I've been building on the MS stack since .NET 1, mainly because that's the work I had available to me. Before that in the early 2000s, I went through a hard core linux phase where I very commonly bashed the "evil empire". I only managed to successfully convince businesses to use a handful of linux machines, and all of them were servers. This experience (from the sysadmin side too) ultimately shattered my notions about Linux taking over Windows market share. Subsequently, I went to work for a non-profit. It turns out that MS licensing terms for non-profits is generous on the whole, so there was no downside to going whole hog with MS. Then yet later I worked as a linux server admin and then a supercomputer admin -- all linux nodes of course -- before I was tasked with .NET work again.
So I've been involved with MS products for a while, but lived on both sides of the fence. MS is definitely a different company from the Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers era, thankfully. It seems that the current leaders there have a better outlook on the part MS plays in the broader community. I hope that trend continues for many years to come.
But let us not forget that at the end of the day all these big tech companies (MS, Apple, Google, FB) exist to turn a profit. At times that will be at odds with what is best for the community or end users. So it would be a mistake to relax and just assume any future plans include your best interests. "Trust, but verify."
I've been building on the MS stack since .NET 1, mainly because that's the work I had available to me. Before that in the early 2000s, I went through a hard core linux phase where I very commonly bashed the "evil empire". I only managed to successfully convince businesses to use a handful of linux machines, and all of them were servers. This experience (from the sysadmin side too) ultimately shattered my notions about Linux taking over Windows market share. Subsequently, I went to work for a non-profit. It turns out that MS licensing terms for non-profits is generous on the whole, so there was no downside to going whole hog with MS. Then yet later I worked as a linux server admin and then a supercomputer admin -- all linux nodes of course -- before I was tasked with .NET work again.
So I've been involved with MS products for a while, but lived on both sides of the fence. MS is definitely a different company from the Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers era, thankfully. It seems that the current leaders there have a better outlook on the part MS plays in the broader community. I hope that trend continues for many years to come.
But let us not forget that at the end of the day all these big tech companies (MS, Apple, Google, FB) exist to turn a profit. At times that will be at odds with what is best for the community or end users. So it would be a mistake to relax and just assume any future plans include your best interests. "Trust, but verify."
I'll take that quote to heart.
Appreciate the comment.