A lot of us have no qualms in “hating” Microsoft. Even those who never paid a penny for any of their products, like myself, included. Common reasons range from its dubious ‘creative history’ to its product pricing (BSOD in the past). I haven’t had any serious problems with my version of XP for over 19 months – the longest I’ve ever had an OS installation without any anti-virus s/w. It may have to do with the fact that I’ve significantly cut down on the ‘technical tweaks’ that I try since the time I switched fields. Of course, one of my best friends, Badri, would never take this as a reason to accord them with new respect. He started using Linux in 99. So you can imagine his opinion about MS. Technical inadequacies of MS products in contrast with open-source stuff like Linux is worth writing pages and people do it all the time. I neither have the expertise nor the passion to do it here.
In a recent conversation, one of my friends said that her friend quit his job with MS because of some “anti-corporate enlightenment.” I’ve read several articles that have detailed unethical practices of MS, but I still thought his move wasn't well thought out. Yesterday another friend of mine, from political science, shared the image below with me.
I usually avoid talking about economic models because I believe they are structures that are beyond individual repair. Any contribution by someone like me would take a significantly long time to have any measurable effect in anyone’s life. And obviously, my knowledge on economic models is fairly limited. When “experts” can’t agree on what’s feasible why should I expose my ignorance? But as always, I am interested on the measurable effects of corporatization. By measurable I mean things that are beyond subjectivities – war, inflation, unemployment etc. I’ve always wondered if MS can be painted along with the other corporations that several leftists have learnt to hate. I’m not sure. I’ll just paste the exchange we had after I saw the image.Suresh: I don't know if I would have had windows in the same list. I mean, Microsoft
Friend: why not?
Suresh: after all, they have the largest charitable foundation
Suresh: I think he's one of the very few corporates who's actually "giving back"
Suresh: maybe not as much as he can, but he is
Suresh: he doesn't kill chicken or exploit slum dwellers of Bangladesh (well, if you call outsourcing s/w jobs to India as exploitation, then yeah)
Friend: i know all about their "charity"
Friend: see, i have a problem with that framework
Friend: and outsourcing is exploitation
Friend: i mean, it's more complicated than just good corporation, bad corporation
Suresh: well, basically all kinds of profit making is exploitation, isn't it?
Friend: because so much of this is about power structures
Friend: the idea of capitalist profit is based on exploitation, yes
Friend: cheap labour and so on
Friend: creating needs
Friend: i mean, that's what capitalism is all about
Suresh: but I think one needs to be nuanced in his/her approach. They cannot equate Coke and McD with MS purely on the basis of their capitalist business model
Friend: no you can't
Friend: but you can talk about complicity
Friend: the idea that these businesses are complicit in a certain kind of nationalist model
Friend: or promoting certain nationalist goals and doing nothing to STOP their militaristic goals
Friend: i mean, their obviously genocidal goals
Friend: where is responsibility
Friend: so it's an issue of complicity
Friend: well, when it comes to that it's every american
Friend: but their tax dollars are significantly smaller than the ones that these people give america/israel
Friend: anyway
Suresh: yeah, never mind
Her comments were centered around the Israel-Palestine conflict the image represents. So I didn't want to point to the obvious shortcomings of her arguments (which I presume she knows too). I just wanted to hear her out. But I'll say it here. What do you expect them to do? Refuse to sell OS to government organizations? Refuse to pay taxes? Provide food and shelter to those who are willing to protest everyday on the street?
I'm not going to give CNN and others the same treatment. Of course not. They are criminals who consciously construct a contrived reality, but MS?
PS. I didn't edit the actual exchange. Just spaced them in a way it's easier to read.
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