Microsoft Joins the Open Invention Network - <AUTHOR> https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/10/10/1619375/0/en/Microsoft-Joins-the-Open-Invention-Network-Community.html <comment><USER2> So, if \- microsoft de-debts every developer which got into financial trouble like perhaps with US 6041345 and

\- i as an independent developer who only publishes code under bsd-2-clause- license or agpl3+ or Apache or MIT-license

\- can reimplement

\- (arbitrarily big parts of)

\- Active Directory, VFAT, FAT, NTFS, MTP, RDP so my application can interact with it, not only from Windows, but from Linux or BSD also

\- and i do not have to be in the OIN club, because i have no money for it or i even do not know about it

\- then i will believe this move is sincere.

Is there already a complete free C#-Compiler available for posix systems, which can be recompiled without non-free parts from microsoft?

Will their office suite in the future really support an open data standard like ODF? because they kind of ditched their own standard.

With Active Directory and Windows, they keep people from really switching to open source on the desktop. and they know it. And of course, THAT part is exempted from their OIN-Initiave.

I would like to have meaningful examples what they opensourced, what they do not primarily need for cloud, but what benefits open source in general, like on the desktop or office applications.

But i have to admit, i am really starting to hope, microsoft is only a normal company, not especially opensource-hating-one anymore. could be. time will tell. would be nice. Really _hereIsMeHoping_

<comment><USER3> > Is there already a complete free C#-Compiler available for posix systems, > which can be recompiled without non-free parts from microsoft

Is the Apache 2 licensed Roslyn compiler not free enough for you? [https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn](https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn)

<comment><USER4> I feel so much compassion for the developers of Roslyn, that were dictated to "re-implement the bugs from the proprietary version in the open source version".

<comment><USER5> Can you provide a source for that? I'm interested in learning what kind of bugs would need to be re-implemented.

<comment><USER6> Check out: [https://medium.com/microsoft-open-source-stories/how- microso...](https://medium.com/microsoft-open-source-stories/how-microsoft- rewrote-its-c-compiler-in-c-and-made-it-open-source-4ebed5646f98)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a quite interesting move actually. It indicates undoubtedly that Microsoft's business model also radically shifted away from selling software to selling hardware, subscription services and user data & analytics. It's not surprising now that Microsoft doesn't plan to make money off patents. So they make that huge OIN move to promote themselves as a big OSS supporter. That's quite a PR move, I'd say, a nice one though.

<comment> S-E-P Well while I mostly agree, I think it is important to note that it seems they are going for more of a SAAS approach. With Office and Azure, etc.

They are more into the service industry now than they've ever been in the past. This move was them realizing that OSS is just a really good way to improve software for cheap.

I doubt this will have lasting effects as I have yet to see them actually open source anything that I would consider special.

<comment><USER8> > I have yet to see them actually open source anything that I would consider > special.

It looks like they have open sourced a number of .NET components: CoreFX - Core foundational libraries, CoreCLR - runtime, Roslyn - compiler.

As well as PowerShell, VS Code, Typescript, ASP.NET Core, MVC, Blazor, F#, Z3 Theorem Prover, etc.

And that's from just the first few pages of their Open Source page: [https://opensource.microsoft.com/](https://opensource.microsoft.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the companies in OIN really wanted to help stop misuse of software patents why not just donate the patents to the public domain? The OIN itself seems to be either a patent cartel or a distraction.

> "Microsoft's participation in OIN adds to our strong community, which > through its breadth and depth has reduced patent risk in core technologies, > and unequivocally signals for all companies who are using OSS but have yet > to join OIN that the litmus test for authentic behavior in the OSS community > includes OIN participation."

Companies are the ones _creating_ patent risk by using the patent system to attack others. If you want to keep your secret sauce secret, then use trade secrets. They've basically signed non-agression pacts _with themselves_. Open Source has nothing to do with this outside of projects that dual license (which basically means that the code is _not_ F/OSS).

> "Microsoft sees open source as a key innovation engine, and for the past > several years we have increased our involvement in, and contributions to, > the open source community," said Erich Andersen, Corporate Vice President > and Chief IP Counsel

Yeah, that sounds like "microsoft sees the value in leveraging the free time of thousands of developers as we can rope them in, now that many other companies have forged the way while directly trying not to be crushed by us".

> Funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony, SUSE, and Toyota, OIN > has more than 2,650 community members and owns more than 1,300 global > patents and applications.

Yeah, somehow none of those companies strike as companies that want patent wars to actually end.

More optimistically, maybe this is a step in the right direction, a few steps before software patents are abolished all together.

<comment><USER10> That's not a fair assessment, specifically towards open source in Microsoft. Big closed-source corps, such as Microsoft, are often the biggest contributors to the open source projects they use.

The free time of thousands of developers is not as efficient as a team of developers working full time under a PM. That's why I think it's really counter-productive when we call out those companies who are top contributors. We should recognize good when we see it and encourage more of it.

<comment><USER9> Cool, are we just ignoring all the anti-competitive things Microsoft and some of these other corps have done in the past? What about the time they sued TomTom[0]? What about the paper that was written detailing other such action[1]?

I'm all for forgiveness but I won't forget. Microsoft wanted Linux and any ostensibly open source dead, as you would expect from a corporation which has a horse in the software patents rat race and a moat to protect. If they want good will, they should release their patents into the public domain, even someone like me can't possibly ignore that kind of move.

I can recognize the fact that Microsoft has done a bunch for open source, but do you think that's proportional to how much they've gained from it? In the end a company is made of people, and maybe the people in Microsoft have changed and the culture is changing but Microsoft the entity/business isn't my friend/ally (as much of a corporation can be). It would be great if they've turned over a new leaf but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I might be too harsh, but that doesn't change the point -- if they wanted to get rid of patent wars, they'd just release the patents/start hunting patent trolls/lobby for abolishing software patents all together. I'll say it again, this is either a patent cartel, or a distraction -- I'd love to be proven wrong.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._TomTom_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._TomTom_Inc).

[1]: [http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...](http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf)

<comment><USER11> TomTom is a member of the OIN, and it probably will not be required to pay the FAT32 IP licensing fees now that Microsoft has joined them.

It seems like Microsoft can do nothing to please you. But this is huge for the OIN and its members.

<comment><USER9> I'm willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, but the bar is higher.

At this point I can't tell who is being unreasonable anymore -- this is exactly how cartels work, join/cooperate or face consequences. TomTom _paid_ licensing fees in 2009 -- they lost that fight with Microsoft... When Microsoft joined OIN, did it return the licensing money TomTom paid adjusted for inflation?

Again, I'm capable of looking at this optimistically -- this move is better than the status quo, but it is not enough to budge my skepticism given the damage done over the years by Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the last half-dozen years (give or take), I've been flabbergasted that MS has taken some of the steps it has toward being a better technology neighbor. Even so, it still engages in some very sketchy (even "evil") behavior, as all publicly traded corporations do, and some of that behavior is very reminiscent of the bad old days of Microsoft (though living up to the evils of the Ballmer age is probably not even visible from where MS is now).

Over the last couple years, I see people having completely ignored the fact that Microsoft still pulls a lot of bad shit. Because the change has been so drastic, people seem entirely willing to overlook the horrors still in play. Sure, Oracle seems more evil than Microsoft these days, but that's a pretty damned low bar for someone to suddenly forgive Microsoft and start singing its praises. I'm a bit more cynical than that. Show me an open source MS-DOS 5.0 at least; MS-DOS 2.0 is nothing but a mostly-pointless curiosity and PR stunt. Show me a covenant to never sue anyone for patent infringement, regardless of OIN membership, unless that other party sued MS for patent infringement first. Show me opt-in telemetry instead of opt-out; never opt-out instead of opt-in, for any software at all. We need more.

I've been disappointed that people were so ready to forgive MS not only for the perfidies of the past, but the ongoing bad behavior of the present, too. I'm happy to see there are still people skeptical of Microsoft's current state of reform here on HN. Yes, I am willing to believe MS is better than it was, and is better in some respects than Google and Apple now (which are just atrocious), but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give MS any support for anything that isn't completely free and clear in its licensing.

