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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

People keep mentioning how "Microsoft changed" due to VS Code, the Linux subsystem, .NET Core.

I say that they are the same company, only with different cash cows.

Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users? Do they not engage in patents racketeering? Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

"But Mom, some of the other companies are doing it too", well yeah, but some of us don't have double standards, in spite of what you'd think and that doesn't absolve them of anything ;-)

Brilliant marketing campaign though. They needed it I guess, but it's getting obnoxious.

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That said I'm glad that after the acquisition GitHub will be led by Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Xamarin, which has some credibility.

At least the news isn't all bad.

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Their license for the .NET Core debugger makes it so that only they can use it, JetBrains and others cannot, see [1], they haven't changed at all.

1 - https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2017/02/15/rider-eap-17-nu...

My understanding is that the debugger is an adapted version of the closed source Visual Studio debugger. Visual Studio isn't open source, and is a paid for product.

It takes time to break things out from inside a larger closed source project...

Some editions are, I suppose. For many things VS Community is free though.

I don't think any editions of Visual Studio are available as Open Source software. The Community thingie is gratis but doesn't come with source code.

There's VSCode (is that OSS?) but that's not an edition of VS but rather a whole different product.

VSCode is absolutely OSS.

Why would Microsoft give away their crown jewels to a competing IDE? They spent ages perfecting their debugger.

It's not like JetBrains can't build their own debugger based on the ICorDebug interface (which is what Microsoft's implementation is also based on).

Nobody here is claiming proprietary code is inherently bad (some people definitely do, but not in this thread), they're just saying it makes a poor example of Microsoft embracing open source.

JetBrains products aren't Open Source. So how is embracing a closed source for-profit company anything to do with embracing Open Source?

You're asking why releasing an open source debugger has anything to do with embracing open source because there are closed source companies that are also making a debugger?

> You're asking why releasing an open source debugger has anything to do with embracing open source

I don't even understand what that means. It was never Open Source, it was part of the IDE(s). Microsoft released an update package for their IDE(s) on NuGet which JetBrains used before their native debugger was ready.

If Microsoft are to be shamed for keeping their IDE's debugger closed source then JetBrains should be equally shamed, both have closed source proprietary IDEs.

> how is embracing a closed source for-profit company anything to do with embracing Open Source?

Truly embracing open-source with .NET core would mean that, yes, even a proprietary product could make use of it. A debugger is extremely core to having a language being open-source and artificially limiting it to your own products is the exact opposite of 'embrace'

Also, JetBrains does have an open-source debugger in their community versions, but this is not what the debate is about.

By that token Richard Stalman doesn't embrace open source. The Linux kernel isn't open source. Anything that is GPL is not open source, because you can't make proprietary code from GPL code.

GPL spells this out and gives you the source, if requested. It does not make any restrictions as to on what platform you can use it or anything like that. Microsoft released .NET Core under a permissive license which does allow integration with proprietary code and then specifically limited use of the debugger to their own products. Even other open-source projects, beside VS Code, cannot use the debugger. That is everything that the GPL is not.

This is like if Stallman released Emacs under the GPL, but kept the Elisp interpreter proprietary.

My problem is; if you're going to pretend to embrace open-source and then limit a core component this arbitrarily, you're not embracing open-source, you're still the old org afraid of competition.

Yep, I really dont understand why there are Microsoft fans.

Like I understand if you bought an Xbox, but I dont understand if you are a programmer.

Microsoft has always been a headache. Recently its been a tiny bit better, but they still are a for-profit company that needs to continue to make a profit.

This was to make Microsoft money, nothing to 'help programmers'.

Because their developer tools are pretty good and finding jobs as a .NET developer is pretty easy?

That doesn't make them an ethical company. Oracle makes a pretty good database. Google makes a good search engine. All of those companies have serious ethical issues and I would not want any of them as the steward of the largest body of open source code on the planet.

A federated or independent solution is the only way to go for infrastructure like this.

I think you replied to the wrong thread? I replied to a poster who didn't understand why some people were fans of Microsoft.

It's pretty easy for non .NET jobs too.

Their developer tools are pretty good for their own platform (but JetBrains actually makes great cross platform tools, some of them are proper free and open source, VSCode is playing catch up). Their C++ stdlib implementation was sucking balls for decades. Their (the dev tools') scriptability was horrible. PowerShell is nice, but it came too late, and it was too server focused.

C# is okay, MS has great teams and people, but they are still very much run by the bean counters.

MSVC's stdlib is still a headache, just see the /std flag[1] which only appeared in msvc2017: you can either have C++14 with some C++17 features, or C++ "latest" which means 17 and missing features.

EDIT: just noticed the article says it was also added to 2013, but my 2015 doesn't support it so idk.

I can conceive PowerShell being good as a scripting language, but as a day to day terminal? That would my hell. And the fact that they are forcing so much on it in win10 doesn't help.

They do produce some great things sometimes, I agree, it just doesn't average out as positive IMO.

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt490614.aspx

Perhaps it should be renamed to Power Hell?

I really enjoy PowerShell :)

Try the newest version of those docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/std-spe...

> Yep, I really dont understand why there are Microsoft fans.

I wouldn't consider myself a fan, but their developer tools were (are?) some of the best out there.

s/Microsoft/Apple/ s/Xbox/iPad/

I dislike Microsoft a lot. But Apple, just as much. People will take a dump on Microsoft while in the same breath fawn over Apple for identical behaviour.

They're all as bad as each other. Yep. Google included.

>Yep, I really dont understand why there are Microsoft fans.

Not a Fan, but judging from their recent work, I am giving them the benefits of doubt.

> Microsoft has always been a headache. Recently its been a tiny bit better, but they still are a for-profit company that needs to continue to make a profit.

Just want to point out that Github was also a "for-profit" company.

Exactly. It seems people around here are brainwashed. They are incapable of thinking objectively. You are so naive if you think Apple or Google or Facebook are not for profit!

Look at how much data Google has on every single one of us.

MSFT is going through a cultural change right now. It was the case for Google, to make money the had to be an advocate of open source. They didn't do that because they are good-hearted or anything else. It is just like geopolitics. Hit your opponent from the weakest point. And Microsoft weak point was open source at that time.

But the point is neither MSFT, Apple, Google or Facebook does not care about developers or customers. They want to make money. This is nature of corporations. Instead of nagging and being short-sighted we should embrace open source collaboration by MSFT and should hit them when they don't respect customers.

The expression "for profit" is indeed inappropriate.

However, with the understanding of what the poster meant, it does make sense. We're talking about the company whose racket produces 10$ avg for each Android phone sold.

I'm talking especially about those FAT patents, which are against the spirit of patenting (independently of being in favour or against patents).

I understand that big companies are big and internally conflicting, however, I see a radical conflict of interest between their newfounded open source responsibility and their ruthless business attitude.

>Look at how much data Google has on every single one of us.

What about the data Microsoft has on you? Their Windows 10 OS is basically a data funnel right to their servers. They operate a tracking based search engine that also builds profiles on people. And they have data centers in China that are run by Chinese state run companies.

That is the point. There is no good or bad in this competition. Everybody is in it for itself/themselves. We should think about our strategies.

>And they have data centers in China that are run by Chinese state run companies.

BTW, tbh I don't trust data centers in USA any more than data centers in China.

I think the difference is between 'constructive' and 'destructive' for-profit companies.

Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies on the planet because it is destructive? What’s that even mean?

There are two ways you create value for your employer:

1) creating value for their customers

2) maintaining the moat that prevents other people from creating value for their customers

The former is constructive, the latter is destructive. They both contribute revenue.

I haven’t done a full scale analysis of Microsoft, but the argument I would entertain is that Microsoft primarily sells tools for companies and individuals to built moats around themselves.

#2 doesn't work unless you can also provide that value, so it is still constructive. You cant keep customers from using something if you have no such offering yourself to compete with.

Sure you can, why not? They will just work around deficiencies in your product as long as switching is even more painful.

Microsoft makes all of it's money from PC sales and software licensing.

Meanwhile, they basically invented the "buy your competitor and tank their business" strategy. That's probably what this person is referring to.

If Microsoft makes all their money from PC sales and software licensing, how is Github a competitor?

How does tanking Github allow Microsoft to sell more copies of Office?

That doesn't make sense. If they buy the competitor, why would they tank the business which is now their own instead of gaining the combined revenue and market share?

"Buy and trash competitor" isn't a real strategy. When an acquisition fails, it's usually poor management or vision, or just a lack of synergy in the first place, not a purposeful tanking.

Who taught you that high market cap equals nondestructive? Go ask for your money back.

What is the point of your comment? Care to explain what "destructive" means then since you're claiming to be better educated about this?

No, I don’t care to explain. You opened with incredulity, an Appeal to Accoplishment/Authority, and now you are playing Prove Me Wrong/Teach Me.

The original poster claimed it was "destructive" which doesn't logically sound like a way to build a lot of value, especially to be one of the top 10 companies on the planet, at the very least without clarity on what they are supposedly destroying. From the votes and other comments, I'm clearly not alone in wondering. You had your chance to enlighten us but went with juvenile retorts instead, ultimately only really proving that you don't know either. Thanks for playing I guess.

I was never terribly fond of GitHub either. I disliked how they somehow became synonymous with open source, and I dislike how people have focused on GitHub rather than software freedom. I also wasn't a fan when they decided to step into politics.

I think self-hosting is a better choice for almost any organisation. Remember, 'the cloud' just means 'someone else's computer.'

The problem with self-hosting is a lack of visibility. Like Sourceforge before them, you basically need to host your project there for anyone else to notice it.

Of course you don't need to host it all there. Just mirror enough that it gets you the "visibility", while keeping everything else on your own servers.

Then again, there's inertia. And inertia always wins.

The interesting bit is that is about to get tested out with GitHub. Yes, of course, Skype target audience was network locked and not that savvy, but, the open source community does seem a tad bit different breed.

> This was to make Microsoft money, nothing to 'help programmers'.

This is not mutually exclusive. You need money to keep lights and servers ON

As with every other big corporation, including Apple, Google etc. the problem isn't making money, which is perfectly legit and fine, the problem is the "western" economy system which requires, or even encourages, any rogue behavior aimed at maximizing profits at any cost. A company expecting returns for its investment is a thing, but one who buys startups only to destroy them to stop the development of competing products, or engage in legal battles to eliminate competition, is a totally different thing. Most of us criticize the latter, not the former. Unfortunately there's no legal way to prevent a corporation to become a creature turning anything including its integrity into profits, because being an ass in this context brings money and money buys favorable laws.

I don't know what the term "Microsoft Fan" means, but count me a proud C#, VSCode, Visual Studio, and even VBScript fan.

You lost me with VBScript. But before I am with you:)

RHAT is about making money too. They do a good job of it.

Unlike Microsoft, however, they can't seem to make GUIs where the font metrics are right (eg. can you read the text properly or does the text overlap or end up being too big or too small for the space?) or scrollbars.

Linux is a winner for server apps but on the desktop it seems to get worse over time, not better.

>Linux is a winner for server apps but on the desktop it seems to get worse over time, not better.

No, not really. The problem is too many people (like you maybe) associate "Linux desktop" with "Gnome (3)". That's false; there's a bunch of different DEs for Linux. Just look at Xfce; it isn't getting worse. KDE seems to be getting no worse too.

I do not associate it with Gnome3 but I have to ask (as I am not longer a desktop Linux user), do they still rewrite every system utility every couple of releases? Back when Fedora Core was a thing, they rewrote the GUI utilities every couple of releases, without actually improving them from what I could tell. And despite installing a binary distribution, they insisted on writing these in Python with bindings to the in-fashion GUI library (typically GTK). This meant the utilities were dog slow and generally very poor. Why not write a compiled binary? Didn't make sense to me.

Do they still do that?

I don't know, because I never used Gnome much, and have avoided Gnome3 like the plague. Fedora is very much a Gnome-centric distro, so of course it's going to be like what you say.

At home, I use KDE, so of course they're not going to have system utilities binding to GTK. KDE is Qt-centric, so most stuff there is most likely in Qt-flavored C++. Xfce is GTK, but it's known to be fast (I use it at work and it's quick), so I seriously doubt it has system utilities in Python.

Honestly, I think all your complaints are really about Gnome3.

No, they were aimed at the system utilities eg. system-* that present UIs. They weren't tied to a DE (but did use a specific windowing toolkit like GTK+); I am not talking about the control center or Kontrol system - I am talking about the system-* UI packages which were all Python written, with bindings to GTK+ and ran horribly.

Maybe because they always put developers fist, this acquisition is a perfect fir for the brand and legacy.

You comment makes no sens, "I don't understand if you are a programmer', no offense but what rock do you live under?

As a developer Microsoft has treated my far better than any other corporation pushing an agenda. Amazon seems kind of apathetic towards any one developer or group, Google and Apple can be down-right hostile in their policies or support. Microsoft has by far hosted the most events that I have access to, ranging from global developer conferences to user-group meetings.Their tooling and developer support has always been forefront in their strategy as well.

So it's a little disingenuous to say only technology consumers should have positive feelings for Microsoft. Plus, making money & helping programmers are not mutually exclusive; Coupled with their business strategies (good and bad) this has always been MS's strategy to grow and profit from their markets.

How did they treat Windows Phone developers?

How did they treat Nokia employees?

Mhmmm.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't the plan.

> How did they treat Windows Phone developers?

I was one of them, and Microsoft treated me very well.

Windows Phone was an amazing platform. I’ve also developed for iOS a lot. Visual studio + expression blend was way ahead of apple’s xCode. Every single piece was much better: language, libraries, compiler, debugger, emulator, UI designer.

The platform is now discontinued so I no longer develop for WP. Meanwhile, most of the skills I’ve obtained working on WP7-8 apps apply to other XAML-based platforms, i.e. WPF, WinRT, and UWP. Fortunately for me, Windows is not going from desktops any time soon.

I appreciate that Aws is apathetic a bit. The other way to put it would be unintereste or removed or unbiased. They aren’t that helpful, fine. That’s what we get paid the big bucks for. I’ve worjed in the Msft ecosystem...never again, no thanks.

As a former windows phone user and .NET developer who is currently a mobile developer, Microsoft definitely treated mobile developers worse than any other company.

They killed what small progress they’d made on their ecosystem 2 times, simply because they got bored and decided they didn’t like the technology stack they’d previously mandated and supported. They deserved to get buried in that space.

Meanwhile Apple have kept what is essentially the same technology stack for the past decade. Sure there’s been some pain, but almost all of it had some purpose that moved the development of apps forward.

As someone who also developed on windows phone I really disagree with this portrayal. Microsoft did not change the stack on account of "getting bored" with the tech.

Looking back on it, they took on an extremely difficult problem having a completely new marketplace and platform against competitors with tremendous amount of pre-existing traction.

There were clearly some pivots towards universal windows compatibility, and possibility of android compatibility as well. Nobody argues there's a ton of tactical failures and the net result was a loss, but I wouldnt conflate the mobile endeavor with something half-baked nor disregard to developers

None of what you said actually justifies this to a developer. Microsoft may claim "developers, developers, developers" but when it came to mobile, they screwed the platform not once but twice.

Trust has two main dimensions in my view, compassion and competence. Microsoft was not competent enough to have a surviving platform in the face of iOS or Android... even though they had roughly a 8 year lead.

That doesn't earn my trust.

> but they still are a for-profit company that needs to continue to make a profit. This was to make Microsoft money, nothing to 'help programmers'.

What a strange criticism. Of course Microsoft is a for-profit company and they're doing this to make more profit - no one is of the delusion of otherwise. They didn't spend $8b out of the goodness of their heart.

However, one way you make money is to do and make things people like. Here's hoping Microsoft will recognise the value Github can provide and they do right by it. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I think many people forget that the word free in free software means free as in free speech, and not free as in free beer. There's no issue with a for profit company selling free software so long as they adhere to the license. It's not quite the case here, but I think too many developers forget that making money is why people start business and why people work.

> Yep, I really dont understand why there are Microsoft fans.

I definitely agree. Anything Microsoft-related, or even Google-related, is a no from me. Just from a product standpoint, most of there products inherently aren’t that great. And you get that feeling when using their products, a feeling of “oh, this must be a Microsoft product because it feels very corporate.” Plus, there approach to design is subpar — it’s like there’s people out there that actually like Google’s Material Design?

> Like I understand if you bought an Xbox

I have an Xbox, and I just noticed advertisements on the dashboard that are non-gaming related. I also think I saw this when using a friend’s Windows-computer, they have advertisements within their operating system. It’s just bad.

> it’s like there’s people out there that actually like Google’s Material Design?

I like Material Design...

TypeScript and Visual Studio Code are both really nicely done open source projects. There is a fairly significant group of .NET developers out there, and that's largely open source today.

Sure, Microsoft is ultimately out to make money, but they're doing a fair bit to "help programmers" and only making money from those efforts indirectly.

What's wrong with being 'a for-profit company that needs to continue to make a profit'? Should they run their business at a loss?

Not "always." I started working with Microsoft dev tools in the late 80's and early 90's after Borland's sun began to set (in no small part because MS poached a lot of their best people). There was a time when MS was the developer's best friend, and tools like the early versions of MSDN gave unprecedented access to information that previously had been very hard to get (raise your hand if you ever paid over $100USD for a manual from IBM). Of course back then the FOSS community did not exist, and the alternatives were old line players like IBM, Digital and Sun. Things are different now. My major concern is not that the company is somehow still evil in a Ballmer-esque way, but rather that their focus on enterprise customers will inevitably lead to changes in the core Github offering. We'll see.

Why not let things play out a little before predicting chaos? Github doesn't have the vendor lock-in that other companies have. It starts to go downhill? Just push your repo to another Git host. Yes, you'll need to figure out how to port some of your workflows, but it won't be an insurmountable pain.

>Why not let things play out a little before predicting chaos?

History.

GP gave you a very good reason why this is different than historical Microsoft EEE[0]:

> Github doesn't have the vendor lock-in that other companies have

There's not much about Github that can't be easily replaced; it uses git at its core. Comments, issues, and wikis are convenient, but relatively simple to implement.

The main value in Github is the de facto community status it has, which it earned by being an open community and good steward of open source projects. The worst MS could do here is shoot themselves in the foot and ruin that value (which they just purchased for 7.5B) by driving developers to other platforms (who will make it all too easy to switch).

I think the M&A teams at MS must have seen this possiblity and have a different plan in mind for Github. Think dead simple (one-click) Azure deployments and integrations. And if you want (or need) that functionality for a different cloud provider, you'll just have to build it yourself on a different site.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

It's not like anything about github is open source. Maybe that will change.

well, there was the atom editor. which now i fully expect msft to kill in favor of vs code. damn it.

How would they kill it? It's open source.

They can't really "kill" it as in destroy it, but the biggest contributors to that project were all GitHub staff. MS will most definitely redirect any staff efforts to VSCode instead.

VsCode is open source too: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode

i vastly prefer atom - open source or not.

> There's not much about Github that can't be easily replaced.

Integration and workflow. Thanks to the various gubbins available in the marketplace[0], CI/CD goodies, hooks into communication and project management tools and so on, for a lot of people migrating away from Github would mean losing access to enough little convenience things that actually it's not feasible for a large organisation with not great process change management techniques.

https://github.com/marketplace

Yea, but if you maintain that mentality, that affects your thoughts, affects behavior, affects 'crowd' behavior generally (all those agree), is perceived as such from those you predict about, get it? Affects all those who disagree too.

2 sides, same coin. You assume chaos, they see you assume that. They shape their narrative to fit their perspective with this data in mind. That rationalizes the behavioral pattern from their end, which continues the cycle.

Not saying I know any better solution, just that it's annoying as fuck to actually change when everyone keeps assuming you won't, and treats you as such. Chaos is probably going to happen even if there's a general mutual trust that springs forth. Can't control chaos.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

They haven't fooled me since the 1990's and they won't fool me this time.

Exactly. Which is why today I typed "go help importpath" to remember how to use my own domain name for my import path.

Dear reader, you should too.

That's why the "extend" phase is there in the embrace/extend/extinguish strategy - to make it an insurmountable pain to migrate elsewhere, after first having lured the users in with the "embrace" phase. Letting it play out is just what they need to move from phase 1 to phase 2.

But "extend" hasn't happened yet. There's no need to cry foul until it does, because until it does there's no evidence of anything nefarious going on. "Embrace" on its own is perfectly normal and acceptable behavior.

Vendor lock-in is an important concern regardless of who owns the platform you're being locked into.

> But "extend" hasn't happened yet.

If we wait for it to happen by then it will be too late

So you're saying anytime a new technology gets embraced by anyone it's time to jump ship? That's ridiculous. Should we be abandoning email because Outlook exists?

Edit: Actually, I don't think the idea of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" even applies to buying out companies. The idea behind that phrase applies to technologies, not companies. You can't "extend" GitHub with proprietary tech, it was never an open source technology in the first place.

If Microsoft starts extending git with new proprietary features that only work with GitHub, _then_ it may be time to start being concerned. As of now though, I don't see how "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" applies to this situation in the slightest.

No need to get concerned. Just look at codeplex, it fully supports Git and Microsoft haven't touched that feature. :P

GitHub is to git as Outlook is to e-mail and as Internet Explorer is to the web.

As for how EEE applies to this situation: The situation is consistent with an EEE strategy currently being in the "embrace" phase. It's also consistent with a "embrace, be nice, create win-win outcomes" strategy, but that is not usually Microsoft's modus operandi.

The idea is that stuff like issues and PR comments (the added value a social coding site like GitHub provides) are the extend around pure git source management.

Fair point, but none of that is Microsoft's doing. Why are we only talking about this now?

Because Github wouldn't have been able to do the extinguish phase. Microsoft can, and will.

Pretty sure issues and PR comments came before the acquisition

The "extend" has already been done, by GitHub.

Git doesn't support issue tracking and pull requests.

So what do you call TypeScript !? They now bought the site where 99% of all free NodeJS packages are hosted. A few years ago NodeJS didn't even work properly on Windows, and was growing at exponential rate, taking market share from the Microsoft ecosystem. So what happened in the last few years ? Many developers now code JavaScript/NodeJS using TypeScript on VsCode. And their code is hosted on Github.

Unless they disable the APIs migrating to another platform would take a couple of days to hack something together. Disabling those APIs would also break a load of tools people already use for management so they would be shooting themselves in the foot.

When you see a fox entering a chicken coop would you also say the same? Microsoft will most likely gut GitHub, not as badly as Oracle would have done it but they will.

This said, Free Software Devs should never have trusted GitHub in the first place.

It works for the git repository, but GitHub is more than that.

There is a wiki, a bug tracker, a platform for pull requests and distribution, etc...

> Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users?

How is it spying when they present you with a full screen detailing data collection with the option to turn it off, and have several blog posts providing details.

> Do they not engage in patents racketeering?

It's not much of an excuse, but all tech companies do this.

> Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

Didn't they give Windows Mobile one hell of a run? Like they tried for a decade and finally admitted defeat? And Skype, I don't know. I use it in a daily basis. It doesn't seem to be that bad.

I'm really not sure here but I was under the impression that they had started doing the full screen detailing data collection thing after they had gotten caught doing it without it?

They made it clearer and easier to review and change, but data collection was always toggle-able in Windows 10. A lot of people just hit "Express Setup" and then were surprised when the defaults were full collection.

The Privacy Panel in the new Settings applet for example has always existed.

It was not toggle-able. You could only opt out of an ill-defined subset of an ill defined set of collected data, including, but not limited to all user inputs performed on that system. You would know as much if you had read the material published by MS on this. Only with the recent update do they offer a tool with which to inspect at least part of the actual data sent to MS. There is however no proof that the data shown in that tool is complete (even though I believe that they truely intend to show everything - despite their traditionally pushy methods, they are not Facebook).

You actually can’t turn it off, and they still refuse to publish the complete list of what is collected. You need an enterprise version to disable as much as they will let you, and even then, they still force quite a bit of collection.

>> they still refuse to publish the complete list of what is collected

Seems like refusing to disclose what is collected would run afoul of GDPR. The law requires that "categories of personal data" be disclosed, and also that Microsoft's European customers have a right to a copy of their personal data. Are you claiming that Microsoft is not or does not intend to comply with GDPR? Or perhaps there is some other qualification implied; such as this only applies to non-European customers? If so what is your basis?

Or there's no PII in the collected data.

"This article describes all types of diagnostic data collected by Windows at the Full level (inclusive of data collected at Basic), with comprehensive examples of data we collect per each type" https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/configuration/windo...

there are other classes of data besides 'diagnostic data'. The additional word 'diagnostic' is a tell.

Below “Basic” is the “Security” level, which only enterprise can set. It’s a subset of Basic, but excluded from the disclosure. They refuse to say what that sends.

>they still refuse to publish the complete list of what is collected

They give you the option to fully inspect all the telemetry data your computer is sending, categorized by use.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/configuration/diagn...

incorrect. That page tells you about diagnostic telemetry, but there can be other kinds of telemetry.

Can you point to an example of telemetry that Windows is collecting that isn't documented and shown?

that's the entire point. We don't know, because they still won't tell us.

>> And Skype, I don't know. I use it in a daily basis. It doesn't seem to be that bad.

Likewise. I know they neglected the Linux client (which I used to use) for years and then replaced it with some new browser based thing. This 'ruined Skype' claim has been made several times with each Microsoft buys GitHub story. What exactly do people have in mind when they claim Skype was ruined?

People have fuzzy memories, and think Skype was a gold standard before Microsoft bought it...which is far from the truth.

The facts that I see:

The new UI is absolutely counterintuitive and badly designed. The Linux version is now based on Electron and requires a ridiculous 400MB of RAM just for the login screen. It subjects the CPU to ridiculously high loads, ca. 10 times higher than before when idling (easily saturating one core periodically). It starts to jerk and studder when the chatlog reaches any realistic length, making it unusable with more than 200 to 500 messages in the visible history. The Windows 10 client, which seems mostly identical, cannot get audio from any of my microphones.

> The Windows 10 client, which seems mostly identical, cannot get audio from any of my microphones.

I see. By all accounts the Electron based client is garbage. I use the 'classic' Skype client; a.k.a. Skype 7. It isn't based on Electron and works great for me with two different mics. So I guess I've missed out on all the fun with the new client.

Telemetry and analytics is a spyware. Let me give you an example. Let's say that Windows collects information on which applications were run and how much time they were used. Now let's say there is a competitor to Microsoft that uses Windows with telemetry option.

Even if the data is anonymous, Microsoft can filter it by range of competitor's IP addresses. Then by stuyding the list of used applications they can learn: how many employees the company has, how many of them use IDE (i.e. are developers), how many use Excel (marketing people), how many use social networks and chats (managers), how many man-hours they spend on development, how many DBAs are there, whether anyone works overnight or on weekends, when they have vacations etc. Now tell me it is not a spyware.

And by the way Google has similar powers because they have advertisement and analytics scripts installed on most websites, so they can spy on their competitors too.

UPD: looked through an article [1] and understood that I underestimated Microsoft. They even collect user account identifiers and hardware details. Microsoft knows about your computers more than your sysadmin.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/configuration/windo...

You do realize that by posting that link, you contradicted yourself? How many Microsoft be spying on you if they write articles detailing what data is collected?

If you don't like data collection, then don't use Windows 10. Plenty of Microsoft tools work on macOS and Linux. But don't accuse them of spying on the user when they have made efforts to be transparent about it.

What you said makes no sense. Talking about doing something is the same as not doing something?!

There's a reason the GDPR requires explicit opt-in: companies are expert at making their spyware look harmless and know that most people won't bother to change the defaults or won't understand what's happening.

No, what I was disputing was the claim that what Windows 10 collects is spyware when Microsoft makes it a point to ask you what data you want to share (if any) and then has several posts written describing in detail what they collect and how to turn it off. Spying implies the company is doing it in secret, and yet here we are talking about and referencing public documents that describe it. That is not "spying".

"Data collection" is implemeted not only in Windows 10, but also is backported up to Windows 7. So basically it is now in every supported and regularly updated Windows installation.

Also I remember that detailed articles about "data collection" appeared only after it was shipped and caused some negative reaction. While publishing an article is a good idea, it is unlikely that everyone will read it. A better idea would be to display a popup for Windows users saying something like "Hi there! We are going to look what programs you are running and what else do you do at your computer to improve your experience. Hope you are fine with that.".

Technically it might be not a spyware, but if the user doesn't realize that their actions are being tracked, it still would look like a spyware to them. Or should we better call it a "trojan" software? A definition from Wikipedia says "In computing, a Trojan horse, or Trojan, is any malicious computer program which misleads users of its true intent." and Windows telemetry program matches that definition.

For example, in an article about "basic" telemetry [1] they mention that full command line of an application can be recorded, potentially including any private data and passwords.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/ru-ru/windows/privacy/basic-level...

> Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users? Do they not engage in patents racketeering? Have they not killed Nokia or ruined Skype?

I don't think one can say they killed Nokia. Nokia's phone business was basically doomed after Android gained traction, and Microsoft just helped the company to pivot by overpaying for that part of the business, while leaving Nokia with everything that actually was making money.

Nokia engineers wanted to move to Android, but the M̶S̶ ̶M̶o̶l̶e̶ then current CEO made a prikaz to go with Windows Phone.

> prikaz

diktat just for those wondering

I think this was a better outcome for Nokia. They didn't make their own components like Samsung does, so they'd probably now be in a position similar to HTC and Sony. They would have faced years of painful, expensive downsizing instead of a (retrospectively) good payout that assumed the liabilities too.

> Nokia engineers wanted to move to Android

I don’t believe the engineers spent thousands man-years developing in-house Symbian, then significant time working on (mostly) in-house Maemo, then some day they said “screw that, let’s throw away everything we’ve developed and move to Android”.

Nokia had and released their own version of Android [0] which probably sped up the negotiations with Microsoft. Likely done by a completely different team vs. the Symbian people, though somone else probably knows more of those details.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X_platform

Android was really hated by middlemanagers at nokia. Android was eating Nokia's lunch in mid-end phones, and managers lost their sales bonuses. When Nokia went to talk to Google and Microsoft, Google gave the "here's the deal everyone gets" and Microsoft "we'll do anything for you".

Finally Nokia managers were full of hubris, and believed Nokias was still the center of mobile, and so important it to change the course of industry by Adopting Windows Phone.

>When Nokia went to talk to Google and Microsoft, Google gave the "here's the deal everyone gets" and Microsoft "we'll do anything for you".

This is a well regurgitated lie that I see posted often. If you would like the truth about what really happened I suggest you read Operation Elop.

According to a source present, Google seemed to really want Nokia to join the Android world. The company assured that Android can be customized more than Nokia understood, especially compared with Windows Phone. Even if Google was criticized continuously for having Samsung, HTC and Sony Android phones differ from each other too much, Nokia would be given leeway to create its own user experience. Google saw that Nokia differentiated from these competitors in that it had a global area of operation. Nokia would be able to create better local services and user experiences for network providers and customers, one person present remembers being discussed. The Nokians also noticed that they had been living partially with misinformation. Nokia could continue with Android with its own maps side-by-side with Google’s maps. The same applied with the app store. Nokia’s music service as well as ovi.com could continue, as long as the phone had Google Play.

The discussions continued at a fast pace after the first visit. Google seemed to really want Nokia.

Some constraints were set by the Open Handset Alliance behind Android, OHA. Unlike Windows Phone, Android is not controlled by one company, rather by an alliance of 84 companies which is led by Google, where the members are able to use Android in an equal manner. Google was in a difficult position. By giving Nokia special privileges, it risked its relationship with other manufacturers. The reactions would be difficult to predict. Creativity was needed.

As the negotiations proceeded, a solution was found. Google offered Nokia, among other things, plenty of say in choosing the direction of Android development. By directing Android development to align with its own competitive goals, Nokia would gain some advantage, even if the changes would be available for everyone at the same time. Now Nokia was interested. Android and Nokia had an area where their interests converged in a brilliant way: Developing countries. If Android could be made to work on cheap hardware, Nokia would be best at getting in through in developing markets. The arrangement was enticing. Google would secure the position it was dreaming of in smartphones, and Nokia would become part of virgin Android markets. The precise details remained hidden, but Nokia was able to learn that Google worked Android into clearly cheaper models than Windows Phone.

Another flexible point of Android was in its predictability. Nokia wanted to publicize the new software features earlier than when the phones go into sales. The reason was brutal: Nokia was more solid than its Korean competitor and needed more time to build a phone. If the information about the new Android features was available earlier, Nokia would have enough time to get them in the first wave, like the others. Google was willing. It promised to make the publicizing of its plans earlier and to release the source code to its partners. The solution would have been useless for other Android manufacturers in relation to Nokia, but would not have broken the OHA rules.

Google made a substantial offer regarding distribution of income. Nokia would have gotten a portion of the income from Google’s search engine, app store, and other services which originate from Nokia phones, and the terms would be in relation to Nokia’s influence in the ecosystem. We don’t have information about precise percentages, but at any rate, Google’s promise was quite exceptional, considering that Nokia would still have been able to keep its own services in its phones.

Contrary to what Nokia has claimed, Google was ready for concessions. It was ready to flex as far as it could in the framework of OHA, and even then some more.

Then some big money stepped into the game, as well as the mysterious Nokia employee with the name Rahul Mewawalla.

https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...

I dont like Microsoft, but I'm not sure how they killed skype.

Yes there were a few dark years, but I think most IM was struggling years ago.

Now skype is pretty good.

Skype is pretty awful for calling phones. The user interface has become a mess and is difficult to use. They are constantly making it more difficult to call phone.

Skype still works for it's main purpose. At least they haven't removed calling, but the UI and menus are an utter mess.

You absolutely can't be serious. The new Skype is an unrelenting abomination... just look on ANY community site and you will see the utter livid rage for "new skype". It's truly horrible in every way, it removed every setting and feature that was good, the UI/UX is one of the worst things ever. https://www.reddit.com/r/skype/search?q=new+skype&restrict_s...

Nokia basically held onto Symbian for a bit too long. They had a massive chance with Meego; they weakened it slightly pre-Microsoft due to mismanagement, but killing it in favour of Windows Phone was the actual Nokia's death sentence.

They killed Nokia twice! First by forcing them to use Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone, or whatever it was called) when it was clear to all they needed to go with Android, and then by actually buying it and killing it when even Microsoft couldn't refuse Windows Mobile was going nowhere.

> First by forcing them to use Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone, or whatever it was called) when it was clear to all they needed to go with Android

There's no way that Microsoft bought Nokia to concentrate on making that tiny hardware subdivision profitable (MSFT's market cap is $700B+ and they bought Nokia for $7.6B). They wanted a hardware platform to promote Windows Phone. For Microsoft, the dying entity in need of a Hail Mary was Windows Phone, not Nokia.

Nokia had Maemo/Meego which wasn't on par with Android at that time wrt the software ecosystem, but with some investment in development could have killed it pretty easily: thanks to native code a device could offer the same performance using slower CPUs and less RAM, or be a lot snappier with the same hardware. Given due time, manufacturers and users would have noticed. As probably did Microsoft. You can have a full desktop Linux running in 1GB of RAM, full HD screen etc. but most Android users throw away old cellphones because 1 or even 2 GB RAM aren't enough anymore thanks to Android Java dependency. Maemo/Meego would have eliminated that problem completely.

I really liked the Maemo and Meego phones that got released, but your scenario would not have happened. Nokia's DNA was not in software development, and they couldn't really compete with Google on that.

Furthermore, Nokia wouldn't have shared a successful OS with others like Google did if they had one. That meant all other manufacturers were going to stay with Android, and I greatly doubt that they would've succeeded in building the whole ecosystem alone like Apple did.

