“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: A look at the proximity between GNU/Linux-hostile analysts and the company which feeds them

WE HAVE already written quite extensively about how Microsoft uses analysts to advance its business agenda and several days ago we showed that the Microsoft-corrupted Gartner Group is a fan of the company's software patents. It's only to be expected from those whose wages are paid by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Here is more from an analyst at Gartner:

I am not a big fan of the Bilski ruling. But if it’s impact ends up being more acutely felt on the business models necessary to commercialize innovation than on innovation itself it, that would seem to me yet another reason to find fault with it.

So here is advocacy of monopoly on thought -- on a process that can be carried out with pen and paper or just words. Since one of the main losers from In Re Bilski fallout is Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], this should not be too surprising.

In other interesting news, a lot of people parrot the words of some Lenovo analyst, but very few people bother to mention the company's strong ties with Microsoft as of late [1, 2, 3, 4]. It even includes Microsoft executives as employees and it always looks to reinforce or justify its decisions. The analyst in question is telling as well. His blog is filled with Vista posts and nothing except Windows. So should one be surprised that he bashed GNU/Linux? DaemonFC published a post about it last night:

Microsoft-paid anti Linux stooges at Lenovo

[...]

This isn’t like Windows at all which already has or provides easy access to everything I want it to do, can be downloaded and burned legally and for free to any blank disc I have laying around, and is entirely open source. Linux is proprietary and costs between $140-$1000 a license.

In response to that latest FUD from Lenovo, one person explains that "retail shelves are rented."

when it comes to the retail shelves, what you see on the shelf is not what customers or the market have picked. These products are placed on rented space and the marketing people placed the product there. This shouldn't surprise anyone. But, because Microsoft was/is allowed to throw money at hardware resellers(Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) in the name of marketing partnerships, what products you see on shelves have more to do with backroom contracts than customer demand. Especially when you're talking about Linux as an option. And yes, I've heard product development people talk about how Microsoft influences product configurations with disruptions of these marketing contracts.

Windows Vista is so widely disliked that the Vista Uncompetition has just been launched. Vista 7 won't be much better and we keep seeing vicious attacks from unnamed individuals against anyone who dares to criticise it ahead of arrival, including attempts to shun those critics and get them in trouble with their publisher; the latest example, for which there is a lot of evidence, is Charlie from The Inquirer. One has to wonder if the PR agencies are at work again, policing coverage of key products. ⬆

"Mopping Up can be a lot of fun. In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism's goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology's coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, "he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry."

--James Plamondon, Microsoft