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Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

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Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#101

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

kelnos wrote: post #37

This sort of thing has been MS's playbook since I was a kid, or earlier. It surprises me that people are still surprised when things like this happen. I especially think someone with Miguel de Icaza's experience should know better[0]. It's interesting to see the generational difference here. Many of my somewhat-younger (even only by 7-10 years) programmer/techie friends just don't remember the Microsoft of the 80s an…

> It was clear to me that MS intended .NET to be a wholly-proprietary, Windows-only technology until de Icaza and co. built Mono, when MS grudgingly embraced it.

I kinda disagree with that, based on things that MS people straight-up say out loud. MS changed that "wholly-proprietary, Windows-only technology" thinking for other reasons.

VS and .NET are not the profit centres any more. Azure is. Even #2 spot in cloud computing is vastly profitable (1) and strategic.

Is Azure "struggling" eh, it depends. Sure they want to have more users than AWS, and they're struggling to do that. Struggling to be successful, big, profitable etc, no not at all, Azure is all of those things.

MS wants you to run it on Azure. For just about any "it". They'll even prioritize enticing you to Azure over enticing you to Windows servers. Therefor, there should be a good "it runs on Linux on Azure" story for any popular dev tool. Doubly so for the MS developer base.

1) https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cloud-revenue-at-23-...

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#102

Post by anonymous_sorry »

headmelted wrote: post #68
kelnos wrote: post #37

This sort of thing has been MS's playbook since I was a kid, or earlier. It surprises me that people are still surprised when things like this happen. I especially think someone with Miguel de Icaza's experience should know better[0]. It's interesting to see the generational difference here. Many of my somewhat-younger (even only by 7-10 years) programmer/techie friends just don't remember the Microsoft of the 80s an…

I think what's more likely in this case is that MS under Satya really does want to be a good corporate citizen, but are finding themselves in a bind that threatens the whole organisation. They're spending up the wazoo on Xbox, still, to battle PlayStation. They were supposed to have conquered that market over 15 years ago and are still throwing money at it. Windows is hurting as a retail business. License costs have…

You say Microsoft is in a bind because in most of its businesses it is facing existential threats from stiff competition. But that is exactly how free market capitalism is meant to work.

You almost imply that we can expect better corporate citizenship (whatever that means) from corporates with comfortable monopolies. I think 90s Microsoft is probably sufficient rebuttal of that.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#103

Post by oblio »

bayindirh wrote: post #59
kelnos wrote: post #37

This sort of thing has been MS's playbook since I was a kid, or earlier. It surprises me that people are still surprised when things like this happen. I especially think someone with Miguel de Icaza's experience should know better[0]. It's interesting to see the generational difference here. Many of my somewhat-younger (even only by 7-10 years) programmer/techie friends just don't remember the Microsoft of the 80s an…

Yes, a lot of younger developers and "tech citizens" think MS is a saint now. They need to love Open Source / Linux because their platform has lost to the openness, composability and lightness of Linux. They lost the server space, but they're retrying to seize desktop from Linux with WSL and invading the developer tools space and trying to isolate Desktop Linux as an "irrelevant layer which runs MS software and techn…

> trying to isolate Desktop Linux as an irrelevant layer

They're obviously doing that, but they don't really need to.

Desktop Linux is its own enemy. 2 major GUI toolkits, frequent upgrades to them, generally with breaking changes, multiple DEs, frequent upgrades to them, also with breaking changes, a full decades of bickering over a solution that solves actual end user and operator problems in a standardizing way (systemd), immature GUI software after decades (Gimp & co), chronic lack of funding because nobody can figure it out, etc.

I've been around Desktop Linux for more than 15 years. I still hear bad arguments I heard back in 2005.

Plus, the ship has sailed. Mobile devices outnumber desktops and laptops and will only continue to grow. The money surrounding mobile dwarfs desktop. And Linux lost on mobile, it was it best chance to become the primary platform somewhere. Android doesn't count. Android used a cheap and standard kernel with many drivers and plopped a million proprietary things on top that look nothing like Desktop Linux.

You'll say I'm wrong, yet I'm willing to bet $100 that this discussion will look the same way in 15 years.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#104

Post by akagusu »

bayindirh wrote: post #84
littlecranky67 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His joint venture with MS what turned everything sour for many people, incl. me. Why did it turn things sour for you? I mean, ever since the Xamarin acquisition, MS .NET has become open + cross plattform and Xamarin which was a commercial/paid-for product is open too. VSCode is a first class citizen for free C#/.NET development on macOS and Linux. Not saying all of this is related to de Icaza getting bought by MS,…

If you're a .NET developer who uses Linux, yes that sounds nice. On the other hand. Consider a prominent member one of the biggest open source projects leaves the project, joins Microsoft, and praises Microsoft and pushes semi-closed Microsoft technologies on every project, claiming Linux is dead without Microsoft, and we need to compromise by allowing these non-free technologies and porting almost everything to it.…

> DeIcaza (knowingly or unknowingly) was a part of an concentrated and coordinated effort to EEE Linux, and the open frameworks around it.

