CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
Posted Sep 8, 2010 12:48 UTC (Wed) by ledow (guest, #11753)In reply to: CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project by kripkenstein
Parent article: CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
However, if on the other hand they are funding third-party companies to sue their own rivals at the same time (previous SCO lawsuits, current Google lawsuits), one should *always* be cautious about their intentions. Someone once asked me why I don't "work for Microsoft or something" - my reasoning was quite clear, you couldn't ever pay me enough. A lot of people I know are equally suspicious and equally as damning of the company because of non-unreasonable reasons.
Some things can be tax write-offs and actually help *save* the company money. Some things can be brought up in court cases as evidence of acts supporting such endeavours even if they just gave the money to a random OpenSource project that they have no intention of using. Some things can be a random bone thrown to try to garner PR from something that is quite literally a drop in the ocean to MS to a project that isn't really competing directly with any of their major offerings. You don't see them putting a few thousands dollars, say, towards Eclipse, or Gnash, or Samba, or any other of a million and one OpenSource projects that they have contact with or use.
MS is a business. Like any other, the bottom line is profit. I hate that it's enshrined in the UK's legal definition of a business that its primary aim must be profit. And MS, as a business, rarely play by the rules or even do what people would consider "fair".
There's nothing wrong with a bit of healthy skepticism.
Posted Sep 8, 2010 13:37 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (11 responses)
The only bad thing is that Microsoft has the chance to invoke the 'guns' of the government through the patent system and use that to terrorize other projects and companies.
Except for that tidbit it would pretty much be all sunshine and rainbows. Especially if Mercurial could really use that money in any way it seemed fit.
Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:06 UTC (Wed)
by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
[Link] (6 responses)
Man, you're off by an order or magnitude.
Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:29 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:49 UTC (Wed)
by Alterego (guest, #55989)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Sep 8, 2010 15:08 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:23 UTC (Wed)
by caitlinbestler (guest, #32532)
[Link] (2 responses)
Face it, at this amount this is nothing but a cheap ad.
Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:41 UTC (Wed)
by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)
[Link] (1 responses)
Perhaps the biggest / only difference is the lack of (widely-circulated?) press release. I'm not seeing a press release from GOOG; perhaps I'm just missing it.
Posted Sep 9, 2010 10:47 UTC (Thu)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
It's nice to have companies donate money to worthy causes, but from my experience with seeing how hard it can be to attract conference sponsorship, I imagine that this level of contribution is the smallest a reasonably large company can give without the budgeting being a hassle. For a conference, you'd think that setting sponsorship levels at $10000 and lower would attract lots of sponsors because such money is peanuts to a large corporation, and they get a reasonable amount of good, focused publicity, but it's rather likely that someone in such a corporation whose job it is to throw money around for promotional initiatives or "community encouragement" sees small donations as making more work for them: they'd rather throw down a larger amount and use up their budget more quickly doing less work. And I know of one large company who sponsored a conference and never got round to pay the invoice in the end: that says a lot about the corporate mindset, I think, and the organisers of that conference have shown considerable restraint in not naming and shaming the company in question. So, it's nice to see a contribution that someone in Microsoft thought was worth their while making, but the observation about maximising goodwill is completely valid, too. They, Google and Fog Creek are all doing good business around Mercurial.
Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:25 UTC (Wed)
by ledow (guest, #11753)
[Link] (3 responses)
I'm just saying that it shouldn't be their *primary* aim, like most companies regard it. Surely your primary aim is to actually do your business and do it effectively and well? Customer service probably comes below that and above profit too. Otherwise you get no end of compromises made in the name of profit-increase (no new pencil for you until you provide the worn-down stub of your previous pencil!).
And it was $25,000 - which is less than half of one fairly-decent salary for a programmer which is what the donations were publicly advertised they would be going towards. The money is good - spend it, of course, and wisely and on something that will push the project forward (I don't use Mercurial so I really don't care about that side).
But the question has to be asked "Why?". If, say, the FSF, or the Linux Foundation donated $250 to a closed-source tool, you would have to be equally as suspicious. That's still probably orders-of-magnitude out in its equivalence to Microsoft spending $25,000, and without the previous reputation that Microsoft has to tar it. And yet you'd STILL get suspicious about a project deciding to donate money to something that they will ultimately see no benefit from, and which kinda goes against everything that their public announcements, mission statements and even press releases from their top brass have been saying for years.
