Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft and Its Followers Compare Free Software to Terrorism

"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

Summary: How Microsoft incites the public against those who are critical of its behaviour

THE title of this post is no news. It has carried on for quite a long time. The same strategy happens to be used by the media/content industry, which insists that file sharing encourages terrorism. More recently, this very same industry argued that giving something away for free was "unamerican". It's an insult to Americans when this argument is being made. Whenever scrutinised by regulators outside for US for breaking the law, companies like Intel and Microsoft use the "anti-American" label as well. But again, that's not news and it is a well-understood technique where one polarises and daemonises the competitor or the law enforcer. Yes, Microsoft has done everything to show that it polarises and incites people against Free software; hypocritically enough, Microsoft accuses others of doing this and since Microsoft has greater control over the media, many people may actually be lured into this false impression.



The following new article from the Indian press speaks about the loadable module [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] that Microsoft gave after failing to comply with the GPL. Here is the person this article quotes:

From Linux side Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Driver Project Lead, said "Microsoft's contribution is a good move for Linux. I'm pleased to see Microsoft working to build a better relationship with the Linux community. I think that this will be good news for users and organizations who want to see better interoperability between Windows and Linux."


The article fails to mention that Greg Kroah-Hartman is actually a Novell employee too and it's also a Novell project, part of the patent deal with Microsoft. Quoting Torvalds to justify this, the article proceeds to dismissing the possibility that Microsoft is acting to promote its own interests against Linux.

In another new article we find a former Microsoft intern comparing "open source" to religion and taking cheap shots at Microsoft's competition using words like "fundamentalist" and "religious". It is very telling. He is pushing the typical myths that he may have heard about while at Microsoft. Elsewhere, in the Microsoft press itself (the same one that offers sympathy to SCO), the author is trying to characterise the FSF's new campaign efforts [1, 2, 3] as "anti-capitalist" while ignoring that Microsoft is unique in the sense that it commits crimes. Is this capitalism? Was it established on violating laws? In other articles we find weasel words like "Linux fanatic". Much of this was fueled by the FSF's latest campaign.

“It is a case of artful terminology which seeks to associate Free software advocates with terrorists.”Adherence to law, ethics and democracy apparently makes one a "fanatic", a "fundamentalist", even "religious" (never mind if many Free software supporters are atheists). Needless to say, many of these characterisations arrive from Microsoft itself or from the Microsoft-sympathetic crowd. It is a case of artful terminology which seeks to associate Free software advocates with terrorists. I know from personal experience that Microsoft is trying to achieve this and the quotes appended at the bottom strive to demonstrate this.

As some readers may already know, Microsoft TEs lurked in Boycott Novell for quite some time before going above water -- so to speak -- and then attacking me, spamming some forums with those attacks on me, and even comparing me to a serial killer, Unabomber (by quoting known trolls and even anti-Linux Web sites). There are also firms like W-E and Visible Technologies. They have full-time staff doing this PR stuff that includes monitoring Web sites. Anything imaginable is being done to publicly discourage critical persons and incite others against the 'problematic' messengers. To them, it is another game of hypocritical spin and reality-warping. Novell employees have done the same thing to Boycott Novell, but this is a separate subject.

"Linux is a cult that captures the best-and-brightest kids."

--Jim Gray (Microsoft Research)



"There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free."

--Steve Ballmer



"Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the US Department of Defense."

--Richard Stallman



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
 
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025