Not Your Parent’s Microsoft - Microsoft and the New Software Ecosystem
By Bryan Becker, Senior Business Analyst
As you know Microsoft has gone through a number of changes in the past 10 years. Obviously, they have changed their focus from Windows desktop machines and servers to Cloud Computing, but they have also changed their culture in ways we have may have never thought possible. The following quote from an article that recently appeared in The Economist [1] clearly demonstrates a key aspect of this transformation:
Mr. Nadella has changed Microsoft’s culture as well as its technological focus. The cult of Windows ordained that customers and partners be squeezed, and rivals dispatched, often by questionable means, which led to the antitrust showdown. Mr. Nadella’s predecessor called Linux and other open-source software a “cancer”. But today that rival operating system is more widely used on Azure than Windows.
In addition to utilizing open source software for Azure, as part of building a new ecosystem for its products, Microsoft has made a number of significant contributions to the open source community:
By at least one measure, Microsoft is the world's top corporate contributor to open source. With more than 4,000 employees actively contributing to open source projects on GitHub, Microsoft has nearly double the number of contributors of open source heavyweights like Google (1,850 contributors) and Red Hat (1,549). [2]
One of the boldest actions that Microsoft has taken, and one that clearly demonstrates their commitment to open source, is the creation of an open source version of the .NET framework. Initially released in 2002, it quickly garnered wide-spread adoption, and has become an underlying component in the vast majority of Windows applications that have been built since then. Microsoft’s initial foray into open source software began in 2007, with their commitment gradually accelerating since then. In November of 2007, .NET Core was announced and since then there have been 6 major releases the last of which was in September 2019.
This wouldn’t mean anything unless independent software developers adopted .NET core, and adopt it they have. Stack Overflow, an Open Source community site, conducts an annual survey of software professionals, and amongst the many questions that they ask “what are the most loved and dreaded” tools that you use. Stack Overflow defines "most loved" technologies as meaning "that proportionally, more developers want to continue working with these.” In numerous categories, both .NET (the proprietary version) always makes a decent showing in the survey results. However, this year .NET Core (the open source version) is at, or near, the top of the results in many of the categories, including the “Most Loved Frameworks” category.
At Betach we are excited by what we see happening at Microsoft. It is no longer the Microsoft of Bill Gates, or Steve Ballmer. It has become something that I don’t think anyone could have predicted 15 years ago. Today’s Microsoft cloud is largely based on open source software. Furthermore, Microsoft has taken one of their most important pieces of intellectual property, .NET framework, and created an open source technology that is widely utilized and cherished by many. In doing so, the Microsoft of today has reinvigorated their proponents, and attracted a whole new generation of software creators.
[1] “What Microsoft’s revival can teach other tech companies”, The Economist, July 25th, 2019.
[2] “Who contributes most to open source? The answers will definitely surprise you”, TechRepublic, September 13, 2018, https://www.techrepublic.com/article/who-contributes-most-to-open-source-the-answers-will-definitely-surprise-you/