Company

All companies with investors are evil, make no mistake.

They may have nice looking save the world charity campaigns, but once you get even close to affecting their revenue stream, the axe falls.

Some level of Government intervention is needed.

It is just a question of business model: some business models are eviler than others. Making people pay for operating systems being possible the most evil of all.

One thing must be said however. You can learn a lot by working in a good company, because it ends up putting you in contact with practical real problems that you wouldn't otherwise see by just doing your own random low-tech startup. This is especially valuable if said company is also enlightened enough to use and contribute back to open source software, thus improving the world and paying back the moral debt of using other people's work for free.

Video "1984 Macintosh advertisement by Apple (1984)" comes to mind.

TODO year. This was a reply to Microsoft anti-Linux propaganda it seems: https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2012/03/truth-happens-redhats-legendary-reply.html

TODO date.

Trascript from: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xw3ws

The world is flat. Earth is the centre of the universe. Fact - until proven otherwise.
Despite ignorance. Despite ridicule. Despite opposition. Truth happens.

Despite ignorance.
The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. /Western Union 1876/
In 1899 the US Patent Commissioner stated, everything that can be invented has been invented.

Despite ridicule.
The phonograph has no commercial value at all. /Thomas Edison 1880/
The radio craze will die out in time. /Thomas Edison 1922/
The automobile has practically reached the limit of its development. /Scientific American 1909/

Despite it all truth happens.
Man will not fly for fifty years. /Orville Wright 1901/
The rocket will never leave the Earth's atomosphere. /New York Times 1936/
There is a world market for maybe five computers. /IBM's Thomas Watson 1943/
640K Ought to be enough for anybody. /Bill Gates 1981/

First they ignore you...
Linux is the hype du jour. /Gartner Group 1999/

Then they laugh at you...
We think of linux as competitor in the student and hobbyist market. But I really don't think in the commercial market we'll see it in any significant way. /Bill Gates 2001/

Then they fight you...
Linux isn't going away. Linux is a serious competitor. We will rise to this challenge. /Steve Ballmer 2003/

Then you win... /Mohandas Gandhi/

You are here.
Red Hat Linux. IBM.

Bibliography:

https://archive.org/details/makingciscoconne0000bunn on the Internet Archive Open Library.

Nothing phenomenally new on the early days to add on top of Video 5. "Nerds 2.0.1 excerpt about Cisco (1998)", but a few new good points:

This chick is hardcore.

She posed naked on horseback for Forbes to promote animal rights in 1997, ultra low resolution image at: https://rohitnair.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/cisco-history-cisco-systems-history-and-trivia-brand-history-and-trivia/

As of the 2020's, a slumbering giant.

But the pre-Internet impact of IBM was insane! Including notably:

They are evil because they produce closed source offline software used by millions: Microsoft Windows.

And also their monopolistic practices: United States v. Microsoft Corp.

So, as put in Video "Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs by Epic Rap Battles of History (2012)" by fake Steve Jobs to fake Bill Gates:

Why'd you name your company after your dick?

However, like all big tech companies with infinite money, they do end up doing some cool things in their research department, Microsoft Research, notably for Ciro Santilli being:

A monopolistic operating system that only exists in the 2010's because of the IBM-linked historical lock-in and constant useless changes of the Microsoft Word document format to prevent cross operability.

It offers no technical advantages over free Linux distros in the late 2010's, and it is barely impossible to buy a non-Mac computer without paying for it, which should be illegal. European Union, time to use your regulatory powers.

The following anecdote illustrates Windows' pervasiveness. Ciro Santilli was once tutoring a high school student in Brazil, and decided to try and get her into programming. When the "Windows is not free" subject came up, the high school student was shocked: "I paid 100 dollars for this?". She never even knew it was there. To her, it was "just a computer".

Laws should really be passed forcing OEMs to allow you to not buy Microsoft Windows when buying a computer, European Union, why have you failed me in 2016??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows

http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why. by Marc Bevand (2013) has some interesting remarks:

There's also little incentive to create changes in the first place. On linux-kernel, if you improve the performance of directory traversal by a consistent 5%, you're praised and thanked. Here, if you do that and you're not on the object manager team, then even if you do get your code past the Ob owners and into the tree, your own management doesn't care. Yes, making a massive improvement will get you noticed by senior people and could be a boon for your career, but the improvement has to be very large to attract that kind of attention.

The enemy?

You must watch this: Video "Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs by Epic Rap Battles of History (2012)".

It does not matter how many trillions you donate to charity, Bill. If you want to prove your point, make MS Word free and open source and port it to Linux. And then Window implements POSIX-compatible APIs and then deprecate non-POSIX APIs.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/ (archive):

I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

See also: effortless effort.

Open source driver/hardware interface specification??? E.g. on Ubuntu, a large part of the nastiest UI breaking bugs Ciro Santilli encountered over the years have been GPU related. Do you think that is a coincidence??? E.g. ubuntu 21.10 does not wake up from suspend.

evil company that desecrated the beauty created by Sun Microsystems, and was trying to bury Java once and or all in the 2010's.

Their database is already matched by open source e.g. PostgreSQL, and ERP and CRM specific systems are boring.

Oracle basically grew out of selling one of the first SQL implementations in the late 70's, and notably to the United States Government and particularly the CIA. They did deliver a lot of value in those early pre-internet days, but now open source is and will supplant them entirely.

Although Ciro Santilli is a bit past their era, there's an aura of technical excellence about those people. It just seems that they sucked at business. Those open source hippies. Erm, wait.

Bibliography:

Musk is a truly ambivalent personality. Some points are very good. Some are very bad.

Respect on the technical side by Ciro Santilli.

But the way he treated his first wife Justine Musk, is very very weird, incomprehensible: https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/

Positive Cirocoins for possibly going to reverse Twitter's unfair Trump ban if his Twitter acquisition goes through:

Negative Cirocoins for according to Wikipedia:

Within the merged company [Thiel's Confinity + Elon's X.com], Musk returned as CEO. Musk's preference for Microsoft software over Unix created a rift in the company and caused Thiel to resign.

How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson? answer by Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk.