3 ms·

> Oh please, windows was taking over the world long before microsoft was abusing its position. No need for the faux exasperation. Microsoft was abusing its po

by Jedd 9y ago

> Oh please, windows was taking over the world long before microsoft was abusing its position. No need for the faux exasperation. Microsoft was abusing its position long before Windows was 'a thing'. I appreciate your well-meaning comment, but I assure you that I've read sufficient books, lived through, and informed myself of, the history I'm talking about here. I don't see this as a monochromatic morality scenario. Quite the contrary -- it's hugely nuanced. My initial comment was a response to the contextually-lacking hero worship that attempts to remove the darker hues from a clearly grey history.

saiya-jin 9y ago
You'll find these 'dark' traits on every single famous person, be it in IT business or not (Gates, Jobs, Einstein, Tesla, Edison, Bezos, Ellison, Kennedy and all other not-only US presidents and so on and on). No successful CEO in Valley is a nice caring quiet person, otherwise they wouldn't survive for long in such an environment. I recall the late 90' era, geeks were running over each other to make fun of Gates specifically, dreaming about Linux ruling the desktops very soon and hating everything Windows-related. Your comments express similar attitudes.
nolok 9y ago
> Microsoft was abusing its position long before Windows was 'a thing'. Care to give some concrete exemple ? This is again a very genuine query. As far as my knowledge goes, Microsoft sometimes went fast and aggressively in the DOS and Win3.1 days, but there was no abuse of position until the win98 days and forward where they started on the browsers, the jvm, ...
- Jedd 9y ago
  > Care to give some concrete exemple ? This is again a very genuine query. The wikipedia article provides a concise summary of litigation, which is a subset of its abuse of power, but nonetheless enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation It starts: "In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system." And then gets worse. It is not a short page. When you say 'fast and aggressive', are you including FUD (ie. lying, libel, etc) and (arguably) inserting code to break competitors software?

by Jedd 9y ago

saiya-jin 9y ago

You'll find these 'dark' traits on every single famous person, be it in IT business or not (Gates, Jobs, Einstein, Tesla, Edison, Bezos, Ellison, Kennedy and all other not-only US presidents and so on and on). No successful CEO in Valley is a nice caring quiet person, otherwise they wouldn't survive for long in such an environment. I recall the late 90' era, geeks were running over each other to make fun of Gates specifically, dreaming about Linux ruling the desktops very soon and hating everything Windows-related. Your comments express similar attitudes.

nolok 9y ago

> Microsoft was abusing its position long before Windows was 'a thing'. Care to give some concrete exemple ? This is again a very genuine query. As far as my knowledge goes, Microsoft sometimes went fast and aggressively in the DOS and Win3.1 days, but there was no abuse of position until the win98 days and forward where they started on the browsers, the jvm, ...

Jedd 9y ago
> Care to give some concrete exemple ? This is again a very genuine query. The wikipedia article provides a concise summary of litigation, which is a subset of its abuse of power, but nonetheless enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation It starts: "In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system." And then gets worse. It is not a short page. When you say 'fast and aggressive', are you including FUD (ie. lying, libel, etc) and (arguably) inserting code to break competitors software?