The only person who does not know this is Icaza itself.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#106

Post by jmnicolas »

segphault wrote: post #24

Microsoft can't have it both ways. Crippling open tooling in order to extract more revenue or drive lock-in will undermine their efforts to make .NET relevant outside of the niche occupied by traditional .NET shops. I can't imagine that there's a business justification for this decision that is compelling enough to offset the long-term damage to .NET adoption and community trust.

How are they going to extract more revenues with a proprietary Intellisense VS Code extension?

At best they're locking you in their ecosystem, but they don't profit from VS Code directly (emphasis on directly).

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#107

Post by bayindirh »

oblio wrote: post #103
bayindirh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a lot of younger developers and "tech citizens" think MS is a saint now. They need to love Open Source / Linux because their platform has lost to the openness, composability and lightness of Linux. They lost the server space, but they're retrying to seize desktop from Linux with WSL and invading the developer tools space and trying to isolate Desktop Linux as an "irrelevant layer which runs MS software and techn…

> trying to isolate Desktop Linux as an irrelevant layer They're obviously doing that, but they don't really need to. Desktop Linux is its own enemy. 2 major GUI toolkits, frequent upgrades to them, generally with breaking changes, multiple DEs, frequent upgrades to them, also with breaking changes, a full decades of bickering over a solution that solves actual end user and operator problems in a standardizing way (s…

I'll just say that while Linux desktop is not perfect, I see much more people who're "assembling" their own environments to work at speeds I can't ever imagine.

I'm part of a community who does amazing things with all these fragmented parts and assemble unimaginable things while staying productive and inventing new ways of work.

The overall maturity of these small parts have not reversed the tide, but actually changed it a lot.

As a macOS and Linux user for 15 years, I see that both can work seamlessly without much effort, but Windows built on a completely different platform, can't talk this language of protocols and composability natively, or work as seamlessly.

Microsoft is right to feel threatened, because they're threatened by two sides.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#108

Post by ozim »

okamiueru wrote: post #60
ozim wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Swift might be open source - to effectively do something with it you still need to buy a Macbook or even iPhone, which as we know are expensive. To release any application in Apple ecosystem you have to pay for developer account each year. You might play around with stuff - but I don't believe anyone would be developing on their platform just for fun. Microsoft gives stuff away for free - loads of stuff - there…

If only apple products were just expensive. For certain kinds of people, dev-tools/environment and OS are exceedingly frustrating to work with. I don't get why developers put up with it, well, other than the obvious market access.

I think it mostly boils down to that devs in Apple ecosystem get paid more and they can afford that stuff.

Then as they see nice income stream - some inconvenience is written off as cost of doing business.

Then it is just not that many of them.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#109

Post by pooper »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #97
kelnos wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads to me as: > MS under Satya really does want to be a good corporate citizen ... followed by... > [a bunch of reasons why MS won't be a good corporate citizen] Wanting is great, but actions speak louder. Maybe instead of doing sketchy things to try to lock people into your cloud platform (and make using your framework on other platforms more difficult), they could, I dunno, maybe focus on Azure itself, and m…

I wonder how much inertia an organization like MS has. I never worked there, but the anecdotes I read/hear indicate that MS is really 4-5 semi-independent competing power structures. E.g. there's sometimes (often?) adversarial relationship between them even, which then projects into baffling end user experiences. The windows shut down menu or the highly schizophrenic situation between the new and old control panels c…

> Steering something like that is not even analogous to captaining a single large ship, it's more like trying to steer a flotilla where each captain hates the other bunch and they are all continuously pulling in different directions.

I'm sure this is a constant struggle even within the dotnet umbrella. Remember the whole hot reload mess?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972431

I don't get it. Why can't they simply open source the common code between visual studio and visual studio code? Who cares if Visual Studio makes an extra million dollars in revenue? Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. Spending all these resources to get developer mindshare and constantly tripping over themselves because oh we must protect visual studio revenue.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#110

Post by smcl »

StopHammoTime wrote: post #78
headmelted wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's more likely in this case is that MS under Satya really does want to be a good corporate citizen, but are finding themselves in a bind that threatens the whole organisation. They're spending up the wazoo on Xbox, still, to battle PlayStation. They were supposed to have conquered that market over 15 years ago and are still throwing money at it. Windows is hurting as a retail business. License costs have…

Home licensing has not been a big deal for a very long time. Their actual cash cows are things like Enterprise Licensing which aren’t going anywhere soon. You’ve also entirely excluded server licensing as well. Have a read of their actual results and maybe re-think your hypothesis a bit. Microsoft’s revenue went up by 18%. I think they’ll be fine without some .NET extension,

Exactly. This is yet another bizarre move from MS which doesn't exactly seem to make financial sense and just pisses off developers who might otherwise be persuaded to soften their stance towards them. I wonder if these are part of a deliberate strategy MS are trying, or just the actions a few overly ambitious managers
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