Hacker News Reader

Comment by some_account | Hacker News Reader

Please tell me you are trolling people. You can't seriously believe what you are writing here. Microsoft is an ugly company with ugly business practices and they are absolutely not trying to save anybody.

View on HN

Have you been paying attention to Microsoft over the past few years? They have an ugly past, but they are a different company now. I actually think this is a good thing for the community. I for one am sticking with GitHub.

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

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

Microsoft lost all goodwill a long time ago, and they'll never get it back.

If they lost it all "a long time ago" is there a new cohort of developers who just weren't around to see it happen. Most of the references on that page are from ~2002, so kids who were six then are out of college now.

> they are a different company now

To name a some of their recent misbehavior: Windows 10 ads and telemetry, Skype, GPL license violation (ie still actively working against FOSS)

To me MS keeps proving they are still exactly the same company they've always been. They tend to be better at hiding it from public, I have to give them that.

Agreed. Forced telemetry is unforgivably unethical. There absolutely must be a way to opt out.

> GPL license violation

Context?

It's going to take a hell of a lot more actual honest-to-goodness support and good actions before I'm willing to trust them. I remember the browser wars, kerberos, samba, hard drive compression, their acquisitions they ground into the mud, windows 10 spyware, and more.

It's the ol "Embrace Extend and Extinguish". I'll give it 5 years before I trust them. They'll likely show their usual colors soon enough.

If people choose to judge them by a different time scale than you, their conclusions seem pretty justified.

They are so different, that even thought they keep the same practices and goals from always, some people say they're a different company now!

Just remember what's going on around Win10. Toxicity levels are all-time high. No decline in anti-customer thinking

Could you expand on what you're saying here? How are they ugly? What previous acquisitions in this realm have they screwed over?

I'd love to educate myself further, but need more details.

I want people to judge by themselves. You can argue that yes, they have made some mistakes and probably bad practices like all companies. Try to get out of the tech bubble, companies in the world run on Excel. That alone has a huge impact on society. Not everything is black and white. I'm just a fan of critical thinking and not herd mentality not of Microsoft. I'm criticizing the reaction of all this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com