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

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is really showing its age lately :/

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

[barc0001]

OSS works a little differently. See Oracle and MySQL. Oops, I mean MariaDB.

As crazy as it sounds, Microsoft is probably actually trying to join the table in earnest for a change. They realize that the world is marching onward and that platforms are not as important as they used to be so they want to try and stay relevant. Witness their move to bring SQL server to Linux. They know that cloud/infrastructure on demand is where a lot of the world is going and SQL server on Windows just isn't going to be a big part of that picture. And honing in on Oracle's share of that space is a good motivation too.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Verdatum]

I'm trying to think...excluding situations where they outright bought a company (e.g. Nokia, Skype), when is the last time MS has employed Embrace Extend Extinguish? I haven't exactly been paying attention lately, but I can't think of an instance in quite awhile...

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

How, *exactly*, is Microsoft going to "extinguish" anything that's Open Source?

They can't revoke their already-granted copyrights, they can ONLY decline to release *further* code under an open source license.

So... no matter where you get to with Microsoft-supported open source, you can ALWAYS fork it, and continue maintaining, extending, and working with it regardless of what Microsoft decides to do *tomorrow*.

There is literally no way Microsoft could do anything to harm or kill your product, the only thing they can do is *stop supporting it,* in which case you're free to support it yourself, hire someone else to support it for you, or simply migrate to a new open source product.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HeckRuler]

Especially since the evil old leaf's narfarious plan included

"Embrace open source"

as their opening move. And now we're supposed to be so glad that Microsoft is embracing open source? Seriously?

Hey, sure, if they get stuck on this phase, that's fine. But the moment they start making suggestions about the direction of the project, or new features they want to add, or "powerful extensions that would really help the project"... You know... I not sure which is worse, the maniac telling everyone to drive into the brick wall or the fool listening to him and steering the car into the brick wall.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HiThere]

Change some of the code, wait a couple of years, file patent infringement claims.

Well, I haven't read the Eclipse license, so that might not work, but it's of a piece with what they've done before. So perhaps a modification of that, where Eclipse usability becomes dependent on a Microsoft plug-in that isn't a part of their donated code.

My feeling about MS is, "If it's a sleazy trick, then MS is either working on it or kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.".

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HiThere]

They've said that too often before, and every time they've lied. To trust them this time would be foolish.

That said, sometimes they do offer a hook with decent bait that it's possible to take without getting caught. Which is where not trusting them comes in. Be sure the bait is worth the risk, and avoid getting hooked...or poisoned.

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.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[MightyMartian]

Look what Microsoft did to Kerberos... There are different kinds of poison pills.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

What, exactly, did Microsoft do to Kerberos? They wrote a binary-only extension that prevented non-Windows systems from talking to Windows' implementation of Kerberos. How did that impact the kerberos project itself, exactly? Their extension simply isolated Windows systems from non-Windows systems - doesn't seem to have slowed down the adoption of non-Windows systems at all, in fact.

As far as I can see, the Kerberos project is still going strong today, and Microsoft has since released the specs for its extensions under its Open Specification Promise (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecifications/), and as RFCs:
- RFC 3244 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
- RFC 4757 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
- RFC 1510 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
- RFC 1964 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...

Looking at this, it looks to me like Microsoft's "embrace" of open source ended up with Microsoft itself being much more open. And you think that's a bad thing?

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[barc0001]

Again though, there's no "trust". If they "do" something to Eclipse the codebase will fork and everyone will take the non MS fork like has happened so many times in the past.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Gravis Zero]

yes but this time it will be a public service. ;)

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[MightyMartian]

They deliberately broke with a standard to damage interoperability with a well defined protocol. It's bad behavior, period.

