Image credit: Linux Veda

Summary: ​Cyanogen continues to expose itself for what it really is and who it is serving, owing to staff background

MICROSOFT took over not only Nokia, inciting it to attack Android (Nokia now attacks Android using patents) but also Cyanogen, the company whose agenda seems to now closely align with Microsoft's. Many of its employees are based near Microsoft, but that's not too shocking. It puts the NSA's leading partner (Microsoft) right at the centre of AOSP whilst smearing Google, which developed AOSP and gave it away as Free software. We previously covered this in posts such as:

• Attempts to Disrupt Android by Pushing Microsoft Software Into It (Using Patent Blackmail and Cyanogen)
• Speculations That Microsoft is About to Buy Cyanogen (or at Least Officially Partner) to Attack Google's Android/Linux, Replacing Everything With Microsoft
• CyanogenMod Dumped by Major Partner Shortly After Funding From Microsoft Revealed
• Microsoft Won't Let People Wipe (Off) Windows But Happily Wipes Android, Wipes Android Apps Through Cyanogen and Blackmailed 'Partners'
• OnePlus (or OnePlus Customers) Should Wipe CyanogenMod From Existing Devices and Install Something Else
• Does Anyone Still View Cyanogen as Anything But a Microsoft Proxy?
• Boycott Cyanogen/CyanogenMod If Its Anti-Google Rhetoric and Microsoft Funding Continue

Microsoft's proxy ​Cyanogen has just hired Microsoft's Lawler, based on this article. What a surprise? Not! To quote CBS ZDNet: "Formerly Lawler was also chief technology officer of Microsoft's Bing Maps..."

Microsoft's strategy against Android has become utterly ugly as it includes patent extortion. Some of the media tries to nevertheless characterise Microsoft as a friend of Free software. The latest example is Windows (proprietary) promotion by payments to OpenBSD -- a move that is criticised by FOSS Force, which says: "Of course, it isn’t revealed how much, in code, Microsoft is going to contribute going forward, but as long as the money is there…I guess the money is there."

Microsoft keeps trying to use its money to disrupt Free software projects. It did this in 2006 with Novell (a GNU/Linux actor at the time) and it is still doing that with other companies or nonprofit entities. Cyanogen is one of these and OpenBSD hopefully has the moral strength to bite the new hand that feeds. ⬆