📓 F# Notes

Coda - Microsoft, the Enterprise & The Open Source Balancing Act

Coda: Microsoft, the Enterprise & The Open Source Balancing Act #

I’m sure that Microsoft takes many figurative arrows to the chest and back while navigating between the demands of their enterprise customers and the broader open source community. That’s what happens when you make a large target of yourself, such as acquiring GitHub. But Microsoft understood that it’s not just ideas from Redmond that are worth supporting. Seeing what Aaron Stannard has done with Petabridge and Akka.NET, and likewise Greg Young’s work with Event Store, and Isaac Abraham with Compositional IT and Farmer, as well as Bryan Costanich’s leading edge work with Wilderness Labs each show that a well-managed open source business model yields innovation that the enterprise can rely on.

And with GitHub Sponsors there’s more ways to support open-source while fitting within the budget constraints of a start-up or growing company. I’m sponsoring Zaid Ajaj for his incredible work with Snowflaqe, Feliz and myriad other projects he supports. And Maxime Mangel has a Patreon page for supporting his Fable Compiler. If it’s worth making these tools part of your business, it’s worth finding a business model to support them. And GitHub Sponsors should be applauded for providing a platform which expands the number of professional contributers to the world of software engineering. I’m hopeful that other companies that make their money by strip-mining open source projects - or - by building moats around rebranded scrapes of others’ technologies will take note and see that the better way is to create a rising tide that lifts all ships.

And Microsoft isn’t new to this. Don Syme and Microsoft Research deserve credit for making the long-term investments to bring cloistered concepts into the real world. And FSharp.org continues to create fertile ground for ideas to grow in the .NET ecosystem. Like so many that have read this far (bless you!) I’ve watched Microsoft find its way forward and have been frustrated at times. But on balance I find that the investments they’re making, not just with navel-gazing concerns of high-performance compute, but also their sustainability initiatives have the makings of a more responsive and more responsible future. It can be difficult to see a silver lining as a global pandemic becomes endemic. But as a life-long technologist I can say with confidence that this landscape makes me more hopeful than ever.