09.21.10
Posted in Deception, Google, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenDocument at 6:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is unleashing the lobbyists and AstroTurfers in more desperate attempts to cause Google trouble with the law
MICROSOFT has little or no legitimacy when complaining about Google. Everyone knows that they are each other’s competitors. So, what does Microsoft do? It hides behind fake groups that it funds to pretend to be independent complainers.
One example of such groups is ACT, which Microsoft uses for a variety of purposes including the fight against ODF, the fight for software patents in Europe, and the fight against Google. Another group, ‘Consumer’ ‘Watchdog’, keeps AstroTurfing against Google and foolishly enough some reporters still give this group a platform.
The ice cream man video has been viewed over 330,000 times.
Then there is the ITA complaint and its connection to Microsoft was covered here earlier this month. A Microsoft booster writes about it too, perhaps not noticing the source of the this complaint against Google.
Watch the article “House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy Hearing”. Someone is quoted as saying: “In addition, I have done consulting for Microsoft. My testimony today reflects my own personal views and not the views of my clients.”
Or the paychecks?
People love to obscure their biases to themselves. It’s a self defence of one’s convictions.
In another post from the Microsoft booster which was mentioned above, “Microsoft-backed group” is the name given to another Microsoft lobbyist, Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). He ought to just say “lobbyist”, which is still a euphemism and a nice word for someone who pretends to be independent but is actually just a proxy for corrupting lawmakers on behalf of a paymaster.
Look who’s talking in the House Judiciary Committee panel hearing. “Microsoft-backed group issues warning on Google-ITA deal” is an understatement:
“The concern is about access to the engine and who gets the best quality result,” Morgan Reed, executive director for the Association for Competitive Technology, told a House Judiciary Committee panel hearing Thursday. Reed’s group is backed by Microsoft and Orbitz, both of which rely on ITA’s service to display airfares.
We have been seeing a lot of this recently, e.g. in Texas [1, 2], but Google is not blind to the source of it all. “Google suggests Texas search concerns originate with Microsoft” says The Hill (also see “Google faces more antitrust scrutiny, blames Microsoft again” and “Google hints at Microsoft involvement in antitrust suit”).
Why need Microsoft be so worried about Google? For starters, it is killing the #1 cash cow. Yesterday from Forbes: “Google Apps Is Making Microsoft Poorer, Adding 1 Million Users Per Month”
This morning, Google announced that over 3 million businesses, with over 30 million employees, are using its enterprise Apps product.
[...]
Given that only a small percentage of Apps users actually pay for it, it doesn’t look like Google is going to turn enterprise into a revenue engine any time soon. But the point of Apps isn’t to make money – it’s to eat away at Microsoft’s cash cow.
Despite the misreporting/FUD which lingers on, Google Apps is also gaining some major clients. Since it’s Fog Computing, it’s not great news, but as Google supports ODF, it is far better than Microsoft monopoly. █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Finance, Marketing, Microsoft, Patents at 12:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A comprehensive view on Gates PR from the past fortnight, including the purchasing of the Guardian and TED platforms, which convey trust
The Guardian is an excellent newspaper covering issues that range from the environment to politics from all around the world. When it comes to technology, however, The Guardian is said to have sold out to Microsoft too many times [1, 2, 3], as we began showing last year when the paper shamelessly promoted Vista 7 like it was a PR channel. The Guardian is not to be bashed for occasional mistakes. Techrights too, throughout its almost 4 years of running with nearly 12,000 posts, has made some errors and corrected them. The problem we discuss today is very different because Bill’s Gates Foundation has just ‘bought’ The Guardian in the sense that it paid it to alter its agenda. Bill’s operations have injected funds into The Guardian‘s coffers to increasingly cover matters of interest to Gates. Does that impact coverage? It sure does. In fact, there are already some glowing pieces about the Gates family in The Guardian, published only days within the announcement of this troubling relationship. Complaints about what Gates is doing here have come in parallel. Several journalists are independently and very openly questioning the integrity of this publication because its publishers accepted money in exchange for changes to its agenda. By the time this gets covered here there are already many criticisms out there; therefore, we’ll attempt to summarise them rather than weigh in at any high level of capacity. It’s as though others have done the work of debunking already, so the counter-arguments ought to just be heard now.
“The Gates Foundation has been paying book authors, journalists, radio broadcasters and other key channels of information in order to cover issues of interest to Gates (i.e. strings attached), the way Gates wishes for them to be covered.”It would be suitable to begin with just a little background. The Gates Foundation has been paying book authors, journalists, radio broadcasters and other key channels of information in order to cover issues of interest to Gates (i.e. strings attached), the way Gates wishes for them to be covered. These sources then pretend to give people information while in fact doing worse by obscuring real information using endless PR. In other words, the media gets saturated with so much PR that any genuine coverage gets washed aside by the PR and receives little attention in comparison. This is a very serious problem that affects many walks of life. It’s all PR and billions are being spent on it by the Gates Foundation alone (aggregated sum over the years). We are talking about stuff like this, glorifying owners of the future and selling readers the story about the world’s richest people also being the most generous people in the world. It’s an attempt to get public support and to get critics off their backs. In essence, they are playing “parents” with the world and if uneducated masses fall for the PR tricks (the science of appeal to psyche), then they will discourage dissent from those with well-developed critical thinking skills, including those who are resistant to PR.
