3 ms·

> Microsoft is the enemy This made me smile, sadly. I remember when Microsoft was the new darling not many years ago, because of VS Code and WSL and the appare

by pmontra 5mo ago

> Microsoft is the enemy This made me smile, sadly. I remember when Microsoft was the new darling not many years ago, because of VS Code and WSL and the apparent goodwill about open source. Some people and I, who lived through all of Microsoft, were skeptical and believed that it was only another embrace phase of their EEE pattern. I'm not sure if they are extinguishing something but it turns out that they are squeezing money out of the pockets of their users now.

nine_k 5mo ago
Microsoft is big, internally incoherent (even inimical, according to some accounts), and people responsible for VSCode and WSL are likely totally unrelated to people determining when and how to crack MS's crown jewel, the Office suite, in an attempt to squeeze out a few dollars more.
- hotstickyballs 5mo ago
  That's why anything that goes against the long-established corporate culture aren't likely to stay around for long.
  - emodendroket 5mo ago
    Visual Studio Code has been around over a decade and there is zero indication it's going anywhere.
    - adithyassekhar 5mo ago
      Apart from academics, who are forced to stay away from ai, i feel vs code will regress to a code reader as the models improve.
- shimman 5mo ago
  Why are we acting like VS Code is nothing but a way to stop independent developers from selling their tools? Things like VS Code literally destroy the cottage industry and likely has held back our industry by several decades. MSFT needs to be at least six separate companies: Windows, Office, GitHub, Visual Studio, Xbox, and Azure. That would kneecap the company and destroy its parasitic blight on our industry for several decades and if luck we with us indefinitely.
  - gucci-on-fleek 5mo ago
    > Things like VS Code literally destroy the cottage industry and likely has held back our industry by several decades. VS Code was released in 2015, so even if its initial release somehow completely stopped the entire software industry, it would still not have held the industry back by several decades. > MSFT needs to be at least six separate companies: Windows, Office, GitHub, Visual Studio, Xbox, and Azure. That would kneecap the company I'm pretty sure that all of those (aside from Xbox) are profitable on their own, so I don't think that them becoming independent would kneecap them at all.
    - watermelon0 5mo ago
      Is GitHub really profitable, considering how much Actions credits are given away to open source projects as well as free users? Same goes for Copilot.
      - gucci-on-fleek 5mo ago
        > Is GitHub really profitable Well I had assumed that GitHub was profitable, since it used to be independent, and it feels like it should be profitable right now. But I tried Googling "is GitHub profitable" just now, and the first few results seem to suggest that either it's still losing money or that nobody knows. So I was likely incorrect about that point, sorry. > considering how much Actions credits are given away to open source projects as well as free users? GitLab does the same thing, and they are definitely profitable [0], so that on its own isn't necessarily a barrier. [0]: https://ir.gitlab.com/news/news-details/2026/GitLab-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-Fiscal-Year-2026-Financial-Results-Board-of-Directors-Authorizes-400-million-for-Share-Repurchase-Program/default.aspx https://ir.gitlab.com/news/news-details/2026/GitLab-Reports-...
    - jayceekay 5mo ago
      They said cottage industry, not software industry. Edit: s/he/they/woops sorry
      - 5mo ago
userbinator 5mo ago
They're open-sourcing things either because they get no value from them anymore, or just want more unpaid "community" labour.
- emodendroket 5mo ago
  OK well that's the whole "open source" model. It's not some Microsoft perversion of it. The reason they moved from "free software" to "open source" was specifically rejecting the ideological stuff that would prevent business exploitation
jijji 5mo ago
I think Microsoft stopped being the "darling" in 1994 when they got sued by Stacker and had to pay $120 million for stealing their source code and using it in their own product.
mppm 5mo ago
> I remember when Microsoft was the new darling not many years ago, because of VS Code and WSL I was genuinely puzzled by that, actually. I thought it quite obvious from the start that Nadella is no longer interested in Windows and other Microsoft software as products and will be moving them to thin cloud wrappers, but for some reason people were really optimistic about the "New Microsoft".
- olyjohn 5mo ago
  I remember going to Linuxfest NW some years ago. Microsoft had a big booth there... "MICROSOFT <3 LINUX" I couldn't believe how many people sucked that shit up.
AnonymousPlanet 5mo ago
A lot of developers (and thereby most on HN, I guess) see Microsoft only from the perspective of a private consumer. From the perspective of a normal non-technical company though, Microsoft is this giant that has spread its products throughout your organisation like a cancer and you can never free yourself from it. For Microsoft's main business it's irrelevant if VSCode is mostly open source or not. That is why these gestures never meant anything in the first place. It doesn't matter if some Microsoft trinkets are open sourced while AD is not and while you still can't connect your open source DNS and DHCP server to a Microsoft domain controller. Or have your open source email client be 100% compatible with the proprietary Exchange protocol.
- thewebguyd 5mo ago
  There's also business value in "good enough" that Microsoft satisfies for enterprises. You get a lot of stuff "for free" with something like an E5 license: EDR, DLP, MDM, a full cloud IAM system, and a ton of cross app magic for the lowest common denominator of non-technical employees that you just aren't going to get without spending considerable developer effort to piece together a stack yourself. What looks like cancer to us looks like a massive reduction in operational risk to a CFO/CIO. This is especially true if your core business has nothing to do with software or tech. Much easier to cut a check to Redmond. Microsoft is basically a utility company for enterprise now, it's commoditized IT. "Do what you do best, outsource the rest."

by pmontra 5mo ago

nine_k 5mo ago

Microsoft is big, internally incoherent (even inimical, according to some accounts), and people responsible for VSCode and WSL are likely totally unrelated to people determining when and how to crack MS's crown jewel, the Office suite, in an attempt to squeeze out a few dollars more.

hotstickyballs 5mo ago
That's why anything that goes against the long-established corporate culture aren't likely to stay around for long.
- emodendroket 5mo ago
  Visual Studio Code has been around over a decade and there is zero indication it's going anywhere.
  - adithyassekhar 5mo ago
    Apart from academics, who are forced to stay away from ai, i feel vs code will regress to a code reader as the models improve.
shimman 5mo ago
Why are we acting like VS Code is nothing but a way to stop independent developers from selling their tools? Things like VS Code literally destroy the cottage industry and likely has held back our industry by several decades. MSFT needs to be at least six separate companies: Windows, Office, GitHub, Visual Studio, Xbox, and Azure. That would kneecap the company and destroy its parasitic blight on our industry for several decades and if luck we with us indefinitely.
- gucci-on-fleek 5mo ago
  > Things like VS Code literally destroy the cottage industry and likely has held back our industry by several decades. VS Code was released in 2015, so even if its initial release somehow completely stopped the entire software industry, it would still not have held the industry back by several decades. > MSFT needs to be at least six separate companies: Windows, Office, GitHub, Visual Studio, Xbox, and Azure. That would kneecap the company I'm pretty sure that all of those (aside from Xbox) are profitable on their own, so I don't think that them becoming independent would kneecap them at all.
  - watermelon0 5mo ago
    Is GitHub really profitable, considering how much Actions credits are given away to open source projects as well as free users? Same goes for Copilot.
    - gucci-on-fleek 5mo ago
      > Is GitHub really profitable Well I had assumed that GitHub was profitable, since it used to be independent, and it feels like it should be profitable right now. But I tried Googling "is GitHub profitable" just now, and the first few results seem to suggest that either it's still losing money or that nobody knows. So I was likely incorrect about that point, sorry. > considering how much Actions credits are given away to open source projects as well as free users? GitLab does the same thing, and they are definitely profitable [0], so that on its own isn't necessarily a barrier. [0]: https://ir.gitlab.com/news/news-details/2026/GitLab-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-Fiscal-Year-2026-Financial-Results-Board-of-Directors-Authorizes-400-million-for-Share-Repurchase-Program/default.aspx https://ir.gitlab.com/news/news-details/2026/GitLab-Reports-...
  - jayceekay 5mo ago
    They said cottage industry, not software industry. Edit: s/he/they/woops sorry
    - 5mo ago

userbinator 5mo ago

They're open-sourcing things either because they get no value from them anymore, or just want more unpaid "community" labour.

emodendroket 5mo ago
OK well that's the whole "open source" model. It's not some Microsoft perversion of it. The reason they moved from "free software" to "open source" was specifically rejecting the ideological stuff that would prevent business exploitation

jijji 5mo ago

I think Microsoft stopped being the "darling" in 1994 when they got sued by Stacker and had to pay $120 million for stealing their source code and using it in their own product.

mppm 5mo ago

> I remember when Microsoft was the new darling not many years ago, because of VS Code and WSL I was genuinely puzzled by that, actually. I thought it quite obvious from the start that Nadella is no longer interested in Windows and other Microsoft software as products and will be moving them to thin cloud wrappers, but for some reason people were really optimistic about the "New Microsoft".

olyjohn 5mo ago
I remember going to Linuxfest NW some years ago. Microsoft had a big booth there... "MICROSOFT <3 LINUX" I couldn't believe how many people sucked that shit up.

AnonymousPlanet 5mo ago

A lot of developers (and thereby most on HN, I guess) see Microsoft only from the perspective of a private consumer. From the perspective of a normal non-technical company though, Microsoft is this giant that has spread its products throughout your organisation like a cancer and you can never free yourself from it. For Microsoft's main business it's irrelevant if VSCode is mostly open source or not. That is why these gestures never meant anything in the first place. It doesn't matter if some Microsoft trinkets are open sourced while AD is not and while you still can't connect your open source DNS and DHCP server to a Microsoft domain controller. Or have your open source email client be 100% compatible with the proprietary Exchange protocol.

thewebguyd 5mo ago
There's also business value in "good enough" that Microsoft satisfies for enterprises. You get a lot of stuff "for free" with something like an E5 license: EDR, DLP, MDM, a full cloud IAM system, and a ton of cross app magic for the lowest common denominator of non-technical employees that you just aren't going to get without spending considerable developer effort to piece together a stack yourself. What looks like cancer to us looks like a massive reduction in operational risk to a CFO/CIO. This is especially true if your core business has nothing to do with software or tech. Much easier to cut a check to Redmond. Microsoft is basically a utility company for enterprise now, it's commoditized IT. "Do what you do best, outsource the rest."