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Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

Because some people prefer to bash things with open source rocks instead of using a proprietary hammer.

There’s an entire subculture of the IT world that spells it “Micro$oft” and refuses to acknowledge its very existence, or a valid option.

I once saw a post about how some Linux tool had support for “every major LDAP directory system” and did not list Active Directory! It’s like… dude… something like 99% of deployed LDAP systems is AD. The rest is a rounding error.

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This is an uncharitable take which presents both a strawman and a false dichotomy. The reasons for avoiding Microsoft are many. And often philosophical in nature, whether with respect to business practices or the sanity of one's work environment.

You can choose to avoid Microsoft, that's perfectly fine. I do however find it amusing to see the very existence of Microsoft casually skipped over, as if they weren't one of the world's biggest corporations.

Imagine if someone listed "modern UNIX-like operating systems" and the list went something like: NetBSD, OpenBSD, AIX, OpenSolaris, and then went through dozens like that into ever more obscure things nobody has ever heard of, but skipped Linux like it didn't even exist. Just some Finnish guy's hobby project, not really worth discussing, right?

It gets to the point where it's absurd.

As a real example, someone made a printable SVG/PDF poster of "big data" and "data science" companies and technologies. They were listing dinky little startups that had a total value smaller than the annual cost of an individual Azure storage blob container that I deleted to save money. That was an "oops" by someone that the customer didn't even notice.

You're still strawmanning by lumping together a huge amount of people with different motivations under one homogeneous group.

> It gets to the point where it's absurd.

All of the examples you provide don't paint some cohesive picture, they come across as random, haphazard strokes with no form or meaning. Your original comment attempted to answer a question by ridiculing an entire demographic of people who care much more about human rights than you realize.

Okay, let me paint you a picture: I will never go as a tourist to certain countries. I don't want to support their economies with my dollars because I think they're morally bankrupt places. I also value my own safety, freedom, and the like. Think Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc...

That doesn't mean I'll just ignore their existence or forget to list them as places in the world.

It's a uniquely Linux-fanboy thing to just pretend Microsoft doesn't exist, or that it's not even worth including in a list.

"Superpowers: Russia, China, and India."

"Hello!? United States!"

"The united what?"

No, your comment is still coming across as close-minded and judgemental, and you are likely engaging in sharpshooter's fallacy as well by examining a few cherry-picked examples to support this weird crusade you seem to have against "Linux-fanboys".

Overall, this take feels immature and insensitive to the ideals that drive Linux users.

I would call them rewards rather than reasons

One gains a lot of benefits by building with libre or permissive software. Proprietary software comes with licensing fees and sometimes complex DRM systems that need maintenance. There are totally situations where both are the better tool for the job, though generally the proprietary "solutions" are often just short-term "let's get this done now" stuff, that then later has an increased cost. Leaning on a proprietary solution also means you're downstream of any decision the makers of the tool make, including choosing to nuke your (and/or your business's) use case.

I can't comment on the LDAP thing on a technical level, but if the focus is on libre software, why is it apropos to list proprietary things that it's compatible with? Software that boasts this compatibility doesn't always keep it, or sometimes loses it due to deliberate action from the proprietary party. I don't think I'd list Active Directory either. It's not something one can vouch for unless they're literally Microsoft.

Unless your business is in the line of user authentication, what business advantage would one get by developing their own LDAP server? It would be an incredibly inefficient use of resources if you're a 100 person shop only wanting unified logins.

This question feels like it belongs to another comment: where does GP talk about “developing ones own LDAP server”?

No, it was in response to the correct comment but I should elaborate.

> Leaning on a proprietary solution also means you're downstream of any decision the makers of the tool make, including choosing to nuke your (and/or your business's) use case.

My understanding is that OP is advocating free/libre software protects a business from changes in software that could affect the business' use case.

This risk is present in both proprietary and free/libre software. Maintainers may remove features that some users find critical. If a feature is removed and your business requires the feature, you now need to maintain a fork of the software or contribute development time upstream.

You're right, by trusting any outside source for a dependency, you're still dependent. But as you noted, there's the option of adopting the software yourself and injecting it as vendored or something similar. Proprietary doesn't even have that.

Depending on the project, it may move slow enough for the dependency to be slow to update and it be fine. Depends on what you're doing.

At least in the case you mentioned, I can revert to an older version and freeze it there until my business can sort out the way forward.

Ideally, one chooses dependencies that are easy to replace and reasonable to maintain for a bit, if needed. Or if you're lucky, no dependencies at all!

I think that subculture you're referring to existed in 1990s in places like /.,, but I never encountered it during 2010s or 2020s.

(I think it is directly related to the lack of stranglehold which MS had over much of daily computing in 1990s. Apple, Linux, and mobile platforms forced it to compete and innovate more seriously, winning back quite some respect.)

Microsoft products are often criticized for being expensive to use on public clouds other than Azure. In terms of "bundling", Microsoft has not changed its ways.

I was having a twitter argument the other day with someone who maintained that they never really come across any Microsoft systems in their work and who would be crazy enough to use Windows Server. I've worked in orgs from 100 people to 10,000 and it's always Active Directory and MS all the way through with odd few Ubuntu or RHEL servers for a internal application.

You haven't worked at a tech company then.

The only Windows systems I've seen in over 15 years were to run Active Directory over 10 year ago (and not since), my personal gaming desktop (which no longer runs Windows) and GitHub runners for cross compilation.

There's plenty of Microsoft out there, but there's an entire, thriving universe where Microsoft is completely irrelevant.

IIRC, both Intel and Qualcomm have a lot of Microsoft IT infrastructure.

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