Port25

You’re invited to help us celebrate an unlikely pairing in open source

gianugo — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:00:00 GMT

We are just days away from reaching a significant milestone for our team and the open source and open standards communities: the first anniversary of Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. (MS Open Tech) -- a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

We can’t think of anyone better to celebrate with than YOU, the members of the open source and open standards community and technology industry who have helped us along on our adventure over the past year.

We’d like to extend an open (pun intended!) invitation to celebrate with us on April 25, and share your burning questions on the future of the subsidiary, open source at-large and how MS Open Tech can better connect with the developer community to present even more choice and freedom.

I’ll be proud to share the stage with our amazing MS Open Tech leadership team: Jean Paoli, President; Kamaljit Bath, Engineering team leader; and Paul Cotton, Standards team leader and Co-Chair of the W3C HTML Working Group.

We will share personal anecdotes about how an unlikely pairing -- Microsoft and open source / open standards – may go down in history as successful as Chocolate & Peanut Butter, Cats & the Internet, and Pirates & Ninjas.

Come raise a toast to how far we have come as a community, and to the exciting places we’ll be headed in the next 12 months.

Find your ticket below, and register here http://congratsmsopentech.eventbrite.com.

Cheers,

Gianugo Rabellino
Senior Director, Open Source Communities
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

It keeps on getting better – Hortonworks highlights native Windows support for Apache Hadoop

gianugo — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:10:00 GMT

Any time you can open up a platform to more options for interoperability, it’s a great thing. It’s even better if the platform is as popular as Apache Hadoop and the new option is one that has been accepted as a popular choice. And earlier today, HortonWorks announced another interoperability achievement for the Apache Hadoop project on their blog by highlighting how Hadoop now runs natively on Microsoft Windows platforms:

“One of the things we believe strongly in here at Hortonworks is community driven open source and, obviously, the bigger the community, the better. The community opens itself up to new members by the developmental choices it makes and last week the Apache Hadoop community voted to significantly expand itself by agreeing to accept enhancements into the core trunk that make Apache Hadoop run natively on the Microsoft Windows platforms including Windows Server and Windows Azure. These enhancements were the result of many, many months of joint engineering work from Microsoft and Hortonworks and we are glad to see the community accept and embrace them. So far, as is common in the Apache Hadoop project, we developed these in a development branch for over a year and once this work was complete, the community voted to incorporate these changes into the mainline trunk.”

We at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., want to congratulate the teams at the Apache Software Foundation, HortonWorks and Microsoft Corporation that made this happen! We’re excited to see where native support for Apache Hadoop on Windows Server and Windows Azure will take the community.

A collaborative snapshot of community-driven Web developer tools

gianugo — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:15:00 GMT

Today Scott Guthrie blogged about new releases of Microsoft’s Web developer tools that reflect a snapshot of improvements and contributions from the open source community and Microsoft Open Technologies Hub (The Hub). The latest updates from ASP.NET SignalR and Web API are good to go thanks to our cool collaboration.

All code submissions met a high bar before being merged into the source. These submissions were reviewed and tested by The Hub development team to ensure the project maintains the high quality and reliability that all of our customers demand.

Once shipped, these products are now officially fully supported by Microsoft Corp. and backed by its lifecycle. This approach is unique - allowing rapid open source innovation, while also providing continuity for Microsoft’s business customers.

Here’s a quick overview of the latest products and features, along with links to their open source repository homes. Please keep the feedback coming so we can continue to make these tools better together.

ASP.NET SignalR

ASP.NET SignalR provides real-time web functionality to applications, and may best be expressed by the description on the ASP.NET SignalR website:

“ASP.NET SignalR is a new library for ASP.NET developers that makes it incredibly simple to add real-time web functionality to your applications. What is "real-time web" functionality? It's the ability to have your server-side code push content to the connected clients as it happens, in real-time.”

