3 ms·
In my personal views, corporate ownership is mostly a bad thing. Although i can see how some corporations are very user-friendly and will go to great length to
by southerntofu 5y ago
In my personal views, corporate ownership is mostly a bad thing. Although i can see how some corporations are very user-friendly and will go to great length to service their users. But i can't say Microsoft, who's always been engaged in very user-hostile practices, has a good track record.
Microsoft famously tried to outcompete the Internet via their existing monopoly on Windows with MSN (not just the messenger) back in the day, and have always been super hostile to free-software. They have also, like any corporation, stopped to maintain several services over the years and the fact that beyond their public image they don't have any incentive to keep Github Pages going doesn't inspire me confidence.
The fact that Github Pages were up and running before Microsoft's acquisition of Github is a reason to be worried. There's no money flowing in from that service and it probably costs a fair amount. Despite their "we love open source" statements, i've yet to see Microsoft open-sourcing any significant product (including Github) and specifying/standardizing existing stuff like Github Actions.
- rcarmo 5y agoWell, in my personal view (since I joined coming from an OSS environment) you are still hanging on to _very_ ancient history. I won't discuss it further other than point out that the last six years have been completely at odds with that worldview and that software has changed profoundly (I recommend you check out the Azure GitHub org, where a _lot_ of tooling and supporting services are public).
- southerntofu 5y agoIs Secure Boot ancient history? TPM 2.0 requirement? The quasi-requirement of a Microsoft account to use Windows? Ubiquitous telemetry that's impossible to disable? Cortana that cannot be removed and employs precarious workers without a confidentiality contract to transcribe everything people say and have no idea Cortana is recording? Blocking standards-compliant mail servers silently? Microsoft is still a strong force for evil in this day and age. I only wish they were disbanded during the antitrust investigations of the 90s instead of putting Apple on life-support: the world of computing would be such a better place without both Apple and Microsoft to shit their monopoly on our faces.
- rcarmo 5y agoAs a Mac user working at Microsoft on Linux workloads, I definitely do not identify with that viewpoint.
- southerntofu 5y agoDo you think the examples i presented are bullshit or do you not think they are ethical problems? Just because Microsoft embraces people working on different operating systems doesn't mean they suddenly started to respect the human rights of their users.
- rcarmo 5y agoI would favor the first part of your sentence. I watched a lot of that happen before joining and understand how it happened, and I think you're inflating the matter.