Why do some developers hate Microsoft so much?

#41 @Badguy:

You come up with the product that will make money, and someone will get you the money to patent it. However, your assumption (from something you apparently read here) that I couldn't afford the $10k kind of tells me you may also be wrong in other assumptions you've made in this thread. Funny sometimes what people assume. For instance, I assume you made the comment simply because you didn't like my input in the thread. Maybe took it as a personal affront somehow that I didn't agree with the "share everything" idea. It wasn't. Just getting in on a conversation and putting in my 2 cents on the subject.

I don't usually get in on these types of topics just because they generally raise someone's ire, and I'd rather be reading productive (or interesting) conversation. Think I'll slip back out to the observe and browse mode while I can still afford the electricity to run this thing. :)

#42 @Scott: "I don't think that Microsoft is trying to take anything away from you"...

Did you not read about them trying to outlaw the GPL in court? This would take away my right to publish my software under an open source license which allows me to share my technology with the rest of the world and ensure that companies like Microsoft cannot use my inventions to make profits for their own financial benefits without the giving same courtesy of sharing the source. Why should I not have the right to license my own inventions in such a way?

I cannot see your view that it's much much better for a company to sell technology, rather than for individuals or groups of programmers to deliver their tech. to the whole world at no cost. Sure, open source programmers may find it hard to put their software on the shelves, but they don't need to because anybody with an internet connection can get it for free.

Has anyone ever seen the movie The Saint? A group of scientists come up with a working implementation of "cold fusion", and decide they want to share their knowledge with the world so everyone can benefit from it. However, the bad guys steal the reasearch for themselves so they can sell it for billions, since scientists from every country would love to use it.

That sounds like something Microsoft would want to do. Sure, they have the marketing power to get new technology onto peoples' computers at a price, but it doesn't give them the right to try to stop others from distributing the source code of their own inventions so the whole world can benefit from it for free.

Or how about this, imagine if I were a medical scientist and I discovered a cure for cancer. Should I hold a medical conference and share my reasearch so that many others can implement it so they can start saving lives? Or should I keep it proprietary/secret and mass produce the medications myself and sell it for a price that only upper-middle to upper class can afford?

Knowledge is best when it's freely available. What is knowledge when only a few people know it? Keeping others ignorant is a selfish and false sense of feeling intelligent. What if there weren't such thing as public libraries where academics and scholars can study, would we have much of the great inventions that we do have now?

#43 I do not hate Microsoft, but I do dislike monopolies because they slow innovation and increase prices for the consumer.

#44 Lets see how good of a living you can make giving away your work for free. Once you work thousands of man hours on a product, see how much drive you have to deliver it for free.

Microsoft has not gone against open standards, why would they? From now on, I would like to see srouces to all this negativity towards any company, especially the one who pioneerd what we know as the world wide web. And they should be credible sources, or you mights as well change your nickname to "flamer_XXXX." I have very very few comapnies on my blacklist, because I am a very open minded person.

#45 Heh. Scott, Maybe you weren't trolling, but you certainly started a discussion with that non-trolling paragraph :)

#46 @Jeffrey Baker - The whole cancer thing doesn't work very well. With that train of thought, all companies should give all their stuff away.

#47 >Lets see how good of a living you can make giving away your work for free. Once you work thousands of man hours on a product, see how much drive you have to deliver it for free.

Linus Torvalds - OSDL pays him a salary of nearly $200,000. In addition, he sold initial public offering shares that he got as gifts from a couple of Linux companies, including VA Linux Systems. Source Businessweek

I'm sure I could dig up some more numbers from the guys at apache, mysql, kde, gnome, xorg, etc... etc..
Bottom line, if your product is good enough, you'll make money on it via support and training. IE: every major distro company on the planet.

#48 "If I take my tank down the (information super-) highway, I can only take lanes that are designed with my tank in mind, because tanks are not the commonly driven standard.

I prefer the economy car. That's why I use Windows."

Thats what completely ruined your arguement to me. Servicing, fine.. There arent many Linux shops to take your computer to. You fix it yourself. Thats a Given.


But what is this assinine notion that a Linux user can't use the Internet just as a Windows user can?

#49 > "If I take my tank down the (information super-) highway, I can only take lanes that are designed with my tank in mind, because tanks are not the commonly driven standard.

