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Comment by oldnan | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS profits are still from proprietary software.

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Do you honestly expect them to open source software that earns them significant revenue? They are a business trying to make money.

I don't, and neither does anyone else. The point is that they remain a proprietary software company at their core and will likely remain that way.

Oh I misinterpreted your comment. I see your point.

None of the megacompanies open-source their cash cows. Red Hat is an exception to some extent, but they're not that big.

Google, Apple, Microsoft -- they all make money based on closed-source software. What they open-source is only the stuff that does not give them competitive edge. You can't download the source Google Search, iOS or Windows.

(I'm not arguing with you, btw.)

Yes they're both companies, but Sun open sourced stuff to get you to buy it on Solaris, their traditional cash cow.

Microsoft promotes stuff like Visual Studio Code and Chakra not to sell Windows - their stand at Node Interactive earlier this month had a 50 inch TV running Ubuntu. Instead, they realise you don't necessarily want Windows, and are happy to sell you Azure (which runs Linux VMs and is a pretty good product).

Azure is their cloud OS and runs on a special Windows server cluster in huge datacenters. (One can run Linux VMs on it, but that's just a byproduct) Azure and software as a service are their mid term future plans. Not for a reason Dave Cutler (73 years old!!), VMS and WinNT fame/chief architect has worked on Windows Azure and Hyper-V since 2008. He is undoubtly Microsoft's oldest and most important person - without him Windows (NT series, XBox, Azure) wouldn't exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler

Everything you've written in your comment is true, but I don't think it responds to anything I've said: it just looks like you're trying to show off your knowledge of NT.

No, it was (an extensive) answer to your comment. Azure is their mid term plan for the future. It's their cloud OS. Software as a service, pay per months/annual is their business model to grow. As long as you run your Linux on their Azure they are happy to have you on board. Though, running other OS as guest OS on HyperV is just a by-product of the capabilities of the Azure cloud.

Both in the case of Office 365 and that of Azure they are selling you their cashcow (office and windows), only in a software as service fashion. Moreover, neither is opensource, unlike cloud offering based on Xen or kvm, which are (at least to some extent). I fail to see how Sun fares worse in this comparison, if this was your point.

Cutler has been in Xbox for a couple of years now.

I don't think their open sourcing is some kind of desperate attempt. They open sourced .NET understanding that developer tools and languages have to be open source nowadays, if they want adoption.

Without adoption it's hard to stay relevant which was what my post was about...

Without developers Microsoft tools and platform will shrink a lot and fast. It was basically their only chance to open source the new dotNet core. And try everything incl. their TypeScript tactics on JavaScript to get developers back into their development tool eco system - and to lock-in them into their tool-sets and platforms.

Most devs beside enterprise IT departments use open source languages for web deveopment. NodeJS/Java/PHP/Ruby/Python/Go are very popular and only a tiny fraction (11%) runs on Windows servers with dotNet or Mono. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2015/11/16/november-2015-w...

Hows that compiled though? Most iis installisations don't send idenditifying information.

I know if you nmap our website which uses iis it returns as something else because of our load balancer.

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows was open source in 10-20 years. I'm not expecting it to, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't open sourced, either.

Probably not going to happen. Windows includes code sourced from too many other companies.....

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