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Stop Quoting Steve Ballmer

18 points by haydenbarnes

by haydenbarnes

2 subcomments

Not "Developers Developers Developers", that one is great. The cancer one.

by usr1106

0 subcomment

Well written. But does not change the fact that Microsoft acts as an ugly monopolist in a user-hostile and developer-hostile way in their market space. And delivers at most mediocre products.

by robotmaxtron

0 subcomment

"Embrace, extend, extinguish". ya boi remembers exactly how Microsoft got their reputation.

by dmazzoni

2 subcomments

This feels like trying to rewrite history. Those of us who lived through that time know that it was real - Microsoft was extremely anti-Linux. That famous Ballmer quote wasn't taken out of context, it was one of many. Ballmer and Gates were vehemently anti-Linux for years, and Microsoft engaged in deliberate marketing campaigns to smear Linux. They saw it as real competition, and they fought dirty, as they did with all of their competitors.
Here are just a few examples I found of evidence in just a few minutes of searching:
https://slate.com/technology/2005/11/the-open-source-movemen...
https://www.wired.com/2014/07/tech-time-warp-ms-matrix/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-dec-26-fi-micro...
The legal questions were always overblown. The concern Ballmer was raising was that if you incorporate a bit of GPL software into your own, then it could "infect" the rest of your code and force you to release more. But that's ridiculous because nobody is forcing you to incorporate GPL software into your own. There was no serious legal concern about simply using Linux - Microsoft was just trying to scare people.
Is Microsoft a different company today? Yes, in many ways. They're much better about open-source software, for sure.
I still think they're anticompetitive in many ways. Their marketing team still prefers to try to spread lies about their competition (e.g. Chrome) rather than promote their own product on its own merits.