05.30.08
Susan Hauser, FUDMeister Extraordinaire
“It’s nice for you to admit your guys are running scared [of Free software]. They should be.”
–The sum of Microsoft’s fears (yesterday)
Remember Susan Hauser, who 'stole' the voices of customers and tried to 'override' their views? We will never forget this fear mongering technique. She did not impress much in the audiocast from last October and neither did Justin Steinman and the other Novell/Microsoft salespersons. To a great degree, these marketing folks are responsible for Novell’s troubles.
“Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond’s Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out.”OStatic is an “open source” site, but there has always been something funny about it (not just posts advocating Windows and Mac software). Other than the fact that they publicly dismissed our views on Mono, it’s part of the same network that at leas once in the past AstroTurfed for Microsoft (and got caught). It also employs OpenSUSE’s community manager, who receives a salary from Novell.
At the moment, there are more reasons for cautiousness. OStatic has just interviewed 4 people from Microsoft, which as regular readers would know, is just trying to hijack and ruin "Open Source". In order to achieve this, Microsoft needs trusted open source Web sited (not Redmond’s Fort 25) to offer them room to speak out. It’s the path to people’s minds — especially people on the ‘other side of the fence’ (never preach to the cenverted).
Anyway, let’s interpret Susan Hauser’s response to OStatic. It’s heavily filled with toxic words.
OStatic: What goals do you have for Microsoft’s interoperability alliance with Novell, and what’s behind the goal of converting Linux users in the Chinese market to SUSE Linux Enterprise?
Susan Hauser, General Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Licensing at Microsoft:
“We entered into this agreement because based on customer feedback, we believed that there was an opportunity to grow our business by working together and to show leadership in the industry and the community in the following ways.”
Translation: We arranged a protection racket with Novell, paid it loads of money and then pretended that customers had certain requirements in order to justify our dirty little transaction.
[Note: Matt Asay and others have already confirmed that customers required none of the above (e.g. bogus 'protection'). The only one perpetuating and spreading this lie is Susan Hauser, who stole the voice of customers (c/f reference at the top) to tell lies 'on their behalf', and behind their backs too.]
“Customers want their vendors to embrace interoperability. Microsoft and Novell collaborated – and continue to collaborate – on technical solutions for their shared customers to address critical interoperability technologies such as virtualization and web services. The sales of SUSE Linux support certificates and feedback we’ve received from those customers affirms that choice.”
Translation: Customers needed Microsoft to finally get its act together and stop the technical sabotage, or at least total its disregard for open standards. However, by liaising with Novell, we at Microsoft realised that we can carry on maintaining our proprietary protocols and then build secret binary bridges that only those who pay us ‘protection money’ will receive access to. The patent royalties we’re receive from customer affirm the fact that we got them screwed big time. They pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux.
“Customers want their vendors to manage IP issues for them. Both companies recognize that Microsoft and Novell intellectual property is relevant to their respective products and will be increasingly relevant over time. This agreement has provided customers with confidence these issues have been addressed. We have provided customers with IP Peace of mind. In addition, by having reciprocal respect for IP, we are able to collaborate technically and deliver technical collaboration solutions that benefit our customers.”
Translation: Customers don’t care about interoperability. They just want to cover imaginary debt for imaginary things. Both companies realise that they can build a collective and mutual intellectual monopoly and, as time goes by, they can maginalise competition because antitrust regulators look the other way. The agreement showed that we can sleep better at night, knowing that a corrupted system will permit this to happen. We provided foolish customers with a piece of paper which they never asked for and had them brainwashed to the point of believing that this paperwork was needed. Of course, without pieces of papers, bits of binary code magically cease to work. Programming is impossible without paper (no, not punch cards).
“Microsoft wants to continue reaching out to the open source community. Microsoft has begun participation in some important OSS projects and the non-compensated OSS community is being encouraged to experiment and grow through a broad covenant not-to-sue that benefits individual developers.”
Translation: To quote my boss Steve Ballmer, we need to “f**cking kill Linux.” In order to do so, we try to infiltrate FOSS project and convince them that they have a debt to Microsoft and that they need to pay up in order to ensure Microsoft does not take them and their customers to court. Additionally, they need to ditch that “cancer” called Linux and port their programs to Windows as soon as possible, using “open source” programs solutions like Visual Studio.
“There is a growing recognition among customers – in many countries including China – that there are significant costs to the business by running an operating system that is not supported by a commercial vendor. These costs include the staff time to do manual patches and bug fixes versus leveraging the seamless updates that are provided by Novell for SUSE Linux Enterprise as part of a support contract.”
