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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're just trying to make their platforms more appealing to people shopping for cloud computing services.
-- Ghandi
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Can't be any worse then the way Red Hat and Canonical are fucking over Linux....
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.
They are open-sourcing their development "stuff", and are doing so because it will help them keep the "critical mass" of developers writing stuff for their platforms. As long as software keeps being released for Windows (all flavors) or Azure, they are pretty much guaranteed a place in the market.
It's really smart positioning on their part, and really shows that someone in upper management is thinking 20+ years in advance...
Give them a taste for free, then when they're hooked, gouge them.... Visual Studio and .Net do tend to be well received by everyone. The consensus is that it's a good product and a pleasure to use. The only problem with it is that you have to run it on Windows. 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.
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.
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.
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.
OTOH upgrading to an intel i3 or something will save you massive bucket-loads in electricity over years.
They've open sourced a lot of stuff that they're having trouble getting anyone to use.
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 and in 2014 it fired, er "layed off" almost 20,000 employees. faced with life support options of XBox earnings and corporate licenses, it excreted another phone no one wanted and held its breath. then it lost another 300 million on its nook investment and 676 million on the surface tablet in 2014. Then it remembered how well litigation as a business model worked for SCO.
microsoft is embracing Open Source in much the same way you embrace that creepy uncle that touched you as a kid during thanksgiving. Its a truce, because a patent war against amorphous things like windowing, clicking, or startup noises would haul big guns like apple and google into court, not just samsung and tomtom, and they would face the very real possibility of losing unchallenged but indefensible patents so its best to keep that paper tiger in the desk drawer. Their best bet is to hope people think Microsoft non OSI "open source" licenses can make some headway, and that people stop talking about BSD and GPL. Gobbling up more video games would do it well, but the innovation ship has sailed at redmond and there arent many options left for real growth. Watch for it to become a clearing house of small game studios and dessicated open source projects long since forked by dedicated dev groups that have very sour memories of Redmond. Microsoft knows it can expect businesses to pony up protection money but once Google or Ubuntu unveil an office desktop killer, thats the end of the show.
Good people go to bed earlier.
FUD.
What patents? The stuff they are open sourcing is dependent on DirectX or even Windows. It runs on Linux and Mac.
And there's still nothing preventing them from changing their attitude and discontinuing support, especially when by getting their software in-use, it's easier to migrate to their platform with the existing type of software than it is to change types of software while remaining on the existing platform.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Could we get a summary that isn't like: "In an unbiased and purely 3rd party perspective Microsoft has been historically bad ..."?
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".
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.
"except windows and office".... "I don't run Microsoft bloatware"... that's like saying: Except for my F-150, I don't run Ford... wtf
I don't think Microsoft cares much about helping IT "get further" as such. It only cares about maximizing profit.
The ones they are using to extort from many Android-based phones, for starters.
Let's see,uh; Big Movement (bm) and Microsoft kind of go together. Not likely anyone will help them make their code or programming better for free, but good to see them trying to get some free publicity. I know! Why not sell a $50 operating system called Win10? And not a whittled down version, something with audio editing etc. That might actually stop people from using pirated software. Right now it's a toss up towards Linux (because it is getting better every year)
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.
Charlie, they announced that the patents are now in open domain. The catch is that it is now easier to develop on .NET than Java and they will get IDE sales and partnerships for most new projects that build websites, API, and integrations. It is the glooming death of Java and Oracle/Gold Finger dictate to the industry.
Open source is a success. It's taken over most of the server market. The fact it's open is why it's a success - do you think PHP would ever be popular if it were closed?
The question Microsoft is asking themselves is not "How do we kill this", but "How do we monetize this?" (followed by "How far should we jump right now, and to what extent should we hold back?")
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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 come along. Oh, and all that .Net stuff will run great on Azure.
Azure is the big thing internally, and they know they have to run open source platforms on it. There is a shift in the Enterprise group to get away from a "captive" market to just trying to compete on features and to make a compelling platform, which Windows Server, .Net, etc. really is becoming.
Now, there's some things that just don't make sense to do. Open source Office makes little sense, as I doubt there'd be any real interest in contributing to that code base. Same with Windows. So, of course, it's a self-serving, pragmatic approach versus an ideological change on how software should be created and supported.
