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> completely fearful and reactive, has no basis in recorded fact, and does an appalling disservice to the many people who have spent many years (successfully) trying to change Microsoft's internal culture and make it more friendly to open source.

If you're not already familiar with the "Halloween Documents" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents) then you should take a look. They were pretty much the definition of "fearful and reactive".

Microsoft has historically had an ideological investment in killing everything that wasn't Windows.

Microsoft has been roused in this fashion 3 times before that I can think of.

1. The internet. If you don't remember, MSFT completely misjudged the importance of the internet. A heroic effort by Bill Gates turned the company around and got them on track to seize control of the web (until Google drove them back).

2. Java. It was so successful that MSFT had to create a nearly identical tech stack that they controlled, after Sun beat them in court.

3. Linux. Open source, well supported, loved by tech people, runs on almost every conceivable hardware platform. It's been a herculean effort just to fight for market share. If it weren't for lock-in, MSFT would have gone the way of Solaris and HP-UX.

Now open source is the only way to try to get back that developer mind share that they've been losing for so long. This is a good thing in the long run, but to couch it as anything but "fearful and reactive" is to discount a lot of history.

>they are unable to conceive of a company as anything other >than a single, gestalt entity, with a single opinion and >purpose, whose actions are driven by the most basic >emotions and can be classified as good or evil with >absolutely no grey-area.

Seems like quite a straw man argument, there probably isn't a single person that actually fits your description. And it certainly does not describe a typical developer.

As infamously documented in "The Windows Shutdown Crapfest" [1], in order for anything to be publicly observed outside of most large bureaucracies, a large number of people are involved, and their only common interest comes from very high up in the bureaucracy. So you usually do end up with a single, simple ideology presented to the public, even though there are a lot of people internally fighting for different things.

[1] http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...

You're not wrong, but you're not sufficiently right yet. You are saying that folks see only the forest, but you want to point out that there are lots of trees. Open your eyes: There are trees and forests.

A corporation has a power structure which necessarily is independent from any one person. It follows that there is something about corporations which is distinct from its employees. Look at a business as both having employees, who are people, and being a corporation, which is like a golem.

Well, maybe he is not talking about those people, but about the decision makers. And those strategic decision makers (a rather small community) dont love open source. Yes, even the new generation.

Nobody does risky moves out of the sheer joy of doing them, especially if you have shareholders holding the Damocles sword of share-value over your neck.

You do them, when you run out of options.

I think a lot of people get into software because they dislike complexity and code gives them the opportunity to tackle it. You can't "solve" the complexity of humans and human interaction.