Microsoft Open-Sources Edge's WebGL Implementation

[timofonic]

Why can't Microsoft do the same with .NET as Oracle does with Java? They just need to wait for the opportunity, just as Oracle did with Google (let's see if OpenJDK is enough switch for them).

[balperi]

subscribed to this thread, this seems like a very interesting thread

[Luke_Wolf]

What Oracle is trying is plain stupid too, and it hasn't stopped them. I see this as Microsoft hedging their bets. Plan A is for their open source projects to generate community excitement and investment. Out of that they get good publicity, more positive perception from developers, and free code improvements from the community that they can use on Windows. And if more people build applications in .NET or for Chakra, even if the people build them for Linux they can probably run on Windows.

Given the Microsoft has basically given up on inserting their OS into the phone market, the "Draw in developers" argument falls flat because on every other front they're not the ones hurting for developers. So they don't need that. Much more believable and what actually fits with the history going back to 2008 is that the Developer and Tools division has been pushing for this for a long time, and that with Nadella in power they finally were given the green light to go all the way, and that that caused a shockwave through the company causing them to have more leverage to push for the other non-product areas to follow suit.

But if someone forks Chakra and makes a successful Linux-only or Android-only browser out of it,

Chakra is like Webkit, and further Edge is not a product for Microsoft, what you're proposing is Microsoft getting pissy because a Linux only frontend is more popular than edge and suing them over it, sorry but no. Not going to happen. Not worth their time or money to sue over non-product software.

or someone writes an application in .NET that eats into Microsoft's business software market, they can shift to Plan B and attack the competitor that way.

That's not how patents work, I'm not a lawyer but what you're proposing here could only even potentially work under the framework of copyright. If a company were to reimplement .NET, okay now you have a potential for patent issues, but you can't provide someone an implementation of something and then sue them over patents for using it in a way you don't like. Plus as what you're proposing would kill .NET cold, Microsoft would never do it.

EDIT: That said I can guarantee that Microsoft has other patents on their business software that they *can* actually use to stomp said individuals out of business, but anyone just using .NET core has no patent liability whatsoever from Microsoft.

[starshipeleven]

To be pedantic, Windows is still a cash cow and will remain a cash cow for some time yet. It's just no longer the colossal cash cow that it was 15 years ago.

Conceded.
The main point was that it's unrealistic to think it will grow again by any margin, and that by all predictions it is going to keep slowly shrinking like the PC sales are.

[Michael_S]

Bluntly because what you're proposing is just plain stupid. Is Microsoft a saint? No, but what you're proposing is something nobody does. Nobody goes: "I'mma release this code as open source that I have patents on... now to wait till everyone has integrated it and then... mwahahahahaha time to sue them for every penny they've got in patent infringements with shell companies.".

What Oracle is trying is plain stupid too, and it hasn't stopped them. I see this as Microsoft hedging their bets. Plan A is for their open source projects to generate community excitement and investment. Out of that they get good publicity, more positive perception from developers, and free code improvements from the community that they can use on Windows. And if more people build applications in .NET or for Chakra, even if the people build them for Linux they can probably run on Windows.

But if someone forks Chakra and makes a successful Linux-only or Android-only browser out of it, or someone writes an application in .NET that eats into Microsoft's business software market, they can shift to Plan B and attack the competitor that way.

All Microsoft has to do to close the door on this is revise the legal text on their patent grant to completely guarantee that anyone using the code is protected. They just have to promise that if they ever sublicense, sell, or otherwise transfer their patents that cover the code to any public or private entity, the transfer agreement will contain a provision guaranteeing this patent use license and requiring the entity to pass along the same provision if they transfer the patents in turn.

[Michael_S]

Never said that. I'm just talking of Windows, MS has many other things, and they are doing their best to become a IBM/oracle-like thing that lives off b2b services and things since windows is NOT going to return a cash cow anytime soon.

To be pedantic, Windows is still a cash cow and will remain a cash cow for some time yet. It's just no longer the colossal cash cow that it was 15 years ago.

[starshipeleven]

You are making the assumption here that people will accept change willingly.

When you aren't the one in charge, you don't have the choice.
If management sees better numbers in a course of action, lower level workers get fucked.
That's why over-specializing is usually a bad idea in IT. Must be able to double as other figures too.

Also - MS is not going down any time soon or in fact any time in the medium term either.

Never said that. I'm just talking of Windows, MS has many other things, and they are doing their best to become a IBM/oracle-like thing that lives off b2b services and things since windows is NOT going to return a cash cow anytime soon.

[boxie]

Which will get fucked. Techsupport, programmers, and sysadmins aren't the ones pulling the strings. If the technology you know well goes to hell or is replaced, you sink with the ship.

this happens all the time with frameworks, libraries, applications and shit. Changing an OS under that isn't a major difference since people will work with the applications/frameworks/libraries/shit 99% of the time anyway.

You are making the assumption here that people will accept change willingly.
Also - MS is not going down any time soon or in fact any time in the medium term either.

[starshipeleven]

The problem is that Microsoft believes people (their employees) have no value and that all value is in what they produce, and if we give that away... then yes... they lose, because people aren't of any value... and certainly not "smart".

No, they aren't evil cartoon characters.
The problem is that MS is living off stuff they made ages ago, and at the moment they are mostly in mainteneance mode on that, while doing half-assed GUI reskins to make everyone think they are still "developing" something.

But... what if... what if people are where the value is.
That means, even if something is made FOSS, the primary development will still be done by the "people" that were "smart" enough to create and open source it to being with. Now... let's say somebody else thinks they are "smarter" and tries to "own" the software. Well, it's FOSS, so it can't be "owned", at least not in that way. And Microsoft can always hire "smart" people as they are found.... oh... and they might just create another awesome product.

Very risky (even if you round up the best men of the world and pay them the most money of the world there is no guarantee that the product will be good nor that it will sell well) and much more complex to get right since it's done in the open and not behind closed doors.

MS never had particularly bright management, they always used simple tactics and brute force. Now they come from decades of simply dominating the market and we all saw how ineffectively they reacted to Android. They cannot handle anything that isn't usual old-school closedsource and b2b services.

But would people pay for "Windows" just to ensure it continues to provide them with "value"? That's the question.

"people" don't know what an OS is so that's invalid.
Still, the answer to a more general "world would pay for windows" is yes. Companies will need an OS that has the same APIs as whenever the fuck the software they use was developed on, as they don't give a flying about that, the PC is a tool to make stuff. Many don't upgrade most PCs beyond XP either just because the whole use of that PC is running THAT SINGLE SOFTWARE they use to run the company.

For the consumer market it's like that too, but to a more limited extent. OEM need a pre-made OS with STRONG restrictions, one that they cannot ruin too much with their crapware. Any attempt at going outside Windows turns into shit pretty fast, only Android manages to survive that, and it's much more shittyfied than Windows.
Linux is too free, OEM needs a nazi-like vendor to keep them in line and not crapify brutally whatever OS they touch.

The good news... there isn't a single Linux company (though Red Hat is certainly trying).

That's another point that merits discussion as it is another thing that shows how Microsoft as it is now would make 0 sense in a "opensource Windows" world.

Linux (and Unix to a lesser extent) are made/supported mostly by companies that have some kind of interest in using it.

Kernel and low-level stuff is mostly developed by hardware manufacturers, which want to sell hardware using it (in SDKs, or plain linux).

The guys from virtualization software contribute to many subsystems, and also to virtualization subsystems.

Those that want to sell services run by linux boxes contribute to the parts they are most interested about, taking the rest nearly as-is.

All the companies contributing to the project profit from something they do with linux, not from Linux itself. That's why sharing the development on it is welcome. Linux itself isn't the product.


On Windows it's different, all development is done by a single company, and such development is aimed ONLY at this company's interests (which are usually more aligned with big company's interests).

All profit is done by licenses and stuff off the OS that is a product.

If they go open who will be paying them so much? OEM surely won't, they would just take for free and use it and steal all their revenue off that, Android-style.

That's why they are moving most of their programs and services to the cloud or on Linux or even plain opensourcing them.
They are saving what can be saved from a sinking ship.
The businness model they used for Windows is not flexible enough to save it on the long run and cannot be changed either without causing a disaster, so they need to have sure revenue from everything else they have while "what os you run stuff on" slowly loses relevance.

[starshipeleven]

I disagree. There are a lot of people with a lot of invested learning, tooling and experience who will want the stay the course with MS.

Which will get fucked. Techsupport, programmers, and sysadmins aren't the ones pulling the strings. If the technology you know well goes to hell or is replaced, you sink with the ship.

The cost of people learning a new system with new bugs and new ways of resolving things is expensive both in Time and Money.

this happens all the time with frameworks, libraries, applications and shit. Changing an OS under that isn't a major difference since people will work with the applications/frameworks/libraries/shit 99% of the time anyway.