Re: There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

They could hire Poettering and kill your product from within.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[AHuxley]

Yes. The wider community will have to pay for this in terns of "clean up", paper work, loss of reputation or conflicting legal issues.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish just keeps giving over any open project. Flood with code, new ideas. Extend the project into the busy work realm. Then extinguish as the vast tainted project becomes more work just to keep track of rather than ever been productive again.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[ilsaloving]

That's a strawman argument. There is zero evidence that that is their intention.

However, the is more than ample evidence of Microsoft disrupting competition in various, and sometimes ingenious, ways to either give them a significant edge, or to destroy their competition entirely.

Classic examples include:
-Trying to add windows-only extensions to java. Sun called them on that, sued, and thankfully won.
-Refusing to give OEMs very generous discounts/bonuses/etc, if they sold machines with anything other than Windows.
-Bundling IE with Windows, to destroy Netscape. They were ultimately sued by the US and European gov'ts, and lost, but they still won cause they became the default browser for a good decade. They subsequently did their damndest to fill the internet with proprietary crap like ActiveX, that wouldn't work on any other browser or OS.
-They successfully got Office OpenXML declared an industry standard, in one of the most sleazy and contentious ballots in the history of the ISO. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML) In the process, their ballot member stuffing hamstrung the ISO and ruined ISO's reputation.

The list is just massive, but the point is this. Microsoft would never do something so comically simplistic as try to 'close open source'. Their MO is to corrupt whatever they touch so that they can squeeze a disproportionate benefit from it.

They may well not be planning any such thing at all. But based on their previous behaviour, only a fool would take their word at face value.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

For example: They look at an Open Source environment, such as Android.
They contract those who use it, and inform them that they believe some of their patents are being abused.
They are deliberately vague about the details.
They threaten to sue, unless licensing fees are paid to Microsoft.
The Android using companies can not afford the risk, so they pay Microsoft BILLIONS in bogus licensing fees.

If there was ANY integrity to what Micro$oft was doing , then this would not be happening.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does Redmond pay you to be a shill?

Ah yes the classic response, all your arguments are thoroughly disproven with facts and citations so you resort to a pathetic attempt at character assassination. Frankly I am curious what motivates you to act like a complete mental defective that can't accept that he's wrong, are you actually that stupid or do you have some vested interest in appearing that stupid?

Re: There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Slip in Nsa backdoors because Microsoft is uncle Sam's bitch?

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[KGIII]

I use Lubuntu. However, I'm grateful that Microsoft exists. It's really hard to say this but much of what we're able to enjoy today is because of the influences Microsoft has had. For better or worse, they're one of the primary reasons that we have it as good as we do. We can argue over things would have been different without them but that's the point - it would have been different.

No, I don't want Microsoft to go away. I want Microsoft to get better. They have enabled/driven so much and inspired so many - even if they inspired hate and gave someone reason to create an open source alternative. What they have done has resulted in trillions of dollars in economic activity over the years. They helped make the device you're using as affordable as it is.

No, not go away but better. Better would be good. They seem to, for the most part, be headed in a better direction. Then again, I'm not really a rabid hater of anything nor fan of anything. I'm not really a zealot or anything. It's obvious that you've a different view, I respect that. I just disagree in preferring their demise. And yes, yes I am well aware of what Microsoft has done, is doing, and can accurately judge the veracity of the complaints levied at them. All that and I still don't want Microsoft gone from the scene - much like I don't want Apple gone.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[KGIII]

Alright, presume that I echoed their sentiment - as I *do* echo their sentiment.

Am I a shill?

Linux kgiii-desktop-9 4.2.0-32-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 26 02:21:44 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

(It's actually Lubuntu, they skipped changing the name. I'm too lazy to fix it. Note the time, it's off by an hour. I'm accessing the box via remote. Locally it is Lubuntu as well.)

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[KGIII]

Because you clicked on update, a variety of agreements, accepted a EULA (after indicating you'd read it), and then rebooted the system several times to ensure all the updates were done?

No, Windows 10 doesn't install without user intervention.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[exomondo]

If they "do" something to Eclipse the codebase will fork and everyone will take the non MS fork like has happened so many times in the past.

