I was curious what the Linux people think about Microsoft and any bad practices that most people should know about already?
I don’t think about Microsoft at all mostly. I supported their stuff professionally in the past and friends/family but otherwise total avoidance. They own some big game studios so I probably use some of their products like Minecraft but I haven’t used their operating systems or applications for decades and I dislike and distrust cloud services and theirs is no exception. All big companies tend to be the same. Try not to depend on any of them.
They coined the term Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and they haven’t stopped enforcing it. I haz not much faith on WSL and similar.
I consider their new push for webapps in stead of traditional client as bad practice, its buggier and runs like absolute shit
This thread teaches me that generally, most Linux people are looking at windows. Meanwhile Microsoft only thinks Windows is 16% of its business.
Basically, it seems, most Linux users do not think hard about Microsoft.
IIRC, Azure represents the largest slice of Microsoft’s revenue… And ironically, a fair chunk of that is run on Linux
You’re right. Both cloud services (like Microsoft 365 measured by licensing) and azure each individually are about double Windows. They together make over half of Microsoft’s earnings while Windows is like 16%. Then you’ve got games and linkedin and others filling up the smaller %.
Microsoft doesn’t need Windows, you can run your office 365 off Mac or Linux for all they care. Just host all your virtual workloads on azure regardless of OS if it’s not serverless, and they’re fine with taking that money.
Why did you link to the Microsoft website?
In case people didn’t know what company he was referring to. /s
I’m just hearing about them now. Do they make really tiny software or something?
Buggy and laggy. I work with it and its a daily pain for my soul and mental health.
How bad is Microsoft?
Yes
As far as humanity goes, Microsoft and OpenAI might turn out to be the worst companies on earth with the Clearview database being fed to Boston Dynamics war robots and US military goggles. Due to these companies, USA could effectively genocide the entire world as they see fit. This makes the doings of Google and Apple look like a joke in comparison. However, Apple has damaged the society itself via creating capitalism brand cults and teaching this strategy to other brands, entities and people. So Apple has also done horrific things. Google and Apple smartphone generated metadata is regularly used by CIA to commit genocide and assassinations of Muslims and other people.
In short, Western Big Tech and all of NATO/Anglosphere is a big evil for rest of humanity.
Michaelsoft is literally the devil
not quite as bad as adobe, but they are among the worst
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.
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?
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.
Thank you.
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.”
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.
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.
(A)GPL restrict the modification of the software. I’m sharing an example how that restriction works.
How does it restrict modifying the software?
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.
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.
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.
I personally have no problem with people using Windows but I don’t want it shoved down my throat. When people first boot their computer they should have the option to choose what OS to install (Windows, various Linux distros, and FreeBSD) and that choice should always be available in the bios.
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.
I like Micsrosofts office suite, but I hate virtually everything else. I got tired of their recent decisions and bought an Apple laptop, partly because I’m getting into iOS development and wanted that experience. But my other computer is dual booted with Fedora and Windows for when I absolutely need Windows, I’ll swap over, bit rarely do I outside of some gaming.
