Why is Microsoft so interested in open source?

While no stranger to open source development, Microsoft has always remained relatively reserved when it comes to a slightly greater embrace of shared open source-based creation – at least until recently. In a mix of a good neighbor policy with a very well thought-out marketing strategy, the company has shown growing interest in the model with Microsoft consulting firm.

In a company whose CEO said that licenses like the GPL were “spreading tumors”, new announcements of platforms and open systems have been seen in order to favor the exchange of information and to accelerate the optimized development of software - as they have always preached. open source advocates. But it is a disciplined change indeed.

As the TechRadar website put it, Microsoft has mostly shared software/designs that have little connection to its notoriously income-generating products. And that ranges from joining forces with the Eclipse foundation (whose IDE competes with Microsoft Visual Studio) to partnering with – including donations to – the Linux Foundation.

.NET, TypeScript, Chakra, R Tools etc.

Although the list of software made open by Microsoft is constantly expanding, names like .NET, TypeScript, Chakra, R Tools, Service Fabric (Azure) among others make clear a certain intention of the Redmond headquarters. After all, these are basically intermediary tools used for development – ​​taking company technologies where they were not normally available, it's true.

In the clearest terms, there is nothing there that, once marketed to Windows users, has suddenly become free. In fact, even Visual Studio has had a free version of the operating system for quite some time now. “What about the Linux version of SQL Server?” would be a reasonable question. Well, as the site points out, it is doubtful that database software is also available in open source.

“ Microsoft has opened up its source code in several areas, but these are mostly isolated areas, without involving those responsible for significant parts of its revenue today”, explained Wes Miller, vice president of the consulting group Directions on Microsoft, in an interview with TechRadar . “As such, adopting open source for areas like these does not represent the major shift in direction that some have theorized about.”

Strategic diffusion of knowledge

It is, therefore, the probable adoption of the same modus operandi normally associated with Apple and also with Google. Basically, a nod to the strategic diffusion of knowledge advocated by open source – reaping the fruits of community building and collaborative development efforts – but without compromising end-of-quarter revenue.

“The areas of the company that still represent the 'breadwinner' do not have open source – and I do not believe that this will happen in the near future”, said the analyst.

A new development culture

However, it is worth noting that even these changes have less to do with changes in Microsoft's perspective than with an adjustment to the notable changes in software development culture. Changes are certainly packaged by sharing code in the cloud, something that has become increasingly common in recent years.

“As a company, we're moving to very open development and embracing communities to help us further extend our technologies and tools,” said Visual Studio Team cloud development manager Brian Harry. “This has been very visible with .NET,” he adds, explaining how communities have taken the form of small development units capable of “branching code and taking it to new places”.

Originally a software framework designed to run primarily on Windows, .NET was not only brought to Linux but the speed of the collaborative process even culminated in a version for OS X.

The TypeScript example

Several open source-based projects conducted within Microsoft have helped fuel the current (albeit conditioned) embrace of free code. Among the pioneers, it is worth noting particular note for TypeScript, for example.

Initially a JavaScript tool developed for internal use - especially during the development of Office Online -, the technology ended up being made available to other developers and other projects. Currently, TypeScript is both open source and open design. “During our first year, we developed much of our design behind very closed doors,” said former TypeScript team director Jonathan Turner.

He continues: “It was secret, but not in a nefarious way; this was simply because it was the way we normally handled design at Microsoft. We would try to design something as best we could and then throw it out into the world.”

Turner says that things changed as the team got to know the open source proposal better – using collaboration tools like GitHub (a shared web hosting service based on Git version control). “Instead of me writing tons of specs behind the scenes and releasing them to the team here, we said, 'No, it's all about change orders and bug reports.'

Open to the community

Turner says that then new additions to TypeScript were made publicly available, so that anyone in a community could comment and suggest changes – going beyond simply making design documentation available, therefore.

“If you had a suggestion, if you wanted a new feature in TypeScript, you could come in and interact with the team saying, 'Hey, this is my idea, and here's why it's a good idea,' and if the team said 'Yes, it's a good idea', so you could send a sharing request”, said the former leader of the technology development team.

Open source and the cloud

The process exemplified by the pioneer TypeScript is, in fact, quite similar to what has naturally arisen in other collaborative developments within Microsoft, such as .NET - whose eminently open design suggests that the company has made the open source model increasingly present in its development chain.

And there is even a new pivot in this process: Microsoft Azure. Microsoft's cloud development platform has proven to be an excellent enabler of collaborative development, as the company's in-house engineers become involved in open projects – accommodating more and more of the propositions and benefits of open source.

In fact, Azure has recently embraced the Open Compute Project – an organization that shares data center designs among several companies, including Facebook , Google , Cisco and Apple . But this is a two-way street: although it takes advantage of the open hardware design, the company contributes its own infrastructure for cloud servers, the Open Cloud Server.

A ten year agenda

Between the harvest of open source's advantages and the new commercial strategies, Microsoft is gradually maturing an agenda that, since its first movements, has already taken a decade - currently reaching a point where new proposals related to the format have gained space every bigger and bigger.

“Microsoft's journey into open source began more than ten years ago, and we've been significant and growing contributors ever since – particularly with respect to Microsoft Azure, where we support numerous open source programming models, as well as libraries. and Linux distributions,” said Azure CTO Mark Russinovich in a recent note.

Finally, between executive strategies and the enthusiasm of developers adept at open creation, it is a fact that Microsoft has found its own balance point – something not exactly new, considering that several relevant open source entities simultaneously maintain commercial proposals. Certainly a disciplined expansion capable of drastically altering the open source horizon over the next ten years.