18 ms·

Having followed a fair number of MS bloggers/podcasts currently in and around their web tools (ASP.NET, MVC, etc) teams... I honestly believe they understand th

Having followed a fair number of MS bloggers/podcasts currently in and around their web tools (ASP.NET, MVC, etc) teams... I honestly believe they understand the value of open source. Visual Studio and their MVC framework continue to impress me (I mostly work in Ruby today, but have to maintain some .NET stuff) and MS takes inspiration from successful open-source tools and frameworks where needed. Many of their recent advancements over the last 3-4 years have clearly been the work of engineers who enjoy and value the best of the open source world. I'm not trying to tell you that Microsoft is suddenly our warm, fuzzy friend. As even Scott Hanselman would gladly admit, they're ultimately trying to sell you software licenses or Azure services. But it seems to me that they're using open source the right way in order to achieve that goal, as opposed to the bad old "embrace and extend / embrace and extinguish" days at Microsoft. Whether or not Microsoft has earned another shot with us or not is definitely up for debate, and with all the cool shit happening in the open source world it's probably even a moot point to an extent. But they're definitely doing more than cargo-culting in Redmond these days.

jaynate 13y ago
Any developer worth his/her salt understands the value of open source these days. Keep in mind that these engineers don't actually run the business.
NicoJuicy 13y ago
There's a reason why Visual Studio continues to impress you. I once saw a presentation of the Visual Studio lead in Belgium, where he claimed that there were over 1200 people involved in the Visual Studio project. If that's true, i don't think there is any IDE that can top that number and it explains why Visual Studio is the best tool for (almost any) job. People should realize that Visual Studio is not solely C#, it's NodeJS, PHP, Mono, Python and so much more in one environment.
Shamanmuni 13y ago
I don't know, I see this as a good sign but for me it's still "too little too late". At least release it under a copyleft license, make it usable with previous versions of Visual Studio (it only works with 2013) and I'll feel more confident that you aren't setting a trap. Non-copyleft licenses can easily align with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. The value of .NET for most developers is closely associated with Visual Studio. They can make the next version closed source and have Visual Studio only accept that one and we are back to the same old Microsoft. Sure, you'd still have the previous open source version, but who cares when most people will probably just move on to the next.
- eitland 13y ago
  > Non-copyleft licenses can easily align with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. What? I would think if anything giving everyone else a crippled license while retaining copyright etc yourself that would be an even bigger setup for a EEE. Remember, MS can do w h a t e v e r they want with that code anyway it is not lke they'd be bound by a copyleft on their own code. (Unless they also started accepting patches without copyright assignment I guess.)
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Exactly. There's a reason why more restrictive licenses are more conducive to dual licensing models than less restrictive ones. A non-copyleft license effectively means that Microsoft, should they try EEE, has to compete not only with free as in beer and free as in freedom, they also have to compete with all the closed source competition they are subsidizing in this effort. If you believe that more competition is good, the less restrictions on the code from a big vendor, the better.
    - Shamanmuni 13y ago
      Copyleft licenses are more conductive to dual licensing because they give you no other choice if you want to sell a closed source premium version. That's the only reason. And for that to work you have to get copyright assignment. I think your view is pretty naive. They develop the platform and own the IDE that's synonymous with it. They can keep any other compiler off the IDE if they want that, you would be competing with them at their house, which is doomed to fail. With copyleft without assignment at least any later version would effectively remain free for all, whether Microsoft wants it or not. You don't have to believe and hope, it's just the way it is.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        > I think your view is pretty naive. You can think what you will about my opinion but it is based on a decade-long career around both BSD-licensed and GPL-licensed projects. > Copyleft licenses are more conductive to dual licensing because they give you no other choice if you want to sell a closed source premium version. And the licensor can always decline to sell the license to a competitor though this might be problematic for a big company. The point is that the GPL gives a company control over proprietary spinoffs, while the BSD license does not. > They can keep any other compiler off the IDE if they want that, you would be competing with them at their house, which is doomed to fail. Frankly their choice of licensing makes no difference in what sorts of products they can ship. > With copyleft without assignment at least any later version would effectively remain free for all, whether Microsoft wants it or not. But the point is that you end up with less competition under a copyleft license because fewer forms of competition are in line with the license. If your fear is against Microsoft as competitor, giving up more rights is better than giving up fewer. You say you think my view is naive, so I have to ask: how does one both release code under the Apache2 license, a license which allows anyone to change the license and add restrictions when distributing it provided that the license restrictions in that license are met, and adopt an embrace-extend-extinguish strategy. The first two might work ok because one could sell additional proprietary features just like anyone else, but the final one doesn't work because you are competing against yourself if you do that.
davidgerard 13y ago
I think one would be exceedingly foolish not to exercise the very greatest of caution. This is Microsoft we're talking about - they have a track record of profound fuckery. But I do indeed think this is better than not having happened.
