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Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

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Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#11

Post by ekianjo »

tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

> All money and support to free software is most likely good.

Open source is not the same thing as Free Software. From the website itself, in the history section:

> The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label "free software." Brainstorming for this new label eventually converged on the term "open source", originally suggested by Christine Peterson.

Open-source is used broadly to define a way of developing software, but it says nothing about the rights it gives users. In practice there are several projects called "open sources" that are not using licenses that empower users, hence the valid distinction with Free Software where the end goal is user freedom.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#12

Post by tyfon »

gear54rus wrote: post #3
tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

You have a lot more patience that I do, frankly. That's the point people keep missing. These a-holes are seizing control over our computing primarily through Windows and while this stuff (described above) continues, it doesn't really matter if they open-source a lot of shit that doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things or throw a few bucks here and there because all in all it's Windows that has become a huge…

The patience is becoming more and more an experiment to see how far they will go to control my usage in the operating system as a thanks for my 1000 NOK purchase of a license.

Just what does it take to actually be able to use a new Windows without getting shafted?

My gaming is almost completely moved to the PS4, Switch and Linux, even though neither Sony nor Nintendo are paragons of virtue in any sense, they are smaller companies that depend on happy customers.

Neither of them are shoving the horrible GAAS (Games as a service), that is loot boxes and other shady tactics, into their games like Microsoft is doing. There is no forced online. You can just pop in a disk/cart and play without registering 1000 accounts on the internet. The experience is much better imho than fighting windows.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#13

Post by tyfon »

ekianjo wrote: post #11
tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

> All money and support to free software is most likely good. Open source is not the same thing as Free Software. From the website itself, in the history section: > The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by partici…

Yes which is why I specifically wrote free software in two of my paragraphs, I should probably have clarified.

I do not necessarily think supporting non-free open source software is good, and hope some of this goes to supporting actual free software.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#14

Post by csmattryder »

tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

Devil's advocate: You're supporting `n` billion devices around the world running your product, and the users are typically non-technical (from "I know how to open Word" to "Where's the 'Any' key?")

You need to battle against your competitor's product that "just work" because they can target one specific hardware profile and you can't, so you put in telemetry to improve compatibility. Makes sense.

It enrages us, the technically-minded and privacy conscious, but only serves to make Windows better for the non-techies and help MS stop haemorrhaging users to iOS.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#15

Post by ionised »

tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

I am under no illusions that they have changed at all. They have an agenda, and it won't be for the benefit of open-source.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#16

Post by czechdeveloper »

cjsuk wrote: post #5
voltooid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent a few minutes this morning trying to figure out how to turn off Cortana on my windows 10 virtual machine. I don't want to have to spend 45 minutes of my morning trying to figure out the ins and outs of elevated power shell to just turn one freaking app off on an operating system that I bought and therefore should have control over. In my view, this is very obviously tailored to deter most people from rem…

Add to that the clearly missing quality control and it's just eye poke after eye poke for me. I rebuilt my daughter's laptop a couple of weeks back after her MS account got hosed due to an unresolvable billing problem that just threw errors galore and MS support is like talking to Cortana now. It took me 3 hours to get it into a workable, secure and privacy respecting state with a local account. And it's still unreli…

Good thing is, that a the good stuff they do (C#, TypeScript, Visual Studio Code) is not limited to Windows use.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#17

Post by cjsuk »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #16
cjsuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that the clearly missing quality control and it's just eye poke after eye poke for me. I rebuilt my daughter's laptop a couple of weeks back after her MS account got hosed due to an unresolvable billing problem that just threw errors galore and MS support is like talking to Cortana now. It took me 3 hours to get it into a workable, secure and privacy respecting state with a local account. And it's still unreli…

Good thing is, that a the good stuff they do (C#, TypeScript, Visual Studio Code) is not limited to Windows use.

You're right but this puts me off among other things: https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093

(even though I've been writing C# for 15 years now)

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#18

Post by notalaser »

csmattryder wrote: post #14
tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

Devil's advocate: You're supporting `n` billion devices around the world running your product, and the users are typically non-technical (from "I know how to open Word" to "Where's the 'Any' key?") You need to battle against your competitor's product that "just work" because they can target one specific hardware profile and you can't, so you put in telemetry to improve compatibility. Makes sense. It enrages us, the t…

So put a big red scary "PRESS THIS BUTTON AND YOU'LL GET HACKED IN TEN MINUTES UNLESS YOUR COMPUTER DOES NOT CRASH BEFORE THAT" that turns telemetry off and let me press it.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#19

Post by tyfon »

csmattryder wrote: post #14
tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

Devil's advocate: You're supporting `n` billion devices around the world running your product, and the users are typically non-technical (from "I know how to open Word" to "Where's the 'Any' key?") You need to battle against your competitor's product that "just work" because they can target one specific hardware profile and you can't, so you put in telemetry to improve compatibility. Makes sense. It enrages us, the t…

If they used the collected data only for compatibility improvements and discarded it when done.

If they allowed me to opt-in and I could shut off _all_ other telemetry.

If I trusted Microsoft.

Then we could talk :)

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