Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Licences Grow Unpopular While the GPL -- Despite FUD -- Keeps Expanding

Scroll with BSoD



Summary: A look at unrest caused by Microsoft licensing and FUD which entities close to Microsoft throw at the favoured alternative

WE previously provided many citations regarding Microsoft EULAs and also some critique of the SUSE EULA. Microsoft, unlike Novell, is able to get away with a very appalling EULA because a lot of computers have Microsoft software tied to them, whether the buyer accepts the terms or not.

According to this new report from IDG, Microsoft's software licensing is becoming a "nightmare" to businesses.

Despite efforts from Microsoft over the years to simplify its software licensing for businesses, a new analyst report said it's more complex than ever for companies to figure out the most cost-effective way to acquire products from the vendor.

A new report by Directions on Microsoft analysts Paul DeGroot and Rob Horwitz called "5 Reasons Why Microsoft Licensing Is Hard" claims that Microsoft licensing isn't likely to get any easier any time soon, mainly because Microsoft is not motivated to make it so. The report is available online and is connected to a series of "boot camps" the firm hosts to help companies get up to speed on Microsoft licensing.


Compare the complexity of Microsoft licences to the simplicity of the GPL. The GPL encourages any business to download and to spread not only the program but also the code. It is free for everyone to use. How can any business overlook such fantastic opportunity?

Microsoft spreads a lot of GPL FUD [1, 2] probably because it fears that more businesses will realise the appeal of Free software. Just watch how Microsoft deals with GPL-licensed software that it was forced to disclose and make available because it had violated the GPL [1, 2]. Microsoft lost interest in developing this code, as evidenced by some Novell-Microsoft trouble over the maintenance of a loadable module. From IDG comes the following Kroah-Hartman (Novell employee) quote:

"Unfortunately the Microsoft developers seem to have disappeared, and no one is answering my emails. If they do not show back up to claim this driver soon, it will be removed in the 2.6.33 [kernel] release. So sad...," he wrote.


Lastly, speaking of Free software FUD, less than a week ago we wrote about the Gartner Group throwing some more FUD at such Free software. IDG, with its apparent bias against the GPL , more or less parrots Gartner, whereas OStatic directly challenges these claims.

No, the Cloud is Not Killing Open Source



Andrea DiMaio from the Gartner Blog Network asks an interesting question in a post titled "Is Cloud Computing Killing Open Source in Government?," and InfoWorld [IDG] weighs in on the issue as well. One might as well not limit the question to government usage.

[...]

For that matter, Cloudera, which provides commercial support for the open source Hadoop software framework, straddles the worlds of cloud computing and open source precisely in the middle. Countless ambitious cloud initiatives rely on Hadoop, such as this one at the New York Times. As another example of how cloud computing and open source can walk down common paths, Ulteo, which we've covered before, allows users to use the OpenOffice applications online, and offers them free storage. Ulteo is very competitive with Zoho and Google Docs in terms of quality of its offering, but it's combining cloud services with open source.


Why all the hostility towards Free software from analysts who are regularly doing business (monetary transactions) with Microsoft? A cynic might begin to theorise that Microsoft is not a fan of Free software.

"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

Recent Techrights' Posts

Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part XI
By Dr. Andy Farnell
GNU/Linux and ChromeOS in Qatar Reach 4%, an All-Time High
Qatar has money to spend, but not much of it will be spent on Microsoft, or so one can hope
This 'Article' About "Linux Malware" is a Fake Article, It's LLM Slop (Likely Spewed Out by Microsoft Chatbot)
They're drowning out the Web
Early Retirement Age: Linus Torvalds Turns 55 Next Week
Now he's almost eligible for retirement in certain European countries
 
Apple's LLM Slop Told Us Luigi Mangione Had Shot Himself, BetaNews Used LLMs to Talk About a Dead Linus Torvalds
They can blame it on some bot
Microsoft, Give Me LLM Slop About "Linux" and "Santa", I Need Some Fake Article...
BetaNews is basically an LLM slop site
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 22, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, December 22, 2024
Links 22/12/2024: Election Rants and More Sites Available via Gemini
Links for the day
Links 22/12/2024: North Pole Moving and Debian's Joey Hess Goes Solar
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/12/2024: Solstice and IDEs
Links for the day
BetaNews: Microsoft Slop is Your "Latest Technology News"
Paid-for garbage disguised as "journalism"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 21, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, December 21, 2024
Links 21/12/2024: EU on Solidarity with Ukraine, Focus on Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court in the EU (UPC)
Links for the day
[Meme] Microsofters at the End of David's Leash
Hand holding the leash. Whose?
Deciphering Matt's Take on WordPress, Which is Under Attack From Microsofters-Funded Aggravator
the money sponsoring the legal attacks on WordPress and on Matt is connected very closely to Microsoft
Gemini Links 21/12/2024: Projections, Dead Web ('Webapps' Replacing Pages), and Presentation of Pi-hole
Links for the day
American Samoa One of the Sovereign States Where Windows Has Fallen Below 1% (and Stays Below It)
the latest data plotted in LibreOffice
[Meme] Brian's Ravioli
An article per minute?
Links 21/12/2024: "Hey Hi" (AI) or LLM Bubble Criticised by Mainstream Media, Oligarchs Try to Control and Shut Down US Government
Links for the day
LLM Slop is Ruining the Media and Ruining the Web, Ignoring the Problem or the Principal Culprits (or the Slop Itself) Is Not Enough
We need to encourage calling out the culprits (till they stop this poor conduct or misconduct)
Christmas FUD From Microsoft, Smearing "SSH" When the Real Issue is Microsoft Windows
And since Microsoft's software contains back doors, only a fool would allow any part of SSH on Microsoft's environments, which should be presumed compromised
Paywalls, Bots, Spam, and Spyware is "Future of the Media" According to UK Press Gazette
"managers want more LLM slop"
Google Has Mass Layoffs (Again), But the Problem is Vastly Larger
started as a rumour about January 2025
On BetaNews Latest Technology News: "We are moderately confident this text was [LLM Chatbot] generated"
The future of newsrooms or another site circling down the drain with spam, slop, or both?
"The Real New Year" is Now
Happy solstice
Microsoft OSI Reads Techrights Closely
Microsoft OSI has also fraudulently attempted to censor Techrights several times over the years
"Warning About IBM's Labor Practices"
IBM is not growing and its revenue is just "borrowed" from companies it is buying; a lot of this revenue gets spent paying the interest on considerable debt
[Meme] The Easier Way to Make Money
With patents...
The Curse (to Microsoft) of the Faroe Islands
The common factor there seems to be Apple
Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Companies That Attack Free Speech Online (Follow the Money)
One might joke that today's EFF has basically adopted the same stance as Donald Trump and has a "warm spot" for BRICS propaganda
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 20, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, December 20, 2024
Gemini Links 21/12/2024: Death of Mike Case, Slow and Sudden End of the Web
Links for the day