Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Fights GNU/Linux and Brazil with Lies

Pratinha - Chapada Diamantina
Pratinha - Chapada Diamantina



Brazil's education system has already decided to embrace Debian GNU/Linux with KDE. It will be served to approximately 52 million children and adolescents. A reader of ours from Brazil recently estimated that GNU/Linux is already used by about 8% of the population in Brazil and by watching the following new article, a shift in momentum becomes rather evident.



Universities that do not use Free Software: Time for a boycott?



I received an email recently from a young man in Brazil who wanted me to come to his university and talk to the students and faculty about using Free Software. I am normally happy to advise universities to use Free Software, but usually this is done in conjunction with some large conference held at the university or some other venue. I just do not have the time to visit each and every school. But I did investigate the university of the student and found that Microsoft was indeed a sponsor of the University. In fact, the university had a large banner on the front page of their web site talking about Microsoft as a partner. It was the first time I saw a university advertising a commercial firm on their home page.

I started doing a little more investigation of the student's city and found that there was another university in the same city that was very active with Free Software. In fact, they had a mirror of Debian software and were actively promoting Free Software.

[...]

Ten years ago a boycott might not have been possible. There were too few universities that had access to enough really good Free Software to ask the students to make a "sacrifice" in forsaking a university that only used proprietary software to teach. Now, with the range of Free Software that is available, and with the marketplace crying out for new programmers trained in Free Software development techniques, and with many more good universities using Free Software to teach courses, the university "marketplace" is ready for the boycott.


Microsoft rarely responds to such threats directly. It might anger people, whose freedom is taken away by a fraudulent multi-national, so it operates by proxy instead.

“As for IDC, they twist figures or prepare definitions that are biased by design. They are engineered to deceive.”Ina Fried, a known 'Microsoft mole' from CNET, is doing a batch of articles with photos of Brazil's slums and articles about "Linux" (forget the GNU philosophy of freedom). Fried is therefore encouraging the view that only poor people would 'settle' for "Linux" and that it's all about cost.

Remember that CNET was funded by Microsoft's co-founder and it's only a small part of the corporate sponsorship maze in the press.

At the same time, CNET is citing ZDNet (also known as "Ziff/Gates" to some) with the usual bogus numbers from IDC. It's the servers FUD all over again (a quarterly or bi-annual occurrence). We covered this just a few days ago.

As for IDC, they twist figures or prepare definitions that are biased by design. They are engineered to deceive. We saw it and remarked on this before. in reality, Windows servers are claimed to actually be on the decline. Says one reader in Linux Today:

They go to great lengths to mask some numbers. Windows market share is down almost 2% from 38.4% to 36.5%.


Another article is suggesting that GNU/Linux is losing because of mainframes. The source? IDC. In a nutshell, IDC continue to sling mud at Linux by biasing, just as Al Gillen did about a year ago (the rebuttal stays the same).

It's sheer dishonesty, which is typically paid for those with vested interests in lies (or gymnastics in statistics) [1, 2, 3, 4]. It even says "Linux sales". GNU/Linux need to be sold? Since when? In fact, as time goes by and Free software improves further, it's easier to deploy without buying anything. They try to make technical arguments (maybe even correct ones) to only highlight statistics of no interest or value.

All in all, Ina Fried and Matt Asay continue to participate in Microsoft's propaganda against Brazil and Linux, respectively. There's also intersection between them now, but Asay is probably doing this naively and accidentally. Here is one remark from the comments:

Bravo. Good corporate lackey. Ina Fried gets a fluff job from the Microsoft head liar in Brazil and she runs with it THREE times and now you jump on it. Bravo.


The above surely is rude, but it's true.

“There's a lot of Linux out there -- much more than Microsoft generally signals publicly -- and their customers are using it.”

--Paul DeGroot, a Directions On Microsoft analyst (a fortnight ago)

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete