Hi h4rr4r,

Ok! Now were getting somewhere. In your last post you didnt curse, and you didnt say anything insulting. You are getting close to a lucid and fact base conversation.

The idea that posting a positive comment about your employer makes someone a "paid shill" is just goofy, it is nonsensical. If you really believe this, then there are large numbers of paid shills posting on Slasdhot and in many other places. So, please be sure to critisize them as equally as you have critisized me.

I think you dont understand the labor market. My explanation that we pay people the same no matter if they are citizens or on a Vista doesnt prove your point - not even a little. We dont complete for labor with just ourselves, but with many, many other companies - the demand for labor in our industry is what sets labor prices - not what just what we pay. We compete for top talent every day with Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Oracle, and many other companies (including small companies and startups). Its this market that determines the cost of labor - how much we pay in salary and the overall total rewards package.

The current labor market for they kind of people we hire - devleopers and technical people in particular - is currently tilted in dramatic favor of the candidates. Said more simply, the demand for top technical tallent greatly outstrips the supply. Im sure you understand basic economics to know what that means.

We simply cant pay less than the market rate or people that we wanted to hire would simply go to other companies that offered better packages. We see this all the time. For example, we recently lost a very good new-grad hire to Google. They simply offered the candidate a higher sign on bonus. He waned to buy a new car. He was very up front about it. He was talking to Amazon as well. Unfortunately, he accepted Googles offer before we had a chance to counter. He was new to this and didnt understand that he had a good negotiating position and very likely could have gotten more out of someone.

I dont like tax cheats either - they are breaking the law. I was really clear that avoiding taxes legally is good, right, proper and noble. If you dont like people and companies that do that then you really dont like a very large number of people and companies. Are you being hypocritical here? Have you ever taken a tax deduction? How about for mortgage interest? Or a home office? If so, how is OK for you to do that, and cheating if others do it? How do you judge a ligitmate tax reduction technique, or a bad one. Do you just know it when you see it - which is subjective relativsim at its worst - or do you have some more objetive criteria? You can I can agree to disagree here - but as long as its legal, its not cheating. I argue that it would be good to make it much simpler, and that it would be good for the country if some corporate and individual tax shelters were eliminated. But again, if its legal, its not only OK, its good, right and proper.

I searched, but I dont think anybody ever fussed at us about doing anything that could remotely be called bribing dell. Do note that we have long had a marketing program where we give partners marketing dollars if they meet a min-quality bar. You may be familiar with the Windows Logo Program. If they meet our logo requirements, they get some marketing money. This program changes a bit from release to rerelease. All OEMs are equally eligible .

My apologies for missing your comment about "calling Linux a cancer". Ballmer was widely misquoted here. If you read the articles (here is one), he was talking about the GPL - not Linux itself. Ive personally heard Ballmer talk about this internally, and it is the license he doesnt like, not the things that use the license. Now, you may believe that is splitting hairs, and if you take umbrage to Ballmers opinion here, then I suggest you have a thin skin and are more than a little hypocritical. You personally called me an asshole. How does that compare to what Ballmer said? Moreover, the vitriol from the anti-Microsoft (particular on Slashdot) is way, way more acidic than any of Ballmers statements. if you are going to hold Ballmer to task for this statment then you must certainly resever equal disdain for lots of posts and peole here on Slashdot. You can find my related views here.

Yes - I should have been more clear in talking about monopolies.That wasnt a very well written argument. Privatizing was a poor choice of words. I should have said de-regulating. Its pretty common that when left to their own devices, ulility companies will rise prices unreasonably.

Note - you didnt mention if you approve of MLB or not...

Next, you said:

How the Xbox turned out? According to MS it still has not ever made a dime. The 360 may one day pay back its own dev costs, but it will not pay for the first one. This is a great example of MS using its monopoly earnings in other markets to distort this market.

Im not sure where you are getting your XBOX numbers - do some research. Go look at our 2010 financial statements - heck, just go look at many other posts here on Slashdot. The XBOX business is gangbusters for us and my understanding is that the XBOX business has had a positive (and good) ROI for some time now. As I mentioned in another post - just XBOX live alone is running at $1.2 billion dollars. Here are some links:

• One of my recent posts here.
• Here are some links on my Delicious collection

Note, I do believe that we lost money on the original XBOX. But with the 360, the overall program has been quite successful and is a growing and profitable business.