The Hub support for ASP.NET SignalR comes with a long-term roadmap. As with the other open source projects in our portfolio, The Hub is dedicated to maintaining a high level of development resources for ASP.NET SignalR, as well as making the customer feedback loop better to allow growth of customer usage.

ASP.NET SignalR has an active community. Community contributions can be submitted to the ASP.NET SignalR GitHub repository. All code submissions will be reviewed and tested by The Hub to ensure the project remains high quality and reliable. Before accepting contributions a contributor must sign a contribution agreement. A contributor then submits their patch, which, if accepted, will be merge into the source.

ASP.NET Web API

The ASP.NET Web API now includes support for OData endpoints, with support for JSON.Light and custom conventions. Automated help page generation allows developers to quickly and easily create documentation for web APIs.

Get started with OData at http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/odata-support-in-aspnet-web-api.

More details on automated help page generation can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/08/15/introducing-the-asp-net-web-api-help-page-preview.aspx.

Here at The Hub we are very excited to see new projects and updates continue to roll out with the help of the open source community. With your participation, we’re continuing to build open source engineering best practices. As we go ahead, we are looking forward to working even closer with open source projects and communities.

VM Depot repository off to a flying start

Ross Gardler — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:34:00 GMT

It's been just one month since Microsoft Open Technologies announced the early preview of VM Depot, a community-driven catalog of open source virtual machine images. Today we are proud to announce that the community has rallied to our call and already produced over 100 images. We are thrilled at the reception this preview has received and there are more images appearing every day. VM Depot, even in preview, is already a valuable resource for open source projects and their communities. On VM Depot the community can build, deploy and share their favorite Linux configuration, create custom open source stacks, work with others and build new architectures for the cloud that leverage the openness and flexibility of the Windows Azure platform.

We already have a range of base Linux distributions upon which you can build new images. These include, but are not limited to, Debian, Centos, Ubuntu and Mageia. There are images that include “big brand” open source projects such as WordPress, Drupal as well as developer stacks such as the LAMP, Ruby Stack and Apache Tomcat. All these are complemented nicely by more niche projects such as the Moodle course management system and PhPCompta, an accounting application adapted to Belgian legislation. Each day we are seeing more and more open source software published on VM Depot for deployment to Windows Azure. I can only thank the growing community for so fully embracing the VM Depot preview. It's great to arrive here at Microsoft just as this is taking off, I look forward to working with you as we go from strength to strength.

If you haven't already done so, now is a really good time to take a look at the ever growing range of images available. If you have an Azure subscription, you're ready to try it out, if not you can quickly sign up for a free 90-day trial subscription. In addition to being able to deploy from your Azure portal we have provided cross-platform command line tools that give you all the control you need. All we ask is that you remember this is a community effort so please rate and comment on any images you try out. This will help users find the best images and help maintainers ensure they are meeting user's needs.

Should the image you are looking for not be available yet you can let the community know via the VM Depot forums, with luck someone else will have the same need and publish their image for you. Alternatively, you can build and publish an image yourself. Instructions for publishing and managing images are available on the VM Depot website. If you need any assistance please post to the forums where I or another community member will be pleased to help you.

It is clear from the communities uptake of VM Depot that open source is front and center on Windows Azure, with your help we look forward to building on the early momentum this preview release has generated.

Git now fully supported and integrated into Team Foundation Service

gianugo — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:23:00 GMT

Here is great news for open source developers: Brian Harry announced today at the Microsoft’s ALM Summit that Git is now fully integrated into Visual Studio as well as the Team Foundation Service, Microsoft’s cloud-powered Application Lifecycle Management tool.

Here at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., we are excited to hear such news as this offers more choice and flexibility to development teams. We happen to work on a daily basis with developers on Git in the context of projects such as Node, Dash, Redis or Solr so we totally get the goodness of this news.

The Visual Studio Tools for Git work great against Git repositories locally, in Team Foundation Service, on GitHub, CodePlex, BitBucket etc. That’s all because they are using Git as the distributed source control solution and they talk to Git repositories via the open source library LibGit2. LibGit2 is a portable C library that runs on many different platforms including Linux and Mac.

Microsoft engineers in Brian’s team have been contributing to LibGit2 for a number of months now as they worked with the community to add Git support in Visual Studio – some of them earning committer rights on this popular and very active open source project. Even better as the team started testing the integration, all the bug fixes and security fixes that they found also have been contributed back to the project.

Therefore not only is Brian’s announcement good news for developers in Visual Studio wanting to use Git to contribute to open source projects, it’s also great news for others building on top of the LibGit2 library on any platform.

The Visual Studio Tools for Git are provided as an extension for Visual Studio 2012 but Brian also says that they should be included in the box with all editions of Visual Studio in a future release – including the Express editions.

I can tell you MS Open Tech engineers can’t wait to take full advantage of the Visual Studio Tools for Git in their daily interaction and collaboration with the open source developers’ community.

It's an exciting day for me

Ross Gardler — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:50:00 GMT

I've been involved with open source software for just shy of 15 years now. During that time I've seen open source software become a fundamental part of technology innovation. It is that technology innovation that has fed me and my family for many years. I like to think I've given back and played a small part in the growth of open source software through my code contributions and my open source strategic consultancy services. But, today I am presented with an opportunity to give back even more. From today onwards I will be joining Microsoft UK, where I’ll be serving a global role supporting the amazing team at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

MS Open Tech, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, was set up to advance Microsoft's investment in openness - including interoperability, open standards and open source. Those of you who know me through my open source work will know just what this means, but for those who don't know me I guess a mini-bio might be in order.

I've held a variety of roles including software development, academic research, university lecturing and strategic consulting to both academic research community (via the OSS Watch service at the University of Oxford) and to the private sector (via OpenDirective, a small consultancy company). In all these roles open source software has been a fundamental part of my work. Through this work I've been able to contribute back to many projects, particularly within the Apache Software Foundation where I currently have the honour of standing on the Board of Directors.

More important than my history and my contributions, however, is what the open source experience has taught me. I can honestly say that I have learned far more from my open source engagements than I have in any other of my activities (including amazing experience such as being vice-captain of a national schoolboy sports team and not unsuccessful band manager). This new role is an opportunity to work in this new mixed IT world of devices and services; and play my part in maximizing Microsoft's investments in openness.

This is the first of many exciting days, I am sure. I look forward to telling you about others in the near future.

Ross Gardler

Microsoft UK (Supporting Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.)

For your OSS image building and sharing pleasure … meet VM Depot from MS Open Tech

Doug Mahugh — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:00:00 GMT

By Gianugo Rabellino
Senior Director Open Source Communities
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

As I write this, I’m exploring the public preview of VM Depot, a new service from Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. VM Depot is a community-driven catalog of open source virtual machine images for Windows Azure. On VM Depot the community can build, deploy and share their favorite Linux configuration, create custom open source stacks, work with others and build new architectures for the cloud that leverage the openness and flexibility of the Windows Azure platform.

The preview launch of VM Depot today is an introduction of things to come: you can already easily deploy different Linux-based virtual machines that include custom and curated installations and configurations. (We have the latest, full-fledged distributions of Debian, Alt Linux and Mageia for your hacking pleasure.) You can comment on them. You can rate them. And, what’s more, you can remix them to your liking and possibly share the results with other members of the community. Or why don’t you go ahead and just create a new one from scratch with your favorite software? For ultimate speed, you can quickly deploy images already customized for specific business scenarios. All this is just a few clicks away, completely free of charge and just waiting for your input to make it better. To learn more, see Getting Started with VM Depot.

VM Depot is another illustration of how the Azure platform is effectively open. As complex as it may seem, VM Depot was relatively easy to build as it relies exclusively on published Azure APIs. As we explore the meaning of openness and interoperability of cloud platforms, I can now say that Windows Azure is at the forefront of the debate and provides compelling proof that documented APIs can do wonders to enable building amazing new applications that leverage the cloud.

Some days you can’t help smiling. I had a big smile on my face back in June when Microsoft announced it was making preconfigured Linux images available in Windows Azure gallery and today I have another reason to be happy as I see how Microsoft Open Technologies is helping open source communities work even more collaboratively with the Windows Azure platform.

VM Depot wouldn’t have been possible without the support of a number of partners who have contributed images and packages for this preview launch, including Alt Linux, Basho, Bitnami and Hupstream. Here what they have to say about VM Depot:

"Ease of deployment is one of the key discussions we have with all of the companies leveraging Riak for their highly-available, scalable data storage needs. The VM Depot indicates that Microsoft Open Technologies is dedicated to supporting the needs of today's enterprise with the Windows Azure Platform" - Tyler Hannan, Director of Technical Marketing, Basho Technologies, Inc.

“The launch of Azure Virtual Images and now the VM Depot demonstrate that Microsoft is serious about building out its cloud computing platform. We are thrilled to be a part of this new marketplace, which simplifies deployment of the top open source applications to the enterprise-ready Azure platform, taking Windows Azure to a whole new level.” – Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock, developers of Bitnami

“The demand for cloud computing is there, and Hupstream had the skills to adapt a distribution to the specifics of cloud computing, and provide support as needed. We also wanted to make Debian and Mageia more accessible, and cloud platforms are the simplest way to get started. This was also an opportunity to establish a conversation between actors that traditionally shun each other. Notably, we had excellent collaboration with Microsoft engineers and other community members, while working on a common goal: expanding the reach of developers with Linux.” – Romain d'Alverny, Managing Partner & Engineer at hupstream

I have been doing a fair amount of traveling for MS Open Tech lately where I’ve met a number of great people from the open source community. After a wonderful holiday break, we’re off to an exciting and busy New Year. I know I will use every free moment this month to peek at the VM Depot dashboard and see our latest creation take its first baby steps. Expect more in the upcoming weeks and please help us make VM Depot the best place for open source communities to work together and build shared images for the cloud. See you there.

Simplifying Big Data Interop – Apache Hadoop on Windows Server & Windows Azure

gianugo — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:37:49 GMT

(This blog was originally posted on our Interoperability blog)

As a proud member of the Apache Software Foundation, it’s always great to see the growth and adoption of Apache community projects. The Apache Hadoop project is a prime example. Last year I blogged about how Microsoft was engaging with this vibrant community, Microsoft, Hadoop and Big Data. Today, I’m pleased to relay the news about increased interoperability capabilities for Apache Hadoop on the Windows Server and Windows Azure platforms and an expanded Microsoft partnership with Hortonworks.

Microsoft Technical Fellow David Campbell announced today new previews of Windows Azure HDInsight Service and Microsoft HDInsight Server, the company’s Hadoop-based solutions for Windows Azure and Windows Server.

Here’s what Dave had to say in the official news about how this partnership is simplifying big data in the enterprise.

“Big Data should provide answers for business, not complexity for IT. Providing Hadoop compatibility on Windows Server and Azure dramatically lowers the barriers to setup and deployment and enables customers to pull insights from any data, any size, on-premises or in the cloud.”

Dave also outlined how the Hortonworks partnership will give customers access to an enterprise-ready distribution of Hadoop with the newly released solutions.

And here’s what Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden said about this expanded Microsoft collaboration.

“Hortonworks is the only provider of Apache Hadoop that ensures a 100% open source platform. Our expanded partnership with Microsoft empowers customers to build and deploy on platforms that are fully compatible with Apache Hadoop.”