Wealthy families like Gates’ have been ‘injecting’ themselves into many articles that sell people illusions and fairy tales, which in turn increase lobbying power for something like Gates’ foundation (which is just his bank account under shelter from state tax). Tax shelters are sometimes being shared in the sense that one family may puts its wealth in another family’s rather than create its own. Buffett is an example of that. Watch this month’s news about Gates and Buffett touring the East like they are presidents of the United States, colonising a little in China only to receive the cold shoulder [1, 2, 3, 4]. The Chinese press calls Gates and Buffett “U.S. barons” right in the headline. At least the correct words are being used. The word “baron” is not quite so fashionable anymore. These people are taking credit for the work of others after lobbying on how tax should be spent, using newspapers to get those whom they exploit off their back (here is an excellent new example of a Gates puff piece).
“There is a hidden component here and that’s the PR and lobbying.”One Chinese billionaire says he will donate his “entire fortune”, based on the Chinese press (also here), but just as in the case with the US rich list, they have not actually given the money yet and it is often being used for tax avoidance/evasion and lobbying — a fact that many overlook. “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has more than $400 million to support new grants,” says this report, but the tax savings alone are worth close to that amount (depending on how tax for the super-rich gets fixed in the US). Someone who did some mathematics/fast calculations came up with the allegation that Gates only gives away what he saves in terms of taxation using those giveaways (from which he sometimes profits as an investor). Does Gates make up for that? This is not the most important point. There is a hidden component here and that’s the PR and lobbying. A lot of power is gained by already-super-rich people because there is disinformation in the press, which often enough they just ‘buy’. Here is a good example of Canadian PR which tries to make it seem like they work for the ‘little people’. Contrariwise, one person writes “An Open Letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett”:
If nothing is done, these forces will continue to destroy the middle class, and the number of American consumers with the income and confidence to drive robust market demand will continue to contract. The reality is that there is simply no viable force — either economic or political — to counteract the relentless concentration of income and opportunity that now characterizes our society. Our government has largely degraded into a plutocracy of special interests. While specific agendas vary, collectively these powerful players act to accelerate the drive toward further income inequality — even as they attempt to dismantle the few safety nets that exist for middle class Americans.
In the absence of a countervailing force, income inequality seems poised to reach levels that may ultimately be socially, and even economically, unsustainable. If that is allowed to happen, the ramifications may be both dire and unpredictable.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett, why not deploy a substantial fraction of your wealth at home? Why not create a powerful political voice — and a well-funded lobbying organization — to speak for the interests of the bulk of Americans: for the bottom 80, or even 90, percent of the income distribution?
At the Gates Foundation (where Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett stash their money to avoid tax), there is still no transparency according to its own new report [1, 2], maybe because of investments in companies that harm society. A lot of people know next to nothing about the major function of the Gates Foundation as an investments vehicle with a portfolio that includes Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, BP, Goldman Sachs, and so on.
Over at Associated Press there is coverage [1, 2, 3] about this report because the foundation admits that it is too secretive (only after being pressured on the matter a few months ago):
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has taken another baby step toward increased transparency, acknowledging in its annual report that the world’s largest charitable foundation is too secretive and hard to work with.
The Gates Foundation sells the illusion of a cuddly and transparent donator, but the reality is very different. The foundation guards its image and scrutinies/belittles/punishes anyone who challenges it (otherwise, it just arrogantly ignores all critics). The foundation employs a very large number of marketers (some peripheral) to ‘plant’ PR fairy tales/sob stories in the press all around the world. The foundation also gets to censor people through self-censorship at the very least. What people in the field say gets “monitored by a Gates Foundation public-relations representative,” according to this new article about malaria. To quote in context: “Eradication may be as much as 40 years away, but it’s important to start work now on drugs and vaccines that can take a decade or more to bring to the field, he said in an interview monitored by a Gates Foundation public-relations representative.
“As the world’s richest — and perhaps most influential — philanthropy, the Gates Foundation has the power to sway both science and governments. Some experts fear its emphasis on eradication will divert too much money and energy away from efforts to treat the disease and toward a far-off goal.”
“Gates wants to be seen as the world’s parent and he is mass-marketing (or pushing) this to journalists along with the wife.”The foundation can retaliate with funding when people go ‘off the script’ Gates wants to control. The politics of scientific funding through grants just works this way. One needs to remember that the foundation’s health chief has a history of bullying opposition and we have heard from prominent critics how Gates monopolises research, in essence by excluding all other/competing research routes. In 2008 the New York Times wrote that “[t]he chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.” The article went on and pointed out that “[i]n a memorandum, the malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained to his boss, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., that the foundation’s money, while crucial, could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences.””
That’s just malaria as an example. There is the old story about pharmaceutical patents they invest in at the expense of others. They form special relationships with companies they invest in and they groom individuals of interest. From this one new article: “Frieden is in the Seattle area this week meeting with local public health leaders. He’s also spending a day at the Gates Foundation. He spoke briefly to reporters at a Department of Health laboratory in Shoreline, Wash.”
This finally brings us to the part about shameless publicity stunts and attention-whoring. Gates wants to be seen as the world’s parent and he is mass-marketing (or pushing) this to journalists along with the wife. A Gates sceptic states: “The head of the Gates Foundation loves to retell stories, but does she?”
