Tag Archives: ms

Is Microsoft more open than the Open Source community wants us to believe?

Is Microsoft more open than the Open Source community want us to believe? I think we need to “Hit Refresh” on our opinions as well!

Microsoft

Microsoft

The second day of MS Ignite 2017 was for me all about technical architecture in contradiction to the first day where strategic vision was the focal point.

Having been in my career at both sides of the proprietary vs open divide, I started in an academic and open source java oriented setting and moved to consultancy using MS .and NET oriented technologies, I must admit that what I’ve seen MS doing today with Linux was once again an eye-opener.

You see MS pushing for Windows on Linux and Linux on Windows. Not only is the command line interface cross platform but SQL, VS Code, .NET Core and ASP.NET Core are now running on Linux. This means .NET applications can be developed and run natively in a Linux environment. The support for Linux on Windows is also extending rapidly. Linux containers run on Windows. Bash, a traditional Linux CLI, runs on Windows. Also in the cloud we see great evolutions by now, 8 Linux distributions are supported with close Azure integration something you would only have expected from Windows VM’s before.

In the Apple IOS world, we are already more accustomed to MS solutions to be present. Think about Office for Mac, Skype and Visual Studio. I was amazed to see that Skype would come to Linux. We are still not there yet but I hope to see one day Office and Visual Studio running cross platform.

In the SharePoint and Office 365 world further adoption of open tools to support the development of customizations is realized. The push for JavaScript is remarkable. Development of extensions is relying on TypeScript, Gulp, Yeoman, React and node.js!

If you see the evolution one can ask, who is truly open across all these eco-systems? I remember in 1999 we said Linux and Windows would never work together I guess pigs can fly and hell just frozen over.

Hit refresh on your opinion of MS!

Microsoft going Open Source?

I recently stumbled on Scott Guthrie blog where he explains that Microsoft is releasing the source code of the .NET Framework Libraries. Finally was my first impression. A bit latter and a bit disappointed, I saw it was a blog post from 2007 when MS realized a link between VS 2008 and a website with the debug symbols for framework classes.

For some of the hardest bugs I had to solve as a consultant, the last resort was the use reflector to check the libraries’s code to understand what is really happening. Having access to the debug symbols we are able to simple step through.

Anyway I’m very pleased with the effort MS puts into documenting their libraries and providing additional information. Compared to the early days it is a vast improvement. I remember creating C coded OLE ActiveX objects to run Delphi application against. Not a lot of fun!

I always wonder why Microsoft does not allow some Open Source licensing schema for his core libraries. It is not that the content is hidden. Reflector easily reveals what is in these libraries. It is probably my academic flower power period where I thought everything could be open and free, that is catching up.