Microsoft Is Now 'Open by Default', Says Xamarin Founder Miguel de Icaza

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2016/11/08/microsoft-is-now-open-by-default-says-xamarin-founder-miguel-de-icaza/#5ed2c7b520e7

by nedsma • 10 years ago

111 104 10 years ago

forbes.com

aikah• 10 years ago

My Windows license doesn't feel "Open by Default", nor SQL Server license audits ... I like the guy, he created Mono, Xamarin, Gtk and co. But only a tiny subset of MS products like the .NET ecosystem are open.

adrianlmm5• 10 years ago

Just waith and see.

Aldo_MX• 10 years ago

My Windows 10 Telemetry settings really look "open by default"...

bobajeff3• 10 years ago

Yes, DirectX is still looks closed to me, along with the NT Kernel and even EdgeHTML.

Ant5do• 10 years ago

Isn't it clear from the article, like everyone else pointed out, that things going forward in Icaza's org are open? As in cloud and developer tools?

You're talking about older things.

gigatexal2• 10 years ago

Edge core got open sourced they even made a fork of nodejs that used it

wmccullough• 10 years ago

Obviously they are talking about projects going forward. The article makes that pretty clear.

"Microsoft is now open by default and you actually have to make a case on a team/peer review level if you feel something needs to be closed,” said de Icaza."

Should they stay guilty forever for the things done in the previous regime?

irq-1• 10 years ago

Will the next versions of Microsofts closed/licensed software be open? Will someone have to make a case that they need to remain closed? Will they release new products that are closed/licensed?

nogbit• 10 years ago

Yes, because their OS is now evergreen, there will never be another "Windows X" and it will be forever closed. If/when they make the OS open (and ideally their other products as well) only then can his statement be taken seriously.

cryptarch4• 10 years ago

I assume they'll make all Windows updates open-source from now on then?

sametmax• 10 years ago

First, you have to give very strong evidences that they are not "like the previous regime", or that there is a "previous" at all. All I see right now is PR and strategic moves (let's do what google did, even a bit late).

Secondly, given the track record, it is fair that it will take a long time before their past is forgiven. At least the same number of years of doubt that they spent misbehaving. And again that supposes they are not doing it right now. Like patent trolling, or moving software you could buy to a rent-only model, or put spywares in their new OS.

I strongly believe MS is not getting better, just getting better at communicating. They are not in a monopoly anymore and they can't get away with a "linux is cancer" like they used to do.

The only thing that bother me is that the Gates are getting away with it. They detached them self from MS, and now make heavy communication on their charity, so everybody seems to think they are saints. People have very short memory.

michaelmrose• 10 years ago

With decades of bad behavior I don't understand why they would ever be trusted. Its not like Gates is dead and buried and there certainly is continuity between the old regime and new.

zgramana• 10 years ago

Miguel is clearly referring to Microsoft developer tools, since he's in the developer tools org.

maxxxxx2• 10 years ago

Then they should open source Visual Studio and TFS and make them free. Dealing with those licenses is a major PITA.

digi_owl2• 10 years ago

Actually he founded Gnome, GTK already existed (the G coming from GIMP).

Frankly the guy seems very similar to Poettering. Stuff he creates, for the most part, only really becomes usable once the leaves the project.

deckard1• 10 years ago

No idea why you're getting downvotes. You're completely right.

I was there when GNOME started. Was working heavily with GTK+ and GIMP at the time. Most of GNOME was tossed together haphazardly in a mad dash to catch up with KDE. There were astroturfing campaigns against KDE/Qt, organized on the GIMP IRC servers. The hate on Slashdot towards KDE was crazy, and much of it coming directly from GNOME camp. GNOME 1.x was a total shitshow. The code was horrid, and nothing was stable at all. Luckily their poor standards of code quality never hurt GTK+ much, as the GIMP guys still knew what the hell they were doing.

anonbanker6• 10 years ago

your downvotes are alarming.

Miguel left GNOME before 2.0 shipped, and started working on Mono full-time. If you've ever used GNOME 1.0, it was barely more than a set of ORB-based applications you stacked on top of Enlightenment DR 0.15 (or Sawmill/Sawfish if you weren't cool/used RedHat after Raster left). The panel was awful, the fonts were awful. Themeing (once they moved to gdkpixbuf rather than imlib) was awful. It didn't even have Human Interface Guidelines until Eugenia Loli-Queru basically forced her opinion on the devs.

