9 ms·
In threads about github etc, many were claiming Microsoft are a completely different, and better company, with a fine open approach to business these days. See
by NeedMoreTea 8y ago
In threads about github etc, many were claiming Microsoft are a completely different, and better company, with a fine open approach to business these days.
Seems nothing much has changed in their approach in 30 years.
- egeozcan 8y agoMaybe we should stop evaluating companies like we evaluate people.
- RyanZAG 8y agoCompanies are just people though - the guys in charge of decisions are the ones we're ultimately evaluating. That the left hand of the company doesn't know what the right hand of the company is doing isn't much of an excuse, as ultimately the buck stops at the executive and board positions. There's no way a decision like this one didn't get approval from the top layers of the company as it no doubt had to go through different levels of legal, product and everything in between.
- sureaboutthis 8y agoOn the side, I've owned some chain restaurants for 32 years. Mine have always been noted as friendlier, cleaner, fresher and all that. I like to say that it's cause it runs downhill and I care about the customer experience. Three years ago, I sold one of those restaurants inside a mall while still owning one just two blocks away. People from the mall come into this restaurant. Just yesterday someone told me that they hated the mall one. "They're just so mean to everyone!" They did not know I was the owner.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- s_kilk 8y ago> Companies are just people though Eh, this is like saying that people are just collections of cells. It doesn't tell you much about the high-level behavior observed.
- xvector 8y agoI don't think that's necessarily true. The binary line at which we judge objects begins with the concept of sentience/self-awareness. If our cells work to do something bad, we can't blame them - they aren't sentient. If people work to do something bad, we can and have always judged the group - they are sentient and are capable of making decisions within a moral framework.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoThere are group effects for groups of people, just as there are effects that organised groups of cells have that collections of cells do not. If someone hands you a cupcake and punches you in the face with the other hand then you don't think that the two actions are from separate "organisations" of cells (maybe, in cases of schizophrenia, or similar). People in an organisation often lack agency to fully control actions based on their personal ethics. This is often exploited by controlling influences.
- kkarakk 8y agoif the cells are sick, the person is sick. you don't just say you have a little cancer but on the whole you're chilling and are ready to goto the beach
- kevin_b_er 8y agoThey are legally people under the broken legal system of America. I will treat their crimes, their lack of morality, their low ethics, and their sociopathy the same as a human as long as they are "people".
- xnyan 8y agoIt’s not much better in the EU today. Do you argue that users were pushing for this: https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copy...
- anticensor 8y agoThey have less rights e.g. no freedom to be represented in parliament, no imprisonment; hence a legal entity is still different than a natural person.
- userbinator 8y agoThey've learned how to appeal to the easily-convinced crowd with all their "openness" and "modernity" (for lack of a better word.) They're opening up stuff that wasn't likely to be a source of revenue, and I bet they make even more from the non-obvious telemetry embedded in them. I see it as nothing more than another marketing attempt.
- frou_dh 8y agoThey've really done a number on these people, because not only are they using MS stuff again, but they've been turned into "New Microsoft" cheerleaders in many a comment thread, for a couple of years now.
- drb91 8y agoMicrosoft is a huge company. You’re going to see different reactions to Azure, VSCode, .NET, and their voice assistant/spyware program.
- frou_dh 8y agoThat's why pervasive "Does anyone else love the New Microsoft?!" style comments have seemed odd. People talking about how they like specific products is perfectly normal.
- _jal 8y agoIn retrospect, I'm pretty sure that was astroturf. The story of a how new, enlightened CEO was going to embrace open source, etc. was tailor-made for folks who want to believe they finally won over the last fight's great satan. The buzz seemed to be everywhere for a while, and then stopped. And it was timed conveniently around several open source releases that also made a splash - classic reenforcement advertising. And it seems to have worked.
- exikyut 8y agoNice. What open source releases were these, and what tim{e,ing} was this?
- pjmlp 8y agoThey are as open as Intel, AMD, ARM, Google, Apple and IBM, the beloved ones from FOSS.
- vetinari 8y agoARM is an open company? When did that happen? They still don't provide architecture reference manuals for download (unless you are customer), unlike AMD or Intel.
- mavhc 8y agoI can download a 6000 page PDF that seems to be what you want for the low low price of registering my email address
- vetinari 8y agoOh, it's just an email address now? Good to know, thanks.
- seabrookmx 8y agoNice username. "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken." GNU Terry Pratchett
- squarefoot 8y agoTheir GPUs are much more closed though.
- Delmania 8y agoAh yes, this comment was bound to appear. As it always does when we find out that the people running Windows do something that's not a good idea. They are more open with their development division, as they have to be. Windows is a completely different division, and more often than not, the notable members of the development division will call out their company.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoExcept they are not separate divisions. There are no subsidiary companies for Windows or Development, yet there are for Xbox, Mobile, Games and others. Windows and development are subject to the same executive team, and same orders from the top setting corporate direction. It was precisely that break-up that was ordered by the US court during the anti-trust case, and stopped with the arrival of the Bush administration.
- intern4tional 8y agoEventually all divisions roll up to the same executive team. The level at which Windows and the people responsible for this decision meet is far above where the decision is or was made. Mobile and XBOX aren't subsidiary companies. Mobile rolls up closer to Windows than the browser team does which led to the mess that is UWP and the Windows 8 (and on) start menu. Sorry, your comment is inaccurate.
- phyzome 8y agoI find I don't really care how Microsoft likes to divide up its stuff internally. Either this kind of nonsense is supported by the company or it isn't.
- sbergot 8y agoGood for you if this stance helps you. But ultimately the world is more complex. Do you judge a given country population by the act of their leader? Because you have no reason to care how a given country divide its stuff. If a country does something that must mean that everyone in this country support this thing right?
- gadders 8y agoI think what has changed is that Microsoft is no longer the massively dominant force it was pre-Internet. In those days, it really was the 1,000lb gorilla. It is still a big company, but Google at least can certainly compete with it as an equal.
- krylon 8y agoWith a company the size of Microsoft, I am certain that there are different factions/divisions/groups within the company that might have very different values, views, priorities, to the degree that they might as well be different companies.
- skybrian 8y agoBig companies employ a lot of people who can do both good things and bad things. Many teams and projects have nothing to do with each other. Treating a large organization as a single person for moral purposes is a category mistake. It's entirely possible for Microsoft to do bad things like this while GitHub keeps doing its thing and Typescript and VSCode developers keep doing their thing.
- severino 8y ago> Seems nothing much has changed in their approach in 30 years. Well, their PR department changed a lot, so they can keep the same old tactics while having people think they're the good guys now.
- phire 8y agoThey are doing very well about being open in the developers space. Open sourcing libraries and tools that make the lives of programmers much easier and even porting them to run on linux. This may be a selfish approach approach from Microsoft (win the hearts of developers and the regular users will follow), or it might be signs of actual positive change. The one thing that is clear is this openness does not extend to regular users of windows. I'm mentally making notes that I should really be switching back to linux for my core desktop computing, even if I continue to use Microsoft technology like vscode, typescript and dotnet core.
- pyrophane 8y agoThe world around Microsoft has changed though. Yea, they are still the same company even with their strategic realignment around open-source, but now they face healthy competition from arguably worse (at least just as bad) tech giants that makes Microsoft seem more benign. Every now and then I hear some PR spiel or read some comment on HN about how great Windows is now and I try to run it, but I always run into some dumb thing like this that turns me off.
- ary 8y agoA better point of view might be this: Microsoft is a huge company, not all the people that work there are (what we might consider) ethical engineers, and some of the adherents to the sleazy business practices of their past are still around. It’s not a good reason, but it’s possibly the reason. Ultimately it’s not really useful to attempt to paint an entity as large as Microsoft as all good or all bad.