Microsoft Releases First Public Preview of RTVS Under MIT and GPLv2 Licenses (microsoft.com)

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Microsoft Releases First Public Preview of RTVS Under MIT and GPLv2 Licenses (microsoft.com)

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 9, 2016 @06:37AM from the perfect-for-piracy dept.

shutdown -p now writes: Microsoft has released the first public preview of RTVS (R Tools for Visual Studio), an extension for Visual Studio that adds support for the R (GNU S) programming language. The product is open source, and while most of the code is under the MIT license, some components are GPLv2, in accordance with the R license. That's not the first time this week (or this year) that Microsoft's open source efforts have been front-page news; with its new role in the Eclipse Foundation, too, the company's angling toward being one of the largest open source companies around, even if that's a small part of its business model. Update: 03/09 19:03 GMT by T : Speaking of which: reader Salgak1 writes with his first submission, linking the Register's report that Microsoft has released a Debian-based Linux distro, called SONIC. "It is optimized for network switching, and apparently is a localized version of the "Azure Cloud Switch" released into the Azure cloud hosting system. Question is, is it just another Microsoft "Embrace, Extend. Extinguish" strategy in action?"

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Waiting for...... by phishybongwaters · 2016-03-09 06:40 · Score: 1

Someone to explain how this is a bad thing and all that jazz. MS is in the title and summary, it's going to happen.
1. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 06:49 · Score: 0
  
  Hate it all you want, but microsoft is a company well known to employ monopolistic practices.
  To change that, drastic changes in the corporate structure would be required, changes that i hardly believe they are willing to make.
  Why are they supporting open-source? I don't honestly know, but it is likely to screw people over in the long term.
2. Re:Waiting for...... by dontbemad · 2016-03-09 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Something about embracing and extending.
  
  Very phallic.
3. Re:Waiting for...... by slashdime · 2016-03-09 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Someone already did. History and all that...
4. Re:Waiting for...... by halivar · 2016-03-09 07:55 · Score: 2
  
  To change that, drastic changes in the corporate structure would be required, changes that i hardly believe they are willing to make.
  Like changing chairmanship and corporate structure a couple times in the 20 years since?
5. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 08:18 · Score: 0
  
  Timeo danaos et dona ferentes. Microsoft has earned a reputation, over decades, as one of the dirtiest companies around. Trust the beast at your own peril.
6. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 08:52 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  This is Slashdot, so it wouldn't matter if Bill Gates and Microsoft gave all of their money to Linus, open sourced Windows and rewrote the entire kernel and set of API stacks on top of Linux, and then provided a mechanism to performantly convert every binary program and application (along with source code) ever written for Windows to run natively on Linux itself... and then renamed the company to Linuxsoft and had Paul Allen personally crash a rocket ship into the company's main campus after using its plume to draw the shape of a penguin whose cock is being sucked by Steve Ballmer...
  ... someone would STILL yell "Extend, Embrace, Extinguish!"
7. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 11:08 · Score: 0
  
  Microsoft is bad. Didn't you see the picture of the Bill Gates borg?!
8. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 12:18 · Score: 0
  
  Because they are quoted as saying Linux is a CANCER, while M$ is single-handedly rotting the PC industry.
9. Re:Waiting for...... by silentcoder · 2016-03-10 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  He may add "Ignite" afterwards though...
  
  --
  Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
10. Re:Waiting for...... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-10 05:53 · Score: 0
  
  Are you implying the Borg are bad? They only wish to raise quality of life for all species.
seattle exploding? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 06:41 · Score: 0

a small area https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk24YoMqfI0
I miss Bill Gates by Xamindar · 2016-03-09 06:52 · Score: 2

I miss the Bill Gates borg icon, where did it go!
1. Re:I miss Bill Gates by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe site owners finally graduated from middle school?
2. Re:I miss Bill Gates by dstyle5 · 2016-03-09 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  At the very least it should be updated to the Vista logo, which when clicked upon takes you to this video, because the "Wow" is now:
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:12 · Score: 0

I wish this meme would die.
1. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2016-03-09 07:18 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I wish this meme would die.
  With time and good behavior on Microsoft's part, it will - eventually. But the "meme" exists because of very real misbehavior by Microsoft over the course of many years.
  It's analogous to a career criminal declaring he's gone straight - it's going to take time and repeated evidence before most people believe him.
  
  --
  #DeleteChrome
2. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:22 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I wish this meme would die.
  That's not a meme. It's a real strategy that Microsoft was doing as early as 1996.
3. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by chipschap · 2016-03-09 07:29 · Score: 2
  
  I doubt Microsoft is going to extinguish open source. If that were possible they would have done it long ago. They are anything but altruistic.
  If they're contributing to open source now, you can be certain they have a business reason. After all, they're a business.
  I cautiously welcome this. Time will tell what's really behind it, of course. Meanwhile, no one is obliged to use their stuff if you don't wish to.
4. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:35 · Score: 0
  
  It's analogous to a career criminal declaring he's gone straight - it's going to take time and repeated evidence before most people believe him.
  Microsoft Corporation is a psychopathic entity whose sole reason to exist is to make money for its shareholders. Full stop.
  A leopard never changes its spots.
  This particular leopard is busy grooming its coat, not lamenting the bunnies that it ate in years past.
5. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by slashdime · 2016-03-09 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  I wish the meme of ww2 would die.
6. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by halivar · 2016-03-09 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  Twenty years is a long time to hold a grudge. All those people are gone, and we got work to do.
7. Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Billly+Gates · 2016-03-09 07:59 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  So you think Apple, Google, or IBM who are the good guys would be any different?
  Oh yeah IBM wasn't this awesome open source Linux friendly company we know today.
  It is called a free market. Everyone will be evil given opportunity and everyone will be good saints as soon as competition comes in. Saying a leopard doesn't change it's spot is silly.
  Companies are not your friends.
  They are actors just like you in a free market. Let me ask you all something? If you had a skillset no one else had would you be a nice guy and only charge 65k a year? Or would you charge the world and force employers to contract millions with 401k, stocks, and golden parachutes if you could?
  Of course the later. Competition forces us to be nice
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
8. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 08:06 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, but open source != free software
9. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 08:27 · Score: 0
  
  Still happening less than 10 years ago.
  The attempt to strangle open source is all that "secure boot" was about. To avoid legal issues MS "allowed" some open source boot programs to be signed... But it HAS to be done by Microsoft.
  And they don't have to do it, and don't sign for ARM systems. Those are just land fill (remember Windows RT? you can't boot anything on those). So 2012.... still trying to kill it only 4 years ago.
10. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by nine-times · 2016-03-09 08:53 · Score: 2
  
  I wish this meme would die.
  With time and good behavior on Microsoft's part, it will - eventually.
  Seems like Microsoft should just embrace the meme. And then extend it. After that, they should have an easier time killing it.
11. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 09:00 · Score: 0
  
  I wish the meme of ww2 would die.
  Spoken like a true nazi. Sure the previous two versions (ww1 and ww2) were bad, but I like the next generation: www.
12. Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  You do know that the origin of the statement is from Microsoft internal communications that where made public in the anti competitive lawsuit right?
13. Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  Paraphrasing you:
  
  Sure Microsoft was an asshole, but everyone in their position would be an asshole, so that makes it OK, right?
  That's what you're asking us?
14. Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by The-Ixian · 2016-03-09 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps it is the system that is broken?
  It certainly does seem inevitable that once a company gets to a certain size its practices move from human interest to business interest.
  Business interest is not necessarily compatible with human interest.
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
15. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 12:57 · Score: 0
  
  With time and good behavior on Microsoft's part, it will - eventually. But the "meme" exists because of very real misbehavior by Microsoft over the course of many years.
  But it makes no sense, not once have they "extinguished" a standard or project through this supposed strategy. In fact if the "extend" phase weren't of value to users and/or developers then nobody would even adopt it anyway. The "meme" is perpetuated by people who have no idea about where it came from or what it means.
16. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 13:53 · Score: 0
  
  The attempt to strangle open source is all that "secure boot" was about.
  Well firstly that wasnt "embrace, extend, extinguish" in any way. OEMs only had to do it if they wanted the Windows Certified sticker, even Windows 10 works perfectly fine on non-secureboot systems and for the systems that did have it Microsoft mandated that there must be a way to turn it off. This is all under the full control of the OEMs and motherboard makers yet you still have idiots complaining about Microsoft. The OEMs are totally in control in this regard, if you have a problem with it then go to them.
  Further proof that your assertion is wrong is in their support of Linux on servers and running their Azure cloud on Linux-based infrastructure. Their whole cloud strategy would fall over if they didn't work well with the Linux community.
17. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by phantomfive · 2016-03-09 17:36 · Score: 1
  
  I wish this meme would die.
  What, exactly, do you think Microsoft is doing? They aren't open-sourcing this stuff because they like you.....it's guaranteed they have some plot to make money.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
18. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Gadget_Guy · 2016-03-10 00:53 · Score: 1
  
