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It's Official: Microsoft Has Redefined “Open Source”

...and it didn't even ask anybody else for approval of the new definition

A reader has just asked us to re-emphasise a very important point that was alluded to before. Having entered the OSI back in October, Microsoft has been attempting to break the spirit not only of the GPL, but that of "Open Source" (as perceived by the OSI) as well, using their enormous marketing and publication power.

“It was not open source at all. Microsoft pitched to the press something altogether different.”The mainstream press proudly spoke about Microsoft "opening up to open source" (never mind the reality), but what is it that Microsoft called "open source" anyway? Guess what? It was not open source at all. Microsoft pitched to the press something altogether different.

Moments ago, the Office Open - OpenOffice confusion was discussed, following other recent posts that illustrate this self-serving confusion (serving Microsoft, of course). It was a good squeal to yesterday's post about Microsoft's redefinition of "cross platform" (not "multi-platform" or "dual-platform"), among many other things.

Our reader tells us that "Microsoft officially redefined OpenSource." He point to this page and adds: "Predictable, but *DONE*."

To quote the remainder of the followup message:




...You don't stress the point that they [Microsoft] *ARE* redefining it.

We have merely jumped from reading between the lines to it getting written explicitly by Microsoft!

This point may escape many while reading your post. Actually, only a few comments reflected that.




Glyn Moody foresaw this. He pointed out early attempts to achieve this when Microsoft signed a horrible agreement with the EU, so it's worth looking back at what we posted at the time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].

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