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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future.

It’s a fair point but I still cannot read this without thinking of someone saying “yeah I did some things in the past but I’ve totally changed I promise. Look, for the whole past week I’ve been really nice to people haven’t I?”

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The MS of today has massive skin in this OSS game. They've been contributing to the Linux kernel for years now [0]. They've got over 4000 repos on GitHub. Many projects are actively developed on GH. As an example, the VS code team solicits contributions on GH [1]. It's hard to say what kind of resources have been invested in .NET core and the open source compilers (Roslyn) and the CLR. Substantial resources.

If you told me 5/10 years ago about these developments I would have never believed you.

I don't think it's fair to reason about a (40+ year old, 100k+ employees, public) company's behaviour as if it has a mind. It doesn't.

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/top-five-linux-contributor-mic...

[1] https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING...

The new Microsoft only exist in markets where the old Microsoft have been pushed to the fringes. In the markets where Microsoft still have the ability to set the rules their behavior is even worse then the bad old days when they still believed the windows market could grow(as anyone trying to get a telemetry free copy of windows10 can tell you).

What we are seeing now is Microsoft reacting to being kicked out of several markets by going back to the embrace phase in an attempt to regain some of the ground lost from Balmers failed attempt to secure a foothold for MS in the mobile and web framework markets.

If they had really been about embracing open source and open standards we would have seen them do something useful for Linux like releasing a version of excel for Linux or opening up the protocols outlook and exchange use to talk to each other, but that kind of openness was never on the table.

What i would expect to see with github is that if/when ms decide they want to utilize their investment for profit is a heavy integration with the azure environment in the form of CI hooks designed around azure api's to the point where other CI platforms become 2nd degree citizens in the ecosystem and i would not be surprised if a github account becomes a add on to an office365 subscription rather then a stand alone product.

Corporations aren't people.

If you change the leadership and change employee incentives, it might as well be a different company.

Sure there's cultural inertia... but incentives trump culture every time.

It may sound like a harsh statement, but exactly because corporations are not like people, they seem to be harder to change, in my opinion. I'm not saying Microsoft can't change, but it's easy to forget that the main goal of any corporation is profit, specially when it's so big.

I think the profit motive is exactly why change happens.

As soon as a company realizes it can make more $$$ with new strategy B than their original strategy A, then boom -- changed. (Sometimes you have to get rid of the old believers, but that already happened at Microsoft.)

If you look at MSFT's stock price, it's ~tripled since Satya became CEO, after being stagnant for years. He seems incredibly committed to open-source -- because in the long run it will ultimately be more profitable for Microsoft, no?

> I think the profit motive is exactly why change happens.

I agree. They don't actually care about open source it's purely because it's profitable to their business. They'll close it without caring if it's not making them enough money or good will.

But I still hope this works. As long as maintaining open source projects is profitable to Microsoft then it gives incentives for other FLOSS projects to show that if such an anti open source company as Microsoft is willing to embrace it then there's good reasons to join in.

> He seems incredibly committed to open-source -- because in the long run it will ultimately be more profitable for Microsoft, no?

I think it's just because in the short run Microsoft ran a very high risk of getting pushed in a corner.

They are embracing what's hip most of all to improve their image, especially so as to be more attractive for talented technical people.

The "Windows everywhere" vision is not pursuable at this time, so it makes sense to let some things go and focus on what can get you the most money right now (cloud, IA, individual profitable products and services).

And maybe, just maybe, surreptitiously spread your patents everywhere... =0

But incentives are still very much in the hand of shareholders who have been rewarding and continue to reward Microsoft's predatory stance on the market (including its continuous abuse of patents against open-source projects like Android and Linux).

So yeah, they are "all in on Open source", right.

I'd argue that the incentives of a company who made their fortune and moat on deliberately incompatible lock-in OS/software are permanently broken, so I agree with you but come to the opposite conclusion.

> If you change the leadership and change employee incentives, it might as well be a different company.

Exactly. Which is why the idea of "trusting" a corporation, or treating them like you would a human being on any level, is ludicrous. They're a plane crash and a stock dip from becoming a totally different entity.

A person is a midlife crisis[1] or a railway accident[2] away from being a totally different entity. There is no absolute trust, just risk assessment and reevaluation.

[1] I thought it was just a cliche until I saw it happen to someone. She went through some things and upended her whole life.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

The story of Phineas Gage is a lot less common than that of a company undergoing routine changes in leadership, so it's a bit of a silly comparison.

The thought that Satya Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992 and then steadily climbed his way (in extremely fierce competition) to the top would be a better, more moral person than the "old guard" is kind of funny.

He's just younger and less out of touch than Gates (and particularly Balmer). Many people seem to mistake ascribe this aspect of him (more in touch with modern tech) with some higher moral standards etc than e.g. Gates/Ballmer. I don't see why he should be any less fierce/brutal.

No CEO of a company of that size is not fierce and brutal.

I agree with your assessment. For me MS motives are pretty transparent and in my opinion will have a positive net result for GitHub.

Yes, but the argument that they have changed is an equally compelling argument that we can't be confident they won't change again in the future.

True, but you can say that for any company. At least in this case, you can consider their past 5 years, see what moves they make and what statements they have released, and judge whether their words and matching their actions.

I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they have changed?

Continue behaving well.

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM.

(2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office)

(3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

About your second point, I just tested it on my machine, Word 2016 saves and opens *.odt files just fine. Is there some unsupported stuff?

Yes, their implementation is (deliberately?) patchy with many bugs. They've been lobbying to prevent governments from adopting ODF (an open ISO standard with multiple implementations): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_re...

What do you mean by 'wrapper over binary blobs'?

I know the old .doc format was basically a memory dump of the document; but how does OXML relate to that?

> OpenXML on the other hand, is a high-level specification which describes the high level envelopes used to embed binary objects which are included in the content. The content itself contains the binary code which can call any function in any Microsoft library and has all permissions of the person opening the document.

http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microso...

But lots of Office-like apps have implmented OpenXML read/write without MS libraries

There's a nice documentary about Microsoft vs. FLOSS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ

They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.

Of course. That's the point of criticizing them. So that they can see the potential profit in behaving nice.

Absolutely.

To me? Almost nothing. Some of the the things they've done are pretty much a "life sentence" for ill will.

* Drop DirectX for Vulkan

* Drop MSVC for Clang or GCC

* Drop Edge for Firefox or Chromium

because they love open-source, right?

Vulkan is just a 3D graphics and compute API, it cannot replace DirectX because it doesn't support most of the things DirectX does.

Did you mean to say Direct3D? That's still leave you with input, sound, maths, and 2D missing.

Yes, I meant Direct3D.

This is just ridiculous. The other points may/may not make sense but drop direct-x for vulkan? What? It'd have made more sense to make Direct-X open source than just dump it like it's useless. It's not like windows drivers for GPUs don't support vulkan. Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. Now, VULKAN evens things out a bit but just dumping so much of RnD for nothing doesn't make sense

> Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL.

That view is fairly one-sided, to say the least. The history is presented in this StackExchange thread: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054....

But to summarize: OpenGL was the standard before D3D was created. D3D has been a step behind OpenGL in features and performance up to about D3Dv7. Then the OpenGL ARB screwed up, with Microsoft among the members (some hypothesize that Microsoft were attempting to sabotage OpenGL).

Several key pieces of Edge are open source, such as Chakra Core, which is the JS engine (like Chromium's V8), and more are expected.

The argument IE6 was that the web grew too stagnant with a single dominant web renderer. If we all agree that the Web is a better place with multiple competing web renderers, why wish the death of the Edge renderer when it and Firefox are all that are standing in the way (and barely by latest metrics) of forks from the KHTML/WebKit/Blink family dominating?

Compared to open-sourcing them? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

* Direct3D being open-sourced would have removed the need for Vulkan.

* Many compilers are good for the ecosystem.

* Many browsers are good for the ecosystem.

Yes, let's have fewer choices for everything! That is sure to spur innovation!

There are a lot of situations where people don't have a choice but to use DirectX or MSVC. Same was true for Internet Explorer.

It's only a choice if we have open standards so you can actually choose between different implementations.

He consistent and have a good track record for years.

It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. In my mind, everyone has a "Days since last accident" counter in their head, and Microsoft's number is quite low.

>It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes.

Windows 10 exists. Microsoft is "spying" on Windows boxes right now

*Be

* Drop Windows and contribute to WINE

* Drop OOXML and make ODF the default format

* Drop the patents

* Drop the telemetry

* Drop Xbox

* Drop DirectX

* Drop the cloud garbage

* Drop or open MSVC

* Drop or open Edge

* Actually open .NET

> * Actually open .NET

We don't need to open the .NET Framework... We have .NET Core. It's better, faster, and cross-platform...

But it's not a drop-in replacement, and it doesn't have any of the GUI bits.

Would the GUI bits be useful on a non-Windows platform?

Yes? There is lots of legacy GUI software that's stuck on it.

gtk / qt wrappers for old .net programs would be awesome.

Think this is the only other alternative for cross plat guis if you don't want to pull in non-.net stuff like qt or electron. https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia

So yeah.

I can see, or kinda see your point for all of these except for the Xbox. Why would you want them to drop that?

It's a crappy desktop computer stuck in a walled garden.

So? Your not forced to own or buy one.

It is, but a lot of people want that instead of a desktop and the work necessary to maintain that. I don't think my toaster is crappy just because it can only make toast even though I could use an oven which has more capabilities

so microsoft should just shut down the company?

Sure. At least that way they won't be continuing the damage, at least.

In the end his statement is not against Microsoft but capitalism.

but particularly msft it would seem. Many of the larger oss projects are maintained by companies who either make money off the products or are funded by the other things they work on

Allow install of Windows onto a partition and not overwrite the MBR

I've hated that behavior for years, and am appalled to learn this it still works that way.

Its worse now. Grub-efi cant boot Windows 8.1+ directly. It instead boots Window's Bootloader which then handles all of the bootable windows partitions.

It looks okay if you only have one Windows in your boot options but once you have two you realize you have two bootloaders.

Honestly? Nothing. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose and Microsoft has spent my entire professional life acting against my interests.

Sell the majority of their shares to other people and behave very nicely, doing things against their short and medium term interest, for 15 years.

That's about the minimum, given their track record.

In the meanwhile we can give them increasing credit, if they do behave nicely, but it's absurd to believe that they've suddenly become a good company and that they'll stay like this for the next decades. I have a hard time believing that anyone not payed by them could think so.

And by the way, they have yet to reverse the decidedly un-nice things they have done with Windows 10 in the last years. Allow everyone to disable the telemetry and to better control the updates, and then we can start the 15 years count. Oh yeah, and maybe also stop astroturfing, that's another extremely un-nice thing that they clearly started doing only recently.

There would be nothing wrong in discussing with the people, if they paid people to do so while stating in every message that they're being paid by Microsoft it would be perfectly ok, but that's very different from what they're doing now.

These things make it clear that they're still motherfuckers, just less then they used to be.

They're all-in open source. They love it. That's why their former CEO said its cancer.

Everything said after that is just some cheap PR trick for chumps.

Quickly after they get back into an advantage position again they will abuse it same as before and you will live in an age of digital slavery.

I'd believe them if they open sourced Windows. They could still keep their web platforms (Office365, Azure, etc.) closed but it would be a huge statement to open up Windows 10.

(Never going to happen, not just for philosophical reasons, but I'm sure legal reasons too)

I think the biggest issue would be the audit. Recall that NT started out as part of OS/2 which is owned by IBM. I suspect that Edge/IE has similar issues, because it was evolved from NCSA Mosaic it probably has legal issues preventing it from being open sourced.

I know for a fact that the ZIP component of the windows shell would be an issue as that is definitely licensed to Microsoft instead of being owned by.

Open what they can and keep binary blobs of stuff they can’t?

GitHub was closed source, so its a good fit.

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