Microsoft Joins the Eclipse Foundation

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/03/08/microsoft-joins-the-eclipse-foundation/

by dstaheli • 10 years ago

204 155 10 years ago

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

junto• 10 years ago

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.

nwah1• 10 years ago

First SQL Server on Linux? More like a continuing strategy going back for years, since they began opening up bits of the .NET framework, compiler, ASP.NET and MVC, etc etc.

Now the great majority of the .NET development stack is completely open, aside from Visual Studio itself. But there's always Visual Studio Code, the lightweight, open source alternative. Runs on linux too.

Cyph0n• 10 years ago

This shift occurred some time back when MS started the process of open-sourcing .NET and porting it to Linux.

theandrewbailey• 10 years ago

Where do you want to go today?

Open source, apparently.

qihqi• 10 years ago

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).

Someone12342• 10 years ago

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.

usrusr• 10 years ago

Before Linux made the GNU development model something that was actually being used, when people thought of openness in computing they usually thought of "100% IBM compatible", running a Microsoft OS. The contrast between the "open" world of PC clones and the isolated islands of hardware makers that supplied their own operating system was as alive and visible back then as the contrast between FOSS and MS is now.

Seen this way, the slow transformation from lock-in to charm-in that we observe today is more a return to the roots than a dissolution of identity for Microsoft.

staticelf5• 10 years ago

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.

cm21873• 10 years ago

Reading it, it doesn't seem to be a completely altruistic policy. The way I read this blog post is "we are going to contribute to Eclipse to ensure that you can deploy your projects well on Azure".

I'm not saying it's bad. But it's not a "MSFT open sources xxx" headline either.

staticelf5• 10 years ago

Of course it's in their interest to do this, but that's always the case when it comes to company sponsored open source?

It's not like they're going to throw money on something that they believe never will benefit them in any way. This is completely fine and how it should be.

yAnonymous6• 10 years ago

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.

staticelf5• 10 years ago

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.

elcct• 10 years ago

To me it feels like they are IE6 of Open Source

edwinnathaniel2• 10 years ago

They got no choice. They realized that if they don't do these moves their platform is dying.

But let's scope the discussion just around this announcement.

Majority of the topics here are around azure for non-.net market. There's TFS but only because this is how IDE works: provide plugins for a source control systems to reduce task switching.

staticelf5• 10 years ago

I don't agree that they have no choice, they are simply making a good choice.

Yes, in Visual Studio publishing your application (even node.js) is as easy as going into the meny and pressing publish. You can setup git-push deploy, databases etc easily. I believe they want to integrate their tools into Eclipse which seems awesome. Think if you could set up cloud management in your IDE for java/C++/php projects as well. That would be awesome for the people using Eclipse and Azure.

chei0aiV2• 10 years ago

Wake me when they GPLv3 something and create a development community around it so that they aren't the sole copyright holder.

Someone12342• 10 years ago

Arbitrary requirements much.

By your own logic if Linux were a Microsoft product that wouldn't be good enough because it is only GPLv2.

A lot chunk of the .Net framework are under MIT license and include this:

https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/PATENTS.TXT

Seems pretty comprehensive to me.

akerro2• 10 years ago

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...

untog2• 10 years ago

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.

yAnonymous6• 10 years ago

I didn't know about it and I'm glad it was brought up.

bragh2• 10 years ago

No, it gets brought up because the after effects of that philosophy are still felt even today.

CaptSpify4• 10 years ago

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.

akerro2• 10 years ago

Forgive, don't forget. I trust them less and less. I'm probably subjective, because of their contributions to EEE and adding spyware to their key product and huge espionage of spyware added to OS as "basic functionality" in every new release.

erbo• 10 years ago

A tiger can't change its stripes, even if it proclaims that it's now a harmless little kitten.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Don't trust Micro$oft. Let them die.

ninjakeyboard• 10 years ago

Between this and Donald Trump, it's like it's the last season of "Planet Earth" and the writers are just going nuts.

