Microsoft’s official @dotnet sent its first Mastodon post today.
Pay attention to the domain: dotnet.social.
Which means Microsoft is operating their own Mastodon community server.
@dotnet account was registered in November, but it became active today.
Clearly, Microsoft sees the Fediverse as core to marketing to developers. I wonder what other brands they’ll bring to the Fediverse as well.
Other people are noting that dotnet.social is not “officially” affiliated with Microsoft.
By why would Microsoft put the official @dotnet at dotnet.social if there’s no relationship?
Who are they trying to kid?
We see you, Microsoft 😉
@atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews Why would they not? They can migrate any time if they need to, but this makes it easier for their marketing crew. Most brand accounts are just accounts, not whole servers.
@LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Look at when the account was created. Look at when the first message was sent.
Clearly, there’s been affiliation for a long time.
@atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews What does the account being created months ago have to do with whether or not they're affiliated? I don't see where you're making that leap. It makes sense they'd want to claim the name they'd eventually use early, even if they weren't prepared to commit to engaging yet. That doesn't mean they're affiliated with the server.
And that's on top of the fact that they've now expressly said they are not affiliated with it. 🤦♂️
@LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Well, I don’t believe them.
You don’t think Microsoft’s lawyers will send a cease and desist if their intellectual property weren’t violated?
You think Microsoft wouldn’t park their official account there for 5 months if there weren’t some sort of relationship?
The reason it’s probably not “official” is because Microsoft likely doesn’t want blowback.
@atomicpoet Microsoft's developer network is extremely community-focused. This is absolutely inline with their past actions. There are hundreds of software packages available that use the .NET name as part of their branding, and Microsoft's lawyers have a history of going after none of them. Moreover, running an account instead of a server is the exact same way their marketing department works on every other social media, so why complicate things here unnecessarily?
Also, "blowback" from who or what?
I really think you're grasping at straws here.
@LouisIngenthron Surely you’re not unaware of how much of the Fediverse community views Microsoft, right?
@atomicpoet Not all of it apparently. I regularly interact with developers on here and haven't heard a hint of anti-Microsoft sentiment.
There are plenty of us .NET developers on Mastodon.
And anyone who hates Microsoft is free to defederate from dotnet.social.
Look at those who have been here before the #TwitterMigration. Better yet, look at those who have been on #Friendica or #Hubzilla before Mastodon even existed. The Fediverse was much different back then.
People generally distrusted all of #GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft). They used Linux whenever and wherever they possibly could. They avoided commercial, corporate-owned, proprietary, non-free, closed-source software like the plague.
Microsoft was actually considered the ultimate evil, also due to Steve Ballmer's attempted crusade of total annihilation against #FreeLibreOpenSourceSoftware, Linux first and foremost.
Devs coded in C, C++, PHP, Python etc., always either cross-platform and Linux-first or Linux-only, put their works under the GPL, the AGPL, the MIT license etc. and open-sourced them. They would never have touched C#, .NET or any other language that was owned by a big corporation and/or would have lead to Windows-only or Windows-first software with a 10-foot barge pole. And they never had to.
Some Fediverse projects actually moved their code repositories from GitHub to Framagit, Codeberg or another non-corporate, non-commercial Gitea-based hoster after Microsoft took over GitHub.
@jupiter_rowland Sure, but now every point you just made has been reversed.
There are lots of .NET developers on Masto now.
Microsoft has proved themselves to be much more developer friendly than any of those other examples.
Steve Ballmer's been out for almost a *decade* now.
C# and .NET are fully cross-compatible now.
GitHub is beloved by developers of all OSes and is a beacon of Microsoft's commitment to open source.
I agree Microsoft's not always been the good guy. But they've been doing the right thing for a good long while now, and they deserve the little bit of trust that's bought them.
