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Comment by jmillikin | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft has a history of being hostile to the open-source and free-software communities. They release "shared source" code under licenses with onerous terms or encumbered with patents. In the event that an open-source project built on their technology becomes popular, Microsoft attempts to smother it (for example, see their treatment of Mono).

I trust Google about as much as I trust Red Hat, Canonical, or any other company with a history of friendly interaction with the community. While I'm certainly not going to give them my SSH keys, it seems reasonable to take advantage of open-source software that they release.

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>I trust Google about as much as I trust Red Hat, Canonical, or any other company with a history of friendly interaction with the community. While I'm certainly not going to give them my SSH keys, it seems reasonable to take advantage of open-source software that they release

Yes, but then again you work for Google too. That alone could be basis for bias.

I certainly don't trust Google as much as Red Hat or Canonical (well, the same as Canonical of late, maybe). Still remember the bait-switchy GAE pricing changes, among other things.

Can't disagree here. Trust is hard to get, easy to lose, and once it's lost.. good luck getting that back.

Of these 3 I only trust RedHat with their intents. And I don't think we're alone. And that doesn't mean RedHat is the greatest company ever, but I do trust them (I'd also probably never work for them, for that matter).

>In the event that an open-source project built on their technology becomes popular, Microsoft attempts to smother it (for example, see their treatment of Mono).

That was in the past -- and probably from some over-jealous layer types at that point in .NETs development.

Since then Microsoft has even been sponsoring Mono/Xamarin events.

I agree that Microsoft hasn't been trustworthy historically, but how have they smothered Mono?

And a counter-example is Samba.

Mono was banned from Microsoft's development conference (see http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2005/Sep-06.html), and faced various sorts of legal threats regarding their implementation of .NET libraries not covered by the ECMA standards process (most notably ASP.NET).

Samba benefited from Microsoft's documentation because Microsoft was forced to disclose it by court order.

You're living in the past maan.

Since Mono still seems to be going strong and seems to be one of the official platforms for F#, I'm not sure that something that happened seven years ago is necessarily great proof that they're smothering Mono.

It's proof that Microsoft's intentions towards Mono aren't dependable. They can (and have) changed dramatically, whenever Microsoft wants. Exactly how friendly do you think Microsoft will be if Mono stops being .NET's toehold in non-Microsoft mobile OSes?

Ahhh 2005? Com'on. Much has changed at MS these days. Except licensing. Which is a nightmare to figure out. But MS isn't the only company with that shame.

As a counterpoint, Microsoft employees have contributed to libgit and parts of the ASP Web Stack are open-source under the Apache Licence - see http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/license

I trust Google about as much as I trust Red Hat, Canonical, or any other company with a history of friendly interaction with the community

Sorry but I have say, WTF is this? You are employed by Google https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jmillikin . Can you imagine a current employee saying "I don"t trust my [current employer]" and still expect to show up to work again at 8.30am? How much weight should we give to your "trust"?

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