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.
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.
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.
[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.
So yeah, they are "all in on Open source", right.
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 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.
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
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.
I agree with your assessment. For me MS motives are pretty transparent and in my opinion will have a positive net result for GitHub.