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Comment by scbrg | Hacker News Reader

"You're just a bunch of fanatic, Linux obsessed Microsoft haters living in the past. Microsoft are the good guys now."

-- ca. everyone here, during the GitHub acquisition

Oh, this is just the usual Microsoft Stockholm syndrome. I've been witnessing this for over 20 years now and have been told that it has been a thing for much longer than that.

"No, we can't switch to OpenOffice you weird Open Source hippie! I can't e-mail documents to other people anymore, nobody can open them. Besides, the UI is all different, I won't be able to find anything!"

Then Office 2007 happened, tossing out the waffle menu for the ribbon and people started receiving e-mails with strange docx/xlsx files that nobody could open. IIRC that was still an issue 3 years later.

But no, when Microsoft does it, it is different: "This is progress! Are you against progress, you weird Luddite?"

I remember by the time Windows 8 was released ("Kachelofen edition" - "hurr, your desktop is a tablet!"), I was discussing with a Unix graybeard friend in the cafeteria how long it will take until the complainers accept that "this is the way now". I think it was him who suggested that if Microsoft sent a sales rep around to shit on peoples lawns, it would take at most a year until they start defending it as the inevitable cost of technological progress.

No matter how slow and bloated the GitHub web UI gets, or how many nonsense anti-features Microsoft stuffs into it. People will accept it and find funny excuses (network effect will be the main one).

> I think it was him who suggested that if Microsoft sent a sales rep around to shit on peoples lawns, it would take at most a year until they start defending it as the inevitable cost of technological progress.

They would inevitably say that Linux was not viable because you had to buy your own fertilizer.

> ca. everyone here

Every time someone claims “everyone on HN thought X”, I go back to check and find out that it was not true and that the discussions had both people in favour and against. Every time. But this case is particularly bad, I’m checking the top voted comments and so far the feeling is of dread and wariness, the complete opposite of what you claim.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227286

I really wish people would stop this silly “everyone thought X” shtick. It’s embarrassing. Verification is trivial. What do you gain from it? It’s just spreading heated reactions based on a lie.

Well, yes, that sentence definitely simplified matters a bit. The fact is though, that those who expressed concerns about Microsoft - in that particular thread, and in others - were generally ridiculed in roughly the tone I imitated in my original post.

Of course there were people raising concerns, though. I figured that was pretty obvious in my original post. If there hadn't been any people raising concerns, nobody would have had to dismiss them - condescendingly or not.

So yes, I (incorrectly) used the word "everyone" to mean "a lot of people" in a sentence where I figured it was quite obvious that that's what I was doing, and in a way I've seen it used before in English so many times that I thought it was a common and accepted pattern. Perhaps I am wrong about the last bit though. ESL speaker, so that's quite possible.

> The fact is though, that those who expressed concerns about Microsoft - in that particular thread, and in others - were generally ridiculed in roughly the tone I imitated in my original post.

The fact the top voted comments are wary of Microsoft suggests otherwise. When people agree, they upvote and seldom comment. Of course responses are contrarian (that’s mostly when you have something to add), but that doesn’t mean that view is prevalent.

> If there hadn't been any people raising concerns, nobody would have had to dismiss them - condescendingly or not.

OK, yes, fair.

> So yes, I (incorrectly) used the word "everyone" to mean "a lot of people" (…) and in a way I've seen it used before in English so many times

It’s perfectly fine to use “everyone” and “no one” to mean “the overwhelming majority”. As in, not literally everyone but enough that the outliers are a rounding error. For example: “no one wants ants biting their genitals” (I’m sure you’ll find someone who wants that, but it’s pretty safe to assume the overwhelming majority of people don’t). But I don’t think it’s OK to use “everyone” to mean “a lot of people”. A lot of people live in China, but it would be ridiculous to say “everyone is Chinese”.

Fair enough. Point taken :)

So it's true that the several of the top topmost comments are anti-MS or at least worried, but there are plenty of replies to those that are defending MS. A few of them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229625

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229775

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227447

I don't think it's safe to say that the prevailing opinion there is one of concern.

Like I said (emphasis added):

> I go back to check and find out that (…) the discussions had both people in favour and against.

The point is that “everyone here thought” complaints have so far never been true.

> I don't think it's safe to say that the prevailing opinion there is one of concern.

Comment position matters, because it means people upvoted it. If one agrees and upvotes they are less likely to comment. But even if we were to nitpick what the prevailing opinion was, it’s still not true that HN was in agreement with the sentiment expressed by the OP.

This common trend of invoking the goomba fallacy is a thought-terminating way to excuse and justify away any popular opinion. Even if single individuals have different opinions, the common sentiment on the forum was that Microsoft of 2010s was not Ballmer’s Microsoft, and the unsavoury anticompetitive behaviours had been done away with.

> the common sentiment on the forum was that Microsoft of 2010s was not Ballmer’s Microsoft, and the unsavoury anticompetitive behaviours had been done away with.

Maybe it was a common sentiment, but clearly not the. Again, we can see from that acquisition thread that people were wary of it. The second top post even makes Microsoft seem like a domestic abuser.

Relevant thread

"Microsoft acquires Github" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227286

It's funny - many of our greatest concerns back then are things we now accept.

There's that old misconception about how to boil a frog..

Afaik turning up the temperature slowly wouldn't work on an actual frog. But works on people without fail.

That's because you can ignore when the people complain as long as its not too many at once.

Misconception? That's a playbook, not a misconception.

"Microsoft loves open source now!"

Oh, they adore it. Specially once they figure out how to plaster all open source projects with ads...

Microsoft: "We're EMBRACING open source!"

Everyone who remembered Microsoft in the 90s: "Uhhhhh... :concerned_face:"

LOL I remember that stance. A good one!

I have never owned a GitHub account post-M$. :/ Mainly because I always knew Microsoft has always been against FOSS.

I've had so many discussions with friends over the past 15 or so years where they've praised Microsoft and their embracing of open source, and have given me a hard time for continuing to distrust them. To be fair, I was a teenager in the 90s, and a huge computer nerd who followed the MS antitrust case very closely; quite a few of these friends are 5-7 years younger, rendering them a bit too young at the time to experience that going on in real-time.

But damn... I enjoy a good "I told you so" as much as the next guy, but most of the time it sucks to be right.

Thinking of megacorps as anything other than slimy, amoral, scum honestly requires superhuman levels of mental gymnastics.

And thinking that megacorps are in any meaningful way different than your last underdog startup darling is another level of copium.

Sure. But a startup could, in theory end up profitable and self-sufficient without a public offering. It's not impossible.

Startups are about making money, take they capital with a promise of making more capital, and the logic of capital is uniform, no matter where it comes from. It always, without exception, will end up the same, with the only difference how much time it will take.

It really depends on what kind of investment they took. Venture is probably worse than going public with the desire to moonshot. A loan is pretty harmless, since they want you to repay a fixed amount with as much stability as possible.

That's why I said in theory. Consider that at some point Valve was a startup.

ahahah yes I remember those comments yes

Does it matter these days if a company or administration are "the good guys"? Does "good" even have a meaning anymore? The "good" part of the world rotates in disbelief since Trump was re-elected in a democratic vote. Everyone says Microsoft is evil, since, what, the 90s?! But still, Windows is everywhere. Is anyone still buying this moral bullshit? "Goodness" obviously has no majority.

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