Microsoft turns to developers, developers, developers

From the translator: Jim Zemlin is executive director at the Linux Foundation. He wrote such an open letter on November 12, 2014 in response to the news that Microsoft is opening the source .NET code and making it cross-platform .

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gained notoriety in 2006 after he held a Microsoft Windows meeting, shouting " developers, developers, developers " and clapping his hands. Although the pictures of the screaming and clapping Ballmer served as food for the early social networks and youtube, his intentions were correct. Developers own the universe (at least the software universe), and Microsoft understands this.

Today, the company makes a loud statement. It opens the source code of the server-side .NET and expands its capabilities so that the system will work on Linux and Mac. This is a serious move for the company, following the recent admission that Linux is running at least 20% of Azure VM . This news quickly spread to Twitter, although it was not such a surprise - just remember how common Linux is in cloud computing.

With this news, we are clearly aware of how much the software business has changed over the past ten years. Microsoft is rebuilding itself in line with the world of open source software and collaborative development, and demonstrates its focus on the developer in many ways, such as things like today's news. A few years ago, they were among the top-20 corporate members of the Linux kernel development . They take part in the SDN project (software-configured network), the OpenDaylight project and the Internet of Things project from the AllSeen Alliance . This year, they joined the Core Infrastructure initiative, which is looking for open source projects that are most critical to global infrastructure work. We do not always agree with their actions, and many open source projects compete directly with Microsoft products. Nevertheless, the updated company of today looks completely different in all that relates to open source.

The company's participation in these projects emphasizes the fact that the way of building software has changed the most over the past twenty years . Today, most programs are created by joint labor. The essence of the development of open source software is to accelerate the development of technology, so today the competition is so fierce, and everything moves much faster than before.
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I think we are witnessing the “Pareto principle” in the field of software. In business, there is a rule that 80% of sales make 20% of customers. Similarly, in software, 80% of programs are open source programs, and 20% are proprietary software. As a result, companies and individuals are frantically trying to figure out how to grab onto joint development in order to promote technology and change markets.

Microsoft understands that modern computing markets have changed, and companies are no longer able to push them alone. Open source has fundamentally changed the software industry, and now at the forefront are developers, developers, developers.