Bonum Certa Men Certa

Dr. Glyn Moody Rebuts Microsoft-funded 'Study'/Book Against Open Source Software

Annual report by Microsoft



Summary: Many factual errors found in the Microsoft-funded book that belittles "open source" and helps Microsoft lobby governments

The unethical bunch from Redmond is back to bribing professors, as part of a business model so notorious that we thought it had been buried. We already know that the Gates Foundation keeps buying the news to make coverage more favourable towards its goals (and in order to silence the many vocal critics). Microsoft is more or less the same (but more subtle) and just like the Gates Foundation, it funds professors who will become its front men.



To repeat the points made in the previous two posts on this subject [1, 2], Microsoft had paid Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, who in turn produced literature which echoes Microsoft lobbyists and gives those lobbyists something academic to cite later. Microsoft's model might go something like, pay some professors to put their names behind some particular text with particular bias, then assure buying some copies of that text for a considerable price and mail copies to CIOs or whoever needs to be persuaded by a report which only seemingly comes from independent experts. There is nothing that a corrupt monopoly abuser won't do to secure its monopoly and the evidence of this little abuse is hard to obtain. Dr. Glyn Moody shows why it's like hiding it behind a paywall:

Since I've not read the book - and I'd rather not shell out €£25.95 for the dubious pleasure of discovering where the errors originate - I'll limit myself to addressing the arguments outlined in the Economist review rather than worrying about where they originated.


Microsoft is not a charity that funds books to be more "objective", it is obliged to serve its shareholders, i.e. to further its agenda with its money. Therefore, Moody's detailed rebuttal (titled "There's No FUD Like an Old FUD") is necessary and to give just a taste of it:

But my main concern here is with the follow section:



Yet the finding that open-source advocates will like least is that free programs are not always cheaper. To be sure, the upfront cost of proprietary software is higher (although open-source programs are not always free). But companies that use such programs spend more on such things as learning to use them and making them work with other software.



Yes, it's a variant on that old FUD that free software is not actually free (gosh, really?) that Microsoft tried about ten years ago and gave up when it realised that nobody said it was when you took into account all the factors like paying wages. But leaving aside that this, too, is hardly news to anyone, let's just look at the central claim of the current incarnation of that FUD:



companies that use such programs spend more on such things as learning to use them and making them work with other software



So does the first part mean that learning to use a new piece of open source software is inherently harder than learning to use a new piece of proprietary software? I've not seen a single piece of research that suggests that. What I have seen documented is that people who are currently using Microsoft Office, say, find it harder to learn to use OpenOffice, say, than to continue using Microsoft Office. Which is, of course, a piece of wisdom that is once again firmly located at the very heart of the Land of the Bleedin' Obvious.



So, passing swiftly on in the hope that there might be a more substantive issue here, we have the second claim: that companies spend more on making open source work with “other software”. But wait, what could that “other software” refer to? Since it's not open source (because it's “other”, not open source) it is clearly proprietary; so the problem comes down to making open source work with proprietary software. And why might that be?



The good news is that more and more people become aware of what Microsoft did here. "I weep for Slashdot," wrote Gordon, "when this is considered worthy to report..."

Gordon refers to this item which shows that Slashdot caught this too and did not leave out the connection to Microsoft. As I said in my reply to Gordon, "to be fair to Slashdot, they made it very clear in the title and summary that Microsoft paid for this FUD. It harms their relationship with FOSS."

Microsoft is trying to tell everyone (by proxy) that "open source" is bad. So why would anyone defend Microsoft's excursions in "open source"?

“On the day of the sentencing, the gang members [Microsoft executives] maintained that they had done nothing wrong, saying that the whole case was a conspiracy by the white power structure to destroy them. I am now under no illusions that miscreants will realize that other parts of society view them that way.”

--Supreme Court Justice Jackson



Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October