Lets talk about interoperability. Interoperability is a feature. Its is not free. You are a developer - you know that. SharePoint (and many other things) are Microsoft products, they work best with Microsoft products. Just like things that run on Linux work best with Linux. This is by design. Often we design, implement our products to interoperate well with non-Microsoft products. Sometimes we dont. What I can tell you is interoperability is something that is customer driven - when our customers needed it, we do it. Again, we do this often. But, we dont spend money, time, effort and energy on interoperability just because someone on Slashdot might be unhappy about it. It doesnt take too much digging to find non-Microsoft stuff that doesnt interoperate with our stuff. How bout authentication? To my knowledge - there is no way for a Linux system to participate in a Windows domain security model (which is quite good) despite all the publicly documented protocols to do so. Note, Linux systems can login with Kerberos - which has been supported since W2K, but that just authenticates users - it doesnt make a Linux system a full participant in a Windows domain security system. Note, that our support for Kerberos is great example of a feature specifically included for interoperability. Note, i think this is just fine - but it is an example of a lack of interoperability in Linux.

Im not sure what interoperability problems you are talking about with SharePoint - but Ill take it on face value that there are some. Im assuming you are unhappy that SharePoint doesnt work with one or more non-Microsoft browsers. Note, I actually use FF at work and it seems to work just fine with our internal SharePoint servers. In any case, these are our products. We dont make anybody buy them. If you dont like it, dont use them. Im sure you can find all kinds of alternate products - right?

Im not familiar enough with how Excel works on the Mac. But, the MAC version of office doesnt have 100% feature parity with the Windows version. My understanding is that this is more due to the what Apple customers want, and the costs of developing he product, than any strategic or tactical decision not to support something. Like with any cross platform engineering project - there are trade offs to be made. Very few things that are truly cross platform have 100% feature parity (though Im sure some do). This is especially true for big complex things like Office.

I now apologize if I havent addressed any of your comments. If I have missed any, its not intentional - just let me know what Ive missed and Ill comment as best I can.

My motives for many of the questions I ask you is to determine if the dislike and criticism you have of Microsoft is primarily aimed at Microsoft, or if you have an equal dislike for the other companies that do the same things. I read through as many of your Slashdot post as i could in about 45 minutes and these seem to indicate a focus on Microsoft. If so, then that is highly hypocritical. If you are going to be this critical of Microsoft, then you should also be as critical of other companies that share similar business practices.

Let me give you a good example: Google giving Android away for free. Many people consider this highly anti-competitive behavior.My personal opinion is that this is simple corporate hard ball at its maximum. Developing a good mobile operating system, shell and set of applications is freakishly expensive. Apple, Nokia (with Symbian), and Microsoft have all invested tons and tons of money here. So has Google. Googles revenue model isnt selling software. Their primary revenue stream is advertising by a ratio of 26 to 1 (clearly shown in their most recent financial statement).Googles goal is to undercut their competition with a free product then make revenues off of search and customer data from Android based systems. They openly call this both offensive and defensive (cite). Forbes thinks this will be a $1B market soon - almost as big as our SharePoint business which is well over $1B in annual revenue, and highly profitable. Google confirm this themselves (cite). When launched in 2008, Google said they would not take a cut of any paid app revenues (cite). This is a direct shot at Apples business. For paid apps, they take 30% from the developer and give it to the carriers (which I think is brilliant).

Google isnt doing this because they are good, or because they are noble, or because they love open source, or because they want to do what is best for customers. They are doing it for one reason: to make as much money as they possibly can at the direct expense of their competitors. To do this, they will leverage every possible advantage they can - including their dominant market share in search, which some claim is a monopoly, (cite, cite, cite, cite, cite - I could go on and on here...). To be clear - I dont agree with all monopoly claims against Google, or Apple, or Microsoft. My personal opinion is that such claims are driven by competitors who simply suck - they couldnt cut it. So they did the only thing they could do - sue. Losers every one. It may be expensive, it may take a while, but it is possible to successfully complete with Google, Apple and Microsoft - on their home turf, in their strongest markets. Its just really hard and doing so means making no-mistakes because the big guys will squash you if you screw up. Bummer for the looser here - whoever it may be.