Sun Microsystems had to dedicate months of programming and useability testing to get the UI to a point that everyone didn't hate it anymore.

Once Miguel gave up the reins, others took GNOME where it is today. This is similar to Lennart Poettering, wherein NetworkManager and PulseAudio became much better/more stable/useable when he left.

baldfat4• 10 years ago

"Microsoft is now open by default and you actually have to make a case on a team/peer review level if you feel something needs to be closed,” said de Icaza."

The Microsoft bias is to always bash them but give a pass to Apple. I think Microsoft has been the good guy for a bit but they still get hate mainly due to Steve Balmer.

sigzero• 10 years ago

“There was no story at Microsoft for other platforms back in the day. But the world is full of heterogeneous connections now and I think Scott Guthrie [now Microsoft’s lead on Azure cloud platform] helped drive a lot of the openness. Microsoft is now open by default and you actually have to make a case on a team/peer review level if you feel something needs to be closed,” said de Icaza."

So it seems "new" projects not older ones are "open by default" with a caveat. That's still a lot better than they used to be.

blub• 10 years ago

Microsoft embraces open source because they found out that there are other methods to monetize and lock in customers. As a bonus people seem to like you when you give them stuff for free, even with the catch of privacy invasion.

In other words, they stopped copying Apple and switched their sights on Google.

The stuff that matters stays closed source. Infrastructure, tooling are published because they bring massive amounts of goodwill and developer mindshare while hindering potential competitors that now have to battle with a free offering.

Frankly I preferred the old Microsoft which wanted your money, not the new one that (also!) wants your data.

AnonymousPlanet4• 10 years ago

And there is nothing at all stopping them from closing everything up again once they're back on top (which might be sooner than anyone thinks).

prplhaz4• 10 years ago

Are there any good examples of this strategy? I can't think of anyone successfully moving a leading open source product back to closed source...I think normally it's the fork of the open source version that lives on...

nixos4• 10 years ago

They're not copying Google. They're taking the worst of both worlds.

Windows isn't free. It just happens to come with the cost of your PC, but the PC manufacturer pays for it (and passes the cost to you).

They just noticed that no one upgrades Windows (and why should they? When was the last time you were excited about a windows release? XP? 95? 3.1? Maybe 7 if you're coming from Vista?)

baldfat4• 10 years ago

I have been using Linux for 13 years.

I fail to see the worst?

I personally was VERY excited for Windows 7 and it proved to be a very solid edition. VERY VERY excited for Ubuntu bash in Windows 10 in the preview edition.

They're not copying Google. They're taking the worst of both worlds.

Google's model is advertising

Apple's is Hardware

Microsoft is selling services more.

I find it really awesome that Microsoft has really turned into a company I have a positive view of and glad that Steve Balmer is gone.

executesorder66• 10 years ago

They don't even have a closed source MS Office for Linux.

simonh2• 10 years ago

It's hard to see how a port to Linux would ever make back the cost of porting it in the first place.

notatoad• 10 years ago

or how that really has any impact on the general "openness" of microsoft.

adrianlmm5• 10 years ago

Not even Google is investing in Desktop Linux, where is that official Google Drive client?

pera2• 10 years ago

Chrome works pretty well on Linux.

FT_intern• 10 years ago

Google's main apps are web based and for the most part OS independent

benologist• 10 years ago

Google builds two of the perhaps most popular desktop linux's ... Android and Chrome OS.

msh• 10 years ago

Yes they do, you can get it on the google play store. Maybe not your preferred flavor of Linux, but Linux none the less.

snippet22• 10 years ago

Who wants to use Windows? So now they are just repackaging open free software like npm and angular 2... Oh great... Again who wants to use Windows? Azure you can't even have it use anything that touches other servers without costing you. I think their focus on their base is what is hurting them. Sure they gained a little with azure but as tech people know, thatll be out if date if not already. Cause why learn how is all connected right?

moron4hire3• 10 years ago

I want to use Windows. No other OS has put the time and effort into ensuring stable, cutting edge support for the 3D graphics systems I need for my work.

Windows is still 90% of the PC market. If only 10% of those users are developers, that means there are more Windows developers than all macOS users combined. There are a lot of us out here, and I think we're starting to get fed up with being treated like we don't exist, just because of the shame that gets lumped on us from a small cohort of other developers.

simonh2• 10 years ago

This is a fair point actually. I switched to the Mac a decade ago, but Mac hardware free-rides off the PC hardware market all the time. If we're honest, so does Linux. If Microsoft hadn't supported and grown the PC hardware industry for decades the whole desktop ecosystem would be a lot poorer.

