How bad is Microsoft?
gnu.org
I was curious what the Linux people think about Microsoft and any bad practices that most people should know about already?
I was curious what the Linux people think about Microsoft and any bad practices that most people should know about already?
Embrace, extend, extinguish
Came here to say this. They wrote the playbook that has spelled the end or at least shitification of so many standards, open-source or otherwise(but usually still free-to-use or at least cheap).
They also wrote the book on user-hostile everything
And set the bar super low for other tech companies
IIRC It's on their Wikipedia
Microsoft is definitely the corpoest of them all.
Probably not the worst corpo, likely even, but out of the corpos, they are the most corpo corpo of any corpo.
Ok but look on the bright side of things! you get great futures with this big tech concentration and control of the market. For instance, who else doesn't want a operating system hotkey to Linkedin, baked into their settings? How did I use a computer without that before?!
Worse than Apple?
Apple is highly restrictive on their OS and over priced. They are extremely pro consumerism with heavy marketing and engineered obsolescence to ensure you are always pressured to buy their new tech, and they are historically very strongly anti-right-to-repair.
Microsoft is bad. But at least they are primarily a software monopoly.
Apple is from the walled garden of Eden.
Fortunately I have a ladder
I'm not sure, at least the unrepairable mess made by Microsoft is software rather than hardware - you can reinstall a janky OS but you can't unexplode a phone that disassembled itself when you sneezed in its general direction.
There's no fine line between the two companies.
Edit: they continuously fucked up Halo in unexcusable ways, fuck them, they're worse than Apple. Forgot about that.
Yes. Microsoft is the king of “good enough” software. DOS was good enough (and had a free C compiler!). Windows gets the job done 95% of the time when it’s not freezing up or needing rebooting. Office is okay - and nothing else is 100% compatible so you get a bonus of vendor lock-in. New features are few and far between, as are bug fixes for non-critical issues.
They tried to destroy linux and free/libre software, and when that didn't work, they started cornering the market and pushing for a move from "Free" to "Open Source." They also support SaaS model, and have made it next to impossible to get a new computer without their mediocre OS. On top of that, their OS is full of spyware, and is starting to become adware too.
But that all pales in comparison to the fact that you do not own your own OS: you can run Microsoft's OS, but you can't modify it or share it.
Oh, and this falls more in the realm of personal preference, but the deliberate lack of customizability is a real pain in the ass.
4/10 OS, only slightly better at disguising its capitalist greed than Apple.
You left out that they refuse to let end users control updates on the system unless they resort to hacky bullshit (and even that doesn't work consistently). As far as I know (and have experienced on Windows Server) this extends to enterprise as well.
Can you explain more? Is that related to the clown gpl guys criticizing BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh on FreeBSD for letting Apple to do whatever I can't remember?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Free software can be freely copied, modified, distributed, etc. This doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it.
Open source software has its source code published. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're able to copy some or all of it, modify it, distribute it, etc.
It's getting more and more common that, even in cases where code is open source, only part of the codebase is actually available. This is something that Microsoft (and other wealthy tech companies) loves to do to show that it's "transparent."
Thanks.
GPL as an example.
If you are citing the GNU's website, you should remove the "modified". I'd quote a mailing list user:
I couldn't find any primary source on OpenSSH's licenses, but wikipedia says "BSD, ISC, Public Domain."
Both BSD and ISC explicitly grant permissions to modify the software (and redistribute the modified software), and Public Domain means no rights reserved whatsoever, so the mailing list user's points aren't relevant to any of the Four Freedoms (aka the Sacred Texts).
Without access to the source email: it looks like it's a debate about using copyleft licensing instead of BSD/ISC, which is sometimes considered the Fifth Freedom. If you want an argument about that, I'm happy to do so (later), but it isn't a valid reason for saying some piece of software fails to meet the definition of Free Software.
(A)GPL restrict the modification of the software. I'm sharing an example how that restriction works.
How does it restrict modifying the software?
It requires any modifications to be under GPL.
And it also requires anything that incorporate GPL codes also be under GPL.
And the code must be published to the copyright holder as far as I know.
How it harms the end user are described.
While I'm not gonna argue the merits of GPL—it is technically restricting modification, even if there is no practical difference for those only interested in adding/removing functionality—I disagree with the assessment that using the GPL causes harm to the users.
