Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attacked Open Source Before

Re:Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attac... by dale_glass on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @09:55AM (#31823989)

Companies aren't people. Microsoft (and most any other corporation) will do whatever is in its interest currently. And their behavior isn't consistent, it changes as the makeup of the leaders and their priorities change.

IMO the right way to deal with that is to reject the instinct of considering a corporation to be a person, just rationally look at whether their recent actions, look for potential conflicts of interest, and make sure any deals are guaranteed to be in in your interest.

For instance, Microsoft has been known in the past for screwing people over in creative ways. Famously they screwed over Spyglass by buying the code that became IE with a royalty deal, and then giving it out for free, ensuring that Spyglass got percentages of $0, which it seems they definitely didn't expect. So there it would make perfect sense to take a look at any deals that could be subverted creatively with a very critical eye.

On the other hand if they just give you a donation because they want PR or some such with no strings attached, then there's unlikely to be a problem.

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Re:Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attac... by phendrenad2 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:49PM (#31826132)

The question is why Microsoft is still viewed as anti-FOSS while Google and Facebook are viewed as pro-FOSS. Yes, your answer explains why some people might view ALL corporations as somewhat anti-FOSS. But it doesn't explain the discrepancy.

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Re:Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attac... by car_analogy on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:35PM (#31826780)

Who are the idiots that view Google and Facebook as pro-FOSS? Did they somehow miss how Google is locking more and more OS functionality behind the Play store? Or Facebook's locked-tight Occulus?

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Re:Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attac... by jamesgeck0 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @04:06PM (#31828517)

Google is pro-whatever-is-most-profitable-for-Google. Sometimes this leads to pro-FOSS behavior (they’re consistently among the top contributors to Linux), sometimes not.

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Re:Microsoft Donated Money to Gnome: Remember How They Attac... by pjmlp on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @01:43AM (#31832451)

I would assert their office location, Silicon Valley corps are loved by FOSS crowd.

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