Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

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Well, you may love to forget, but a lot of us don't.

We didn't forget that our community was called a cancer (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_...)

We didn't forget that microsoft is one of the biggest pattent troll in the world (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=... or http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/27/microsoft-has-received-five...).

We didn't forget than they litterally corrupted officials to capture markets (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrawrage/2013/03/20/micro... and https://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/pots-de-vin-microsoft,1...)

We didn't forget monopolistic practices (https://www.networkworld.com/article/2221165/microsoft-subne... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...)

We didn't forget the lies (http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/2096/) and sabotage (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009051922175320).

We didn't forget they aided dictators (https://www.salon.com/2011/09/06/wikileaks_microsoft_tunisia) or destroyed products you bought remotly (http://sebsauvage.net/rhaa/?2010/01/06/13/21/41-microsoft-pe...).

We didn't forget they force updated Win10 and all the integrated ads and spywares, after a terrible Win8 while everybody was happy with win 7.

We didn't forget that microsoft killed rare, nokia, skype and that currently outlook is becomming less and less usable everyday.

So yeah, VSCode, Excel, TypeScript, the Xbox and C# are good products. So what ?

Unless you suddently fire everybody from MS, change their raison de vivre, and reboot them, they are still Microsoft.

Attitude like yours is why crooked politicians get reelected. Why big companies can mess up with consummers and get away with it.

People say that you can't change the world. That you can't do anything about what's wrong. They feel helpless.

I'd start with stopping this habit of giving a free pass to all the entities with a disrespectful background just because they got better on some points. Or because they have a better PR.

Because they do. Half of the links I had on them were cleaned off. They are green washing them, cm by cm. Until all that remains is that they were the good guys.

Upvoted you for going through the effort to put these points so eloquently together :)

However, it's not forbidden for MS to change their ways and public image. There is no danger anymore of depending too much on MS tech today. And there's the tactical argument of "the enemy of your enemy" if you know what I mean; eg. these days it's all about about your attention and invading your privacy (and MS also has no clean hands here). But still MS is mostly a software company with a predictable pattern, unlike darker forces able to influence public opinion to a degree not seen before, while MS shilling and astroturfing is easily spotted and amateurish by comparison.

The things I'm more concerned about when it comes to GitHub I've already posted in another story:

They could change the terms of service and essentially drive certain types of projects away. They could limit access to older builds and versions to non-paying customers. They could limit access to verified/signed builds. They could reserve certain rights to your software such as they did with npmjs.com. They could run ads, offer IT staff skill matching and promotions, FizzBuzz-like services, or other LinkedIn integrations. They could come up with clever schemes for offering commercial licensing for open source. They could go after the enterprise package mirrors and policy checkers market Artifactory et al are serving. Not saying they'll be doing that (MS isn't stupid), but given MS is selling mainly to enterprises, there are many creative ways they could make money of it.

Overall, however, I'm not too worried. In fact, I think GitHub has become too much of a monopoly (though I have absolutely nothing against them at all), and I'm always for more choice.

> And there's the tactical argument of "the enemy of your enemy

I agree on this one. After all, IE is now in great shape because of the competition.

IE is abandoned, isn't it? Keep in mind that Microsoft bought Andreessens code from NCSA after Andreessen left to found Netscape, so Netscape was competing against a bad version of itself, made worse by Microsoft.

Edge is just a commercial IE alias. It's still IE, just like Firefox is still Firebird, a XUL based browser.

Hold on. GitHub has become too much of a monopoly? And this is somehow fixed by being acquired by Microsoft?

Yes because at least MS's competitors will take their code elsewhere, and F/OSS will hate to depend on MS services, no matter what.

Well, at least you're right about code moving away from GitHub - spreading the code around to multiple services can at least in theory make it more resilient to any one service failure / takeover.

> We didn't forget that our community was called a cancer

This is disingenuous. He was referring to the licensing model of certain open-source projects, where the introduction of a single line of code coming from an open source project would require the whole of the Windows stack to be open-source, effectively "contaminating" the rest of the stack. To this day this is still a problem to many companies and legal department must carefully review the licensing of the libraries used by their devs.

Yeah, this is so disingenuous, Balmer had really no other words to use. This was totally appropriate, and as a FOSS lover and somebody that was able to make half of my carreer thanks to those licences, I should not be offended. No matter how much of my free time I spend on projects protected by said licence.

Espacially since the economical model of microsoft is to lock you in by using softwares and formats that call for getting the entire stack with it, hence infecting your business. But it's ok because they make you pay for it.

And I note that you choose the most important points of all my comment to focus on.

I'm glad some people still defend them. It's good honest people take care of those innocent little guys.

That's a choice that the developers choose to make to enforce their wishes. It's supposed to be embraced by a capitalistic system, i.e. they choose to serve only the customers who abide by their terms. Free market!

I don't think MS, whose OS infects every PC on store shelves has any place to complain.

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