5 ms·

Azure IoT Loves Open Source

32 points by dluc 10y ago

ausjke 10y ago
When I thought about MS could potentially buy Redhat and Canonical and such and swallow the major open source companies with cash, I woke up sweating.
- oridecon 10y ago
  If they bought RH or Canonical at least we would have one less vendor to add to the fragmentation. At least in my eyes, the moment something like this happens it would be like a black hole vanished with that entire "distro" ecosystem.
  - meira 10y ago
    And then they will have killed Linux. Don't let they read this.
    - oridecon 10y ago
      What do you mean? I don't see how that can happen. Maybe a few "power moves" here and there, and companies already poach OS devs anyway. There's also licenses, CLAs. Worst-case scenario people would just rewrite parts of the stack to move around it. There's people salivating at this very moment just thinking about rewritting core stuff in Go, Rust, or something else, and making a blog post about it. Imagine if they had an actual motive to do it.
fingar 10y ago
To be pedantic, they do not "love" open source.
- finid 10y ago
  You're actually not being pedantic. It's true! Microsoft does _not_ love open source. The company does love to find ways to hurt Linux while pretending to "love" it.
  - s3r3nity 10y ago
    I don't know how much more they can do when they're at the top of Github contributions [1]. At some point, you accept that their culture is probably different than 10+ years ago. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-open-source-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-open-source-...
    - ffggvv 10y ago
      Riiight https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878
    - minchinha 10y ago
      > they're at the top of Github contributions What does that mean? 16.000 lines of code, 16.000 projects? Nope. Just 16.000 people -not necessarily MS employees- which did something that can go from pushing a commit to opening a ticket. So this kind of stats mean nothing for me. It used to be called 'propaganda'.
      - meira 10y ago
        It'd be better to compare stars and forks. Makes much more sense.
faragon 10y ago
Is there any compromise about Microsoft not going to sue Open Source projects anymore? (FAT patents, etc.)
eveningcoffee 10y ago
What they actually love here is to crab as much data as possible.
- mc32 10y ago
  So kind of like almost every other large outfit out there? Not sure there is a solution where that isn't the case, but it'd be nice to be wrong.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    Hard to say. Naturally this is growing cynicism in me that is talking. I believe that in most cases data from smart device should not leave their local network. Making a product that leaks data, especially from people homes is dangerous for the their users (I do not say owners, as who owns the data is an actual owner in my opinion) and even more dangerous for the society as whole.
3327 10y ago
Microsoft PR arm again on HN. We all known what Microsoft loves.
- soared 10y ago
  You weren't kidding. OP's profile: > Working on Microsoft Azure iot and this post is his only contribution.
  - LyalinDotCom 10y ago
    I work for Microsoft in our developer marketing org and can assure you this isn't marketing and Sam works for engineering organization. We're always looking for more ways to contribute to the open source community, but I totally understand in the end you will judge us by our actions and not what some marketing guy (like me) says here :). thanks for reading.
    - soared 10y ago
      I've had enough (not positive) interaction with dev marketing at ms to know how uncoordinated your departments are haha. I'm only judging that this was his only contribution on a new account.
      - 3327 10y ago
        Funny how the dev marketing just "swoop" in so we rest assured its Sam's original contribution.
  - dluc 10y ago
    @soared, sorry if I gave that impression. I'm actually a software engineer, enthusiast HN reader. I thought this was a good opportunity to join the community and share some work :-)
    - soared 10y ago
      Not holding it against you, but generally you'll want to follow some sort of 80-20 or 90-10 rule. Share/contribute 90%, promote your [employer's] stuff 10%.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ddorian43 10y ago
So they open sourced, a client ? who cares? Good example: https://github.com/BitFunnel https://github.com/BitFunnel (full-text-seach from bing)
LyalinDotCom 10y ago
This post was very short and specific but in regards to what Microsoft (Where I work) contributes to open source, well there is a lot of traction in the last few years with Satya at the helm, who has helped really enable a lot of this. So just in case anyone is curious here are a bunch of links to just how much we're doing in the open now: (1) Azure repo collection: https://github.com/Azure https://github.com/Azure (2) Microsoft general repo collection: https://github.com/microsoft https://github.com/microsoft (3) .NET Core open source repo: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet
meira 10y ago
Now M$ loves open source? What a joke. Most developers still don't like it and the fresh ones almost don't need to pay much attention. Farewell, M$. Now it's time to make Google and Facebook to "loves privacy", in regrets.
NicoJuicy 10y ago
Here we go again.. Just like the post in Github ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558053 ) some people are so hatefull on companies because they had some bad press ( github vs gitlab ( github didn't do anything new for a long time and then gitlab came in) and the past of Microsoft vs linux. For all the haters here below, who "actually" blame one developer, who shares his code ( because he posts a project) and he hasn't got another contribution on his new account... Let me remind you, Microsoft is the #1 contributer on Github now, topping Google and Facebook together. https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/15/2255241/microsoft-has-more-open-source-contributors-on-github-than-facebook-and-google https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/15/2255241/microsoft-h... Please, now let's go back to IoT and ontopic. Too bad i don't know a lot of IoT on Azure, but i have viewed some projects about IoT of Microsoft on Hackster, their project page: https://www.hackster.io/microsoft/products/microsoft-azure https://www.hackster.io/microsoft/products/microsoft-azure Thanks dluc for sharing, i hope i have topic worthy stuff to contribute next time ;) - one point of discussion would be to link to the project page instead next time - https://github.com/azure/toketi-iothubreact https://github.com/azure/toketi-iothubreact or https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduction-to-azure-iot/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduct..., it would probably fuse some less discussion - we like code :p
- joezydeco 10y ago
  I just finished a prototype IoT node project for a customer using Azure. Azure was their choice, not mine, but by the end of the development I was pretty pleased with the level of security they built into the data acquisition side. Before the Azure project I worked with some other IoT/Cloud providers and it was a lot shakier. As in, am HTTP GET with the device serial ID in the URL and that's it. My customer showed me the dashboarding they've already built with BI on the backend, it was even more advanced than the stuff I've seen from the others. Azure is no cakewalk to set up, but it seems to work really well once it is.
  - NicoJuicy 10y ago
    Any insights, blog post about this?
bizzleDawg 10y ago
Slightly tangental, however I've been waiting for months for an Azure IoT thread to post this mini rant on... My team and I spent a few weeks working with Azure IoT before instigating a switch to an alternative. The problem with Azure IoT as a platform is that they provide SDK documentation (which is relatively good for languages they like), but not API documentation for the AMQP interface which is their preferred method of connecting devices. Their support for python clients and servers (in particular servers) left me and my team spending circa 10 days digging through AMQP logs and wireshark in ever more desperate attempts to integrate our existing python server with Azure IoT. Eventually it became clear that our only option was to wrap the C library for a really brittle integration and that we could switch to a different platform with far less effort! Both Amazon IoT and Watson IoT have been far smoother to integrate with since they provide both SDK and API docs! The tough thing about it is that on the surface it looks as though it's really well documented and it's not until you hit your first big problem that you start looking around for API docs to try and debug what exactly it is that's wrong! Currently really fond of Watson IoT for the decent python SDK's (we've only got 2-3 patches in a fork!) and the really handy device management features which can make rebooting etc much easier from the server side. The MQTT implementation they've worked on is great too.

