Microsoft's Azure open-source site and blog, covering SONiC, AutoRest, the Azure SDKs, Azure Verified Modules, and IPv6 on Azure.
Commenters cite it as evidence that much of Azure is open source, though one calls these examples only bits and pieces of open code.
It makes me chuckle a little bit that you feel this way, only because I recently took on similar roles in my own career, and, despite working directly with python luminaries for pretty much the last ~5 years, I still constantly question my expertise next to them. (I say this to perhaps lend solidarity/"it might not be as bad as we fear")
That said, let me give some actual answers to your questions.
1. Good hosted code. I actually asked this exact question to a python core dev a few years ago when having the same concerns you are, and I'll point you to where they pointed me: [0] (Obviously this is only one breadcrumb but it may serve to lead you to more)
2. This is a hard question since I personally shy away from books as opposed to code samples/going elbow deep. Many moons ago I used to hear "dive into python" recommended a lot but this advice may be very dated, so I'd leave this to other responders who may have more up-to-date advice.
3. There are a few here; [1] is kinda the "obvious" one if you weren't aware, we also produce a "targeted" version for my dev team (I'll caveat ahead of time, I work for the python folks at MS so I obviously have the bias of this coming to mind first, but this is our style/contribution guide. I'll also be open that we regularly find things we want to detail more effectively, so it's definitely a 'living document.' [2] In an effort to offset some of my bias :P I'd mention that the Google style guides are also notoriously good, although…
> drain resources from the apps
The resource usage is negligible.
If you really need that level of high efficiency that you can't spare the tiny amounts of memory the agent uses, then you'd be better off looking into using something like Packer to build a Server Core image in your pipeline, and deploying that to an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set. This allows "zero outbound communications" deployments also because the image build step is out-of-band and isn't done anywhere near the live infrastructure network. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/reference/packer-build-v1?view=azure-pipelines
The above approach concept also works with any other imaging-based workflow such as Windows Docker containers running on App Service or Kubernetes. https://azure.github.io/AppService/windows-containers/
The packer + VMSS approach however allows the IIS workers to join an Active Directory domain "properly". Sure, Kubernetes has some limited support for this, but I wouldn't try it in production unless forced to at gunpoint.
> needs to have a route open to Azure.
If you're only deploying instead of running arbitrary pipeline tasks, then I believe just four firewall rules is sufficient to Azure DevOps (not "Azure"!), but you may need more depending on your requirements: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/windows-agent?view=azure-devops#for-organizations-using-the-devazurecom-domain
> Apparently you have had good experiences with…
>LinkedIn has a large open source footprint: http://linkedin.github.io/
>More importantly, Azure has a ton of Open Source: https://azure.github.io/
Sure I get those examples of "bits and pieces" being open source. Likewise, Google open sources lots of things like Protobufs (BSD license), CityHash (MIT license), and Kubernetes (Apache license) -- but they don't open source their crown jewels of proprietary source code collaboration, the Google Cloud datacenter management stack, and of course, their latest iteration of PageRank. A lot of those Azure github repos I see are open source examples for client SDKs as opposed to building a full clone of Azure that's equivalent to RedHat's OpenStack.
Those limited examples didn't seem to be the spirit of Joel Handwell's wish. I think we can presume that he wants to download the entire Github source code, compile it, and self-host it like GitLab. I could definitely see MS open sourcing bits & pieces of Github but still not give away the entire stack.
To me, it looks like MS is taking Github in the direction of a hosted service for full Application Lifecycle Management. (For example, add more features to compete with Jira.) Github-Enterprise could possibly eventually overtake Microsoft's own Team Foundation Server as the preferred release management tool. It adds to MS portfolio of other cloud services like Office 365. Likewise, if we ask for MS to "please open source Microsoft Excel", it's probably not going to happen…
Xamarin is an easy to use leading indicator because of Nat Friedman's involvement in both. Simply in choosing Nat Friedman as new CEO it is hard not to wonder if Microsoft at least has the intention to explore Open Source as an operating option for GitHub moving forward.
> But, MS has not open sourced CodePlex, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Skype, Linkedin. [...] I see a difference between "programming tools" and "collaboration platforms" [...]
They've open source some of those "collaboration platforms". It's not a clear black & white situation, I don't think.
LinkedIn has a large open source footprint: http://linkedin.github.io/
More importantly, Azure has a ton of Open Source: https://azure.github.io/
A lot of what might possibly be considered "secret sauce" bits of the Azure stack are open source, and you could possibly cobble together your own mini-Azure if you needed too and for some reason it wasn't just cheaper to buy Windows Servers with Azure Stack out of the box or even to just use Azure's existing cloud.
The Azure Functions Host is the biggest example off the top of my head that a lot of people imagine would be closed source but is open source.
(Another example is I've used over the years for different reasons is Azure's "Kudu" website deployment engine.)
I don't know if there's a cut/dried point where Microsoft might currently be drawing the line between its closed source stuff and open source, but "programming tools" versus "collaboration…
KRO (pronounced “crow”) or Kubernetes Resource Orchestrator is an Open Source tool built in collaboration between Google Cloud, AWS and Azure.
Kube Resource Orchestrator (kro) is a new open-source project that simplifies Kubernetes deployments . It allows you to group applications and their dependencies as a single, easily consumable resource. It's compatible with ECK, ASO and KCC
GitHub - https://github.com/kro-run/kro
Google Cloud - https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/containers-kubernetes/introducing-kube-resource-orchestrator… AWS - https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/kube-resource-orchestrator-from-experiment-to-community-project/… Azure - https://azure.github.io/AKS/2025/01/30/kube-resource-orchestrator…
I would not expect that to happen any time soon. Maybe they will see a chance to promote bicep more by such move. Yet until now they actively (and reasonably) advise in their docs Terraform use, if you consider multicloud and few other situations.
I would rather expect MS to declare support for OpenTofu. They don't even have to be involved in it directly.
The main work is ensuring azure providers compatibility (which is formally maintained by hashi). Add compatibility with Tofu to Azure Verified Modules [0] (a great project btw), and we have a clean way out of this by providing real help where it's most needed.
[0] https://azure.github.io/Azure-Verified-Modules/