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On 07/01/13 23:03, Philip Hudson wrote: > Odd message to post to this list. > > On 7 Jan, 2013, at 10:02 pm, Martijn Grooten wrote: > >> Of course, there's the whole open source thing. > > Is there really? > > There's also the whole Free Software "thing". They're not the same. > Just thought I'd mention it. > >> I like open source, > > Can you guess what the next word is? > >> but > > > <snip> > >> Microsoft. I >> certainly don't dislike them > > > You strike me as (very) well-informed, Martijn, so that surprises me. > They're dastardly, moustache-twirling, cartoon criminals. They've been > convicted of anti-competitive acts directly harming their users, that > is, everyone alive to a first approximation. They screw their > customers because they don't (think they) have any choice. There's no > ifs or buts about the matter; they're dirty rotten scoundrels. That is > not the case for any other major tech company I know of. Most of the > big names, when you think about it, are players in free software to > some extent, with the possible exception of Adobe. > > In terms of tech, MS have never been or produced any of the following: > > - First > - Least buggy > - Fastest > - Safest > - Smallest > - Cheapest > - Easiest > - Most featureful > - Most interoperable > - Most empowering > - Prettiest > > or any other superlative I can think of. > > Yet thanks to one stupid IBMer's mistake in 1981 they are the leading > software house today. > > BTW, might it be apposite to declare interests? My work involves no > kind of partnering with MS, no revenue or value of any kind going > either way. Can your employer (Sophos, right?) make that claim? > > Either the user has control over the software or the software has > control over the user, as Microsoft's crime demonstrates, so, no, we > can't all just get along. Software that does not guarantee the four > freedoms is not morally neutral, nor is it natural or inevitable or > the default; it is of recent origin and it has nothing like the record > of achievement that free software does (though it does stand on open > source's shoulders). > > -- > Phil Hudson http://hudson-it.no-ip.biz > @UWascalWabbit PGP/GnuPG ID: 0x887DCA63 > > Hmm, this is pretty strong stuff! I'm slightly bemused, because I'm used to being the biggest open-source/free software hippy advocate in any given group at work, or down the pub or whatever... I guess this being a LUG, it's not really that surprising that there are some seriously staunch Free Software advocates present. Staunch enough that my stance seems almost 'watery' by comparison. I guess I'd classify myself as a pragmatist, and find myself once again in the slightly odd situation of stepping up to defend Microsoft again. Let's not pretend that in the real world things are quite so black and white. As I said earlier, Microsoft is a convicted anti-competitive company, and I do still bear a grudge for that. I also hate them for all the substandard, half-arsed crap they've foisted on unwilling markets over the decades. Bill Gates' infamous "open letter to hobbyists"* still has the capacity to make me rage even today, and I wasn't even 1 year old when that was published :] As a sysadmin I've been dealing daily with Microsoft products for much longer than I care to remember, and even now, nearly every single day, I still run into colossal "WTF?" moments fixing their dumber choices. Don't even me started on the whole embrace/extend/extinguish thing. Or Metro. Or NT 3.5, office format incompatibilities, Access, MS Bob, Vista... I could go on. However - and sorry Phil, you should know the next word... *BUT* It's a huge company, employing I imagine tens of thousands of people. Outside of HR and PR** of course, most of them are perfectly capable, non-evil people. They frequently surprise me by writing good software, that enough other people also think is good that Microsoft is the biggest IT shop in the world and runs a massive percentage of all computers out there. Just outright dismissing them as evil and useless seems... well, frankly, a little bit crazy. I'll give just one little, nuanced example: the MS team responsible for SMB fully co-operated with the Samba team over years to help implement the latest, greatest v4. Yes, of course, this was partly because the EU forced MS to do so, partly as a result of the monopoly abuse saga. I'm sure many higher-ups and board level MS finger-to-mouth evil types must have hated this with every fibre of their being, but the actual engineers, the low level we-love-software engineers at MS went so far above and beyond the call of duty helping out with Samba interoperability that Jeremy Allison, head Samba honcho, specifically praised them and gave them a big shout-out in the release notes. See? It's just not that simple. Disclaimer: I'm very much a Free Software believer. In an ideal world, that would be how all roll but this is not that ideal world. Debian is my favourite OS. I saved the reply from RMS I got as a young lad when I emailed him a "thanks for everything chief" message. But let's try and be a bit more realistic here. Right, now stop making me defend Microsoft you bastards, this is like the third time in as many weeks :] Last thing: Phil, I'm a bit unsure about your last paragraph. Proprietary software existed right from the very start of computing, open source very definitely came along later. Sure, there was a general "share it about" kind of philosophy in the early computing world, but everything in the early decades was proprietary. And I really mean, *everything*. MULTICS, everything from IBM, Honeywell, etc. It all came from the military originally remember, and they were never really that big on sharing stuff like the analogue system specs for their fire control computers, nukes, etc. Regards *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists **EVERYONE in HR/PR is evil: there are no exceptions -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq