02.21.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

Microsoft Inside — Part I: Don’t Get Close to Microsoft, It’s Not a Love Story

Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 9:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

As Sir Humphrey Appleby famously said in Yes Minister: “It is necessary to get behind someone in order to stab them in the back.”


Summary: Today we start a mini series about how Microsoft plans to ‘deal’ with GNU/Linux (of course while pretending to “love” it; that’s just a very old modus operandi of Microsoft)

THERE is a tendency to wrongly assume that Microsoft is not trying to kill GNU/Linux (probably because it cannot anymore; it’s almost too late). Nothing would please Microsoft more than killing GNU/Linux and pushing Windows to fill the newly-created gap; the whole “Microsoft loves Linux” thing is “sour grapes” in reverse; they lost the battle (in most areas or form factors), so they pretend to be happy about it regardless (and want to steal a share of the pie, e.g. with Azure). As we keep reminding people, Windows is fast becoming minority market share in more segments of the market, with desktops/laptops being a last-remaining stronghold (that monopoly too is waning as Windows rapidly drops in share). They don’t like to admit this, so they rely on biased and ridiculously selective measures (to make the shareholders think they maintain about 90% of “the market”). The takeover of GitHub wasn’t just expensive; it’s an ongoing money burner with no signs of turnaround (GitHub is “successful” in the same sense Uber is). They bought it in an attempt to occupy the competition (spying, imposing disproportionate censorship, undermining one way or another). If they don’t pull it off, it’ll be another write-off like Nokia. More losses. Remember that last year Microsoft shed off a lot of staff, including in supposedly “successful” divisions like Azure. There were layoffs and Microsoft is exceptionally paranoid about its clients and shareholders finding out.

“In this series we will share some stories we’ve heard throughout the month. Microsoft has some rather malicious plans and by explaining those plans we hope to ‘inoculate’ the community, developing a sort of “herd immunity” (to the tactics or the generic strategy).”Earlier today I caught up with video coverage about what Microsoft had done to the Raspberry Pi. Having already seen plenty of articles about it (almost 50 articles, not even counting forum threads, social control media, comments and so on), I belatedly turned to video coverage. It takes a lot more time to digest video as it cannot be ‘scanned’ like text. I’m pleased that we at Techrights were the ones to break the story — a fact publicly recognised even at the front page of Raspbian. Following that revelation of ours a lot of the media brought highlights and spotlights to the backlash, putting intense pressure on Raspberry Pi (Foundation), which instead of making things better only made things worse, at least in the short term, probably due to secret contractual obligations. Half a decade ago we did the same to Lenovo, which resorted to censorship of customers (because Lenovo didn’t want to change its misguided policy, at least not immediately). Based on what happened with Lenovo (in years that followed it gradually warmed up to GNU/Linux, even if just to avoid the hate) our prediction is that if Raspberry Pi has some potential for expanding a Microsoft partnership, it would give that a pass. They hopefully learned their lesson/s; Microsoft tried something similar several years ago (putting Windows on Pi devices). That’s just how corporations work (even if they call themselves “foundation” instead of “limited”) and engaging with them on a financial level and PR level is the only way to accomplish something. I know this having spent like half a decade of my life (at expense to myself and my health) opposing Novell. It worked. It really worked. A decade or so later Novell's last CEO still feels hurt by the whole thing.

In this series we will share some stories we’ve heard throughout the month. Microsoft has some rather malicious plans and by explaining those plans we hope to ‘inoculate’ the community, developing a sort of “herd immunity” (to the tactics or the generic strategy). The patterns are mostly familiar, we’ve covered some of these before (e.g. EDGI), but they merit emphasis in light of new examples, not a supposedly ‘old Microsoft’ but this year’s Microsoft.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Site Updates and Plans Ahead

    A quick look at or a roundup of what we've been up to, what we plan to publish in the future, what topics we shall focus on very soon, and progress moving to Alpine Linux