An interesting part of my open source community role at MS Open Tech is meeting with customers and trying to better understand their needs for interoperable solutions. Enhancing our products with new Interop capabilities helps reduce the cost and complexity of running mixed IT environments. Today’s news helps simplify deployment of Hadoop-based solutions and allows customers to use Microsoft business intelligence tools to extract insights from big data.

TypeScript: an open and interoperable language

Olivier Bloch — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced the release of the TypeScript preview, a new open and interoperable language for application scale JavaScript development. The TypeScript compiler is available as open source on CodePlex.

TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. TypeScript starts and ends in JavaScript. You can read more details in Soma’s blog, on the TypeScript site and on CodePlex.

So, how is TypeScript open?

The TypeScript language is made available under the Open Web Foundation’s OWFa 1.0 Specification Agreement, and the community is invited to discuss the language specification. Microsoft’s implementation of the compiler is also available on CodePlex under the Apache 2.0 license. There you can view the roadmap, and over the next few weeks and months you’ll see the TypeScript team continue to develop on CodePlex in the open.

TypeScript builds upon the good work happening in the TC39 committee, which determines the direction of the ECMAScript standard, the formal standard for JavaScript. Microsoft continues to work with the committee to evolve the language and runtime capabilities. Should the community desire the TypeScript team to go even further and submit TypeScript to the standards body, the team is open to that too.

And how is it interoperable?

All JavaScript is TypeScript, such that you can literally copy-and-paste from an existing JavaScript program into a TypeScript file. You can also create TypeScript declare files to annotate the types for existing libraries, enabling great tooling experiences without having to modify the libraries themselves (the TypeScript team has included TypeScript files to declare the types for several popular JavaScript libraries like jQuery, MongoDB, and the DOM). Over the coming weeks, we plan to partner with developer communities that create these libraries to ensure that the TypeScript files that declare the types support the best developer experience.

Because TypeScript produces standards-compliant JavaScript, TypeScript is consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to Same Markup and an interoperable web: the output of the TypeScript compiler runs on any browser, in any host, on any operating system. Further, it already plugs into your existing JavaScript toolchain (minifiers, lint checkers, build systems, command line tools).

Last but not least, you will see on the site that you can develop TypeScript code using the online playground tool or Visual Studio 2012. But this is not it! You can also use Sublime Text, Vim or eMacs as the team has kicked off work on syntax files for these popular editors JavaScript developers love to use. And as the specification is public, anyone can create their own syntax files for other editors as well.

Give your feedback

TypeScript is one foray into making programming languages and tooling even more productive. Pick it up, take it for a spin, and give your feedback. You can contribute by discussing the language specification or filing a bug.

Olivier Bloch
Senior Technical Evangelist
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

MS Open Tech is hiring - come join the fun!

gianugo — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:00:00 GMT

I can hardly believe it’s been almost four months since we announced the foundation of Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. Boy, have we been busy: Redis, JQuery Mobile, OData, HTTP 2.0, Doctrine, Symfony, Apache Solr, Windows Azure tools for Mac and Linux, Eclipse, Apache Cordova, MongoDB, CouchDB, EntityFramework, ASP.net MVC 4, Web API, Web Pages, WebRTC, Wordpress… the list goes on, and the road ahead of us is nothing short of amazing. We are heading towards one of the most important years in Microsoft history and everyone in MS Open Tech is excited and busy advancing our journey into openness.

We have come to a point where we really could use some help, and I believe we have quite a few great opportunities to join our team. We are currently looking for developers, program managers, technical diplomats and evangelists: what those profiles have in common is a strong interest and experience in open technologies (Open Standards and Open Source), interoperability and community engagement. We strongly believe in code doing the talking for us: we are pragmatic, agile, focused on real-life scenarios and deeply engaged in open conversations with the community at large.

We are having tons of fun pursuing our passion for solving customer and developer issues by creating innovative solutions and technical bridges between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies, and we want more of the same. Please visit the Microsoft careers website to learn more about the open positions and by all means do get in touch: we would love to talk to you.