Father of Wiki Quits MS, Moves to Eclipse

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."

Comments

About time

[Sheepdot]

With all these individuals leaving Microsoft for open source or other commercial ventures, does anyone suspect maybe there is about to be a shareholder shakeup of upper-level management? It would appear to me that Microsoft has gotten far too rigid, top-heavy, and doesn't provide autonomy at the development level anymore. Anyone else get the same idea based on the staff that are leaving?

Re:About time

[jtwJGuevara]

I don't forsee current shareholders giving a flying hoot about individuals leaving as long as the bottom line numbers remain prosperous... and you know as well as I that with all the successful product lines and forced upgrades, the bottom line isn't going to turn south anytime in the interim future.

In fact, MS shareholders should be happier than ever since they just recently received a whopping dividend payment.

Of course, as an individual investor, I wouldn't buy Microsoft for a long term investment for the very reasons you stated. Its potential for growth isn't attractive any longer either.

Re:About time

[TheWanderingHermit]

In fact, MS shareholders should be happier than ever since they just recently received a whopping dividend payment.

I don't know about that. I learned investing from my Father, who has literally made several million, just since his retirement. While dividends are nice, there are problems with them. They're taxed when they come out, whereas a rising stock price is only taxed when it is sold. So even if you use a DRIP so you never actually see the dividend, just the new shares it purchases, you still get a yearly tax. Dividends can be a big help if you are retired, or otherwise using dividend income as a primary source of support, but in terms of investing, they are not always as nice as a stock price that constantly goes up -- which is something MS Stock hasn't done much of for a while.

You're right -- it isn't a good idea for a long term investment, which is about the only kind I make. (I've found turnover can be fun, but after fees and taxes, long term investments generally do better once you see past the next year or two.)

Re:About time

[Sheepdot]

I suspect that there are more "former Microsoft employees" than there are "current Microsoft employees."

But isn't that the breaking point then?

Think of it like this. Microsoft has, for two decades now, shown itself as the bright younge upstart. But the truth is they are coming to maturity now. They aren't "cool" anymore. iPods are "cool". Facebook is "cool". Google is "cool". Microsoft is like the youngest uncle at the family renions, too young to know that he's too old to be hanging out with the kids anymore.

IMHO we're likely to see Ballmer have a heart attack or other adverse health issue during a promotional gig (don't laugh, remember how he required vocal chord surgery after yelling Windows?) and shareholders will ask him to step down for safety concerns. His problem is that he doesn't realize what Microsoft is. IBM didn't realize who it was till Lou Gerstner defined it.

Re:About time

[mwvdlee]

I wonder; if somebody leaves Microsoft, do they get their soul back?

Re:About time

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Microsoft is like the youngest uncle at the family renions, too young to know that he's too old to be hanging out with the kids anymore.

You just made my day with that line. Thanks.

Re:About time

[rho]

It used to be that dividends were the norm. Then came the awful idea that "if the company doesn't know what to do with its profits, there must be something wrong with them". This was the idea that fueled stock options and an incessant drumbeat to keep those quarterly reports positive and upbeat.

When a company pays out profits to shareholders, then the stock is acting in a "classical" stock sense. The company is then working for its shareholders. When a company doesn't pay dividends, and the whole value of the company to the shareholder is whether the stock will rise in value, then you get into dangerous territory where stock manipulation is a key skill, rather than business acumen and "knowing thy customer".

As for taxing dividends, IIRC, the nasty Republicans want to cut the dividends tax to zero. That encourages companies to offer dividends. That encourages investors to look at companies that pay dividends. All of the above encourages business practices that are less stock market oriented and more investor oriented. That is, it's a Good Thing. Now you're investing in a company because it produces a product that sells well, instead of investing in a company because you think you can fool somebody else into buying from you at a higher price.

There's room for the latter in a modern market, but the former is much less fraught with criminal or unethical doings.

This Just In

[the darn]

Ballmer vows,"I'm going to f**king KILL the Eclipse Foundation!"

Re:This Just In

[xtracto]

Yeah, fortunately, when Ballmer told Ward "just tell me it is not Google!" he could answer calmly "No, it is not Google".

Now I know why did I saw the BG borg sad

MS's new corporate theme song

[ianmassey]

lately ought to be "exodus" by bob marley.

In other news

[MemoryDragon]

The entrance door of the Eclipse foundation has been smashed with a chair recently...

Ballmer to blame?

[tjstork]

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

Re:Wikipedia

[metamatic]

What was he doing there anyway?

Oh, you know... Evil.

The usual.

Someone explains this to me...

[Rhoon]

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.

Re:Someone explains this to me...

[Mechanik]

As a committer on the CDT Eclipse project, I can say right now that if you are doing doing win32 or MFC development, right now you'd be crazy to not use Visual Studio over Eclipse, unless you're willing to help work on the IDE support yourself.

Right now work is beginning in the CDT community on a prototypical debugger that uses the dbghelp APIs of Microsoft's free windows debugger (WinDbg). Work is also ongoing in the community on support for the Visual C++ compiler under CDT's Managed Build System. What's really needed right now is people to help out on these efforts, and someone to step up and make a windows resource editor (a la Eclipse's Visual Editor Project). We would love for CDT to be a serious (and free!) competitor to Visual Studio that required only the free debugger, compiler, and platform SDK downloads from Microsoft that are currently available... help us make it happen.

Re:Someone explains this to me...

[daem0n1x]

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.

Shares of IKEA and other furniture makers ...

[ArsenneLupin]

... rise to record valuations!

Re:What Wikipedia has become

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotten to the point where on the front page yesterday, it mentioned dildos and pegging.

OMGWTF

This is seriously a disturbing turn of events! We can't let Wikipedia inform of methods to relieve sexual tensions with dildos! OMG, what is this crap? Think of the children! We must actively start aiming Wikipedia's front page for specific cultures and religions. Act now! Do YOU want your children to grow up in a society where people are informed about human sexuality?!

Gates had already predicted this move

[digitaldc]

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.

More info at EclipseZone

[Ed Burnette]

This news was first posted on EclipseZone. There, you can find an article announcing the move that goes into a little more detail about what Ward will be doing at Eclipse. Please add this article link to your main post.

Oh dear!

[oneandoneis2]

How are Microsoft going to be able to tell people "There's no money in Open Source" if their best & brightest keep getting lured away by companies based on it? :o)