"I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. [...] by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this?"

--Microsoft's chief evangelist

Summary: The Linux Foundation, which funds core Linux developers, receives money from Microsoft in exchange for favours

TWO readers have contacted us regarding this matter. It is pretty serious and unprecedented in the sense that this time it's the Linux Foundation which takes the dirty money and not some Linux-unaffiliated party like LinuxTag [1, 2, 3, 4].

So now we know that the Linux Foundation too puts principles aside and lets Microsoft buy a session to promote proprietary software including running of Windows, or essentially to fund the company which is suing Linux over software patents.

Richard Stallman said that in sponsorships such as this the "price might be, let someone from Microsoft give a speech. The price might be, don’t say that proprietary software is evil. The price might be, present Microsoft sponsorship in a way that inhibits you from denouncing Microsoft’s software as unethical."

Well, after it took over Novell and Nokia Microsoft already had some bridges into the Linux Foundation. When the foundation is getting money from Microsoft it leaves itself open not just to criticism but also subversion from the inside. As we showed in prior years, other FOSS foundations died pretty much as soon as they had accepted money from the enemy, Microsoft, instantaneously collapsing like ALEC. Anyway, here is the news:

I'm not exactly sure how Microsoft ended up being a Gold Sponsor of the Linuxcon event. At the Gold Level for an event, sponsorship is worth approximately $20,000 and it looks like it also comes with a guaranteed session speaking opportunity too.

One reader called it "[c]orruption within the Linux Foundation" and another called it "interesting news". One asked: "What was that Comes v Microsoft document about killing two mac conferences. Now it's happening to Linux. Is it greed or has someone defected and now trying to bring down LF?

"Amazing," he added later, "I was able to find it in Techrights only because I knew it existed. But as far as Google goes, it and Comes V Microsoft don't exist." ⬆