It's true that some websites are not accomodated for Linux browsers, but that is hardly the fault of Linux browser developers. The W3C sets HTML and CSS standards, which all web browsers should meet in order for all websites to be viewable properly by any browser. Both IE and Mozilla (as well as many others) support these standards, but IE has features that are only available in IE. A lot of web developers use these non-standard features to design websites, and also use technology that require proprietary plugins that are only available on Windows. If Linux developers could make these plugins for Linux browsers, they would, but a lot of them are proprietary.

> "Lets see how good of a living you can make giving away your work for free. Once you work thousands of man hours on a product, see how much drive you have to deliver it for free."

I personally have put thousands of hours into various C/C++ projects for both Windows and Linux, and delivered them for free. I didn't make any money, but that's okay because I wasn't trying to make a living from it. Obviously I have a lot of "drive", it's called generousity and selflessness.


@Nihonlvr: I'm not trying to make anyone give their stuff away for free. I just would like to keep my right to do so in such a way that the GPL protects the freedom of my inventions and make sure I don't get taken advantage of. And if I so choose to create something that can be reused in various projects (like a software library), I'd release it under the LGPL which permits proprietary software to use the library.

Why does my right to do what I want with my own source code offend you guys?

#50 Linux and GPL are viral.

#51 I decided last night I wasn't going to get back into this topic, but here I am.

Just wanted to point out that for everyone on the "share everything" side, I'm sure we would all be glad to get a copy of all your current game code and IP content for us to use in our own commercial endeavors. As a gesture of good faith, you understand. If, on the other hand, you don't have any good game code or IP content, it sort of makes it sound like it's one of those "those who can, do, and those who can't ask for it for free" deals. And if you have it but you're just not willing to share because of all the work you put into it........well, that speaks volumes also.

Not saying this for any other reason that to make the statement, but I've purchased TGE, TSE, T2D, ShowTool, RTS, and various content packs here at GG as well as both of Ken's books and anything else I could get my hands on because I don't mind paying for someone's IP if need or want it. I was glad to get them all at the price GG charges. Matt Langley was gracious enough to give away some good tutorials for T2D, but I would have paid for them. The same with many others here at GG. I wouldn't think of asking anyone to give me something in which they've invested time and effort, and in many cases money. I'd gladly pay for any future books/tutorials or tools/utilities that would help me make better software.

Also, we should remember that Linus Torvalds was a student when he started working with Linux. Not that students don't need money, but he also wasn't trying to support a wife and kids (that I'm aware of). And since what he was working with was Unix based, it was already open source by definition. Not to take anything away from Linus, he did a great thing. Many others have done the same in other areas. I applaud them, but I still have to put Christmas presents under the tree for the grandkids.

I've always liked Unix and all it's offshoots. I use primarily C but also have an affinity for Pascal. I also like Macs and I think it would be cool to have a Cray in the back room. However, five of the six computers in my home office are Windows and one is Linux because I prefer the Windows environment. And that is what everyone should do, use what they prefer and not try to convert everyone else. It doesn't work and makes people upset.

I often talk politics with a very good friend of mine. We're on completely different sides of the fence, but we have heated discussions for 20 minutes and then drink coffee and talk about sports. No attempts at conversion or nasty comments. An exchange of views and thoughts, without personal attacks.

Man, I really have to quit reading these kinds of threads. Sorry for the soapbox rant, see ya.....

#52 A lot of people (not ALL!) who hate Microsoft are open or closet Marxists. Marxists hate capitalists, and therefore anything produced by capitalists. There's nothing wrong with that though, as long as they don't use that belief to justify aggression against anyone.

#53 One of the things that I personally dislike about microsoft is their collusion with government to smash their competitors (like the whole GPL thing, and some rediculous patents). But I'm not anti-MS for that - just skeptical and watchful. I'm not an anti-Wal-Mart person either, even though their use of eminent domain (another big-business / government collusion) to steal private property to increase profits for their business and taxable revenue for the government was evil. Overall though, I'd say they do more good than evil. Who can argue with making America a more affordable place to live (other than, say, marxists and protectionists).

#54 A decidedly long post... fair warning.

Part 1.

I think the reason that some people dislike Microsoft so intensely is that they exemplify everything that is wrong with the American business "ethic".

A bit of a history lesson for those who were not around at the time...

It begins right from the start of Microsoft's creation. Bill Gates was approached by IBM to write a version of Basic for the IBM. Bill's version of Basic was a copy of Kemeny and Kurtz's original work in Basic, but Bill G. did not direct IBM to them, instead he told IBM them he would do it. Later, when they asked him for an OS company he initially directed them to Digital Research to obtain the license.

When IBM and DR could not work out a deal and IBM asked Bill for another company who could make an OS, Bill lied and said he could do it. He had no experience in OS writing. Instead, he went to a bank made a deal for financing, and then went to Seattle Computer Products and purchased the rights to the DOS operating system from an individual who was effectively cut out from the millions of dollars in royalties he really should have gotten.

Bill then returned to IBM and waved around the OS as his creation. Yet, he was unable to modify it in any meaningful way because he didn't understand it. Instead, he engaged in a prolonged deception. Everytime there was a problem with the hardware development side, Bill told IBM that the delay meant that he would not be able to add another of the features that IBM had asked him to make to the OS software. By the time the release date of the product had arrived Bill had weasled out of most of the features requested by IBM - features that would have made the product a secure robust multitasking equivalent to Linux or Unix. The instant sucesss of IBM DOS ensured that Bill was never required to go back and fix all the features he left out even though IBM requested them several times in later meetings.

Bill then "befriended" another rising star in the industry, Apple's Steve Jobs. Exploiting this friendship, Bill learned about Apple's design for a new Graphical Operating System, based on the work done by Xerox Parc. Both Apple and Digital research were doing work on such a system. Bill used the information from his friendship to get IBM to fund the development of OS/2 as a graphical system. IBM, eager to move to the forefront of software development agreed, and again did not balk at signing a deal in which Bill was allowed to use the code developed in his own projects. Hence, Bill was able to create Windows out of the knowledge he gained from creating OS/2. He made both products at the same time and kept Windows secret from his partner IBM. Any mistakes or deficits found in OS/2 were corrected in Windows, but the solutions in OS/2 were often not reported until discovered by IBM Q/A people - another example of bad faith with a business partner.

#55 Part 2.

Later, when Windows had become a massive success, Microsoft used its position as creator of the operating system to enter and dominate the lucrative markets for spreadsheets and word processors. Microsoft would provide licensed developers with function calls to be used to access the operating system. The licensees, such as Lotus Development Corporation, Borland, and Word Perfect, were given function calls that markedly slowed the performance of their products under Windows, while Microsoft developers were given special access to faster function calls embedded in the operating system. If any of these undocumented codes were discovered by other companies and used in their products, then Microsoft would change the function calls in new releases, breaking the competitor's products. Their own people would be given the new function call parameters and would release "updated" products that worked correctly at the time of the OS update. Competitors would be forced to spend weeks trying to fix their now broken software. Entire books were written on Microsoft's "Undocumented" function calls.

Microsoft began presenting contracts to potential licensees who needed operating system information to develop new products. These agreements allowed Microsoft to use any information gained from business discussions in any way they chose including the creation of competitive products. Licensees were denied the use of any information revealed by Microsoft in any way, except for the product they initially presented to Microsoft. Eager young naïve developers saw their ideas sucked into Microsoft products as a result, and their own products languished on store shelves as Microsoft made changes in the OS that left them incompatible for weeks or months at a time.

Based mainly on these unethical actions rather than the creation of superior products, Microsoft eventually came to dominate the compiler, word processing, and spreadsheet markets. With their dominance established Microsoft began to steadily raise the prices of software in these markets. Compilers went from Borland's US $49.00 Pascal and C compilers to the hundreds of dollars it costs today. Microsoft's Word and Excel packages can cost almost a thousand dollars as combined individual purchases in the store today, yet they are substantially unchanged from what they were back in days of Windows 386.

Microsoft also began using its power in other unethical ways. They refused to license the Windows operating system to hardware manufacturers unless they agreed not to offer Linux operating systems on ANY of their PC systems.

Microsoft took its considerable research budget and began to apply it almost exclusively to the creation of copy cat products to enter new markets, letting the product areas they already had control over languish. So while innovation in the spreadsheet and word processing markets died, Microsoft spent millions to drive Netscape into financial ruin by offering a free copies of Internet Explorer bundled with its operating system.

Recently, Microsoft exploited the growth of one of the first truly innovative programming languages, Java, by initially announcing they would support the product, then creating a broken translation that would not operate cross-platform as the product was intended. Then they attempted to subvert the standard, by misleading the public as to why the language did not work correctly on their systems. And finally by eventually trying to substitute their own, Microsoft only version, J++.

#56 Part 3.

And let's not forget how Microsoft entered the gaming market. They initially entered the gaming market, not by creating a new graphics standard (WinG was a total failure), or by using one that had already been established (OpenGL). Instead they bought a technology similar to RenderWare, rebranded it as DirectX, and began bundling it with their operating system to force other competing graphics packages out of the market. They joined the OpenGL standards committee, proposed hundreds of changes that would make the product incompatible with other companies operating systems and products, delaying the release of OpenGL standards. Then they left the Standards committee and announced a new operating system, Vista, that will not be properly compatible with the OpenGL standards.

This prolonged history of exploiting others is why I dislike Microsoft. I pay ten times the price for every single software package as a direct result of Microsoft's monopoly in this market and I do not believe that anything that Microsoft has done to "standardize" the market makes up for that fact. The quality of their products is certainly not ten times better. Their history is one of deception, sleazy deals, blackmail operations, and exploitation. Their workers are encouraged to view all software development as "us vs. them". They introduced to the development community the idea of "non-compete agreements" that prohibit developers from working in their chosen fields if they leave Microsoft employ. They also pushed the idea of software patents to the US government, even though if software patents had been in place their business could never have been created.

I have been around from the beginning before Microsoft and seen all of these events first hand. The computer industry was a much more congenial, much more open, and much more productive environment before Bill Gates. I clearly remember dozens of spreadsheet programs vying to gain market share by innovating new features. I remember compiler manufacturers striving to create faster more robust products.

People today seem to feel that if Bill Gates had not consolidated the market that it would not have grown into the dominant force it is today. I do not feel that is true. I think that the market forces that were in play would have propelled the industry forward at this pace or even much faster. If anything, I feel Microsoft has been a brake on innovation in the industry - a brake that is increasingly being applied as the company tries to extend its control into the home.

Many here will accuse me of being a Microsoft basher, but I am merely reporting events as I remember them from having lived thru them. I have met Bill Gates, talked to him, and dealt with him and his company on a business level as well as his fomer competitors Digital Research, Lotus, Borland etc.

For me, this is personal history, not personal emotion.

#57 Very interesting ...

#58 @David:

Very interesting post. I believe the name of the original Seattle Computer Products operating system was QDOS. And I believe it was his father (a banker?) that helped him get the financing. It was also interesting that the IBM made the decision to go with the 8088 instead of the 8086 because the 8086 was too powerful (once they'd decided against Motorola).

Though I'd never met Bill Gates or worked directly with MS, I did lose a couple of good employees to them in the 90's. One directly and one that had gone to Fox, then MS through the FoxBase purchase.

I had started playing with the "home" computers before IBM made their move and MS got their kickstart. My first PC had the standard 16K of ram and a tape drive with the built-in Basic. Finally got a floppy, then that huge 2MB hard drive. Later on I even picked up a copy of DR DOS to see how it compared to PC/MS DOS. It's been quite a ride. Wish I'd bought that MS stock in '82.

Can't disagree with anything you said, but I would add that one might be hard pressed to find any company of that magnitude that hasn't had some shady deals on their rise to the top. As much as we'd like to see people make it through good decisions and clean living, the sad fact is that it seldom happens that way.

Again, good post...

#59 @David - Thank you for the kind reply, and thought out analysis.

Building a succesful business is not something the average business man can do. Now, Once MS got out of Bill Gates' hands, that is exactly the time they began to do some pretty 50/50 things. But, if you had the privledge of talking with anyone who worked with Gates before MS was really anything, you would know what he ment MS to stand for. He ran MS from the back room of a resteraunt, his openess to new ideas is what paved the way for his success. My personal opinion is that a common platform to develop on is a good thing. I also have my views on the price of development software. The software is very expensive, and I would love some cost effective ways of doing business (AKA Visual Studio Express 2005).

All in all, Linux and Windows are great products, both are stable, and both stand for completely different things while doing the same job. Just think of it this way, if MS allowed its competitors the rights and ways to run software just as in windows, increasin compatibility between all OS', what edge would MS have against the market? That is the hard question. They have to be stingy to some degree, or they don't make money. Now if Linux was not as open source as it is, I am sure that MS would not be as large as it is. Now if someone can do the job of writting an OS from scratch, closed source, but open software, that is where some success can occur, as it can keep private it's key elements which make it competitive, while opening the doors to source to the base software (such as the writting software ect.) I know I make it osund easy, but in my view that is the only way to make a dent in MS' market share.

But that is all my own two cents, and mean no offense to anyone by posting it.

#60 @Anthony


>>Microsoft has not gone against open standards, why would they?

What?



>>I would like to see srouces to all this negativity towards any company, especially the one who pioneerd what we know as the world wide web.


Are you talking about building the internet with netBooBoo protocol?