Glorified job titles don't make minds full of glory

"In honor of the event, Pam Edstrom, who had since left Microsoft to cofound her own agency, Waggener Edstrom, and handle Microsoft's PR from the outside, sponsored a "Windows Roast." Gathered at the Alexis Park Resort in Las Vegas, Gates and Ballmer made fun of themselves and not so subtly apologized for the Windows delays. "To Dream the Impossible Dream" was the theme song playing in the background. With three hundred analysts and members of the press invited to these festivities where Gates and Ballmer let it all hang out, it was another coup for "Gates's Keeper." Gates joked that Ballmer had insisted, " 'We just gotta cut features.' He came up with this idea that we could rename this thing Microsoft Window—and we would have shipped that thing a long time ago."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by Pam's daughter

"Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, "he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors' technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: People with exaggerated roles (exaggerated by corporate media and corporations that control them) distort public perceptions about their clients; they're in effect just elevated marketing or Public Relations (PR) operatives

MANY PR PEOPLE (rewriting if not writing press releases) like to call themselves "journalists"; pundits call themselves "analysts" or "consultants" (myth of professionalism) and at the Linux Foundation they've given the site Linux.com (after two decades of respectable existence) to a self-described "filmmaker" who never made a film, so you already know that you deal with phonies... (the chief of the Linux Foundation itself is also not qualified for that job).

So a thing called Linux Foundation and a site called Linux.com are both run by people who don't even use Linux. So what? So what if the latter posts openwashing Microsoft propaganda(yesterday) in his personal site and the Foundation's as well? So what? A site called Linux.com is now linking to Microsoft.com because Microsoft a client of Zemlin. It's all about money. Pure business, so don't call it 'sellout'; they don't sell themselves out, they just sell out many thousands of people who actually developed this thing called "Linux" (which they speak about but don't use!).

"Until or unless we recognise the threat this sort of greed poses to Software Freedom -- and unless we shun the culprits -- things will only get worse for all of us (except those of us who opt for defection)."This isn't another rant, however, about the so-called 'Linux' Foundation. It's about the systemic sellout which to the sellouts is merely a "business model". Here's a new example from yesterday: Stephen O'Grady of Redmonk keeps promoting the same old Microsoft lies because Microsoft pays them (and has done so for like a decade!). Sellout does pay off. And we have this kind of problem. That's where the money is: helping proprietary software giants devour the competition.

Until or unless we recognise the threat this sort of greed poses to Software Freedom -- and unless we shun the culprits -- things will only get worse for all of us (except those of us who opt for defection). ⬆