When 'Former' Microsoft Influence Lands in Free/Open Source Software

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2015-05-13 11:39:02 UTC
Modified: 2015-05-13 11:39:02 UTC

Linux Foundation Helps .NET

Sam Ramji
Photo from a Microsoft marketing site

Summary: The voices and brute-force impact of Microsoft are gradually penetrating the Free/Open Source software (FOSS) world, including the Linux Foundation

Earlier this year we wrote about Sam Ramji, Microsoft's mole inside Free/Open Source software, entering the Linux Foundation [1, 2, 3]. No lessons learned yet from Nokia and Elop?

Either way, according to some articles (see also [1,2] below), Ramji's new position (at Cloud Foundry) now facilitates Microsoft and .NET. How predictable. It didn't even take long, only months.

"GE Launches Cloud Foundry ‘Industrial Dojo,’" says one new press release, "Contributes to Open Source to Foster Continued Development of the Industrial Internet" (more coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4]), so "Microsoft and Canonical are partnering up on IoT," to quote SJVN.

This is what we have come to expect when 'former' Microsoft staff was allowed to join the Linux Foundation. Watch how an operating system (DCOS) that is backed by Microsoft's anti-Linux manager (Silverberg) is getting tied up to Microsoft right now, facilitating control over the competition (GNU/Linux guests). This is a sign of defeat, not a victory over Microsoft, and it is going to lead to more proprietary software (which DCOS is).

North Bridge, somewhat of a sidekick of Black Duck (founded by a man from Microsoft to badmouth the GPL and sell proprietary software), is doing Black Duck's marketing in Red Hat-run site, not just in Linux Foundation sites. The author says: "It’s been nine years since my firm, North Bridge, began our annual examination of trends in open source, which we conduct in conjunction with Black Duck Software."

Congratulations, Chamberlains of the world. We now have Microsoft-occupied FOSS. Microsoft tells FOSS what to think and compels FOSS to invite Microsoft in, even though Microsoft remains proprietary, attacks FOSS (even in the courtroom), bribes officials, eliminates standards etc. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

IBM Adds New Bluemix Services at Cloud Foundry Summit

IBM announced a bunch of new Bluemix services to help developers create analytics-driven cloud apps.

IBM Bluemix Welcomes Microsoft's .Net

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