What Will Microsoft's "Embrace" of Open Source Actually Achieve? 217
Nerval's Lobster writes Back in the day, Microsoft viewed open source and Linux as a threat and did its best to retaliate with FUD and patent threats. And then a funny thing happened: Whether in the name of pragmatism or simply marketing, Microsoft began a very public transition from a company of open-source haters (at least in top management) to one that's embraced some aspects of open-source computing. Last month, the company blogged that .NET Core will become open-source, adding to its previously open-sourced ASP.NET MVC, Web API, and Web Pages (Razor). There's no doubt that, at least in some respects, Microsoft wants to make a big show of being more open and supportive of interoperability. The company's even gotten involved with the .NET Foundation, an independent organization designed to assist developers with the growing collection of open-source technologies for .NET. But there's only so far Microsoft will go into the realm of open source—whereas once upon a time, the company tried to wreck the movement, now it faces the very real danger of its whole revenue model being undermined by free software. But what's Microsoft's end-goal with open source? What can the company possibly hope to accomplish, given a widespread perception that such a move on its part is the product of either fear, cynicism, or both?
Oblig ... (Score:2, Insightful)
-- Ghandi
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"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you. Then you lose and kill yourself."
- Hitler (well, not really)
I never understood what that Gandhi quote is so popular, sure that's what a victory looks like out the rear view mirror but most defeats start just the same.
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"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you. Then you lose and kill yourself." - Hitler (well, not really)
I never understood what that Gandhi quote is so popular, sure that's what a victory looks like out the rear view mirror but most defeats start just the same.
Well, the point is, that if you aren't willing to be ignored and ridiculed to begin with, you'll never win because you'll never even try. Really, Hitler won and took over Germany. Then he won taking over Austria. Then he won taking over France. Then while still fighting Britain, he doubled down and tried for Russia, and then finally lost.
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That's more of a "don't take on more than you can chew" story.
Yes. Yes it is. A lot of people forget just how close he came to winning, never mind the really nasty details like how people in Eastern Europe actually welcomed him because of just how bad the Soviets were*--which, to bring us back on-topic, I should note is an advantage that Microsoft seems to lack.
Really, the question ought to be how much of this is an EEE attempt? It may be that Microsoft has decided that what they're releasing to open source is worth too much to just end entirely and not bringing in e
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First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then you realize you're just a clown
-- Bozo
Sales (Score:3, Informative)
They are trying to leverage their IP to get more people to buy or subscribe to their products. There's nothing wrong with that; it actually helps developers.
The idea is that if you make it easy for developers to do good stuff on your platform, they are more likely to do good stuff on your platform. Then end-users who want the good stuff will buy the good stuff from the developer and the platform from you.
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Read all about it here [visualstudio.com] or here [zdnet.com].
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There's #develop and monodevelop.
Neither have the polish of VS.Net, obviously. But with the release of the .net box and dice, integration may become sweeter.
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It's a shame that Sharpdevelop is so tied to Windows ; if it lived up to the promise of the platform, it would just run on Linux. Monodevelop is a *terrible* port and really lags behind SharpDevelop on features.
Even MS gets that UI is hard - the Windows.Forms namespace was being specifically excluded from the open-sourcing AFAICR.
Microsoft the pusher? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, perhaps the plan is to support .Net on Linux for a while, then yank the support for Linux away and force everyone back to Windows and SQL Server or rewrite their application for another platform.
But it's Open Source, can Open Source not survive without a corporate sponsor?
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Open source, but not free to use, not free software.
Nope, you're wrong. It is under the MIT License [github.com] which is a Free Software license.
Open-source is no longer a threat to them (Score:5, Insightful)
What has changed is that open-source is no longer a threat to Microsoft. It was a threat when Windows competed against Linux for the desktop and for the server. But today, Microsoft doesn't care about Windows and has re-invented itself: Microsoft lays its hopes on Azure.
All this open-sourcing of .NET is to entice people to use .NET and thus use Windows Azure. By eliminating the stigma of being closed and proprietary, they eliminate the #1 objection to using .NET. This openness goes both ways: not only is .NET opening, but Azure is supporting other stacks: node and LAMP for example. They don't care what tools you use anymore, they just want your hosting business.