32 points by dluc 10y ago

When I thought about MS could potentially buy Redhat and Canonical and such and swallow the major open source companies with cash, I woke up sweating.

oridecon 10y ago
If they bought RH or Canonical at least we would have one less vendor to add to the fragmentation. At least in my eyes, the moment something like this happens it would be like a black hole vanished with that entire "distro" ecosystem.
- meira 10y ago
  And then they will have killed Linux. Don't let they read this.
  - oridecon 10y ago
    What do you mean? I don't see how that can happen. Maybe a few "power moves" here and there, and companies already poach OS devs anyway. There's also licenses, CLAs. Worst-case scenario people would just rewrite parts of the stack to move around it. There's people salivating at this very moment just thinking about rewritting core stuff in Go, Rust, or something else, and making a blog post about it. Imagine if they had an actual motive to do it.

fingar 10y ago

To be pedantic, they do not "love" open source.

finid 10y ago
You're actually not being pedantic. It's true! Microsoft does _not_ love open source. The company does love to find ways to hurt Linux while pretending to "love" it.
- s3r3nity 10y ago
  I don't know how much more they can do when they're at the top of Github contributions [1]. At some point, you accept that their culture is probably different than 10+ years ago. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-open-source-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-open-source-...
  - ffggvv 10y ago
    Riiight https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878
  - minchinha 10y ago
    > they're at the top of Github contributions What does that mean? 16.000 lines of code, 16.000 projects? Nope. Just 16.000 people -not necessarily MS employees- which did something that can go from pushing a commit to opening a ticket. So this kind of stats mean nothing for me. It used to be called 'propaganda'.
    - meira 10y ago
      It'd be better to compare stars and forks. Makes much more sense.

faragon 10y ago

Is there any compromise about Microsoft not going to sue Open Source projects anymore? (FAT patents, etc.)

eveningcoffee 10y ago

What they actually love here is to crab as much data as possible.

mc32 10y ago
So kind of like almost every other large outfit out there? Not sure there is a solution where that isn't the case, but it'd be nice to be wrong.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  Hard to say. Naturally this is growing cynicism in me that is talking. I believe that in most cases data from smart device should not leave their local network. Making a product that leaks data, especially from people homes is dangerous for the their users (I do not say owners, as who owns the data is an actual owner in my opinion) and even more dangerous for the society as whole.

