4 ms·

Microsoft seems to be undergoing a huge sea change towards acceptance and promotion of open source software, and moving into a devices and services model for re

Microsoft seems to be undergoing a huge sea change towards acceptance and promotion of open source software, and moving into a devices and services model for revenue as opposed to a software licensing model. It seems that most of the open source community still thinks they are "up to something" but I'm starting to believe that they are genuinely becoming a much better company than they were under Ballmer and Gates. Either way, I'm happy to see them putting their money where their mouth was, literally.

sfk 11y ago
I agree with much what you wrote, but why is this cause for happiness? It's basically the end of programming as a profession should every company go that way.
- rjbwork 11y ago
  Can you elaborate on why?
  - sfk 11y ago
    I was referring to "moving into a devices and services model for revenue as opposed to a software licensing model" - which I think is likely. If every company starts doing this (using open source!), the majority of software will be written and maintained by volunteers begging for donations from said companies. What will be left is devops jobs, "full stack" engineers, i.e. all jobs where you can't really focus on developing software. Very few interesting jobs may remain in Microsoft Research.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mordak 11y ago
      The other possibility is that if every company starts doing this (using open source!), the majority of software will be written and maintained by employees of said companies. This is already the case for many projects, isn't it? In the case of OpenBSD, several of the core developers are either owners or employees of companies that use OpenBSD in their operations. Some of these companies are infrastructure providers, some are device / appliance vendors, some are consultancy shops...
    - jlhenry 11y ago
      "the majority of software will be written and maintained by volunteers begging for donations from said companies" that is not how it works now so why would that change?
- jlhenry 11y ago
  please explain
- morganvachon 11y ago
  My statement about "happiness" was not part of the previous paragraph. I'm happy they are contributing to OpenBSD. I'm cautiously optimistic about their sudden benevolence towards open source in general.
digi_owl 11y ago
MS has always been pragmatic. The shift is happening because they have gotten into the cloud business, with a primary focus on the infrastructure tier (Azure). This means that as long as someone is renting compute time from them, MS don't really care what is running higher in the stack.
- illumen 11y ago
  Burning CPU time and memory bandwidth is what ssh does on purpose to make things secure. So from this perspective, ssh seems like a great match for them making more money.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Azure is so terrifically overpriced for compute, so it stands that they'd love people using it even if they ran stuff that actively went against Windows. Azure's prices are more than double Google Cloud Compute. Up to 5x the price. Azure could resell GCP and still make a hefty margin.

sfk 11y ago

I agree with much what you wrote, but why is this cause for happiness? It's basically the end of programming as a profession should every company go that way.

rjbwork 11y ago
Can you elaborate on why?
- sfk 11y ago
  I was referring to "moving into a devices and services model for revenue as opposed to a software licensing model" - which I think is likely. If every company starts doing this (using open source!), the majority of software will be written and maintained by volunteers begging for donations from said companies. What will be left is devops jobs, "full stack" engineers, i.e. all jobs where you can't really focus on developing software. Very few interesting jobs may remain in Microsoft Research.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Mordak 11y ago
    The other possibility is that if every company starts doing this (using open source!), the majority of software will be written and maintained by employees of said companies. This is already the case for many projects, isn't it? In the case of OpenBSD, several of the core developers are either owners or employees of companies that use OpenBSD in their operations. Some of these companies are infrastructure providers, some are device / appliance vendors, some are consultancy shops...
  - jlhenry 11y ago
    "the majority of software will be written and maintained by volunteers begging for donations from said companies" that is not how it works now so why would that change?
jlhenry 11y ago
please explain
morganvachon 11y ago
My statement about "happiness" was not part of the previous paragraph. I'm happy they are contributing to OpenBSD. I'm cautiously optimistic about their sudden benevolence towards open source in general.

digi_owl 11y ago

MS has always been pragmatic. The shift is happening because they have gotten into the cloud business, with a primary focus on the infrastructure tier (Azure). This means that as long as someone is renting compute time from them, MS don't really care what is running higher in the stack.

illumen 11y ago
Burning CPU time and memory bandwidth is what ssh does on purpose to make things secure. So from this perspective, ssh seems like a great match for them making more money.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Azure is so terrifically overpriced for compute, so it stands that they'd love people using it even if they ran stuff that actively went against Windows. Azure's prices are more than double Google Cloud Compute. Up to 5x the price. Azure could resell GCP and still make a hefty margin.