Microsoft: We were wrong about open source | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft: We were wrong about open source

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46 pointsValentineC15 comments

I wish Microsoft would officially release the source code for Windows 7 or even XP. I use Windows 7 now (with AV and common sense) and although slower it's a marked improvement from 10 in terms of customization and privacy. If Microsoft gave the open source community the tools to start improving Windows it would completely change the game.

I think Microsoft knows this and I think they don't want to make Windows open-source for fear that they could create their own competitor.

I doubt it's about competition. Massive portions of Azure are developed completely completely open source, even though there are clear competitors.

Third party licenses, such as Adobe's font parsing, would need to get relicensed or rewritten to have a usable system.

You should listen to Bryan Cantrill's rant on Sun's disastrous attempt at opening up Solaris. This isn't an easy task.

https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc

This is pure speculation on my part, but would the parts of Azure Microsoft has open sourced be useful to their competitors? I think Google and Amazon would prefer their own ground-up implementations that work well with their systems. Furthermore, becoming a cloud provider takes a lot of infrastructure, so I'd consider it unlikely that a competitor would spring up using Microsoft's software.

Yes, software this essential also always comes with certain (non-technical) processes attached to it. This is usually my argument to corporate for opening up software that is extremely well tailored to our needs. A competitor would have to revamp entire divisions to make proper use out of it.

Funny enough though that not changing your process to fit software but trying it the other way around is the reason most SAP integration projects fail.

To be honest, a lot of Microsoft's open source efforts, while seemingly a change from their old attitude, hasn't been anything substantial. Their inclusion of a linux service later and the forthcoming linux kernel has nothing to do with kindness to the open source community and everything to do with capturing market share and profit.

It entices developers who might otherwise leave windows to stay. Why bother leaving windows when all your linux toolchain needs are available under Microsoft's comfy corporate roof.

Meanwhile, they've acquired one of the largest repositories of open source software in existence and now. make substantial profit from this.

Not that this is bad necessarily, but this 'oh look how benevolent and great Microsoft is now' twist all these stories get is just kind of a bit ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

Microsoft's still a business concerned with trying to dominate on as many different fronts as it can. It may have changed up its strategy, but the goal hasn't changed. And, while they do seem to be doing some good, their whole underlying business strategy of 'have a presence on every computer everywhere' still remains strong.

> Microsoft's still a business concerned with trying to dominate on as many different fronts as it can. It may have changed up its strategy, but the goal hasn't changed. And, while they do seem to be doing some good, their whole underlying business strategy of 'have a presence on every computer everywhere' still remains strong.

Well of course. That's the essence of capitalism, it's strange to me that you're remarking on one of the most fundamental tenets as if it's interesting or otherwise noteworthy.

The fundamental tenet of capitalism is businesses exist to make money, otherwise they die and the shareholders have to bail out the company and employees, which is exactly why shareholders make so much money, as reward for the risk of investment (or -- in our current system -- the shareholders get bailed out while everyone else suffers the loss). Microsoft makes money by capturing market share and increasing vendor lock-in. The idea of companies doing "good" is outside the realm of market dynamics under capitalism, so it's alarming to think that any self-respecting neoliberal could assume that a company is inherently "good" or "bad".

"Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish" is something microsoft has been doing since the 1980s, and the 1990s leaked Halloween Memos show they've been aware of the threat since Linux's inception, I'm honestly surprised they took this long to start doing it with Linux, although the user experience in the last 5 years has become rather seamless, in my experience, so it's likely that it's only now that because of that, and Android, it's seen as a real threat.

> it's strange to me that you're remarking

Reminders are important - and for some, especially the young guns, your comment isn't a reminder.

I guess? That's a fair point. Although I'm on the younger side myself compared to the average population here.

I think it's more likely than it ever was (whatever that means), given that their revenue is not all that reliant on Windows anymore. Their apps run in the cloud, on mobile devices (not Windows Mobile), and on Linux (MSSQL for Linux was unthinkable a decade ago). If they could open source it, give away home (and pro?) for free, then they could outsource even more QA to the community and still make the real money off of Enterprise and Azure hosting.

The problem is all of the binary blobs they used in developing Windows (the zip library is a simple example) are licensed from third-parties that probably don't want their software open-sourced. The libraries would have to be reimplemented for the OS to be usable (not saying it wouldn't/shouldn't happen, it'd just be a hurdle).

https://www.fsf.org/windows/upcycle-windows-7

Microsoft understood, and still understands strategy wrt developers. Microsoft went Open Source because that is where devs go, why do they go there? Access, control and agency.

Why do you think they make VSCode? With VSCode and Github, Microsoft has access to probably > 40% of all developers in the world! How did they do it? Open Source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23214548

Microsoft admits being 'on the wrong side of history' with regard to open source (theregister.co.uk)

73 points by FlyMoreRockets 1 day ago | 110 comments

How corrigible of them. We all know damn well they have no choice.

Why do we have so much MSFT post on HN?

Be it release related, PR?

In general? Microsoft is one of the largest software (and SW dev tooling) vendors in the world. Recently? Their dev conference (BUILD) is starting today. Expect even more in the next 36 - 72 hours.

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