6 ms·

Microsoft's Android patent shakedown was the big thing that kept me from believing the company had really changed - I think I'm ready to consider that it really

Microsoft's Android patent shakedown was the big thing that kept me from believing the company had really changed - I think I'm ready to consider that it really has changed now.

alimbada 8y ago
They started changing for the better as soon as they got rid of Ballmer in my opinion. He was toxic for the company and for the industry as a whole. It's taken a few years, but I don't think there's much of the "old" MS left anymore in terms of business practices and ethics.
- Isamu 8y ago
  Not just getting rid of Ballmer, but promoting Nadella to the job. That pick was the turning point.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    Interesting... I don't know much about him. Wikipedia mentions briefly that he worked at Sun. What did he do there, for how long, with whom, and how did that influence his time at Microsoft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella
    - Isamu 8y ago
      I haven't read it but apparently he published an autobiographical book last year: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit-refresh https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit-refresh https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from-reading-satya-nadellas-book-hit-refresh-6c2f07893d5c https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from-re...
      - fernandotakai 8y ago
        i would also recommend his interview with freakonomics podcast http://freakonomics.com/podcast/satya-nadella/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/satya-nadella/
      - DonHopkins 8y ago
        That's a great article by Xavier Geerinck. The part about leaders generating energy is interesting. I wonder what he thought about Scott McNealy's attempts at generating energy by trying to make Microsoft out to be the great enemy of humanity that Sun was going to vanquish, which I though fell flat because you should never let yourself be defined simply in terms of opposition to someone else. When Sun Microsystems fell apart into several different companies, he even named one of them "SunSoft" in opposition to "Microsoft". You've got to have something of your own to be energetic about, without needing an enemy to fight against. For so many years, Java was first and foremost simply a weapon in Sun's arsenal for their much bigger purpose, the raging war against Microsoft. They actually weaponized a programming language, and that was a higher priority than any other consideration. They wasted all that energy they generated around Java in a war overseas, instead of building infrastructure at home.
- mistersquid 8y ago
  That's a great observation and reminder, thank you. I agree Ballmer's strategic actions were problematic for the larger technological ecosystem and only benefited Microsoft in shortsighted ways though they did establish Microsoft as the most important technology company in the world for nearly 10 years (1995 - 2005). It's been 4 years since Ballmer left Microsoft and it's taken some time for new management to effect change. Microsoft is a much more interesting, cooperative, and innovative company as a result. EDIT: Change "Ballmer" to "Ballmer's" and number agreement.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  (Disclaimer: MS employee) Yes and no. Credit to Satya Nadella, the culture really is changing towards openness and collaboration. However, Microsoft has a lot of "lifers," and you don't just roll back two decades of the old Microsoft in a couple years. At the high level/PR level, I think the business practices and ethics are improving, but it'll take many years and possibly a good number of retirements (because the industry is actually old enough for that now) for the mindset change to propagate throughout management.
markovbot 8y ago
I'm still unconvinced, I think we'll need to see years of really good behavior for me to possibly believe they've changed. There have been decades of bad faith attacks on free/libre technology, I think I'm going to need to see at least 5 years of no fucking around from them before I consider this more than the embrace part of embrace, extend, extinguish. Up till now my biggest complaint has been the extortion racket they've been running with these patents, so this is certainly a move in the right direction, but that company is evil to the core and I don't believe for a second they're really trying to change for any reason other than marketing/public perception.
- icey 8y ago
  When does the timer start? Microsoft started open sourcing a lot of its core technology over four years ago (.NET Core being one example).
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    It doesn't matter - just another person that jumped on the MS bash bandwagon because it's fun and it lets you score quick brownie points. Most people have crap articulations of why MS is evil or why it sucks besides "patents", and it's the same basic drivel I see repeated about any company. Never ceases to amaze me how critical thinking skills can cease so thoroughly on a subject.
    - cure 8y ago
      I think you may be missing some historical perspective. Microsoft have quite the history of being extremely unpleasant toward free and open source software. There's also this list of more recent issues with their software: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.en.html
      - tomnipotent 8y ago
        No, not missing anything. Most of the stuff on the GNU list is highly subjective, and I don't consider Richard Stallman a voice of reason. Did Microsoft employ some aggressive business practices? Sure. Show me another modern-day company from any country that hasn't done the same.
eksemplar 8y ago
I'm not sure they've really changed, but I judge them from an enterprise viewpoint. I think their strategy has certainly changed, but I think their core ideals have remained the same, and I think they are really just honing in on their primary market. Their tech still doesn't play well with others, only in the areas where they absolutely have to. I think Sharepoint in the cloud is a good example. It's really great if you let it handle most things, maybe you buy a theme or maybe something bigger to put on top, but generally you let Sharepoint handle most things on your intranet. You'll include a few non-Microsoft systems through Sharepoint apps or widgets, and that still works well enough. That's the great use case. The terrible use case, is using it alongside 500 other IT systems and trying to include those, the way you'd like a modern enterprise intranet to do. We have a system to report our driving to get it refunded. Another system to get vacation time accepted and validated, and a third system for sick leave. All with their own web-interfaces, mobile apps and open APIs. They rely on AD and ADFS for authentication, but they're their own things. Sure you can build a Sharepoint specific plugin for each of them, but a modern intranet should really support stuff like VUE stand alone widgets/apps so that you can share those widgets between systems and you really can't do that with a Sharepoint plugin. We use Azure a lot, like I said, and it I think it's great, but it's very clear that .NET is very first class in Azure. You can argue that stuff like Node.js is up there, and maybe the few python frameworks that Microsoft support with visual studio, but JAVA, Go, Flutter or whatever you can think of certainly isn't smooth in Azure. And just try using non-outlook, libra office or something other than one drive for business in your Microsoft enterprise setup, you can, but it's not very nice. I'm sounding negative, but I actually really like Microsoft. I think they're great at what they do, and I think they're one of the best partners you can have in enterprise, along as you embrace their tech. But that's the catch, and that's why I think they haven't really changed their core values. I do think it's perfectly reasonable, for them to want you to use their technologies, from a business point of view, but when I look at the options for stuff like cloud, I think it's very clear that Azure wants you to also build your backbone in .NET with maybe Node.js + a JS framework on the front, where as with AWS I feel like Amazon doesn't really care what your stack is.

