[Animus7]

> "Looking cool" is the last and least thing they've got to do to atone.

Maybe to us, the 1% on HN.

But most people don't know or care much about Microsoft's tarnished past. Some have already forgotten.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you're saying, but to me you seem to imply that this is a bad move or that it won't work. Unfortunately, I think for Joe consumer "Looking cool" might actually be enough to continue to buy in to the Microsoft jails.

[adambyrtek]

"Joe consumer" doesn't really care about Git or Node.js. Looks like they are finally trying to catch attention of developers, and I don't see how this could be a bad thing.

[Animus7]

Joe probably cares about Metro, though, which is a far more significant piece here.

And let's not kid ourselves; Microsoft is catching the attention of developers mainly in order to extract money from them once they lock in to the Microsoft ecosystem. It may or may not be a Bad Thing, but it's not doing any favors to the Node or Git communities that they'd like us to think they care about.

[adambyrtek]

Well, you could always speculate about intentions, but supporting open source tools seems like a step in the right direction. The community usually benefits from more popularity, and open source licenses offer some level of protection from "embrace and extend".

[beagle3]

Except Microsoft's modus operandi in the past was "embrace, extend and extinguish", which IS harmful to the community despite open licenses.