Bonum Certa Men Certa

SourceClear: Yet Another Microsoft-Connected (Coming From Microsoft) FOSS FUD Firm

SourceClearAnother Black Duck in the making? Security FUD from a firm established by champions of back doors.

Summary: Another company whose business model is monetising (and thus often enhancing) fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) over Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and this one too comes from Microsoft

THIS trend has grown rather tiresome. Every now and then we see Microsoft's tentacles reaching out for areas in FOSS where there is an opportunity to badmouth FOSS. They turn Microsoft's anti-FOSS rhetoric into their business model. They institutionalise it.



"Another Microsoft guy creates a company that says Free software is not secure and needs some proprietary software 'medicine'."Based on a new press release in its various forms/variations [1, 2, 3], we may have yet another OpenLogic or Black Duck in our hands. Another Microsoft guy creates a company that says Free software is not secure and needs some proprietary software 'medicine'.

SourceClear is not even known (we never heard of it, it seemingly came out of nowhere), it's a very young firm, and immediately it receives a lot of money and even promotional coverage from the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal, which is a Microsoft-friendly publication. The first sentence provides the background one needs to be aware of:

Mark Curphey worked to stamp out software bugs for about a decade as head of the security tools team at Microsoft Corp. and in several other jobs before he realized that the problem was getting worse instead of better.


To quote Gordon B-P: '"Worked at MS bugs for a decade" - didn't do a very good job there then. What makes him think he'll be able to "secure" OSS?'

Jordan Novet, who is a promoter of Microsoft as we noted the other day, covered this as well, using bug branding such as "Heartbleed", coined by a company which is strongly connected to Microsoft. “It turns out that lots of other [FOSS] libraries have exactly the same issues but have not been reported,” Novet quotes Curphey, whom he describes as "previously a former principal group program manager inside Microsoft’s developer division. [...] SourceClear started in Seattle in 2013..."

“SourceClear started in Seattle in 2013...”
      --Jordan Novet
With OpenLogic, Black Duck, Codenomicon and various other Microsoft-connected (often created by Microsoft people and/or managed by Microsoft people) firms that badmouth FOSS we sure expect SourceClear to be no exception. They serve to distract from the built-in and intentional insecurities of proprietary software such as Windows, including quite famously Vista 10 where back doors are an understatement because everything is recorded and broadcast (total remote surveillance), even without a breach or an access through the back doors.

Microsoft cannot produce secure code because 'national security', i.e. many back doors, are a design goal. It helps Microsoft establish a 'special relationship' with the state and in fact it just got a contract from a highly notorious company, Taser [1].

Here we are in 2013 onwards -- a time when simple bugs in FOSS (a defect affecting one line or two) get all the limelight and receive names, logos etc. whereas Microsoft's critical zero-day flaws hardly make the headlines. There are many high-impact headlines that make a huge deal of fuss every time a security bug is found in Android (again, just in recent years). We suppose it's part of a PR campaign in which Microsoft and its partners evidently participate. They are often the ones who come up with the names, logos, and much of the accompanying negative publicity.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Microsoft Helping to Store Police Video From Taser Body Cameras
    Microsoft has joined forces with Taser to combine the Azure cloud platform with law enforcement management tools.

    [..]

    In order to ensure Taser maintains a monopoly on police body cameras, the corporation acquired contracts with police departments all across the nation for the purchase of body cameras through dubious ties to certain chiefs of police.




Recent Techrights' Posts

Another "Told You So!": XBox Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Many Recent Reports Were Chaff and Spin), Many Other Divisions Affected
With mass layoffs at Microsoft the world would be much better
When the Microsoft Aggressors Rely on Several Law Firms ('Attack Dogs', 'Guns for Hire'), Not Just One, Lawyering Up Against Techrights (Acting on Behalf of Americans Against UK Publishers)
From serving customers at some restaurant he has moved on to bullying people with demand letters
Polygamy, from Catholic Synod on Synodality to Social Control Media & Debian CyberPolygamy
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Only a Third of or 1 in 3 Web-Connected Devices is a Desktop or Laptop, According to statCounter
we can expect Android to widen its lead
 
