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Microsoft Has More Open Source Contributors On GitHub Than Facebook and Google (thenextweb.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bigger-in-numbers dept.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Next Web: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has really embraced open source over the past couple of years. GitHub, a site that is home to a number of the web's biggest collaborative code projects, has counted more than 5.8 million active users on its platform over the past 12 months, and says that Microsoft has the most open source contributors. Microsoft has 16,419 contributors, beating out Facebook's 15,682 contributors, Docker's 14,059 contributors, and Google's 12,140 contributors. The Next Web reports: "Of course, this didn't happen overnight. In October 2014, it open sourced its .NET framework, which is the company's programming infrastructure for building and running apps and services -- a major move towards introducing more developers to its server-side stack. Since then, it's open sourced its Chakra JavaScript engine, Visual Studio's MSBuild compiling engine, the Computational Networks Toolkit for deep learning applications, its Xamarin tool for building cross-platform apps and most recently, PowerShell. It's also worth noting that the company's Visual Studio Code text editor made GitHub's list of repositories with the most contributors. You can check out these lists, as well as other data from GitHub's platform on this page." GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath said in an interview with Fortune, "The big .Net project has more people outside of Microsoft contributing to it than people who work at Microsoft."

3 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Obviously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft is a software company. Facebook and Google are advertising companies. Who would you expect to have more Open Source software contributors?

  2. The Microsoft PR bots are working overtime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This little turd blossom has shown up in every single new stream I have. So Microsoft is playing the "open source" game again? Does no one remember what happened the last time? What about embrace, extend, extinguish? Let me know when Microsoft does anything that isn't directly in their short term best interest. This PR stunt crap is just that. They've lost on the servers, they are losing browsers, they've lost on mobile, they lost on fitness trackers. No one really needs Windows anymore. The only product that Microsoft does really well is the Office Suite, and I suppose the Xbox. This new PR campaign of "open source" will end as soon as they pivot again, this is desperation for a dying company.

  3. Re:.NET programmers have been waiting years by ljw1004 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been having a blast. I work at Microsoft on C#. But now that it's all open-source, I did things completely differently...

    I had an idea for a new C# language feature (more efficient async, saves up to 90% allocation in some benchmarks). I discussed it first on github with the public. Then I forked the official C# repository into my personal github account, did all the coding live on livecoding.tv. Once it was finished I took it to the official C# Language Design Team, who approved it. And it'll be in C#7!

    https://www.livecoding.tv/ljw1...