Microsoft's new competitors are OpenStack, Amazon, and other cloud service providers. They will compete with those providers by trying to have the cloud platform that supports the most tools and the easiest process to get stuff into the cloud.
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But today, Microsoft doesn't care about Windows
Them's pretty big words considering they still spend a huge amount of money developing and maintaining Windows on various different form factors.
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What I think they are pushing is Xamarin.
That way they would get far more developers for Windows Phone. The best part for Microsoft is that the applications made in Xamarin works best on Windows Phone. When the sore losers who picked Xamarin have 1M lines of code they no longer can back out, but Microsoft won't care (to fix the "corner cases"), the next hit game is first and best in Windows Phone.
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Yes, if they open source it, the community can maintain it.
Let's say they release .NET 5.0 *only* for Windows 10. If there's demand, a third party will back-port it to 7 or possibly as far back as XP.
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Excellent questions. There are a few reasons, but they are indirect.
Why would they care if anyone uses .NET if it's free and cross-platform?
1) Because Azure will be the default place to deploy .NET servers, which makes them money. .NET developers will tend to use Visual Studio, which makes them money.
2) Because
3) Because Windows phone and Windows 8 and the Windows store will be the default place to deploy those apps, which makes them money.
Also, note that there have been free and cross-platform imlpementations of .NET for >10 years. It has done very little to dilute Micros
Simple (Score:3)
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wow, that's just like GNOME project
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Re:what an embrace means. (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the day, Microsoft viewed open source and Linux as a threat and did its best to retaliate with FUD and patent threats.
then in 2013 Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$32 billion
MS had an after-tax income of over 21 billion dollars in 2013. No idea where you're coming up with a $32B loss. Ballmer was a horrible CEO, but the biggest problem was that MS continued to make money--LOTS of money--while he was destroying the company's value, which made him look absolutely great on paper.
implicit tone (Score:2)
I interpret this tone as: "You are an idiot that needs to be spoon fed value judgments" OR "You are an idiot, and I think I can manipulate you by disguising my opinion in here as uncontroversial, monolithic, undeniable claims".
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Like that of promoting the IBM PC compatible from a limited market to be the industrial standard architecture (by making sure they could sell MSDOS to anyone that wanted it)?
Or like that of "forcing" hardware manufacturers to improve their products (by helping to design and standardize misc. enhancements to the ISA)?
Most things aren't black and white unless one is bipolar...
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Because it works... (Score:2)
It's not hard. They want .Net to gain more traction as a development platform. There's enough people that are contributing to things like ASP .Net MVC and Entity Framework to make it useful for them. Also, there were open source projects that have helped them a ton (NuGet) and they realize that it works for them in some cases. Also, I think they sense that there is an opportunity for .Net to become the "goto" enterprise development platform. Oracle's handling of Java is creating a space for a new player to
The handwriting's on the wall: Alice v. CLS Bank (Score:3, Insightful)
In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International [wikipedia.org] the US Supreme Court ruled:
merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.
Recently, after its SCO fiasco, Microsoft's biggest gun in its ceaseless war on Linux and all things FOSS has been patent extortion. IIRC, Microsoft makes a sizable chuck of change from Android devices due to the licenses for a fuzzy bunch of patents that have never been tested for validity in a court of law.
At some point, someone with deep enough pockets to risk a spin on the roulette wheel that is the US court system in regard to patents will take on Microsoft and see if the Emperor is wearing clothes or not. Microsoft owns some very smart lawyers. The lawyers know such a challenge is inevitable. They also know there is a good chance Microsoft will lose and will have to shut down its patent extortion racket. At that point they will need a plan B. This is their baby steps towards a plan B which is way too little, way too late.
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Barnes and Noble were shaping up to test a few of em in court - then Microsoft sidled up and 'partnered' with them. That's another part of the MS modus operandi. Wait for a company who you've hurt to be on the ropes financially, and then offer to help if they'll kiss and make up. Happened with Apple and MS too.
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Barnes and Noble were shaping up to test a few of em in court - then Microsoft sidled up and 'partnered' with them. That's another part of the MS modus operandi. Wait for a company who you've hurt to be on the ropes financially, and then offer to help if they'll kiss and make up. Happened with Apple and MS too.
They also did this with Corel and Novell.
