04.09.09
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). █
