I think your average geek used to be like, somewhat academic and erudite and into arcane knowledge and had some level of good faith of wanting to engage in discussion

Now it’s all frauds and absolutely braindead elon stans and crypto dipshits and conservative freaks and people who enjoy and defend watching big tech destroy everything.

      • Agrivar@lemmy.world
        8·
        2 days ago

        “Microsoft, a tech company historically known for its opposition to the open source software paradigm, turned to embrace the approach in the 2010s. From the 1970s through 2000s under CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft viewed the community creation and sharing of communal code, later to be known as free and open source software, as a threat to its business, and both executives spoke negatively against it.”

        [emphasis added]

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 days ago

          Bill Gates’ primary quest was to destroy open source right from day 1. See “Hackers” by Steven Levy for more.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
      6·
      2 days ago

      yeah he bought dos and im pretty sure even the folks at that company did not have open source on the radar with what stallman was doing. Maybe by late nineties but if anything they resisted it. Kept on doing versions of open standards with a spin so that they would not interoperate correctly.

    • Snot FlickermanEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      Just an example, in 2020, Microsoft acquired npm, the Node Package Manager.

        • Snot FlickermanEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          I’m not seeing you specify the late 80’s as your reference timeframe anywhere here.

          OP really is mixing metaphors is the bigger issue. Microsoft didn’t build their OS on Open Source, they only embraced it later, after getting in trouble for Embrace Extend Extinguish. Google built their OS on open source tech. Then more recently Microsoft followed the same path forged by Google.