
Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub - gjmveloso
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-open-source-2016-9
======
Illniyar
How is that calculated?

I mean Microsoft only has 2561 members
([https://github.com/orgs/Microsoft/people](https://github.com/orgs/Microsoft/people))
, so it isn't how many microsoft members contribute to open source.

Is it how many contributors their open source projects have? nope, FontAwesome
has maybe 100 contributors to all of it's 5 projects but it's listed as having
9000+ contributors.

From what I can gather it's mostly based on the number of people that forked
one of their projects (with some padding, maybe by the number of contributors
to forks of the project? I have no idea)

This doesn't seem like a metric that is more meaningful then just the number
of stars a repository has.

~~~
us0r
Microsoft also has:

[https://github.com/azure](https://github.com/azure)

[https://github.com/OfficeDev](https://github.com/OfficeDev)

[https://github.com/mspnp](https://github.com/mspnp)

[https://github.com/dotnet](https://github.com/dotnet)

[https://github.com/aspnet](https://github.com/aspnet)

[https://github.com/powershell](https://github.com/powershell)

[https://github.com/nuget](https://github.com/nuget) \- not sure this counts

plus probable another 100 i'm not aware of.

~~~
arcticfox
I'm no huge fan of Microsoft but leading that list with Azure made me recall a
nice experience I had with their devs.

One of their APIs was missing something I needed so I created an issue on
Github. Not only did the devs respond, they thanked me profusely for the input
and made the (rather significant) change in days. I don't know if it's true or
not, but I felt like their only user whenever I interacted with them (their
issue tracker was rather empty...)

~~~
tracker1
I had a similar experience with MS employees for an issue on a third party SQL
driver using it with Azure SQL... very courteous, professional, and was
included on some internal email chains to keep me informed. It did take a
couple days, but the effort was very nice to say the least.

It was an Azure team member that spotted the bug and worked with some of the
MS SQL guys to resolve the issue.

I can't speak for the larger organization, but will say that the Azure and
.Net Core teams have been incredibly open and responsive. And with a huge
amount of their devdiv stuff in Github, it doesn't surprise me they'd be one
of the largest corporate contributors on Github.

------
edpichler
This is very good, with this I learned that it's never too late to a company
change. A very slow and large company like MS took decades to make this
change, but they did well. And, they do that not because they are "good guys",
but because this is the strategy to make them grow on their business. They are
thinking on themselves.

~~~
testgiveme123
> A very slow and large company like MS took decades to make this change, but
> they did well.

From the outside imo it feels like it took ages for them to start this change,
but actually doing it once they first started open-sourcing things seems to
have been an incredibly quick switch, over just a couple of years. Has there
been loads of progress on this in the background that's just only become
visible now?

~~~
pm90
I suspect that most of their code was probably version controlled in Git
anyway, so it wouldn't take that much effort to simply upload it to Github.
What really delays stuff is probably the approval process, which for some
companies can be really slow.

~~~
cobalt
I'd imagine most of their code was in TFS. However I'm sure they used a tool
to move things over. None of these have the full history of the project

~~~
animal531
Or worse, SourceSafe.

------
aries1980
AFAIK Angular is part of Google.

But a quite decent improvement from the era when the company bribed government
officials to purchase bulk licences for pupils and govn't, distorting the job
market. This is a less harmful Microsoft than it was 5-10-20 years ago.

~~~
rmc
> _a quite decent improvement from the era when_

Or the era of "Linux is a cancer"

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/)

~~~
bad_user
Yeah, now they're just engaging in racketeering against Linux and Android
using their patents.

~~~
golfer
The "Scroogled" era wasn't that long ago either. Unbelievably embarrassing.

Nor the stealing of Google's search results.

I'm not ready to bless Microsoft yet.

~~~
wmccullough
How long do they have to pay for their past mistakes before they've done
enough to placate people?

~~~
sqeaky
Long enough to earn trust.

I still don't trust Sony after the RootKit fiasco, and it might be another
decade before I do. Or Sprint after the IQ agent keylogger.

There are simply too many other companies with similar products to ms, sony or
sprint that have no public dishonesty on their record. I can just use someone
else's product until they have been good corporate citizens long enough that I
have forgotten.

~~~
JustUhThought
Honest question, if not Sprint, then who? Verizon is the worst. So, TMobile?

------
chha
This is quite an improvement from the olden days when a certain Microsoft
executive described the GPL as a cancer, and open source in general as a thing
to avoid

~~~
douche
If you're trying to write commercial software and make money off of it, the
GPL _is_ a cancer.

