
Microsoft Joins the Eclipse Foundation - dstaheli
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/03/08/microsoft-joins-the-eclipse-foundation/
======
ethomson
Interesting. I was part of the original "Team Explorer Everywhere" team that
built their Eclipse plug-in for TFS and had originally championed this as a
good idea. But really, I'm not sure that I'm enthused about this news.
Certainly this is good community building, but I've found the Eclipse
Foundation to be so ineffective that I'm not sure what purpose this _actually_
serves except to send out a press release.

My team was initially acquired; we were originally a small company in a
cornfield in Illinois called Teamprise, where we built the original TFS plug-
in for Eclipse. At the time, we were Eclipse Foundation members and reasonably
happy about it. Certainly it was nice to give back (in terms of membership
fees) to a project that we were a part of and took advantage of. And the
Foundation has a few really solid employees and it was nice to talk to them
about tech stuff.

But our larger goal in joining the Eclipse Foundation was largely unmet, which
was to actually _partner_. For example: we hoped to bring in a contractor who
could occasionally tackle some bugs in Eclipse on AIX which ultimately
affected our customers. We were a tiny company and going deep on some weird
problem that only affected the Motif AIX build was not particularly rewarding.
So we hoped to engage the Foundation to help us out here: we would pay this
contractor if they could help us find them. But we were rebuffed in a manner
that I found rather off-putting.

Despite this, after we became part of Microsoft I still pushed for us to join
the Eclipse Foundation. I stopped pushing when Microsoft had a booth at
Eclipse Con one year and a member of the Foundation (apropos nothing) went on
a nice, long rant about Microsoft. I don't think it's particularly classy to
make fun of your competitors, nor do I really appreciate inculcating an "us vs
them" mentality. But to do that after we had paid a big hunk of money to
sponsor that conference seemed particularly poor form, and if the Foundation
is going to make fun of the people who are paying to sponsor their Conference,
what does membership buy you? A steaming pile on your doorstep once a year?

In any case, that was when I stopped advocating for Microsoft to join the
Eclipse Foundation and instead advocated for us to ignore them wholesale. I
hope that my old team has better luck working with them than I did.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> I'm not sure what purpose this actually serves

Preparation. The world isn't ready yet for Microsoft joining the Linux
Foundation.

~~~
ethomson
I can't tell if you're joking or serious. Certainly, Microsoft hosts a lot of
Linux VMs in Azure. A _lot_. The last I heard, Azure was hosting more Ubuntu
than anything else.

I'm going to assume you're serious and agree with you; I wouldn't be at all
surprised if Microsoft _did_ end up joining the Linux Foundation. I'll guess
within the next 2 years.

~~~
nickbauman
Na. The only reason why Microsoft is doing this is because they want to remain
relevant in a world that has largely stopped relying on closed-source code in
a server-side OS. I suspect Microsoft will open source Windows _long_ before
it ever joins the Linux Foundation.

~~~
ethomson
Those are unrelated concerns. Microsoft isn't a big homogenous unit. The
business unit that would join the Linux Foundation would be Cloud & Enterprise
(which does crazy things like open sourcing .NET and joining the Eclipse
Foundation).

The business unit that would open source Windows is Windows Development Group,
who are mostly stuck in neutral. They can barely perform _builds_ of Windows
themselves, it's so huge and tangled and poorly organized. They can't change
anything because they're crippled with decades of technical debt. Whether they
want to or not (and I don't think that they really _do_ want to) to try to
open source that monstrosity is quite far away.

That said, I'm sure some people within Netscape said the same thing about
Mozilla. So I'd love to be proven wrong.

------
optforfon
I feel like I'm not seeing the forest for the trees.

I swear Microsoft's business model was to bring people in to their ecosystem
and then charge them for what is hopefully a superior development experience.

Is there a new business model? How do they lock people in and squeeze them for
money? Is their cloud solution radically different from the competition that
they can put all their eggs in that basket? What's the big picture plan? Or is
the new CEO just going rambo and pandering to DIY geeks who want everything
for free ? (myself included!)

I feel like there has to be some parallel universe blog where these press
releases explain what they're doing to investors beyond "we're going to take
your money, and we're going to make things with it. And then give it away for
free! Please give us more money"

Like awesome dude... but what the hell is going on?

