Summary: Badmouthing of open source, of its flag carriers, and the Microsoft connection
JUST OVER a week ago we wrote about White & Case, which
had Microsoft as its client. Having disseminated outright lies about the GPL, there was a bit of a stir and
Matt Asay offered a possible factual explanation.
White & Case, a leading international law firm, has been struggling in the face of the recession, laying off 70 associates in late 2008.
Watch what
he wrote later on: "White & Case wrote CNET to complain about my post on their FUD-mongering. Their argument? We didn't mean what our words said!"
This would not be the first time such an incident occurs; we've already seen Microsoft employees harassing Matt Asay,
trying to get him in trouble or even fired. There are many similar examples where other writers were involved. Having engaged in FUD-mongering against FOSS they proceed to engaging in FUD-mongering against messengers.
So why do Microsoft's paid troops attack the GPL in particular while mocking no other software licence? Well, Microsoft has its own CodePlex nonsense, which is mostly a shrine to Microsoft Windows. A couple of days ago Microsoft pulled another publicity stunt when it added some stuff to it:
This is hardly about collaboration.
Anyway, the bottom line is that Microsoft and its people will be mocking Free software and promote their own confusing vision to simply dilute the meaning and reduce the power of the term "open source". Many people, Mark Shuttleworth included, are already switching to the term "Free software", which they realise does not include foes like Microsoft (
it's suing Linux by the way) under its umbrella.
Other nastiest to watch out for are
this intellectual monopoly charade, which is actually a
Jonathan Zuck event (Microsoft fingerprints on it) and Bill Snyder's latest open source FUD (
cited by Slashdot). What they don't show is that he is an Apple and Microsoft shareholder (he disclosed it last year).
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"Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I'm an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat."
--Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
