Steve Ballmer's jesters come out to play
There's a true "yes men" roundtable today, involving all the usual suspects. Some hours ago we stated that a vile Microsoft shill was preparing to attack ODF (he has already attacked GNU/Linux and other non-Microsoft threats) and later on this assault started. It's Wouter van Vugt, whose latest batch of messages gets the attention of those whose involvement many could guess blind-folded. First of all there's Matthijs Hoekstra, who describes himself as "Developer Evangelist @ Microsoft."
“Joining these celebrations (attack on ODF) is the Convenor of OOXML, who is known to be deep in Microsoft's pocket.”Joining these celebrations (attack on ODF) is the Convenor of OOXML, who is known to be deep in Microsoft's pocket.
Jesper Lund Stocholm participates a great deal in this early round of ODF bashing. Like Wouter van Vugt, his career is deep in Microsoft's wallet, so he's doing anything he can to disrupt ODF and help the Microsoft ecosystem.
And these are the voices representing a company which pretends that it supports ODF while actually just causing it damage in practice [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]? It figures.
Microsoft has stated that it needs to attack its competition, but not directly. It always uses some people who look like outsiders and it's the job of Technical Evangelists (TEs) to encourage them. As usual, Microsoft would step aside and say, "No! It's nothing to do with us." Microsoft only happens to reward them financially in all sorts of artistic ways. ⬆
"...Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux."
--Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO