6 ms·
That's why I don't like MS, and don't buy the whole "New MS and OS rainbows and unicorns" bit. I judge companies on how they behave when they're "at the top" -
by greenhouse_gas 10y ago
That's why I don't like MS, and don't buy the whole "New MS and OS rainbows and unicorns" bit.
I judge companies on how they behave when they're "at the top" - MS in the late 90s-early 00's or Google (Android and search) in the late 00's - now.
The reason is that companies at the bottom have to behave nicely (Cyanogen learned that the hard way), community-cred is literally all they have. You judge companies behavior once they get to the top and can do whatever they want.
Now, back to the topic, MS was losing developer cred lately(and don't want to become IBM), so what do they do? They Open Source some developer tools and part of their language (less than Java, BTW). Oh, they also realize that developers were switching to Apple and Linux, so they added WSL.
It's not they became ethical, it's not that they're stopping vendor lockin, it's not that they're going to finally fully document the Win32 API (their online documentation is quite often inaccurate), it's not that they're going to allow you to stop their spying (unless you're a huge business who had enough purchasing power to actually leave - try telling the CIA that if they're using Windows, everything they type is seen at MS). They're at the top there and don't need to do any favors to anyone.
MS is simply business as usual.
- jimmaswell 10y agoWhat tech company has ever been at the top and acted nicely?
- greenhouse_gas 10y agoHonestly, even Google is more ethical. Google is at the top in Mobile. Yet Android is 90% Open Source. It's not that even that. If I want to install an APK, I can do it. No need to be a Enterprise or pay $100 for a developer license, anyone can install FDroid. And they let people write competitive software (Firefox, etc.) and set them as default. Actually, as a user, I don't have to see anything be Google if I don't want to. And don't forget open sourcing TensorFlow.
- Dayshine 10y agoAnd then there's Chrome...
- blibble 10y agowhich is 99.99% open source (Chromium), and forms the basis of several competitors to Chrome? compared to the openness of Edge/IE, Google are saints with Chrome
- nacs 10y ago> (Chromium), and forms the basis of several competitors to Chrome Chromium was based on Webkit which actually came from Apple (and who forked it from KHTML from the KDE project). It's not Chromium that's the "basis" of competitors, it's Webkit that was the base.
- Nullabillity 10y agoBy that logic, KHTML/Konqueror should get all the credit. But AFAIK V8 (which most of those forks use) also has pretty much nothing to do with JSCore.
- MertsA 10y agoWhat are your objections to Chrome? Chromium seems like a reasonable project and everything that's not in Chromium seems to be pretty well Google specific and probably shouldn't be in Chromium IMHO.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Ludd1t3 10y agoIs Android any different from Windows in that sense? It's open source in name only. All development is done behind closed doors and essentially dumped out in the open when Google determines it's ready for a release. No one else has say in the development process and you can't contribute changes either. All the other things you mentioned, can also be done on Windows. I am not sure how that's different than what Windows does/is doing.
- Nullabillity 10y agoOpenness is about being able to modify it and share it with people, not about being able to get Android to adopt it. For a long time even the GNU project had a similar cathedral-style approach of secretive development processes and no outside contributions. You might have a point when there is a CyanogenMod/LineageOS equivalent for Windows.
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago1. Most of Android is Open Source - see Amazon Fire, for example. Is there an equivalent of that on windows? 2. MS took apple's approach that everything (on their new platform) must go through the store. Even if right now they give exceptions, it's as I said above an example of them trying to build market share. Will they have an "Unknown Sources" button when they get 80% of the market?
