And don't forget that MS employees only *say* they like Microsoft products because they're just trying to protect their own income, so *of course* you're going to say you like Windows - it's your only means of support!!

My name is Carlos Perez, but I'm NOT that annoying guy!! XD

Couldn't have said it better, Rory, though my arguments with people of their ilk was always "Well how do you *know* this is what they're thinking?", and I would suggest other possibilities.

I followed your first link to Javalobby, and quickly came up with this article, about how there's a bit of a battle going on in the open source community over Java integration into OpenOffice. Open source purists don't like it, and this makes the writer, Michael Urban, miffed at the community. Some people over there seem to be grounded, despite the irritating folks:

http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t18017.html

I particularly liked this line in it:

"My take on this? Sacrificing productivity simply for the sake of remaining a 'true open source purist' is just ridiculous." Amen!

Many years ago I used to have an anti-MS attitude myself. I came out of college, having been trained on Unix machines, programming in C (which at the time I thought was a neat language). MS just struck me as contrarian, and, well, weird. I thought, "Come on! This is the standard. Why don't you follow it?" A funny thing happened once I had been out in the work world for a while. I found that the work I was doing was getting harder and harder, but the tools on Unix were not advancing fast enough to help me out. I found I was getting bored, partly because even though the technologies on the platform were "standards based", there was no guarantee of 100% compatibility from system to system (this was before Java came along to try (and fail at first) to fill that role). This prevented me from trying new technologies to make my job easier, because that just increased the likelihood that what I wrote would break on a different system, and it would be harder to patch. The other thing I noticed was that the Windows developers were having more fun developing software, and they had tools that helped them be more productive. Not to mention that the price points of Windows versions of software were in the area of 10x cheaper than the Unix version, even though both did the same things. After that I realized, "I've gotta check this out!"

It's interesting that there are a lot of people who are die-hard Linux developers who were once Windows developers. Apparently they saw things differently.

Maybe a lot of developers go through a phase where they use what they were trained on, and then rebel against it, and go with its opposite, because they realize it gives them certain advantages that they felt their original development platform didn't give them.

I think the whole open source versus Microsoft debate can be boiled down to what one zealot posted: "My opinion has nothing to do with the quality of Microsoft products, it has to do with Microsoft's attitude."

Instead of a discussion of tangible benefits and/or short comings of closed versus open source products, it is now a debate of some sort of perceived attitude. Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? How does a corporation have an attitude? I like to make money too, does that mean I have an attitude? I can only assume that this sort of muddled argument is put forth because in a real discussion about pros/cons, they fear they might lose, and so take a moral argument instead.

Basically, Microsoft could create a product that made you live for ever, increased your sex appeal, and made you 1000 times more productive, and if they have the audacity to:

a) Claim it is good product
b) Want to make (gasp) money selling it

it would be considered the root of all evil by some zealots.

There is also a weird 'us versus them' attitude I see in these arguments. To be a non-Microsoft developer is to go against The Man, System, etc. and so the open source developer is no longer just a choice of tools, but an identity. I think this is why the average Microsoft platform developer finds the average zealot crazy, because most .NET developers don't have as much of a personality investment in their development tools.

This argument also has undertones of a Capitalist versus Socialist debate. Not to start a huge political tangent, but I just believe you should get paid for the work you do, if software development is your choice of career. I think of the saying about how if you don't believe in socialism when you are young you have no passion, and if you don't disregard it when you are old you have no wisdom. So in my mind the open source zealots have too much passion and not enough wisdom.

I respect their passion and their desire to share their work with others, but don't think this gives them the right to condemn those who want to sell their work in order to make a living.

I like to think of the open source zelots as being the hippies of this generation. As Brian Kuhn has pointed out - better than I can - the zelots' ideals seem to be IMHO quite the same as the hippies from the late 1960's.

Just read anything written about hippies and replace the word 'hippy' with 'open source zelot' and it will make a lot of sense*

* Yes, I ripped this idea off of Les Nessman from WKRP, so sue me.

>>Some of us come in peace, damn it.

Sure, that's what they say just before they vaporize you...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116996/

Rory, hero:

You have my sympathies. You are in a difficult situation, common to just about everybody who works for a large corporation that depends on other large corporations for investment and other large corporations as customers.

After a while, there is no person there, just the entity, the corporation. So how does one establish one's humanity.

And then there is the issue of "corporations acting responsibly.", which is sort of like asking the weather to act responsibly.