MIT or the MS-PL is much more practical.

~~~
syshum
To translate

if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything
back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer

>MIT or the MS-PL is much more practical.

This depends on the project

I normally license my libraries, code I intend to be included in other
software under BSD or MIT, but full developed software that is intended to be
used as is gets GPL.

~~~
rubber_duck
>if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything
back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer

That's bullshit - GPL requires you to open source your derived work as well -
which plenty of people have a problem with commercially - it doesn't mean you
don't want to contribute _anything_ (quoting you) back.

Even with the LGPL there are scenarios where sharing your code is not an
option because of real world constraints (eg. NDAs), for example you need to
modify the LGPL code to port to a closed platform. That doesn't mean you can't
contribute back other improvements, but anything platform specific can't be
released and therefore you can't comply with LGPL.

In general GPL creates a lot of problems to which GPL supporters just plug
their ears and mantra "if you were truly free you wouldn't have those
problems". Liberal licenses remove those problems and incentives to share back
are there without the license requirement, you get your stuff maintained in
the mainline and don't have to rebase on every update and reduce conflicts
further down the development. LLVM is an excellent example of this where even
traditionally closed companies OSS stuff because it's such a chore to keep up
with latest. An example of a project being choked by GPL is Blender - a tool
that has great potential to be a fully featured OSS 3D authoring package is
struggling to fund developers because it can only sustain itself from
government grants - nobody is interested in investing in it commercially
because of the GPL. If it allowed for commercial plugins the OSS core would
undoubtedly see significant contributions from those developers as well.

~~~
mikegerwitz
> In general GPL creates a lot of problems to which GPL supporters just plug
> their ears and mantra "if you were truly free you wouldn't have those
> problems".

I'm not plugging my ears. I recognize it, and it's terribly unfortunate that
one would ever be in such a situation, but the idea there is that the GPL
would encourage the liberation of other code, and other platforms. Here's an
example:

    
    
      http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL
    

Now, you're talking about a broader issue than liberating a single program.
But enough useful GPL'd software might sway larger systems.

Otherwise, if modifying free software and in doing so making your modified
program proprietary means that it can't be used at all, then that is the
intent.

~~~
diamondlovesyou
Except the GPL doesn't just encourage open sourcing works which use the GPL
work as a dependency; it makes the open sourcing of any library/program/what-
have-you a MANDATORY condition for use of the GPL work. This has nothing to
due with modification of the GPL work; the condition is still in effect when
no modifications, proprietary or otherwise, are required in the GPL work.

I'm actually in agreement with Ballmer on this one: GPL is cancer. And I love
contributing to OSS in general.

~~~
mikegerwitz
moron4hire is correct.

If you are not distributing the software personally or outside your
organization, the GPL does not apply to you. If what you are doing does not
constitute a derivative work, then your software is also not affected by the
GPL: if you're invoking GNU grep in your program, for example, your program
does not need to be licensed under a GPL-compatible license.

For clarification, see [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html)

~~~
diamondlovesyou
I am aware of these issues. I replied in-haste in-class, and didn't specify
that I was only referring to library code. I instead used 'work', which was
the wrong term; I apologize. Anyway, according to the GPL, using a GPL-ed
library as a dependency in a larger codebase constitutes a derivative work
(assuming distribution etc), thus requiring GPL-ing the whole larger codebase,
which isn't cool (imo, of course).

------
jdmoreira
When I was a script kiddie back in the mid nineties Microsoft was this evil
corporate empire that all the linux kids hated.

Now I'm in my mid 30s and I respect them a lot and would definitely work for
them.

I guess we both have changed.

~~~
bad_user
I'm not sure what changed about them. Do you think that dumping some code on
GitHub is enough? I disagree.

"Linux kids" hated Microsoft because of their dirty tactics, exemplified for
example in the "Halloween documents" [1], which shows among other things how
they sponsored the SCO lawsuits against Linux. "Linux kids" also hated
Microsoft for how they always tried to subvert open standards, like for
example the Open Document Format (ODF). "Linux kids" also hated how Microsoft
tried to push people towards DRM and Trusted Computing.

If they changed, that would mean they no longer engage in such tactics, right?

Yet Microsoft constantly engages in racketeering practices against Android
phone makers and against Linux, with their huge patents portfolio, turning
into genuine patent trolls. They make more money from Android than from their
Windows Phone. They are also coercing computer makers to install Windows on
computers, threatening with patents that allegedly cover Linux. If you can't
innovate, litigate, right? And on open standards Microsoft is still engaged in
subverting ODF, forcing governments that want open formats to accept OOXML as
an alternative. And on Trusted Computing, well, they weren't the ones
popularizing it, Apple takes the credit for that one, but they surely benefit
from it now ;-)

Oh, and the often cited article by Scott Hanselman, titled "Microsoft killed
my Pappy", doesn't mention these problems. Convenient, but it feels like a
slap in the face.

Yet indeed, Microsoft did change. The Microsoft I know would have never
tricked users in giving away their privacy by dark patterns [2]. And I can
recognize they now have a wonderful PR department, otherwise this "change"
nonsense wouldn't have flied without one.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents)

[2]
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-b...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-
blatantly-disregards-user-choice-and-privacy-deep-dive)

~~~
sremani
You should be more worried about Google and Facebook tracking your spatial and
temporal data than Microsoft racking fees from Android OEMs.

~~~
bad_user
I'm not sure how that's relevant to the topic at hand. Do you think I'm not
ranting on Google or Facebook's behavior? If you'll look at my history, I'm
doing it all the time.

But this is some sort of fallacy. Does the existence of other companies that
engage in bad behavior somehow exempt Microsoft or makes them less bad?

And in case you're not up to date, Microsoft is also collecting your data and
they forced that upgrade on all Windows users, in addition to behaving like
patents trolls. So what's your point?

------
DoofusOfDeath
Let's discuss Microsoft's software patents.

Any Github contributions they make are trivial in comparison.

~~~
gilrain
Never praise a good thing while a bad thing exists.

~~~
youdontknowtho
yep. this times a hundred.

I keep saying that for a lot of people there's nothing they could do to change
their opinion because people are so invested in them being a bad guy. It's
part of a world view.

------
executesorder66
It seems to me like they are only open sourcing the products they wish more
people are using, and not their actually useful products like MSOffice and the
Windows OS.

Edit: to be clear, I know it is in their best interest not to open source
those products, because that's where most of their money comes from. But it
really looks to me like the want to flood the market with random open source
stuff, so that they seem more open source friendly. But in reality they are
not actually contributing anything very useful to the community.

~~~
dx034
VSCode is a great contribution and in some areas a valid alternative to Visual
Studio.

~~~
GordonS
Agreed - I have access to Visual Studio at work, but for some projects I've
lately been using VSCode. It's super fast and has most of the features I need.
Visual Studio is of course more fully featured, but I don't always need
everything it has, and god it is SLOW!

------
idm
I reached a similar conclusion regarding Microsoft, based upon my own
analysis:

[http://www.gh-impact.com/blog/the-most-influential-
organizat...](http://www.gh-impact.com/blog/the-most-influential-
organizations-on-github.html)

Despite being a latecomer to GitHub, Microsoft has risen to become the 4th
most influential organization on GitHub in a very short amount of time.

------
knocte
And I'm guessing they're even still not counting the Xamarin employees?

------
TACIXAT
I've been using dotnetcore to prototype a project. I'm actually really
impressed with it. Every time I build and run it on Linux I'm resurprised that
the project started in Visual Studio and builds / runs on Linux. Neat stuff,
now they just need to add support LDAP.

This is all coming from someone who only uses Windows for Overwatch, Office,
and courses that require it.

------
ergo14
Great - did they stop suing linux users yet?

~~~
youdontknowtho
Yes.

~~~
RobAley
Unless you count android as linux.

~~~
RileyKyeden
Google is working on that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia)

------
l0b0
Leaving aside the obvious methodology issues, whenever such a huge company
starts using a third party extensively I start worrying that they will buy
them and lay waste to the values of the original company. At least we'll have
GitLab and the like.

~~~
baldfat
> whenever such a huge company starts using a third party extensively I start
> worrying that they will buy them and lay waste to the values of the original
> company.

The issue is the financial health I would be worried about. I haven't seen
GitHub as anything special and it is clearly not the most Open Sourced company
and their price structure has been all over the place. I am not worried about
MicroSoft doing anything with Github they already have VS using git and you
can use it dozens of different ways. There is nothing to be made with owning
one piece of a dozen.

> At least we'll have GitLab and the like.

At least we have git.

~~~
aandrieiev
At this stage the value of GitHub doesn't have much to do with git per se.
It's about the projects' communities hosted there. That said, I don't see much
of uniqueness in what GitHub provides, it just happened to be good enough and
popped up at proper time.

------
thr0waway1239
Ballmer 2005: Let's kick open source's ass

(Many years of confusion, a realization that no company has the engineering
chops to pull off such a feat, stagnant stock price, CEO change..)

Nadella 2015: Let's kiss open source's ass

------
omouse
Let the meaningless metrics wars begin.

------
vthallam
Microsoft is definitely trying to change its perception among the people, from
hardcore closed box to trying to be the typical silicon valley company which
opensources time to time to entice engineers working for them and yeah,
greater good of the community.

