Those of you who know me well know I don’t really care for Microsoft. But, I couldn’t really put a finger on it. Until a few weeks ago that is. I went to a MS SOA seminar in town. Basically, this was Microsoft’s answer to Oracle’s Fusion technology stack I had seen at Oracle OpenWorld. While watching the presentation, I figured it out: Microsoft is just too full of itself.
Imagine that one person in jr high you couldn’t stand because it was them this and them that…you have Microsoft. Yes, they have cool technology, yes it does neat stuff, but in contrast with open free–as in freedom–software that uses standards everyone can live with, Microsoft saves its coolest most interoperable stuff for other Microsoft based apps.
Now, onto an aside: DotNetNuke (a cms based on .net). What about the modules? I recently went looking for a podcast module for Salem Baptist’s website. The only modules were ones I had to pay for. ARG! I don’t want to pay for something only to find out it doesn’t do what I want.
Contrast this with Joomla and the components and bots available for it. I recently went looking for a podcast module to play with on my site. Right off the bat, I found several I could download, install, play with, and see if I like. That’s it…nice and simple.
While it isn’t Microsoft that makes the module designers choose what they did for their modules, I believe the “microsoftie” attitude shows through them. Instead of writing code because they want to, they enjoy it, or they have a need for functionality then sharing it with others, they do it and want to “get theirs.” Yes, in all fairness there are problems with the “free software movement” too: if all software were free (as in freedom), we would not have world peace, the planets wouldn’t align, and everyone wouldn’t get along.