The reasoning seems to be that a 3rd party's refusal to use the software because of the license, and suvsequent use of a shittier product is somehow the (hypothetical GPL-using) OpenSSH dev's fault.
The problem is that accepting the premise that the devs are responsible for what people who choose to not use their software do entails that they are then responsible for everyone who uses any type of software tangentially related to OpenSSH's functionality. It also means that it's their fault for whatever consequences of using the licenses they currently do, which inevitably drive some people away for various reasons. It also means any potential license (or even lack thereof) is open to the same criticism.
Did you mean
I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi, I just want to make sure I'm interpreting you correctly and not putting words in your mouth.
Afaik, BSD and MIT licenses qualify as Free Software licenses. I could be wrong; I am not a lawyer, nor am I Richard Stallman.
As for your first question:
@rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com did a good summary of the distinction, so I will expand on m$'s role:
By most Free Software advocates' accounts, the rise of the term "Open Source" was a deliberate move to make proprietary software less of a bitter pill for us radical digital anarchists: "look, our code is ~Open~ and ~Transparent~ (but you still can't reproduce or modify it, even if you buy a license)." At the same time, Open Source advocates argued that this was the "Shoe-In-The-Door" for Free Software into the corporate/capitalist landscape—it's not, because it doesn't actually advocate any of Free Software's Four Essential Freedoms (Five, if you consider Copyleft to be essential, as I do).
So basically the corporate world took the concept of Free Software, which was starting to be a threat to their businesses, sanitized it of any actual freedom, and sold it back to devs and users as some kind of magnanimous gesture that they were letting us look (but not touch) the code they wrote. Open Source.
M$ has been essential in this shift. Perusing their github, they make it clear that they're willing to toss projects onto the pile, but make sure as hell to keep the Freedom from infecting any of their larger, popular software (e.g. Office, Visual Studio, Windows). And in return, they get access to whatever code you host on their service, assuming they can interpret vague phrasing in their Privacy Policy loosely enough.
Thank you.
Do you like having bullshit forced on you? Paying a $150 license to have ads in your operating system? Don't care at all about privacy? Then Windows is for you!
You people are paying for Windows licenses?
I mean I don't. But I used to. You have to just to get dark mode.
pretty much.
If you need a point for developers: all public code repositories hosted on GitHub are harvested, at least in 2021, and used to train copilot regardless of their license. Furthermore, GitHub is OWNED by Microsoft now.
Don’t forget they own npm too
Microsoft has been building the O365 platform to lock out competitors and locking users into an ecosystem that is difficult to leave. They systematically eliminate competition and have pushed to create laws that make competition harder. In embrace extend extinguish, they are in phase 3, which is a massive red flag. They also started putting out spyware and malware into their software and have proven they can't maintain security; making them a bad actor in a position of power. Scale is debatable, but Microsoft is undeniably evil in 2024.
A coworker recently sent me a Word document with edits and comments they had added. When I downloaded & opened it (in Word on Windows!) it told me that it had the edits/comments but it wouldn't let me see them unless I log in to my Microsoft account and then view it online in the web version of Word. What the actual fuck?
Fuck that. I responded to my coworker and asked them to just send me the edits via email in plain text. I'm not winning popularity contests at work, but what the fuck Microsoft?
This ☝️
my favorite bit was how no one at microsoft actually understood their own licensing pricing. for decades, you could call microsoft for pricing and get different answer from people in cubicles next to each other or even from your own rep.
it was as if they were making it up as needed.
Yes
Microsoft abuses their de facto monopoly to engage in gross invasion of their users' privacy, and continues to try to wrest their users' control of their system from them by altering system settings after updates, and making some settings nearly impossible to change. And that's to say nothing of MS's attempts to turn their operating system into and advertising platform.
Bad enough to be stay away from
Why did you link to the Microsoft website?
In case people didn’t know what company he was referring to. /s
I’m just hearing about them now. Do they make really tiny software or something?
Maybe I'm going crazy but I feel like I've been seeing this post or an identical one for many days, maybe even a week, yet the age is still one day.
Still, fuck MS and all.
Microsoft is about as bad as any other proprietary software company. They do some good things for the open source economy, but they also mistreat their users.
