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Comment by Totoradio | Hacker News Reader

I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they have changed?

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM.

(2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office)

(3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

About your second point, I just tested it on my machine, Word 2016 saves and opens *.odt files just fine. Is there some unsupported stuff?

Yes, their implementation is (deliberately?) patchy with many bugs. They've been lobbying to prevent governments from adopting ODF (an open ISO standard with multiple implementations): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_re...

What do you mean by 'wrapper over binary blobs'?

I know the old .doc format was basically a memory dump of the document; but how does OXML relate to that?

> OpenXML on the other hand, is a high-level specification which describes the high level envelopes used to embed binary objects which are included in the content. The content itself contains the binary code which can call any function in any Microsoft library and has all permissions of the person opening the document.

http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microso...

But lots of Office-like apps have implmented OpenXML read/write without MS libraries

There's a nice documentary about Microsoft vs. FLOSS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ

They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.

Of course. That's the point of criticizing them. So that they can see the potential profit in behaving nice.

Absolutely.

To me? Almost nothing. Some of the the things they've done are pretty much a "life sentence" for ill will.

He consistent and have a good track record for years.

It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. In my mind, everyone has a "Days since last accident" counter in their head, and Microsoft's number is quite low.

>It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes.

Windows 10 exists. Microsoft is "spying" on Windows boxes right now

*Be

Honestly? Nothing. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose and Microsoft has spent my entire professional life acting against my interests.

Allow install of Windows onto a partition and not overwrite the MBR

I've hated that behavior for years, and am appalled to learn this it still works that way.

Its worse now. Grub-efi cant boot Windows 8.1+ directly. It instead boots Window's Bootloader which then handles all of the bootable windows partitions.

It looks okay if you only have one Windows in your boot options but once you have two you realize you have two bootloaders.

Sell the majority of their shares to other people and behave very nicely, doing things against their short and medium term interest, for 15 years.

That's about the minimum, given their track record.

In the meanwhile we can give them increasing credit, if they do behave nicely, but it's absurd to believe that they've suddenly become a good company and that they'll stay like this for the next decades. I have a hard time believing that anyone not payed by them could think so.

And by the way, they have yet to reverse the decidedly un-nice things they have done with Windows 10 in the last years. Allow everyone to disable the telemetry and to better control the updates, and then we can start the 15 years count. Oh yeah, and maybe also stop astroturfing, that's another extremely un-nice thing that they clearly started doing only recently.

There would be nothing wrong in discussing with the people, if they paid people to do so while stating in every message that they're being paid by Microsoft it would be perfectly ok, but that's very different from what they're doing now.

These things make it clear that they're still motherfuckers, just less then they used to be.

* Drop DirectX for Vulkan

* Drop MSVC for Clang or GCC

* Drop Edge for Firefox or Chromium

because they love open-source, right?

Vulkan is just a 3D graphics and compute API, it cannot replace DirectX because it doesn't support most of the things DirectX does.

Did you mean to say Direct3D? That's still leave you with input, sound, maths, and 2D missing.

Yes, I meant Direct3D.

This is just ridiculous. The other points may/may not make sense but drop direct-x for vulkan? What? It'd have made more sense to make Direct-X open source than just dump it like it's useless. It's not like windows drivers for GPUs don't support vulkan. Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. Now, VULKAN evens things out a bit but just dumping so much of RnD for nothing doesn't make sense

> Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL.

That view is fairly one-sided, to say the least. The history is presented in this StackExchange thread: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054....

But to summarize: OpenGL was the standard before D3D was created. D3D has been a step behind OpenGL in features and performance up to about D3Dv7. Then the OpenGL ARB screwed up, with Microsoft among the members (some hypothesize that Microsoft were attempting to sabotage OpenGL).

Several key pieces of Edge are open source, such as Chakra Core, which is the JS engine (like Chromium's V8), and more are expected.

The argument IE6 was that the web grew too stagnant with a single dominant web renderer. If we all agree that the Web is a better place with multiple competing web renderers, why wish the death of the Edge renderer when it and Firefox are all that are standing in the way (and barely by latest metrics) of forks from the KHTML/WebKit/Blink family dominating?

Compared to open-sourcing them? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

* Direct3D being open-sourced would have removed the need for Vulkan.

* Many compilers are good for the ecosystem.

* Many browsers are good for the ecosystem.

Yes, let's have fewer choices for everything! That is sure to spur innovation!

There are a lot of situations where people don't have a choice but to use DirectX or MSVC. Same was true for Internet Explorer.

It's only a choice if we have open standards so you can actually choose between different implementations.

Continue behaving well.

* Drop Windows and contribute to WINE

* Drop OOXML and make ODF the default format

* Drop the patents

* Drop the telemetry

* Drop Xbox

* Drop DirectX

* Drop the cloud garbage

* Drop or open MSVC

* Drop or open Edge

* Actually open .NET

> * Actually open .NET

We don't need to open the .NET Framework... We have .NET Core. It's better, faster, and cross-platform...

But it's not a drop-in replacement, and it doesn't have any of the GUI bits.

Would the GUI bits be useful on a non-Windows platform?

Yes? There is lots of legacy GUI software that's stuck on it.

gtk / qt wrappers for old .net programs would be awesome.

Think this is the only other alternative for cross plat guis if you don't want to pull in non-.net stuff like qt or electron. https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia

So yeah.

I can see, or kinda see your point for all of these except for the Xbox. Why would you want them to drop that?

It's a crappy desktop computer stuck in a walled garden.

So? Your not forced to own or buy one.

It is, but a lot of people want that instead of a desktop and the work necessary to maintain that. I don't think my toaster is crappy just because it can only make toast even though I could use an oven which has more capabilities

so microsoft should just shut down the company?

Sure. At least that way they won't be continuing the damage, at least.

In the end his statement is not against Microsoft but capitalism.

but particularly msft it would seem. Many of the larger oss projects are maintained by companies who either make money off the products or are funded by the other things they work on

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