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Microsoft Open Source

Microsoft 'Wins Over Skeptics, Open-Source Great Satan No More', Declares Bloomberg (dailyherald.com) 271

Microsoft cloud chief Scott Guthrie says the company wasn't ready to acquire GitHub in 2014. "We would have screwed it up," he tells Bloomberg. But as he sees it, there was also another problem.

"The open-source world would've rightly looked at us at the time as the antichrist. We didn't have the credibility that we have now around open source..."

An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg's report: Since then, Microsoft has turned itself into one of the biggest developers of open-source software and has persuaded customers to trust applications built using rival tools and programs to Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service, boosting Azure revenue and usage. More than 60 percent of the company's team that works with cloud-app developers were hired for their expertise in non-Microsoft programming tools or cloud services. A full version of the open-source Linux operating system is even being added to Windows. The efforts are bringing new software builders to the Microsoft camp.

Last June, Guthrie and Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella finally unveiled an agreement to acquire GitHub. While there was still some initial agita in the developer community and rivals gained some refugee users from GitHub, one year later the deal is noteworthy mainly for how little drama it's caused. Most GitHub users just continued putting their code there. "Some people were upset, but few, because Microsoft had spent years building up goodwill with the open-source community," said Matt Asay, an Adobe Inc. senior director who is a longtime open-source developer and previous Microsoft opponent. "There was a knee-jerk sort of 'remember, they're the Great Satan' reaction, but it was halfhearted."

The article also notes that after Microsoft acquired GitHub, 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab.
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Microsoft 'Wins Over Skeptics, Open-Source Great Satan No More', Declares Bloomberg

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:40PM (#58733516)

    "A full version of the open-source Linux operating system is even being added to Windows."

    • What does that... mean?
      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by higuita ( 129722 )

        They are basically confirm the rumor:

        it mean that in a few years you will get MS linux in your "windows", the NT kernel will be there for legacy apps, but most of the software will use linux. MS learn that its a waste of time and money to maintain the NT kernel and that linux kernel and drivers are way better.
        They are slowly adding support to the micro-kernel to allow the linux kernel to be directly used and will add any needed "windows" feature to linux kernel. windows is really a dying OS. They already du

    • A full version? So, does it run Wine?
  • Chose your demons. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    For atheists Microsoft was never the "great Satan".

  • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:43PM (#58733524)

    Still bankrolling patent troll companies such as Intellectual Ventures to attack Linux and open source companies

    Still clobbering millions of PCs with bad updates, still the main vector for spreading malware through companies because of poor source code control and poor testing

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ditto. I don't get what gives them the right to say: "They would have looked at us like the great satan in 2014".

      Nothing has changed, Microsoft. You are still the capitalist monster that holds people's feet to the fire at your own whims, just to make a buck.

    • by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:56PM (#58733592)
      The Stac lawsuit. The OS/2 debacle.

      Nope, all is not forgiven. It's nice that they're playing nice together with Linux, but I think that's more an acknowledgement of where Linux is now, versus where Linux was ten years ago. They don't have a choice now.
      • > the stac lawsuit

        So... you support patent trolls?

        • > the stac lawsuit

          So... you support patent trolls?

          Huh? Stac Electronics was definitely *not* a patent troll. They had a functioning and very successful product--Stacker--that they were actively selling at the time that Microsoft released DoubleSpace. Stac sued Microsoft and won $120 million, and also settled a smaller counterclaim filed by Microsoft about misappropriating a trade secret on some of their pre-loading technology. Most of the IT people with which I discussed the lawsuit at the time were in agreement that it was clearly a case of Microsoft u

      • But in my opinion they're not 'playing nice' with linux, they're positioning themselves to annex it and make it irrelevant.
      • by BenBoy ( 615230 )
        The Stac suit; I still remember that too. Stac "won", after they'd been driven into the ground by those M$fsckers. Still have a grudge.
    • They're open-sourcing stuff lately. Calculator? And they embrace Linux with WSL.
      Bad updates are another issue, unless you're saying they're intentional.
    • Still bankrolling patent troll companies such as Intellectual Ventures to attack Linux and open source companies

      Yes this practice is entirely unforgivable.

      Still clobbering millions of PCs with bad updates,

      Forgiven due to being unintentional. Satan isn't an accidental evil.

      still the main vector for spreading malware through companies because of poor source code control and poor testing

      Demonstrably false. The amount of malware that propagates due to Windows code is minuscule, and in the past few years the amount of wormable exploits can be counted on one finger, and the number that were exploited before a patch was available can be counted on the fingers of a quadruple amputee.

      Now the metric fuckton of bad code written on top of windows (MS Office, looking at you), the stupidity

      • Demonstrably true, corporations skid to a halt when malware spreads around in a day. Seen that at my last VAR job where we had huge clients including the big corporations and city, state and local governments as clients. It's happened twice where I work now, the half the company that relies on windows was screwed, at multiple locations.

        You spew Microsoft shill-boy nonsense, must be worried about your stock.

        It is Microsoft's fault because of poor code control and bad QA. So it counts as intentional neglig

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:44PM (#58733532)

    What has Slashdot become?

    You can keep saying it until you're blue in the face, but it is simply untrue. Microsoft has NOT changed, the "open source community" doesn't trust them.

    • The open source community probably just doesn't bother with slashdot anymore... MS is still the embodiment of evil, nothing has changed. I'm not even sure what they've done that suggests otherwise.

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @12:22AM (#58733678) Journal

      I banned all Microsoft products from my company networks in the late 1990s. We were a security-focused company and having Windows or IE running anywhere on purpose network didn't go well with security. We also developed software and systems around open source, contributing to open source, so Windows didn't fit our goals and values. I've talked a lot of shit about Microsoft over the last twenty years.

      I still make fun of Microsoft from time to time, despite knowing that it rubs my bosses the wrong way. If anyone wants to say Microsoft sucks, I won't disagree.

      I've recently been forced to spend some time in the Microsoft offices and I was really surprised at what I found. You can say Microsoft sucks, but Microsoft under Satya Nadella in 2019 is definitely not the same as Microsoft under Ballmer in 2005. It's a very, very different culture, a very different outlook. If you say "I don't like Microsoft" or "I don't trust Microsoft", fine. Saying "nothing has changed at Microsoft" simply isn't true. Nadella's was very clear when he took over that his first and major job was reverse the culture, the general attitude and approach, that Microsoft had before.

      Under Ballmer it was all about ruthless competition. Each team and each manager was trying to outdo and cut down the other guy - both other teams within Microsoft and those outside of Microsoft. The Windows team was king. Any project, any team, was judged on how much it helped Windows remain dominant and increase Windows revenue.

      Nadella reversed that. Cooperation was the new rule. Each team and project would be judged on their own contributions to the whole company, Windows was no longer special and you needed to help the other guy, not be them. (Soon, Windows updates, a major revenue driver under Ballmer, would be given away FREE.)

      You can tell me all about how much Microsoft sucks, but they suck very differently than 10 or 15 years ago.

      • That should say:

        --
        you needed to help the other guy, not beat them.
        --

      • You can tell me all about how much Microsoft sucks, but they suck very differently than 10 or 15 years ago.

        This is almost tautologically true - about most things rather than just Microsoft and sucking. Change is constant, entropy is ever increasing, nothing stops changing - in general. About anything you can say it is different - and your chances of being wrong is negligible.

        Hence when you say it is sucking differently - you are not saying anything non-trivial.

        Add to it the new kind of sucking that the privacy violations and update nightmares from Windows 10 - your unstated implication of improvement in Microsof

    • Only 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab, that's drama-free love and trust, right?

    • > What has Slashdot become?

      Become .. it's been known as the Microsoft slashdot for a long time :)
  • So this whole article looks blank to me - can anyone else verify that this is a real troll/spam post?

    Thanks!,

    Ryan Fenton

    • So this whole article looks blank to me - can anyone else verify that this is a real troll/spam post?

      Thanks!,

      Ryan Fenton

      You're the same guy who can never read it.

      1) Install NoScript
      2) View site

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @12:12AM (#58733644)
    they're, and I don't know any kinder way to put this, a corporatist rag. When Richard Stallman praises Microsoft or at least Linux Torvalds we'll talk.
    • When Richard Stallman praises Microsoft or at least Linux Torvalds we'll talk.

      Ahhh politics. Only ever changing your opinion when the extreme left agrees with the extreme right.

    • by troff ( 529250 )

      When Richard Stallman praises Microsoft or at least Linux Torvalds we'll talk.

      When Stallman praises Microsoft, it's either April 1 or we check to see if he has lizard eyes and seriously that's when we ought to be seriously panicked.

      Torvalds? Maybe. Yes, his "Microsoft hatred is a disease" comment, but his "Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems"... and what reason is there to think they've done better since?

