Open source

Microsoft is all in on open source. We believe that power of collaborative development through the open source process can accelerate innovation, and that open collaboration often allows communities to achieve more than their members can do alone. As one of the top open source collaborators in the world, we’re committed to bringing our engineers and innovation to help foster a healthy open source ecosystem that our customers, developers, and partners can use, modify, improve, and build upon.

Microsoft is an active member and core contributor to open source ecosystems and projects such as the Linux Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Python Software Foundation, and Rust Foundation. We also work with GitHub and the broader open source community to build norms, laws, and polices that accelerate collaborative software development. Finally, we foster active communities around our own home-grown projects like VS Code, TypeScript, and .NET Core.

Microsoft supports open source innovation by participating in patent “safe spaces” for open source software. For example, in October 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network, a community formed to help protect the Linux ecosystem from patent-related threats. Other examples include sharing our exFAT technology with the Linux kernel community and extending IP indemnification coverage to open source software powering Azure services through the Azure IP Advantage program.