from the can't-help-themselves-it-is-in-their-nature dept.
Miguel de Icaza's barrage of criticism against Microsoft comes with a lot of credibility. This is the developer who has spent much of his career building open source projects within the Microsoft ecosystem and spent years working for Microsoft on Xamarin and other projects. His primary complaint? "That Microsoft would subvert an active open source project by ramming in a proprietary extension to continue to lock down .NET." This comes after last year's Hot Reload open source dumpster fire.
For those who choose to see this as a resurrection of Microsoft's old "Linux is a cancer" trope, not so fast. On balance, Microsoft has been a consistent contributor to open source communities, at least since its public declaration of open source devotion back in 2014. It's doubtful that the company is suddenly reverting to type, closing off one of its most visible open source successes. Instead, I suspect this is one division's decision to satisfy corporate revenue targets with a well understood, if out-of-favor, licensing model.
Still think it's just Microsoft being evil? Have you ever worked at a big company?
[...] It's possible to accept de Icaza's view of the situation and still think that, on balance, Microsoft gets more decisions on open source right than wrong. This is the same Microsoft that recently funded the GNOME project, a direct (if not particularly threatening) challenge to the Windows desktop. It's a big sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation, plus it contributes cash and other resources to Python, Java (!!), Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, and more.
[...] One thing I've learned: A company is never as bad as it seems on the surface because ultimately it's made up of individual people making decisions. [...] It was money that influenced Microsoft's love for open source, just as with every other company, and Microsoft will follow the money in this case, too.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:56PM (5 children)
Because that's what Microsoft as a corporation is: they might look like they're cooperating with you, but you know deep down all they care about is themselves.
The dance is complicated because you're dancing with someone with a fake smile on their face and a knife in one hand behind your back.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:05PM
And that's true for any large company or government agency. For example, Google at some point removed the "Don't" from the front of their slogan.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:19PM
How'd that different to any other corporation?
Corporations are essentially intelligence without conscience.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bloodnok on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:25PM (1 child)
It doesn't much matter whether we think Microsoft are being evil, slightly evil, mostly evil, or not at all evil. The question should be do we think we can trust them?
Having worked separately for large corps and for a psychopath, I'd say that although with the large corporation you may sometimes get non-psychopathic behaviour you can't rely on it continuing. The legislative framework around corporate existence allows and even encourages psychopathic behaviour, so you should expect it. If not today or tomorrow, then soon.
__
The major
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @01:10AM
I have finally come to the following conclusion:
I am an engineer. I work with things. I do what I have to do to accomplish a given goal. I use laws of physics to manipulate matter.
An MBA works with people. They do what they have to do to accomplish a given goal. They use laws of men and psychology to manipulate worker-bees.
Just as I consider the amount of energy I invest to produce something, the MBA considers his access to political power and trust as expendables. He uses his tools, instruments of obedience. The position to rank others, employee advancement/termination. Lying ( expenditure of trust - aka "marketing" ), won't share information ( keep the subordinated ignorant ). The cover name is "leadership".
Seeing a corporation hire the MBA and subordinate it's engineers under it to me is akin to seeing a cat lapping up antifreeze. One can estimate from that the time to liver and kidney failure, followed by shutdown of the cat. Engineers and MBA don't mix well.
In my personal research, which was triggered by exposure to MBA ethics, I ran across the following:
https://www.economist.com/whichmba/academic-view-learning-how-trust [economist.com]
Also, I found a lot of behavioral studies linking authority and compassion, which was quite an eye opener for me. Stanley Milgrim did an interesting study on people's susceptibility to psychological techniques in the 70's.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/milgram_obedience_experiment.html [age-of-the-sage.org]
You gotta be careful out there! There are "corporate leadership" types out there who lap this kinda stuff up like us lapping up new technologies to purify water.
One thing though they seem to have in common is a love of money, a need to display their position, impeccable appearance, and a disdain for those below them, unless they personally need their services. Distance yourself. They just need another horse. The one they had ran off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:27PM
To put it differently: When you dance with the devil, the devil always leads.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:03PM (5 children)
Q: Still think it's just Microsoft being evil?
A: Yes
Q: Have you ever worked at a big company?
A: Yes
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Common Joe on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:15PM (3 children)
This. Fully agree.
All it takes is the person (or a small group of people) at the top making the decisions. They can plan several years ahead, wipe out the competition, and become dominant. Embrace, extend, extinguish. We've seen this done time and time again. Microsoft is all about making money. If they sniff a direction that will make them money, that's they way they will go. Even if it cost them in the short term. Or the person could be a complete idiot. Or both.
