Comments

• A Wiki Admin

  2009-06-10 23:39:30

  The nice thing is that all the evidence is there and public. Microsoft can edit; they cannot remove (public) Wikipedia editing logs and page histories. FUD doesn't work well when you can't hide your activites. It just needs a nice lawyer and another go round the European Courts... I wonder how much they would be good for this time in terms of media and legals? :)

• Needs Sunlight

  2009-06-10 10:31:12

  WTF is all the OOXML promotional material doing in the ODF article?

• pcolon

  2009-06-10 12:05:58

  MSFT seems to be psychotically desperate now. It doesn't matter what crap they use to break the GNU/Linux ecosystem; It's not working and their desperation is readily apparent for all to see in spite of their followers and paid press/blogger spins.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-06-10 12:12:33

  Be aware that that Microsoft is paying bloggers and people in social networks to promote Windows.

• pcolon

  2009-06-10 12:23:17

  Yes, have been pointing that out to the members of our lab team. It seems these people (ghettoblaster, hAl, etc.) are trying to make Wikipedia as irrelevant like Brown and Jesper did with ISO.

• twitter

  2009-06-10 14:58:47

  The only thing M$ can do to fight ODF and free software is break Office and Windows. Break Windows and blame the competition, this is an old trick that's not working as well as it did back in the days of DRDOS and CompuServe. The more they do it, the faster they lose.
  
  The simple solution is to dump M$. Because they continue to prove their malice, "Mixed environments" should be viewed as worse than an all M$ environment no matter how many features are lost. No feature added to M$ Windows by a "third party" can be counted on because M$ will eventually sabotage it. I've been using free software exclusively for close to ten years now. The trouble saved by escaping M$ malice far outweighs the few times I've had to find a Windows box to cooperate with some ignorant institution or other. I think I've only had to do that once in the last three years. My case is not isolated as massive migrations such as Lowes, IBM, the French National Police, West Point and many other prove.
  
  The sooner the world gets away from non free software, the sooner the malice will end. Only non free software people bother with sabotage like this. You don't find schools, doctors and lawyers doing these kinds of things to their peers. RMS pointed out early that NDA's were like an agreement to "be a bad person" and that non free software was unethical at its very foundation. We should not be surprised when non free software companies behave in an unethical manner. The sooner non free software is over, the less damage their poor ethics will do to society at large.

• Moo

  2009-06-10 15:25:52

  The sooner non free software is over, the less damage their poor ethics will do to society at large.

  I agree with the sentiment. I am also pessimistic about ever meeting this standard. As long as society is ignorant and willing to trade their freedom for power and convenience, we will always have digital colonial masters abusing their power over society.

• David Gerard

  2009-06-10 19:16:45

  Various relevant people at Wikipedia and Wikimedia are aware of this, FWIW. There are various apocalyptic scenarios we'd rather didn't come close to consideration.

• David Gerard

  2009-06-10 19:18:25

  (In particular, some people seem unaware that people do in fact see all and know all, and are merely extremely conservative in what action is taken, preferring to lead perpetrators to more sensible action.)

• Roy Schestowitz

  2009-06-10 19:23:09

  I saw your comments today in Groklaw (regarding Wikipedia). FWIW, hAl[bert] gets his treatment.

• David Gerard

  2009-06-10 19:35:57

  *facepalm* So much for verb. sap.

• manul

  2009-06-11 05:18:18

  Here is some fresh news:
  
  Federal Anti-Monopoly Service Russia opened a case against six major notebook producers (namely Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Dell), following consumers' complaints that they were being forced to buy Microsoft's Windows operating system along with new computers.
  
  genuine announcement (in Russian) http://www.fas.gov.ru/news/n_24601.shtml google translate http://translate.google.ca/translate?pr ... ry_state0= Moscow Times: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/378477.htm