Bonum Certa Men Certa

GPL is Declining According to Friends of Microsoft

Business



Summary: A closer look at those who disparage the GPL and where they come from

AS MY PH.D. is associated with statistics, I believe that I have the critical skills necessary to show, even without auditing the data, when methods are selected to fraudulently show outcomes that are false. When it comes to firms with origins at Microsoft, there is no data available. They keep it to themselves and they probably know why. While trying to gain power as spokespeople for FOSS, these firms do everything the proprietary way, even with software patents.



"Be sceptical of what you read regarding software licences. There is a war for people's perception and people with media clout are being paid to change these perceptions."On a couple of occasions this week we wrote about the latest numbers from Black Duck. One of the participants in this was funded by Microsoft. The other actually has Microsoft roots and it is this firm which gets challenged by Free software defenders because it "doesn't give any information on how the three hundred new sites [for example get] added" (this included Microsoft sites at the time, as we mentioned repeatedly [1, 2] because Microsoft had announced a special partnership). The most problematic repository at the centre of all of this (so-called 'analysts' typically point at it) is maintained privately by Black Duck, which was founded by Mr. Levin and "in the early 1990s, Levin was a marketing manager at Microsoft," say many reports like this one. Microsoft marketing, eh? We have a wiki page about the subject that we find so disturbing as firms like these discourage the use of copyleft licences. Microsoft does not like the GPL and it says that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

Given that SourceForge erroneously marked a GPL-licensed project of mine as Public Domain (I found this out by accident earlier today as I begin working on another FOSS project), there is a lot of room for bias and error. It is not surprising that analysts who are paid by Microsoft try to tell us that the GPL is declining. OpenLogic is also part of those messengers. It is headed by a guy from Microsoft. Be sceptical of what you read regarding software licences. There is a war for people's perception and people with media clout are being paid to change these perceptions. By selecting methods and data in a proprietary way one can show anything and 'prove' anything (assuming the peers are gullible).

"Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 189 Out of 200: A Terrible Idea to Condemn Projects for Using Slop 'Code' When Your Own Employer Does This (and Profits From Every Company Doing So) or to Call Distros 'Not Secure' While You Advance Back Doors
"I don’t want a back door. I want a front door."
Slop Ruins Development and Reverse Engineering, It Rewards Retarded "Slop Kiddies" (to Quote Andy ‘TheFlow0’ Nguyen)
Slop is just a fatal cancer that kills the body, then dies with the body it killed
 
Links 19/09/2026: "OpenAI and Microsoft Knew They Were Starting a ‘Doom Loop’ [of Mass Plagiarism 'Normalised' by Brute Force] for the web", Calling It "Hey Hi"
Links for the day
8 Series Going on at the Moment in Techrights
4 series about SLAPPs and related matters
Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 4 - Outsourcing to Microsoft, Approaching 10 Gigabytes
Can we blame Microsoft for those DDoS attacks? Partly.
Software Freedom Day 2026 is Today, Week-long Celebration in Brazil
In Brazil, Clownflare reckons about 1 in 20 laptops/desktops might use GNU/Linux already
Red Hat Lost 2,000 Staff (Net Loss)
Maybe by year's end it'll be a 20% reduction
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 18, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, September 18, 2026
Gemini Links 18/09/2026: Setting Goals, Tiredness, and Admissions From LLM Purveyors It Was All Along About Building Plagiarism Engines Sold as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2026: Microsoft Boasted Slop is Just Copyright Infringement/Plagiarism, Floods in Europe
Links for the day
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Mailing Lists Are Still Better Than Discord, Slack, and Discourse
Discourse is "open" "bossware"
Links 18/09/2026: Disgust Over LLMs and Why "Agents" (Bots) Are Nothing More Than "Spam"
Links for the day
Software Freedom Day is Tomorrow
events coming
Illegal and Unconstitutional Tribunal That SLAPPs Critics Does the Illegal and Unconstitutional: It "Rubberstamps Software Patents"
This is not a legal system. This is mafia.
Privilege in 'Linux' Foundation (Double Standards) and What the FSF Should Avoid Doing
If RMS can talk about politics, others too should be able to talk about politics
Seems Like Many Microsoft Layoffs Are Going On Right Now (Forever Layoffs)
Like IBM, Microsoft hopes shareholders will not know of morale and financial problems
More Threats From the Person of Restricted Boot Infamy
Remember this is the man who is the principal purveyor of restricted boot and who landed restricted boot in Linux
Snooping EPO Management, Sniffing Up Every Staff Action
It this a problem for whistleblowers? Of course.
Don't Do That
Options do exist. People should exercise freedom.
Iran Has Debunked GAFAM and Cloud Computing as Safety of Data
Cloud of smoke?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 17, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, September 17, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 188 Out of 200: Used, Then Discarded, by Microsoft (as We Predicted All Along, It's Always Like That)
The longer they carry on with it, the more scandalous this will get
Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 3 - Besieged by LLM Bots, Now Hiding Behind a Wall of JavaScript
The series began 3 days ago
Gemini Links 18/09/2026: Modern Linguistic, Boxing, Turning 40, and Solar MiniServer
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2026: Studio Closures and Negative Rumours About Microsoft XBox Again
Links for the day
What's Wrong with Microsoft's GitHub, New Article by Jacob Bachmeyer and Richard Stallman
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
EBay is Going to Die Soon
Users will flee
Red Hat PIPs. The Only Question is, How Many?
Insiders know what's coming soon
This Week The Register MS Published a Page With "AI" 34 Times in It and It Was, as Usual, Paid SPAM!
Does The Register MS understand that it is doing harm to its audience (for temporary gains)?
43rd Anniversary of the GNU Project Announcement
Coming soon
General Assembly (Meeting of All Staff) Starts in Hour Ago to Discuss Strikes at Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO), Strikes to Last Until End of 2026 (If Not Further)
The media absolutely does not cover this and that's intentional
SLAPP Censorship - Part 187 Out of 200: Reminding Ourselves of the Great Damage Garrett Did to Linux (for Microsoft)
he rejects freedom
Cancel Culture is a Cancer That Harms Democracy, Justice, and Science. It's Designed to Help Corporations Vanish Their Critics.
"Codes of Conduct" sounds benign; in practice, however, it is not
Links 17/09/2026: Class Action Lawsuit Over GAFAM's "NameTag" and Automattic Hides What It Did to CEO Mullenweg (or Why)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2026: Google Signals the End, ROOPHLOCH Coverage, EBay Uses Offensive Bots to Falsely Accuse Users of Stuff
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 16, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 16, 2026