Re: Contradictiory directions

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 09:13:19AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> > Since a few years ago Gcc improved after painfully breaking old
>> > constraints, pressured by the new competitor, but I'm afraid that it
>> > will be too little, too late. Linux compiles with Clang, and that's a
>> > very worrying signal for Gcc, because if certain distributions migrate
>> > to Clang, Gcc development will be over.
>> 
>> That rings a bell: it's what I heard 20 years ago about XEmacs vs GNU
>> Emacs when I talked (in person) to its main developers.  The rest is
>> history.
>
> I think it is still relevant. Big corps have learnt to ride the waves
> since then. Watch Microsoft "being friendly" to "open source" to the
> tune of $ 7 billion (if I remember correctly) they shelled out for
> Github (they didn't out of the goodness and warmth of their hearts:
> I, at least, don't believe in fairy tales). Watch Google (before that)
> editing out the "do no evil" while nobody seemed to be looking.

Money is in another place nowadays. It's not in the software they sell to users,
it's users they sell nowdays, or at least data they gather from users. I
wouldn't be surprised if they even give away OS for "free" one day; they already
do for the most part, just as they did with IE and other software, just so
people use it, or if they even go "open source" with it in some forseable
future; not a year or so, but 10? 15? Maybe sooner, when they can't sell it any
more; when new generation used to Android/iOS and gnu/Linux have grown up so
they don't care about MS Windows any more?

MS clearly had a vision (business plan) when they purchased Github and that AI
company and when they started VS Code. It took several years for outside world
to realize, but I think it is clear now, with codepilot. They want users, they
want people to create content on their platform, because people are money, not
the software they (micorosoft) create. They failed with Bing, but I think Github
+ AI company is their "Google search".