Miscellaneous > The Lounge
Why do you hate Microsoft (Poll, Sort Of)
billy_gates:
No Fights, just tell me and everyone else what your grudge with MS is.
Mine is crappy ass software. I don't care about their business practices or close source software. I just hate crappy software that crashes and fails at every possible moment. I could care less about being able to look at the source. I also think that is MS is smart enough to sell crap to stupid people and make billions of dollars doing it, good for them. I don't like how they put other people out of business just because they can, but if they can, good for them. When it comes to open source stuff, I think it should be like everything else that you buy. I think you should be able to work your car's engine backwards, but don't think that they blue prints should be given to you. Now I do not like the dmca or whatever they're called that doesn't allow you to work the software backwards. I also think copying shouldn't be allowed, you can't do it in the real world, it shouldn't be allowed in the software world, except for convenience of the person who bought it.
I hate MS because they make Shit
Now tell me why you hate MS.
emh:
For me, it has less to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of their software, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they are open source (availability of source code makes no difference to me, because I'm not a programmer).
For me, it's their illegal and anti-competitive business practices. I mean, threatening computer makers with revoking their Windows licenses just because they want to feature software that's not made by Microsoft? That alone pisses me off so much. Why can't they let the consumer decide what is best for them? If their products were truly superior to the alternatives, then they shouldn't have any problem letting users decide what they want. In a fair market, people would be aware of all choices and select the product that works best for them. For too long in the computer market, Microsoft has been dictating what consumers can choose, and it's got to stop.
If Microsoft were truly fair in the marketplace, and if their software was truly superior to the competition, then they wouldn't have any fear in allowing computer makers to bundle software of their choosing. In a healthy market, consumers have choices. Competition drives capitalism. Who knows? In a fair market, with all things being equal, people might still choose Microsoft. And they also might still choose someone else. But as it stands right now, consumers don't think they have any other choice other than Microsoft, be it with operating systems, office software, money software, internet browsers, whatever.
Don't get me wrong. Microsoft has done good for the computer industry, unifying the PC model and allowing for one operating system to run on multiple configurations. However, their time has long past, and now they are nothing more than a big bully trying to buy their way into preventing other choices for the consumer. So far, mostly because consumers aren't aware that there are other choices, they are succeeding. The best way for MS to fail in this endeavor is for people to be made aware of the alternatives, and tell people that they don't have to be a slave to Microsoft if they don't want to be.
psyjax:
Main reason I have allways hated microsoft is basically cuz I'm a bigtime Apple Loyalist. I got into computers with the Apple II, migrated to the Mac and have been there ever since.
I started back in the day, and thought Mac's were wonderfull! It was great when we were king of the GUI and the home desktop... untill WIN3.1!!!! Grrrrr.... I hated that sodden pice of rubish the minute it hit PC's. I was enraged to hear people saying that now their PC's worked like Mac's, when they so did not know what the fuck they were talking about.
As a Mac user, I saw the insideus creep of microsft bloatware infiltrate my market like a plague and hated every minute of it. How could people increse the marketshare of this most pathetic attempt at a GUI when the Mac is sooooo much better?
It was even worse watching Apple fuck up their buissness time after time, and be oblivious to M$ as they copied them left and right. Why did they oust Jobs? Apple got their just deserts in this period for turning it's back on it's own creator.
And so Time went, on and then Came Win95. By this point it was too late, Marketing clout, and the overwhelming money M$ had, destroyed the Mac market share and reduced it to wavering between teh 3 and 5 percent it manages to keep today. We, the proud, the few, the Mac Zealots.
My beef with Microsoft is a personal hatred. It's the hatred of seeing a plagerist, a cheet, a swindler, use your complacancy to steal your wind and take the gold away from it's rightfull winner. I could care less if M$ made the best products in the world, I never have subscribed to the idea that the ends justify the means and never will. A company with low ethics, is not a company I will stand by.
[ April 23, 2003: Message edited by: psyjax: plain 'ol psyjax ]
slave:
I could attempt to write a long list of reasons why I hate Microsoft, but the truth of the matter is I don't see them as deserving any more hate than most other software companies. I think I'll let Richard Stallman speak for me with this article he wrote:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.html
Is Microsoft the Great Satan?
Many people think of Microsoft as the monster menace of the software industry. There is even a campaign to boycott Microsoft. This feeling has intensified since Microsoft expressed active hostility towards free software.
In the free software movement, our perspective is different. We see that Microsoft is doing something that is bad for software users: making software proprietary and thus denying users their rightful freedom.
But Microsoft is not alone in this; almost all software companies do the same thing to the users. If other companies manage to dominate fewer users than Microsoft, that is not for lack of trying.
This is not meant to excuse Microsoft. Rather, it is meant as a reminder that Microsoft is the natural development of a software industry based on dividing users and taking away their freedom. When criticizing Microsoft, we must not exonerate the other companies that also make proprietary software. At the FSF, we don't run any proprietary software---not from Microsoft or anyone else.
In the ``Halloween documents'', released at the end of October 1998, Microsoft executives stated an intention to use various methods to obstruct the development of free software: specifically, designing secret protocols and file formats, and patenting algorithms and software features.
These obstructionist policies are nothing new: Microsoft, and many other software companies, have been doing them for years now. In the past, probably, their motivation was to attack each other; now, it seems, we are among the intended targets. But that change in motivation has no practical consequence, because secret conventions and software patents obstruct everyone, regardless of the ``intended target''.
Secrecy and patents do threaten free software. They have obstructed us greatly in the past, and we must expect they will do so even more in the future. But this is no different from what was going to happen even if Microsoft had never noticed us. The only real significance of the ``Halloween documents'' is that Microsoft seems to think that the GNU/Linux system has the potential for great success.
Thank you, Microsoft, and please get out of the way.
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To put it short, I don't like Microsoft, but it's for most of the same reasons I don't like Apple, Macromedia or Adobe either.
Pantso:
There are many reasons why I don't like Microsoft as well. Surprisingly these reasons have a lot less to do with their Operating System's stability or security and more to do with Microsoft's view on free software. You see, not only has Microsoft supported and promoted closed and proprietary standards, it has actually tried to prevent the development of free software in various ways.
Microsoft is also the reason why we do not enjoy any freedom of choice and are not being offered any alternatives. They have bullied and are still bullying the software and hardware industries, based on their desktop "operating system's" success so far.
There are so many reasons, but I'm bored to mention each and every one of them. :D
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