3 ms·
I hear this phrase "It didn't make business sense" all the time. It's a persistent misunderstanding of business and customer relationships. You support Linux u
by angry_octet 10y ago
I hear this phrase "It didn't make business sense" all the time. It's a persistent misunderstanding of business and customer relationships.
You support Linux users (or Mac or WinXP or those behind a firewall or MSI installer needing etc etc) because you want to dominate your competitors, you want your product to be the one everyone wants, and the one with the least bugs.
If you're going to say 'screw you' to some customers, that needs to be based on an actual assessment of costs, impact on users, how it can be mitigated, and what else that money would be spent on. A CTO level decision, not the support desk. And not supporting people running a standard web browser is just inept.
- NamTaf 10y agoAt a company the size of MS that is not a CTO level decision by any stretch unless it is a broad-based 'all-in' or 'all-out' decision to steer the company at a high level. It's much lower than that and it almost certainly is based on an assessment of competing priorities.
- angry_octet 10y agoNo, even at Microsoft. It won't be at the level of "the support for this app will work for firefox on linux" but it will be setting policy like "By default all Microsoft websites will support browsers x/y/z on platforms p/q/r/s, unless exempted by the relevant VP with supporting business case" etc.