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Ask Slashdot: Which Tech Company Do You Respect Most?

Posted by BeauHD on from the with-respect-to dept.

dryriver writes: On Slashdot, we often discuss the missteps and non consumer-friendly behavior of various tech companies. This company forced people into a subscription payment model. That tech company doesn't respect people's privacy. Yet another tech company failed to fix a dangerous exploit quickly, protect people's cloud data properly, or innovate and improve where innovation and improvement was badly needed.

Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"

37 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. trump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    trump university.

    1. Re:trump by saloomy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ubiquiti. They have good products, at good price points. They are well documented, contribute back to the open source community, and they are truly revolutionary in their hardware designs.

      Their software is mostly free as well. You can download and use it at will.

    2. Re: trump by Jesus+H+Rolle · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's like they're all over the place!

  2. Whoever by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whoever it was that decided to shutdown their secure email service instead of hand over info to the feds.

    1. Re:Whoever by koavf · · Score: 5, Informative

      Lavabit.

    2. Re:Whoever by koavf · · Score: 5, Informative

      Do you realize that Lavabit *did* fight this in a secret court? And that they reconstituted the company with Silent Circle to make a secure mailing protocol? I get the impression you made this comment without reading anything about what happened in court (the owner was given a gag order from his own *lawyer*) and what has happened since 2014. Is that accurate?

  3. craigslist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only truly ethical tech company I can even really think of.

  4. What tech company do you respect most? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apple, in 2010. Year of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

    It's been downhill ever since:
    No Mac mini update since 2012, downgraded in 2014.
    No real update for the MacBook Air since 2015.
    No more iPod shuffle.
    Unreliable keyboards with almost no travel in $1000+ computers.
    Either no RAM slots, or insanely hard to access RAM slots except in their $1800+ iMacs, iMac Pro not included.

    1. Re:What tech company do you respect most? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually the brings up a good point. It isn't what company that you respect the most, is where was that company when you respected them the most?
      Being that most companies are For-Profit there seems to be a time, where the lust for cash crosses their main values.

      The big companies Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM... All had their high points where they were respected at one time for being the best example of a company. Then they will undoubtedly trim the fat too much, treat customers poorly, or move the company in a direction people don't want to go and use the companies size and influence to push it.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  5. Which by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ask Slashdot: What Tech Company Do You Respect Most?

    *Which* Tech Company Do You Respect Most?

  6. What Tech Company do I by oldgraybeard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Respect? duh! None! why should we?

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  7. The Onion by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The only source for news.

    1. Re:The Onion by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Onion.com is suffering a slump because real news from the White House is more zany.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  8. None... by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... since they are all in bed with the entertainment industry and are hell bent on a war against computing and people owning and controlling their own software.

    The coming war on General computing and software freedom

    1. Re:None... by oldgraybeard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Didn't they create the plague that is systemd ;) lol

      Puts on flame suit ;)

      Just my 2 cents ;)

    2. Re:None... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Lennart Poettering has been a RedHat employee for a long time. They didn't just adopt it, they paid him to write it. He's also responsible for PulseAudio, and I think was working for RedHat then as well.

      He's also responsible for Avahi, which is at least only mediocre rather than actively harmful.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  9. Mozilla by RickRussellTX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, the Mr. Robot promotion was a huge mistake, and they've finally admitted that and pledged to do better.

    But I think that mistake only garnered so much attention because Mozilla has been so transparent and aggressive in protecting privacy and advancing the state of browser technology. If somebody like Goog or MSFT pulled that crap, nobody would blink an eye.

    1. Re:Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As far as I'm concerned they burned whatever goodwill they ever had when they fired Brendan Eich for political reasons that had nothing to do with his abilities. But even if they hadn't, their recently bullshit with killing XUL extensions and destroying the UI to turn the browser into a poor Chrome clone is enough to evaporate any respect I might have had left.

      But wait, there's more, I keep on seeing ADS for their stupid browser. Ads proudly proclaiming the death of extensions and then using BS biased tests as "proof" of the browser's speed.

      In short: I have no respect for Mozilla and even less for people who still shill for them.

  10. SpaceX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seems like real innovation.

  11. Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    GNU

  12. SpaceX by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They are the only ones that are going to get us off this rock stuck in a gravity well.

  13. DuckDuckGo by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to respect Google but becoming a public company turned them evil just like every company that goes public. Now DuckDuckGo has come along and they are great because they respect your privacy and don't collect data on people. They are small with a mere 40-some employees which is enough to keep the site going and few enough for them to pay without exploiting users. If that wasn't enough, all their stuff is open source and on github.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  14. Mozilla and DuckDuckGo by seasunset · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think Mozilla is doing wonderful things and a single mistake doesn't change that.

    DuckDuckGo is the other one...

  15. From the top of my head: by Qbertino · · Score: 3, Informative

    Enercon
    Beyerdynamic ...
    Wiha
    Wera

    Ok, the last two are just Toolmakers, but I still count them in.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  16. Easy questiom, Red Hat by the_pouar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're probably the most successful open source company, and their tech is pretty good too.

  17. Tesla by mark-t · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While perhaps more of a car manufacturer than tech company, I'd say that they still qualify at least partially as the latter.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  18. Define tech by MpVpRb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I despise Apple. I consider them fashion that uses tech, rather than tech
    Intel is tech, and they have accomplished great things. Of course, they are also stuck with a really bad problem at the moment
    Atmel and Microchip make useful, but un-glamorous, embedded processors. Their merger has caused us(embedded system programmers) a bit of pain, but on balance, they deserve respect
    Fairchild, NXP, Panasonic, AVX, Kemet, Bourns, Vishay and others make the essential tiny bits.. resistors, capacitors, small logic that the rest of the tech world couldn't live without
    At one time, Sony was amazing, then they shifted their focus from tech to fashion
    LG and Samsung deserve a lot of respect

    Possibly my favorite is Texas Instruments

    1. Re:Define tech by AaronW · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I love Texas Instruments. When I was designing a power supply for a hobby project I came across their web bench design site. I just plugged in the numbers and out pops a schematic, BOM and board layout with parts that are in stock from Digikey. I've always found TI's documentation to be top notch. That's not to say that some of the other semiconductor manufacturers also don't have great sites either, but I haven't yet found any that match TI. I also respect a lot of the other companies you listed.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  19. Who Makes raspberry pi's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've never heard anything bad, only good.

    1. Re:Who Makes raspberry pi's? by supremebob · · Score: 3, Informative

      They are designed by the non profit Pi Foundation, and are made in a Sony factory in the UK.

  20. Re: At present by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pretty sure that the vast majority of C-level execs making 300x the salary of their employees are boomers, not millenials

  21. Flip It by rhadc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What tech companies respect you most?

  22. Here's some. by BenFenner · · Score: 5, Informative

    Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/
    Enough said.

    NearlyFreeSpeech web hosting: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n...
    They defend net nuetrality. Their pricing structure is clearly laid out with no hidden fees, and emphasis on efficiency, and they do well when you do well. They are run by highly competent individuals.


    DuckDuckGo web search: https://duckduckgo.com/html/
    Great search that doesn't track you. Fuck yes.


    PaleMoon web browser: https://www.palemoon.org/
    A modern, FOSS, secure, fast, lean, extensible, and highly configurable browser that took over where FireFox left off. It's run by individuals who have ethics, and stick to them.


    Proton Mail web mail: https://protonmail.com/
    FOSS end-to-end encrypted e-mail. The only issue I see here is that it is free, so you're likely not the customer... There is another end-to-end encrypted web-mail solution that is $5/mo. or so but I've forgotten the name. Anyone?

  23. RedHat, Canonical, et al by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    RedHat is for sure on the list, alongside Canonical. They have done more for Linux and FOSS adoption by corporatizing than countless other projects combined. The profit motive is powerful and it gets products into the hands of willing consumers. RedHat and Canonical are the great heroes of FOSS.

    Open Whisper Systems deserves great praise, though it is financed by some large donors and thus isn't really a company.

    Ixquick, DuckDuckGo and ProtonMail all also deserve great thanks.

  24. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  25. Remember when most of us would've said Google? by AbRASiON · · Score: 3, Interesting

    HAHAHAHAHAA!
    HAHAHAH!

    Oh boy :(

    My, how things have changed. Honestly I think I like Microsoft more than Google now.

  26. Lavabit by iYk6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lavabit was a mixed bag, they had their pros and cons.

    Pros:

    * Provided free email service

    * Simple

    * Most of the features you expect from an email service

    * Spam and virus filters were customizable and much easier than most other services.

    * They shut down their servers instead of giving up Edward Snowden.

    Cons:

    * Buggy, bugs were never fixed, bug reports were never acknowledged

    * Poor communication skills from the developers, both free and paid accounts

    * Actively lied when they shut the service down. For about 2 days they insisted that it was just an upgrade, would be back up soon, and that our emails were not being lost. If they couldn't tell the truth for legal reasons they should have said nothing instead, there was no excuse for the lies.

    * For about 2 days after the shutdown they continued to accept emails sent to users, instead of just rejecting them so the senders would know that the emails had not been delivered.

    Lavabit is back up but I don't use them anymore because of their behavior the first time. They are just not trustworthy.