Microsoft Bigotry?

for RuBoard

Trying to provoke me in a meeting recently, someone said, "OK, if you're going to be a Microsoft bigot, let's just get that on the table right now so we can start fighting about it." To which I replied, "I'm not a Microsoft bigot, but I'm also not an anti-Microsoft bigot. I'm a good technology bigot. I use whatever works, regardless of who produced it."

There is a romanticism that seems to have attached itself to rejecting Microsoft technology on moral grounds, but it is a false one. There's a school of thought that believes that refusing to work with Microsoft technology actually helps the world in some tangible way, in the same way that dedicating one's life to public service, or to working in third-world countries might. I think this borders on pretentiousness. Any perceived benefits to humankind that come from rejecting technologies because they're produced by Microsoft are spurious at best. The fact is: There are plenty of developers out there who will use Microsoft technologies if we elect not to, just as there are plenty of mechanics who will service General Motors vehicles if some of the grease monkeys of the world decried the inhumanity and tactics of large corporations and switched exclusively to Yugos.

It's important to guard against moral vanity here, and it's important not to let one's lack of knowledge of a technology result in rejecting that technology out-of-hand, without having even tried it. Refusing even to consider technology simply because it comes from Microsoft disrespects all those who work hard to make it good. Even if you don't like Microsoft's business practices, the people who build its software are, for the most part, not responsible for them. They're people like you and me. They build things; they work for a living. They aren't any more or less evil than the technologists in any company are. Sometimes they come up with great ideas; sometimes they don't. It pays to know when they do.

for RuBoard