In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International 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.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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 and extend" was the original phrase, in which a company would "embrace" a standard with "minor extensions and enhancements", eventually rendering the original standard apparently incompatible with its implementations. As a simple example, consider Microsoft Internet Explorer, which became significantly incompatible with the HTML standard it was supposedly supporting; or Microsoft's implementation of Java in a non-transportable way. Microsoft's approach was described as "Embrace, extend and extinguish" during the failed antitrust case. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
AMD AM1 processors run at 25W TDP, which is less the Intel i3 processors. My current AMD AM3+ quad core processor runs at 95W TDP. I'm thinking about replacing the motherboard and getting an AMD eight-core processor that also runs at 95W TDP.
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 launch can cause major issues. Forcing people to choose an other gaming system before the release.
Having the vendor lock in, just isn't working... Too many Rich HTML web applications out there, meaning people are not even caring if they are on Microsoft Server of LAMP.
In order for Microsoft to last for the future they will need to be more Open. So those .NET apps work in Linux and Windows, So people who care about the App that it runs not the OS (Like most people, just not Slashdot) means they will not need to switch to an other platform. If they keep on windows only. The fact people will feel stuck may mean they will chose a more open app,
I like my house, I like to stay inside my house... However if I feel like I am stuck in my house I will want to leave it.
Making microsoft open and allowing a way out, means people are not coming up with reasons to leave.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
After all these years, Microsoft hit the sweet spot for Windows and Office as mature products. Someone else commented to me today on how bad it was using MS Visual Studio and SQL Server on less than top of the line hardware.
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 because my current stack looks better and better.
If you mean they wish to extend and extinguish the entire open source movement, well thats just ridiculous - you can't force people off Python, Perl, PHP, Java etc, you can't force communities to switch wholesale to your platform, they will always go on until the platform is irrelevant, but to achieve irrelevancy in a competing product yours has to be better.
A growing IT industry that uses Microsoft products, whether open source or not, is likely to be beneficial to their profits. There's no conspiracy here folks, not matter what the little voices under your tinfoil hats say...
He stopped using Flight Sim... ;-)
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
I'm just waiting until I can get a Core M NUC (mini desktop) where I can run a desktop OS on 4.5W TDP. I'll replace my current 8 year old AMD and save a whole lot of power, and get a huge performance boost at the same time.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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".
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
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...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Because it worked so well for Sun Microsystems.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh please the only ones pulling a EEE is Google but the FOSSies are too busy pretending its 1999 and the desktop is still the battleground to see the buttfucking they are about to get from their supposed "friend"
TFA is beyond simple, BALMER WAS A SHITTY CEO who thought the way you win is by sticking a WinFlag on knockoffs of other people's shit. Flash? Silverlight. Java? .NET, iPod? Zune. iPad? Surface. Balmer was the Pepsi guy of CEOs who couldn't think beyond whatever was getting buzz at the moment. Compare this to Nadella that...get ready for this, its a mind blower...actually tries to give the customers what they want! Gasp! what we are seeing with Nadella is a Steve Jobs style transformation of MSFT and like Jobs Nadella is focusing on his customers. the reason why he is opening .NET is VERY simple, the way you make money on a language is support, not by waving the WinFlag so surprise surprise THAT is what he is doing!
After a decade of the Balmernator squirting his Zune as an Apple wannabe I'd say Nadella is a breath of fresh air and if his common sense moves make the FOSSies miss the Googlefucking until its too late? Bonus.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure it's possible, but given their history how could you trust them?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It DOES run on Linux and Mac. Full Mono compatibility is coming with the next .Net release, and the next version of ASP .Net breaks dependency on System.Web. Want to create a MVC oe WebApi site that runs on Linux? No problem. They even have a tutorial on MSDN.
What Microsoft doesnâ(TM)t do, the community will be able to do easily, since the new compiler (Roslyn) is open source.
Uh... that's like saying that once you've converted to Apache, the Apache Software Foundation can leave you high and dry with no possibility of support for the software you're using.
Repeat after me: It's OPEN SOURCE. The software you're using today from them is OPEN SOURCE, and they cannot retroactively relicense it. Which means they can go back to their proprietary model, if they want, but the software they licensed under the MIT license STAYS that way, which means anybody else can pick it up, customize it, offer support for it, etc. if they wish.
