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Earlier he had said that we shouldn’t keep old grudges, so I was surprised he then turned around and asked for them to renounce statements from 20+ years ago, m

Earlier he had said that we shouldn’t keep old grudges, so I was surprised he then turned around and asked for them to renounce statements from 20+ years ago, made by people that aren’t even there anymore. In my mind, .net core and vs code and countless smaller projects are a complete renunciation of their previous public statements. Maybe Stallman can’t see that because they MIT license those things, but why ask for more talk when you are already getting action? Edit: here’s Ballmer turning around in public on the cancer thing. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linux-a-cancer-but-now-i-love-it/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linu... so I really don’t see what more Stallman wants.

jacquesm 7y ago
Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. When it suited him Linux was a cancer, and when it no longer suited him he 'loved Linux'. If the wind should ever change Linux will for sure be a cancer again.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. You say that as if it were a condemnation. Everybody who runs a business is an opportunist, pure and simple.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    To a coarse approximation, yes. But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to. In a more just society these guys would be behind bars rather than pretending to be philanthropists.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      > But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to. Larry Ellison? Scott McNealy? I'm sure I could think of others if I had the time. Ballmer was merely the most visible because MS was at the top of the food chain at the time.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Good point about Ellison and McNealy, Jobs figures in there somewhere as well given how he treated his business partner.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    That would be fine if he didn't pretend to be a man of "principles" built on a foundation that can not be shaken.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      * cough * "Don't be evil." * cough * .
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Everyone who runs a business, just like everyone in any other life circumstance, must balance multiple concerns at the same time. So, the need to make money, and the need not to be a jerk. They can and should overlap in the same individual. We've gone through periods in our culture where we glorify greed and self-interest. (Commentary like yours makes me think of Reaganites or Ayn Rand.) We've gone through other periods where we acknowledge the need to band together. (Think 1960s hippies.) A functioning person probably needs both types of influence at various times of their lives. I get really tired of how many people glorify or worship the former and neglect the latter.
- vezycash 7y ago
  > Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Ballmer is not a Devil. Open source was costing him billions in lost Windows revenue from Google, Amazon and many other companies. Right now, with hindsight bias, we feel that the path to capitalizing on open source was OBVIOUS - it wasn't. Cloud computing wasn't a thing when Ballmer was in power - an existential crisis for the Microsoft. The new guy Nadella is no Saint or Altruist. Right now, it's obvious business sense to embrace open source - particularly because of Azure unlike 20 years ago. People talk about Saint Nadella and forget that Nadella's just taking the glory for Money makers that were started & financed by Ballmer - Xbox, Azure, Office 365, Hololens, Surface Pro, Windows 10... Google which built its business on open source, embraced open source much early with Chrome & Android. However, they are doing a tactical retreat - butchering those two money makers and making key parts of them proprietary. If Jobs were still running the show at Apple when he built NextStep, he wouldn't have embraced Unix. At that time, only broke people did open source but now big companies can go broke trying to build everything by themselves. Just follow the money and most people are easy to understand. Google won't stop spying on people because of money. And Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling customer's data.
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    > Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling Could it be (I'm not an apple fanboi though I like my 2015 MBP) that Apple's financial predictions suggested that a lone company not selling customer data might be able to flip that to their advantage in the marketing or minds of its users? Apple privacy is a recurrent même so it seems they succeeded intentionally or otherwise
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I very much do not think Nadella is a saint, for one thing he was there when Ballmer did his stuff, if he was a man of principle he'd have left MS long before he made it to the top so I'm going on the assumption that he was A-Ok with those strategies as long as it benefited him.
- tutfbhuf 7y ago
  Ballmer says Linux instead of GNU/Linux. That's just another mistake.
rerx 7y ago
Quoted for its WTF-factor: > Perhaps his new-found peace with Linux is linked to yoga, a practice he said he has taken up after leaving Microsoft in 2014.
- srbby 7y ago
  Ballmer practising yoga is not something I would've wanted to picture in my head
  - fortran77 7y ago
    It's a new type of yoga where you jump up and down while repeating your mantra. (His is "Developers".)
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      Most everyone makes fun of that mantra moment, but Ballmer was right, Microsoft has always historically done its best work when it put Developers first. Ballmer wasn't always great at executing a developer-first vision (particularly compared to the modern open source era of Azure/WSL/VS Code/…) [ETA: partly because Ballmer was not himself a developer and needed the reminders], but it's weird to criticize him for shouting about how developers should be the core to what Microsoft builds (and sells).
      - nitePhyyre 7y ago
        The criticism isn't that he was shouting about how developers were the core to business. The criticism is just that he looked silly doing it.
      - fortran77 7y ago
        I agree with you. He was 100% correct. And that's why the company is top in valuation. And I love to develop on Microsoft. Best toolset around. I use C#/F#/C++ on Windows 10
      - sandov 7y ago
deskamess 7y ago
Your point about 'action' vs 'talk' is valid. In this case what is being asked is not a grudge that needs to be addressed. Keep in mind the underlying context of the suggestions => "what can Microsoft do". So this is, in my eyes, more of something that Microsoft can choose to do for themselves - admit that they said things in the past that were not exactly true. A self initiated internal cleaning of the air as they continue to engage the public community. This is not something that they have to do to address a grudge. It should be mostly symbolic to the external world. So, is there value in Microsoft actually coming out and saying it? Well, that's for Microsoft to decide.

jacquesm 7y ago

Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. When it suited him Linux was a cancer, and when it no longer suited him he 'loved Linux'. If the wind should ever change Linux will for sure be a cancer again.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. You say that as if it were a condemnation. Everybody who runs a business is an opportunist, pure and simple.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  To a coarse approximation, yes. But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to. In a more just society these guys would be behind bars rather than pretending to be philanthropists.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to. Larry Ellison? Scott McNealy? I'm sure I could think of others if I had the time. Ballmer was merely the most visible because MS was at the top of the food chain at the time.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Good point about Ellison and McNealy, Jobs figures in there somewhere as well given how he treated his business partner.
- fortran77 7y ago
  That would be fine if he didn't pretend to be a man of "principles" built on a foundation that can not be shaken.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    * cough * "Don't be evil." * cough * .
- asveikau 7y ago
  Everyone who runs a business, just like everyone in any other life circumstance, must balance multiple concerns at the same time. So, the need to make money, and the need not to be a jerk. They can and should overlap in the same individual. We've gone through periods in our culture where we glorify greed and self-interest. (Commentary like yours makes me think of Reaganites or Ayn Rand.) We've gone through other periods where we acknowledge the need to band together. (Think 1960s hippies.) A functioning person probably needs both types of influence at various times of their lives. I get really tired of how many people glorify or worship the former and neglect the latter.
vezycash 7y ago
> Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Ballmer is not a Devil. Open source was costing him billions in lost Windows revenue from Google, Amazon and many other companies. Right now, with hindsight bias, we feel that the path to capitalizing on open source was OBVIOUS - it wasn't. Cloud computing wasn't a thing when Ballmer was in power - an existential crisis for the Microsoft. The new guy Nadella is no Saint or Altruist. Right now, it's obvious business sense to embrace open source - particularly because of Azure unlike 20 years ago. People talk about Saint Nadella and forget that Nadella's just taking the glory for Money makers that were started & financed by Ballmer - Xbox, Azure, Office 365, Hololens, Surface Pro, Windows 10... Google which built its business on open source, embraced open source much early with Chrome & Android. However, they are doing a tactical retreat - butchering those two money makers and making key parts of them proprietary. If Jobs were still running the show at Apple when he built NextStep, he wouldn't have embraced Unix. At that time, only broke people did open source but now big companies can go broke trying to build everything by themselves. Just follow the money and most people are easy to understand. Google won't stop spying on people because of money. And Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling customer's data.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  > Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling Could it be (I'm not an apple fanboi though I like my 2015 MBP) that Apple's financial predictions suggested that a lone company not selling customer data might be able to flip that to their advantage in the marketing or minds of its users? Apple privacy is a recurrent même so it seems they succeeded intentionally or otherwise
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I very much do not think Nadella is a saint, for one thing he was there when Ballmer did his stuff, if he was a man of principle he'd have left MS long before he made it to the top so I'm going on the assumption that he was A-Ok with those strategies as long as it benefited him.
tutfbhuf 7y ago
Ballmer says Linux instead of GNU/Linux. That's just another mistake.

rerx 7y ago

Quoted for its WTF-factor: > Perhaps his new-found peace with Linux is linked to yoga, a practice he said he has taken up after leaving Microsoft in 2014.

srbby 7y ago
Ballmer practising yoga is not something I would've wanted to picture in my head
- fortran77 7y ago
  It's a new type of yoga where you jump up and down while repeating your mantra. (His is "Developers".)
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Most everyone makes fun of that mantra moment, but Ballmer was right, Microsoft has always historically done its best work when it put Developers first. Ballmer wasn't always great at executing a developer-first vision (particularly compared to the modern open source era of Azure/WSL/VS Code/…) [ETA: partly because Ballmer was not himself a developer and needed the reminders], but it's weird to criticize him for shouting about how developers should be the core to what Microsoft builds (and sells).
    - nitePhyyre 7y ago
      The criticism isn't that he was shouting about how developers were the core to business. The criticism is just that he looked silly doing it.
    - fortran77 7y ago
      I agree with you. He was 100% correct. And that's why the company is top in valuation. And I love to develop on Microsoft. Best toolset around. I use C#/F#/C++ on Windows 10
    - sandov 7y ago

deskamess 7y ago

Your point about 'action' vs 'talk' is valid. In this case what is being asked is not a grudge that needs to be addressed. Keep in mind the underlying context of the suggestions => "what can Microsoft do". So this is, in my eyes, more of something that Microsoft can choose to do for themselves - admit that they said things in the past that were not exactly true. A self initiated internal cleaning of the air as they continue to engage the public community. This is not something that they have to do to address a grudge. It should be mostly symbolic to the external world. So, is there value in Microsoft actually coming out and saying it? Well, that's for Microsoft to decide.