Why is Microsoft Evil?

[xky]

Microsoft is often described as evil on HN.

What has Microsoft done to deserve being labeled as evil?

[thesuperbigfrog]

"Microsoft Loves Linux" now but before that they stated, "Linux is a Cancer" and treated it as such:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

Things have changed since then:

https://www.idginsiderpro.com/article/3584911/how-microsoft-...

You really had to be there to understand the emotions involved. It was like a real life version of Star Wars with the Rebel Alliance (GNU / Linux / BSD et al.) against the Galatic Empire (Microsoft).

People protested and made it into a social movement that has since become mainstream:

https://youtu.be/1j9j-Ywjmbk

[nickpeterson]

Microsoft is a company that in the past tried very hard to use their dominance in certain markets take over other markets. It’s hard for young people to understand how powerful Microsoft was as a company in the mid 90s.

[orionblastar]

Microsoft bundled apps like Media Player and Internet Explorer to take over markets of QuickTime and Netscape web browser.

[simonblack]

They had a history of outright stealing of other companies' intellectual property. They had the habit of deliberately misleading people about other companies' products. Those of us who lived through the 90s lost all trust in Microsoft. They will never ever regain that trust.

Some places to investigate for your own education: 'The Halloween Documents', 'AARD Code', 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish', 'STAC software stolen, DriveSpace released','Exclusionary Licensing', 'Sendo', 'XBox 360 Disk Failures Suppressed', 'Microsoft Litigation', etc, etc, etc.

Here. I'll get you started with the 'Halloween Documents' - http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

[rolph]

>> What has Microsoft done to deserve being labeled as evil? <<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

[stop50]

They also used public standards and added propietary incompatible standards on it. outlook 365 requires changes to use smtp and imap that are not always compatibel with standard software. They "standartised" their xml based document standard (docx, ...) despite the open document standard already beeing standartised and impossible to implement for other developers except microsoft(modern office files are incompatible with the standard).

[mdp2021]

> xml based document standard

And how violently ugly are those file structures. (Compared, e.g., to .fodt)

[appleflaxen]

Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.

Other companies might have a monopoly on Web ads, but Microsoft has been convicted. That's amazing. And evil.

[mdp2021]

We want our computing to be free. Monopolistic practices threatened that.

[endisneigh]

No