I think it's a mistake to look at the free software movement as being a reaction against Microsoft or Google. It's against the proprietary software world in general.
They coined the term Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and they haven't stopped enforcing it. I haz not much faith on WSL and similar.
First they tried to destroy FOSS, then they realized that they can make money and gain control using open source software, so now they pretend to support it. Microsoft is a monopolistic piece of garbage that I'm staying away from at all costs.
I don't think they're pretending. Open source software is a valuable resource for basically all major tech companies, and a lot of it is driven by major tech companies. Some kind of combination of open source and proprietary software will always be a thing for them. This isn't some major contradiction, they use either model based on the specific needs of the project.
This is why some think "Open Source" is too permissive since they see it as free/cheap labor to be exploited by huge corporations.
I'm not sure that I see it that way, but I can see their point.
If as soon as it's more profitable for it to not be they stop supporting it, then yes they were pretending.
It's not as if they are holding themselves up as supporting Free Software philosophies (as opposed to Open Source), so where's the pretense?
If somehow it ever makes strategic sense for them to stop making use of the open source model, yeah, they'll stop. That doesn't mean they were pretending.
Extinguish, fail, extend, embrace, extinguish again!
"Rinse and repeat"
Lets talk about THEIR carbon footprint while creating "equality" and new "bussiness opportunities"
They do this because we pay them to.
Working there is apparently pretty nice. Microsoft on the inside is not Microsoft on the outside.
But regardless, terrible company with terrible products. Even if they didn't do anything shady, they still aren't great.
As a shareholder (which I'm not), it's absolutely amazing.
As a human being though... it's simple to look at the history of the company, from its inception based on nepotism and locking-down was hitherto the common good, to going from one place of monopoly (OS, app, cloud) to another (extending to whatever is trendy at the moment e.g XR with HoloLens, AI with OpenAI, etc).
It's IMHO one of the very worst thing that could have happened to humanity in terms of cognitive empowerment. Apple is not far behind but in terms of locking up an entire ecosystem but Microsoft, sadly, is doing it better.
To clarify what I mean is that Microsoft is the business embodiment of learned helplessness. Most people would shrug at the quality of software they provide, the price, etc ONLY because they are convinced, wrongfully so, that they are is no legitimate alternative. If users were actually able to chose, not being coerced into but properly chose, by experiencing alternatives, the World would be totally different. Instead of having computer users who feel an adversarial relationship to their devices, we would have a much stronger relation of "this is MY device" the same way a lot (not all) of people have a repair toolbox at home. They know they can try to fix something in THEIR home, even improve it. Most people understand it won't be easy, they might mess it up, but it's possible to try. Not in software, and that's entirely Microsoft "success". Maybe in an alternative reality others, like Apple, would have made that happen to, but in our reality I blame Microsoft, Bill Gates upbringing from his legal mindset father and well connected mother.
We could have a world were users own their devices, have a challenging yet empowering relationship to technology, starting with software, and instead we have exploitative learning helplnessness. So yes, Microsoft is that bad.
Yes. During the entire history of MSDOS, Windows and Internet Explorer, there are so many things you can pick why Microsoft is bad. Now they even integrate Recall into Windows. I want to say that I always disconnected Xbox from Microsoft; and I'm not entirely sure why.
The question of this post is a bit misleading, because it implies that someone could answer with "no". Better question (in my opinion) is "How bad is Microsoft?".
I think overall they are not better or worse than other tech giants. They try to be the platform for blank and thus to push competitors out of the marked, or lock it down so they can't enter. They try to extract as much money from their customers as they can, even if it makes the user experience worse. They push the boundaries of what the can legally do. They charge you, but you don't own anything.
What really grinds my gears is how they try to force stuff on me that I don't fucking want. I feel like they are completely different in that regard than for example Google. I use Google Maps because I want to. I don't use Chrome because I don't want to. It's that easy. They don't ask me to reconsider, they don't make it super complicated to switch, nothing. I can disable any Google App and forget about it.
To stick with the Google comparison, I also feel like Google informs me better and gives me more control regarding my data. This feels much more hidden on convoluted in MS products in general. For example I had no idea Office is basically spyware before reading about it elsewhere. In Google-land, they seem much more upfront about what they use and what I can opt out from (or in to).
