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Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company and was privy to "strategic conversations" whereby they were looking to regain trust

Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company and was privy to "strategic conversations" whereby they were looking to regain trust with developers to get them back from Android and Google to Windows stack. Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything, even when there were much better tools. Under Satya, it was better, but the emphasis is still very much on getting, as Steve Balmer said "Developers developers developers". Microsoft knows its being challenged in the platform game and that developers have migrated. But having seen the inside of Microsoft corporate, legal, compliance and policy I don't have high confidence that this isn't another PR project destined for death of the startup. It's also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement.

gaius 8y ago
Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything This is called “dogfooding” and all companies should do it. How can you sell to customers or understand customers if you’re not using the product yourself? One day I’d love to visit SAP and see how they do their own vacations and expenses. It can’t be with their own software.
- flukus 8y ago
  I wish they dogfooded on spinning rust and limited RAM.
  - gaius 8y ago
    It’s always been the case that developers have better hardware than end users, I don’t see that changing anytime soon!
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  Customers and potential customers also use competing products, so you also need to use those to sell to, understand, and grow your customers. Maybe SAP uses their own software internally and they've all become power users that aren't bothered by the issues that you're having. Perhaps if they used competing products they'd have a better understanding of where theirs is lacking.
  - gaius 8y ago
    You can always spot software that is or isn’t used by the people writing it
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't use their own software. I'm saying that they shouldn't use it exclusively.
- santaragolabs 8y ago
  I've done some security contracting work for the folks in Walldorf over the years; I've seen first-hand some SAP FTE's getting insanely frustrated putting in their expenses in their own systems. Which was pretty hilarious to watch. And most folks there fully acknowledge that usability is not their strength traditionally. Things like uptime, support-contracts, having someone on-site within three hours when your multi-millon-dollar-order-processing-SAP-cluster goes down etc are what matter to their customers more than usability (traditionally). Things are changing and a lot of effort has been put into getting better at UI/UX though. But I haven't been involved with them for several years now so I don't know where they are at or what their current offerings are (I keep tabs a bit on HANA developments but that's it really).
- gdegani 8y ago
  SAP Is actually pretty good in eating their own dog food, usually the problem is that the customers are super slow in adopting the new stuff that SAP releases...I worked at SAP for 9 years.
- majewsky 8y ago
  I work at SAP. I book absences via a web UI for a SAP system. I record my time using a very nice HTML5 UI that hooks into an SAP system via RPC. I record travel expenses in Concur (the company of the same name was acquired by SAP, so that counts as dogfooding too). SAP still needs to get better at their dogfooding game in some areas (e.g. using our own ticket system products instead of internally-grown idiosyncrasies), but we're getting there.
staticassertion 8y ago
I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers? Did you leave some part out?
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Yeah except the implication is that it's at the expense of other players, not that they want to simply join the ecosystem and contribute things that everyone can use with low barriers to exit -- the antithesis of open source. Some companies just join, donate hard work and earn good will without the expectation to cash in with their platform play. No one has a problem with any company trying to improve it's relationship with any population of consumers it serves, but Microsoft seems to still be trying to create walled gardens and get developers in then make sure they don't leave.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    Almost every company works this way. They kind of are okay with the world growing but they want to help themselves in what they are really doing. Like hiring interns, it's mostly a way to get 'a really long interview'. It's not really about helping the interns to grow that much.
    - hardwaresofton 8y ago
      Like everything, it's a balance -- open source can also be used to make money (open core, closed source plugins/enhancement suites). At the very least, it's about tact and doing things that are just open enough to not betray your desire to create a walled garden. Let's use Google's Kubernetes as an example -- it's a fantastic tool that doesn't require use of their ecosystem -- so open in fact that both Azure and AWS are spinning up their own hosted versions. Many of the architectural/organizational pieces are non-trivial as well, years of work at google went into it, and they open sourced it.
- notveryrational 8y ago
  Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult. The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's what's best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the GitHub user base if necessary. Developer relationships aren't an end in themselves - something Microsoft wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end. Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux userbase. Some people probably don't have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.
psyc 8y ago
I'm not seeing the problem.
rorykoehler 8y ago
It's pretty obvious that the only reason they pretend to give a shit is because they have no other alternative.
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
>It's also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement It's not fragile, it very much antifragile. The highs and lows make it stronger and more resiliant. What I find interesting is the commentary about this deal is all about Microsoft, and very little about the people who sold Github. Presumably they were highly regarded by many, and they sold out open-source (not my view).
tfha 8y ago
I mean, a big problem to me is that Github wasn't open source. It was a closed source, SaaS product that a lot of people depended on. An open source, open identity, self-hostable platform would be a lot better. And, we're running into issues ourselves in trying to migrate, because running your own-self hosted GitLab isn't really good enough, we don't have the team to ensure the uptime we need, but I would feel comfortable if there were more hosting providers for GitLab than just GitLab itself. Just to get that extra redundancy. On the other hand, I imagine that's something that could exist quite readily if GitLab shut down or got acquired. Someone could step forward and do the SaaS for all the companies that don't really have the capability to self-host at the same reliability at a pro.
bnolsen 8y ago
Microsoft isn't going for the developers as much as for the development managers and technology company management. They build up a grand picture of the universal MS platform that can be used to target any platform and try to sell it to corporate.

