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Direct link (note: it only later turned out that it's a fake)

Summary: How the departure of a Microsoft senior vice president came about; more "smoking guns" to come from the Comes case

A FEW days ago we wrote about one of the perpetrators of anti-competitive (including anti-GNU/Linux) tactics finally leaving Microsoft, having served as senior vice president.

This is a win for GNU/Linux, but some interesting details have surfaced in Mary Jo Foley's blog after she spoke to Veghte:

Veghte (with whom I spoke briefly by phone today) said he had been looking for a new job at Microsoft doing something new. That would be challenging, given he’s done everything from field sales, to working on CE, Office and Windows Server. In the end, after meeting with CEO Steve Ballmer, he decided to leave the company and seek a position elsewhere.

Wherever he lands next, it might be harmful. He will hopefully leave the area of IT. In the previous post about his departure we highlighted many Comes vs Microsoft exhibits where his role in fighting GNU/Linux in nefarious ways is shown.

Some time later this year we'll return to presenting Comes vs Microsoft exhibits. Groklaw is now providing more texts, carefully extracted from the exhibits which will hopefully complete the huge record. Using some exhibits that we have already covered here before (with full text), Groklaw has published "The Microsoft-Linux Story As Told in the Comes Exhibits"

We're still deep into the transcribing, so I won't write much about the exhibits here, but take a look at this page, the Exhibits by Numbers page 4 (we had to divide it into 4 pages, because it became too long), and look for keyword EDGI and also keyword Linux and "Don't lose to Linux" or "never lose to Linux". It'll knock your socks off, what Microsoft is willing to do to beat Linux.

And the interesting part is to see how Microsoft viewed Linux just before SCO showed up on the scene. Look for exhibits 9644, 9683, 9685, 9677, 9679, 9687, and 9695, all PDFs. The last one is 2002, when SCO was just getting in gear, and Kevin Johnson writes, "Linux is good for business, you know." The impression I formed from these exhibits is that Microsoft was terrified of what one email called the "Linux infestation".

The Mad Hatter has more to say on the subject:

This week Groklaw, a geek legal site run by the redoubtable Pamela Jones, a paralegal, published several of the documents as text. In addition to the work done by the Boycott Novell website, the work done at Groklaw gives a view inside Microsoft, where as far back as 1999 Microsoft was more concerned with blocking Linux adoption, than they were in providing a superior product.

Groklaw’s main concern is the damage Microsoft has done to Free Software, but Free Software hasn’t been Microsoft’s only target. They used the same attacks against a wide range of competing companies, including IBM, Novell, Digital Research, Word Perfect, Corel, Apple, Commodore, Atari, Berkeley Softworks, Lotus, Borland, Real Networks, Netscape, Micrografx, Beos, Sun, Go Corporation, Ashton Tate, and Stac Electronics. Many of these companies no longer exist due to Microsoft’s machinations, which have left a trail of wrecked companies and lives.

It’s impossible to determine how much damage Microsoft has done to the world economy by it’s anti-competitive actions. We know that the EU Competition Commission levied a fine that was over a billion euros, and which apparently has done little or nothing to change Microsoft’s actions. It appears that fines are part of the cost of doing business from Microsoft’s point of view.

Anyway, our hats are off to Groklaw, which is completing many of those missing exhibits, some of which we will touch on in the future (there is no rush really, as these are not new).

Over at Slashdot, there was once this coverage of anti-GNU/Linux material from Microsoft.com. One of our readers brought it up again last night.

An interesting article uncovering some embarassing and amusing PR practices of our friendly software giant had been recently published by Michael Zalewski. The author recovered change tracking information from all the DOCs published on microsoft.com, and came up with something to cheer you up. It's funny when it happens to others - but even better if it fires back on themselves.

Here is the direct link. ⬆