”He is said to have left his role recently, but the FUD continues, so shame on him.“Over in HackFUD, Bill Hilf's latest arguments are torn apart systematically and effectively, proving yet again (fourth time in this Web site) that he is nothing more than a FUD-generating machine. It's not the first time that he spews subtle threats, either. He is said to have left his role recently, but the FUD continues, so shame on him. He is not a popular man anywhere, especially if SUSEBlog is anything to go by (warning: strong content).
Be sure to go through the whole thing and see how subtle Microsoft sentences -- if they are readable at all -- can be used to create uncertainty. There must be a handbook of "quick facts" somewhere (there are actually several of them) from which these cheap-shot attacks on Free software and Linux get extracted time after time to make the Big Lie persist.
The article concludes with the following statement:
Really, the best model that would work best for the software business, would be to get rid of software patents. It’s that simple. Oh, sorry, but that would take away a MAJOR method of threatening everything else which isn’t part of the “Microsoft Stack”, wouldn’t it.
Comments
Kevin Cave
2007-11-19 10:00:40
;)
I do have one problem with your article though, and that's the link to that SUSEBlog article - I personally find that kind of thing distasteful, and it's that kind of rather - in my opinion - childish stuff which /could/ give people the wrong impression of Linux and/or FOSS users. I truly think them doing stuff like that is completely counteractive, and has a negative effect on FOSS.
Best regards,
Kevin.
eet
2007-11-19 10:14:36
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Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-19 10:21:20
About SUSEBlog, I agree with you. I wanted to just drop that link altogether, but eventually just added a gentle warning instead.
The point of that link -- however disgraceful the content may be -- was to show that others acknowledge the disdain Bill Hilf has earned. Martin Taylor seems to have quit the company when he realised that the FUDMeister role is no easy role to have. Microsoft should just drop the FUD.
eet
2007-11-19 10:25:28
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Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-19 10:44:48
eet
2007-11-19 11:04:48
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3711871
The first page is titled 'It's time to get over Microsoft'; meaning some FOSS advocates' obsession with this company.
The second page is named 'It's time to grow up', and it means people exactly like YOU, Roy.
The author comments on a reply to a previous article - that could well have been a reply by you - and I feel that it could have been a comment on your blog, Roy:
"To which I can only reply, "Will you listen to yourself?"
Between the self-importance, the fanaticism, and the either-or logic of such a comment, an outsider could only conclude that the speaker's motherboard had popped a few capacitors. Such crusading rants are going to scare many people, and the few it attracts will be scary folks to have hanging around."
Grow up, Roy!
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eet
2007-11-19 12:09:30
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Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-19 11:57:04
Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-19 12:39:00
eet
2007-11-19 12:58:31
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eet
2007-11-19 13:04:50
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Victor Soliz
2007-11-19 14:11:24
eet
2007-11-19 16:58:46
Face it, what you write here is utterly unimportant for the survival of Linux; the only objectives it serves are a) satisfy your own desire to feel righteous; b) alienate prospective new Linux-users. The latter part is the one I hold most grudge against you for.
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eet
2007-11-19 17:48:40
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tracyanne
2007-11-19 20:51:29
Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-19 21:51:43
Just ask Corel, Netscape, RealNetworks and dozens of other large companies which thought that ignoring anti-competitive tactics will be fine, and that justice will prevail.
eet
2007-11-19 22:27:56
FOSS is only successfull because it is NOT the product of a single company but the product of collaboration between all companies and unpaid helper involved. It reduces development-costs drastically. That and the price-tag of the software (zero, if no support is involved) are the reason Linux could become a success. But this goes also for OpenOffice and many other projects.
Time that you try to understand it: We are talking about a fundamentally different business-model when we are talking about FOSS. Single companies can go bottom-up, a dozen of them are unlikely. Single companies can be ruined in a court of law, a dozen of them can't - especially if IBM is one of the parties involved.
The thing called FOSS has become to big to suppress, thus M$ is now participating in this new business model and adapting. Money is money, after all; whether it comes from proprietary or free software.
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Kevin Cave
2007-11-20 08:59:42
It's not the price-tag which makes Free and Open Source Software remarkable. It's the very fact that the software is Free-as-in-Freedom. It's remarkable that you can actually see the full source code to the Linux kernel. It's remarkable that you can see the source code to OpenOffice. Ditto goes for all the GPL'ed software you can download and install on your computer.
It's remarkable that you can /change/ the source code as you see fit. It's remarkable that you can redistribute the software quite Freely (as in Freedom) - the only "restriction" to that being that you also have to license the software with the exact same licensing terms as the original source that you got it, but as you are probably well aware, that's remarkable too.
Regards,
KC.
eet
2007-11-21 21:09:26
Please don't preach to the already-converts.
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