> Microsoft is the number two cloud vendor. When they violate the privacy of their paying customers, they are dead.

Perhaps it's different for paying customers, but I do have evidence of them scanning my OneDrive about ten year ago and them reading Skype chats about a year ago. I bet if someone uploads the OS X source code to OneDrive, or perhaps a private Github repository, the good parts of its design would somehow make it into Windows. Or perhaps something else that they can use, I'm pretty sure they'll check that out before making an acquisition offer.

Perhaps it's besides the point, but core osx is open source as Darwin and XNU, and I don't see much value in them. NT hybrid kernel is extremely well designed, and there is an ecosystem built around it. It is extremely unlikely anyone at Microsoft will find anything aiding in Office 98 compatability online...

I think we should be more careful to distinguish between accessing data and "big data" usage like stats, ads, ... (and scanning illegal stuff). The later is "normal" business while the other is a real breach of trust.

I'm pretty sure they don't ban Skype accounts based on algorithms alone, seems risky.

> evidence of them scanning my OneDrive

Microsoft publically states that they scan OneDrives for forbidden content, like pornography (yes, all pornography is forbidden on OneDrive, not just child pornography).

> I bet if someone uploads the OS X source code to OneDrive, or perhaps a private Github repository, the good parts of its design would somehow make it into Windows

The OS X kernel is open source, and that's the most valuable part of the OS X source code. It's not like Microsoft can import the OS X window styles. https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

>The OS X kernel is open source, and that's the most valuable part of the OS X source code

Uh, no.