There is LITERALLY no way for Microsoft to put people in a bind with this maneuver. The *worst* that would happen is that you're forced to spend money to someone other than Microsoft for maintenance releases of the open source software that Microsoft has decided they don't wish to open source anymore. And for everybody who's about to shout, "But they can SUE even though they promised NOT TO!" Go look up "Promissory Estoppel," and stop your bitching.
Microsoft's embrace of Open Source is a GOOD thing.
They're not really open sourcing them. The Linux version's going to be
Fuckedupbuntu
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
abandonment
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.
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?
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 their ass kicked by Sony. Doesn't look to good, if you ask me. They've got nothing for the consumer they can offer, that any of the above mentioned can offer better and/or cheaper with less tie-ins. The latest Surface devices appear to be at least somewhat pleasing to the consumer crowd, but I couldn't say it's enough to gain critical mass in that market. Apple has to much mindshare and their margins are *huge*. For anybody for whom Apple is to expensive, there's the devices with Google's Android and Chrome OS. With things and computer time spent moving further and further into the web, it's not looking good for MS.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"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 positive about this open sourcing of .NET core.
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
By 'exactly', I was referring to their MO, not specifics like licensing. I thought I had been clear. Sorry about that.
> 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 with Android and IOS. Windows ... I was about to say "Mobile" but it's all Windows now, I guess -- Windows on portable devices (there you go...) is the major new up and coming platform (according to marketing) and Microsoft typically fights to the death (often their death) in the initial stages of the introduction of a new platform. I'm not sure that parses, but you get what I mean. Microsoft would not be seeking interoperability with the iPad at a time they're trying to sink it by showing the Surface on Hawaii five-oh at every opportunity. (Or whatever.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
systemd
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?
> 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 thing.
We're talking about Microsoft here, who has, in the past, used "Embrace" more than once as a road to extinguishing competitors. With varying success.
For fudd's sake, there's a wiki about it: "Embrace, extend, and extinguish",[1] also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate",[2] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found[3] and was used internally by Microsoft[4] to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.
(Emphasis mine.)
So yeah, companies do this all the time, but this is microsoft. We have a right, I think, to be a tad suspicious of their motives.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> 1994 called, it wants its ridiculous MSFT paranoia back.
I'd like to point out that "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is Microsoft's own words. Perhaps our reaction is less about our paranoia and more about Microsoft's baggage.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But what they did in the past was proprietary, that was the problem but this is open source so what's the issue?
You're aware that, right now, you can build cross-platform apps entirely in Microsoft Visual Studio, 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 thing, it's how difficult it is to unseat a dominant market position. After all, Linux has had excellent and *completely free* offerings on the PC for years, yet it's hovering around 1%, even with the backlash by many users against Windows 8.
So, I think the strategy is to deal with the certainty that iOS and Android on mobile and Linux on servers are not going to be disappearing anytime soon. That doesn't mean that they're not going to work hard to make a viable Windows mobile platform - I think they could potentially crack into the market with some moderate success at least, but I don't think anyone, either inside or outside MS, realistically thinks that they have a prayer of dominating mobile like they did the desktop.
So, now we see them making tools and porting frameworks for easier cross-platform development. As a Windows developer, this actually makes me really happy at the prospect of using Microsoft's development tools I already own and know how to use were I to target other platforms, and I think this is exactly the reason they're doing this. Essentially, since I'm using Microsoft tools, it will probably be a no-brainer for me to also target, say, Windows mobile platforms as well. If I were using other development tools, I may not be as inclined to do so.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
.NET is not Open Source, more like .NET Core is an “open core” PR stunt. The main purpose of which is to lure developers away from real Open Source projects. When will we see Microsoft open sourcing Microsoft Android?
You are absolutely correct in this one. The people at MS are not dumb, the "one and only stack" is no longer. Microsoft is therefore, in a rather pragmatic manner, moving to stay relevant. You can see this in their open-sourcing a lot of their stuff, not only the .Net stack but also their C# compiler (Roslyn) etc. For anyone who is not a paranoid, retarded /. lunatic, this is a good thing. It also makes EEE basically impossible.
