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07.15.09

Boycott Novell Has New Subscriber

Posted in Boycott Novell, Marketing, Microsoft, Site News at 1:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft TE Jonathan Wong keeps an eye on Boycott Novell

THE following has just shown up as a trackback.

johnathan-wong

It’s our ‘special friend’, a professional Microsoft AstroTurfer. Got to keep that “perception management” going [1, 2].

Leaked Microsoft Slides (2003): How to Win Against GNU/Linux

Posted in Antitrust, Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 11:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft’s recognition of the GNU/Linux threat as shown in its internal, confidential presentations

WE have mountains of antitrust exhibits to show — material that never reached any public attention because Microsoft settles quickly and buries evidence as part of the settlements. Today we deal with Comes vs. Microsoft Exhibit px07378 (2003) [PDF], from which wallclimber has managed to extract and reconstruct the main slides (high-resolution PNGs below). She could not salvage the entire text, but it was more than workable.

Internal documentation (intelligence) such as this proves truly valuable because it shows just how afraid Microsoft is of GNU/Linux, which Bill Gates calls the most potent competitor in operating systems. Apple is still a niche which targets mostly rich people, so surveys in developed countries alone do not tell the truth. In fact, in a recent presentation Steve Ballmer showed that globally, on the desktop, GNU/Linux market share is said to have exceeded Apple’s.

There are many interesting portions to show in this latest exhibit, but here is some good material on GNU/Linux. From 2003 “IMPERATIVES” for example (highlight in red is ours):

FY 03 IMPERATIVES

* Drive Revenue & XP Excitement
- Promote XP Software, Establish Products, Push to Professional+, Win Emerging
* Turn the corner on Longhorn
- Builds, alignment, execution
* Earn the Trust of Our Customers, Partners, & Government
- Community, closing the loop, compliance with SRPFJ
* Win against Linux
- Government, education, emerging
* Invest in the Ecosystem
- Metrics, roadmap, leadership
* Develop People & Organization
- Hires, communication, cross group, manager span, training

Challenges & Discussion
* Winning Against Linux: government, education, enterprise, embedded
* SRPFJ: OEMs hiding our innovations; Work to deliver, & comply
* Dry spell coming in FY04 – revenue, annuity, competition
* Emerging markets plan – Linux, other OSs, and piracy: ideas welcome
* Improving sick ecosystem – quality, innovation, profit
* Product segmentation – how many “premiums”?
* Finding the right balance on legacy support
* Making customer trust/connection a part of the culture
* Piracy: How to make progress (and yet balance with Linux)

In the part about “COMPETITION”, GNU/Linux comes before Apple and they use the TCO lie to fight against GNU/Linux.

COMPETITION
Linux: Win in edu/gov’t/emerging, prove lower TCO
Apple: Partner w/ISVs/IHVs on scenarios, win digital media reviews/leadership
Real: Maintain lead, broader/profitable ecosystem

A lot about media, DRM and also Palladium (Trusted Platform Module) is included in the full exhibit, which can be read as PDF or plain text below. A few slides were not reconstructed due to reading difficulties (the text is sometimes illegible due to scale, so reference to the original is better than a deficient translation).


Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px07378, as text


Read the rest of this entry »

So Many Trolls, So Little GNU/Linux Users…

Posted in Apple, Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Site News, Windows at 8:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Carole Bartz: puppet

Summary: Sock-puppetry and trolling match the stereotype

THINGS are starting to heat up, which means we must have hit some sensitive spot/s. Is it the list of Microsoft AstroTurfers? Or is it Microsoft Moonlight?

It doesn’t matter.

Anyway, for those who may be wondering, the Internet trolls are mostly Windows users (HTTP headers say so), so unless they just fake being “Windows” users, a lot of this trolling can be nicely categorised. Some Windows users even go under names like “Sabayon User” or “Gentoo User” because it makes them seem more credible. But they are Windows users, not GNU/Linux users. David “Lefty” Schlesinger, for example, is a Mac user.

