What does a trustworthy Microsoft look like to you?

I’ve been a developer for nearly 25 years. I’m not sure if there is anything MS could ever do to regain my trust. Unfortunately this seems to be the way of large tech companies. At one time I thought Google was the best thing ever (don’t be evil). Now I find that I view Google in much the same way as I do MS. A huge corrupt behemoth that needs to be broken up.

I definitely saw Microsoft-of-the-90s as corrupt and harmful, and I definitely see Google-of-today as corrupt and harmful. I am not wholly opposed to the idea that both are bigger than companies should be allowed to be.

But apart from the fact that they followed the unfortunate modern trend to add telemetry to things, I can't really say Microsoft has done anything particularly offensive to me in the past... nearly a decade?

Just because you've been a developer for 25 years doesn't mean you should evaluate a company based on 25 year old events.

In my opinion Microsoft has done a great job as long as you can completely ignore everything about Windows 10.

https://hothardware.com/news/microsoft-changes-offline-accou...

https://www.howtogeek.com/519572/microsoft-is-testing-ads-in...

And that is all recent, on top of all the other stuff they won’t fix, like issues where file extensions magically reset to Windows defaults, nagging you to just please try Edge because its better for real this time, and the unavoidable mandatory Candy Crush - seriously, if you install with no internet connection, it will keep a placeholder there for you that will install as soon as you’re online.

The telemetry issues are annoying too, not because they exist but because you have to read a books worth of literature to understand what they chose to document. Seriously:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...

Windows 10, I wanted to like it but I can hardly tolerate it. Has Microsoft changed? Maybe, but apparently the Windows team didn’t get the memo.

I would generally agree Windows looks more like traditional Microsoft than many other arms of their org.

And the Candy Crush thing... like, if it was just Home edition? Fine. If it was even smart enough to realize it need not preinstall that on a domain account (the installation of UWP apps is technically per-user), like, if they'd demonstrated any recognition that Windows is used in professional settings... I'm right there with you on this one.

However...

> like issues where file extensions magically reset to Windows defaults

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190225-00/?p=10... is probably the best response to that. Given the number of Windows app developers who do unholy things with their apps, it's hardly a surprise. (My understanding is Windows has a huge number of secret compatibility shims just to keep major software vendors' bad hacks and API misuses working.)

> nagging you to just please try Edge

I literally can't escape "switch to Chrome" nags, as a Firefox user. Every Google site has at least one, Google's home page has displayed an amazing three Chrome popups at the same time before. I'd maybe give you this one if they weren't waging a war on it to a far more aggressive foe, and losing badly.

I’m a fulltime Firefox user personally, and I have not noticed a whole lot of nag. Does it not show up under Linux or something?

edit: So far I’ve tried switching my user agent, turning off adblock, using a private/logged out window, on docs and search. Not that I’m doubting you or anything, but I am surprised I’ve not noticed it much since switching back to Firefox.

It’s also probably worth disclosing that I work for Google, though at home I am using Firefox and Duckduckgo.

This is a 2018 screenshot I took: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoEPgo2V4AA4Ql5?format=jpg&name=...

Your mileage may vary on any given month, as Google frontend code seems to come and go regularly and randomly, indeed varying by platform, OS, and lunar cycle.

One especially odious thing recently: GitHub works with ICE to round up and terrorize undocumented people and their families. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-12-04...

If you want an action to be made legal, you legalize it. Don’t blame the enforcement of the law. It makes for great virtue signaling but is useless for bringing long-term change and it doesn’t help provide a stable environment for people illegally in the country.

ICE itself routinely breaks laws in trying to capture undocumented people. But to speak to your point directly, I would love to see immigration reform. Until then, I’ll absolutely keep speaking out against ICE. That’s not “virtue signaling”, it’s just advocating for a cause I care about.

Furthermore, basically everything Microsoft did that made developers hate them is legal. Why is it okay to hold a grudge for “embrace, extend, extinguish” but not for aiding and abetting an organization that consistently violates our civil liberties?

