06.20.20
Gemini version available ♊︎The Evolution of Anti-GNU/Linux FUD and Ridicule
Summary: People who believe that GNU/Linux just “won” and has no enemies left are clearly easy for Microsoft to indoctrinate or thoroughly deceive; at the moment the very trademark and identity of GNU/Linux is under attack
Techrights was born in 2006, shortly after Microsoft and Novell had signed a deal asserting that Microsoft somehow ‘controls’ or ‘owns’ GNU/Linux through unnamed software patents (which are likely invalid these days, partly because of 35 U.S.C. § 101, even if they’re not all expired just yet). 14 years down the line, as we noted again this morning, Microsoft continues to make that same assertion, albeit this time OSI, OIN, the Linux Foundation and various other groups are infiltrated if not bribed by Microsoft. So they don’t say a darn thing about it.
“Well, even teenagers (at present) can recall and may be old enough to remember what Microsoft did to Nokia after Nokia had become the third-biggest Linux contributor, working on GNU/Linux platforms such as Maemo.”Back in 2008 ZDNet said that “Microsoft Ha[d] Turned Into the Biggest Patent Troll in the World”; but nowadays with new management and new paymasters ZDNet tells us that Microsoft “loves Linux” and all sorts of other (laughable) lies, portraying Microsoft as some kind of charity.
Well, even teenagers (at present) can recall and may be old enough to remember what Microsoft did to Nokia after Nokia had become the third-biggest Linux contributor, working on GNU/Linux platforms such as Maemo. The goal was to undermine and completely derail what Elop later called “burning platforms” (because his real masters, Ballmer and Gates, told him to burn those).
Microsoft’s war on Linux and on GNU carries on; right now it reaches an incarnation of being disguised as “love”, with a new and very lousy CEO that claims “love” for Linux (while pulling E.E.E. tactics against it, not to mention patent lawsuits).
“Later came the patent blackmail and nowadays Microsoft is hijacking the word “Linux” (to promote Windows) while collecting “patent royalties” from it and buying its pertinent projects/packages through GitHub. This was the biggest digital landgrab of the century.”I’m old enough to remember what Microsoft did in the 1990s. The media hype already referred to GNU as just “Linux” and any time it received press coverage the emphasis was on some Finnish dude rather than hard-working bearded dudes, who had already spent over a decade developing what is now the world’s most widely used operating system. The bias was clear and the bias was intentional. They didn’t like the political views of GNU hackers (who referred to themselves as “hackers” even when the press already distorted that word, conflating it with “crackers”). That was an obvious pattern of FUD, designed to prop up a debate around what was later coined and promoted as “Open Source” (to distract people from ‘pesky’ ethical issues, including what was associated with liberty and freedom). In the years that followed, back when I started GNU/Linux advocacy — which I did tirelessly — the pattern of FUD shifted to belittling and ridiculing GNU/Linux as insignificant, even though it had already made major gains in servers (that was before Android and the widespread adoption of mobile devices). After Android became ever so dominant and GNU/Linux became the de facto standard for servers we saw trolls from Microsoft vilifying and slandering it based on subjective double-standards. Later came the patent blackmail and nowadays Microsoft is hijacking the word “Linux” (to promote Windows) while collecting “patent royalties” from it and buying its pertinent projects/packages through GitHub. This was the biggest digital landgrab of the century.
“Right now, in 2020, the war on GNU/Linux may in fact be at its very height. Don’t let words like “love” cloud our collective judgment.”Corrupt officials from the Linux Foundation (many of whom came from Microsoft or still work for Microsoft) tell us that this is OK. “Linux won,” they’d tell us, while outsourcing just about everything to Microsoft and while choosing software licences that Microsoft favours.
Right now, in 2020, the war on GNU/Linux may in fact be at its very height. Don’t let words like “love” cloud our collective judgment. When you’re in the lead people try to take you down, so stay vigilant. Microsoft did not change; only the strategy and the rhetoric changed somewhat, out of self-serving convenience. █
Quote source (the metaphor was popular inside Microsoft [1, 2], in the context of GNU/Linux too)
“A lot of people make that analogy that competing with Bill Gates is like playing hardball. I’d say it’s more like a knife fight.”
–Gary Clow, famous Microsoft victim
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