Bonum Certa Men Certa

“The 'old Microsoft' is still the 'new Microsoft', only the face of the company has changed - CEO and PR.”

Cut out or altogether drop the sweet talk, Microsoft...

“This anti-trust thing will blow over. We haven’t changed our business practices at all.”

--Bill Gates



Summary: Microsoft's claims of "love" for GNU/Linux aren't being accepted by the community, so a lot of the PR campaign falls on deaf ears (except those wishing to be fooled and further disseminate the lie, e.g. in Microsoft-friendly/-funded media companies)

THE following message was posted not too long ago at Reddit. It's more like a blog post published as a submission in the site and it is titled "Remember: Microsoft is still (and will always be) hostile to Linux and FLOSS." We thought it was worth reproducing below (without any of the comments) because it also alludes to many things we covered here before, including Comes vs Microsoft.



Will the all the "nice" PR and news of Microsoft (seemingly) getting close to Linux, it's easy to forget how Microsoft IS hostile to Linux and everything open source. Remember: All they did was get a new CEO, the company culture is still there.

All that's changed is instead of publicly hating on Linux, they now publicly love Linux, but are really still very hostile to Linux. This will never change.

Just remember the Iowa consumer case files ( http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/ ) which has a lot of internal emails from Microsoft, many of them basically state their love for all things Windows and MS and hatrid for everything else. All are in PDF format and have been unsealed (thankfully). Some even go into detail about their plotting with things like the Vista Ready program in order to trick consumers (they basically don't give a shit) etc.

Then there's Halloween docs: http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/

Again, take your pick - Get The FUD, whatever you choose. It's all there. Then there's Ballmer's "Linux is cancer" etc.

Yeah, yeah sure, I'm off my rocker, this was all years ago etc. But it's not - Microsoft HATES Linux, this will NEVER change! Again, the only thing that has change is the CEO and as a result, the PR. You'll probably find that Nadella has internally said to everyone "publicly, we LOVE Linux and FLOSS, internally it's still business as usual"; and changed the PR machine as a result.

Now I don't know what Shuttleworth and Canonical are playing at or what benefit they may get from the deal they made, perhaps more Ubuntu market share (and money). But don't let your guard down - Microsoft will ALWAYS hate Linux, even if you can't directly see it.

Do you really think Bill Gates, while no longer chairman or CEO (he still works there tho), would really let his company, his ways, his wants and direction etc all go down the toilet and have someone else come in and take it all in a new direction? No... Gates is very smart and ruthless. MUCH smarter than that. His / the "old Microsoft" dirty business ways are fully entrenched in the company. No single change of CEO will fix the ways of the "old Microsoft".

The "old Microsoft" is still the "new Microsoft", only the face of the company has changed - CEO and PR. That's it. Microsoft, if they could, would press a button and kill Linux and FLOSS over night.

Remember the "patents" they have that they will use to threaten our ways, even if not directly. Microsoft will always be hostile to Linux and free software. Remember that!


IDG's Paul Venezia has a reasonably good article (he's pro-UNIX/Linux and always was), which he published this morning at InfoWorld. To quote one bit of it: "The fact that Microsoft now supports SQL Server on Linux isn’t really a technical development -- it’s a business move. Fortunately for Microsoft, the Ballmer blinders are gone, and the company can see that Linux is the OS of choice for our cloud future, not Windows. Microsoft lost that battle a long time ago. Not surprisingly, the Azure cloud folks have taken the lead in pushing Microsoft toward supporting Linux (and other open source cloud-related technologies, including Docker, Kubernetes, and various NoSQL databases)."

"Microsoft isn't loving or embracing GNU/Linux, except in the E.E.E. sense (remember what the first E stands for)."A roundup by Jim Lynch of IDG (also InfoWorld) later said (citing the above) that "Microsoft has recently made some moves toward accepting Linux in a prominent way, but has the company taken too long to do this? One writer at InfoWorld thinks Microsoft's embrace of Linux might be far too little, and far too late."

As we explained a day ago, there's just a lot of rhetoric and provocative lying. Microsoft isn't loving or embracing GNU/Linux, except in the E.E.E. sense (remember what the first E stands for).

Speaking of E.E.E., CSO (IDG) reposts and then expands on Maria Korolov’s Black Duck marketing FUD against FOSS by saying in the language of rhetoric (right there in the headline!) that there's something wrong with "open source code quality". Black Duck (it came from a Microsoft marketing guy) is advertised as follows:

As more open source software is created, the number of vulnerabilities goes up as well. Black Duck Software is currently tracking 1.5 million open source projects.

Open source vulnerabilities can be particularly dangerous, according to Black Ducks' Vice President of Security Strategy Mike Pittenger. Open source software can be ubiquitous, he said, and typically has no process where patches are automatically pushed out to users.


Black Duck is somewhat similar to Xamarin in the sense that it acts a little bit like a Microsoft proxy. It would not be possible without the "embrace" (as in E.E.E.) of FOSS. Black Duck is a proprietary software company which merely exploits FOSS for marketing. See the long message at the top and realise that these tactics aren't entirely new. Why make the same errors all over again? Learn from history.

"Don’t encourage new, cross-platform Java classes, especially don’t help get great Win 32 implementations written/deployed. [...] Do encourage fragmentation of the Java classlib space."

--Ben Slivka, Microsoft

Recent Techrights' Posts

Sanctions Cause Fragmentation in Software
some Chinese Linux developers are already subjected to restrictions similar to Russians'
The Internet is Failing to Protect Democratic Processes and Human Knowledge
Amplifying lies, rewarding plagiarists
Links 05/11/2024: Criminal Referrals Regarding Patent Trolls and Disinformation About the Election Process (Already)
Links for the day
Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
 
[Meme] Announcing "Results" Before Everyone Even "Played"
There is a "tech" angle to otherwise political news
US Polls Close in One Minute (Social Control Media Does Not Care, Will Not Wait)
US election results will be known in about 2 days
Concentration and Centralisation Versus Aggregation or Syndication
KDE has a history of burying old sites
Social Control Media, Even Hours Before Polls Have Closed
Has social control media controlled by CPC (TikTok) and the Trumpmobile guy (Musk's "X") done enough to convince people not to even vote (based on presumptive "results", presented a long time before all polls have closed)?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 05, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 05, 2024
Wayland Pains in Community-Led Distros of GNU/Linux
Few people and companies use Wayland; there's hardly any technical or practical reason to choose it
IBM Still Conflating Microsoft With 'Security'
As a meme
Web Failing With Slop, Even in 'Linux' Sites (LLM Spam)
Add SEO prompting to the mix and the Web becomes a pool of slop, not knowledge
[Meme] State of the World Wide Web and Online Journalism
Technically a failure (DRM) and cannot even get basic things right
Trump's signature policy, building a wall, copied from Irish-Australian student politician
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linus Torvalds' self-deprecating LKML CoC mail linked to Hitler's first writing: Gemlich letter
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] Turning 18 in One Day
just one more day
Birthday Tomorrow
Many cakes and drinks are ready; we're one day away now
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: 'App' Needed for Parking, NNCP, Gomphotherium
Links for the day
How Voting Does Not Work
You cannot vote from an "app"
Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
Links for the day
[Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
"OK, my critics are 'spam'"
Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
Canonical is worth shunning
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day
Microsoft Lost Nearly Half of Its 'Cash Reserves' This Past Year
Is Microsoft (MSFT) the next Intel (INTC)?
The Year Isn't Over Yet, There Will be More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs
Nowadays Microsoft just tries to conflate/equate its energy waste with "value"
The Corporate Media Blasted Bitcoin for Destroying the Planet and Must Do the Same to Incite the Public Against the 'Great Rigging of Wall Street' (Under the Guise of "AI", the Latest Gold Rush)
"AI" is the next "metaverse" (trailing by a few months)
[Video] Richard Stallman is Back to Halo and Gown (in Peru) With 2+ Hours of a Public Talk
The globetrotting Richard Stallman gave many talks at the end of last month
Going Strong Against the Wind
the abuse serves to emphasise or affirm the importance of what we do
Links 04/11/2024: Squashing More Software Patents and Taiwan at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2024: Typing vs Writing and a Smol (Net) Pub
Links for the day
Links 04/11/2024: LibreOffice Had Adopted PeerTube, "Hey Hi" Hype is a Threat to the Energy Grids (Worse Than Fake-Coins)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Telescreens With Microphone
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Shout-out to Christine From FOSSForce
Who noticed our short story
Not Boycotting Apple (Yet)?
"Apple Forces The Signing Of Applications In MacOS Sequoia 15.1"
statCounter This Month: Android Has Nearly Become Twice as Big as Windows
If it happened, it would be an unprecedented milestone
Why Technical Sites Need Not Make Political Recommendations or Endorsements
Except perhaps when it's for some purely technical role, e.g. FCC chief
[Meme] Apple Freedom
Freedom is... the ability to purchase as many 'i' things as you want
Apple's MacOS Shows Us the Vision of Computing That GAFAM Has for Us (Digital Prisons)
Freedom means "we the people" should be in control, not people being controlled by corporations (contemporary slaveowners)
"Active" as in One URL, One Emoji, and 4 Words in One Week
Diversity community in Fedora
Apple Vision Pro Has Failed, Just Like "Metaverse"
Vision Pro lacks software
Things That Can Improve Election Integrity
the first two relate to "tech"
Rigging Elections is Difficult, Cheating a Little is Not
Avoid social control media, it is the biggest rigger of all
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
On throwing stones in a glass house
Our Stance on Electronic (or Digital) Voting Machines
The simple activity of voting and counting ballots does not require thousands of complex machines with hundreds of millions of transistors and hundreds of millions of lines of code
Microsoft and "Retrospective Re-writing of History..."
in YouTube anyone can make stuff up (as one goes along)
This Coming Week
Go exercise your right to vote
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 03, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 03, 2024
Reddit is (Still) Lying and Faking
Don't fall for this phony idea that the above sites are grassroots or edgy; they're not
GNU/Linux Users Are Not Cheaters
The bottom line is, most cheaters use Windows
Links 04/11/2024: FCC, Broadband Industry Spar Over Net Neutrality; Software Patent Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Official MyGemini.Space Announcement
Links for the day