10 ms·

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 dev

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.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  Feels like a page out of The Dictators Handbook: > First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of "We, the people." Or I guess here, 'we the developers.' I don't think Microsoft is at all alone in this spot. Github got a huge payout from this. It benefited them. We don't think of them as a Microsoft style company, but they made the same decision we might have seen in reverse. They didn't sell out before, but now the payout was significantly high enough. It's the old "You'd be stupid to turn down that much money" line from Thank You for Smoking. But keep in mind, Adobe, Oracle, Intel, Amazon .. they'd probably all do something like this if some essential backers on the board thought it was in their best interest, with the goals always being around maximizing profit (so you can pay all those CFOs, CTOs, board members and controlling stock members). The people who make these decisions care about staying in power .. and are most likely very far removed from actual development .. or their userbase (in this case the same thing). Just look at what happened with a userbase of gamers and the Facebook purchase of Oculus.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    Oculus is vaporware, right? I don't see anything that encourages me that whatever thing they were aiming at will be a thing?
some_account 8y ago
Microsoft is forcing employees to use Microsoft tools when there are better ones to solve the problem. Read that again and think about the culture they have at Microsoft, then think about the open source culture if it's the same. Do Microsoft embrace open source?
- outside1234 8y ago
  Cmon, google does the same thing, Facebook does the same thing. They are all at the scale where they can’t adopt random JavaScript framework of the week.
  - partycoder 8y ago
    Google cares about ads and Facebook cares about monopolizing social graph tech with ad targeting applications. Microsoft historically wanted to monopolize everything. Your operating system, developer tools, office suites, Internet browsers... everything.
    - outside1234 8y ago
      Yes you are right - Google definitely isn't a monopoly around search nor Facebook for social networks.
- ethomson 8y ago
  As a Microsoft employee, I use Mac, Linux and Windows regularly. I write code in vim. I write quick-and-dirty scripts in Perl or Ruby. I’ve shipped code in Java, C and C#. I browse the web in Chrome. I push to GitHub and VSTS. Microsoft doesn’t force employees to use Microsoft tools; Microsoft forces employees to think critically, empathize with our users and build great experiences for them.
  - ionised 8y ago
    empathize with our users So why isn't this reflected in their actions?
digitalzombie 8y ago
I think the original comment is trying to convey is that perhaps developers should be wary of goodwill. Microsoft have done this in the past. They actively eat the browser market share with IE and left it alone after being the monopoly in web browser. This forced Netscape to become Mozilla. They also tried to be the gateway and believe OS is the gateway for all program and was left in the dust with web app and web search engine. Their past modus operandi was always to stay a monopoly not to create a good environment for developers. And I think it's a good thing to keep in mind because microsoft's past actions we should all be wary and keep in mind when we decide to do anything with Microsoft.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  Google is pretty much doing the same thing with Chrome. Opera has switched to its rendering engine and Firefox's share is dropping (after Google pumped tons of money in them and used their work to enhance their own offering). Gecko is barely on the map while Google's render can be found in newer versions of Opera, Vivaldi, and others. I mean if you go back far enough, Microsoft did this with IE. IIRC, they licensed a bunch of stuff from NSCA Mosaic, who thought they were going to make some good money off a percentage of sales. IE was originally part of the Plus! pack which you had to pay for with Windows95, but then MS released their browser for free.
  - simonh 8y ago
    So Google is bad because they poured millions of dollars into Mozilla for Firefox development, but even so their own browser is still better and more popular, and the code is open for other projects to use. Which is a bad, evil thing to do and we want none of that round here! And this is the same as developing a crummy browser, not sharing the code and not funding any alternate implementations, and leaving it stagnant for years. Ok.
    - exceptione 8y ago
      «So Google is bad because they poured millions of dollars into Mozilla for Firefox development, » No. Google paid for having its search engine in firefox (as the default engine).
Iv 8y ago
Because the implied part is a bit obvious to any programmer would had to go through the 90s under Wintel domination. They want programmers to use their tools so they can exploit a dominant position and crush competition. They have been charged (and condemned) for abuse of monopolies as late as 2013. I don't trust a company that used to be dominant and evil and suddenly as it becomes weaker tries to play nice. The GAFA are problematic, but their ethos is nowhere as bad as what MS was when it was the dominant player of the software world.
klathzazt 8y ago
I think the bad part is the act of MS buying complete control of the worlds largest open source code (and other) repository. Maybe it goes without saying that this is not a good thing, given the MS track record of EEE and FUD. An example of what could now happen is that MS could decide one day at will to drastically change how your data is accessed from github, maybe even requiring MS version of git, with added "security" and requiring you to login with your hotmail account or whatever they call it these days.

