02.11.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Attacking GNU/Linux Using “Donations”
Summary: Microsoft — like Bill Gates — is giving presents with no physical value in order to suppress and reduce competition in different areas
MICROSOFT fights the adoption of GNU/Linux using a programme called EDGI. We gave the latest examples of it some days ago, but what we hadn’t discussed as much as necessary (due to lack of time) is the so-called 'gift' (permission to run some code) Microsoft is giving to researchers so that they steer away from GNU/Linux.
As everyone hopefully knows by now, GNU/Linux is huge in supercomputers, so as Glyn Moody put it, Microsoft approaches the NSF and making an offer that even the devil should/would refuse (Moody’s words).
So, basically, you sell your digital soul by using Windows instead of GNU/Linux and get three years’ cloud computing in return: I don’t think even Faust would have gone for that one.
We wish to politely remind readers that this ‘donation’ business model is also being used by Bill Gates in order to sell more of the patents he is investing in. Why is the press so blind to such simple games of economics? It’s really trivial to understand. Donation of access to patented concepts is less than a donation of even air! Imaginary value accompanies imaginary property and one can sell as much of it as one wants (it’s abundant).
As GatesKeepers put it this week, there are conflicts of interests in the press (which Gates is often funding, as we showed using numerous examples in the past).
Here someone from the Center for Global Development (Is there any other kind of development?) is overly polite in making suggestions on how to leverage funds and then imagining that the Gates Foundation has already thought of them all. Is she being cute as she has already suggested them to the Foundation or careful as her organisation is a beneficiary of Gates Foundation largesse?
Separately, GatesKeepers reminds us of the secrecy in the Gates Foundation.
They still have a LONG way to go to become truly transparent.
If everything that the Gates Foundation has been doing is so wonderful, then why is it so secretive? And why does it employ so many people in PR? These questions were raised before. █
“Key to Microsoft’s success is its public image. Whatever reality may be, it is critical for Microsoft to keep the public on its side. To this end they employ a number of PR (Public Relations) firms, most prominently Waggener Edstrom. Microsoft pays Waggener Edstrom about a quarter of a billion $$ a year (that’s billion with a B) and other PR firms many millions more to keep Bill Gate’s image polished and Microsoft shining in the public eye.”
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