Re: GNOME/Freedesktop/redhat incompetent or malicious influence

On Sat, 12 Oct 2024, Phillip Frabott wrote:

On 10/12/2024 16:57, D wrote:

  On Sat, 12 Oct 2024, Phillip Frabott wrote:
 

On 10/10/2024 18:13, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 16:10:04 -0400, Phillip Frabott wrote:
 

Replacing Ballmer with Nadella seems to have had quite an impact. Often
replacing a CEO is 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.
 

I'd disagree. I think Nadella is more like Gates then Ballmer. When was
the last time you saw Nadella run on the stage chanting and raving like
Ballmer did? :-P

 I think we agree but I phrased my remark badly. Nadella is like having an
adult running the company. I'm impressed that he managed to turn the
corporate culture around. Many times the 'new broom' has little effect.
 I don't know how much of that is from Nadella's personal background.
Indian business leaders seem to have a more collaborative, longer term
outlook than happens in the US. Ratan Tata was a good example.
 I'm skeptical about their AI efforts but at this point I think it's
something they have to do to stay in the game. I do hope the ARM
experiment works out better than the previous attempt.

 You opened the door for the relatedness so I had to take it. But yes, from a company corporate perspective I'd agree. But I don't trust Microsoft at all regardless because to me it's all about stealing our data and spying on us with what we do. And Nadella will do what makes the company money. So if they have to screw over their customers to make it so be it. "everyone" (using that loosely) uses Windows so they can do a lot of things to their customers and get away with it because they know their customers can't get away from Windows and Microsoft products. So unfortunately the company's output itself hasn't changed much.
 

 That reminds me... today some license term changes from linkedin landed in my inbox, and apparently all your thoughts, texts and data will now be used for linkedin business development, and I assume, AI training.
 But don't worry... linkedin (Microsoft) has _proactively_ added an _opt- out_ button, because obviously adding an opt-in would be way too reactive. ;)
 Fortunately at least this practice is illegal in the EU, so there they cannot do this.

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Heh, and opt-out button... This will probably come off conspiratorial but... I wouldn't trust that the opt-out button would actually opt you out of anything. Since you will never be able to see exactly what Microsoft puts into the training set, you'd have no way to prove or validate that it actually opted you out.
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I don't mean any disrespect in this next part, but it's just my thoughts. Yes, EU has laws about it, but here's the thing, first, EU would have to prove Microsoft was violating the law, (which Microsoft can easily cover up if they wanted to) and second, with a company as powerful and profitable as Microsoft is, the fines the EU would impose would be a speeding ticket to Microsoft at the end of the day. And if Microsoft threatened the EU to pull it's products from the EU, the EU would likely back down because, (and you can tell me if I'm wrong here) the EU is probably runs Microsoft software in most of it's infrastructures, and likely their government as well. It would cost the EU a ton of money and resources to move away from Microsoft if that were to happen and it's more likely the EU would just back away instead of switching to GNU/Linux or something else due to that cost of deployment, training, resources, etc. It's not like Facebook or X where it would not cause a major disruption like Microsoft would. Microsoft tends to be foundational. Facebook and X is just a consumer service in the grand scheme of things.
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(I am making certain assumptions about the EU and Microsoft software. If I'm wrong, then fair enough. But in the US most of our infrastructure and government need Windows to function so I just assume the EU is similar in that regard).
>

You could be right, but the speeding ticket issue I think has partly been addressed. The fines for breaking the law is 4%-10% of global revenue. That is not speeding ticket level fines.
In terms of how much MS there is in the infra, you are 100% right. There are small initiatives here and there, for instance, München switched to libreoffice, but usually what happens, is that Microsoft bribes the politicians with promises of an R&D center employing X 100 or 1000 people if they change back, and of course they do, since they are politicians and not open source enthusiasts.
Finally, in terms of proof, it is very common in the EU to be guilty until proven innocent. But don't underestimate whistle blowers who can leak information. I would imagine that the possibility of getting monetary rewards for leaks either exists already, or will be implemented, and that would also help motivating people to leak information about their employers breaking the law.
There is of course a down side to all of this, and that is that the EU is regulating it's tech sector out of existence, so all skilled technologists, in time, will become employed by non-EU companies, since there will be no point in starting a tech company in europe, only to be at risk of high fines for the slightest mistake.
In my opinion, the EU will become a museum where rich tourists from the rest of the world will go to experience food and culture. There will of course be a tail of tech jobs in heavy industry, but all innovation will leave the EU if its current socialist and pro-regulation agenda continues for long.