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Note that SQM telemetry is separate from any ad tracking. I think part of the problem is declining PC sales. I recommend that you read this: https://hal2020.com/2013/03/07/what-if-microsoft-had-done-wi...

> The openness is just a facade to entice people away from seeing that other side.

Excuse my language but I don't know a better or more direct way to say this but horseshit. You have no idea that's true. That's a pretty slanderous claim. I _hated_ the old Microsoft but I'd never let that hate distort my judgement the way it obviously has distorted yours.

> "we're open-sourcing our IP because it's not worth much anymore ---

Equally horseshit.

> Google and Facebook are other examples of companies doing a similar thing ---

Again, horseshit. My feeling is that devs have seen the success of Linux and come to the correct conclusion which is that open-source is pragmatically a better engineering practise than not.

> From that perspective, I'd rather have the old MS bac

Are you out of your mind? I can link to comments of people quipping about flying porcine objects and chilly days in hades when Microsoft started open-sourcing .Net. The new Microsoft was literally unimaginable even six years ago. I think it's incredible and Microsoft is to be encouraged. Guess what, they're not a monolithic malignant entity. They can be giving with one hand while taking with the other without there being a causal relationship.

You failed to address OPs arguments, dismissing them as 'horseshit' instead. The following statements are faact, not slander: Microsoft has made it well nigh impossible to disable telemetry in Windows 10. Microsoft has also resorted to pretty underhanded ways to trick people into upgrading to windows 10 (since when did dismissing a window mean the same as clicking on "OK"?)

Commoditizing your complement is not a new concept - open sourcing your complement is just a recent twist. Without passing judgement, I can safely say Google will not open source its search algorithms in the foreseeable future.

I used to work at Microsoft, so take this with a grain of salt, but the company really runs (or at least ran) like a bunch of smaller companies than it did like one giant corporation. There were people in leadership in some verticals that really detested the way other verticals ran. E.g. none of us in the web side of things would touch an architect that came from the Office team.

So it may be possible that the teams releasing OSS have relatively good motives while the people running Windows have relatively misguided ones. Different verticals have different-- possibly conflicting-- aims.

Personally, I think we can encourage the right behaviors and discourage the wrong ones. Use their OSS stuff, don't use their closed source/adware stuff. I don't think I'll be using Windows again (unless something drastic changes), but I do use VSCode, and I'd love to use Visual Studio again, if it ever arrives on Mac/Linux.

MS doesn't have such strong verticals anymore. The end of the consent decree, the "One Microsoft" initiative, and the massive reorg from a couple years ago all went a long way towards breaking down barriers internally.

Windows releases OSS projects as well, it's not only the dev div team that values open development.

> ...which at the same time are collecting huge amounts of data ("telemetry") on and locking down their OS against users

They've only begun catching up with Google and Apple in this regard, though.

What's your point? Does that make it okay or something?

I thought we could leave the "hurr durr, evil M$" stuff behind, considering that today, Microsoft is technically so far behind Google and Apple that it does not even come close to matching them in invasiveness.