5 ms·

I very much doubt this was intentional. If this was a small company targeting unsavvy users to try and upsell them something, sure. In this case the payout migh

by ht85 10y ago

I very much doubt this was intentional. If this was a small company targeting unsavvy users to try and upsell them something, sure. In this case the payout might be worth the fallout once people inevitably figure it out. In this case, I doubt someone thought "hey, let's mess with Linux users and serve them a bunch of garbage, it'll encourage them to move to Windows".

milkytron 10y ago
Any thought that starts with, "hey let's mess with Linux users..." Isn't very likely to be a good thought
herbst 10y ago
then how else would such behaviour be explainable? I thought about reasonable explanations but i doubt a little background process that notices a unsupported user agent would act up like this
- lgessler 10y ago
  I don't know if MS has earned the benefit of my doubt, but it's conceivable that the software could have implemented platform-specific behavior or optimizations that ended up slowing things down for some reason.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Yeah after reading some other comments (also on reddit) the idea that they push fixes platform specific and linux just defaults to a state with many missing fixes sounds like a reasonable option.
    - Twisell 10y ago
      So they supposedly maintain duplicate version of core functions in plateform specific branch and never merge them to master... That would only be slightly less worse than the sabotaging theory.
      - herbst 10y ago
        Indeed. But it sounds like something _new_ microsoft would do and does not imply that they are still _old_ microsoft with a new hat.
- Griffinsauce 10y ago
  It could very well be because of a lack of testing on that platform. Assumption is the mother of all fuckups, especially when you speculate about intentions.
  - herbst 10y ago
    true, history just made me very sceptic about everything microsoft
  - Nelson69 10y ago
    Sure it could. At the same time, this company has printed money for 30 years, not just beat the competition but killed the competition in many cases, and even made that an internal mantra. They have a pile of very smart people, money, etc.. there are also browser compatibility test services. They could have a VM grid with every interesting browser ever and it's not a big cost to them. A 15 person startup? I get they you might skip some browsers and focus on a key supported set. The tooling for that VM grid is also something I think a lot of the community would eat up of MS made available, there are lots of ways to build good karma and improve community relations. Intentional or not, it's just bad optics, if nothing else. A slate with the windows 10 linux subsystem looked like an interesting environment to play around with and maybe give a shot. This sort of thing makes it look a lot less interesting. No joke, I was thinking of getting my kids one.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
cookiecaper 10y ago
The only reason I would hesitate to say it's intentional is Microsoft's relationship/experience with the DOJ. Maybe that's far enough in the past and the landscape has changed sufficiently that it's no longer a matter of concern for them. If the only change necessary to improve speed is to update a string in the UA, I would say that's pretty hard to do accidentally. In theory, it could be an artifact of some internal QoS systems that prioritize requests from Windows boxes without the explicit intent of damaging the experience of non-Windows users, but that seems like a stretch. It'd be interesting to know if Mac UAs experienced similar slowdowns or not. It's much more likely that Microsoft is interested in doing what they can to make sure that people feel "things just work better on Windows", and little limitations or breakages like this are the perfect way to do that. Windows is Microsoft's bread and butter and they haven't forgotten that.
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  I highly doubt that someone on OneDrive has KPIs that performance on Windows is X better than performance on another OS. Maybe if both teams were in the same org, then I could see that as a (n albeit very slight) possibility. Not knowing the code behind it, but knowing the history of the OneDrive for Business client, I could see a few ways this could happen. The OD4B client has gone through a bunch of iterations before being merged with the regular (public) OneDrive client, so along the way, there could have been optimizations added on that were only available to the new merged client. Due to constraints, this could have been done using a simple UA check. These optimizations could have been merged down to the OSX/Linux clients (not sure if they're using a merged one there, or still the separate ones) but since different teams work on the clients (most likely different teams on each client) and server, the Linux client team never told the server team that the it also supports these optimizations. Easily could see the above scenario happening, it's not completely crazy when talking about big companies that teams don't have the best insight into eachother's work. Disclaimer: Work on Microsoft. Not on Windows, not on OneDrive, completely different part of the company.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    While that type of disconnect is certainly plausible, this type of soft communication arbitrage is regularly used to sabotage projects in corporate politics. It allows the conspirators to keep their moves covert. Plausible deniability is key, and affable management personalities go a long way to keeping people believing in the fairy tale. I'm sure a company like MS, who've had traumatic run-ins with the DOJ in the past, has internalized this phony management persona even more than most. And I do believe low-level developers who work on the individual clients are probably 100% earnest. They usually are. It's the people in the political structure who set their priorities and schedules and use them as pawns that you have to worry about. Even if your postulation is exactly accurate, MS still bears responsibility for crippling the Linux client, no matter which specific employee the communication "fault" falls on. I have no inside knowledge of Microsoft, this is just generic commentary and extrapolation on corporate politics in general. It is possible that I'm incorrect and this is truly an honest mistake. If this gets any attention, management will certainly claim that, and we'll never know the reality of whether it was unintentional or whether "The Linux client supports those speedups" was intentionally swallowed by someone along the line (or whether the patch was delayed for additional review because it was "accidentally bundled" with a bigger branch, or whether the priority has just been "innocently" pushed down, or whether the team is "just understaffed", or...). The proof is in the pudding with corporate politics. Being in management is being a professional politician. That's always true. They're always going to try to tell people what they want to hear and cloud up the picture around things that that person doesn't want to hear. If Microsoft is continually engaging in a series of accidents that hurt non-Windows clients, that pattern is sufficient proof of management's intent, regardless of what they claim.
ConceptJunkie 10y ago
Why not? It's not officially supported. It's not like Microsoft hasn't been doing this kind of thing to their competitors for the last 30 years.
- krylon 10y ago
  But I doubt somebody would switch from Linux to Windows because OneDrive is faster there. Also, the percentage of desktops running Linux is still tiny relative to Windows. The last time I saw any numbers (about two or three years back), it was ~90% Windows, ~7.5% OS X, ~1.5% Linux, so there is little incentive for Microsoft to care about Linux desktops.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    >But I doubt somebody would switch from Linux to Windows because OneDrive is faster there. Not for this one reason, but for 'webpages just work faster on Windows', sure.

by ht85 10y ago

milkytron 10y ago

Any thought that starts with, "hey let's mess with Linux users..." Isn't very likely to be a good thought

herbst 10y ago

then how else would such behaviour be explainable? I thought about reasonable explanations but i doubt a little background process that notices a unsupported user agent would act up like this

lgessler 10y ago
I don't know if MS has earned the benefit of my doubt, but it's conceivable that the software could have implemented platform-specific behavior or optimizations that ended up slowing things down for some reason.
- herbst 10y ago
  Yeah after reading some other comments (also on reddit) the idea that they push fixes platform specific and linux just defaults to a state with many missing fixes sounds like a reasonable option.
  - Twisell 10y ago
    So they supposedly maintain duplicate version of core functions in plateform specific branch and never merge them to master... That would only be slightly less worse than the sabotaging theory.
    - herbst 10y ago
      Indeed. But it sounds like something _new_ microsoft would do and does not imply that they are still _old_ microsoft with a new hat.
Griffinsauce 10y ago
It could very well be because of a lack of testing on that platform. Assumption is the mother of all fuckups, especially when you speculate about intentions.
- herbst 10y ago
  true, history just made me very sceptic about everything microsoft
- Nelson69 10y ago
  Sure it could. At the same time, this company has printed money for 30 years, not just beat the competition but killed the competition in many cases, and even made that an internal mantra. They have a pile of very smart people, money, etc.. there are also browser compatibility test services. They could have a VM grid with every interesting browser ever and it's not a big cost to them. A 15 person startup? I get they you might skip some browsers and focus on a key supported set. The tooling for that VM grid is also something I think a lot of the community would eat up of MS made available, there are lots of ways to build good karma and improve community relations. Intentional or not, it's just bad optics, if nothing else. A slate with the windows 10 linux subsystem looked like an interesting environment to play around with and maybe give a shot. This sort of thing makes it look a lot less interesting. No joke, I was thinking of getting my kids one.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

cookiecaper 10y ago

The only reason I would hesitate to say it's intentional is Microsoft's relationship/experience with the DOJ. Maybe that's far enough in the past and the landscape has changed sufficiently that it's no longer a matter of concern for them. If the only change necessary to improve speed is to update a string in the UA, I would say that's pretty hard to do accidentally. In theory, it could be an artifact of some internal QoS systems that prioritize requests from Windows boxes without the explicit intent of damaging the experience of non-Windows users, but that seems like a stretch. It'd be interesting to know if Mac UAs experienced similar slowdowns or not. It's much more likely that Microsoft is interested in doing what they can to make sure that people feel "things just work better on Windows", and little limitations or breakages like this are the perfect way to do that. Windows is Microsoft's bread and butter and they haven't forgotten that.

mynameisvlad 10y ago
I highly doubt that someone on OneDrive has KPIs that performance on Windows is X better than performance on another OS. Maybe if both teams were in the same org, then I could see that as a (n albeit very slight) possibility. Not knowing the code behind it, but knowing the history of the OneDrive for Business client, I could see a few ways this could happen. The OD4B client has gone through a bunch of iterations before being merged with the regular (public) OneDrive client, so along the way, there could have been optimizations added on that were only available to the new merged client. Due to constraints, this could have been done using a simple UA check. These optimizations could have been merged down to the OSX/Linux clients (not sure if they're using a merged one there, or still the separate ones) but since different teams work on the clients (most likely different teams on each client) and server, the Linux client team never told the server team that the it also supports these optimizations. Easily could see the above scenario happening, it's not completely crazy when talking about big companies that teams don't have the best insight into eachother's work. Disclaimer: Work on Microsoft. Not on Windows, not on OneDrive, completely different part of the company.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  While that type of disconnect is certainly plausible, this type of soft communication arbitrage is regularly used to sabotage projects in corporate politics. It allows the conspirators to keep their moves covert. Plausible deniability is key, and affable management personalities go a long way to keeping people believing in the fairy tale. I'm sure a company like MS, who've had traumatic run-ins with the DOJ in the past, has internalized this phony management persona even more than most. And I do believe low-level developers who work on the individual clients are probably 100% earnest. They usually are. It's the people in the political structure who set their priorities and schedules and use them as pawns that you have to worry about. Even if your postulation is exactly accurate, MS still bears responsibility for crippling the Linux client, no matter which specific employee the communication "fault" falls on. I have no inside knowledge of Microsoft, this is just generic commentary and extrapolation on corporate politics in general. It is possible that I'm incorrect and this is truly an honest mistake. If this gets any attention, management will certainly claim that, and we'll never know the reality of whether it was unintentional or whether "The Linux client supports those speedups" was intentionally swallowed by someone along the line (or whether the patch was delayed for additional review because it was "accidentally bundled" with a bigger branch, or whether the priority has just been "innocently" pushed down, or whether the team is "just understaffed", or...). The proof is in the pudding with corporate politics. Being in management is being a professional politician. That's always true. They're always going to try to tell people what they want to hear and cloud up the picture around things that that person doesn't want to hear. If Microsoft is continually engaging in a series of accidents that hurt non-Windows clients, that pattern is sufficient proof of management's intent, regardless of what they claim.

ConceptJunkie 10y ago

Why not? It's not officially supported. It's not like Microsoft hasn't been doing this kind of thing to their competitors for the last 30 years.

krylon 10y ago
But I doubt somebody would switch from Linux to Windows because OneDrive is faster there. Also, the percentage of desktops running Linux is still tiny relative to Windows. The last time I saw any numbers (about two or three years back), it was ~90% Windows, ~7.5% OS X, ~1.5% Linux, so there is little incentive for Microsoft to care about Linux desktops.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  >But I doubt somebody would switch from Linux to Windows because OneDrive is faster there. Not for this one reason, but for 'webpages just work faster on Windows', sure.