5 ms·

What I found most interesting is how Google and Microsoft are in the process of swapping places with regards to open source: Microsoft is taking formerly-closed

What I found most interesting is how Google and Microsoft are in the process of swapping places with regards to open source: Microsoft is taking formerly-closed projects open (particularly their compiler and development tools), while Google is taking formerly-open projects closed (particularly Glass, which was a closed-source fork of Android).

cowardlydragon 12y ago
A free compiler and dev tools? Revolutionary. Or, completely the norm in Ruby, Python, Java... um, every other language. Did they OSS the IDE?
- jdmichal 12y ago
  You mean the Java for which the reference VM (Hotspot) and compiler were not open-sourced until November 13, 2006 [1], roughly corresponding with the Java 6 release? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_initial_release http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_ini...
- nvivo 12y ago
  The compilers for .net were always free and were in every installation of the framework since the first version on 2003. And there were open source IDEs for .NET since the beginning.
plnk22 12y ago
How much has MS truly open sourced? SQL Server? Windows? Visual Studio? MS Office? No, MS has realised Linux is winning in the Cloud and want to open source their development platform in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. That said, Google strong-arming phone and tablet manufacturers, and indie musicians on YouTube is pretty shady too.
- nvivo 12y ago
  How much has google really open sourced? Think about it. Search engine? Gmail? Ad engine? Maps? Drive? Youtube? Nothing! Google has a lot of development tools open sourced, almost no products. Android is one for a change, but with Google Play Services, most of what you really use is closed source. Microsoft has tons of source code out there too, but no windows, no office... For VS I think it's a matter of time. But the point is: should they? What is the advantage? Apple seems to be doing fine with developers, and how much of it is open source? In fact people like to pay more for apple hardware in order to talk about how free things should be.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    I'd go further and hypothesize that it's only a matter of time before Windows is open-sourced. The main obstacle to that has historically been a perceived need to sell each and every copy of Windows at a massive markup, but the current trends indicate - to me at least - that Microsoft is slowly warming up to the idea of being to Windows as Red Hat is to its variety of GNU/Linux or Google is to Android: use it as a vehicle to deliver a product (Red Hat's support contracts, Google's ad delivery and such) rather than the product in and of itself. Here, Microsoft will still make plenty of money; businesses would still want support contracts, after all, so Windows could be monetized like RHEL with Microsoft selling support contracts to medium and large enterprises. Selling Windows itself has been an obsolete business model for quite some time, and I have a good feeling that Microsoft is now starting to realize that.

cowardlydragon 12y ago

A free compiler and dev tools? Revolutionary. Or, completely the norm in Ruby, Python, Java... um, every other language. Did they OSS the IDE?

jdmichal 12y ago
You mean the Java for which the reference VM (Hotspot) and compiler were not open-sourced until November 13, 2006 [1], roughly corresponding with the Java 6 release? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_initial_release http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_ini...
nvivo 12y ago
The compilers for .net were always free and were in every installation of the framework since the first version on 2003. And there were open source IDEs for .NET since the beginning.

plnk22 12y ago

How much has MS truly open sourced? SQL Server? Windows? Visual Studio? MS Office? No, MS has realised Linux is winning in the Cloud and want to open source their development platform in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. That said, Google strong-arming phone and tablet manufacturers, and indie musicians on YouTube is pretty shady too.

nvivo 12y ago
How much has google really open sourced? Think about it. Search engine? Gmail? Ad engine? Maps? Drive? Youtube? Nothing! Google has a lot of development tools open sourced, almost no products. Android is one for a change, but with Google Play Services, most of what you really use is closed source. Microsoft has tons of source code out there too, but no windows, no office... For VS I think it's a matter of time. But the point is: should they? What is the advantage? Apple seems to be doing fine with developers, and how much of it is open source? In fact people like to pay more for apple hardware in order to talk about how free things should be.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  I'd go further and hypothesize that it's only a matter of time before Windows is open-sourced. The main obstacle to that has historically been a perceived need to sell each and every copy of Windows at a massive markup, but the current trends indicate - to me at least - that Microsoft is slowly warming up to the idea of being to Windows as Red Hat is to its variety of GNU/Linux or Google is to Android: use it as a vehicle to deliver a product (Red Hat's support contracts, Google's ad delivery and such) rather than the product in and of itself. Here, Microsoft will still make plenty of money; businesses would still want support contracts, after all, so Windows could be monetized like RHEL with Microsoft selling support contracts to medium and large enterprises. Selling Windows itself has been an obsolete business model for quite some time, and I have a good feeling that Microsoft is now starting to realize that.