10 ms·

Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. Any contribution that M$ (remember when people would sub the S for a dollar sign?) makes

Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. Any contribution that M$ (remember when people would sub the S for a dollar sign?) makes to open source or open standards is to support their own bottom line and we shouldn't expect anything else. The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. To this effect, companies will contribute to open standards when it's better for the share price, and will seek to screw open standards when it's better for the share price. Public companies are inherently evil by default -- this is because the only goal of a public company is to strengthen the share price. I've said it before and I'll say it again: always assume bad faith when you're dealing with a company. From this, it doesn't matter what people thought of Microsoft before, or what they think of them now. Microsoft like all companies has a single goal. If we can pressure these companies to coast in a certain direction then great. But we shouldn't ever believe that companies can 'turn over a new leaf' when they legally cannot. FAANG is the same. Ford is the same. Starbucks is the same. Every company is exactly the same, but the larger they grow, the more visible and impactful these actions become. Microsoft has been in the spotlight for decades because it has been a juggernaut for decades. But it's hardly unique in what it does. Our real concerns should be why regulators were quick to put the smack down on Microsoft but have since turned into paper tigers and are allowing unhinged monopolization from FAANG in 2022.

oblio 4y ago
People forget that before about 2000 or so, Microsoft was bigger than the next 10 or so software companies, <<combined>>. And had much higher profit margins that the other tech companies. IBM created the playbook, Microsoft perfected it, FAANG copied it.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  One distinction between Microsoft and early FAANG (except for Apple): FAANG cut out the distributor and kept those profits themselves. Microsoft always had distributors as a key component of their platform sales.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Presumably the distributor is the company that supplies the internet connection we now consider mandatory.
  - hvs 4y ago
    That was by necessity more than choice. The internet wasn't really a viable option at the time.
rakoo 4y ago
> Public companies are inherently evil by default -- this is because the only goal of a public company is to strengthen the share price Agree with your arguments, but more generally companies are inherently evil by default, because their only goal is to maximize profits. You can only hope that they will behave correctly regarding their employees, their competitors, their neighborhood, and the environment.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> Public companies are inherently evil by default The extremism of this positon makes it hard to swallow the message. You might as well be right, but accepting it at face value would be a huge cognitive dissonance for many people working in public companies. Basically, the “are we the baddies ?” answer would be “yes” for a huge chunk of us, and I don’t think that’s how we see it personally. Companies have to make money, but the evil label needs way more nuance. To apply this to another context: I genuinely think that IKEA has had an outsized positive impact on our everyday life, even as they aim to make money (not the core “charity”, but the rest of the group), or as they make truely dirty legal and commercial decisions to trick the system in their favor. And they didn’t improve flatpacks by accident, it is their stated mission, and I’d be crazy proud of my job if I designed the Expedit series.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > IKEA has had an outsized positive impact IKEA has been illegally logging forests in romania for decades. The first public conpany was involved in slavery. Show me a large enough company and there will be a history of fraud, illegality and human rights abuses.
  - simonh 4y ago
    They've bee caught using wood from companies logging illegally yes, but that's just as much an enforcement issue in these countries as it is on IKEA to manage it's supply chain. Also using tainted wood isn't the only thing IKEA has ever done, just as breaking the speed limit or parking illegally isn't he only thing I've ever done. If you were held to a "one strike and you're out" good/evil standard would you really stand up? I know I wouldn't.
    - legulere 4y ago