DOS 2.0? .NET Core? PowerShell? Sure, I am happy with the direction Microsoft has taken with those, but I'm not 100% sure I can legally trust them outside of a Linux context, given how the OIN somehow abandoned the pretense of just being about openness and doubled down on being about Linux specifically. What kind of insanity might creep into GitHub now? How dangerous would it still be to use Windows? No thanks, I'll put my time and trust elsewhere, same as with how I treat Apple, Facebook, Google, and Oracle. I can't trust any of them, and you shouldn't either.

<comment><USER13> > ... Microsoft still pulls a lot of bad shit.

Specific examples?

<comment><USER14> > Specific examples?

Microsoft should come clean, admit their wrongdoings and recant doing from the following unethical practices:

1\. Bullying the competition with software patents

2\. Hijacking the ISO standardization process when they pushed through their OOXML specification

3\. Having a man sent to prison for making Windows Restore DVDs from ISO images that you could download freely from the Internet

4\. Lobbying lawmakers to block laws which promote open standards and free software for use in the government

5\. Preventing users from running their own software using draconian DRM on closed devices (Windows 10 Mobile and S)

6\. Enacting restrictive Marketplace policies against GPL-3 software

7\. Launching misinformation campaigns ("Get the facts" etc.), Astroturfing and other ways of spreading lies, especially against Linux

So now they basically stopped #1 after already having more or less stopped #7, and while technically still on sale, the market laughed them out of #5. But they have still not owned up on anything, so someone mistrusting might think they could start at any time again.

<comment><USER15> >3\. Having a man sent to prison for making Windows Restore DVDs from ISO images that you could download freely from the Internet

Please stop parroting that non-sense. They didn't even bring the case against him, US Customs did. He was also warned more than once by Customs to stop, and he didn't.

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the- fac...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the-facts-about- a-recent-counterfeiting-case-brought-by-the-u-s-government/)

<comment><USER14> > Please stop parroting that non-sense.

Please stop the Microsoft apologism.

It is not nonsense. Microsoft testified against the man in court. They wanted him to go to prison.

And yes, what they did is lie to the court in order to achieve that goal. The sentencing is based on Microsoft testimony.

Louis Rossmann has some choice words for Microsoft:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoJErxYLtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoJErxYLtM)

<comment><USER15> >It is not nonsense. Microsoft testified against the man in court. They wanted him to go to prison.

He was selling counterfeit disks as genuine. Was warned to stop, and didn't. You either haven't bothered to read the link provided, any of the court rulings (it was upheld on appeal), or you're just such an MS hater you're going to deny reality.

Either way, when there are literally email threads of him trying to sell disks to computer refurbishers as "genuine" and being called out for them being counterfeit, you're not going to convince me he was the innocent victim he's claiming to be.

I'm just going to assume I'm correct in you not reading any of the links provided, and I'll leave this here: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/Ema...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/Email_image3.png)

And if you want to "prove" that MS is in the wrong, I'd suggest you link to a lawyer disputing the results of the case. Not a guy who fixes laptops for a living.

<comment><USER16> > He was selling counterfeit disks as genuine.

While this is technically an accurate statement, it sounds like he was selling counterfeit Windows CDs (that Microsoft sold). In fact, he sold bit-for-bit copies of Windows restore CDs that you can get from Microsoft or Dell for free online -- Microsoft claim in the blog you posted that they sold it for $25 but that is not true (they sold CDs with Windows licenses for that much, and you needed a Windows license to use the restore CD -- so you can arithmetically conclude they are worth $0). The court and court of appeal disagree with that point for two reasons:

1\. Microsoft's expert witness claimed that you could use most of Windows with the restore CD image. This ignores the fact that you can download a trial image of Windows for free, or install Windows on many machines without a licence key and have it mostly work in the same way. It also ignores that such a system mostly working is entirely the fault of Microsoft, by their own admission, because they wrote earlier versions of Windows to only nag you for a licence -- and the 30-day free trial was actually perpetual (like WinZip, funnily enough).

2\. It is difficult to believe that the defendants would spend tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture disks that are worthless -- though this is said as an aside. This ignores the fact they sold them because they knew there was a need for them, and so the value of the disks was the market value and not any intrinsic value that Microsoft claims they had. I don't buy his "just wanted to help people find the discs" comments, but I don't agree that he made them because he believed they had an objective worth of at least $25. Because he downloaded the images for free.

Obviously I disagree with their views, but more importantly the court claims their worth _entirely_ on Microsoft's expert testimony. It's quite clear they wanted to

Microsoft claims that the _software_ is counterfeit in their blog post you linked, which is not physically possible since it's a bit-for-bit copy. Not to mention that the court decision says that they distributed unauthorized copies of copyrighted software, which is not the same as what Microsoft said (the court effectively found that the disks were identical copies).

The key issue IMHO was that the CDs he sold had the Microsoft logo screen- printed on it in an attempt to make his customers' customers not think that the CDs were counterfeit (even though the software was not counterfeit -- it was an unauthorized copy). Obviously this was a stupid (and as the court case proved, illegal) thing to do, because it is obvious proof of him trying to to deceive people. That was obviously illegal and unethical, not to mention selling unauthorized copies of copyrighted software.

> Not a guy who fixes laptops for a living.

Bit of an odd stance from someone who is just posting links to Microsoft's view on the case, which is obviously going to be in favour of the decision (and as above possibly incorrect).

Louis has his biases, sure, but in his interview with the guy it was quite clear (to me at least) that he had an issue with the key point of the case -- that he actually sold discs with a Microsoft logo on them that were not made by Microsoft, and claimed they were genuine. He also admitted his initial video about the topic was not accurate because he wasn't aware of all the facts, and instead focused entirely on the valuation argument in the case.

<comment><USER15> >Bit of an odd stance from someone who is just posting links to Microsoft's view on the case, which is obviously going to be in favour of the decision (and as above possibly incorrect).

How so? I posted a link to Microsoft's legal counsel stating their case. I've yet to see any third party lawyer make a claim otherwise. If you want to dispute a lawyer and the justice department and their take on the law, the very least you (op) can do is provide a reference to an opinion from another lawyer.

<comment><USER16> Just as an aside, it isn't their case (you said so yourself). But I'll move on.

> If you want to dispute a lawyer and the justice department and their take on > the law,

I'm not disputing the law, I'm disputing the facts presented and the conclusions drawn based on said facts. Given that you and I are technically inclined enough to understand what a Windows restore CD is and what restrictions it places, this means that we are in a position to be able to discuss the facts of the case and whether they pass muster.

In the previous comment, I explain in some detail what aspect of the facts I disagree with as well as referencing parts of both the decision and the appeal (from the link you posted). The conclusions made by the judges are clearly based on the facts presented by Microsoft, and so discussing whether those facts are actually true is a completely valid thing to do.

And finally, I don't disagree with the court that he broke the law nor do I disagree that he should be punished. I just disagree with several of the statements Microsoft made (in my opinion, in bad faith) related to the case -- and the valuation statement is particularly shady because it is simply and provably _untrue_. The reason why the judges explicitly decided that Microsoft's expert witness was more credible than the defendant's expert witness is not something I know -- but it doesn't mean that they were correct to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft's Android patent shakedown was the big thing that kept me from believing the company had really changed - I think I'm ready to consider that it really has changed now.

<comment><USER18> They started changing for the better as soon as they got rid of Ballmer in my opinion. He was toxic for the company and for the industry as a whole. It's taken a few years, but I don't think there's much of the "old" MS left anymore in terms of business practices and ethics.

<comment><USER19> Not just getting rid of Ballmer, but promoting Nadella to the job. That pick was the turning point.

<comment><USER20> Interesting... I don't know much about him.

Wikipedia mentions briefly that he worked at Sun. What did he do there, for how long, with whom, and how did that influence his time at Microsoft?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella)

<comment><USER19> I haven't read it but apparently he published an autobiographical book last year:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit- refresh](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30835567-hit-refresh)

[https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from- re...](https://medium.com/@xaviergeerinck/my-key-take-aways-from-reading- satya-nadellas-book-hit-refresh-6c2f07893d5c)

<comment><USER20> That's a great article by Xavier Geerinck.

The part about leaders generating energy is interesting.

I wonder what he thought about Scott McNealy's attempts at generating energy by trying to make Microsoft out to be the great enemy of humanity that Sun was going to vanquish, which I though fell flat because you should never let yourself be defined simply in terms of opposition to someone else. When Sun Microsystems fell apart into several different companies, he even named one of them "SunSoft" in opposition to "Microsoft".

You've got to have something of your own to be energetic about, without needing an enemy to fight against. For so many years, Java was first and foremost simply a weapon in Sun's arsenal for their much bigger purpose, the raging war against Microsoft. They actually weaponized a programming language, and that was a higher priority than any other consideration. They wasted all that energy they generated around Java in a war overseas, instead of building infrastructure at home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> All the more reason to move from Oracle's Java to MS's .NET Core. They're not the big bad evil company they once were (they can't afford to be today.)

<comment><USER22> They're slightly less evil than they were, but they're still a company. To quote Brian Cantrill, they're still a lawnmower and will chop your arm off if you put it in the wrong place, without any hard feelings.

I agree with you that they can't afford to be super evil, because they're not the only big fish anymore. They're actually not even the biggest one.

I think it's a bit too early to decide if Java or .Net Core is better placed for the future, though.

<comment><USER23> Your post makes me think you read that statement backwards. (The lawnmower comment is from an oracle talk, etc) It's proposing to move to .net from Java.

With recent licensing changes to Java and microsoft's recent good behavior I have considered it myself.

<comment><USER22> I've edited my comment to clarify that I'm not backing any migration option (Java -> .Net, .Net -> Java). In my opinion both ecosystems are very solid :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > By joining the Open Invention Network, Microsoft is offering its entire > patent portfolio -- with the legacy exception of its Windows and desktop > application code -- to all of the open-source patent consortium's members.

Is this sentence a meaningless tautology (application code is not the same thing as patents) or are there some older patents that Microsoft isn't donating? For example the VFAT patents?

<comment><USER25> This sentence seems to have been inserted by the ZDNet editor. The GlobeNewsWire article (to which this post has been redirected), and the original OIN PR ([https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pressrelease_details/?i...](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pressrelease_details/?id=89)), don't have anything like it.

It's not in the ZDNet article body either, just in the small lede under the header. The body instead says,

> You see, Microsoft, with the major legacy exception of its Windows desktop > and desktop application code, is an open-source company.

It seems like an editing mistake or a badly worded statement.

<comment><USER26> That's some close reading! Good catch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is astonishing. Are there upcoming US/EU court cases on software patents or specific Microsoft patents?

Which other large companies could now sue vendors of devices (e.g. ereaders) which use Linux? Is Oracle in OIN?

Is OIN's Linux patent pool now large enough to deter other large companies?

Has Microsoft published a definitive list of their Linux-related patents which were previously subject to royalty payment? Is the FAT patent covered, [https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalD...](https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=20011212&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP&CC=EP&NR=0618540B1&KC=B1&ND=4)

</comment><comment><USER28> Microsoft android revenue was already going down: [https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-android-patent- lic...](https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-android-patent-licensing- revenue-falling-2016-4)

I am sure most of the FAT patents must be expired at this point since patents last 20 years and FAT32 came out 22 years ago. The Chinese manufacturers didn't have much of incentive to pay Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER27> (2013) [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fat-patent-loss- enda...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fat-patent-loss-endangers- its-android-revenue/)

 _> A patent loss in a German court may lead to trouble for Microsoft's Android strategy ... one of Microsoft main Android patent weapons has been rendered harmless for now in the EU. This may sound like a minor patent. It's not. Microsoft has been using this patent since 2003 to pressure Linux and Android companies that use the popular FAT file system for compatibility with other operating systems ... combined with the recent judgment that the US version of this patent, "Common name space for long and short filenames," Patent No. 5,758,352 "invalid for obviousness," may finally blunt this patent's usefulness for Microsoft._

<comment><USER29> We could cutpaste a snippet like this for almost every major tech company on the planet, what's your point?

<comment><USER30> At some point it was arguable whether Microsoft was making more money from Android than Google [1].

That it's even possible shows the entire corruptness of the broken patent system and Microsoft's active abuse of it.

They're not just "one of the kids who benefit for misbehavior" they're the poster child.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-does-Microsoft-make-more-money- fro...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-Microsoft-make-more-money-from-the- Android-than-Google)

<comment><USER31> Exactly.

I think people are too eager to claim Microsoft as one of the "good" guys. Microsoft has been around since the 70's and has not been "good" through almost that entire period. So, Microsoft releases a (nice) text editor, releases a Linux subsystem, partially open sources .NET, releases an open source JavaScript framework, has an active GitHub account (filled mostly with nonsense by the way), and we're supposed to forget the 40 years prior? ExxonMobil has been investing heavily in renewable energy lately; would you tell an environmentalist that they're wrong to dislike Exxon now?

Microsoft changed because they had to. _That_ must be the context in which they are evaluated in. Joining a couple organizations, and open sourcing a couple projects doesn't negate the fact that they were forced into this position because they were losing mindshare, developer prestige, and can no longer force everyone into their playground.

<comment><USER29> FWIW I hadn't intended to suggest Microsoft was somehow 'good', just not 'particularly bad' compared to any other company. The readers of this thread are polarized into two camps, neither of which match reality, and Microsoft discussions always end up like this. People have no problem with nuance and "on balance" regarding other huge companies (perhaps except Oracle), but when it comes to Redmond, the same tired old noise is regurgitated every single time.

<comment><USER32> In addition, Apple, Amazon, and _even_ Google aren't completely open source friendly. In the case of Google, pretty much all their webservices are closed source, and they make more and more components of Android become part of the closed source Google Play Framework. I realize Google is the best major corp for open source. But somewhat cynically, I view the ultimate purpose of their open tools to be for running proprietary code.

<comment><USER33> > I realize Google is the best major corp for open source.

It's not. I'd say Red Hat is the friendliest open source company. They truly embrace the open source ethos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So a patent license is granted when

a) you are a member of OIN

b) the infringing software is core to the Linux system

Is that correct? What about other OSS projects that are unrelated to Linux?

<comment><USER35> I think it only highlighted Linux specifically because of the prior tug-of-war there, it mentions right afterward " and other important OSS technologies".

<comment><USER36> [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining- oin/](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/)

This specifically talks about "the Linux System".

<comment><USER37> I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.

<comment><USER35> No where in the literature does it mention GNU outside of the GPL.

[https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/linux- syste...](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/linux-system/)

<comment><USER16> It's a Stallman copypasta, but in this case I think it's justified. The definition of "Linux System" appears to refer to a Linux distribution which would include GNU and countless other projects than just the kernel. Seems like really strange wording since it'll likely just cause confusion and lawsuits down the track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Want to take this opportunity to describe my positive experience with the Open Invention Network (OIN):

I called the OIN many years ago to talk about what they do and how it works. I ended up speaking with Tom Tyson for a good 15-30 minutes and he was very helpful in answering my questions.

My questions were around open sourcing inventions so that other companies could not claim IP on them and prevent others from using them. I am fine with companies taking the idea and making money from them, just not okay with them taking the idea, claiming it is theirs, and creating a proprietary product.

So, I spoke with Tom and the gist of it that I remember is that OIN will work to create a "defensive patent" for your invention. Now, the idea doesn't actually have to be software, they may be software based but are open to all inventions (this may have changed since then). So if we have ideas (we all do right!) that we know we won't have time to implement/execute but just want the product made so we and society can use it, while having multiple companies offering it to compete and improve the idea, then OIN passes the smell test!

Feel free to give Tom a call if you are curious, he was very patient with my questions.

</comment><comment><USER39> This seems like an extension of what large tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google have been doing among themselves all along. Over the last two decades they amassed huge patent portfolios and then mutually agreed to only use them defensively.

The difference here is that anyone who joins OIN can play along too.

I feel like this a natural evolution of their policies over the last decade.

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/04/04/a-new-ip- strateg...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/04/04/a-new-ip-strategy-for- a-new-era-of-shared-innovation/)

</comment><comment><USER40> It's hard to let past Ballmer / Gates era sins go, and I'll probably take a lot of heat here, but moves like this continue to reinforce the Nadella era is truly serious about advancing OSS both within Microsoft and within the broader community.

<comment><USER41> The WSL stuff has me seriously considering a Windows laptop next, which I would have told you was pants-on-head crazy a couple years ago.

