Why do you Like Microsoft?
In a recent blog post about Idealism by Guy Van Sanden there was an interesting comment by Matt:
IMHO an idealist in this situation would say that perhaps MS can be trusted enough that partnerships (the likes Miguel has been forging with those within MS) are of more benefit and vastly more productive than repeated fearmongering. Maybe MS and FOSS can learn to better work together, and realise that there is potential for cooperation of mutual benefit.
I have no interest in dealing with Microsoft, no partnerships, no trust, no respect, their name is dirt to me and socially they are a pariah. Not because of some fundamentalism or because I have an unwarranted grudge; But because they do harm to my communities, they harm my industry and do it wilfully and purposefully and I won’t condone or forgive them while they continue1. In fact I’d have to see reparation for them to recover their name, I don’t think it’s possible.
Matt’s idealist example shows that it’s a jolly old world where it’s nice to be friends with everyone. It’s true, we don’t want conflict, but this is where the idealism in the nature of people’s behaviour is tested and societies have been going on for a long time and we haven’t yet got to the point where people are nice, pleasant and trustworthy especially when they’ve been absolute bastards in the past.
I believe it’s naive, bordering on the cartoon plot line of trust. I can’t decide if it’s admiration for a bully, fear or just plain ignorance of the past that has given people such an optimistic opinion of Microsoft and they seem to be able to wipe away their slate every day.
Fortunately for me, Microsoft is as good as dead anyway, the economics and the technical effects are going to roll right over them. Nothing to do with my idealism or my social concern, but a happy coincidence for me. A Microsoft without a monopoly might well change it’s tune, but are people really trying to convince me that I ‘ort to trust them right now?
1 Some might say it’s worth being spiteful, if we had a big enough stick to beat them with. We don’t have to go that far though.
This entry was posted on 2009-07-03 at 10:54 and is filed under Free and Open Source Software, Politics, Sociology, Ubuntu with tags foss, microsoft, Politics, social harm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2009-07-03 at 11:30
I don’t get it. How did you deduce that “Matt seems to think that it’s a jolly old world where it’s nice to be friends with everyone”? Matt just explained what he thought idealism meant, not that he was an idealist himself.
2009-07-03 at 12:52
You might be right, let me re-read it and see if It was third person. I may have mistaken the colour of the language.
2009-07-03 at 11:47
It seems like a side effect of the fact that we keep having to learn to get along internally (ie with people of similar ideals) to get anything done, that this is extended to everyone externally, including those with ideals that state we’re a cancer to be destroyed :$
I’m all for ditching the rabid MS bashing that just turns normal humans off free software, but I’m still not going to walk down dark alleys in the Bronx waving wads of $100 bills in the air, metaphorically speaking. When someone has repeatedly hurt others willfully in the past, you don’t call for a lynch mob, but neither does it help to just ignore that tendency.
The funny thing is that everyone seems to be weighing in to completely different arguments. The pro mono camp seem to all argue that it may create legal problems. The anti mono camp seem to be arguing that it provides useful functionality. As a Kubuntu user I feel rather perplexed by many of the comments that go “Well, if you don’t like Mono, come up with a good free software, alterenative to Fspot and Banshee!!!” Uh yeah… they’re called Digikam and Amarok… What are we to take from this… Mono good. KDElibs bad?
2009-07-03 at 11:50
I can see you hold a lot of resentment towards Microsoft. And believe me, I sympathise.
I swore never to install a copy of windows for anyone ever again about 5 years ago, and I’ve held firm, which has been an incredibly liberating feeling.
You’re correct that they harm our communities, and the industry. I’ve had trouble expressing this to laymen, mostly because I’ve forgotten much of what they’ve done along the way. Would you care to help me list some of their key-crimes?
For instance:
1) IE breaking HTML standards forcing me and every other budding web-dev to write nearly two completely separate versions of every website they ever built.
2) Integrating IE into the OS rather than sandboxing it, making it so much more insecure, and making my life as the techie everyone goes to sooo much more difficult.
I can probably think of more, but what are your most painful experiences?
Alex
2009-07-03 at 13:06
Here you go: http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf
2009-07-03 at 18:19
Ironic that the document from which the PDF was created was written in Microsoft Word …
2009-07-03 at 11:51
I think MS themselves put it best:
“Every line of code written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat.”
2009-07-03 at 12:49
Absolutely poetic article. Thank you!
There is a giant killdozer inching ever so persistently toward Redmond. Feel the ground shaking yet?
2009-07-03 at 12:54
All relationships are based on trust. Mother/child, business partners, penpals, whatever. When that trust is violated, it is gone and is hard to recover. People are “rabidly anti-MS” for multiple good reasons. Don’t be fooled again.
2009-07-03 at 15:53
Agreed.
2009-07-03 at 17:06
Thanks for Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf. It was an interesting reading.
2009-07-03 at 17:23
Hi,
I have no particular love of MS. I enjoy free-software for my own reasons that i think have more to do with the style of community involvement and the pace of change. I definitely do not posses the hatred of MS that many seem to do.
The point i was trying to make was that for the original poster to somehow say he is an idealist for wanting to purge Mono from the default just strikes me as wrong… in a kind of grotesque way.
2009-07-03 at 17:28
You have no love, but you have no social concern either. This strikes me as wrong.
2009-07-05 at 19:07
Not quite sure why you think i have no social concern. If i had no concern why would i bother to comment?
I guess my concerns are shaped by a different set of factors to yours. For instance, I get worried for a society when i see moral absolutism taking root…
2009-07-03 at 18:30
I hate Microsoft for so many reasons that I’ve forgotten most of them over the years. Right now it is because their AML compiler is being used by hardware/PC vendors to compile buggy DSDT files. They are intentionally breaking ACPI compatibility with Linux/Mac operating systems. I am trying to help correct this, but how do you reach everyone? Most people don’t know what a DSDT is. I’m guessing that on most of the newer PC’s, 80-90% of ACPI problems with Linux are being caused by Microsoft. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1036051 http://forums.opensuse.org/how-faq-read-only/unreviewed-how-faq/386054-how-fix-your-buggy-dsdt.html
2009-07-03 at 23:51
This is why I like Microsoft.
– Without them the PC would have never evolved into what it is today.
– Without them the free software movement would be non-existent more than likely.
– Without them we would have nothing to bitch about.
MS has done a lot, like them or not. Without any of the work they have done, some really great and some really bad, the PC wouldn’t exist as it is today. MS made the PC, now it is up to us to make the PC shine.
2009-07-04 at 02:01
I don’t agree, Apple, Comadore, Atari and Amega all had PC businesses based on different concepts and hardware. The only thing Microsoft did was to speed up commoditisation of the hardware stack from IBM.
But besides that, doing some good by accident in the distant past does not give anyone carte blanch to wade in with their size 12s smashing everything all the time.
The pragmatic extremists have some funny ways of looking at the world sometimes, it’s like technical achievement can effectively replace moral and social codes. *roll eyes*
2009-07-06 at 10:46
Apple, Comadore, Atari and Amiga, in no way influenced the PC market, even if they did have a similar business model. How big was Linux on PPC? It wasn’t large and typically supported by just a few people at best with each distro. The good that MS did in the past was by no means and accident. They knew what they were doing, and they did it well, no matter at what cost it was to the companies they obliterated.
I love how everyone talks about the bad that MS has done, and it is funny in the Linux world that is an excuse for a lot of people who use Linux now. I am willing to bet a lot of these people still drive Honda, Toyota, Ford, or GM cars. How many have used Sony products? How many shop at Walmart? Got their home mortgage from a Fannie Mae lender? Purchased their significant other a diamond ring? All of the companies behind this stuff is just as bad, if not worse than MS ever has been. At best using the whole “MS smashed this and that” is at best, a hypocritical statement at best.
2009-07-06 at 12:14
@ nixternal:
How convenient: unless you are perfect (hint: we never are), you don’t have to… you may not do ethical choices. And you may poke at those who are trying.
“Release early…”
2009-07-04 at 04:31
“Without them the PC would have never evolved into what it is today.”
Difficult to say and it could as well just be a convenient myth for MS to boost about. Don’t forget that MS foremost was based on a ruthless business strategy and only secondary on software. We already had several at the time better alternatives which potentially could have become a PC equivalent.
“Without them the free software movement would be non-existent more than likely.”
As I remember history that’s plain wrong. MS wasn’t even on the map at the time. The free software movement had its roots in really early stages of software development. MS wasn’t the cause or the inspiration, but a locked in Unix world. Bill Gates actually reacted against that open minded sharing culture that already was established, and thought it was unfair to all developers… which proved to mean himself personally. That MS eventually became the greater enemy is due to the company’s success which was based on documented hatred for anything that resembles the ideas of a free software movement.
