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I have a lot of respect for organizations that get a lot done with Microsoft technologies. I think your perspective could be thought of as the benefits of verti

by th0ma5 1y ago

I have a lot of respect for organizations that get a lot done with Microsoft technologies. I think your perspective could be thought of as the benefits of vertical integration and vendor lock in. These do help people get things done! In the academic and open source world those things are fought against because you don't want to be at the mercy of the software developer in the context of certain rights. I think for every negative you mention on either side a positive could be found on either side. And like many things on the net, you're not wrong but not necessarily talking about the same kinds of things. My remaining complaints about Microsoft are the inflexibility of their solutions that command abstractions that just don't work for many organizations, and the general viral nature of software sales in general of which they are one of many with similar issues, however Oracle is the worst of course.

jiggawatts 1y ago
Perfectly valid points. I've worked in academia, and their insistence on non-Microsoft technologies was helpful in certain fields where openness and long-term reproducibility is critical. The downside is that this produces a microcosm of obscure technologies that can have... strange effects on industry. Some FAANG-like companies have a habit of hiring only recent graduates, so their entire staff is convinced that what they saw at their University is how everybody else does things. It leads to Silicon Valley clique that has a fantastically distorted perspective of the rest of the world. Some comments I've seen here on HN are downright hilarious to anyone from the "rest of the world", such as: "Does anyone still use Windows Server!?" -- yes, at least 60% of all deployed servers world wide, and over 80% in many industries. "Supports all popular directory servers such as OpenLDAP, ApacheDS, Kopano, ..." -- hello!? Active Directory! Have you heard of it!? It's something like 95% of all deployed LDAP deployments no matter how you count it! The other 5% is Oracle Directory and/or Novell eDirectory and then all of the rest put together is a rounding error.
- ArcHound 1y ago
  I agree with this, I see the AD as critical. Do you please have a source for these numbers? Would love to include it in the article.

by th0ma5 1y ago

jiggawatts 1y ago

Perfectly valid points. I've worked in academia, and their insistence on non-Microsoft technologies was helpful in certain fields where openness and long-term reproducibility is critical. The downside is that this produces a microcosm of obscure technologies that can have... strange effects on industry. Some FAANG-like companies have a habit of hiring only recent graduates, so their entire staff is convinced that what they saw at their University is how everybody else does things. It leads to Silicon Valley clique that has a fantastically distorted perspective of the rest of the world. Some comments I've seen here on HN are downright hilarious to anyone from the "rest of the world", such as: "Does anyone still use Windows Server!?" -- yes, at least 60% of all deployed servers world wide, and over 80% in many industries. "Supports all popular directory servers such as OpenLDAP, ApacheDS, Kopano, ..." -- hello!? Active Directory! Have you heard of it!? It's something like 95% of all deployed LDAP deployments no matter how you count it! The other 5% is Oracle Directory and/or Novell eDirectory and then all of the rest put together is a rounding error.

ArcHound 1y ago
I agree with this, I see the AD as critical. Do you please have a source for these numbers? Would love to include it in the article.