Like when they contributed to the Linux kernel...oh wait. What are some of the "many times" when Microsoft has contributed to an open source project and then people have forked and everybody has taken the non-MS fork?

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[exomondo]

"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

Isn't that the strategy of every single company that wants to compete in an existing market? If you read up on it the idea is to embrace a product category by producing a competitor, extend your competing product to have features users want in an effort to extinguish the competition.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[amacide]

and it had zero effect on anything except interoperability of standard components with Windows products.

And you've just proven MightyMartian's point RE "They deliberately broke with a standard to damage interoperability with a well defined protocol."

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[jrumney]

A lot of OSS licenses make it explicit, but estoppal still exists in law, even if the license doesn't specifically say they can't start suing people for patent infringement on code that they made publicly available under a license that encourages reuse.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[godefroi]

If Eclipse's usability depends on some future hypothetical Microsoft-developed plug-in, then it's unusable now, and nothing of value will be lost. In this scenario, the only value that can be extinguished is the value that Microsoft created...

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HiThere]

Sorry, but have you ever tried to retrofit old code to work with a new set of libraries. It can almost always be done, but it is often quite difficult. And it's quite possible to write patents that apply, or appear to apply, to all the obvious feasible ways of doing so. This has worked in the past. The only tricky part is to get the system dependent on your changes for two or three versions before you start noticed enforcement actions.

I've got several of old programs that won't work on Linux after about 2.2. (I'm vague because I've never bothered to check out the precise cut-off. But I have a VM installed to run them on.)

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HiThere]

"They" is spokesmen for Microsoft.

Yes, the personnel at MS has changed. The corporate policy has changed. But there's no believable evidence to indicate that they've become someone to become dependent on...and considerable evidence that it's still a bad idea.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[barc0001]

It's not a MS specific comment. MANY companies or groups have tried to take or hijack an OSS project and the community told them to go pound sand and made their own fork. Like MySQL and MariaDB. Or like Nagios and Icinga, or Mambo and Jooma, or even stuff like OpenBSD from NetBSD (caused by a power struggle within the NetBSD team).

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[beastofburdon]

MS is evil incarnate

I had to use an XP virtual machine for one of my CS classes years ago. Evil Incarnate is what I named it.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[Reteo Varala]

Back when that tactic was standard practice, we had Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in charge of the company. Both have since stepped down (BG is now the technology advisor, but not in charge of the business strategy of the company). I'm not saying that Microsoft has definitely changed, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[HiThere]

The shady business practice of Microsoft continue in the present. They are collecting legal payoffs from nearly every Android phone sold for "secret patents", i.e., they say they have patents, but they won't tell you what the patents are.

Then there's the stuffing of the delegation to various standards committee meetings so that no opposing parties could speak. And several other equally immoral and unethical practices within the last decade.

It's true that Balmer has been replaced, but early reports don't speak any more highly of his replacement.

In this particular case it's their shady legal maneuvering that causes me to be dubious of them. You may have a case that's a clear win, but if you can't afford to present it that doesn't do you much good against a well-heeled heel.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[RockDoctor]

they can't start suing people for patent infringement on code that they made publicly available under a license that encourages reuse.

Isn't the "made publicly available" bit an example of "prior art". At least, when I dealt with (European) patent law, that would have been grounds for denying a patent application. Once we'd FILED the application, then we could use our ideas to beat shit out of our competitors (different, but not directly comparable because they did different things) product adverts. These days, I just castigate the competition for sending out operators with their equipment, who don't even have 'technician' level of understanding of it, let alone 'developer' level (about where I'd put myself) or 'theoretician' (whose conversations I can at least understand).

Sorry, the "former competition". I guess I have to think of Scumburger as potential employers now. And they don't like people who know where intermediate-level management have bodies buried from upper-level's sight.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[RockDoctor]

I'll bring a barrel.

