5 ms·

With .NET Core, all .NET languages, and ASP.NET Core being open source I'd say they've made that jump. It's literally millions of developers who use .NET and p

With .NET Core, all .NET languages, and ASP.NET Core being open source I'd say they've made that jump. It's literally millions of developers who use .NET and pay for Visual Studio (not to mention, this is what an incredible amount of Microsoft's products are built with), which last I checked is a billon-dollar business for MSFT. The open source stuff is where they're taking that business strategically, or at least it certainly seems that way.

avar 10y ago
All the things you've listed fall squarely in the category of "we've lost the hosting war, and nobody's going to ship proprietary .NET binaries on Linux distros". The further you go from that sort of thing where they've already lost the market and either have nothing to lose or the writing is on the wall (how long can paid-for languages truly compete with free ones?), the less they have open sourced. E.g. even Visual Studio which would be the next logical step is still for sale starting at $500 on their website[1], maybe that'll be fully open one day. After all how long can the paid-for editor wars persist? What I was pointing out is that there's no sign of them opening up anything that would truly make them an open source company. I.e. things they make real money on, or would threaten their established lock-in. 1. https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs
- oblio 10y ago
  Both Visual Studio and the Jetbrains IDEs are commercial and they're considered some of the best tools available on the market. Quality tools can still command a decent price. To put things into perspective, IntelliJ has been battling both Eclipse and Netbeans for ages and it is (slowly) winning.
  - avar 10y ago
    Yes it makes perfect sense that they're selling it. I'm not saying it doesn't. What I'm saying is that the comments here to the effect of "Microsoft has changed their stance" don't seem to be in touch with reality. Microsoft has just realized relatively late that there's certain things that they can't make money on yet are still strategically important, such as core .NET technology, or JS engines. That doesn't mean that they'll keep open sourcing stuff, or that they're not likely to pull back the second they think it services their commercial aims.
    - oblio 10y ago
      You're probably right. The thing is, Microsoft is right now in existential danger, at least if it wants to grow, and I think it has to grow, because it's a public company. Their core market (desktop/enterprise desktop) is basically saturated. Almost their secondary efforts have failed from a financial standpoint or are only second in their niche (Bing, Edge, Azure, Xbox, etc.). Unless they pull off some sort of a miraculous switch: * they'll continue to be perennial underdogs * they'll opening things up in order to gain allies, through genuine community building From my point of view, in a sort of twisted way, that basically means that they're safe from a open source point of view. They'll have to develop communities in almost every area they want to compete in (which means that there will be stewards available if they back down) and they'll invest quite heavily in their open source contribution. It might not be done for the purest reasons, but I think that their new contributions will be here with us for the long term.
    - pyre 10y ago
      > "Microsoft has changed their stance" don't seem to be in touch with reality I would say that porting MSSQL to Linux, open-sourcing .NET and ChakraCore (amongst other things) is definitely a change from the "Linux / OpenSource is a cancer" days, no? Microsoft is in no way going to become the next Red Hat in running a service-only model onto of Open Source products. It doesn't make sense for them to do that. But the fact that they have accepted Open Source as a possibility for some of their products, and put that into action is a step in the right direction.
      - cyphar 10y ago
        The fact that they are happy to ship proprietary products that are known to have backdoors doesn't make me believe they've changed their views on user freedom. It's a relevance ploy, nothing more.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Note that, while VS is still proprietary, VSCode is open source. Keep in mind that there's a considerable overhead in open sourcing large products with very old codebases that evolved over many years, sometimes decades (this describes Windows, Office and VS, among many others). For example, they may incorporate code and components from other sources, and the license that permitted their use and redistribution may not permit opening the source. Worse yet, in many cases, you won't even be sure if they do or do not before you do an expensive code audit. Open sourcing something mostly brand new, like ASP.NET Core or Roslyn, is much easier in comparison, because you architecture for that from the get go.
  - pritambaral 10y ago
    > while VS is still proprietary, VSCode is open source And the two are completely different products
    - int_19h 10y ago
      Yes, of course. But they're products in a similar area, with the main difference being that one is a brand-new, from-scratch codebase, while another one is ~20 years old, and in places, might be based on code going even further back. Which reinforces my point that it's much easier to open source new stuff.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  The open sourcing of .NET core is incredibly significant. As much as people here like to pretend no one uses C#, it's a massive and profitable ecosystem. The license you're buying for VS is a support seat with some special integrations. It's not like IntelliJ doesn't do that too. The community edition is entirely serviceable and free.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > how long can paid-for languages truly compete with free ones? This is why we cannot have nice things, and FOSS community keeps rediscovering features that were already common in the 90's in commercial tools. Common Lisp IDEs is just one example out of many.

