AS we pointed out dozens of times before, despite Ars Technica being an excellent site in general, two authors who are dedicated to covering Microsoft over there are doing a poor job and one can argue that there is no reason to have an area/section designated just to Microsoft in any such news site. Is the site about technology or about brands? That's a key question which Digg.com had to face some years ago when it added a "Microsoft" section/category and annoyed many users by doing so.
“They have vested interests that they try to hide, albeit poorly.”Oh, really?
Now that's one heck of a quote to demonstrate delusion. It's also an attempt to spin something negative (patent-shoving) as a positive (cooperation). That's the same line of reasoning used by Microsoft Florian to confuse people.
As always, be very careful of Microsoft spinners. They have vested interests that they try to hide, albeit poorly. One example of this is Alex Brown, whose business profits from the Microsoft relationship. We mentioned him some days ago for his threats against me (after I had leaked OOXML) and he occasionally tries to hide his bias using posts like this one about search neutrality. He is trying to show he's not in Microsoft's pocket by pointing out the obvious -- a bias which people showed repeatedly as Microsoft has been doing this for years.
Curious now, I enter into "free office download" into Google and again get the OpenOffice.org Site. Performing this with Bing I'm given a page for Microsoft€® Office™ downloads and add-ins.