Melinda says she loves retelling stories. If that is true then it must be she who is retelling the stories and she is not having a ghost writer pen blog posts or her presentations.
This is not surprising.
In a entry titled “The man who put the words into Bill and Melinda’s mouths” the same sceptic reveals the person who is writing their speeches for them. He is now working for the Clintons, the Gates' friends/collaborators.
Daniel has been working as a senior advocacy officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, where he was in charge of writing Bill and Melinda’s speeches. He also apparently drove cross country before taking up his new post in Foggy Bottom this week. From 1999 to 2003, he was managing editor at Slate Magazine, where he wrote extensively about the entertainment industry.
Now we get to some interesting new examples of Gates controlling coverage. Last month we showed that Gates 'bought' TED and this month we learn more: “Buy your own TED and put yourself on the podium”
When you buy your own TED you can put yourself on the podium. Way to go, Melinda.
Here is more information about that: “The event, TEDxChange: The Future We Make, is co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and international Not for Profit, TED with satellite events around the world linking up with the main event in New York.
“Speakers at the TEDxChange event announced so far include: Melinda Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”
“A few months ago we showed that the Gates Foundation was expanding to a new branch in London and now we learn about TEDxLondon.”she does not even write her own speeches, as revealed by that recent article. It’s just like advertising and she puts her name on it.
Another article/page says: “Excerpts from selected films will first premiere Sept. 20 as part of TEDxChange, a live event convened by Melinda French Gates, to mark the 10th anniversary of the creation of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to improve social and economic conditions in the world’s poorest countries.”
A few months ago we showed that the Gates Foundation was expanding to a new branch in London and now we learn about TEDxLondon. A tinge of Gates is in order:
London, Wednesday 15th September – TEDxLondon today announced the illustrious live speaker line up for “The Future We Make”, a special TEDx event exploring global health and development taking place on September 20th at the Science Museum, London.
Hosted by Wired UK editor David Rowan and featuring a live broadcast of Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation speaking from TEDxChange New York.
There is even TEDxRedmond, based on the Seattle P-I. What on Earth has happened to TED? The article says: “Adora Svitak, 12, is the host of TEDxRedmond, a local TED program that is being organized “by kids, for kids” that will be held Saturday September 18 on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. Follow on Twitter.”
That’s right, “Microsoft campus in Redmond”.
Rest in peace, TED.
This could be part of similar sponsorships that make TED look like a sellout for corporations. Apparently TED was too good and had gained some credibility, so someone had to exploit it. What a shame.
Some more prepared speeches are about to be delivered by Gates at the mHealth Summit [1, 2] in November.
Chopra will join the keynote luncheon on November 9 at 1 pm, where Bill Gates is also scheduled to speak. The event has drawn an impressive lineup of speakers that includes Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director; Ted Turner, Chairman, the United Nations Foundation, Bill Gates, Co-Chair, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Dr. Julio Frenk, Dean of Faculty, Harvard School of Public Health.
They are lobbying, perhaps buying a place at the table, so to speak. Another new example:
Actually there will be some quite high profile people there – one of them, of course, being Bill Gates in his capacity as co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Amongst the sponsors are Verizon, Qualcomm, Microsoft and Skype.
What a good venue in which to promote their investments/patents. The Huff&Puff (Huffington Post) recently created a corner for self-praise of the likes of Gates and this corner of the site right now features this placement from the head of the Gates Foundation. That corner is called “Causecast” and it is potentially sponsored by Gates as we explained before. The Huff&Puff has some other new puff pieces from Microsoft employees who put their own articles there, even marketing employees (PR). There are new examples like this one (pay attention to the disclosure).
Finally — and perhaps most importantly — we must come to grips with the fact that The Guardian sold out for sure. Unlike the Huff&Puff there is an admission (“The Guardian launches global development website with Gates Foundation”).
Gateskeepers asks: “How much did the Gates Foundation bribe the Guardian to make a ‘news’ website in its interests?” (The Guardian did not reveal the numbers)
If the Guardian editor thought that this issue was important and ignored, why didn’t he just publish more stories about it instead of taking Gates Foundation money to do it?
It will be interesting to see the stories by Bunting, Bosely, Elliot, and Vidal. Will they publish ‘good news’ about Gates Foundation activities or not write a word about the Foundation?
The Gates Foundation purchase of mainstream media makes watchdogging their work more challenging.
More Microsoft bias from The Guardian ought to be expected and the role of Charles Arthur (technology editor) is at stake if he wants to be critical of Microsoft. Arthur is actually one of the good writers, but with his usual reluctance to be hard on Microsoft there is reason for concern. Now that he or his bosses are paid by Bill Gates he must be careful. Saying the wrong thing can put him in an awkward position or on the launching pad (for ejection). Money that comes in such a fashion poisons reporting, even if by self-censorship (refusal to make one statement or another because of perceived risk to one’s job and livelihood).
“Watch how hard The Guardian tries to defend its image.”Truth be told, there is not much money in journalism (and even less over time as paper copies get neglected and paywalls must compete by offering what people can already get for free elsewhere). But when they become just a marketing department and not reporters (or sponsored from the outside), they sell bias, not news. And that’s just what happened to The Guardian. It cannot quite criticise Gates anymore because that’s where money is coming from. Nobody bites the hands that feeds.
