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Next up: Microsoft acquires Docker. That will make Microsoft own: - #1 Code repository: Github - #1 Package management repository: NPM - One of the most pop
by cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
Next up: Microsoft acquires Docker.
That will make Microsoft own:
- #1 Code repository: Github
- #1 Package management repository: NPM
- One of the most popular editors: VSCode
- THE container engine: Docker
I have nothing against this btw, but just wonder at which point the government will throw the antitrust card
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI'm pretty sure MS has to actually behave anti-competitively (and in the current climate, possibly show obvious harm to customers) before they'd get in trouble. It's not illegal to own 90% of a market; it's illegal(ish) to use that to shut out others, which I don't see them doing (yet). (IANAL; this is one layman's understanding, not legal advice)
- bdcravens 6y agoThat's exactly what happened in their late 90's antitrust case. It wasn't the OS monopoly, it was them abusing their relationship with computer makers to prevent installation of other software.
- monocasa 6y agoWell, and I've heard a rumour that their unwillingness to say "how high" when the doj wanted them to jump wrt "lawful intercept" played a part as well.
- throwaway2048 6y agoIs there anything to back this up at all?
- EpicEng 6y agoHonest question; how does Microsoft's ownership of those stifle competition? How is it anti-competitive? Just because they're popular doesn't mean they are somehow stifling competion. Again, honest question, obviously IANAL.
- donmcronald 6y ago> The idea of the integration is to make it easier, faster and more efficient to include Docker containers when developing applications with the Microsoft tool set. Docker CEO Scott Johnston says it’s a matter of giving developers a better experience. What they actually mean is the opposite. They want to make Azure the easy choice when developing with Docker. They go on to say it can take hours or days to get the integration set up manually. If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. IMO one of the major cloud vendors will buy Docker this year. Microsoft seems like the obvious choice right now.
- cosmie 6y ago> If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. Which is a playbook they've demonstrated as recently as last October, on Mover[1]. It used to allow you to migrate data between a whole host of sources and destinations, and the guides/help docs even still reference those capabilities. Microsoft acquired it and made it free, but have turned it into a one-way tool: the only supported destinations are now Azure, Sharepoint, and OneDrive. [1] https://mover.io/ https://mover.io/
- revel 6y agoTotally agree with you. This is an attempt to make heroku for enterprise-scale systems. The risk, as a user, is that you end up locked into a ton of automatically configured, Azure-specific costs. It's a recipe for an anti-trust suit based on bundling (ie. the same situation that MS lost with IE many years ago).
- mrkurt 6y agoWell, they did just make a bunch of previously paid GitHub stuff free. That's something only a company the size of Microsoft can do.
- rantwasp 6y agoseriously now. Microsoft built VSCode. It’s their fault that they managed to build something successful?
- TehCorwiz 6y agoIsn’t VScode a fork of Atom?
- megavolcano 6y agono
- rantwasp 6y agoas far as I know no. Both Atom and VSCode use Electron but VSCode is something MS build from scratch.
- johannes1234321 6y agoAnd Electron was built for Atom, so in turn Viscose uses the core of Atom, even though Electron (after VSCode started using it) became more independent.
- rantwasp 6y agosure. the point is that it’s not a fork of atom. if you use leftpad you’re not a leftpad clone
- agustif 6y agoThey both are electron-based, and when MS acquired GitHub, Atom took the worst part...
- Kipters 6y agoI doubt MS acquiring GitHub had a major role in Atom downfall. Atom's market share was already declining fast
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThey also own Azure, so you can run everything you build in their ecosystem. It’s quite the achievement, and likely their plan to beat AWS. Developers, developers, developers.
- oh_hello 6y agoI am a huge AWS user. However, as a VSCode fan and generally happy GitHub user, I also regularly consider playing with Azure integrations just to see how seamless they have made the experience.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Bombthecat 6y agoSome food for your thoughts? You can connect one Excel File via Azure functions via another Excel file with seemless integration.
- nojito 6y agoYou can connect to two Excel files together using Power Query. No need for Azure.
- joana035 6y agoThen Linux world move to systemd-container, cri-o or something more sane and the world keeps moving.
- robszumski 6y agoThe Linux world is mostly on the runtime side of it, not the developer side of it. Both are important and docker will likely continue to see success with Windows and Mac users.
- 0xEFF 6y agoThe move is well underway.
