4 ms·

Never entirely sure how to take some of these announcements. Prima facie it sounds great and laudable ... but I'm old, and my memory is full of stories of si

by Jedd 11y ago

Never entirely sure how to take some of these announcements. Prima facie it sounds great and laudable ... but I'm old, and my memory is full of stories of similar-sounding attempts to get youth mindshare with dubious subsidies of gear into schools, and the old classic of $100m to fund HIV research, $400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux. [1] I know - people tell me - it's a whole new Microsoft these days. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/13/gates_gives_100m_to_fight/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/13/gates_gives_100m_to_...

tetrep 11y ago
Indeed. Unless there's a promise of migration support once funs inevitably run out or some sort of lifetime fixed price/discount, such that the nonprofits or whatever can make an informed decision about the real cost of their infrastructure once it's no longer free, this is nothing but a terrible trap. I'd hate to see organizations suckered into this only to find that it has unsustainable costs once the freebies dry up and whatever pains come from attempting to migrate to some other platform/service and/or back onto local servers.
- bithive123 11y ago
  Smart organizations won't adopt even free services without a contract of some kind.
- jmspring 11y ago
  One can certainly design one's apps in such a way where the cloud provider doesn't necessarily matter -- docker containers running on VMs, for instance. If you use a bunch of things like SQL Server, Document DB, etc. that is certainly much harder to migrate than PostgreSQL running on a VM.
  - NetStrikeForce 11y ago
    Very good point. You could leverage Docker and an overlay networking solution like ours[1] to abstract yourself from the provider APIs and even the network itself. [1] https://wormhole.network https://wormhole.network
pasbesoin 11y ago
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. I remain skeptical that MS has changed its basic playbook. P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
differentTan 11y ago
It all depends on what you consider to be more valuable: 3 years worth of a team's effort working with a specific stack, or 3 years worth of free cloud services. My guess is that in the average case it skews heavily in the team effort direction. So then it's a net gain by MSFT. Still, you shouldn't discard charitable efforts if they also happen to be structured to benefit the benefactor.
ntakasaki 11y ago
They do a lot of things like most big companies, and some people seem to concentrate only the bad. For example, they started funding OpenSSL and other core infrastructure[1] projects of the Linux foundation after the Heartbleed fiasco. But you don't find that kind of news on here. By the way "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" seems to be quite hyperbolic, especially coming from 'The Register'. The link in the article goes to a 404 page, do you have any real details of the so called campaign? [1] https://threatpost.com/group-backed-by-google-microsoft-to-help-fund-openssl-and-other-open-source-projects/105672/ https://threatpost.com/group-backed-by-google-microsoft-to-h...
- Jedd 11y ago
  TheReg link works fine here. You're right about Reg style, though I have no reason to doubt substance of the story. Agreed on range of perception of deeds of any large company. Microsoft has long form on this front (baiting the education market), though they're certainly not the only organisation to have done this. Unlike other student discounts - say for movie tickets, public transport, etc - there's a clear and obvious future payback for providing free or heavily discounted software & services to that demographic, as opposed to just charging less to customers who can't afford full price. Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in. EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these: https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185301/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=28059762 https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185301/http://economicti... https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185306/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=28055647 https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185306/http://economicti...
  - ntakasaki 11y ago
    >Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in. There is no such requirement. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-myth-of-maximizing-shareholder-value/2014/02/11/00cdfb14-9336-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-... http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor... >EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these: I read those and I don't find anything to justify OPs "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" or The Register's characterization of '$421m to fight Linux".

by Jedd 11y ago

tetrep 11y ago

Indeed. Unless there's a promise of migration support once funs inevitably run out or some sort of lifetime fixed price/discount, such that the nonprofits or whatever can make an informed decision about the real cost of their infrastructure once it's no longer free, this is nothing but a terrible trap. I'd hate to see organizations suckered into this only to find that it has unsustainable costs once the freebies dry up and whatever pains come from attempting to migrate to some other platform/service and/or back onto local servers.

bithive123 11y ago
Smart organizations won't adopt even free services without a contract of some kind.
jmspring 11y ago
One can certainly design one's apps in such a way where the cloud provider doesn't necessarily matter -- docker containers running on VMs, for instance. If you use a bunch of things like SQL Server, Document DB, etc. that is certainly much harder to migrate than PostgreSQL running on a VM.
- NetStrikeForce 11y ago
  Very good point. You could leverage Docker and an overlay networking solution like ours[1] to abstract yourself from the provider APIs and even the network itself. [1] https://wormhole.network https://wormhole.network

pasbesoin 11y ago

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. I remain skeptical that MS has changed its basic playbook. P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

differentTan 11y ago

It all depends on what you consider to be more valuable: 3 years worth of a team's effort working with a specific stack, or 3 years worth of free cloud services. My guess is that in the average case it skews heavily in the team effort direction. So then it's a net gain by MSFT. Still, you shouldn't discard charitable efforts if they also happen to be structured to benefit the benefactor.

ntakasaki 11y ago

They do a lot of things like most big companies, and some people seem to concentrate only the bad. For example, they started funding OpenSSL and other core infrastructure[1] projects of the Linux foundation after the Heartbleed fiasco. But you don't find that kind of news on here. By the way "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" seems to be quite hyperbolic, especially coming from 'The Register'. The link in the article goes to a 404 page, do you have any real details of the so called campaign? [1] https://threatpost.com/group-backed-by-google-microsoft-to-help-fund-openssl-and-other-open-source-projects/105672/ https://threatpost.com/group-backed-by-google-microsoft-to-h...

Jedd 11y ago
TheReg link works fine here. You're right about Reg style, though I have no reason to doubt substance of the story. Agreed on range of perception of deeds of any large company. Microsoft has long form on this front (baiting the education market), though they're certainly not the only organisation to have done this. Unlike other student discounts - say for movie tickets, public transport, etc - there's a clear and obvious future payback for providing free or heavily discounted software & services to that demographic, as opposed to just charging less to customers who can't afford full price. Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in. EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these: https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185301/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=28059762 https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185301/http://economicti... https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185306/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=28055647 https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185306/http://economicti...
- ntakasaki 11y ago
  >Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in. There is no such requirement. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-myth-of-maximizing-shareholder-value/2014/02/11/00cdfb14-9336-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-... http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor... >EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these: I read those and I don't find anything to justify OPs "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" or The Register's characterization of '$421m to fight Linux".