Azure IoT Loves Open Source | Hacker News Reader

Azure IoT Loves Open Source

azure.microsoft.com

32 pointsdluc28 comments

This post was very short and specific but in regards to what Microsoft (Where I work) contributes to open source, well there is a lot of traction in the last few years with Satya at the helm, who has helped really enable a lot of this.

So just in case anyone is curious here are a bunch of links to just how much we're doing in the open now:

(1) Azure repo collection: https://github.com/Azure (2) Microsoft general repo collection: https://github.com/microsoft (3) .NET Core open source repo: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet

Here we go again.. Just like the post in Github ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558053 ) some people are so hatefull on companies because they had some bad press ( github vs gitlab ( github didn't do anything new for a long time and then gitlab came in) and the past of Microsoft vs linux.

For all the haters here below, who "actually" blame one developer, who shares his code ( because he posts a project) and he hasn't got another contribution on his new account...

Let me remind you, Microsoft is the #1 contributer on Github now, topping Google and Facebook together. https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/15/2255241/microsoft-h...

Please, now let's go back to IoT and ontopic. Too bad i don't know a lot of IoT on Azure, but i have viewed some projects about IoT of Microsoft on Hackster, their project page: https://www.hackster.io/microsoft/products/microsoft-azure

Thanks dluc for sharing, i hope i have topic worthy stuff to contribute next time ;) - one point of discussion would be to link to the project page instead next time - https://github.com/azure/toketi-iothubreact or https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduct..., it would probably fuse some less discussion - we like code :p

I just finished a prototype IoT node project for a customer using Azure.

Azure was their choice, not mine, but by the end of the development I was pretty pleased with the level of security they built into the data acquisition side.

Before the Azure project I worked with some other IoT/Cloud providers and it was a lot shakier. As in, am HTTP GET with the device serial ID in the URL and that's it.

My customer showed me the dashboarding they've already built with BI on the backend, it was even more advanced than the stuff I've seen from the others. Azure is no cakewalk to set up, but it seems to work really well once it is.

Any insights, blog post about this?

Slightly tangental, however I've been waiting for months for an Azure IoT thread to post this mini rant on...

My team and I spent a few weeks working with Azure IoT before instigating a switch to an alternative.

The problem with Azure IoT as a platform is that they provide SDK documentation (which is relatively good for languages they like), but not API documentation for the AMQP interface which is their preferred method of connecting devices. Their support for python clients and servers (in particular servers) left me and my team spending circa 10 days digging through AMQP logs and wireshark in ever more desperate attempts to integrate our existing python server with Azure IoT. Eventually it became clear that our only option was to wrap the C library for a really brittle integration and that we could switch to a different platform with far less effort! Both Amazon IoT and Watson IoT have been far smoother to integrate with since they provide both SDK and API docs!

The tough thing about it is that on the surface it looks as though it's really well documented and it's not until you hit your first big problem that you start looking around for API docs to try and debug what exactly it is that's wrong!

Currently really fond of Watson IoT for the decent python SDK's (we've only got 2-3 patches in a fork!) and the really handy device management features which can make rebooting etc much easier from the server side. The MQTT implementation they've worked on is great too.

So they open sourced, a client ? who cares?

Good example: https://github.com/BitFunnel (full-text-seach from bing)

Is there any compromise about Microsoft not going to sue Open Source projects anymore? (FAT patents, etc.)

When I thought about MS could potentially buy Redhat and Canonical and such and swallow the major open source companies with cash, I woke up sweating.

If they bought RH or Canonical at least we would have one less vendor to add to the fragmentation. At least in my eyes, the moment something like this happens it would be like a black hole vanished with that entire "distro" ecosystem.

And then they will have killed Linux. Don't let they read this.

What do you mean? I don't see how that can happen. Maybe a few "power moves" here and there, and companies already poach OS devs anyway. There's also licenses, CLAs.

Worst-case scenario people would just rewrite parts of the stack to move around it. There's people salivating at this very moment just thinking about rewritting core stuff in Go, Rust, or something else, and making a blog post about it. Imagine if they had an actual motive to do it.

What they actually love here is to crab as much data as possible.

So kind of like almost every other large outfit out there?

Not sure there is a solution where that isn't the case, but it'd be nice to be wrong.

Hard to say. Naturally this is growing cynicism in me that is talking.

I believe that in most cases data from smart device should not leave their local network.

Making a product that leaks data, especially from people homes is dangerous for the their users (I do not say owners, as who owns the data is an actual owner in my opinion) and even more dangerous for the society as whole.

Microsoft PR arm again on HN. We all known what Microsoft loves.

You weren't kidding. OP's profile:

> Working on Microsoft Azure iot

and this post is his only contribution.

I work for Microsoft in our developer marketing org and can assure you this isn't marketing and Sam works for engineering organization. We're always looking for more ways to contribute to the open source community, but I totally understand in the end you will judge us by our actions and not what some marketing guy (like me) says here :).

thanks for reading.

I've had enough (not positive) interaction with dev marketing at ms to know how uncoordinated your departments are haha. I'm only judging that this was his only contribution on a new account.

Funny how the dev marketing just "swoop" in so we rest assured its Sam's original contribution.

@soared, sorry if I gave that impression. I'm actually a software engineer, enthusiast HN reader. I thought this was a good opportunity to join the community and share some work :-)

Not holding it against you, but generally you'll want to follow some sort of 80-20 or 90-10 rule. Share/contribute 90%, promote your [employer's] stuff 10%.

It is an organized effort as a campaign to be on HN within Microsoft dev marketing teams- win hearts and minds. See the defense from marketing within the company? That is validation for you right there.

Now M$ loves open source? What a joke. Most developers still don't like it and the fresh ones almost don't need to pay much attention. Farewell, M$. Now it's time to make Google and Facebook to "loves privacy", in regrets.

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