The legislative process is not the only feedback system that is enshrined in the US constitution, else there would be no mention of public gatherings or protests. What you suggest is a false dichotomy.

This is the curse of globalist behemoths. Small companies is where it's at. Localism.

Nonsense. There is hardly a local government in Australia not hopelessly corrupted by local real estate interests. In many nations local corruption is endemic right down to every neighbourhood police station. Size isn't the question: money's corruption of power operates at all scales.

Size is absolutely the question. There is always corruption, but in small municipalities at least the scale of corruption is contained. In a sufficiently local area the corrupt has to brush shoulders with his unwilling benefactors and be shamed.

Empirically, that's plainly false. Corruption declines, on any level, when the right policies & incentives are in place.

I try to not anthropomorphize companies.

They're made up of many small and hardly interconnected parts.

Whoever made some despicable decisions 25 years ago, almost certainly don't work there anymore.

Gates just finally stepped away from the chair. When that shit comes from the top, it gets baked into the culture and has a staying power beyond any tenure.

What do irrational numbers like phi have to do with the lack of ethics of large corporations?

For most businesses, Microsoft still holds a monopoly position on desktop OSs. For a lot of smaller IT departments, this bleeds into back-end servers as well.

Microsoft has the Windows Subsystem for Linux, allowing Linux binaries to run on Windows. How about the reverse? Get WINE to the point where Linux (or FreeBSD or some fully source OS) can reliably run Windows binaries.

Along the same line, provide portable libraries to allow other office suites to reliably edit MS Office files (docx, pptx, etc). Maybe Adobe or someone will come up with a commercial competitor, instead of just LibreOffice.

Make Windows and MS Office a choice, rather than a tax businesses have to pay to be compatible with everyone else. That would go a long way to establishing trust.

Microsoft is arguably working on it: They offered up exFAT support to Linux, and it's been added to the kernel. SQL Server being supported on Linux is huge. Probably the absolute biggest selling point to Windows-based infrastructure remains Active Directory, and if you're cool with being cloud-based (I'm not, FWIW), they offer that through Azure now.

Windows is like three decades of legacy systems, but I would argue many of Microsoft's recent decisions have been at the cost of their Windows division.

Chapter 7 Bankruptcy where they get acquired by a newly-reformed Sun Microsystems (where no stock is owned by Oracle or Oracle shareholders).

EDIT: I'm mostly kidding, but you can't really expect true change of morals when the vast majority of the upper management is the same under the new CEO as under the old one.

As a former Sun employee I love this comment, but in all fairness Sun did have its own level of sleaze in the C suite (neither Eric Schmidt nor Scott McNealy would really do well as ethical leader exemplars)

That said, I'm thinking Moon Microsystems :-) Not as big or as hot as Sun. (ok that is a bad punalogy) I did get the domain though, it was available and I couldn't resist.

Under certain conditions, can eclipse the the Sun. "Eclipse" ... now there is a name I haven't heard in a long time.

But can you make a cool logo out of "Moon"?

> But can you make a cool logo out of "Moon"?

No, but with minor butchery you can re-use the Sun logo with the letters MMS (Moon Micro Systems) :-)

At the risk of sounding somewhat naive, I think people do have the capacity to grow over time. Perhaps part of the reason why Microsoft has seemingly turned over a new leaf in recent years is that upper management has learned from their past mistakes? I do see your point though, and I think it's stuck in the back of a lot of our minds.

Not to mention that upper management doesn't consist of the same people as 15 years ago.

Most of Microsoft's anti-trust related behavior was in the 1990s. Closer to 25 years ago. Merely a quarter of a century.

There's something hilariously farcical about holding a grudge toward Microsoft for a quarter of a century.

It's not so much a grudge as a reaction, call it an immuno-type response. I shed my MS-OS Windows Desktop addiction over 20 years ago to become a desktop Linux user and I still see my co-workers struggling every day with many of the same issues I haven't had to cope with anymore since then.

