Summary: Freedom of expression met by freedom of suppression and the Gartner Group carries on setting the agenda

THE FSF's latest motion is one that we wrote about yesterday. To quote the official press release:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched the next stage of its "Windows 7 Sins" campaign at http://windows7sins.org, making the case against Microsoft and proprietary software by writing to 500 leaders of the most influential nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide, asking them to make the switch to freedom-respecting free software, and to help foster awareness of the ethical importance of computer user freedom.

As usual, resistance to the ethical goals mentioned above mostly comes from the Microsoft crowd. We saw this when the campaign was first launched and gave examples in posts on the subject, e.g.:

• FSF Campaign Upsets Exactly Those Whom It Ought to Have Upset
• “Windows 7 Sins” Campaign a Great Success So Far
• The Group from Boston That Makes Microsoft Scared (Not Novell)

The FSF speaks about Microsoft's crimes (moral of technical) almost exclusively, yet opposition to the FSF never comes directly from Microsoft. This is the expected behaviour and a known Microsoft "shill", Andrew Thomas, is the latest to be mocking the FSF with a daemonising photo and rude headline.

Speaking of "shills", Roughly Drafted Magazine has this brilliant new exposé of the Gartner Group. It presents evidence (some of which extracted from Boycott Novell) and concludes as follows:

Had Gartner not served as Microsoft’s mouthpiece in badmouthing OS/2, NCs, Macs, and everything open source-related (or just not Microsoft-related) to enterprise users all these years, perhaps the company’s analysts wouldn’t be blown away by “technological advances” that happen every year. Of course, had it not done all that damage, the company wouldn’t have ever got all those millions of shill dollars for keeping Microsoft’s terrible products in the headlines.

The above article was published in response to Gartner on Android. In another new article, the same site explains the obvious -- that Windows Mobile is a dead end.

This strategy pitted Android against Microsoft’s Windows Mobile in a defensive play to prevent Microsoft from leveraging its smartphone hardware partnerships to block Google’s entry into the mobile search and ads business. Insiders have referred to Android as “Danger 2.0,” as the Android project builds upon Danger’s general architecture of using a Unix-like kernel (Android uses Linux) with a Java-like application runtime (Android’s Dalvik virtual machine).

Overall, this is an exclusive and fascinating analysis. ⬆

More on the Gartner Group:

• Gartner et al Fixing the Price for the Entire Industry?
• How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World
• IDC, Gartner and Yankee Group's Latest Press Attack on Customer's Competitors
• Analyst Firms, Including IDC and Gartner, Named and Shamed for Serving as Microsoft Mouthpieces
• Gartner Group is Banned by Boycott Novell
• Microsoft 'Bribes' Mac Bloggers to Slam Apple, Gartner Hosts Google FUD
• Gartner Group Shows Its True Colours -- Censors Reporters
• Gartner Group is Attacking Free Software, Again

"David Smith commented that Gartner will not bash MS if MS chooses to slip Vista."

--Jamin Spilzer, Microsoft