The best way to build a cross-platform stack is to build a single stack, in a collaborative manner. And the best way to do exactly that is by open sourcing it. -- Microsoft. blogs.msdn/b/dotnet/archive/2014/11/12/net-core-is-open-source.aspx I have done a complete 180 on Microsoft over the past few years. Today, I find them increasingly pragmatic and friendly toward Open Source, and I have generally found those I have met from Microsoft to be some of the nicest, most wonderful people you will find anywhere. Decent human beings. Doing a job pretty well actually. And with a few philosophical differences from their Linux friends, but far from the days of the past. Well still compete (vigorously, but in a gentlemanly/womanly fashion), and may the best products win :) Contrast this with my former views on that organization. I *used* to hate Microsoft passionately, religiously (even down to misquoting biblical verse in comparison of Bill Gates to the anti-Christ for many, many years). Everything they did was *wrong* simply because they existed. They could have done anything whatsoever and I would have deemed it wrong. And for over a decade I refused to use any computer with Microsoft Windows on it solely on principle (friends will remember such choice quotes as I must find a computer running only Free Software!). So lets be clear. I have completely changed my opinion on that company over the years. I even run Windows virtual machines occasionally (mostly for EDA stuff). Im super excited by the kinds of things I see Microsoft doing in terms of engagement with the Open Source community, and with efforts such as this. Increasingly more than baby steps. Will they ever Open Source the NT kernel itself? Probably not. Theres no compelling reason (and probably hundreds of years worth of legal paperwork to be done toward code provenance compliance, licensing, all of that associated fun that we remember fondly organizations such as Sun having to do - and then undo - for Open Solaris) for them to do it at this stage. Nor do they have to. Nor is it even really all that interesting. I mean, I loved reading Systems Internals back in the day, and the NT kernel books are great reading, but if I want to hack on an OS kernel there are plenty to go around already :) The exciting thing isnt whether Microsoft will Open Source Windows one day, its seeing them engage more with Open Source as a concept, and embracing change that is hard for any organization of such a size in doing what they did opening .NET. Kudos to Microsoft. Maybe it finally is time to go play with .NET after all.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 04:39:15 +0000
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