Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Obeys Neither Open Standards Nor Open Source Software Doctrine

Image: stuffing-capable ISO



Summary: Microsoft is preaching about standards and open source again, having just had managers vilify both (sometimes resorting to outright corruption); IE9 another new example of harming Web standards and snubbing Open Source

IDG's pseudo-open source blog has a new hit today. It's Microsoft's Walli [1, 2] again and he wants to educate us dumb communists, explaining to us what "Open Source" really means. "Please Don’t Confuse Standards with Open Source Software" says his headline and one can imagine the rest of those Microsoft talking points. Microsoft loves proprietary software development methods and when it comes to standards, it loves labeling its own proprietary APIs/protocols "standards" (recall what Microsoft did to ISO).



"They call it open source for marketing purposes," explained to us gnufreex a couple of hours ago, "but they are doing business by GNU manifesto." [update 18/9/2010: gnufreex asked to emphasise he referred to Red Hat here]

As we showed earlier today, Microsoft pretty much admits that it hates Open Source (not just Free software). It's good that the technology press has been paying attention to it. "Microsoft slags off Open Sauce" says the headline from TechEye:

While software giant Microsoft has been trying to tell the world plus dog that it really loves Open Sauce, there are signs that some company executives did not get the memo.

Hernan Rincon, president of Microsoft Latin America, has been hitting the press claiming that "open" really is a way of saying "incompetent":

He claimed when software companies cannot compete they are declaring their product to be "open". This apparently "masks incompetence".

"When convenient, the companies say they are open and they they use it for your own benefit, " he added in our Babelfish translator.


It's not just Open Source that Microsoft is clearly hostile towards (to the point of violating licences repeatedly after exploitation). At Microsoft there is still hostility towards the Web, with obvious examples like Silverlight (very anti-Web standards) and even Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), which Microsoft boosters say will fracture of the Web. We wrote about the subject earlier today and Swapnil Bhartiya says more by claiming that IE9 is a Chrome and Firefox "rip-off" (his own headline).

The browser seems to an obese boy, unlike lean Chrome and Firefox. The setup file itself was twice the file size of Mozilla Firefox 4.

Firefox was smaller in size (10MB), almost half the size of IE9. It installed fast and was up and running while IE was still installing.

Typical of Microsoft's flint-stone age approach, you have to 're-start' your machine in order for IE 9 to work. Doesn't matter how much important work you are doing, you have to restart.


IE9 is bad for other reasons [1, 2, 3] and no component of it is available for code audit, let alone for sharing. Just about any other Web browser -- Opera and Safari included -- has at least something that's Free software inside it. Microsoft loves Open Source? Don't bet on it [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Google Spreading Misinformation and Lies
Google is in the propaganda business
New Video Report About Microsoft Cancelling Multi-Billion Dollar Projects
direct link to the video
Microsoft is Already Laying Off Lots of Contractors
cost-cutting at Microsoft takes a new "edge"
Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
 
Links 29/04/2025: Water Scarcity, LLM Slop Backfiring Again in Legal Documents
Links for the day
statCounter: GNU/Linux Adoption Surging in Switzerland, Windows at All-time Low
What happened?
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Free Speech and Perfectionism in Design
Links for the day
What Fake News Looks Like (IBM)
IBM told a lie. The media then just blindly repeated this lie.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, April 28, 2025
China is Already Culling GAFAM (Not Just Microsoft Windows)
OS monoculture or "OS hegemony" may be coming to an end
The "Telephone Operating System in the Vatican" is 95 Years Old, Vatican Moved to GNU/Linux
Maybe Microsoft is down to zero already
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025