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Microsoft Open Technologies Is Closing: Good Or Bad News For Open Source?
BrianFagioli writes When Microsoft Open Technologies was founded as a subsidiary of Microsoft — under Steve Ballmer's reign — many in the open source community hailed it as a major win, and it was. Today, however, the subsidiary is shutting down and being folded into Microsoft. While some will view this as a loss for open source, I disagree; Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella, that a separate subsidiary is simply no longer needed. Microsoft could easily be the world's biggest vendor of open source software, which is probably one reason some people don't like the term.
News at 11.
Stay away !!
No wonder Open Tech is closing in Microsoft. It is the brilliant minds of Microsoft that conceived of putting " shut down " in the "start" menu. It was so bad it became good, and now even Microsoft is not able to get rid of the start button. Same way they might find it impossible to close their open tech.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Cause that is about the only person who was praising Microsoft Open Tech when it started.
Microsoft has a long way to convince me that they are committed to OSS. So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..
In our hearts forever.
But at least we know that the closing of the Old Google Maps IS a bad thing.
Better to close the *NEW* Google Maps instead!
You sound like a dick taking cheap shots at GNU.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
@BrianFagioli, please substantiate the comment: "Microsoft could easily be the world's biggest vendor of open source software." Is there any data to back that up?
>> Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella
That's a funny way of saying "your SQL Server and other Server pricing went through the roof"
The whole Microsoft "open source" strategy seems to be based on getting as many software applications and developers ("it's free!") to depend on the Microsoft crown jewels of AD, SQL Server and Windows Server (2012) as they can, and then squeeze cash (e.g., core pricing vs. CPU pricing) from IT departments as they try to build out a stable backend to support all these apps. That's Balmer's "developers developers developers" plan anyway...and I don't see Satya doing anything different yet.
Besides using the buzzword "cloud" a million times?
I hear an echo in here.
Well, actually, not really.
Nobody ever believed them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
..and nothing of value was lost.
US$0.02++
Idiot can't see past "Evil M$" and doesn't understand that MS has been accelerating it's open source offerings.
Idiot doesn't understand "M$" doesn't need a separate department for what the entire company is doing.
News at 11.
> MS has been accelerating it's open source offerings.
Since 2006 MS has made some contributions to driver development and Linux kernel development, but mostly it's released tools for working with .NET, Azure, etc. That's the "Open Source" portion of what the entire company is doing. Giving tools to developers for lock-in technologies.
Idiot AC thinks that the department was more than a publicity stunt.
MS has offered nothing with their "open source" things that i have any interest in using. Mostly it's been some tools for their own closed crap. I'm not falling for that.
Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella, that a separate subsidiary is simply no longer needed.
This is far from true (or at least, there is little evidence of it). Perhaps Microsoft will become a good (or at least nonmalevolent) player in the software space eventually, but to say that it's there right now is seriously jumping the gun.
Small correction...
Microsoft has been accelerating its "open" source offerings. Certifications be damned, licenses and formats such as SharedSource and Open XML are not open. The vast majority of anything else they've done in that vein has almost all been focused on sucking in devs to the .NET world (which itself is anything but open.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
He's one person. Frankly his views on software are outmoded, outdated, and far too rigid. He's not really the advocate I want any more because he's too much like a zealot.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Giving tools to developers for lock-in technologies
Yeah, you are right. They have only open-sourced .NET and it is now available on all major (and quite a few minor) platforms. They have open sourced the C# compiler. They have open sourced just about anything web related they are doing. So, what else should they open source? Windows? According to Microsoft that is apparently also an option they keep open.
What, specifically, are you missing?
So, a fully open source .NET is not open? A fully open source compiler for .NET, that's not open? How do they make it more open?
The sad truth is that the term "open source" is another way of saying you don't care about free software and it's OK to include proprietary bits. ie for example AMD has released an "open source" driver, but, you can't actually utilize it without the big proprietary blob. So ultimately what good is it? It's not.
If you care about your freedom then you should be glad to see this fold. Microsoft's never done anything out of interest for users freedom. They've only released code such that it would be beneficial to themselves. For example to divide the community or to be able to say "works on Linux". Then the reality is they control the release of specs and development such that the "open source" version is always behind, doesn't have the proprietary digital restrictions in it, so it totally worthless anyway, etc. Silverlight and Moonlight are a good example of this.
are doom to be exploited by Microsoft.
So, it's exactly what Google has done with Android?
What's the big deal?
Yeah, you are right. They have only open-sourced .NET and it is now available on all major (and quite a few minor) platforms. ....
What, specifically, are you missing?
I'm missing .net on OSX and Linux. (Let alone VS on anything other than Windows.)
Can you name any platform other than Windows where I can download .Net today? I did a search and could not find anything other than an announcement that they are open sourcing parts of it.
So, a fully open source .NET is not open?
...not when it's bound good and hard to a closed-source operating system and closed-source tools, it ain't.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Open source and Free software are different things. I don't think that the open source software of Microsoft is also free software. I can be wrong, but I think that whenever you fork the software to create another product that Microsoft doesn't like, you will get sued by an army of lawyers with an amount that is exponential to the amount of your entire staff.