Watch how hard The Guardian tries to defend its image. Now it’s just hiding the impact of this revenue source, maybe hiding behind “good cause”, UN, and other sentimental notions. There is even a new “About this site” page which may seem like an utter absurdity/joke when it claims: “The website is partly funded by the [Gates] foundation and is editorially independent.”
“There is not even pretence of objectiveness being retained as just a few days pass since the announcement of Gates paying The Guardian and they are already advertising Melinda in the top pages…”That’s a contradiction in practice. Watch how they even brags about it in an unrelated article about Nick Clegg. It says: “Clegg’s comments come as the Guardian today launches a new section of the website, guardian.co.uk/global-development, in partnership with the Gates Foundation, to track progress on the goals.”
According to a new piece from The Guardian, Melinda Gates is “gods with chequebooks” (that’s the headline). There is not even pretence of objectiveness being retained as just a few days pass since the announcement of Gates paying The Guardian and they are already advertising Melinda in the top pages (she is the one paying The Guardian with those “chequebooks” they glorify). How tactless.
Techrights noticed this timely placement before realising that several others did too. Gateskeepers goes with the headline “The Guardian brown noses Melinda”
The Gates Foundation funds the Guardian to make a new website. A few days later the Guardian publishes a gushing sychophantic Saturday interview. Coincidence? Will Bunting, Bosely, Elliot, and Vidal publish the same kind of fluff?
The thing about Bill Gates is, he does not need to ‘buy’ all the publications, just several which are dedicated to the specific topics of relevance. Then, he can post about it in great volumes, setting the tone for or ‘seeding’ for other publication to follow and rely upon. He is essentially trying to set the consensus, just as mainstream press famously does in politics, justifying wars and the likes of that by seeding in key publications and then seeing it echoed, having been normalised.
In this case, the promotion of the Gates family as a bunch of angels is what the The Guardian helps achieve, for monetary gain.
Another journalist noticed this nauseating conflict of interest and asked: “Gates Funds Guardian News Site, Which Then Profiles Melinda Gates?”
I don’t know who made the call to do this, the Guardian newspaper or the Gates Foundation.
But I don’t think it was a good call — to do this somewhat gushing story on Melinda Gates.
Earlier this week, the British newspaper and the Seattle philanthropy announced they had partnered to create a new online news site at the Guardian devoted to global development.
[...]
What looks bad is the rapidity with which the Guardian moved to write a glowing article about one of its financial benefactors. There are plenty of other leaders in the field of global health and development worth profiling as we head toward the big UN development confab next week.
“Two Seattle journalists are concerned about the Gates Foundation buying the Guardian,” says Gateskeepers and provides examples:
Two veteran Seattle journalists get it. The have just observed the Gates Foundation purchase of advocacy space in the formerly progressive Guardian and have questions about it. If down-home journalists are concerned, shouldn’t we all be?
Here are the two critics:
i. Guardian is Gates’ latest advocate
According to a Guardian news release, the Gates Foundation is partially funding the website (I was not able to find the grant itemized on the foundation’s website), and it was launched to “help focus the world’s attention on global development.”
[...]
Last week, the foundation disclosed that it spent more than $365 million in 2009 on policy and advocacy efforts. The largest portion was related to global health, but it did spend $41 million on global development.
That spending, which takes many forms, is showing up more often in the world of media.
ii. Gates Foundation Funds Media Coverage of Itself
But this is what the Gates Foundation calls the money it gives to media organizations, advocacy.
Journalists, and news organizations, like to claim they don’t advocate. So why are we accepting advocacy money to cover global health and development issues from an organization with an agenda in all this?
NPR has taken money from the Gates Foundation to cover global health. So has PBS NewsHour, PRI’s The World and a number of other media.
And who knows, maybe my new employer KPLU will also try to wrangle some money for this site as well? That’s what they (oh, I mean we) do here at NPR affiliates, isn’t it? We ask for pledges, underwriters. (I think I’m supposed to pretend I don’t consider this as I objectively scribble away ….)
When I was a newspaper journalist at the Seattle Post Intelligencer, I used to point out the potential conflict-of-interest inherent in these kind of deals. I could claim to be “pure” because the PI supported journalism by selling ads of women’s underwear, teeth-whitening services and professional sports (though advertising for the sports industry was often confused as news reporting).
No more criticism of Gates from The Guardian then? Would that put at risk a funding source?
Gates’ fan press goes with the line that Gates actually does something positive by giving money to The Guardian for his agenda and other Web sites neglect to account for the negative impact of this [1, 2, 3]. It harms journalism as a whole.
Needless to say, this also serves Microsoft. Just when people are led into believing that someone 'leaving' Microsoft means less damage rather than more, the press gets rightly discredited. It’s not just Melinda by the way. Bill too receives glowing puff pieces about himself [1, 2, 3, 4], this time with a “boy scout” flavour:
Bill Gates is a boy scout
Former software king of the world, Sir William Gates III is apparently no stranger to “Scouting for Boys” .
What a stupid and meaningless granting of a symbol which serves no purpose other than publicity. There is other PR at this moment, centred around Bill Gates and “Superman” [1, 2].
To close this long post on a cautionary note, here is a good article about the giving of money as a form of lobbying:
Gatekeepers – Is giving away money — and lots of it — really the best way to change the world?
[...]
That influence stretches into the U.S. government — USAID administrator Rajiv Shah is a Gates alumnus who still dines privately with Bill and Melinda. And when the Gates Foundation sets priorities, the market listens. According to Randall Kempner of the Aspen Institute, “Gates is so big and so influential that if they decide they want to focus on, say, food security, then they have the weight to get other foundations and, indeed, government agencies to change the game.”
We wrote about Rajiv’s activities in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. He is an example of former Gates Foundation staff which enters the political system/public sector and then serves Gates’ agenda from within. We gave some examples of that.
Lastly, from the The Atlantic Wire we have this article: “Does Large-Scale Philanthropy Work?”
The best model for getting the most bang-for-charitable-buck doesn’t seem to be 100% clear. But the bottom line, she concludes, particularly with 40 billionaires’ fortunes scheduled to flood into the system, is that “the philanthropic world must change gears.”
Little attention is being paid to how much of that money is actually being given away and how/why it got amassed in the first place. Moreover, tax exemptions and profit from one’s stock are important issues which are almost always overlooked. As the press gets increasingly reliant on rich people like Bloomberg, Murdoch and Gates, investigations will be harder to come by. █
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09.20.10
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, SLES/SLED, Virtualisation, VMware at 9:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More people are afraid of VMware, Groklaw suspects that VMware only pretends to compete with Microsoft, and there are reasons to believe that VMware would abandon free elements such as OpenSUSE
IT APPEARS as though the Microsoft-occupied VMware (which we may call MSWare or WCware, as suggested by one of our readers) will become a subject of greater focus at Techrights. It seems like the future owner of Ballnux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], the Microsoft patent tax-encumbered distribution of GNU/Linux. VMware would most likely try to hurt Red Hat with it, using the hypervisor as a sales channel. VMware has been buying FOSS to bury it, based on our experience and many links we covered here before. We realise that a lot of people are unaware of this, just as they do not know that the top of VMware’s management is filled with former Microsoft executives after the old management was ousted with help from EMC, a close Microsoft partner.
Earlier today in IRC it came up that the news about VMware is definitely bad news for SUSE and for FOSS. “[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse,” Chips B. Malroy said to kick off this discussion (which may be more long-winded than this post). What would happen to OpenSUSE, whose weekly activity seems to be decreasing over time? VMware does not have a history of fostering much of a community at all. As pointed out in IRC, it is possible that VMware is just Microsoft’s way of getting better control over SUSE. ThistleWeb
says: “isn’t the MS dictionary definition of “embedding” about getting their own employees embedded with other companies or committees to help further the MS agenda? yahoo, vmware, iso style”
“[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse”
–Chips B. MalroyBrian Proffitt from IDG says that “A VMware/Novell acquisition makes sense, but care must be taken.”
Another IDG columnist writes the article/column: “Dear VMware: Please don’t buy Novell”
From Novell’s point of view, he is right. VMware would be bad news given its staff and its history. It’s a brain drainer to FOSS.
It does seem inevitable that Novell will be sold (and SUSE sold separately) based on this new report from Bloomberg.
Investors should buy bullish Novell Inc. options to profit from a potential breakup of the maker of Linux operating-system software, which is exploring a sale of its assets, MKM Partners LP said.
Etai Friedman, MKM’s head derivatives trader, recommended purchasing November $6 calls on Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell while selling the same number of November $7 calls, a strategy known as a call spread that cuts the price of the trade while capping potential profit. Novell rose 1.2 percent to $6.12 at 4 p.m. New York time and has gained 47 percent this year.
“Speculation of a Novell deal has whipsawed the stock for quite some time,” the Greenwich, Connecticut-based strategist wrote in a report today. “With specific buyers in the mix,” MKM “believes investors’ attention should move toward the valuation of Novell with prospects of a deal much higher than current prices.”
Paul Singer (Elliott Associates) too will be making a profit from his shares of Novell. Vultures tend to get their way in such a society with a “free” market. That’s another subject anyway.
TechFlash, a Microsoft boosting news site, had this to say about Novell:
A potential acquisition of Novell could pose an interesting situation for Microsoft, which partnered with the Linux vendor on virtualization technologies in 2006. But VMware, led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, inked a key partnership with Novell earlier this year which sparked strong negative reactions from the Microsoft brass.
Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones supports our suspicion that the ‘new’ VMware (with Microsoft veterans in charge) is still working for Microsoft in a way. “Let me hasten to say I have no knowledge if this is so or not,” Jones wrote, “He goes on to say that Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other, so that means there’s no love lost. Maybe. Or maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
“Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other [...] maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawJones said this last year as well. It does seem like a possibility and we have publicly inquired for more information about the private relationship between Maritz and existing executives of Microsoft.
If it turns out that VMware serves Microsoft’s interests, then maybe it would be suitable to change how we refer to the ‘new’ VMware. “MSWare” would confuse people too much, but we can figure something out. Today’s VMware is clearly not the VMware people knew some years ago (we covered in great detail what Tucci had done to the management while he was getting closer to Ballmer).
“Red Hat let VMware have: Zimbra, SpringSource, RabbitMQ, Tungsten Graphics, GemStone,” wrote gnufreex. “They could intercept at least two of those… Zimbra and Spring source for example.”