Those very same people are systematically gaming the comment ratings and then make statement about those ratings. It is similar to Microsoft ploys where they got caught rigging polls against Java and against GNU/Linux. We have access to the logs, so we know exactly what’s going on.

List of Microsoft “Technical Evangelists” (Lead AstroTurfers)

Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 6:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. [...] by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this?”

Microsoft's chief evangelist

Summary: The beginning of a list which maps those in Microsoft who are TEs

THE following is a list of Microsoft Technical Evangelists, whose role is described in presentations such as this one. Here is an example profile of a Technical Evangelist (TE) and an example of activities, which we hope to assign to different people that are listed below in order to more effectively track their behaviour on the Web. The behaviour is usually unethical and potentially illegal, so vigilance may hopefully help improve this. We also maintain a large list of Gates- and Microsoft-hired lobbyists in the United States.

Microsoft’s TEs include:

Anand Iyer, Developer Evangelist, Northern California

Brian Hitney, Developer Evangelist, North Carolina, South Carolina

Chris Bowen, Developer Evangelist, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Bob Familiar, Architect Evangelist, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Peter Laudati, Developer Evangelist, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut

Bill Zack, Architect Evangelist, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut

Chris Koenig, Developer Evangelist, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Asli Bilgin, Developer Evangelist, New York

Allan da Costa Pinto, Developer Evangelist, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

Curt Devlin, Architect Evangelist, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont

Danilo (Dani) Diaz, Developer Evangelist, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey

G. Andrew Duthie, Developer Evangelist, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

Lindsay Rutter, Developer Evangelist, Pennsylvania, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

Zhiming Xue, Architect Evangelist, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania

Dave Bost, Developer Evangelist, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin

Dave Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

David Solivan, Architect Evangelist, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey

Doug Turnure, Developer Evangelist, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi

Glen Gordon, Developer Evangelist, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina

Russ Fustino, Developer Evangelist, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi

Chad Brooks, Architect Evangelist, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina

Joe Healy, Developer Evangelist, Florida

Joe Rubino, Architect Evangelist, New Jersey, New York

Jeff Brand, Developer Evangelist, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Michael Benkovich, Developer Evangelist, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Jeff Barnes, Architect Evangelist, Florida

Ken Jones, Architect Evangelist, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina

Rob Bagby, Developer Evangelist, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

Woody Pewitt, Developer Evangelist, Southern California, Hawaii

Lynn Langit, Developer Evangelist, Southern California, Hawaii

David Chou, Architect Evangelist, Southern California, Hawaii

Hong Choing, Architect Evangelist, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware

Joe Cleaver, Platform Strategy Advisor, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware

John McClelland, Partner Evangelist, Alabama, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia

Sean Seibel, User Experience Evangelist, New York

Kevin Boyle, Platform Strategy Advisor, Southern California, Hawaii

Jason Mauer, Developer Evangelist, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California

Mithun Dhar, Developer Evangelist, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho

Sam Chenaur, Architect Evangelist, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho

Joe Shirey, Architect Evangelist, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

Dan Willis, Platform Strategy Advisor, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

John Stame, Platform Strategy Advisor, Northern California

Scott Kerfoot, Director of Strategy – West Region, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Southern California, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

Bruno Terkaly, California

Will Tschumy, User Experience Evangelist, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Southern California, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

Clint Edmonson, Architect Evangelist, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota

Jeff Blankenburg, Developer Evangelist, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan

Jennifer Marsman, Developer Evangelist, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan

Bill Steele, Developer Evangelist, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana

Ron Cundiff, Developer Evangelist, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee

Josh Holmes, RIA Architect Evangelist, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota

Larry Clarkin, Architect Evangelist, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana

J Sawyer, Developer Evangelist, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Zain Naboulsi, Developer Evangelist, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas

Phil Wheat, Architect Evangelist, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Denny Boynton, Architect Evangelist, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota

Jon Box, Architect Evangelist, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio

Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota

Brian Gorbett, Developer Evangelist, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois

Brian H. Prince, Architect Evangelist, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee

Charles Sterling, Community Lead, Washington

Brian Johnson, Developer Evangelist, Florida

Joel Reyes, Developer Evangelist, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Marc Schweigert, Developer Evangelist, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Robert Shelton, Jr., Developer Evangelist, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

“It could be argued that Microsoft’s unethical Technology Evangelism (TE) practices are “old news”—i.e., that Microsoft stopped using these questionable TE practices long ago. This is very unlikely to be the case, for at least three reasons.”

James Plamondon, former Microsoft shill (aka ‘Technology Evangelist’)

Eye on Microsoft: Attacks on Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer

Posted in Microsoft, OpenOffice, Security, Windows at 6:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Internet icons

Summary: A self-explanatory set of news articles

Microsoft delivers 9 patches, but leaves one hole open (so typical)

The patches fix two bugs presently being used by hackers, but a third bug remains unaddressed

Microsoft Office users attacked by cybercriminals

Microsoft Corp warned that cybercriminals have attacked users of its Office software for Windows PCs, exploiting a programing flaw that the software giant has yet to repair.

The world’s largest software maker issued the warning on Tuesday as it released patches to address nine other security holes in its software.

Second unpatched ActiveX bug hits IE

Scallywags are using an unpatched vulnerability in an ActiveX component to distribute malware, Microsoft warned on Monday. The development adds to already pressing unresolved Internet Explorer security bug woes.

No patch is available for the Office Web Components ActiveX security hole, although there are workarounds which can be automated for enterprise rollouts. The flawed component is used by IE to display Excel spreadsheets, greatly increasing the scope for mischief. Win XP and Win 2003 systems are particularly at risk, while the additional security controls in Vista cover Microsoft’s modesty.

Microsoft Keeps Beating a Dead Browser

The question is why? If the destination is what matters, why does Microsoft care so deeply what browser people use to get there? Maybe this: Unless Bing is the browser’s default search engine, no one will go there after the novelty wears off. That’s probably enough to make anyone at Microsoft lose their lunch.

US State Dept. workers beg Clinton for Firefox

US State Department workers have begged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to let them use Firefox.

“Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox?” worker bee Jim Finkle asked Clinton during Friday’s State Department town hall meeting.

“I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program.”

Presumably, the State Department is using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. And we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still mired in the eight-year-old IE6 [...]

ASUS — Like Microsoft — Uses ‘Contests’ to Conceal AstroTurfing (Blog Posts in Exchange for Incentives)

Posted in Deception, Finance, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft at 5:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Cash rules everything around me

Summary: ASUS uses prizes to generate buzz for its products all across the blogosphere

AS we showed before — using hard evidence — Microsoft had mastered the art of generating a lot of positive coverage using the excuse that it's a "competition". Carphone Warehouse takes the illegal route probably because it does not understand those loopholes Microsoft is exploiting (Microsoft is to a great degree a marketing company that polices perception). The PR plot is simple: bring together a bunch of contestants, urge them to promote you or your products on the Web, and the one who sucks up the most will receive an award. The raw outcome is attractive: for the mere cost of an award (usually monetary prize) the Web will get filled with favourable posts from a large bunch of people who are jumping for dollars. Most wannabe winners will not even be compensated for their “side-effect AstroTurfing”.

As we showed a few months ago, Microsoft is still using this method not only to poison the blogosphere but also to poison social networks, including sites like Slashdot and Digg. We have just found out that ASUS is doing the same thing after selling out to Microsoft and then assisting a Slog against GNU/Linux [1, 2].

A while back, Asus decided it would save itself ooodles of cash on marketing and advertising by picking six people from the ranks of the unwashed masses and asking them to ‘blog’ about certain products they’d been given for review. Readers, said Asus, would be able to vote for their favorite blogger and the winner of the popular vote would be able to keep their Asus review kit. But alas, it wasn’t to be.