avar 10y ago

All the things you've listed fall squarely in the category of "we've lost the hosting war, and nobody's going to ship proprietary .NET binaries on Linux distros". The further you go from that sort of thing where they've already lost the market and either have nothing to lose or the writing is on the wall (how long can paid-for languages truly compete with free ones?), the less they have open sourced. E.g. even Visual Studio which would be the next logical step is still for sale starting at $500 on their website[1], maybe that'll be fully open one day. After all how long can the paid-for editor wars persist? What I was pointing out is that there's no sign of them opening up anything that would truly make them an open source company. I.e. things they make real money on, or would threaten their established lock-in. 1. https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs

oblio 10y ago
Both Visual Studio and the Jetbrains IDEs are commercial and they're considered some of the best tools available on the market. Quality tools can still command a decent price. To put things into perspective, IntelliJ has been battling both Eclipse and Netbeans for ages and it is (slowly) winning.
- avar 10y ago
  Yes it makes perfect sense that they're selling it. I'm not saying it doesn't. What I'm saying is that the comments here to the effect of "Microsoft has changed their stance" don't seem to be in touch with reality. Microsoft has just realized relatively late that there's certain things that they can't make money on yet are still strategically important, such as core .NET technology, or JS engines. That doesn't mean that they'll keep open sourcing stuff, or that they're not likely to pull back the second they think it services their commercial aims.
  - oblio 10y ago
    You're probably right. The thing is, Microsoft is right now in existential danger, at least if it wants to grow, and I think it has to grow, because it's a public company. Their core market (desktop/enterprise desktop) is basically saturated. Almost their secondary efforts have failed from a financial standpoint or are only second in their niche (Bing, Edge, Azure, Xbox, etc.). Unless they pull off some sort of a miraculous switch: * they'll continue to be perennial underdogs * they'll opening things up in order to gain allies, through genuine community building From my point of view, in a sort of twisted way, that basically means that they're safe from a open source point of view. They'll have to develop communities in almost every area they want to compete in (which means that there will be stewards available if they back down) and they'll invest quite heavily in their open source contribution. It might not be done for the purest reasons, but I think that their new contributions will be here with us for the long term.
  - pyre 10y ago
    > "Microsoft has changed their stance" don't seem to be in touch with reality I would say that porting MSSQL to Linux, open-sourcing .NET and ChakraCore (amongst other things) is definitely a change from the "Linux / OpenSource is a cancer" days, no? Microsoft is in no way going to become the next Red Hat in running a service-only model onto of Open Source products. It doesn't make sense for them to do that. But the fact that they have accepted Open Source as a possibility for some of their products, and put that into action is a step in the right direction.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      The fact that they are happy to ship proprietary products that are known to have backdoors doesn't make me believe they've changed their views on user freedom. It's a relevance ploy, nothing more.
int_19h 10y ago
Note that, while VS is still proprietary, VSCode is open source. Keep in mind that there's a considerable overhead in open sourcing large products with very old codebases that evolved over many years, sometimes decades (this describes Windows, Office and VS, among many others). For example, they may incorporate code and components from other sources, and the license that permitted their use and redistribution may not permit opening the source. Worse yet, in many cases, you won't even be sure if they do or do not before you do an expensive code audit. Open sourcing something mostly brand new, like ASP.NET Core or Roslyn, is much easier in comparison, because you architecture for that from the get go.
- pritambaral 10y ago
  > while VS is still proprietary, VSCode is open source And the two are completely different products
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Yes, of course. But they're products in a similar area, with the main difference being that one is a brand-new, from-scratch codebase, while another one is ~20 years old, and in places, might be based on code going even further back. Which reinforces my point that it's much easier to open source new stuff.
KirinDave 10y ago
The open sourcing of .NET core is incredibly significant. As much as people here like to pretend no one uses C#, it's a massive and profitable ecosystem. The license you're buying for VS is a support seat with some special integrations. It's not like IntelliJ doesn't do that too. The community edition is entirely serviceable and free.
pjmlp 10y ago
> how long can paid-for languages truly compete with free ones? This is why we cannot have nice things, and FOSS community keeps rediscovering features that were already common in the 90's in commercial tools. Common Lisp IDEs is just one example out of many.