24 ms·

> Same code, name name, same culture. Counterclaims are pure PR. I don't think that's fair, there's major, objective moves in this direction: - .NET Core is f

> Same code, name name, same culture. Counterclaims are pure PR. I don't think that's fair, there's major, objective moves in this direction: - .NET Core is fully open source and they're moving towards it being the primary .NET implementation - VS Code - TypeScript - React Native for Windows - Windows Subsystem for Linux - Broad support for major open source tooling on their Azure services These are significant and measurable moves of the sort we wouldn't have seen from Microsoft a decade ago. While they may not have opened all their patents, they're also not pursuing implementers of open source software for them. It seems a shift of one sort or another occurred.

skohan 7y ago
Even if they are playing nice now, MS is a profit-driven corporation and will behave as such. If and when they feel like they have sufficient market leverage to use their positioning to favor their own products, they will. They have a fiduciary responsibility to do so.
- buildzr 7y ago
  In many ways this open source tooling is making them money. Developers tend to use what they know and are comfortable with, if you have to move off of C# say in order to write servers with better Linux compatibility or mobile apps you're going to learn something else and may not stay in their ecosystem. If instead you use .NET Core for your Linux based services and buy Xamarin for your mobile apps, they're in a lot better condition, especially given that they can offer to host those Linux based services for you on Azure as well as dozens of open source databases and tools which may support them. They're making a killing off this, many companies have gone to pure Azure services given that they're able to host everything they need there, had they not been able to that money may have gone to Amazon or Google, investing in open source is generally a good move for them financially. They're now less and less reliant upon everyone using their exact stuff - as long as your corporation still wants a Windows domain controller and MS Office, they're on top of the list for cloud considerations and will easily make money hosting open source software - they lock companies in in other ways than software, like Office 365 and Active Directory login integration with your Azure hosted applications. There's big money in hosting and managing open source software, Amazon and Google discovered this before Microsoft, but Microsoft has been quite competitive given these advantages.
  - itomato 7y ago
    You're perpetuating the myth that these alternatives are equivalent to their counterparts in the real world. Nobody chooses C# from outside the Microsoft walled garden. Same for .Net or Silverlight or Outlook. They are "Products" made to resemble and provide ersatz versions of the real thing inside that walled garden. WSL is a fine example.
- tracker1 7y ago
  There is nothing wrong with wanting to, and making money. As long as the decisions and direction of a corporation are generally reasonable there's nothing wrong with community interests and the actions of a corporation aligning. Frankly, I trust MS a LOT more than I do Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter. MS tends to make money when you make money. The rest will bury you to make everything you used to.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Frankly, I trust MS a LOT more than I do Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter. As a dev, maybe. As a normal user, I don't think there's a significant difference.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      As a user even... to my knowledge, MS hasn't actually sold my data to anyone, or manipulated search results in favor of a particular political campaign, or acted in mass-censoring, or established policy that favors a political party.
      - skohan 7y ago
        What do you think telemetry is for? Do you think MS is collecting your usage data at an OS level for totally benign reasons?
yarrel 7y ago
Free developer resources to drive developers to walled gardens. Microsoft's use of "open source" today is like their use of CDs in the 90s.
WorldMaker 7y ago
Don't forget little things like Calculator now being Open Source and developed on GitHub in the open. In box Windows Apps are now open source, and the Windows team is currently working to migrate the vast majority of the modern Windows Presentation stack (the "UWP" UI system) to open source in the WinUI 3.0 library. (Basically everything above the lowest level DirectX libraries will be open sourced.)

skohan 7y ago

Even if they are playing nice now, MS is a profit-driven corporation and will behave as such. If and when they feel like they have sufficient market leverage to use their positioning to favor their own products, they will. They have a fiduciary responsibility to do so.

buildzr 7y ago
In many ways this open source tooling is making them money. Developers tend to use what they know and are comfortable with, if you have to move off of C# say in order to write servers with better Linux compatibility or mobile apps you're going to learn something else and may not stay in their ecosystem. If instead you use .NET Core for your Linux based services and buy Xamarin for your mobile apps, they're in a lot better condition, especially given that they can offer to host those Linux based services for you on Azure as well as dozens of open source databases and tools which may support them. They're making a killing off this, many companies have gone to pure Azure services given that they're able to host everything they need there, had they not been able to that money may have gone to Amazon or Google, investing in open source is generally a good move for them financially. They're now less and less reliant upon everyone using their exact stuff - as long as your corporation still wants a Windows domain controller and MS Office, they're on top of the list for cloud considerations and will easily make money hosting open source software - they lock companies in in other ways than software, like Office 365 and Active Directory login integration with your Azure hosted applications. There's big money in hosting and managing open source software, Amazon and Google discovered this before Microsoft, but Microsoft has been quite competitive given these advantages.
- itomato 7y ago
  You're perpetuating the myth that these alternatives are equivalent to their counterparts in the real world. Nobody chooses C# from outside the Microsoft walled garden. Same for .Net or Silverlight or Outlook. They are "Products" made to resemble and provide ersatz versions of the real thing inside that walled garden. WSL is a fine example.
tracker1 7y ago
There is nothing wrong with wanting to, and making money. As long as the decisions and direction of a corporation are generally reasonable there's nothing wrong with community interests and the actions of a corporation aligning. Frankly, I trust MS a LOT more than I do Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter. MS tends to make money when you make money. The rest will bury you to make everything you used to.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Frankly, I trust MS a LOT more than I do Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter. As a dev, maybe. As a normal user, I don't think there's a significant difference.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    As a user even... to my knowledge, MS hasn't actually sold my data to anyone, or manipulated search results in favor of a particular political campaign, or acted in mass-censoring, or established policy that favors a political party.
    - skohan 7y ago
      What do you think telemetry is for? Do you think MS is collecting your usage data at an OS level for totally benign reasons?

yarrel 7y ago

Free developer resources to drive developers to walled gardens. Microsoft's use of "open source" today is like their use of CDs in the 90s.

WorldMaker 7y ago

Don't forget little things like Calculator now being Open Source and developed on GitHub in the open. In box Windows Apps are now open source, and the Windows team is currently working to migrate the vast majority of the modern Windows Presentation stack (the "UWP" UI system) to open source in the WinUI 3.0 library. (Basically everything above the lowest level DirectX libraries will be open sourced.)