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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.
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..
^ dah, wasn't logged in
>> 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.
Well, actually, not really.
Nobody ever believed them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
..and nothing of value was lost.
US$0.02++
He thinks Microsoft's cloud is cloudy, but he's not sure. In the meantime, because his cloud has become clouded, he'd like to politely ask you to go to cloud off.
Cloud to your mother.
" shut down " in the "start" menu
They fixed that, didn't you hear? In Windows 8, the option to shut down the computer is now logically found under Settings.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Reading through TFA, the justification seems to be that Microsoft contributes to a large number of open-source projects:
...made it easier for Linux, Java, and other developers to use Azure...
...helped bring Microsoft’s services and APIs to iOS and Android...
...brought Office 365 to the Moodle learning platform...
...collaborating with the industry on standards for HTML5, HTTP/2, and WebRTC/ORTC...
In other words, Microsoft is still Microsoft. They've firmly established the "extend" part of their usual strategy, and now it's time to start slowly dropping support for those old, outdated open technologies in favor of the newest crap spewing forth from Redmond.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Sounds like you've never used Windows 8.
The shutdown command is still right there on the start screen, next to the current logged-in user's account name and avatar.
You can also still use Alt-F4 from the desktop to bring up the old-school shutdown dialog, too.
If I want to start the process of shutting down my computer, why wouldn't I go to a menu of things to start?
Idiot can't see past "Evil M$" 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.
shutdown /r /t 00 always works for me
That was added in the Windows 8.1 update, actually. It's not in the original Windows 8.
That would have got you mod++ if you weren't AC
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
To be fair they have never made any excuse about this, which makes sense when you think that their investors are going to want to know why the f*** they are giving away an asset paid for by their money FOR FREE. This is Microsoft adapting to work within the current business environment to the best advantage of these same shareholders. They have a legal obligation to do this or they go to jail.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
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?
That's S3 mode stand by, if you can accept the name and limitations. Such as : don't actually cut the power, never mind the occasionally possible network issues, or particular linux issues (when powered back up, it sends my graphics card in "emergency mode" i.e. fan at 100% speed and it stays at 100% speed till I reboot)
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?
"Shut down" isn't just disconnecting the power supply, it's an operation involving a whole collection of actions, i.e. something that the user starts.
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?
are doom to be exploited by Microsoft.
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?
I don't see an icon labeled alt+f4 you're obviously a Microsoft shill.
I'm not going to use the keyboard like some kind of savage.
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.
"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
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.
Some old-school trolling going on here. "Start" does not mean "Start Program." Rather, it's a navigation starting point where you can make many choices that range from starting programs, changing settings, or shutting down the computer. Don't you feel stupid now?
Well, you have Richard Stallman on your side. Not only is he a dick, but he's also fat, eats his own toejam, and throws a fit when things don't go his way.
So so complaining and buy a chromebook already.
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?
One that implements the published specification for the platform/language? Just like MS got burnt trying to knock off java with J++ if you make a C# like languages that is broken from the standard in fundamental ways they'll come after you.
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?
The real question is, after 30 years of personal computers, why can't we simply hit the "off" switch or pull the power plug?
On my Windows boxes, the (soft) power switch works just fine, thanks. It's set up to do a graceful shutdown, so it won't shut down if an application foolishly needs to ask me whether or not to save changes, but that's mostly the application's fault (see Notepad++ for how to do it right), and I could set up the power button to do a "maintenance shutdown," which force closes everything, if applications were written better.
Powering off without any notice at all, safely, would really limit performance in many ways - I'm just as happy to wait a second or two for unsaved changes to be parked, all the write caches to flush and so on.
I want a computer that I can just switch off, then switch on and be instantly back at what I was working on, or at a login screen. Instantly.
Basic physics will keep persistent storage slower than volatile memory, but if you're content with 1990s performance, you could probably build a PC that worked that way. Heck, it probably exists for some exotic use case.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It is the brilliant minds of Microsoft that conceived of putting " shut down " in the "start" menu
I've never been able to find "shut down" in the Ubuntu menu tree - does it even exist?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Despite the common misconception, there is actually no general legal requirement that corporations must act to the benefit of their shareholders. Rather, United States law holds only that the company act according to its charter, which may actually have practically any terms the founders see fit. There may be no terms, permitting executives to have free reign over the company, or there may be very restrictive terms detailing precisely how the corporation is to be run, which is particularly useful for incorporated charities.
With that out of the way, why should there be any question about giving away anything for free? I can't recall any large company whose marketing department didn't get a wide variety of samples or freebies to promote the brand. For anything with an engineering department, the offer to make an expensive system work with other expensive systems has been a common sales tactic. These ideas are not new or questionable at all.
Also falling into the "not new" category is Microsoft's ongoing strategy. For the last two decades, Microsoft's primary business model has been to attach their products to existing business dependencies, encourage their use (forming new dependencies), then drop support for the original dependencies in favor of their own new products, leaving their own product as the only upgrade path for a now-locked-in customer.
For several years, Microsoft has clung to a few bad decisions (most notably ignoring the Internet until it was too late, then ignoring the business need for easy provisioning), leaving room for open-source solutions to grow. Having now completed their compatibility phase, Microsoft moves on to encouraging their products' use. A low initial price tag helps that effort.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
One that implements the published specification for the platform/language? Just like MS got burnt trying to knock off java with J++ if you make a C# like languages that is broken from the standard in fundamental ways they'll come after you.
No - they can't. They have not put any clause in the licensing term for neither C# or core libraries prohibiting you from extending those. Sun did that with Java. Microsoft put the equivalent of C# delegates and P/Invoke into their Java implementation. Especially the latter riled Sun, as it allowed MS to integrate Java much more efficiently on Windows than Sun could do on other platforms. Sun sued and won and MS walked away from Java and created J++ but eventually went all-in on C#
This time around you can add anything you want. There is no non-free, licensed test suite you'll have to pass and there's limitation on how you can extend.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
@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?
Is it even possible? Seller of free stuff....