<comment><USER42> The fact that Windows 10 updates bundle shit like candy crush[1] and use my computer as an advertising platform means my current and future laptops run GNU/Linux.

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/humanity-weeps-as- can...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/humanity-weeps-as-candy-crush- saga-comes-pre-installed-with-windows-10/)

<comment><USER43> Removed at build 1803 good sir.

<comment><USER42> See, that's funny. Because when I woke my windows gaming machine from its long slumber, it updated and dumped "Bubble Witch 3 Saga", "Candy Crush Soda Saga", "Disney Magic Kingdoms" and "March of Empires: War of Lords" into my start menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 I'm wondering if the portfolio include most filesystems Microsoft made (NTFS, VFAT, ExFAT, etc).

</comment><comment><USER44> Here is a link to the source post from MS - [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/blog/microsoft-joins-open-...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/blog/microsoft-joins-open-invention-network-to-help-protect-linux-and-open- source/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm still a little skeptical since this applies to "Microsoft" and not any of its holding or investment companies. A great move to earn trust is to "Open Source" almost expired or useless patents.

</comment><comment><USER46> Remember now Linux is part of Windows via Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu). This is very important for me as developer and I am using it every day.

By joining ONI MS is strengthening parts of its offerings (Linux), and maybe is using (or will be using) existing ONI Linux patents to defend that part.

<comment><USER47> Why not just use Linux directly? It's much better than using a paid OS with ads and spyware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's simple, the last attempts at getting Windows into the new computing spaces failed. Windows RT & Windows Phone (Windows on ARM) have all failed.

Microsoft is being left behind, and their only hope is to pick up the "open- ish" platform and run with it. SQL Server has always been portable, and it running on Linux is no surprise. Expect more and more of this, culinating with a Microsoft branded Android devices.

By this time Google will have abandonded Linux & Android to have moved onwards to Fushia.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm uncertain about OIN's membership and its benefits to the larger public. Is it just an exclusive club that benefits its members, or a means to provide everyone with IP safety regarding Linux and maybe other FOSS? One sentence in the press release suggests that only members benefit:

> The OIN patent license and member cross-licenses are available royalty-free > to any party that joins the OIN community.

Still, their About page says membership is free:[0]

> Any company, project or developer that is working on Linux, GNU, Android or > any other Linux-related software is welcome to join OIN, free of charge or > royalties.

On the other hand, there are only ~2,600 members [1] - that sounds like a big number, but I would expect almost everyone to join. Are you protected if you are not a member? Why haven't more joined? I suspect that the answer may have something to do with the IP needs of software developers compared to those of users, and the latter don't need membership for some reason; but even then, 2,600 seems like a small portion of FOSS developers.

[0] [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/about- us/](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/about-us/)

[1] [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/community-of- licensees/](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/community-of-licensees/)

<comment><USER36> > Why haven't more joined?

My guess:

1\. Most devs don't know about it.

2\. Most devs don't need it, if they contribute to projects that are themselves members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Not OP, but I think it is important to see a company as a whole.

Untill Microsoft has truly changed its entire company and the culture ruling it, to be supportive of Open Source, it is safe to say "There are just some parts supporting OSS". Just like one can safely say "but there are just some parts of the company opposing FLOSS".

In order to truly help OSS, joining some initiative, group or foundation is the easy thing to do. Opening the patent portfolio, is the difficult thing to do. The latter helps FLOSS a lot more.

<comment><USER29> The 90s called, they want their tired old meme back. If you want to know if Microsoft has truly changed, please take your fingers out of your ears for just 10 minutes and review some of what's been happening in the past half decade:

\- They're now, or soon will be, the largest supporter of free infrastructure for open source projects on the planet (GitHub)

\- They've open sourced a massive chunk of their (IMHO) best-in-class language runtimes and language implementations (C#, F#, VB.net) and design and develop new features _in the open_

\- They've contributed more than 1700 changes to the Linux kernel that can easily be identified with a quick 'git log --grep'

\- They're the first company to make a real attempt at an industrial strength alternative implementation of the Linux kernel. Linux was supposed to be about choice, remember?

\- They've open sourced the core chunks of the evaluation engine used in Bing (BitFunnel)

\- They're a platinum member of the Linux Foundation. In other words, _they pay Torvalds salary_

\- They support Linux as a first class OS on Azure and make it _cheaper_ than Windows

\- They have one of the largest and most active GitHub organizations

\- They've joined OIN and, ignoring the actual patents involved, have thus in the process made an implicit promise never to attack any core part of the Linux infrastructure in the future

What more do you want?

<comment><USER51> Big-fat "So what?" to all of that.

Their primary product is still proprietary, and if that's not bad enough, it's essentially completely spyware at this point.

I don't want to use their crap open source products so I can integrate with their crap proprietary SaaS ecosystem.

Just because they're finally deciding to release some token software with some level of open source, and buying political influence via the linux foundation, doesn't make them a friend of free software. There is more to free software than just the license: their strategy of vendor-lockin via Terms of Service instead of EULA, they are merely seeking to 'vendorize' free software projects to integrate with their paid products.

<comment><USER52> _Their primary product is still proprietary, and if that 's not bad enough, it's essentially completely spyware at this point._

You could say the same about Google......

<comment><USER51> I don't disagree. I have started using Firefox as my primary browser again.

<comment><USER53> And you don't have any social media accounts, don't use Google/Bing or any other Google/Microsoft service, no social media (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc), right?

<comment><USER54> So you have to be 100% clean of all google/microsoft tools/services in order to criticize them? Give me a break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone know (or have a speculation on) the annual profit loss coming out of this? Didn't they get a very significant portion of every Android sale?

<comment><USER56> According to Yahoo Finance, "billions": [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-may- relinquishing-b...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-may- relinquishing-billions-android-patent-royalties-141047213.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> How does Microsoft benefit from this step?

<comment><USER58> Definitely a lot of goodwill between patent non-aggression, all of their work in the developer community (VSCode), listening to user feedback (most of the time anyways). Also they gain access to other patents in the OIN. Plus most of their revenue seems to be from cloud and licensing, I'm sure they are making a mint on Office, Windows, and Azure without needing any patent aggression.

I keep asking myself "is this a trojan horse" and the more time goes on, the less I think it is. Maybe they have actually changed for the better.

<comment><USER59> Yes, this Microsoft does seem to have left much of the Gates and especially Ballmer machinations behind - at least as regards its openness and collaboration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does this include hardware patents? Quantum computing? Microsoft Research? XBox?

<comment><USER61> According to the OIN license agreement, it's just patents for the "technology defined as the Linux System" [0].

[0] [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining- oin/](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/)

<comment><USER60> Aha -- that makes practical sense.

(and a reply from the person in whose perspective I was most interested!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Can i get nice font of linux now? Does it include the font rebdering patent?

<comment><USER63> I thought fonts were copyrighted.

<comment> 0-_-0 This is about rendering, not the font itself: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType)

<comment><USER63> Ah, thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> How does that affect royalties from android phone makers?

<comment><USER65> Wasn't that a fat32 patent? Would I have had to pay for this patent if my phone didnt have an SD card slot and didnt support reading of fat32 partitions on USB OTG storage devices is what I would love to have known.

<comment><USER66> How many of Microsoft's cornerstone patents are soon to emerge from patent- protection?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Link to terms: [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/oin- license...](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/joining-oin/oin-license- agreement/). Looks like it might be revocable.

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's the original press release on the OIN website: [https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pressrelease_details/?i...](https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pressrelease_details/?id=89)

</comment><comment><USER3> The continued hatred of Microsoft amazes me. If Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, and RMS __all joined Microsoft and proclaimed it safe, I suspect the accusations of selling out or being drugged would be leveled within milliseconds.

 __I fully realize RMS would never do this; my larger point is that with a huge chunk of the population I don 't think there is anything Microsoft can possibly do to convince them they aren't evil/truly friendly toward open source.

<comment><USER68> While their current efforts seem genuine, the deep skepticism is not unwarranted given their behavior in the late 90s and should not be a surprise

<comment><USER69> And their behavior recently:

\- Data collection

\- Forced installs

\- Android shakedown

Looks like some progress is being made, however.