Lastly, I have some requests for you:

• Dont make stuff up. If you are going to be critical, make an effort get your facts right. Bing and Google are very easy to use. If you make stuff up you are simply lying - you are not merely being mistaken.
• Dont cuss and dont gratuitously insult people. It just makes your posts vulgar, base and common. It sucks the legitimacy out of your statements and arguments.
• If you are going to be critical of Microsoft, be sure to apply that criticism equally to others where it applies. Doing otherwise is simply petty and hypocritical.

Best Regards
-Foredecker

p.s. My appologies if there are spelling mistakes in this post. I use a spell checker of course, but Im a terrible proof reader.

Nice post.

-foredecker.

How do you figure? Did you do any math actual math? If so - care to share it? Or cite an reputable article? What did you compare it to? Or did you just make that up?

-foredecker.

Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360. That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But, despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being profitable since 2008.

Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you cite your source?

XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite). Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our annual report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business - we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010, this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business. Steam is close to that (cite).

Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.

-foredecker.

Hi h4rr4r,

Ok, thats a bit better. My apologies for misinterpreting your use of the term amateur. I think you can see I dont believe that any of our competitors are amateur - this includes FOSS folks. Its groovy that you didnt curse this time, though the pejorative use of the term shill remains both baseless and crass.

I believe I addressed all your comments. Where do you belive Im lying?

Im not sure why you think Im a "paid shill". Could you explain that in a lucid fact base manner? Im a dev manger in the windows org - my signature clearly points to my wordpress site. Im not the least bit anonymous. Do you have any evidence that Microsoft has ever paid anyone to post anything on Slashdot? No? Yes? What enables you to make that claim? Im pretty familiar with how we do PR and marketing and Im pretty sure that never happens, though i must admit I do not know that for a verifiable fact, but Id bet money on it...

Or, is that simply a hyperbolic baseless accusation? Or is that a lie?

Are you a "paid shill" simply because you post on Slashdot and have a job?

Speaking of pay and H1B visas - Im quite confident this your claim is 100% baseless. Im a hiring manger and have hired many developers. We pay people on visas exactly what we pay everyone else. Microsoft is quite competitive with overall rewards - that includes starting bonuses and stock, base salary, yearly bonuses (cash and stock), and benefits. For example, our health benefits are fabulous - Microsoft very literally pays for my health care - nothing comes out of my paycheck. Ive never had a single co-pay - ever (I have a family of four). I know for a verifiable fact that not only does Microsoft health coverage do this for regular things but also for very, very expensive things like cancer treatments. Microsoft routinely pays 100s of thousands of dollars for peoples cancer treatments - with no copay.

Microsoft is responsible for enabling thousands of the smartest and best people from all over the world to come to the United states and work for long periods of time. Many of these people gain their citizenship. They raise families here, pay taxes, and are exactly the kind of people we want to emigrate to the US. Thats a bad thing how?

When we hire a person on a visa, we hire them "into the US". This is in contrast to hiring people already here on a vista. That does happen - for example, someone might already be working here (on a Visa) for another company, or may be here on an educational visa. But most visa hires are for people that we bring in from outside the US. By "into the US" I mean: We pay all the expenses of helping them get the visa, we fill out all the paper work have lawyers review it, we submit it to the federal government for approval. Then we pay to move them here - this often includes moving their family as well.

We hire these people simply because there are not enough qualified US based people to fill high tech slots in the US. There is intense competition for the best and the brightest. We compete against Google, Apple, Oracle, IBM, Facebook, and several other companies all the time for the best talent. The need for, and use of, visas isnt a Microsoft thing - its an industry thing. Name me one single company of significant size that doesnt hire people on visas. All the majors hire significant numbers of people on Visas.

Given that level of competition, there is no way at all that we could use visa hires to lower overall pay. Its just impossible. I know for a fact that MSFT pays, quite well - especially at the senior levels. Doing well at Microsoft is very lucrative. Let me give you an example: Microsoft doesnt give people stock options any more. Options suck. If the strike price is greater than the market price, then the options are worth nothing. Seven years ago Microsoft switched to giving people stock grants - its just stock. There is no strike price. When I vest shares, I can sell them at market price when ever I choose. I dont have to wait until the market swing up - I can sell them any time. Thats ridiculously valuable.