Another thought: When one wear the uniform of a soldier, is one being a soldier? Anyway, we all wear uniforms to some degree. Today my T-Shirt says: Madonna Grimes Dance Studio.

Bob

Aren't those the lyrics to the Prisoner Cell Block H theme music?

It's a fact of life that Microsoft has to do things such as give away IE with Windows and kill Netscape, and implement its own proprietary IE tags, which makes things more annoying for us web developers. This is bound to create some bad feeling, but in business terms it's a necessity. At least open source has meant we get tools like Visual Web Developer for free.

Brian Kuhn,

Corporations *can* have an attitude.

My small company once had a small client that we developed a successful product for, which we agreed to write for a 4% royalty. After several years of updating the product, and making a lot of money, the client decided they wanted to buy our royalty contract for next to nothing. We were told that they were done paying royalty payments and that we could go ahead and sue them if we didn’t like their offer.

While we made a lot of money from that 4% royalty, they got the other 96% and had a whole lot more in the bank than us. So, we were suddenly facing the possibility of them keeping 100% of the profits, and us losing a good chunk of our monthly income, with a lawsuit that would have taken years. This all came without warning.

The client claimed “it was just business”, but I think the whole situation could have been handled better. This is definitely not the type of company that I would want to work for.

Note: My point is that corporations *can* have an attitude. I’m not implying anything about Microsoft. I’ll leave that to the courts. :-)

Screw peace. Some people just need to be made to capitulate, and this crowd obviously hasn't gotten the memo yet (if they were running Windows, you could just netsend it to all of them, but NOOOO).

=)

Don't worry Rory, it's just a temporary malfuction in your <a href="http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/2106.aspx">borg implant</a>. It's working just well enough right now for you to reject these thruths, but with a few adjustments you won't even hear these voices of opposition anymore and will go back to being a happy part of the collective again.

don't fight it - the world will be a better place under total microsoft domination

Issues about microsoft that are inseperable from those perspectives:
Business practices.
Convicted Monopolist.

So what if you aren't personally evil? If you are a good developer and do manage to produce not-bug-ridden software, and marketing gets the fruits of your labors and makes a torture device out of it, or a weapon of mass destruction, people will probably associate some of their negative emotions about the product (or how it was used) with You.

After all, you knew they made those things, right? You were willing to give that power to marketing, right? And what's so wrong about making money by selling products? Products don't do bad things to people, people kill people!

To anonymous2,

OK, its true MS's business practices have been "percieved" to be anti-competitive and yes they have been found guilty of anti-trust regulations. These are true statements and I won't argue.

The fact is we all know this really has nothing to do with the Linux and F/OSS communities objection to MS.

Linux and F/OSS are competitors to MS and the above issues are something they can point to and rally around to promote thier own products. There is nothing REALLY wrong with this I guess. They need some point for their own marketing people to use.

My issue is, sure this has been a point for the zeolots to go on about (and on and on and on......). However if this is such a big deal to them I really like to ask a couple questions.

1) Do you use Intel?
2) Do you use Master Card?
3) Do you use Visa?

If you use any of the above then pardon my french but shut the F#*! up!

All of the above companies have been found guilty of the exact same things in just the last year!!!!

Visa/MasterCard info:
http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2005/01/21/0121autofacescan02.html

Intel info:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020354,39193445,00.htm

I do not mean to say anything bad about these companies! They did some things they shouldn't have, but this has been addressed and is now over, done!

These three are not isolated cases. MANY companies do such things (some get caught some don't). This is business, you try to find way to bring more profit to your shareholders. Sometimes you may push this a bit far and get thumped for it. Fine! But I just cannot understand these people endless droning over these same issues when they are all carrying products from similarly anti-competitive companies in their pockets!!!

Tony,

I am sorry you got totally screwed by your client. As I said before, I think developers have a right to be paid for their work, and having your client not pay you the royalties is definitely rude if not illegal.

But lets not couch this in terms of "attitude". Corporations can commit crimes, propagate poor business practices, or they can create great products and foster good relationships with their partners. These are all tangible acts that can be reported on and discussed, even rightly criticized when someone in the corporation makes a bad decision.

When we start criticizing a corporation's attitude, we are no longer making a criticism of a particular action or decision made by said corporation. The point I was trying to make was that this sort of argument against a corporation allows the critic to no longer have to back up their arguments with facts and instead becomes an attack based on people's perceptions, which may or may not be correct.

