Bonum Certa Men Certa

Growing Awareness of Microsoft's Campaign Against Linux, Based on Poor Quality Software Patents and Secret Settlements

Techrights at Reddit



Summary: Articles that we published about the past week's Microsoft shakedowns (targeting Linux with software patents) are receiving unprecedented traffic levels

TECHRIGHTS is gratified to see that shortly after writing 3 articles about Microsoft's latest anti-Linux patent deals [1, 2, 3] there is a Web-wide debate about it, and it extended far beyond the GNU/Linux world. The various threads about it are approaching 1,000 comments in all sorts of sites (hard to keep up with it all) and people express their justified anger at Microsoft.



"The various threads about it are approaching 1,000 comments in all sorts of sites (hard to keep up with it all) and people express their justified anger at Microsoft."Yesterday we noticed this a angle getting press coverage in Germany. To quote: "Microsoft hat zwei Patentabkommen geschlossen, die sich auf Technologien beziehen, die in Linux und Android verwendet werden. Darauf weist Roy Schestowitz vom Techrights-Blog in einem Beitrag hin. Zwar versuche Microsoft derzeit, sich als besonders Linux-freundlich zu inszenieren, so Schestowitz, an der Praxis der Geltendmachung von Patentrechten gegenüber Linux und Android habe sich aber nichts geändert."

An English-speaking news site wrote yesterday that "not all strands of the open source community are welcoming the open source-Microsoft rapprochement. Christine Hall at FOSS Force filed an analysis this week in which she wrote that Microsoft's moves "are based solely on greed" and represent a "one-way street" to drive more business for Microsoft.

"Make a lot of money without lifting a finger, basically just sending a flow of patent applications, at the cost of millions, in order to earn billions from companies that actually make things""Similarly, Roy Schestowitz, one of the staunchest of the younger new generation of open source acolytes, writes that Microsoft has "blackmailed Linux."

"At first glance, criticisms like these may seem merely to reflect deep-seated misgivings toward Microsoft on the part of open source fans who represent the more ideological part of the open source community. It would be easy to write them off as radical viewpoints with little mainstream significance."

For those who don't know enough about the controversy, the gist of it is that Microsoft wishes to:



"It’s a scorpion or a snake in the parable sense."Yesterday we mentioned Simon Phipps' IDG article about this. Shortly afterwards, accompanying his IDG article (maybe stating what's not suitable for publication there) Phipps released this piece in his personal blog and said: "I went to the Microsoft press release page looking for the news about Linux support for SQL Server and joining Eclipse. Much to my surprise, there was nothing there. But there was something else; a press release celebrating the signing of another Linux user into Microsoft’s patent licensing regime and another celebrating an Android patent win. Nothing about SQL Server, Eclipse or any other positive open source engagement.

"I’ll set aside the issues of the validity of software patents, or of the applicability of Microsoft’s portfolio of them to Linux, although both have real and significant issues. The surprise arises from my own experiences at Sun."

This came after I had exchanged some words with Phipps, who concluded with: "That’s why I’ve written in InfoWorld a call for Microsoft to join OIN. Please join me in answering every Microsoft announcement related to open source with “But have they joined OIN yet?” until they do."

They probably never will. It's not in their nature. It's a scorpion or a snake in the parable sense.

Earlier today, linking to a pro-Microsoft site, we noticed this Reddit post titled “Raining on the Parade: Microsoft shakes down company over Linux infringing patents” (a lot of the media overlooked this at the time because of plenty of distraction). There are now nearly a dozen Reddit posts linking to Techrights in relation to this topic (here is just one of them). Even Soylent News covered this earlier today by taking stock of Phipps' article and ours:

Simon Phipps comments on Microsoft's latest antics in regards to open source. Specifically, while the public is distracted by show, Microsoft is shaking down the Android/Linux and GNU/Linux communities for patent licenses.

Phipps asserts that it’s time for them to put up or shut up by either joining the OIN or admitting that they can’t be trusted in the open source community they now claim to love.

Roy Schestowitz has some harsher words on the same topic, noting that the media is ignoring malicious actions in favor of paying attention to the public relations campaign.

While the OIN cannot protect against NPE's aka patent trolls, it is created for just this kind of situation and choosing to join -- or not -- sends a very clear message about their intentions towards the community.


"We hope that our few articles on the topic of Microsoft and GNU/Linux will be enough to leave a lot of people with sobering balance and a broader perspective on things."There are many comments in there, including: "Simon has written more over at his personal blog. He asks people to join him in answering every M$ announcement related to open source with “But have they joined OIN yet? [webmink.com]” until they actually do. M$ can’t expect to carry on patent shakedowns and also be respected as an open source peer.

"Maybe joining OIN would work, but I'd rather seen M$ fold financially and their remaining assets seized. Nothing they have is needed or even advantageous to open source or free software. The world is better off without them. Certainly technology would be much further advanced. The decades of damage they have done to the software industry in general cannot be undone quickly or easily, even if they were to start in earnest, which they haven't. But that complaint aside, I agree with Simon. The only way they can show that they are there to work with open source rather than against it would be to join the OIN."

"This leads people closer to the truth."There are currently close to 800 comments in Reddit about Techrights' latest article (I cannot recall ever attracting this many comments for one single article). FOSS Force has just said: "Although Microsoft mainly succeeded in its attempts to hijack the FOSS news scene this week by spreading open source love — better than spreading FUD, I guess — there was plenty of FOSS news happening away from the Redmond campus. Even Microsoft with all its billions, it seems, isn’t large enough to monopolize all of the news in the big, wide and wonderful world of FOSS."

We hope that our few articles on the topic of Microsoft and GNU/Linux will be enough to leave a lot of people with sobering balance and a broader perspective on things. Microsoft is not a friend and we estimate that nearly a million people have come across our posts regarding Microsoft's latest patent bullying. This leads people closer to the truth.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/09/2023: Preparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and 9.3 Beta
Links for the day
We Need to Liberate the Client Side and Userspace Too
Lots of work remains to be done
Recent IRC Logs (Since Site Upgrade)
better late than never
Techrights Videos Will be Back Soon
We want do publish video without any of the underlying complexity and this means changing some code
Microsoft is Faking Its Financial Performance, Buying Companies Helps Perpetuate the Big Lies (or Pass the Debt Around)
Our guess is that Microsoft will keep pretending to be huge, even as the market share of Windows (and other things) continues to decrease
Techrights Will Tell the Story (Until Next Year!) of How Since 2022 It Has Been Under a Coordinated Attack by a Horde of Vandals and Nutcases
People like these belong in handcuffs and behind bars (sometimes they are) and our readers still deserve to know the full story. It's a cautionary tale for other groups and sites
Why It Became Essential to Split GNU/Linux Stories from the Rest
These sites aren't babies anymore. In terms of age, they're already adults.
Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy - A Techrights Perspective
If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed
Google (and the Likes Of It) Will Cause Catastrophic Information Loss Rather Than Organise the World's Information
Informational and cultural losses due to technological plunder
Links 28/09/2023: GNOME 45 Release Party, 'Smart' Homes Orphaned
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
Xen, breaches, and more
GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100
Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32
Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now
We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118
Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
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IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
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