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With this new CEO, Microsoft is a different company. Cloud & Mobile all the way. .NET/CLR is open-source. First class support for Linux and OS X. Commitment to

With this new CEO, Microsoft is a different company. Cloud & Mobile all the way. .NET/CLR is open-source. First class support for Linux and OS X. Commitment to standards. At the risk of sounding like a complete lunatic, here's my prediction for the next 10 years: * Microsoft abandon traditional Windows development. * They take a FreeBSD/Linux distro and add a "Windows" layer on top, ala Apple. Unix and Unix-like OS's become the only game in town. "Traditional" apps are emulated. New Apps are written in a CLR-compatible language only for the modern runtime. * IIS, IE, Sivelight - all are left to stagnate. * Office becomes HTTP/JS, hosted only.

TheCondor 12y ago
Ms would stop being ms in that scenario, I can't see it happening. I could see them drop the "windows" brand though. This new browser, is it married to Windows? Ibm went through this, they were maybe the most dominant corporation the world has ever seen, then the government scared them and the micro revolution happened. IBM switched from trying to own every deal (well they still wanted that) to being satisfied to get a slice of the action, it became all about open. Ms seems to be switching from "windows everywhere" to "helping you be the best you" or some other theme. I'll be impressed when they support a browser and office on linux.
snorkel 12y ago
As long as Microsoft has big customers all-in on Windows, and there are many, so too will Microsoft remain Windows. You can compete with free for as long as free is not what the big players want in their IT operation.
ninkendo 12y ago
I've thought about this a lot too and I mostly agree, but I think they'd keep the Windows branding and NT kernel and just start making the POSIX/Unix layer installed by default and supported as first-class. I'd love a Windows machine to work the same way I use my OSX machine: using Terminal.app and HomeBrew to develop and use unixey apps, but with a nice GUI and hardware support that's better than the Linux distros out there. I can confidently develop say, rails applications, test them locally, and just push them to production on Linux servers and I've never once thought "hey, I wonder if this will break due to differences in OSX to Linux." It just never has made a difference. I want windows to be like this too. I can get there with Windows now with Cygwin or SFU, but I want it all to ship with Windows, and binaries I create are unlikely to work anywhere except other people who have installed the whole stack. Plus there's no good terminal emulator for windows I'm aware of.
- amorphid 12y ago
  I became a Mac user when I started to become a developer with a preference for the command line. The default Windows terminal sucks for development. I think bmy biggest beef is jltrying to do something as simple as cutting/pasting text.
ams6110 12y ago
I think they would keep the NT kernel. The engineering that went into that was pretty top notch. The rest of the Windows legacy yeah, that gets dumped.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Can you elaborate on what MS would gain by tossing their rather fine kernel and using Linux/BSD? Particularly since that'd lose the massive amount of hardware support from current drivers.
- fuzzythinker 12y ago
  One strong reason is to lure back developer love. One reason why most startups use Macs or linux machines is because open source libraries runs on linux and most of the time on OSX without much modifications. Windows is always an afterthought and is lucky if Windows support is available in a few months. MS knows this and knows that if the trend is not reversed soon, Windows market share will decline.
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    Most online SaaS/Internet startups? Yes. Maybe some on Azure too. Every other type of business startup is going to use Windows because software. Call centers, restaurants, supermarkets, retail stores, real estate, financial, pharmaceutical, etc.
    - rjbwork 12y ago
      We are a SaaS startup using exclusively Azure. Minus the complete lack of a data warehousing/OLAP service, it's great!
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        Have you compared the cost of your compute/VMs to Google Compute Engine? When I did, Azure was literally double the cost. And it has useful SSD options which Azure doesn't yet have. But Azure is a fairly cool product overall.
        rjbwork 12y ago
        Azure does actually have SSD options for both VMs and Storage Accounts now.
zvrba 12y ago
> They take a FreeBSD/Linux distro and add a "Windows" layer on top, ala Apple. No. NT is a far more advanced kernel than any of the free unixes. If anything, they'll make it the other way around; a decent "linux" subsystem which can seamlessly run ELF binaries. Like FreeBSD's linux binary support. Or like coLinux, but without the overhead of virtualizing another kernel.
- wantab 12y ago
  No, NT is not far more advanced.

TheCondor 12y ago

Ms would stop being ms in that scenario, I can't see it happening. I could see them drop the "windows" brand though. This new browser, is it married to Windows? Ibm went through this, they were maybe the most dominant corporation the world has ever seen, then the government scared them and the micro revolution happened. IBM switched from trying to own every deal (well they still wanted that) to being satisfied to get a slice of the action, it became all about open. Ms seems to be switching from "windows everywhere" to "helping you be the best you" or some other theme. I'll be impressed when they support a browser and office on linux.

snorkel 12y ago

As long as Microsoft has big customers all-in on Windows, and there are many, so too will Microsoft remain Windows. You can compete with free for as long as free is not what the big players want in their IT operation.

ninkendo 12y ago

I've thought about this a lot too and I mostly agree, but I think they'd keep the Windows branding and NT kernel and just start making the POSIX/Unix layer installed by default and supported as first-class. I'd love a Windows machine to work the same way I use my OSX machine: using Terminal.app and HomeBrew to develop and use unixey apps, but with a nice GUI and hardware support that's better than the Linux distros out there. I can confidently develop say, rails applications, test them locally, and just push them to production on Linux servers and I've never once thought "hey, I wonder if this will break due to differences in OSX to Linux." It just never has made a difference. I want windows to be like this too. I can get there with Windows now with Cygwin or SFU, but I want it all to ship with Windows, and binaries I create are unlikely to work anywhere except other people who have installed the whole stack. Plus there's no good terminal emulator for windows I'm aware of.

amorphid 12y ago
I became a Mac user when I started to become a developer with a preference for the command line. The default Windows terminal sucks for development. I think bmy biggest beef is jltrying to do something as simple as cutting/pasting text.

ams6110 12y ago

I think they would keep the NT kernel. The engineering that went into that was pretty top notch. The rest of the Windows legacy yeah, that gets dumped.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Can you elaborate on what MS would gain by tossing their rather fine kernel and using Linux/BSD? Particularly since that'd lose the massive amount of hardware support from current drivers.

fuzzythinker 12y ago
One strong reason is to lure back developer love. One reason why most startups use Macs or linux machines is because open source libraries runs on linux and most of the time on OSX without much modifications. Windows is always an afterthought and is lucky if Windows support is available in a few months. MS knows this and knows that if the trend is not reversed soon, Windows market share will decline.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  Most online SaaS/Internet startups? Yes. Maybe some on Azure too. Every other type of business startup is going to use Windows because software. Call centers, restaurants, supermarkets, retail stores, real estate, financial, pharmaceutical, etc.
  - rjbwork 12y ago
    We are a SaaS startup using exclusively Azure. Minus the complete lack of a data warehousing/OLAP service, it's great!
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Have you compared the cost of your compute/VMs to Google Compute Engine? When I did, Azure was literally double the cost. And it has useful SSD options which Azure doesn't yet have. But Azure is a fairly cool product overall.
      - rjbwork 12y ago
        Azure does actually have SSD options for both VMs and Storage Accounts now.

zvrba 12y ago

> They take a FreeBSD/Linux distro and add a "Windows" layer on top, ala Apple. No. NT is a far more advanced kernel than any of the free unixes. If anything, they'll make it the other way around; a decent "linux" subsystem which can seamlessly run ELF binaries. Like FreeBSD's linux binary support. Or like coLinux, but without the overhead of virtualizing another kernel.

wantab 12y ago
No, NT is not far more advanced.