> Nokia wouldn't have shared a successful OS with others like Google did if they had one

But that was exactly the plan. When they cooperated with Intel to build Meego, the resulting OS was available to all other handset manufacturers and there were test suites in the work for vendors to be able to claim Meego compat, just as with Android.

The Meego OS was actually quite solid and very nice to develop for. Its major problem was the unwillingness of most app developers to support additional platforms besides Android and the Iphones. Just as with Windows Phone.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Nokia's plan to make Meego open-source but keep their own UI layer closed? I may be misremembering things as it was a while ago, but there was some catch to keep Nokia the main player.

As for the adoption among developers, it never had a wide enough release to even start with that. N9 was available in limited countries only, and after Nokia's WP announcement.

> with some investment in development could have killed it pretty easily: thanks to native code a device could offer the same performance using slower CPUs and less RAM, or be a lot snappier with the same hardware. Given due time, manufacturers and users would have noticed.

Windows Phone was native and extremely performant on even low end hardware. Microsoft dumped millions into development and couldn’t get traction. No way Maemo was going to displace Android.

Manufacturers literally do not care about anything except selling devices and are uninterested in performance except as it relates to bigger numbers that they can advertise with. Users consistently chose Android over Windows Phone demonstrating that their priorities did not align with picking the phone that would still be snappy in two years.

Nokia’s phone business was doomed. Even if they’d pivoted to Android devices they’d probably have still failed because that’s such a tough market with so much competition willing to sell phones with no margin.

Disclosure: Microsoft employee

> acquisition GitHub will be led by Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Xamarin, which has some credibility

Credibility of what? He's a Microsoft employee, being paid by Microsoft, and has made a ton of money by selling his company to Microsoft. Follow the money and you'll find nothing but allegiance to Microsoft and it's corporate goals.

For the record - I don't think MS is as nefarious as people here are insinuating, I'm just pointing out facts that people seem to overlook.

Funny story about him. He wanted to get a Job at Microsoft and wasn’t hired because he didn’t have the qualifications. Then he built Xamarin and made it a great C# open source tool to build apps. M$ really loved it and bought the company. Now he’s leading GitHub. That’s awesome.

Microsoft does have a dark history, it’s also a huge company and Terry Meyerson (windows lead) was an aweful leader.

Things definitely changed. Satya knows that they need the developer mindshare, and that means to go where the developers are.

I hate windows as much as anyone, but a lot of their products are top notch. God I love vscode and Typescript. Just only use their OS products and you’ll be happy.

The job part is not the story of Nat Friedman but Migual de Icaza.

Not sure about the job part being about Miguel, but it's certainly not true about Nat. Nat interned at Microsoft in 97 and I was his manager. He did a great job and was well liked. I don't think he ever applied for a full time position after graduating as I would have heard about it.

I think it's just that he wanted to do something Open Source based, rather than what Microsoft was doing at the time.

Thanks for the insights! Miguel had Visa issues if I remember it right and could not get a job because of this.

You must be proud of Nat :)

Oh I am. I'm proud of him and his boss, who was also on the same team.

I am much more unhappy about the quality of their operating system. They had decades to turn it into a user friendly simple system like macos is, and failed every single time. It is outrageous that I have to delete half of the operating system to get something barely useable and the first thing when you run windows update is to put back the games and other crapware that I do not need on my devices. Is there any hope that Windows UX gets once something good or should I just give up hoping?

> It is outrageous that I have to delete half of the operating system to get something barely useable

Seriously? Windows 10 is a perfectly usable OS out of the box. I can open up the included web browser and go to whatever website I want. I can install Office, Visual Studio, a Linux subsystem, VLC, a VNC client, VirtualBox, Chrome, Firefox, and every other piece of software I need without any hassle.

Yes, there is something called "Bubble Witch 3 Saga" in my start menu that I did not install. I understand why people are upset about things like that even if I don't care.

Windows 10 has plenty of flaws that are worth pointing out, but using ridiculous hyperbole doesn't add to the conversation in a productive way.

> Windows 10 is a perfectly usable OS out of the box.

There's a large gap between 'usable' and 'good'.

They destroyed the consistency of their interface (combined desktop/mobile anyone), and added a lot of cruft that literally nobody who's used Win 7 needs.

Yes there is. I have no problem with people saying Windows 10 isn't good, even if I personally think it's good. The "goodness" of an operating system is pretty subjective.

I do have a problem with people calling it barely usable, which is a much more objective (and incorrect) statement.

Arguing with developers about the gaping maw between “tolerable” and “good” is an uphill battle. I’m starting a support group. We meet at a bar. Want in?

Yeah just like Ubuntu, FreeBSD + XFCE and a bunch of other systems. I need something solid, featureful and simple as macos is, that has _great_ UX and I don't feel like fighting against the OS. Good example is when to update feature in macos vs windows is. One is pleasant, co-operative and feels right, the other is disruptive and I need to disable basic stuff not to lose some unsaved work. Just a great example how UX matters.

I don't really care if you choose MacOS over Windows. Plenty of people do. There are good reasons to. I even agree with you on some of your points.

My contention is that you implied that Windows 10 does not even meet the low bar of "barely usable" when you said that you have to delete half of the OS to make it barely usable.

That is a lie. Windows 10 is usable out of the box without any modifications. Saying otherwise is spreading misinformation, which I don't support.

For me it definitely does not meet the bar. It might be because I work as a systems/software engineer for too long and I have extremely low tolerance to have a subpar solution running in "production". It is ok if you just open a Outlook client and mostly use Excel + Word + PowerPoint, this covers huge amount of the user base.

> Seriously? Windows 10 is a perfectly usable OS out of the box. I can open up the included web browser and go to whatever website I want. I can install Office, Visual Studio, a Linux subsystem, VLC, a VNC client, VirtualBox, Chrome, Firefox, and every other piece of software I need without any hassle.

Ditto for dozens of Linux distro's.

> Yes, there is something called "Bubble Witch 3 Saga" in my start menu that I did not install. I understand why people are upset about things like that even if I don't care.

What other things have they installed that is difficult to find out about? How about all the spying? Some game you don't use is the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not sure how Linux's viability as a desktop OS is relevant to Windows being usable or unusable.

I have no idea what else they've installed, just like I have no idea what MacOS or Linux install. They're all black boxes to me. I see no reason to think Windows is any worse than it's competitors.

I assume by spying, you are referring to Windows 10's telemetry. Personally, I think concerns about it are overblown and calling it spying is misleading at best. It's for diagnostic information. You can set it to only send basic diagnostic data if you so choose. I am in favor of companies collecting diagnostic information about their products to improve them.

> the same company, only with different cash cows.

I think having different cash cows does change a company. If it's in their interest to be a good steward of VSCode, Typescript, Github etc then they're more likely to do it.

I think consolidation is actually as much of an issue as which company it is, the more consolidated, arguably the less direct incentive for intercompatibility and open standards. That's more of an issue here because GitHub is not open-source, so unlike the other examples the developer base has nothing to fall back on.

On privacy, that's never stopped anyone from using Angular or Kubernetes because of Google, or React because of Facebook, unfortunately behaviour towards developers seems to be judged separately from behaviour towards users.

