5 ms·

I would like anyone that considers Microsoft to be a recent champion of Open Source to reflect on corporate doublespeak. It's plausible that this bug was engin

by gtop3 4y ago

I would like anyone that considers Microsoft to be a recent champion of Open Source to reflect on corporate doublespeak. It's plausible that this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox.

DonHopkins 4y ago
If Microsoft were so good at software engineering that they could pull off such an attack on Firefox, then maybe they do deserve to have a monopoly. /s
layer8 4y ago
Never attribute to malice…
- alpaca128 4y ago
  Nowadays a lot of malicious acts are intentionally disguised as stupidity and incompetence. Not necessarily in this case, but that quote really is showing its age.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Incompetence and malice are one and the same.
DoctorOW 4y ago
Devils advocate, why then did they fix it?
- mistrial9 4y ago
  slow walk.. or.. in comparison, have you contacted your local city government to fix obvious holes in the road recently? Around here, a two-year wait time to fix it is common.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Because it became public knowledge that it was happening?
princevegeta89 4y ago
Very interesting point. They might have had the intentions of pushing everyone to use Edge, and it is not surprising after their so many consistent nags and misleading messages to think its the "better" browser compared to anything else.
maccard 4y ago
Have you any semblance of proof of this? By the looks of it took Firefox a few years to figure out what the repro was, they reported it to MS, it was (very) promptly fixed and they were warned that the syscall they were using isn't being used as intended and they should consider changes to FF for future use cases.
- mrb 4y ago
  It's the AV that was calling TdhFormatProperty(), not FF. The problem was mostly on the AV side, not FF. FF itself was generating many events due to too many VirtualProtect() calls which in itself was only a smaller part of the problem.
- xutopia 4y ago
  I've lived through the browser wars and I can tell you that this would not surprise me one bit.
  - maccard 4y ago
    There's a difference between something not surprising you and a wild, totally baseless accusation. Ill happily eat my words if there is a shred of proof, but right now it's "company fixes old bug when it was reported to them"
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  >> It's plausible that this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox. > Have you any semblance of proof of this? Does it need proof? Someone can make a statement like this solely based upon past behavior. They're merely stating that it is plausible.
  - maccard 4y ago
    > Does it need proof? Yes, it does. Stringing together a narrative and ignoring the proof that contridts your claims is conspiracy theory territory. > Someone can make a statement like this solely based upon past behavior. Yet all the evidence (the bug linked) implies nothing of the sort. > They're merely stating that it is plausible. I can state that it's _plausible_ that the US government conspired with Disney to fake the Moon landing as a show of power to the USSR in the 60's, but I'd expect to be asked for proof, and I'd expect to be accused of spreading absolute nonsense.
vntok 4y ago
What a weird take. If this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox, then it seems like the project has been infiltrated by bad actors, because the bug comes from Firefox's codebase. Indeed, the developers themselves contradict your comment in the linked bug conversation: > This problem has two sides: Microsoft was doing a lot of useless computations upon each event; and we are generating a lot of events. The combination is explosive. Now that Microsoft has done their part of the job (comment 82), we need to reduce our dependency to VirtualProtect. (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441918#c90 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441918#c90) Compare how many calls other browsers make (this is also quoted in the link): Firefox was generating up to 46 times more (costly) events than Chrome. It is a bit ludicrous to shame Microsoft for the whole situation. > Firefox with normal configuration: ~14000 events, 98% of which are PROTECTVM_LOCAL; > Firefox with the preferences from comment 83: ~6500 events, 95% of which are PROTECTVM_LOCAL; > Edge: ~2000 events, 91% of which are ALLOCVM_LOCAL; > Chrome: ~300 events.
stalfosknight 4y ago
Do we have to assume negative intent every time something like this happens?
- uoaei 4y ago
  We should at least be aware of it as an option. Many call this "healthy skepticism". It becomes unhealthy when you veer into blind optimism/pessimism/cynicism.
- agloe_dreams 4y ago
  Well no, but I also would question the inverse. Holding accountable companies that gain from possibly bad actions and asking the questions is helpful. See: Microsoft's Supreme court case over their preference for IE and forced monopoly. While Microsoft 'won' the case, the outcomes were exactly what the case feared but "convenient" political climate helped them avoid travelling back to court of course. Microsoft took extreme steps to avoid being broken up in the 1990s however and it's arguable that one of their political mitigation methods, investing in Apple, actually had worse effects on them. (Prior to the iPhone in 2007, it was assumed that RIM and Microsoft would be the big two players in the smartphone space, Apple and Google have basically become the big two players in the Computing space mindshare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
chaostheory 4y ago
This is a relic of Bill’s tenor. Satya is different in good way.
markphip 4y ago
It is amusing that anyone thinks a company with > 200K employees and probably 10K products is organized enough for something like this.
- naremu 4y ago
  Inaction is a pretty low "bandwidth" form of action, and can sometimes produce the results you're looking for just as well, if not more effectively. Microsoft has a storied history of anti-competitive views leaking to public eyes/ears, something like this is quite literally a matter of not organizing anyone.
echelon 4y ago
Why would Microsoft attack Firefox specifically and not Chrome? Chrome is the bigger threat to their business. Firefox has become almost too small to care about - little revenue, small browser market share.
- agloe_dreams 4y ago
  There's an argument that Microsoft's Edge use of Chromium and then the Surface Duo would cause 'don't bite the hand that feeds you" problems. Not agreeing with OP, but it would make sense.
babypuncher 4y ago
This seems incredibly unlikely and overly cynical just for the sake of being cynical.
garbagecoder 4y ago
The WWEification of every discourse is the worst thing about $current-year

by gtop3 4y ago

I would like anyone that considers Microsoft to be a recent champion of Open Source to reflect on corporate doublespeak. It's plausible that this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox.

