Do you remember the times MS tried to kill Java by adding new features to Java?
Every time they "contribute to open-source" I trust them less and less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish...
At this point I really don't think it's useful to cite a Microsoft strategy from the mid 1990s. It's clear at even a cursory glance that their approach has changed dramatically.
- old IE installs
- PDF printing functionality not included in older versions of Office and Windows
More experienced people/sysadmins can probably bring out lot more issues. And I totally agree with you that Java didn't suffer in the end, but how many lawyer hours were spent on stuff that shouldn't have been an issue in the first place?
I respectfully disagree. MS has spent a long time building up a lot of bad-will. Just because they've done a couple of nice things lately doesn't mean we should forget all that.
I hope they become awesome, and continue to be pro-FOSS, but it's going to take more than a couple of good steps to convince me.
Also, they didn't just stop in the 90's. A lot of their questionable practices have continued on, and are still going on. I'm not basing my mistrust only on the 90's. It's just one factor out of many, but one I still feel should be taken into account.
How many of the employees that were there in the mid-1990s work at companies you adore or support today? Maybe other companies are where Embrace, Extend, Extinguish lives today.
Technology moves at an incredible pace. Acting like any news story from the mid-1990s is relevant today is incredibly silly.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Don't trust Micro$oft. Let them die.
The claim is that Microsoft omitted the Java Native Interface (Allows Java code to call C/C++ code) and instead used their own J/Direct interface for calling Win32 APIs directly.
That said: 1. I have to admit J/Direct was an awesome idea. Being able to call Win32 apis directly without writing JNI wrappers is very useful. You wouldn't be able to port python code that uses the win32api module either.
2. JNI Code is very often not portable as it is. If you're writing JNI Code, you're most likely already using native OS apis, and relying on OS specific features.
I have (somewhere ;-) RMS's John Hancock on a small cheque I wrote and he cashed for the FSF nearly thirty years ago.
I did my duty on hating Microsoft and pushing Linux for those years when it mattered. By 2005 I was estimating Microsoft's 'packet' TTL at about 10 years ...
Nowadays Microsoft are like a beaten bully, out-eviled by much creepier players, and they're acting reasonable, mostly just asking to be paid for decent products that do not rape the customers and sell their info to whomever.
Why be stuck in the last century?
If you have any evidence of this, you should email links to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate them. We've banned pro-MS astroturfers before; one in particular who made dozens of accounts and used them to reply to himself in arguments. But I don't know of any evidence that they're "hard at work on HN" now.