      And it's not just their operating systems. Every comment above and below, for example. Their Office application. Their licensing - they just squeezed

  • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @12:21AM (#58733676) Journal
    is not the support open source needs.
    The better quality embrace that was worked on is really good news?
    Wait for the new and improved extend part.
    They improved that part too.
    The third step is always the same.
    • The third step is always the same.

      Only if you don't understand how EEE works, why it was used, and more importantly the fundamental requirement for it to actually happen in the first place.

  • Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)

    Microsoft is still the great enemy of FLOSS. It is getting more and more difficult to live without their meddling.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Is it? All the main browsers are using a non-Microsoft, open source, standards compliant rendering engine now. No more "best viewed in Internet Explorer". Visual Studio has decent support for building Linux software, and just got support for Clang and non-MS build systems. VS Code runs on Linux and Mac.

      Azure cloud has supported Linux for years. .NET is open source now, and the alternative implementation Mono is highly compatible thanks to MS providing proper documentation. Office uses open file formats that

      • 90% of the browser share is chrome, which miraculously started blocking adblockers after Microsoft integrated it into their product line. Funny how that happens. Azure is a surveillance panopticon. .NET a patent minefield. Office remains the prime example of what happens when you give Microsoft the ability to control things - the control over editing is centralized to their servers, and they can delete your words when they feel like it. The problem is in the days when the bank website needed an ActiveX
      • Office uses open file formats that other apps can read properly.

        I can't find anything like this. Colloquially "links or it didn't happen" - though that sounds less polite than I'd like.

        I only see things like render as in Office '97 as the office "open" XML standard.

        And which other "apps" can read it properly ? Even though reading is not enough to be "open" file formats.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          Although it's not ODF (which is supported if you want to save in that format), the format they do you is an openly published standard, part of which was adopted by the IEC, and which other office suites can generally read without issue. The areas where it diverges from the IEC standard are stuff that is specific to MS Office like the change tracking features, so such documents open fine in LibreOffice but obviously that MS specific stuff is discarded.

          • If the format is standard, why are there MS specific stuff ?

            Anyway, this office open XML is completely nonsense, a subversion of standardization process. It has sections like "render table like Word '97". I didn't think you were naÃve enough to consider it a standard worth the name.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              The point of it is that it's not some secret binary format that has to be reverse engineered. It's published and freely available for other software to implement without fear or being sued to violating MS patents.

              It's worth noting that ODF is little better. Still patent encumbered (with guarantees from the holders) and the exact specifications for rendering and behaviour are sometimes a little vague. Neither offers a standard macro language either, particularly annoying for spreadsheets.

              As I say, it's not p

              • It is an "open" format that contains "instructions" to reverse engineer how to render a table in Word '97. Which is called a secret binary format.

  • IT'S A TRAP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @01:58AM (#58733874) Journal

    They can see the writing on the wall, Microsoft is getting desperate to maintain their control. You can only wallpaper over redundancy for so long before the cracks become structural and Windows becomes another UI option for Linux or BSD.

    If you don't believe it ask yourself how much effort it would take for Microsoft to make their fork of WINE perfect?

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      You wouldn't find any support for that looking at their financial statements. And companies still have gobs of MS only software, that isn't going anywhere any time soon.

      I'd love it if MS circled the toilet bowl, but I don't see it happening now. They are still capable of cutting deals with managements regardless of what the rank and file think of them.

      • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        You wouldn't find any support for that looking at their financial statements. And companies still have gobs of MS only software, that isn't going anywhere any time soon.

        I'd love it if MS circled the toilet bowl, but I don't see it happening now. They are still capable of cutting deals with managements regardless of what the rank and file think of them.

        Oh for sure, I wouldn't disagree with any of that, they're ruthless and have plenty of fight in them. I'm saying that the cracks are starting to appear. I'm also pointing out that it's the same techniques they've always used to take over intellectual property.

  • Bull (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @02:19AM (#58733918)

    I don't believe a word from that bullshitters mouth after the story with the special chips on compromised servers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This guy has an agenda and wields his publishing power to his advantage.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I don't believe a word from that bullshitters mouth after the story with the special chips on compromised servers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This guy has an agenda and wields his publishing power to his advantage.

      The evidence that Microsoft is embracing open source is pretty plain as day, like WSL, Visual Studio Code, open sourcing .NET Core and ASP.NET Core, SQL Server on Linux, Azure support and so on. The question is whether <Admiral Ackbar>it's a trap</Admiral Ackbar> or not, but all of that is really speculation into Microsoft's long term business strategy. Bloomberg doesn't have any proof of that, but neither have the people claiming this must be an embrace-extend-extinguish trap. Can corporations

  • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @02:21AM (#58733926)

    Minion of the Devil, Bloomberg, says the Devil isn't the Devil. Seems legit.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Needs more insightful moderation. Yes, it's funny, too and again it's too bad that Slashdot doesn't do a better job of displaying multiple dimensions of moderation... (Imagine a little radar icon.)