- sangnoir 10y ago> What tech company has ever been at the top and acted nicely? It's not a binary option (nice vs. not nice) but a range from nice to not nice. Companies fall at different points on that spectrum. As examples; Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle all fall on very different points on this not-nice spectrum when they are/were at the top. The relative positions are subjective depending on who you relate to each (developer, competitor, user, recipient of legal threat or bystander), but in my circles there is a general consensus on the relative positions.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- r00fus 10y agoWhile there are a few counter-examples, for the most part, as Lord Acton said "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". We need to prevent companies from controlling the market, and keep the powerful ones honest and accountable. Hating IBM, Microsoft and AT&T is all about fighting tyranny.
- cm2187 10y agoAmazon has remained customer focused
- mrmondo 10y agoI would say they are purely sales focus and any remaining energy / time is spent saving face and convincing C(E/I)Os they're not just the best option, they're the only option.
- cm2187 10y agoYou think AWS. I think amazon ecommerce. I don't have much experience about AWS.
- greenhouse_gas 10y agoThat's not "Ethics", it's not being Tone Deaf. Apple was not Tone Deaf under Jobs, but weren't really ethical. If Google would block Amazon on search, there'd be such a scream.
- burnbabyburn 10y agomozilla
- mrmondo 10y agoRedHat came to mind very quickly, Mozilla too...
- sametmax 10y agoFinally somebody seeing that. Everytime i said the current MS behavior was just better PR I got downvoted. Now maybe people will also start looking at the current "gate is a fantastic person" trend from the PR perspective as well.
- mrmondo 10y agoLikewise, last year it was noted at certain points in time it was very clear that target campaigns run by or for Microsoft on Reddit and HN were working to down/up-vote specific posts and write replies in their favour. The results and details of this were posted at least two or perhaps thee times before fading away, they might be on the internet archive somewhere, if I get a chance I'll try and hunt them down.
- sgift 10y agoPlease do, because right now this sounds suspiciously like a conspiracy theory. "I cannot proof it, but these evil people certainly do things" ...
- cryptarch 10y agoWell, it definitely is one, but you seem to mean "a conspiracy theory in the sense often depicted in mainstream media: unsubstantiated paranoid ramblings, see also: tinfoil hat". I mean, it is unsourced, but it's not an unheard of idea, and should be quite Google-able. Microsoft has engaged in astroturfing many times (last in 2014 AFAIK) so it's entirely possible. NeoGaf discussion with a list of news reports on MS astroturfing: http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=579641 http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=579641 (I'm not associated with NeoGaf, I found it on Google, I vaguely recall it having some GamerGate-related stigma attached to it so I added this disclaimer)
- sametmax 10y agoThat's kinda the problem with it. The time and resources one would involve to prove the point is substantial. And for what result ? At best a few people will get offended and that's it. MS has corrupted governments, insulted competitions and spied on its customers and yet they have been forgiven. So even if we prove what's is now a feeling, that they are on a PR campaign, it will achieve nothing. They win whatever happen. It's a bit depressing.
- lewisl9029 10y agoI don't think this general notion, that a company can have some kind of intrinsic evil or goodness that is somehow immune to management changes, changes in competitive landscape, and generational shifts resulting from the passage of time, is really rational. Companies are not people. Companies can't have nor lack a moral compass that tells them right from wrong. Companies are run by people. These people are the ones making the business decisions and doing the work that enables the company as a whole to do ethical or not-so-unethical things. The people running these companies can and do get replaced. And when enough of them get replaced, the past actions of a company will no longer be representative of its potential tendencies from that point onwards. This is very simply because a new set of people will be the ones making business decisions and doing the work, and these new people will become the real moral compass behind the company's decision making. And let's not forget the fact that even people can change. So what's stopping them from changing while running a company, which would thereby be reflected in the actions of the company itself? All of this change tends to happen slowly and gradually, but change itself, for better or worse, is inevitable as long as a company remains solvent. Of course, I'm certainly not suggesting that I know for a fact that Microsoft itself has turned an entirely new leaf. In fact, I find all of their recent actions toward limiting user freedom and privacy as disgusting, exploitative and unethical as most others in this thread. My point is, however, we should try to judge each individual action of a company on their own merit or lack thereof, rather than always viewing them through a lense tinted by some extrapolation of their actions from 20 years ago into some fundamental measurement of the company's intrisic goodness or evil. At the very least, we should try to make an effort to calibrate our lenses to weigh new information more favorably than old, because otherwise, even when the company itself may have long moved on, our opinions of them will forever be stuck in the past.
