4 ms·

The snobby attitude about Microsoft on HN makes no sense to me

ornornor 4y ago
They’ve worked very very hard in the past to extinguish and annihilate a lot of the values HN stands for. Either you’re too young or didn’t follow tech back then but MS and Gates truly did evil moves to try and kill any and all competition, especially Linux and open source. Many of us remember.
- vintermann 4y ago
  That was the bad old days. Things got better under Nadella. Just like they got steadily more evil at Google. There are no big corporations you can trust in the long term, but at least MS is behaving reasonably well right now.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Things look better under Nadella. But they really aren't that much better.
  - archerx 4y ago
    > Things got better under Nadella - Windows is now a dumpster fire - Azure is a mess - surface computers suck + much more I feel like our definitions of “better” are very different
    - vintermann 4y ago
      Well, yes. I'm talking about corporate trash antics like getting one of your insiders to wreck a competitor so you can buy out the scraps (Elop and Nokia), or using a proxy lawsuit to try to strangle the open opposition (SCO vs IBM). I'm not judging what's best on a technical level. No amount of hypothetical technical goodness can make up for Ballmer.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    > Things got better under Nadella I will believe that once they will sell Office for linux packaged in flatpak and 1:1 feature parity with windows version.
  - blibble 4y ago
    once you discard the friendly appearing PR ("Microsoft <3 Linux") they're behaving exactly the same as they always have
    - vintermann 4y ago
      If you think that, you don't know half the rotten, criminal shit Ballmer did.
  - pxc 4y ago
    Microsoft has not proven to be a good faith steward of their own open-source projects in the 'new days', though. See https://isdotnetopen.com/ https://isdotnetopen.com/ and especially the recent controversies with Omnisharp ( https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2022/06/16/csharp-vs-code-tool.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2022/06/16/csharp-... ). See also the first snobby, then underhanded, then petulant behavior of the Windows Terminal maintainers recently with respect to some performance improvements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284419 It's very reasonable to be skeptical of Microsoft's relationship to open-source in 2022, even as we might also feel positively about some aspects of their new open-source strategy.
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      >See also the first snobby, then underhanded, then petulant behavior This just corporate open source as a whole. I don't know what else he expected. You don't participate in open source with the big boys if you expect a quick response or you expect to get any kind of non-trivial credit for something. It is not you who is paying the bills. No reason to be skeptical about it, this is how the game is played.
kanonieer 4y ago
Educate yourself on the topic and it will. Maybe start here?[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/fsfe/projects/ms-vs-eu/halloween1.html https://www.gnu.org/software/fsfe/projects/ms-vs-eu/hallowee...
egorfine 4y ago
Some people here are a bit older than a typical %MODERN_FRONTEND_TECHNOLOGY% developer and thus they remember very well what Microsoft did to Linux and open source community a decade ago and back.
bayindirh 4y ago
A relevant primer, a comment by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987377
the_biot 4y ago
Lots of people hate MS because of their monopolistic practices in the past. Myself, I always despised the company because of the complete shit quality of their software, starting with DOS. That was a pile of crap from day 1, and while much has changed since then, you can still see the complete disregard for quality in so much of what they do.
- pedro2 4y ago
  Software is going the way other industries go: no real competition, no quality. It's not that they want to do bad software, it's just they don't have any short-term profit on doing so.

They’ve worked very very hard in the past to extinguish and annihilate a lot of the values HN stands for. Either you’re too young or didn’t follow tech back then but MS and Gates truly did evil moves to try and kill any and all competition, especially Linux and open source. Many of us remember.

vintermann 4y ago
That was the bad old days. Things got better under Nadella. Just like they got steadily more evil at Google. There are no big corporations you can trust in the long term, but at least MS is behaving reasonably well right now.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Things look better under Nadella. But they really aren't that much better.
- archerx 4y ago
  > Things got better under Nadella - Windows is now a dumpster fire - Azure is a mess - surface computers suck + much more I feel like our definitions of “better” are very different
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Well, yes. I'm talking about corporate trash antics like getting one of your insiders to wreck a competitor so you can buy out the scraps (Elop and Nokia), or using a proxy lawsuit to try to strangle the open opposition (SCO vs IBM). I'm not judging what's best on a technical level. No amount of hypothetical technical goodness can make up for Ballmer.
- vetinari 4y ago
  > Things got better under Nadella I will believe that once they will sell Office for linux packaged in flatpak and 1:1 feature parity with windows version.
- blibble 4y ago
  once you discard the friendly appearing PR ("Microsoft <3 Linux") they're behaving exactly the same as they always have
  - vintermann 4y ago
    If you think that, you don't know half the rotten, criminal shit Ballmer did.
- pxc 4y ago
  Microsoft has not proven to be a good faith steward of their own open-source projects in the 'new days', though. See https://isdotnetopen.com/ https://isdotnetopen.com/ and especially the recent controversies with Omnisharp ( https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2022/06/16/csharp-vs-code-tool.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2022/06/16/csharp-... ). See also the first snobby, then underhanded, then petulant behavior of the Windows Terminal maintainers recently with respect to some performance improvements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284419 It's very reasonable to be skeptical of Microsoft's relationship to open-source in 2022, even as we might also feel positively about some aspects of their new open-source strategy.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    >See also the first snobby, then underhanded, then petulant behavior This just corporate open source as a whole. I don't know what else he expected. You don't participate in open source with the big boys if you expect a quick response or you expect to get any kind of non-trivial credit for something. It is not you who is paying the bills. No reason to be skeptical about it, this is how the game is played.

kanonieer 4y ago

Educate yourself on the topic and it will. Maybe start here?[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/fsfe/projects/ms-vs-eu/halloween1.html https://www.gnu.org/software/fsfe/projects/ms-vs-eu/hallowee...

egorfine 4y ago

Some people here are a bit older than a typical %MODERN_FRONTEND_TECHNOLOGY% developer and thus they remember very well what Microsoft did to Linux and open source community a decade ago and back.

bayindirh 4y ago

A relevant primer, a comment by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987377

the_biot 4y ago

Lots of people hate MS because of their monopolistic practices in the past. Myself, I always despised the company because of the complete shit quality of their software, starting with DOS. That was a pile of crap from day 1, and while much has changed since then, you can still see the complete disregard for quality in so much of what they do.

pedro2 4y ago
Software is going the way other industries go: no real competition, no quality. It's not that they want to do bad software, it's just they don't have any short-term profit on doing so.