Are there other signs that Microsoft is moving in this direction? Yes, there is. The iPad (and probably also Android phones and tablets) are getting their touch-enabled versions of Microsoft Office at least a full year before any Windows tablet or phone. Given the importance of Office inside MS, there is no doubt that abandoning their own platform as the "most important" one is a huge flag of surrender to realities.
This simply isn't the Microsoft of the 1990s, and that's a good thing. No matter what the paranoid nuts go on about.
Oh, and as the "only" other managed software development environment, we should all be happy. C# and .Net is more than Java ever dreamed about being, and more than Java ever will be as long as Oracle uses a community process to manage the development. To me, a combo of .Net on the server and Angular and (at the moment, but that stuff changes all the time) Ionic on the client is fantastic. Cordova makes my life a good one, and .Net on the server blows Java out of the water every day of the week and 22 times on Sunday. Speaking here as someone being part of a team that delivered enterprise software (had it deployed at many customers) on the Java platform back in 1997-98 or so. JDK 1.0.2.
Windows on portable devices (there you go...) is the major new up and coming platform (according to marketing) and Microsoft typically fights to the death
You haven't been paying attention. Mobile Office or Touch Office or whatever, is available for iOS and (I think) Android at least a full year than any Microsoft mobile device.
Microsoft is the best thing that ever happened and will ever happen to computers
It isn't. Never has been (I'd love for QNX to take over the world). That doesn't mean that the retarded EEE mantra of paranoid and rather ignorant /. trolls are not worthy of being modded trolls though. They comments are fully retarded. With the direction that Microsoft is going now, the final E in the EEE simply isn't possible. Not even theoretically. Don't agree - please elaborate on how it could be.
Retarded trolls are retarded trolls, irrespective of what they are trolling about.
We have a right, I think, to be a tad suspicious of their motives
Since this is open-sourcing of their own software, please elaborate on how the final E in EEE is even theoretically possible. I don't care about their motives, I do however notice that they are making irreversible changes to their product portfolio that can only be beneficial to the community as such.
EEE is possible only if you take an open standard, build your product around it, then, after having some success, subtly change your product not to work with the open standard any more. Example Active Directory. Then the last of the three E's is possible. If they open source AD on the other hand, the final E isn't even remotely theoretically possible.
There is a difference between being suspicious and being raving mad paranoid. Most of /. posters come in the last category whenever there is the word "microsoft" somewhere in a post.
> 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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> 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 Extend is to create proprietary extensions to that standard, and the Extinguish is when competitors can no longer compete because users have come to rely on those proprietary features.
This is not exactly a secret.
The question becomes, does Microsoft have enough clout to do it again.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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 to enter the market, rather than shutting them out of it. Lack of other Google services is actually a feature in many of these cases (like in Chinese implementations). If you weren't allowed to use Google as a search engine in such competitor Android implementations (as if, for example, by means of a malicious code license) then *that* would be EEE, because Google would be using its search monopoly as leverage to prevent a competitor from entering the mobile OS market (as in Embrace the mobile OS technology by open-sourcing Android, Extend it with the Google search feature, and Extinguish it by showing everyone how lame those other Android phones are that don't have the Google search feature). As far as I know, this is not the case. You can even get the closed-source Google apps to play on a Kindle Fire, for example. There is definitely some bad karma created at Google for abandoning the open-source projects, but this is not a case of EEE. And on the other hand, who said that Google was obliged to invest into the open-source projects indefinitely? I'm not familiar with the exact license of each piece of Android code, but, in general, once it has been open-sourced the community will decide when it's time for the software to die. If Google stops development of an open-source app and the app dies, then it is *our fault* for not picking up where Google left off.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Google fanboy or anything, but the EEE technique that MS pioneered is *very* harmful and evil. We have to make sure we don't cry "wolf" at every sign that might resemble it, even if open-source fans (like me) have to come to the defense of a multibillion corporation like Google. Otherwise we will get no reaction when shit does in fact hit the fan, like we had with the OOXML fiasco.
Wait for a company who you've hurt to be on the ropes financially
Microsoft hurt B&N? And here was me thinking it was a comination of Amazon and people not buying books anymore that was the problem. What was it specifically that Microsoft did? Cripple that horrible Nook thing?
