Maximize your profits - support Open Source Community

I was thinking...in our difficult times is it possible that the shift of wealth which everyone is talking about is happening in broad daylight? Through so many channels of communication and information is impossible for a person to get a deeper understanding of what is communicated. Let's discuss this by looking at the biggest company in the world at this moment...Microsoft

A few years back Microsoft decided stop the "war" with the open source community and invest in Linux and providing support for free software development. Acquiring Github cemented the next step in an open source platform where users can easily build their projects,can easily collaborate and build tools and applications which are free to the world. The world was amazed by the support provided and the openness which Microsoft showed and continued to show in all press releases. Windows OS no longer was the arch enemy of Linux Distros, but accepted them with open arms.

With WSL 1 (Windows subsystem for Linux) Microsoft showed that you are no longer required to make the switch to Linux as you had a rudimentary integration, at the top of your fingers. WSL 2 brought a full kernel build into Windows which was completely separated from Windows and could be used as a full Linux distro. WSL-g introduced with the release of Win11, a direct graphical integration for your Linux Distros, in Windows. Madness I tell you!

You are now able to do everything within Windows - do programming, use your favorite free software tools using either GUI or command line.

This can be described as the greatest win for the open source community since the beginning of the "war". But can it be something else? Let me explain by making a parallel with the enterprise world.

A similar approach, if not identical, was taken from Microsoft for their Cloud business. No longer it tried to compete, at a surface level, with everyone but it smoothed the path for each service provider and each software company to get into Cloud. Stated from Satya Nadella in his speech in 2019, in the opening of Microsoft Ignite:

Tech intensity as a formula is something that we've talked about for a while now. It's a pretty straightforward formula but there are some nuances. The first thing is how quickly can you adopt new technology, because the last thing when you are building tech capability in your organization is for you to recreate the wheel. You want world-class input. And then the most key thing, of course, is for you to build your own tech capability.

And then trust is of paramount importance. The power law in this equation is all around trust. Of course we as platform creators have to care deeply about it, ensure trust, but you all as creators of tech capability will also have to treat trust as a first-class construct.

Our mission is simply put, to empower you to build that tech capability. We want every organization to be a digital software company. And that means you all need to have the capabilities to be able to turn every organization into a digital company.

Satya Nadella CEO Microsoft Ignite 2019

A very positive and clear message what the direction should look like in the next years.

Let's look at two notable examples are VmWare, which could be considered at that time a direct contender in platform services and SAP, a German software company which pretty much is the standard in enterprise business applications.

Vmware , one of the world leading company in on premise infrastructure, is offering after only 2 years it's service in Microsoft Azure as “package”. That means from a technical perspective that, you are very close in transforming a world leading company in IT Service in a feature of your Cloud Service.

SAP, took a similar approach but due to the limitations (yet) of internal configurations within the Application components (logging, business data management etc), is not yet there but steps are taken in that direction. New Features like Monitor SAP on Azure released this year are a huge step in the same direction. You will no longer need SAP specific solutions where logging of data and securing it it with SAP tools. You use the wrapper and tools provided by Microsoft.

While on the surface this can be argued as a step in the right direction, where we all are focused on incentivizing your services, we should ask the question, how does Microsoft managed to bring such services to life? Where did it gathered the information and data for the solutions they offered? Answer is simple...from you dear customer. Each product is based on a customer necessity observed by other companies, while migrating into Cloud, and transformed into own products and services to SELL.

The result, the respective companies which participate in Cloud migrations, are indirectly supporting Microsoft in building and monetizing their own services. Yes, they are involved in the initial phases of implementation and provide consultation but the biggest chunk of revenue is shifted to the new provider.

Now let's finish with the parallel between the two. Based on the Cloud Service business model of integrating, optimizing based on provider and customer feedback and making the old product obsolete as no longer "Cloud ready" could there be a risk for the open source community as well?

When you have your Linux Distro in a few clicks (terminal commands) are you still motivated in going through 100+ distros build for fun? If you argue by saying yes , this is my pleasure, think about how many new IT guys and DevOps will have the same drive in developing open source OS in years to come? If Linux is "Microsoft Ready" and a Feature of Windows, how much time will pass until it will become....just a feature to be used...

The battle was won by Linux and Open Source Community and Microsoft admitted it through their actions but let's not forget the "war".

Until next time, TFG