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by kriro
4107 days ago
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There are actually some strong OS voices in Microsoft. I was at Solutions Linux in France (around 2006 iirc) and there was a Microsoft booth. Since our booth had some downtime I talked to the guy manning their booth who was kind of stranded between Linux distros and FLOSS companies. He was pretty cool and genuinely trying to advance OS within Microsoft but said it's a pretty frustrating experience overall (his descriptions of the internal processes at Microsoft were pretty interesting). Seems like they have come a long way since, I hope he's still working there. I should have his card somewhere at home :) So as far as I know there have been developers who were pushing to open source a lot of infrastructure/language stuff for quite some time. Edit: I think it's no coincidence we see this happening now that Ballmer is gone. He was kind of the villain in the "let's open source stuff" stories I heard. |
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The move to open source has been in the works a long time and appears (to me at least) as part of Ballmer and Gates long term strategic plan for the era when they were no longer the largest and second largest shareholders and the company was more beholden to Wall Street.
The new post-founder (ok Ballmer wasn't technically a founder) era at Microsoft has been set up so that Microsoft can operate like a software company again. That means embracing current industry culture. Practices that made sense when software came in boxes and was sold through magazines and connecting meant squawking over POTS, needed to be looked at with an eye toward long term.
Nadella was set up by Ballmer to fall into the pit of success. The super tanker's rudder was changed years ago. The move toward open source is no more overnight than the hardware build quality of the surface.