Lennart Poettering goes to Microsoft

Nicola Mingotti said:
If they contribute to the Kernel or something its only because they plan to take advantage of it.
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I think this is true of any corporate sponsor. We're happy when a company throws money at our favorite open source project but cringe when, for example, a certain open source browser offers to store all your bookmarks in the cloud, or some Linux variant wants you to store your home directory on the cloud.
 
Over the 25 years I was at IBM, I watched it go from an engineering company to a marketing company.
The top management were all degreed engineers, and the company focused on technical innovation.
IBM had the "lease" model revenue stream decades before Adobe and Microsoft figured that out.

Things changed, and the company was taken over by bean counters and marketing types with those tassels on their shoes.
They had only two interchangeable parts: Mouth and Asshole.
It got even worse when they outsourced development and manufacturing to 3rd parties, with the resulting loss of engineering control.

It seems all big companies go from innovative to senile monoliths over their life span.
I don't see it any different at Microsoft, HP or Intel (worked there too)
 
jbo@ said:
Microsoft has proven not to be an enemy of free software countless times by now.
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Whilst I feel that pretty much all companies are enemy to the people, not just Microsoft, I do hear from ex-collegues working there that they internally are pretty hostile to Linux and free software still (in an almost childish way). Luckily they are currently thrashing around with no clear goal to damage anything yet.

Microsoft Research was a very different beast. They were very pro open-source. Almost a completely different company.


bgavin said:
Over the 25 years I was at IBM, I watched it go from an engineering company to a marketing company.
[...]
It seems all big companies go from innovative to senile monoliths over their life span.
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It is sad. I still find IBM kind of charming, its like a big corporation, with a small innovative company inside trying to get out. I was actually secretly hoping their procurement of Red Hat was going to be an outlet of that innovation to escape a little but unfortunately it doesn't yet look like it is panning out that way.
 
kpedersen said:
Whilst I feel that pretty much all companies are enemy to the people, not just Microsoft, I do hear from ex-collegues working there that they internally are pretty hostile to Linux and free software still (in an almost childish way). Luckily they are currently thrashing around with no clear goal to damage anything yet.
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That is just proving my point. The same way you have people working at $RandomCorp shitting on Microsoft Windows all day long just become somebody once started doing that you surely have a lot of people working at Microsoft shitting at Linux all day long for similar reasons. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I am just criticizing the sheep like behavior where some people claim that something is bad only because they heard somebody else saying that.
Critical thinking is rare these days. And even more so accepting that sometimes a solution that is not perfect might still be better suited for a particular use case.
 
jbo@ said:
Critical thinking is rare these days. And even more so accepting that sometimes a solution that is not perfect might still be better suited for a particular use case.
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I feel we don't have the information to go on yet to think any differently from ~10 years ago. Microsoft needs to provide more evidence of recently seeing the light to undo the years of EEE.

For example, Microsoft is/was big on dogfooding the tech they support. I would like to see more evidence of Microsoft integrating Linux within their own infrastructure. This would then prove that undermining Linux would be damaging to themselves.

So far I only see them dabbling with Linux as a product for *others*. For example Azure, WSL, CBL-Mariner are ways to bring in developers into their ecosystem; they themselves are not entirely on board. I am not convinced that their own in-house products such as Hotmail/Office365/Teams are using it yet. This migration would be proof. Until then, they are probably the least trustworthy guys I know.
 
I'm really worried about the future of desktop (including laptop) computing after installing Windows 11 for an offspring. That thing is so loaded down with crapware it takes hours to trim it down into something reasonable, and I got to pay $120 for the privilege! Also the rumours about Windows going subscriptions-only worry me.

There are no reasonable alternatives for non-technical users right now. Apple keeps getting worse and more expensive at the same time. Linux is a sick joke.
 
First, and above all else... MS is a marketing company in business to make money.
They can virtue signal all they want, but at the end of the day, their interest is in products (subscriptions) that roll in the big bux.
 
Jose said:
I'm really worried about the future of desktop (including laptop) computing after installing Windows 11 for an offspring. That thing is so loaded down with crapware it takes hours to trim it down into something reasonable, and I got to pay $120 for the privilege! Also the rumours about Windows going subscriptions-only worry me.

There are no reasonable alternatives for non-technical users right now. Apple keeps getting worse and more expensive at the same time. Linux is a sick joke.
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You shouldn't worry; according to the latest reports from companies that claims to know the future, the desktop doesn't have a future - everyone will be using a "smart" phone in a generation.
 
tingo said:
You shouldn't worry; according to the latest reports from companies that claims to know the future, the desktop doesn't have a future - everyone will be using a "smart" phone in a generation.
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Google reported, this year or not too long ago, that phone usage surpassed desktop usage.
 
bgavin said:
Some of us actually do real work, and not just circle jerks on Facebook.
Can't do that on a phone.
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Yes, to create ( ie do real work) you need a keyboard and a mouse or trackpoint or roller ball or just plain Vi and VIM (they don't need a mouse to move around). Yes, I too, use my smart phone to look up, tap virtual keyboard short comments on Telegram, consume media content, yet to create a record in a spreadsheet like gnumeric or calc. You need a real keyboard to get work done.

I am so happy to see Arm64 become Tier 1 supported and that Raspberry Pi 4B, 3B, 400 have a release image https://freebsd.org/where. The idea that The Next Billion (TNB) people can get on the internet and create information with a inexpensive desktop computer based on FreeBSD Operating System. (ps. That Speech to Text feature, using my voice, to write a comment is quite useful to work with out a keyboard.)

Wonder what the next 10 years technology will bring us to use?
 
A lot of joke web pages and such predicted the future. There was one about an Apple innovation, no keyboard, you would move an iPod (not Pad, Pod) like dial to get your letters. Similar to say, typing in a password from the TV remove control. There was another (I wish I could find these, but most were probably on geocities) of MicrosoftLinux. They'd have a daemon called Krapd that did everything--it was as if they were predicting systemd.

As for these people, usually younger, who do all their work on smartphones, I admire them--between my eyes and rather clumsy fingers, I couldn't imagine it. I don't like it and couldn't see doing it, but it might just be the equivalent of my parents hating much of the music I listened to. I can't imagine putting important information on an easily lost smartphone. Maybe younger folks are more careful about losing them.
 
scottro said:
I can't imagine putting important information on an easily lost smartphone. Maybe younger folks are more careful about losing them.
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Its sad, I see so many people losing valuable photos because their phone died.

Whats even more sad is that often the inbuilt disk is intact but it is all so proprietary and locked down they can't just rip it out and shove it in another machine.

Until the inevitable mass extinction of data (access) once Facebook shuts down, many people really do need it as a rudimentary backup to sidestep the fact that smart-phones are fairly defective by design.
 
scottro said:
I can't imagine putting important information on an easily lost smartphone. Maybe younger folks are more careful about losing them.
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Automatic backup of phone data into the cloud is pretty common now and Google and Apple push that functionality quite a bit.

I am more concerned about the photos floating around a CF card in my DSLR camera for a year that I didn't retrieve yet.
 
jbo@ said:
This sounds a bit like your typical group of people working at a company hating at Microsoft Windows just because it has become company culture.

Microsoft has proven not to be an enemy of free software countless times by now.
Also, blaming them for not doing something they could do is a ridiculous argument no matter where you apply it to. Surely there are things that you could do that you're not doing.
Just because their business model does not appeal to you does not make them a villain.


That is mainly a symptom of GPL. That's a grave that many FOSS projects dug themselves and we see it happening repeatedly.
Also, first you blame Microsoft for not being more Linux/FOSS friendly or focused. Now you blame them for actually doing it. This is typical for the "oh this sucks because everybody else says it sucks"-sheep behavior.

The culturally motivated haters that just hate because others in the company are doing it will have plenty of arguments against this but may I remind you: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/selling-security-updates-via-subscriptions.91674/
"Just switch Linux distributions" is a very long, tedious and complex task for any company doing actual serious work where lifes depend on the output.

That being said, I'm not a fan of Microsoft Windows either and I like to avoid it where reasonable. I'd just like to point out that seemingly many people are first blaming Microsoft for not doing something and then when they are doing it they blame them for doing it. The double standards that some religious FOSS people have seem insane to me.
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Please don't suppose other people is sheep (your word). [I am not mad at you, no problem, it is saturday and there is the sun, i am hacking an ESP32 and some MODBUS giggling, they day is a good&fun one. This subject for me is interesting but VERY far from a religious figth]

In my company we do metal construction and machines, nobody here is interested in OSes, nor can distinguish KDE from Windows at first sight. My opinion is MY OWN opinion.

I don't get well your position, It seems you don't like Microsoft, but you dislike I say it.

So let's recap a few reasons for hate which are NOT RELIGION.
1. Microsoft is an ENEMY OF THE FREE SOFTWARE movement and I love the FreeSoftware movement.
1.2 Microsoft contributes to the Kernel ? Irrelevant, they do for their consumption. They are not FreeSofware friends. Who is our friend? Do we have any friend between companies? Well, one sure i know is Google, it gives a LOT of resources to many FreeSoftware projects not directly tied to its immediate consumption.
1.3 Why Microsoft is enemy of the FreeSoftware movement? That is pretty easy, what pushes/pushed the majority to Linux or BSD ? That fact that Windows strinks! The desire to undestand and hack. So our movement come to existance with one main objective a better replacement of Windows. Much of the impetus (desire of change) has been absorbed by macOS (based on unix) and we became strong on servers and mobile (after Apple and Microsoft abandoned those field defeted respectively).

