A quick search on “bill hilf” immediately brought up the following, which is a prominent reference connecting Martin Taylor to Bill Hilf.

“Martin Taylor and Bill Hilf – Linux at Microsoft, Part I”

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=64981

God save us. If these two minds think alike, then I would be surprised if Bill uses Tux toys as a voodoo dolls. These are very poisonous people whose position is, as I suspected, to destroy GNU/Linux (and Free software).

Taylor used very questionable propaganda techniques to achieve this. He worked closely with Steve Ballmer at the time. The product of the “Get the Facts” smear campaign is, as I only recently found out, banned in the United Kingdom because it’s considered misleading advertising, which increasingly invades more of the Web. Recently, LinuxWorld started the placement of not one but two large and animated banners with anti-Linux ads from Microsoft.

But the OSI has to find a very convincing explanation for the rejection. Just saying “because we don’t like you” could be turned against us.

I agree with you entirely and therein lies the rub. Be aware that Microsoft was a Diamond Sponsor of OSCON. It’s slush money for Microsoft. It’s a pattern. It’s assimilation with malevolent/self-serving intent. See the following recent story.

“Microsoft seems to have hijacked Linux Asia”

,—-[ Quote ]
| Was the general feel amongst the attendees at Linux Asia 2007;
| MS however, just wanted to say ”let us walk hand-in-hand”
`—-

http://www.ciol.com/content/developer/Linux/2007/107020104.asp

I have many more such examples, just in case you need any.

If you watch this closely, you’ll see that Microsoft poisons the minds of the attendants. The attendants are unhappy about this. The attraction is lost and the conference loses focus. It is not an isolated incident. Linux and Open Source conferences require funding, but given the wrong funding source, agendae get ‘corrupted’. A recent conference in Germany came under a lot of scrutiny.

At the end of the day, tensions are unhealthy.

And the OSI has to make very clear, that it is not about all Shared Source licenses. I fear Microsoft will try to lump them together, if they get the approval.

I have the suspicion that while many of these companies take the dive, some people at the top end up with big bucks. It is sad when an excecutive’s interests do not intersect with the well-being of the company s/he run.

Discover the ‘benefits’ of the latest deals:

How Much Did Mr. Typaldos, Mr. Carmony, and Mr. Hovsepian Get Paid to Stomp on Linux?

The ‘Cost’ of GPLv3 is the Loss of All Threats to Free Software

At the end of the day, Microsoft’s current business plan depends on maintaining market dominance. Linux, by its nature, does not allow one company (or any single distro) to squeeze the market like Microsoft has done. The only rational conclusion is that Microsoft behaviour is designed to maintain their position of power and to stifle Linux adoption. Spend your thinking time on the next killer Linux app or a cool game for Linux or building that online business. Microsoft have had more than a reasonable measure of slack cut to them — trusting them now is a fool’s errand.

Even though a broken clock is right twice a day, I’m going to look elsewhere for my time checks.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/27/osi_fury_badgerware/

One has to wonder if Microsoft could attempt to create a ‘civil war’, essentially dividing the ‘open source’ world further. Their deals have already led to a storm in OSDL, so why not OSI?

As SubSónica points out, making their licences incompatible with GPL(v3) would be be convenient. It’s akin to joining the Web, ‘extending’ a few things, and then bringing over some userbase (e.g. developers), whose old stuff is no longer compatible with the new rules.

This “me too” strategy is deep rooted in Microsoft behaviour: whenever
a product, service, development model or standard that they do not control, is successful they go out with their own second class offering and try to use their desktop monopoly leverage to impose their “clone” in the market, while
at the same time eroding and subverting the original/competing one. (It already worked with DRDOS, OS2, Novell, WordPerfect, Borland, Netscape, Palm… and they keep trying against PlayStation -Xbox mkI & mkII-, Ipod -Zune mkI & mkII- …etc)
Aditionally, I suspect that if they get the standard and the open “certification” they will go around shouting they are THE standard and THE open way to go, but it won’t take long for them to change some details in the standard or in the licence that make them double-edged and they will be used exclusively (in ways that are neither standard nor open) against any competing player in the market. You can bet the licence Microsoft submits to the OSI will be carefully designed to be fully incompatible and toxic with the GPLv3: In fact many of these exclusive-proprietary-non-standard flaws are alredy incorporated in their MSOOXML format or, for example, in their “covenants not to sue” devised to attack-threaten any Gnu/Linux distros /users not caving to Microsoft’s wishes.
On the other hand, if they cannot get their way and the ISO rejects the MSOOXML format and the OSI rejects their “open” licence, I expect a harsh campaign from Microsoft to discredit these intitutions as “irrelevant”.
So far this strategy has worked with many products and some services. Let’s hope it doesn’t work so well with international standards or with community
development models and licences, actually no, let’s not only hope, let’s fight for it.

Even the FSFE said that some of the Shared Source licenses could be okay:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2005q4/000120.html

But they also say:

Naturally, it is not the publication of licenses, but the publication
of software under a Free Software license, that gives people freedom: