On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 10:10:30 pm Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
That's probably why Microsoft agreed to match Jeff Atwood's donation of $5000 to support OSS Dot-Net development. Microsoft is famous for being idealistic and religious about open source.
And? $10000 is nothing. This approximately is what a senior software developer/architect with PhD./Master/Dipl.-Inf./Dpl.-Ing. costs a company per month.
Yes, and? The point which seems to have escaped you is that *Microsoft*, a company that a few years ago described Linux and OSS as "cancer", has now realised the business worth of it to *themselves*.
Hold on! *Dot-Net* development isn't exactly supporting Linux! In fact one might suspect that the purpose of the support might be to lure some free software supporters away from free OSs (or stop them from switching to them).
While I agree with your general point, this seems to be a bad example.
I didn't mean to imply that Microsoft was all lovey-dovey with Linux now (although they've been forced by customer demand to be slightly less hostile to it). All I meant was that Microsoft sees value in the OSS model as it applies to .Net. If that's because they think it will lure people away from Linux to Windows, or stop them switching away from Windows, that just goes to support our point that there are lots of reasons for supporting OSS other than idealism.