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How Microsoft Embraced Python (medium.com)
Steve Dower, a Python developer at Microsoft, describes how the language become popular internally:
In 2010, our few Pythonistas were flying under the radar, in case somebody noticed that they could reassign a few developers to their own project. The team was small, leftover from a previous job, but was chipping away at a company culture that suffered from "not invented here" syndrome: Python was a language that belonged to other people, and so Microsoft was not interested. Over the last eight years, the change has been dramatic. Many Microsoft products now include Python support, and some of the newest only support Python. Some of our critical tools are written in Python, and we are actively investing in the language and community....
In 2018, we are out and proud about Python, supporting it in our developer tools such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, hosting it in Azure Notebooks, and using it to build end-user experiences like the Azure CLI. We employ five core CPython developers and many other contributors, are strong supporters of open-source data science through NumFOCUS and PyData, and regularly sponsor, host, and attend Python events around the world.
"We often felt like a small startup within a very large company" Downer writes, in a post for the Medium community "Microsoft Open Source Stories."
In 2018, we are out and proud about Python, supporting it in our developer tools such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, hosting it in Azure Notebooks, and using it to build end-user experiences like the Azure CLI. We employ five core CPython developers and many other contributors, are strong supporters of open-source data science through NumFOCUS and PyData, and regularly sponsor, host, and attend Python events around the world.
"We often felt like a small startup within a very large company" Downer writes, in a post for the Medium community "Microsoft Open Source Stories."
Microsoft has also been known to _steal_ technologies that had a competitive edge. It may be difficult prove the theft of the GUI from Xerox, but the theft of VMS source code and technologies to create the NT kernel was clear. David Cutler and his team took a great deal of copyrighted code and patented technologies and trade secrets with them, from their work on VMS and it's canceled followup projects Mica designed to run on the new Prism hardware. While Intel was stealing Alpha technologies to create the Pentium chip, Microsoft was stealing the core VMS technologies to create NT. The combined theft created the "Wintel" commercial juggernaut and bankrupted DEC. There have been other thefts since then, but I've not personally seen any thefts as thorough and outrageous as those.
With Python integration, I'd be concerned that they'll create incompatible, proprietary aspects in their classic "embreace and extend" approach, where the "extend" part adds unrequested features that break compatibility.