02.06.21
Gemini version available ♊︎Raspberry Pied in the Face — Part I: What is Known About the Relationship Between Microsoft and the Raspberry Pi Foundation
Last week: Microsoft is Like a Cult, According to Former Microsoft Insider
Summary: The backlash against the Raspberry Pi Foundation is growing, not only from customers but also developers and partners; we’ll try to explain what happened and why, based on verifiable information rather than hypotheses, face-saving PR, and mindless gossip
AS PROMISED, we’re still drilling deep into the facts surrounding a scandal that even Microsoft sites now weigh in on. This article is not an extensive or exhaustive list of references (most do not even cite the original source, which is us, and in Wikipedia people keep removing links to Techrights, sometimes replacing those links with links to Microsoft sites). “Microsoft bashing” is the new term for opposing serial abusers.
“Readers are encouraged to send us additional information; the research has thus far been collaborative as it helps get the pertinent facts right…”As a little bit of background, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was already ‘targeted’ by Microsoft several years ago (they tried to shoehorn Windows into the Raspberry Pi, causing backlash if not fury in the Raspberry Pi community; we wrote about this at the time, e.g. [1, 2]). Last year we outlined the Microsoft modus operandi as follows (in relation to many companies, not the Raspberry Pi Foundation). To quote the core part:
a. Partner with a company (“we’ll pay you for every version sold”).
b. Get a close look at their original work.
c. Then bring out a ‘free’ version with Windows (“oh, we were just working on something similar”).
Tomorrow, in part two, we’ll share our findings, which are based on extensive research (including input from readers and people in IRC). There’s quite a lot to say and show, so we’ve decided to turn this into a series, whose length is unknown at this point. We’ll also make use of video, so it’ll take longer to produce. The objective is to produce at least one part per day for at least one week. Readers are encouraged to send us additional information; the research has thus far been collaborative as it helps get the pertinent facts right (there’s some more raw information in our IRC logs). We’re not a fake community, we’re a real community with a strong sense of trust among those who value truth. That’s why we’ve been targeted for years (with threats and smear campaigns). That’s why there have even been attempts to incite RMS against us lately, albeit those attempts fell flat on their face. RMS speaks to Mr. Raspberry Pi about moving further towards software and hardware freedom; Microsoft must really, really hate that. █
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