Why does a company go overnight from "GPL is a cancer" to supporting a GPL-based project that's *NOTHING* to do with them?
Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:55 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
As long as you take external coercion out of the picture and the profits are gained for voluntary exchange then profits are a result of providing value and goods to your customer better and more efficiently then otherwise is possible if somebody else did it. That is your increasing your wealth by increasing the wealth of society at whole so that it's a net gain for everybody.
In that case then pursuing profits in themselves are a virtue.
Remember: Just as long as it's voluntary. As long as people are free to choose you or your competitors then they will choose to spend the money on what business maximizes their own interest. That is spending money on your business increases their own wealth as a result.
> I'm just saying that it shouldn't be their *primary* aim, like most companies regard it. Surely your primary aim is to actually do your business and do it effectively and well?
How can you remain in business by doing a worse job then your competitors?
> Customer service probably comes below that and above profit too. Otherwise you get no end of compromises made in the name of profit-increase (no new pencil for you until you provide the worn-down stub of your previous pencil!).
I don't really understand your example.
If I have to spend time fumbling around with a stub of a pencil or spend my time looking for a lost good pencil instead of doing my job then profits of my employer will suffer because they will be spending money on me doing something other then what makes them money. Therefore in attempt to pursue profits it's important for them to make sure that I have the proper tools to get my job done in a efficient manner.
If I am a customer of a pencil maker and they have a attitude were I need to provide them remnants of my old pencil before they will sell me a new one at exorbitant prices then I'll just buy a pencil from a different company or use a pen. Anybody wanting to sell pencils to people need to make sure that they do it in a way that benefits their customers and pleases them. :)
Posted Sep 8, 2010 23:44 UTC (Wed)
by shmget (guest, #58347)
[Link]
There is an hidden assumptions: that such transaction are between two and only two parties . that these parties are fully informed, and are free (you did mentioned that one, I just re-assert it for completeness).
In real life such transactions are rare.
As soon as Ads are in play for instance, you have at least 3 parties in each transaction. the 'service' provider, the end-user and the Advertiser (in practice there is a Ad broker, an ad agency and a company that pay for the add, all of which are different goals, none of these goals being the interest of the end-user).
For exmaple:
>I'll just buy a pencil from a different company or use a pen. Anybody wanting to sell pencils to people need to make sure that they do it in a way that benefits their customers and pleases them. :)
But in real-life the party that buy the pencil and the party that use it are two distinct entities and most of the time have competing goals.
Posted Sep 10, 2010 7:54 UTC (Fri)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
In that case then pursuing profits in themselves are a virtue.
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
It is a really small contribution, and you are off by one order of magnitude...
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
Meh. It puts them in the highest-tier position (http://mercurial.selenic.com/sponsors/) like GOOG and Fog Creek. The same arguments can be presented there.
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
- Microsoft pay Verizon to force Bing upon Verizon's customers.
- Apple block ip-phone Apps
- NBC acquire a monopoly on the Olympic and MS pay them to force SilverLight on the masses.
- The poster child of such dysfunctional scheme being the US health care system: Employees Are customers of Doctors. Doctors are paid by Insurance, Insurance cater to employer, and employer employ employee. Result the employee is twice remove from the insurance, and the later rightfully consider the employee as a burden, not a customer.
and that is exactly how 'you can remain in business by doing a worse job than your competitor'. Because 'worse' here is being assess from the point of view of the pencil user, not the 'pencil procurement officer' point of view.
CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project
As long as you take external coercion out of the picture and the profits are gained for voluntary exchange then profits are a result of providing value and goods to your customer better and more efficiently then otherwise is possible if somebody else did it. That is your increasing your wealth by increasing the wealth of society at whole so that it's a net gain for everybody.
I'm afraid that Adam Smith disagrees with you. There are many, many situations which can apply which can prevent this rosy picture from coming true, and normally many of them apply at once. You need a lot more than just 'no external coercion'. One trivial additional condition, for instance: monopolies and quasi-monopolies. Note that due to network effects computing is ridiculously monopoly-prone. I doubt the conditions you suggest have applied to the computing market for even one single day in its entire history.