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duncan_bayne

This is the company behind the Halloween Documents:

http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/

Why anyone would choose to trust them is beyond me.

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You really think the Microsoft of today is the same as the Microsoft of 20 years ago?

20 years ago, Microsoft was convicted as an abusive monopolist. It's up to them to convince me that they've reformed, and they're doing a kind of poor job of it.

Are you arguing that I am to just assume that they've changed due to the passage of time?

How hard does a 28 year old person need to work to convince you they're not the same as they were when they were 8 years old? Microsoft has changed CEOs and lower leadership a number of times in the last 20 years. I submit that it would be difficult to find ANY company that can go 20 years without changing.

Change? Sure.

But they've done nothing to suggest they've shed their utterly user-hostile philosophy from 20 years ago. It just manifests in different ways.

To run with your analogy: imagine you ran into someone at 40, someone you hadn't seen in 20 years. 20 years ago he was into petty theft and vandalism. These days, he works as a lawyer for a patent troll. The specifics have changed; his character has not.

No, but that's not the question here, is it?

20 years ago, Microsoft had an astoundingly user-hostile philosophy that manifested, at the time, in the Halloween documents: a strategy for 'defeating' Linux & open source software, rather than winning by producing a better outcome for their customers.

The user-hostile philosophy continues. But now, they've conceded the battle to open source software in general, and Linux in particular (witness moves towards Docker support on Windows). Thus the user-hostility now manifests as rampant advertising, and bullying users into unwanted upgrades.

My point is that Microsoft had nothing but contempt for their users 20 years ago, and they've done nothing since to change that.

People can become very dangerous when their life is threatened. I think their new strategy is to hurt OSS from within. For example make OSS harder to use, or move it in a direction away from their core income/market.

I don't know. It can go both ways. You seem to assume that Microsoft cleaned up their act for the better, but for all we know it could be the opposite. You don't automatically become good (or less evil) by ageing.

Of course it's not automatic but pointing to something that happened in the distant past (on the scale of the technology industry) is a terrible argument to justify an opinion about something current.

I wasn't justifying my opinion. I was merely pointing out that it's odd to assume that Microsoft has changed for the better in the intervening 20 years, despite a) being awful 20 years ago, and b) having failed to demonstrate any change for the better since.

It does seem so.

In some ways they seem worse.

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