  What, exactly, do you think Microsoft is doing?
  So what, exactly, is the evidence that you have that EEE is what they are doing? Apart from a vague claim that Microsoft wants to make money, how does making open source projects ever lead to extinguishing anything? If Microsoft did try to do something underhanded with the project in the future with an extend or extinguish phase, then everyone could just fork the project from the previous version and keep working happily.
19. Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Billly+Gates · 2016-03-10 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps it is the system that is broken?
  It certainly does seem inevitable that once a company gets to a certain size its practices move from human interest to business interest.
  Business interest is not necessarily compatible with human interest.
  You wouldn't take a job for 6 figures and a golden parachute and a contract? Of course you would.
  That is human nature my friend and motivates us to work hard and update your skills so when you and y our employer grab the ball you can have more pull in negotations.
  My point is MS got lucky and played their card to the max. It doesn't make sense not too?
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
20. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by silentcoder · 2016-03-10 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  Sun JAVA.
  Hell you can blame Sun's eventual bankruptcy and the fact that Oracle now owns JAVA almost squarely on MS's embrace-extend-extinguish strategy. MS-JAVA only ran on windows - and had extensions developers liked, so people used them and suddenly java lost it's most important marketed feature - to be multiplatform.
  By the time MS dropped JAVA - it was basically dead as an application language. Sun made a valiant effort to reinvent the language in other spaces (mobile and server-side appservers and such) but the damage was done.
  Oracle may own it today but microsoft no longer even ships java - they dropped their version when the competition was dead. They never cared about having good java support, or adding value for customers - they only cared about not letting a powerful and popular language (at the time pretty much every CS student learned java) be multiplatform and allow applications to flourish outside their narrow ecosystem.
  They did the same with great success to html - and for many years sites often had to have multiple versions targetting multiple browsers, most sites didn't bother and only supported IE6. It greatly slowed down linux adoption that the main linux browser couldn't see half the web - only geeks would put up with that for a better OS.
  Sure they didn't actually kill any of these technologies completely dead - and html has recovered so entirely that today microsoft is very careful to toe the line with standards.
  But all that proves is that the strategy didn't give them final victory - it doesn't remove that they followed the strategy or undo the terrible harm it caused along the way. The embrace-extend-extinguish strategy was absolutely pervasive. It even included a directx rich-content web plugin at one point ! It decisively slowed down the growth of the computer field and delayed many great advances by years (decades in some cases).
  I don't see any good reason why we should forgive them for that, and certainly not yet.
  
  --
  Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
21. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-10 09:31 · Score: 0
  
  With time and good behavior on Microsoft's part, it will - eventually.
  Yes, once a bunch of cheeto-stained neckbeards put themselves into a diabetic coma in their mommy's basement, we will FINALLY fucking forget this ridiculous bullshit.
  It's been nearly 20 FUCKING YEARS since the IE lawsuit, and there is *ample* evidence of Microsoft changing it's style in the last 5-10 years with increasing embrace of and cooperation with open source. The only people who give a shit about Microsoft's 'troubling history' these days are the social retards whose monitors are lacquered with a thick shell of mountain dew, cheetos crumbs, and spittle.
22. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-10 09:34 · Score: 0
  
  By the time MS dropped JAVA - it was basically dead as an application language
  Yes, because nobody in the motherfucking world codes in java today. You're right. Microsoft completely destroyed Java!
23. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-10 09:37 · Score: 0
  
  They aren't open-sourcing this stuff because they like you.....it's guaranteed they have some plot to make money.
  What *I* think is happening, is that Microsoft is shifting to a services model, and they've realized that interoperability is a good thing. In other words, they've come to embrace and validate the assertion that "open source" can be both good for business, and good for profits.
  I'd think you fucking neckbeards would be dancing in the streets.
24. Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Meme by silentcoder · 2016-03-10 18:15 · Score: 1
  
  Right... because I didn't mention people using it in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE. Oh wait.... but hardly anybody writes desktop applications in it anymore. That was java's original primary purpose, to write desktop applications that would run unchanged on whatever platform you wanted. And microsoft DID kill java in that sense. As a server-side language being platform neutral is far less valuable. That it survived on mobile is a result of the fact that way back when it was first created that's what SUN had intended, but SUN was too far ahead of the curve. They wrote a mobile language in 1995, but the mobile revolution didn't really take off until 2005.
  
  --
  Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Validation for the R language by DaBombDotCom · 2016-03-09 07:49 · Score: 1

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but this is a wonderful validation for the popularity of the R language. When I started using R almost 10 years ago, few had heard its name outside of select academic disciplines. Now, in addition to it being quite ubiquitous in academia, its something that I list as a main skill on my resume.
1. Re:Validation for the R language by ripvlan · 2016-03-09 08:49 · Score: 1
  
  I've only been using R for a short time - about a year. But I'm excited by this - and MS' new foray towards true open-source.
  I quickly found RStudio - simply because the basic R shell/gui was difficult to use. RStudio was nice and very helpful plus the team turned out new releases. My excitement is MS' wallet and pushing money into this - R should improve.
  As for embrace & extend - R could use a bit of consolidation & simplification. There are many ways to do things and not all of them compatible. Plus the documentation is a bit...thin.
  So I believe this will be good. Yay!
Ice skates at the Gates? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:55 · Score: 0

A Microsoft Linux distro? There must be a market for ice skates developing in the underworld. Hell has officially frozen. Fun part would be to hack it and make it a sysV controlled confabulation using Patrick's kernel config and init.
Re:DAVID KORESH WAS RIGHT! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 07:55 · Score: 1

Maybe if microsoft released a nosystemd debian they'd get some adoption.
Focusing on the R, here... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 08:01 · Score: 0

Why would I use this instead of R-Studio? Is there anything this is adding?
1. Re:Focusing on the R, here... by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-03-09 11:24 · Score: 2
  
  (full disclosure: I am a developer on the RTVS team)
  It is a bit too early to make feature-by-feature comparisons, since you'd be comparing green apples to ripe oranges. RStudio has been out for several years; RTVS is in its first public pre-release, it's not even feature complete yet.
  So, for the most part, RStudio can currently do more. But there are exceptions already. Some of it stems from piggy-backing on top of VS, such as multi-language support - you can have a .cpp file in your R project, and you will get the usual VS editing experience for it, with syntax highlighting, completion etc.
  Some of it is product-specific features, such as Variable Explorer (in RStudio, the same thing is called Environment). Have a look at this video, starting from 2:12 on. Notice how you can drill down into children of values without limitation - in RStudio, you're limited to a single level. Or, in the same video, note how the REPL has syntax highlighting for R code.
  More of both - more product-specific features and improvements, and better integration with the rest of VS and other languages in it (esp. C++) - will be coming in the future.
  Our issue tracker is public, and you can see the things that are in the pipeline. Please take a look, and if you see anything you like, comment on it to let us know that there's user demand for it. And if there's anything that you would be interested in that is not there at all, feel free to file it.
That's not the first time this week (or this year) by frovingslosh · 2016-03-09 08:05 · Score: 1

Well Duh! if it isn't the first time this week then it obviously isn't the first time this year, The more logical way to say this would have been to swap the two time frames. Nice editing Tim.

--
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It must be a trap, right... by ndykman · 2016-03-09 09:28 · Score: 1

I know, everybody is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but there is none. The strategy here is obvious. Grow usage of Azure and displace Amazon. This means being pragmatic about platforms and gaining developer mindshare. There's billions of dollars to business to be had and Microsoft is ahead of the curve.
And it's a good story from a developer standpoint and it's getting better. Currently, where I'm at, they are still busy testing and doing proof of concepts, trying to set stuff up in Amazon, when they could have just gotten things running and started testing in Azure in minutes. They just refuse to believe that it can be that easy and they cling to virtual machine images and control they don't need (and costs them in resources).
Could this be a move to remain relevant? by Hussman32 · 2016-03-09 09:32 · Score: 1

I understand the EEE logic, and that was the MS MO for a long time. But Linux has established itself as an enterprise mainstay, and if I were in their shoes, I would make sure that their products could work on the operating systems that their customers use. They would like to extinguish, but they can't, so they need to join them.

--
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Well now you know why systemd was forced at Debian by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 10:11 · Score: 0

Know you know why systemd was force-fucked into Debian. Everyone with any fucking sense saw this angle coming, it's the extend that comes with the embrace.
Re:Well now you know why systemd was forced at Deb by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-09 22:21 · Score: 0

The fuck has either to do with Microsoft?
And how exactly is modern system management a bad thing? Are neckbeards worried they may become irrelevant, now that most of the system management can be done in a few unit files rather than atrociously long, confusing and often hard to read shell scripts without any actual style guidelines but plenty of redundancy?
Java was SUCH a failed attempt to extinguish by MS by daboochmeister · 2016-03-11 03:33 · Score: 1

I embrace what you're saying - but to extend the thought - it's interesting that Java as a desktop application language has been resurrected, as long as you squint just right and allow yourself to recognize that mobile devices are the new desktop, and Android has the large majority share there. So, almost all of the apps on the most prevalent OS in the world, by many counts, are based on Java. I would call that a failed attempt to extinguish, even leaving aside Java's prevalence on the server side.

--
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh ... never mind." Dave Bucci