# Not sure about this



## Phishfry (Aug 31, 2016)

I know at the upper echelons the Foundation must strive to keep things civil between camps. But this took my breath away as a newcomer.
A Microsoft employee on the FreeBSD Foundation board.

Comments
https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-foundation-welcomes-new-board-members/


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## Phishfry (Aug 31, 2016)

Just 2 months ago the world was in shock by an disk image:
http://www.itproportal.com/2016/06/10/microsoft-supports-freebsd-the-world-is-in-shock/


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## ShelLuser (Aug 31, 2016)

Hmm, the world was in shock or the media liked to make it appear that way. For example, when looking at 'El Reg' (which happens to be one of my favorite news sites) the story about Microsoft supporting a FreeBSD Azure image didn't exactly get an extravagant amount of comments. So shocked? Nah.

But to be honest I think most people who are "shocked" or "surprised" over this are also often allowing themselves to be led by a little bias. For example, it's also not a secret that at one time Microsoft was even amongst the top 20 Linux (kernel) contributors. I'm sure they had their own agenda (in this case making Linux more compatible with their server line) but you can't deny the fact that they also contributed something useful to Linux as well.

In my opinion the same applies here. Who cares if she works for Microsoft? That should really be the least of your concerns in my opinion. I'm much more interested in her background and when looking at mentioning of Intel software projects involving virtualization and kernel drivers as well as an already present dedication to Open Source then I think the foundation made a good educated choice.


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## Murph (Sep 1, 2016)

I won't rehash all of my comments from the thread discussing MS officially supporting FreeBSD, you can read them over there if you want.  The short version is that I once liked MS (back in the early 8086 days), then grew to distrust them more and more over time (and with cause).  Despite that lingering distrust, I'm really not at all concerned by this announcement.  It's yet another free endorsement of FreeBSD by MS; more free credibility, publicity, and advertising for us.

Yes, we need to keep our eye on MS and make certain that there are no negative contributions or bad influence.  MS have big reasons not to behave badly here, as the negative PR when any misdeeds were inevitably exposed (something which would be fairly likely to happen rapidly) would be highly toxic for them.

Keep in mind that the Foundation's board does not have overall control over FreeBSD, and that board members can be fired if they do not appear to be working to the general benefit of the Foundation and Project.  Unlike the board of a normal commercial organisation, we have considerable power over the board, and the ability to essentially veto a decision made by the board which would send the Project in a bad direction.  The ultimate decisions around the Project's important stuff remain where they always have been, with the people who are contributing and committing code.  MS absolutely can't easily subvert that peer review process and cause any long term harm to the code (without getting caught and suffering badly from it).

There is no immediate downside here, we just need to remain vigilant.  There is plenty of upside from their endorsement of our OS.  If it starts to turn bad at any point, that's the time to worry, and the relationship can be terminated.


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## Phishfry (Sep 1, 2016)

Wasn't Microsoft secretly behind the SCO thing.

I am not attacking the person but the organization they work for.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 1, 2016)

It's no secret I have zero trust for Microsoft. I also have two friends who work for them and, from the stories they tell me, I have less than zero now.

What I don't understand is, I read one of the reasons she was brought in was cause Microsoft wants help interfacing their server products with FreeBSD. Fine but why does that require a board membership? Is this a Trojan horse? Personally, I think it would have to be cause that's how I feel about Microsoft.


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## zirias@ (Sep 1, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> Wasn't Microsoft secretly behind the SCO thing.


Those were the old Gates/Ballmer times. You might have missed the huge strategy change with Nadella, that was so much needed for MS, btw.

With classic PC sales dropping and OEM prices dropping as well, just selling an OS and an office package to consumers doesn't work any more. With a lot of great new development tools and frameworks on all kinds of operating systems, the .NET platform isn't enough any more to dominate the enterprise market. The attempt to rush into the phone and tablet market was a failure. Sticking to their lock-in/dominate/isolate strategy would have made Microsoft irrelevant over the time.

In this situation, Microsoft changed a lot:

They try to sell more services than software products, having Linux and FreeBSD available for their cloud services is part of that strategy, another one is the pricing and shipping model for windows 10
Instead of fighting standards, they now work on being as interoperable as possible
To make .NET fit for the future, they split it into modules and opensourced them, with development taking place on github (which is already a great source of information for any .NET developer)
Even their own source control tool, TFS, now optionally "speaks git" (which makes it IMHO "suck less")
I wouldn't say I'd ever really "trust" Microsoft. But it's apparent that their new strategy aligns much better with the interests of opensource developers and users.