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The other way to interpret what happened is to notice that Microsoft went buddy-buddy with a company that was going to fight them in court. By doing that, Microsoft avoided having any actual ruling on their patents, and kept them in top shape for FUD.
Easy... (Score:3, Informative)
The SDK and libraries have never been a revenue source. The development tools and software platform are the revenue sources.
Given a continued level of investment, it is unlikely that another party would overtake Microsoft as the definitive source for commercial .Net needs. On the filp side, Microsoft needs a bigger ecosystem. First party only takes them so far, and most third party efforts focus around more linux-oriented or platform-neutral stacks, with an emphasis on open source. Going more cross platform and open source is their way of trying to get the platform more relevant. If this plan succeeds, then some parties will be 'getting it for free', but those parties would have otherwise gone with a free solution.
In short, they are trying to open source just enough to provide equivalent support to free frameworks that are realistically good enough, while holding back components where there is a shred of belief that MS might possible continue to hold differentiated value.
The Desktop is dying. (Score:2)
Micosoft made its fortune off of the Desktop market.
Windows, and Office. + The slue of apps that support the two. Programming, Servers, IE...
Now not everyone wants or needs a desktop.
They didn't get much effort in getting Mobile. Zune, Windows Phone, the PC makers are kinda floundering on Windows Mobile tablets.
Their XBox gaming is a fickle market. They are in way too tight race with Sony, then you have the mobile market taking up a lot of the indie game market. Screwups like they did with the XBox One lau
I dare MS to embrace Open Source (Score:2)
Because it worked so well for Sun Microsystems.
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MS would like to become a service company. (Score:2)
MS is transitioning, ... trying to transition to a service company. Which they should've done 10 years ago, imho. Couldn't tell if they're to late. Even FOSSing .Net came to late, imho. If they succeed, they'll become something like another IBM and Oracle.
However, I expect them to feel even more pressure in the next few years. At least in the consumer and services market MS looks like a toddler joining an NBA Final between Apple and Google. And in the new-gen consoles department they're currently getting th
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Sehr gut, aber:
Native speakers can make those mistakes, too, so don't feel downhearted :)
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Microsoft (Score:2)
I Beleive in Magic (Score:3)
Embracing as a matter of principle, or profit? (Score:3)
Should this worry us? I think it should
Re:They couldn't wreck the movement from the outsi (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know; the market looks very different than it did back in the Halloween Email days. There are two things going on here: 1) Ballmer and Gates are out at MS, and 2) server OS market share is not as important as sales of cloud services. It isn't what you're running on your box that they're interested in, anymore, it's what you're connecting to for your business layer. If they can get *nix customers connecting to Azure on .NET, I think they'd call that a win.
Re:They couldn't wreck the movement from the outsi (Score:5, Insightful)
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And there's still nothing preventing them from changing their attitude and discontinuing support
Discontinuing support for what? If it's open source then the open source philosophy of maintaining it yourself or paying somebody to do it applies. If you require corporate support for open source code then what is the point of open source at all?
Re:They couldn't wreck the movement from the outsi (Score:4, Informative)
Embrace, extend, destroy. Sun Tsu's book isn't off their shelves just yet.
That said, Microsoft needs revenue, and moneyspenders tired of the BS, the poor quality, the BS, the proprietary nature, the lock-in, and more. The veneer of openness still means that Microsoft is looking for revenue, and their seeming love for open source is designed to follow the market, not some sort of philosophical shift. They're still in it for the revenue.
The trends in software and administrative support still favor strong static infrastructure, and Microsoft's IT management has a generation of schooled people that know dot-net, SQL Server, and desktop products. They learned AD, and how to make stuff the Microsoft Way.
Licensing models can't be easily ignored, and embracing them doesn't stop their principal need: more and lots of revenue, and at least some harmony. Their QA still is hideous, but it's improving, which is damning with faint praise. If they want to competitively and actively support open source/FOSS, fine. They could change that battleship of theirs tomorrow. Licensing wouldn't matter as there are armies of closed source coders dying for revenue, too. It's just that community-sourced armies of passionate coders can be not only faster, but equally as effective-- or more. It's the revenue. Follow the revenue. It's all about the revenue.
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It isn't what you're running on your box that they're interested in, anymore, it's what you're connecting to for your business layer. If they can get *nix customers connecting to Azure on .NET, I think they'd call that a win.
