Comments on: Links 07/11/2008: New KDE Release; GNU/Linux Sub-notebooks Scare Microsoft

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:38:13 +0000

Here is a similar and very memorable story

“Then, they fight you”

[May 2008]

“I asked the organizers if our Free Software Group could hold a short session about the benefits of FOSS in education, with references to Ubuntu, Edubuntu and Kiwilinux and we were given a slot after the ones which had already been planned a while ago – those of Microsoft, Cisco and a local company that sells education software for Romanian schools.

[...]

“That was two days ago but yesterday we were notified that the Microsoft representative in charge with the education strategy had requested the organizers to pull the Ubuntu presentation because it is ‘unfair competition’ to hold such a presentation at an event sponsored by them. They are indeed co-sponsors but the conference is organized by the Ministry of Education and its local office, and is being held on the premises of a public University.

“It is sad to know they are resorting to this sort of coercing and that they have such influence over the educators but looking on the bright side of it, and that’s how I perceived it after thinking a bit about it, THEY ARE SCARED :)”

http://janimo.blogspot.com/2008/05/then-they-fight-you.html

By: pcolon

pcolon — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:11:21 +0000

Microsoft’s xenophobic attitude against FOSS came way before the netbooks. Just look at the netbooks as an accelerant (petrol) for the fire.

By: Jose_X

Jose_X — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:46:26 +0000

wrt http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17493 about mp3 push by retailers, I think businesses are seeing that the bad side of the drm coin for them is that the few controlling and getting monopoly-ish power aren’t necessarily them but can and will use this exclusivity against them.

It’s effectively the same old Microsoft sell of the “virtues” of closed source monopolies. Problem with the theory is that monopoly and secret power is not something that is shared, by those who have it, with many others. The idea is to keep people from collaborating and instead working as islands, apart from each other, making it much easier for a dominant pirate to come around and rape everyone slowly but surely.

Sometimes to gain a healthy amount you have to give a little first. If you go for too much control, you are more likely to end up controlled yourself, having allowed the tyrant to seize sufficient control.

For anyone who hasn’t caught the drift here, Microsoft is the deceptive pirate and tyrant.