Dude, any company worth their salt does what ever it can legally to avoid paying taxes. Again, do you not like Microsoft? Or do you not like companies in general? For example, Amazon is shutting down an entire distribution center in Texas - and costing the state about 1,000 jobs (cite). This kind of thing happens all the time in the corporate world. Im pretty sure your company legally avoids paying every nickel of taxes it possibly can, just like you likely do (and I do) with our personal taxes. Its why I pay a CPA to do my taxes every year. Legally avoiding paying taxes isnt evil, it is noble, good, right and proper. The government isnt entitled to our money. Nobody should pay a nickel more in taxes than they are legally obligated to pay. Not you, not me, not corporations. If you dont like how people or corporations pay the minimum legal amount of taxes - dont bitch about the people, bitch about congress. Even better, send some letters to your congress people and senators.

You mention "bribing Dell". Your reference here is unclear - it would be cool if you could elaborate. You do realize that we give exactly the same deal to every single OEM - none are treated differently - not even a little. Are you confusing what Intel did with Microsoft? Intel is accused of actually bribing Dell. Note, Dell is just as bad as Intel here - Michael Dell personally paid $100 mega-bucks in fines (cite). Intel was fined $1.45 billion in 2009 (£945 million) by the European Commission and paid AMD $1.25 billion ((3850 m) in the same year as part of a settlement of legal disputes between those two companies. Of course, Intel officials have denied any wrongdoing, saying the company’s aggressive business practices were well within the limits of the law.

Im not sure why slashdotters are so fond of the phrase convicted monopolist. There was no conviction - its not a criminal thing - its a civil thing. I dont know much about it because I wasnt around when it all went down. Having a monopoly isnt a bad thing - there are many legal monopolies in the US. Most utilities like cable TV, gas, water and electric are true monopolies. Its been shown that these monopolies are good for consumers - when these kinds of things are privatized, consumer costs tend to go up. Do you know one of the most long standing monopolies in the US? Major League Baseball (cite). Do you dislike MLB as much as you dislike Microsoft? Or do you reserve your dislike just for Microsoft - believing that other monopolies are ok. Use Bing or Google to search for "<insert company name> monopoly suit" and you find plenty of examples.

Some of our competitors won lawsuits by demonstrating we were competing unfairly. We made all kinds of agreements to remedy those claims. We have very scrupulously and honest lived up to the US consent decree (which is now expired) and are doing so with the EU. We continue to stick to these business practices even though the consent decree has expired. All employees go through training about this every year. Remember, we are not the first big US company to run into monopoly problems. Intel, IBM, Google and yes - even Apple (cite) have them as well. IBM is the classic high tech monopolist. So, Im assuming you dont like these companies either... right? How about Intel? Using your parlance - they have been convicted of a bunch of bad things. Google is pretty sure to get whacked by the EU - maybe even harder than Microsoft got wacked. How do you feel about Google? Do you really believe their "dont be evil" slogan?

Look, you can point out all kinds of things you believe Microsoft does that are bad. Microsoft is a corporation. Our primary goal is to make money - great heaping gobs of it. We do that, year in, year out. Im personally unapologetic about this. Its they way corporations are, especially big ones. There is nothing wrong with it - its all good right and proper. Competition at the Microsoft level is bare knuckles. Lots of companies have learned this the hard way (Sun is a spiffy recent example, Novell an older one . Sun and Novell tanked because they made poor decisions, didnt execute, could sustain their business, and couldnt recover. Their CEOs Scott McNeely and Ray Norda were famous for making big bold statements that they would crush/beat/dominate Microsoft. That didnt work out so well for them. We compete hard, legally of course, but hard, with consistently and continuity over time, and without forbearance. Often we win, sometimes we dont (mobile seems to be the current canonical example here...). Going head to head with Microsoft where we are strong is almost always a mistake. If you look at other major competitors, they have grown into their currently large selves by focusing on markets where Microsoft was not present. Search, music players, database, CMS, and even servers. Very, very few companies have successfully gone head to head with Microsoft.

Were also pretty good at coming from behind. Most pundits predicted XBOX would fail miserably - "there is room for only two consoles!". Look how that turned out. How about Word perfect? Remember them? Boy, did they blow it or what? How about products like VisiCalc, Quatro Pro, Lotus 123, or Supercalc? Those were all dominate market leading "nobody can compete with" products. We are doing well in other spaces as well - Microsoft Dynamics is gaining market share against SAP and Oracle (cite). Even in search we are doing pretty good - though we have a long way to go. Most people predicted bing would be a huge flop - apparently not... (cite). Now be sure not to poo-poo a 1% share gain - thats a real, measurable gain in one month. It also means were increasing earnings. If that had been Linux market share gain, Linux folks would be all excited. This has happened before (cite).

