The new interview with Bill Hilf, whom we do not consider trustworthy, says quite a bit about Microsoft's tactics and its future plans. Don't listen only to what Microsoft tells you, but ask yourself what it is not telling you. The same goes for Novell and the rest of the Microsoft apologists.

From the interview:

The real value of open source from Microsoft is understanding how community developed software can happen on our platform and help grow our business as well as the open source community, which is how we started off on this whole path of launching things like Port25 and CodePlex, and which is why I submitted the licenses to the OSI.

Here is what Groklaw says: "See? I told you. They are trying to get the community to divide up into Red Hat and the GPL and Novell and others who will help them compete against Red Hat. Very nice. Not. Why would anyone help them?"

That is precisely what we have argued all along. Novell is dividing the community along with Microsoft. It is not Web sites such as this which lead to division. Microsoft had all of this planned and Novell took a lot of money to be part of Microsoft's game. Even smaller companies, as we have seen a few days ago, are lending a hand to Microsoft's claims that it owns part of Linux (intellectual property). Keep an eye on Google's Android because Microsoft has some plans.

The question, of course, is why Kyocera Mita would need a patent from Microsoft to enhance products built on embedded Linux. Is it adding proprietary Microsoft technology on top of embedded Linux?

Could be…

Or is this a case of Kyocera Mita accepting a claim by Microsoft that embedded Linux is among the 235 open source technologies Microsoft insists it owns.

Microsoft had a key idea. It's the idea that if you fool, terrorise and even bribe enough companies, then market perceptions can be changed and rules be rewritten to benefit Microsoft. The least one can do is prevent Microsoft from rewriting the laws by shunning those who assist Microsoft.