Microsoft has made a big deal out of their support for open-source projects and for quite a good reason. Ever since their switch to open-source for .Net, the Redmon giant has not only gained by encouraging developers to use Azure server tools but has provided the programming community with an increasingly improved free product to build on.
InfoWorld declares the switch to open-source a “win-win”, noting that originally Microsoft wasn’t too keen on the idea of going into open-source. In fact, the company had once considered it a threat to software development. But now Microsoft has taken full advantage of the opportunity, building the .Net Core up to the official Version 1.0 release just this year.
The last two years have treated Microsoft well, according to Scott Hunter, the partner director program manager for .Net. “Forty percent of our .Net Core customers are brand-new developers to the platform, which is what we want with .Net Core,” Hunter said during a presentation last month, explaining that the goal is to bring new people in.
This is even further highlighted by the 61% increase of developers involved in the .Net GitHub community, and that’s just in the last year. Developers have been able to taken advantage of the open-source and push the .Net Core cross-platform and onto MacOS and Linux.
If it’s proven one thing, it’s that Microsoft is much more approachable than it was in the years prior, paving the way to more innovative technology and community involvement for future projects.
