Encouraging? Microsoft demonstrated here that the move wasn't because of quality or that the change was unable to be in the OSS version, they demonstrated that they only act a certain way because of the backlash. If they would have stand their ground, they would have given the image that this change didn't live up to their wanted quality, instead this demonstrated that they are just giving up to peer-pressure because they don't want to lose "developer love".
The problem is they're showing they will behave as badly as they're allowed to. Not terribly good for trust if it takes backlash for them to act the right way.
At least they shoved that they can undo a bad decision if the community asks for it.
This reads like an apology and recognizing they've made a mistake:
>We are always listening to our customers’ feedback to deliver on their needs. Thank you for making your feedback heard. We are sorry that we made so many community members upset via this change across many parameters including timing and execution.
>Our desire is to create an open and vibrant ecosystem for .NET. As is true with many companies, we are learning to balance the needs of OSS community and being a corporate sponsor for .NET. Sometimes we don’t get it right. When we don’t, the best we can do is learn from our mistakes and be better moving forward.
>Thank you for all of your feedback and your contributions over the years. We are committed to developing .NET in the open and look forward to continuing to work closely with the community.
I mean of course it reads like that - MS and similar corporations pay PR people quite a lot of money to craft messaging to frame things in the best possible way. This is not your personal friend or colleague asking forgiveness when they messed up, it's a multinational corporation acting in their own best interest, just as they did when they tried to get away with moving this feature from free to paid
That's certainly one way to frame it; though, I think, a very narrow view.
They knew they were going to lose some 'developer love' when they originally made the decision. They went ahead anyway. So, your framing isn't adequate.
What made them walk back is when they realised _how much_ they'd lose. Which happened only because lots of people were outraged and vocally spoke against it. Far more than the number of people they were expecting.
It'd be naive to believe they didn't know they're going to lose some, especially given how long they've kept up their charade of 'MS :hearts: OSS'. What's more likely, and supported from evidence of their similar behaviour in other parts of their OSS charade, is that they thought they could get away with it this time too.
> What made them walk back is when they realised _how much_ they'd lose.
What's wrong with this arithmetic? Don't independent FOSS organizations have similar metrics when deciding on things? They want to progress while causing the least amount of grievance to the community, and when it exceeds expectations, they walk back?
For example, I hate Firefox's new tab UI; I think it's terrible, and one of the reasons I stopped using it. But, apparently I'm in the minority, so Mozilla Foundation is okay losing my love. Had the backlash exceeded Mozilla's expectations, wouldn't they have walked back? What's extra sinister about what Microsoft's doing here (besides other valid points of criticism)?
> What's wrong with this arithmetic? Don't independent FOSS organizations have similar metrics when deciding on things?
Math is never the problem; it's what you use it for.
> They want to progress while causing the least amount of grievance to the community ...
Except that's not what's happening here at all. Cannibalising a promised, existing OSS feature in favour of one's proprietary tool is not "progress". What caused them to back off wasn't a desire to minimise "grievance to the community", but harm to their self-image.
I'm not going to deign your sidetrack about another, actually Open Source product, making UX decisions, with a reply in connection to this charade of OSS.
I may have done a bad job articulating what I meant. My main point was that I feel (based on like 2nd and 3rd knowledge so could be totally wrong) that this had as much to do with public pressure as it did with a number of well known (and certainly many not well known) dotnet and Microsoft team members who fought for an OSS feature that they had been developing and promoting for most of this year.
> ... a number of well known (and certainly many not well known) dotnet and Microsoft team members who fought for ...
That wasn't enough. I'm sure they fought for it before the public did. It took the public calling out Microsoft's duplicity for them to change face. I'm sure the insiders' voices helped, but they weren't adequate.
IOW, Microsoft will absolutely do it again, if they think they can slip it past the public. Outrage can't be a driving force for very long, and they know that.