Our main concern is that VMware has some Microsoft loyalty (like EMC, its owner) and that together they will both try to hurt Red Hat, drain FOSS competition to Microsoft, and sell just ‘Microsoft Linux’ (SUSE) through hypervisors they wish to control at KVM’s expense, for example. Our “VMware” wiki page may be required reading for those who have not seen what happened to VMware over the past couple of years. It’s just not the same company anymore. Jason from The Source wrote about it before he knew that the likely buyer would be VMware and he wondered what this would mean to Mono and Moonlight:
Mono goes on, maybe under a spin-off company with Miguel de Icaza and troops. Team Apologista is large and insular enough to remain divorced from the overall FLOSS community and still soldier on as a Microsoft team. Mono has always been and will always be a niche product in a niche market, but you can make money off of niche products. Besides, the ideological and personal investment of many Team Apologista members mean they are not going to give up on Mono, no matter what.
I have a harder time imagining an existing company taking on Mono, though. The reason is – even if you think Mono is perfectly fine to use, it is still true that a large and vocal segment of your potential user base disagrees. A segment including the Free Software Foundation, by the way.
If you aren’t a desperate company flailing about for some lifeline – any lifeline – and you know what happens in terms of FLOSS community trust and respect when striking deals with Microsoft – not to mention what happens to companies in general that deal with Microsoft – why would you take on such a white elephant as Mono?
Speaking of Mono, the FSF is not a fan of it as projects like Banshee are clearly a patent liability, based on the MCP from Microsoft. We still saw arbitrary reviews/advocacy of Banshee a few days ago [1, 2]. People should not be encouraged to install this Novell software, which gives Microsoft a legal weapon against distributions other than SUSE. Mike Masnick is meanwhile reminding us of what empty copyright allegations have meant to GNU/Linux and to SCO:
Unix For Sale: Massively Damaged, Sold As Is & Absent Delusions Of Grandeur Over Linux Copyright Infringement
[...]
It’s unclear what anyone would really do with whatever magical assets the sale comes with, but I would suggest suing IBM for infringement is not one of the better ideas.
We covered this last week on a few occasions [1, 2]. We don’t need another SCO and Novell owns UNIX rights (now on sale). █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Leopard Seal
Summary: Microsoft is hiring more people to stifle the adoption of its #1 competition rather than create better products that can practically compete; updates about Microsoft’s latest open attack on “Open Source” and from Switzerland too
“PJ [Groklaw] and Linux Today have spotted a Microsoft anti-Linux hiring spree,” told us a reader some moments ago.
He linked to this page from Microsoft and the summary from Linux Today, which says:
Is Microsoft hiring more anti-Linux Gurus? There’s evidence that yes, they are. All over the world!!!
In one of their recent marketing job ads, the words “Linux” and “FOSS”, appears more than 20 times !!!
http://www.microsoft-careers.com/job/San-Salvador-Initiative-Marketing-Manager(717317-External)-Job-SV/864893/
“Develop and manage an end-to-end view of the local Linux Server competitive environment (Paid and Nonpaid) and the local FOSS compete environment (Paid and Nonpaid): Be the local expert on Linux Server and FOSS issues for the GM, BG and Segment leads. Build a solid 360 view of the Linux Server and the FOSS environments through market intelligence at the local level that can be used to ensure the region/sub maintains a healthy, balanced and sustained share growth projection. This view should also be used to create awareness, take action, and drive programs to win share with appropriate segments and BGs including paid and nonpaid Linux Server and FOSS environments..”
“Embrace Open Source Web Companies and Community Projects: Develop a OSS ISV program in local market to establish partnerships with key OSS companies and community projects. Help educate Open Source Web companies on how they can expand their business opportunities and make money on the Microsoft platform (Windows, SQL, etc). Escalate companies to corporate CSI team where there is opportunity to run Linux Web applications on Windows, such as PHP on Windows.”
“They did not have the nerve to say “subvert” or “co-opt” in public the way they do in their private communications, but that is clearly the intent,” said our reader.
“They did not have the nerve to say “subvert” or “co-opt” in public the way they do in their private communications, but that is clearly the intent.”
–AnonymousWe gave many examples like this before, especially when we discussed Munich’s migration to GNU/Linux less than a year ago [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft keeps pretending to be a friend of FOSS, but its senior haters let it be known that this is not the case. Consider prior examples which we covered last week after Mirosoft had made distasteful remarks about “Open Source” [1, 2, 3]. Even in 2010 Microsoft is fighting against “Open Source”, but unlike in previous years, Microsoft is better at hiding it.
“Microsoft’s Hernán Rincón Launches Anti-FOSS Missile In Brazil” says this new headline and another one says: “Microsoft’s Latin America chief: Open-source equals ‘imcompetence’” (via Rob Weir we learn that “A Microsoft President Equates Open Standards with Incompetence”).
This is a small PR disaster for Microsoft, due to the level of exposure (there is more than the above, in languages other than English). Dana Blankenhorn calls it “Microsoft tea party against open source”:
Anyway, back to Microsoft. Windows Mobile is being crushed by Google Android. Governments are rejecting Microsoft in favor of open source. Microsoft Azure is nothing next to Amazon’s EC2 cloud. Bing!
If you have made your career drinking the corporate Kool-Aid (and Redmond can be pretty isolated from the rest of the computing universe) what’s going on in the market these days can seem absolutely maddening.
Hence the crazy.
* Tivanka Ellawala insisted that Android is not free. It’s the usual FUD about patents, built around Oracle’s suit against Google and Apple’s suit against HTC. Only in this case it is taken to extremes, implying that anyone with an Android phone might be forced to pony up extra money to use it sometime. Patent suits don’t end that way.
* Hernan Rincon, asked about Brazil’s support of open source, called open source incompetent. Judging from Rincon’s Twitter feed, this is the usual nonsense about innovation. He was trying to say that open source requires continual investment by government, as opposed to outsourcing, but something was lost in translation.
Notice that both these people are Microsoft careerists. Ellawala, a Stanford grad, has been with Microsoft for 11 years and it’s her second employer. Rincon, a Harvard man, started at Unisys. Both joined Microsoft when it was on top. Neither is responsible for what has happened since.
Going back to Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux ‘fighters’ that it recruits, recall the latest happenings in Switzerland. The article from Heise not has a translation to English:
Agreed in December 2001, the migration to Linux was supposed to be completed in 2007. This was an unobtainable goal because, for example, some of the project’s calls for submissions were only launched in 2006. Nominating the Scalix web interface as a replacement for Outlook proved to be an ill-advised choice: Even last June, the Scalix web mail client still lacked a task manager and various convenience features found in native mail clients.
[...]
When there was no bad news to report, the papers simply made some up: The headline “Wieder Ärger mit dem Pinguin” (More trouble with the penguin) promised a big screen production but delivered no more than amateur dramatics. In May 2009, the Solothurn public prosecutor’s office hosted a lawyers’ convention for 400 participants from all over Switzerland, but failed to prepare a Windows system for rendering PowerPoint presentations. The Cantonal Police, who, according to Berner Zeitung, had “successfully warded off Linux”, were able to help out with a Windows system and saved the Solothurn prosecution from embarrassment. Linux can be blamed for many things, but the convention hosts’ lack of organisational skills isn’t one of them.
All this eventually led to IT director Bader having to step down last summer, and to a Cantonal spokesperson announcing the switch to a dual strategy which was to involve both open source software and Microsoft solutions. The definitive end to Linux in the Canton of Solothurn finally came yesterday: desktop computers will apparently be migrated to Windows 7 in 2011, and Outlook will replace the Scalix web mail client.
There is another report from Switzerland and it indicates that Micro☭oft communism (monoculture) in the country is due to habits, specialised applications, and existing Microsoft lock-in. Some comments we found indicate that Microsoft also put its own minions in seats which enabled them to derail this migration (the same was done for OOXML in Switzerland a few years ago).
They could all take a lesson from Munich about staged migration which is a long-term investment, taking into account the financial benefit of dodging lock-in for good. █
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Posted in America, Antitrust, Asia, Finance, Microsoft at 10:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: India is better than the United States at regulating Microsoft; the latest figures about Microsoft’s tax dodge in the US are revealed, along with the role of former Microsoft staff in letting this be
A former Microsoft lawyer recently said that Microsoft “routinely produces and/or condones deficient investigations, covers up alleged misconduct, mischaracterizes evidence, refuses to preserve or provide pertinent facts and data, protects the perpetrators and retaliates against victims.”
At the end of last year in India, Microsoft was fined for using “money power” to “harass” defendants. Earlier this year we wrote a great deal about Microsoft’s connections in government, which enabled to company to “legally” evade tax (when one controls the law, any crime can become lawful). It’s another type of money games which may be tolerated in the United States, but in India Microsoft was found guilty of tax evasion a few years back (last mentioned here in the comments). For further background, compare Microsoft influence in the Indian government to Microsoft influence in the United States government.
There is a highly-referenced report in the Times of India right now and it says that the Competition Commission of India takes on Microsoft:
Global software major Microsoft Corp has been dragged to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) by a law firm for allegedly abusing its dominant position as a market leader.
Singhania & Partners has filed a complaint against Microsoft alleging that software company first signed an agreement to sell a software at a certain price, but later raised the price intending not to sell it, sources said.
The law firm had placed an order for MS operating systems and MS Office software. They had paid 50 per cent advance the got quotations for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) licences, but at the time of delivery Microsoft said that they would give them volume licence, which would cost the firm double the price.
The life of an OEM finishes with the life of a computer, while that of a volume licence is transferable.
Microsoft’s antitrust violations are recalled here this month (“Obama antitrust enforcement looking like more of the same”) and more coverage from India was shared last night by Chips B. Malroy who quoted: “Software giant Microsoft has been dragged to the Competition Commission of India by a Delhi-Headquartered Law Firm. The company has been charged with allegedly breaching the competition act by using its monopoly position in the Indian market, reports CNBC-TV18′s Ashwin Mohan. [...] In short, Singhania and Partners has claimed before the Competition Commission of India that Microsoft is coercing its consumers to buy its softwares at higher prices. Now, there are two things that it has sought before the commission. It has to sought an investigation into the anti competitive practices, the alleged anti competitive practices of Microsoft. Secondly, it has also an enquiry into the overall consumer impact as a part of these practices of Microsoft.”