<comment><USER15> >Data collection

So turn it off. It has ACTUAL end-user benefits being enabled by default. You are literally asked on first boot if you want it on or off. And you can go a step further by disabling it in the registry to prevent a second user on the system enabling it.

>Forced installs

This one gets me more than anything. Literally every *nix admin on the planet bitching for the last 2 decades about MS having all these insecure zombies out in the wild. The fix? Enable updates by default, and make it difficult for the average home user to turn it off. More importantly make it difficult for malware to easily turn off. And you STILL find a reason to complain. Why on earth you'd want to make the internet less secure is beyond me, but that's just such a horrible thing to try to bag them for.

<comment><USER69> Privacy is not opt-in, thanks. The actual benefits must not be great as Windows is the most user hostile of the big three, and not much improvement since 7. It's clear soon after install that you'll be doing things the way MS wants.

The second you misunderstood, it refers to forced installs to 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Embrace extend extinguish

I'm sorry but i just can not trust microsoft, their history is just too full with heinous behavior and so is their present behavior. I think mocrosoft embracing opwn source and linux is more unsettling then comforting.

<comment><USER71> I find seeing this post in every single MS related story to be quite boring.

<comment><USER36> Even worse, they don't even attempt to justify how EEE applies to what MS is doing now. Please, at least try to make what you're saying relevant to the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I would like to see the definitive analysis as to whether they will continue to benefit from those licences on patents that affect open source software.

How do they plan to recoup their losses? They weren't getting much anyway?

<comment><USER73> They were getting more from Android on licenses than they were on Windows Phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> So no more Android patent protection racket from MS? What about using exFAT in Linux distros (especially commercial ones that need to provide support for SD cards), will that now be free?

<comment><USER75> That would be covered if exfat were in the mainline kernel, which I don't think it is yet.

<comment><USER74> OIN doesn't cover the kernel only. So that's why I'm asking. I'm not sure what exactly is covered.

<comment><USER75> Those are all userland packages. OIN's site does not list any packages with supplemental kernel modules.

<comment><USER74> exfat is using FUSE I think in common distros anyway. So it is userland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's interesting to me is how serious Nadella's Microsoft is about embracing OSS. Consider his appointment as a line in the sand and look at how drastically the company has changed since that line was drawn.

I realize that doesn't make the actions done prior to 2014 right. But I do feel the company has been serious about advancing OSS since Nadella took over as CEO.

<comment><USER47> Yeah, I like how after 2014 they decided to push ads into their paid OS. And how they forced "upgrades" to windows10 for millions of people who didn't want it.

They are truly a company that cares about openness and giving back control of the device the the people who fucking paid for it.

No wait, they aren't. They are still just a bunch of assholes like always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Public donations to foundations and similar stuff are:

\- public relations

\- tax deductible

So it's PR the taxpayer pays for.

</comment><comment><USER77> I have a feeling this is neither open, nor inventive, nor a network.

</comment><comment><USER78> Hopefully MS joining OIN would further discourage patent trolls.

<comment><USER79> How? By their nature patent trolls don't have products so they don't care about OIN's patent portfolio size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> no matter MS is good enough or not, this is a good thing

</comment><comment> justin--sane Interesting how this thread reads when you replace "Microsoft" with "NASA" or "Pharma Companies" and "Windows" with "Globe Earth" or "Vaccines"...

</comment><comment><USER81> Here is the press release without ZDNet's autoplaying videos: [https://globenewswire.com/news- release/2018/10/10/1619375/0/...](https://globenewswire.com/news- release/2018/10/10/1619375/0/en/Microsoft-Joins-the-Open-Invention-Network- Community.html)

<comment><USER82> Thanks. I opened the page and chrome started chugging. I closed the page without reading the article

<comment><USER83> <F9> in Firefox to open in "reading mode" \- majestic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Holy shit. I'd like to see an anti-microsoft comment on this post...

<comment><USER85> Microsoft bit my sister once.

<comment><USER86> heh [https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> HN this week:

\- Don't trust global supply chains \- Apple loses trust for the MSM \- Microsoft loves FLOSS, really \- Google really is evil, really \- Global supply chains are scary, pt II \- Something about Elm \- Instagram is Facebook, duh \- MSM loses trust for everyone \- EU licks chops, globalist fines \- China buying out EU, world

</comment><comment><USER88> Wow nice!

</comment><comment><USER89> Really like the way Satya Nadella transforms M$

</comment><comment><USER90> Is that joined or infiltrated?

</comment><comment><USER91> If Microsoft is doing this selflessly, then why aren't they simply putting their patents into the public domain?

Consider the open innovation network as a kind of club, with good intentions.

When a company like Microsoft joins it might seem like the pinnacle of success, but with it really means is that the club has become a mafia.

It won't be long before OIN uses its patent leverage to affect control over the behavior if its members.

Think about it for a minute… Why wouldn't such a group or simply convince corporations, like Microsoft, to put their patents into the public domain? If you have to join a club to gain access to something, but it's not really open source and it's not really some kind of charitable contribution.

Another way of looking at this is, Microsoft has just one goal, being a publicly traded company, which is to increase the share price of its stock… Why are people so stupid always constantly fall for the same tricks, believing that such companies do anything that is actually charitable?

<comment><USER92> No one suggests they're doing it selflessly. They're doing it because they get more value out of the IP by sharing and collaborating, than they do by litigating. Like so many OSS evangelists have said for the last 20 years: open source isn't about charity; it's actually a better way to develop.

I think you raise a good point about the public domain. Why wouldn't the GNU licenses just force users to put their works into the public domain? Because public domain software isn't copyleft. "Joining a club" in this case is just signing an agreement (for free) that compels open access to your entire patent portfolio. The OIN agreement is a copyleft-style patent club, similar to the GPL. You get unlimited, royalty-free access to my software, but you must agree to offer similar access to everyone, too.

<comment><USER91> > ...GNU...

That's not a valid comparison. If Microsoft was licensing their patents under GNU (if that was possible), we'd be talking about something different entirely, but they're not actually open sourcing them in any way at all... they're entering into a contract to trade them like Pokemon cards with a consortium that will actually, eventually become a monopoly. Once they become a monopoly with enough leverage, they will inevitably agree to change their terms to be more hostile to the rest of the world.

Open source software offers usage under some kind of license for essentially nothing in return, not "you can use our software if you make all of your software open sores as well".

I'm gonna leave this comment here so that I can come back and reference it in an article that all right 10 years from now when everybody is talking about how this consortium effectively took over the world of IP and how it's too bad nobody could see that snowball when it was near the top of the hill still.

Here's another thing to consider: given the right terms, which the constituents of this consortium could agree to, this IP monopoly (read: mafia) could even use their IP to collectively sue basically everyone (the cross section of that many patents will overlap with much more IP in the world, creating an economy of scale nobody can compete with).</comment></comment></comment>


Software updates: the "unknown unknown" of the replication crisis - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/06/07/software-updates-the-unknown-unknown-of-the-replication-crisis/ <comment><USER2> I'll concede that the story is different when you're relying on commercial software that you've purchased to implement an algorithm correctly, but in the limited case of replicating results (whether they're flawed or not), the onus really should be on the user to record what version of software they're using and how they configured it. The article does a lot of gymnastics to make software correctness and research reproducibility feel like the same issue.

<comment> s-shellfish Versioning/Configuration in industry that has automated some aspect of their build process to include external dependencies leads to label accumulation (I'm intuiting that this is greater than exponential growth - assuming there exist dependencies for a system A that are dependent on other dependencies that system A is dependent on).

The problem is you can't document everything while also trying to automate everything. It's always a balance of figuring out which information is most important, and if 'oneself' were to attempt to construct a model that represents everything, 'oneself' would simply be stuck in a catatonic state of analysis paralysis, in perpetuity and invariably, until the heat death of the universe.

Yes, the onus is on the user, but who is the 'user' in the industry of development? How do you maintain structure in records for information systems that are fundamentally, at core, completely opened%? I believe this problem maps back to the science of collecting and verifying the veracity of information, up to isomorphism (quite literally, this is the definition of the graph isomorphism problem).

% The intrinsic nature of science and discovery is 'we discover new things because we assume there is more to know (~ we don't know everything)'. Therefore, all components of such a system are subject to change. There is nothing that can be said to be permanent in knowledge discovery systems where the premise of discovery rests on 'assertions' that can not be provably demonstrated to be factual AND absolute.