> 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 an innovative fork be adopted as the defacto standard instead.
The "embrace" part is a strategy to get competitors to use a Microsoft standard, the Extend is to create proprietary extensions to that standard, and the Extinguish is when competitors can no longer compete because users have come to rely on those proprietary features.
But they would be extinguishing their own product, not a competing product.
The question becomes, does Microsoft have enough clout to do it again.
Again? They haven't successfully done it even once, why would they try it again, with their own product no less. I can see them trying to kill off a competing product but why kill their own product?
Most of what you say is true except Bill Gates is definitely not out...
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/...
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...
Microsoft with (not against) the guidence of Bill Gates are embracing open source as they have every other technological movement there has been.
Well either you work with technology that doesn't require ethernet or you're planning on retiring.
Cloud services are not a trend. It's not going to go away, completely ignoring them for someone in the business of building software is a ridiculous folly.
The Cylons hate us with every fiber of their being.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
When Windows is based on making the WINE extensions work better under a Windows implementation of Linux, then I will believe. Until then I will just hear Daleks shouting "Embrace", "Extend", "Exxxxxttteeerrrmmmiiinnnaaattteeee"
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
One of the largest cross platform gaming engines today is based on Mono the open source implementation of .NET
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual...
From mono also comes...
http://xamarin.com/
A very good cross platform development tool for developing mobile apps.
The CLI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure) was always open. Microsoft has worked with Mono developers from the get go and has even funded them...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
The notion that this is a recent renaissance is a complete fallacy. Microsoft understands that like any other company that when people leverage your technologies there are many opportunities to make money.
Open Source is not inconsistent with their strategies, which are all about making money and dominating the market, like every other company on the planet.
It matters. Is Microsoft embracing open source because of a change in philosophy, having committed to the principles of open source? I would assert that only a fool would believe that. So we're left with them embracing open source because deep in Redmond's bowels, they turned the crank on some Excel ROI formula, and determined that "embracing" open source gives them the greatest potential for the greatest profit ... for now.
... because that crank, they keep on a'turnin' it ... and as soon as it spits out the opposite answer, out come the knives behind open source's back, and stab stab stab ...
Should this worry us? I think it should
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
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.
> Not a great idea, but they never picked FAT to be a SD card file system in the first place.
And it would have never been picked but for interopability w/ Windows.
The open source community does not use .NET or Java, so, it's a bit pointless to open source .NET or Web API. Their implementation of MVC+Razor is, and has been, a joke. Silverlight was DOA. Azure is a five years behind AWS. MS SQL no longer offers anything particularly more attractive than MySQL or MariaDB.
Now, if they open sourced something that the community desperately needs, like Office or Kinect, then there's something worth talking about.
Perhaps it's 1 reason device makers are shipping devices without removal storage.
No sd card, no fat patent licensing required.
What about when the next version comes out?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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"?
Office Open XML
So, how do they hurt the competition with such a move? Elaborate please. Who suffers?
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.
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
While .NET is quite nice. it is severely hindered by being (mostly) Windows. Java has currently a much wider acceptance, running on most mobiles, running in BlueRay Players, still on some desktops and on most servers up to the really big iron servers. .NET could take this place, when it can gather a productive and creative community behind it. Microsoft will profit from this by providing all the tools for developing .NET applications. While I personally don't like Visual Studio very much (the built in assistants usually don't produce what I want and without the assistants things get really hard), I still recognize it as one of the best IDEs out there. When reaching to big iron, all the modelling and planning tools in the more expensive versions of Visual Studio come to shine. So by the broader the usage of .NET is, the more money can Microsoft make by providing the tools.
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 on to the link. It's slow. I thought I could get away from that at DuckDuckGo, but they've been doing the same thing.
What about Google's language, Go? Anyone using that? I've been looking at webRTC, from Google, wondering if it could be used to move away from the client server model of web and Internet usage. For instance Skype (now owned by MS), requires that users connect to a central server, which does provide a little bit of service, tracking who is avaialble and who is away. But at what price?