“Microsoft becomes less of an American company over time.”There’s also this one which says: “During the economic slowdown, Microsoft expanded its reach in India from around 13 cities to at least 300 cities, through a network of nearly 7,500 partners??seeds for future growth?, as Ruskill puts it.”
We wrote about this several hours ago. Microsoft becomes less of an American company over time. It’s expensive to be based primarily in the United States because of ‘nuisance’ like workers’ protection rights.
Microsoft Florian is taking Microsoft’s side on the face of it (no surprise here) and in India there are other noteworthy wage discussions that ignore share holdings/value (Larry Ellison being the victim of this pattern of disinformation as in some companies the founders receive only a symbolic wage of $1). Despite the fallacies, here is how the article from the India Times goes:
Patni Computer Systems, 90 times smaller than Microsoft by revenues, cannot hold a candle to the US software company on most counts. There is one notable exception though — CEO pay.
The cash portion of Patni chief executive Jeya Kumar’s compensation was twice that of Mircrosoft’s Steve Ballmer in 2009. An Australian citizen, Mr Kumar, 55, received Rs12.19 crore for the year to December 2009 compared to $1.26 million, or nearly Rs6 crore, for the fiscal to June 2009 for Mr Ballmer.
Likewise, Wipro chief Azim Premji earned Rs7.8 crore, again outshining Mr Ballmer’s pay.
They refer to Wipro, one of several companies that are like Microsoft subsidiaries in India. To quote again from the article “Microsoft wants India among top 5 markets”:
Mumbai: The world’s largest software products company Microsoft Corp. wants India to be among its top five revenue generators globally within the next three-five years.
Yes, that’s where the wages go and the wages are embarrassingly low. Microsoft is neither interested in paying its workers enough nor in paying taxes for its citizenship (a problem in Europe and in the United States, with Ireland and Nevada being the tax havens, respectively).
The former Microsoft employee who became an activist against Microsoft’s tax dodge is back to blogging after a long time being idle. He revises his figures to show that Microsoft has avoided paying far more taxes than he initially calculated:
Instead of a projected $3.3 billion deficit, Washington State would today have a $1.8 billion surplus.
So, while Microsoft’s been publicly lobbying the legislature to spend more on transportation and education, its behind the scenes lobbying to cut its tax bill and its Nevada tax dodge have actually helped make Washington State insolvent, siphoning the coffers that might have otherwise invested in our state’s infrastructure.
I read today that the Gates Foundation has made a tentative deal with Seattle not to have the city tunnel under its new offices during the rebuild of the crumbling Alaska Way Viaduct. But apparently, it’s just fine for Chairman Gates to figuratively tunnel under the capital in Olympia and dismantle the state’s financial stability.
Back in 2004 when I interviewed Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith for my Seattle Weekly article Citizen Microsoft, he seemed open to considering opening up more of Microsoft state tax records for public inspection. Perhaps it’s time.
Coming soon at the Microsoft Tax Dodge blog: Ross Hunter’s Message to 48th District Taxpayers and My Discussion with Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman on the paper’s failure to cover Microsoft’s Nevada tax dodge for readers.
In another post, Microsoft’s former manager Ross Hunter is being slammed for betraying citizens of Washington. As a public official after his long Microsoft career he is throwing all the burden of taxes on the public while leaving Microsoft almost tax free. It is outrageous and it’s true. Where are the protests?
Ross engineered a gigantic tax cut for Microsoft. Some pesky blogger had been hassling Microsoft for avoiding the state’s royalty tax through a small office in Nevada, so Ross just changed the tax! With the royalty tax cut to shreds, the blogger had nothing bad to say about Microsoft. But just in case, Ross quietly added in amnesty for Microsoft’s entire 13 year tax dodge. Ross likes Microsoft because, well, he worked there for 17 years. And Microsoft likes Ross!
And, that pesky blogger, he recently estimated that if Microsoft had just stayed out of Olympia and paid the OLD royalty tax, Washington State would have a surplus today … Ross knows that surpluses are bad because they just feed big government…and big government is bad.
As Chair of the powerful Finance committee of the democratically controlled House of Representatives, Ross pushed through the legislation that delivered our new $4.5 billion deficit. It couldn’t have been easy to do that. That’s delivering results!
[...]
In the meantime, if you’re tired of paying all those taxes, ask Ross to make a video about how to evade them. I’m pretty sure Microsoft has watched all of Ross’ Tax Evasion for Dummies videos … especially steps 2 and 3 about shell corporations and step transactions. Microsoft must have a pretty bad-ass post office box in Nevada to hold $30 billion a year.
Over at Associated Press we now learn about the tax-exempt Gates Foundation (Bill’s bank account under a different name). It says that “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made a deal with the city of Seattle to build a new street around its new campus rather than allow the city to tunnel under the property.”
Gates’ booster Kristi Heim does not investigate these issues properly. Some journalists play along with the idea that Gates is helping the city/state, but actually, he is paying for his own project/private property. In some places and almost exclusively in the Seattle Times (which is a strong Microsoft and Gates booster and therefore a biased and poor publication) it is almost described as an investment in the city, but it’s not. Recall the bridge controversy. Microsoft is only taking from the state and gives back almost nothing, not even jobs (many workers are laid off, then replaced by workers in countries like India and others come to to the state from another country on a visa). This gives unregulated capitalism a bad name. █
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