THE MOST effective lobbyists are sometimes those who pretend to be the very opposite of what they are. There are many example of that, extending well beyond the realms of IT. We wrote about "controlled opposition" in April [1, 2] and in June when we gave Association of Competitive Technologies (ACT) as an example.
“My guess is that he [Florian Müller] is being paid handsomely to act the way he does.”
--Stefan GustavsonGroklaw wrote about OIN the other day (not explicitly referring to IBM's role), defending it unquestionably, as usual. The president of the FFII quoted Groklaw as saying that "Bergelt is highly respected in the FOSS community, as is OIN"; What did he label it? "When Groklaw get it wrong" -- that's right, the FFII was never a big fan of the OIN, either. Certain things which the OIN does are commendable [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but there might be better ways to defend the freedom of GNU/Linux. On the other hand, there are those who consider OIN's foes to be foes of GNU/Linux.
Over at Groklaw, Stefan Gustavson writes: "You may be confusing the Florian Müller from 2005 with the person we see blogging now in 2010. He might have been honest then. At least he did some good when the EU patent "reform" was shot down. He certainly isn't honest any longer. He spreads lies about free software and its proponents, and throws mud in any general direction where Linux is being discussed in public, with a clear intent of spreading FUD. He is not stupid, so he can't be excused for not knowing better. My guess is that he is being paid handsomely to act the way he does."
Müller does not seem to have responded to that yet. When we had our suspicions about him and people started to turn up the heat he ended closing comments on his blog. It makes a more controlled platform for him, but he can't control Groklaw, which continues to accuse him sometimes. Other former colleagues of Müller are equally suspicious.
One thing is for sure; Müller is nothing like the lobbyists from ACT and especially Jonathan Zuck (see video below) who denied wrongdoing in his E-mail to me.
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Not surprisingly, CodePlex has been subject to much suspicion – and derision. It was a pretty blatant attempt to jump on the open source bandwagon, in a form that was strictly controlled by Microsoft, which allowed it to place its own interpretation on what open source meant (by including licences that weren't on the OSI list, for example). And so no surprise, either, that the open source world has pretty much ignored CodePlex as a result. I must confess that I am guilty of this sin too, and that is unfortunate, because something is happening there that is potentially very interesting.
Directly related to this is the European case of looming software patents. Today Mikko Välimäki from Tuxera wrote several blog entries on their law firm's page, main one is this:
http://www.turre.com/2010/06/softan-patentoinnille-euroopassa-lopullinen-ok/
Title in english: "Final ok for patenting software in europe?"
He even goes to say that decision to allow/approve software patents in Europe would be JURIDICALLY correct. What a nice bat called FUD that is. And "oikeusvarmuus" is translatable to "assurance of juridical rights", the same once again.. pay us or be sued.