3327 10y ago

Microsoft PR arm again on HN. We all known what Microsoft loves.

soared 10y ago
You weren't kidding. OP's profile: > Working on Microsoft Azure iot and this post is his only contribution.
- LyalinDotCom 10y ago
  I work for Microsoft in our developer marketing org and can assure you this isn't marketing and Sam works for engineering organization. We're always looking for more ways to contribute to the open source community, but I totally understand in the end you will judge us by our actions and not what some marketing guy (like me) says here :). thanks for reading.
  - soared 10y ago
    I've had enough (not positive) interaction with dev marketing at ms to know how uncoordinated your departments are haha. I'm only judging that this was his only contribution on a new account.
    - 3327 10y ago
      Funny how the dev marketing just "swoop" in so we rest assured its Sam's original contribution.
- dluc 10y ago
  @soared, sorry if I gave that impression. I'm actually a software engineer, enthusiast HN reader. I thought this was a good opportunity to join the community and share some work :-)
  - soared 10y ago
    Not holding it against you, but generally you'll want to follow some sort of 80-20 or 90-10 rule. Share/contribute 90%, promote your [employer's] stuff 10%.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ddorian43 10y ago

So they open sourced, a client ? who cares? Good example: https://github.com/BitFunnel https://github.com/BitFunnel (full-text-seach from bing)

LyalinDotCom 10y ago

This post was very short and specific but in regards to what Microsoft (Where I work) contributes to open source, well there is a lot of traction in the last few years with Satya at the helm, who has helped really enable a lot of this. So just in case anyone is curious here are a bunch of links to just how much we're doing in the open now: (1) Azure repo collection: https://github.com/Azure https://github.com/Azure (2) Microsoft general repo collection: https://github.com/microsoft https://github.com/microsoft (3) .NET Core open source repo: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet

meira 10y ago

Now M$ loves open source? What a joke. Most developers still don't like it and the fresh ones almost don't need to pay much attention. Farewell, M$. Now it's time to make Google and Facebook to "loves privacy", in regrets.

NicoJuicy 10y ago

Here we go again.. Just like the post in Github ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558053 ) some people are so hatefull on companies because they had some bad press ( github vs gitlab ( github didn't do anything new for a long time and then gitlab came in) and the past of Microsoft vs linux. For all the haters here below, who "actually" blame one developer, who shares his code ( because he posts a project) and he hasn't got another contribution on his new account... Let me remind you, Microsoft is the #1 contributer on Github now, topping Google and Facebook together. https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/15/2255241/microsoft-has-more-open-source-contributors-on-github-than-facebook-and-google https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/15/2255241/microsoft-h... Please, now let's go back to IoT and ontopic. Too bad i don't know a lot of IoT on Azure, but i have viewed some projects about IoT of Microsoft on Hackster, their project page: https://www.hackster.io/microsoft/products/microsoft-azure https://www.hackster.io/microsoft/products/microsoft-azure Thanks dluc for sharing, i hope i have topic worthy stuff to contribute next time ;) - one point of discussion would be to link to the project page instead next time - https://github.com/azure/toketi-iothubreact https://github.com/azure/toketi-iothubreact or https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduction-to-azure-iot/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduct..., it would probably fuse some less discussion - we like code :p

joezydeco 10y ago
I just finished a prototype IoT node project for a customer using Azure. Azure was their choice, not mine, but by the end of the development I was pretty pleased with the level of security they built into the data acquisition side. Before the Azure project I worked with some other IoT/Cloud providers and it was a lot shakier. As in, am HTTP GET with the device serial ID in the URL and that's it. My customer showed me the dashboarding they've already built with BI on the backend, it was even more advanced than the stuff I've seen from the others. Azure is no cakewalk to set up, but it seems to work really well once it is.
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  Any insights, blog post about this?

bizzleDawg 10y ago

Slightly tangental, however I've been waiting for months for an Azure IoT thread to post this mini rant on... My team and I spent a few weeks working with Azure IoT before instigating a switch to an alternative. The problem with Azure IoT as a platform is that they provide SDK documentation (which is relatively good for languages they like), but not API documentation for the AMQP interface which is their preferred method of connecting devices. Their support for python clients and servers (in particular servers) left me and my team spending circa 10 days digging through AMQP logs and wireshark in ever more desperate attempts to integrate our existing python server with Azure IoT. Eventually it became clear that our only option was to wrap the C library for a really brittle integration and that we could switch to a different platform with far less effort! Both Amazon IoT and Watson IoT have been far smoother to integrate with since they provide both SDK and API docs! The tough thing about it is that on the surface it looks as though it's really well documented and it's not until you hit your first big problem that you start looking around for API docs to try and debug what exactly it is that's wrong! Currently really fond of Watson IoT for the decent python SDK's (we've only got 2-3 patches in a fork!) and the really handy device management features which can make rebooting etc much easier from the server side. The MQTT implementation they've worked on is great too.