I'm not so sure I believe that they're trying to do a "nice thing" out of the goodness of their hearts. They've held pretty tightly to .NET because in order to deploy anything developed in .NET you needed to buy Windows licenses. Recently that hasn't played out so well. Software developers look to minimize costs and overhead that doesn't contribute to their mission (e.g. licenses and license compliance). There's just zero reason to pay for operating systems in 2014 when there are such capable free alternatives.

So if people won't pay for operating systems what will they pay for? Stuff that still costs them money, i.e. hardware infrastructure and attendant maintenance and administration. Hello cloud. Development shops are happily sending Amazon millions of dollars a month so they don't have to buy servers, set up server rooms, hire system administrators, and worry about things like air conditioning, big UPS systems and emergency power generators, etc.

Alongside Amazon, Microsoft is doing pretty well with Azure. And you can run free operating systems on Azure, and .NET is already well supported on Azure. So what will sell more Azure? Make .NET run on the free operating systems. Now all the developers who like the free OSs on their personal dev systems are suddenly able to develop stuff they can deploy on Azure. What about all the devs that like Macs? No problem, make .NET run on Mac OS X as well.

I think this is all about making Azure services more compelling and more able to compete with Amazon than it is wanting to do "nice things" for the open source community.

Your analysis is absolutely solid, but I'm not sure anyone read this and thought "Oh gee how nice of M$ to give back".

In the end I think this is overwhelmingly a net positive for both MSFT and developers.

You know, if MS had done this even a year ago, the project I'm working on would have the server-side in .Net instead of node. I'm replacing a very old .Net project having built up too much code debt to be maintained with a green field project using flux/react server and client. <br /><br /> I really like ASP.Net MVC since v3 it's been a pleasure to work with and the first release of anything ASP that actually mirrored how I used ASP.Net for a long time before it. MVC meant no more hacking with asmx/ashx to work around the web forms event lifecycle issues. Razor is such a great view/template language I still can't believe it hasn't become more popular. <br /><br /> All of that said, there really is a lot of power in being able to use the same JS tooling both server and client. JS has always been a favorite language of mine, and I've been using node tooling even in VS web projects for 3-4 years now for client resources (pre-build events with grunt, and now gulp). <br /><br /> I think this makes a ton of sense in the wake of Azure as a platform. Especially if MS can do services in docker containers (windows or linux) and run on their infrastructure with relative ease. Companies are paying for the tooling (beyond express, now community versions), and they pay for ease of deployment/infrastructure. They don't want to pay for a lot of enterprise windows licensing anymore... MS sees the writing on the wall. <br /><br /> What I think will be really telling, is if by the end of 2016, VS runs in linux and osx as well.

Well there was that big tada about MS/Docker, now this...

A lot of good things happening in Redmond right now.

Now if they can somehow fix this upcoming Lync is now Skype Business business, I'll be really impressed.

I agree with you on the Azure vs "nice things". I also think their long-term strategy doesn't rest with the .NET framework.

However, I think they know that if they completely abandoned the .NET framework, there would be a community of very upset devs that have spent their entire careers investing in Microsoft. Instead, they're doing a slow withdrawal and "giving it to the community".

I think that in the long term, they're going to be focusing more on Sharepoint, SQL Server, and Azure; less on .NET. That's just IMHO.

The power of OSS is often overstated when it comes to writing user friendly software and the sorry state of the *nix GUIs, where setting up a multi motor setup like you do in Windows 98 is still a few years away. The reality is that best practices often conflict with the need to ship resulting is wasted time refactoring, and redesigning.

When my dad's laptop broke, he picked up my spare Ubuntu laptop and has been using it for the last two years. I know it's just one anecdote, but when it saves me a crap-ton of money and time, it seems very real to me. He could have asked me to buy Windows and Office for him... too bad for Microsoft he hasn't needed either. Game over.

What kind of things does your Dad do on that laptop? It seems to me that Linux works well for people who are very technical and people who are not. The problem is with people who want to do more than browse the web and read email but aren't technical enough to do it on Linux. For example a user who wants to record themselves playing guitar. On a mac, plug in and open Garageband. On Windows download Audacity and plug in. On Linux figure out JACK/drivers/supported IO devices. I haven't used Linux in a few years so I admit my opinion could be out of date but I've definitely noticed that the problem is for that middle group who want to do more with their computer but aren't technical enough to do it on Linux.

He's actually surprised me lately. He figured out how to install a spreadsheet app (libre office I think) and has been using it for his work spreadsheets (he's a contractor).

To be fair, he probably wouldn't have been able to set it up initially by himself. But I've had really good luck getting family members on Linux lately. I can Ssh in and do updates or make changes and it's way easier than remotely administering windows.

While I do think this move is a valiant one, I don't believe that it will, in and of itself, build better practices and help Microsoft build better software. Open source is very hard to do right, and if you're a company that doesn't have open source in their DNA it could pose a huge challenge to building positive relationships with your developer community. If you're a big corporation like Microsoft, you have tons of people with their eyes on you at all times. Everyone can read and criticize your code.

Also, being open source means being open and transparent about release cycles and roadmaps, which takes a lot of effort and initiative. I do think Microsoft can do that if they build a solid team of technical community evangelists, but otherwise, they will be swimming against the stream.

Like Apple and Google, right?