gaius 8y ago

Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything This is called “dogfooding” and all companies should do it. How can you sell to customers or understand customers if you’re not using the product yourself? One day I’d love to visit SAP and see how they do their own vacations and expenses. It can’t be with their own software.

flukus 8y ago
I wish they dogfooded on spinning rust and limited RAM.
- gaius 8y ago
  It’s always been the case that developers have better hardware than end users, I don’t see that changing anytime soon!
daveFNbuck 8y ago
Customers and potential customers also use competing products, so you also need to use those to sell to, understand, and grow your customers. Maybe SAP uses their own software internally and they've all become power users that aren't bothered by the issues that you're having. Perhaps if they used competing products they'd have a better understanding of where theirs is lacking.
- gaius 8y ago
  You can always spot software that is or isn’t used by the people writing it
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't use their own software. I'm saying that they shouldn't use it exclusively.
santaragolabs 8y ago
I've done some security contracting work for the folks in Walldorf over the years; I've seen first-hand some SAP FTE's getting insanely frustrated putting in their expenses in their own systems. Which was pretty hilarious to watch. And most folks there fully acknowledge that usability is not their strength traditionally. Things like uptime, support-contracts, having someone on-site within three hours when your multi-millon-dollar-order-processing-SAP-cluster goes down etc are what matter to their customers more than usability (traditionally). Things are changing and a lot of effort has been put into getting better at UI/UX though. But I haven't been involved with them for several years now so I don't know where they are at or what their current offerings are (I keep tabs a bit on HANA developments but that's it really).
gdegani 8y ago
SAP Is actually pretty good in eating their own dog food, usually the problem is that the customers are super slow in adopting the new stuff that SAP releases...I worked at SAP for 9 years.
majewsky 8y ago
I work at SAP. I book absences via a web UI for a SAP system. I record my time using a very nice HTML5 UI that hooks into an SAP system via RPC. I record travel expenses in Concur (the company of the same name was acquired by SAP, so that counts as dogfooding too). SAP still needs to get better at their dogfooding game in some areas (e.g. using our own ticket system products instead of internally-grown idiosyncrasies), but we're getting there.

staticassertion 8y ago

I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers? Did you leave some part out?

hardwaresofton 8y ago
Yeah except the implication is that it's at the expense of other players, not that they want to simply join the ecosystem and contribute things that everyone can use with low barriers to exit -- the antithesis of open source. Some companies just join, donate hard work and earn good will without the expectation to cash in with their platform play. No one has a problem with any company trying to improve it's relationship with any population of consumers it serves, but Microsoft seems to still be trying to create walled gardens and get developers in then make sure they don't leave.
- Latteland 8y ago
  Almost every company works this way. They kind of are okay with the world growing but they want to help themselves in what they are really doing. Like hiring interns, it's mostly a way to get 'a really long interview'. It's not really about helping the interns to grow that much.
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    Like everything, it's a balance -- open source can also be used to make money (open core, closed source plugins/enhancement suites). At the very least, it's about tact and doing things that are just open enough to not betray your desire to create a walled garden. Let's use Google's Kubernetes as an example -- it's a fantastic tool that doesn't require use of their ecosystem -- so open in fact that both Azure and AWS are spinning up their own hosted versions. Many of the architectural/organizational pieces are non-trivial as well, years of work at google went into it, and they open sourced it.
notveryrational 8y ago
Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult. The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's what's best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the GitHub user base if necessary. Developer relationships aren't an end in themselves - something Microsoft wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end. Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux userbase. Some people probably don't have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.

psyc 8y ago

I'm not seeing the problem.

rorykoehler 8y ago

It's pretty obvious that the only reason they pretend to give a shit is because they have no other alternative.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago

>It's also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement It's not fragile, it very much antifragile. The highs and lows make it stronger and more resiliant. What I find interesting is the commentary about this deal is all about Microsoft, and very little about the people who sold Github. Presumably they were highly regarded by many, and they sold out open-source (not my view).

tfha 8y ago

I mean, a big problem to me is that Github wasn't open source. It was a closed source, SaaS product that a lot of people depended on. An open source, open identity, self-hostable platform would be a lot better. And, we're running into issues ourselves in trying to migrate, because running your own-self hosted GitLab isn't really good enough, we don't have the team to ensure the uptime we need, but I would feel comfortable if there were more hosting providers for GitLab than just GitLab itself. Just to get that extra redundancy. On the other hand, I imagine that's something that could exist quite readily if GitLab shut down or got acquired. Someone could step forward and do the SaaS for all the companies that don't really have the capability to self-host at the same reliability at a pro.

bnolsen 8y ago

Microsoft isn't going for the developers as much as for the development managers and technology company management. They build up a grand picture of the universal MS platform that can be used to target any platform and try to sell it to corporate.