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What Will Microsoft's "Embrace" of Open Source Actually Achieve?
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?
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.
FUD.
What patents? The stuff they are open sourcing is dependent on DirectX or even Windows. It runs on Linux and Mac.
I may be wrong but I thought the only major patent things they've been involved in lately they were pretty up front about - in fact, many Slashdotters complained at the time they were just engaging in FUD by announcing they had any patents.
The things I know of are:
- The FAT LFN patent. Not a great idea, but they never picked FAT to be a SD card file system in the first place. Can't blame them for cashing in beyond general opposition to patents.
- The package of patents covering technologies in Android - this is the one I think Slashdot's commentator consensus complained was FUD until Microsoft started approaching mobile device makers.
- VC-1, which they were upfront about during the standardization process, and coordinated with the group licensing the MPEG LA was organizing.
Where have they tried to push something as an open standard and then turned around and said "Ha ha! Gotcha! Here are these hidden patents we never told you about"?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.