I just had management breathing down my neck this past week demanding a really dumb decision be executed. I won't say what it was, but it was sort of like demanding that we have a meeting using chairs that are mounted upside down on outside tree branches... but the meeting should look completely normal for the video conference. What finally put an end to that little saga was the equivalent of finding out that the seat belts wouldn't come by the date of the meeting. Nevermind that the whole thing was preposterous. Everyone knew it was stupid except for the CEO, but we had to follow orders because he's the boss and signs the checks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:23PM (2 children)
No, it's not. It's more insidious than that. Individuals may have a conscience. But a corporation eliminates that problem effectively.
You may not want to fire that person who just got a mortgage and has 2 kids. But you either fire him or they will eliminate your department, so you have to, your conscience rests easy because you're protecting the rest of your staff. The firing has to happen because the CEO decided they have to cut expenses. But he has to do that. If he doesn't, the investors in the bank will drop his shares, the company value tanks and he'll have to fire even more people. The investor doesn't really want to drop shares of a company that he knows does the ecologically (or whatever) right thing either, but he has to, he was entrusted with the retirement funds for a lot of people and is responsible that these people get their value out of it so they can retire.
So in case you're wondering what asshole caused you to lose your job, check the next mirror and ponder whether your retirement is as important as having a job.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday June 26 2022, @10:48PM (1 child)
An interesting Canadian film called simply "The Corporation" argues fairly effectively that if, in the immortal words of Mitt Romney, corporations are people, than they fit perfectly the definition of "psychopath" in the DSM that was current at the time. And not only that, as you point out, they do an excellent job of incentivizing the people in them to act like a psychopath even if they don't really want to as a human being.
For example, my employer goes to significant lengths to try to keep people doing my kind of work from thinking about the people whose work my work rests on. The people whose work pays my salary and who in some cases are killed by doing that work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday June 27 2022, @06:52AM
CEO positions are attractive to people with psychopathic tendences. And they are also good at getting them. Because while a normal person is wondering "should I cross that line" when faced with a moral dilemma, the psychopath already lept over it.
(Score: 0, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @08:35PM
Yes.
No.
We can all agree on one thing.
Why do we keep getting Micro$erf apologetics? Is someone being paid on SoylentNews? Where is aristarchus?
(Score: 2) by jon3k on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:47PM (1 child)
So by this logic no large company can be evil. Microsoft, the company who invented "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" could not have been evil, ever?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:30PM
The job ain't done until Lotus won't run.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:57PM (3 children)
So far most of what he did has weakened open source. Neither GNOME nor Mono really helped OSS. GNOME was and is crap.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday June 26 2022, @09:21PM
That is unfair. Without Gnome, KDE wouldn't have been open source, much less Free Software. And I really liked Gnome2. So much so that I'm currently suing Mate.
Now if you want to criticize Gnumeric....well, OK, but it wasn't that bad.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @01:44AM
Yeah, it's not like people haven't been warning him about this from the very start.
(Score: 1) by jrbrtsn on Tuesday June 28 2022, @01:29AM
Gnome as a project has provided necessary desktop infrastructure used by many other desktops (like XFCE, my favorite).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @05:36PM (3 children)
Funding Gnome is probably a strategic decision. Gnome is more of a threat to Apple than Windows, and funding Gnome helps keep the much more Windows-threatening KDE down.
Way back around the introduction of Vista, KDE was good enough that it was actually easier to switch to Linux than to "upgrade". Gnome suddenly got a lot more corporate traction, got much less co-operative with Gnome stuff working on KDE, and split the UI dev community in two effectively halving the resources working on KDE.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @06:50PM
>> split the UI dev community in two effectively halving the resources working on KDE.
The smart half went to the project that had no code of conduct.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:09PM
The GNOME project is presently a poisoned fruit. Guess who concocted the poison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @02:38AM
Uh huh...divide and conquer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:04PM (6 children)
Open source communities are tasty. Microsoft loves them. Microsoft loved many closed-source companies too, before. Nobody remembers most of them anymore.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday June 27 2022, @06:55AM (5 children)
The problem is, buying out Open Source companies is pretty tricky. And pointless. The people you buy jump ship becasue they don't want to work for a closed source juggernaut, the source gets forked and you're sitting on a big pile of nothing.
