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Comment by cute_boi | Hacker News Reader

Ok where are all those people who had convinced me Microsoft has changed their hostile behavior? I mean how can they change when their dna is like this. Do people really think if some company like facebook/microsoft spends some dime they can whitewash their tarnished reputation? Can we buy reputation from money? Lets not create utopia for sophist corporation.

And their browser is not better than ungoogled chromium or vivaldi or firefox. Their browser despite being copy of opensource hasn't even published the source (I understand its BSD). Will we get edgium?

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Ok where are all those people who had convinced me Microsoft has changed their hostile behavior?

I'm big enough to admit that I was one of them. I genuinely felt that between VSCode, WSL, their involvement with improving Python, the improvements to Linux on Azure, Open Source .Net Core etc. etc. that Microsoft was changing and Windows was a genuine and valid OS option for developers. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and a second chance, despite having been an actively anti-MS Linux user through the whole "Open Source is cancer", EEE and anti-trust years.

Turns out I'm the sucker.

I wouldn't be too harsh on yourself. I think the people involved with those projects are genuinely trying to pursue the idea that providing quality open source tooling can be good for business without predatory behaviour and dirty tricks that MS has been famous for. However MS is a big company, I imagine that there's a separate set of people managing and developing Windows who are much closer to the "old" MS we love to hate.

It's self-defeating IMO - the developer goodwill they gain with the projects you mentioned is immediately lost any time they pull stunts like this.

> It's self-defeating IMO - the developer goodwill they gain with the projects you mentioned is immediately lost any time they pull stunts like this.

That's something they will never ever get. I could be convinced that VSCode is a great tool or that the azure cloud is a worthwhile alternative to AWS or the Google Cloud...

And then I remember it's microsoft, a giant software company so shady i refuse to run any of their software on my devices because every day theres a new dark UI pattern, a new advert injected somewhere, a new abuse of trust. Why would I EVER recomend any of their software to a customer of mine if I deeply distrust them and expect them to try to fuck me over some way or another any way they can.

I'd be really curious how the teams who produce VSCode, .NET, WSL etc feel. It must be a bit infuriating to be undermined like this

Kudos to you. It takes a big man (or a woman, or anything inbetween) to admit being wrong.

I was also in this boat as a very happy user of VS Code, Azure, and the .NET ecosystem. I still think MS's philosophy behind those products is a good one. My mistake was in thinking it would apply to their older products. I guess my next laptop is another Mac.

Same here. Sucks that they now own GitHub.

I genuinely felt that between VSCode, WSL, their involvement with improving Python, the improvements to Linux on Azure, Open Source .Net Core etc. etc. that Microsoft was changing

Well, a part of it changed somewhat, because these things were unheard of in the past..

Windows was a genuine and valid OS option

..it's just that this bit didn't change.

for developers

Depending on the type of application, Windows can practically work perfectly fine for a developer, always has and probably always will. Just too bad said developer also has to deal with the not-so-sunny side of MS.

Same, it's very disappointing.

> Can we buy reputation from money?

Yes, apparently they can. There used to be huge threads here on HN on how today's MS has nothing to do with its past, that it's ridiculous to believe that the company will always stay the same, that the Ballmer epoch is all over. I mean yes, these people are right, MS is a different company - but will still do grayish stuff on the verge of legality, as long as they can go unpunished. And because corporations are not people, apparently we can only speak about the legal aspect, not the moral one (as if nobody was personally responsible for these decisions).

Corporations are made by people and are led by people. I wish we get rid of the limited responsibility stuff. You're the CEO, you go to jail. This would probably break large companies in a multitude of much smaller ones to manage risks. How many people can you manage and be reasonably sure don't do something that sends you to jail? Not many. We would still have software, FOSS demonstrate it, and entrepreneurs would still find a way to create new things.

The point is that Microsoft effectively "bought" that good will with developers and now they've cashed it out. I have no plan to trust them, and if I hear the "actually Microsoft has been good for open source" argument, I can finally counter it with reality.

I never trusted them and I'm not using their products unless I really must (a customer's Windows server, their Android PDF reader or Google's one, maybe that's it.) But yes, when one is young and exposed to Microsoft for the first time and see them behave it's easy to dismiss the tales of old bad behavior. If one is 40 or 50, it takes a lot of naivety to trust them or any similar corporation. If anybody did, they are hopefully changing their mind because of the facts of the last few years.

As long as they have a younger generation that they can market to, and paint the older generation as grumpy graybeards, this will endure.

Money can buy stuff. Apple forgoing some, in my opinion, minor tracking and ads stuff in the grand scheme of things, garners it a ton of goodwill among the tech and gadget communities.

Facebook gets hated far more than is necessary. As if it’s some evil far worse than other companies. Even just other major tech companies.

Amazon somehow is able to maintain a decent enough reputation. The disdain for Amazon is far less than Microsoft on HN. Or in general where people don’t care about Microsoft but are more or less okay or better with Amazon.

This is all anecdotal and my personal opinion of how big tech is viewed.

The big difference is Amazon consistently focuses on the customer. That is their big thing. Notice that the criticism is never about what Amazon does for/to customers, but about other players: delivery partners, employees, rival sellers. Where the customer does suffer (IME very rarely) it is due to a failure (e.g. not keeping up with scams on their marketplace) and not malice (actively spending engineering effort to make the product worse for consumers, see Microsoft Windows, or promoting engagement at the expense of society). Meta is actively thwarting international attempts to hold genocidal regimes accountable, so I think they deserve the hate they get. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/facebook-...

It’s frustrating with Microsoft because the bad behavior is completely unnecessary. They are torching their reputation and goodwill for what can only be marginal gains in usage share for a free product, that might ultimately lead to showing slightly more ads.

At least when Amazon screws over business partners, it is on my behalf (in the form of cheaper or better goods and services - Amazon Basics being a great example). When Microsoft screws someone they screw me. When Facebook screws someone, they screw me (or they did, before I deleted my account, good riddance).

I think the key here is that both things are true:

1. Microsoft has changed their hostile behavior in some segments

2. Microsoft has always been hostile in others, and that has not changed

In a company as large as Microsoft, any kind of transformational change is not going to be evenly distributed.

A charitable take on this is: Some parts of MS are as they have always been, but others have improved.

A slightly more pessimistic take: Microsoft realized they needed to change to say relevant with the developer community, and so they focused on that community only.

Moves like this certainly bolster arguments that MS never really changed, but I think it's more complex than that.

>Can we buy reputation from money?

Public relations is concerned exactly with this.

I've been saying this all along. The leopard can't change its spots that easily. Micro$oft is still Micro$oft, despite so many people's wishful thinking to the contrary.

Time for Linux developers to buckle down, rally behind standards that third-party developers can count on, and give the world a better platform that respects the user...because we know none of the big players will do that.

There always will be those who support and those who don't. People are not 100% rational to begin with, and not having complete information only amplifies the problem.

It's called Azure Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Edge, not Edgium. Edgium would be way too short for a Microsoft product name of the 2020s.

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