"Here's some money, pretend we're friends"

Summary: A glimpse into Microsoft's latest "open source" infiltrations

A LOT has already been said about OSBC 2009, which will be opened up by a Microsoft ally. The company which is suing the heart of Free or "Open Source" software (the GNU and Linux projects) and is constantly trying to change the meaning of these terms is also trying to crash these events by merely attending. And here is its story:

Microsoft is once again a Platinum Level sponsor of the annual Open Source Business Conference, which is being held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

As part of this sponsorship, Robert Youngjohns, the president for Microsoft North America, will also be delivering a keynote address to attendees on Wednesday, March 25 from 09h00 to 09h30 ..

That latter part suggests that Microsoft will be speaking "as part of this sponsorship." It's almost as though they pay specifically in order to acquire a position, a spotlight.

Similar things are happening in India where Microsoft has invaded Open Source India Tech Days ‘09. Here is a portion of an overview:

Then Mr. Srivathsa of Dell, Mr Anil of Microsoft, Ashok krish of TCS and Mr. Shrinivasan of Cloudversity had a pannel discussion about the Career trends in FOSS, which was very much useful for the students( both school and college)

From the comments:

LOL who allowed those idiots inside? Nobody there registered a protest? damn man

Microsoft does not mean well. It is trying to dilute or hijack "open source" and by its very own admission, ruining such events by merely attending is a goal too.

Here is another recent example:

Hi, this is Brian Gorbett and I am an Architect in Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism group. This week I had the privilege to speak on a panel at the Saper Law Open Source Symposium in Chicago.

Who is guarding this event from ill interests? Well, according to the site, "To serve as a panelist or to sponsor the event, please contact Daliah Saper as soon as possible."

When Microsoft attends such events it is pitching in favour of software patents and "hybrid". That's just what it's doing in these conferences, just like their lobbying arms that infiltrate European panels on open source. They also promote what one of our readers calls "the Ms-PL trojan." He explains: "Given the nature of Open Source and how it is designed to keep a level-playing field for all contributors, it's patently obvious that the Ms-PL is a trojan horse concocted by the lawyers who's sole function to pollute the code and render it useless in GPL type projects.

“When Microsoft attends such events it is pitching in favour of software patents and "hybrid".”"The merist hint of Ms-PL code will pollute any such 'open source' projects and leave them liable to litigation. Ms-PL, a transparent attempt to con foolish open source developers into destroying FOSS from the inside."

In other related news, Microsoft is fighting against Java, as it always has. But it was invading their conferences too, despite the many offences which Microsoft had committed against Java. Microsoft employees got caught messing about with polls, which they gamed against Java. Someone with high credibility has just notified us that "Astroturfers are dropping fake developer comments all over the forums lately promoting a proprietary alternative to Java. This serves to highlight the activity and growth of Java.

"There are also articles slamming Sun and Java. While there are some imperfections that must get addressed soon, these articles contrast sharply to the reality which shows active cooperation.

"Another area which confuses me regarding Sun and Red Hat is server hardware. Sun along with Fujitsu and a few others make server systems using open hardware.

"It would then make more sense for Red Hat and Sun to be offering joint solutions, such as pre-loaded Red Hat on SPARC, than for Sun to be offering anti-trust problem child Intel's chips."

We have seen similar attacks on OpenOffice.org [1, 2, 3]. ⬆

"Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]