08.16.11
Microsoft’s Latest FUD Against GNU/Linux Hinged on SEC Filing, Boosted by Pretend ‘Journalists’
Summary: The “Linux is just a desktop” pattern of FUD gets used by Microsoft boosters (with a new hat) to rile up and ridicule supporters of GNU/Linux, which thrives in many areas and spawns new brands (like “Android”)
A Microsoft booster from Directions on Microsoft (Matt Rosoff, who left them last year only to promote Microsoft, as a seemingly-independent writer) started to spread some more GNU/Linux FUD last week. We have already given many examples, some of which well covered in this site, where he was advancing Microsoft agenda and this is just his latest (no links given as that would only feed a provocateur). Brian Proffitt, whose defence against this is weak (he helps validate the false allegations), neglects to mention the conflict of interest from this shameless Microsoft booster who now pretends to be a journalist. The only proper responses we have found so far help show that this FUD also got echoed by other Microsoft boosters such as Ed Bott. We were going to just ignore this FUD rather than give it any visibility. However, rebuttals have already been posted (around Monday), so we might as well give links to those:
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Microsoft’s ‘Linux Threat Level’: Down to Green or Redder Than Ever?
Whereas said documents used to include Linux as a primary threat to Windows — alongside Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) — Redmond’s documents now reportedly don’t mention any competitive threat from desktop Linux at all, according to a recent article on Business Insider, which cites a tweet by Directions on Microsoft’s Wes Miller.
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Of course, embedded Linux is still acknowledged as a problem in that arena — not to mention servers, of course — but author Matt Rosoff (formerly with Directions on Microsoft as well, it most certainly should be noted) comes to a very happy conclusion anyway: “So much for all those predictions that Linux would kill Windows,” he writes.
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Linux snickers at Microsoft’s victory declaration
Sure, on the desktop, it’s a Windows world, but guess what Sherlock; the desktop is declining in importance. The mobile, server, Web and cloud worlds are where the twenty-teens’ billionaires will come from, not the desktop. And, guess, who’s already in all those spaces large and in charge? Yes, that’s right, Linux.
In IRC, Ryan explains this morning: “They declared victory on the desktop [...] how strange that this has nothing to do with their market share [...] and comes just as the DOJ oversight is going away and they don’t need to pretend they have credible competition there anymore”
“Also,” I added, “they have tablets challenging desktops now. Tablets run Linux”
“Microsoft revived Apple back in the 90s,” Ryan elaborates, “when they nearly bankrupted themselves after a long line of stupid business decisions [...] what’s going on with Novell is the same thing, just a different market” [...] (We have competition, they even compete using our technologies) [...] not on the desktop, that has always been a misleading truth, but the money is in servers and workstations and now phones and tablets so they’re the majority holder of a platform that is not growing and in fact, is starting to recede”
“Windows revenue has declined for quarters,” I noted (since 2009). █
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Agent_Smith said,
August 16, 2011 at 9:02 am
What about this piece of priceless comedy: http://ur1.ca/4×523 ?
Hilarious, to say the least.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
August 16th, 2011 at 9:12 am
I was hoping not to feed ZDNet trolls.
twitter said,
August 16, 2011 at 9:55 am
Microsoft/Apple people are further separated from reality than ever. As Pogson pointed out a while back, gnu/linux, via Android is back on the Amazon best seller’s list for notebooks and tablets. Groklaw made a post about GPL compliance FUD aimed at Android and there’s a few other Microsoft crazy claims falling apart that are hardly worth mentioning because no one is listening.
My favorite development is Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility, which I see more as a rescue of an independent competitor than a validation of patents. Microsoft wanted to buy MM probably to do to them what they have done to Nokia. I doubt that Microsoft had the money for that but I expect good things to come from MM now. Like Google’s thwarted spectrum purchases and thwarted patent purchases, Google’s ownership of a pile of patents will be more of a demonstration of a hopeless broken state than it is a validation. The Microsoft/Apple extortion campaign through proxies like IV will continue until the patent system is dismantled or the aggressors go bankrupt. Biski already eliminated business method patents and courts are eliminating them but the aggressors have only stepped up their efforts.