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Comment by TheCabin | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

I don't think anyone on HN has forgotten considering it's repeated ad nauseum on every single Microsoft story on here.

Well, because the strategy was really nasty stuff and acquiring github might fit into this kind of pattern.

Except all the key players of this strategy are gone and Microsoft has embraced (full stop) open source as much as any major corporation in recent years.

But don't let actual evidence stop your pitchforks.

I see that Microsoft is not a corporation that is evil by design and that they are doing exciting stuff as well -- I don't hate them.

However, I am keeping my skepticism when they embrace open-source and am curious which 'actual evidence' you are referring to?

So far, many open-source efforts look more like marketing to me. For instance, WSL makes sense to keep people in a Microsoft environment (and to me at seems that more and more frameworks favor Linux and Mac over Windows).

Microsoft is basically the corporate version of the ship of Theseus at this point. The have a lot of questionable stuff in their history, but the leadership and the culture at large has shifted drastically since those days. At a certain point it is worth reevaluating one's opinions and question whether it is still worth hanging on to those old grudges.

I can certainly understand why people might be skeptical of GitHub being purchased by any of the big players in tech. But I don't see how Microsoft is really a worse buyer than any of the other potential bidders.

Yeah, I am not saying I would trust any other big competitor more than Microsoft.

However, I am still not convinced that Microsoft really changed as much as many people like to believe. I think it is obvious that they lost the fight against open-standards in many domains. Linux on Smartphones would be one example. Now they have two options, either to embrace these technologies or lose market. The question is: How genuine is their enthusiasm and are they really acting in the interest of open-standards? Do they still have strategies to hurt open alternatives to their own products in the long run?

I think the shift from a traditional sales focus to one on subscriptions and "The Cloud" is a pretty monumental change. Losing traditional sales markets like selling phones really hastened that change. I don't think you're looking for proof that they're genuinely enthusiastic, because imo desperation is the rawest form of genuine enthusiasm. It's whether or not they're altruistic in this particular field, and that has yet to be seen.

I don't think you have to be altruistic to have genuine enthusiasm -- some companies have fantastic plans to support open-source as well as their business plans. But I agree with the first point you are making.

I think it is naive to believe than any company that is beholden to investors would choose altruism over profit. Most corporate altruism is just marketing.

I don't think Microsoft is any more altruistic now, they just have adjusted their corporate strategy to recognize that supporting openness is good for business. That is enough for me.

and yet the response to anything by microsoft is reminders of EEE, while google gets praised for blatantly awful abuses of power.

True.

My days of google fan-boy-ism are long over :-/

> google gets praised for blatantly awful abuses of power

Do you have some examples of that? The first things that come to mind are AMP and related announcements, which were not received particularly positively here on HN.

mil drone stuff, Reader, the worst customer technical support…

Cue followup 'Actually these are all extremely good + business-savvy decisions for big G since' posts.

The key part I quoted was

> google gets praised

None of the things you list are things Google is praised for.

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