171–180 of 459 posts
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1412...
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Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…
I don't think it's particularly fair to lump Apple with the rest since 14 years later [1] the core OS is still open source [2], and they're actively working on several high profile open source projects (e.g. Webkit, CUPS, and clang). They're not exactly irrelevant either. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Dar... [2] http://opensource.apple.com/
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Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…
I don't think it's particularly fair to lump Apple with the rest since 14 years later [1] the core OS is still open source [2], and they're actively working on several high profile open source projects (e.g. Webkit, CUPS, and clang). They're not exactly irrelevant either. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Dar... [2] http://opensource.apple.com/
They also announced as part of this that they are putting a large swatch of their .NET Source code under Apache 2 and accepting pull requests. Folks, this is a very big deal for Microsoft. Who would have imagined this 10 years ago? Here is an image that shows what they are putting into the community https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkT9oBcCQAAHIAV.jpg:large
Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…
Visual Studio and their MVC framework continue to impress me (I mostly work in Ruby today, but have to maintain some .NET stuff) and MS takes inspiration from successful open-source tools and frameworks where needed. Many of their recent advancements over the last 3-4 years have clearly been the work of engineers who enjoy and value the best of the open source world.
I'm not trying to tell you that Microsoft is suddenly our warm, fuzzy friend. As even Scott Hanselman would gladly admit, they're ultimately trying to sell you software licenses or Azure services.
But it seems to me that they're using open source the right way in order to achieve that goal, as opposed to the bad old "embrace and extend / embrace and extinguish" days at Microsoft.
Whether or not Microsoft has earned another shot with us or not is definitely up for debate, and with all the cool shit happening in the open source world it's probably even a moot point to an extent.
But they're definitely doing more than cargo-culting in Redmond these days.
As a C# developer who genuinely likes the C# language (although I loathe vast swaths of the .NET framework libs) I'm actually super-excited about this. C# is a great language, and I hope to see it flourish outside of the MS walled garden. Miguel de Icaza does what he can with Mono, but it can be so much more.
Agreed. I really like C#. But it's currently pretty close to useless anywhere other than Windows - Mono doesn't even come close. Hopefully this will close the gap.
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Red Hat, for instance, makes a ton of money off the reverse model, where they let CentOS give away their core offering for free (heck, they're even paying people to work on CentOS now), and they make their money off clients who have money and are willing to exchange it for support and such for otherwise free offerings. There's really no reason Microsoft can't do something similar here (and they seem to be trending in…
You honestly think Microsoft it trying to shift to a RedHat-like business plan? That they'll switch to becoming a support provider? I think what RedHat is doing is nice, but it's really not on the same scale to what Microsoft does; not to mention that they essentially have no monopoly/lockin - b/c anyone can start doing what they do (ie. start providing support for CentOS). The synergy of microsoft services is closel…
So look at what they're actually doing, right now: they're open-sourcing key parts of the .NET platform, and they're partnering with Xamarin to support even more open-source elements that makes the .NET platform appealing to new kinds of developers. So there's a low barrier to entry to getting started with .NET development and getting into that ecosystem. Once you're on the hook, as you grow you'll run into more and more things Microsoft can sell you. Microsoft can sell you their line of Visual Studio development tools, which provide the best .NET development experience. They can sell you Azure hosting for your .NET apps, which will likely offer the best .NET hosting possible (and even if you're not on .NET or are mixed between .NET and something else, Azure is getting very competitive with Amazon and Google). And if you're writing phone and tablet apps for iOS/Android using Xamarin, Microsoft is right there for you to expand your reach by porting to Windows Universal, where you can get your app on Windows 8 tablets and PC, Windows 8.1 phones and the Xbox One. That's Microsoft's vision of the future.
And yes, if you're running ASP.NET on Mono on Debian via AWS, to support your iOS app developed in Xamarin using Xamarin's IDE, Microsoft doesn't really benefit there. But that's also the case if you're running Node.js or PHP on AWS to connect to an iOS app written in ObjectiveC. And people in the former group are still much better PROSPECTIVE customers for future Microsoft endeavors than people in the latter group. (Not that Microsoft doesn't want to sell the latter group stuff too -- look at Azure.)
They also announced as part of this that they are putting a large swatch of their .NET Source code under Apache 2 and accepting pull requests. Folks, this is a very big deal for Microsoft. Who would have imagined this 10 years ago? Here is an image that shows what they are putting into the community https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkT9oBcCQAAHIAV.jpg:large
well, Microsoft used to say that open source software was anti-american, cancer, communist, anti-competitive, etc... yup I think they changed a bit
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XAML != WPF. XAML is a language for object instantiation, thats it. Similar to XIBs in the Apple world. There are no less than 3 similar but different and incompatible UI libraries that can be instantiated by XAML: WPF, Silverlight (WPF/e), and Windows store/phone (WinRT). WPF is dead like WinForms but the only solution for normal windows apps unless somethings changed with WinRT to make non full screen apps with. If…
Windows 8.1.1 allows non-fullscreen WinRT apps. So yeah, when I said WPF, I meant XAML/WinRT. My main desktop use is supporting WinForms legacy apps so I don't keep up with the new GUI frameworks.
I'm looking to move to direct2d eventually. I work at a low enough level that this wouldn't be too bad for me.
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Are you referring to this? It doesn't sound like he was trying to kill Mono, he just didn't want to depend on it because of the patent issue. https://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono So, five years later Microsoft makes another step in the right direction, and you think he's wrong because he didn't want to risk building the open source environment around something that could go away with a simple threat. Btw, doe…
Speaking of which, have the patent concerns about ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Forms gone away yet?
They also announced as part of this that they are putting a large swatch of their .NET Source code under Apache 2 and accepting pull requests. Folks, this is a very big deal for Microsoft. Who would have imagined this 10 years ago? Here is an image that shows what they are putting into the community https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkT9oBcCQAAHIAV.jpg:large
Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…