On Tuesday, 5 June 2018 at 23:40:37 UTC, aberba wrote:
These people who complain don't usually contribute a penny to Open source.
I dare doubt that this is true.
Frankly, Microsoft has done great things for the world with software. Making computers accessible to everyone...
...and lock users in. Making computers accessible in terms of UI started with Xerox whose engineers later went to Apple. It was actually Apple that took computers away from the CLI high priests, but Apple machines were too expensive. MS's UIs were quite crap at the beginning, but they were clever enough to make their products available on cheaper PCs. Apple were too elitist.
[...]
I think some only look at what happened during Steve Balmer's time as ceo. It was "HIS" strategy to pick on Linux. In fact, he pick on Apple too and several other competing products. Its all marketing and competition and its pretty much everywhere. Monopoly and patent registration is everywhere. I'm not saying its a good thing or bad,...Its not just Microsoft.
See, that's the thing. MS under Steve Balmer played really really dirty. It was completely OTT, even by dog-eat-dog business standards that, btw, most people are aware of. We know how business works. Once the trust is gone it is very hard (or nigh impossible) to get people to trust you again. MS, under Steve Balmer, relied too much on bullying, intimidation and locking users in. However, they missed a lot of developments which was their downfall. With the advent of Mac OS X, iOS and Android, people began to realize that there was a digital life beyond MS (remember when people were afraid to buy anything else but Windows PCs saying "I don't want to be trapped in the Mac world", while cursing Windows at the same time?) People don't trust MS anymore and even if they are "nice" now, who knows whether it's not just because they are no longer in a position of power ("the wolf has eaten chalk"). But that's MS's problem, not mine.
If you're don't trust Microsoft, you shouldn't trust any commercial company. Microsoft has changed business model too by embracing open source. In fact, their the real believers in open source now compared to those who don't think theirs money in open source.
You shouldn't trust big IT companies. The names of people who have been cheated out of their software by them are legion.
