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> Microsoft: embraces open source Oh please. Microsoft has not embraced open source. Is their web browser open source? No. Is Word, Excel, or Powerpoint op

by wdr1 8y ago

> Microsoft: embraces open source Oh please. Microsoft has not embraced open source. Is their web browser open source? No. Is Word, Excel, or Powerpoint open source? No. Do they even push for open standards of those products? No. Is Windows open source? No. Is the C# compiler open source? No. Microsoft may have taken some positive steps to support Linux on Azure & other things -- things possibility necessitated by market demands -- as well some contributions to open source. But to say they have embraced open source is patently false.

linuxftw 8y ago
All very true. Their core business is not free and open source software, they haven't embraced anything.
amanzi 8y ago
> Is their web browser open source? No. Their Edge browser engine is proprietary but is built to work with open standards - no more pushing their own proprietary standards like ActiveX. > Is Word, Excel, or Powerpoint open source? No > Do they even push for open standards of those products? No. The default file format for recent Office versions is based on Office Open XML which is a published standard that anyone can interoperate with. Also, Office apps can save to the OpenDocument format too. Yes, there is a lot of proprietary stuff inside of Office, but they also have 20+ years of backwards compatibility to deal with. > Is Windows open source? No. Are there any examples of a company taking something as large as Windows OS and converting the whole thing from closed to open source? It's not like they can just flip a switch and let the whole world see the source code? > Is the C# compiler open source? No. Look at what they are doing in the .Net Core space for an indication of where this is going... > But to say they have embraced open source is patently false. I disagree with this and most who have followed Microsoft's actions over the last few years would also disagree with you. They have embraced open source way more than could be expected of any other company with a huge portfolio of closed source software.
- justinclift 8y ago
  > Are there any examples of a company taking something as large as Windows OS and converting the whole thing from closed to open source? It's not like they can just flip a switch and let the whole world see the source code? Maybe when Sun Open Sourced Solaris? It took them quite some time to get it done, but with significant effort they got it over the line.

by wdr1 8y ago

linuxftw 8y ago

All very true. Their core business is not free and open source software, they haven't embraced anything.

amanzi 8y ago

> Is their web browser open source? No. Their Edge browser engine is proprietary but is built to work with open standards - no more pushing their own proprietary standards like ActiveX. > Is Word, Excel, or Powerpoint open source? No > Do they even push for open standards of those products? No. The default file format for recent Office versions is based on Office Open XML which is a published standard that anyone can interoperate with. Also, Office apps can save to the OpenDocument format too. Yes, there is a lot of proprietary stuff inside of Office, but they also have 20+ years of backwards compatibility to deal with. > Is Windows open source? No. Are there any examples of a company taking something as large as Windows OS and converting the whole thing from closed to open source? It's not like they can just flip a switch and let the whole world see the source code? > Is the C# compiler open source? No. Look at what they are doing in the .Net Core space for an indication of where this is going... > But to say they have embraced open source is patently false. I disagree with this and most who have followed Microsoft's actions over the last few years would also disagree with you. They have embraced open source way more than could be expected of any other company with a huge portfolio of closed source software.

justinclift 8y ago
> Are there any examples of a company taking something as large as Windows OS and converting the whole thing from closed to open source? It's not like they can just flip a switch and let the whole world see the source code? Maybe when Sun Open Sourced Solaris? It took them quite some time to get it done, but with significant effort they got it over the line.