In the same minute that I learned GitHub had been acquired by Microsoft, I cancelled my pro subscription and began moving my critical repositories elsewhere. I'm old enough to remember the MS that tried to choke the life out of GNU/Linux and spread FUD about all FLOSS, the one that engaged in anti-competetive behavior during the "Browser Wars". I'm not suggesting that this blunder of a delay is related to the Microsoft acquisition, but the abusive "Look at me, I'm changing" spiel never cut any mustard with me.
Vote at the ballot box and with your dollars. Do not reward executives, lawyers, or engineers who dissemble or obfuscate.
memory of that stuff is just never ever going to die, is it?
yet the same people use google, and facebook, and AWS, like those companies sit upon moral high ground. they do not.
Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people, and the response is to continue to hate Microsoft for their loss? I do not understand.
Just admit your motivation for saying things like this: you hate Microsoft because Slashdot told you to, or tells you to, and you want to let people know about that, unprompted. Nothing about Microsoft's behavior in the 1990s has any bearing on what GitHub does today.
Microsoft is still doing this anti-competitive things with web browsers today. Every so often, my Windows 10 machine switches back to Edge, or adds Edge back to the task bar, or prompts me to try out Edge, "the recommended browser for Windows".
And no one is claiming that Google, Facebook, and Amazon are better. Those are not the examples I would pick to show Microsoft could do better, for sure. This is whataboutism.
> yet the same people use google, and facebook, and AWS,
Speak for yourself.
For me, the lesson I learned while growing up with the MS of the 90's was to not trust any big corporation. The power imbalance is too large, individuals have no way to protect themselves and they will take any and every opportunity to exploit that.
This pattern can be seen with in the 90's with Windows, it can be seen today with Github and LinkedIn (talk with recruiters and they will tell you how MS is jacking up the prices and removing functionality) and it can be seen with any of Big Tech in the last 20 years.
Seems like you’re being just as hostile in the other direction. If this isn’t the appropriate time to complain about Microsoft, then what is?
I can’t speak for everyone, but I continue to not like Microsoft because they don’t make a single piece of software that I like, and they’re ruined the ones I did like.
I am just dead tired of Microsoft getting zero credit for the changes they've made since the antitrust verdict.
they haven't done EVERYTHING that EVERYONE wants, so lots and lots and lots of people still shit on them like they're still mad, and it still gives nerd cred to shit on them for any reason. as if we're perfect in comparison...
if the same people speak poorly of Facebook, Google, or Amazon in the same ways, the reactions observed are very different. Very different.
People pick on Microsoft because they once earned it, yet we let so many worse things slide, today, because those things are done by companies which are not Microsoft.
Happily picking an opinion: I won't use phone apps; I won't buy new computers or devices, though I infrequently buy refurbished; I won't buy new cars; I carefully vet all vendors for quality, politics, and ethics (and have largely automated the process); I won't buy new kayaks; I eat a plant-based diet and try to source it locally/ethically; I won't knowingly vote for or endorse rapists or murderers and do my best to vet candidates.
I abhor Google, loathe Facebook, have considerable contempt for Musk (as a person) and the products his companies offer, use Amazon sparingly and grudgingly, and only started shopping at Walmart during the Great Recession when a) they became the employer of the majority of my neighbors and b) other vendors in my area closed.
@naikrovek may not now be aware of what happens when one makes assumptions about other people and their actions, beliefs, etc.
> Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people
I don't know, hardware still regularly does not support Linux, the Linux desktop has a risible fraction of the world's user base, popular apps still only exist for winmac.
It won on the server, sure, but that's hardly every single way that matters, at least from what I remember as an open source user in the '00s.
> Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people
So when someone gets a job where they're required to use Windows and spend all day in IE11 and Microsoft Office, let's say at a very large semiconductor company, they're hallucinating?
Yet you moved the goal post from "Linux defeated Microsoft in open source" to "there isn't anyone using Windows at all". Or are we all hallucinating your comment?
Try undertaking to recognize the actual premises of ∀x-style statements and ∃x-style statements that you encounter in the wild, scooter.
The goalpost was set at "Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people". Ignore the record of what was actually claimed if you want (the quotes you're throwing around are works of your imagination), but that is not merely a claim that either Windows or Linux is "the most common".
The observation that that there exists some X where P does not hold is precisely the way to counter a claim that for all X, P is true.
First let me say that talking with you is really annoying, way worse than anyone else I've interacted with on this site. Removing the "must be hallucinating", "try undertaking to recognize", "scooter" would turn your comment more into thoughtful discourse than sneer (you might want to check out the HN guidelines). I am trying to politely argue, pointed out that your comment didn't make sense to me hoping for a clarification, and got shit on, twice. Nice.
To attempt to answer you (I might regret this): what did you take "every single way that matters to open source people" to mean? By gazing through your insults into your comment, trying to find the "∀x statement" you think you saw, I have to assume that you think that means "every one developing open source code isn't using Microsoft?" Is your made-up acquaintance working at a semiconductor company primarily developing open source software there (rather than, say, semiconductors)?
Is the "∀x statement" about "x: way that matter"? Am I to take "non-free software is being used for making semiconductor at a large company" as an example of something that should matter to open source people?
You seem so convinced that there is a logic statement written right there with quantifiers and everything that you don't hesitate to use ridicule on complete strangers and question their grasp of logic. It's funny but couldn't really count as an argument (assuming you were trying to argue rather than just get some bile out).
> First let me say that talking with you is really annoying, way worse than anyone else I've interacted with on this site.
This is not an uncommon reaction from people who are accustomed to bullshitting their way into arguments and who typically "win" those arguments by being just enough of a nuisance—and where the stakes are just low enough—that the likeliest outcome tends to be that the other party decides to move on rather than exhaustively refuting the bullshit. When you find people doing this with you, you are not "winning". In fact, that it happens is a consequence of how annoying others find it to interact with you.
An example (of someone who was similarly incredulous that everyone didn't just let the lame contrarian quips go unremarked upon—and of the sort of company you're in): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27906289>
> what did you take "every single way that matters to open source people" to mean?[...] I have to assume that you think that means "every one developing open source code isn't using Microsoft?"
No, you don't have to assume that. The only possible reason to assume something so self-serving is because you refuse to engage in a good faith resolution.
On the issue that is under discussion, there's no ambiguity here—at all.
The original statement—which you distorted twice—is a for all X statement: "Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people":
For all X, where X is some thing that "matters to open source people", the condition C is true, where C is the claim that "Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft [on those Xs]".
The fact that you are unable to parse this out of a very straightforward passage like the one that appears in the part of the comment I quoted, but that you _are_ able to just, like, make some shit up about where the goalposts were set suggests very much that you are not making any attempt whatsoever to actually understand the issue, and you are just in the business here of issuing low-effort quips (like your first two here[1][2]) that don't actually track the discussion. But setting that aside, let's move on to the actual issue of the claim.
The following scenario results in a contradiction of the statement that I responded to:
It is 1997. Ned is working for a very large semiconductor company. At Ned's company, they are required to use Microsoft products. Ned instead wants to use Linux. He is an open source people, and this is what matters to him.
Now, it is 2022. Ned is still working for that very large semiconductor company where they are still required to use Microsoft products—he's not allowed to use Linux. This still matters to him.
It is therefore undeniably refuted via proof by contradiction; the statement that "Linux succeeded and defeated Microsoft in every single way that matters to open source people" is false.
Having now dealt with that, let's read back the transcript and look at your multiple attempts to move the goalposts, e.g. from "every single way that matters to open source people", to something that you plucked out of the air entirely—that is, whether one of Windows/Linux is merely "the most common". That is absolutely _not_ where the goalposts were set, and that's just the first instance of distortion. The second is where you go on to manufacture a quote: '"there isn't anyone using Windows at all"'—which appears nowhere except in your comment where you present it as a quote. Not only is this bullshit, it is the kind of bullshit that is against the rules here on HN.
Do not do this kind of thing. And certainly don't do this sort of thing while making a big deal about how annoyed _you_ found yourself over the course of carrying out this (entirely avoidable! excruciating!) back-and-forth that you alone were responsible for foisting onto the discussion.
No. It won't die. In the same way that memory of the Holocaust won't die (hopefully), or that memory of Putin's invasion of Ukraine won't die (hopefully), or that the memory of the corruption of Donald Trump won't die (hopefully), or the memory of the enslavement of Black human beings in the US won't die (hopefully), or the memory of corrupt policing won't die (hopefully).
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
You have no idea of what tools I or anyone else on here use or don't use. You only know that I use git, which I could be using independently of everything. I could be using git to track my personal thoughts every day and nothing more. I make an effort to source everything I use as ethically as possible, though it is ridiculously difficult in the world of modern technology.
Microsoft bundling a browser is not the same as the Holocaust. Not the same magnitude, not the same offense, not the same violation of any moral code, at any magnitude.
No one died because Microsoft included IE with Windows. no one was enslaved because Microsoft included IE with their OS.
that you think these are all events of the same magnitude has completely invalidated your opinion, and placed you firmly in crackpot territory.
That’s a pretty neoliberal attitude to effecting systemic change, do you think that’s enough to mitigate those behaviors considering they crop up elsewhere and ongoing
If refusing to do business with a company whose business practices you don't like is "neoliberal" then the term has officially been stripped of any meaning, significance, or usefulness.
Thank you for your input but I am not commenting on the decision to stop purchasing. I'm responding specifically to the final demand: "Vote at the ballot box and with your dollars." The OP is encouraging us to take action against this behavior specifically via choosing how they allocate their dollars as consumers (and also voting), which is core to the neoliberal mission. They're not just saying it's worthwhile to stop purchasing, they're saying that this is the solution
"Voting with your dollars" is not only a neoliberal attitude, it's also a liberal attitude, but moreover it is also very common for leftists. Unless you're buying the rope from capitalists to hang them, realizing how power flows in our current economic system is essential for all.
Waiting for bad corporate behavior to punish individual actors for individual behaviors with dollars requires such an extreme level of widespread activity that you might as well be talking about something more radical and mass-organized than promoting care over simple purchasing decisions, to be meaningful at a systemic scale. These negative behaviors are a feature of capitalism not aberrant fringe behavior to course correct. It’s fine but leaving such a strong command to, paraphrasing, “fix this world by choosing between democrat and republican, and through carefully considering your purchases” (not even a clear call for organized boycott, just the individualized ethics) does not satisfy me
Vote at the ballot box and with your dollars. Do not reward executives, lawyers, or engineers who dissemble or obfuscate.