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Can somebody please explain to me why Microsoft is suddenly being so open? Are they afraid to lose relevancy due to Linux/OSX/Android and this is their way to f
by yoodenvranx 11y ago
Can somebody please explain to me why Microsoft is suddenly being so open? Are they afraid to lose relevancy due to Linux/OSX/Android and this is their way to fight back? What is the long-term strategy behind all of this?
edit: Thank you for all your answers!
- aaronbrethorst 11y agohttp://news.microsoft.com/2014/02/04/microsoft-board-names-satya-nadella-as-ceo/ http://news.microsoft.com/2014/02/04/microsoft-board-names-s...
- ponyous 11y agoNobody really knows for sure. But here is what I've read in other comments and it makes the most sense to me (sorry can't find the source!): > Microsoft has lost in server space against Linux. Developers developing any server software switch to either Linux or OSX. They want to prevent this switch.
- UK-AL 11y agoThe problem with windows sever, is that free is hard to beat.
- simplemath 11y agoRed Hat isn't free.
- justinclift 11y agoCentOS sure is.
- simplemath 11y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=centos+market+share https://www.google.com/search?q=centos+market+share
- justinclift 11y ago??? This one (from the same result set) may be useful too: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all
- simplemath 11y agoThe one I linked is websites running on Linux. Besides we're splitting hairs, right? It just comes down to the fact that most enterprises like having technical support.
- cosarara97 11y agohttps://www.google.es/search?q=red+hat+market+share https://www.google.es/search?q=red+hat+market+share
- toyg 11y agoUbuntu / Debian is. A lot of startups don't care about "official support" -- at least until they're big enough that price is not a factor anymore.
- wernercd 11y agoThe problem with Ubuntu? Lack of games and applications... and a desktop that people have to learn to use vs tried and true Windows. Ubuntu has games and applications? Come back when Call of Duty 87 or Office 2016 works on Linux...
- mateuszf 11y agoThis thread is about servers.
- haukilup 11y agoYou seem to be totally off topic here
- RaleyField 11y agoIt's 2016, Steam is available on Linux. I even managed to run AoE2 HD on Wine. > Call of Duty All you need is CS:GO. And you can get it on Linux. ;)
- jqm 11y agoThat's but _one_ of the problems....
- cm2187 11y agoPlus Windows server is not even cheap...
- gagege 11y agoMy guess is that it's two things: To get developers to use Windows again and to get developers to use Azure for everything.
- euroclydon 11y agoMaking the barriers low for Azure is huge. They have such an advantage over Amazon and Google here. Google has no IDE to speak of. Amazon has no IDE, language(s), runtime, etc.
- mixmastamyk 11y agoDo they need them? There are hundreds of free(dom) choices.
- st3v3r 11y agoAnother way of saying it is that Amazon has every IDE, language, runtime, etc.
- Eridrus 11y ago> Google has no IDE to speak of. Not quite true; Android Studio has some tools to help you get a mobile backend onto Google's cloud.
- criddell 11y agoFor backend developers, this is super smart. When I'm running an app on my phone or in my browser, I don't care if the brains reside on AWS, Google, Azure, Rackspace, etc... For the front end, this probably won't have much effect. Developers go where the users are and there's very little excitement around Windows applications (win32 or universal). If keeping developers happy was all that important, then Linux would be the dominant desktop OS.
- judah 11y agoSoftware-wise: The open source advocates (Scott Hanselman, Scott Guthrie, Damien Edwards, and many others) won the internal struggle. Microsoft is more open because they recognize this is a superior model over the proprietary closed systems they had built in the past. Business-wise: The answer is Azure. While Microsoft wants you to run Windows, they care even more that you're running in their cloud.
- swalsh 11y ago"The answer is Azure. While Microsoft wants you to run Windows, they care even more that you're running in their cloud." The lock in here is a very hard to resist value proposition. I started using Azure because they gave hundreds of dollars a month for free (for I think 3 years). I then started to use their services because it's just simpler. Core made that decision even easier for me. I originally started using Core because my thinking was "if i'm on linux, I can always move to AWS, linux is pretty competitive everywhere", then I needed a solution that had a market place offer (which is not free) or an azure service offer (which is free). I decided to choose the azure solution, but I designed my software with an interface so in theory i could replace the implementation if I ever needed to move to AWS. However, i'm now starting to realize that while I've always tried to choose solutions so I can easily move, it's becoming increasingly more difficult. In 3 years I may have the capability to move, but i'm now becoming aware that it might not be practical to move. They got me.
