TechEd is Microsoft's flagship technical training conference. This year, over 13,000 IT professionals and developers attended the event, where new Microsoft technologies were shown off to people who might be interested. I attended in the capacity of a Tablet PC developer, but there was so much to do and see, I had plenty of time to look around.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
This is one of the best-written articles I have read at OSNews. One of my hats is as a .NET developer (besides Java, Palm, etc), and I greatly appreciated the information in this article. Along with the article submitted by the Professional Writer yesterday, I think we are seeing some high-quality submissions to OSNews. Way to go!
Member since:
2005-07-06
Sounds like you had a good time there Almafeta. I wish I could have attended. Did they give out any free swag? The overall theme seems to be exactly what you stated, Microsoft wants to work with technologies that businesses are using. That would explain the Microsoft-Linux distro deals.
Member since:
2005-07-02
You and I have often had heated arguments, but this was a very well-written and informative report.
It's interesting to see how much interest Microsoft has had in Linux recently...could it be that they are finally coming around to having a healthier attitude towards it (and other alternative OSes)? Let's hope so!
Incidentally, I also hope that this will warm you up to the benefits of FOSS as well...FOSS and proprietary software don't have any choice but to coexist. Better to be friendly competitors than bitter enemies, I say!
Member since:2005-07-06
I also have had some exchanges with the author, but I guess it goes to show you should be quick to judge others (or allow them space to grow). I also hope this might "soften" the opinion of FLOSS software in Almafeta's eyes.
Unlike many, I do not fear Microsoft as the big boogie man. They are just doing what many companies woould like to to - dominate the market. They also realize that times are changing, and they are doing their best to adapt. It must be scary to be an empire based on a paradigm (closed-source code) that is slowly becoming obsolete. Nevertheless, Microsoft is first and foremost a Marketing company. They will most certainly find something to market, and embrace it, and ...
You know the rest!
Member since:2006-01-02
First and foremost a marketing company? I find that hard to swallow. Between MSR, DevDiv, and Office they do a lot of interesting and hard software development that no one else is even close to. Windows too comes with some technologies that FOSS just doesn't have to resources to reproduce. Windows is just a bit more constrained in its abilities to make radical changes. I'm not saying that the features in the MS progamming languages, Office suite, and Windows have not been done before. What I am saying is that no other company integrates all these advances after thoroughly testing them so that they can be relied upon.
The only marketing I see here is Microsoft pretending to be OSS-friendly. I think they'll embrace Linux a bit until they can fill the gaps in their offerings that currently produce niches for linux. Then, slowly but surely, the big business customers will be encouraged to switch to Windows for those niches too (mostly by the ease of administration and management of having a pure Windows environment). The game plan here is to get the foot into the door of traditionally-linux tasks and then slowly exceed linux's ease of use.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-02-22
Microsoft's come a long way from the days when its OSs were its flagship product (although it's still my first choice, for various reasons).
As to Microsoft and Linux... well, first Microsoft opened up business with a few select Linux companies; now, as I mentioned above, it's writing code that can be included in the Linux kernel (said hypervisor), although in a non-central part; said code is going to be released under an open-source license (which one to be decided, I suspect after the GPL v3 is finalized and completely informed decisions can be made); and it's licensing significant technologies (like IronPython) that could be sold for a mint under a license that's even free-er than the GPL (the MsPL); and (I meant to put this in the article above) one of the MS employees I met was a self-described "Open source evangelist."
What this says, I can only speculate.
