Businesses, including Microsoft, do only what is necessary for survival.
This time, they have apparently embraced open source, while still keeping most of their core stuff closed, because doing otherwise would be bad for them.
Microsoft will gladly ditch open-source in the future, if it becomes the best option for survival.
Microsoft embraces open source because they found out that there are other methods to monetize and lock in customers. As a bonus people seem to like you when you give them stuff for free, even with the catch of privacy invasion.
In other words, they stopped copying Apple and switched their sights on Google.
The stuff that matters stays closed source. Infrastructure, tooling are published because they bring massive amounts of goodwill and developer mindshare while hindering potential competitors that now have to battle with a free offering.
Frankly I preferred the old Microsoft which wanted your money, not the new one that (also!) wants your data.
All companies that embrace open source do it because it's good for business. It's a seemingly unlimited resource that accounts for billions (made up number, feels reasonable) of dollars of unpaid labor.
It was always stupid to be against OSS from a business perspective and so long as developers hand over their IP on a platter it always will be - Microsoft would be really stupid to turn away free money, and they seem to realize this now.
While I do think this move is a valiant one, I don't believe that it will, in and of itself, build better practices and help Microsoft build better software. Open source is very hard to do right, and if you're a company that doesn't have open source in their DNA it could pose a huge challenge to building positive relationships with your developer community. If you're a big corporation like Microsoft, you have tons of people with their eyes on you at all times. Everyone can read and criticize your code.
Also, being open source means being open and transparent about release cycles and roadmaps, which takes a lot of effort and initiative. I do think Microsoft can do that if they build a solid team of technical community evangelists, but otherwise, they will be swimming against the stream.
Because Microsoft is a profit-hungry monster and their "adoption" of open source was the only way they could stay alive longer. It never had to do with doing what is good for humanity.
Microsoft using open source components is very much in line with other large tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. It isn't really something to applaud, and just normal business strategy for any tech company in 2016.
For Microsoft to become a true open-source company they would need to open source Windows, which goes against their advertising, telemetry, and tracking goals.
Microsoft's "acceptance of open-source" only stretches as far as it helps them survive, in an economy where "why would I buy your product when there's this open-source thing" is a question that gets asked more and more frequently. You know, the "embrace" and "extend" phases of "embrace, extend, extinguish".
open source currently aligns with MS's business plan, they haven't turned good or bad they just see where developers want to go and think it's a good thing to go with them.
it doesn't change any of their other business plans but currently it's great for open source software and luckily if they change direction again we have permissively licensed software out of it.
they can't scoop that code back out of the pool so i don't really see a downside, except maybe having to fork projects and maintain them without the MS cash if they do change direction
I'm having a tough time drawing a conclusion from this article. In my experience with commercial/open source projects the only reason they are open source is because of some sort of market advantage. Is the author suggesting that Microsoft doing all this OSS work out of the goodness of their collective heart? Corporations are about making money, while that goal and OSS happen to align we'll get open source from Microsoft. The second it stops being strategically relevant: bye-bye.
I hope this is not true, that Microsoft is still in war with open source, under a different cover this time, embrace-then-eliminate. but again, this has been its gene for decades, so really no surprise to me.
Where are all the people telling us about the _new microsoft_ which loves open source now?
It's a huge company, don't anthropomorphize it. It hasn't changed, it's a system for maximizing profits, it does what some people in it determined to be most efficient for that goal. If saying it "loves open source now" on their websites to "befriend" and attract a new wave of devs is most efficient, then that's what it'll do. When the situation changes, it'll kill competition using any means it can get away with just like it always did.
It's a company, in one of the most cutthroat industries in the world. Of course they do everything for competitive advantage, that's the same for all of them. Do you honestly think Amazon or Google are any different in this regard?
Microsoft's embrace of open source is about making their PaaS offerings universally compatible, and about trying to meet developers where they are. They will continue this strategy as long as it remains super profitable; ie as long as great developers have a preference for OSS, and as long as OSS remains a key part of the software ecosystem. If you want Microsoft to remain open source friendly, those are your battlefields.
I don't think this should be seen in the light of "open source everything" but more that many see Microsoft doing open source not as part of "being good" but part of their age old "embrace extend extinguish" policy.
Exactly this. There are only two ways I can find to read that:
1. You think that Microsoft is dying, and embraced open source as a last ditch effort to right the ship. If this is your opinion (OP) - you must just be an MS hater. They are CRUSHING it, and I haven't seen this much goodwill from their enterprise customers since the dot-bomb of the early 2000s. People are actually proud and excited to use their products again.
2. You think that embracing open source is going to kill them. In which case you just argued against your own premise.
Either way, I don't see how their "best days are behind them".
Microsoft will gladly ditch open-source in the future, if it becomes the best option for survival.
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