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Father of Wiki Quits MS, Moves to Eclipse

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wonder-if-that's-a-paycut dept.

linumax writes "Microsoft has lost one of its high-profile hires to an open-source consortium. Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, announced on Monday that Ward Cunningham is leaving Microsoft to join the staff of the open-source tool consortium. Cunningham's new title is Director of Committer Community Development.Cunningham, the father of the Wiki concept, joined Microsoft about two years ago. At Microsoft, he was not involved directly in social-networking-software development. Instead, Cunningham worked as an architect with the company's Patterns & Practices Team."

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Wikipedia by WebfishUK · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What was he doing there anyway?

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    -- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
  2. Ballmer to blame? by tjstork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One wonders how many Microsoft developers are bailing because they are sick of the increasing lack of creative room under Herr Ballmer.

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    This is my sig.
  3. Someone explains this to me... by Rhoon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How does Eclipse really effect MS' sales for Visual Studio? If I'm developing in Java, I'm going to use Eclipse of course, but I wouldn't buy V.S. for Java development... there's no support. I'd use a Borland or a Sun product to do that.

    And conversely, why would I use Eclipse for developing in a MS created Programming language (apart from the price break). IF I (or my company) have/has the cash to purchase V.S. and we're developing in C#, MFC, Visual C++ for a Windows program, then I will buy Visual Studio. I don't see how Eclipse is a direct competitor to MS at this point in time, they're hardly in the same market.

    --
    "If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
    1. Re:Someone explains this to me... by daem0n1x · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had the misfortune of becoming a ASP VB developer during a year. I hated it with all my guts, but I had to pay my bills.
      My employer was too cheap to move on to .NET, so we had to work with that old ASP shit using legacy VS6 that somebody had bought ages ago. We did the classical stuff, editing ASPs in VB and T-SQL stored procs.
      Later, I found out, to my surprise, that Eclipse was better for ASP and T-SQL development than the very M$ tools in VS6 and SQL-Server. Some weeks later, I was using Eclipse for everything, ASP, T-SQL, PHP, XML, etc., integrating with M$ Visual Source Safe, and all. I had an Eclipse instance running since the very first minute I sat in my office chair every morning. My M$ drone colleagues used to look at me as if I was a freak, or something. But I was more productive than them.
      Installing the right plugins, Eclipse can be the IDE for any kind of development you imagine.

  4. Gates had already predicted this move by digitaldc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From:
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20051017/tc_nf/38691; _ylt=Amqnvtqy9Q9fJYcw8Yn1dq4jtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJ vMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

    "In the next decade, there'll be a shortage of great software engineers. We'll be scouring the schools for them," Gates told the students at Madison. "Software is the place where all the action is. It is an area that will continue to generate jobs. This is the golden age of software."

    Another interesting quote that sounds like the 640k one:

    He (Gates) predicted that the HD DVD will be "the last physical media format there will ever be." To help make that happen, Gates said he will need a lot more software engineers.

    Oh boy, I hope that doesn't come back to haunt him.

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson