I Was So Wrong About Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

I Was So Wrong About Microsoft

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37 pointsPretzelFisch15 comments

Not being in a position to bully everyone else really improved their attitude. Microsoft is my friend now! They wouldn't abuse us if they were on the top again, right?

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Sent from my Windows 10 Enterprise computer https://i.imgur.com/cwZGj0g.png

So what company that once it gets into a position to bully won’t? Google forced manufacturers not to ship phones based on Android forks if they ship Google certified phones. This is the same thing that Microsoft got in trouble. They didn’t allow OEMs to ship alternate operating systems if they wanted to ship computers with Windows.

> So what company that once it gets into a position to bully won’t?

All of them will. All of them need to be regulated better instead of just getting a slap on the wrist.

Just don't go throwing "Microsoft is my open source hero" (and that last paragraph) bullshit on my face.

They can ship Google certified phones based on Android forks as long as they pass CTS[1]. You don't really think the Galaxy phones are built on top of unmodified AOSP, do you? Many[2] manufacturers[3] provide[4] SDKs[5] for their phones on top[6] of the base Android SDK.

[1] https://source.android.com/compatibility/cts/

[2] https://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/sdks

[3] https://developer.motorola.com/tools-kits

[4] https://www.htcdev.com/devcenter/opensense-sdk/opensense-ove...

[5] https://developer.sony.com/develop/theme-creator/overview

[6] http://mobile.developer.lge.com/develop/

That was not the issue. Samsung could not both ship Google certified phones and Android phones based on non Google certified forks.

This is what Google got fined for.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/18/google-face...

The second anti-competitive behaviour was preventing smartphone manufacturers from running competing systems that had not been approved by Google.

For instance, Amazon wouldn’t have been allowed to manufacture both Fire phones and phone that were certified by Google as an Android phone.

This point doesn't support your first sentence then because this policy of the Open Handset Alliance existed before Google was in a position to bully, before Android had any market share at all. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance?wprov=...

The referenced citations from your Wikipedia article actually supports my claim.

(Citation #5 as of this writing) https://www.cnet.com/news/alibaba-google-just-plain-wrong-ab...

Google took some heat earlier this week for seemingly using its clout to squash a burgeoning mobile OS.

(Citation #6 as of this writing) https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.

Besides, even in 2008, what other OS were OEMs going to license to compete with the iPhone? Windows Mobile?

Your citations are about a policy that predates a single Android device being available to the public, so they do not support your claim.

> Besides, even in 2008, what other OS were OEMs going to license to compete with the iPhone? Windows Mobile?

Yes, Windows Mobile was the dominant licensed smartphone operating system at the time. What's that got to do with anything?

In the time it took to write this comment you could have unpinned all those things from your start menu and never see them again, they aren't installed.

Most people customise a new computer in a myriad of ways, how is the start menu any different? Of course it is sleazy marketing dreamt up in a management meeting, but you chose to accept the defaults here.

It's like knowingly buying a bike with a flat tire then complaining to everyone it doesn't work instead of simply pumping up the tire.

New things get added over time. Cortana suddenly starts "reminding" you of all the neat things she can do. Windows tells you your computer is at risk because you aren't sending all your data to One Drive.

Sure you can disable some of them but its like whack-a-mole and your an update away from a new nuisance. The speculative app installing (which does get actually installed) requires a registry change to disable - not exactly user friendly.

I paid extra for a "professional" operating system. Why am I getting candy crush?

The GitHub Engineering team announced the GitHub Load Balancer and intent to open source its components back in 2016 - https://githubengineering.com/introducing-glb/. And commits to https://github.com/github/glb-director began in May. I doubt Microsoft had anything to do with releasing this other than not blocking it.

So Microsoft does one good thing and that is supposed to absolve them from all previous underhand trickery? Very unlikely.

Trust has to be earned. It takes a long time to build, a moment to destroy. Microsoft has a lot more building to do.

> So Microsoft does one good thing and that is supposed to absolve them from all previous underhand trickery? Very unlikely.

This is not the first good thing they've done.

> Microsoft has a lot more building to do.

Maybe in your eyes. They've redeemed themselves with a lot of people.

The deal with Github has not even closed yet. It is supposed to close by EOY.

Internally we don't even get free/discount licenses or anything yet. We aren't supposed to operate any differently with them until it closes.

Source: I work at MSFT and asked. It also says so in our blog post "the acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year." https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-g...

Nat Friedman of Microsoft is the CEO of Github now and he was involved in a lot of open source projects (Gnome, Xamarin, etc.)

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