NEW YORK—At its first Connect event in 2013, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2013. In 2014, it announced the open sourcing of .NET, and in 2015, the open sourcing of the Visual Studio Code editor. The big news this year? Microsoft, the company that has built an empire on proprietary, closed-source software, has joined the Linux Foundation as a platinum member.
Microsoft has been a big contributor to Linux over the past several years, primarily focusing on improving support for its Hyper-V hypervisor. Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said that in becoming a member, "Microsoft is better able to collaborate with the open source community to deliver transformative mobile and cloud experiences to more people."
Microsoft's increasing commitment to open source has been met with some cynicism (and please, beloved commenters—try to refrain from "embrace, extend, extinguish" posts, as the very concept is preposterous when it comes to Linux), but with projects such as Visual Studio Code and .NET, is starting to win hearts and minds. The company does appear to be a reasonably good open source citizen, not merely publishing source code repositories that are occasionally updated from an internal development branch, but actually performing development in the open, accepting community contributions, and seeking community consensus when it comes to new features.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @08:23AM
They are joining because they know their desktop buisness is doomed in the long run, getting a foothold into linux to have the proper backend to port their various applications to it in the future helps if you want it done properly (see also Valve working directly with intel to get better linux GPU drivers out).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 17 2016, @05:35PM
Just as IBM was disrupted by microcomputers, Microsoft's desktop monopoly is disrupted by cheap hardware, Android, Tablets, Phones, Etc. Chromebooks have been the top selling laptops on Amazon for several years now. PC sales have been declining for a few years now. As PC sales decline, so does Microsoft's desktop OS business.
Open Source is unstoppable. Like the tide coming in and you trying to stop it with your hands. Open Source may rise much more slowly than commercial software. But it's not tied to marketing schedules, profits, sales features that nobody actually uses after the sale, etc.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.