6 ms·

I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they have changed?

adamc 8y ago
Continue behaving well.
nileshtrivedi 8y ago
(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM. (2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office) (3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses
- Totoradio 8y ago
  About your second point, I just tested it on my machine, Word 2016 saves and opens *.odt files just fine. Is there some unsupported stuff?
  - nileshtrivedi 8y ago
    Yes, their implementation is (deliberately?) patchy with many bugs. They've been lobbying to prevent governments from adopting ODF (an open ISO standard with multiple implementations): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_response/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_re...
- koyote 8y ago
  What do you mean by 'wrapper over binary blobs'? I know the old .doc format was basically a memory dump of the document; but how does OXML relate to that?
  - nileshtrivedi 8y ago
    > OpenXML on the other hand, is a high-level specification which describes the high level envelopes used to embed binary objects which are included in the content. The content itself contains the binary code which can call any function in any Microsoft library and has all permissions of the person opening the document. http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-office-xml-formats-defective.html http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microso...
    - wangyjx 8y ago
      But lots of Office-like apps have implmented OpenXML read/write without MS libraries
- IamaMentalGiant 8y ago
  Especially (3). The day they stop taking $ for Android is the day I believe.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  There's a nice documentary about Microsoft vs. FLOSS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ
- g-b-r 8y ago
  They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.
  - nileshtrivedi 8y ago
    Of course. That's the point of criticizing them. So that they can see the potential profit in behaving nice.
    - g-b-r 8y ago
      Absolutely.
ninkendo 8y ago
To me? Almost nothing. Some of the the things they've done are pretty much a "life sentence" for ill will.
jhasse 8y ago
* Drop DirectX for Vulkan * Drop MSVC for Clang or GCC * Drop Edge for Firefox or Chromium because they love open-source, right?
- Ornstein 8y ago
  This is just ridiculous. The other points may/may not make sense but drop direct-x for vulkan? What? It'd have made more sense to make Direct-X open source than just dump it like it's useless. It's not like windows drivers for GPUs don't support vulkan. Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. Now, VULKAN evens things out a bit but just dumping so much of RnD for nothing doesn't make sense
  - ekr 8y ago
    > Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. That view is fairly one-sided, to say the least. The history is presented in this StackExchange thread: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054.... But to summarize: OpenGL was the standard before D3D was created. D3D has been a step behind OpenGL in features and performance up to about D3Dv7. Then the OpenGL ARB screwed up, with Microsoft among the members (some hypothesize that Microsoft were attempting to sabotage OpenGL).
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Vulkan is just a 3D graphics and compute API, it cannot replace DirectX because it doesn't support most of the things DirectX does. Did you mean to say Direct3D? That's still leave you with input, sound, maths, and 2D missing.
  - jhasse 8y ago
    Yes, I meant Direct3D.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Several key pieces of Edge are open source, such as Chakra Core, which is the JS engine (like Chromium's V8), and more are expected. The argument IE6 was that the web grew too stagnant with a single dominant web renderer. If we all agree that the Web is a better place with multiple competing web renderers, why wish the death of the Edge renderer when it and Firefox are all that are standing in the way (and barely by latest metrics) of forks from the KHTML/WebKit/Blink family dominating?
notheguyouthink 8y ago
He consistent and have a good track record for years. It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. In my mind, everyone has a "Days since last accident" counter in their head, and Microsoft's number is quite low.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  >It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. Windows 10 exists. Microsoft is "spying" on Windows boxes right now
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  *Be
Nullabillity 8y ago
* Drop Windows and contribute to WINE * Drop OOXML and make ODF the default format * Drop the patents * Drop the telemetry * Drop Xbox * Drop DirectX * Drop the cloud garbage * Drop or open MSVC * Drop or open Edge * Actually open .NET
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  > * Actually open .NET We don't need to open the .NET Framework... We have .NET Core. It's better, faster, and cross-platform...
  - Nullabillity 8y ago
    But it's not a drop-in replacement, and it doesn't have any of the GUI bits.
    - bsg75 8y ago
      Would the GUI bits be useful on a non-Windows platform?
      - Nullabillity 8y ago
        Yes? There is lots of legacy GUI software that's stuck on it.
      - mikeymop 8y ago
        gtk / qt wrappers for old .net programs would be awesome.
      - efskap 8y ago
        Think this is the only other alternative for cross plat guis if you don't want to pull in non-.net stuff like qt or electron. https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia So yeah.
- lovich 8y ago
  I can see, or kinda see your point for all of these except for the Xbox. Why would you want them to drop that?
jjgreen 8y ago
Allow install of Windows onto a partition and not overwrite the MBR
- undseg 8y ago
  I've hated that behavior for years, and am appalled to learn this it still works that way.
  - mikeymop 8y ago
    Its worse now. Grub-efi cant boot Windows 8.1+ directly. It instead boots Window's Bootloader which then handles all of the bootable windows partitions. It looks okay if you only have one Windows in your boot options but once you have two you realize you have two bootloaders.
mulmen 8y ago
Honestly? Nothing. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose and Microsoft has spent my entire professional life acting against my interests.
g-b-r 8y ago
Sell the majority of their shares to other people and behave very nicely, doing things against their short and medium term interest, for 15 years. That's about the minimum, given their track record. In the meanwhile we can give them increasing credit, if they do behave nicely, but it's absurd to believe that they've suddenly become a good company and that they'll stay like this for the next decades. I have a hard time believing that anyone not payed by them could think so. And by the way, they have yet to reverse the decidedly un-nice things they have done with Windows 10 in the last years. Allow everyone to disable the telemetry and to better control the updates, and then we can start the 15 years count. Oh yeah, and maybe also stop astroturfing, that's another extremely un-nice thing that they clearly started doing only recently. There would be nothing wrong in discussing with the people, if they paid people to do so while stating in every message that they're being paid by Microsoft it would be perfectly ok, but that's very different from what they're doing now. These things make it clear that they're still motherfuckers, just less then they used to be.

