- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
I was curious what the Linux people think about Microsoft and any bad practices that most people should know about already?
- Sonotsugipaa ( @Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English59•6 months ago
Microsoft is definitely the corpoest of them all.
Probably not the worst corpo, likely even, but out of the corpos, they are the most corpo corpo of any corpo.
- They own LinkedIn, and I could just stop this list here.
- They’re the founding fathers of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.
- They are the vanguard of videogame studio consolidation, after buying Activision and Bethesda.
- AI
- Everything they do is soggy bread: you can eat it, it’s probably mostly healthy, I think, but if a product is not the minimum viable product then it will be; take the Halo franchise as a reference for blandness, Windows for end user tolerance - both are controversial yet functional and popular software that people complain (and do nothing) about. Halo took quite a hit in popularity, but still…
- Remember when a software company got in trouble for monopolistic practices? That was a thing that happened at some point, and it was Microsoft. Not that it will ever happen again, nowadays all the cool kids have some slice of the tech landscape on a chokehold.
- delirious_owl ( @delirious_owl@discuss.online ) 2•6 months ago
Worse than Apple?
- greyw0lv ( @greyw0lv@lemmy.ml ) 6•6 months ago
Apple is highly restrictive on their OS and over priced. They are extremely pro consumerism with heavy marketing and engineered obsolescence to ensure you are always pressured to buy their new tech, and they are historically very strongly anti-right-to-repair.
Microsoft is bad. But at least they are primarily a software monopoly.
- Sonotsugipaa ( @Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•6 months ago
I’m not sure, at least the unrepairable mess made by Microsoft is software rather than hardware - you can reinstall a janky OS but you can’t unexplode a phone that disassembled itself when you sneezed in its general direction.
There’s no fine line between the two companies.
Edit: they continuously fucked up Halo in unexcusable ways, fuck them, they’re worse than Apple. Forgot about that.
- emberpunk ( @emberpunk@lemmy.ml ) English1•6 months ago
Ok but look on the bright side of things! you get great futures with this big tech concentration and control of the market. For instance, who else doesn’t want a operating system hotkey to Linkedin, baked into their settings? How did I use a computer without that before?!
- BaumGeist ( @BaumGeist@lemmy.ml ) 43•6 months ago
They tried to destroy linux and free/libre software, and when that didn’t work, they started cornering the market and pushing for a move from “Free” to “Open Source.” They also support SaaS model, and have made it next to impossible to get a new computer without their mediocre OS. On top of that, their OS is full of spyware, and is starting to become adware too.
But that all pales in comparison to the fact that you do not own your own OS: you can run Microsoft’s OS, but you can’t modify it or share it.
Oh, and this falls more in the realm of personal preference, but the deliberate lack of customizability is a real pain in the ass.
4/10 OS, only slightly better at disguising its capitalist greed than Apple.
- scratchandgame ( @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml ) Tiếng Việt1•6 months ago
pushing for a move from “Free” to “Open Source.”
Can you explain more? Is that related to the clown gpl guys criticizing BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh on FreeBSD for letting Apple to do whatever I can’t remember?
- rand_alpha19 ( @rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com ) 10•6 months ago
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Free software can be freely copied, modified, distributed, etc. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay for it.
Open source software has its source code published. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re able to copy some or all of it, modify it, distribute it, etc.
It’s getting more and more common that, even in cases where code is open source, only part of the codebase is actually available. This is something that Microsoft (and other wealthy tech companies) loves to do to show that it’s “transparent.”
- scratchandgame ( @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml ) Tiếng Việt1•6 months ago
Thanks.
Open source software has its source code published. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re able to copy some or all of it, modify it, distribute it, etc.
GPL as an example.