With a hint of luck, the people you think you just bought make a new company with the forked code and continue their work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @07:35AM (2 children)
Infiltrate a few Microsoft lovers into high positions (or activate those already infiltrated) and use them to put the codebase onto the road to oblivion, to chase out dissenters, and to alienate users. The sorry recent-ish history of all the things (mis)managed by the GNOME project, is ample enough a demonstration.
The result? Well, people had Gnome itself forked as Mate, but GTK+ got sabotaged without causing a fork, and that library underlies a lot of things still, and WAS underlying even more. The time and effort people spent in rewrites, to transition projects either to maliciously incompatible new GTK+, or off GTK+ to Qt; that alone was a major win against the FOSS community, and now GTK+4 is here, to repeat the gambit once more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @05:54PM (1 child)
what is your specific complaint about gtk4?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @05:37PM
The malicious incompatibility with GTK+3, and the malicious removal of necessary features, of course.
https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/migrating-3to4.html [gtk.org]
And especially this piece of crazy:
If I need to resort to platform API anyway, WHAT I NEED GTK+ FOR, then???
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Monday June 27 2022, @09:04AM (1 child)
The people you buy jump ship becasue they don't want to work for a closed source juggernaut, the source gets forked and you're sitting on a big pile of nothing.
That's why M$ first sticks its ovipositor into a soft part of the project via the project's weaker members and lays a CoC. Then as the project turns its back on coding and spends all remaining developer time on infighting, it is easy to influence and steer while it is devoured by the Coc. Or if the project is just left on it's own at that point, it can be ignored as it declines into irrelevance when the developers are all driven out.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday June 27 2022, @11:24AM
We need a "sad but true" mod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:06PM
Now there's an open source project Microsoft loves since it speaks to their core values. Their first contribution was to ensure that all the data got copied to Redmond. #FuckTelemetry
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @08:39PM
> Microsoft gets more decisions on open source right than wrong
dude it's the embrace phase. Give up control, you'll get screwed. Again.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday June 27 2022, @12:56AM
Microsoft doesn't really care if open source succeeds or fails so long as you are using it within a Microsoft environment.
They send their lawyers out to sue/blackmail those using linux. Nice support.
They blackmail shops into buying and installing Windows on everything in site. Nice support.
They lobby governments to use MS 'open source' (such as .docx or whatever their 'open' format is), etc. Nice support.
They are evil and people need to smarten up and drop that crazy monkey. They 'support' open source while kicking it in the nuts every single day in every single way.
Smarten up sheeple.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @01:03AM (2 children)
The F/OSS community hates it, but I miss the days when Windows had a "fee for product" business model. I get why they've gone in the direction they've gone: it makes more money.
It's not a good deal though. You pay little or nothing for the OS, and they spy, advertise, etc. The SaaS business models aren't much better; but these are the ways to monetize F/OSS because it's a lot harder to sell it as fee-for-product.
It may take some time, but I think some of the hardcore people here and green site might come around to my long standing PoV.
Fee-for-product isn't evil. Evil is evil. There's room for both business models. I'd like to see a real choice that we could trust where we have to pay for the OS, but can be assured it's not spying on us. A business model where they're not always trying to lock the hardware instead of the software (because it's legal to run F/OSS on locked hardware!).
(Score: 2) by srobert on Monday June 27 2022, @03:53AM
I see software as being in two categories, one the underlying infrastructure like operating systems, windowing systems, desktop environments, and the other the end user applications that depend on that infrastructure. I like the fee for product business model for the latter category, but in the former, I prefer an open source product. Sort of analogous to buying a car built for profit, to drive on a public road, built for the public good. In a perfect world, specialists could design and sell proprietary software, closed source, to solve specific problems that are unique to our fields, professions, etc. But those applications would always be made available on open source platforms like Linux or FreeBSD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2022, @07:33PM
Software is only an extremely profitable thing to develop, if, and only if, you use exploitative licenses to create artificial scarcity. If you aren't doing that, you can do SaaS.
The real problem, is that, nobody does, "Pay to Develop." I think the reason nobody does this, is because, they, "just aren't aware it's even an option."
The government and other government agencies, always opt to offer contracts, to already established companies with already established software solutions.
That's dumb.
What they need to do, is pay competent teams of people, to produce specifically tailored free/open source software. Anyone can do this, if they have the proper amount of cash; and I would argue, it is boat loads cheaper than any other alternative...
Fuck Microsoft. If their posture has changed in anyway, it's because their position has been weakened by the competition (free/open source software). They posture out of necessity, nothing else...