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.

djsumdog 8y ago
Feels like a page out of The Dictators Handbook: > First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of "We, the people." Or I guess here, 'we the developers.' I don't think Microsoft is at all alone in this spot. Github got a huge payout from this. It benefited them. We don't think of them as a Microsoft style company, but they made the same decision we might have seen in reverse. They didn't sell out before, but now the payout was significantly high enough. It's the old "You'd be stupid to turn down that much money" line from Thank You for Smoking. But keep in mind, Adobe, Oracle, Intel, Amazon .. they'd probably all do something like this if some essential backers on the board thought it was in their best interest, with the goals always being around maximizing profit (so you can pay all those CFOs, CTOs, board members and controlling stock members). The people who make these decisions care about staying in power .. and are most likely very far removed from actual development .. or their userbase (in this case the same thing). Just look at what happened with a userbase of gamers and the Facebook purchase of Oculus.
- megaman22 8y ago
  Oculus is vaporware, right? I don't see anything that encourages me that whatever thing they were aiming at will be a thing?

some_account 8y ago

Microsoft is forcing employees to use Microsoft tools when there are better ones to solve the problem. Read that again and think about the culture they have at Microsoft, then think about the open source culture if it's the same. Do Microsoft embrace open source?

outside1234 8y ago
Cmon, google does the same thing, Facebook does the same thing. They are all at the scale where they can’t adopt random JavaScript framework of the week.
- partycoder 8y ago
  Google cares about ads and Facebook cares about monopolizing social graph tech with ad targeting applications. Microsoft historically wanted to monopolize everything. Your operating system, developer tools, office suites, Internet browsers... everything.
  - outside1234 8y ago
    Yes you are right - Google definitely isn't a monopoly around search nor Facebook for social networks.
ethomson 8y ago
As a Microsoft employee, I use Mac, Linux and Windows regularly. I write code in vim. I write quick-and-dirty scripts in Perl or Ruby. I’ve shipped code in Java, C and C#. I browse the web in Chrome. I push to GitHub and VSTS. Microsoft doesn’t force employees to use Microsoft tools; Microsoft forces employees to think critically, empathize with our users and build great experiences for them.
- ionised 8y ago
  empathize with our users So why isn't this reflected in their actions?

digitalzombie 8y ago

I think the original comment is trying to convey is that perhaps developers should be wary of goodwill. Microsoft have done this in the past. They actively eat the browser market share with IE and left it alone after being the monopoly in web browser. This forced Netscape to become Mozilla. They also tried to be the gateway and believe OS is the gateway for all program and was left in the dust with web app and web search engine. Their past modus operandi was always to stay a monopoly not to create a good environment for developers. And I think it's a good thing to keep in mind because microsoft's past actions we should all be wary and keep in mind when we decide to do anything with Microsoft.

djsumdog 8y ago
Google is pretty much doing the same thing with Chrome. Opera has switched to its rendering engine and Firefox's share is dropping (after Google pumped tons of money in them and used their work to enhance their own offering). Gecko is barely on the map while Google's render can be found in newer versions of Opera, Vivaldi, and others. I mean if you go back far enough, Microsoft did this with IE. IIRC, they licensed a bunch of stuff from NSCA Mosaic, who thought they were going to make some good money off a percentage of sales. IE was originally part of the Plus! pack which you had to pay for with Windows95, but then MS released their browser for free.
- simonh 8y ago
  So Google is bad because they poured millions of dollars into Mozilla for Firefox development, but even so their own browser is still better and more popular, and the code is open for other projects to use. Which is a bad, evil thing to do and we want none of that round here! And this is the same as developing a crummy browser, not sharing the code and not funding any alternate implementations, and leaving it stagnant for years. Ok.
  - exceptione 8y ago
    «So Google is bad because they poured millions of dollars into Mozilla for Firefox development, » No. Google paid for having its search engine in firefox (as the default engine).

Iv 8y ago

Because the implied part is a bit obvious to any programmer would had to go through the 90s under Wintel domination. They want programmers to use their tools so they can exploit a dominant position and crush competition. They have been charged (and condemned) for abuse of monopolies as late as 2013. I don't trust a company that used to be dominant and evil and suddenly as it becomes weaker tries to play nice. The GAFA are problematic, but their ethos is nowhere as bad as what MS was when it was the dominant player of the software world.

klathzazt 8y ago

I think the bad part is the act of MS buying complete control of the worlds largest open source code (and other) repository. Maybe it goes without saying that this is not a good thing, given the MS track record of EEE and FUD. An example of what could now happen is that MS could decide one day at will to drastically change how your data is accessed from github, maybe even requiring MS version of git, with added "security" and requiring you to login with your hotmail account or whatever they call it these days.