Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Beast of Redmond Intervenes with Yet Another Open Source Summit

Hardly a single Linux or open source event can escape Microsoft 'sponsorship'

It has become a classic and recurrent routine which continues to be seen once every few weeks. Microsoft offers some organisers money in exchange for the right to attend and speak out its mind in open source events, even Linux events thanks to Novell's implicit invitation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Then, Microsoft markets itself and influences the events, in essence trying to force mutual love upon others, under its own rules of pseudo-open-source. Right now Microsoft is doing this in the Philippines.

Microsoft Philippines will sponsor an open source summit in Cebu next month and this early, the software giant is bracing itself for lively discussions about openXML and the fact that the company will make its presence felt at the summit.


Let's see. Microsoft brings its proprietary OOXML, which is deliberately a case against Free software, and then pretends that it's part of the "open source" family. Yes, they try to become part of it and then just flush away all the things in Open Source which they don't like, such as the GPL. Here is a quick refresher, just from the past month alone:



It's rather sad and ironic. Whilst bribing, bullying and viciously fighting the GPL Microsoft is still trying to move FOSS projects over to the Windows stack, making them dependent on Microsoft's proprietary technologies. It's a path to servitude, disguised as goodwill.

“When will journalists finally wake up and find all that Microsoft is hiding under its blanket?”At the moment, even some of the more pathological liars from the OOXML fiasco get the guts to claim openness in another self-serving new article from Disinformation Week, which seems like an attempt to sell us the idea that Microsoft is all about open source and open standards.

It's utterly appalling how Microsoft uses the its press to 'massage' people's perception while hiding behind the counter whenever those colleagues are rigging votes, bullying people, bribing people and lying to them so shamelessly. When will journalists finally wake up and find all that Microsoft is hiding under its blanket? The evidence is here to see, but the press totally ignores it. Is it shy? Afraid?

"It’s a Simple Matter of [Microsoft’s] Commercial Interests!"

--Microsoft's Doug Mahugh about OOXML in the fast track

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