<comment><USER3> "Versioning/Configuration in industry that has automated some aspect of their build process to include external dependencies leads to label accumulation"

Okay, but most software shops shove all those labels into their product version, usually something simple like "ToolFoo 3.4.11".

I think that this numbering and basic "here's the binary, run at your own risk and don't call me" legacy support are enough on the vendor's part. And I agree with gp that if the researcher fails to document the top-level tool version they're using, plus the changes they made to default configuration, then it's the researcher's fault.

Don't you agree?

<comment><USER4> There are many software stacks that are not versioned only at the top level, especially in scientific software.

As an example: If I tell you I calculated a result on SciPy 1.1.0, do you know what version of what code is doing the linear algebra? No, because there's no single answer. It depends how SciPy was built and what's installed on the rest of my system. It could be OpenBLAS, ATLAS, MKL...

So if there were a bug in, say, a particular version of OpenBLAS, and it manifests itself in SciPy, there's no way to tell whether the bug is present based on the SciPy version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People are latching onto different individual takeaways from this, but it really requires a multi-prong approach (and can never be fixed completely):

Companies making scientific software should test at a higher level of rigor than others. There's no such thing as bug-free software, but that on missile launch systems and NASA satellites comes pretty close, so scientific software can too.

For algorithms that go beyond just math, researchers should consider writing their own code.

As applicable, software version numbers (and perhaps binary hashes) should be listed as part of the reproduction conditions in papers.

</comment><comment> s-shellfish > Furthermore, perhaps before releasing a new version of the software for a > broader usage, these companies should ensure it is bug-free by pre-testing > it and thus guaranteeing the correctness of the produced estimations.

This is f-king ridiculous. This will never happen. There will always be bugs. Bug free.

If you don't want bugs, write the code yourself, or read all of the code yourself. After you do that, try to figure out whether your mind can still parse information 'correctly' relative to your respective science.

<comment><USER5> Suggesting bug-free software demonstrates an ignorance of how software engineering works, but requesting more rigorous testing not just for absolute correctness, but perhaps even for consistency with past versions (a novel concept) is perfectly reasonable.

<comment> s-shellfish > not just for absolute correctness, but perhaps even for consistency with > past versions (a novel concept)

Sorry, can you explain what you mean by this further?

<comment><USER5> Normally, software functions are only tested against what is considered to be the universally correct outcome. The wiggle room - i.e., undefined aspects of the behavior - within that definition of "correct" is not tested. It would be interesting for testing of scientific software to incorporate a second metric: "how close is it to what it was last time (assuming last time was also 'correct')?" For the sake of reproducibility, maybe it's meaningful whether or not the current version of correctness is in line with the previous version of correctness.

There's virtually no other domain in which you'd want to test software this way, which is what makes it novel and interesting.

For example, maybe a floating point operation rounds the very last digit down. Then through code changes, it starts truncating the very last digit instead. Your tests may still consider this result "correct", but it might be worth considering the fact that it differed from the previous "correct" result.

<comment><USER6> I have the impression that issues with a software version not matching a previous version are not only not novel, but have been plentiful with any kind of software since the beginning of time. Microsoft is proverbial for Windows being under the constraint of maintaining past behavior however imperfect.

To wit, it's such a common thing that there is an xkcd for it:

[https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png)

P.S. I was momentarily repressing my first hand experience, but in a past job, there were _many_ times I wanted to fix things and wasn't allowed to, because if the results changed, it would upset someone. The cardinal, CYA rule, was if we've been reporting something wrong for years, it better be consistent forever. Which is really painful if you care about correctness and compulsively investigate it.

<comment><USER5> That sounds awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the statistical significance of your results is algorithm-dependent, shouldn't they be regarded as suspect? Perhaps it might be just a failure of imagination on my part, but I find it odd to think that changing a software package might budge estimates far enough to push them outside the zone of statistical significance unless they were only marginally significant in the first place.

<comment><USER5> I could imagine algorithmic differences adding bias in error margins. Both versions might be accurate approximations of the answer, but one might lean towards one end of the error space and one might lean towards the other.

It's like when fixing a bug in library code breaks application code. Usually it's because there was some undefined behavior in the library - which wasn't part of the contract - which the application (knowingly or unknowingly) relied upon, and then the updated version produces a different undefined behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Yet, the company does not justify which version of the program is the > correct one to use in order to get as close as possible to the underlying > true relationship.

Even if they did that's still not good enough. I guess it's my own ignorance of how science is done, but I'd expect a higher standard of certainty for which algorithm you're using than "some vendor said so".

<comment><USER9> One project I have worked with was analyzing data in the education industry. Mainly public schools, think student grades and educational performance in general.

You'd think a simple percentage grade would have meaning, but it doesn't. Often times federal and state rules alter how data is to be "perceived" and therefore, analayzed and reported on.

There are a few major players in the data collection and analysis game for public school system, and they all not only have their own way of determining skill level (eg, reading skill level) with their own testing systems, they also analyze their custom data with their own algorithms. Thus leading to quite a variation in their ultimate recommendations/conclusions between vendors.

Then, take into account some schools have many students with English as a second language, and based on how the state views that school, it may be analyzed as "all equal" or take into account the language barriers.

Then mix in that you have to analyze students over multiple years, with students entering and leaving districts, sometimes with data vendors changing, etc... Then there is state and federal laws mixing with multiple vendors data collection _and_ analysis.

So the next time you hear a particular school district is under/over performing based on these vendor's analysis (especially related to budgets), keep in mind how variant the actual reality is to what is being reported.

Maybe every complex system has the same core problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >"The replication crisis is largely concerned with known problems, such as the lack of replication standards, non-availability of data, or p-hacking. One _hitherto unknown_ problem is the potential for software companies' changes to the algorithms used for calculations to cause discrepancies between two sets of reported results." \- June 7th, 2018

They didnt know about this?

<comment> s-shellfish No, they expect developers to know everything, apparently. At least to know everything that doesn't give them a dopamine hit when two result sets match, validating their theories/beliefs.

This is what developers deal with all the time, so this is obvious. Code should work this way, but it doesn't always. Yes, we can all make heroes of ourselves by thinking of ourselves as saviors for those edge cases of catastrophic failure, but we don't, because we are aware, that bugs happen - they are a mathematical certainty assuming one doesn't have access to all information, including every single use case of a program in the future.

<comment><USER10> I mean almost the first thing that happened to me when I tried to use commercial stats software was being unable to reproduce a calculation manually. Eventually found out they had a known bug in their code that was left in for ~20 years and when they fixed it they called it the "enhanced version". The calculation was based on the original version of a paper that was retracted and corrected. I would never trust commercial stats software after that.

I really mean this was close to the very first thing, so I would assume it has to be very common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me a lot could be solved by making data available and compiling software to webasm, then packaging up a single web page that demonstrates any algorithms used.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe they should also be required to publish their software environment as a container or other virtual package.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Speaking in 2002 about weapons of mass destruction, United States Secretary > of Defense Donald Rumsfeld infamously distinguished between the "known > unknowns" and the "unknown unknowns"_

Rumsfeld rather _famously_ distinguished, as the world has proved by endlessly quoting and paraphrasing him.

The _infamous_ appellation here is presumably based solely on the authors' dislike of Rumsfeld. I stopped reading.</comment>


Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/tesla-burns-through-record-cash-as-musk-brings-model-3-to-market <comment><USER2> > The company burned through $1.16 billion in cash in the second quarter by > spending on capacity for its cheapest model yet and boosting battery output.

This makes me very happy. It's very rare for a large company to literally risk their existence to bring a new product to market. Most prefer to just sit in the pile of cash and profit from margins...

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's much of a risk. They created a product that is way differentiated from every other car out there and people want to buy it. It's like seeing the iPhone for the first time, and all the other flip-phones out there is simply just not enough anymore. They will succeed. If I'm in the market for a new car, I would totally line up for this one.

<comment><USER4> This is where I disagree with most people who are bullish on Tesla. I think there's a huge risk for Tesla that most people don't factor in- that it's very possible that most car buyers _simply don 't want one_. The interesting thing about that is that most people seem to assume that making them at enormous scale and meeting the overwhelming demand is the only risk. What a century of observing the auto industry has taught us is that car buyers in huge percentages have fierce brand-loyalty and that anytime a new model is brought to market there's a huge uphill battle to create demand.