Its perfectly cool if you dont agree with how corporations; but there is nothing inherently wrong with it, or bad, or evil. Its how corporations work in the US and in most parts of the world. Complaining about this is kind of like kids who think tigers are awesome, until they figure out they are vicious freaking relentless predators with zero mercy that viscously and horribly kill then eat cute brown eyed critters. Disliking Microsoft for competing hard is very much like disliking a tiger for being a tiger.

Most importantly, you are simple wrong with many of the assertions you have made. This is hilarious - give the moral high ground you seem to be calming. Are you merely mistaken? Or are you lying? It is hard to tell.

-Foredecker

"Asshole", "shill" "Amateur"? Thats the best you can do? Really?

My phrase Foss Teams was not intended to be derogatory. I put it in quotes because I wasnt sure what phrase to use. There are companies that provide FOSS products, some only do FOSS, some contribute to FOSS but also sell proprietary solutions. Then there are groups of people that develop FOSS products. If FOSS Teams is not a the right phrase, then what is?

FOSS (LAMP) in particular in the sever space has a strong presence. But, I maintain it is not dominant. Microsoft sells lots of server products every year. Overall, the numbers Ive seen are more favorable to Windows server and related products. Of course, you can look at narrower markets and show different numbers. For example, in 2008, the super computer market was dominated by Linux (at like 90+%). It still is, but much less so today. Almost a year ago, Computerworld published this article, saying Windows Server had a 73.9% market share for the fourth quarter of 2009. In June of 2010, Mary Joe Foley (who loves to rake us over the coals) wrote this article saying that PP

In Q1 2010, Windows Server was installed on 75.3 percent of the servers sold worldwide. Linux was on 20.8 percent of the servers and Unix on only 3.6 percent. Both Windows Server and Linux grew in share from Q4 2009 to Q1 2010; Unix declined slightly

I found these two articles pretty easily. Im sure you can could find some others. I suspect the data wont be materially different - it is unlikely that, in aggregate, FOSS server software has a dominate market position by any stretch of the imagination. Note, Im not arguing that if you narrow things to specific sub-markets that FOSS will show much stinger numbers, but dominant ones? In major markets (not just niche things).

Said another way - what is your definition of dominant? Mine is dominate like the iPhone, or Windows, or Office.

The major FOSS products, like Linux, the LAMP stack, and MySQL (there ere others too...) are great products, developed by very capable and innovative people. They are also free. But even in the face of those characteristics, and the huge advantage of being free, MSFT has a solid and profitable market share competing with FOSS in the overall server space - its a $15 Billion market for us, and growing, and very, very profitable. That is success by any measure. We sell stuff to millions and millions of happy customers every year, year in, year out. Thats speaking with actions.

We make some really great products. Weve also built some super-crappy ones. Just like many other companies. We are a dominate number one in some big markets and were a strong number two in many others. We are committed to becoming so in some other markets (like search). We are good at growing profitable business over time and pruning ones that fail. Microsoft people almost universally have a strong and healthy respect for the people and products we compete against. The Apple iPod, iPhone, and iPad are insanely great products. Apple, Google, Oracle, and IBM all have smart, capable, innovate people. So do many FOSS projects.

Its cool that you dont like Microsoft - its a free country. But do you have such disdain for other major technology companies like Apple, Google, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, HP, or Facebook? Is the company that employees you any better? Or do you work for your self? If so, what do you do that is more moral or better? What FOSS projects have you contributed to in a material way? How many bugs have you fixed in FOSS software? Did these fixes make it into actual shipping releases? How many people did they help? 10s, 100s? Millions? Or is a sneering, cursing, hyperbolic post the best you can do to compete with Microsoft?

Its trivialy easy to be merely critical, but it is real work to be better. How are you better than Microsoft?

-foredecker

AMD as done well, so has NVIDIA, HP. Dell would have if they hadnt shot themselves in the foot. So have many other OEMs and ODMs. In the client space - it certainly isnt Linux or any other FOSS software driving their business. Of course, Linux and LAMP are a strong competitors in the server space - but certainly not dominant.