- zamalek 13y ago
  > This is Microsoft we're talking about - they have a track record of profound fuckery. They have a bad track-record, but not in terms of "this team" (known as Devdiv). They might have gotten all uppity about IE, Windows or what-have-you - but the .Net team had a relatively quick epiphany about open source. Look at Mono. Java is always touted as a "more open" platform, Microsoft-haters have no issue spewing falsity that the Microsoft encumbrance is a big risk - however, so far as the framework track-record goes, Microsoft has a "community promise", an ECMA spec and has given Mono unit tests for Moonlight; Sun/Oracle has a track record of aggressively pursuing copyright (the recent spat with Google/AOSP). I'm not saying that Java sucks, or that people shouldn't use it. I'm just saying that a lot of people need to have a hard look at how much time they spend trying to mud the name of a company trying to make a turn. These opinions are antique. It may change in the future given new governance in those corporates (just as the e.g. Java, NodeJS situation may change), but as of now and as far as .Net FX goes: Microsoft is likely one of the best living examples of how things should be done.
- JohnBooty 13y ago
  Yeah, I think that's totally fair to say. I wouldn't place bets on any strategy that relied on Microsoft not closing the doors again at some point in the future, on future versions of their development stack. Like you said, though, this is better than not having happened.
  - lugg 13y ago
    I don't see why they would. This has been an obvious move for a long time, keeping it closed never really made any sense to me. They gained nothing from .Net being closed except hate and utter avoidance from people like me (vocal early adopters.) MS doesn't really make money off C# or .Net directly, they make money off the windows licenses you need to run the resulting code. Open C#/.Net = stronger, longer lasting community / free improvements = more users = more licenses. It also has other side effects like fostering [more] open source frameworks/plugins for their platform, which again, strengthens their position.
tormeh 13y ago
Well, I'd like to see Visual Studio for Linux with support for Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and other non-Microsoft technologies. That's my wishlist in this bright new era of Microsoft openness. I don't like Microsoft but Visual Studio is the only IDE I've ever tried that is substantially better than gedit/jedit. The auto-completion (intellisense) is just delightful to use.
- keypusher 13y ago
  Is Visual Studio auto-complete significantly different from IntelliJ or Eclipse? There are many great editors an the continium between gedit and Visual Studio, such as Sublime, hell even vim and emacs have autocomplete plugins.
  - untaken 13y ago
    C# support in IntelliJ would be a dream come true! (yes, I know about ReSharper - but that's just lipstick on a pig)
    - coldtea 13y ago
      Pig? VS is considered one of the best IDEs out there. On par, if not better than IntelliJ.
      - vetinari 13y ago
        If it was better, it would not need ReSharper.
        yesiamyourdad 13y ago
        I use both on a daily basis, and VS + Resharper beats the crap out of IntelliJ, IMO. My opinion might be different if I had to pay for my licenses, but independent of cost, VS wins.
  - jkrems 13y ago
einhverfr 13y ago
I think you have to define "they" here when you say "they understand the value of open source." There are a lot of people at Microsoft who really do understand the value of open source. When I worked there ten years ago, there were plenty who did. When I wrote interop papers as an outside consultant in 2007, I worked with a unit that did. But Microsoft also has a bunch of real problems that make it hard for them to realize this value, and so their options in going into it are somewhat limited. They can't pivot and become a services company because their whole Microsoft Partner network would be turned upside down. So they enter services in some key areas where their partners can't. It's a very delicate process, and it means for many on the administration side, the value of open source software for Microsoft is not as high as it would be for some other firms. Nonetheless this is huge. Open sourcing the VB.net/C# compiler effectively means the possibility of an Linux port, which means that .net has the possibility to become write once, run anywhere even if the whole class libraries are not open sourced yet. This is a gamble for Microsoft because it reduces the barriers to moving from Windows to other platforms (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc).
- tracker1 13y ago
  Outside of my 9-5 work, I've probably deployed nearly as much C# code (via Mono) under Linux as I have under Windows. In a few ways it's been very nice, in others a bit frustrating. I think that if MS Dev-Div buys out Xamarin, we'll see where things are really headed here. It will either be a new era of OSS tools from MS, or back to the old "kill it for cross platform in v.Next" ... I'm hoping that the tooling and integration gets a lot better in *nix, but nod sure how the Mono license (MIT iirc) and this new C# license (Apache) will jive together. Personally, most of my new dev for the past couple years has been in node.js (which has its' own niceties and quirks).
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    > I'm hoping that the tooling and integration gets a lot better in *nix, but nod sure how the Mono license (MIT iirc) and this new C# license (Apache) will jive together. The MIT license is a lot more permissive than the Apache license. However I see no reason that you can't have different components under each license which work together harmoniously. If nothing else, the MIT license can be easily changed without consulting other contributors because of the sublicensing grant.
foobarian 13y ago
Perhaps the lieutenants and the rank and file are less afraid of having a chair thrown at them nowadays followed by a firing. And given that the new CEO is from the Azure team it seems like he should know the value of this kind of step. I mostly feel sympathetic to the engineers working there. It's no fun living under an embarassing dictator.

