5 ms·

Somebody bears responsibility for past actions. That Somebody is M$. You say they are a better company now. We'll see. It is probably just a strategy. What th

Somebody bears responsibility for past actions. That Somebody is M$. You say they are a better company now. We'll see. It is probably just a strategy. What they did had a huge cost: putting back computing science for decades, and probably closing a one-time chance of having an open source platform accross all market segments. Linux is a bad desktop platform? Blame M$! M$ actions have costed humankind trillions, and we have collectively lost millions of years. That is not brushed away with a questionable release of an IoT product.

lobster_johnson 8y ago
What? The responsibility for Linux being a "bad desktop platform" is entirely that of whoever made it. Between KDE, GNOME and the various alternatives, none of their issues were caused by Microsoft. Microsoft may have been plenty evil under Gates/Ballmer, but it's hard to argue that they did much actual damage of consequence. If anything, they energized the open source community, and lost developer mindshare as a result.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  They FUDed the market out of existence. The workpower left was not enough to produce a competitive product. Linus on Desktop is improving, but the damage is done. It happened long ago, but tbe ripples will be felt for centuries. They bear a huge responsibility, and it will not be forgotten.
  - lobster_johnson 8y ago
    What market? What kind of progress did Microsoft kill, exactly? Not to mention that back in the late 90s and early 00s when Microsoft was actively FUDing Linux, it was the server market they were afraid of. The LAMP stack was threatening IIS; the whole Mindcraft debacle, for example, was about the supposed superior TCO of Windows NT Server. Linux on the desktop was not a threat to Windows then. Microsoft wasn't talking about how Word and Excel were better than OpenOffice or whatever. They didn't need to. Microsoft's business was IIS, Exchange, SQL Server and so on, and they needed to FUD Linux to avoid losing enterprise market share against an upstart that could run lots of powerful Unix stuff at a fraction of the cost.
    - gonvaled 8y ago
      M$ was fighting the GPL, which was a license that users were freely choosing. And it was fighting it, in great part, by actively lying.
  - mdekkers 8y ago
    tbe ripples will be felt for centuries hah, seriously? "centuries" as in "hundreds of years"? Do you have _any_ kind of half-way decent argument to back up that -frankly outlandish- assertion? I'm not a big MSFT fan, but you make a lot of statements in this thread, non of which are backed up by anything else except emotional knee-jerk comments. I'd be happy to engage in a reasonable discourse, based on supportable factual statements. Spare me the "M$ is teh (sic) evil" stuff, it doesn't help us as a technology community with being taken seriously.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Who really bears that responsibility? Bill Gates? Steve Ballmer? Guess what - they're both out and the new leadership clearly has a different approach in mind. Microsoft has no blame for Linux being a bad desktop platform - and for the record, I strongly disagree with the assertion that Linux is a bad desktop platform. Your hyperbole and childish "M$" name-calling do nothing to support your argument.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  It is too easy to say "those persons are no longer responsible". I do not care who was responsible, I do not care how the company was structured or who was calling the shots. The company reaped the rewards, they get to keep the responsibilities. It is a boring argument, being repeated ad-nausea: "nobody is responsible anymore". And, since companies (and states) are perfectly aware that the market / society will forget in a couple of decades what they are doing now, they keep on doing whatever they like. Guess what, some of us are not willing to forget. > Your hyperbole and childish "M$" name-calling do nothing to support your argument. You call it "childish name calling", I call it "guerrilla marketing". It seems to work.
jodrellblank 8y ago
Alternately, "M$" saved the world from a user-hostile desktop and added trillions of dollars in value to the world, enabling a thriving market of profitable, useful, commercial software with accessibility, backwards compatibility, hardware compatibility, print independence, and relevant business functions that no other company or group has been able to match in decades of trying. More people were willing to pay for desktop software than use something free. The "free is better" rhetoric breaks down when people spend billions of dollars per year getting away from the free alternatives.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  I do not blame M$ for competing. I blame them for FUDding. It could perfectly be that M$ had the better product or better TCO, or better support, or better whatever. But advancing their cause by FUDding was not ok.

lobster_johnson 8y ago

What? The responsibility for Linux being a "bad desktop platform" is entirely that of whoever made it. Between KDE, GNOME and the various alternatives, none of their issues were caused by Microsoft. Microsoft may have been plenty evil under Gates/Ballmer, but it's hard to argue that they did much actual damage of consequence. If anything, they energized the open source community, and lost developer mindshare as a result.

gonvaled 8y ago
They FUDed the market out of existence. The workpower left was not enough to produce a competitive product. Linus on Desktop is improving, but the damage is done. It happened long ago, but tbe ripples will be felt for centuries. They bear a huge responsibility, and it will not be forgotten.
- lobster_johnson 8y ago
  What market? What kind of progress did Microsoft kill, exactly? Not to mention that back in the late 90s and early 00s when Microsoft was actively FUDing Linux, it was the server market they were afraid of. The LAMP stack was threatening IIS; the whole Mindcraft debacle, for example, was about the supposed superior TCO of Windows NT Server. Linux on the desktop was not a threat to Windows then. Microsoft wasn't talking about how Word and Excel were better than OpenOffice or whatever. They didn't need to. Microsoft's business was IIS, Exchange, SQL Server and so on, and they needed to FUD Linux to avoid losing enterprise market share against an upstart that could run lots of powerful Unix stuff at a fraction of the cost.
  - gonvaled 8y ago
    M$ was fighting the GPL, which was a license that users were freely choosing. And it was fighting it, in great part, by actively lying.
- mdekkers 8y ago
  tbe ripples will be felt for centuries hah, seriously? "centuries" as in "hundreds of years"? Do you have _any_ kind of half-way decent argument to back up that -frankly outlandish- assertion? I'm not a big MSFT fan, but you make a lot of statements in this thread, non of which are backed up by anything else except emotional knee-jerk comments. I'd be happy to engage in a reasonable discourse, based on supportable factual statements. Spare me the "M$ is teh (sic) evil" stuff, it doesn't help us as a technology community with being taken seriously.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Who really bears that responsibility? Bill Gates? Steve Ballmer? Guess what - they're both out and the new leadership clearly has a different approach in mind. Microsoft has no blame for Linux being a bad desktop platform - and for the record, I strongly disagree with the assertion that Linux is a bad desktop platform. Your hyperbole and childish "M$" name-calling do nothing to support your argument.

gonvaled 8y ago
It is too easy to say "those persons are no longer responsible". I do not care who was responsible, I do not care how the company was structured or who was calling the shots. The company reaped the rewards, they get to keep the responsibilities. It is a boring argument, being repeated ad-nausea: "nobody is responsible anymore". And, since companies (and states) are perfectly aware that the market / society will forget in a couple of decades what they are doing now, they keep on doing whatever they like. Guess what, some of us are not willing to forget. > Your hyperbole and childish "M$" name-calling do nothing to support your argument. You call it "childish name calling", I call it "guerrilla marketing". It seems to work.

jodrellblank 8y ago

Alternately, "M$" saved the world from a user-hostile desktop and added trillions of dollars in value to the world, enabling a thriving market of profitable, useful, commercial software with accessibility, backwards compatibility, hardware compatibility, print independence, and relevant business functions that no other company or group has been able to match in decades of trying. More people were willing to pay for desktop software than use something free. The "free is better" rhetoric breaks down when people spend billions of dollars per year getting away from the free alternatives.

gonvaled 8y ago
I do not blame M$ for competing. I blame them for FUDding. It could perfectly be that M$ had the better product or better TCO, or better support, or better whatever. But advancing their cause by FUDding was not ok.