The Editor: Microsoft's Open Source Pivot

On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, Microsoft took its Visual Studio Code editor and released the source code to the world under an open source license, and the company that had spent decades fighting open source gave its developers a gift instead of a threat. The announcement came at Connect, the company's developer event in New York, and it fit a pattern that had been building for two years. The release is the November 2015 story, and the story is the lesson: the fastest way to win developers back is to stop treating them as the enemy.

The Editor is the subject of this article: what Visual Studio Code is, why Microsoft made it open source, how the move fit the company's bigger pivot, and what it says about the leadership that rebuilt the most important relationship in software. The release happened on Wednesday, and the developer world noticed. This is the story of the editor, and the story is about the moment a giant learned to share.

1. The Editor

Visual Studio Code was a new kind of editor from Microsoft, and the newness was the point. It was a free, cross platform code editor that ran on Windows, macOS, and Linux, built on the open source Electron framework that combined Chromium and Node.js. It offered the features developers expect from a modern editor: IntelliSense for smart code completion, integrated debugging, Git integration, and an extension system that let the community shape the tool. It was fast, light, and familiar.

The editor had been introduced earlier in 2015, at Microsoft's Build conference in April, and it had been greeted with a mix of surprise and curiosity. Microsoft had never made a serious cross platform editor before, and the idea of the company that owned Windows building a tool that ran everywhere was a signal. The editor was the product of a different Microsoft, one that understood that developers did not all live inside Windows. The editor was the shape of the new strategy.

2. The Release

The open source release was the surprise of the Connect event, and the surprise was carefully planned. Microsoft published the source code of Visual Studio Code on GitHub under the MIT license, one of the most permissive open source licenses in existence. The code was no longer a Microsoft secret; it was a community asset, free to read, free to modify, free to build upon. The company that had once called Linux a cancer was releasing its own code to the open source world.

The release was not a stunt, and the proof was in the details. The MIT license allowed anyone to fork the editor, and Microsoft said it would accept community contributions. The company committed to building the product in the open, with issue trackers, pull requests, and public roadmaps. The release was a transfer of trust, and the transfer was the message: Microsoft was not just tolerating open source anymore, it was participating in it as an equal.

3. The Pivot

The release was one move in a larger pivot, and the pivot had been underway since Satya Nadella became chief executive in early 2014. Nadella had pushed the company toward cloud first and mobile first, and the cloud first strategy depended on developers who did not use Windows. The logic was simple: Azure made money when developers built on it, and developers built on it when Microsoft made them welcome. The welcome had to include tools that ran anywhere.

The pivot showed in a hundred small moves before the editor. Microsoft had already released the core of the .NET platform as open source a year earlier, and it had added Git support to Visual Studio. The company was hosting Linux on its cloud, and it was courting the developers it had once ignored. The editor release was the most visible symbol of the pivot, and the symbol mattered because symbols tell developers which way the wind is blowing.

4. The History

The history between Microsoft and open source was the backdrop of the announcement, and the history made the announcement dramatic. For two decades, Microsoft had treated open source as a threat to its business, from the famous memos that called Linux a cancer to the legal fights and the FUD campaigns. The company had built its empire on proprietary software, and the empire had been defended against the open source movement with everything Microsoft had.

The history was not ancient; it was recent enough to be remembered by every developer in the room. The generation of developers who had grown up with Microsoft as the villain had not forgotten, and the new Microsoft had to earn their trust one release at a time. The editor was a step in that earning, and the step was meaningful because it cost the company something real: the exclusivity of its own code. The history made the moment possible, and the moment began to rewrite the history.

5. The Developers

The audience for the pivot was the developer community, and the developer community was the true target of the release. Microsoft understood that developers were the new power brokers of the technology industry, the people who chose the platforms, the clouds, and the tools that shaped everything else. The company that won developers won the industry, and the way to win them was not to lock them in but to welcome them.

The welcome was working, and the evidence was in the reaction to the editor. Developers who had never used a Microsoft product in their lives downloaded Visual Studio Code, tried it, and told their friends. The editor spread by word of mouth because it was good and free and open, and the spread was the strategy. The developers were the prize, and the prize was being won with kindness instead of force.

6. The Cloud

The strategic engine of the pivot was the cloud, and the cloud explained the generosity. Microsoft had bet its future on Azure, and Azure needed developers on every platform. A developer on a Mac with a Linux server was a potential Azure customer, and the only way to reach that developer was with tools that did not demand Windows. The open source editor was a front door to the cloud, and the door was open to everyone.

The cloud made the economics of open source work for Microsoft. The company could give away the editor, the framework, and the tools, because the money was in the services that ran behind them. Azure, Office 365, and the developer services were the business, and the tools were the hook. The cloud was the reason the release made sense, and the reason was the future of the company.

7. The Culture

The pivot was also a cultural change inside Microsoft, and the cultural change was the hardest part. The company had been built on a culture of competition, secrecy, and internal rivalry, and the new strategy required cooperation, openness, and external partnership. Nadella had talked about changing the culture from know-it-alls to learn-it-alls, and the open source release was the culture change made visible in code.

The cultural change showed in how the company talked about itself. Microsoft executives now spoke about the developer community as partners, and the language of the company shifted from control to collaboration. The culture change was not complete, and the changes would take years, but the editor release was a moment when the new culture produced something the old culture could never have made. The culture was the foundation of the pivot, and the foundation was being rebuilt.

8. The Lesson

The lesson of the editor is about the power of changing your mind in public, and the power is greater than most leaders believe. Microsoft spent two decades fighting open source, and then it spent two years embracing it, and the embrace worked because it was real. The company did not pretend the past had not happened; it demonstrated the change with code, one release at a time, until the developers who had doubted it began to believe.

The lesson applies to any organization that needs to win back a community it once pushed away. The way to do it is not with marketing, and the way to do it is with actions that cost something. Microsoft gave away its code, and the gift was worth more than a thousand statements. The editor is the November 2015 story, and the story is the lesson: the fastest way to win developers back is to stop treating them as the enemy, and the fastest way to prove the change is to share what you have built. The measure of the pivot will be the community that gathers around the tool, and the community is already forming. The developers who once laughed at Microsoft are now reading its code, and the reading is the reconciliation. The editor was the gift, and the gift was the door. The tools that developers choose are the tools they trust, and the trust is earned in public. The company that opens its code opens its future. The event ended with a message that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier: the developer is the customer, and the customer is everywhere. The message was the strategy, and the strategy was the future of the company.

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#engineering #technology