Wow. I've been very impressed with Microsoft lately. They could have easily set themselves up as the next IBM, in the sense of being a monolithic corporation relying on corporate practices, but they've been spewing some crazy fun things that shows they're not out of the league yet.
Might just be MY miscontrued perception that microsoft was becoming old/monolithic, but really excited with the direction they are heading.
Microsoft have been hugely focused on hiring people who have experience outside the Windows bubble, and have been encouraging cross-pollination of ideas with the OSS world. There are holdouts for the old guard of course (there's still a BU that requires Windows Phones), but I think everyone knows that the Microsoft of old cannot compete today by bringing an attitude that pleasing the CFO is all that matters. There are techies in the boardroom now who are familiar with the early-mover advantages of free software and the importance of the OSS culture to their workers.
So when a company of massive resources, who can see the writing on the wall, decides to hire thousands of people who actively disbelieve in the value of monolithic lock-in and who enjoy using open-source tools, and empowers them to build interesting things without regard to company loyalty, the result is Powershell on Linux and Bash on Windows. Oh, and a whole lot of goodwill amongst the people you had previously alienated.
Let's hope the awesomeness they are showing on the developer relations side finally leaks into the Windows side and they stop their shenanigans with W10 and Android and VFAT patent threats. It's so disappointing to see this kind of split-brained behavior.
Developers are pretty much the only demographic that might realistically switch operating systems, so they only really need to cater to them. The rest, they can pretty much treat however they want, and they won't lose them as customers.
Exactly. The developers they can get to work for them are "useful idiots", whose work they then use to further screw over their main customers, who aren't going to abandon them no matter what, and also bring in more developers to their platform and away from the competition. As long as these developers are easily and naively wooed by a bunch of BS talk about "the new Microsoft", they get to help MS with their evil shenanigans.
Sigh. I don't even know how to start with this one. I'm a "useful idiot" because I'm interested in making PowerShell work as a proper Debian package, or because I might look into what's required to get it into FreeBSD?
Seriously?
MS is not a monolith, it's made up of lots of different people with different ideologies and different goals.
I think the parent comment's point, with which you are likely to disagree but haven't fully addressed, is that even the best intentions of developers can only serve the ends of the less noble segments of Microsoft.
In response to the flagged sibling comment: I use Linux as my main OS and have almost non-stop since ages ago. I have in the past half-seriously wondered whether infamous projects that make Linux worse were MS false flag ops. But here, rather than making personal accusations (regardless of how true they might seem to you), it's probably more productive to provide a counterexample, a reminder of MS's negative behavior, or evidence that they haven't really changed. Then either people can see for themselves, or people within MS will see they still have a long way to go and keep pushing for change from within.
I agree with you! Even if this is all for microsoft's bottom-line (and there's nothing wrong with that since they are a business after all), we all (devs and consumers alike, directly or indirectly) stand to benefit. The prospects certainly seem exciting.
Might just be MY miscontrued perception that microsoft was becoming old/monolithic, but really excited with the direction they are heading.