Continue behaving well.

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM. (2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office) (3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

Totoradio 8y ago
About your second point, I just tested it on my machine, Word 2016 saves and opens *.odt files just fine. Is there some unsupported stuff?
- nileshtrivedi 8y ago
  Yes, their implementation is (deliberately?) patchy with many bugs. They've been lobbying to prevent governments from adopting ODF (an open ISO standard with multiple implementations): https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_response/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_re...
koyote 8y ago
What do you mean by 'wrapper over binary blobs'? I know the old .doc format was basically a memory dump of the document; but how does OXML relate to that?
- nileshtrivedi 8y ago
  > OpenXML on the other hand, is a high-level specification which describes the high level envelopes used to embed binary objects which are included in the content. The content itself contains the binary code which can call any function in any Microsoft library and has all permissions of the person opening the document. http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://slated.org/ooxml_dissecting_the_binary_blob_problem http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-office-xml-formats-defective.html http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microso...
  - wangyjx 8y ago
    But lots of Office-like apps have implmented OpenXML read/write without MS libraries
IamaMentalGiant 8y ago
Especially (3). The day they stop taking $ for Android is the day I believe.
dcbadacd 8y ago
There's a nice documentary about Microsoft vs. FLOSS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ
g-b-r 8y ago
They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.
- nileshtrivedi 8y ago
  Of course. That's the point of criticizing them. So that they can see the potential profit in behaving nice.
  - g-b-r 8y ago
    Absolutely.

ninkendo 8y ago

To me? Almost nothing. Some of the the things they've done are pretty much a "life sentence" for ill will.

jhasse 8y ago

* Drop DirectX for Vulkan * Drop MSVC for Clang or GCC * Drop Edge for Firefox or Chromium because they love open-source, right?

