THE MORALE at Microsoft is not good. It's low. The company really wasn't prepared for the pandemic. Its business model isn't suitable unlike -- let's say -- Amazon's and Facebook's. The big clients of Microsoft are big businesses and governments that grossly overpay for licences. Home working is an impediment to certain types of contracts. Budgets are in general decreasing. It did not surprise me at all that a month ago Microsoft admitted layoffs, then Mixer died, then Microsoft Stores were shut down indefinitely (all of them). The first two were spun by focusing on a replacement ("HEY HI" hype and Facebook) and the second was announced late on a Friday, spinning that as 'virtual' stores. We've long mocked the idea of 'virtual' conferences and summits or whatever. They're 'webinars' at best; the conferences themselves get canceled, but organisers don't have the heart to say it like that (they don't accept that they wasted months of their lives organising something that would never exist!), so they call a bunch of webstreams from people's bedrooms or living rooms 'virtual' <something glorified>.

"It did not surprise me at all that a month ago Microsoft admitted layoffs, then Mixer died, then Microsoft Stores were shut down indefinitely (all of them)."Free software is not affected or barely affected by all this. As we've noted for months, people being stuck at home often means they have even more time for coding, especially in their 'spare' time (many work on Free software as a sort of hobby, not for a salary). Unemployment may also mean finding a contingent occupation by which to pass time.

Yesterday, in the article "Linus Torvalds on the future of Linux kernel developers and development" (by SJVN, who really needs to abandon that awful publisher) Torvalds was quoted as saying: "I suspect 5.8 might be [so large] because of people staying inside but it might also be, it's just happened that several different groups ended up coming at roughly the same time, with new features in 5.8."

"For me, it's the only reason I can keep a full-time job and still run Techrights, even more so during this pandemic (less time spent outdoors)."Here's more: "None of my co-developers have been hugely impacted either. I was worried for a while because one of our developers was offline for a month or two. … [But,] it turned out that it was just RSI [repetitive strain injury], and RSI is kind of an occupational hazard to deal with. One of the things that is so interesting about the Linux community is how much it has always been email-based and remote, how rarely we get together in person."

SJVN referred to that as "videoconference" (again, the glorified term "conference" -- in this case a bunch of coders streaming from home).

Regardless, here you have it from Torvalds himself. He has long worked from home and he should know how beneficial this can be to productivity. For me, it's the only reason I can keep a full-time job and still run Techrights, even more so during this pandemic (less time spent outdoors). ⬆