- Nursie 10y agoSo there's no such thing as corporate culture?
- lewisl9029 10y agoThere certainly is. I'm not sure where in my post you're detecting that sense of absolutism you're reading into it. But culture, like everything else in a company, is also shaped by its people. Which means culture can change as well. Any change will be a slow process due to inertia, but it can and will happen if enough people in the company want it to happen.
- mrmondo 10y agoYou took the words right out of my mouth. The re-branding / imaging that's going on is nothing more than marketing hype.
- baq 10y agothat's blatantly wrong unless you consider microsoft's github a PR stunt.
- dvfjsdhgfv 10y agoYou oversimplify things when you refer to it as a "PR stunt". It's a part of their current tactics: certain parts of MS, especially the Azure team, have no other choice than collaborate with the open source community if they want their business to grow. You may remember Microsoft always wanted to win developers over. However, the programming ecosystem changed considerably since the 90s. Now, in order to get us back on board, they need to act differently than they did back then - and it seems it works as many people speak positively about the "new" Microsoft. It's not new, the strategy is pretty much the same.
- intended 10y agoThis thread is really weird. Since when did HN mean having to choose one polar view point only? Microsoft is changing, and how far they are changing is to be seen. Calling them villains unable to change or calling them as innocent as new lambs is strawmanning.
- tremon 10y agoMicrosoft is changing, and how far they are changing is to be seen. The point people are making is that the only thing that has changed so far with Microsoft is their methods. And that their new methods still align with their old tactics and goals. Would you call a gang member that now uses guns instead of knives a "changed man"?
- 10y ago
- LoSboccacc 10y agoTangential I know but what happened to cyanogen? I was just about to move to android and they folded.
- JohnTHaller 10y agoCyanogenOS wound up a mishandled mess and brought the whole thing down. It's split off to be LineageOS with many of the same volunteers.
- coldpie 10y ago> it's not that they're going to finally fully document the Win32 API (their online documentation is quite often inaccurate) Okay, this is tangential to your point, and I'm no fan of Microsoft's, but I really have to defend MSDN here. MSDN is by a wide margin the best and most complete API documentation I've ever seen. Yes, it's wrong sometimes, but that's because it fucking exists. Almost every function, and certainly every function a typical developer is going to care about, is documented. Even crazy obscure shit like wmvcore COM interfaces[1]. You don't even know what that is, but look at all that fucking documentation! Oh my god. My life would be so much harder as a Wine developer if it weren't for MSDN. Every win32 API developer at Microsoft deserves a gold fucking star for actually writing documentation. They certainly don't deserve chastisement for not being perfect. [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd798576(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd7...
- wodencafe 10y agoThe developers at the Wine project have mentioned multiple times in various places how sketchy and inaccurate MSDN is. Maybe MS has tried to clean that up recently, but it has a track record of inaccuracy, at best. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wine developers were the ones submitting the corrections to the MSDN, anyway.
- coldpie 10y agoSure, it'd be cool if everything was perfect. Then we wouldn't need to write all these tests $ cat src/wine/*/*/tests/*.c | wc -l 1085766 But we don't live in that world and it's far more interesting to compare like with like. When you take into account its scope, in terms of completeness and usefulness, MSDN is head and shoulders above every other API doc I can think of except maybe Java, which is also excellent. Certainly better than Apple, and don't even get me started on most open source APIs.
- kyberias 10y agoYes, MSDN documentation may be inaccurate from the perspective of people trying to REPLICATE THE ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION of the APIs! That's not the purpose of MSDN documentation though.