Readers, in their naive ignorance, voted for a particularly honest – read, not entirely Asus kissing – blogger by the name of Gavyn Britton, a choice Asus wasn’t so keen on. So the Taiwanese computer maker decided to change the rules of the competition.

Amazing.

With ASUS in the “dark side”, GNU/Linux remains a strong player and contender in sub-notebooks, especially thanks to ARM. To say a word about Microsoft’s attempt to rewrite sub-notebooks history and issue slurs against Chrome OS, it is worth adding that Steve Ballmer could not help adding a slur of his own. He publicly mocked Chrome OS yesterday (or the day before that).

“Microsoft only ever responds to competing products that it is really worried about because it gives those products visibility.”This is a positive sign. Microsoft only ever responds to competing products that it is really worried about because it gives those products visibility. Only if there is no other choice will Microsoft mention them.

We now know almost for a fact that not only the Enderle, Yankee, and Gartner Groups have thrown FUD on behalf of Microsoft; it escalated to the CEO of Microsoft, so Chrome OS must be pretty serious. Ballmer publicly mocked Android last year and right now Android is stealing market share from Windows Mobile, whose presence out there is seemingly diminishing and market potential eroding. Microsoft pondered buying RIM and it also bought Danger, which was odd because Danger leads to duplication and it uses BSD. It is all indicative of an internal crisis and lack of direction in Microsoft’s Mobile Unit, whose leader quit.

“In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism’s goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology’s coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth.”

Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Mono Applications Get Integrated with Microsoft Moonlight

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 4:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I’d like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 – no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET.”

“Gnome to be based on .NET – de Icaza”

Mono GNOME
Don’t let Mono and Moonlight tarnish GNOME

Summary: Novell-sponsored Mono software gets extended so as to make it interconnected with Microsoft Moonlight, a “forbidden” component by Red Hat’s assessment

Novell’s Mono projects are starting to take problematic shape. As Jason puts it after some research, Banshee begins to overlap Microsoft Moonlight, which is Mono-dependent. And as we already know, the Novell-sponsored Banshee uses parts of .NET which are not covered by Microsoft’s “community promise”. The word “Trojan” comes to mind and Red Hat should pay careful attention again.

Yes. That’s right. According to the GCDS 2009 presentation notes on the Banshee site, we learn lots of nice stuff about Banshee:

“It’s not just an app, it’s a platform”.

* Long term goal is to write the UI in Moonlight
o Declarative UI, canvas, scene graph, and toolkit
o Moonlight is an Open Source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology … and it is awesome

“Banshee is going to do photos”

“We are re-basing the F-Spot core on top of Banshee”

And it ends with GNOME, Mono and Banshee logos.

Moonlight is of course, absolutely toxic unless you get it directly from Novell, as the so-called “covenant” specifically prohibits non-Novell distributions from distributing Moonlight

We have had a long-standing suspicion that Banshee will be used for video and maybe even Windows DRM. According to sources, Novell already takes the lead in building GNOME 3.0, which Miguel de Icaza wanted to make Mono oriented. Tony Manco argues that “they should really start a desktop environment based on mono. I suggest MonoDrop [...] to stop the gnome poisoning [...] and future kde too.” Forenza calls it “very scary”. Here is another new analysis of ongoing attempts to put Banshee inside Ubuntu despite the patent issues, Novell’s control of it, and extreme bloat.

It seems we are settling on the “best-of-breed” as the ultimate justification. This is a good stop if you are on Team Mono, because you can call any application the “best-of-breed” so long as you are the one that gets to decide what factors make it the “best-of-breed”.

I always chuckle around #4; Team Mono is forever chanting “pragmatism” and how “the user doesn’t care about freedom or principles”. Yet it’s quite clear that the overwhelming majority of users do not want Banshee. So, do the users matter or not? It seems to me that how much they matter is in direct proportion to how much they support you on any specific issue.

