Microsoft President Brad Smith Acknowledges They Were Previously Wrong On Open-Source

[TemplarGR]

There is nothing wrong with selling closed source software that runs over open source software. I would gladly buy Office if it was officially ported on Linux, and i needed the extra functionality compared to opensource solutions. Opensource is preferable but not every product and need can be accommodated by open source. Developing some kinds of software is expensive and if it gets opensourced for free then the developers will go bankrupt. Of course stuff like the Linux kernel get support from many wealthy companies but these companies did not originally develop the kernel, and they benefit from it as much as they contribute to it. You can't expect Microsoft developers to work hard to make Office and distribute it for free.

I don't understand the hate Microsoft is receiving. Yes it is the kewl thing to do in Linux forums, but it is stupid. They can't just opensource everything, even if they wanted to, they are obliged by law to maximize profits for their shareholders, giving away their softwares for free will make them liable for lawsuits. So unless they can prove opensource benefits them or at least isn't costing them more than it benefits them, then they can't opensource anything.

In my opinion Microsoft is on the road to transform Windows into a Linux distro. This obviously is a slow process, but the writing has been on the wall for some time now. They don't plan on replacing Windows 10 with a newer version. Windows 10 is the last of the NT versions. They are releasing service packs, yes, but they aren't selling a new version, anyone who has Windows 10 can keep using them for many years, how that profits Microsoft?

I think Microsoft is behind the scenes trying to make a Linux distro which uses their own proprietary userland. Obviously they will transfer D3D12 Ultimate to it as well, and their driver model. That way Microsoft can keep the advantage of hardware and software compatibility, while minimizing development costs considerably. It is the smart thing to do. Their main revenue is the cloud and non-windows products now anyways.

[Mez']

"WE"? Speak for yourself. I, for one, welcome MS Office for Linux.

This has nothing to do with open or closed. I don't (didn't) care about using Netflix, Spotify or fglrx for that matter as long as it works.

But LO >>>> MSO. If given a choice, hell, If I had to pay twice the price for LO, I would pick it any day of the century.
Sure, it's not as appealing aesthetically, sure it needs a bit of a learning curve to find your MSO functions back. But then, damn! When you need to produce advanced documents, it's at least 25-30% faster to do it (for me). And more importantly, I don't want to smash everything around me every 10 minutes because MSO assumes something entirely different from what I expect or asked.

If this horrible piece of software is brought to Linux, it will enforce its monopoly and I will be forced to use it for as long as I live. Hell no! WORST case scenario.
I've used that crap for long enough (25 years, including 12 years being forced to).

I'd rather we keep on trying to advertise LO (even if it means struggling for market share for many more years).

[increasechief]

Microsoft is no longer a threat to open source. I'm not claiming that because I'm naive, it's simply because Microsoft's interests no longer conflict, and in some ways now even happen to coincide, with those of the open source community.

No, you are naive. Everything's good until it isn't.

[k1e0x]

I know that almost all responses here have been dismissive of Microsoft. And I concur that they have done some pretty nasty things over the years, including going as far as needlessly integrating a web browser in an OS, just to destroy Netscape, and in doing so not only killing a competitor and holding back the web for about a decade, but also unleashing an untold number of needless security headaches upon the world.

But let's give credit where credit is due. This is an actual admission that they were wrong and that they regret those words. And I have to say, I've been liking the new Microsoft since Satya Nadella took over the helm. Although at the end of the day they are a large publicly traded company that will of course put the interests of their shareholders first, the means through which they have been doing so has made them far less of an evil company than Facebook, Amazon and, sorry to say, also Google these days.

Linus Torvalds once said: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." And by that metric, Microsoft has been putting their money where their mouth is. Aren't they one of the largest contributors to the development of the Linux kernel these days? Visual Studio Code has been by far the most heavily developed open source project on GitHub in the last few years, IMO even having reached the point where it may start cannibalizing revenues from the commercial Visual Studio IDE.

