"First one's free."
Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
What cloud service would not have those issues? I think it's a great thing. People already use Azure or some other provider at these institutes (I know my uni does). If Microsoft wants to trade free services for market share, everyone partaking benefits from it -- unlike cigarrets at schools. If you or your institution don't want to partake, don't. I know I won't.
Every cloud service would have, indeed. But there is no reason the support has to be "free" access to cloud resources at all. Why not just donate the money and let the nonprofits choose which cloud to use (or whether to use a cloud at all)?
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Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#33Never entirely sure how to take some of these announcements. Prima facie it sounds great and laudable ... but I'm old, and my memory is full of stories of similar-sounding attempts to get youth mindshare with dubious subsidies of gear into schools, and the old classic of $100m to fund HIV research, $400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux. [1] I know - people tell me - it's a whole new Microsoft these days. [1] http:/…
They do a lot of things like most big companies, and some people seem to concentrate only the bad.
For example, they started funding OpenSSL and other core infrastructure[1] projects of the Linux foundation after the Heartbleed fiasco. But you don't find that kind of news on here.
By the way "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" seems to be quite hyperbolic, especially coming from 'The Register'. The link in the article goes to a 404 page, do you have any real details of the so called campaign?
[1] https://threatpost.com/group-backed-by-google-microsoft-to-h...
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#34$1B * COGS / Retail Price
A $200M donation?
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#35This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they graduate. Now it's just adapted for remotely-hosted software.
Yes - a cost of goods sold calculation requires the downstream marketing impact. nice, I own MSFT!
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#36Never entirely sure how to take some of these announcements. Prima facie it sounds great and laudable ... but I'm old, and my memory is full of stories of similar-sounding attempts to get youth mindshare with dubious subsidies of gear into schools, and the old classic of $100m to fund HIV research, $400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux. [1] I know - people tell me - it's a whole new Microsoft these days. [1] http:/…
They do a lot of things like most big companies, and some people seem to concentrate only the bad. For example, they started funding OpenSSL and other core infrastructure[1] projects of the Linux foundation after the Heartbleed fiasco. But you don't find that kind of news on here. By the way "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" seems to be quite hyperbolic, especially coming from 'The Register'. The link in the…
TheReg link works fine here. You're right about Reg style, though I have no reason to doubt substance of the story.
Agreed on range of perception of deeds of any large company. Microsoft has long form on this front (baiting the education market), though they're certainly not the only organisation to have done this. Unlike other student discounts - say for movie tickets, public transport, etc - there's a clear and obvious future payback for providing free or heavily discounted software & services to that demographic, as opposed to just charging less to customers who can't afford full price.
Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in.
EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185301/http://economicti...
https://web.archive.org/web/20030604185306/http://economicti...
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#37This is the same old strategy of giving students discounts which get them accustomed to proprietary products, then marketing to those same students when they graduate. Now it's just adapted for remotely-hosted software.
So long as the course is designed independently of Microsoft then it's a failing of the university if that happens. Any donation of cloud services, from any given provider, could be used to teach "how to deploy to this specific cloud provider" or "how to deploy to cloud services". The university needs to go for the latter.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#38The criticisms here remind me of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[1]: > The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it.…
You make some great points, and I'm genuinely torn on how I should feel about the announcement.
I'll comment on only one of your points, though:
> Microsoft is giving away a billion dollars worth of services,
> yet people are criticizing them for it.
2. The billion dollars is a retail value -- and the retail pricing is defined by Microsoft. I know these kinds of announcements (from everyone) always use retail value, but it's a disingenuous way of determining actual value.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#39Between this and the ChakraCore news item on the front page I've been wondering whether Microsoft really has been changed its behavior since the 90s, or whether this is just how they play the game when they're not in a position of strength as they are with node.js and cloud services. It's pretty telling from the ChakraCore thread not entirely being "They're obviously trying to embrace, extend, extinguish node.js like…
Posts like this remind me of the quote in N.N.Taleb's Antifragile book, The mind fights yesterday's war, but the body fights tomorrow's war (in the context of biological systems under stress). Some minds here are fighting a decade old war and no good deed goes unpunished in HN comments.
IMO you don't get to shed decades worth of reputation because you made a few good moves in the open source world.
For me at least, such a company would have to spend as much or more time pushing this new open idea than they did pushing the Embrace Extend Extinguish model.
Some people are more forgiving than me but I agree with the parents skepticism about how the openness seems to largely be in areas where they already lost the lockin wars.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do a lot of things like most big companies, and some people seem to concentrate only the bad. For example, they started funding OpenSSL and other core infrastructure[1] projects of the Linux foundation after the Heartbleed fiasco. But you don't find that kind of news on here. By the way "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" seems to be quite hyperbolic, especially coming from 'The Register'. The link in the…
TheReg link works fine here. You're right about Reg style, though I have no reason to doubt substance of the story. Agreed on range of perception of deeds of any large company. Microsoft has long form on this front (baiting the education market), though they're certainly not the only organisation to have done this. Unlike other student discounts - say for movie tickets, public transport, etc - there's a clear and obv…
>Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in.
There is no such requirement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-...
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...
>EDIT: Sorry - misread your 404 question -- try these:
I read those and I don't find anything to justify OPs "$400m to fund ways to destroy GNU/Linux" or The Register's characterization of '$421m to fight Linux".