Free software can be freely copied, modified, distributed, etc
If you are citing the GNU’s website, you should remove the “modified”. I’d quote a mailing list user:
Say if OpenSSH was licenced under (A)GPL, companies would likely not use it because they wouldn’t be able to incorporate it into their IP, they would then try to code a shoddy implementation, and have numerous security bugs which would affect the end user. In other words, you are just shooting yourself in the foot.
- BaumGeist ( @BaumGeist@lemmy.ml ) 1•6 months ago
I couldn’t find any primary source on OpenSSH’s licenses, but wikipedia says “BSD, ISC, Public Domain.”
Both BSD and ISC explicitly grant permissions to modify the software (and redistribute the modified software), and Public Domain means no rights reserved whatsoever, so the mailing list user’s points aren’t relevant to any of the Four Freedoms (aka the Sacred Texts).
Without access to the source email: it looks like it’s a debate about using copyleft licensing instead of BSD/ISC, which is sometimes considered the Fifth Freedom. If you want an argument about that, I’m happy to do so (later), but it isn’t a valid reason for saying some piece of software fails to meet the definition of Free Software.
- scratchandgame ( @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml ) Tiếng Việt1•6 months ago
(A)GPL restrict the modification of the software. I’m sharing an example how that restriction works.
- BaumGeist ( @BaumGeist@lemmy.ml ) 1•6 months ago
How does it restrict modifying the software?
- scratchandgame ( @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml ) Tiếng Việt2•6 months ago
It requires any modifications to be under GPL.
And it also requires anything that incorporate GPL codes also be under GPL.
And the code must be published to the copyright holder as far as I know.
How it harms the end user are described.
- BaumGeist ( @BaumGeist@lemmy.ml ) 6•6 months ago
Did you mean
Is that related to the gpl advocates who criticize BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh at FreeBSD for letting Apple do something (I can’t remember what)?
I’m not trying to be a grammar nazi, I just want to make sure I’m interpreting you correctly and not putting words in your mouth.
Afaik, BSD and MIT licenses qualify as Free Software licenses. I could be wrong; I am not a lawyer, nor am I Richard Stallman.
As for your first question:
Can you explain more?
@rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com did a good summary of the distinction, so I will expand on m$'s role:
By most Free Software advocates’ accounts, the rise of the term “Open Source” was a deliberate move to make proprietary software less of a bitter pill for us radical digital anarchists: “look, our code is Open and Transparent (but you still can’t reproduce or modify it, even if you buy a license).” At the same time, Open Source advocates argued that this was the “Shoe-In-The-Door” for Free Software into the corporate/capitalist landscape—it’s not, because it doesn’t actually advocate any of Free Software’s Four Essential Freedoms (Five, if you consider Copyleft to be essential, as I do).
So basically the corporate world took the concept of Free Software, which was starting to be a threat to their businesses, sanitized it of any actual freedom, and sold it back to devs and users as some kind of magnanimous gesture that they were letting us look (but not touch) the code they wrote. Open Source.
M$ has been essential in this shift. Perusing their github, they make it clear that they’re willing to toss projects onto the pile, but make sure as hell to keep the Freedom from infecting any of their larger, popular software (e.g. Office, Visual Studio, Windows). And in return, they get access to whatever code you host on their service, assuming they can interpret vague phrasing in their Privacy Policy loosely enough.
- scratchandgame ( @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml ) Tiếng Việt3•6 months ago
Thank you.
You left out that they refuse to let end users control updates on the system unless they resort to hacky bullshit (and even that doesn’t work consistently). As far as I know (and have experienced on Windows Server) this extends to enterprise as well.
- macniel ( @DmMacniel@feddit.de ) 30•6 months ago
pretty much.
If you need a point for developers: all public code repositories hosted on GitHub are harvested, at least in 2021, and used to train copilot regardless of their license. Furthermore, GitHub is OWNED by Microsoft now.
- toastal ( @toastal@lemmy.ml ) 1•6 months ago
Don’t forget they own npm too
- originalucifer ( @originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ) 30•6 months ago
my favorite bit was how no one at microsoft actually understood their own licensing pricing. for decades, you could call microsoft for pricing and get different answer from people in cubicles next to each other or even from your own rep.
it was as if they were making it up as needed.
- smileyhead ( @smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de ) 29•6 months ago
Windows is the worst thing that ever happened to computer science.
And I don’t exaclly mean the product itself, but the mindset and habits that came with it.
- thingsiplay ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 7•6 months ago
The worst thing is, that Windows (and DOS) is the only main operating system that is not POSIX compatible, or Unix like. Besides not being open source…
- bamboo ( @bamboo@lemm.ee ) 1•6 months ago
As someone who primarily uses Unix-like systems and develops cross platform software, having windows as a weird outlier is probably best for the long term. Windows is weird and dumb but it forces us to consider platform differences more explicitly. In the future if a new operating system becomes popular, all the checks that were implemented for windows will make it a bit easier to port to newer systems.
- jsomae ( @jsomae@lemmy.ml ) 4•6 months ago
Xbox controller is the worst thing to happen to emulation
- thingsiplay ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 7•6 months ago
I don’t agree.(Edit: Read the replies, he is actually right.)Using Xbox controller since 360, now the One and Series S controllers as my preferred gamepad for modern emulation systems (meaning I have a Snes like pad for older systems). I have no idea why you think that a Xbox controller is bad for emulation.
- jsomae ( @jsomae@lemmy.ml ) 11•6 months ago
Oh they’re very good controllers! The problem is that they took Nintendo’s button names (ABXY) and transposed their positions. It’s utter chaos, and very hard for me at least to remember that A is B and B is A.
Playstation, by contrast, came up with entirely new button symbols, so it’s much less confusing that O -> A.
The APIs for gamepad interfacing are a total mess now, with some based on button names and some on position (south/east/west/north).
- AlolanYoda ( @AlolanYoda@mander.xyz ) 4•6 months ago
I agree with you, but Xbox just took the Dreamcast’s layout, which means SEGA is the original culprit
- jsomae ( @jsomae@lemmy.ml ) 2•6 months ago
:O I had I idea!!
- thingsiplay ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 4•6 months ago
I’m from the 80s and totally understand what you mean. That’s a valid point, yes, its a total mess, especially for emulation where the button names collide. This was actually an “objectively” bad choice by Microsoft.
- LeFantome ( @LeFantome@programming.dev ) 3•6 months ago
Ironically, they were probably afraid of the very explicit litigiousness of Nintendo.
Two solutions:
- different names ( like Sony )
- different positions ( like Microsoft )
Third solution:
- get sued by Nintendo
Maybe they did some early testing and got feedback that people liked the button names being the same as Nintendo. Or maybe they read criticism about Sony using different names.
Maybe they were originally the same and then the legal dept depended a swap too late to change the actual names.
Maybe none of this stuff.
As you can see, I find the legal system to be a bigger threat and generally more frustrating than Microsoft.
- jsomae ( @jsomae@lemmy.ml ) 1•6 months ago
Yes of course, I agree this is the rationale for sure. Still I blame Microsoft (and Sega as I’ve just discovered) for this.
- Fargeol ( @Fargeol@lemmy.ml ) 29•6 months ago
How bad is Microsoft?
Yes
- TFO Winder ( @tfowinder@lemmy.ml ) 17•6 months ago
How bad is Microsoft?
Bad enough to be stay away from
- Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼 ( @Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English17•6 months ago
First they tried to destroy FOSS, then they realized that they can make money and gain control using open source software, so now they pretend to support it. Microsoft is a monopolistic piece of garbage that I’m staying away from at all costs.
- Bilb! ( @bilb@lem.monster ) English9•6 months ago
I don’t think they’re pretending. Open source software is a valuable resource for basically all major tech companies, and a lot of it is driven by major tech companies. Some kind of combination of open source and proprietary software will always be a thing for them. This isn’t some major contradiction, they use either model based on the specific needs of the project.
