[harkyns_castle]

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces.

There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways.

Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched.

They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

[Spooks]

A lot of the people that were there when practices were at their worse are no longer there.

I don't think I would be able to use any form of technology if I was to hold a grudge for every large company that performed some sort of bad practice, with slave labor to privacy issues.

Luckily people that perform these bad practices will eventually get ousted and replaced, that's when I proceed with caution.

[detaro]

Sadly, if you use such rules there are not many big tech companies left that haven't done such things...

[sounds]

False equivalence fallacy.

You can wish Microsoft would die, and still use an iPhone.

In fact, much of Apple's success can be attributed to Microsoft fumbling the mobile revolution. In other words, people who use Apple may be doing so directly because of how much worse Microsoft was -- due to Microsoft spending their limited resources on zero-sum tactics like shafting their developer ecosystem.

Compete or die. (Microsoft seems to act like they have a third alternative, monopolize. They're still immensely profitable so it's understandable that their shareholders are comfortable with their current course.)

[jinst8gmi]

And continue to do such things... e.g. milking Android handset manufacturers using patents.

[verbin217]

I agree. The world needs more granular incentives.

[Infinitesimus]

Out of curiosity, is it fair to assume you use hardware and software by a source you consider more ethical then? (your classification above rules out Apple and Google as well since they've both done less-than-stellar things )

[harkyns_castle]

I basically do my best yes, whilst having to earn a living in my chosen field. FreeBSD and Linux where I can advocate them.

Part of my current contract is migrating a customer away from SQL Server to Postgres, and it feels good. Automating powershell on aws instances doesn't feel so good, but it's temporary pain.

[baldfat]

This is my ehtical chart

Apple (Worst Offender but also helped Open Source at times)

Microsoft M$ (Middle of the road with it always depending on who you spoke with at the company)

Google (Most powerful of the three in terms of control over people's lives if they wanted it, but I seriously think they stumble ethically not on purpose. I believe they try to follow, "Don't be evil" as a whole)

[debacle]

Corporations are ships of Theseus.

[ladzoppelin]

But its attitudes like this that drive people toward Ms. Everybody can see that other companies are doing the exact same thing. For example there is actual proof of Apple conspiring to keeping developer's wages low.

[SCHiM]

I don't think that's a fair position to take, fair to yourself that is. The company then is not the same as it is now. Enough time has passed since then and now that it's safe to assume that all the people in important positions have been partly replaced, and I'm sure the majority of those who remain are now in different situations than they were back then.

I think it's wrong to withhold fair consideration for MS products (specifically) just because they did something you think is wrong years ago.

[anon4]

You can't forgive a corporation. Corporations aren't people, they have no conscience, no morals and no ethics. The entire concept of forgiving them, or being angry at them or whatever doesn't make sense. It's like forgiving a lion for eating your brother and thinking it won't eat you. It's a lion. It will eat you when it gets hungry. That is its nature.

[blumkvist]

>Let them die.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

[criddell]

Microsoft isn't going to die, but their enormous influence has eroded nicely. They're a mature, profitable, mostly boring company and I'm okay with that. XBox is pretty hip, but the reset of the company is about as interesting to the general public as Oracle, Cisco, or IBM.

[yread]

> cancerous attitude

seriously?

[hga]

Seriously. Microsoft has an unmatched record of screwing pretty much everyone who did business with them, and otherwise abusing their position in the market. Worse than IBM when IBM was in their position.