- tluyben2 11y agoWe evaluate cloud services quite often to see if we are still betting on the right horse and I can't say (but that might be taste) that I find Azure any easier to use that AWS. What do you find simpler? AWS is almost no work; you write code and the rest is handled for you. I'm not sure how to get simpler 'beyond' that.
- mfoy_ 11y agoAzure does that too, you can create a Web Application project in Visual Studio and publish it directly to your Azure subscription, it provisions everything it needs automagically and just works. I haven't played around with testing that out tooo much but it seemed pretty slick based on the demo project I set up. Tearing it down later was also incredibly easy.
- T-A 11y agoTwo obvious answers: 1) Use developer tools as onramps to Azure. Same reason Amazon made Lumberyard free. Yes, developers can opt for other clouds, but the effort required to do so will often seem more costly than it's worth. 2) Specifically for Xamarin, if you've already built your iOS and Android app in .NET, in Visual Studio, and there's little more than a recompile between you and a Windows Mobile version, why not do that too?
- Quarrelsome 11y agoThis is a long term trend that began with Gates leaving his position as CEO. I'd imagine the engineers have slowly been gaining more influence over time and most engineers can see the value of openness as it increases the scope of what they can achieve. The first echoes of this trend in my opinion were codeplex and providing sources for .NET.
- mythz 11y agoAzure and Server licenses is the business center that's behind funding their recent OSS efforts. They're effectively following a freemium model, get as many developers onto the MS platform then direct them to Azure.
- simplemath 11y agoTo swallow Linux whole, especially dev environments.
- pekk 11y agoToo late, another company already did the same with its own proprietary software.
- wernercd 11y agoKings never fall? Ask Palm & Blackberry how they are doing...
- register 11y agoI would say that it's not to swallow but rather to embrace. I have been developing middleware in Java, C++ and .NET on Linux and Windows Servers using basically every possible editor/ide/debugger combination. I have always regretted the fact that Java and Linux did not have anything on par with what Visual Studio provides. Now that most of the tooling is free deciding which tool to use will be a no brainer for everyone that has just touched VS and will become extremly tempting also for anybody else. At the same time this will push adoption of .NET and I foresee that in the next 10 years .NET will erode much of Java space. In my opinion the stategy is not to swallow Linux but rather to push .NET. On premise Servers are becoming less relevant Linux or Windows won't make much difference in the future. What will make a difference is what the cloud will support and provide.
- simplemath 11y agoSure, that its becoming less relevant that the dev environment is linux or windows, seems to me to be a huge win for MSFT.
- mixedCase 11y ago>I have always regretted the fact that Java and Linux did not have anything on par with what Visual Studio provides. Linux has had JetBrains IDEs for a long time now. In any case, without Xamarin being ported to Linux and tied to VS, the embrace you're talking about is shortly followed by the other two "E"s.
- thearn4 11y agoAlso out of curiosity, have any of the original vanguard for FOSS (Stallman, ESR, Torvalds, etc.) made any recent comments about this trend from MS?
- mixmastamyk 11y agoI don't think Stallman even recommends Red hat or Ubuntu, MS has a long way to go.
- regularfry 11y agoHell, Debian isn't Free enough for RMS.
- abiox 11y agoi seem to recall he was somewhat... unenthusiastic about the amazon-canonical team up.
- cubano 11y agoWithout significant developer mindshare, long-term MS is toast. The new gen devs simply refused to buy into their old school closed shop practices. evolve or die.
- mbesto 11y agoDevelopers, developers, developers.
- taivare 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extingui...
- jongalloway2 11y agohttps://opensource.org/licenses/MIT https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT Seriously, do people even think before posting EEE on every Microsoft open source release? How exactly does that work?
