Open Source-happy Microsoft Joins Eclipse Foundation (networkworld.com)

alphadogg writes to note that just a day after announcing it would be bringing SQL Server to Linux, "Microsoft has announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation, an open source community for developers launched more than 10 years ago." Microsoft, which notes that it has worked with the Eclipse Foundation for years "to improve the Java experience across our portfolio of application platform and development services," made the announcement to attendees at EclipseCon, going on in Reston, Va., this week.

Comments

There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[idontgno]

"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[kheldan]

This, so much this. Glad someone else said it. I'd have to say, given Microsofts' track record, especially lately, that they're more interested in 'infiltrating' the Open Source community as much as possible, so as to more easily destroy it and make All Things Microsoft a reality. Come on, FTC, when are you going to get around to levelling monopoly charges against Microsoft?

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[MightyMartian]

This isn't some Englishmen still taking the piss out of the Germans for WWII. Microsoft's turning over a new leaf is a very new phenomenon, so I don't see why a healthy dose of skepticism isn't in order. Microsoft has a lot of road to repair before a lot of people will be willing to fully trust it, and that's as it should be.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Austerity Empowers]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is a sign of insanity.

If showing our age means we remember when MS was bad, and why MS was bad, then guilty as charged.

There are really good reasons to really hate Microsoft, and thus far, absolutely none to love them. Their OS is crap, their developer tool chain is crap, they still have cute ideas about the command line that are funny in a bad way. They appear to be all about Indian software development, and it shows. Honestly other than an effort by marketing to soften their image, they are still the same shitty company. It was just this past month that their covertly funded attempt at ruining Linux (aka the SCO lawsuit) finally died the true death. I don't know why we would expect anything has changed.

I will buy their turnaround the same way I bought Apple's turn-around: after surviving the brink of bankruptcy and fundamentally changing the nature of their product in acknowledgement of its defects, and coming out the door with something I want to buy on its own merits: not because I have to, not because I'm stuck in some demented ecosystem.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[kheldan]

If Microsoft is actually dying, then so much the better, I'll throw a goddamned party when then go under.

Oh Shit!

[Agent0013]

Ape #1: Dear me. What are these things coming out of her nose?
Ape #2: Spaceballs.
Ape #1: Oh, shit. There goes the planet.

The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[HerculesMO]

Which I expected to see on Slashdot in a laughably fast manner did not disappoint.

Whilst the anti MSers here continue with that tirade, the rest of us are noticing a differentiation in how MS is conducting is business. It's not selling software any more -- it's selling services. Office 365 and Azure are pretty much the key to this differentiation. They want to build their partner ecosystem (this is what they've been pushing heavily for the last year+) and allow their partners to resell not only Azure, but the PaaS offerings Microsoft has built and is building.

If you've seen "Field of Dreams" this is the Microsoft version of "If you build it they will come." They are building the future of deploying applications to the cloud, and managing everything throughout. They are going to integrate with everybody, they will make their own software a commodity and use that benefit of wide integration to drive it home in terms of operational benefits. It means developers can *just develop*. They won't have to worry about infrastructure, networking, etc.

Compared to AWS, Azure is a far less configurable but far easier to manage platform. AWS builds all of the automation they offer into a base of virtual machines that still need to be managed on a storage, network, and VM level. Azure offers that with less configurations (ie, less machine types) but also offers you abstraction from all of it via their PaaS services. The only thing AWS has to offer in that space is Beanstalk and to be honest, unless you're running a lot of Java services it's not that useful.

This is the future of Microsoft, in my opinion. You can think it's "embrace extend extinguish" but since all of their offerings are open source and they are making a hell of a lot of OS contributions, I think the simplicity of the hate has to be expanded a bit to think what MS could be doing to make money given their moves recently.

Re:It's hedging bets...

[PCM2]

As a key example, I have never met a shop that did SQL Server because they explicitly wanted it, but that it was the path of least resistance for supported database given an existing contract with MS.

But once Microsoft gets its database running on these customers' platform of choice, it can always start competing on price. SQL Server is a totally competent database. If Microsoft really gets it running on Linux in a way that Linux admins will like working with it, it stands to gain market share.

Desperation

[plopez]

I for one smell desperation. See the recent article on SQL Server for Linux. They are losing mindshare and to remain relevant they need to get a footprint in the OSS space. They can no longer concede it to the competition.