MS has changed from proprietary software vendor to a spy-on-the-users-and-try-to-monetise-them services company that's trying to be Google. I don't think that's much of an improvement.

Their code used to be their core value and source of profit; they are open-sourcing a lot of it now because that's not true anymore and they might as well get some publicity out of it. If you look at companies like Google and Facebook who publish lots of open-source, you'll see the same trend --- it's opened because it's not worth anything to keep it secret anymore.

VSCode, exFat, and .Net core are not enormous. Their revenue streams are enormous and remain as close to their chest as ever.

So they should start losing money? Should Google? Should Apple? I don't get this argument. And .Net Core being open source is enormous if you use it.

The system I just implemented is using .Net Core on Ubuntu on AWS/VMWare and is happily processing lots of transit trips a day. Licensing costs are $0.

.Net Core brings MS's equivalent to Java to Linux and enables the use of a better language set (C#/F#) and allows for a relatively seamless development experience.

What's not to like?

>So they should start losing money?

I was unclear; their revenue streams are still overwhelmingly comprised of proprietary tech.

Darwin and AOSP are massive compared to the toys MSFT is throwing over the Linux wall. This idea that they need to lose money is a strawman.

I disagree - VSCode has an enormous user base, and .NET Core is a huge deal. They even open sourced the serverless engine from Azure's Function Apps!

All that withstanding, nobody but developers buy Microsoft products because of VSCode.

Microsoft SQL Server on Linux indeed has enormous licensing costs.

Relative to what, though? Departmental budgets or MSFT's gross revenue?