05.08.11
Microsoft’s Mole at Nokia Harmed People and Harmed Free Software, Microsoft Moles at Juniper Put Internet Users at Risk
Summary: People are losing their jobs and computer users are left vulnerable to attacks because of Microsoft
A few days ago we explained that just like Richard Belluzzo, Microsoft's Elop is at Nokia just to give Microsoft the company's car keys. Despite all the spin, Nokia is letting itself be acquired by Microsoft at almost no cost and this is bound to harm European workers for the most part. That’s what Microsoft does, and it does it very effectively.
The FSFE’s founder, Georg Greve, is one whose business depends on some Nokia-owned work that it offloaded or neglected (for the time being Qt will live). He writes:
Elop to leave Nokia in 2012? That must be some kind of record for most damage done to major business in shortest time. http://is.gd/7yRqjU
This has really hurt KDE/Qt, as we predicted even back when Nokia got Trolltech. This latest corruption by a Microsoft mole is bound to damage the Finnish economy and to anybody who says that Microsoft creates job or adds something to the economy, look no further than Nokia to see the very opposite. Microsoft has put many companies and many people/families out of a job just so that its billionaires can become richer (from the destruction of others). The question is, which will be Microsoft’s next victim? We already saw Yahoo! and Novell (and countless others before that, e.g. Corel) totally exploited and left naked by Microsoft. A few years ago we showed that Microsoft had begun Juniper entryism as well. It put many executives in there, including the CEO’s position. Now, watch this report titled “Microsoft and Juniper warned of dangerous IPv6 hole”. It says:
Security experts are urging Microsoft and Juniper to patch a year old IPv6 vulnerability so dangerous it can freeze any Windows machine on a LAN in a matter of minutes.
Microsoft has downplayed the risk because the hole requires a physical connection to the wired LAN. Juniper says it has delayed a patch because the hole only affects a small number of its products, and it wants the IETF to fix the protocol instead.
As Mr. Pogson points out:
This is yet another example of M$ caring about licensing fees and not service. Use GNU/Linux. The problem has already been fixed in Linux.
As companies keep leaving Windows and are also leaving the #1 cash cow of the monopoly (Office), expect Microsoft to cut corners, distort the market (e.g. antitrust complaints by proxy, patent litigation by proxy), attack competitors, change laws by lobbying, and bribe for lucrative contracts (like in the case of OOXML). Office sales declined and so have Windows sales. When will Microsoft repay its debt? Right now it is passing all the costs and the risk to other companies such as Nokia. This has got to stop. █
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twitter said,
May 8, 2011 at 6:38 am
Because of Windows botnets, the chances of someone having a “wired connection” to your LAN are about one for every two machines, which is a virtual certainty for large organizations. As of April of last year 88% of the US Fortune 500 networks were hosting at least one botnet,
I imagine the 12% that went undetected were infected with other botnets not tested for or variants of Zeus that were modified to avoid detection. The reason there was not much Vista or Windows 7 activity is because corporate use of those OS is less than 10%.
Free software is the only solution to this problem. There are many reasons free software is more secure than non free software. Non free software developers are unable to share between companies, so even when they are part of a large organization like Microsoft they are helpless and divided. Even if they could share between companies, there are still many more free software developers than non free software developers. The result is a unified base and better code quality that comes from not having to reinvent the wheel for every project. Even if by some miracle Vista were the “most secure OS ever” that Steve Ballmer said it was, the user is still at risk for malicious features and no company or person should consider that risk acceptable. If for some reason you decide you can trust a company that considers every other company a “pawn” to be used like a “one night stand”, how many other software owners does the average Windows computer have? Every non free program you install has the ability to do what any botnet does, and Vista itself has these capabilities built in. Vista/Windows 7 has file indexing by keyword and establishes encrypted communications back to Microsoft which can not be disabled, which gives them the mechanism to enforce the terms of their EULA that grants Microsoft the right to search through your files and delete them at will.
The immediate solution to Nokia’s problems is regulatory action by Finnish or EU anti-trust agents. They should talk to employees and board members who objected and figure out how to fix things before too much damage is done to Nokia. Microsoft has been so hasty with this one that they probably violated the letter as well as the spirit of several laws. Perhaps the EU will move faster than the US did with Word Perfect. Society should not allow itself to be harmed the way Microsoft is harming it.