      Intermediaries are often just an easy way to get out of liability. It can happen to small companies that you don't know about or are powerless to your supplier's illegal practices. With big companies you know and have the power, which makes it your responsibility and you being part of the problem. There's also a trend to give big companies liability for their supply chains. Germany just enacted a supply chain law last year and there are talks about similar laws for the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_Chain_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_Chain_Act
danielovichdk 4y ago
Any big company has different cultures based on what people are doing within that company. The sales-force are bonus-pay-based on how much cloud they sell. Some of the development groups are paid for delivering sustainable software that is also open-source. It's not black and white. Many politics are being played. I do believe Scott Guthrie and some of the other VP's are good folks that understands the need for being open and honest. Anders Hejlsberg too for example. But is's not black or white.
jka 4y ago
> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. That's an often-repeated maxim, but it's not universally agreed to be true. Quoting https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-governance-and-the-fiduciary-duties-of-directors/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-gover... for example: "The fiduciary duty of the board is to promote the value of the corporation. In fulfilling that duty, directors must exercise their business judgment in considering and reconciling the interests of various stakeholders—including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, the environment and communities—and the attendant risks and opportunities for the corporation. Indeed, the board’s ability to consider other stakeholder interests is not only uncontroversial—it is a matter of basic common sense and a fundamental component of both risk management and strategic planning."
- hansword 4y ago
  The big point in what you quote is "and the attendant risks and opportunities for the corporation." I read this Harvard text to basically say: "Don't cheat if the cheating will be coming to bite you later. Be generous if you expect additional profits to come from this generosity."
  - jka 4y ago
    Fair point, yep. Generalizing your statement slightly: > Be generous if you expect additional <reward> to come from this generosity. Options for reward could include (without being limited to): "profit", "platform adoption", "trust".. and those rewards often affect each other over time.
tzs 4y ago
That companies (or their officers or directors) have a legal obligation to boost share price (or maximize profits or similar) is one of the most widely believed myths about companies. Google for something like "obligation to maximize shareholder value" if you want to find numerous articles debunking the myth. Here's a good one [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
- someotherperson 4y ago
  That comes across as a straw-man. The myth from the linked article is that they should maximize share price "even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees." Agreed, this is a myth. But nobody said they need to break the law, or hurt employees. Given the constraints of the law, they have a single mission of maximizing the share price. Which is exactly what Microsoft and other companies do every day. If the environment gets in the way of your business (i.e if you are an oil company) then you will only care about the environment to the extent that you are legally obligated to.
  - meheleventyone 4y ago
    Right the myth is that companies need to scrape the legal minimums because they have a legal obligation to do so. When in reality it's directly a choice as with your oil company example or Uber wanting the benefits of treating their employees as contractors without giving them the associated benefits. Often skirting ethical rules and in quite a lot of cases breaking legal ones.
  - davedx 4y ago
    He provided a citation. Please provide one to back up your argument
    - cachvico 4y ago
      It's an opinion piece. Citation implies academic paper. Not quite the same.
alistairSH 4y ago
I’d say companies are inherently amoral. Not evil. Subtle, but important nuance. It’s only when evil and greedy people are in charge that companies become evil. Sadly an all too common state of affairs, but not a law of the universe.
- foxhill 4y ago
  i agree - it’s a significant distinction that often gets overlooked. whilst a company is ran by (ostensibly) moral agents, the overall entity is not the sum of those parts.
- Jemm 4y ago
  Corporations are sociopaths by their very design. Their number one mandate is to make money for their shareholders and to grow. This colours every decision they make.
  - spaetzleesser 4y ago
    It doesn't have to be like that. The focus on shareholders started sometime in the 80s.
    - louthy 4y ago
      But it does have to be like that now. Because if you're not growing (not growing the bottom line), you're almost certainly losing market position to other companies that are chasing growth. If there was some group altruism that made all companies in a sector collectively say "ok, we're big enough now, let's hit pause", then companies could afford to be a bit more about being good for the sake of being good. This is obviously a pipedream though.
      - FractalHQ 4y ago
        Some anti trust laws with teeth would help move us in the right direction!
pwdisswordfish0 4y ago
> Any contribution that M$ makes to open source or open standards is to support their own bottom line Does Microsoft contribute financially to any social programs or other philanthropic projects? Are all those contributions done solely to support their bottom line?
- merouan 4y ago
  Typically such contributions come from the PR budget.
  - CyanLite4 4y ago
    Bruh, they’re carbon capturing or offsetting their entire carbon output since they’ve been in business. All in the next few years. No other major public company even comes close. Being anti-“M$” is one thing, but you it’s hard to disagree with their stance on philanthropy and environmental issues.
    - krageon 4y ago
      You did not address what they said.
WithinReason 4y ago
Of course the difference is: Does the company believe that "doing good" contributes to their bottom line or not? A company that does will do good, a company that doesn't will not. You could then realize that this is true about humans in general. In fact, you could replace "company" with "human" and your point would still apply, making us assume that everyone is evil and only out for themselves, and always assume bad faith, since the same drives control humans as well.
pmlnr 4y ago
> The directors have a legal responsibility [...] to boost the share price What?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I think the GP is referring to shareholders’ right to sue if they believe that a company’s executive/leadership is operating against the interest of the company (and therefore the shareholders.) But that’s a pretty high standard, one that isn’t coextensive with boosting the share price by any means necessary.
- uberman 4y ago
  It might be technically true that some deviation from maximizing investor return is not strictly against the law However, there are several legal opinions that complicate this interpretation. I recommend you read the case eBay v. Newmark that very much complicates this. Here is a nice summary: https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/ https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s... You might also look at Dodge v. Ford Motor Company one of the more in-famous cases supporting/complicating the shareholder value "requirement". In it's opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court in-famously states: "A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." Both cases deal with companies will very small numbers of shareholders where minority shareholders successfully litigated based on some argument that the majority had a responsibility to maximize their minority returns.
tomxor 4y ago
> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. I think this is true for large organisations, the larger they are the more their behaviour seems to become dictated by the rules of the environment it operates within; whereas the smaller the organisation the more principled they can be as individuals have the power and will to override those rules. Also with something as large as Microsoft there are so many departments that one can be actively working against the interests of another, i.e MS can and probably does simultaneously do good and bad faith activities for open-source - and yet we commonly anthropomorphise them as if they have the integrity and consistency of an individual... A human flaw i guess.
mattmanser 4y ago
Let's knock some of this nonsense on the head shall we? Directors do not have a legal responsibility to boost their shareprice. Companies do not have a single goal. Public companies are not obliged to increase their share price. Every company is different. I'd also add that on top of all that, different countries have different corporate law.
- oaiey 4y ago
  True, but we are not talking about a two man company or a historic trust fund in southern France. We talk about an US shareholder company which leadership (do not be nitpicky) can be sued for by shareholders by not doing the best for their money. And law indeed differs... But everywhere someone will be made responsible for not getting the best for their buck (the simplest case: being fired). That applies to FAANGMxyz and also the rest of the top 500 shareholder companies.
  - alxlaz 4y ago
    I was under the impression (based on the USSC's opinion back in 2015, see e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... ) that this was not true even in the US. Has anything changed in the meantime? Or did I get that article wrong from the beginning?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Conan_Kudo 4y ago
      It is not true in the United States. Officers of the company are required to do best by the company and all stakeholders, but the officers can generally define how they approach that. Most go by the share price, because it's used as a proxy to measure company success.
  - Someone 4y ago
    But “the best for their money” need not be short-term. Shareholders have successfully sued big oil for not preparing enough for climate change, for example. (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/oil-shell-directors-sued-for-failing-to-prepare-for-energy-transition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/oil-shell-directors-sued-for..., https://www.forbes.com/sites/timabansal/2021/05/27/big-oil-under-fire-climate-activists-win-big-against-exxon-and-shell/?sh=661f3e11118c https://www.forbes.com/sites/timabansal/2021/05/27/big-oil-u...) It will be a lot harder to argue that developing a closed-source component is, in the long run, bad for Microsoft, though.
tresqotheq 4y ago
> Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. You should have felt free to say that it is utter stupidity for people to assume good faith for public companies. But sadly, the times we live does not allow pointing out stupidity in a harsh manner. Don't go easy on stupidity people. You will end up in a nice stupid world without joy or happiness. > always assume bad faith when you're dealing with a company. I think this is the biggest problem that humanity is facing right now, and a lot of currently accepted "mainstream" end of world problems derive from it. And the issue is that these entities are locked in a process where not-the-fastest-growing means on the path to death. And to side step this, they have to do bad things without getting caught. The dominant player will be the one who does the baddest things without getting caught. For example, In the world of pharmaceuticals, the dominant player would never be the one who play by the rules set by the authorities. But the one who has got authorities on the payroll. If you are starting about "evidence that authorities are on a payroll", take a look at the above point regarding "not getting caught"... Sadly, this does remove the higher bounds to what a company would do to secure its bottom line. Which is why I think this is the biggest danger that humanity faces right now. And this is going to get worse, because what ever higher bound we have right now, is going to be pushed higher and higher, in a world full of perpetually distracted people...
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
"How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints." - C.S. Lewis I still recall people fawning over how Google was going to be "different" in 2006, and how it was going to save us from Microsoft. Nowadays, they are essentially what MS was in its' heyday. Blind faith in corporations is not the way forward. I've always understood the hacker ethos to have strong tenets of working towards decentralized power structures through tech. Nowadays, that idea feels farther away even on a site like this one.
- Conan_Kudo 4y ago
  Well, this site isn't about hackers in the classical sense. It's about people working on building businesses and startups. The URL tells you everything: "news.ycombinator.com". This is, first and foremost, about the business, not the people or the technology.
  - thaneross 4y ago
    The dichotomy is pretty stark sometimes on this site between the excellent conversations about technology and the SV capitalists musing about how to get richer.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    I’ve yet to find a better watering hole for technologists. If you know of one, I’m all ears.
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  Amen. The further corporatisation of OSS through lobbying organizations like the CNCF is a sad state of affairs. But it is also the place where VCs are putting a lot of their money. That and until 2 weeks ago, Web3
triceratops 4y ago
> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company Yes > and to boost the share price Not exactly. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and must always act in their best interests. But the law allows a great degree of freedom in interpreting that. For example, actions that may depress the share price in the short-term can be argued as being good for the long-term health of the company and the courts are OK with that argument.
camelite 4y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... "There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” ... this belief is utterly false."
UnpossibleJim 4y ago
It seems like semantics, but it's public corporate entities that are amoral and not all companies. There is a designation of a "Public Benefit Corporation" which has more restrictions and audits as well as a different mission statement. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation

oblio 4y ago

People forget that before about 2000 or so, Microsoft was bigger than the next 10 or so software companies, <<combined>>. And had much higher profit margins that the other tech companies. IBM created the playbook, Microsoft perfected it, FAANG copied it.

ethbr0 4y ago
One distinction between Microsoft and early FAANG (except for Apple): FAANG cut out the distributor and kept those profits themselves. Microsoft always had distributors as a key component of their platform sales.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Presumably the distributor is the company that supplies the internet connection we now consider mandatory.
- hvs 4y ago
  That was by necessity more than choice. The internet wasn't really a viable option at the time.

rakoo 4y ago

> Public companies are inherently evil by default -- this is because the only goal of a public company is to strengthen the share price Agree with your arguments, but more generally companies are inherently evil by default, because their only goal is to maximize profits. You can only hope that they will behave correctly regarding their employees, their competitors, their neighborhood, and the environment.

makeitdouble 4y ago

> Public companies are inherently evil by default The extremism of this positon makes it hard to swallow the message. You might as well be right, but accepting it at face value would be a huge cognitive dissonance for many people working in public companies. Basically, the “are we the baddies ?” answer would be “yes” for a huge chunk of us, and I don’t think that’s how we see it personally. Companies have to make money, but the evil label needs way more nuance. To apply this to another context: I genuinely think that IKEA has had an outsized positive impact on our everyday life, even as they aim to make money (not the core “charity”, but the rest of the group), or as they make truely dirty legal and commercial decisions to trick the system in their favor. And they didn’t improve flatpacks by accident, it is their stated mission, and I’d be crazy proud of my job if I designed the Expedit series.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> IKEA has had an outsized positive impact IKEA has been illegally logging forests in romania for decades. The first public conpany was involved in slavery. Show me a large enough company and there will be a history of fraud, illegality and human rights abuses.
- simonh 4y ago
  They've bee caught using wood from companies logging illegally yes, but that's just as much an enforcement issue in these countries as it is on IKEA to manage it's supply chain. Also using tainted wood isn't the only thing IKEA has ever done, just as breaking the speed limit or parking illegally isn't he only thing I've ever done. If you were held to a "one strike and you're out" good/evil standard would you really stand up? I know I wouldn't.
  - legulere 4y ago
    Intermediaries are often just an easy way to get out of liability. It can happen to small companies that you don't know about or are powerless to your supplier's illegal practices. With big companies you know and have the power, which makes it your responsibility and you being part of the problem. There's also a trend to give big companies liability for their supply chains. Germany just enacted a supply chain law last year and there are talks about similar laws for the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_Chain_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_Chain_Act

danielovichdk 4y ago

Any big company has different cultures based on what people are doing within that company. The sales-force are bonus-pay-based on how much cloud they sell. Some of the development groups are paid for delivering sustainable software that is also open-source. It's not black and white. Many politics are being played. I do believe Scott Guthrie and some of the other VP's are good folks that understands the need for being open and honest. Anders Hejlsberg too for example. But is's not black or white.

jka 4y ago

> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. That's an often-repeated maxim, but it's not universally agreed to be true. Quoting https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-governance-and-the-fiduciary-duties-of-directors/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-gover... for example: "The fiduciary duty of the board is to promote the value of the corporation. In fulfilling that duty, directors must exercise their business judgment in considering and reconciling the interests of various stakeholders—including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, the environment and communities—and the attendant risks and opportunities for the corporation. Indeed, the board’s ability to consider other stakeholder interests is not only uncontroversial—it is a matter of basic common sense and a fundamental component of both risk management and strategic planning."

hansword 4y ago
The big point in what you quote is "and the attendant risks and opportunities for the corporation." I read this Harvard text to basically say: "Don't cheat if the cheating will be coming to bite you later. Be generous if you expect additional profits to come from this generosity."
- jka 4y ago
  Fair point, yep. Generalizing your statement slightly: > Be generous if you expect additional <reward> to come from this generosity. Options for reward could include (without being limited to): "profit", "platform adoption", "trust".. and those rewards often affect each other over time.

tzs 4y ago

That companies (or their officers or directors) have a legal obligation to boost share price (or maximize profits or similar) is one of the most widely believed myths about companies. Google for something like "obligation to maximize shareholder value" if you want to find numerous articles debunking the myth. Here's a good one [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

someotherperson 4y ago
That comes across as a straw-man. The myth from the linked article is that they should maximize share price "even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees." Agreed, this is a myth. But nobody said they need to break the law, or hurt employees. Given the constraints of the law, they have a single mission of maximizing the share price. Which is exactly what Microsoft and other companies do every day. If the environment gets in the way of your business (i.e if you are an oil company) then you will only care about the environment to the extent that you are legally obligated to.
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  Right the myth is that companies need to scrape the legal minimums because they have a legal obligation to do so. When in reality it's directly a choice as with your oil company example or Uber wanting the benefits of treating their employees as contractors without giving them the associated benefits. Often skirting ethical rules and in quite a lot of cases breaking legal ones.
- davedx 4y ago
  He provided a citation. Please provide one to back up your argument
  - cachvico 4y ago
    It's an opinion piece. Citation implies academic paper. Not quite the same.

