They've learned how to appeal to the easily-convinced crowd with all their "openness" and "modernity" (for lack of a better word.) They're opening up stuff that wasn't likely to be a source of revenue, and I bet they make even more from the non-obvious telemetry embedded in them. I see it as nothing more than another marketing attempt.
They've really done a number on these people, because not only are they using MS stuff again, but they've been turned into "New Microsoft" cheerleaders in many a comment thread, for a couple of years now.
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that was astroturf.
The story of a how new, enlightened CEO was going to embrace open source, etc. was tailor-made for folks who want to believe they finally won over the last fight's great satan. The buzz seemed to be everywhere for a while, and then stopped. And it was timed conveniently around several open source releases that also made a splash - classic reenforcement advertising.
I was one of the cheerleaders ever since I learned about Scott Hanselman and others. The meta is that there are at least two camps about this at Microsoft.
This changed slowly over the last two years for me as I watch the dot net special interest group at Fedora struggle. Microsoft has not released enough of dot net core as free and open source software. It looks free and open source but it isn't. The programmers at red hat (almost all the dot net sig folks are red hat people) are too nice to raisea fuss over it.
I don't think Scott Guttrie's team is lying. I want to believe in their sincerety. However, I also understand likely nobody at Microsoft: from the bottom engineer to Satya Nadella or the board is nearly at all enthusiastic about free software. They may approve of "open source" but only as far as it helps business. I can't blame them for being practical. However, I can yell at their hypocrisy.
Microsoft, give the fedora people what they need. Release the sources please.
That's why pervasive "Does anyone else love the New Microsoft?!" style comments have seemed odd. People talking about how they like specific products is perfectly normal.
These days I assume by default the intentions of companies are not good (especially the big ones) but when I was younger, I used to think these companies play nice with others (generally speaking). I hate that I feel this way, but pretty much everything they do is towards one goal only - money and market share, everything and everyone else be damned :(
you know, there's a theory of this and I personally find it much more useful at explaining things than most other political/economic theories... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
And with that system, you trade the owner (capitalist) with a different owner (government). The proletariat are still in pretty much the same position.
And there's also the issue of communism the economic system, and communism the social control system. Economically speaking, does have some justifications. But the social control is more than willing to kill and imprison people for disagreeing with the economic system.
Capitalism also has similar types of flaws, and its own directly related deaths it causes. The difference is that capitalism the social control system blames individuals for systemic issues, including death and injury.
The problem is not mere ownership though. Who owns it matters, because different owners have different incentives.
The incentive of a private business owner is profit. Especially for a company that is publicly traded, where investors have the power to sue management for malfeasance if they don't get a return and the company has been particularly charitable. If it can be done, you must fuck over the customer to make profit for shareholders, or be replaced by someone who will.
The incentive of a nationalized industry is the good of the state and its voters. Management is incentivized to provide a good product at a fair price to everyone, or else they get voted out of their job.
ownership by "government" is not the same as ownership by the working class (which includes you unless you are very wealthy). part of the point of socialism is much more democratic control of government anyway.
>And with that system, you trade the owner (capitalist) with a different owner (government).
you're mistaking the economic law "Marxism" explaining why and how that stuff is happening for the actual political forces who advocate and force such a change. It like Newton's laws and the actual people shooting the guns which are working based on the Newton's laws.