jaynate 13y ago

Any developer worth his/her salt understands the value of open source these days. Keep in mind that these engineers don't actually run the business.

NicoJuicy 13y ago

There's a reason why Visual Studio continues to impress you. I once saw a presentation of the Visual Studio lead in Belgium, where he claimed that there were over 1200 people involved in the Visual Studio project. If that's true, i don't think there is any IDE that can top that number and it explains why Visual Studio is the best tool for (almost any) job. People should realize that Visual Studio is not solely C#, it's NodeJS, PHP, Mono, Python and so much more in one environment.

Shamanmuni 13y ago

I don't know, I see this as a good sign but for me it's still "too little too late". At least release it under a copyleft license, make it usable with previous versions of Visual Studio (it only works with 2013) and I'll feel more confident that you aren't setting a trap. Non-copyleft licenses can easily align with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. The value of .NET for most developers is closely associated with Visual Studio. They can make the next version closed source and have Visual Studio only accept that one and we are back to the same old Microsoft. Sure, you'd still have the previous open source version, but who cares when most people will probably just move on to the next.

eitland 13y ago
> Non-copyleft licenses can easily align with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. What? I would think if anything giving everyone else a crippled license while retaining copyright etc yourself that would be an even bigger setup for a EEE. Remember, MS can do w h a t e v e r they want with that code anyway it is not lke they'd be bound by a copyleft on their own code. (Unless they also started accepting patches without copyright assignment I guess.)
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Exactly. There's a reason why more restrictive licenses are more conducive to dual licensing models than less restrictive ones. A non-copyleft license effectively means that Microsoft, should they try EEE, has to compete not only with free as in beer and free as in freedom, they also have to compete with all the closed source competition they are subsidizing in this effort. If you believe that more competition is good, the less restrictions on the code from a big vendor, the better.
  - Shamanmuni 13y ago
    Copyleft licenses are more conductive to dual licensing because they give you no other choice if you want to sell a closed source premium version. That's the only reason. And for that to work you have to get copyright assignment. I think your view is pretty naive. They develop the platform and own the IDE that's synonymous with it. They can keep any other compiler off the IDE if they want that, you would be competing with them at their house, which is doomed to fail. With copyleft without assignment at least any later version would effectively remain free for all, whether Microsoft wants it or not. You don't have to believe and hope, it's just the way it is.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      > I think your view is pretty naive. You can think what you will about my opinion but it is based on a decade-long career around both BSD-licensed and GPL-licensed projects. > Copyleft licenses are more conductive to dual licensing because they give you no other choice if you want to sell a closed source premium version. And the licensor can always decline to sell the license to a competitor though this might be problematic for a big company. The point is that the GPL gives a company control over proprietary spinoffs, while the BSD license does not. > They can keep any other compiler off the IDE if they want that, you would be competing with them at their house, which is doomed to fail. Frankly their choice of licensing makes no difference in what sorts of products they can ship. > With copyleft without assignment at least any later version would effectively remain free for all, whether Microsoft wants it or not. But the point is that you end up with less competition under a copyleft license because fewer forms of competition are in line with the license. If your fear is against Microsoft as competitor, giving up more rights is better than giving up fewer. You say you think my view is naive, so I have to ask: how does one both release code under the Apache2 license, a license which allows anyone to change the license and add restrictions when distributing it provided that the license restrictions in that license are met, and adopt an embrace-extend-extinguish strategy. The first two might work ok because one could sell additional proprietary features just like anyone else, but the final one doesn't work because you are competing against yourself if you do that.

davidgerard 13y ago

I think one would be exceedingly foolish not to exercise the very greatest of caution. This is Microsoft we're talking about - they have a track record of profound fuckery. But I do indeed think this is better than not having happened.