> On privacy, that's never stopped anyone from using Angular or Kubernetes because of Google, or React because of Facebook, unfortunately behaviour towards developers seems to be judged separately from behaviour towards users.

That's not the same though. I host my (company private) code on Github. I can use React or Kubernetes without giving any access to Google or Facebook to my code.

Nokia was struggling long before Microsoft came along though. They saved it for a little bit, but there isn't much you can do with a company that got so far behind it's competitors. Samsung, HTC, Apple, Motorola, etc were all light years ahead of Nokia even before Microsoft got involved.

Funny that the things you mention all happened under Steve Ballmer too...

Ahead in what sense? Apart from Apple and Google, everyone was behind. The fact that HTC and Motorola adopted Android didn't do much good for them in the end, and in hardware and market share Nokia still had the lead at that time.

>>Ahead in what sense?

Refusing to move on to Android?

There was no real chance Symbian had in the post iPhone world.

Nokia forgot its USP, which was basically durable rugged hardware. Instead they tried to compete with the iPhone in the software department, it didn't work out too well.

Motorola is doing quite good with Android.

> Nokia forgot its USP, which was basically durable rugged hardware. Instead they tried to compete with the iPhone in the software department, it didn't work out too well.

You misremember things quite badly. Nokia was the clear leader in all phone segments, smartphones included. At the peak they sold just over 50% of all smartphones in the world. Of course they would try to hold on to that. They were better in software than their hardware competitors (Ericsson/RIM/etc), but of course that didn't amount to much when the field was upended by Google and Apple.

> Motorola is doing quite good with Android.

Motorola is now a Lenovo brand.

Nokia is pretty much alive.

As for what Elop did, in case you missed the news, he only did what the Nokia board themselves asked him to do, and even gave him a bonus for achieving it.

What's is Nokia up to? I'd love to know they are doing interesting things.

Well, they just split up their Health division back into Withings. https://health.nokia.com/event/nokia-withings

I only know that because I have one of their awesome scales (https://health.nokia.com/gr/en/scales). I was shocked they were Nokia when I found out about them. They're absolutely awesome, highly recommend them.

Networking hardware, mostly, especially cellular and POTS switching stuff.

With the money from Microsoft's deal, they bought Siemens part from NSN, merging it back into Nokia.

They got back many of the former mobile division employees via the partnership with HMD, currently having one of the best deals in Android devices.

Ah and Bell Labs now belongs to Nokia.

>As for what Elop did, in case you missed the news, he only did what the Nokia board themselves asked him to do

Did that include having secret negotiations with Steve Ballmer that the board was unaware of? For a true accounting of what really happened you can find it all in Operation Elop.

https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...

Thanks for the link,

If the board hadn't had such bonus (24. The bonus brouhaha boils over) as Helsingin Sanomat discovered, the outcome would be much different.

https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...

As someone that used to know the Espoo HQ from inside, Microsoft is not the one I blame.

Skype was terrible before they got it. Had to make the config XML file on Windows readonly and remove the obnoxious advert placeholders. Skype 7 still works alright with these removed (although uses mind-bogglingly high amounts of RAM).

The Metro version no longer supports copy/paste formatting properly (no timestamps), destroys {code} annotations, does not show alerts properly, does not actually send messages you type into the Windows 10 popup alerts, does not auto scroll to the bottom of a message list, does not let you set your status to AWAY.

The web.skype.com also has broken copy/paste but is better than the absymal Metro version.

The iPad version is probably the most usable (but not tried copy/paste on it) and the Android one is mostly alright when it lets you log in, although still a bit clunky and non-responsive (blatantly a web app in a native wrapper).

I run OOSU10.exe on all my Windows 10 instances to turn off the spyware and run PiHole at home to try and limit the insane amounts of data leakage from all my devices (TV, iPads, Android phones sending buckets of telemetry home, Windows PC and Macs) - it's insane.

Interesting to see this purchase though, but I wanted to say that Skype is getting worse and worse - bring back MSN Messenger which had more features than modern Skype!

These are giant companies with 1000s of employees and more politics than small countries... it doesn’t work to just generalize it all together.

The developer side of Microsoft has definitely changed for the better over the last several years.

And even if github fails, so what? It’s the most easily replaceable part of the stack.

You haven’t been using GitHub for open source then.

The best part of GitHub is the social part and that’s not currently replaceable. Also good luck migrating issues and their history of comments and PRs.

There is precedent for these transitions working out fine (Sourceforge, Google Code)

Issues and comments can already be migrated, github has a simple API and all the other services have import tools. It's not hard.

The social part is not that big of a deal, its just because everybody happens to already have a login. Other than that, what's the big social hook? You can have the same exact discussions on the other source code sites, all of which have more features too.

And they're still pulling the same old tricks of vendor lock-in with DirectX. Microsoft's PR team likes to pretend they've changed since they gave a few concessions, but the reality is that they made those decisions solely because they were losing competitiveness. .Net core was because everybody was jumping ship to Linux due to the Kubernetes bandwagon. VS code was because the "Electron text editor" market was already filled with cross platform competitors.

Some people get offended when for-profit companies turn out to be not neighborly or friendly or human beings.

I like to look at it from the perspective that they are a for-profit public company and are legally required to maximize shareholder value, and they have every right to do so.

Therefore, any plans I make regarding GitHub will not rely on them being friendly and kind-spirited in any way. If they turn out to be great, I'll just be pleasantly surprised.

If that works out good for you, great. I know that GitHub has every right to do what they think is necessary to maximize shareholder value. But I don't have to agree with their decisions. I don't trust Microsoft for pretty much exactly the reasons the parent listed.

> Haven't they killed Nokia?

There wasn't much to kill, when they bought it Nokia was still clinging to Symbian and was in a freefall. They tried everything to get Windows Phone running, but were too late to the show. Also Google refused to make any kind of apps to their platform, effectively sabotaging it.

> ruined Skype?

Its still pretty popular. It was crap 5 years ago, but now its on par with the other big messaging apps.

>There wasn't much to kill, when they bought it Nokia was still clinging to Symbian and was in a freefall.

Who knows what would have happened to Nokia's Device division without Microsoft's involvement, but one thing is certain - Windows Phone exclusivity solidified their demise. At least Nokia got 7 billion for their troubles, though.

>They tried everything to get Windows Phone running, but were too late to the show. Also Google refused to make any kind of apps to their platform, effectively sabotaging it.

There's a difference between trying everything and being incompetent and constantly rebooting your platform and expecting a different outcome. As for Google sabotaging their platform - Microsoft was already doing a good job of it so they didn't need help from Google. Also, Google did have a couple of apps on their platform I believe, but let's not try and blame another company for the demise of their OS when they were ultimately responsible.

> Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

They killed msn, skype was always a turd. Nokia was dead well before Microsoft got involved.

I've worked in several offices around 2013 where people happily used Skype like IRC: everyone was in a list of ~10 channels and occasionally sent private messages to coworkers. Instead of building on this, Microsoft kept pushing its unpopular business chat app (Lync) and made sure that Skype was only useful for consumers (obnoxious birthday notifications, the "snapchat redesign" etc.)

Skype could have beat Slack to the punch. Instead Microsoft lost both the business and the consumer market.

