All three announced agreements at Connect(); conference

Nov 17, 2016 06:32 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s Connect(); developer event kicked off yesterday with some pretty big announcements, and the Redmond-based software giant itself started the celebration by revealing that it was joining The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member in a move that clearly shows the firm’s ambitions in the open-source world.

But Microsoft’s announcement was followed by similar news from Google and Samsung, which also attended the developer conference to share their efforts with the community.

Google, in particular, is joining the independent .NET Foundation, becoming an important Microsoft partner for the open platform, despite remaining a key rival in so many markets.

“Wednesday’s addition of Google to the .NET Foundation’s Technical Steering Group further reinforces the vibrancy of the .NET developer community as well as Google’s commitment to fostering an open platform that supports businesses and developers who have standardized on .NET,” Microsoft announced in a press release.

Samsung’s announcement

And Samsung, in its turn, is also making significant steps in this regard with a preview of Visual Studio Tools for Tizen, the company’s in-house operating system that’s growing at a fast pace. Tizen is currently installed on a variety of devices, including smartwatches, and there are rumors claiming that the South Korean firm is planning to bring it on smartphones as well in the coming years.

“Other industry leaders are also betting on .NET Core for their own commercial products. On Wednesday Samsung is releasing a preview of its Visual Studio Tools for Tizen. Developers can use the tools to build .NET apps for the Tizen operating system that runs on millions of Samsung TVs, wearables, mobile devices and many IoT devices around the world,” Microsoft proudly announced.

Without a doubt, having large companies such as Google and Samsung on its side can only be good news for Microsoft, especially because the software giant is expanding so aggressively in the open source world.

It goes without saying that seeing Microsoft joining The Linux Foundation is surprising news given the fact that the company’s leaders once described Linux as “a cancer,” but with Satya Nadella at the helm of the firm, getting closer to the open source simply makes sense.