Personally I'm very happy with the hardware options available to me on the Mac, but there's a whole world of hardware options over there in PC land I'll never take advantage of. Conversely Linux graphics card driver support is still woeful, but that's really not Microsoft's problem and if Linux didn't have the PC platform to run on it's hardware costs would be much higher. What would be the alternative, Sun-style workstations? It's not that Microsoft did this on purpose, but it's still a fact.

Spivak• 10 years ago

If only 10% of those users are developers

Your overall point stands on its own but are you really trying to argue that 1 in 10 PCs are software development workstations?

Also, you should not expect that having a 90% market share overall will translate into 90% market share among any particular subset of users.

pmontra5• 10 years ago

If only 10% of those users are developers

They are not. That would mean that more than 10% of the people sitting on chairs in companies are doing software development. That would fail to take into account jobs that don't have a chair, every PC outside an office and even non technical jobs in sw development companies.

Let's check some facts.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...

Number of jobs: 1,114,000

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001

All employees, end of 2014: 140,402,000

It's less than 1%, still much more than I would bet on. However I think that this figure is lower globally and Windows is sold globally. Hence, much less than 1% of PC users are software developers (Windows, Mac, Linux, anything) and having Windows the larger share its stats are close to the global figure.

cryptarch4• 10 years ago

Isn't it mostly that no other OS has graphics drivers that are put as much time in by graphics card makers?

Because Microsoft has the largest market share and porting drivers from Windows to Unix systems is basically a full rewrite, which doesn't happen?

anonbanker6• 10 years ago

ensuring stable, cutting edge support for the 3D graphics systems I need for my work.

So how is Vulkan support on Windows these days?

makecheck• 10 years ago

Well, nothing like having to “log in” to a product to make it feel “open”, or have it randomly prioritize verifying its own license for 60 seconds over letting you launch and begin your work.

SomeHacker44• 10 years ago

Somewhat OT: With the ad interstitial, and now an auto-play video with audio ad on the main article, and the article split into three pages... I just can't bring myself to read Forbes content online anymore. Even if I'm interested in what de Icaza has to say.

megous• 10 years ago

Forbes looks like quote of the day website that's progressively enhanced to a online newspaper if you care about enabling JavaScript.

Progressive enhancement was nice while it lasted.

st3v3r2• 10 years ago

Cool. Where's the Windows and Office source? I've got some changes I'd like to contribute.

whoopdedo• 10 years ago

The exFAT patent is royalty-free now?

anonbanker6• 10 years ago

I wonder what kind of sit-down peer review was done to keep it closed?

m-p-3• 10 years ago

And thus a new cycle of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish is happening.

ergo14• 10 years ago

Did MS stop suing linux users already?

thr0waway1239• 10 years ago

I have started thinking that those who now work at Microsoft are blind to its flaws by default.

The classic example being Windows 10 - anyone who is actually not blind to the fiasco of the automatic upgrades/issues around further updates [1] notices that there is a certain brutality in the way the whole thing was carried out. After installing the unwanted Windows 10 OS on probably hundreds of millions of perfectly fine Windows 7 machines, they claimed that some 300+ million computers were now running on Windows 10. [2] My guess is, less than half of those were actually desired by the end users. And a few more iterations of these botched auto-updates, and "happy Windows 10 user" is going to become an oxymoron.

This episode went so much against the spirit of open source that these claims seem a little comical. It is probably true that MS had to make these choices to maximize shareholder profit, but lets just take it down a notch on the supposed openness.

To those who wish to still make this 'open by default' claim, I welcome MS to open source Windows 7 and Windows XP and see if they can sustain the same kind of growth after that point [3]

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=windows%2010%20update&sort=byP...

[2] http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-300-million-active-d...

[3] http://www.computerworld.com/article/3054528/microsoft-windo...

ocdtrekkie2• 10 years ago

From what I've seen, Microsoft employees have a keen understanding of both the issues with Microsoft as well as it's past. If you are seeing complete radio silence on something, like we see with both telemetry and automatic updates, that's when you know there's a corporate policy that's been laid down that nobody's going to risk their job to speak out against. You can see this sort of thing with a lot of companies, not just Microsoft.

leandrod• 10 years ago

De Icaza is now ‘gullible by default’, says Universe.

Microsoft Is Now 'Open by Default', Says Xamarin Founder Miguel de Icaza

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