I'm aware that Microsoft is a giant corporation and there are many different people employed. The amount of people who support Open Source most likely increased in the last years. But as long as they're doing the public "we love Linux and Open Source" and try to lobby Open Source away in the background, I have no reason to trust them.
Well really it's not much different from saying you will move out of your representative's district, move out of your state, or move out of the country if a law you don't like gets passed. Is it blackmail for a person to leave Indiana because of their pro-discrimination bill that recently passed? Was it blackmail for Salesforce to say that they wouldn't be doing business in Indiana? It's the same thing here. They're voting with their wallet just like everyone does.
However, it says in the article: A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We have looked into the nearly decade-old matter and we don’t recognise these claims. Fundamentally, it is not how we operate as a business. We have an honest and open engagement with the government and this is how we will continue to work with it.”
I do not like microsoft because I think it has slow down the progress of computer science (MHO). In this case microsoft has done nothing wrong. It has given Samsung the right to sign executable because people would hate if microsoft was the only one able to sign executables. In his case, samsung is the only culprit.
I think microsoft has make many good moves recently because the public interest and its business interest are converging. Microsoft is in a hard fight to avoid becoming irrelevant. It has to lobby governments for commercial interests and at the same time, it has to seduce developpers by open sourcing (and leading technical innovation).
Yes, I agree that this isn't related to Microsoft at all. I was merely responding to the aspect of "hey guys, look, Microsoft got better".
> It has to lobby governments for commercial interests and at the same time, it has to seduce developpers by open sourcing (and leading technical innovation).
Well, that's the very problem for me. As long as it is only PR to catch devs, I don't care. Opening .NET was great, but honestly I'm accustomed to open languages (or open compilers), such as Go, Rust and C (including the whole GObject ecosystem). It didn't make .NET better, it made it equal to things I'm used to. And in contrast to .NET, these languages are truly governed / developed by a multitude of developers.
To me it's more important to stop ambushing Open Source / Free Software (like the blackmailing I linked above). If Microsoft's products are better, they won't have to fear Open Source at all. Fair play is all I want.
I do not think open sourcing is only PR. It is a different model that should increase quality of software and less deception. I think there is a financial interest in open sourcing and listening to a community. The financial benefits of being "fair play" is not so clear.
I'm aware that Microsoft is a giant corporation and there are many different people employed. The amount of people who support Open Source most likely increased in the last years. But as long as they're doing the public "we love Linux and Open Source" and try to lobby Open Source away in the background, I have no reason to trust them.