Fuck. You get someone to brew a swimming pool full of beer - I'll bring some copper pipe, hammers, axes and wood blocks and TEACH people how to build distilleries!

(To actually brew the wort from yeast and seed-potatoes would probably make for a pretty long party. As would maturing the distillate. Though I can take the rough edges off the "first" bucketful.)

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[jrumney]

They can apply for the patents before they open source the code to avoid the prior art issue. But if they open source the code without stating up front that you need a license from them, and if they contribute it willingly to other projects with licenses that are incompatible with stating that you need a license to use the code, then they have triggered estoppal.

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[RockDoctor]

I don't want to take away from the generally positive tone of your comment, or disagree with it hugely (I would piss on Bill Gates - if he were on fire. And if I met him in the street having a heart attack I'd do CPR [as appropriate] because his post-work work on malaria re-qualifies him to join the human race. But ...)

They have enabled/driven so much and inspired so many - even if they inspired hate and gave someone reason to create an open source alternative.

Sorry, but I was using a touch screen on a Xenix (Xenix!! Wiki link for those who don't need that stupid hair-browning shit the TV advertises incessantly) in 1988 (-89? Ohh, my grey hairs.) ... but that's when MS made a hardware mouse ... and touch-screen drivers were not in Win3.11, despite hardware being available and functioning. I saw that, and brought Win3.11 after considering buying Xenix, and a SVR5-alike from some legitimate Unix-a-like vendor called SCO (yes, them!). And as is almost traditional for me, once I'd jumped in one direction at a technological crux, the world went a different way, and some mad Finn hacked his 386.

Trust me on this - if I jump one way on a technology at the cutting edge ... jump another way. It'll improve your odds.

(Bill Gates and Richard Stallman are each other's best sales men/ women/ people.
I deliberately leave out the option of "sales robots" as one would hope that robots would be more competent.)

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[RockDoctor]

I do agree with the AC. (Washes mouth out with soap made from Tyler Durden's fat.) Enough people who have enough money for deep lawyering have caved on that, that I take it as true. IANAL (thank fuck IANAL!. But money pays for deep lawyering, and enough etc etc) so I don't know what the original issue was, but from later quietness, it is something that can be easily bypassed. so, no problem.

Mathematics (as opposed to implementations of the maths) are published ideas (how else can the validity be assessed?), and computing is maths (see Turing, about 1935) so, [shrug]. For any patented implementation, there is an unpatentable, equally true implementation [I think that's the essence of Turing's 1937-ish "stopping problem" proof, but I welcome correction.] It might be less efficient, but that's not normally a BFD. (Is BFD an unrecognisable acronym for the linguistically challenged? It means "Big Fucking Deal," and is an expression of derisory contempt.)

Did someone patent 3x5in cards for exam revision? BFD, I'll use 8x5cm cards. If MS have a patent on an implementation of $IDEA$, then whoopie-doo. If it is likely (judgement) to be quicker (judgement) and / or (judgement) easier (judgement) to re-implement it from scratch, then fight the case. Otherwise, buy the license (for which I assume M$ have adequately demonstrated ownership). There are a lot of judgement calls there. It's not a clear result.

I forgot to include the costs of fighting the case. That substantially shifts the argument towards "settle". Even if, ultimately, you think you could win. Theories don't run on 3- or 5- year budgets. Unlike bean-counters.

One of these days, I'll persuade a SlachCoder to implement "this member spent x minutes composing this response" function.

Actually, as a way of encouraging "considered response" ... [American Dad Roger]you don't want to know how many time I had to correct that [/American Dad Roger]. Are the New Owners watching?

Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this

[RockDoctor]

Errrrr.. I read that.OK, 3rd reading ....
i8f they open source the code
Null
d if they contribute it willingly to other projects with licenses that are incompatible with stating that you need a license to use the code, then they have triggered estoppal.
Sorry, did you just say that I have NO CHOICE but to
Slug more $So,

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[Anonymous Coward]

As if VisualStudio is any better. I hate having to wait twenty minutes every morning before autocomplete starts working.

