07.29.10
Grameen Foundation and Microsoft Misuse the Term ‘Open Source’
Summary: The Grameen Foundation, which has Microsoft ties, apparently promotes predatory loaners and uses terms like “open source” to get attention
THE Grameen Foundation is an interesting subject which we previously explored in (everything except the first post just mentions it briefly):
- Microsoft Seizes Control of Grameen and Uses it to Dump Against Free/Libre Software; Microsoft Dumping Comes to Latin America and Maryland
- Microsoft Hijacks More of Education Sector in Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia
- One Hand Shows “Open Source”, Another Hand Shows SaaS
- Microsoft’s Battle to Consume — Not Obliterate — Open Source
This so-called ‘foundation’ which is close to Microsoft (many such foundations — including Gates’ — are pro-Westernisation and sometimes for-profit) dresses itself up as ‘open source’, but based on its new press release it’s mostly about loans to poor populations. It’s a shady area because the poor people need to pay back, so they become slaves of the banker or hedge fund in question. We gave examples of this practice before (and below we put a good video from Pilger).
The use of the term “open source” in press releases of the Grameen Foundation seems to be for marketing purposes. In everything we have seen in those press releases (so fat at least) there is no evidence of proper “Open Source” being involved. And speaking of fake open source, since we mentioned Jean Paoli's appearance a few hours ago, here is an expansion on that. Microsoft now promotes all sorts of notions like “Open Cloud”, which is like saying that giving someone else one’s data makes it transparent or more accessible. It is the very opposite, so watch out for the spin machine. █
