I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests:
(1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.)
(2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, without joining the Patent Commons.
(3) Microsoft seems to intentionally subvert its OS's users' attempts to disable snooping. AFAIK, Microsoft not only refuses to say what data are gathered, but also phone home to so many different IP names/numbers that it looks like they're trying to hide the activity from the OS user.
(4) Microsoft is now "embracing" Linux. Microsoft became famous for "embrace, extend, extinguish". People outside of the CEO's inner circle can't know if that's the plan here as well.
The "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme is largely overused these days in reference to Microsoft. If the trend towards using the cloud continues and the desktop OS becomes more of a terminal to cloud services then we could be looking at a modern version of "EEE". Embrace linux for the customers, extend Windows software to Linux for those customers, and let market trends extinguish the desktop OS.
The interesting bit is that FOSS movement that created the modern mainframe, aka browser + cloud, just made it even easier for companies to leech on free software and user data.
That's a good point. I guess the question is, in a case like this, what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? I don't know.
The manner in which Microsoft pushed Windows 10 may be a data point.
The sco scam was in 2003 and the recent move towards arm devices that use treacherous computing to lock the user out of modifying their machine was recently who cares about 1995.
1) This is the entire industry, but much less so today than in 2007..
2) Microsoft is listed as the highest level of foundation support for the Linux foundation and a member of patent ocmmons.
3) true.. but people seemingly don't care that everyone does this.. have a chrome book? you're being snooped, use a mobile device and mobile apps? you're being snooped..
4) That was said 21 years ago.. see #2
(1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.)
(2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, without joining the Patent Commons.
(3) Microsoft seems to intentionally subvert its OS's users' attempts to disable snooping. AFAIK, Microsoft not only refuses to say what data are gathered, but also phone home to so many different IP names/numbers that it looks like they're trying to hide the activity from the OS user.
(4) Microsoft is now "embracing" Linux. Microsoft became famous for "embrace, extend, extinguish". People outside of the CEO's inner circle can't know if that's the plan here as well.