"The fact is we all know this really has nothing to do with the Linux and F/OSS communities objection to MS.

Linux and F/OSS are competitors to MS and the above issues are something they can point to and rally around to promote thier own products."

I don't agree; That IS a strong objection *I* have about Microsoft. And I don't think the Linux and F/OSS communities are of one mind enough to say that it's a tool of "their marketing department" for the purposes of tipping the competitive balance towards them.

Similarly, I Do use Intel, I Do use Visa, I Do use MasterCard, and I Do even use Microsoft Windows 2000 AND XP in my office AND EVEN MY HOME. And I don't like it. Is there any excuse for my behavior when there are other viable alteratives? (use Apples, cash, cash, and more Apples or linux) No; there are no excuses for anything that isn't serving in a soup kitchen on 94th. (whups, more rhetoric, that's what got this tipping over the edge in the first place.) No, I don't do Everything I can to personally punish those companies for their bad behavior, or otherwise show them that I don't approve of that method of doing business. (decisions of that kind are usually choosing between lesser evils) I DO Vote, and I communicate what I think is wrong. Someday maybe I will feel affluent enough to stop shopping at Wal-mart. A more politically correct person would say that day is always yesterday.

If you like, you can relegate me to the category "just a complainer".

"They did some things they shouldn't have, but this has been addressed and is now over, done!"

Well, you know, it's funny, because "addressed" is particularly one of the reasons I still complain; I hope that the justice department may someday go back and do something about Microsoft's punishment, because it does not seem to have sufficiently "addressed" the problem of monopolistic anticompetitive practices. (though the EU seems to be trying to pick up the slack a little)

I have wondered before about another topic in your post:

"This is business, you try to find way to bring more profit to your shareholders. Sometimes you may push this a bit far and get thumped for it."

If you applied a darwinistic perspective to economics, I wonder if it would show that the kind of company that would eventually be called "fittest" would be the kind that bought all its competitors so it could have all avenues of revenue, pushed the law as far as it could without getting caught, (or, depending on the cost of a particular instance of being caught, just flauting the law)) and influencing the law as much as is cheaply possible to its advantage.

"Morality" or "evil" cease to have meaning.

(sidenote, among the rhetoric of my previous post, please do not read to imply that all microsoft employees, *even* ones in the marketing department, are personally evil. The PROCESS produces results that I see as evil, and I tried to point out that some people will associate the results of the process Directly with all microsoft employees, which is what produces silly conclusions like rory mentioned at the top of this topic, numbered 1-5+.)

anonymous2 said:

"Similarly, I Do use Intel, I Do use Visa, I Do use MasterCard, and I Do even use Microsoft Windows 2000 AND XP in my office AND EVEN MY HOME. And I don't like it."

Well excuse me for calling you a friggin' HYPOCRITE then! You remind me a former coworker I had several years ago who would occasionally rant on about how "we are destroying the Earth", complaining that we were spewing toxic pollution into the air with our internal combustion engines, and whatnot. Never mind that he drove to work every day in a light SUV that ran on gasoline! No kidding. He didn't feel directly responsible because it was "a friend's vehicle". He didn't have one of his own. But still...I couldn't help but think, "Come on!!!! You really expect me to respect your argument when you're getting around the same way everyone else is, and you're contributing to the pollution you hate?? Gimme a break!"

I have a lot more respect for people who not only voice their objections to the way things are, but do something tangible to change it in a pragmatic, practical way. I admire people who are environmentally conscious and actually purchase hybrid or biodiesel vehicles. They're putting their money where their mouth is. I admire people who not only complain about pollution, but then come up with ways to reduce or elliminate the pollution, AND save money at the same time.

I would've listened to your argument a little more if you would've said that you disliked MS, and were working with a team to make Linux a nice, easy-to-use desktop alternative, and perhaps described how you were going about doing that, like setting up a task force to talk to business and home users and ask them to try the system, and get feedback from them about how they like it, and incorporating that into the product. And, oh yeah, you could drop the moralizing. That tends to turn people off. Just talk about what you're doing to change the situation.

It's one thing to complain. It's another to do something tangible about it. There are probably thousands of people out there with the same opinion, but like you, they aren't doing anything about it, which makes yours and their opinion annoying and well, pretty pointless. All you're saying is, "I'm unhappy, and I'm going to stay unhappy," because you're not contributing to changing anything. Why would I want to listen to that?

Does Linux enable terrorism? You bet!