Translation: China respects intellectual monopolies and ownership of mathematics. Additionally, no GNU/Linux distribution other than Novell ever receives patches. Users have to write their own. They have to keep track of Bugzilla and watchever and figure out how to fix every individual flaw. It’s really, really hard.
“In addition, companies are realizing that with limited budgets, it makes much more sense to use valuable IT staff on strategic projects that support the overall business than on manual tasks that are easily automated when a support contract is purchased.”
Translation: Novell is cheaper than something like Debian. And let’s not forget that if you don’t pay for your copy of GNU/Linux, then automation becomes impossible.
This hopefully sums up the spin doctoring which can be seen above. Microsoft is very good at something — it’s the mastery of FUD tactics and intimidation. It’s just a dirty old routine.
In other OStatic ‘news’, you can clearly see this pattern of FUD (or non-deliberate disinformation), which was once accidentally echoed also in the 451 Group’s blog. The GPL has already won; maybe not in the US (never been tested there to the end), but planet Earth is not the same thing as the United States of America. Why oh why are people still trying to suggest that the GPL is weak, invalid or untested? █
OJ simpson america said,
May 30, 2008 at 2:50 pm
“The GPL has already won; maybe not in the US (never been tested there to the end), but planet Earth is not the same thing as the United States of America.”
Please, it’s the “United States of Advertising” as Bill Hicks said. “Your freedom is speech is guarenteed if you have the money.”
Michael said,
May 30, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Wow, OSStatic is a crappy site, I was just looking through the user questions/comments sections.
Great ‘open source’ queries like ‘what’s good about visual studio 2008′, and plenty of other proprietary software questions or suggestions. Or other jems like ‘I hate google knowing too much, i’ve replaced blogger, how can i replace desktop search (with ‘open source’ software)’.
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 30, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Just about 5 or 6 days ago they published a piece suggesting that “open source programmers” are moving to Macs. Dana Blankenhorn rebutted this. In fact, based on what I read (for instance, most of the developers at Fox News use Ubuntu), this was utter nonsense extrapolated widely from a single incident to justify the author’s preference.
gggggg said,
May 31, 2008 at 4:03 am
She’s a market drone and can’t provide a straight answer to any question. The “Customers” line is also abuse. Who’re this “Customers”? Martians?
Bob said,
May 31, 2008 at 8:03 am
From reading that OStatic article, I never got the impression that the GPL was weak. The only impression I got that there were only a few GPL infringements worldwide and they were settled out of court before there was any ruling about the validity of the GPL thus supporting the claim that the GPL is untested. In reality, the GPL would have been subverted long before 2006 if there was any real chance of subverting it.
Shane Coyle said,
May 31, 2008 at 9:09 am
Usually, what seems to happen is the company tries to argue the GPL is invalid, then they get explained to them that if they win on that point they actually open themselves up to copyright infringement suit(s) from each developer with a piece of copyrighted code in their product, for each instance of distribution I believe, so they wisen up.
GPL was the only thing that gave them a right to distribute in the first place, without its existence, they need individual licenses for every different copyright holder. Imagine what that would require just for the Linux kernel, for example.
Recently, a case (in Germany, maybe???) had the judge explain to the defendant (Skype, I think?) something to the effect that if a publisher’s license required the product be distributed in a green envelope, they had no choice but to comply or seek alternative terms, just to demonstrate the point.
Copyright Law is very strong, just about the world over, and the GPL uses it’s own weight against it in a very cool example of legal judo, ensuring that no one can strip away freedom to redistribute downstream. Brilliant.
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 31, 2008 at 11:18 am
The criticism — however weak this criticism may be — is that they give the impression that the GPL was never tested in court. See this.
I see a lot of anti-GPL and GPL ridicule of this type in newsgroups and other circles (“the GPL is artistic”), so it’s worth squashing the myths for good.
Bob said,
May 31, 2008 at 9:35 pm
It’s always good to dispel any factually incorrect statements, but I think it’s better to educate the people about rudimentary knowledge rather than constantly correcting inaccuracies.
As for the anti-GPL rhetoric/ridicule such claims are made usually because they are confused about the purpose and the philosophy behind the GPL; that is, they don’t understand it as well as the people that wrote it. It’s easy for me to understand why people don’t understand the number of different nuances that went into the GPL – it is usually because they don’t understand the GNU project’s definition of free software. Because of this misunderstanding, such people make all sorts of claims that are simply not true. Implying that the GPL is somehow a weak licence because it hasn’t been tested in court is an example of ignorance that should be corrected with rudimentary knowledge of free software and copyright law.
Henry H said,
June 27, 2008 at 11:18 am
False. Do your research.