That's not to say that lots of people won't want a Tesla, clearly there's evidence that there's a market. But it remains to be seen whether that's a niche market or the better part of the auto market. To justify the current valuation, you'd have to believe its the latter.

Comparisons to the iPhone seem oversimplified. The iPhone on pretty much every metric was demonstrably better than every other phone on the market, and by a huge margin.

Tesla is better on some metrics- doesn't rely on fossil fuels, has some cool technology, and is a novelty because there aren't that many of them on the road.

But on most other metrics, there are lots and lots of better options. Some have more power, some are much cheaper, some have more storage space, and some simply have better brand awareness and loyalty.

Again, not suggesting that they aren't developing a great product. But there are huge risks to the survival of this company beyond cash burn that I don't think people are taking into account.

<comment><USER5> They have half a million reservations for the Model 3, despite putting essentially no effort into signing people up, and spending the last year or so actively _anti_ -selling it. They're currently adding 1,800 reservations a day, despite the fact that someone reserving today probably won't receive their car for 18 months or more.

I agree with your point as applied to a hypothetical generic car company launching an unknown model, but in this particular instance there's good reason to believe that Tesla will be able to sell every car they're capable of building.

You compare it to the iPhone saying that the iPhone was better on pretty much every metric. That wasn't the case at all. The original iPhone lacked 3G connectivity, support for more than one wireless carrier, support for CDMA networks, GPS, third-party apps, hardware keyboard, user-swappable battery, decent camera, FM radio tuner, multitasking, and removable storage.

The iPhone eventually gained many of these features, and most of the others turned out to be less important than people thought they were. But that was very much not obvious at the time.

<comment><USER4> _one wireless carrier, support for CDMA networks, GPS, third-party apps, hardware keyboard, user-swappable battery, decent camera, FM radio tuner, multitasking, and removable storage_

I don't know about you, but my clamshell Samsung flip phone didn't support any of that except a user-swappable batter and removable storage, both of which I would argue are not net positives, but negatives as they increase the form factor of the phone.

Also, what of the 65k or so of cancelled reservations for the Model 3?

<comment><USER5> Why are you comparing to your clamshell Samsung flip phone specifically? You said "The iPhone on pretty much every metric was demonstrably better than every other phone on the market" so I'm comparing to every other phone on the market, not one specific low-end model.

Every feature I mentioned there existed in contemporary smartphones. I even looked them up! The iPhone got a _ton_ of criticism at the time for missing things like this.

65k cancelled reservations out of over half a million total, with net reservations increasing rapidly... what of them?

<comment><USER4> Right, on pretty much every metric. So do you think that the Motorola Razr was a better product than the iPhone because you could buy an extra battery and swap it out? I remember well when the first iPhone came out and people waited in line for hours to be able to buy one. It was just so different than any other phone available at the time. I don't really feel that applies to Tesla, and I think most consumers (not people who read and report for Bloomberg News, but the silent majority of people who are actually buying cars and keeping these companies in business) would agree. Yeah, it's cool and it's battery- powered. I get it. But pretty much every new car now is loaded with technology and can reliably get you from point A to point B. So the main differentiator is that it runs on a battery. Is that enough to get people to move en masse to Tesla?

 _65k cancelled reservations out of over half a million total, with net reservations increasing rapidly... what of them?_

I think that's the question I posed to you. Doesn't seem like there's a good answer for it.

<comment><USER5> Why do you keep comparing to middling dumbphones? Compare the iPhone to contemporary high-end smartphones and you'll see that the iPhone was behind on pretty much every metric. The big exceptions were:

1\. UI.

2\. Web browser.

3\. AT&T unlimited data plan.

It turned out that those three metrics were _really important_ , and that being ahead on a few _really important_ metrics is better than being ahead on a bunch of less important ones, but it's just not the case that the iPhone was ahead "on pretty much every metric."

> I think that's the question I posed to you.

Can you be more specific? I don't know what you're actually asking. Are you asking why anyone would cancel? That's because sometimes people change their minds, especially when it involves giving a $1,000 interest-free loan. Are you asking if the cancellations are a counterpoint to the idea that the Model 3 will sell well? The fact that the cancellations are a small proportion of the overall reservations, and net reservations are still rapidly increasing, suggests the answer is "no." Or something else?

<comment><USER4> Because the middling dumbphones are what comprised the majority of the market, the market that Apple completely took over. How many people were using smart phones as a % of overall market in 2007? The only real players that I can remember were Palm and Blackberry, and both those were terribly executed in comparison to the iPhone.

And yeah, more than 10% of reservations were cancelled but that couldn't possibly be because people don't actually want the car at a large scale, could it? I tend to pay attention to what people do and not what they say, and the fact is that consumers purchase ICB autos at orders of magnitude higher numbers than EV. When push came to shove, 65k people who actually made the conscious decision to spend $1k to reserve a car suddenly decided they no longer wanted it. But your only reason is that "sometimes people change their minds." To me that's a nice way of saying a lot of people don't want to spend $35k on this car.

<comment><USER5> If you intended to say that the iPhone was far superior to the typical dumbphone of the day, then I can accept that. I was responding to what you wrote, though.

If 65,000 cancelled reservations translates to "a lot of people don't want to spend $35k on this car," then the nearly half a million remaining reservations must translate to "a _shitload_ of people want to spend $35k on this car." No?

<comment><USER4> Not really. First of all, they are reservations, not purchases. And the outstanding orders represent everyone who follows this company the most closely and who are the most enthusiastic about these cars. Once that demand is exhausted, can we be certain that the demand will continue?

I'm not saying that it's certain that it won't, but it does remain to be seen. In the automotive industry, a half a million cars just isn't a lot. Certainly not enough to proclaim that "a shitload of people" will want one for many years to come. Ford sells 750k F150s each year. That's just one model. And those aren't reservations, they're sales.

<comment><USER5> I think you need to make up your mind here. If 65k cancelled reservations is a lot, then so is nearly half a million remaining reservations. If half a million remaining reservations aren't a lot, then 65k cancelled ones aren't relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "He's going to need capital," said Ross Gerber, chief executive officer of > Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, which holds Tesla shares. > "That's the one part of the financials that are a little bit troubling. To > underestimate the cash burn over the next six months will be a mistake."

It's not that troubling. Even massive companies (AMZN in 2014) need to raise big capital. When you have something you want to do, you get the money and spend it.[1]

This seems to be constantly framed as negative ("they aren't making any money!"), but that's the correct growth strategy for what Musk wants to do. Nobody adds tons of debt just to _not use it._ Cribbing from my comment yesterday:

I've owned TSLA a long time and I hope they don't start making money, and continue the Amazon model and actually build something with years of minimal or no profits, re-investing vigorously. Amazon had almost 20 years in business without "making any money" except a few quarters where they accidentally eked out some non-trivial profit.

But without their spending, they wouldn't have become Amazon. Without Tesla's spending, they won't be a _future_ company, they'll just be a tiny car company.

For some historical comparison: Amazon added $6bn in debt as recently as 2014. Even very large and very successful companies take on debt to fuel growth far beyond "bootstrap" numbers. Both companies leverage as much investment money as they can to build and expand as fast as they can. If you look at Amazon's raises in the late 1990's you'll find something more comparable to Tesla today relative to revenue. In 1999 Amazon raised $1.25 billion, and their revenue for the year was $1.64 billion. So they raised proportionally way more money than Tesla has so far this year. And spent it all!

full comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915317)

[1] The flipside of this is that it's an indictment of companies that hoard huge amounts of cash, like Apple. That they can't find a way spend it building future stuff is a signal that they are out of big ideas, and (in the case of Apple) have been for some time.

Musk and Bezos, on the other hand, have clear ideas of what to spend money on to build something.

<comment><USER7> Whether Tesla survives or not, these billions are some of the best spent money on the planet in the last 50 years.

What are the accumulated losses so far? $5-10B? Even if Tesla were to spend another $50B and go bankrupt, I would still maintain it's great.

What Tesla has achieved is so important in the long run for the environment, for ending the strategic dependence on oil dictatorships, and for renewing the belief in technology. And the cars are really nice too.