Delmania14• 10 years ago

What in your mind, can Microsoft do to Java at this point in time? It's been a decade since that case, and Java has matured and hardened to the point where any form of EEE is going to be an utter waste of time considering the ecosystem of the computing world. This is a response to JetBrains. The company has IntelliJ and with Project Rider, a viable competitor to Visual Studio. With the emphasis on Azure, it's in MS's best interests to add additional language support to VS. Competition is a good thing.

dkopi• 10 years ago

Well, Microsoft wasn't trying to "Kill Java". They were accused of trying to kill "Java portability". which isn't the same as killing Java (Try porting android Java code to IOS for example).

The claim is that Microsoft omitted the Java Native Interface (Allows Java code to call C/C++ code) and instead used their own J/Direct interface for calling Win32 APIs directly.

That said: 1. I have to admit J/Direct was an awesome idea. Being able to call Win32 apis directly without writing JNI wrappers is very useful. You wouldn't be able to port python code that uses the win32api module either.

2. JNI Code is very often not portable as it is. If you're writing JNI Code, you're most likely already using native OS apis, and relying on OS specific features.

AI_Overlord• 10 years ago

Java portability was a main feature of Java. Kill that and you kill Java. Java Android is not really Java.

samfisher83• 10 years ago

C# is pretty much MS version of java. I think they did a pretty good job with the language. They keep adding things to it. P/Invoke is pretty awesome.

yAnonymous6• 10 years ago

It's amazing how every time this is mentioned it's downvoted when it's actually very relevant. Microsoft shills are hard at work on HN.

B1FF_PSUVM2• 10 years ago

Sigh.

I have (somewhere ;-) RMS's John Hancock on a small cheque I wrote and he cashed for the FSF nearly thirty years ago.

I did my duty on hating Microsoft and pushing Linux for those years when it mattered. By 2005 I was estimating Microsoft's 'packet' TTL at about 10 years ...

Nowadays Microsoft are like a beaten bully, out-eviled by much creepier players, and they're acting reasonable, mostly just asking to be paid for decent products that do not rape the customers and sell their info to whomever.

Why be stuck in the last century?

dang• 10 years ago

Microsoft shills are hard at work on HN.

If you have any evidence of this, you should email links to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate them. We've banned pro-MS astroturfers before; one in particular who made dozens of accounts and used them to reply to himself in arguments. But I don't know of any evidence that they're "hard at work on HN" now.

Delmania14• 10 years ago

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.

optforfon2• 10 years ago

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?

ericcholis• 10 years ago

I think it's about capturing new marketshare or previously lost marketshare. There's a large group of developers and their associated companies that were never likely to hop on the MS toolchain. In many ways MS == .NET for years. Now, it's more agnostic with Azure and even Visual Studio Code.

So, marketshare and marketing.

Delmania14• 10 years ago

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.

optforfon2• 10 years ago

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??")

shmerl22• 10 years ago

there is absolutely no way they can maintain any form of lockin.

They still have a very strong lock-in in graphics though. Why didn't MS join the Vulkan working group? And that's their attitude in general - they didn't become any better than before. They just drop lock-in under pressure by competition. Other than that, they pursue lock-in all the same.

cookiecaper2• 10 years ago

Yes, "cloud" is changing everything, for better or worse. Microsoft realized that enterprise, their primary market, LOVES cloud and that Windows technologies were much less capable in the cloud than open technologies for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is licensing.

MS is opening their platform to run on Linux because they want people to continue using Windows, Visual Studio, and .NET as development platforms. The core of MS's business has always been Windows, and secondarily, Office. Since so many people want to use the cloud, and on top of that since so many people want to use the cloud via sexy vendors like AWS, Microsoft needs the heart of their Windows lock-in strategy, which is .NET, to work on it.