I don't think about Microsoft at all mostly. I supported their stuff professionally in the past and friends/family but otherwise total avoidance. They own some big game studios so I probably use some of their products like Minecraft but I haven't used their operating systems or applications for decades and I dislike and distrust cloud services and theirs is no exception. All big companies tend to be the same. Try not to depend on any of them.
IMO the title of "worst computer tech company" is essentially a tie between MS and Google right now, with the two constantly one-upping the other back and forth on stupid ideas and corporate practices.
I would argue that it's either a 4-6 way tie, or Meta is the worst, but MS is certainly terrible.
Don't forget Oracle.
No offence, but have you been living under a Microsoft shaped rock for the past 30 years?
My lifespan is shorter than 30 years so yes.
Consider this; you were taught Microsoft in school as it's used in work environments, Microsoft is used in work environments as it's taught in schools or the person making the decision was only taught one product.
Why do you think Microsoft is giving free upgrades from windows 10 to 11, same thing from XP upwards. It's vendor lock in, and that's bad for many reasons
Are you a Eggplant?
Haha, yes I'm an eggplant, thank you BTW, I enjoy seeing you posting! I think you were a reason I stick around lemmy.
Is this the circlejerk community of lemmy?
What is the point of your comment? The person asked what the Linux community thinks about Microsoft and you come with this idiotic CiRcLeJerk bs? You didn't add anything to the thread.
I've learnt a bunch of horrible practices done by MS that I wasn't aware of so thank you everybody else.
If you have been on lemmy for any amount of time, "Microsoft bad" is posted almost daily. I'm not disagreeing, yes they are bad. It's super circle jerky to post a whole thread literally asking something that is posted in comments/other posts literally daily. It's fine I just find it funny lol
Average Reddit comment.
You: 🤡
Yes
Instance really
Undoubtedly
There is a lot out there on why from a lot of sources, so definitely not hard to do research on this. Definitely research the history of this company regarding anti-competition, Bill Gate's letter to hobbyists regarding intellectual property and markets (which touches on the whole proprietary vs FOSS suff). You can also just use their products for a while and see for yourself, note what you like and what you don't like (for me the latter is more likely), and make your own judgement.
This thread teaches me that generally, most Linux people are looking at windows. Meanwhile Microsoft only thinks Windows is 16% of its business.
Basically, it seems, most Linux users do not think hard about Microsoft.
IIRC, Azure represents the largest slice of Microsoft's revenue... And ironically, a fair chunk of that is run on Linux
You're right. Both cloud services (like Microsoft 365 measured by licensing) and azure each individually are about double Windows. They together make over half of Microsoft's earnings while Windows is like 16%. Then you've got games and linkedin and others filling up the smaller %.
Microsoft doesn't need Windows, you can run your office 365 off Mac or Linux for all they care. Just host all your virtual workloads on azure regardless of OS if it's not serverless, and they're fine with taking that money.
does it matter how bad it is? does it matter how much shit is in a shit sandwich?
I'm not having it however little there is.
There is a possibility of having 0.01% shit in the sandwitch from water used in it due to some leakage from a toilet tank. Would you not eat it?
Also yeah who known houseflys sit on shit and land on sandwitch at some point in time
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler jk i agree with your point tho :::
weeell you kinda misrepresented the stated point, creating what's commonly referred to as a strawman.
the subject isn't a random sandwich that might or might not have contaminates in it; the subject is a shit sandwich. therefore it's pointless to argue exactly how much shit is in a shit sandwich, as its essence and genesis preclude it from being considered nourishment.
now there's copious propaganda out there convincing you it isn't that bad, lotsa people do it, memba the sandwich from decades ago you loved... but we're in the wrong community for that.
Ah yeah sorry lol i misinterpreted
It used to be pretty bad, back when it was using all the dirty tricks it could invent to build its monopoly. By now though it's just obsolete.
Obsolete? Hardly. The Surface, GamePass, Xbox, GitHub, Skype and just general market dominance says otherwise. They only lost their effective monopoly due to antitrust lawsuits.
Currently, there's lots of better options out there, true, but it's far from obsolete.
Is Skype still a thing? I thought it died soon after MS bought it!
It's a phone service and business communications. I have to use it for work
Huh, didn't realise they were still bothering to sell it
It's Teams, now.
