Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

What signs of change are you expecting? Microsoft is a <i>huge</i> organization and change comes slowly to different products.<p>Here&#x27;s the thing - if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren&#x27;t exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more. I personally applaud Microsoft on their dramatically increased involvement in open source in the past couple of years and I encourage them to keep it up and explore other ways they can improve. Yes, Windows still sucks, and is getting worse. Keep putting their feet to the fire for it. But that doesn&#x27;t mean we have to demean the legitimately good work they&#x27;re doing - let them enjoy the success from that so they can apply it across the rest of the org!

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good.<p>However, I&#x27;ve been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the &quot;cancer&quot; of open source.<p>It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software.<p>How much has Microsoft really changed? I have windows on my gaming PC, and every day i have to ALT+F4 a stupid message to &quot;review my privacy settings&quot;. There is no option for full privacy so i keep ALT+F4&#x27;ing the message and block all the telemetry stuff in my openbsd firewall.<p>I have a powershell script called deleteapps that removes all the apps that is reinstalled everytime there is an update. It also appears to be impossible to uninstall the xbox app. Onedrive keeps turning on even if I choose that I do not want to sync during the installation, set the option in onedrive to not start at launch.<p>Why fight the user to this level? Have they really turned &quot;good&quot;?

The obvious advantage for Microsoft is that they can now influence OSI. Even if they don&#x27;t get voting rights immediately (which I would expect them to push hard for) there will now be the everlasting threat of pulling the funding to keep OSI in line. Organisations sponsored mostly by companies can&#x27;t be expected to be bold about upholding users&#x27; rights and keeping the moral high ground, because most organisations are willing to compromise to keep themselves alive. Now it remains to be seen if this is a dark day for FOSS or just for OSI.

I do mind the perception that OSI is some pristine and error-less patron of open source. They&#x27;re not, they are a business and they will do anything to get more donations.<p>OSI has been known to accept money from anyone. They took money from the company that&#x27;s known to abuse open source. It’s a kind of “indulgence”, where you pay the church of open source to wash away your sins. OSI certainly doesn&#x27;t care about anything other than publicity.

From the press-release: &quot;Microsoft&#x27;s history with the OSI dates back to 2005 with the submission of the Microsoft Community License&quot;<p>Well, that is not exactly true. For those who have forgotten the history, or weren&#x27;t around at the time, this leaked internal document from Microsoft was the proximate cause of OSI taking off: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;halloween&#x2F;halloween1.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;halloween&#x2F;halloween1.html</a><p>TLDR: Microsoft&#x27;s loud opposition to, and deep fear of, open source software provided a catalyst and a point of unification for those who supported it.

If I had a crystal ball back in the 90&#x27;s that would have predicted this, I would simply had thrown it away thinking it was broken. Simply astounding. MS went from the &#x27;monopoly&#x27; everyone loved to hate to this. Bravo!

I would have preferred to see this money go to FSF instead of OSI, but of course sponsoring any of these organizations is better than not sponsoring.

So I hear it&#x27;s been rather chilly in Hell as of lately, some report below-freezing temperatures.<p>That being said, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and all that. Besides, there&#x27;s a market for free software now they&#x27;ve become a cloud computing company too. Fits perfectly into their long-term plans.

Don&#x27;t large companies sponsor or become members of such initiatives or organizations just so they can have a say on its future?

Does anyone know what Microsoft&#x27;s objectives are here?