[youdontknowtho]

It actually was a long time ago that they were "tangentially involved in SCO". That was a very long time ago. My children were babies when that happened. THEY ARE IN COLLEGE NOW.

BTW. That was mainly IBM and Novell that you want to be mad at. Microsoft made a licensing deal with SCO to license Unix. Wow. You really have to reach back on that one. You could have more reasonably chosen how they treated Netscape.

No one ever seems to mention that they invested in Apple at a time when that investment KEPT APPLE ALIVE. But what ever.

The telemetry. It bother you. It doesn't bother me.

The "Get Windows 10" app that people were complaining about? Fair play. That was crap.

I don't know what to say about the last statement. Ask anyone in computer security and they will say, yes it would be great if walled gardens weren't the best idea for getting trustworthy software onto customer systems, but right now it is. They all think that Android is worse than IOS. Platforms that are used by a billion people where you can do anything you want produce malware. There isn't a way around that right now.

Solve that one and you too can be a billionaire.

My feeling is that the "ill will" is more emotional than it is reasonable. I know lots of admins who made up their mind about Windows in the Windows 2000 and 2003 era. It's vastly different in 2016 and far better. It's hardly recognizable.

EDIT: OK OK. Babies may have been hyperbole. Toddlers. They were toddlers.

[pjc50]

(Someone has downvoted you, wasn't me)

In re malware and walled gardens, I certainly don't have a solution, but I've been writing a chart of the extent of the problem: https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagr...

[pweissbrod]

2004-2012 I built apps of significant size/$$ for clients employing poorly recommended microsoft tech including silverlight, infopath, webforms, datasets, windows phone 7 and 8, WCF. Hindisght is 2020 and shame partially on me but when you try to be sensible and follow the official recommendations you develop this instinctive flinch over time that happens when microsoft comes out with re-inventions that converts your codebase into legacy overnight.

Yes youre right the 'new' microsoft under nadella is much more accommodating, however I was forced into a place where I couldnt afford the problems the 'old' microsoft bought and it was more logical to adopt open standards. Since I switched to open platforms microsoft has really improved but pardon me if I stick with my open tool stack for the foreseeable future until i see any compelling reason to switch back. In other words, microsoft is now 'as good' as many open platforms, but there isnt really a compelling reason to switch back.

[youdontknowtho]

It's funny you mention InfoPath. I know of at least two multi-billion dollar companies that have significant amounts of development time tied up in InfoPath. All of its still running, with the plan being to replace it over time.

Still just sitting there running.

No need for pardon's. Use what you like that gets the work done. My instinctive flinch is different. We all have them. That's the thing, I don't want you to switch. I don't care. I love open source software. What I am saying is that they have a lot of effort built into backwards compatibility. And those solutions may not be the latest hotness, but you can still run them.