Re:Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use?

[Hognoxious]

Q: Why didn't they say something during the probationary period?

A: The were still waiting for it to open!

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[MightyMartian]

What in the hell kind of hardware are you running Eclipse on? Shared drives on 10mb network cards plugged into hubs? It can be a bit slow at times for me, but I've never seen anything like that.

Khhaann!

[Latent Heat]

'nuff sed.

In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[Qbertino]

... and the sea is running red with blood.

This move *does* raise an eyebrow with me. .Net FOSS? Naturally. SQL Server for Linux? Whatever. ... But this *is* surprising. They've got a very good IDE with visual studio, it is very surprising that they team up with Eclipse.

Perhaps it is to get closer to the Java camp? After all, that's where all the big corporate money is - Java Appservers and such.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[MightyMartian]

That would be my big thought, and it's likely why .NET and SQL Server are being ported over to Linux. They're gunning for the big enterprise Java applications, and they know they'll never get these guys to move over to Windows. This looks to me like after 15 years of trying to bring Mohamed to the mountain, they're finally going to bring the mountain to Mohamed.

Frankly, as much as I generally dislike Microsoft and its products, I'm hoping they give Oracle a big nasty kick in the ass. I hate Oracle that much more.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[PCM2]

That would be my big thought, and it's likely why .NET and SQL Server are being ported over to Linux.

I would have thought it's more about cloud. It's my understanding that even most VMs on Azure are running Linux.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[blind biker]

It is not surprising if Microsoft wants to turdify Eclipse through "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."
Microsoft under Nadella has been every bit as evil and corrupting as in the past under Gates and Ballmer.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[yodleboy]

"It is not surprising if Microsoft wants to turdify Eclipse through "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." Microsoft under Nadella has been every bit as evil and corrupting as in the past under Gates and Ballmer."

jesus, some folks just won't let go... As if MS has not changed in 20 years. As if tech favorites like google, yahoo, hp, ibm, apple etc haven't ground the little guy beneath their feet on occasion. There's not a chance that the people making decisions these days at MS are from a newer generation than Gates, Ballmer et al. There's, not a chance that these new people have a different perspective on doing business. Nope, MS has stayed the same since 1998 or so and the rest of the tech industry has evolved into a serene and cooperative utopia.

Remember folks, once someone has committed a crime, served their sentence and gone on to do better (in general), it's OK to keep hating them no matter what.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[squiggleslash]

There's pretty much nothing Microsoft could do to make Eclipse worse, I wouldn't worry about it...

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[JohnFen]

As if MS has not changed in 20 years.

I have seen nothing to indicate that they have.

Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ...

[blind biker]

It is also pretty clear that this whole thread has been infested by MS paid sockpuppets.

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.

It's hedging bets...

[Junta]

If all roads end in microsoft, then MS is a little less put off by the community that won't touch VS.

MS wants to have a software development reality where you can't turn around without bumping into some potential reason to give money to MS. Previously, they hitched that all on the premise that a target market adopts Windows as the leverage point to get in. Now they are (seemingly) accepting that many market segments won't go that way (server and mobile particularly) and trying to tap into those markets.

I predict their efforts may bear fruit in mobile space, but I'm skeptical on the server space. I think most folks that would embrace MS server components would have already embraced Windows Server. 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.

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.

Re:It's hedging bets...

[phantomfive]

Previously, they hitched that all on the premise that a target market adopts Windows as the leverage point to get in. Now they are (seemingly) accepting that many market segments won't go that way (server and mobile particularly) and trying to tap into those markets.

A lot has changed, Windows is a small part of Microsoft's revenue, and the cloud is now the biggest part. CEO Nadella sees the cloud as a huge cash cow, and wants a part of (seriously, read the article).