  • "The article also notes that after Microsoft acquired GitHub, 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab." ...out of over 96 million repositories. That's 0.12%, rounded up.
    Now many were created during the same period?

  • by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @05:52AM (#58734316)

    A full version of the open-source Linux operating system is even being added to Windows.

    No it isn't. It's Windows SUBSYSTEM for Linux, a subsystem with huge gaping holes in it. For example, the WSL networking shim doesn't have AF_PACKET support so tools like Etherape, nmap, scapy, tcpdump and Wireshark cannot work under WSL.

    • No it isn't. It's Windows SUBSYSTEM for Linux, a subsystem with huge gaping holes in it. For example, the WSL networking shim doesn't have AF_PACKET support so tools like Etherape, nmap, scapy, tcpdump and Wireshark cannot work under WSL.

      It really is. You're talking as far as I can tell about the existing WSL version 1 which is not Linux, but a translation layer for may of the syscalls so most userland software can run. Version 2 which is being added is running a complete Linux kernel as a userland process

    • No it isn't. It's Windows SUBSYSTEM for Linux, a subsystem with huge gaping holes in it.

      We will be shipping a real Linux kernel with Windows that will make full system call compatibility possible. This isnâ(TM)t the first time Microsoft has shipped a Linux kernel, as we have already shipped one in 2018 when we announced Azure Sphere. However, this will be the first time a Linux kernel is shipped with Windows, which is a true testament to how much Microsoft loves Linux! Weâ(TM)ll be building the kernel in house from the latest stable branch, based on the source available at kernel.org. In initial builds we will ship version 4.19 of the kernel.

      https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]

      Well maybe you aren't "lying" but your reading comprehension sucks since "being added to" in the English language means it's a process that hasn't finished yet.

  • While tech literate people find the notion of Microsoft having any credibility in the open source community to be completely laughable, I think there is an argument that Microsoft - with some self-serving efforts - has improved its image with the public at large.

    This is not journalism reporting that Microsoft *has* won over skeptics, it's an attempt at propaganda to *win over* skeptics who are not following the issue as closely as they should.

  • by robi5 ( 1261542 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @10:55AM (#58735024)

    My opinion won't change on a whim, or just due to some different public facade for a few years under one specific CEO. In fact, gobbling up the likes of skype, linkedin, github etc. outlines some interesting patterns. Sure they wanted to be in the hosting business so they had to accept the de facto standard of Linux, and sure they want to follow developers wherever they want to go, which is things like Linux, OS X etc. so they splurge on loss leaders like vscode which, being written in Javascript, is fast (unlike Java alternatives such as WebStorm) but at the expense of providing through 3rd party plugins, poorly, what comes as standard in other IDE tools. I won't ever trust them. It's nothing to do with them being nice, they just couldn't remain on the peak of their monopoly power and had to adjust. When a murderer doesn't murder others in a prison, I don't attribute it to him becoming a gentle person; not before entertaining other explanations such as less power, opportunity and incentive to sin, and more supervision. They employ a bunch of people I respect, yet they can play the long game and can afford to keep a low profile and not bragging about "choking company X's air supply" for several decades before returning with more of their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish practice.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @11:25AM (#58735168)

    Let me think about that while I recompile my Windows kennel.

    Oh, wait .....

  • An Aggressor does not have your interests at heart.
  • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @01:23PM (#58735548)

    Embrace.
    Extend.
    Extinguish.

    All they've done is put a better public face on the embrace phase this time around. They're still the house that gates built. And they've never been punished for their past wrongdoings. They bought themselves a republican president to escape responsibility. And they are most definitely not to be trusted in any capacity.

  • ..declares Journalism Great Satan
  • by sad_ ( 7868 )

    sure, MS might be a great contributor to OSS at this very moment.
    until it no longer profits them, or Satya Nadella is replaced by somebody else, or whatever reason you can come up with.
    don't put on your surprise face, it was bound to happen one day or another.

  • I am reminded of a statement by Eric Raymond, who is speaking of open source, and quoting Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

    I have been free of ms groping since July 4th, 2018. Thank you, Ubuntu.

    From the summary: "The article also notes that after Microsoft acquired GitHub, 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab." Enough said.
  • You're a n00b.

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