God, I hope that's the case. Since I won't touch cloudy services with a ten foot pole, this would mean that Microsoft will finally stop being a pain in my butt.
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Most of what you say is true except Bill Gates is definitely not out...
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/... [techcrunch.com]
Bill Gates was on the board, he's stepped down from the board to take a more hands on role within the company.
I don't think you give the man enough credit, he is the man who beat Steve Jobs and nearly drove Apple out of business...
http://www.wired.com/2009/08/d... [wired.com]
Microsoft with (not against) the guidence of Bill Gates are embracing open source as they have every other technological movement there has been
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I think you are rather confused with the meaning behind EEE.
The EEE strategy of MS was harmful, because MS used its monopoly to screw up widely used open standards, thus eliminating competition at birth. This was bad not only for startups, but for consumers as well. Remember IE6?
As the article that you linked to yourself describes, there are a lot of Android versions that are based on the open source version of the OS. Google is actually giving its competitors the Android code for free, thus enabling them t
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Interesting that you mention Pepsi. Speaking of stuck in the 1990s, did you mean to allude to former Apple CEO John Sculley?
Yes, I've noticed that what Google is embracing with Android is the walled garden model. One little thing their search engine does, and a big reason why I'm trying to move away from them, is this redirection. Click on a link on their search results, and it doesn't send you straght to the linked material, no, it sends you to a Google URL that does a little something, then sends you
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Why is parent modded troll? This is *exactly* the kind of thing Microsoft has done in the past. Not just once, but repeatedly. The most obvious one was Java, and it took a lawsuit from Sun to get Microsoft to stop trying to commandeer the platform. Microsoft then dropped Java in a big public hissy fit, and came out with .NET instead.
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By 'exactly', I was referring to their MO, not specifics like licensing. I thought I had been clear. Sorry about that.
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How do you know that MS is not abetting the systemd bandwagon? What a perfect leadup to the Extend and Extinguish steps.
That would be a work of genius, and frankly I don't think MS is that smart any more. Still, if it turns out Pottering has been on the MS payroll all along, I might actually die laughing.
Amazon (Score:4, Interesting)
Historically, being embraced by Microsoft has often been deadly...
True in the 80s and early 90s, but today Microsoft is pretty responsive to their partners and that role has more been taken on by Amazon. I hear Amazon basically data mines business partners who sell on their site to undercut prices on everything except for certain narrowly agreed products.
It's a good business model for Amazon's move to gather more market power, which will give them a near-monopoly in the end. They're definitely playing the long game. But it's not a good move for their partners.
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. I hear Amazon basically data mines business partners who sell on their site to undercut prices on everything except for certain narrowly agreed products.
To be fair, most sellers on Amazon Markets do the same, and price their stuff just under or at Amazon's price, and Amazon seems OK with that. Wasn't there a bug in the past where the software that people use to undercut Amazon had a big and was pricing stuff at 1 cent, and Amazon stepped in to help out with that?
They're definitely playing the long game. But it's not a good move for their partners.
So far it's worked very well for their customers, and has for many years. It's starting to seem pretty far-fetch that this is some elaborate scheme to do anything except lower prices to keep custo
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You mean, like Nokia?
I've read plenty of articles in the past about partners complaining that they showed Microsoft something, Microsoft temporarily working with them, and then showing them the door while coming out with their own product. I tried googling for such just now but there's so much noise I can't find the specific articles I was looking for.
They may well be trying to clean up their act, but they have a lot, and I mean a LOT of bad-will that they have generated over the years. If they think that
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You mean, like Nokia?
I've read plenty of articles in the past about partners complaining that they showed Microsoft something, Microsoft temporarily working with them, and then showing them the door while coming out with their own product. I tried googling for such just now but there's so much noise I can't find the specific articles I was looking for.
They may well be trying to clean up their act, but they have a lot, and I mean a LOT of bad-will that they have generated over the years. If they think that people are going to accept these supposed changes at face value, they're mad.
I thought specifically in the case of Surface, Microsoft had all their OEMs working on tablets, which Microsoft required their own involvement in the development. Microsoft then cherry-picked the best features from each OEM, and then released their own tablet hardware, the Surface.