There are many, many Microsoft re-sellers and VARs that do quite well working with Microsoft. By quite well I mean nicely profitable over long periods of time.

While slashdotters often have Apple myopia, many cell phone vendors did quite well selling Windows Mobile phones. Note that I completely, the iPhone agree that the iPhone is awesome. It changed the game and MSFT is playing catch-up.

There are literately thousands of Independent software Vendors that make a good living of selling software that runs on Windows or integrates with other Microsoft products. Most Microsoft products are extensible for just this reason. (yes, sometimes we suck at making things extensible....)

There are many service providers that make good money selling things like exchange and SharePoint services.

Lets not forget game developers that make good money off PC and XBOX games.

One of Microsofts strengths is that we grok the ecosystem strategy. Its very good for our customers and for us if other companies can run viable business over the long term partnering with Microsoft, or otherwise leveraging Microsofts products.&nbspNote, other companies and some FOSS teams (is the right phrase?) get this too - but not everybody does.

Deride it all you want - thats just better for us when you mis-judge Microsoft.

-Foredecker

That is exaclty true.

See my answer on Quora

-Foredecker

Dang! I wrote this during a meeting in a bit of a hurry. This will teach me to not screw up cut-n-paste. I sure brought the spelling police out in force. Here is a correctly spelled and edited version.

I have no idea why this made the news. The article says he is "a" principle development manager, not "the" principle development manager. he most certainly is not an executive. There are many “Principle Development managers” at Microsoft. How this departure became news is a mystery. Microsoft is a big company – people come and go all the time.

"Principle" is a job title. The individual contributor levels go like this for software devleopers:

• Intern (not really a rank but part of the general idea)
• Software Developer (lowest rank)
• Software Developer -II
• Senior Software Developer
• Principle Software Developer
• Partner Software Developer
• Distinguished Engineer
• Fellow

Managers go like this

• "Lead" - manager of individual contributors. Almost always senior or principle level.
• "Manger" means manager manager of leads. Always principle or better.
• "Director" manager of manager of managers. Always principle or better – usually partner.
• Vice President (rougly equivlent to distinguished eigineer)
• Senior Vice President (like Jon DeVaan)
• President (like Stephen Sinofsky)
• Ballmer (known to Slashdotters as Cheif Chair Thrower in Charge)

For several years, I was "a" Principle Development Manager in Windows. I am now a principle lead because there was a specific team I wanted to be a part of. It certainly wouldnt be news worthy if I left Microsoft.

-foredecker

I have no idea why this made the news. The artcile says he is "a" principle development manger, not "the" principle development manger.

"Principle" is a job title:

• Software Devleopers (lowest rank)
• Software Devloper -II
• Senior Software Developers
• Principle Software Developers
• Partner Software Developers
• Distinguished Engineer
• Fellow

Mangers go like this

• "Lead" - manger of individual contributes
• "Manger" manger of mangers
• "Director" manger of manager of managers
• VP

For several years, I was "a" princpiple development manger in Windows. Im now a principle lead becuase there was a specific team I wanted to be a part of. If I leaft, it would be news.

-foredecker

Actually, the product teams and research teams often work together - regularly and very deliberately. Many developers have moved between the research and product groups. There are many features in Office, Windows, Bing and other products that came right out of MS Research. In my experience, we're really good at this.

-Foredecker

Dude, what are you talking about? We make money of our own software. Your "Gee Mr. Coder" statements make it sound that you think we should sell stuff for competing platforms. Really? You gotta be kidding. Are you insulating that isnt fair? Really? How is it not fair? Are there not other places than a Microsoft sponsored store where FOSS folks can get their stuff to users? Your "Mr. Coder" has lots of ways to get his software to users. Its like your saying Mr. Coder needs Microsoft....

That being said, why would we sell or provide Linux or other office products in our store? That would be the store that we paid a gazillion dollars to build - in terms of both hardware and software. Do you have any material reason other than "Microsoft is bad".

Come on Mr. open source Linux guy - get off your duff and go build the be-all-end-all FOSS app store that can beat Apple and soon Microsoft at our own games. Really, knock your self out. Do you best. I can safely speak for Apple as well - we welcome the competition.