3 ms·

The other one: "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run". See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10432608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10432608

neilv 6y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20190908064425/http://www.proudlyserving.com:80/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190908064425/http://www.proudl... It was an old pre-Windows joke saying, maybe appealing because it didn't seem totally outside the realm of possibility, given other things people saw and heard from MS. Later variations on the theme came with early Windows, when MS's own application programs were said to get special development support and also undocumented APIs they could use. Supposedly, this gave MS's programs time-to-market, stability, and performance advantages on MS's platform, to unseat previous dominant apps like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Then there seemed to be a later phase of MS, when any kind of competition or partnership with them came with the explicit question of what your exit strategy was, when MS decided to either buy you or stab you in the back. And lots of complaints from customers over the barrel. That environment was great for adoption of Linux and for moving some kinds of things to the Web. I think MS isn't currently one of our biggest problems. Whether ruthless underhandedness is irrevocably in the DNA of the MS corporation, perhaps laying dormant until they reach a leverage threshold, or with much better public perception management for maneuverings now, I don't know. I certainly hope that they've mellowed out, and are just a typical large corporation. Not to diss engineering people there. I don't suspect that engineering there was ever much in on any underhandedness in business dealings.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I mean.. I don't think typical large corporations are mellow. Microsoft has over $100 billion in cash reserves and their OS near monopoly in many computing areas. It's going to take quite a lot of internal heroism to prevent them from using their position as an advantage. Maybe. But probably nothing will stop it. Look at gaming. Recently got a Windows laptop. When I initially set it up it asked if I wanted Xbox Game Pass with a ton of games for $10 per month. Who can pass that up? Now they have a deal with EA. I am not a big gamer. Now it seems silly for me to buy more stuff on Steam when I haven't touched most of the stuff on Game Pass. The basic concept seems obvious to me. Anytime you have a private corporation controlling a platform, it's not going to be fair. See also Google, Amazon, etc. But thankfully we are making progress on decentralized platforms.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    > But thankfully we are making progress on decentralized platforms. Are we? Curious what progress you see.
    - posguy 6y ago
      Mastodon, Pleroma and other ActivityPub platforms have gained traction with millions of users, even Gab was just a (very outdated) fork of Mastodon. Matrix is federating chat, with Mozilla, Gitter and numerous others natively using the Matrix protocol. Meanwhile, there are dozens of mature bridges to pull in IRC, Slack, Discord, etc so you no longer have to install their software: https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/

neilv 6y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20190908064425/http://www.proudlyserving.com:80/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190908064425/http://www.proudl... It was an old pre-Windows joke saying, maybe appealing because it didn't seem totally outside the realm of possibility, given other things people saw and heard from MS. Later variations on the theme came with early Windows, when MS's own application programs were said to get special development support and also undocumented APIs they could use. Supposedly, this gave MS's programs time-to-market, stability, and performance advantages on MS's platform, to unseat previous dominant apps like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Then there seemed to be a later phase of MS, when any kind of competition or partnership with them came with the explicit question of what your exit strategy was, when MS decided to either buy you or stab you in the back. And lots of complaints from customers over the barrel. That environment was great for adoption of Linux and for moving some kinds of things to the Web. I think MS isn't currently one of our biggest problems. Whether ruthless underhandedness is irrevocably in the DNA of the MS corporation, perhaps laying dormant until they reach a leverage threshold, or with much better public perception management for maneuverings now, I don't know. I certainly hope that they've mellowed out, and are just a typical large corporation. Not to diss engineering people there. I don't suspect that engineering there was ever much in on any underhandedness in business dealings.

ilaksh 6y ago
I mean.. I don't think typical large corporations are mellow. Microsoft has over $100 billion in cash reserves and their OS near monopoly in many computing areas. It's going to take quite a lot of internal heroism to prevent them from using their position as an advantage. Maybe. But probably nothing will stop it. Look at gaming. Recently got a Windows laptop. When I initially set it up it asked if I wanted Xbox Game Pass with a ton of games for $10 per month. Who can pass that up? Now they have a deal with EA. I am not a big gamer. Now it seems silly for me to buy more stuff on Steam when I haven't touched most of the stuff on Game Pass. The basic concept seems obvious to me. Anytime you have a private corporation controlling a platform, it's not going to be fair. See also Google, Amazon, etc. But thankfully we are making progress on decentralized platforms.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  > But thankfully we are making progress on decentralized platforms. Are we? Curious what progress you see.
  - posguy 6y ago
    Mastodon, Pleroma and other ActivityPub platforms have gained traction with millions of users, even Gab was just a (very outdated) fork of Mastodon. Matrix is federating chat, with Mozilla, Gitter and numerous others natively using the Matrix protocol. Meanwhile, there are dozens of mature bridges to pull in IRC, Slack, Discord, etc so you no longer have to install their software: https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/