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Comment by NewsaHackO | Hacker News Reader

For some insight, look how people are combing for curse words/ devs making jokes about people being brain damaged etc. There is no upside for the company, and all that has to happen is some unsavory politically incorrect joke to get missed from sanitization and the are on the cancelled chopping block.

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The "cancel" stuff only comes from a tiny minority of vocal extremists. Everyone else is entirely unfazed.

Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.

It is about 'risk'. These companies are deeply afraid of being outed that way. They do not want to end up in court over something silly. Just remember a bottle of windex has the words 'do not drink' on it. 99.99% of people out there would not have done it but there is that small cadre of people who will do it and sue. Either for the power of it or for money. Do not underestimate the depths that fools will goto.

Yeah… if folks are offended by some of the comments in the source code here they really aught to have a look at some of the other popular media from the era to contextualize what was considered acceptable at the time.

I think I lost it when they suggested we stop using the term 'sanity check' or 'sane defaults' because they might offend, well, brain damaged people.

I am close to writing a browser extension that does a find and replace to reverse change these imposed, humourless, coddled changes.

> I am close to writing a browser extension that does a find and replace to reverse change these imposed, humourless, coddled changes.

I will be your first paying customer

How dare people attempt to be more empathetic towards others.

It's certainly about a feeling, and I think superiority has more to do with it than 'empathy'. This much is clear with the aggression, bullying and moral grandstanding that's usually behind the language police.

I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation. I'd rather speak my mind than please everyone. That's sanity for me and for many others.

"I only care about myself and do what I want." Thats just being shitty, for you and many others.

Holy false dilemma, Batman! If that's your reading from what I said, you really can't be helped.

Your exact words are "I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation."

Empathising with others and yourself isn't mutually exclusive. What's hard to grasp with that?

> I empathise with myself first and will use what ever word feels right in the situation

And you're doing the same right now. Isn't your use of the word 'selfish' in the thread 'hurtful', and therefore not empathetic to me? By chiding me aren't you empathising with yourself more, and wishing that I would defer to your feelings instead of my own?

The difference between you and I is I don't claim that a virtue is supreme and then immediately enact its opposite, which is really what makes this drive for 'inclusive language' and 'empathy' so repugnant to me.

Empathy and calling out people's self-declared self-centered behavior are, as you say, not mutually exclusive.

After I've patiently explained it to you, you really think that you aren't exhibiting the same behaviour? In a much more worse way because it comes in seemly guise?

Legal also may be concerned that having source makes it easier to detect patent infringement and code copying. Even if you deem the risk zero that that actually happened, why run the risk of somebody claiming you did?

For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.

That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.

For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.

No upside for the company? Do you not see all the people who are delighted to be able to browse the code?

No commercial upside for sure. Just some extra reputation points among a very niche group and maybe some happy employees.

Those niche people are the developers they want to use their software. When that niche is the target audience for whole product line of yours pleasing them is a good idea.

The historical value is invaluable for our species, especially in the far future. There is a moral imperative for this kind of thing to be made available for posterity that, in my opinion, completely overshadows any commercial, copyright or political correctness concerns.

Frankly, there should be regulations guaranteeing source code release after a few decades, and that all code, including third party code, is released from copyright protection. In return, companies should be granted legal protection from any potential legal consequences. It was over 30 years ago. The idea that somebody should be able to sue Microsoft for copying code or a third party can sue them for releasing it or that they should in any way be punished for unsavory language used THIRTY years ago is clearly utter insanity.

Part of me thinks that its not cancellation but more not wanting to personally insult people, by name, in a medium that you never thought anybody but a handful of people might see (and certainly never expected to be published verbatim for the entire world to see) from 35 years ago (maybe people who wrote those comments were a bit less mature)

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