Linux Journal is a Slopfarm, It's Experimenting With LLM 'Authors'
Is Slashdot next?
WebProNews is a Slopfarm
Please avoid linking to WebProNews
Microsoft LinkedIn is Dying and Many More Layoffs Are on the Way
LinkedIn is just a failed acquisition of Microsoft. It causes losses and debt.
Gemini Links 25/06/2025: Combinatorial Music and Self Hosting
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Coming Back to Europe This Autumn to Give More Talks
His last talk in Europe attracted about 400-450 people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 24, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Social Control Media, Technology & Catholicism: Synod on Synodality review and feedback
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
How Many More Women Will Managers at Microsoft Strangle and Tell to Kill Themselves (or Try to Kill)?
The world needs to know what happened
The New BetaNews: 7 New 'Articles', All of Them LLM Slop
BetaNews is basically defunct. Nobody writes there anymore.
statCounter Estimates Only 1 in 300 Iranians Would Use Microsoft for Search
Iranians don't quite trust Microsoft
Gemini Links 24/06/2025: ftpd on FreeBSD and Online Small Web Magazine
Links for the day
Google News Does Great Harm by Promoting Slopfarms as Legitimate News Sites
Slopfarms are sites which are 100% LLM slop
Links 24/06/2025: Trouble at "Open" "AI" and ‘Siarhei is Free’
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/06/2025: Stimulants and Subscription Costs for DRM
Links for the day
Links 24/06/2025: OpenAI [sic] May Soon Die (Too Much Debt) and Social Control Media Accused of Being Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda Amplifier
Links for the day
Nirbheek Chauhan in Planet GNOME Explains Why Wayland Pushers Are Losing
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
The Days Are Getting Shorter, the First Half of 2025 is Almost Over
We're gratified to see significant increase in traffic and also positive feedback on the work we do
Turning GNU/Linux Into a Political Football
X (not the site) is Free software
X Server Still Works for Many People
A lot of people will grow suspicious of Wayland boosters/pushers if they persist and insist on using these tactics
Exactly a Week Ago "BetaNews Staff" Said "Betanews Is Growing Alongside You". Since Then Every Article (All by "Camila Nogueira") Has Been LLM Slop.
BetaNews is basically a slopfarm
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 23, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 23, 2025
The "Tarzan Effect" in Compilers and Software
What happens when you forcibly make things 'work', either by hacks or by disregarding warnings (like those that compilers tend to issue)?
Gemini Links 23/06/2025: Mass Tourism, Hair Love, and Google Gemini as a Googlebomb
Links for the day
Law Firm Burgess Mee Does Not Fully Deny Participating in Abusive Litigation for Serial Strangler From Microsoft
I am not unfamiliar with these tactics
The Modus Operandi of Wayland Pushers: Make It Political
do what I say or you're a nazi...
Links 23/06/2025: RFE/RL Contributor Vladyslav Yesypenko Released, Recording Industry Cutbacks
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Solicitors (M): Over 99.9% of Our E-mail is Self-Marketing, We Send You 3.5MB E-mails for Less Than 1KB of Text
Why would tech people entrust legal matters to such people?
Peter Moon's (Computerworld) Interview With Richard Stallman
Stallman: If you want freedom don't follow Linus Torvalds
At What Point Does Outsourcing Constitute Malpractice?
Brett Wilson LLP's new staff page is misleading
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sailing to GNU/Linux, According to statCounter
countries in that region will quickly learn the price of neglecting digital sovereignty
From Do Your Own Research to Do Your Own Search
The Web is full of garbage; search engines amplify this garbage
More People Moving to Geminispace?
at age 6+ Gemini Protocol seems to have gained some maturity and it seems like more people use it
Permutation in LLMs Does, Inevitably, Change Meanings and Therefore LLMs Cannot Properly Rephrase or Summarise Texts
LLMs lack actual grasp or comprehension of what they spew out
Links 23/06/2025: Many Security Breaches, Population Declines
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/06/2025: "America at the Crossroads" and OpenWRT Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 22, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 22, 2025
Pure Dove
Different means different, and sometimes those who "deviate" from "the norm" have a point
Censorship is a Sign of Weakness Which Invites More Censorship Attempts
revolutionaries don't succumb to pressure from bullies
Why It's Unlikely That LLM Slop Will Dominate the Web in the Long Run
Slopfarms will eventually perish (they have no actual value) and "survivors" on the Web will be sites that never depended on search engines and social control media
GNU/Linux in Argentina Now Measured Near 5%
Like in central Europe, they must be seeing an increasingly hostile US
BetaNews is Fake News, Composed by LLM Slop
nothing in BetaNews is written by humans anymore