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What is the root of all the Microsoft distrust? I’m older, and left Windows for Linux back in 1997 and haven’t really paid attention since. I wonder if this mistrust is valid? Are they any worse than Apple?

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Well, there are a lot of web developers that we're saddled with supporting ie6 for many years after Microsoft won the browser war with Netscape and proceeded to let it stagnate for years. That amount of pain that was inflicted on the web dev community left a lot of lingering resentment.

Then there was their locked-down file formats, their role in killing off BeOS and preventing pre-installed Linux machines, their "embracing" of open technologies like Kerberos only to make their version subtly incompatible. For well over a decade, almost everything they did technically rubbed us tech folks the wrong way.

For me it's that they're software patent abusers, and I won't send them any money because of that. However, all I did was switch from the paid tier to the free tier, and move my private repositories to my own server.

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11323942

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