03.01.08
Posted in Asia, Deception, Fraud, Microsoft, Open XML, Standard at 4:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Back in August we warned that Microsoft had just made a very suspicious donation at a very strategic time. It only days before the September vote on OOXML. The article which was cited at the time has vanished, but you can find a copy here:
Microsoft to Boost Charity in India
By: AP | Aug 28,2007
Microsoft Corp. will distribute free software to nonprofit groups to boost charity in India, a company official said Monday.
The software donation will be routed through a technology assistance program that India’s NASSCOM Foundation is offering in partnership with TechSoup, a San Francisco-based group that partners in charity work with companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Symantec.
NASSCOM Foundation, the philanthropy arm of the trade body of technology companies operating in India, introduced the program Monday – titled BiG Tech.
[,,,]
Nearly 35,000 nonprofit groups in India will be eligible for such software donations.
Charity, eh? To 35,000 nonprofit groups. I was lucky to spot this because I’ve systematically been watching Microsoft news for the past two years. This one seemingly big event did not make big waves at the time. It went on quietly outside the scope of the press (Associated Press being the exception) — something which I can quite clearly recall made me even more suspicious back then. I informed some people about this suspicion.
Only yesterday we mentioned the latest fiasco (a new revelation) from India.
You are encouraged to see both incidents and consider some of the later writings that we finally find. Here is one:
Of course, there has to be some trade-offs, because there should never be free lunch, even for the ones who starve: Microsoft, according to this article, has conditioned its help to Indian NGOs to their support of OOXML. What the NGOs had to do was to send letters of support on OOXML to the federal government of India.
How many of these 35,000 nonprofits could potentially overwhelm the national standards body? More information about this latest incident can be found here and hopefully we will find some press coverage soon. The press typically shies away from such controversy. Some of it is literally owned by Bill Gates or Microsoft.
‘Charity’ in exchange for lock-in and favours? Where else have we seen this before? Start here and follow the citations:
Next time people tell you about all those nice investments donations from Microsoft, ask yourself whether Microsoft gets something in return for those investments donations. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Asia, Deception, ECMA, Europe, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML at 1:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
For those who are unaware, Microsoft was caught faking support letters (by proxy) several years ago. It used the names of deceased people. Later on, as we last mentioned just 5 days ago, Microsoft seemed to have used similar tactics to overwhelm ISO and put OOXML on the Fast Track.
Microsoft never changed its ways. Perhaps it tried harder to hide its fingerprints, but the same dirty tactics live on to this date. Similar incidents were spotted in England about a year ago (we documented some of them). Then, we even saw briberies in Sweden and similar suspicions were raised in other nations, such as Malaysia.
Another incident has just been identified in India. This Web site has the details.
The extent to which Microsoft can go in its efforts to get OOXML is interesting. Microsoft has “persuaded” several non-profit organizations to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal. A copy of the form letter they have been circulating to NGOs is given below. Somebody should interview these NGOs to see how much they really know about OOXML and open standards.
The sequence of events leading up to the spamming of GoI is:
Letter from an NGO thanking Microsoft (name changed to protect their identity)
[...]
Do have a look at what appears like a pattern. India is by no means the exception here. This was systematic. █
“You know what Microsoft’s problem really is? They’ve lost the ability to feel ashamed.”
–PJ, Groklaw
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.29.08
Posted in Antitrust, Asia, ECMA, Europe, Fraud, Microsoft, Open XML, Standard at 2:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“If you flee the rules, you will be caught. And it will cost you dearly,”
–Neelie Kroes (about Microsoft), February 27th, 2008
Bob Sutor found an important bit of text in the MarketWatch article about Microsoft’s latest fine.
In addition, Microsoft recently acknowledged that the commission is also looking into lobbying efforts for its Open XML file format, which has been derided by critics as insufficiently accessible. Microsoft unsuccessfully sought last year to receive approval from the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, to have Open XML declared an international standard.
As you are probably aware by now, the Commission is onto Microsoft's tail as it digests and analyses the endless abuses by Microsoft in pursuit of OOXML as a standard. From Google’s text search alone, this site receives over 10,000 visits a month (‘OOXML’ being a common search term), so it’s natural to assume people do their research on this issue and end up in here. Any comment and insight you can add will probably assist tremendously and be very visible.
Going ‘back’ to the BRM (present days), LinuxWorld has an article about the secretive nature of a process deciding on open standards, which affect everyone (to give another example of secretive discussions, consider eastern Europe).
Delegates at the meeting must decide to accept each of ECMA’s recommendations, reject them or make some other change instead.
