Summary: New heights for Microsoft's spin and lies; the latest wave of GPL smears arrives from friends of Microsoft and former employees

A FEW days ago we mentioned Microsoft's patent royalty coupons that it (re)sold to Novell customers. From the comments on that same article we have "The purpose of Microsoft's engagement with Novell":

The purpose of Microsoft's engagement with Novell was to placate the European Union who were gunning after Microsoft for their - alleged - anti-competitive practices. The EU had reached the conclusion that Microsoft had largely (and illegally) wiped out most of (Europe's) software industry and was actually in the business of now gouging its corporations and citizens for billions of dollars every year.

SUSE - being formerly a German owned Linux developer.. and the No 1 distribution in Europe - was specifically targeted by Microsoft in an attempt to mitigate the enormous pressure they were under to prove they had become more 'inter-operable'. Thus the 'inter-operability' agreement with Novel/SUSE so as to prove itself a good corporate citizen and placate the EU about it intentions to 'open up'.... and to provide forward supporting evidence seeking to protect Microsoft from further efforts by the EU to prosecute them for - alleged - monopolistic practices.

Watch what the 'Microsoft press' published a few days ago in order to deceive the masses with the help of people who masquerade as journalists or merely pass on whatever ludicrous claims Microsoft makes, uncritically. Their negligence is to blame for a lot of problems because they can prevent almost any problem by investigating and exposing. Microsoft booster Marius Oiaga promoted the same PR lies, as well. These people have no shame about lying and spinning. Some of them are paid handsomely by Microsoft in order to do this, namely promoting this delusion that Microsoft's blatant patent attacks on GNU/Linux and Free Software are in some ways an act of playing nice.

The dishonesty is breathtaking and Novell helped initiate this, in the words of Oiaga:

Back in 2006, Microsoft made a landmark move designed to bridge Windows Server and Linux with an interoperability agreement inked with Novell, a partnership that has evolved and grown in complexity. Although criticized for its intellectual property assurance aspect, the Novell deal signaled a cultural change for Microsoft.

No, it didn't! Microsoft began suing GNU/Linux companies after it had signed the deal with Novell.

The lies will obviously never end and those who have the money will manage to squeeze their story (lies) into the media. If only Brian Proffitt stopped sympathising with Novell, then the quest for truth would be nearer to being accomplished. There are another couple of comments on his promotion of a Novell job vacancy (Zonker left), one of which says:

I was already skeptical a few years ago but after reading many of the documents Groklaw has linked to in the Comes vs Microsoft case and read how Microsoft does business (I always thought the case against them was a bit on the heavy handed side but after reading those documents and emails, its seems they were just as bad as we thought if not much worse).

'Show me' is popular in my state and not because of spring break.So until I hear/read any repudiation of the past 2-3 years of attacks on Linux from THE HEADS at Microsoft, I have absolutely nothing to base this 'things are different' vibe you are peddling. And considering that the whole TomTom lawsuit by MS over three patents that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel wasnt even one year ago, it seems your idea of thaw is pretty strange.

As a “Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer”, Novell and their apologist Zonker were defending threats to my livelyhood.

To broaden this last statement and to use the same words, all of Novell and their apologists are defending threats to the livelihood of Free software. They are helping Microsoft.

Microsoft is more than just Microsoft. It is an aggregation of companies all of which serve similar and sometimes overlapping agendas.

Take Black Duck Software for example. It is yet another source of FUD against the GPL and it was created by a Microsoft executive [1, 2, 3, 4]. Watch what Black Duck Software announced a few days ago (in a paid press release even):

Black Duck Software Awarded Patent for Core Technology That Automatically Resolves Software License Obligations and Conflicts

Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software, has been granted a patent protecting core technology that can automatically identify license obligations and resolve license conflicts for legally-protectable content (e.g. software, multimedia, video, audio, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know-how, business know-how, contract rights, and/or software elements, etc.).

For those who do not know, Black Duck Software is a proprietary software company (monetising the existence of FOSS as raw data to work on) that even endorses and brags about software patents that it's applying for and receiving right now. It promotes Microsoft's moves against the GPL by announcing deceiving numbers, which lead companies like Alfresco to changing their minds about the GPL.

“There are new articles that discuss the attacks on the GPL, typically quoting Monty, who is now in Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation (like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, who also removed GPL code in December).”We must make ourselves aware that anti-GPL folks are busy smearing the GPL at the moment, just like in prior years (but probably more so than before). There are new articles that discuss the attacks on the GPL, typically quoting Monty, who is now in Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation (like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, who also removed GPL code in December). The apple does not fall far from the tree and one reader of ours says that "they have escalated their FUD carefully so that their target audience is acclimated to it in steps -- first it was all just anti GPL 3.0, now a year later it is anti GPL entirely... this is how professional marketing campaigns are done. This is more organized than people want to believe."

We previously showed how attacks on the GPL had been coordinates by Microsoft front groups like ACT. ⬆