3 ms·

You mean two of the most successful pieces of commercial software in the history of modern computing? Because as easy as it is to pretend they're terrible: to m

You mean two of the most successful pieces of commercial software in the history of modern computing? Because as easy as it is to pretend they're terrible: to millions of users and orgs, they simply aren't.

quadrifoliate 4y ago
Eh, first mover advantage counts for a lot. It doesn't necessarily mean the software is good. Burning coal for generating energy was very "successful" and had great adoption. It's still a terrible method for the environment, and we can feel free to regard it as negative. In this analogy, Microsoft products would be like generating energy by burning garbage, aka a dumpster fire.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  You'll want to pick your analogies carefully, because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. But let's not strawman: first mover advantage is very real, but it's been literal decades of competition, and plenty of folks moved off of MS products. Hundreds of millions, however, have not. And still voluntarily install them. Because for them, they work the vast majority of the time, and don't cause any more gripes than Apple or Linux do for others.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    That's the thing though, burning coal works fine as well and doesn't cause any more gripes than hydroelectric or solar. Without voluntary moves to other products, or regulatory changes, it would have taken likely much longer before we stopped doing it. It's not an exact analogy, but there are parallels – the linked article is suggesting voluntarily stepping away from Microsoft code hosting, and others in the thread have suggested regulatory controls. > because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. Now that you say it, I do remember reading that Sweden burns garbage for energy. I would have thought that the main problem would be arbitrary emissions from the plant, but from the plan of a typical one, those are trapped and/or filtered [1]. I still think that in the US this would be harder, since people are probably prone to throwing more things in the garbage than they should; and don't recycle as much as the Swedes do. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/energy-from-waste-can-help-curb-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/energy-from-waste-c...
    - TheRealPomax 4y ago
      Indeed. A number of other places in Europe looked at the economics of landfills and went "yeah: no. Even with the cost of gas filters, literally burning garbage for energy is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than making a time bomb by burying it".
nequo 4y ago
Being successful as a business has as much or more to do with market power than with code quality. I am lucky that I can avoid their products. But millions of users and orgs can't because that's what others around them use. So they're stuck with it no matter how much worse it is than open-source alternatives.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  In 2022, it really isn't "you're stuck". Even if your org uses MS prodcucts, there are interoperable open source suites these days. The problem is that they're shit. Yes, they work for small documents, but star/sun/open/libre/EtcOffice all fall over when you do something as simple as trying to sort a 30,000 row spreadsheet on several column criteria. (and yes, that is trivially simple. If your software can't do that in a performant way, you don't understand what product you're trying to out-compete) It's not that there's no alternative, it's that the alternatives are just not good enough when it comes to "I need this stupidly complicated thing, thanks to 20 years of spreadsheet formula history at my organization that I have zero power to even remotely change, done in seconds. Not minutes".

quadrifoliate 4y ago

Eh, first mover advantage counts for a lot. It doesn't necessarily mean the software is good. Burning coal for generating energy was very "successful" and had great adoption. It's still a terrible method for the environment, and we can feel free to regard it as negative. In this analogy, Microsoft products would be like generating energy by burning garbage, aka a dumpster fire.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
You'll want to pick your analogies carefully, because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. But let's not strawman: first mover advantage is very real, but it's been literal decades of competition, and plenty of folks moved off of MS products. Hundreds of millions, however, have not. And still voluntarily install them. Because for them, they work the vast majority of the time, and don't cause any more gripes than Apple or Linux do for others.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  That's the thing though, burning coal works fine as well and doesn't cause any more gripes than hydroelectric or solar. Without voluntary moves to other products, or regulatory changes, it would have taken likely much longer before we stopped doing it. It's not an exact analogy, but there are parallels – the linked article is suggesting voluntarily stepping away from Microsoft code hosting, and others in the thread have suggested regulatory controls. > because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. Now that you say it, I do remember reading that Sweden burns garbage for energy. I would have thought that the main problem would be arbitrary emissions from the plant, but from the plan of a typical one, those are trapped and/or filtered [1]. I still think that in the US this would be harder, since people are probably prone to throwing more things in the garbage than they should; and don't recycle as much as the Swedes do. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/energy-from-waste-can-help-curb-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/energy-from-waste-c...
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    Indeed. A number of other places in Europe looked at the economics of landfills and went "yeah: no. Even with the cost of gas filters, literally burning garbage for energy is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than making a time bomb by burying it".

nequo 4y ago

Being successful as a business has as much or more to do with market power than with code quality. I am lucky that I can avoid their products. But millions of users and orgs can't because that's what others around them use. So they're stuck with it no matter how much worse it is than open-source alternatives.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
In 2022, it really isn't "you're stuck". Even if your org uses MS prodcucts, there are interoperable open source suites these days. The problem is that they're shit. Yes, they work for small documents, but star/sun/open/libre/EtcOffice all fall over when you do something as simple as trying to sort a 30,000 row spreadsheet on several column criteria. (and yes, that is trivially simple. If your software can't do that in a performant way, you don't understand what product you're trying to out-compete) It's not that there's no alternative, it's that the alternatives are just not good enough when it comes to "I need this stupidly complicated thing, thanks to 20 years of spreadsheet formula history at my organization that I have zero power to even remotely change, done in seconds. Not minutes".