Sort of off topic, but it's Friday afternoon so maybe someone has an opinion. Do people who got burned by Microsoft think its different this time? I see a warm embrace of a variety of non Microsofty things, so naturally I'm worried about what comes after (Embrace Extend Extinguish).
I think it might be a little different this time. I remember when they "open sourced" code in the past they used some freaky restrictive license of their own that nobody wanted to touch[1]. Now they appear to be using accepted open source licenses like MIT and Apache.
I agree with apalmer and worry that as soon as they get some leverage over you, you are still in trouble. I can't predict the future, but I've found past behavior to be one of the best predictors, for better or worse.
Change happens. You can adapt and seize the new opportunity, or if you are more risk-averse, wait it out and see how it matures. Any company can burn you at any point in time. How many services have Yahoo and Google killed off over the years (just to name two of the big guys)? Personally, I'm excited to see a company like Microsoft embrace the developer community (I can't wait to try Windows 10 on the R-Pi).
It's fine to have reservations about new technologies and companies' strategic shifts. Being a little skeptical is healthy. Objectively, you have to admit that there has been a massive sea change happening at MS over the past several years, and it's all moving if a common direction toward a more open embrace of the non-MS, open-source development community (I was as surprised as anybody when I saw that Azure supported non-Windows VMs, and I doubt they'll pull support for those).
While it's entirely possible (though I'd argue not very likely) that they could shift back to their old ways at some point, ask yourself this: Do you and the projects you work on stand to benefit from Microsoft's new direction? If so, you would be doing yourself a disservice not to try their products and services when you're ready. If they don't offer anything appealing to you, then what's there to worry about?
I've been burned a number of times. Both from audits (that was expensive, even after we were told we were compliant) to spending all night up because ReaderWriterLockSlim deadlocked across our entire cluster and took our entire platform down. Also I've had the tools melt like butter in my hands. And I've had my fair share of inherited shit balls. Not only that they've been treacherous bastards historically.
But the thing for me is the cash is pretty damn good and some days you can get so much done its unreal. I've worked with Unix platforms for the same time (20 years now) and know both inside out and windows is way more flexible, particularly when it comes to the end user.
What comes after exbrace, extend is no longer extinguish though. Any sane person these days makes portability choices. We're rebuilding our stuff as microservices now (4MLoC C# projects won't survive without this). Now their stack is getting a look in because we're already experienced with it but if they shaft everyone this time, its trivial to port our services away to other tech. We rewrite most of our stuff perpetually so they'll evolve into zero risk.
Seems like their CEO is pushing a new strategy. I'm starting to warm over a bit personally. I would love to be able to use visual studio for all of my hobby projects, but I need to have confidence it's going to support things like node, Linux, Arduino or whatever else I'm playing with at the time. I'm watching MS closely now. Perhaps they might just turn themselves around.
While you'll find many who legitimately complain about Microsoft's products, I think you'll find very, very few folks around here who were actually burned by EEE :-) Most of the hate seems to come from people who:
a) are open source fans and didn't like Microsoft's stance on their religion of choice (which was actually not EEE); or
b) worked for companies that competed unsuccessfully with Microsoft; or
c) just parrot what they hear from people in groups (a) and (b) because they don't know any better.
It would be interesting to poll HN to find out who got actually burned by EEE and how.
I've been hearing about this'new microsoft' for the better part of a decade (yep, even when Balmer was still around). So every time somebody mentions it my mind muddles anything else they have to say.
I'll believe Microsoft has turned a new leaf once they've open sourced their Operating System's Kernel and their Browser Engine and stopped development on DirectX or handed it over to Khronos or ISO/IEC and/or open source it.