Ugh, Teams. I can't believe Skype and MSN died for this!
@kbal @Moorshou the most valuable obsolete company in the world.
Sure enough, it's up there with Facebook and Saudi Aramco.
Michaelsoft is literally the devil
Buggy and laggy. I work with it and its a daily pain for my soul and mental health.
I like Micsrosofts office suite, but I hate virtually everything else. I got tired of their recent decisions and bought an Apple laptop, partly because I'm getting into iOS development and wanted that experience. But my other computer is dual booted with Fedora and Windows for when I absolutely need Windows, I'll swap over, bit rarely do I outside of some gaming.
Very bad
The death of Windows means more people will come to Linux
Also mean more commercial distros. Less donations to BSDs projects.
And it also increase the strength of Apple and Google, do you want to see that?
One pet peeve of mine is how in Windows 10 switching between virtual desktops was flawless, and somehow in Windows 11 they fucked it up. At first it had no animation when switching, the taskbar kind of glitches. Now it has an animation but it's kind of delayed and the taskbar still kind of glitches, it seems to reload or something. Kinda crazy honestly
Could it be the new taskbar? It's the worst part of W11, I don't understand why they had to replace the old one.
Maybe it's just the hardware I've tried to use it on but it always seemed to take too long for me in 10, too (haven't used 11). Whether trackpad gesture or win+tab, it's just always seemed sluggish compared to other options.
One word:
Recall.
I can't remember
Microsoft just like many other big tech companies are shoehorning AI into everything. It's a new fad, and if it isn't a fad, this is how idiocracy starts IRL.
I personally have no problem with people using Windows but I don't want it shoved down my throat. When people first boot their computer they should have the option to choose what OS to install (Windows, various Linux distros, and FreeBSD) and that choice should always be available in the bios.
Microsoft is evil, but are they more or less evil than Google?
They took down the fucking don't be evil sign! Google used to be a good company but I don't trust their actions. I've only found out about the spyware level chrome browser, not to mention that Google has been coloring my searches on the internet.
But what do I expect from a ADVERTISING company first and for most?
Don't authenticate to a search engine.
youtube needs you to sign in to watch videos now
This is unfortunate, I like my privacy, I've also been hearing about server side ads. On grayjay, I haven't needed to sign in.
I consider their new push for webapps in stead of traditional client as bad practice, its buggier and runs like absolute shit
I don't think the world is black or white. Of course Microsoft can make bad choices and prioritize profit, but Microsoft isn't a person or and entity. MS is an enterprise driven by people that work there.
Linux community or any other community can also make bad choices, afterall it's also people-driven and people are flawed.
I don't excuse MS for really bad choices, but also don't blame it. I just think that's better to see the world complex as it is, not by judging stuff as 'bad' or 'good'.
My good sir... if their modus operandi is rotten to the core... then you could generally say the enterprise is affected by it... (a few bad apples can spoil a bunch...)
While I can see the merit of your sentiment here, and would generally agree the world exists on a spectrum and not some binary scale of yes or no, black or white. Like others have said, with mottos like "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" how can one ignore the bad that Microsoft brings to the table.
You can't compare a general community to a company. Linux community isn't a single community. It's like talking about the gaming community and putting everyone into one soup. Linux community isn't a single entity. However Microsoft is a company and is an entity. Microsoft is an organization, which is one definition of entity. With a clear leadership, goal and driven by making money.
You can say if a company is bad or good, just like you can say if Google and Facebook is good or bad. But you cannot do this with broad collection of different communites, who act independently from each other, such as the "Linux community". Each part of the Linux community has its own goals and does not even align with the other. Therefore it is not a single organization and not an entity. That's why you cannot take this as an example as a counter argument to criticize/judge Microsoft.
You totally missed the point I was trying to say. And I'm not going to explain because of laziness.
I did not miss the point and corrected your statement not being applicable, because the comparison is totally wrong. And I explained why. You claim me being missing the point and not trying to explain, then I have to assume you have no explanation.
Linux community does not have a hierarchy that resolves to a single entity controlling the system. However Microsoft is a narrow company. And you are wrong when saying that Microsoft is not an entity.
Assume whatever you want. I don't care
How bad are we that M$ still has 75% market share on operation systems and office suites?
