[mort96]

The official replies started off by addressing ... the "unacceptable abusive behavior towards AMD". The most important thing here is obviously to ask people not to use such hurtful words as "disgraceful" towards poor little AMD...

Answering the actual question seems not a high priority

[bborud]

Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset? Especially when to company has just announced changes that limit what users can do with their products.

The older I get the less I want to deal with companies that act like primadonnas and the technologies they make. This is also why I don’t do phone apps: your market access is 100% controlled by two companies that can wipe out your business overnight.

Imagine having to work with these people professionally. With real money involved. While probably not as high risk as mobile development, their customer representatives seem like real primadonnas. You’ll be happier without these people in your life.

[Aurornis]

> Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset?

I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse.

It should not be the job of a forum moderator to take abuse. Warning them about the rules of the forum and then enforcing the rules is forum management 101. It’s getting silly that people are attacking this person specifically for just doing their job.

[bborud]

When a company screws over entire segments of their customers people get angry. And they don’t get less angry when their frustration is belittled by someone how essentially says “your dissatisfaction means less to us than the words you choose to describe it”.

_Professionals_ de-escalate. This was not that.

[hluska]

I don’t want to register for this forum and I’m having trouble finding any kind of a sort. But are you referring to this comment?

* First, any bad language or abusive behaviour towards AMD, is not acceptable. If continued, we will proceed to block your profiles altogether.

If you are not happy with the new tier licensing flow, no one is stopping users (Students etc) to continue using the current versions of Vivado (any Vivado version prior 2026.1) and develop using free Vivado ML Standard Edition.*

If so, I have a different take on this. It could have been worded better, but I don’t think Anatoli is a native English speaker. Based upon a reply to @mkru, I also don’t think they have much visibility into marketing or if they do, they’re not very interested.

* For your specific question: Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier?

This is AMD's marketing decision.*

None of this is great, but English isn’t the easiest language to learn and de-escalation involves a specific speech pattern. And of everything they said in the answers I’ve found, ‘this is AMD’s marketing decision’ is the most blunt. Everything else has more information attached except for the little takedown at the beginning.

I know that’s a lot of words to say that I think belittling is a little strong. But brevity is a juicy topic… :)

[bborud]

Communication is tricky because it isn’t just about the words, but how they land. On the surface it may not seem like belittling someone’s pain. In reality this is exactly what it feels like for those on the receiving end. It also doesn’t help that it was delivered with a threat of expulsion. It communicates:

- we don’t care about your pain - those in charge find it below their dignity to explain the decision to you - we don’t feel we owe you an explanation, but we’ll take your license fees - we care more about how you say things than what you say - you are helpless and we can take away your voice (here) if we want to

Now, the problem isn’t just that some people are not native English speakers — quite a few in our industry come across as not being able to “speak human”. Which makes us prone to put more emphasis on words than how different people in different states of mind read those words.

[spaqin]

> Communication is tricky because it isn’t just about the words, but how they land

Please mind that English is not my native language, but as I aged, I found that to be true less and less. Exact word choice does not matter as long as the intent is conveyed properly. With some leeway, maybe benefit of the doubt. And misunderstandings can be cleared up.

In this case, customers are unhappy with the decision. No amount of weaseling around with any kind of word combination is not changing the decision. Whatever tone he might have used here would not help anyone or clear up anything. There is no further misunderstanding.

[throwaway85825]

People can be abused, corporations can't. They aren't living things.

[Dylan16807]

> I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse.

That's not the question that was asked.

Neither calling a company's actions disgraceful nor anything else in the posts that triggered that official reply were abusive to customer service.

[Aurornis]

I actually support companies who empower their customer facing employees to enforce civility.

It means the company cares more about their employees than sacrificing them in favor of maybe getting a few more sales from angry customers.

[dangus]

There were no uncivil comments in the whole thread.

Also, corporations don’t have feelings. They aren’t people. They are legal structures. No comments made were directed at moderators or employees.

[wormius]

Whether it's directed at you or not, as an employee it's still stressful AF and these people are like getting paid kinda shit wages to put up with people all day long.

I'm not arguing about whether or not this particular instance contained "uncivil comments" (do the mods have the ability there to delete the comments if they are uncivil?)...

But day in day out, on a mass level, it's such a goddamned drag, even if it isn't directed at you, it's energy and emotional bullshit. Every job has it, sometimes it's your boss or shit coworkers... But customer facing is such an awful position for the wages they usually make. Even if it's "good" wages. Even if they don't primarily face the public, but still have to engage in a secondary support role. I can't imagine what it's like to deal with this as a job when you're on the front line with an angry mob coming at you.

Again on this particular case I'm making no judgement, but it IS a stressor, regardless if directed at you, or not.

Especially in a high volume environment that probably has more incoming vectors of commentary/attack/vitriol than just the single comment thread.

[Dylan16807]

I disagree that enforcing civility means that, especially if mkru's comments are considered too uncivil.

[esquivalience]

They were very sweary.