So they probably have complaints like, ".net sucks because you can only develop for it on Windows." I'm sure they've heard it, because I've heard it. So they are trying to remove all barriers any pesky developers might tell their managers, preventing them from using the technology (as you pointed out).

Re:It's hedging bets...

[Burz]

As for .Net adoption, I wouldn't trust a company that extorts royalties from Android devices on patents it refuses to disclose publicly.

Patent revenues from Android devices are a big deal to MS... http://www.thewindowsclub.com/...

This theme about MS being "Open Source Happy" is dubious at best (no surprise it comes via timothy).

Re:It's hedging bets...

[phantomfive]

This theme about MS being "Open Source Happy" is dubious at best (no surprise it comes via timothy)

Let's say it differently.....they're definitely trying to integrate themselves into the open source community.......
Which is not to say they are friendly to open source.

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that modern multi tier apps are now so complicated that I've had quite a few devs that took over a month before they pushed their first change. Getting Eclipse configured with all of the required add ins by itself is a hard task.

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:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[castionsosa]

I have some cautious optimism. I would love to see some ability for Linux to run AD, Exchange, and other core services, as well as be better managed in domains/trees/forests. Winbind is very fiddly, and it would be nice to see something (preferably OSS) from MS to make Linux variants work with AD with fewer headaches, so I can have the boxes be locked and loaded into the domain in the kickstart file, with whatever GPOs pushed from on high to the boxes before they even reboot the first time.

Some other MS features would be nice as well. ReFS and Storage Spaces/Storage Spaces Direct would be nice, especially if usable as root filesystem. Merging KVM and Hyper-V, especially if coupled with a LVM layer.

Of course, seeing Linux features in Windows can't hurt. SSH, first and foremost comes to mind.

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[Verdatum]

As I asked in another thread on this post...I can't think of the last time MS did Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, unless you count when they completely buy a company; in which case, it's theirs to wreck as they see fit (RIP Nokia handsets).

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[ilsaloving]

That's cause people look out for that behaviour now. Outside of the desktop, they do not have a dominant position in any other industry. At best, Microsoft has tiny footholds, and most of those have collapsed. Because we now have a generation of IT people that saw what Microsoft did in the past with PCs, and won't give them the chance to do it again.

So Microsoft needs to come up with new strategies to get what they want, such as ballot-stuffing industry standards bodies.

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[Livius]

It's not selling software any more -- it's selling services.

Which is worse.

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

There was a time when MS could rely on mindshare and being the de facto standard. But these days, is that still the case? Why would a start-up go with an MS based solution today? 100% of the software they'd need to get started is free as beer, and free as in freedom to boot. Of course, some of the big consulting firms are still heavily invested, but for how much longer?

So yeah, maybe you're right. It's not about EEE anymore. They're just getting desperate.

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[HerculesMO]

Why would a startup go with an MS solution? Because they want to turn around the software quickly, have easily available programming talent, and high quality products?

I mean not for nothing, but .NET is an amazing language suite -- this is noted by almost anybody who is respected by the Slashdot community. .NET skills are readily available for hire, the IDE is top notch, and the ability for you to execute an idea is pretty darned fast compared to "open" languages.

But that's just the languages. SQL server on Azure is braindead simple to use, and cheap to boot. So are a lot of the PaaS apps for things like websites, caching, etc. And realistically the "cost" isn't really in the software, almost EVER. It's in the development time. And if you can shave development time by going with an MS stack then you'll do it. Gone are the days you have to pay big $ for a license for SQL or Windows... it's cheap as dirt now. And cloud makes it accessible. While AWS has the hearts and minds of startups, as engineers understand the landscape better Azure will catch on more and more. They offer you the ability to speed up your entire development process, a claim that AWS cannot commit to because the management of all the overhead (storage, network, backup, monitoring, etc) while automated, is still an overhead you don't have to worry about at ALL on Azure if you implement properly.

