I feel like the authors of this site may be biased, though.
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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I'm a little biased right now.
not quite as bad as adobe, but they are among the worst
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.
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 thought we were well past this topic. I guess everything old is new again. In fact, I'll dust off a classic:
"Bugs fly through open Windows."
Michaelsoft is literally the devil
Microsoft has been building the O365 platform to lock out competitors and locking users into an ecosystem that is difficult to leave. They systematically eliminate competition and have pushed to create laws that make competition harder. In embrace extend extinguish, they are in phase 3, which is a massive red flag. They also started putting out spyware and malware into their software and have proven they can't maintain security; making them a bad actor in a position of power. Scale is debatable, but Microsoft is undeniably evil in 2024.
This ☝️
A coworker recently sent me a Word document with edits and comments they had added. When I downloaded & opened it (in Word on Windows!) it told me that it had the edits/comments but it wouldn't let me see them unless I log in to my Microsoft account and then view it online in the web version of Word. What the actual fuck?
Fuck that. I responded to my coworker and asked them to just send me the edits via email in plain text. I'm not winning popularity contests at work, but what the fuck Microsoft?
Microsoft is evil, but are they more or less evil than Google?
They took down the fucking don't be evil sign! Google used to be a good company but I don't trust their actions. I've only found out about the spyware level chrome browser, not to mention that Google has been coloring my searches on the internet.
But what do I expect from a ADVERTISING company first and for most?
Don't authenticate to a search engine.
youtube needs you to sign in to watch videos now
This is unfortunate, I like my privacy, I've also been hearing about server side ads. On grayjay, I haven't needed to sign in.
Worse than theyve been as is most every other massive conglomerate still in business since inception. As the adage goes, power corrupts. Absolutely immutable if the rest of the corporate world is any example
I think overall they are not better or worse than other tech giants. They try to be the platform for blank and thus to push competitors out of the marked, or lock it down so they can't enter. They try to extract as much money from their customers as they can, even if it makes the user experience worse. They push the boundaries of what the can legally do. They charge you, but you don't own anything.
What really grinds my gears is how they try to force stuff on me that I don't fucking want. I feel like they are completely different in that regard than for example Google. I use Google Maps because I want to. I don't use Chrome because I don't want to. It's that easy. They don't ask me to reconsider, they don't make it super complicated to switch, nothing. I can disable any Google App and forget about it.
To stick with the Google comparison, I also feel like Google informs me better and gives me more control regarding my data. This feels much more hidden on convoluted in MS products in general. For example I had no idea Office is basically spyware before reading about it elsewhere. In Google-land, they seem much more upfront about what they use and what I can opt out from (or in to).
First they tried to destroy FOSS, then they realized that they can make money and gain control using open source software, so now they pretend to support it. Microsoft is a monopolistic piece of garbage that I'm staying away from at all costs.
Extinguish, fail, extend, embrace, extinguish again!
"Rinse and repeat"
Lets talk about THEIR carbon footprint while creating "equality" and new "bussiness opportunities"
They do this because we pay them to.
I don't think they're pretending. Open source software is a valuable resource for basically all major tech companies, and a lot of it is driven by major tech companies. Some kind of combination of open source and proprietary software will always be a thing for them. This isn't some major contradiction, they use either model based on the specific needs of the project.
This is why some think "Open Source" is too permissive since they see it as free/cheap labor to be exploited by huge corporations.
I'm not sure that I see it that way, but I can see their point.
If as soon as it's more profitable for it to not be they stop supporting it, then yes they were pretending.
It's not as if they are holding themselves up as supporting Free Software philosophies (as opposed to Open Source), so where's the pretense?
If somehow it ever makes strategic sense for them to stop making use of the open source model, yeah, they'll stop. That doesn't mean they were pretending.
I consider their new push for webapps in stead of traditional client as bad practice, its buggier and runs like absolute shit
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