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Comment by EugeneOZ | Hacker News Reader

pff.. they are "open source" just because they want to attract developers, because without developers writing apps for their platform, Microsoft will die (as any other platform). They are still just money-makers and nothing else, there is no any idea except money behind their movements to Open Source world, otherwise they wouldn't take revenues from Android.

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Everything you say may (probably is) true.

Now why does anything in your post matter?

Because ocdtrekkie was using Microsoft's open source strategy to imply that Microsoft is no longer pursuing the same goals as before. EugeneOZ explained that Microsoft's strategy does not preclude their earlier goals.

Because it's important to distinct intention to contribute to open-source world and intention to use this world to make money.

It's sad to see that despite open source (or free/libre..etc) software being around for so long, people still don't get it that money and freedom are not mutually exclusive. I would argue that contributing to open source for business reasons is perhaps even more beneficial for the software and community than just doing it for a hobby or some philosophy because companies pay people to even work on stuff that is not exciting / interesting.

sad to see that people still thinks "it's sad to see" that somebody can have different opinion.

Huh? I acknowledge that you have a different opinion and I'm saddened by that opinion.

I respect your right to have a different opinion. I don't have to respect the opinion itself. Hope you can see the difference.

As if these were orthogonal. My employer encourages me to contribute to open-source precisely because the open-source tools are the best for the job and thus allow us to make more money.

It's absolutely different case. Microsoft don't care if tools they use will be open-source or free - no. They only care if they can attract developers by playing role of "openSource company". It's not your case.

last time I checked Microsoft was a company (not a platform) and like any other it has to make money to survive. Your saying is applicable to every other company releasing open source code

Approaches of Mozilla and Microsoft are quite different.

Yes they are... And believe it or not people / companies can change. And changing to a more open culture even if the reasons for doing this is because they will cease being competitive if they don't is still a good thing. Open source these days not only makes sense technically and ethically but also economically... And that's a good thing.

And I absolutely agree with it. Even happy about that. Companies should make money, developers should make money - it's all the right things. I love money too :)

The only thing I'm talking about is honesty - MS is trying to show they love open-source just because they are so awesome and hackers, but in reality it's just profitable mask and they are glad to wear it.

I submit that Microsoft is staffed and led, in part, by talented software developers, many of whom are invested themselves in open source philosophy. When ideas make it into the light of day that reflect this internal culture, I think it is a cause for happiness. Let's use care when claiming to understand the actual decision making process in any complex organization, particularly one formed from many intelligent, autonomous agents. Certainly skepticism is healthy in general, but in this case it doesn't seem to serve a positive purpose.

I appreciate your efforts to register this account just to write this reply. But as it's just common words (each huge software company have developers who are involved to open-source projects), nothing has changed in my opinion - I'm still sure they wave "open-source" flag just to not loose developers for their platform and any their new standard or new language is a tool for vendor-lock (platform-lock) as it was before for years.

Did you think they would suddenly start waving "information wants to be free" flags?

Did I give any reason to think so?

You are dismissive of "attracting developers" as motive. That has always been a marketing ploy of the open source camp as an alternative to a fully open philosophy i.e. information wants to be free.

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