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Microsoft joins the MariaDB Foundation as a Platinum level sponsor
- cjsuk 9y agoTentacles everywhere.
- christogreeff 9y agoDamned if you do, damned if you don't.
- cjsuk 9y agoThey’d damned themselves permanently for a lot of us.
- adventured 9y agoHow many engineers and executives from 1990-1998 do you suppose are still working full-time at Microsoft today? I'd place my money on it being a single digit percentage. Pre early 1990s, Microsoft had a modest amount of market power and wasn't infamous for abusive tactics. Post anti-trust years, Microsoft's competitive abuses contracted to negligible levels by necessity. So out of ~42 years of existence, they abused their temporary monopoly position for about ten of those. And you can't let any of that go, even after two decades. That doesn't seem overly dramatic to you?
- cjsuk 9y agoMicrosoft were terrible in the 1980s too (I have a Gates signed copy of MS DOS encyclopaedia here to give you an idea of how far I go back). They abused enterprise customers all through the 2000's. They screwed people on audits, certs, all sorts. This is a consistent negative all along. This isn't a 10 year stretch, it's persistent bad behaviour AND it hasn't actually got any better. Enterprises are still getting screwed and they're pretty much steamrolling everything. You have to be stupid to trust them at this point.
- josteink 9y agoTranslation: They are using it internally and/or are planning to offer it as a service in Azure. Which is absolutely fair enough.
- dspillett 9y agohttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/mariadb-postgresql-and-mysql-more-choices-on-microsoft-azure/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/mariadb-postgresql-an... Given that they've offered mySQL as an azure managed service (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/mysql/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/mysql/, along with postgres https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/postgresql/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/postgresql/) for while now and MariaDB is intended to maintain drop-in compatibility with mySQL as much as possible, the move to supporting MariaDB in the platform too makes sense.
- baq 9y agothey actually did the same thing with postgres open 2017. customers were begging them to offer postgresql on azure, so they did.
- tpxl 9y agoWell yeah, it says so in the post[0]. 0. "...developers can use their favorite database as a fully managed service on Microsoft Azure that will soon include MariaDB"
- pc86 9y agoI don't think you need a footnote on a two-sentence post, where one of those sentences is the footnote.
- partycoder 9y agoThe new Microsoft * Microsoft and node.js 1. Microsoft embraces node.js (embrace) 2. Microsoft forks node (extend) https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore 3. Soon! (extinguish) --- * Microsoft and R 1. Microsoft embraces R 2. Microsoft forks R. Fully compatible, but interoperability is one-way only. https://mran.microsoft.com/open https://mran.microsoft.com/open 3. Soon! (extinguish) --- The old Microsoft: - Microsoft <3 Apple -> Let's work on Macintosh -> Windows - Microsoft <3 IBM -> Let's work on OS/2! -> Windows NT - Microsoft <3 Sun -> Let's work on Java -> .NET - Microsoft <3 Sybase -> Let's work on Sybase ASE -> SQL Server
- sametmax 9y agoHope they don't try to extend Python, cause they sure love the language right now.
- Kipters 9y agoYeah, it's so clear they're trying to extinguish nodejs, it's not like they used node-chakra to push for a better engine abstraction in nodejs which brought NAPI
- partycoder 9y agoThe problem is that it is not so much of an "abstraction". It is a leaky abstraction. Your application code will be running on Chakra's version of ECMAScript, which is whatever they want it to be. It could start the equivalent of the 90s browser wars.
- josteink 9y ago> Your application code will be running on Chakra's version of ECMAScript, which is whatever they want it to be. So just like any other browser and JS-runtime. Exactly like v8 actually. Node chakra is something you can knowingly opt in to use. And they've made efforts trying to get it merged back into mainline, just like any other good open-source citizen. So how is that a problem again?
- squarefoot 9y agoWe already know what is going to happen in the long term: the foundation becomes highly dependent on MS funding and all decisions will be taken with the sole goal of keeping that money flowing. Should things get worse, someone eventually will fork the project, rinse repeat.
- sjwright 9y agoThere's a world of difference between a foundation addicted to a supply of money, and the whole product being sold to a corporate monolith.
- onion2k 9y agoThere were already three platinum sponsors before this (booking.com, Alibaba and Tencent), so adding a fourth diversifies their funding and makes MariaDB less reliant on any single source of money. If you're concerned about the way they're funded then the more sponsors they have the better.