Ever since I have been able to get the Microsoft out of my systems, I find myself naturally predisposed to keep it out. I am not against Microsoft, I really am a fan of a lot of the open and developer-focused things they are doing, certainly not least of which is their support for Kubernetes through Azure, but this does not make me more receptive to going back to living in a Microsoft OS-flavored ecosystem today, it just is not happening for me and it's nothing to do with holding a grudge or similar.

I use a Mac now because it was provided by work, if they offer me a trade for a Windows machine I would probably consider it because of the progress made by WSL2, but our group policy lags somewhat behind and certainly not on insider ring, so none of my coworkers have been able to try WSL2 on their work-provided Windows machines, or likely will for some time, and that makes me seriously think twice about it.

My natural inclination is that I would much rather install Linux as the host OS so I have control over things like when updates get applied, or whether a reboot needs to take place immediately, in spite of the struggle that sometimes comes with that, it is really much better to have the source and keep the capability to control your own hardware. And then only run Windows in a VM whenever it is really needed. (In other words, to be able to occasionally run Windows apps in a similar way as I do when I have to use them on a Mac.)

Microsoft's corruption of ISO to standardize Office Open XML is much more recent than that.

I think Sun was worse than MS. Your scenario would terrify me.

Sun’s hardware was expensive although their software was nice. Their handling of Java put me off them and led to this current state with Oracle.

They had many positives, but I’d rather have old Microsoft than old Sun if I had to pick only one to eat everything. Definitely prefer new Microsoft.

I don't really distrust Microsoft per se.

I just find it tragic that the only way GitHub could survive (I guess) was to be BOUGHT. Like why couldn't they stay smaller, focus on what they were good at, and standardize with the community all the integrations in an orderly manner?

Although, Microsoft has shown they care more about the developer community than Apple as of late. So for that, I can at least say my trust is rising. But it's a bit too late for me, I'm happily running Linux for most of my daily life.

Microsoft's stance lately is that it's great if you want to run Linux - they want to provide tools for you to use there as well.

Microsoft always took care of the developers.

Sightly off topic, but relevant to your question.

Recently I installed win10 pro and was appalled at the way I had you jump through hoops to NOT have a m$ account, not to mention the blatant adware. And this was win10 professional.

It certainly reminded me that m$ is a long long way away from where it was in the 90s and early naughties.

So, a good start would be a stable and private os without all the adware and telemetry.

PS: I use gitea instead of GitHub these days. Nor do I use vscode, but sublime text, for the same reasons: too much telemetry that cant be disabled permanently.

You can use vscodium, which is basically vscode without telemetry

It would be interesting if they ended up with Brendan Burns (creator of k8s when he was at google) in charge of github at some point and made him like the OSS champion. He's running all the containers and linux stuff on Azure, so it seems like it would be a natural fit.

Three product companies (Enterprise, Consumer, and Media), an open source company (Research, Engineering, and Collaboration), and a foundation owning all of the patents and other licensed IP.

A trustworthy Microsoft is one that has open sourced one or more of their core products. Anything less is just retaining their classic hostility towards outside engineers.

Break up, and cease to exist.

One broken down into smaller companies through antitrust rules.

"What does a trustworthy Microsoft look like to you?"

An oxymoron?

Divided into a handful of independent companies, maybe?

Dead & gone.

Small enough to drown in a bathtub.

To me it looks like water that isn't wet. PR (propaganda) and time will improve their reputation, but the "commodify your compliment" strategy, the intent to dominate markets through anticompetitive behavior... Those things aren't gone. Big tech companies (like most big business) don't prioritize public good over profit, so they really don't deserve anyone's trust apart from trusting them to seek profit.

Maybe. But until someone comes up with a competitive alternative, that is a mood point.

It's "moot"

> Sleez'n their way into our hearts.

Just like a cancer! Oh wait...