Microsoft launches site dedicated to their Open Source projects, programs, and tools

Nothing they own that really matters is FLOSS.

Name a for-profit company that sells software licensing for which this isn't true. Apple? Nope. Oracle? Nope. IBM? Debatable, but mostly no. Google? N/A - They don't sell licensing, only services.

Oh.. I know one: Red Hat. Umm... that's the only one that comes to mind for me tbh. But basically, any of the big Silicon Valley players you can think of are going to keep their assets that "really matters" proprietary. Microsoft is not alone on this front.

But in the meantime, FOSS continues to defines a commons which grows larger and larger every year and obviates all these "really important" products. They are ultimately going to "proprietize" themselves right out of the market. And that's why the big shift to cloud, PaaS, and SaaS because they ultimately know that's where the important real estate of the future lies. The "IP wars" are a waning battlefield and the only victors there now are the rest of us who have long ago absconded with the lefftover assets from those skirmishes and routed around the aggressors to find new solutions.

But hey... that's just me connecting the dots after decades of watching this nonsense ever since shareware authors started running afoul of patent trolls.

Don't worry, the days of the patent troll are over. But god help ya in the future if you get accused of stealing a trade secret for your SaaS. Secrets trollz anyone?

Yay... I think I need to retire or something. I'm getting sick of these cycles of bullshit.

/r/programming Thread Parent Link - opensource.microsoft.com