Microsoft Already Attacks the BSDs as Well (the E.E.E. Way, as Usual)
Bearers of bad news
We genuinely hope readers who celebrate Easter had a pleasant break. On Easter Monday we kept as busy as usual and we'll soon have some good news as well.
No, it's not about Theo de Raadt or 7.7-current (mailing list). OpenBSD 7.7 is near and there's fresh FUD about OpenSSH (not unprecedented [1, 2]). One reader said that "Microsoft throws sand in the gears of an important project by making a hostile fork to sow name confusion; trademark violation?"
This is the latest: (emphasis is ours)
On Sun, 20 Apr 2025 at 02:00, John Cooper via openssh-unix-dev < openssh-unix-dev at mindrot.org> wrote:
> [...] These guidelines lines are for it to be placed in a folder located > in the %AppDataLocal% environment variable location. I recommend that the > folder be called “OpenSSH”. > > Could this please be taken into account with portable releases? >
The OpenSSH code provided by the OpenSSH team does not support being built on Windows, except via Cygwin. If you're referring to the Microsoft fork[0] then you need to direct your request to them.
[0] https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable
-- Darren Tucker (dtucker at dtucker.net) GPG key 11EAA6FA / A86E 3E07 5B19 5880 E860 37F4 9357 ECEF 11EA A6FA Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgement.
Revisit "Embrace, Extend, Replace the Original (Or Just Hijack the Word 'Sudo')" because Theo de Raadt also commented on what Microsoft was doing. To reproduce what he said last year:
List: openbsd-tech Subject: Introducing Word for OpenBSD From: "Theo de Raadt" <deraadt () openbsd ! org> Date: 2024-02-08 21:39:05 Message-ID: 83808.1707428345 () cvs ! openbsd ! org [Download RAW message or body]
In the spirit of Microsoft bringing sudo to Windows, it is time we bring Word to OpenBSD.
Same as Microsoft:
1. Not caring about name confusion 2. Not caring about compatible behaviours 3. Not caring about trademarks or defacto trademarks 4. Not asking the original product teams if it is OK.
This is setting the standard as well as Microsoft will do with sudo.
Index: usr.bin/mg/Makefile =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.bin/mg/Makefile,v diff -u -p -u -r1.35 Makefile --- usr.bin/mg/Makefile 18 Jul 2019 05:57:48 -0000 1.35 +++ usr.bin/mg/Makefile 8 Feb 2024 21:34:07 -0000 @@ -19,6 +19,8 @@ SRCS= autoexec.c basic.c bell.c buffer.c re_search.c region.c search.c spawn.c tty.c ttyio.c ttykbd.c \ undo.c util.c version.c window.c word.c yank.c
+LINKS= ${BINDIR}/Word + # # More or less standalone extensions. #
Theo de Raadt, why did you let Microsoft "infiltrate" the SSH community? We warned against that many times back then. GNU isn't your rival, Theo de Raadt, Microsoft is. █