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Re: From practical experience... (Score:4, Informative)
i3 processors start at a TDP of 11.5W and are almost as fast as those 25w amd chips despite using less than half as much power. AMD chips have not been able to come remotely close to the performance per watt of Intel's chips since Conroe launched in 2006. They compete on performance per dollar, not power efficiency.
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It's not entirely clear to me that ARM chips offer better power efficiency than Intel chips when comparing modern parts at similar performance targets. There's not traditionally been much in the way of comparison points between them, because only very recently have ARM chips and Intel chips begun overlapping in terms of power envelopes.
I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between nVidia's Denver cores (or the A15) and Intel's new Core M parts. I believe they have similar TDPs.
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So, if NewEgg doesn't sell it, then Intel doesn't make it? Intel's lower power parts are packaged to be soldered directly onto the motherboards of tablets and notebooks, places where people don't replace CPUs. NewEgg doesn't sell those parts. It's also worth noting that TDP is going to be the maximum power draw, but isn't going to tell you how much power it takes to accomplish a given task. Two CPUs with the same TDP can exhibit dramatic differences in battery life in mobile products.
Your implication was th
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So, if NewEgg doesn't sell it, then Intel doesn't make it?
If I can't buy it, I'm not interested. My typical budget for a motherboard/CPU/RAM combo is under $200. AMD dominates this price range. Intel usually costs twice as much.
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He stopped using Flight Sim... ;-)
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FUD.
What patents? The stuff they are open sourcing is dependent on DirectX or even Windows. It runs on Linux and Mac.
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The ones they are using to extort from many Android-based phones, for starters.
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The ones they are using to extort from many Android-based phones, for starters.
I understand one of the main ones is a FAT32 patent, which I can see how that would apply to the ability for the Android kernel to read/write from that file system, not sure how you think that applies to this though. The information on what all those patents were was leaked quite some time ago so which of them do you think would apply to this?
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MS have claimed numerous patents which they will STILL not disclose. FAT32 is only a known factor because it is also an issue with cameras, audio players and such.
At the end of the day, if I decide to install Windows on a system bearing Linux, then that Linux system is in peril. If a user receives a Linux ext3-formatted SD card and puts it into a running Windows system, the user will be told the card is unusable until it is formatted.
Where office formats and disk formats are concerned, MS still only has two
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MS have claimed numerous patents which they will STILL not disclose.
They were already leaked [gizmodo.com] some time ago. And this is covered by the community promise (i'm sure you can google that and understand the legal implications of it as well).
Its nice that MS makes FOSS-friendly noises in the server/cloud space. That is what bullies do when they get their asses kicked. If MS gets the upper hand and their vendor lock-in starts working here, then the friendliness WILL evaporate.
It is open source! Do you not understand the concept of open source? How can people here be so moronic as to think that vendor lock-in exists with open source products? It is quite unbelievable how dense some of you are.
Re: Patents (Score:2)
What Microsoft doesnâ(TM)t do, the community will be able to do easily, since the new compiler (Roslyn) is open source.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Noone ever picked FAT, it's a very poor filesystem and the only reason it ever gets used for anything is because MS won't support anything else unless it's even more proprietary.
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Perhaps it's 1 reason device makers are shipping devices without removal storage.
No sd card, no fat patent licensing required.
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I don't think Microsoft cares much about helping IT "get further" as such. It only cares about maximizing profit.
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Sure it's possible, but given their history how could you trust them?
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Re:EEE (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... My guess is that, after this announcement, developers are going to say to themselves, "Great, now we don't have to learn how to use new tools to create software for Linux", and do all their work on Windows.
Since this is about open sourcing .Net how is it any different from Java? Do people not learn Linux-based tools to create Java programs because they can do it on Windows?
Then, in five or ten years, when everyone's using Microsoft's tools, they'll claim no one's using them to port to Linux, anyway, and drop support.
But it is open source, what would "dropping support" achieve when the source is out there?
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What about when the next version comes out?
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Linux's (poor or non-existant) development tools
Wow, what? Is opposite day?
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I'm confused - what does Microsoft see as being able to "extend" or "extinguish" by open sourcing their own products? Sure, that may be a goal if they get involved in third party products, but its pretty hard to extend and extinguish other products by being actively involved in the development of their own.
