Microsoft Open Technologies Is Closing: Good Or Bad News For Open Source? 110
BrianFagioli writes When Microsoft Open Technologies was founded as a subsidiary of Microsoft — under Steve Ballmer's reign — many in the open source community hailed it as a major win, and it was. Today, however, the subsidiary is shutting down and being folded into Microsoft. While some will view this as a loss for open source, I disagree; Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella, that a separate subsidiary is simply no longer needed. Microsoft could easily be the world's biggest vendor of open source software, which is probably one reason some people don't like the term.
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Idiot can't see past "Evil M$" and doesn't understand that MS has been accelerating it's open source offerings.
Idiot doesn't understand "M$" doesn't need a separate department for what the entire company is doing.
News at 11.
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Giving tools to developers for lock-in technologies
Yeah, you are right. They have only open-sourced .NET and it is now available on all major (and quite a few minor) platforms. They have open sourced the C# compiler. They have open sourced just about anything web related they are doing. So, what else should they open source? Windows? According to Microsoft that is apparently also an option they keep open.
What, specifically, are you missing?
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One that implements the published specification for the platform/language? Just like MS got burnt trying to knock off java with J++ if you make a C# like languages that is broken from the standard in fundamental ways they'll come after you.
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One that implements the published specification for the platform/language? Just like MS got burnt trying to knock off java with J++ if you make a C# like languages that is broken from the standard in fundamental ways they'll come after you.
No - they can't. They have not put any clause in the licensing term for neither C# or core libraries prohibiting you from extending those. Sun did that with Java. Microsoft put the equivalent of C# delegates and P/Invoke into their Java implementation. Especially the latter riled Sun, as it allowed MS to integrate Java much more efficiently on Windows than Sun could do on other platforms. Sun sued and won and MS walked away from Java and created J++ but eventually went all-in on C#
This time around you can a
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Small correction...
Microsoft has been accelerating its "open" source offerings. Certifications be damned, licenses and formats such as SharedSource and Open XML are not open. The vast majority of anything else they've done in that vein has almost all been focused on sucking in devs to the .NET world (which itself is anything but open.)
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So, a fully open source .NET is not open?
...not when it's bound good and hard to a closed-source operating system and closed-source tools, it ain't.
Re: convicted monopolist shuts down open source de (Score:1)
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If there's a lot of bad blood between you and would be contributors
There isn't. Remember, most of the world is not as closed minded and insane as the average slashdotter.
It really is best not to ignore social component even if the licence doesn't mention it
There was probably a full argument in there in your mind, but you only wrote about half of it.
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I'm pretty sure the BCL is open, ASP, entity framework etc. In core you have Linq, the IO, serialization and task parrellel library all of which IMO are the "I wonder how they did that" parts of the platform. That is the vast majority of my use of the language.
The biggest thing would be if they ported enough that VS ran on any platform. For those that do it I'm sure it would be nice to have the choice of using VS when doing iOS development (they could still force you to build on a mac but kind of ridiculous
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You say accelerating yet the FA is about microsoft doing the opposite.
Had microsft open sourced something useful then maybe people might care like open sourcing skype or ntfs or windows or office or outlook or uefi signing, the kinect etc. Instead they open source rubbish which is only good to leverage their own products and is nothing good for for porting to other platforms for interoperability.
Re:convicted monopolist shuts down open source dep (Score:4, Insightful)
Has Microsoft ever offered any apologies for its past evils? If not, then why should anyone trust them now? If someone goes and trusts a company that has been well proven to be untrustworthy in the past, and another person avoids them awaiting evidence of remorse and reform, then which one is the idiot?
Open Tech is closing? (Score:1)
Re:Open Tech is closing? (Score:5, Funny)
" shut down " in the "start" menu
They fixed that, didn't you hear? In Windows 8, the option to shut down the computer is now logically found under Settings.
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Sounds like you've never used Windows 8.
The shutdown command is still right there on the start screen, next to the current logged-in user's account name and avatar.
You can also still use Alt-F4 from the desktop to bring up the old-school shutdown dialog, too.
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shutdown /r /t 00 always works for me
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That was added in the Windows 8.1 update, actually. It's not in the original Windows 8.
Re: Open Tech is closing? (Score:1)
I don't see an icon labeled alt+f4 you're obviously a Microsoft shill.
I'm not going to use the keyboard like some kind of savage.
Re:Open Tech is closing? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I want to start the process of shutting down my computer, why wouldn't I go to a menu of things to start?
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That's S3 mode stand by, if you can accept the name and limitations. Such as : don't actually cut the power, never mind the occasionally possible network issues, or particular linux issues (when powered back up, it sends my graphics card in "emergency mode" i.e. fan at 100% speed and it stays at 100% speed till I reboot)
Re: Open Tech is closing? (Score:2)
So so complaining and buy a chromebook already.
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The real question is, after 30 years of personal computers, why can't we simply hit the "off" switch or pull the power plug?
On my Windows boxes, the (soft) power switch works just fine, thanks. It's set up to do a graceful shutdown, so it won't shut down if an application foolishly needs to ask me whether or not to save changes, but that's mostly the application's fault (see Notepad++ for how to do it right), and I could set up the power button to do a "maintenance shutdown," which force closes everything, if applications were written better.
Powering off without any notice at all, safely, would really limit performance in many
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"Shut down" isn't just disconnecting the power supply, it's an operation involving a whole collection of actions, i.e. something that the user starts.
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Some old-school trolling going on here. "Start" does not mean "Start Program." Rather, it's a navigation starting point where you can make many choices that range from starting programs, changing settings, or shutting down the computer. Don't you feel stupid now?
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It is the brilliant minds of Microsoft that conceived of putting " shut down " in the "start" menu
I've never been able to find "shut down" in the Ubuntu menu tree - does it even exist?
Accepting a story from Florian Meuller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause that is about the only person who was praising Microsoft Open Tech when it started.
Microsoft has a long way to convince me that they are committed to OSS. So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..
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Really? How about they start by not doing anything, i.e., give up the patent nonsense on Android.
MS is nothing more than a snake waxing all indignant while the family dog is now a lump sliding down its body.
Re:Accepting a story from Florian Meuller? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..
How about completely opening .Net, moving their build system to GitHub, and moving the compiler to LLVM? Those seem to have some real substance to me. Then there's them embracing Docker for Windows Server 10 and open sourcing that work. This is not your fathers Microsoft.
Re:Accepting a story from Florian Meuller? (Score:5, Informative)
People can be skeptical to be skeptical, but, as you eluded to, this is not the Microsoft of old. As some of my friends have said, "Haters gonna hate..." And some things won't change.
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It's not just .NET. It's the .NET compiler. ASP.NET. ASP.NET MVC. The Entity Framework. .NET Core Runtime libraries. This stuff is the heart of Microsoft development. And it's all open-source. And, they are providing support for cross-platform development on Mac and Linux. The Visual Studio Community
Does it mean VisualStudio will run on Linux soon?
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You might (I hope) be surprised. They did after all release the new office for iOS and Android first. The problem is probably that VS is such a margin cash cow: enterprise products that people actually pay $2k for a pop vs windows which most people who care either acquire with a new computer (for about $40 OEM license) or "acquire" by other means.
As I said: I'd like to be surprised with it. But if not: there is still other IDEs that can handle C#/.Net source code. The more the platform matches the mindset o
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Well if could just end up being like using the Apple stack: you can support many OSs but you'll have to run a PC in order to have a good time doing so. I'm fine with that. I earn well more in a day than a license of windows costs. I don't see why professional developers should hesitate to use whatever tool they think best. For hobbist/people that can't get someone to pay them to do development: well lots of free alternatives exist.
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Does it mean VisualStudio will run on Linux soon?
No. Visual Studio is not open source (although there is now a free Community edition [visualstudio.com]), and "open source" doesn't mean "runs on Linux" anyway.
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MIT or similar, not such a big deal since MS is contribution a metric crapton of code to start the projects.
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People can be skeptical to be skeptical, but, as you eluded to, this is not the Microsoft of old.
I remember the Microsoft of old singing, "developers, developers, developers......" Sounds like the same old song to me.
Microsoft has been giving stuff away free for a long time to get an edge on competition. There was a huge lawsuit about that with IE.
TBH I'm not sure exactly what you think has changed.
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Sorry, but it will take more than this to counter 30+ years of hostile MS behaviour and shenanigans.
Re:Accepting a story from Florian Meuller? (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of MS OpenTech, people just don't understand what it is (or rather, was) about. Back when MS was still in the "dark ages" wrt open source, but slowly coming out of them, OpenTech was set up as an independent org that could work with open source without the fear of "contaminating" MS proper - remember, this was back when Ballmer with his "GPL is a virus" notions was still around, and lawyers were super-paranoid about people copy/pasting some code snippet and inadvertently exposing the code to some OSS license, or a patent claim or something like that. They were even more paranoid when people wanted to contribute something upstream; with a few exceptions, this was something that you had to go to OpenTech to do.
Now that this is no longer the case, and regular devs inside MS are allowed (in fact, actively encouraged) to use and contribute to open source, the legal separation that was the whole point in the first place has lost its relevance. Notice how the announcement specifically notes that this is not about laying people off, just closing down the legal entity.
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OpenTech was set up as an independent org that could work with open source without the fear of "contaminating" MS proper - remember, this was back when Ballmer with his "GPL is a virus" notions was still around, and lawyers were super-paranoid about people copy/pasting some code snippet and inadvertently exposing the code to some OSS license, or a patent claim or something like that. They were even more paranoid when people wanted to contribute something upstream
and it is sadly still like this in many many companies.
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So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..
How about completely opening .Net, moving their build system to GitHub, and moving the compiler to LLVM? Those seem to have some real substance to me. Then there's them embracing Docker for Windows Server 10 and open sourcing that work. This is not your fathers Microsoft.
They're not doing it out of a sense of freedom or charity, so forgive me if I don't swoon with joy...
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So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..
How about completely opening .Net, moving their build system to GitHub, and moving the compiler to LLVM? Those seem to have some real substance to me. Then there's them embracing Docker for Windows Server 10 and open sourcing that work. This is not your fathers Microsoft.
I think it's close to 100%, on mac+linux. When Microsoft open-sourced their VB+C# compilers a year ago, Miguel was on stage as well to show it running on mac.
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Yes ... sort of I think. Ex: System.IO is just wrappers around COM calls to Win32 apis as far as I know. On Mac yes you could use the compiler but you'd have to include the mono or whatever version of System.IO which might insist on changing API signatures in subtle ways to be more "mac like" and mean you have to learn everything from scratch. Not only that but a lot of .Net developers (myself included) have been spoiled so much with tooling that we really have to think about it if we try to write a compile
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They're not doing it out of a sense of freedom or charity, so forgive me if I don't swoon with joy...
If that's the bar you're setting, no business will ever live up to those expectations. You're absolutely correct that this is simply a pragmatic strategy, made to help secure their place in an era where Windows no longer is the dominant platform. I'm completely fine with that. I don't expect Microsoft to suddenly turn into nice guys. I do expect them to act consistently with their own interests, and right now, that means accepting that they need to embrace a cross-platform development strategy. That's
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System.IO is released and it is pretty tied to the platform. Problem with WPF/XAML designers: they can't decide on a schema and stick to it. WPF desktop, silverlight and Modern apps all have a slightly different way of doing a lot of things. Just when I start to wrap my head around data/command binding and such I try something different and it doesn't work the same way. Hopefully the push for universal apps will force one standard to win since more people will be in the porting business.
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They are committed when it impacts large contracts.
Seen stuff in the news lately regarding the push for open document standards on the web? Governments are now specifying published government documents can not be propriety formatted. This forced Microsoft to support open formats or lose large contracts because Microsoft Office is not meeting specifications of the document requirements.
Compatibility with internet standards has forced open standards onto Microsoft for a long time from TCP/IP over NetBios, to
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Remember when Microsoft had Windows for Workgroups?
Yes....
The Internet put them at risk of a end run past them. They had to adapt or die.
So they stole from IBM. Yes, it's coming back to me now. OS/2. Thanks for clearing that up.
Oh wait, I see the problem - you're equating networking and internet. Networking was easy - little resistance from Bill there, the "internet" was something he hoped was a passing fad (tcp stack was trickier than cifs, and then their was the whole browser thingie - damn standards). Netscape, Mosaic, that's a whole 'nuther barrel of fish in the sun.
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Cheap Sniping at GNU, nice (Score:1)
You sound like a dick taking cheap shots at GNU.
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Well, you have Richard Stallman on your side. Not only is he a dick, but he's also fat, eats his own toejam, and throws a fit when things don't go his way.
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^ dah, wasn't logged in
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Reading through TFA, the justification seems to be that Microsoft contributes to a large number of open-source projects:
...made it easier for Linux, Java, and other developers to use Azure...
...helped bring Microsoft’s services and APIs to iOS and Android...
...brought Office 365 to the Moodle learning platform...
...collaborating with the industry on standards for HTML5, HTTP/2, and WebRTC/ORTC...
In other words, Microsoft is still Microsoft. They've firmly established the "extend" part of their usual strategy, and now it's time to start slowly dropping support for those old, outdated open technologies in favor of the newest crap spewing forth from Redmond.
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Despite the common misconception, there is actually no general legal requirement that corporations must act to the benefit of their shareholders. Rather, United States law holds only that the company act according to its charter, which may actually have practically any terms the founders see fit. There may be no terms, permitting executives to have free reign over the company, or there may be very restrictive terms detailing precisely how the corporation is to be run, which is particularly useful for incorp
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@BrianFagioli, please substantiate the comment: "Microsoft could easily be the world's biggest vendor of open source software." Is there any data to back that up?
Is it even possible? Seller of free stuff....
Funny way of saying "SQLServer Pricing Doubles" (Score:3)
>> Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella
That's a funny way of saying "your SQL Server and other Server pricing went through the roof"
The whole Microsoft "open source" strategy seems to be based on getting as many software applications and developers ("it's free!") to depend on the Microsoft crown jewels of AD, SQL Server and Windows Server (2012) as they can, and then squeeze cash (e.g., core pricing vs. CPU pricing) from IT departments as they try to build out a stable backend to support all these apps. That's Balmer's "developers developers developers" plan anyway...and I don't see Satya doing anything different yet.
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Microsoft has pushed in the next-to-be-released version of
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>> But you'll still need some windows machines around if you plan to run those AD and SQL Server technologies.
Plus their server connection licensing is being changed so they can capture revenue from non-Microsoft platform connections.
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1) Last I checked, MS SQL Server does not run on OSX or Linux, and .NET does not run anywhere near Postgres, Oracle, MySQL, etc... so why are you saying "database" up there?
2) GP forgot to mention pricing on MS Office in the pricing squeeze (sure, you can get Office 365... subscription models are effing delicious to MS, especially when compared to set-pricing for licenses that may or may not renew within the next 3 years).
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He thinks Microsoft's cloud is cloudy, but he's not sure. In the meantime, because his cloud has become clouded, he'd like to politely ask you to go to cloud off.
Cloud to your mother.
I will miss them (Score:2)
Well, actually, not really.
Nobody ever believed them.
the obligatory, (Score:3, Interesting)
..and nothing of value was lost.
Jury is still out (Score:2)
Microsoft has evolved so much under Satya Nadella, that a separate subsidiary is simply no longer needed.
This is far from true (or at least, there is little evidence of it). Perhaps Microsoft will become a good (or at least nonmalevolent) player in the software space eventually, but to say that it's there right now is seriously jumping the gun.
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Before, Microsoft was just another pile dog crap. Today under new leadership, H1B stewardship, and dead culture guidence, it is a steaming ignorable pile of dog crap. One can only wonder at the surprizes* that the thrid world will have to offer planet earth.
* a surprize is, flatulence with a lump in it.
People that don't know history (Score:1)
are doom to be exploited by Microsoft.
Microsoft pollutes the term Open Source .. (Score:1)
It's like Jeffrey Dahmer becoming a vegetarian (Score:1)