5 ms·

I try not to complain when proper competition causes improved behavior. I’m a fan of “the new MS”. Do I trust them? Not any more than a massive company. But d

I try not to complain when proper competition causes improved behavior. I’m a fan of “the new MS”. Do I trust them? Not any more than a massive company. But do I love all the open source software they’re producing now? Yes! Do I pretend that it’s because MS has seen the light and become penitent? No! But at least this time when MS turns its back on their users, we can fork .net, edge, and vscode and go on with our lives. MS can’t unmerge their contributions to the Linux kernel or other open source projects they’re selfishly contributing to.

gerash 6y ago
I agree. If the outcome is a win for both Microsoft (or any other entity for that matter) and the rest of the ecosystem that's perfect. But they have shown that as a corporation they are comfortable playing nasty when it suits them.
- brokencode 6y ago
  Pretty much every large company will play nasty when it suits them and if they think they can get away with it. That’s why they call it “corporate warfare”, not “corporate hugs and kisses”.
- buran77 6y ago
  I never found much sense in this line of reasoning. MS as a corporation is an abstract legal concept with a name. Every action taken under this "umbrella" is an executive's decision (or a group's), not the actual abstract corporation doing it. It's fair to assume most of the leadership from '90s MS has moved on. So is your concern with the current leadership or the abstract concept of the corporation? Is it that "they did it once so they might do it again" the real worry? Do we assume the corporation has hysteresis and the executives of today will take similar actions to those of the past because of operating under the same "umbrella" named MS? If so how far back do you go with this record of bad or good deeds? I see a lot of people sort of bragging with being old enough to remember evil '90s MS (so around 35+). How far back do you look at a company to judge them? I can think of a lot of companies who flip-flopped several times because the leadership changed and the market demanded it. So once they go bad do they stay forever bad? Your worry should be MS's current leadership and their ability to execute in the future, not what Gates did 20 years ago. Similarly you don't judge today's Google by their actions of 20 years ago. Saying "I don't trust MS because Gates in the '90s" tells me you might be stuck on the actual name and that's the only aspect that will ever matter to you (a simple "if MS then Bad"). You've seen Google go from do no evil to whatever they are now. Apple from whatever they were to champions of user privacy. MS from whatever they were to embracing open source and such. None of it because corporations are sentient beings with intentions but because of leadership and market imposed necessity. If anything you (and I) are more rsponsible for what MS, Google, Apple, etc. do than those companies themselves. They do what we allow them and what we reward simply because their leadership acts in the interest of profits.
  - gerash 6y ago
    There is some continuity to how a corporation acts externally but I agree too much anthropomorphism is pointless.
hackerbrother 6y ago
My interpretation of "Microsoft <3 Open Source" is that MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and influential. In my opinion, MS didn't really cede much power to the community when open-sourcing .NET, for example. It would still be incredibly painful for a company to unhook itself from Microsoft's version of .NET, and .NET is still influential for all the same reasons is was before, because of MS's position in the software industry. I think the move was just MS moving the framework into the current paradigm of software development. All(?) popular frameworks are open source these days: React, Electron, ... It just doesn't fit with the times to have .NET be closed source. It think is interesting to think though about Google directly providing the source code base for its competitors, Edge and the other Chromium clones. Maybe the lasting message of US v. Microsoft was that if you open-source your software, you're less likely to be perceived as controlling. Or maybe your software simply becomes more influential if it's open source! Chrome being open source allows Google to be enormously influential as far as web standards go. It would probably be a lot less so if Chrome was closed source.
- why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
  Microsoft simply realized what current Open Source really is -> free labor. People will willingly work for free in their own free time using their own hardware on projects of other people or corporations. And they are proud to do that! Anyone not taking advantage of that must have brain damage. Original ideas of open source (free as in speech) are long forgotten.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  > MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and influential. It has been a huge boon for .NET as well. Serious contributions started pouring in almost immediately. Code from Mono being ported over; linux support. Fixes to really old issues that were not getting attention because .NET was essentially put "in a box". C#, .NET and the CLR are pretty great tech that could have been a true Java alternative if not for the fact the vision for it was so narrowly scoped to Windows.

gerash 6y ago

I agree. If the outcome is a win for both Microsoft (or any other entity for that matter) and the rest of the ecosystem that's perfect. But they have shown that as a corporation they are comfortable playing nasty when it suits them.

brokencode 6y ago
Pretty much every large company will play nasty when it suits them and if they think they can get away with it. That’s why they call it “corporate warfare”, not “corporate hugs and kisses”.
buran77 6y ago
I never found much sense in this line of reasoning. MS as a corporation is an abstract legal concept with a name. Every action taken under this "umbrella" is an executive's decision (or a group's), not the actual abstract corporation doing it. It's fair to assume most of the leadership from '90s MS has moved on. So is your concern with the current leadership or the abstract concept of the corporation? Is it that "they did it once so they might do it again" the real worry? Do we assume the corporation has hysteresis and the executives of today will take similar actions to those of the past because of operating under the same "umbrella" named MS? If so how far back do you go with this record of bad or good deeds? I see a lot of people sort of bragging with being old enough to remember evil '90s MS (so around 35+). How far back do you look at a company to judge them? I can think of a lot of companies who flip-flopped several times because the leadership changed and the market demanded it. So once they go bad do they stay forever bad? Your worry should be MS's current leadership and their ability to execute in the future, not what Gates did 20 years ago. Similarly you don't judge today's Google by their actions of 20 years ago. Saying "I don't trust MS because Gates in the '90s" tells me you might be stuck on the actual name and that's the only aspect that will ever matter to you (a simple "if MS then Bad"). You've seen Google go from do no evil to whatever they are now. Apple from whatever they were to champions of user privacy. MS from whatever they were to embracing open source and such. None of it because corporations are sentient beings with intentions but because of leadership and market imposed necessity. If anything you (and I) are more rsponsible for what MS, Google, Apple, etc. do than those companies themselves. They do what we allow them and what we reward simply because their leadership acts in the interest of profits.
- gerash 6y ago
  There is some continuity to how a corporation acts externally but I agree too much anthropomorphism is pointless.

hackerbrother 6y ago

My interpretation of "Microsoft <3 Open Source" is that MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and influential. In my opinion, MS didn't really cede much power to the community when open-sourcing .NET, for example. It would still be incredibly painful for a company to unhook itself from Microsoft's version of .NET, and .NET is still influential for all the same reasons is was before, because of MS's position in the software industry. I think the move was just MS moving the framework into the current paradigm of software development. All(?) popular frameworks are open source these days: React, Electron, ... It just doesn't fit with the times to have .NET be closed source. It think is interesting to think though about Google directly providing the source code base for its competitors, Edge and the other Chromium clones. Maybe the lasting message of US v. Microsoft was that if you open-source your software, you're less likely to be perceived as controlling. Or maybe your software simply becomes more influential if it's open source! Chrome being open source allows Google to be enormously influential as far as web standards go. It would probably be a lot less so if Chrome was closed source.

why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
Microsoft simply realized what current Open Source really is -> free labor. People will willingly work for free in their own free time using their own hardware on projects of other people or corporations. And they are proud to do that! Anyone not taking advantage of that must have brain damage. Original ideas of open source (free as in speech) are long forgotten.
Rapzid 6y ago
> MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and influential. It has been a huge boon for .NET as well. Serious contributions started pouring in almost immediately. Code from Mono being ported over; linux support. Fixes to really old issues that were not getting attention because .NET was essentially put "in a box". C#, .NET and the CLR are pretty great tech that could have been a true Java alternative if not for the fact the vision for it was so narrowly scoped to Windows.