As to being stuck in the past, I still don't trust Microsoft. Remember OOXML? That wasn't the 90s, that was 2008 when they ran their ugly campaign to cozen and bully ISO into making it a standard. Then there was the little technical problem from 2012 in which Windows 7 didn't offer users a chocie of browsers as they had promised, and for which Europe penalized MS. Now one of MS's latest stunts is this huge change in how they sell Office. You can't buy it any more, you can only lease it? If you think file format lock was bad, how about cloud dependency? Be a real shame if you let your Office 365 subscription expire, and lost access to all those documents you foolishly stored in MS's cloud. Of if you became dependent upon their services to sync and share your documents. Not to mention the little detail that sensitive info may be in their cloudy hands, ripe for data mining, seizing by law enforcement, or leaking in industrial espionage incidents.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If it's power efficiency that's wanted, shouldn't ARM be mentioned?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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 modes: Pretend its noise that should be erased, or freakout send a SWAT team of marketing psychologists and lobbyists to get you to switch back.
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.
The lowest i3 TDP available at Newegg is 35W. Yes, we all know that Intel beats AMD in performance. Just not on price.
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.
Linux's (poor or non-existant) development tools
Wow, what? Is opposite day?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Get this, many of the people at the company - the developers, the outreach, the designers - actually value the idea of open source and the company/culture as a whole has actually changed from that of 20 years ago that /. loves to hate. But no... it couldn't possibly be that the company as a whole has changed, could it? There _has_ to be some sort of evil intention.
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 that AMD offers better power efficiency than Intel chips. This is false. Intel's parts offer either substantially more performance at similar power consumption, or substantially less power consumption at similar performance. This is true from tablets through servers. But AMD is still competitive on price. This has led to them holding onto some market share, but it means that they have minimal presence in the mobile space, since power efficiency is a big deal in tablets and ultrabooks.
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.
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.
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What about it? If open source is what gets developers to use .Net then the next version will also need to be open source otherwise they will continue using the existing version or fork it.
MS have claimed numerous patents which they will STILL not disclose.
They were already leaked 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.
You can buy hardware with lower-power Intel chips from NewEgg, you just can't buy the CPU by itself. It's not in your price range, but here's a Zotac mini computer for $380 (which includes the RAM and SSD): http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
They also sell numerous tablets/laptops/etc with that processor.
For an Intel motherbaord/CPU/RAM combo, you're looking at around $40 for the motherboard (all these prices from NewEgg US), $30 for 4GB of RAM, leaving you up to $130 for the processor. That puts it at an Intel i3-4360, a high-clocked dual-core Haswell part.
For AMD's part, assuming the same CPU budget, you're looking at an A10-6800K.
Right off the bat we can notice a disparity in TDP, being 54W on the Intel chip and 100W on the AMD chip.
In terms of performance, AnandTech Bench conveniently has both of those chips in their system. The benchmarks show that the Intel chip is faster (sometimes substantially) in almost every benchmark, be it single or multithreaded... And all that while using much less power.
After looking up those results, though, I realized that that AMD chip was a Richland, while there is the newer Kaveri cores available. There is also a Kaveri CPU at the same $130 pricepoint (but with a lower clockspeed/model number), the A10-7700K, with a TDP of 95W. That one is unfortunately not in Bench, but looking at other sides indicates that it manages to narrow the gap substantially, while still generally being slower than the i3 chip. But in order to do this, it uses 10W more power at idle and 26W more power at load.
Intel's got Haswell chips at decent clockspeeds down to roughly the $40 pricepoint, where I expect they'd still compete favourably with AMD. Below that is nothing, and I suspect there might be a point somewhere between $40 and $130 where AMD makes more sense.
All this said, I'm disappointed in AMD. I don't want Intel to beat them, I want AMD to put out parts that are competitive in price, performance, AND power consumption. Most of my early CPUs were AMD chips. I've owned a K6-2, a Duron, and an Athlon XP, and all were fantastic. The Athlon 64 was also great. But ever since then, AMD has been behind, and the lack of competition has certainly not helped the market. I keep hoping that AMD will put out something new that wows me, a completely new architecture that shakes things up like Conroe did for Intel or ClawHammer did for AMD. But thus far they seem to keep iterating on the same non-competitive designs.
