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Comment by berkes | Hacker News Reader

Not OP, but I think it is important to see a company as a whole.

Untill Microsoft has truly changed its entire company and the culture ruling it, to be supportive of Open Source, it is safe to say "There are just some parts supporting OSS". Just like one can safely say "but there are just some parts of the company opposing FLOSS".

In order to truly help OSS, joining some initiative, group or foundation is the easy thing to do. Opening the patent portfolio, is the difficult thing to do. The latter helps FLOSS a lot more.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18185547.

Why did you choose to draw the line there?

The 90s called, they want their tired old meme back. If you want to know if Microsoft has truly changed, please take your fingers out of your ears for just 10 minutes and review some of what's been happening in the past half decade:

- They're now, or soon will be, the largest supporter of free infrastructure for open source projects on the planet (GitHub)

- They've open sourced a massive chunk of their (IMHO) best-in-class language runtimes and language implementations (C#, F#, VB.net) and design and develop new features in the open

- They've contributed more than 1700 changes to the Linux kernel that can easily be identified with a quick 'git log --grep'

- They're the first company to make a real attempt at an industrial strength alternative implementation of the Linux kernel. Linux was supposed to be about choice, remember?

- They've open sourced the core chunks of the evaluation engine used in Bing (BitFunnel)

- They're a platinum member of the Linux Foundation. In other words, they pay Torvalds salary

- They support Linux as a first class OS on Azure and make it cheaper than Windows

- They have one of the largest and most active GitHub organizations

- They've joined OIN and, ignoring the actual patents involved, have thus in the process made an implicit promise never to attack any core part of the Linux infrastructure in the future

What more do you want?

Well, for one, they could stop threatening patent infringement over the length of file names.

I suppose you think they're doing all of these things out of the goodness of their heart and not because their previous strategy with the FOSS community turned out to be a catastrophic failure.

Please point to any company that does anything out of the goodness of its heart. Companies don't have hearts, they have employees and shareholders that need to be kept happy and paid.

Never claimed any other company did that, what I am suggesting is your post reads like a PR fluff piece, and gives more or less the same rhetoric Microsoft gives as well.

Honestly, most of the FAANG companies are guilty, but I will give Facebook kudos for being fairly honest about the mutual benefits that came from open sourcing React.

Thanks for calling out FOSS. Microsoft's open source contributions absolutely do not enhance our freedom to compute how we wish. Nothing they are doing will help you compute ethically, or prevent someone else from imposing their ethics on you. They are just trying to capture a market of developers that happen to code in the open.

I'm confused.

Let's say I like C# and I also like Linux. Doesn't them making C# (and .Net) open source and cross-platform enhance my freedom to compute how I wish?

Or is that somehow different from other open source languages, like Python or Rust? How do those help with computing ethically?

> Doesn't them making C# (and .Net) open source and cross-platform enhance my freedom to compute how I wish?

Why do you need this on Linux? Only to integrate with MS proprietary products, that's why.

I don't need it. I want it, because C# is my favorite programming language. Isn't that what freedom is about?

This means that when I'm writing a website or a Docker microservice, I want to use C#. And since the best OS to run those is Linux, there are no proprietary MS products in sight.

When I'm writing a cross-platform desktop application, I want to use C# too, but I can't, so I'll use another language.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. Don't blindly trust anyone backed by shareholders.

Your preference indicates that you have been captured. They will use it to move you to a platform they control eventually. Maybe you'll like it, but it won't be more free. It will have a ToS.

> What more do you want?

Not extorting 10$ (average) for each Android device sold.

Considering a few billions Android devices sold, that amounts to an astronomical amount of money that could fund all the points above.

(even if the above calculations are wrong, the amount is surely still astronomical)

Isn't that what they just did by joining the OIN?

> Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO, commented on Microsoft's announcement in an interview: "This is everything Microsoft has, and it covers everything related to older open-source technologies such as Android, the Linux kernel, and OpenStack; newer technologies such as LF Energy and HyperLedger, and their predecessor and successor versions."

Quote from https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-ent...

> The 90s called, they want their tired old meme back.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_... (2001)

https://youtu.be/86j8zOsmNFE?t=62 (2003)

> - They're now, or soon will be, the largest supporter of free infrastructure for open source projects on the planet (GitHub)

That's actually a bad thing. Open source needs resiliency and decentralization.

> - They've contributed more than 1700 changes to the Linux kernel that can easily be identified with a quick 'git log --grep'

A lot of that is so it can run better on Azure.

> - They're a platinum member of the Linux Foundation. In other words, they pay Torvalds salary

Torvalds' work provides them with more revenue than whatever they are paying the Linux foundation.

Not only revenue on Azure, but they also collect billions of dollars from phone manufacturers using Linux.

> What more do you want?

We want people on Microsoft's payroll to stop making noise on Hacker News.

We don't trust you. Cheap gifts won't make up for decades of bullshit. Bullshit that comes back each time someone suggests me to use MS Office, the ultimate embodiment of software monopolism.

I love people like this, and there are so many on this thread. They have survived for so long on communal aphorisms without ever doing any homework of their own, that they cannot comprehend anyone would ever write something positive about Microsoft without having been paid by them.

Ignoring the personal attack (the second I've received on this thread - no greater indicator of the quality of 'discourse' when it regresses to ad hominem), you almost managed to make one good point - the Linux commits are indeed mostly related to Azure and SMB.

Putting the ineffective sarcasm and nonsense aside, let me ask you one thing:

Why do you act against your own self-interest?

> We want people on Microsoft's payroll to stop making noise on Hacker News.

In other words, you're saying it doesn't matter what they do, you've already made up your mind. And just to be sure, you don't want to hear anything that would contradict your opinion. Did I get that right?

> you don't want to hear anything that would contradict your opinion

Yes, because they don't garner any trust as an organization. They are merely courting today's developers which have voted wholesale to adopt other platforms instead of MS.

If MS releases their operating system under the GPL, I'll change my tune. Until then, it's all marketing and PR hype.

That is right. It does not matter what they do because they made their wealth in quasilegal ways and they should not exist in 2018.

Their PR stunts are just a distraction, and all the happy foundation shit is likely all tax deductible anyways.

It does not matter that happy guy Satya is CEO, Bill Gates is still on the board and got away with all.

If a guy robs a bank then donates 1% of the money to charity, it doesn't change the fact that guy robbed a bank.

Big-fat "So what?" to all of that.

Their primary product is still proprietary, and if that's not bad enough, it's essentially completely spyware at this point.

I don't want to use their crap open source products so I can integrate with their crap proprietary SaaS ecosystem.

Just because they're finally deciding to release some token software with some level of open source, and buying political influence via the linux foundation, doesn't make them a friend of free software. There is more to free software than just the license: their strategy of vendor-lockin via Terms of Service instead of EULA, they are merely seeking to 'vendorize' free software projects to integrate with their paid products.

Their motivations don't make their work bad. OP is pointing out that MS is much less an enemy of OSS than they used to be, not that you should use their software and services.

I hate MS, but please, don't make the case that no progress is better than some progress. They aren't perfect, and of course they are motivated to make money, but none of that means their work isn't good for OSS.

> but none of that means their work isn't good for OSS.

I disagree. They are losing developer mind share, that's the only reason they have any open source initiatives. None of what MS does is good for open source IMO, and they can keep their money.

There seems to be quite the concerted effort to make MS 'cool and hip' here and elsewhere. I'm not buying it, I'm not using their software, and it's still perfectly valid to dislike MS for aforementioned reasons. I view their work on free software as only a mechanism to co-opt.

Microsoft tries to claim they love and support open source for the greater good, but what they really love is money. If they offer you a job, try running Linux as the primary OS on your work computer and see what they say (even if you want to run Windows using KVM). It's a broken toxic culture there. If you have good intentions, you'll likely be fired.

I've known multiple Microsoft developers who use a MBP at work, and who aren't fired. And now that MS has bought companies like Xamarin, need to support Linux and Mac.

They wouldn't allow it 2 years ago. Yeah, you can run Linux in a VM but not as your main desktop connecting to their corporate network.

I assume GP meant "MBP" means "MacBook Pro" so, not Linux either.

Right, you've reminded me of the time they tried to take over Java on Windows by embracing it.

I view VS Code as an excellent editor and Unix Subsystem for Windows making Windows a first-class citizen (almost) for dev work. But hey, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.

> Their primary product is still proprietary, and if that's not bad enough, it's essentially completely spyware at this point.

Interested Observer here. What is Microsoft's primary product you are referring to? Windows or Office. From a quick Google search, it seems like Office (based on revenue).

That may be true, but perception may be otherwise.

Their primary product is still proprietary, and if that's not bad enough, it's essentially completely spyware at this point.

You could say the same about Google......

I don't disagree. I have started using Firefox as my primary browser again.

And you don't have any social media accounts, don't use Google/Bing or any other Google/Microsoft service, no social media (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc), right?

So you have to be 100% clean of all google/microsoft tools/services in order to criticize them? Give me a break.

- Open source GitHub like GitLab has

  - GitLab SaaS actually provides CI as well and doesn't limit Pages to just Jekyll

- Open source their web browser like Chromium & Firefox

- Provide virtio support for KVM/Linux, especially for graphics acceleration

- Open source DirectX 12 like Vulkan

- The list goes on and on

> Open source GitHub like GitLab has

They can't do that yet, since the acquisition is still in progress.

Let me know when they provider a descent Docker container for GitHub like they do for GitLab:

https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce/

Or a Helm chart:

https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/install/kubernetes/gitlab_chart.h...

> - They're now, or soon will be, the largest supporter of free infrastructure for open source projects on the planet (GitHub)

They bought GitHub, a profitable proprietary product, that also hosts open source code as a marketing project.

By that logic you could say that MS supports open source because some other people develop OSS on Windows. (And MS has tried to do this!)

> - They've open sourced a massive chunk of their (IMHO) best-in-class language runtimes and language implementations (C#, F#, VB.net) and design and develop new features in the open

Is .NET Framework (the real thing, not the vapourware rewrite) open? Didn't think so.

> - They've contributed more than 1700 changes to the Linux kernel that can easily be identified with a quick 'git log --grep'

And how many of those are just about Hyper-V/Azure? When is Windows going to support Ext4 and KVM VirtIO?

> - They're the first company to make a real attempt at an industrial strength alternative implementation of the Linux kernel. Linux was supposed to be about choice, remember?

So that they can execute another round of EEE. No thanks.

Then again, I guess we're fairly safe from that this time, since they haven't even managed to get SQLite to run properly.

> - They've open sourced the core chunks of the evaluation engine used in Bing (BitFunnel)

From the top of their README: "It doesn't work (yet)."

> - They're a platinum member of the Linux Foundation. In other words, they pay Torvalds salary

So when are they going to start acting like it?

> - They support Linux as a first class OS on Azure and make it cheaper than Windows

Just like all the other cloud providers? Meh.

> - They have one of the largest and most active GitHub organizations

How many of those projects are useful outside of Azure/Windows?

> - They've joined OIN and, ignoring the actual patents involved, have thus in the process made an implicit promise never to attack any core part of the Linux infrastructure in the future

Too little, too late.

>How many of those projects are useful outside of Azure/Windows?

VSCode alone is one of it not the most active projects on github (depending on the metric), and is a general purpose code editor equally stable on Windows/Linux/Mac. Yes, they have plugins you can install for Azure/VSTS/etc, but you can also install plugins for BitBucket, GitHub, AWS, GCE, or ~whatever you want. It's pretty generically useful. I think.

I read this list as, 'Yea, they're helping OSS.. but they make a profit also!' OSS does not mean you can't make a profit.

I read it as they are acting like they support OSS because lots of people like OSS. And its kind of sad IMO that their biggest open source product is a text editor (a good one, but still a text editor). Let me know when they make word and excel open source and then we might be able to have a conversation about them supporting open source. Right now they are supporting the tools people want to use on their hosting platform because most people dont want windows in the cloud (except to handle current enterprise systems that are slowly being migrated to other platforms).

GitHub is not profitable.

.net core is not vaporware. It's out and just shipped 2.1. The non-core one is not open source as it is very tied to Windows and they want the future effort to be the cross platform .net core.

Microsoft also:

- Forcibly upgraded as many Windows 7 and 8 machines to Windows 10 as possible without really asking permission, so that some manager could make their adoption metrics look better. - Implemented extremely-invasive data collection in Windows 10. - Migrated to a "Windows is a service! Better hope you like not being able to decline updates!" model with Windows 10, where the user no longer has control of their own machine.

I'm a huge fan of C# and Visual Studio, and I think MS SQL Server is arguably the best overall[1] relational database software, but I certainly don't trust them to have any motivations other than "whatever makes us the most money as possible".

[1] I like Postgres a lot and use it myself most frequently for personal projects, but if one has at least a small budget, SQL Server (IMO) has by far the best administration tools of any database and is very reliable.

>Forcibly upgraded as many Windows 7 and 8 machines to Windows 10

Does this have any bearing on Microsoft's support for Open Source?

It does say a lot about their respect for their users.

It motivated some people to switch to Linux. Those people may be sceptical when Microsoft offers to help them with Linux.

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between Open Source and Free Software and why Microsoft are happy to be seen as a champion of the former.

> Forcibly upgraded as many Windows 7 and 8 machines to Windows 10.

This was a terrible decision, I agree.

> to have any motivations other than "whatever makes us the most money as possible".

Well they are a corporation. That's the end goal of any corporation.

> Implemented extremely-invasive data collection in Windows 10

This I don't agree with though. Yes, they collected data, and that is wrong. I was pissed off too. However, it was not as invasive as made it out to be. They did not track the websites we browse. They did not track who we communicate with like Google, Facebook and other such companies do. I would trust Microsoft with my data and privacy over Google and Facebook. And yet most of us use Google services without a second thought.

Another thing I dislike about Windows is the bloatware and ads in Start.

However, this does not negate their recent contributions. Is the end goal for these contributions to make more money? Absolutely. But that does not mean we should not welcome the good stuff from Microsoft just because its Microsoft.

Once the data starts flowing, it is trivial for the "terrible decision" making manager above (endemic to such corporations) to decide to gather just "a little more."

> What more do you want?

Many people (not parent in particular, just in general) need something to be angry about, so they feel like they are taking a stand of some sort. Microsoft is a soft target, and this creates a bandwagon.

You work for them, and dismiss all the valid arguments as people needing something to be angry about, in spite of their multidecade fuckery. What a slimy shitheel you are.

Some of us have worked with their software for many years and don't trust anything they say / do because they can change their minds tomorrow. I sometimes think of MS as a abusing partner that keep beating us up when they feel for it, but then buy us some flowers and chocolate to make up for it.

Edit: spelling

I like this analogy a lot.

An important addition is that they not only buy flowers and chocolate to make up for it, but that they let all your friends know about this. In such a way that when you tell your friends "well, he's really nice now, but last month, when he missed the deadline, it wasn't that good to be home" and they simply don't believe you.

> - They've contributed more than 1700 changes to the Linux kernel that can easily be identified with a quick 'git log --grep'

They're forced to. People want to use Linux. If a cloud provider decides they don't want to support Linux, it's business suicide. Microsoft's contributions to the Linux kernel, when I last checked, were almost exclusively related to Hyper-V. They're just doing what's good for them. If Linux was proprietary and enjoyed similar popularity, they would pay the owner to include these features.

It's a good start, that I agree with.

But the telemetry (that you can't trust is actually off) it a complete non-starter. Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

I recently installed an eval of Win10 in a VM. While nice in some respects, it soon became clear that you will work the way Microsoft wants. Telemetry, ads, Edge, activation, white backgrounds even in dark mode, all forced down your throat, etc. Windows 2000 was better in most respects.

Wait, I did think of something. Public support of ReactOS would be a big feather in their cap.

> Linux was supposed to be about choice, remember?

Free software was never supposed to be about choice, not sure where that idea came from. It's about freedom.

> In order to truly help OSS, joining some initiative, group or foundation is the easy thing to do. Opening the patent portfolio, is the difficult thing to do.

What's the difference between the two? In order to join OIN, MS had to agree to let other members of OIN freely use their patents.

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