Tea Party in DC

Summary: Microsoft pretends to be the voice of Open Source while fighting against the interests of Open Source with the aid of external/occasional employees like Rob Enderle

THE remarks from Microsoft's Hernán Rincón refuse to die. He was openly bashing "Open Source" [1, 2, 3, 4] and he is a senior executive in the company, which bodes not so well at all for Microsoft's pretenders.

What's the big deal? Rincón simply stated the company's policy. Unlike the rest of the company and his colleagues in America, this man was not lying about Microsoft's stance, he was only lying about what "Open Source" can and cannot achieve or why it exists.

“Rob Enderle has written an article built on his imagining that Larry Ellison "out-of-breath" and hence in Enderle's mind perhaps having health problems.”
      --Pamela Jones, GroklawIt is by no means surprising that IDG lets Microsoft employees steer its "open source" blog. Microsoft is a large source of revenue to IDG and it needs to pretend to be an Open Source authority. The person in question, Walli, also participated in some other public platforms, such as a Red Hat-run blog, opensource.com. Watch the first comment from this Microsoft employee bashing Google in a way (along with other companies, excepting his employer, Microsoft). Just how far does this Microsoft promotion go?

Microsoft need not rely on its own employees to bash Open Source and to bash companies like Google. Microsoft also pays people like Rob Enderle to go around bashing the competition. A week ago, Groklaw's Pamela Jones wrote about Oracle OpenWorld 2010: "Rob Enderle has written an article built on his imagining that Larry Ellison "out-of-breath" and hence in Enderle's mind perhaps having health problems. However, if you view the video in full, you'll notice what Enderle did not, that Ellison is out-of-breath at the very beginning only/ Probably, if I may imagine to match Mr. Enderle's efforts, because he ran to get to the stage. I'd be out of breath too, and I'm in perfect health. Ellison sounds fine to me. Enderle? Diagnosis unknown."

ECT still lets him publish nonsense like "Microsoft's Secret Plan to Take Over the World". Does ECT not know about the controversy and about his conflict of interest? He gets paid by the companies he writes about. His smearing of Oracle is by no means a surprise; it's akin to what was done to Apple (Jobs health rumours).

Groklaw also wrote about the "Open Indiana" page on Wikipedia, noting that "There was a dustup about a request -- almost as soon as this page began -- to remove it as not notable, which it obviously is. However, the decision was eventually made to keep it. The person suggesting deletion claimed to know Ellison ( and that she was in the 90s"...a member of Sun's HR Business Advisory Council. I also worked closely with Larry Ellison and designed a comprehensive image/branding package."), but the same individual made other claims that seem contradictory."

To be clear, Oracle is not worth defending (because it harms free/open source software), but to see Microsoft using Oracle to belittle free/open source software is just worth pointing out. Neither company can honestly speak for Open Source because they are both staunch supporters of the proprietary model. To work against one's own interests makes no sense, unless it's part of a stunt. ⬆