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Comment by timvdalen | Hacker News Reader

This may just be paranoia but if I were competing with Microsoft on something that I'd have private code for hosted on GitHub, I'd be pretty worried right now.

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That's not paranoia. That is completely reasonable considering Microsoft's history.

Microsoft have a history of corporate espionage against their customers?

Well, considering all this "telemetry" thing they have been pushing down its customer's throats, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with this move.

I think if Microsoft are even slightly shown to have used this to spy on its competitors, it'll be the end of the company as we know it, and people will go to jail.

Just for example, among the EU's criticisms of Microsoft were some of the documented (as in civil judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars documented) abuses of some of its notable customers like IBM and Intel.[0]

"Oh, but that was way back in the 80s and 90s, and different people run the company now. They're more mature and responsible these days." This is the only argument I've been offered when pointing out Microsoft's very shady history. It doesn't suffice.

[0] http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...

> among the EU's criticisms of Microsoft were some of the documented abuses of some of its notable customers like IBM and Intel

Scanning that, I don't see any mention that this was in any way due to corporate espionage, or weaponizing the customer relationship -- could you point me directly to that part?

Said by people who probably cheerfully use AWS.

That's a very weak counter argument

And nope, I don't use AWS or any other "cloud" service.

Microsoft doesn't have the time or resources to give a fuck about yours or other's shitty private repos. Besides, if they really wanted to compete, they would just utilise their massive engineering team to extinguish the competition.

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