3 ms·

I'm a regular salaryman at Microsoft, and everything I've done for the past 2+ years has been open source. It's pretty cool, after having worked on traditional

by latkin 12y ago

I'm a regular salaryman at Microsoft, and everything I've done for the past 2+ years has been open source. It's pretty cool, after having worked on traditional closed-source msft teams for my first ~5 years. I work on the F# language, which has been on Codeplex since 2010, and 1 year ago moved to a fully-open-engineering model (and moved to GitHub about a month ago). The broader team I'm part of, which includes the C#/VB compilers, Typescript, Python tools for VS, and the .NET framework/JIT/CLR, is also now pretty much 100% open source (or is rapidly and publicly moving that direction). That's maybe ~100 Evil Empire FTEs doing OSS every day as their 9-5, just in my building. Not bad!

digitalzombie 12y ago
> That's maybe ~100 Evil Empire FTEs doing OSS every day as their 9-5 This action doesn't make them any less Evil. If they didn't neglected the server back end and just concentrated on user desktop they would never be doing open source. The fact was they lost when they didn't bet on the internet and several sector. Now that they are losing ground on several sectors and that they are doing open source stuff doesn't mean that they're not evil anymore. Their open source stuff is to help them stay relevant in these sectors. This isn't purely out of altruism. If they were to cross over to the good side they wouldn't be making money off of Android by threatening these companies with patents lawsuit.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Name one company do in open source purely out of altruism.
  - jghn 12y ago
    Mine does, although it's a non-profit funded heavily by philanthropy and government grant money
    - dinkumthinkum 12y ago
      A non-profit is not really a company in the traditional sense of the word.
- dinkumthinkum 12y ago
  There's a lot of hyperbole there. Evil empire is sort a joke, you know that right? Most people don't actually think they are "evil" in the Pol Pot sense. Also, .... yeah this is a lot if hyperbole.
- nailer 12y ago
  > If they didn't neglected the server back end and just concentrated on user desktop they would never be doing open source. Windows desktop/mobile (and big apps like xbox music) gave birth to TypeScript (which is obviously OSS).

by latkin 12y ago

digitalzombie 12y ago

> That's maybe ~100 Evil Empire FTEs doing OSS every day as their 9-5 This action doesn't make them any less Evil. If they didn't neglected the server back end and just concentrated on user desktop they would never be doing open source. The fact was they lost when they didn't bet on the internet and several sector. Now that they are losing ground on several sectors and that they are doing open source stuff doesn't mean that they're not evil anymore. Their open source stuff is to help them stay relevant in these sectors. This isn't purely out of altruism. If they were to cross over to the good side they wouldn't be making money off of Android by threatening these companies with patents lawsuit.

sukilot 12y ago
Name one company do in open source purely out of altruism.
- jghn 12y ago
  Mine does, although it's a non-profit funded heavily by philanthropy and government grant money
  - dinkumthinkum 12y ago
    A non-profit is not really a company in the traditional sense of the word.
dinkumthinkum 12y ago
There's a lot of hyperbole there. Evil empire is sort a joke, you know that right? Most people don't actually think they are "evil" in the Pol Pot sense. Also, .... yeah this is a lot if hyperbole.
nailer 12y ago
> If they didn't neglected the server back end and just concentrated on user desktop they would never be doing open source. Windows desktop/mobile (and big apps like xbox music) gave birth to TypeScript (which is obviously OSS).