What's your point? At one moment in history everybody would buy leaded fuel. That's my strawmen reply to your strawmen.
The majority are simpletons which (also) love simple stuff. That's why.
You mean had the education system teach them their tools specifically?
I feel like the authors of this site may be biased, though.
I'm a little biased right now.
Worse than theyve been as is most every other massive conglomerate still in business since inception. As the adage goes, power corrupts. Absolutely immutable if the rest of the corporate world is any example
I thought we were well past this topic. I guess everything old is new again. In fact, I'll dust off a classic:
"Bugs fly through open Windows."
What does "bad" means to you exactly? They are the hypocrites just like any big corporation, value only money, they reinvent wheels all the time, but their products pretty good despite being non-free, and making programs is much easier for Windows then GNU/Linux.
It would be even better if they didn't force you to use only their products.
You value simplicity or free of choice and privacy? The "bad" definition depends on it.
It really depends on your perspective if windows is „easier“ to produce for. They are fully and redundantly vertically integrated which means they have the means to produce IDEs and even create programming languages.
But it is hugely easier to create a small app on linux imo. The simplicity of linux and the modularity of the different desktop environments is pretty great.
Is it tech illiterate friendly like windows? No! It would be great if everyone would be able to use linux now but we‘re gonna have to be patient.
I wish everyone use GNU/Linux too. Mostly agree with you. Except of calling Linux simple. I wish it was simple... (Unless you mean simplicity of use?)
In this particular case I meant that linux is the same in all regards: open source. You can look everything up if you have the time. This makes it possible to change everything and anything you need. Even through different DEs you still have the same structure.
Now if you go try that with windows, you‘re properly hosed. Different package manager? No! Different desktop environment? No!
Simple might not have been the best choice of words though. Modularity might be better.
I do lean to having privacy and freedom to do whatever with my tools as "good" things
Then it's very unusual question that GNU/Linux user could ask. If I may ask, what is your story with Microsoft? What was the last drop for you?
My last straw was the privacy and lack of control.
I didn't like software being released by Microsoft telling me my choices were bad or unoptimal, I like my software, I made my choices from listening to others and forming my own opinion. I had a shift in thinking recently, I wanted to start selecting my software based on my values rather than just choosing whatever works.
Impossible to know it, there isn't any other corporation who fight with M$, it is a perfect monopoly so it's impossible to figure out a world without it.
My point could be: you can't compare the actual reality to a hypothetical reality because the hypothetical reality isn't real. So how can you know it exactly?
Basically two teams (applied to anyone that are "speaking", e.g writing propaganda blogs, comments, etc; they don't necessary need to have all of this properties, and they may have both teams' properties):
Pro microsoft, pro systemd, pro bsod, pro administrator, pro "security" (privsec.dev pro microsoft edge), pro ms office, pro wine, anti apple/mac, anti (a)gpl, pro .net, pro powershell, .....
anti microsoft, anti windows culture, anti systemd, anti msedge, anti powershell & cmd, anti conio.h, anti bsd/mit/isc, anti company sponsorship ....
Team 3: BSD: receive donation from every entities and work on their clean operating system and software they give everyone for free without restriction; FreeBSD has been looked down by the anti-company anti-apple anti-permissive-licenses clowns
Expressed by Theo de Raadt (OpenBSD): "Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. We do what we do because we love Unix."
Join team 3!
And, you cannot make the world better by just destroy A company, Microsoft. You must destroy all of them, or don't destroy any, because it can only make the existing company to compete more fierce, and because OpenBSD needs donation from Google, Microsoft, and Meta to keep working on OpenSSH and other great software those companies need! They don't need clowns to look up nor look down them, like when those clown looks down FreeBSD because they received something from Apple that I cannot figure out what.
I don’t fit in an of these teams, and neither do literally all Linux users I know. Should we have identity crises, or could this be a giant oversimplification?
Congratulations for not being in any team!
I've written more clearly that you must be a writer to join team 1 or 2. Keep going on your project, and ignore those who are fanatical and like to meddle in other people's affairs, like the guys who want a project to refuse donations and contributions from some specific or all company.
That seems like a good edit, and fair enough. Good to know that there is also room for people who want to use their computer in a non-fanatical way, simply minding our own business.