> once called open source a cancer

There are some really good arguments as to why we should be worried about Microsoft so can we please stop ruining them by using this complete misquote as a component.

This comment covers it well:

> This is disingenuous. He was referring to the licensing model of certain open-source projects, where the introduction of a single line of code coming from an open source project would require the whole of the Windows stack to be open-source, effectively "contaminating" the rest of the stack. To this day this is still a problem to many companies and legal department must carefully review the licensing of the libraries used by their devs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225806

To be more precise, this is what Steve Ballmer said back in 2001:

> [...] Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.

https://web.archive.org/web/20011108013601/http://www.suntim...

I think this is a case of "it doesn't look good, but the more you think about it the less bad it looks." There's a kernel of truth in the unfortunate wording. GPL (certain versions) is problematic if you want to keep your related code closed source. When I interned at Microsoft, you had to get approval from legal to use open sourced code specifically for copyright liability reasons.

I'm sure Ballmer also disliked Linux for other reasons, but this line makes for an ambiguous example of it.

Given that Microsoft has been pretty enthusiastic about tools like VSCode and Linux support on Azure, I'm personally cautiously optimistic with Nadella at the helm.

But in fact, copyright is the cancer. There is no way to disable copyright. Even if you put something in the public domain, copyright will reattach itself and future users can be legally denied full access to it. Copyleft is the cure for copyright. It's the only cure we know.

Except that GPL comes with its own set of restrictions and it forces these restrictions on every bit of code it touches. LGPL is a bit better but I find the line confusing and blurry often. Many people do not believe it to be the cure at all.

Many people don't understand what they're talking about. Those restrictions you talk about are purely to stop copyright reattaching itself in the future.

Anyone who uses copyleft really wants to declare the following: "This is not copyrighted and derived works shall never be copyrighted." That is not possible with current copyright law. Copyleft is the only way to get that.

GPL is not about enforcing restrictions, it's about doing what's necessary to neutralise the damaging effects of copyright. The fact that is uses copyright to achieve that makes it one of the greatest hacks of all time.

Microsoft specifically also stated that Linux "mutates" in anti-Linux advertisements, for example https://doraj.com/wp-images/2005/03/microsoft-vorteile.jpg

This fits pretty well with Microsoft calling Linux a "cancer".

(Note that you also have to carefully review licensing of libraries used with proprietary licenses; that's not a problem caused by open source unlike the quote wants to imply. Proprietary licenses also tend to "contamine" a project and make the entire project non-free, so that is not specific to open source either.)

It's not a misquote and it's not disingenuous. That was their attitude at the time.

Sounds like they were referring to GPL (and similar), not OSS in general.

It is a misquote. See above. He was talking about Linux not open source, and specifically about the licence that Linux has chosen to use.

It would be entirely reasonable to find it an objectionable comment nonetheless, but please find objectionable what he actually said, not some alternative version.

OSS was built on the GPL. Clutching at straws, that is.

Also the company that was responsible for killing the Limux project[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

> In November Munich city council decided to revert to Windows by 2020 with all systems being replaced by Windows 10 counterparts.

> Reasons cited were adoption and users being unhappy with the lack of software available for Linux.

> A report commissioned by Munich and undertaken by Accenture found the most important issues were organizational.

> In 2018, journalistic group Investigate Europe released a video documentary via German public television network ARD, wherein it is claimed that the majority of city workers were satisfied with the operating system, with council members insinuating that the reversal was a personally motivated decision by lord mayor Dieter Reiter.

> Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for Microsoft moving its German headquarters from Unterschleißheim back to Munich.

It's not as clear-cut as you're painting it.

It's not clear-cut in the sense that Munich's IT landscape was and is fragmented which made and makes it very easy to blame IT problems on LiMux. But that doesn't make me believe even for one second that Microsoft didn't lobby their way back to Munich. Here's a little story from some years back about Microsoft's lobbying efforts to prevent usage of ODF as a standard in the UK:

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240234078/Government-op...

Shortly before the official announcement of the end of LiMux, Microsoft's German headquarter moved to Munich [1]. It's also estimated to cost about 89 million € to return back to Windows [2 (german)], including 24 million € for "external consulting".

1: https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-germany-moves-into-a-new-h...

2: https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2017-26-Muenchens-Rueckfall-...

That is still conspiracy and not "Microsoft killing a project".

So, hypothetically of course, if Microsoft subtly let the new Mayor Dieter Reiter know that they will only build their new headquarter in Munich if Windows was to replace LiMux, then what about this could not be considered as Microsoft killing LiMux? Sure, they didn't directly pull the plug, but that's semantics.

Wow, I had no idea. That seemed so big for OSS, and the killing blow was relatively recent.

It doesn't seem as if MSFT has entirely changed.

May be of further interest to German-speaking folks in Munich: there will be a discussion about LiMux on 11th June with former Munich mayor Christian Ude and others.

https://www.gruene-muenchen.de/terminliste/termin/freie-fahr...

I just finished moving all my 20+ repos over from github and deleted all of my github accounts. Feels good actually. I'm glad to see gitlab getting good attention. I bet all of the people behind gitlab are feeling pumped/anxious/excited right now! ^_^

I hope you are right and I hope Gitlab folks are happy. But also note that it just became easier in many big corporations to sell Github to senior management, because you know, "nobody got fired for choosing Microsoft"

Congratulations! That sounds like a really good use of your time. Nobody ever get fired for choosing Microsoft...

It was actually very easy for me lmao. ^_^ I'm nooooooo noob to computer technology.

> this is the same Microsoft

No, it isn't. It's like saying that Ford is the same company that finds more profitable to let customers burn than to fix a flaw[1].

[1]: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Ford_Pinto...

There's cgit if you just want people to be able to clone over https. They can always e-mail you patches.

> Gitlab Pro Platinum

GitHub?

Friendly reminder: Skype was pure garbage before MS acquired it. I have no idea from where people got the idea that MS ruined Skype.

Started the browser wars? Too bad the browser wars have been too small, because we obviously haven't learned anything from them.

Erm, while I agree Skype wasn't the pinnacle of chat software pre-MS acquisition, I believe OP is referring to their absolute butchering of the consumer client[0].

Anecdotally, I stopped using Skype for iOS shortly after it was changed because it went from a solid, reliable internet-calling service to probably the most buggy / laggy interface I could have expected.

[0] - https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-updates-skype-after-...

You're totally off your rocker. They undeniably obliterated Skype in every possible way. Literally, it is an absolute abortion. Look on ANY community site about Skype, you will see its 95% livid rage to this sorry excuse of an app (including me, I actually used Skype for everything, now I'm forced to use the old version which hopefully isn't deprecated). https://www.reddit.com/r/skype/search?q=new+skype&restrict_s...

> Skype was pure garbage before MS acquired it.

You have a weird memory. Skype was a very nice thing back in ~2009-2010.

Skype grabs port 80 and 443 by default, which is not very nice. Since at least 2010, but ISTR even earlier than that.

maybe its call quality was better, but its client has been garbage all the way back to the msn messenger days.