Plus .NET is now entirely open source. Which is especially nice, considering another company that is many times more evil and a much bigger threat to Open Source at the moment:

Oracle.

Thanks to their greed, the worldwide software development community is now holding its breath, pending an upcoming decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, regarding the question whether APIs are copyrightable. If the decision ends up being favor of Oracle, it will be desastrous to the entire software industry, not to mention the open source community. And all of this due to Oracle's greed and spite for not having profited off the success of Android.

Microsoft is no longer a threat to open source. I'm not claiming that because I'm naive, it's simply because Microsoft's interests no longer conflict, and in some ways now even happen to coincide, with those of the open source community. Will that change again eventually? Perhaps. But for now, Oracle is the company we should all be rooting against, and against those scumbags, I welcome almost any ally, including Microsoft.

I respectfully disagree.

It isn't Microsoft per say, it is the corporate structure on a whole and if they can destroy competition, gain market share and advantage and dominate opensource projects for their own benefit they will. it's not a personal thing or the people at Microsoft.. it is just the nature of the beast. Any company faces these problems when they become too large and powerful in an industry. it takes extreme restraint for them to do the right thing as opposed to the profitable thing when their bosses and shareholders put so much pressure on them to make money.

It's not a knock on capitalism, it's a wonderful thing when there is competition.. it's when you don't have competition where the abuse starts.

We should be very leery of these giants.. Oracle, Google, Yes Microsoft.. Even RedHat.

Microsoft is essentially telling us "Hey, we are dominating open source, isn't that great?!" I would say, no.. because at the same time you can see WSL is being developed for the sole purpose of running Linux docker containers on Windows $erver turning Linux into a run time layer.

[JustinTurdeau]

Companies are profit driven. More news at 11.

You can handwave and act the apologist all day long, but the fact is: most other companies haven't been caught red-handed engaging in systematic behavior like this. Microsoft has been rotten to the core for the longest time and the only thing that's changed is the marketing...

[mdedetrich]

as

Most people saying "make Office open source or gtfo" are just being facetious, but the points about Microsoft working against standards and going to great lengths to make their formats opaque and non-interoperable are still very valid.

Microsoft are most definitely not acting in good faith when it comes to open source. It's so clear as day that I seriously have to question the motives (or mental faculties) of anyone stating otherwise...

In the early and mid 2000's, sure, however now its a completely different ballgame, i.e. Visual Studio Code. Believe it or not, Microsoft has changed (to what degree is debatable but its not trivial).

[increasechief]

In the early and mid 2000's, sure, however now its a completely different ballgame, i.e. Visual Studio Code. Believe it or not, Microsoft has changed (to what degree is debatable but its not trivial).

I think calling MS on their bluff is more than fair. Clearly they are making more money gathering and selling personal information (Microslurp) than they can on their shallow code quality and QA practices. Open source is looking more and more like a gambit as their recent acquisitions has been fairly transparent attempts to purchase quality developer communities largely owing to the fact they are incapable of building this themselves. I mean only GitHub has really accomplished this so not saying it's easy by any stretch. Nothing new there, they have a looong earned reputation of buying (borg'ing) others nice things.

[Grumpy Cowboy]

Too late. No trust.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

I think calling MS on their bluff is more than fair. Clearly they are making more money gathering and selling personal information (Microslurp) than they can on their shallow code quality and QA practices. Open source is looking more and more like a gambit as their recent acquisitions has been fairly transparent attempts to purchase quality developer communities largely owing to the fact they are incapable of building this themselves. I mean only GitHub has really accomplished this so not saying it's easy by any stretch. Nothing new there, they have a looong earned reputation of buying (borg'ing) others nice things.

The irony is the guy in charge is "president brad smith" which is also "president BS" for bull sheet.

[mike456]

Wonder if Defender will also work on Desktop and not only servers.