Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Latest Assaults on GNU/Linux, Free Software, and Open Standards

'We recommend that we *informally* plant the bug of FUD in their ears. "Have you heard about problems with DR DOS?"'

--Microsoft (internal correspondence)



Summary: Facing sheer pressure, Microsoft goes out of its way to harm its competition

Slandering GNU/Linux



Microsoft is again using NPD, as well as its turncoat reporters, to spread disinformation about GNU/Linux in sub-notebooks. The level of FUD is so appalling that even Canonical has had to issue a response which it labeled "Microsoft, FUD and the netbook market."

Brandon Le Blanc from Microsoft posted an interesting post about Netbooks and Linux last week. While we agreed with his comments about customers wanting choice and looking for outstanding hardware options, we disagree with much of his analysis and unsurprisingly the overall ’spin’ of the post.


Read on for the factual defence.

Hijacking "Open Source"



CMSWire has been repeatedly selling out to Microsoft quite recently by giving them a voice every now again -- a platform on which to pose as an open source player. In the latest example of this, CMSWire at least appends a criticism section where it states:

More and more governments at all levels, such as the entire UK government and the French Gendarmerie, are committing to open source and open standards on a broad level. Many businesses and other organizations are moving more to free and open source solutions as they try to stretch shrinking budgets.

What may be happening is that Microsoft is simply seeing the writing on the wall: play ball and make sure your software works with other solutions, or you will become irrelevant.


Then they'll shout: "we're open! ... we're interoperable."

It would be wrong to buy this. They try to ram abuse and proprietary technology down people's throats, relying on a company that routinely commits offences (example from yesterday) while assimilating itself to the competition and making it indistinguishable that way. Pure evil, but proving effective so far. Can they sue companies like TomTom for using open source and then pretend nothing is amiss?

Mocking ODF and Downplaying OOXML Crimes



Corruption surrounding OOXML is a well-documented fact. The person who eventually organised some of this process (his predecessor ran away at sight of abuse) is a Microsoft crony [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] and it still shows, even months later. Here is Alex Brown flirting with Microsoft employees and blaming rules rather than Microsoft corruption. How convenient a revisionism.

Bluehost's CEO... AGAIN...



In his latest blog post which he titled "Microsoft… AGAIN…" the CEO of Bluehost gives a piece of his mind regarding Microsoft, and not for the first time. This time there is less cursing [1, 2].

I guess I just don’t have much self control. It seems I can’t go six months without writing something negative about Microsoft. I don’t think its my fault. Microsoft just makes it so easy sometimes. Lets examine a couple of quotes by Microsoft management and then you tell me if I’m wrong or not (Have I ever been wrong :) )

Here is the man himself - Steve Ballmer


Yes, "the man himself." The man who said “people that use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us” and "we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

Microsoft is too desperate to make revenue from taxation of its competitors because Free software and GNU/Linux forced its pricing tariffs down (Windows is now as cheap as $5).

Microsoft tax warning

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually