03.26.14

Gemini version available ♊︎

The Politics of Openwashing: How Microsoft Pretends That Windows Has ‘Open Source’, Generates Self-Congratulatory Coverage

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Windows at 5:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Deceiving manoeuvres from Microsoft, which is trying to put an “open” label on its common carrier, despite the fact that it is as proprietary as anything can be

MICROSOFT MUST be very desperate to appear as “open” as GNU/Linux/Android even though Windows is definitely not. Several journalists got bamboozled by Microsoft’s latest PR charade, which involved exposing source code of legacy stuff that’s of no use and nobody uses. Microsoft’s thugs are once again interjecting themselves into museums (public space), just as Bill Gates did over the past decade or so (the Gates Foundation was paying establishments like these to glorify Gates and warp computer history, omitting all the crimes).

The OSI’s president stresses that “Microsoft has NOT “open sourced” MS-DOS or Word v1. Both are under a restrictive & non-open-source license,” with reference to this licence.

As David Gerard (Wikipedia) put it to me last night, “even hacker news doesn’t think it’s safe to look at these downloads” (nothing from Microsoft is safe these days).

Dr. Donnie Berkholz, a Gentoo developer who now works as an analyst, responded to the OSI’s president by saying that Microsoft rejecting Open Source licences “is frankly just weird. Who’s going to benefit off code that old anyway. Why wouldn’t MS actually open-source it?”

I responded by saying that making it FOSS would weaken some patents and other such stuff that Microsoft may need to attack rivals with. “Because suing your customers is great business,” Berkholz replied and the OSI’s president added: “Not just rivals; also those they wish to, uh, monetise.” He alluded to patent extortion. “Or to force into Windows, e.g. Barnes and Noble,” was my followup. We already saw how Microsoft used patents to sue Barnes and Noble and when challenged in court Microsoft then bribed Barnes and Noble to embrace Windows instead of Android. That’s the modus operandi of Microsoft nowadays. Microsoft abuses patents and copyrights for blackmail purposes.

To see some poor coverage of the latest non-event (or even worse [1], with pro-Microsoft/XP propaganda [2] and misuse of the word “free”), just consider what Engadget wrote. Making useless old code seem ‘open’ is good for nothing except openwashing, but some news sites pretend it’s great news for “geeks”. They are basically printing/transmitting Microsoft talking points/PR, citing Microsoft press releases which are calling crimes that led to monopoly “open” (look, but don’t touch) and trying to pass off the PR as goodwill. Here is Will Hill’s response to the nonsense from Engadget:

It is bad and could be very bad in various ways. It is historical revisionism and copyright propaganda. It may also be a trap for free software developers.

We can be sure that the source code is washed of sabotage for competitors. That would be revisionism. The Engadget article itself is either revisionism or ignorant – Gates simply purchased/licensed/stole QDoS, the Quick and Dirty Operating System to make MS DO.

From a copyright perspective, Microsoft is pretending binary code finally enriches the public domain but that’s a farce. We can’t verify that this is the source code they worked with, nor should we trust companies to finally come clean decades later. This is very important because copyright protection is only granted in the US if it advances the state of the art and public domain. None of that happens here. This will be used as propaganda the same way the Gates Foundation is – a germ of truth will be blown out of proportion to conceal an ugly reality.

Finally, Microsoft never really gives anything away -this code is poison and should be avoided by free software developers and competitors alike. Let’s look at their “agreement”. Oh yeah, you don’t even have freedom zero because there are limits on personal use. Personal use if only for “non commercial purposes,” it appears that even consulting based on results of tests are prohibited. You may not share your copy or your modified copies. It’s like they looked at the four freedoms and negated each, and that’s just the first of eight restrictions. One of the nastier restrictions limits damage to $5 for anything, including things Microsoft should have known about – like anti-competitive sabotage.

FU Microsoft, I’ll stick with DosBox and other free software. You can keep your fake old crap and I still don’t think you have legitimate grounds for copyright monopoly.

In summary, Microsoft did nothing commendable. It’s just a PR charade which contributes nothing to computing. It distorts public museums and warps history. Again.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Microsoft open-sources MS-DOS. ’80s kids dance in the streets

    Microsoft actually bought the rights for QDOS (stands for “quick and dirty operating system) from Seattle Computer Products in 1981 for a paltry $25,000. What happened next is computer history.

  2. As WinXP death looms, Microsoft releases its operating system SOURCE CODE for free
Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 07, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, June 07, 2023



  2. The Need to Evolve on the Internet

    Tux Machines is one year away from its twentieth birthday and its increased focus on protocols aside from HTTP/S is paying off; Tux Machines also weaned itself off all social control media, including Mastodon and Diaspora (they're not the future, they're the past)



  3. EPO Management is Still Bullying the Staff (While Breaking the Law and Violating the European Patent Convention)

    Overloaded or overworked EPO workers are complaining about further deterioration at the workplace and their representatives say "this management style may well contribute to feelings of disengagement, depression, or even burn-out"



  4. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Not Responding After 20 Days (Well-Founded Report of Tax Fraud) and British Police Pretending Not to Exist

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ have helped unearth a profound problem in the British law enforcement authorities; What good is a monopolistic taxman (called after the British Monarchy even in 2023) that cannot assess its own tax abuses? Or abuses connected to it via a contractor? Meanwhile, as per what I was told, the police is not responding to my MP and that’s ANOTHER scandal (police not only refusing to act against crimes, committed against many people, but moreover not responding to elected politicians)



  5. Links 08/06/2023: Cinnamon 5.8 and Leap 15.5 Release Mature

    Links for the day



  6. Gemini Links 08/06/2023: Emacs and Thoughts on Bubble

    Links for the day



  7. Links 07/06/2023: Reddit Layoffs and OpenGL 3.1 in Asahi Linux

    Links for the day



  8. Gemini Links 07/06/2023: Jukka Charting Geminispace

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023



  10. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning



  11. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source



  12. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day



  13. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day



  14. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  15. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  16. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  17. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  18. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  19. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  20. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  21. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  22. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  23. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  24. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  25. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  26. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  27. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  28. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  29. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  30. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts