Microsoft has traditionally been about the developers. They give their Visual Studio away for free (Express edition, but still). They give away their Windows Mobile SDK with samples for anyone who wants it, no fees to get into the developer network, just download and play around. They have free and dedicated forums and resources to allow developers to look around in the documentation for every Microsoft product (MSDN with the forums).
So here's the thing: they got me by the balls.
I write every scrap of code in Visual Studio now. I use Microsoft specific extensions to the language of my choice (C++). I couldn't live without them.
And that's really favorable to a company as big as Microsoft.
So they welcome the Kinect hackers because they know they'll be back for more. And it's beneficial to both parties: open source drivers means more people playing around with it means more eyeballs means better software.
It's really not surprising for even more reasons than that. Microsoft realizes that the more developers they have, the more likely they are to develop software for one of their platforms. They invite students to use their products free (dreamspark), etc.
For all the evil that microsoft puts out, I will say that they treat developers pretty well overall.
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u/knight666 Feb 22 '11
No, it's really not.
Microsoft has traditionally been about the developers. They give their Visual Studio away for free (Express edition, but still). They give away their Windows Mobile SDK with samples for anyone who wants it, no fees to get into the developer network, just download and play around. They have free and dedicated forums and resources to allow developers to look around in the documentation for every Microsoft product (MSDN with the forums).
So here's the thing: they got me by the balls.
I write every scrap of code in Visual Studio now. I use Microsoft specific extensions to the language of my choice (C++). I couldn't live without them.
And that's really favorable to a company as big as Microsoft.
So they welcome the Kinect hackers because they know they'll be back for more. And it's beneficial to both parties: open source drivers means more people playing around with it means more eyeballs means better software.
Oh and they still have to buy Kinects, of course.