"[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on."

--Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

Summary: Microsoft and its little helpers at Novell carry on promoting .NET while stereotypical words are used to slap down critics

NOW that Miguel de Icaza is at CodePlex, it has become abundantly clear that he is willing to sidle with a company which attacks GNU/Linux with patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Novell can spin it as much as it wants, but people have learned Microsoft's inherent behaviour time after time for decades. Nothing has changed. As CRN has just put it, "Open source community sceptical over vendor's [Microsoft's] open source aims."

Microsoft has failed to destroy Free software with slurs and aggression alone, so now it is trying to recruit other companies that will do the "dirty work" while Microsoft pretends to have befriended "Open Source". It's a classic mechanism for diffusing opposition -- become so immersed in it, to the point where you become your own pseudo-opposition. That, for instance, is what Microsoft did to its longtime rivals such as Corel and Novell.

To make matters worse, as this discussion about Miguel de Icaza's role at CodePlex puts it:

Generally, anyone who recognizes the pernicious nature of Microsoft's corporate behavior is dismissed as a "Microsoft hater". Of course, too few realize that discrediting by name-calling is the technique of those bankrupt of rational arguments. As a deplorable result, it is lingua franca of modern political discourse, ala Fox News.

We have already explained and shown that people who do not care about FOSS enter the FOSS world only to curse those who really believe in FOSS. We also have entire long posts debating the "Microsoft hater" label [1, 2]^*. Microsoft does more than anyone else to deserve a certain type of treatment, so it's not a Microsoft-exclusive issue.

“Critics of Microsoft are conveniently dismissed as irrational haters.”The "Microsoft hater" label is far from dead. Nick Eaton, who writes for the blog whose purpose is mostly to praise Microsoft, opens one of his latest posts with "For those of you who hate Microsoft..."

See? Critics of Microsoft are conveniently dismissed as irrational haters. As if not agreeing with crime can actually make the skeptic inherently evil. The logic here goes like, "it's not Microsoft that's evil, it's those who 'hate' it who are evil."

Here is just a sample of Microsoft sins. This is the company that Novell and Miguel are helping, most recently by creating iphone MonoTouch, which is about extending Microsoft's ever-abusive monopoly.

Sites that cover a lot of Microsoft products seem to be among those who give it more coverage.

.NET developers will now be able to build iPhone and iPod Touch apps with Novell's new MonoTouch framework. The catch is it doesn't come cheap.

As part of the patent deal from 2006, Novell is looking to complement Microsoft's monopoly and it is sad that so many people are unable to see it, despite Novell making it as clear as it gets. ⬆

Related posts:

• OIN Receives Thanks from Many, CodePlex Foundation Receives Thumbs-Down from Many
• Miguel de Icaza Joins Microsoft
• Why Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation is a Promoter of Proprietary Software
• Microsoft Runs Away from the Press After Trying to Have GNU/Linux Sued by Proxy
• Microsoft Turncoat Quits
• Free Software Foundation Discourages Dependence on Mono, Dismisses Microsoft Community Promise

_______ ^* The “Microsoft Hater” label seems to have been extended to the “Novell Hater” label, which some people now use to dismiss critics of the Novell/Microsoft deal. These labels bear a connotation that is intriguing because particular nations adopt similar daemonisation labels like "anti-Soviet" (a serious crime at the time) or "unamerican", whereas in a nation like Sweden there is no analogous label as it would be preposterous and somewhat outlandish/foreign. These labels can be introduced and phased into society's vocabulary through gradual indoctrination, e.g. imagery, strong words, and stereotypes. Peer pressure is then a policing force.