Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
blogs.microsoft.com
Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#2So they are giving away, to educational institutions, a limited amount of a consumable resource which is amenable to lock-in effects (i.e. addictive), and problematic for privacy (i.e. harmful to users). In effect, they are standing outside schools giving away cigarettes.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#3So without knowing more details, without some special effort on the nonprofits side, I'm guessing this will lock them into an Azure architecture. That could be OK if MS continues the donations after the initial $1B runs out, otherwise it could end up costing the nonprofits/.edu's more in the long run than if they went with a more open path now.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#4Never 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://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/13/gates_gives_100m_to_...
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#5So they are giving away, to educational institutions, a limited amount of a consumable resource which is amenable to lock-in effects (i.e. addictive), and problematic for privacy (i.e. harmful to users). In effect, they are standing outside schools giving away cigarettes.
Evel Knievel couldn't have made that leap.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#6Between 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 they did Java" that people have either forgotten their modus operandi, or that I'm too much of a cynic and they've genuinely changed.
Sometimes I think I'm being too cynical and they're now just as "nice" as some other companies which have a mostly healthy relationship with open source & open architectures.
But then again all the news where they're being more open these days have to do with areas where they don't have established lock-in, including projects like .Net & ChakraCore which formed the basis of some of the major projects where they lost the lock-in wars.
Are they just trying to lure users they've lost back into their sphere of influence so they can tighten the noose again, or are they genuinely doing business differently now?
I don't know, but it's hard to place any trust in them when you've been burned so many times, and even though they have a new CEO middle management & their business model has a lot of inertia.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#7Never 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:/…
Indeed. Unless there's a promise of migration support once funs inevitably run out or some sort of lifetime fixed price/discount, such that the nonprofits or whatever can make an informed decision about the real cost of their infrastructure once it's no longer free, this is nothing but a terrible trap.
I'd hate to see organizations suckered into this only to find that it has unsustainable costs once the freebies dry up and whatever pains come from attempting to migrate to some other platform/service and/or back onto local servers.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#8This 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.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#9So they are giving away, to educational institutions, a limited amount of a consumable resource which is amenable to lock-in effects (i.e. addictive), and problematic for privacy (i.e. harmful to users). In effect, they are standing outside schools giving away cigarettes.
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.
Re: Microsoft will donate $1B in cloud services to nonprofits and universities
#10Between 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.