Bonum Certa Men Certa

Stop Press: Novell Critics Are Not Religious Fanatics

Shock, horror!

SUSE sites and blogs are always a tad suspicious because Novell has its share of boosters [1, 2]. Here is a revealing new confession from the community leader of OpenSUSE, who is also a paid booster with some blogs (Microsoft has some too [1, 2]).

With open source projects, every contributor and every user is a potential source and they don’t have to be vetted by corporate PR first. For instance, with the openSUSE Project we have had board members and other contributors and users quoted (and blogging) about openSUSE and will again in the future.


It was a little amusing to find this Novell-sympathetic post in a blog which sports OpenSUSE banners. It praises Novell for contributions, starting with Poisonware like Mono and Moonlight. This is reminiscent of Crismon's blog, which clogs up some social networking sites with Novell/SUSE 'marketing'.

“A word like "crusade" (religious connotation) is an insult to those who defend their rights and basic freedom.”Back to that first blog, there is another new rant there which defends Novell from 'crusaders'.

A word like "crusade" (religious connotation) is an insult to those who defend their rights and basic freedom. It's not a case against Microsoft either, but Microsoft happens to be the company that attacks digital Freedom the most, whereas others giants like IBM and Sun try to live in harmony with it and even embrace some of it. Since when are activists for freedom "crusaders"?

Were women who fought for equality "crusaders"? Did they carry a cross?

Did people who fight against slavery do something 'religious'? That's the crux of the matter.

Are people who (still) fight for racial equality do it on grounds of religion or based on descent?

So please... enough with words like "zealots", "crusaders" and "fanatics" to marginalise those whom you disagree with. Fighting with labels is easy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Microsoft and the MAFIAA (daemonisation name) have their reasons for calling customers "pirates" and naming kill switches "Genuine Advantage". There are many examples just like that ("trusted computing", "digital rights management" and so forth).

Debate with messages, not with words.

Knight with armor



"A Jihad is a road trip. in which an evangelist visits a large number of ISVs one-on-one to convince them to take some specific action. The classic Jihad is one focused on getting Tier A ISVs to commit to supporting a given technology by signing the technology's Letter of Agreement (LOA - see above).

"A Jihad focuses on the Travelling Salesman aspect of evangelism. As in sales, the purpose of the exercise is to close – to get the mark the ISV to sign on the dotted line, in pen, irrevocably. Not to get back to us later, not to talk to the wife about it, not to enter a three-day cooling-off period, but to get the ISV to sign, sign, sign."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Killed the Term "Open Source" (by Bribing/Taking Over OSI, 'Linux' Foundation Etc.) and Now It Needs to Kill the Brand Linux (Because Windows Just Won't Run!)
Why else would Microsoft falsely describe Windows as "Linux" and "Open Source"?
Slopwatch: Liars for Microsoft, Plagiarism, and IBM Red Hat Markets Slop as "AI"
Today was a bad day news-wise
Slopwatch: Slopfarms 'Think' Redis is "Linux" (RedisRaider)
Today we'll keep it short and to the point again
Links 20/05/2025: Biden's Cancer, GDPR Changes, and UK Defamation Cases (or SLAPPs) Fail Again
Links for the day
 
"The Appeals Committee [at the EPO] Unanimously Stated a Formal Flaw in the Consultation of the General Consultative Committee (GCC) on the Reform"
It's a truly horrifying situation
Links 21/05/2025: Climate Problems and Ceasefires No Longer Foreseen
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/05/2025: "Shrimps of Doom" and "ASCII-graphs"
Links for the day
Links 21/05/2025: GitHub Becoming Slop, MElon as a Drug Addict Considered National Security Risk
Links for the day
IBM Has Allegedly Just Sacked Mr. McKinsey (McK), Clay Cowan, Its Fourth CMO in a Few Years
To insiders he represented the company that's killing IBM or advising IBM on how to self-destruct
Gemini Links 21/05/2025: Trips, 4D Golf, and Writing Software
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 20, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Microsofters Targeting the Wife of the Critic of Microsoft
false claims and loaded statement
Links 20/05/2025: "Bankrupt 23andMe Just Sold Off All Your DNA Data" and "Free Speech Warriors" MIA
Links for the day
Microsoft a Top Sponsor at Red Hat Summit (IBM Selling Proprietary Spyware and Back Doors in a "Red" Trench Coat)
They both work for Microsoft
Openwashing of Windows, Back Doors, Persistent Surveillance, Keyloggers, Screen Loggers, DRM and So On
WSL is not "Linux", it's Windows
New 'Interview' With - or Talk Coverage of - Richard Stallman in the European Union
automated English translation
IBM Mass Redundancies Likely This Coming Thursday
We're not in a position to judge if that's true or false
Gemini Links 20/05/2025: LLM Scraper Bots in Gopher and "Starmer and the Somewheres"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 19, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 19, 2025
Skype Fell Off a Cliff (Microsoft Killed It), All Microsoft Has Left Now is Slop and Spaghetti Code
"This isn’t about AI. This is a puppet show to drive stock prices up and down."
The Official SUSE Blog Uses LLM Slop to Compose Fake Articles Promoting Microsoft and Azure
even a little slop spoils the broth
Slopfarms (Machine-Generated Fake News Sites Authored by Bots With Slop Images) Spread GNU FUD
This isn't about Linux (GNU doesn't run just on Linux)
United States Federal Government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP): GNU/Linux Users Represent Close to 6% of Visitors This Year
How far has GNU/Linux gotten? Very far!
The "LLM Ouroboros of Shit" is Complemented by Even Worse Phenomena Caused by Microsoft's Contribution of SPAM and Pollution
Microsoft became a world leader in promotion of LLM slop
The LLM Ouroboros Phenomenon
Fact #1: over time slop gets worse (training set is like some blurry JPEG). Fact #2: People's "smell" for slop improves over time, as they 'train' on slop and can detect it based on prior encounters. Put 1 and 2 together.
Links 19/05/2025: Charges of Blackmailing Over Son Heung-min, Chad Opposition Leader Detained
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/05/2025: Ableism, Silicon Monkeys, and More
Links for the day
How We Defeated DDoS Attacks
One of the best things one can do is migrate to an SSG
Microsofters Issuing Threats to Microsoft Critics Who Blog About Microsoft
So far we see that their "legal strategy" revolves around trying to discredit people like Theodore Ts'o
Links 19/05/2025: Political Catchup and CISA Advisories
Links for the day
TheLayoff.com Has Begun Deleting Trolls/AstroTurfers Infesting the IBM Section to Discourage On-Topic Discussion About Culls and Maladministration (Bad Strategy)
Moderators have realised there's a problem
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 18, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 18, 2025