Mono Dangers Revisited

This month’s posts about Mono (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]) hopefully showed that Microsoft’s “community promise” is worthless because it changes nothing of substance. Sam Varghese goes further and suggests that it may do more harm than good because it’s intended to fragment the Free software community.

When Britain was the superpower of the world, there was one tactic which its officials used, with great success, to manage its colonies – divide and rule.

As Jason puts it, the differences between Google’s and Microsoft’s promises to Free software developers are truly telling. The SFLC has just used its excellent audiocast to address the subject too [via]. It still insists that depending on Mono is a bad idea.

Bradley and Karen discuss the community debate regarding C# and Mono, and its inclusion in GNU/Linux distributions.

The verdict remains negative. Richard Stallman too, on behalf of the FSF, says that Microsoft’s “community promise” is inadequate, only to find himself smeared as a result of such statements.

Alan Lord wrote on this matter as well.

How on earth could a 19th century detective know about the long running saga of a rather large and bloated software stack designed, it seems, simply to drive a wedge into the FOSS community and act as a trojan horse for our most [ahem] loved convicted monopolist?

Remedy

A new version of Gnote has just been released.

I just released gnote 0.5.3. It is a bug fix release.

The lead developer of Gnote responds to Mono’s meme (banners with “I am not afraid”) by saying: “I write code”

I don’t know what the meme is about but:

I WRITE CODE

The update pace of Gnote seems quite rapid. Releases are frequent. It is ironic that Gnote’s developer originally came from Novell because Novell promotes Mono inside GNOME and Tomboy has served Novell well (it even employs Tomboy’s developer).

In a comment on another post, Chris Halse Rogers raised an interesting and challenging question: “What evidence is there that Novell, the company, is promoting adoption of Mono into GNOME?”

Here’s where I attempt to answer that question!
The easy part

It’s always more effective to knock out the easy stuff first. So let’s establish that the premise is at least reasonable. Here are some facts. Facts are a nice way to start:

1. Mono is a Novell project.
2. Novell is on the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board.
3. Mono is lead at Novell by the founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza.
4. Mr. de Icaza has said in the past, “Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET“
5. Mr. de Icaza claims to be “in charge of Novell’s Linux Desktop Strategy” along with Nat Friedman.

[...]

It can be added that Nat Friedman came from Microsoft. Many people do not know this.

‘We had some painful experiences with C and C++, and when Microsoft came out with .NET, we said, “Yes! That is what we want.”‘

Miguel de Icaza

Orangutans at the zoo

Microsoft UK’s Chief ‘Accomplice’ Jumps Ship

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 3:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Land of hope and glory - UK flag

Summary: The CIO of Newham, which let Microsoft inherit Britain, heads into early retirement and the timing is exceptionally curious

AT THE beginning of this month, Glyn Moody was getting prepared for a faceoff with Microsoft and its main lackey in the United Kingdom, Mr. Steel. It was to be a debate about Microsoft’s OOXML. It was later on that Moody publicly posted examples of OOXML abuses, as we noted yesterday. Now there is a surprising update from Moody:

[T]he CIO of Newham, Richard Steel, for whose benefit the meeting was being held, has rather suddenly and unexpectedly announced that he is retiring. In the wake of this news, I contacted Microsoft, and we agreed that there was little point holding the meeting as originally planned.

On the one hand, this is wonderful news because Mr. Steel helped Microsoft colonise the United Kingdom (digitally) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], but on the other hand this whole important debate/grilling is called off and it is not known who will inherit Steel’s place (better the devil whom we know than one whom we don’t understand yet). Microsoft and him are probably afraid that they would otherwise have to explain OOXML abuses, of which there are hundreds that are known. Microsoft relies on this conversation being suppressed, buried and forgotten, but it never will. As one person put it yesterday, “This is classic Microsoft “embrace, extend, extinguish”, except now applied to standards bodies.”

“I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft.”

Professor Deepak Phatak

“The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles.”

Martin Bryan, Formerly Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 (OOXML) WG1

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