alistairSH 4y ago

I’d say companies are inherently amoral. Not evil. Subtle, but important nuance. It’s only when evil and greedy people are in charge that companies become evil. Sadly an all too common state of affairs, but not a law of the universe.

foxhill 4y ago
i agree - it’s a significant distinction that often gets overlooked. whilst a company is ran by (ostensibly) moral agents, the overall entity is not the sum of those parts.
Jemm 4y ago
Corporations are sociopaths by their very design. Their number one mandate is to make money for their shareholders and to grow. This colours every decision they make.
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be like that. The focus on shareholders started sometime in the 80s.
  - louthy 4y ago
    But it does have to be like that now. Because if you're not growing (not growing the bottom line), you're almost certainly losing market position to other companies that are chasing growth. If there was some group altruism that made all companies in a sector collectively say "ok, we're big enough now, let's hit pause", then companies could afford to be a bit more about being good for the sake of being good. This is obviously a pipedream though.
    - FractalHQ 4y ago
      Some anti trust laws with teeth would help move us in the right direction!

pwdisswordfish0 4y ago

> Any contribution that M$ makes to open source or open standards is to support their own bottom line Does Microsoft contribute financially to any social programs or other philanthropic projects? Are all those contributions done solely to support their bottom line?

merouan 4y ago
Typically such contributions come from the PR budget.
- CyanLite4 4y ago
  Bruh, they’re carbon capturing or offsetting their entire carbon output since they’ve been in business. All in the next few years. No other major public company even comes close. Being anti-“M$” is one thing, but you it’s hard to disagree with their stance on philanthropy and environmental issues.
  - krageon 4y ago
    You did not address what they said.

WithinReason 4y ago

Of course the difference is: Does the company believe that "doing good" contributes to their bottom line or not? A company that does will do good, a company that doesn't will not. You could then realize that this is true about humans in general. In fact, you could replace "company" with "human" and your point would still apply, making us assume that everyone is evil and only out for themselves, and always assume bad faith, since the same drives control humans as well.

pmlnr 4y ago

> The directors have a legal responsibility [...] to boost the share price What?

woodruffw 4y ago
I think the GP is referring to shareholders’ right to sue if they believe that a company’s executive/leadership is operating against the interest of the company (and therefore the shareholders.) But that’s a pretty high standard, one that isn’t coextensive with boosting the share price by any means necessary.
uberman 4y ago
It might be technically true that some deviation from maximizing investor return is not strictly against the law However, there are several legal opinions that complicate this interpretation. I recommend you read the case eBay v. Newmark that very much complicates this. Here is a nice summary: https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/ https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s... You might also look at Dodge v. Ford Motor Company one of the more in-famous cases supporting/complicating the shareholder value "requirement". In it's opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court in-famously states: "A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." Both cases deal with companies will very small numbers of shareholders where minority shareholders successfully litigated based on some argument that the majority had a responsibility to maximize their minority returns.

tomxor 4y ago

> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. I think this is true for large organisations, the larger they are the more their behaviour seems to become dictated by the rules of the environment it operates within; whereas the smaller the organisation the more principled they can be as individuals have the power and will to override those rules. Also with something as large as Microsoft there are so many departments that one can be actively working against the interests of another, i.e MS can and probably does simultaneously do good and bad faith activities for open-source - and yet we commonly anthropomorphise them as if they have the integrity and consistency of an individual... A human flaw i guess.

mattmanser 4y ago

Let's knock some of this nonsense on the head shall we? Directors do not have a legal responsibility to boost their shareprice. Companies do not have a single goal. Public companies are not obliged to increase their share price. Every company is different. I'd also add that on top of all that, different countries have different corporate law.

oaiey 4y ago
True, but we are not talking about a two man company or a historic trust fund in southern France. We talk about an US shareholder company which leadership (do not be nitpicky) can be sued for by shareholders by not doing the best for their money. And law indeed differs... But everywhere someone will be made responsible for not getting the best for their buck (the simplest case: being fired). That applies to FAANGMxyz and also the rest of the top 500 shareholder companies.
- alxlaz 4y ago
  I was under the impression (based on the USSC's opinion back in 2015, see e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... ) that this was not true even in the US. Has anything changed in the meantime? Or did I get that article wrong from the beginning?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Conan_Kudo 4y ago
    It is not true in the United States. Officers of the company are required to do best by the company and all stakeholders, but the officers can generally define how they approach that. Most go by the share price, because it's used as a proxy to measure company success.
- Someone 4y ago
  But “the best for their money” need not be short-term. Shareholders have successfully sued big oil for not preparing enough for climate change, for example. (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/oil-shell-directors-sued-for-failing-to-prepare-for-energy-transition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/oil-shell-directors-sued-for..., https://www.forbes.com/sites/timabansal/2021/05/27/big-oil-under-fire-climate-activists-win-big-against-exxon-and-shell/?sh=661f3e11118c https://www.forbes.com/sites/timabansal/2021/05/27/big-oil-u...) It will be a lot harder to argue that developing a closed-source component is, in the long run, bad for Microsoft, though.

tresqotheq 4y ago

> Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. You should have felt free to say that it is utter stupidity for people to assume good faith for public companies. But sadly, the times we live does not allow pointing out stupidity in a harsh manner. Don't go easy on stupidity people. You will end up in a nice stupid world without joy or happiness. > always assume bad faith when you're dealing with a company. I think this is the biggest problem that humanity is facing right now, and a lot of currently accepted "mainstream" end of world problems derive from it. And the issue is that these entities are locked in a process where not-the-fastest-growing means on the path to death. And to side step this, they have to do bad things without getting caught. The dominant player will be the one who does the baddest things without getting caught. For example, In the world of pharmaceuticals, the dominant player would never be the one who play by the rules set by the authorities. But the one who has got authorities on the payroll. If you are starting about "evidence that authorities are on a payroll", take a look at the above point regarding "not getting caught"... Sadly, this does remove the higher bounds to what a company would do to secure its bottom line. Which is why I think this is the biggest danger that humanity faces right now. And this is going to get worse, because what ever higher bound we have right now, is going to be pushed higher and higher, in a world full of perpetually distracted people...

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

"How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints." - C.S. Lewis I still recall people fawning over how Google was going to be "different" in 2006, and how it was going to save us from Microsoft. Nowadays, they are essentially what MS was in its' heyday. Blind faith in corporations is not the way forward. I've always understood the hacker ethos to have strong tenets of working towards decentralized power structures through tech. Nowadays, that idea feels farther away even on a site like this one.

Conan_Kudo 4y ago
Well, this site isn't about hackers in the classical sense. It's about people working on building businesses and startups. The URL tells you everything: "news.ycombinator.com". This is, first and foremost, about the business, not the people or the technology.
- thaneross 4y ago
  The dichotomy is pretty stark sometimes on this site between the excellent conversations about technology and the SV capitalists musing about how to get richer.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  I’ve yet to find a better watering hole for technologists. If you know of one, I’m all ears.
nickstinemates 4y ago
Amen. The further corporatisation of OSS through lobbying organizations like the CNCF is a sad state of affairs. But it is also the place where VCs are putting a lot of their money. That and until 2 weeks ago, Web3

triceratops 4y ago

> The directors have a legal responsibility to the company Yes > and to boost the share price Not exactly. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and must always act in their best interests. But the law allows a great degree of freedom in interpreting that. For example, actions that may depress the share price in the short-term can be argued as being good for the long-term health of the company and the courts are OK with that argument.

camelite 4y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... "There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” ... this belief is utterly false."

UnpossibleJim 4y ago

It seems like semantics, but it's public corporate entities that are amoral and not all companies. There is a designation of a "Public Benefit Corporation" which has more restrictions and audits as well as a different mission statement. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation