FOR those who still think that Microsoft is all friendly and 'buddies' with Free software (or open source), check this out.

At last year's EduCause conference, an inside source tells me, Microsoft refused to sponsor the conference unless the conference organizers denied Zimbra the opportunity to take a big, prominent booth at the event.

So much for the "Microsoft hater" label, which they love using to describe open source people as intolerant [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

People should deny attendance if a company that threatens to sue Free software is attending, as it so often does by paying organisers. We've used OSCON [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and OSBC [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] as examples before.

Microsoft is trying to be part of everything open source and even everything Linux. It leads to repulsion among other attendants, which only helps Microsoft and devalues the events. Need one recall what they did to an open standards body? Total mockery. ⬆

"Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I'm an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat."

--Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft