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Comment by DSingularity | Hacker News Reader

Its the way of the world. The Palestinians were weak so they got bullied around and Israel was born. They remained weak and Israel continues. This is the way of the world. Strong eat the weak. Whether its monopolizing tech companies or nation states. They can abuse their power. Once established, they can then rewrite history. Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source. Tomorrow the champion of privacy will be Facebook. Tomorrow the champion for human rights will be the Saudis and the Israelis.

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This is how garbage spreads, without wisdom and foresight.

Israel could've been a much better product of creative thinking. Now it's an apartheid state with the indigenous kept in an open air prison that is regularly used for international weapons testing.... The unwise think in very short terms...and it comes back to bite them shortly after.

>> Tomorrow the champion for human rights will be the Saudis

I thought you were serious if not for the closing line... :)

I am serious but obviously sarcastic. Most the world is oblivious to the savagery of the Saudi war against Yemen. One day the Saudis will champion some liberal cause and hire some PR campaign to make sure its in headline news and placed smack middle of some Netflix movie. Poof!

> Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source.

to be fair, they didn't just doctor history, they actually changed their ways.

Let me know when telemetry in Windows can meaningfully be turned off fully, and permanently.

Everything else they've done is pretty much PR management.

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Yes, there are valid technical reasons to use telemetry, but the tricks Microsoft is playing to get these data against the wishes of their users can't be considered fair.

It’s part of the campaign.

Am I out of the loop, what have Microsoft done to support open-source? Made linux containers easy to use on Azure? Wrote a code editor so that they extend and extinguish developer mindshare and get them onto Azure? Im being serious, what have MS actually done to claim they have supported open-source (and of course, open-source != free software)

They are one of the largest contributors to linux, donate $500k annually to Linux foundation (since 2016. Google joined in 2018), VS code, .net is open source to large degree, typescript is open source.

Here's a list of their open source projects.

https://opensource.microsoft.com/?sort=Stars&keyword=&tag=

(Microsoft may be the world's largest open source contributor

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-may-be-the-wo...)

(Microsoft becomes 5th largest contributor to linux core https://www.ukfast.co.uk/microsoft-news/impressive-microsoft...)

The Linux kernel contributions link doesen't have a year, so I don't know if something changed. But the last time I checked this, they were "top" contributor for one quarter/some time because they basicly dumped all of their HyperV support into the kernel and after that they disappeared from the kernel contributors lists almost compleately. A quick google shows the latest Linux Kernel report by Linux Foundation from 2017[1] with the numbers, and they are not even there. It could be that some Microsoft employees are doing work on the kernel without attribution back to Microsoft, but generally speaking I think it's safe to say that the only contribution to the Linux Kernel from Microsoft was HyperV support quite some time ago.

Not saying that they didn't change their ways, but they are a long way from proving that this is not another EEE cycle. Not to even mention "breaking even" on the damage they did directly (and deliberately) to open source effort.

[1] - https://www.linuxfoundation.org/2017-linux-kernel-report-lan...

You ignored the 500k per year contribution to linux, VS code, the ongoing effort to fully open source dot net, them dumping Edge for chromium, their contributions to chromium especially on efficiency for battery is non trivial.

Microsoft could open source Windows and people will still mention EEE. Impossible right? But, open sourcing dot net was inconceivable just a few years ago.

You're talking about EEE. In fact, the organization that's actively performing the EEE strategy is Google. It's quite easy to spot if one isn't blinded by fandom.

E.g. webkit -> blink, rss, bundling of apps on android prevent manufacturers from using forked android, chrome OS has only one browser - MS didn't even do this to get in trouble, AMP project, and then experimenting with removing urls from the search page.

So whatever floats your boat.

It's quite possible to be skeptical of both MS and Google (etc). It's not a one-or-the-other thing. :)

Having projects as OSS is just plain sensible as in the majority of cases it's a better development approach then the proprietary ones.

That MS has made some projects OSS is just recognition they needed to up their game or be left behind.

It in no way means they're suddenly "good guys" (etc).

When their actions are those of "good guys", then perhaps they could be start to be viewed as such.

>It in no way means they're suddenly "good guys" (etc). Irrelevant to the topic at hand

>Am I out of the loop, what have Microsoft done to support open-source?

That's what I responded to.

No worries. :)

They’ve stopped being an arch enemy and twirling their mustache so often.

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