o_0. I remember when I had to use tools to disassemble their precious source that they kept withheld and locked up. Now they post their new tech to github and I can view all the source easily. Now they try to make their tech work on Linux.

I'm all for fair criticism but your prose is not that, its dogma. If you think they're still the same company I can only imagine that you left your eyes behind in the 90's. The culture has shifted a lot towards the engineers and you need to appreciate the good things that happen in life otherwise all you'll see is gloom. They're by no means perfect but they are _different_.

People's memory is short. I've had access to MSFT source code before under shared source apart from the CSPs suspiciously, I've had symbol server around for years and been able to pop into framework code, then there's stuff like this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749640.aspx - not even counting the amount of source coming from MSR etc.

My criticism is not dogma, it's the regression in all the other areas that's the big problem. I appreciate not having to wade through treacle to get my job done. This has got considerably worse in the last 3-4 years as the platform sort of falls to pieces on a regular basis.

Do you remember when server, dev tools, OS and platform all dropped at the same time? That was peak quality. What we have now is the diametric opposite. We have no direction with .Net Core other than all over the place, unmaintained crap falling out everywhere. It's hell. It's really difficult to build and manage a medium to large sized project when someone is smashing all the pieces off the board once a month. And also when you have to raise a defect with one of their products it is closed, ignored or via partner support "here's a registry fix you have to deploy to 2000 disparate companies to fix our product because we removed a UI option" type outcomes.

The good things in life are where I start a project and run it to completion and the tools and frameworks perform as intended. That's not there any more. Things like python, golang and even Java offer better proposition. Even the tooling quality, such as Visual Studio 2017, we have to unconfigure a lot of features to make it stable (like CodeLens for example).

I wouldn't even consider picking it as a platform to build a new project on now because of the time, rewrite and cost risk.

What you see is marketing and front. What I see and oversee is a large team of people fighting this every day.

https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Can't really say nothing's changed if a lot has. I personally believe they need to refine their OS department, clearly that side of the company needs serious change. I say this after having heard of all the oddities from Windows 10 (their latest and current OS) and how awful it is to remove software from Windows 10.

That's one fork of VS Code. Not sure how to find projects implementing .NET Core I do know Mono is implementing code from .NET Core though see:

http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/dotnet-integrati...

I am stating they've changed somewhat since the Bill Gates days. Is my position really so fucking radical that it deserves your tangential rant about registry settings? Peak quality != OSS stance.

My argument is merely that there _is_ a difference. Its been over twenty years, surely the passage of time generates _some_ difference. My position is far from radical nor am I excusing Microsoft from anything but merely stating they have a more positive stance on OSS today than they did during the Gates era.

You should just ask some people who work there;)

The ad hominem was uncalled for.

Ignored on privacy.

Ignored on bugs.

Ignored on product direction.

That's not feedback or customer obsession, that's lip service. And we pay for the software so we can only vote with our feet and on the way help other people to avoid the same pitfalls.

I find this a very entitled and weird attitude. I also find the opposite side of this attitude weird, that if you release source suddenly you have new obligations. That opposite side is even worse because it makes people scared of releasing code.

Being open source or free software isn't some kind of contract to provide support and "community" or whatever. Slap a license on the code, toss it over the fence and be done with it. If you want to offer support and accept patches great, if not, also great. If you're doing it for fun or advantage good, if you're doing it out of respect for your users to let them fix it themselves, even better, because the alternative is to give them no recourse but to go around begging for you and only you to fix it.

The free software that MSFT has releases is free software (and open source), period. They don't have to do anything further to deserve that appellation.

Nothing.

So I phone up support and PAY to have something fixed.

Nothing.

I try playing nice. I try paying nice. I get nothing. I vote with my feet. Nice or not, that's also an aspect here; choice.

Then stop. You don't have to make anything better for them. Fix it for yourself. If you're not having a good time trying to help others, then stop doing it. You have no obligation and neither do they (except, of course, if there were explicit contracts involved).

I have some Xchat patches. I tried getting them into Hexchat, but they didn't want them. Well, looks like I'm now permanently running a personal Xchat fork.

Source is better than no source, but I can see why people would complain about the way they're handling things right now.