[angoragoats]

Nothing about swearing inherently constitutes abuse.

[throwaway85825]

Tone policing is a common distraction from addressing the point and a useful diversion from making unflattering admissions.

[nubinetwork]

> Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset

Typical phone CSR boilover from covid days. Most places I call these days have a message saying that they will hang up on you if you act pissy.

[Aurornis]

> have a message saying that they will hang up on you if you act pissy.

When I had some influence over customer support at a company once I set a similar expectation. We didn’t advertise it up front but if a customer was being abusive over support channels they could be cut off.

Big morale boost for customer support. Abusive customers are rare but they can think it’s their job to attack, threaten, and be uncivil. Being stuck in a position where you’re forced to placate angry man-children sucks.

It’s sad that there are so many comments here trying to attack the forum moderator for moderating the forum.

This person had no hand in the decision making. No reason to treat them as an outlet for anger.

[account42]

If customer support employees don't want to deal with angry customers they should take a job whose purpose is not dealing with unhappy customers. If you as a company have too many angry customers the response should be to fix your product/service, not to find excuses to ignore those customers.

All you're doing to forcing your customers to find other ways to fix their problems - either by finding someone higher paid than customer support and wasting their time instead or by going to a competitor and telling everyone to do the same.

[bborud]

Was the anger directed at the moderator?

[jagged-chisel]

Seems we have an awful lot of snowflakes in the corporate tech world the last couple years. Can’t take criticism, can’t handle basic questioning of their operation …

[PearlRiver]

[flagged]

[NamlchakKhandro]

not sure why you're downvot... yes i do.

You raise an important topic.

Way too many people not going through initiation of adult hood, leaning into their grandiose inner thoughts.

[adrian_b]

Some people, including the management of most big corporations, claim that verbal insults, which do no actual physical harm to anyone, are "unacceptable abusive behavior", while the actions that do physical harm to others, e.g. by tricking or forcing them to pay an extra part of their hard-earned money for things that should not have been paid, because they had already been paid in another form, instead of using that money for worthy purposes, are not "unacceptable abusive behavior".

Obviously, I believe that a decision like that made by AMD now is a much more "unacceptable abusive behavior" than any kind of verbal insult ever known to mankind.

This kind of decision is a masked price rise of the AMD FPGAs that applies only to small businesses and individuals, while the big quasi-monopolistic companies are not affected, which will make competing with them even more difficult.

What annoys me most about this kind of policies aimed to hurt small businesses and individuals and favor big companies, which have become more and more frequent, is that in most cases they do not provide any financial benefit whatsoever to the company that enacts them, because they limit competition not in the market where that company activates, but in related markets.

However such policies are very beneficial for the entire class of people who are major shareholders, board members or executives in big companies, by ensuring that all markets are eventually dominated by few, which has happened especially after the end of the nineties of the past century, resulting in the current unhealthy economies of the Western countries and especially of USA.

This success of the quasi-monopolies has been caused by the lack of truly adequate consumer protection laws.

[Drakim]

I agree with your point (that AMD does a lot more harm than what they are indignant about) but not the way you go there. If emotional abusive behavior is not "physical harm" because it's just emotions, then financial abusive behavior is not "physical harm" either because it's just numbers. When you consider what incredible harm being emotionally unwell can lead to, I don't think it deserves to be dismissed.

AMD is clearly just putting on a performance here though, using the backlash they get as a weapon.

[mort96]

Yea insulting and being verbally abusive towards individuals is something that it's worth taking action against. My problem with AMD's response is simply that they take issue with "bad language or abusive behavior towards AMD".

[OneDeuxTriSeiGo]

NGL that phrase reads as an "ESL-ism" where the intended phrasing is "towards AMD moderators/employees/whatever" i.e. "Don't be a dick to the people trying to help/answer questions" not "don't be mean to the company".

Other quirks with their writing style seem to lend support to this being an "ESL-ism" as well.

[RobotToaster]

It would be more accurate to say that what AMD is doing is causing material harm, while a few mean words directed towards an anonymous megacorp are not.

[tekchip]

The replies here are horrifying. Yes corporations are not people. But they are made up of people. I'd imagine most here work in them yourselves. Often less well paid support staff who have to read, and try to respond, to such terrible behavior. As one of those support people myself I can assure you it takes a toll.

[mort96]

Do you genuinely think that support staff reads "this decision made by AMD is disgraceful" and feel personally attacked because they identify as "part of AMD" and therefore an attack on AMD's honor is an attack on theirs?

Don't get me wrong, support staff often gets abuse thrown their way in a way that is absolutely not okay. There's a lot of people out there who get angry at the support personale. That's not what we're talking about here. Support staff needs thick enough skin to hear, "AMD did something bad" and not take it personally.

[account42]

The entire point of support staff is to stand between unhappy customers and the rest of the company. If they don't think their pay reflects the responsibilities that that entails then they should ask for a raise, not make excuses to ignore customers that the company has failed to serve.

[alphabeta3r56]

Its just numbers only for rich. For poor ir can be the differnce between employability and not. In general, I believe that non-free tools like this are effective violence against poor nations since they trap those societies in unskilled sectors.

[throwaway85825]

Poor nations just pirate.

[cumshitpiss]

AMD is not a person. It has no emotions. Any perceived emotional harm by humans is them projecting themselves onto the AMD entity. Whereas AMDs actions here cause real harm to individuals.

[speff]

AMD and any other corpo is made of people, who do have emotions. Abuse towards these people impacts corp operations. This is an entity protecting itself from damage that it feels is not worth the benefit the offering would bring.

And I question your assertion of real harm to individuals, by not offering free support, being worse than receiving verbal abuse.

[stavros]

Right, but saying "this policy change is disgraceful" and saying "you, customer support person, are an insufferable dickhead" are very different things. From what I can see in the link comments, people seem to be saying mostly the former.

[cumshitpiss]

Was the abuse and response directed at a person or AMD? Even AMDs response is vague and deflects it as “Abuse towards AMD”

AMD is free to change their terms of their product, but then characterizing the backlash as abuse towards AMD is laughable. Have empathy for people not corporations

[makeitdouble]

> claim that verbal insults, which do no actual physical harm to anyone, are "unacceptable abusive behavior"

Which is true in a vacuum. Insulting _people_ is abusive behavior and shouldn't be accepted.

The issue here is the posts aren't insulting people, they're insulting a company, and a company can't be mentally abused.

[tekchip]

There are still individuals, who make up the company, who have to read and try to formulate responses to said abusive behavior. It's usually the lower paid support staff not the engineers or C suite who have those duties. As one of those people I can confirm it absolutely takes a toll.

[jeltz]

Nah, feel free to insult any company I have worked for or even the company that I am one of the founders of. I don't see why that should be off limits. But do not insult me as a person.

[basisword]

I'll come your place of work and hurl abuse at you all day. Let's see if you find it harmful or not by the end of the week.

[musicale]

    You answer all the questions we do not ask.
    Please answer the primary question this issue is about.
 
    Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier?

seems about right

[shevy-java]

> Answering the actual question seems not a high priority

This is a clear sign of propaganda and bullshitting by them. Because answering the actual question would be easy, unless you deliberately want to harass linux users. Perhaps a Barbara Streisand effect kicks in, because people are now sharpening their ears and eyes as to why they harass linux users specifically.

I also have to admit that while my main operating system is linux, on my left side I have a windows computer too. I found this approach more practical, even though I think Linux is far superior to windows. This abuse by private entities to try to force everyone to use winows, is anonying to no ends though.

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah that was hilarious, pretty much instantly closed the tab when I read that.

Oh please mister, won't you please think of the little billion dollar corporation's feelings? They're only poor corporations with nothing to their names but their billion dollar businesses! Won't you think of the starving corporations?!

[jeroenhd]

Probably a good thing I don't run a company, because I wouldn't put energy into responding to the kind of comments they're addressing. If you use a support channel the same way a teenager uses Reddit, you should count to ten and try again later.

That said, the tone and basic grammar of AMD's support rep isn't what I would've expected either.

They did answer the question, though:

> AMD expectation is that the BASIC tier licensing level is used for simple, entry‑level needs. While more advanced, production-based workflows are aligned with paid tiers.

In other words, they're saying hobbyists and beginners are on Windows anyway, and students can get a free version if they apply through the right channels. No more freebies.

AMD wants people to pay for their software. Instead of going "why are you bullying Linux users", AMD customers should probably be going "thank god the Windows version is still free (for now)"

[mort96]

You're kind of doing the job for them here by inventing a connection between Linux and "simple, entry-level needs". Plenty of Linux users have "simple, entry-level needs"; nothing about using Windows automatically makes you needs simpler. If that is indeed their argument, they ought to have spelled it out.

[robinsonb5]

> In other words, they're saying hobbyists and beginners are on Windows anyway

I suspect they're massively underestimating how many hobbyists and students are on Linux. We're not talking about a typical demographic here, we're talking about people interested in computers and technology at precisely the level that Windows and MacOS aim to isolate from the user.

[musicale]

"Well, some guy in marketing figured that we could make more money by charging more money, especially for things that we didn't previously charge money for. This was validated by ChatGPT as the kind of brilliant insight that qualifies someone for an MBA. You may take some solace in the fact that we somehow managed to preserve a free version for broke idiots who use Windows."

[jmull]

I don't know anything about this situation, but basic logic says if you want someone to give you free stuff, be nice to them.

It wouldn't surprise me if AMD is scaling back their free offerings due to the impact on support.

[gilrain]

> It wouldn't surprise me if AMD is scaling back their free offerings due to the impact on support.

They’re welcome to hamstring themselves in the market; it’s just not a smart move.

[ThrowawayR2]

Who are the alternatives to Xilinx on the high end currently? Altera? Lattice and the others make comparatively small FPGAs IIRC.