It isn't a good marketing campaign. This is just going to scare a ton of projects off of GitHub. I also imagine a ton of private companies (e.g. Google, Apple) are going to be moving their repos elsewhere if they are already hosted on GitHub for fear of Microsoft looking at their private code, which they WILL do.

companies that get acquired are probably required to move their private repos off of github. open source projects in the process of open sourcing or using a private repo as a staging area for the open source code are ok

"Haven't they killed Nokia"

No, Microsoft did an incredible service to all Nokia shareholders by buying the sorry handset business which had already failed in the market at that point.

You can blame Microsoft for not resurrecting a dead carcass but that's another thing entirely.

Nokia is doing quite fine manufacturing telecoms infrastructure.

Microsoft hasn't changed at all. Here is one recent incident I read: https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1002696910266773505

No one should take that account as a credible source. Notorious for pot-stirring.

What exactly is Microsoft alleged to have done wrong here? It starts by saying "stole my code", but then discusses an MIT licensed piece of code.

Furthermore, I'd see Microsoft's reply:

> I'm not aware of any deliberate copying of the Lerna code, but let me dig into it now and call all the devs on the team to be sure. If there is, we should definitely give correct attribution, so I want to investigate. [...] I checked with the devs, and nobody's aware of any code coming from Lerna. If we inadvertently used something without credit, I really would like to know so that I can fix it.

https://github.com/Microsoft/web-build-tools/issues/673

> It starts by saying "stole my code", but then discusses an MIT licensed piece of code

Unrelated to the rest of the discussion, I just want to clarify that MIT License != 'Do Whatever You Want' License. MIT requires attribution and maintaining the copyright license on existing code. Yes, if you don't adhere to the license's terms when copying code, it is stealing.

I know, which is why I wanted to clarify precisely what Microsoft is being accused of (I may have worded it poorly). The tone I was getting from OP (the Twitter discussion) was that the code taken was something Microsoft did not have any right to use in the way they did, not something that could be solved by attribution. "stole my code" may be strictly accurate (as if you don't follow the licence, you don't have a licence to use), but I feel like it doesn't clearly communicate the problem, especially with comments such as "If they are going to steal code without crediting the original author" which, to me, initially read as saying it's still stealing even if it was credited.

To be clear, I'm not saying using MIT-licensed code without attribution is acceptable, but I feel that there is a qualitative difference between this and using code you couldn't use under any circumstances, or silently incorporating MIT code in a commercial product.

> The tone I was getting from OP (the Twitter discussion) was that the code taken was something Microsoft did not have any right to use in the way they did, not something that could be solved by attribution.

> "If they are going to steal code without crediting the original author" which, to me, initially read as saying it's still stealing even if it was credited.

Attribution alone doesn't bring it into compliance. The copyright notices have to be preserved too.

Also, the rewriting of commit history, if true, sounds more shady than mere "Oops, I dropped the license and copyright texts".

It's not stealing. I assume the original authors are still in possession of the code they wrote.

> Yes, if you don't adhere to the license's terms when copying code, it is stealing.

Is it? Or is it copyright infringement?

I've seen this multiple times, and Everytime I want to know why they didn't simply diff the code - some proof is better than none, right?

MS claimed APIs are copyrightable. MS strongly pushes lock-in in markets where they have strong presence. It shows they haven't changed enough to trust them with anything.

> MS claimed APIs are copyrightable.

When was that? Oracle famously has, but I haven't read Microsoft's version of the same.

At the same time as Oracle. See https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-teaming-up-with-orac...

So MS contributed to the abysmal court decision.

Proprietary software used to be Microsoft's cash cow. That it is turning to different cash cows is actually a good thing for open source.

Companies have to make money, and originally, Microsoft made money just by selling proprietary software licenses. In these conditions, open source is their enemy, and they have to fight it. Now they do a bit of spying, a bit of cloud, a bit of hardware, etc... which mean they can cut open source some slack and focus on other evils.

Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users? Do they not engage in patents racketeering? Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

This is small compared potatoes to the sort of thing Microsoft used to pull before. Microsoft spent years in the courts and narrowly avoided some very drastic government intervention and regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. That doesn't happen because someone might not like the new Skype UI or really misses flip phones.

Why should I care that they "killed" Nokia. (It still sells products, by the way.)

Nokia, isn't a person. It's another corporation. Patents racketeering...this is literally only going to be fixed with legislation. I'm all for it. There is no such thing as a corporation that won't chase every dollar that it can. That's what they do. Want to stop patent BS? Remove the incentives through legislation.

>>Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

To be really frank Nokia killed itself in the after math of the iPhone. But that was long time coming. When a company which wasn't even your prime competitor an year or two back, out innovates you to the graveyard, you really were setting yourself up for something like this for a while.

And yes, WhatsApp did the same to Skype.

>Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users?

Literally every for-profit desktop OS vendor has "spied on users" by the definition you're trying to use. Including OSX and Ubuntu.

>Do they not engage in patents racketeering?

So Google boxes Microsoft out of the phone market by refusing to support any of their services on Windows Phone. And Microsoft is the bad guy for leveraging their patents against vendors selling Android phones? Satya Nadella would be looking for a new job if he weren't leveraging their patent portfolio. End of story.

>Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

See comment above. Nokia is dead because they couldn't get a handful of table-stakes apps. Primarily because of google.

Skype... well that was just fumbling the ball, but it wasn't for no-reason. The way Skype was originally architected wasn't going to scale. That was by no means nefarious in nature though. Github has no fundamental flaws that I've seen that they would require them making significant changes.

I didn't know patent racketeering was a fair response to not supporting an OS with a worldwide marketshare of less than 2%.

Not supporting? You mean actively blocking? Google actively blocked windows phones devices from accessing YouTube.

And on what planet do you live that licensing out patents that are legitimate patents, for a fee, is racketeering? Talk about Torchlighting....

You must be referring to the time Microsoft reversed engineered YouTube API's and blocked ads in their unauthorized YouTube app. They had no right to reverse engineer proprietary API's, they had no right to block ads from being played and they had no right to create an app for an IP they didn't own.

>And on what planet do you live that licensing out patents that are legitimate patents, for a fee, is racketeering?

You should look into the Microsoft vs Barnes and Noble case[1] as well as review their detailed patent racketeering practices at Groklaw. Additionally, the Chinese government made Microsoft expose all of their patents that they wouldn't allow companies they were shaking down to see and, well, they were full of old, obsolete and prior art ridden patents - be sure to look those up too.

[1]http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20111111222912...

Killed Nokia?

Nokia is still alive. But it's not like it was doing well before Microsoft bought them.

Large Public companies don't change overnight for risk of shareholder revolt. As a Microsoft skeptic, I'll give them the opportunity to change.

That’s fine, at first blush at least, as long as they stay out of my way.

But their MO is to buy up companies people like or love and run them into the ground, then replace them with a Me Too product that is just enough different that getting out is challenging. To the rest of us that’s indistinguishable from destroying the competition and reducing options.

And here they are buying a company people like, having recently killed off others.

This tiger has the same stripes. When it eats your remaining arm, try to remember people told you so.

It's a nitpick, but they didn't ruin Skype, they branded Lync (which is a mountain of hot garbage) as Skype.

Not mutually exclusive.

Exactly. Microsoft ethos is still despicable.

> Haven't they killed Nokia

To be fair, Nokia was already dead when Microsoft bought them. MS just pulled the plug.

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