Microsofts Open Source Strategy

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Mattias Geniar, November 13, 2014

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If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.

Linus Torvalds

Microsoft appears to be rebooting internally. After years of fighting the “Linux Cancer” as Steve Ballmer called it, they seem to be embracing it now. Satya Nadelle even announced “Microsoft Loves Linux”, a mere 10 years later.

As anyone in the Open Source community can attest to, Satya made the correct choice by allowing Microsoft to embrace Linux. Since a few years they support Linux VMs on Azure and are now even supporting CoreOS for Docker integration on Azure. And just yesterday they announced that the .NET Application runtime will be open sourced and available on Linux/Mac OSX. Perhaps a blow to the Mono Project that already enabled .NET on Linux, but it’s great to see native support coming from Microsoft. We can only hope they’ll collaborate their efforts.

In the last few months, I’ve seen more Microsoft news related to their Open Source contributions than anything else. Last week, they also added Windows support for the Docker Client (the client, not the hosts or containers).

If Microsoft plays their cards right, they’re bound to be in the spotlight more and more. Good move, Redmond.



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