Another outrageous patent settlement that requires Microsoft bundling, but the Linux Foundation is too bribed by Microsoft to actually antagonise it any longer
"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: This morning's reminder that Nadella is just another Ballmer (with a different face); Motorola and Lenovo surrender to Microsoft's patent demands and will soon put Microsoft spyware/malware on their Linux-powered products to avert costly legal battles
MICROSOFT is not a friend. It's a predator. It just changed the logo, the PR, and the CEO. It also started paying more and more money to its critics, including Linux OEMs, to keep them quiet. "Microsoft Keynoting LinuxCon," said a headline from Phoronix yesterday. What it failed to say is that Microsoft actually pays the Linux Foundation to infiltrate it. This has gone on for a while. Earlier this month the Linux Foundation posted a Microsoft puff piece paid for by Microsoft. We mentioned it this worrisome development the other day (to their credit, the Linux Foundation did add a disclosure to this). The payment was made under the pretense of supporting a conference (i.e. interjecting Microsoft stuff into it).
Is Microsoft becoming more open? No, it's spying more and more. All the core products are proprietary. What is PowerShell all about? Openwashing. "Embrace and extend" of
wget and
curl (soon to have Mono as well) while claiming to be "opening up" a part of Windows, which is
proprietary spyware that defies law (and had Microsoft lose cases in court).
But never mind all the above. Has Microsoft actually made peace with GNU/Linux? Hardly.
Au contraire. Microsoft is still attacking GNU/Linux. If "Microsoft loves Linux," then it sure shows it like an abusive spouse that beats up the wife (to borrow the analogy from Simon Phipps). Microsoft extorts Linux again, but it has bamboozled the media like it first did when
it attacked Acer. It did this several times more thereafter and we covered it earlier this year, e.g. in:
Remember what happened to Samsung when it said "No!"
Microsoft took it to court and Samsung later settled with bundling (
early 2015). That's like racketeering, but
Microsoft is far too politically-connected to face charges under the RICO Act.
In the past, Microsoft was offering payments for bundling; right now, instead, it's a patent settlement. A patent settlement over what? Linux. The media is calling it all sorts of things other than patent settlement (after threats), which is what it
really is. Here is the coverage we see right now (misleading):
The following two articles suggest that Motorola too (
already sued by Microsoft over patents) is a victim of this strategy:
All that Microsoft is trying to achieve here is control over Linux-powered mobile (or Android) users, e.g. using
Skype malware. People who actually think that Microsoft has changed need to reassess their trust in corporate media (much of the above is Microsoft-connected media and Microsoft advocacy sites that help mislead other media).
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