This is why some think “Open Source” is too permissive since they see it as free/cheap labor to be exploited by huge corporations.
I’m not sure that I see it that way, but I can see their point.
- WarmApplePieShrek ( @WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•6 months ago
Extinguish, fail, extend, embrace, extinguish again!
- Citizen ( @xilona@lemmy.ml ) 1•6 months ago
“Rinse and repeat”
Lets talk about THEIR carbon footprint while creating “equality” and new “bussiness opportunities”
- WarmApplePieShrek ( @WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•6 months ago
They do this because we pay them to.
- 0x0 ( @0x0@programming.dev ) 16•6 months ago
They coined the term Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and they haven’t stopped enforcing it. I haz not much faith on WSL and similar.
- sansrealname ( @sansrealname@lemmy.ml ) 16•6 months ago
Maybe I’m going crazy but I feel like I’ve been seeing this post or an identical one for many days, maybe even a week, yet the age is still one day.
Still, fuck MS and all.
- thingsiplay ( @thingsiplay@beehaw.org ) 16•6 months ago
Yes. During the entire history of MSDOS, Windows and Internet Explorer, there are so many things you can pick why Microsoft is bad. Now they even integrate Recall into Windows. I want to say that I always disconnected Xbox from Microsoft; and I’m not entirely sure why.
The question of this post is a bit misleading, because it implies that someone could answer with “no”. Better question (in my opinion) is “How bad is Microsoft?”.
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English13•6 months ago
Why did you link to the Microsoft website?
- Captain Beyond ( @beyond@linkage.ds8.zone ) 13•6 months ago
Microsoft is about as bad as any other proprietary software company. They do some good things for the open source economy, but they also mistreat their users.
I think it’s a mistake to look at the free software movement as being a reaction against Microsoft or Google. It’s against the proprietary software world in general.
- Grangle1 ( @Grangle1@lemm.ee ) 12•6 months ago
IMO the title of “worst computer tech company” is essentially a tie between MS and Google right now, with the two constantly one-upping the other back and forth on stupid ideas and corporate practices.
- Sina ( @Sina@beehaw.org ) 3•6 months ago
I would argue that it’s either a 4-6 way tie, or Meta is the worst, but MS is certainly terrible.
- utopiah ( @utopiah@lemmy.ml ) 11•6 months ago
As a shareholder (which I’m not), it’s absolutely amazing.
As a human being though… it’s simple to look at the history of the company, from its inception based on nepotism and locking-down was hitherto the common good, to going from one place of monopoly (OS, app, cloud) to another (extending to whatever is trendy at the moment e.g XR with HoloLens, AI with OpenAI, etc).
It’s IMHO one of the very worst thing that could have happened to humanity in terms of cognitive empowerment. Apple is not far behind but in terms of locking up an entire ecosystem but Microsoft, sadly, is doing it better.
To clarify what I mean is that Microsoft is the business embodiment of learned helplessness. Most people would shrug at the quality of software they provide, the price, etc ONLY because they are convinced, wrongfully so, that they are is no legitimate alternative. If users were actually able to chose, not being coerced into but properly chose, by experiencing alternatives, the World would be totally different. Instead of having computer users who feel an adversarial relationship to their devices, we would have a much stronger relation of “this is MY device” the same way a lot (not all) of people have a repair toolbox at home. They know they can try to fix something in THEIR home, even improve it. Most people understand it won’t be easy, they might mess it up, but it’s possible to try. Not in software, and that’s entirely Microsoft “success”. Maybe in an alternative reality others, like Apple, would have made that happen to, but in our reality I blame Microsoft, Bill Gates upbringing from his legal mindset father and well connected mother.
We could have a world were users own their devices, have a challenging yet empowering relationship to technology, starting with software, and instead we have exploitative learning helplnessness. So yes, Microsoft is that bad.