DonHopkins 4y ago

If Microsoft were so good at software engineering that they could pull off such an attack on Firefox, then maybe they do deserve to have a monopoly. /s

layer8 4y ago

Never attribute to malice…

alpaca128 4y ago
Nowadays a lot of malicious acts are intentionally disguised as stupidity and incompetence. Not necessarily in this case, but that quote really is showing its age.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Incompetence and malice are one and the same.

DoctorOW 4y ago

Devils advocate, why then did they fix it?

mistrial9 4y ago
slow walk.. or.. in comparison, have you contacted your local city government to fix obvious holes in the road recently? Around here, a two-year wait time to fix it is common.
justinclift 4y ago
Because it became public knowledge that it was happening?

princevegeta89 4y ago

Very interesting point. They might have had the intentions of pushing everyone to use Edge, and it is not surprising after their so many consistent nags and misleading messages to think its the "better" browser compared to anything else.

maccard 4y ago

Have you any semblance of proof of this? By the looks of it took Firefox a few years to figure out what the repro was, they reported it to MS, it was (very) promptly fixed and they were warned that the syscall they were using isn't being used as intended and they should consider changes to FF for future use cases.

mrb 4y ago
It's the AV that was calling TdhFormatProperty(), not FF. The problem was mostly on the AV side, not FF. FF itself was generating many events due to too many VirtualProtect() calls which in itself was only a smaller part of the problem.
xutopia 4y ago
I've lived through the browser wars and I can tell you that this would not surprise me one bit.
- maccard 4y ago
  There's a difference between something not surprising you and a wild, totally baseless accusation. Ill happily eat my words if there is a shred of proof, but right now it's "company fixes old bug when it was reported to them"
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
>> It's plausible that this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox. > Have you any semblance of proof of this? Does it need proof? Someone can make a statement like this solely based upon past behavior. They're merely stating that it is plausible.
- maccard 4y ago
  > Does it need proof? Yes, it does. Stringing together a narrative and ignoring the proof that contridts your claims is conspiracy theory territory. > Someone can make a statement like this solely based upon past behavior. Yet all the evidence (the bug linked) implies nothing of the sort. > They're merely stating that it is plausible. I can state that it's _plausible_ that the US government conspired with Disney to fake the Moon landing as a show of power to the USSR in the 60's, but I'd expect to be asked for proof, and I'd expect to be accused of spreading absolute nonsense.

vntok 4y ago

What a weird take. If this bug was engineered as an attack on Firefox, then it seems like the project has been infiltrated by bad actors, because the bug comes from Firefox's codebase. Indeed, the developers themselves contradict your comment in the linked bug conversation: > This problem has two sides: Microsoft was doing a lot of useless computations upon each event; and we are generating a lot of events. The combination is explosive. Now that Microsoft has done their part of the job (comment 82), we need to reduce our dependency to VirtualProtect. (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441918#c90 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441918#c90) Compare how many calls other browsers make (this is also quoted in the link): Firefox was generating up to 46 times more (costly) events than Chrome. It is a bit ludicrous to shame Microsoft for the whole situation. > Firefox with normal configuration: ~14000 events, 98% of which are PROTECTVM_LOCAL; > Firefox with the preferences from comment 83: ~6500 events, 95% of which are PROTECTVM_LOCAL; > Edge: ~2000 events, 91% of which are ALLOCVM_LOCAL; > Chrome: ~300 events.

stalfosknight 4y ago

Do we have to assume negative intent every time something like this happens?

uoaei 4y ago
We should at least be aware of it as an option. Many call this "healthy skepticism". It becomes unhealthy when you veer into blind optimism/pessimism/cynicism.
agloe_dreams 4y ago
Well no, but I also would question the inverse. Holding accountable companies that gain from possibly bad actions and asking the questions is helpful. See: Microsoft's Supreme court case over their preference for IE and forced monopoly. While Microsoft 'won' the case, the outcomes were exactly what the case feared but "convenient" political climate helped them avoid travelling back to court of course. Microsoft took extreme steps to avoid being broken up in the 1990s however and it's arguable that one of their political mitigation methods, investing in Apple, actually had worse effects on them. (Prior to the iPhone in 2007, it was assumed that RIM and Microsoft would be the big two players in the smartphone space, Apple and Google have basically become the big two players in the Computing space mindshare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

chaostheory 4y ago

This is a relic of Bill’s tenor. Satya is different in good way.

markphip 4y ago

It is amusing that anyone thinks a company with > 200K employees and probably 10K products is organized enough for something like this.

naremu 4y ago
Inaction is a pretty low "bandwidth" form of action, and can sometimes produce the results you're looking for just as well, if not more effectively. Microsoft has a storied history of anti-competitive views leaking to public eyes/ears, something like this is quite literally a matter of not organizing anyone.

echelon 4y ago

Why would Microsoft attack Firefox specifically and not Chrome? Chrome is the bigger threat to their business. Firefox has become almost too small to care about - little revenue, small browser market share.

agloe_dreams 4y ago
There's an argument that Microsoft's Edge use of Chromium and then the Surface Duo would cause 'don't bite the hand that feeds you" problems. Not agreeing with OP, but it would make sense.

babypuncher 4y ago

This seems incredibly unlikely and overly cynical just for the sake of being cynical.

garbagecoder 4y ago

The WWEification of every discourse is the worst thing about $current-year