Ornstein 8y ago
This is just ridiculous. The other points may/may not make sense but drop direct-x for vulkan? What? It'd have made more sense to make Direct-X open source than just dump it like it's useless. It's not like windows drivers for GPUs don't support vulkan. Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. Now, VULKAN evens things out a bit but just dumping so much of RnD for nothing doesn't make sense
- ekr 8y ago
  > Direct-X has had a history of being the superior graphics API to OGL. That view is fairly one-sided, to say the least. The history is presented in this StackExchange thread: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054.... But to summarize: OpenGL was the standard before D3D was created. D3D has been a step behind OpenGL in features and performance up to about D3Dv7. Then the OpenGL ARB screwed up, with Microsoft among the members (some hypothesize that Microsoft were attempting to sabotage OpenGL).
Someone1234 8y ago
Vulkan is just a 3D graphics and compute API, it cannot replace DirectX because it doesn't support most of the things DirectX does. Did you mean to say Direct3D? That's still leave you with input, sound, maths, and 2D missing.
- jhasse 8y ago
  Yes, I meant Direct3D.
WorldMaker 8y ago
Several key pieces of Edge are open source, such as Chakra Core, which is the JS engine (like Chromium's V8), and more are expected. The argument IE6 was that the web grew too stagnant with a single dominant web renderer. If we all agree that the Web is a better place with multiple competing web renderers, why wish the death of the Edge renderer when it and Firefox are all that are standing in the way (and barely by latest metrics) of forks from the KHTML/WebKit/Blink family dominating?

notheguyouthink 8y ago

He consistent and have a good track record for years. It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. In my mind, everyone has a "Days since last accident" counter in their head, and Microsoft's number is quite low.

mrguyorama 8y ago
>It feels just like yesterday that Microsoft was spying on windows boxes. Windows 10 exists. Microsoft is "spying" on Windows boxes right now
notheguyouthink 8y ago
*Be

Nullabillity 8y ago

* Drop Windows and contribute to WINE * Drop OOXML and make ODF the default format * Drop the patents * Drop the telemetry * Drop Xbox * Drop DirectX * Drop the cloud garbage * Drop or open MSVC * Drop or open Edge * Actually open .NET

philliphaydon 8y ago
> * Actually open .NET We don't need to open the .NET Framework... We have .NET Core. It's better, faster, and cross-platform...
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  But it's not a drop-in replacement, and it doesn't have any of the GUI bits.
  - bsg75 8y ago
    Would the GUI bits be useful on a non-Windows platform?
    - Nullabillity 8y ago
      Yes? There is lots of legacy GUI software that's stuck on it.
    - mikeymop 8y ago
      gtk / qt wrappers for old .net programs would be awesome.
    - efskap 8y ago
      Think this is the only other alternative for cross plat guis if you don't want to pull in non-.net stuff like qt or electron. https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia So yeah.
lovich 8y ago
I can see, or kinda see your point for all of these except for the Xbox. Why would you want them to drop that?

jjgreen 8y ago

Allow install of Windows onto a partition and not overwrite the MBR

undseg 8y ago
I've hated that behavior for years, and am appalled to learn this it still works that way.
- mikeymop 8y ago
  Its worse now. Grub-efi cant boot Windows 8.1+ directly. It instead boots Window's Bootloader which then handles all of the bootable windows partitions. It looks okay if you only have one Windows in your boot options but once you have two you realize you have two bootloaders.

mulmen 8y ago

Honestly? Nothing. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose and Microsoft has spent my entire professional life acting against my interests.

g-b-r 8y ago

Sell the majority of their shares to other people and behave very nicely, doing things against their short and medium term interest, for 15 years. That's about the minimum, given their track record. In the meanwhile we can give them increasing credit, if they do behave nicely, but it's absurd to believe that they've suddenly become a good company and that they'll stay like this for the next decades. I have a hard time believing that anyone not payed by them could think so. And by the way, they have yet to reverse the decidedly un-nice things they have done with Windows 10 in the last years. Allow everyone to disable the telemetry and to better control the updates, and then we can start the 15 years count. Oh yeah, and maybe also stop astroturfing, that's another extremely un-nice thing that they clearly started doing only recently. There would be nothing wrong in discussing with the people, if they paid people to do so while stating in every message that they're being paid by Microsoft it would be perfectly ok, but that's very different from what they're doing now. These things make it clear that they're still motherfuckers, just less then they used to be.