2. Microsoft produces a "medium" quality OS which many of my users HAVE to use because of CAD mainly. My users complain and come to me, and 90% of time I tell them "REBOOT, this is a crappy OS". And it WORKS !

3. Microsoft is a de facto MONOPOLIST, as such, it is far worst than normal (sharp elbow) profit-only driven company X

4. Some day the computer turns on and it does not do what it was doing well yesterday. This NEVER happens in MY computer where I SAY WHEN to UPGRADE and WHAT.
... there are more reasons, but ok

basta, buona giornata
 
kpedersen said:
Whats even more sad is that often the inbuilt disk is intact but it is all so proprietary and locked down they can't just rip it out and shove it in another machine.
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FWIW, Apple does provide a webUI to iCloud where you can download pictures directly from iCloud Photo Library. In any case you need anything immediately after a failed device; the webUI is pretty useful for that. Losing data is hardly an issue nowadays so long as you backup your stuff.
 
Beastie7 said:
FWIW, Apple does provide a webUI to iCloud where you can download pictures directly from iCloud Photo Library. In any case you need anything immediately after a failed device; the webUI is pretty useful for that. Losing data is hardly an issue nowadays so long as you backup your stuff.
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Fair. Let me adjust my statement then:

Until the inevitable mass extinction of data (access) once Facebook or iCloud shuts down
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Same flaw, different company.
 
cracauer@ said:
I am more concerned about the photos floating around a CF card in my DSLR camera for a year that I didn't retrieve yet.
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My Nikon has an app that connects to my phone and every photo gets uploaded to Google Photos as I take them.

As you said, I also auto upload all my photos taken on my phone to that. Eventually they get transferred to my home workstation and I back them up.
Many of you probably know there are programs you can install on FreeBSD to keep your photos on a server somewhere for viewing anywhere similar to Google Photos.
 
scottro said:
There was one about an Apple innovation, no keyboard, you would move an iPod (not Pad, Pod) like dial to get your letters.
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Around the time that Apple tried to sell a MacBook with only one external port, I started making a joke that Apple's next laptop model would be PERFECT. In the sense of being a perfect sphere, made of sandblasted aluminum. With no cracks, openings, or user interfaces. There is no display, no keyboard, and in particular no holes for dumb things like connectors, and even less a slot for a CD or an SD card. All these things from just distract from the perfectly spherical shape, and that ever so uniformly matte silver exterior.

It would also be utterly useless. But to Steve Jobs, this doesn't matter much: perfection is more important than being useful.

OK, that was a joke. In reality, the opposite was true. Steve Jobs (with all his horrible faults) really understood what users want. They want a device that does the tasks they want to get done (make phone calls, browse the web, write documents, video chat with their friends, put numbers into spreadsheets, edit movies, ...), without technology getting in the way. Things like connectors or buttons or keys are a means to an end: having to plug a wire into a device is not something anyone wants to do; it is something they HAVE to do, to get to their real goals. So let's minimize it. One other aspect he understood: the particular clientele that Apple serves not only wants a device that does the task (seamlessly and smoothly without getting in the way), but also one that is also well built. In the sense of being reliable, sturdy, and long lived. One of the reasons Apple devices (both phones and computers) are more expensive than competitors is: there is more metal and glass, less plastic, and there is an enormous amount of effort that goes into mechanical engineering to make it strong and survivable. For example: connectors are sealed against water getting in; Apple was years ahead of building phones that you can drop into the hot tub and still use. And this is not a joke: We've lost one Android phone to the hot tub, but iPhones fall in regularly and they don't care.

I can't imagine putting important information on an easily lost smartphone. Maybe younger folks are more careful about losing them.
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As Cracauer already said: In reality, all the information on the phone is just a user-visible front end to information that's stored in the cloud. I have replaced phones, and these days (as long as you stay within the Apple or Google ecosystem), you don't even have to do much setup of the new phone: The data is all in the cloud, the apps that you had installed get automatically re-installed, and most of your settings are copied. The last time I did this, all I had to do is to change the screen background color/image, and redo the arrangement of the icons on the screen to match my taste.

Now, if you for example replace a Huawei Phone with an Apple phone ... then you're on your own and start from scratch. I don't even know whether this seamless replacement works between vendors in the Android ecosystem, haven't tried that.
 
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