Microsoft sucks open source into its WebMatrix Microsoft is embracing open-source on the web, offering a development kit that targets non-techie programmers. The company has released WebMatrix, a set for tools and templates for use with open-source PHP apps like WordPress, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, and Umbraco in addition to open-sourced .NET code. Nearly 40 open-source …
If you would like to watch the Launch Event Live go to, http://web.ms/enter to download a reminder for your Calendar. Event starts tomorrow, Jan 13 at 12:30PM EST with Launch Keynote and includes 3 hours of live content with a panel discussion and interviews with Microsoft engineers who built the technologies behind WebMatrix plus members and leaders from the DotNetNuke, Umbraco, Joomla and Drupal communities.
"If you would like to watch..."
Hi Mark of Microsoft.
At first I couldn't think why I'd want to watch this stuff - just think of all the more worthwhile things I could spend 3 hours doing! - but then it occured to me, I'd be able to tell my grandchildren I saw it, that I was (virtually) there the very moment when the world changed, when the revolution started...
aw nevermind, I think I'll pop down the pub instead.
Once again Microsoft miss the point.
I'm all in favour of making web development easy, but until they find a way to take programmers out of the loop completely, and produce a totally codeless web development platform they are doomed. Otherwise all that happens is you get the 'easy' bit for free using templates etc, but as soon as your needs go at all 'off piste', you're forced into coding again.
Luckily we don't have to rely on Microsoft!
I'm going to go ahead and censor myself. The comment I would have writ here could not possibly have gotten past El Reg's censor. Read it somewhere else. I doubt this will post anyway, so it becomes in a sense an expression of my discontent with the local moderation to the moderator who's rejecting this post you're unlikely to see.
And yet somehow in the above I've managed to insert some carefully coded and insightful commentary about the article discussed if you're willing to make the skull sweat required to figure out what I'm saying, just in case it makes it through.
WebMatrix Beta 3 is only available on platforms that support Microsoft .NET Framework 4
Was interesting until that .. only use Linux / Apache / MySQL on my webserver .. don't even like to install FrontPage extensions on hosting accounts
Do people use Wordpress, Joomla, DotNukeNet on Windows Servers ?
This reads like "please use our vendor-lock-in-enabled stuff, you know-nothing nitwits that are our core market, for now we added some open source-in-name-only stuff to our stuff. see?"
I am very much not their intended audience, which may or may not be a factor in how hollow this sounds to me. But then, it ought to, it's their speciality. They are primarily a marketeering company, after all.
They know that free software stacks, languages, frameworks, CMSs, etc. are where the market's been going. The vast majority of those are now hosted on LAMP systems.
Microsoft is DESPERATE not to be left behind. So they've swallowed their pride somewhat, thrown a bit of money at open source developers, got them to port open source stuff to run on a Window's proprietary stack. Microsoft is hoping to avoid oblivion by catering for the "developer" demographic who are happy to point and click rather than know what they're doing.
So now we can all look forward to an updated version of the travesty that is/was MS Frontpage: people with the power to create, but zero judgement or aesthetic to know *what* to create (or how to fix it when it goes badly wrong).
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