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Comment by randint | Hacker News Reader

It's a pragmatic choice by Microsoft, but I'm amazed by their ability to piss off developers almost every time they make a decision.

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Wouldn't this be more accurately described as the choice of the Free Software Foundation, rather than Microsoft? The major feature of GPL3 was to prevent use in these type of "tivoized" applications.

Seems that Microsoft is taking heat for respecting the wishes of the GPL. Talk about a can't win situation.

Well, one who thinks that the GPL's wishes are a good idea could certainly feel that they deserve heat for being what the GPL was meant to prevent in the first place. But, that's no comfort to less ideologically zealous developers who want to use a [AL]GPL-licensed library they're used to using and can't.

shrug

It sometimes feels like almost every new policy introduced by Apple for their AppStore was specially crafted to piss off and offend developers. Yet, they can get away with it because end-users are satisfied.

I guess same applies here. Microsoft has just gone out and explicitly said what Apple has not (yet) .

I'm amazed by their ability to piss off developers almost every time they make a decision.

Yes, but you can't even publish an API without pissing off a developer somewhere. Folks like Guido Van Rossum even say things to the effect: if someone somewhere isn't pissed off, you're probably not doing it right.

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