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Comment by christopherolah | Hacker News Reader

For the most part, I agree with Linus. MS shouldn't be excluded, or hated solely because it's MS.

But, that doesn't mean they should be welcomed with open arms, either. MS has done some nasty stuff to us (OOXML, FUD campaigns, patent threats, et cetera). I recognize that companies are large and fluid, but they should still be held accountable.

MS has recently decreased their evil_count in my books, but they still have a long way to go...

With companies I trust, I ``trust, but verify''. With MS, I ``distrust until verified.''

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You (and plenty others) need to stop anthropomorphizing Microsoft and painting them as some kind of single sentient entity. The reason they can be unpredictable is because they're so freaking huge. Even the strategy on their own products doesn't make any sense most of the time.

Microsoft has a pretty consistent record of trying to leverage their strength to stay on top. Remember, there are real human beings who do this (Gates, then Ballmer) - It's not anthropomorphizing when it's a _human_ behavior we are talking about.

Remember - Linus and Crew's itch is mostly about writing excellent software. Microsoft's itch is about dominating the competition, sometimes by embracing-extending-and-extinguishing standards, and sometimes by engaging in illegal monopolistic behavior:

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

"412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest. "

I agree, Microsoft sometimes deserves the wave of hatred, because it has on more than one occassion tried to stifle competition.

Which is the normal job that the code gatekeepers do anyway. For any piece of code that wants to swim upstream to the main repository, it gets checked by the respective maintainers along the way.

Linus trusts these people to do their job, which sounds fair enough to me.

Hmm,

While some parts of Microsoft may have become "less evil", other parts have become more so, or at least more capable of evil. Vista was the first windows incarnation that had DRM attached to its vitals. One can expect this situation to only get worse. Kindle's 1984 flap was a prequel to what can be expected in the future as this stuff multiplies.

I welcome Microsoft if they want to get closer to the FLOSS ecosystem.

As long as they come with their hands where we can see them. ;-)

> MS shouldn't be excluded, or hated solely because it's MS.

This will sound too simplistic to many of you, but MS really should be hated because it's evil.

And no, not everyone working there is evil, but the leadership is, and they control the company.

OOXML, FUD, threats, and so forth are only a small sample of all the evil things they've done. Read a few articles on www.roughlydrafted.com for example, to remind yourselves of more.

People just keep forgetting all the nastiness, for some really strange reason. Possibly because it's an Ah-mmmeeeeeerrrrr-ih-cann company.

You were doing so well until you decided to trail off on a completely unrelated racist (nationalist?) hate-fest against Americans...

To address the rest of your comment though: things aren't not as easy as and black and white as they seem. MS isn't a gigantic living organism with a single brain - there are a lot of teams in a company the size of Microsoft, each with different leadership and goals. Some will be friendly to open source, others will not.

It's easy to paint an entire group of people with a broad brush and see the world as black and white, but then you'd also be wrong.

> You were doing so well until you decided to trail off on a completely unrelated racist (nationalist?) hate-fest against Americans...

I take it you're an American? :)

BTW, I expected lots of downvotes for that post, but oh well.

I can't see my remark about possibly being Ah-merr-ih-can as racist though, but it's always a good accusation to throw around. It's not a hate-fest either. As you most likely understood, I implied that some people might be willing to overlook MS's evil because it's an American company, as in, out of patriotism or something.

As a people, you(?) do seem to be prone to indulging overreacting. Take "Sodomayor is a reverse-racist" for example. Or the heated discussion around abortion.

> MS isn't a gigantic living organism with a single brain - there are a lot of teams in a company the size of Microsoft, each with different leadership and goals. Some will be friendly to open source, others will not.

I believe I addressed this by saying not everyone in MS is evil. But if you look closely, you'll discover that it's really freaking difficult to deny MS's actions as a company being evil.

> It's easy to paint an entire group of people with a broad brush and see the world as black and white, but then you'd also be wrong.

Right, black and white. The truth/reality is often pretty straightforward though. As for painting an entire group of people with a broad brush, see my original comment about not everyone working for MS being evil.

Bleh. I tend towards viewing MS as truly evil too, but that site is a bad example to offer. I clicked through expecting to find a factual chronicle of corporate foul play, and instead just found a bunch of uninformed opinion-spouting combined with poorly veiled Apple fanaticism. Nothing turns me off faster than someone who can't be a little reserved in their allegiances.

Uninformed opinion-spouting? Well, what makes you so sure you're not engaging in some yourself? What if all he's saying about MS is true?

The guy seems to be really well informed. He's definitely pro-Apple though, I'll give you that, but he's really insightful too.

There was another site I happened to see through HN that kept a good chronicle of MS's evil, but I didn't save a bookmark so I had to go with RoughlyDrafted. Sorry! :p

The fourth headline down, "Windows 7 so great Microsoft is giving it away for free," was the last straw for me.

It's a release candidate. There's nothing new about MS giving their early betas and RCs away for free, and in fact it's one of the few areas where I feel they don't totally bungle the process of making and supporting software. To twist that into "look how bad windows 7 is gonna be lol" is obnoxious and disingenuous.

Yes, he got a little carried away in that article. I didn't really like it either. But besides his own conjecture, without which there wouldn't be much left of an article, did he say anything that's not true?

What were the earlier straws, by the way? If you just dig around a bit, I'm sure you'll find quite a few really enjoyable and insightful articles on the site.

To twist that into "look how bad windows 7 is gonna be lol" is obnoxious and disingenuous.

I thought he was just pointing out how MS is worried, and wants to increase W7's adoption by giving the RC away. There's also been some speculation about whether it's actually the finished W7 just dubbed an RC because giving away the finished product would look far too desperate.

Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of excitement over W7, so it looks like MS will have a successful Windows on their hands again.

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