Microsoft's Android patent shakedown was the big thing that kept me from believing the company had really changed - I think I'm ready to consider that it really has changed now.

alimbada 8y ago

They started changing for the better as soon as they got rid of Ballmer in my opinion. He was toxic for the company and for the industry as a whole. It's taken a few years, but I don't think there's much of the "old" MS left anymore in terms of business practices and ethics.

Isamu 8y ago
Not just getting rid of Ballmer, but promoting Nadella to the job. That pick was the turning point.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  Interesting... I don't know much about him. Wikipedia mentions briefly that he worked at Sun. What did he do there, for how long, with whom, and how did that influence his time at Microsoft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella
  - Isamu 8y ago
    I haven't read it but apparently he published an autobiographical book last year: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit-refresh https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit-refresh https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from-reading-satya-nadellas-book-hit-refresh-6c2f07893d5c https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from-re...
    - fernandotakai 8y ago
      i would also recommend his interview with freakonomics podcast http://freakonomics.com/podcast/satya-nadella/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/satya-nadella/
    - DonHopkins 8y ago
      That's a great article by Xavier Geerinck. The part about leaders generating energy is interesting. I wonder what he thought about Scott McNealy's attempts at generating energy by trying to make Microsoft out to be the great enemy of humanity that Sun was going to vanquish, which I though fell flat because you should never let yourself be defined simply in terms of opposition to someone else. When Sun Microsystems fell apart into several different companies, he even named one of them "SunSoft" in opposition to "Microsoft". You've got to have something of your own to be energetic about, without needing an enemy to fight against. For so many years, Java was first and foremost simply a weapon in Sun's arsenal for their much bigger purpose, the raging war against Microsoft. They actually weaponized a programming language, and that was a higher priority than any other consideration. They wasted all that energy they generated around Java in a war overseas, instead of building infrastructure at home.
mistersquid 8y ago
That's a great observation and reminder, thank you. I agree Ballmer's strategic actions were problematic for the larger technological ecosystem and only benefited Microsoft in shortsighted ways though they did establish Microsoft as the most important technology company in the world for nearly 10 years (1995 - 2005). It's been 4 years since Ballmer left Microsoft and it's taken some time for new management to effect change. Microsoft is a much more interesting, cooperative, and innovative company as a result. EDIT: Change "Ballmer" to "Ballmer's" and number agreement.
munchbunny 8y ago
(Disclaimer: MS employee) Yes and no. Credit to Satya Nadella, the culture really is changing towards openness and collaboration. However, Microsoft has a lot of "lifers," and you don't just roll back two decades of the old Microsoft in a couple years. At the high level/PR level, I think the business practices and ethics are improving, but it'll take many years and possibly a good number of retirements (because the industry is actually old enough for that now) for the mindset change to propagate throughout management.

markovbot 8y ago

I'm still unconvinced, I think we'll need to see years of really good behavior for me to possibly believe they've changed. There have been decades of bad faith attacks on free/libre technology, I think I'm going to need to see at least 5 years of no fucking around from them before I consider this more than the embrace part of embrace, extend, extinguish. Up till now my biggest complaint has been the extortion racket they've been running with these patents, so this is certainly a move in the right direction, but that company is evil to the core and I don't believe for a second they're really trying to change for any reason other than marketing/public perception.

icey 8y ago
When does the timer start? Microsoft started open sourcing a lot of its core technology over four years ago (.NET Core being one example).
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  It doesn't matter - just another person that jumped on the MS bash bandwagon because it's fun and it lets you score quick brownie points. Most people have crap articulations of why MS is evil or why it sucks besides "patents", and it's the same basic drivel I see repeated about any company. Never ceases to amaze me how critical thinking skills can cease so thoroughly on a subject.
  - cure 8y ago
    I think you may be missing some historical perspective. Microsoft have quite the history of being extremely unpleasant toward free and open source software. There's also this list of more recent issues with their software: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.en.html
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      No, not missing anything. Most of the stuff on the GNU list is highly subjective, and I don't consider Richard Stallman a voice of reason. Did Microsoft employ some aggressive business practices? Sure. Show me another modern-day company from any country that hasn't done the same.

eksemplar 8y ago

I'm not sure they've really changed, but I judge them from an enterprise viewpoint. I think their strategy has certainly changed, but I think their core ideals have remained the same, and I think they are really just honing in on their primary market. Their tech still doesn't play well with others, only in the areas where they absolutely have to. I think Sharepoint in the cloud is a good example. It's really great if you let it handle most things, maybe you buy a theme or maybe something bigger to put on top, but generally you let Sharepoint handle most things on your intranet. You'll include a few non-Microsoft systems through Sharepoint apps or widgets, and that still works well enough. That's the great use case. The terrible use case, is using it alongside 500 other IT systems and trying to include those, the way you'd like a modern enterprise intranet to do. We have a system to report our driving to get it refunded. Another system to get vacation time accepted and validated, and a third system for sick leave. All with their own web-interfaces, mobile apps and open APIs. They rely on AD and ADFS for authentication, but they're their own things. Sure you can build a Sharepoint specific plugin for each of them, but a modern intranet should really support stuff like VUE stand alone widgets/apps so that you can share those widgets between systems and you really can't do that with a Sharepoint plugin. We use Azure a lot, like I said, and it I think it's great, but it's very clear that .NET is very first class in Azure. You can argue that stuff like Node.js is up there, and maybe the few python frameworks that Microsoft support with visual studio, but JAVA, Go, Flutter or whatever you can think of certainly isn't smooth in Azure. And just try using non-outlook, libra office or something other than one drive for business in your Microsoft enterprise setup, you can, but it's not very nice. I'm sounding negative, but I actually really like Microsoft. I think they're great at what they do, and I think they're one of the best partners you can have in enterprise, along as you embrace their tech. But that's the catch, and that's why I think they haven't really changed their core values. I do think it's perfectly reasonable, for them to want you to use their technologies, from a business point of view, but when I look at the options for stuff like cloud, I think it's very clear that Azure wants you to also build your backbone in .NET with maybe Node.js + a JS framework on the front, where as with AWS I feel like Amazon doesn't really care what your stack is.