What if the delegates wish to raise and discuss new problems? The rules forbid this. To make matters worse, the experts had very limited time to review 6,000+ pages, so not many complaints, corrections and suggestions could be made. This hopefully gives you an idea of how pointless this BRM actually is [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s a shotgun wedding. China complained about this, but got pretty much ignored by ECMA (Microsoft).
Looking more closely at the article from LinuxWorld, someone spots the following:
Robbery at the BRM?
LinuxWorld mentions that the BRM organisors are making a paper ballot on all the 900 comments. It seems that the BRM organisors are “robbing national delegations of the opportunity to propose their own modifications”.
[...]
The purpose of this robbery might be to avoid any fix to the standard. MS-ECMA have not proposed any changes, and this robbery is designed to get the message that the BRM have fixed some issues.
Tim Bray has some photos from the BRM in his blog, in case you are curious. It doesn’t seem too rosy, but as the article above puts it, no chair are flying and people do not shout. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.26.08
Posted in Africa, Asia, Australia, Deception, Microsoft, Open XML at 11:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Ivory Coast-Sénégal
Here is a new short report:
The representative of Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) here in Geneva is Wemba Opota, a senegalese citizen,, who is responsible for Microsoft West Africa.
Remember what happened in other parts of Africa.
Australia
It’s not quite over yet. The news has reached the Sydney Morning Herald, which is probably one of the most read online publications.
Australia’s standards body has been accused of sending an inappropriate, though well qualified, delegate to a crucial international ballot on a controversial move by Microsoft to make its Office documents a world standard.
One industry figure says the move has left Australia looking like a “banana republic”.
Philippines
For information about prior incidents in the Philippines, start here and follow the links forward and backward in time. We have accumulated a good deal of incidents.
Here is the latest good pick: [via Groklaw]
Earlier, Microsoft had flown foreign journalists—including staff members from two local newspapers (not Standard Today)—all the way to Redmond, to pitch OOXML.
I drew some belated attention from the local Microsoft office when I questioned the wisdom of using OOXML as an international standard earlier this month. They didn’t fly me to Redmond, but they did want to meet me so they could air their side.
I proposed they type out their response, instead—which they did. In the spirit of fairness, I am reproducing their arguments here, edited for clarity and brevity. My comments follow in italics.
Going back to Australia, here is an example from the Australian press where you can see Microsoft twisting the arms of journalists for favourable coverage.
“Microsoft expressed disappointment at our views and said “a better story” would have been the positive benefits OpenXML…”
–Microsoft pressures ITWire for better OOXML publicity in 2007 (more here)
This was far from the first time that they are caught twisting journalists’ arms. Mind our past writings about Microsoft bribing journalists in exchange for good publicity. it’s an obnoxious phenomenon which deserves to receive wider publicity. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Asia, Deception, ECMA, Europe, Google, Microsoft, Open XML at 4:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft takes over the city
This is not an isolated incident and we spotted some warnings in advance. Despite the fact that the meeting in Geneva is supposed to be secretive and isolated from the outside world [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], Microsoft cannot just let anything develop naturally. Intervention is already being reported.
I had some time to burn, so I checked out the location of the hotel of the other Malaysian delegates, and was surprised to find that not only were they there waiting in the lobby, but I found the Microsoft Malaysia lackey in the same hotel sitting in the same lobby schmoozing the delegates. How come I didnt get the memo?
Anyway, his trip was wasted because this constant pressure by Microsoft on the Malaysian delegates are starting to take its toll. I mean how creepy is it to find this guy who has traveled the width and breadth of the Malaysian Peninsular with the intention of ‘updating each other’ and now to find him halfway across the world in your hotel lobby?
Gah, stalker.
We are prepared to find more reports like this. Lobbying is one of the most harmful of things and even the legality of the practice is frequently put to question. What would Microsoft say? Is this within the rules? Would it pretend that it has no control over its employees? It seems like the latter, based of what we heard from Microsoft bloggers. Meanwhile, Microsoft also labels people like Vint Cerf ones to be ignored. What’s the worth of a good smear campaign when there’s so much money at stake? █
“Analysts: 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
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.23.08
Posted in Asia, Courtroom, Interoperability, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 2:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Dragoon is probably among those who were part of the decision to go ahead and sign a software patent deal with Microsoft (the first among several others later to follow, possibly as a direct result). The company continues to try quite hard to twist this deal, spinning it as an “interoperability,” but the press conference announcing the deal suggests that Novell knew all too well what it was getting into and what it involved.
