A lot of people hate Microsoft. I don’t. If you do hate Microsoft, here are some things to consider, which may make you reconsider your hatred for Microsoft.

1. First one is a “bonus” reason, because it really isn’t related to Microsoft at all, but instead has to do with Bill Gates. It’s included in this list because a good portion of people who hate Microsoft seem to mix up the company with its former CEO. So if you’re one of those people, this reason is for you. Gates has donated more money to charity than any other one person. He founded the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in the world. Not only has he donated almost all of his own money, he regularly campaigns for other rich people to donate their money to help the less fortunate as well. Since retiring from Microsoft, he has become a full time philanthropist. He doesn’t just throw money at the problem, but actively gets involved in understanding the problem of poverty and finding the best way to fix it in the long term. As a result, most of his donations are in the form of investing in education and healthcare in impoverished countries so that future generations can prosper, as opposed to buying and giving away food to the hungry, which only treats the symptoms. In terms of actual results, and assuming you value human welfare and negatively value suffering, Bill Gates has probably done more good to the world than any other person who has ever lived.

2. If you hate Microsoft because they are “evil”, first, think about what the word “evil” means. To me, “evil” implies raping babies. It implies torture. It implies genocide. It implies chaining people up. I don’t mean the figurative chaining of “Oh, I have to use Microsoft Word because everyone else uses it, so I’m chained” while drinking $5 starbucks coffee and reading RSS feeds on your iPhone. I mean literally having chains made of metal oval links, in some damp basement with no light sources, and suffering some sensory deprivation, and needing several years of therapy to overcome. Microsoft is a corporation and corporations don’t have morality. It’s common to try to anthropomorphosize corporations, but it leads to logical fallacies like concluding that a corporation can be “evil”. Corporations seek money. They don’t have any morality, good or bad. If you’re confused about this, read The Corporation (or if you’re lazy, watch the movie instead).

3. If you hate Microsoft because they are monopolistic, then take a look at Google. What search engine do you use? You don’t need to e-mail me, or write a response. I already know the answer: You use Google. If I could go up to a random person and bet $100 that they use Google as their search engine, I’d make a very comfortable living. “Google” is now a verb. Google appears in acronyms (JFGI, GIYF, etc.) Google’s monopoly is much more difficult to dethrone. Microsoft doesn’t black list programs: You can run any program you want on your Windows computer, including programs which crack and disable the activation process of Windows itself. Google black list pages. If Google doesn’t like your webpage, it will simply not show up in any search queries. And since nobody uses any search engine other than Google, your page essentially has ceased to exist on the web. In other words, Google basically has censorship power over the entire web.

4. If you hate Microsoft because they use lock-in tactics, then take a look at Apple. You can’t use iPhone without iTunes. If you’ve been using WinAmp all your life to organize your mp3s, and built up a database of song ratings, playlists, and so on, too fucking bad. Start over from scratch in iTunes. Oh, so you’re installing iTunes now? Well, to use iTunes, you have to also install QuickTime, one of the shittiest movie players ever made. Oh, and now that you’ve got those two installed, for “high priority security” reasons, you should get rid of whatever browser you were using (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, whatever), and use Safari instead.

   The cable I use to connect my iPhone to my computer is wearing out. When it break’s, all I have to buy is a new USB cable for 88 cents, right? Yeah, sorry, but the iPhone basically uses USB technology, but they changed the shape of the plug, and no one makes these cables except Apple, so you’re looking at $19.

5. If you hate Microsoft because you think they’ll do the minimum they can get away with without getting sued, consider these two tales. Wal-Mart experimented with selling DRMed music. DRMed music, in case you’re not familiar with the concept, are like mp3 files, except every time you want to play the song, your computer needs to connect to Wal-Mart’s servers to verify your credentials to make sure you’ve paid for the right to listen to that song. It turned out that this wasn’t profitable enough, so Wal-Mart shut down the servers which meant that your computer could no longer connect, and thus you lost all the music you’ve paid for. And the music execs argued that this is perfectly normal, and you should expect to lose access to music you’ve already paid for.

   In contrast, Microsoft opened up a service called PopFly. It was a site designed to allow non-programmers to create their own games, and upload them and share them with the public. It was like YouTube, except instead of contributing amateur videos, you contributed amateur games. Microsoft decided that there wasn’t enough demand for this service, so they decided to shut down the server. The difference between this and Wal-Mart is that Microsoft then specifically hired programmers to write a “downloader” program that lets you download the games off of PopFly and play them offline before they finally disappear for good. In other words, Microsoft put money and effort to ensure that nobody lost access to anything they’ve put on PopFly.

6. If you hate Microsoft because they’re anti-open-source, consider that Microsoft has contributed several open source projects under their Shared Source License, and have even contributed to the Linux Kernel under the GPL. Those who argue that MS only contributed to the Kernel for selfish reasons (the contribution makes Linux work better in a VM environment running under Windows) needs to recall the core of the open source philosophy, which is every programmer improving the underlying software by contributing patches which scratch their specific itches. Linus made Linux for “selfish” reasons, in that he wasn’t satisfied with any of the other OS kernels out there. Those who argue that this contribution is some sort of “trap” seem to simply not have much faith in the open source software (OSS) methodology at all: If anyone can submit code to an open source project to destroy it, and there is no maintainer who will verify the submission before it gets integrate into every copy of Linux all over the world, then wouldn’t that imply OSS is a pretty crappy way of developing software? If Microsoft can do some legal magic to somehow screw Linux over while licensing code under the GPL, doesn’t that imply that the GPL is fundamentally broken and flawed?

Finally, here’s a bonus story: in the movie 2002 Minority Report, there’s a scene where someone is using a desk with a built in touch-sensitive monitor. In 2007, Microsoft announced essentially exactly that type of computer, called the “Microsoft Surface”. People complained that Microsoft was unable to innovate, this device clearly being a rip-off of the computer from Minority Report. It turns out that the computer used in Minority Report was a prototype of the Microsoft Surface which Microsoft left to the producers of the movie. (It’s quite easy to verify that Microsoft was closely involved in the Minority Report movie, given how often the MSN logo appears all over the place).

Note that there are basically only two “famous” multitouch devices: the Microsoft Surface and Apple’s iPhone. Note that Microsoft essentially (stealthily) demoed the Microsoft Surface in 2002, via the Minority Report movie. Note that the iPhone was first announced in 2007. Note how nobody whines about how Apple is unable to innovate, simply copying ideas from sci-fi movies.