Re: 2nd try? fontconfig? autohinter? anyone?
On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 07:54:43PM -0400, Roberto Sanchez wrote:
> Tom wrote:
>
> >You know, this is the first slipup in the Matrix I've experienced
> >since I switch to Linux. (I hope you get that: 9 months ago I was
> >a MS-employee. I mean to say: taboo subject about which we are
> >embaressed so we'll pretend it isn't worth discussing...
> >Less than complete intellectual forthrightness... Patent issue
> >we cannot overcome...)
> >
> >Not that it's a big deal, just find the arbitriness curious...
> >Everything else is rational.
> >
> >
>
> Wow. You worked for the evil empire? And survived? I always
> thought it was like the mafia. Once you're in, you can never
> leave. :-)
>
> -Roberto
That's my cue to tell stories:
Internally, MS employees act like open source. There's a great big
share (\\products\public), and everybody installs Advanced
Server/Enterprise editions of *EVERYTHING* (Windows, SQL, VStudio,
Office, etc) on EVERY machine. Prolly $20,000 worth of software on
every machine. If you have THAT model, and it's free, it's pretty
groovy.
But the ironic thing is, even with all that free software, I'm still
happier in the Linux world!
I worked there two years, June 2000 - Jan 2003. I saw NGWS become .NET
and Whistler become XP and Server 2003. And I saw developers noble
intentions become the usual Microsoft incompatible crap. You know the
theory that no one is consciously evil? It is very true here: at no
point, did anyone ever explicitly say "let's make sure this lines our
pocket and f*cks everybody else up" (except once or twice, from
high-level suits). They start out really honestly thinking they're
doing pure computer science. And then, 10,000 things happen, MS does
stuff, vendors respond, the community interprets it, mostly MS does
stuff: and the end result is: what you see. The expression "evil
intent" is not accurate, yet that is the result!
It's all very complicated....
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