Just over a day ago, Microsoft did its 'open' media blitz is preparation for the BRM in Geneva where a secretive key meeting [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] is to take place, potentially harming the city’s reputation. Here is what Novell’s Dragoon had to say about this announcement:
Perhaps not surprisingly, at face value, I’m encouraged and in support of Microsoft’s expanded interoperability as it hits upon two core values that Novell believes in and acts upon: To be Open and Interoperable.
Is this what Novell endorses? Really? Miguel de Icaza’s response is actually quite reasonable, so he deserves some credit for parts of it.
Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project and a Novell programmer working on Mono, an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .Net software: “As a chess move, it is a fascinating one…On the surface it looks very good. (There are) lots of things that we want to interoperate with–Office, SQL Server, SharePoint. Getting the documentation to everyone sounds great, and it seems like they are serious about doing more interoperability work…When the full list for patents becomes available, the question is what will open-source vendors do if they find pieces that have historically infringed: will they choose to license and be the recipients of the community wrath, or will they hold their grounds and risk a lawsuit?”
He is being realistic, but doesn’t he virtually spread some FUD that serves Novell at the same time? Aside from the fact that Microsoft never revealed any patents and apart from the reality that only a few countries actually honour software patents, he seems to portray this as positive news (which it is not, i.e. it’s neither positive nor is it news).
In actual news, Microsoft has just lost another patent lawsuit, this time in Korea.
A Seoul court ruled that the world’s largest software giant Microsoft illegally used patent-covered software technology developed by a Korean professor, ending an eight-year-long legal battle between the scientist and the U.S. company….
Microsoft believes that it needs more patents in order to remain relevant in the long term. Perhaps it will rethink this every time a patent lawsuit against it thrashes its money and affects its limited budget. █
“Those who insist that copyright is the same as real property break their own rule by also insisting that they retain perpetual rights to the good, even after it’s been sold. If copyright were like real property, after the creator sold it, the buyer could do whatever they want with it, including giving it out for free.”
–Mike Masnick [Kudos to Glyn Moody]
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.17.08
Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, Europe, Finance, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista, Windows at 11:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Get me into that and goddam, we’ll make so much money!“
–Bill Gates, Microsoft (source)
“The Gates Foundation does wonderful work, but it’s only a portion of its many activities and functions…”Watch yesterday's news digest for various stories and some of the latest movements in the Gates Foundation and Bill Gates’ private investment firm. Also consider the previous post about head-changing at the Foundation. If you are a new reader and such power shifts mean very little to you, read this and this.
The Gates Foundation does wonderful work, but it’s only a portion of its many activities and functions, some of which include tax evasion, investment in questionable ventures and possibly the flirting with politicians’ ‘pet charities’, which buy political influence (think antitrust).
A few days ago it emerged that there is another unfortunate side effect in the endeavors of the Foundation on good deeds [via Bob Sutor]
Gates Foundation’s Influence Criticized
The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.
This leads to another news story. Jointly, the Gates Foundation and Microsoft work on strengthening the monopoly by handing out Vista-loaded PCs. Russian subsidies were mentioned just days ago and a new discussion about this revealed that the same thing is happening in Portugal.
In my country (Portugal) we have a very similar deal, available to all students and teachers in high school, which is subsidized by the cellphone/mobile ISP companies, the government and probably Microsoft, where you can get a laptop for 150 euros with a contract for 2 years for the mobile internet access with a nice discount from the usual monthly fees, from several well known laptop manufacturers (HP, Toshiba), and pretty decent machines also (Core Duo, 1 Gb RAM, the only downside is they all have integrated graphics cards), of course they all come with Windows Vista Home Premium as well.
Remember that such practices are intended to achieve dependence [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. This is a blatantly anti-Linux tactic. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
02.15.08
Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 6:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“I’m thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux… they should do a delicate dance”
–Joachim Kempin, Microsoft OEM Chief
Back in Novomber we mentioned Intel's and Microsoft's attempt to fight GNU/Linux adoption in Russian schools. Under the disguise of ‘good deeds’ Microsoft appears to be responding to this new threat. [via Bob Sutor]
A Russian mobile-phone operator is the latest service provider to team with Microsoft to offer Windows-based PCs on a subscription basis through the company’s Unlimited Potential program.
See the links at the bottom for more information about “Unlimited Potential”, which by Microsoft’s own admission is a case against GNU/Linux.
Matt Asay adds:
As suggested above, however, the program also offers Microsoft a way to club Linux’s growth in these markets…
Make no mistake. This is merely a ploy for Microsoft to maintain its market share. We covered this before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Selling PCs below cost or giving them away is a case of dumping as means of suppressing one’s competition. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Content is available under CC-BY-SA