zamalek 13y ago
> This is Microsoft we're talking about - they have a track record of profound fuckery. They have a bad track-record, but not in terms of "this team" (known as Devdiv). They might have gotten all uppity about IE, Windows or what-have-you - but the .Net team had a relatively quick epiphany about open source. Look at Mono. Java is always touted as a "more open" platform, Microsoft-haters have no issue spewing falsity that the Microsoft encumbrance is a big risk - however, so far as the framework track-record goes, Microsoft has a "community promise", an ECMA spec and has given Mono unit tests for Moonlight; Sun/Oracle has a track record of aggressively pursuing copyright (the recent spat with Google/AOSP). I'm not saying that Java sucks, or that people shouldn't use it. I'm just saying that a lot of people need to have a hard look at how much time they spend trying to mud the name of a company trying to make a turn. These opinions are antique. It may change in the future given new governance in those corporates (just as the e.g. Java, NodeJS situation may change), but as of now and as far as .Net FX goes: Microsoft is likely one of the best living examples of how things should be done.
JohnBooty 13y ago
Yeah, I think that's totally fair to say. I wouldn't place bets on any strategy that relied on Microsoft not closing the doors again at some point in the future, on future versions of their development stack. Like you said, though, this is better than not having happened.
- lugg 13y ago
  I don't see why they would. This has been an obvious move for a long time, keeping it closed never really made any sense to me. They gained nothing from .Net being closed except hate and utter avoidance from people like me (vocal early adopters.) MS doesn't really make money off C# or .Net directly, they make money off the windows licenses you need to run the resulting code. Open C#/.Net = stronger, longer lasting community / free improvements = more users = more licenses. It also has other side effects like fostering [more] open source frameworks/plugins for their platform, which again, strengthens their position.

tormeh 13y ago

Well, I'd like to see Visual Studio for Linux with support for Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and other non-Microsoft technologies. That's my wishlist in this bright new era of Microsoft openness. I don't like Microsoft but Visual Studio is the only IDE I've ever tried that is substantially better than gedit/jedit. The auto-completion (intellisense) is just delightful to use.

keypusher 13y ago
Is Visual Studio auto-complete significantly different from IntelliJ or Eclipse? There are many great editors an the continium between gedit and Visual Studio, such as Sublime, hell even vim and emacs have autocomplete plugins.
- untaken 13y ago
  C# support in IntelliJ would be a dream come true! (yes, I know about ReSharper - but that's just lipstick on a pig)
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Pig? VS is considered one of the best IDEs out there. On par, if not better than IntelliJ.
    - vetinari 13y ago
      If it was better, it would not need ReSharper.
      - yesiamyourdad 13y ago
        I use both on a daily basis, and VS + Resharper beats the crap out of IntelliJ, IMO. My opinion might be different if I had to pay for my licenses, but independent of cost, VS wins.
- jkrems 13y ago

einhverfr 13y ago

I think you have to define "they" here when you say "they understand the value of open source." There are a lot of people at Microsoft who really do understand the value of open source. When I worked there ten years ago, there were plenty who did. When I wrote interop papers as an outside consultant in 2007, I worked with a unit that did. But Microsoft also has a bunch of real problems that make it hard for them to realize this value, and so their options in going into it are somewhat limited. They can't pivot and become a services company because their whole Microsoft Partner network would be turned upside down. So they enter services in some key areas where their partners can't. It's a very delicate process, and it means for many on the administration side, the value of open source software for Microsoft is not as high as it would be for some other firms. Nonetheless this is huge. Open sourcing the VB.net/C# compiler effectively means the possibility of an Linux port, which means that .net has the possibility to become write once, run anywhere even if the whole class libraries are not open sourced yet. This is a gamble for Microsoft because it reduces the barriers to moving from Windows to other platforms (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc).

tracker1 13y ago
Outside of my 9-5 work, I've probably deployed nearly as much C# code (via Mono) under Linux as I have under Windows. In a few ways it's been very nice, in others a bit frustrating. I think that if MS Dev-Div buys out Xamarin, we'll see where things are really headed here. It will either be a new era of OSS tools from MS, or back to the old "kill it for cross platform in v.Next" ... I'm hoping that the tooling and integration gets a lot better in *nix, but nod sure how the Mono license (MIT iirc) and this new C# license (Apache) will jive together. Personally, most of my new dev for the past couple years has been in node.js (which has its' own niceties and quirks).
- einhverfr 13y ago
  > I'm hoping that the tooling and integration gets a lot better in *nix, but nod sure how the Mono license (MIT iirc) and this new C# license (Apache) will jive together. The MIT license is a lot more permissive than the Apache license. However I see no reason that you can't have different components under each license which work together harmoniously. If nothing else, the MIT license can be easily changed without consulting other contributors because of the sublicensing grant.

foobarian 13y ago

Perhaps the lieutenants and the rank and file are less afraid of having a chair thrown at them nowadays followed by a firing. And given that the new CEO is from the Azure team it seems like he should know the value of this kind of step. I mostly feel sympathetic to the engineers working there. It's no fun living under an embarassing dictator.