Unfortunately, it seems like ARM is more likely than AMD to bring competition to the market as they keep slowly creeping up the TDP ladder, and we're just now starting to see them going head-to-head with Intel in the PC space with lower-end Chromebooks. nVidia's Denver core is supposed to be competitive with Haswell in terms of performance/power, but I can't find any benchmarks that directly compare them.
X-soft need the upcoming iDildo API functionality because, well, marketing say so.
The beancounters say IT can cross-charge it to underhands or overheads or something like that.
It's as sure as green apples aren't red that they can't be fucking arsed with building all that shit themselves.
Realistically, can you provide a scenario where M$ don't get some money out of this - apart from where a meteorite twats 7 barrels of shite out of X-soft's HQ?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because Microsoft is not Oracle. Look at how they handled the thread of ODF to see how they think outside the box. I would be applauding the brilliance of their strategies if they weren't so utterly counter to the public good.
What company's marketing department dictates what API a company needs from another company's open source middleware? Sounds more like you're desperately trying to come up with some FUD than an actual scenario that would occur.
But the answer is they would implement it themselves, contract some team to do it for them, Microsoft would charge them to do it for them or Microsoft would just do it and submit it to the codebase. Most likely if a company needs an API in a piece of open source middleware they will implement it themselves.
No that isn't an answer to the question, this is MIT-licensed free software so what is the problem?
The only all-in-one motherboard I'm willing to consider is the ASRock C2550D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard with a quad-core Intel Avoton processor and 12 SATA connectors. This is a favorite motherboard for FreeNAS file server builders. I just got a new case for my file server that can hold eight 3.5" drives and three 5.25" drives. At $269, it's bit out of my price range and doesn't include ECC memory.
In this case, they only hurt them by threatening to sue over bogus patents when they were already down. But similar idea, no?
The only reason B&N was even able to attempt to fight MS in court is that B&N didn't require any 'preferred OEM' arrangements with MS in order to stay in business. Rather than air the details of the patents in question (there were leaks that hinted they were pretty lame), MS sensed an opportunity and bought their silence. Yeah, they didn't cause B&N's business to falter, but they did want them to base their next-gen tablets on an MS OS, which B&N had no interest in. And in any case, the MS vulture strategy worked for MS as intended. And BN bought some time.
So my ultimate point is that very few have the financial wherewithal to wait out Microsoft when they want to force your hand. They either force you by threatening to damage your MS-dependent business, by threatening to sue unless you pay them for stuff they don't really have valid rights to, or by standing by and watching you shoot yourself in the foot. In all those cases, the public loses.
And, oh, by the way. Barnes and Noble basically only 'shot themselves in the foot' by being an actual bookstore. Amazon competed unfairly for years by not charging sales tax that their customers actually owed - something B&N could not get away with due to the horrible mistake of operating actual stores. And then there was the silliness of the 'one click' patent. Amazon too has managed to succeed by being a bad actor on the assumption that the law wouldn't catch up with them until their competition was badly degraded - perhaps irrevocably...
And too many anti-tax ideologues think that's a good thing, simply because it involves a way around the 'evil' of paying taxes. But if you're going to be a Libertarian, at least insist on a level playing field. Fight taxes if you want, but not by cheering some who can cheat while others carry the freight.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
...said as if 'wanting to port it to a platform' automatically means it will be ported effectively there, and kept up to date.
Releasing the source makes it about as Open Source as the OOXML file formats are open formats. The stuff's there, and 'documented' as thoroughly as it can be - but it's still practically unimplementable. Dumping a ton of source code on the public may be an interesting (and even a nice) gesture - but it's a rare Open Source project that is successful on multiple platforms without its original creators involvement. As of this announcement, all you can say is that they've shown a proof of concept for portability - without which the announcement would have been utterly meaningless.
Why anybody would think .NET without direct support from Microsoft would run equivalently on all platforms in all releases at the same time is beyond me. Java more or less does this because Oracle wants it to. Maybe Microsoft really wants .NET to be cross platform this time, but if so, it'll be a first...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
either force you by threatening to damage your ... your MS-dependent business ... threatening to sue unless you pay them for stuff they don't really have valid rights to
And all of this relates to the patent-free open sourcing that MS is doing right now, being the topic of discussion here? You do know that all patents related to this stuff is also covered in this push towards FOSS, right?