So yeah... if I was doing a startup today, I'd do it in .NET and on Azure.

Re:The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" ....

[ilsaloving]

That is true, although I've seen articles about how their gaming division is on shakey ground.

Desktop belongs to Microsoft. There's no denying it. But there has also been plenty of argument about how much progress Desktop has lost, because of Microsoft's stranglehold. Microsoft long ago stopped trying to compete via quality products. They preferred to get what they want with backroom shenanigans.

Lately it seems like that position is changing, but the problem here is that apart from the diehard Microsofties, Microsoft has done an excellent job of fostering massive distrust, and a couple of positive press releases are not going to be enough to make up for 3 decades of very hostile behaviour.

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[Anonymous Coward]

> What in the hell kind of hardware are you running Eclipse on?

Used Dell laptops off of lease with spinning rust harddrives. I wish I was kidding.

We're running Eclipse, Windows Server 2012R2, SQL Server 2014, JBoss (huge Java app server from Red Hat), and Lucene (distributed search) on laptops that are mostly five years-old. Windows is slow as crap before you even start-up the rest of the dev environment. Personally, I run Linux and use vim for Java development against a shared instance of Lucene and Microsoft's SQL Server on my nine year-old Dell laptop with 2GB of RAM, and I can typically finish tasks before the Windows guys can even get a change built and deployed to JBoss.

Re:Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a couple of Java devs quit because they just couldn't take it any longer.

If you think standard Eclipse is slow, try running Spring Tool Suite. It's a version of Eclipse with a bunch of add-ons to make Spring development easier. I had a developer in January rage quit over it. He broke his keyboard, said he couldn't take it any longer, then just left for good.

You can make it somewhat faster by going to:

SpringSource Tool Suite -> Preferences -> Spring -> Project Validators

Then disabling all of the project validators, but that takes away much of the advantage of running it over the stock Eclipse.

I just did a Google search for "eclipse sts slow," and it returned 225,000 results! There definitely is a serious performance problem.

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.

Re:Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Obvious troll is...

wait for it...

jupp, you know what's comin'...

obviously,
obvious.

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[deKernel]

Here is hint #1.....don't use Server 2012 on a laptop. That is a server OS and not a workstation/laptop OS. Second, why are you using a 5 year old laptop? That is old hardware prone for failure meaning you are just biding your time before heartache ensues.

Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use

[LDAPMAN]

And you think Eclipse is your problem??? It's a wonder they nly quit and didn't go completely postal.

Uhh...

[easyTree]

Is this like the scene where Neo dives headlong into Agent Smith's torso in Matrix n ?

m$ involved with Eclipse

[LifesABeach]

What could possibly go wrong.

Addendum: Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan ...

[HiThere]

N.B.: I'm not claiming this as an example of it happening. This just happened automatically as the system changed and the old programs didn't. Any code that isn't actively maintained is likely to eventually suffer from this problem.

Oh, lord

[JohnFen]

I hope against hope that this doesn't mean that Eclipse will start to resemble Visual Studio.

Re:It's funny how easily astroturfers forget

[HerculesMO]

Yes, and if you bothered to dig through the whole history rather than picking up a few comments about me "liking" Microsoft (which I generally do, as far as tools go), you'd realize I worked in finance (and still do today).

And despite that -- does that make my comment less wrong? Or my previous comments? I won't deny that I'm in a minority on Slashdot who actually likes Windows AND Linux because they are good tools for specific things. My entire career I've treated things like tools and as a result, been pretty successful. It's the people who get 'religion' about platforms that don't inroads to success, and are relegated to doing sysadmin work for the entirety of their careers.

I'm a realist, and cursory glancing at my comment history aside from my thoughts on Windows phones which turned out dead wrong, though I might yet be proven right in the incarnation of Windows 10, I don't think there is anything there that says I hate Linux or open source. It's always been the best tool for the job.

So again, your point was?