~~~
Delmania
TL;DR: Azure.

What's going on in a new strategy.

Microsoft wants people building applications in Azure. They want people using
ASP.NET technologies. Given that Azure competes with AWS and Google Compute;
that ASP.NET and C# compete with Elixir/Phoenix, Clojure, Scala, Koitlin, etc,
there is absolutely no way they can maintain any form of lockin. Even in the
conservative companies, they compete with Java. The pitch to the investors is
that by opening up their toolset, it gets more people on their cloud services
and boosts recurring revenue. Which is what everyone else is doing.

~~~
optforfon
So they've decide that the business model of the past two decades is doomed?
Are investors onboard with that? Sounds like some serious downsizing is coming
to come up in the next 5 years...

We might be looking back at this CEO with incredulity in 10 years when MSFT is
struggling to keep the lights on ("they did what?! They just gave away all
their products for free??")

~~~
pjc50
The alternative is to wait while change passes them buy and then issue a Nokia
"burning platform" memo.

(Nokia are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. If Microsoft collapsed,
who would buy them? Apple?)

~~~
tuukkah
Microsoft bought Nokia's mobile phones but the rest of Nokia survives (marker
cap $22 billion).

------
MyNameIsFred
I must be missing something.

All of the comments here are all about "Microsoft is advancing OSS" and
"Microsoft grew a heart" and "Mind blown", but all I see in the article is
"We'll be providing some tools to help you use our paid cloud services".

What am I missing here?

~~~
krylon
Of course Microsoft is doing all this with the goal of making money at the end
of the day.

But if you remember the Microsoft of 10 or 20 years ago, when they were
bashing open source at every turn, spreading FUD and exploiting their monopoly
on the desktop to crush competition, things have changed _a lot_. Not
neccessarily because the "new" Microsoft is made of nicer people who just want
to be friends with everyone, but because the world around them has changed.

The end result, though, is the same - Microsoft appears to be embracing open
source and community-driven development processes.

~~~
MyNameIsFred
Thank you for your reply.

Yes. I understand that that's the message here in the HN comments, but my
question is _why_. In what way does this mean that MS is embracing open
source? Many replies to that question (including yours) have been along the
lines of "Remember when they were saboteurs? They just took an action that
wasn't overt malice!"

Again, I assume I'm missing something, but it all sounds like "Hitler doesn't
spend all of his time engaging in acts of genocide; Sometimes, he eats
cereal." (BTW, no, I don't think of MS as inherently evil. I make my own
living on closed-source software.) I'm not seeing the "complete reversal"
people are talking about, nor even a partial reversal. Nor do I see the
opposite. These things appear orthogonal.

Is this all because their new Azure-specific tooling is open source? Or is it
simply because they're shaking hands (harder) with an organization that has
OSS street credit? Or something else entirely?

~~~
krylon
Microsoft used to be very hostile towards open source in general and Linux in
particular. These days, the publish some core parts of their software stack -
the new Javascript engine, for example, the core CLR .Net runtime, including
the JIT and GC - as open source and actively support running Linux instances
in Azure.

That still does not mean, of course, that Microsoft is an "open source
company" now, but I think it shows their attitude has changed significantly.
Given their past, I think this is at least a very good sign. Of course, they
still engage in plenty of lock-in, and their baroque licensing terms can drive
a poor sysadmin insane. But there is some progress, and a lot of people are
happy to see that.

Of course, the main reason for this is that the world has changed, and
Microsoft can no longer exploit their monopoly on the desktop when a fair
amount of people have - at least at home - ditched laptops or desktops
completely in favor of smartphones and tablets (rarely running Windows).
Developers like to build web services and web apps on Linux, and if Microsoft
just refused to support any non-Windows systems on Azure, they would lose a
fair amount of business. So they seem to look for ways to make money in a
world where Windows and Microsoft's conventional software stack can coexist
with other software and operating systems.

So if, for example, they open source the .Net framework, that means they can
win over developers on other systems. Developers who then might want to use,
say, Visual Studio, so they still can make money of those.

(Alas, with regards to Windows and Office, their cash cows, nothing has
changed.)

------
pdeva1
Microsoft is just a 'Solutions member', which is among the lowest form of
membership for Corporate entities. They are only required to pay $20K a year.
Not required to contribute any engineers to Eclipse Foundation. The
'membership' portion of this announcement is pure PR. If they were setting
aside real cash, they would join as 'Strategic Member' where they would be
required to contribute real cash and minimum amount of engineers to Eclipse.

~~~
mey
While I'm sure they could easily join at a higher tier, I will still applaud
their contribution.

------
staticelf
Say what you want about Microsoft, but they really take their words into
action nowadays. Seems like there is at least one news item per week. They
have been really active in the open source space recently.

Personally, I love this. Have recently been learning ASP.NET and started using
Azure simply because I find it to be one of the easiest frameworks and
platforms to iterate quickly on.

I love the new Microsoft, I hope this continues. It feels like they have had a
lot of brilliant people previously held back by rules and constraints which
are now removed.

~~~
yAnonymous
They're doing this for themselves. If MS don't invest in open source, they'll
be left behind.

It's a nice reminder how important OSS has become.

~~~
staticelf
Can you mention one company sponsored open source investment that isn't based
in self-interest?

I don't think that is relevant, but of course open source is important and
probably will be in the future as well.

~~~
yAnonymous
The point here is that people remember MS aren't doing this for philanthropic
reasons.

To answer the question: Canonical. While they're aiming to become profitable,
I don't think Mark Shuttleworth has any illusions about getting back all the
money he invested.

~~~
pc86
I accidentally downvoted you when I meant to upvote. I really wish you could
undo that (even if it precluded you from voting on that post again).

But the point is that everyone is self-interested in OSS.

Canonical has an ad on their page for Ubuntu Advantage, they run training and
offer certifications, etc. They are not a philanthropic organization.

~~~
petercooper
_But the point is that everyone is self-interested in OSS._

If we're going that far, everyone is self-interested in everything, even if
it's just because doing something (like, say, giving to charity) makes them
feel good or suffer less guilt.

~~~
pc86
I realize that was an overly broad statement but I thought the next line
clarified it a bit. Canonical definitely has a direct monetary incentive in
its OSS participation.

~~~
petercooper
I agree, but compared to what he's put in, I'd be surprised if he has any
ambitions of getting out anywhere near what has gone in. I think it's more of
a lifestyle business (in the literal sense)... but I could be wrong! :)

------
junto
I swear I just saw a pig flying across the sky.

What is going on in Microsoft? Have they finally seen the light? First today
comes SQL Server on Linux and now this.

It makes a refreshing change. Long may it continue.

~~~
qihqi
MS realized that Windows as a platform is not attractive to developers. So it
is desperately to win those developers back. On the consumer land, Windows is
quite happy being the de-facto platform OS, so it doesn't bother to release
anything in other OS (DirectX, Office, just killed Skype in linux etc).

~~~
Someone1234
> so it doesn't bother to release anything in other OS (DirectX, Office, just
> killed Skype in linux etc).

Office is available on other platforms, and they've been adding new platforms
in the last couple of years.

Currently supports: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Mac, and PC. Not including
their in-browser suite which runs on Chromebooks and your smart fridge.

They also haven't killed Skype for Linux. Skype for Linux was terrible before
Microsoft purchased Skype. If anything Skype for Linux hasn't been improved
while the Skype for Windows client has become progressively worse.

------
ausjke
Visual Studio runs on Linux, now MS joins Eclipse...the changes at Microsoft
is too fast and dramatic, considering a while ago they're so hostile to the
open source and Linux world at large. This indeed explains the saying: "if you
can't beat them, you join them".

I hope it's not too late for them, for me there is no way to get back to
Windows environment for any kind of development.

I suddenly realized that, Linux has won already, from Smart phones to the
cloud servers, all the way.

~~~
Delmania
> for me there is no way to get back to Windows environment for any kind of
> development.

Awesome! You don't need to:

[https://dotnet.github.io/getting-started/](https://dotnet.github.io/getting-
started/) [https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-
downloads](https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads)
[http://www.omnisharp.net/](http://www.omnisharp.net/)

*It's a stretch to say "Linux won on the smart phone".

------
grandalf
Microsoft is finally realizing that Open Source is not an opposing ideology
but an alternative kind of business contract (which happens to lend itself to
services).

------
rbanffy
I'm afraid that their "To Serve the Community" may actually be a cookbook...

------
Yhippa
Argh. Was hoping to hear about C# integration not Azure hooks.

------
geodel
It seems MS is thinking money is to be made from order of magnitudes more
users paying order of magnitude less money on cloud tools / infrastructure. It
is opposite of traditional MS where fewer users were paying lots of money for
MS tools.

------
Delmania
Well, this is certainly an interesting development, although not entirely
unexpected, given that JetBrains is developing Project Rider. It would
definitely be interesting to develop a Java application in Visual Studio.

------
selvans
Hopefully MS stay as a "Solutions member" and not become a "strategic member"
and screw-up Eclipse Foundation

------
TheHappyRock
I was really thinking the announcement was going to be Visual Studio in
eclipse............long shot I know.

------
Negative1
This seems like an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish type deal [1].

Can someone explain exactly what Microsoft would get out of this (and what
they would theoretically give back in the process)?

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

------
bitmapbrother
Is there a reason Microsoft doesn't make their VS Studio IDE work with Java?
Yes, I'm aware of the 3rd party plugins available, but it would be nice to see
official support for what is the world's most popular language according to
the TIOBE index.

~~~
cm2187
Old scars perhaps. VS initially had a java IDE, but then they got sued by Sun,
which ultimately resulted in Microsoft developing C# as a Java killer

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B)

~~~
teh_klev
That was old Visual Studio, from the days of VS6 which shipped VB6, prior to
the launch of Visual Studio.NET (2002).

------
akerro
Do you remember the times MS tried to kill Java by adding new features to
Java? Every time they "contribute to open-source" I trust them less and less.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish#Examples)

~~~
untog
Yes, we all remember Embrace, extend and extinguish. Even people who weren't
around then. Because it gets brought up in every single Hacker News thread
about Microsoft.

At this point I really don't think it's useful to cite a Microsoft strategy
from the mid 1990s. It's clear at even a cursory glance that their approach
has changed dramatically.

~~~
CaptSpify
> At this point I really don't think it's useful to cite a Microsoft strategy
> from the mid 1990s. It's clear at even a cursory glance that their approach
> has changed dramatically.

I respectfully disagree. MS has spent a _long_ time building up a _lot_ of
bad-will. Just because they've done a couple of nice things lately doesn't
mean we should forget all that.

I hope they become awesome, and continue to be pro-FOSS, but it's going to
take more than a couple of good steps to convince me.

~~~
sremani
Couple? F# and asp.net have been open over 5 years, yes under Steve Balmer.
All this is not entirely recent but they have accelerated the pace and
extended the scope. If you choose to ignore it, its your prerogative.

~~~
CaptSpify
OK, so we have what percentage of their products open (admittedly, some of
them are pretty significant)? compared to all the other negative they've done?
I'm not ignoring anything, and I'm not really sure why you assumed that. In
fact, if you blindly say they've turned to the good side, I'd accuse you of
the same...

~~~
untog
All the bad they've done presumably extending back to the 1990s? A company
isn't a person - a significant amount of the workforce, senior management and
even the CEO is different than it was back then.

~~~
CaptSpify
But they chose to stick with that company and culture, presumably that
"brand". I'm not saying they can't turn around, but they've still got a long
way to go to prove to me this is anything different than EEE.

Also, they didn't just stop in the 90's. A lot of their questionable practices
have continued on, and are still going on. I'm not basing my mistrust _only_
on the 90's. It's just one factor out of many, but one I still feel should be
taken into account.