  2. Links 29/05/2023: Snap and PipeWire Plans as Vendor Lock-in

    Links for the day



  3. Gemini Links 29/05/2023: GNU/Linux Pains and More

    Links for the day



  4. Links 29/05/2023: Election in Fedora, Unifont 15.0.04

    Links for the day



  5. Gemini Links 29/05/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.1 and Smolver 1.2.1 Released

    Links for the day



  6. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, May 28, 2023



  7. Daniel Stenberg Knows Almost Nothing About Gemini and He's Likely Just Protecting His Turf (HTTP/S)

    The man behind Curl, Daniel Stenberg, criticises Gemini; but it's not clear if he even bothered trying it (except very briefly) or just read some inaccurate, one-sided blurbs about it



  8. Links 29/05/2023: Videos Catchup and Gemini FUD

    Links for the day



  9. Links 28/05/2023: Linux 6.4 RC4 and MX Linux 23 Beta

    Links for the day



  10. Gemini Links 28/05/2023: Itanium Day, GNUnet DHT, and More

    Links for the day



  11. Links 28/05/2023: eGates System Collapses, More High TCO Stories (Microsoft Windows)

    Links for the day



  12. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, May 27, 2023



  13. No More Twitter, Mastodon, and Diaspora for Tux Machines (Goodbye to Social Control Media)

    People would benefit from mass abandonment of such pseudo-social pseudo-media.



  14. Links 28/05/2023: New Wine and More

    Links for the day



  15. Links 27/05/2023: Plans Made for GNU's 40th Anniversary

    Links for the day



  16. Social Control Media Needs to be Purged and We Need to Convince Others to Quit It Too (to Protect Ourselves as Individuals and as a Society)

    With the Tux Machines anniversary (19 years) just days away we seriously consider abandoning all social control media accounts of that site, including Mastodon and Diaspora; social control networks do far more harm than good and they’ve gotten a lot worse over time



  17. Anonymously Travelling: Still Feasible?

    The short story is that in the UK it's still possible to travel anonymously by bus, tram, and train (even with shades, hat and mask/s on), but how long for? Or how much longer have we got before this too gets banned under the false guise of "protecting us" (or "smart"/"modern")?



  18. With EUIPO in Focus, and Even an EU Kangaroo Tribunal, EPO Corruption (and Cross-Pollination With This EU Agency) Becomes a Major Liability/Risk to the EU

    With the UPC days away (an illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court system, tied to the European Union in spite of critical deficiencies) it’s curious to see EPO scandals of corruption spilling over to the European Union already



  19. European Patent Office (EPO) Management Not Supported by the EPO's Applicants, So Why Is It Still There?

    This third translation in the batch is an article similar to the prior one, but the text is a bit different (“Patente ohne Wert”)



  20. EPO Applicants Complain That Patent Quality Sank and EPO Management Isn't Listening (Nor Caring)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German (here is the first of the batch); the following is the second of the three (“Kritik am Europäischen Patentamt – Patente ohne Wert?”)



  21. German Media About Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and the European Patent Office (EPO)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German; this is the first of the three (“Industrie kritisiert Europäisches Patentamt”)



  22. Geminispace Continues to Grow Even If (or When) Stéphane Bortzmeyer Stops Measuring Its Growth

    A Gemini crawler called Lupa (Free/libre software) has been used for years by Stéphane Bortzmeyer to study Gemini and report on how the community was evolving, especially from a technical perspective; but his own instance of Lupa has produced no up-to-date results for several weeks



  23. Links 27/05/2023: Goodbyes to Tina Turner

    Links for the day



  24. HMRC: You Can Click and Type to Report Crime, But No Feedback or Reference Number Given

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported 7 days ago to HMRC (equivalent to the IRS in the US, more or less); but there has been no visible progress and no tracking reference is given to identify the report



  25. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, May 26, 2023



  26. One Week After Sirius Open Source Was Reported to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Tax Fraud: No Response, No Action, Nothing...

    One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)



  27. Links 26/05/2023: Weston 12.0 Highlights and US Debt Limit Panic

    Links for the day



  28. Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

    Links for the day



  29. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 25, 2023



  30. Links 26/05/2023: Qt 6.5.1 and Subsystems in GNUnet

    Links for the day


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts