One more way MS will engage with the open source and standards communities | Hacker News Reader

One more way MS will engage with the open source and standards communities

blogs.msdn.com

51 pointstilt19 comments

It's really easy to bash Microsoft based on their history of interaction with the OSS community - remember Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? However it is no longer 1999 and the environment has changed. Microsoft is no longer the Great Satan that everyone is scared will dominate everything. They'll act in ways that further their world view and bottom line (primarily Windows and Office) and if that means genuine engagement, they'll do it.

There are plenty of people within Microsoft who would love to be in this space. Endorsement (if that's what this is) could unleash a swarm of smart people working on hard problems for the benefit of all. And it could just be another marketing stunt.

I think any involvement of Microsoft with OSS community is a plus. IBM used to be hated for their heavy handed business practices long back, but they changed their way and embraced OSS (Linux in particular) and have been benefited tremendously. I don't see Microsoft can't have a win-win relationship with OSS.

If Microsoft had embraced oss they would've opened their protocols and wouldn't be extorting Android oems. EEE only works when you have dominant share to leverage, which they don't anymore. If we give it back to them, this new love for oss will be just the first step of EEE all over again.

It may not be 1999 but what about the whole OOXML thing? That's the first thing that springs to my mind when Microsoft talks about standards committees. I'm sure there are a lot of nice people working there, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Yup, I note that that announcement mentions OASIS twice - the company that MS found very helpful to get OOXML rubber-stamped and fast-tracked into ISO. I think we should be vigilant for that tactic being used again...

It's not 1999 anymore but what about patent lawsuits? What about locked UEFI on ARM?

"It's really easy to bash Microsoft based on their history of interaction with the OSS community - remember Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?"

They continue using the same technique today. It is only that enough people have opted out from them and they are doing fine(It was very difficult in the past not depending on MS).

I have to use proprietary MS tech like Silverlight to browse their web pages, no thanks, and they don't want to support webGL in IE so they don't empower standards like OpenGL.

I prefer they don't mess with open Standards so they don't corrupt them. EEE is still alive today because the culture of a company is so difficult to change at the deep level(you need to change the entire hierarchy, the power chain), and they have not done that. This is just PR.

"There are plenty of people within Microsoft who would love to be in this space."

Yeah, in every company there is all kind of people. The question is who gets promoted to make decisions. As the company gets older the hierarchy becomes self sustaining like in the catholic church +65 years old bishops choosing a +80 years old Pope. Do you expect the Pope to change the structure that elected him?.

It's not a popular thing to say, but I think it's time to cut MS some slack. This announcement isn't actually all that surprising, given previous ones in the last few years.

Remember, this is a company whose CEO called Linux cancer. Think about the internal change that has to come about at MS in order for things like this to see the light of day.

What this announcement amounts to is anyone's guess, and it may go nowhere, but they're trying to participate in a meaningful way. They should be given some credit for taking those steps.

If you ever worked in a big company, you should realize that this is pure and absolutely meaningless marketing.

Not only that, but this announcement is by itself absolutely content-free. If they announced that they'll port .NET to Linux, or open-source it completely, now that would have been an announcement worth sharing, because code talks, bullshit walks and unfortunately for them they have a long history of enforcing their monopoly, breaking standards and fighting against open-source and the open web and so they can't be forgiven that easily, not as long as Ballmer is still their CEO.

To their credit, they did release some cool stuff as open-source, like the F# compiler, or ASP.NET MVC and I hope this trend continues. However, marketing-fluff like this is meaningless.

As a former Microsoft employee, the only words that come to mind are "IT'S A TRAP!"

I really wonder how you see that. They're going to make a Microsoft-version of Joomla that doesn't work with the popular plugins?

These are different times. All technologies listed in the article are server tech, not end-user stuff (with the possible exception of Linux, but really Linux is only a competitor to Windows Server, and not to the desktop editions).

I doubt EEE will work as well in the server space; it feels more like a way to save Windows Server from losing market share in the wake of hyped tech like Mongo and Node.js. If they try to extend and extinguish such tools, people will move their apps to Linux.

I'm highly suspect of this motive. It seems like first stage of EEE.

It's odd they're putting emphasis on standardization of HTML5, when their latest browser is two years behind. Their HTTP 2.0 initiatives just seems like an attempt to retard Google's SPDY protocol.

Latest browser is IE10 and it might be behind ( but definitely not 2 years ), but think about how behind IE really was and how far it has come.

Open up your protocols first.

Sorry... I can't help seeing "infiltrate" rather than "engage with".

Now this is a very good thing. Any effort is at least a start, and they can't really make their relationship any worse.

I'm genuinely intrigued to know why working with open source and standards requires you to set up a separate company. That's got to be some crazy internal politics.

Reading the article it seems that the primary objective is to get the open source community behind Windows 8 and the windows phone.

"..work with the PhoneGap/Cordova and jQuery Mobile and other open source communities to support Windows Phone.."

Seems to be a rather one way street to me. When they stop claiming the rights to Linux and perhaps make Silverlight work in Linux I may believe they support open source.

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