[richard_todd]

Earlier he had said that we shouldn’t keep old grudges, so I was surprised he then turned around and asked for them to renounce statements from 20+ years ago, made by people that aren’t even there anymore.

In my mind, .net core and vs code and countless smaller projects are a complete renunciation of their previous public statements. Maybe Stallman can’t see that because they MIT license those things, but why ask for more talk when you are already getting action?

Edit: here’s Ballmer turning around in public on the cancer thing. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linu... so I really don’t see what more Stallman wants.

[jacquesm]

Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. When it suited him Linux was a cancer, and when it no longer suited him he 'loved Linux'. If the wind should ever change Linux will for sure be a cancer again.

[vezycash]

> Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Ballmer is not a Devil. Open source was costing him billions in lost Windows revenue from Google, Amazon and many other companies. Right now, with hindsight bias, we feel that the path to capitalizing on open source was OBVIOUS - it wasn't. Cloud computing wasn't a thing when Ballmer was in power - an existential crisis for the Microsoft.

The new guy Nadella is no Saint or Altruist. Right now, it's obvious business sense to embrace open source - particularly because of Azure unlike 20 years ago.

People talk about Saint Nadella and forget that Nadella's just taking the glory for Money makers that were started & financed by Ballmer - Xbox, Azure, Office 365, Hololens, Surface Pro, Windows 10...

Google which built its business on open source, embraced open source much early with Chrome & Android. However, they are doing a tactical retreat - butchering those two money makers and making key parts of them proprietary.

If Jobs were still running the show at Apple when he built NextStep, he wouldn't have embraced Unix. At that time, only broke people did open source but now big companies can go broke trying to build everything by themselves.

Just follow the money and most people are easy to understand. Google won't stop spying on people because of money. And Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling customer's data.

[marmaduke]

> Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling

Could it be (I'm not an apple fanboi though I like my 2015 MBP) that Apple's financial predictions suggested that a lone company not selling customer data might be able to flip that to their advantage in the marketing or minds of its users? Apple privacy is a recurrent même so it seems they succeeded intentionally or otherwise

[jacquesm]

I very much do not think Nadella is a saint, for one thing he was there when Ballmer did his stuff, if he was a man of principle he'd have left MS long before he made it to the top so I'm going on the assumption that he was A-Ok with those strategies as long as it benefited him.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple.

You say that as if it were a condemnation. Everybody who runs a business is an opportunist, pure and simple.

[asveikau]

Everyone who runs a business, just like everyone in any other life circumstance, must balance multiple concerns at the same time. So, the need to make money, and the need not to be a jerk. They can and should overlap in the same individual.

We've gone through periods in our culture where we glorify greed and self-interest. (Commentary like yours makes me think of Reaganites or Ayn Rand.) We've gone through other periods where we acknowledge the need to band together. (Think 1960s hippies.) A functioning person probably needs both types of influence at various times of their lives. I get really tired of how many people glorify or worship the former and neglect the latter.

[jacquesm]

To a coarse approximation, yes. But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to. In a more just society these guys would be behind bars rather than pretending to be philanthropists.

[ThrowawayR2]

> But very few people would go to the lengths that Ballmer was prepared to go to.

Larry Ellison? Scott McNealy? I'm sure I could think of others if I had the time. Ballmer was merely the most visible because MS was at the top of the food chain at the time.

[jacquesm]

Good point about Ellison and McNealy, Jobs figures in there somewhere as well given how he treated his business partner.

[fortran77]

That would be fine if he didn't pretend to be a man of "principles" built on a foundation that can not be shaken.

[tutfbhuf]

Ballmer says Linux instead of GNU/Linux. That's just another mistake.

[deskamess]

Your point about 'action' vs 'talk' is valid.

In this case what is being asked is not a grudge that needs to be addressed. Keep in mind the underlying context of the suggestions => "what can Microsoft do". So this is, in my eyes, more of something that Microsoft can choose to do for themselves - admit that they said things in the past that were not exactly true. A self initiated internal cleaning of the air as they continue to engage the public community. This is not something that they have to do to address a grudge. It should be mostly symbolic to the external world. So, is there value in Microsoft actually coming out and saying it? Well, that's for Microsoft to decide.

[rerx]

Quoted for its WTF-factor:

> Perhaps his new-found peace with Linux is linked to yoga, a practice he said he has taken up after leaving Microsoft in 2014.