At the moment my .Net stack is looking more and more open each day, but that doesn't harm PHP, Python, Java etc because it doesn't affect them in the slightest. All it means is I'm less likely to use them
Re:Embrace (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not really open sourcing them. The Linux version's going to be some kind of collaboration with Ximian to extend their Mono implementation. Eventually they'll be marketing along the lines of "Now that you've chosen Azure, don't you want the real thing for your .NET platform - you can't trust those hippies to have implemented it right".
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They're not really open sourcing them. The Linux version's going to be
Fuckedupbuntu
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Actually you are wrong - the cross platform .Net Core is a new implementation entirely separate from Mono (the demo they showed running in a Docker Linux container involved no Mono code at all, it was all MS inhouse stuff), although MS are working with Ximaran to expand their development tools and support the Mono platform.
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"The real thing for your .NET platform" will be "the Open Source .NET platform produced by the .NET Foundation."
or will it be "the real thing for the .NET version platform"?
Or the .NET platform that is open source, but you still need to buy a load of stuff to get the juicy stuff that powers most applications nowadays, like WCF and WPF.
Now, if someone forked it and produced a GUI that worked well, rendered fonts without fuzziness or needing a caching service, and performed well... then I'd be much more pos
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> 1994 called, it wants its ridiculous MSFT paranoia back.
I'd like to point out that "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is Microsoft's own words [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps our reaction is less about our paranoia and more about Microsoft's baggage.
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The more they try the more money they spend. The more they take away from their primary product development. The more money they loose when they fail.
Eventually they will run out of money and go out of business.
Which will be followed by "The year of the Linux Desktop" :P
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The more they try the more money they spend. The more they take away from their primary product development. The more money they loose when they fail.
Eventually they will run out of money and go out of business.
My understanding is that Microsoft has a *lot* of cash. But the sun isn't due to go out for awhile yet, so I guess there's time for Microsoft to run out of money.
Which will be followed by "The year of the Linux Desktop" :P
Oh, now you're just being silly...
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> If you want to look at it more cynically, you could say that Microsoft is attempting to keep Windows relevant in a post-PC world by ensuring it can more easily interop with other platforms like Linux, Android, and iOS. The best way for them to do this is to allow Windows PC developers to use their existing tools and technologies to target those platforms
With Linux I sort-of agree, as Microsoft has done timid foreys into this kind of interoperability in the past, but I don't see them trying to interact
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You're aware that, right now, you can build cross-platform apps entirely in Microsoft Visual Studio [microsoft.com], right? And porting .NET is part of that interoperability I was talking about. The next version of Visual Studio is going even further with it's cross-platform support.
Oh, make no mistake, they're trying to get Windows mobile kickstarted as well. I think at the moment they're just looking at the cold, hard facts. iOS and Android are absolutely dominant in that market, and if Microsoft understands one thin
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> It used to be that people wanted companies to release their software as open source but now the community has proved so fickle that they don't want companies to release their software as open source lest that company discontinue support and support be left to an incapable community and end up another abandoned open source project.
I don't think that's it at all. It's nothing to do with some random company open sourcing their software. Companies do it all the time, for drivers and such, and it's a good
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> right and if you read that wiki page (actually the bit you quoted that i bolded is sufficient) how does that apply to releasing their existing non-standard software as open source?
By making a future proprietary version of the software, backwards compatible with the open source version, include new and attractive proprietary features. The "Extend" part of the process.
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> Since this is open-sourcing of their own software, please elaborate on how the final E in EEE is even theoretically possible.
In fact, the open sourcing of their own software is a necessary first step. Open source a version, encourage adoption, then create proprietary but attractive features in a future version which remain closed source, use these features to leverage their own products at the expense of others. The "embrace" part is a strategy to get competitors to use a Microsoft standard, the Exte
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> Since this is open-sourcing of their own software, please elaborate on how the final E in EEE is even theoretically possible.
In fact, the open sourcing of their own software is a necessary first step.
It's less about how it is possible and more why they would do it in the first place. EEE is about killing off an existing standard/product, which they tried to do with Java, if they wanted to kill open source .Net they wouldn't be creating it in the first place.
Open source a version, encourage adoption, then create proprietary but attractive features in a future version which remain closed source, use these features to leverage their own products at the expense of others.
Why would they not just keep the whole thing proprietary then? If developers were going to use the features regardless of whether they are proprietary then open sourcing it in the first place makes no sense, in fact it would create a huge risk that a