It’s just like how Linus didn’t care about MS and instead wanted a Unix like system for his own use. MS didn’t inspire Linus and we’ve proof enough when looking at the design of Linux.
Maybe MS served as catalyst since the need for an alternative became even more evident. Stallman worked on a maybe to complex operating system, very difficult to debug. Linux came along and coincidentally became the preferred base for GNU applications. Linus however seems to have viewed MS as a quite irrelevant factor all a long.
“Without them we would have nothing to bitch about.”
Probably. Still don’t forget that it was Bill Gates himself that initially attacked the idea of free code sharing. Thus MS made themselves a adversary.
2009-07-05 at 22:57
Thanks for reminding me of this piece of history. I’ll save your comment for future needs
2009-07-06 at 10:48
Sorry, I meant to utilize the catalyst analogy here and didn’t mean to make it look like MS is the reason for free software.
2009-07-04 at 04:46
No lame linux crap can competite with Windows Server 2008 R2 + MS SQL Server 2008 and Windows 7 Professional. Wake up FOSStards. That’s not going to happen.
2009-07-04 at 11:42
Feed the trolls! hehe, technically all that stuff you mentioned is a joke. But cost and control wise you might as well have shot yourself in the face.
2009-07-04 at 05:15
Good post Doctormo.
Keep up the “good fight” and don’t let the bast*rds grind you down.
2009-07-04 at 05:47
Well, after a couple of years with linux only, I’m back to using both Windows and Linux. And you know what? I don’t expect a damn thing from Microsoft, and the work I need to do with their software, it gets done. And that’s about it.
Religious wars, pseudo-moral preaching about social responsibility be damned; the reality is closed source software will always have the upper hand, and the one who is dealing the cards will get to dictate the pace of the game. This time it’s Microsoft, in 10 years, it may be Apple.
2009-07-04 at 16:27
Well, if your working environment dictates what technology you have to use to get the job done, you usually have very little to do apart from leaving that environment if you don’t want to use the technology.
When considering a particular technology for a task, you have to weigh in both its advantages and disadvantages, and ultimately go for the one that gives you the best outcome. Believe it or not, there are times when choosing a proprietary technology as part of a particular solution proves to be the optimal strategy, but this may of course be difficult to see for someone outside the problem domain. (no harm intended)
I’m not going to argue against your claims of FOSS superiority which have zero backing with any supportive evidence given. One thing to consider though – while Microsoft had nearly complete control of the desktop market in the 90s, Apple has seized a large 10% chunk of it by 2009. And as far as I know, Apple is a diehard proprietary company. Note that software developed under contract for a particular company is a wholly different matter, where open source software does make sense (notice I left the “free” out of it).
Something you should know here, doctormo: principles are a fixed long-term strategy in a game with changing conditions. As such, they can never be an optimal strategy. Overall, I get the feeling that you still miss the point – if we compare programming to masonry, then you always need a company which provides the masons and the build engineers to build a particular building. Sure, the process and the product is completely yours and you can do whatever you wish with it, but you won’t do all the work for free and then simply let the owner pay for maintenance (which he does so nevertheless). No, you do “give him the source”, but you expect to be paid for it. And the thing that matters – you build the house with the technologies best fit for the purpose, those that minimize the time and work required to build the house while not affecting the end product in terms of ownership and quality, that is the house well-built, fully in the hands of the customer.
Finally, I would like to ask you to refrain from mounting such attacks in the future. Judging one’s strategy without any sort of basic information about the problem being solved is severely shortsighted in my book.
2009-07-04 at 17:25
Yes and even thought, you still don’t get it.
And I believe it would be a waste of breath trying to explain social justice, none technical rationales and the difference between physical and none physical goods and services.
“Time makes more converts than reason.” As Paine said, let me know when you figure it out.
2009-07-04 at 09:13
I think your argumentation is wrong. Microsoft is not some evil organism from hell, they are competition. And yes, they competed and still compete in ways many of the linux community (me including) think is unfair. But on the other hand, they owe us nothing. Apple can take the piss out of MS too in their commercials, but probably everybody thinks that is funny (at least I do
). It is a good thing that Neelie Kroes (Europe) is making MS open up the standards and stop the abuse of their monopoly position, then we can start competing with a better product. The question about mono should be a pure technical and legal one, don’t go on about with FUD against MS, because it is exactly the same as what MS has been doing to us. (That of course doesn’t mean you can trust MS less then others, because of that history). Anyways, it’s good that there is choice and people can choose to use a technology, but from MS or not, it is about the technology.
I do think that with mono it will be a lot easier for commercial companies to release software for linux (besides windows) and you can like it or not, I think that is what linux really needs to hit the mainstream. One last remark, I have been rather anoyed by Guys posts on planet too, because they are all negative and FUDdy against MS, in stead of talking positively about the great Linux. And the mistakes he makes is that he thinks everybody has the same idealism as the FSF, i don’t, i just think open source is a better way to go forward, just like in medical research (where i work), standing on the shoulders of giants! (when it think of it, this is probably where the difference in free software and open source comes in…..)
2009-07-04 at 11:57
Well hell doesn’t exist but in the minds of mortal men, of those who choose to work in such businesses no?
I won’t try and appeal to your sense of social justice, people who argue for Open Source without Free Software principles tend to have none to appeal to. They don’t care for others, they don’t care about their humanity, community or society. Of course it doesn’t help that your not deeply self sufficient and so are forced to join this community to gain advantages from others you can’t really provide for yourself. Just a shame really that you reject their safety and prosperity because they are “other people”. And I’m not just talking about software here either, there is a whole problem with radical neo capitalists that somehow think capitalism is all about self and nothing to do with social interactions, perhaps the modern world has managed to teach such garbage so effectively we’ll always get this kind of dumb selfish view point.
As for what Microsoft owes us, should I be holding that same view when someone is stabbing me in the chest with a rusty knife? “Well I can’t defend myself, and after all he’s got as much right to hurt me as I have to stand here like a lemon and take it and well he doesn’t really owe me anything so I couldn’t ask him to stop or anything.”
2009-07-05 at 23:11
Yes, Microsoft is competition – unethical, unfair, monopoly abusing, lying, corrupting, anti-competitive, anti-standard competition. There’s no need for FUD against Microsoft.
2009-07-05 at 23:30
Really? I have stated no fears, no uncertainties and no doubts. It’s not fear that drives my social concern and it’s not uncertainty that makes me exclude Microsoft from my business partners list. It’s attitude and lack of responsibility. Why bother spreading FUD when the truth is so much more revealing.
2009-07-05 at 12:47
doctormo: You are correct. Every one of your posts demonstrates your deep understanding of the issue at hand. Thanks again for taking this to the public, who seem to need reminders about the potential for social harm.
sirrus: In the situation you describe, a principled person will walk or will work to bring things closer in line to one’s principles.
sirrus: Proprietary solutions externalize the social factors that in the end damage and destroy our communities (even yours). On the surface they may seem to be superior, but only when partial accounting methods are used.
damansion: Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. This information is widely available. Perhaps that soes not match your version of “evil”, but I’d argue it comes pretty close to entering the territory.
67gta: Get a good lawyer and file a claim in a federal court of your choice.
consider this comment:
The “development team” behind FaiF software numbers in the hundreds of thousands (conservatively), more likely in the millions. Now, compare that to the team developing for the Convicted Monopolist Corporation.
2009-07-05 at 16:40
Well, as always, interesting post Doctormo, respect
I think I don’t hate Microsoft (I have never loved them so much to hate them), but I feel very very angry regularly about their actions. If they would like to JUST compete, that would be great. But no, they try to fuck up market, fuck up everything so they can have ABSOLUTE power. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So no people, we don’t talk about Microsoft products here – we talk about company and it’s behavior in market. They act illegally, without slightest respect to other companies and communities, and what’s worse, without vision but the same “good enough”. It is somehow hostage situation here and it is no wonder that there are lot of “Stockholm syndrome” victims here.
Some 10 years ago I also thought that Linux guys are nuts and Microsoft is “the only way” to keep IT together. Heck, I was so naive then.
2009-07-05 at 20:12
[...] Why I like Microsoft THis post is a direct response to a blog post on Planet Ubuntu. Asking the question “Why do you like Microsoft?“ [...]
2009-07-06 at 01:49
[...] a comment » Martin Owens recently asked the question “Why do you like Microsoft?” It’s a pretty brave thing to ask an free/libre/open source Linux community like [...]
2009-07-06 at 14:39
Who are you replying to with this comment, doctorno?
2009-07-06 at 14:48
Thanks for the heads up, damn wordpress comments doesn’t allow proper threading. I think I’ll just remove the comment until I feel better, I need more sleep right now.