But, as you see if you add Angular and Google's contributions, Google leads
the list by a margin. So this looks more like a PR exercise and since when did
we start taking BI articles on tech seriously(no offence to any readers).

~~~
parennoob
> when did we start taking BI articles on tech seriously(no offence to any
> readers)

None taken, BI articles are often poorly researched and written from a
Wikipedia search knowledge level.

~~~
dyml
Regarding poorly research, this paragraph from the article struck me as odd:

> The data isn't perfect, since it only relies on GitHub information available
> publicly — lots of businesses and project teams use GitHub in a private mode
> to quietly share their code. But it's still a big step forward for
> Microsoft.

Que? The article is regarding open source, not the use of GitHub as a source
control, right? So even though the statement is true, it's not really making
any sense. Am I misreading this?

------
spleeder
I have a feeling Microsoft will open source Windows soon.

------
smegel
Docker has 14,000+ employees?

~~~
0xmohit
CrunchBase [0] puts the number between 100 and 250.

[0]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/docker#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/docker#/entity)

------
ruffrey
If the article did the math to add Angular + Google, it would make them the
top by a long shot.

~~~
nojvek
I'm pretty sure there is quite a bit of overlap between angular and Google
once you combine them.

Although they need to show how the numbers are calculated.

Is it the number of contributions and not contributors?

------
akerro
It's a bit different when a corporation open sources their product because it
brings them more business value than a corporation actually contributes to not
their open source projects. Does MS do that?

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Are there any examples where a company contributes to Open Source software,
without any (direct or indirect) benefit to themselves?

What difference does it make anyway?

~~~
ldjb
I think akerro is asking about the motivation for Microsoft's contributions to
OSS, rather than whether they benefit from it (clearly they do).

My impression, having spoken to people from Microsoft involved in OSS, is that
they are pretty much entirely driven by what will make them the most profit.
Sometimes that means making software "open source" and accepting contributions
from the public (free labour!), other times that means keeping their software
proprietary. They don't seem to care about ethics, or software freedom. It's a
shame, but Microsoft aren't the only ones with that mentality. Big businesses
are, more often than not, primarily motivated by profit.

~~~
UK-AL
So are most for profit open source based companies. Redhat development is
probably solely based on profit to.

------
vgt
Let's note that the analysis was done on Google BigQuery's GitHub public
dataset

------
davexunit
Yet they are _still_ opposed to user freedom on computers. Microsoft hasn't
changed.

~~~
whatever_dude
Companies are rarely of a single mind. I like to believe some departments
within it are less prone to self-reflection and still need a bit of nudging.
In Microsoft's case, I think they went user analytics crazy in recent times
and see it as a path to invest resources on. And in true corporation fashion,
they are being a bit too heavy-handed with it.

------
boobek
Probably it's only a short term statistics.

~~~
0xmohit
Lies, damned lies, and statistics [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics)

------
known
Too little; Too late;

------
rck404
GPL and Open Source are still a cancer purely from Business perspective
especially on a short term perspective. This is exactly Steve Ballmer too, he
is a business guy running a tech organization. He generated huge profits.
Satya Nadella is a technical guy, who had seen the benefits of OSS tools,
languages and platforms to know how they impact both the developer mindshare &
long-term company perspective

------
maze-le
As long as key components like the official Microsoft NTFS implementation
remain closed source, I see in this open source policy as a charade.

~~~
guardian5x
Thats a bit like saying, as long as Google keeps their search algorithm closed
source, i see it as charade.

I'm happy that those companies open source more and more code. And Microsoft
released some of their key technologies like .Net as open source. Personally i
give them credit for that.

~~~
maze-le
Nope, I don't think so. I don't demand Microsoft to open up the Windows
sources or sources for MS-Office for that matter. They make money with these
products and I understand the incentive to keep them closed. Alas NTFS is a
filesystem, not the kernel of the OS. If Microsoft would recognize that there
are other operating systems than Windows, and that it is valid that they
operate with NTFS partitions, NTFS would be open.

Oh and yes, .NET is open source by now, btw. I think it's great too. And I am
far less critical of Microsoft than 7-8 years ago. But opening .NET is also a
strategic descision. In essence, it remains a Microsoft platform, and if more
software for linux is written with .NET, good for Microsoft. If more software
for windows is developed on linux machines with .NET, good for Microsoft. If
more linux devs switch to windows, because of the better .NET integration,
great for Microsoft. It's a win-win situation either way.

I'd love to see a development, that might be a net-loss[0] for Microsoft but a
net-win for systems interoperability or the open source community.

[0]: Opening NTFS might not even be a net-loss...

------
fs111
Good for them. I use exactly 0 lines of code from them. Seriously, who cares?

~~~
Anasufovic
The majority of the working world.