- khattam 11y agoThe thing with software is that it gets outdated quickly... and if you don't get the updates, security fixes etc., there is no point in using it. Microsoft releases it with certain license today, will change license tomorrow and then drop support for open source version... most people using it will have to move to their proprietary shit. Do you know what Microsoft did when they tried to kill Java? They implemented a version of JVM on their OS... and that in such a way that if you made apps for Microsoft's JVM, you wouldn't be able to run it on other platforms. There is direct and indirect evidence that this is one of the core strategies Microsoft has used for many years. Given Microsoft's recent embracing of Linux and open source in general, which of the possibilities you think is likely: 1. After calling Linux and Open Source "cancer", "something to be not touched with a 12-foot pole", suing Linux and open source software makers for patent violations, making Linux vendors pay to not sue them, now they suddenly believe in healthy competition and want to part take in open source revolution 2. This is a new strategy to "embrace" Linux and Open Source to start extending at some point in order to finally extinguish it EVEN IF there is A TINY possibility that scenario 1 may be true, I think it is a wise decision to ditch Microsoft for what they have done in the past.
- staticelf 11y agoThe issue with that is people will leave for alternatives. It will also probably be more quick than before and then they would for sure never win the users back. I think alternative 2 is a really bad business decision nowadays and thus will never happen. The difference from the past and today is that they really have open sources a lot. They actually proves their agenda with code and support like never before.
- jbandela1 11y agoA lot of people talk about this as something new. This is really Microsoft going back to its roots. Remember, before the PC, Microsoft made its money selling development tools for multiple platforms. This is their DNA.
- hydromet 11y agoAgreed. This is an astute observation.
- pjmlp 11y agoEasy, look at the old IBM and the new IBM. Adapting to the market flow to stay relevant, that's all.
- iofj 11y agoAside from a good lesson in "how to fuck up financial engineering" (give in to your shareholders every demand, without ever once mentioning that that's exactly why your share price dropped by a factor of 35-40% since the last CEO got appointed, even while debt increased a LOT and assets were reduced by even more (ie. despite the drop, IBM is definitely overvalued). We're getting close to the point that IBM might actually die, or at least get taken over by something like Oracle), what exactly does IBM still do that matters even a little bit ? I always wonder about how companies with such resources manage to make so little use of the advantages they develop. For instance: why wasn't Watson running every callcenter on the planet 5 years ago ? Right now there is little in Watson's tech that can't be duplicated by 10 other firms and give it another year or 5 and every startup can do it. It's too late. How can management of such behemoths as IBM let those things happen. Not that Microsoft did better with Windows Speech Server, and Google and Facebook, well they're not even trying.
- jaxondu 11y agoThe strategy is an enterprise play. MS has loss the consumer for mobile, so focusing on enterprise to take advantage of its strongest strength. Enterprise needs cloud: Azure. Enterprise needs hardware: Surface Pro/Win10. Making it stick is the many enterprise C# developers and one developer tools for all platforms, outside or within enterprise. This will effectively counter IBM/Apple's Swift strategy with iOS devices for the enterprise. And keeping its enterprise customers away from AWS and Google. I'm learning React Native, MS is giving me pause to look at Xamarin. As a side note, it might be good startup idea to create a Xamarin clone that uses Swift that targets all platform. Likely acquire by Apple or IBM. Fastest way is for JetBrain to spin off one unit :-).
- hydromet 11y ago> This will effectively counter IBM/Apple's Swift strategy with iOS devices for the enterprise. In a similar vein, Satya Nadella's new "vision" expressed in yesterday's keynote, aka the future of chat bots with their AI / personal agents (channeling some of the original General Magic vision of 25 years ago), strikes me as more attainable for "developers developers developers" v.s. the marketing messages / PR spin coming from IBM on the Watson AI. > I'm learning React Native, MS is giving me pause to look at Xamarin. Likewise. Let's see what Facebook has to say at F8 starting April 12th. The competition is great. We are in a much better place today v.s. 20 years ago when Microsoft was a monopoly and expending time and money trying to kill Netscape and battle Sun's lawyers over Java.
- dohboy 11y agoBecause Windows is loosing as a dev platform for web and mobile. Enterprise developers are in control as enterprise already did their lock-in with the Office365 platform and surrounding technologies. Don't worry they close down again when enough have come back.
- profeta 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish worked in the past, they hope it will work now. The fact that ubuntu laid in bed with them is extremely scary.
- tmerr 11y agoIt seems like Microsoft wants to free the developer tools but control the distribution of binaries through the Windows Store. Seems like an intelligent business decision to me. You can develop Linux or Mac but you're not going to get the same quality tooling (hello Universal Windows App Model).