06.04.10

^{Gemini version available ♊︎}

Microsoft’s Attack on GNU/Linux and ODF Continues

Posted in Europe, FUD, GNU/Linux, Open XML, OpenDocument at 1:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“The first wave will attack the perception that Linux is free.”

Summary: Latest new examples of Microsoft playing unfair and distorting facts

Anti-Free Software

Dustin Puryear, a Microsoft apologist, reveals that Microsoft is crippling Linux using its proprietary software. It seems like an artificial limitation. Did anyone expect any better?

Using SMP with Microsoft Hyper-V and Linux

[...]

Why does Microsoft only support a single CPU for Linux? It doesn’t make sense from a technical angle since Microsoft has already done the difficult work of getting Hyper-V to work on SMP systems. To me, really, this has to be a tactical move. Certainly, Microsoft is going to support SMP for Linux in the long-term. They’ll have to due to customer demand. But they can certainly stall a bit so that people wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier to run their application under a Windows VM.

Anti-Standards

The OOXML corruptions are not quite over yet. Groklaw has some new details from Norway.

In 2009, Norway decided that ODF was to be used, rather than OOXML, but called for further study and input from the IT industry, and I gather Microsoft put its shoulder to the wheel, and guess what? Now there is a new report (in Norwegian) that compared the two and concludes that neither is suitable, and both should be kept “under observation”. So, what should the government use as their standard if the report’s conclusions are accepted? What’s left? Previous legacy binary formats, one assumes?

Wait. No, it didn’t. It didn’t compare OOXML, the ISO standard, with ODF. It compared *ECMA-376*, which is not an ISO standard, with ODF 1.1, which is, but which no one much uses any more, practically speaking, last I heard, since everyone has moved to 1.2. What’s the logic there?

[...]

Notice a decided tilt? Doug Mahugh, Alex Brown, Gareth Horton, and Jesper Lund Stocholm, the usuals pushing OOXML, and Mahugh and Stocholm left cynical comments on Garshol’s blog about the study, on what a great study he did, as if it was news to them he was doing it, as I read their comments.

[...]

Is *that* why the OOXML dudes have been posting comment after comment and blog post after blog post attacking ODF? I was wondering why they thought that would help. The report’s author says in a comment, “My main source for the assertion that there are lots of errors is the ODF error database…” He acknowledges that, “I realize that the testing I describe here is very superficial…”

Well, yes, yes it is. It comes across to me like Microsoft dumped a pile of talking points on his desk, and he wrote them up.

So it’s the familiar Microsoft group, which always lobbies against ODF, sometimes for financial gain (like Microsoft paying ‘experts’ to edit Wikipedia). Also see:

This is from the company which pretends to have embraced ODF (to silence critics).

Anti-Customer

Here are some transcriptions of this new cartoon a reader sent us:

Hello, I’d like to find some documentation on your UberSecuR(TM) Suite of Identity Authorization tools for Ubersoft Webserver.

Oh, we don’t provide any documentation for that.

You don’t provide any documentation at all?

We prefer to force our customers to pay overpriced consulting fees whenever they run into a problem.

That’s very unethical.

That’s probably a veiled reference to Microsoft, as usual. █

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