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Many (most?) people on Hacker News might be too young to remember the Halloween Documents. They were internal Microsoft documents describing their proposed str

Many (most?) people on Hacker News might be too young to remember the Halloween Documents. They were internal Microsoft documents describing their proposed strategy for dealing with competition from then-new Free Software alternatives: http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ If you want to understand why Microsoft is acting the way they are, read those documents. It's not that I think they are still executing the strategies and tactics spelled out therein. Quite the contrary; Microsoft realises they've lost the OS war to Linux (on one front) and OSX (on the other). The point is how astonishingly user-hostile those memos are. They lay out a strategy for competing with Free Software that has almost nothing to do with their users' needs and wants. Instead, the obvious assumption is that their users will be sacrificed to their (Microsoft's) strategic goals. That's not to say that individual Microsoft teams don't produce excellent, user-centric software (two I can think of in my own experience are Excel and Visual Studio). But the executive leadership, and company culture as a whole, seems to care little about the people who actually use their products. This was clearly true back in the 90s, and is clearly true now. In the 90s it was 'embrace and extend', in the 2010s it's 'track and advertise'.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago
Those memos are over 20 years old. You can't point to something 20 years old and say "see, they did it before therefore that's what's happening today". I'm not a fan of what they're doing with some of the Windows 10 defaults. But you gotta be crazy to not see the user improvements they've done in so many other areas. They are a very, very different company than they were back then. I'm not saying that excuses anything but you're drawing false equivalences using a 2 decades old set of memos to try and back it.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  The underlying theme is _exactly_ the same: they will chuck their users under the bus for what they see as important strategic goals. It was true 20 years ago, and everything I can see suggests it's still true today. This is part of the reason I gave up developing for Windows and .NET after around a decade of doing it. I prefer to work on a stack with which I'm at least partially values-aligned. (Same reason I abandoned Linux for FreeBSD, actually).
- Karunamon 9y ago
  In the same way, you also can't say "That's 20 years old and not relevant anymore". Appeal to novelty fallacy and all that. Are they really that different of a company? Microsoft is huge, organizational memory is long, and decisions made long ago, whether rational or mere cargo culting, will affect how they run today. I'd argue they're a bit more cunning, but not one whit less underhanded. The EU browser ballot thing was considerably more recent, for instance. The forced W10 upgrades with the trick X dialog. Dark patterns surrounding use of a Microsoft account. Non-disableable telemetry. Hawking Edge in a way that would even make Chrome blush [1]. I think they know that they can't be as overt anymore; a couple of antitrust suits will do that to you. [1]: https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg
- OnlyRepliesToBS 9y ago
  "They're different" without any evidence. False equivalence? Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist. That DID happen.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

Those memos are over 20 years old. You can't point to something 20 years old and say "see, they did it before therefore that's what's happening today". I'm not a fan of what they're doing with some of the Windows 10 defaults. But you gotta be crazy to not see the user improvements they've done in so many other areas. They are a very, very different company than they were back then. I'm not saying that excuses anything but you're drawing false equivalences using a 2 decades old set of memos to try and back it.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
The underlying theme is _exactly_ the same: they will chuck their users under the bus for what they see as important strategic goals. It was true 20 years ago, and everything I can see suggests it's still true today. This is part of the reason I gave up developing for Windows and .NET after around a decade of doing it. I prefer to work on a stack with which I'm at least partially values-aligned. (Same reason I abandoned Linux for FreeBSD, actually).
Karunamon 9y ago
In the same way, you also can't say "That's 20 years old and not relevant anymore". Appeal to novelty fallacy and all that. Are they really that different of a company? Microsoft is huge, organizational memory is long, and decisions made long ago, whether rational or mere cargo culting, will affect how they run today. I'd argue they're a bit more cunning, but not one whit less underhanded. The EU browser ballot thing was considerably more recent, for instance. The forced W10 upgrades with the trick X dialog. Dark patterns surrounding use of a Microsoft account. Non-disableable telemetry. Hawking Edge in a way that would even make Chrome blush [1]. I think they know that they can't be as overt anymore; a couple of antitrust suits will do that to you. [1]: https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg
OnlyRepliesToBS 9y ago
"They're different" without any evidence. False equivalence? Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist. That DID happen.