Too Bribed by Microsoft to Move to Free Software?

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 24, 2025

Microsoft lies and Microsoft bribery (in politics)

Having just mentioned once again Microsoft's SharePoint lies and spin (they try to portray Microsoft as the saviour, not the culprit), which strives to distract from Free alternatives^*, and having also mentioned Microsoft buying European politicians or bribing European officials to thwart antitrust actions (like Microsoft forcing OEMs to put Windows on PC) and to undermine Free software policies by promoting proprietary GitHub instead, someone wrote to tell us that to say Microsoft "bribed people in Europe for OOXML" is not the full story. OOXML, after all, is something "which no one actually uses, not even Microsoft itself..."

But more to the point though, regarding SharePoint, somebody in Soylent News wrote: "If SharePoint Online is not that different that means Microsoft already had a fix and delayed releasing the fix, till days after the exploit was publicly known to be in the wild."

An associate explains that this is "Microsoft's old pattern [which] was to do something like that in regards to the newest version. They'd make separate press releases, first slamming the old versions and warning customers to buy the latest version. Then after a few days, they'd quietly announce that the newest version was also affected. I presume that problem remains even with "cloud" versions."

Ryan then remarks in IRC: "I don't particularly like software updates. They often take something that works fine, change it around pointlessly, remove features, move things, and break stuff. These updates don't serve the user, but if you don't install them, you can't get security fixes. Eventually there will be one thing that you really need, but to get it, you have to upgrade to something that's pretty horrible."

The solution is no version of SharePoint or anything from Microsoft for that matter. Microsoft is the problem, it is never the solution. Dump Microsoft and see the alternatives below. █

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^* The stuff Microsoft does not want the media to mention:

1. Nextcloud,
2. ownCloud,
3. Bookstack,
4. MediaWiki,
5. and MediaGoblin.