- squarefoot 9y agoThanks, I didn't think about that, it makes sense.
- yulapshun 9y agoCall me paranoid but I don't trust Microsoft at all.
- sjwright 9y agoYou're paranoid. The Microsoft of today is hugely different to itself ten years ago; it has suffered painful lessons in its own arrogance and has demonstrated its humility with deeds. I'm not saying you should trust Microsoft implicitly, but I'd put them well above Oracle (MySQL), Google, Facebook, Samsung or most commodity device OEMs.
- partycoder 9y agoThey collaborate because they have been forced to, not because they are collaborative. That's a significant difference. Once they regain their market share you will see their true character.
- cjsuk 9y agoThis is exactly my worry. I'm not sure you can't actually see their true character though. Look at the deafening silence and corporate opinion on telemetry criticism and the acres of forum posts dedicated to making windows stop calling home. That's an abusive relationship if there ever was one.
- jenscow 9y ago> The Microsoft of today What about tomorrow? Their history needs to be remembered. They play very nicely in areas where they're the underdog, but not when they're on top where lock-in is rife. Make use of them, by all means.. but never depend on them - ever. Always have an exit strategy. (same goes for most other companies, but Microsoft especially)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jrs95 9y ago
- joseluisq 9y agoMS should pay tribute to Open Source community for the rest of its days. Amen.
- qazpot 9y agoCurrently, they are in Embrace and Extend stage of the plan. Soon, they will move into the Extinguish stage of the plan.
- Touche 9y agoAll that would do is extinguish their user base for Azure.
- sctb 9y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704269
- jgowdy 9y agoIn this thread: Microsoft aligns their business interests with open source projects and extends financial support to those projects, therefore they must be trying to destroy open source, force everyone to run Windows, and have Linus Torvalds assassinated. Have you ever met people who work at Microsoft? The Microsoft engineers are just engineers like you and I. Some of them are some of the best and brightest in the industry. Microsoft has made major contributions to technology that some people just aren’t aware of or don’t seem to care about. The “evil” that existed at Microsoft was largely an upper management issue. There has been significant change in upper management. But here’s what’s important. Ask yourself where Microsoft’s interests lie today. Their goal is to get people on Azure. They don’t give a damn if you run Linux or Windows Server. They aren’t stupid enough to fail to realize that ship has already sailed. They’ll keep developing and selling Windows Server to the people who depend on it and collect that revenue, but the future for them is Azure. And that doesn’t require that they extinguish or destroy anything. I would also like to say that members of the open source community have taken jobs at Microsoft, obviously convinced that Microsoft’s private plans match their ideals and principles moving forward. TL;DR If Microsoft’s profit motive in Azure aligns with open source, why do so many people continue to need to infer sinister motives?
- whatshisface 9y agoBecause history repeats itself - especially when the same groups are approaching the same situation with the same motives. >The “evil” that existed at Microsoft was largely an upper management issue. There has been significant change in upper management. Recent anti-consumer actions indicate that this may not be the case. Come on, ads on the start menu? Today's MS has done things even Gates' MS didn't. >They aren’t stupid enough to fail to realize that ship has already sailed. That doesn't stop them from wanting to go out and turn that ship around. >They’ll keep developing and selling Windows Server to the people who depend on it and collect that revenue, but the future for them is Azure. Cloud compute is a commodity, even one of the major things sold by internet Wal-Mart. Is that really where Microsoft wants to go? It's almost implicit that they're going to want to "differentiate" their service, which means developing lock-in but only once you've got people into the fold. >TL;DR If Microsoft’s profit motive in Azure aligns with open source, why do so many people continue to need to infer sinister motives? This isn't the first time Microsoft's profit motives have appeared to allign with an open technology. This wouldn't be the first time they moved to capture it, ruining it for everybody, either. Microsoft has realized that nobody is going to sign up for an unhealthy, rent-based ecosystem. So, out comes the carrot, with absolutely no contract with you that they won't replace it with a stick. We're entering an era were large businesses can treat small businesses like large businesses treat consumers - that is, no negotiation, no contract garuntees, just take-it-or-leave-it on slowly worsening terms.
- owaislone 9y agoCould this be seen as an indirect strategic move against Oracle/MySQL? Conspiracy theories are fun but the truth is much simpler. They are just using it themselves and giving back. Often providing financial support for an open source project is cheaper/simpler for companies compared to providing engineering resources.