- tarkin2 6y agoWhat's Microsoft's strategy? The AppGet saga has made me cynical. Start selling Microsoft products to the bought userbases? But I suspect Microsoft is targeting companies rather than the developers themselves. Cynically, the drug dealer strategy? Get your (big, slow to change) customers dependent on the free stuff and then jack up the price? Or bundle free software in a development environment to attract SMEs and open source developers. Then integrate and promote Microsoft's own propitiatory development offerings? Convert open source developers into Microsoft developers by owning the open source developers' tools of choice? The tools will be maintained well. And also they'll integrate incredibly well with Microsoft's own software[1]. And with more Microsoft developers that means more Microsoft software sold to companies. [1] Kotlin is a good example of this. Kotlin was integrated so well into Android Studio. I just pressed one button and, bang, kotlin. I never went back to Java.
- cocktailpeanuts 6y agoif you're asking these questions, you probably don't understand how microsoft makes money. MS already has a working business model (a very lucrative one at that) for enterprise, they can just integrate it into their existing user base and they will gladly pay. There's no hidden agenda.
- m12k 6y agoMy best guess: Expand the clientele of Azure from 'corporations and C# shops' to 'everybody and their grandma' like AWS has done - basically going after the long tail of cloud hosting. And I think, apart from improving Azure itself, they're also trying to do this by making sure the best possible developer experience is via Microsoft's developer infrastructure, so they get every chance to 'upsell' and integrate seamlessly in the tools you're already using. At the same time, they're trying to make cross platform development (via Xamarin and WSL) the most convenient way to target other OS's, so they're still in on the action when iOS, Android and Linux webservers are involved.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago> basically going after the long tail of cloud hosting. I want to really stress that your thesis is on point, but it's not about cloud hosting per se. If software is eating the world, and everyone is going to have some level of proficiency as a dev, Microsoft is targeting being the digital operating system of the economy. You write and run your business on Microsoft, whether you're a Fortune 500 or 5 people working out of a coworking space, and you can even get email, team chat, office apps, workflow automation tools, and everything else under the MS umbrella if that's what your business needs.
- bdcravens 6y agoMicrosoft was famously against open source. Then open source prospered, and I'm sure some saw that as Microsoft's comeuppance. Yet Microsoft was able to shift some of their focus to become OSS friendly, and for those parts of the ecosystem that have a commercial focus, they can acquire what they want.
- zitterbewegung 6y agoI think it was more of a slow transition and more focused on Linux. Once Linux become big enough to disrupt them that’s when they started to change . Microsoft research has been contributing to Haskell for a long time. I think they are moving forward a more service oriented company that doesn’t care what you do but will make it easier to stay in their ecosystem like Azure or just focus on getting more developer goodwill and lock-in .
- foepys 6y agoThey saw that developers are eager enough to do Microsoft's work for free. See .NET Core and its related projects where Microsoft accepts a lot of patches from outside contributors and sometimes needs to admit that others know their code and its sometimes decade old history better than they do.
- tracker1 6y agoI think the greater community would rather have it this way. Trying to get a bug in .Net 1.x fixed was not a pleasant or completely legal experience (peaking into .net assemblies, and decompiling to even get the to root of the issue). Even if I only ever had to do it once... having the option is much better than not.
- nicoburns 6y agoExcept for github (which has at least one credible competitor in Gitlab), the important parts of all of these projects are open source, which means that microsoft don't really have any leverage. You can be sure that there'd be well supported forks if MS tried to take docker or VS Code proprietary.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tracker1 6y agoThere already are forks for VS Code (telemetry removed iirc).
- gexla 6y agoMight be a good thing for them to get picked up by a company which would continue working to make the tooling better. Docker seems to have been struggling as an independent company. This wouldn't be the sort of acquisition where MS takes what it wants for itself and kills the product. Not mentioned (unless I missed it) in the article is that Docker has been putting in a lot of work to make the tooling work well with WSL 2. So, having a foot in both Windows and Linux.
- jasoneckert 6y agoI don't disagree with your prediction - however, after Microsoft's infatuation with Linux these past few years and the impressions I got from the recent Build conference, I think the next purchase that Microsoft will make will be Canonical.
- enzv 6y agoAn antitrust case wouldn't really apply in a situation when all these services and tools have numerous alternatives and no one is compelled to use any of them in isolation or together. Not to mention the fact that a great deal of this things listed are open source, or offer a free tire. Hard to make a case for unfair competition practices of vertical integration when you give away those services and tools and alternatives are a click away, of not without costs from migration and loss of network effects for having to leave the established platform for a given ecosystem. The real argument is that the ever increasing scope of these entities create moats far out from the walls of their code product to drive user inwards to the paid offerings and, either by design or happen stance, alt the earth for miles from other smaller rivals gaining any foot holds delivering a service to sections of the user base of these hegemonic organisations from which in time might see the smaller rivals use such traction to then offer competing alternatives of those paid services which hegemonic organisations are based on.
- arh68 6y agoHow they don't already own StackOverflow, I don't really know.