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## kpedersen (Sep 1, 2016)

I think I am the only person in the world who preferred the old Microsoft. Now everything is moving towards "DRM as a service".

1) You now need to request a 30 day developer license to even compile and test Windows 8.x apps. This has been relaxed for Windows 10 but I have been told by a Microsoft Employee that it will be back if Microsoft ever gains "appstore" market share (What really creeps me out is he was telling this to me like it was a good thing and it is what *I* wanted to hear :S).

2) The Surface RT could have actually been fantastic (and been the big push to ARM that this world needed) but Microsoft locked it down to only use their stupid DRM shop.

3) *Everything* in the gaming industry revolves around Microsoft's "Fake devkits" which again, like the Xbox Live Arcade and Windows App Store needs to connect to Microsoft's DRM servers to "check" if my software that I wrote is allowed to run on my own machine.

4)The "Free" development tools like Visual Studio Community need a user to log in with a Microsoft DRM account before it will open. I would never do this and so had to torrent the Enterprise version even though I didn't actually need or want such a large software package installed on my laptop. Free (without the needless DRM) would have been perfect.

5) "Windows 10 as a service" is not even a thing. This is simply a misleading name for "Windows 10 with more DRM than previous versions".

And this isn't DRM to make money... No because it is all mostly free anyway. This is DRM for control for the sheer sake of it "because it might come in handy for our future business needs one day". One day hopefully there will be a law in place against this kind of practice. (I predict that law will come in when Valve shuts down Steam or some other large consumer service)

Also... .NET and C# is laughable. Any developer who has maintained a piece of software since .NET 1.1 to .NET 4.5 will simply choose C or C++ for their next project (actual developers like their code to be supported by computers for longer than 2 years)


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## ronaldlees (Sep 3, 2016)

> I think I am the only person in the world who preferred the old Microsoft ...



That says oh-so-much on so many levels. IMO, MS wants to be like Apple, but it's hard for them to do because there is still significant residual mindset for "automatically having permission" to write your own software on your own machine (something that has been the default way-of-things for a very long time).  IMO, the new meme is a monstrous power grab.

Heretofore, people who didn't like the _walled garden_ could do Windows (or Linux).  The new generation of developers has been immersed in a "new" mindset - total control - and has been aclimated to it (read brainwashed) - so I am not at all  surpised by the fellow who thought "_it was a good thing that I wanted to hear ..._"  The new generation will fall in with the party line pretty well, I think, and they're only teaching MS in the colleges these days ...

In the future, when somebody doesn't like you, they simply _turn your stuff off._  The way I see the future, through my own personal crystal ball, is that future apps all have the equivalent of the "big switch" for the internet.


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## ANOKNUSA (Sep 3, 2016)

Yeah, so I'm just gonna go ahead and report this for closing. No good can come of this thread: the title has "flamebait" written all over it, and this has already been hashed over in another thread.

Before I do, might I remind everyone that inter-organizational liaisons are a thing that well-adjusted and influential entities have, and hyperbole from random dorks on the Internet is meaningless?


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## kpedersen (Sep 4, 2016)

ANOKNUSA said:


> Yeah, so I'm just gonna go ahead and report this for closing.



I don't think this thread is getting out of hand to be fair. I personally always find it very interesting to hear the views of other technical users towards companies who still have such a massive impact on the industry as a whole.

As for the original topic, didn't Microsoft do the same with joining the board on Khronos? Just because their web browser now has to support WebGL, they decided to join the OpenGL board. I guess it is just a way that they get to hear of potential new directions of a technology before it even gets finalized. Plus it is not like the membership costs has any effect on such a large company 



ronaldlees said:


> In the future, when somebody doesn't like you, they simply _turn your stuff off._  The way I see the future, through my own personal crystal ball, is that future apps all have the equivalent of the "big switch" for the internet.



I agree . I just hope that companies in the future grow out of this almost childish and certainly controlling mindset. That said, if it gets so bad, I am almost certain that users will just say enough is enough and go towards open-source. This is a good thing in the long run I guess. Unless of course it gets so bad that we no longer have any choice at all in what we run.


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## Murph (Sep 4, 2016)

kpedersen said:


> I don't think this thread is getting out of hand to be fair.


Yeah, in general, we're quite impressively civilised about these things, even when there are obviously fairly strong opinions involved (with decades of history driving them, in some cases).  Everyone seems happy to tolerate the variations in opinion in here, which makes it mostly a healthy discussion.


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