We should force Microsoft out of business by not purchasing their products.
I have a terrible display, haven't bothered - like four zones or something silly
(Also: "Here is how the law should look like: we all should get a raise")
Even so people (HN or not) won't give up their productivity tool their daily work relies on because of some nuisance or really, ideal. I have seen comments where people are so pissed off by the aggressive ads in Windows that they switched to Linux or Mac, but the number is going to be very small.
Even “IT people” - their primary domain of skill is working with Windows etc…
And Microsoft has leveraged this dominance to coerce companies into their cloud services too.
Microsoft is a lich, it can’t be killed. It just has to be managed around.
and honestly, windows is pretty durable these days. 'desktop stuff' is less than 5% of my timesheet and I really do have better things to be doing with my time than trying to achieve the current baseline functionality with noncooperative methods.
In Romania this was a big deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption... , in other countries maybe they never got caught. I doubt that bribing, as a "strategy", was only used in one country.
[0] "Almost", because I know some large orgs that finally managed to break away, but it wasn't easy at all.
As opposed to the likes of Meta, Apple, Google who operate on the peaceful cooperation and charity paradigm?
Does it look like to you that the other companies got so dominant by not using EEE?
Define "ethical". Depending on the definition, none of the current big companies are ethical, so Microsoft going out of business wouldn't even matter.
And you really need to understand how the world works. Ethical never matters, money matters.
I was thinking about this recently as someone suggested it might be an American thing. But I don't think so - there are plenty of unethical companies in Europe, too. They often manage to exploit some loophole in the law and, say, sell expensive things to old people under some apparently legitimate guises. Or they'll fake car engine tests.
But ethical (=ethically neutral) companies definitely exist, and there are many of them.
That's exactly like saying "if we remove this dictator form this middle eastern warzone, a peaceful and ethical leader will naturally replace him".
No mate, you'll get no ethical alternative, instead Google and friends will immediately take over the power vacuum left by Microsoft before any start-up can even begin hiring.
Nearly all games on steam just work, most modern software just works and the alternative tools never stopped getting better either.
I think that would be a lot better.