Summary: Microsoft's former employees, who encourage Free software developers to forget about GNU/Linux, become key staff in SourceForge/Geeknet

MICROSOFT hates paying tax (here is the latest from Reifman [1, 2], a former Microsoft employee who challenges the company to stop avoiding tax [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]), but it sure wants others to pay tax not just to compensate for its evasion but also to help redeem from its very own negligence [1, 2, 3]. We are talking about the conceited suggestion made by Microsoft's Charney [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], who was hired from the government (US DOJ).

Free Software Magazine writes about a similar subject, not forgetting to mention a similar suggestion from Microsoft's Mundie last month.

Microsoft's Internet Driving Licence: stupid, unworkable and unenforceable

[...]

Mundie also compared computer users on the net to car drivers: “If you want to drive a car you have to have a licence to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance”. Actually, he is right. Most of them are technically illiterate but if the only people who were allowed to drive were also qualified car mechanics then most drivers would be off the road. What next? Not allowed to switch on your TV without being a qualified electronics engineer? The point has been made before: if people were properly trained in the use of computers they wouldn’t knowingly touch the Microsoft OS with the proverbial disinfected barge pole. They’d be using GNU/Linux. Instead, at the same economic forum at Davos, Andre Kudelski of the Kudelski Group actually called for the creation of an new internet where everyone would be forced to own two computers: one for secure internet and one for freedom.

Glyn Moody writes about the subject too, but the main purpose of his post is to point out that Microsoft deliberately avoids the mentioning of GNU/Linux when talking about Free software.

"Last week I wrote about its amusing suggestion that we should all be taxed to clean up the mess its software has caused," Moody writes. "Now we have this witty post on Microsoft's Port 25 site, which involves writing about open source software applications and the platforms they run on without mentioning “Linux” once." He adds:

But it gets better. In the accompanying graph, which shows “Open Source Projects by Platform”, we are treated to a representation of how the open source world is becoming more “Windows compatible”. Of course, there's an inconvenient truth that needs to be negotiated here: the fact that the vast majority of free software runs on GNU/Linux. But fear not, those jolly jesters have come up with a way of representing this fact *without mentioning the “L”-word at all*. They accomplish this amazing feat by talking about – wait for it - “POSIX-compatible” software because, you know, that's just how *everyone* refers to GNU/Linux these days....

One of the comments (external) says: "I Don't know about "afraid", Microsoft doesn't want to post ads and mention Linux, but keep all eyes on what it is doing with so-called "opensource" ...funny stuff !. When the guy across the street is taking business from you, you don't show fear as a rule !, you place bigger ads about you, and never never mention about the guy across the street much-less place him in your ad !!!. This can be taken as fear, but I have to believe its business, business Microsoft must now fight to keep it's share of as Microsoft has never had to before !."

Moody links to this post from Microsoft/Geeknet (there is already an intersection between those two), which says: "As we get ready for the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco later this month, Microsoft asked us to pull some statistics around how Windows plays in the broader Open Source ecosystem..." Regarding the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), Matt Asay told me that Microsoft is OSBC's first sponsor ever and he even gave them a keynote talk two years ago. He let one of Microsoft's key racketeers, Brad Smith, open up the event and speak about software patents. Tactless or what? It was also quite bad last year. Cronyism at its best.

For those who watch this carefully, the latest post shows how Microsoft 'invaded' SourceForge. Some months ago we warned about the acquisition of Ohloh. Ohloh are former Microsoft employees and the author of the post above is Scott Collison, who says that he "joined Geeknet following its acquisition of Ohloh Corporation in June 2009. Scott is responsible for driving product and partnerships at Geeknet. As co-founder and CEO of Ohloh, Scott helped make the company into the market leading directory and data provider for open source projects and developers. As Senior Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, Scott was responsible for marketing Web services, shipping the market-leading Web Services Enhancements in the .NET Framework, and running the Web Services early adopter program."

Could it somehow explain why it became Geeknet rather than SourceForge (renaming/rebranding)? Well, it's probably unrelated. But this is not the first member of of staff that SourceForge is adding from Microsoft and we covered this problem before [1, 2, 3, 4]. They are not careful who they hire, so entryism is allowed. ⬆