These moves are defensive of .NET's place in enterprise development, and consequently Windows's place on the enterprise workstation. Once MS feels that .NET is far and away the clear choice for development in the cloud-centric world, they'll work to bring more people onto Windows as the cloud OS of choice (Azure, etc).

cynoclast• 10 years ago

I can't get over the fact that Microsoft's cloud product is the color of sky without clouds in it.

hguant• 10 years ago

I think Microsoft is recognizing that locking people into an ecosystem is not a long term solution when there are near equivalent ecosystems available for free. It almost seems like they're positioning themselves to get mindshare ('Hey, this free product from the Evil Empire isn't that bad! Maybe they're just another empire, and not so evil.') and transition that into a paid service (Azure is what immediately springs to mind, but Office is pretty essential when you get past a certain point (I say this as a long time OpenOffice/LibreOffice user - there are some things MS just gets right).

rogeryu• 10 years ago

Maybe they're just another empire, and not so evil.

They are just another empire. Enter the new world! This is the smartphone and cloud era!

scholia• 10 years ago

Or maybe Microsoft is just creating a bigger and better ecosystem....

Who else is trying to cover all your needs (1) both on-premise and in the cloud; (2) across platforms from USB thumbdrives to smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops and servers; and (3) has cross-platform apps on Windows, Android and iOS?

Google is pretty much cloud-only and Apple is pretty much Apple only, and neither of them supports anything like the same range of devices.

It's a long play, but Microsoft has been executing this strategy for a few years now....

criddell4• 10 years ago

Microsoft's business model was to bring people in to their ecosystem and then charge them

Yes. But for about the last 10 years, that ecosystem hasn't been doing very well. Most Windows hardware is garbage and (except for games) there's virtually no excitement around software. What's the last Windows application that went viral?

Their developer strategy (universal Windows) is interesting and if I were in charge I would probably go down a similar path, but as a developer it doesn't interest me at all. Applications that can run on a phone or a desktop is an interesting trick, but in reality I normally want a substantially different UI on each. That would lead me to think about separating the UI from the application and then I might as well make a web app.

molmalo• 10 years ago

Popcorn Time, I believe

rbanffy2• 10 years ago

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

Survive now, figure out how to make money later.

If Microsoft does nothing, very little new development will be done to run on Windows. You don't need Windows to access Gmail of Facebook. Their backends don't run on Windows. Why would you deploy your software to Windows if it's cheaper and more effective to deploy it to Linux? Shortly, all their technologies will become irrelevant.

It's true they are doing interesting stuff in the JavaScript space, but what does it do to improve their bottom line? It's not unlike Sun with their Java ecosystem, but from an even worse position than Sun held.

grandalf• 10 years ago

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).

Yhippa• 10 years ago

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

TheHappyRock• 10 years ago

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

ethomson3• 10 years ago

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.

specialist• 10 years ago

Very interesting. I would like to understand governance models for open source projects, standards committees, etc.

I took a job working on an open source product / stack precisely to get experience with how a consortia (kuali.org) manages to do things.

TL;DR: it doesn't.

I'm told the Apache Foundation is also like a tarpit. Would love to hear stories from people with direct experience.

My utopian view is that all government software should be citizen owned. That dream took a hit by my recent experience. I'm still searching for projects, efforts, teams, whatever that cracked this nut.

B1FF_PSUVM2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure what purpose this actually serves

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

ethomson3• 10 years ago

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.

Negative1• 10 years ago

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

MyNameIsFred2• 10 years ago

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?

JustSomeNobody• 10 years ago

You're not missing anything. Some people feel emotional towards things like this. It is why we see all those, "I'm breaking up with <some random technology>" articles.

alexkavon• 10 years ago

You read the article, most people only read the headline.

krylon2• 10 years ago

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.

MyNameIsFred2• 10 years ago

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?

bitmapbrother• 10 years ago

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.

cm21873• 10 years ago

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

teh_klev• 10 years ago

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

geodel• 10 years ago

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.

pdeva1• 10 years ago

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• 10 years ago

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

selvans• 10 years ago

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

rbanffy2• 10 years ago

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

ausjke• 10 years ago

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.

Delmania14• 10 years ago

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://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads http://www.omnisharp.net/

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

Microsoft Joins the Eclipse Foundation

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