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

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."

15 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Google is still #1 by NotInHere · · Score: 3, Informative

    They still are the company with the most open source contributions/contributors. They just have most of their projects like android on their own hosting to not overload github.

    1. Re:Google is still #1 by godrik · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't know if they are number one. But that MS argument is phony.

      For the longest time, google people were pushing to code.google.com. Also the kernel contributions do not go to github.

      Also, claiming you have more contributors do not tell much. Did they only contribute one line?

    2. Re:Google is still #1 by jrumney · · Score: 4, Informative

      code.google.com was Google's hosting platform for other people's code. Their own code is hosted at googlesource.com, which is still active.

    3. Re:Google is still #1 by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it isn't. Believe it or not, people shared code before GitHub. They generally hosted it themselves, or used other popular sites like sourceforge. Claiming that one company has more due merely due to GitHub contributors is ridiculously incomplete to the point of uselessness.

      GitHub is popular, but there's dozens of other places to host your code. Most developers don't use it.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  2. And yet... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Windows is still a stinky proprietary black box.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:And yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Aaand microsoft is an android patent troll.

  3. 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?

  4. .NET programmers have been waiting years by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft went overnight from just another big corporation to being an active participant in a community. They didn't half-ass it like their previous MS-PL things and they aren't just hosting a copy of their repo in public. They dove in head-first and use all the same 3rd party stuff everyone else does. Non-Microsoft devs are on equal footing with those from Microsoft -- if your code is good and your points valid, they are taken.

    All of the new features in C# 7 were discussed by the public, with multiple revisions coming out driven by those talks. There's a huge corpus of features in flight, some with 3rd-party implementations, ready to be picked from for C# 8.

    When .NET Core was announced I saw it as an opportunity to add the features I always wished it had, fix random bugs that I'd reported but had closed as "Wont Fix" because they were without enough benefit to their business customers, etc. -- my first pull request came in so fast they told me "err sorry we haven't figured out the process for adding APIs yet, hold on."

    1. 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...

  5. So in other words, "GitHub is a Terrible Metric" by slacka · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you want an accurate measure of the number of open source contributors, don't limit yourself to github. Google opened sourced their own source code management system, Monorail. Many of there projects are hosted there such as Chromium and Android. There also huge contributors to LLVM/Clang, which uses SVN and of course the Linux kernel which is also not hosted on github.

    So basically BS click bait article.

  6. 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.

  7. Re:So in other words, "GitHub is a Terrible Metric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you want an accurate measure of the number of open source contributors, don't limit yourself to github.

    But that isnt what they are doing nor what they are claiming to do, it couldn't be much clearer and is written right there in the article title.

    So basically BS click bait article.

    You just failed to read the title: Microsoft Has More Open Source Contributors On GitHub Than Facebook and Google. Which is the same title as the article which references Github metrics here.

    "Sorry Github you can't post your metrics because somebody might report on it and despite them posting an accurate headline there are incompetent people out there like 'slacka' that lack basic reading comprehension and might inadvertantly read your article and infer something else then complain about that inferrence"

    Do yourself a favor and read the title, then if it doesn't interest you stop reading and do something else.

  8. Truespace... by DMJC · · Score: 2

    Still waiting for Caligari TrueSpace... They bought it out in 2008 and released it free in 2009. But the sourcecode is still locked away buried and noone is updating or modifying it. #sadface

  9. What does this mean for the newbie open sourcerer by Provocateur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Say you're a millenial and actually use this github hoping to meet geekchix or fellow Big BangTheory fans or whatever.

    In which group are you,
    1) the embrace group
    2) the extend group, or
    3) the extinguish group?

    Or did you sign up to be the Bad Example github user guy, always presented in front of the day's training session, to hang his head in shame and remorse, writing I will stop being a bad example 1000 times on the chalkboard somewhere in Redmond?

    --
    WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
  10. Re:Free labor AND good press?? by Z80a · · Score: 2

    And ways to push azure thing, and ways to make .net actually popular...