Welcome to the new world. Microsoft is now the top open source contributor on Github.

define 'contributor' :{ *suspicious face*

Yeah, what the hell are they contributing?

I believe this. They contribute a ton of stuff. Some are obvious and some are not so obvious. Take Electron for example which is used to power Microsoft VS Code. It's a Github product but they have several regular contributors to help improve it. Not small commits, but actually maintaining it regularly. There are many other projects where they do this. They have gave back to the open source community a lot this past year and don't get enough recognition for it.

True a lot of it is the open sourcing of the .NET framework, but what's awesome about even that is that the #2 contributor to .NET is Google. Its a whole new company now and attitudes have changed massively.

You have to carefully define "open source" as i find Facebooks license questionable at best.

@nblackburn I agree. I'm wondering if MS will change the license of the code once there's a large enough dependency on it. Or maybe deprecated the non Windows code.

How do they get the number? Is it any person who pushed a commit to a repo? Is it a person who is a member of an organisation and pushed somewhere? Do commits to own repos count? I'd love to see the source of those numbers, it's kind of interesting from statistical point of view :)

MS is slowly moving to open source, and making money off of services and the cloud. Most large tech companies are headed that way.

@sheeponmeth I think they did that before , smells like EEE ...

@KeyWeeUsr probably lines of code. You can diff the commits and see total new lines over time.

@skonteam I'm not sure about before, but this new love of open source is eerie. It reminds me of Little Finger in GoT.

@sheeponmeth That's because it's not true to it's meaning anymore.

Sure the code is public, but the license it's protected by is anything but open.

@nblackburn could you expand on the Facebook licence issue?

@sheeponmeth I don't think Microsoft can change an open source licence after someone starts using it.

If a person is given an open licence to use something, they are usually grandfathered into keeping that licence. Unless there's a timed term, which i think would void most people's definition of OS. Plus there is even public records of the open licence.

I'm happy to learn if I'm wrong. But I'm just speculation until it hits case law.

@OiYouYeahYou I think that depends on the license at the time if publication. Also, it might be that all existing distributions of the code are allowed, but future distributions of the code must pay royalties. So, updates, upgrades, so on, would fall under the new licensing.

And yet I still miss Ballmer, Zune and Windows 7.

A strange new world, indeed.

add ; commit
add . commit
add //comment to explain changes commit
changed computer and did pull
fixed tabs/spaces commit

Holy crap. Thought Microsoft was anti-open source all around

It's a trap!

I think they contribute spy code

I am a Microsoft enthusiast and like that.

That said, isn't Angular part of Google? If yes, then Google's and Angular's score accumulated is higher than Microsoft's.

They have that many contributers, because it takes that many to fix all their bugs. xD

Angular is owned by Google so in fact Google is the top contributor. Still never thought I would see Microsoft on this list 2 or 3 years ago though.

@OiYouYeahYou They have a additional clause which involves patents and the fact they can revoke our rights to using their libraries should you infringe on them.

This is non-standard (much like anything they come out with) for open source and has been a reason many cannot use the library.

In short involving lawyers in open source isn't a good thing.

@Yeah69 I think Microsoft contributed quite a lot of code to Angular 2. In the same situation, Google contributed quite a lot of code to Typescript.

Btw, the measurement is the number of employees who have "contributed to open source projects". So it's not just their projects, most of which they've added have a fairly permissive license. But its contributions to all GitHub projects.

Here's a link to the article written by GitHub:

https://octoverse.github.com/

in GitHub, Microsoft has all the Azure SDKs, the .net framework etc... tons of stuff.

@derTuca nice. ten years ago. No one would believe anybody, who is telling that these big companies would help each other.

I say : why hire developers and engineers to fix and improve your code when you can have a whole community do it for free ?!!

@nblackburn I'm starting to really dislike patents and software, and how it monopolises the industry

@skonteam Because those big companies have their own agenda.

It's all about marketshare and control.

OMG! Where have I just arrived? What world is this?

There's something funny about the measurements there because Fort Awesome is basically one font and a CSS framework. Yet somehow it's halfway up that table?

Also, y'all are too young to remember the "embrace, extend, extinguish" that MS was using about 10 years ago.

TypeScript. 90% must be TypeScript.
I like TypeScript. it's just that I don't like the fact that Microsoft made it. :/

@sheeponmeth You should still be able to fork a previous version. So it's not that bad if they change there mind.

What
The
Actual
Fuck
:{

@skonteam well then you'll hire someone to try their code and judge it and improve upon it.
so either way still gonna hire some people.

developers! developers! developers! developers! developers!...

I predict more viruses than ever before...

But you still can't find Apple on the list becuase it's the rarest of creatures in the opensource habitat. Some say it's even rarer than mewtwo !

WTF... Brace yourselves.. winter is coming

Actually for the past months I've noticed Microsoft having a lot of open source projects (cool ones too). Come one guys, don't be so pessimistic about it.

and they own ... npm