. . . Wait a Sec (WOW Microsoft! Part 2)

So I wrote two blog posts about the technologies I thought were most impactful to an entrepreneur from my time attending MIX10.

Here, I have another take on the whole Microsoft thing going on.  And let me say one more thing before moving on that this applies equally well to Google.

First, I love technology and I love development tools.

I love the tools that Microsoft provides to developers since they are second to none.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Microsoft (and Google) are massive companies that employ armies of developers.  This is good for many of us.

Microsoft is really, really, I mean really embracing the ideas of Open Source and community development, which is good for many of us.

As an idea guy with a development background, one of the things that would keep me up at night is the gaps in the tools we have for easily building and assembling great software ideas into working applications.  While working for others, I was often either explicitly or implicitly the architect of software solutions, and often would come up with great ideas for building reusable tools to work into the architectures of our software solutions.  Knowing that software was not the business of my employers and having an entrepreneurial spirit, I often dreamed of making a business out of building software development tools and libraries.

Unfortunately, the ability for this dream to become a reality is shrinking and shrinking at an ever increasing rate.  The consquence, intended or unintended of Microsoft’s gung ho adoption of Open Source is that they are now applying their development army to building the very tools enterprising developers like myself once did outside of the walls of Redmond.  We’re now talking about people within Microsoft who are literally paid to create software tools that will be given away for free.  And it’s not just a few, it’s, again, an army.

Yeah yeah, it sounds like crying over spilled milk, but what I’m really trying to do here is call attention to a trend that I don’t see or hear anyone else mentioning.

So while for some, all of this free stuff that seems to be coming out of a firehose from Microsoft (and Google) is a good thing, there are some very smart developers out there working on an idea that they love for no monetary benefit in the hopes that they can eventually gain some independence and freedom by providing that tool at a nominal fee, only to see their idea or creation obsoleted by something that is given away by the megolith software giants.

Is it fair?  Not relevant.  Does it suck?  For some, but it seems that the business of the business of making software is moving away from the individual, and for me that is sad.  Not just for the closed opportunity personally, but also for the loss of one of the reasons many of us learned how to program in the first place, Independence.