Microsoft To Open Source Cloud Framework Behind Halo 4 Services

angry tapir writes Microsoft plans to open-source the framework that helps developers of cloud services like those behind Halo 4. Project Orleans is a framework built by the eXtreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research using .NET, designed so developers who aren't distributed systems experts can build cloud services that scale to cope with high demand and still keep high performance. The Orleans framework was used to build several services on Azure, including services that are part of Halo 4. The code will be released under an MIT license on GitHub early next year.

Halo MCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Should've open sourced it before Halo MCC was released. Would've saved Microsoft a whole lot of headaches.

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[ncmusic]

Thats basically what the Orleans framework does for Halo4 is the matchmaking.

This isn't true

First they...

[sydsavage]

Ghandi quote in 3... 2... 1...

Re:First they...

[Guspaz]

"Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
- Ghandi

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[binarylarry]

Boom Bitch!

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[s.petry]

Is that NUCLEAR or NUCULAR?

please keep closed!

[Masked Coward]

Whatever it is that made Halo 4 (cloud-based or otherwise) should remain closed. Or better yet, incinerate it.

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[grcumb]

Whatever it is that made Halo 4 (cloud-based or otherwise) should remain closed. Or better yet, incinerate it.

Agreed. 'Software that makes it easy for non-experts to do expert tasks' will one day be recognised for its role in causing the downfall of civilisation as we know it. By then, of course, it will be too late.

Some among you may think that's overstating things. Some among you are also .NET developers, so what do you know?

Seriously, though: From the Airbus crash to high frequency trading to the Sony hack, examples abound of how enabling and empowering mediocrity is the first ingredient of every modern tragedy.

Re:please keep closed!

[Opportunist]

If it didn't lead to cargo cult programming I would maybe even agree. Sadly, that's exactly where we're heading. What encapsulation and abstraction SHOULD bring us is less reinventing of the wheel and more focus on the task at hand. What it DOES get us is more and more people who create software we depend upon who don't have the foggiest idea of just what they're doing.

This is actually an issue. And I'm not even talking about when you ask someone who claims to be a programmer why he chose this over that sort algo and he looks at you blankly, asking "what's the difference"? Or, my personal favorite, "'cause that one used one parameter less so it has to be faster".

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[Dutch Gun]

Well, yes, there are plenty of crappy programmers out there. And some developers always are looking for ways to make things simpler for everyone by creating all-encompassing frameworks, but in the end, almost invariably, it does lead to a lot of cargo cult programming practices with an over-reliance on frameworks and little understanding of how things work internally.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with using higher-level systems and frameworks so long as you understand the tradeoffs you're making.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Dutch Gun]

From someone who uses both C++ and C# on a regular basis, my experience has been that the difference is fairly significant, not just 4%. That aside... you ask who cares? Examples:

Demanding Applications
If your app is extremely large, complex, or graphically intensive, you can probably benefit from a native performance boost. There's a reason office suites and graphics programs are written in C or C++. Games, of course, fall into this category as well.

Simulations
In scientific simulations, there's no such

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[gbjbaanb]

My bet is that their own command and control code is completely native.

mine too. See Herb Sutter's speech at Build 2011, (Here's a transcript) [alejandrosegovia.net]

What happens in the Datacenter? Citing a study, Mr. Sutter claims that the biggest cost is Hardware and Power. These account for 88% of the total cost of running a Datacenter. Performance/Watt has a direct impact on this, and it can be improved by having more efficient programs.

and

Quoting Bjarne Stroustrup: âoeMy biggest contribution to the fight against global warming is C++â(TM)s efficiency: Just think if Google had to have twice as many server farms! Each uses as much energy as a small town. And itâ(TM)s not just a factor of two⦠Efficiency is not just running fast or running bigger programs, itâ(TM)s also running using less resources.â

So they're thinking of their dollars - more efficient programs means fewer servers for the same workload, means less cost and bigger bonuses for the bosses.

This is why Microsoft picked up C++ again after practically killing it off, or at least keeping it around as a niche product solely for the Windows and Office teams that still used it. Its also why the dev team

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[Dutch Gun]

I'm guessing that's where I originally picked this information up, but I couldn't remember the exact source, so I didn't cite it. Thank you for the reminder and the links to those sources. I also recall one of Bjarne's talks discussing another reason why C++ performs better than managed languages, and that's because of better cache coherency, which is a pretty crucial for modern processors.

Anyhow, as someone who relies on both C++ and C#, I'm glad to see them both moving forward with solid support from MS

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[gbjbaanb]

true, same here - I just wish they'd made the distinction between then better - C# for RAD tooling, C++ for performance/efficiency/"heavy lifting" like it used to be with VB and C++ but instead it seems C# was designed to be "the new Microsoft language" by one division so they wouldn't have to work with the other division :-(

If you want to see a better benchmark for performance, look at MSDN magazine's article on WWS [microsoft.com], where the Windows division wrote a compatible version of WCF using C so you can see a goo

Re: please keep closed!

[Billly Gates]

This is cool for a project I am working on. I plan to see if I can create a .com that will do business transactions. I need no latency but at the same time require ACID to ensure each transaction will be written to disk :-(

My Idea is to have no sql and sql databases where something like this will do the transactions to ACID.

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[Opportunist]

The problem is not inefficient coding style. The problem is that people not knowing what they're (really) doing leads to security issues. If a person does not know WHY he is supposed to do something and just does it because he's told to do it, he does not know what to look for when trying to avoid pitfalls.

Look at the OWASP Top 10 [googlecode.com]. And while I don't think too highly of them as an organization, their top10 reflect pretty well what problems I find in web apps during audits myself. Even though it looks almost

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[DuckDodgers]

But unless you're doing something that's waiting for disk input and output or network input and output, the difference isn't 4%. The micro-benchmarks at the Great Computer Language Shootout page are a simple starting point. For Java vs. C++, for some reason the chart (section 2) doesn't show memory difference correctly. The measurements section (section 3) does - Java is about 2x slower than C++ in most of the benchmarks, but only comes within 2x of C++ for memory usage in a few places, in most other mic

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[im_thatoneguy]

Also most internal tools aren't CPU bound it's either Database or Disk bound anyway. A lot of internal tools at media and corporate offices is just a workflow enhancer.

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[DuckDodgers]

The problem is, most of us are crappy programmers for a few years, or even more than a decade, before we're decent software developers. So our pain is inevitable - if you stop the underqualified novices from doing work, you've saved yourself some pain but you've reduced the number of developers of the future.

The ideal solution, as far as I can tell, is more mentorship and closer supervision of novices. You let the same learners write the same garbage code, but then someone who knows what they're doing

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[grcumb]

I disagree. Encapsulation and abstraction of complexity is natural and humans are great at breaking complexity apart and making the common-man able to accomplish what was one impossible.

No dispute there. The problem, though, is not that we make easy things simple and hard things possible (pace, Larry Wall). It's that we have of late developed a tendency to simplify too far. Microsoft is famous for making systems administration and certain types of programming 'click-and-drool' easy. And hyperbole aside, the cost to society of the half-competent people who found gainful employment due to this charade can be measured in the many billions.

You're absolutely right in that commercial flying is s

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[donaldm]

Whatever it is that made Halo 4 (cloud-based or otherwise) should remain closed. Or better yet, incinerate it.

Well it is designed to run on .NET [wikipedia.org] which is open source as well but licensed under Reasonable_and_Non_Discriminatory_Licensing [wikipedia.org] which if you read this seems like a minefield full of flowers since Microsoft holds lots of patents on the all over infrastructure. Basically this will be a Microsoft only thing. Other companies enter at their peril. :)

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[Shados]

.NET is slowly being "re-opensourced" under MIT license though.

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[Opportunist]

Wake me when they're done. 'til then, keep that 10 foot pole ready.

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[gbjbaanb]

only the shitty stuff they don't care about - all the good code is kept locked away, for good reason. Its only the crap that isn't so bad they don't want you to look at, but they do want you to maintain that they open source.

IIRC all the cloud goodness they have went C++ a while back, as they looked at how much it cost them to run .NET code on all their servers, when you have a million servers the loss in efficiency of running .NET everywhere adds up to a significant amount. Hence their "C++ Renaissance" of

Open Source Vaporware

[salesgeek]

I'm glad that Microsoft is releasing this. I really am. But you don't have to do the whole vaporware release where you say "We'll be releasing this awesome thing early next year." Just release the code and announce it when you do. Old habits die hard ...

Encouragement...

[FearTheDonut]

We've been asking for years now (decades, even) for Microsoft to become more open. Regardless of their motivation, this kind of behavior should be encouraged, rather than ridiculed. To my knowledge, none of the other platforms they've open sourced has 'taken back' by them, as some conspiracy theorists have anticipated. While I'm under no illusion that Office or Windows will ever be open sourced, I'm very happy that much of their other platforms are becoming more open and hope they continue to do so.

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[drinkypoo]

Show me a license which protects my interests, and I'll show you some enthusiasm.

Exit strategy?

[RobSwider]

Does this give Microsoft a legitimate exit strategy for when they decide they're done supporting Halo 4 Multiplayer? Can they just say "You can still play online with friends!**"? Will they start handing over the keys, as it were, sooner than they ordinarily would because "someone will pick up the slack"? End-of-life is becoming an increasingly important issue with so many games going all-or-nearly-all online.

Do or die time

[funkymonkjay]

It's do or die time for MS's .Net and Azure so they need to throw down any and all incentive to get people to get on board. I applaud the new CEO's aggressive switch over to open source but it's a little too late. That moment has come and gone. My previous work place experienced this first hand. Potential buyers loved the product but not the platform that it was written in. They wanted linux/java, not MS/c++/c#.

Not sure it's worth it

[trev.norris]

I played Halo 4 for over 400 hours, and I'm currently playing MCC exclusively. While I love the game, I can also say that the multiplayer in Halo 4 and definitely now in MCC are definitely lacking. So I'm not sure Microsoft is doing the world a favor by releasing this. What I can hope is that users will be able to help Microsoft make Halo online gaming experience better.