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Microsoft: 'We love [subverting the definition of] open source'

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Summary: The latest spin from "OOXML Paoli" is an attempt to portray Microsoft as a friend of the very same phenomenon it has been attacking

MICROSOFT'S Jean Paoli is one son of a gun. The FFII calls him "OOXML Paoli" (the full message says "OOXML Paoli loves open source and interoperability [...] Interoperability via patent tax?") because this man is largely responsible for the sham which is OOXML, Microsoft's proprietary binary formats 'dressed up' so as to look open with the help of bribery and other forms of corruption all around the world. After the shameful display of brute power, Paoli does not shy away from the cameras, so to speak. A few weeks ago we showed how Paoli was still scamming and subverting the term "open" [1, 2, 3, 4], making the notion easier for Microsoft to digest and more confusing for many people to understand in the process (by redefining "openness" to mean just about anything, even when it's proprietary and Windows-only). IDG is running some sort of Microsoft whitewash piece which quotes Paoli as saying (for Microsoft) "we love open source". This nonsense has been pushed into the front page of Slashdot, so it's worth rebutting rather than ignoring. Here is the punchline:



"We love open source," says Jean Paoli of Microsoft in a recent interview with Network World.


Bradley Kuhn from the FSF and SFLC wrote in identi.ca: 'Microsoft says "We love Open Source",but not "software freedom". MSFT still thinks sw freedom's an unAmerican,cancerous virus.' Nothing ever changed; Microsoft merely divided a once-more-adhesive community and corrupted the meaning of "Open Source", as we showed many times before. Here is a very recent debunking. The video below hopefully helps explain why Microsoft pretends to be a friend of "open source".

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"There's free software [gratis, dumpware] and then there’s open source... there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with."

--Bill Gates, April 2008



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