> And finally, how likely is Microsoft to fuck free software developers over with proprietary extensions in the future? This is Microsoft we're talking about, after all.
There's a radical change in public behavior of Microsoft since Satya Nadella became CEO. While at first I was skeptical, it's now been three years we have had to observe whether Microsoft's actions match their promises.
So far, I'm impressed. I think their new vision and approach to doing business is much improved from that of their previous two CEOs - it's better for consumers and developers, and frankly it was necessary for the long term survival of MS.
I don't expect to see nasty behavior from them like we have seen in the past.
It seems like the floodgates opened after VS Code when Microsoft realized people actually like what Microsoft produces when they make it easy to use (no confusing, expensive licensing), so there's no need to lock people in. Everything people ever hated about Microsoft was a result of it trying to protect its monopoly rather than coexist.
They're still a little confused about Windows (why do I need to spend $50 on Pro to encrypt my drive?), but you can get Office on anything now. Even Edge has an Android port (beta).
Nasty behaviour is still there. Windows is a joke in terms of how bloated and clunky it still is, how it snoops on you, doesn't let you turn off updates without doing some shady things with the register and whatnot (which, a regular person, will never be able to do) and it has ads in the OS.
Well, they could commit suicide and get a Ballmer clone.
They lost control of the client (it's web + Android/iOS now), steering away from the current course and back to the old one is a sure way to irrelevance.
There's a radical change in public behavior of Microsoft since Satya Nadella became CEO. While at first I was skeptical, it's now been three years we have had to observe whether Microsoft's actions match their promises.
So far, I'm impressed. I think their new vision and approach to doing business is much improved from that of their previous two CEOs - it's better for consumers and developers, and frankly it was necessary for the long term survival of MS.
I don't expect to see nasty behavior from them like we have seen in the past.