Open source without collaboration is pointless. A code dump by itself often is not enough encourage collaboration. If there's a lot of bad blood between you and would be contributors then you might as well just keep it to yourself. It really is best not to ignore social component even if the licence doesn't mention it.
I want this account deleted.
I'm missing .net on OSX and Linux.
I'm not. .Net 1.0, .Net 1.2, .Net 1.4, .Net this, .Net that. Only one .Net version on the machine else nasty things happens.
Microsoft is doing us a big favor leaving .Net to Windows.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Speak not the name lest the devil appear!
"Like an abusive partner, Microsoft says it 'loves' Linux -- when what it means is that it desperately needs Linux .. While Microsoft doesn't appear to have crowed much about its victims since Hoeft & Wessel two years ago, its strategy of shaking down Android users with broad threats seems to be continuing unchanged" ref
Sure, you can look at the code, but if you modify and / or redistribute it, they will come after you with the largest law firm that has ever existed.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994405.aspx
IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID EULA FOR ANY "OS PRODUCT" (MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98, WINDOWS ME, WINDOWS NT 4.0 (DESKTOP EDITION), WINDOWS 2000 OPERATING SYSTEM, WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL AND/OR WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION), YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.
https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/PATENTS.TXT
Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates ("Microsoft") promise not to assert .NET Patents against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, .NET Runtime or .NET Runtime. ... .NET Framework, as described in Microsoft's API
any
importing, or distributing Covered Code, as part of either a
as part of any application designed to run on a
".NET Runtime" means any compliant implementation in software of (a) all of
the required parts of the mandatory provisions of Standard ECMA-335 – Common
Language Infrastructure (CLI); and (b) if implemented, any additional
functionality in Microsoft's
documentation on its MSDN website.
Who defines what a COMPLIANT IMPLEMENTATION is?
This is all smoke and mirrors by the largest patent trolling (Microsoft / Intellectual Ventures / Rockstar ) shakedown racket in the world.
> So, it's exactly what Google has done with Android?
It is good that you have that as a question because the answer is NO.
There are many devices that use the Android source code that otherwise ignore Google. Even Nokia/Microsoft released an 'Android' phone.
> So, a fully open source .NET is not open?
Only .NET CORE has been open sourced. There are many parts of .NET that are not. So, no, there is no 'fully open source .NET'.
says no. It is not good or bad news for open source.
You should check better. There is hardly any DB platform that doesn't have .net providers.
You say accelerating yet the FA is about microsoft doing the opposite.
Had microsft open sourced something useful then maybe people might care like open sourcing skype or ntfs or windows or office or outlook or uefi signing, the kinect etc. Instead they open source rubbish which is only good to leverage their own products and is nothing good for for porting to other platforms for interoperability.
Has Microsoft ever offered any apologies for its past evils? If not, then why should anyone trust them now? If someone goes and trusts a company that has been well proven to be untrustworthy in the past, and another person avoids them awaiting evidence of remorse and reform, then which one is the idiot?
I'm pretty sure the BCL is open, ASP, entity framework etc. In core you have Linq, the IO, serialization and task parrellel library all of which IMO are the "I wonder how they did that" parts of the platform. That is the vast majority of my use of the language.
The biggest thing would be if they ported enough that VS ran on any platform. For those that do it I'm sure it would be nice to have the choice of using VS when doing iOS development (they could still force you to build on a mac but kind of ridiculous if they force you to use XCode too).
Do you trust his ideological commitment?
It isn't. Have you been living in a cave for the past few years?
If there's a lot of bad blood between you and would be contributors
There isn't. Remember, most of the world is not as closed minded and insane as the average slashdotter.
It really is best not to ignore social component even if the licence doesn't mention it
There was probably a full argument in there in your mind, but you only wrote about half of it.
You mean writing a driver so their system that they sell can be used on Linux and generate more sales?
Exactly how is that a *laudable* rather than merely *expected* behaviour???
People over play this so called open move. All Microsoft is really doing is expanding their products into other platforms. Having Office run on more then Windows devices is not open its just good business. People are moving into owning not just one platform but they may have a Android device, a iPhone, and a PC. Or some other combination. At least Microsoft has finally stopped trying to push all Windows ecosystem. Apple could learn from what Microsoft is doing and I guess Apple is trying but in my opinion much less success then Microsoft. Apple just cannot accept people not using an all Apple product line. But just because you love one Apple product. Does not mean you love all of them. Same goes for Microsoft and Windows.
The parent of my comment was saying that the only thing that Microsoft really open sourced was .net and it's basically useless without blah blah blah
Google says android is open source but closes the source after it reaches a decent state. So android is open source but largely useless without blah blah blah.
Nobody forces you to use XCode for developing iOS applications. JetBrains AppCode is one such example.
Using VS for obj-c is another history. But I think nor microsoft nor the iOS developers have any interest in this becoming a possibility.