Speculating, as some do, that the EV revolution would end with a Tesla bankruptcy is silly, not just because Google and Apple (and probably other companies) would be more than happy to take over before or after a bankruptcy, but also because consumers and the the auto industry have now been shown where to go. None of us can unlearn what Tesla has taught us. There is no way back now. Tesla has already won.

<comment><USER8> So what has been the net reduction of CO2 usage because of tesla to date?

<comment><USER9> I'm going to venture that it's not even a rounding error.

In fact, in places it will likely have __increased __the CO2 emissions, again rounding error figures, due to the electricity generation mix and associated losses with generating that electricity (30-60% efficiency), plus transport losses (0.5 - 10%), plus charging loses, plus the efficiency of the motor itself.

<comment><USER10> The internal combustion engine in a car is around 20% efficiency while a coal power plant is around 55%. Gasoline powered drivetrains are also fairly inefficient leading to around 16% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. An electric car is making more efficient use of the energy. It's also centralizing the source of the pollution rather than having to try to deal with it in every car on the road.

<comment><USER9> A coal power plant can reach up to ~60% if coupled with steam turbines, otherwise it's ~30%.

Petrol cars can do a lot better than 20%

There is a study, link below, showing what the subsidy should be for electric cars and in a lot of places in the US the subsidy should be negative.

Granted things might've changed since then, but probably not to overturn the gist of it, which is the point I'm making. In places, EV cars are not the solution.

Quite happy to be proven wrong, at the of the day I've only got a passing interest on the topic so I'm not exactly 100% up to speed with any new studies, etc ...

[https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where- electric-v...](https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-electric- vehicles-actually-cause-more-pollution-than-gas-cars/397136/)

<comment><USER11> City Lab has debunked that notion twice [1, 2].

"[I]t's important to realize that the situation reflected in this data represents the past, not the present. States across the country are rapidly cleaning up their grids, thanks to cap-and-trade programs, investments in renewable energy, tightened air quality standards, and more coal plants put to sleep." [2]

"Here's the cool thing about electric vehicles in the U.S. right now: In many areas, the longer you own one, the cleaner it gets." [1]

[1] [https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/electric-vehicles- are-c...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/electric-vehicles-are-cleaning- up/528822/)

[2] [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/12/the- surprisin...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/12/the-surprisingly- unequal-benefits-of-electric-vehicles-mapped/509390/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People often think of the electronic-nature of their cars as Tesla's key advantage.

Other elements factor into share/debt cost analysis:

1\. Culture — They appear to still have a startup "let's solve the problem" mentality

2\. Distribution — There are no networks of dealerships taking a cut

3\. Marketing — They don't need to pay for it at all right now

4\. Legacy — There are no pension funds and other obligations on them

5\. Environmental icon — There is a lot of political support for them

Tesla is still high risk, but they have a big potential upside.

Contrast with e.g. GM:

1\. Old-school Culture of "if you build it, they will come"

2\. Mandatory dealerships

3\. Big marketing costs

4\. Pensions are underfunded and they have a huge inventory buildup (and defaulting subprime leases are mounting)

6\. They have a lot of political support, but it's not for environmental reasons

That's pretty cursory, but illustrates a few factors besides just the product.

Tesla's burn rate is a marginal-risk long factor, if/when they get past their manufacturing bottlenecks.

[edit]: Newlines.

<comment><USER13> > Pensions are underfunded

That contrast issue is very weak. GM's pension was underfunded by $7.2 billion at the end of 2016. They had $24.7 billion in cash at that point. It's around 7% underfunded. It's a non-issue, particularly since GM has continued to successfully work at reducing it and has been solidly profitable since the great recession.

<comment><USER12> You may be right, and GM's revenue remains massive so it's a fraction of revenue.

The only area of concern is the growth presumptions in the pension fund. They are often around 7.5%, whereas real growth was 0.5%, putting a potential damper on the profit line (but I do not know that relative magnitude of that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> BREAKING: Building a car factory and battery supply chain requires a lot of up front capital.

</comment><comment><USER15> "You're holding it wrong"

Wonder if Tesla will have that moment. Recalling the Model 3 is probably their greatest fear. No product is perfect and they're about to ship tens of thousands a month within a very short period of time

<comment><USER16> Which is one of the reasons why I agree with their strategy to sell to its own employees and investors first. Their feedback loop is so quick and they have a financial and personal interest in the product being perfect.

If they see any issue they will already have a lot of knowledge to debug it/know immediately who to contact to get it debug and have a financial and personal interest for it to be done quickly and correctly.

Which is also part of the reason why the ramp up is really slow at the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cash flow is not a big problem as long as the product is selling well at a profit. The question with the Model 3 was whether Tesla could make money at $35K per unit. In practice, the cars are going out the door above $50K with options, and it's much easier to be profitable at that price. (This is an old Detroit strategy, called "more car per car". Profit comes from the add-ons.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Fast Good Cheap. Choose two.

</comment><comment><USER19> Jesus. Look at the top comment and the replies in this thread. I find it hard to believe it is real HN commenters and not a TSLA PR campaign here.

"What are the accumulated losses so far? $5-10B? Even if Tesla were to spend another $50B and go bankrupt, I would still maintain it's great."

Seriously? This is being voted up?

Also, the top commenter here "simonsarris" is a top commenter in the other TSLA thread.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14914310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14914310)

It's like a TSLA/Elon cult meeting in this thread.

<comment><USER20> The comment you are quoting is a snippet out of context. I'm not sure why you're so upset.

'Whether Tesla survives or not, these billions are some of the best spent money on the planet in the last 50 years. What are the accumulated losses so far? $5-10B? Even if Tesla were to spend another $50B and go bankrupt, I would still maintain it's great. What Tesla has achieved is so important in the long run for the environment, for ending the strategic dependence on oil dictatorships, and for renewing the belief in technology. And the cars are really nice too. Speculating, as some do, that the EV revolution would end with a Tesla bankruptcy is silly, not just because Google and Apple (and probably other companies) would be more than happy to take over before or after a bankruptcy, but also because consumers and the the auto industry have now been shown where to go. None of us can unlearn what Tesla has taught us. There is no way back now. Tesla has already won.'

<comment><USER21> Putting Tesla anywhere near a list of factors for "ending strategic dependence on oil dictatorships" is pure hyperbole at best.

<comment><USER20> Maybe, but what about what Musk has done as a whole? If he can drive home- battery adoption, solar, and electric vehicles, and create markets where companies like GM, Ford, and the Euro manufacturers have to chase the new market, that has to make a huge impact. Obviously it's not going to completely remove our dependence (mainly plastics and shipping) but it will absolutely hit the bottom line of the most oppressive regimes funded by oil (Saudi Arabia). Also this will help us you know stop destroying entire mountain ranges and the largest CO2 sinks in North America for tar sands mining (Boreal Forest).

<comment><USER22> On the plastics front, just look at the news from earlier this week of Lego working to replace all of the plastics used in their toys with bio-plastics (or other non-oil based polymers). A few more efforts like that and plastics won't be anywhere near the driver of oil consumption they are now. That doesn't address shipping (which is horrendously polluting), but if that's the last one standing that's still a massive improvement.

<comment><USER23> Commercial aviation as well will never be electric. It would require two orders of magnitude energy to weight density, and quadruple flight times.

<comment><USER20> People also thought we would never get man into space :)

<comment><USER23> There is a big difference between simply thinking that something is too hard and having numbers to back it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Elon Musk's empire is a house of cards built on self promotion and empty promises. It's only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down.

<comment><USER25> I'll take the house of cards jab, but the "empty promises" thing means I'll have to see a shrink about all the imaginary Teslas I see every day, and the SpaceX landings that are obviously a hoax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The harder they will hit the wall

<comment><USER27> Would much prefer to run into a wall driving a Model 3 than a Prius

<comment><USER28> Is Prius a bad car safety-wise? I thought Toyota cars are very reliable and well-engineered.

<comment><USER29> I think it's less that the Prius is bad but that the parent is assuming that the Model 3 will be great.

Which is a good assumption based on Elon's statements and the track record of the S, but the Model 3 is an amazingly light car for something with more steel, a glass roof and so many pounds in batteries, so it may not be the class leader that the S is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>