Disregarding the truth allegedly for financial reasons

Summary: Ben Edelman is accused of working on behalf of Microsoft and Microsoft Florian too seems to be flogging the same agenda, even if they both distort the truth

GOOGLE is under attack. Techrights is not a defender of Google (in fact we challenge Google to change for the better and to abolish software patents), but when the attacks on Google affect Free software, then everyone in the community should view these attacks as somewhat personal.

In 2010 we wrote a great deal about the Edelman-backed "Consumer Watchdog" attacking Google, probably at someone's behest (Microsoft is a major client of Edelman) and days ago we also showed Microsoft Florian libelling Google as part of a series of his disgusting attacks on Android/Linux. We've been tracking many of them and also addressed the lies they contain. We'll do so again in a moment.

First, we wish to draw attention to this article from the MSBBC (which everyone ought to know is biased in favour of Microsoft due to entryism). It says that someone called Ben Edelman has launched a little smear campaign against Google and Google says he is working for Microsoft. Yes, we have seen this before and the MSBBC insists on denying it. It writes:

The Californian company responded by suggesting he was actually working on behalf of its rival, Microsoft.

But Mr Edelman told the BBC that Google was launching "personal attacks" to distract people from its own behaviour.

And yet, he does not deny a payment from Microsoft. Bear in mind that Microsoft has done that before, even recently in LSE [1, 2, 3]. It's not unusual for Microsoft employees on full-time payroll to do that too. Many of them are disguised as "researchers".

Microsoft is unable to catch up with Google, so the strategy shifted to characterising Google as an evil empire. There's nothing new in this strategy and we gathered dozens of examples.

“No doubt that's the goal of "closed source partisans" for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press.”
      --Pamela Jones, GroklawThe second person who is attacking Google these days (regarding patents, codecs, Android, etc.) is "closed source partisan" Microsoft Florian, which is what The Inquirer called him. Not so easily deceived by the name "FOSS patents" then, eh? "No doubt that's the goal of "closed source partisans" for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press," wrote Groklaw. "Here's my advice: consider the source, and stay tuned."

Assume it's a case just like TurboHercules, which turned out to be partly owned by Microsoft. It was the same with T3 and with SCO, which later turned out to have been paid by Microsoft too. Going back to Microsoft Florian and examining the news, before his latest lies got exposed (he helps pull another SCO while communicating with the people who helped SCO in the same way), Groklaw wrote: "Folks, like I said earlier, stay tuned. No one can know until discovery is done and the experts have presented everything. This insightful comment from Slashdot shows you why you shouldn't assume but need to trace code and licenses more carefully than some are doing. This isn't a case like SCO's where a party was speaking regularly to the press. So we can rely on the filings only, not on those who may or may not have agendas and who may or may not be reliable anyhow."

Here is one of the better known rebuttals to the lies from Microsoft Florian. It puts it quite nicely when it says:

Florian Mueller, who by the way is neither a lawyer nor a developer although he plays one on TV.

Other mobbyists/lobbyists, who also front for Microsoft, are actually more like actors than they are technical people. Jonathan Zuck comes to mind. Being a pretender is part of the job and Microsoft minions will play along with the script. Guess what? Just as expected, Microsoft booster Matt Rosoff [1, 2, 3, 4] continues his FUD campaign from the new platform; he writes falsehoods like "intellectual property lawyer Florian Mueller," which is total disinformation. Groklaw wrote about it: "First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He's neither. How he gets journalists to repeat his oeuvre without doing any fact checking is a skill, no doubt about it. What would the word be for that skill? : D"

“First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He's neither.”
      --Pamela Jones, GroklawWell, that's the same thing ACT is doing. It pretends to be working for small businesses when it fact it does exactly the opposite. It is paid by Microsoft to do this. Mass-mailing journalists and deceiving them is part of this lobbying campaign, stuffing panels too sometimes.

Groklaw has this very comprehensive rebuttal to the FUD from Microsoft Florian. Usually he is just ignored there, or banned even. Barbara put it nicely in her comment where she called Microsoft Florian F[redacted] M[redacted] because of the obvious consequences:

There are two ways to deal with lying trolls like F[redacted] M[redacted].

1. Ignore them. 2. Expose them.

For this site (groklaw), ignoring Mr. Flagrant Misdirection is the best policy, since he *wants* his name mentioned on high-profile reputable sites. As one scammer said, anything that gets him a higher search engine rank is worth it.

It's why I won't post his name here, and would encourage others to do the same. Other pseudo-nyms, if you don't particularly like using the "redacted" brackets:

Florid Mullet

Florian Sockpuppet

F****** M******

"The FMTroll" (goes well with "The MoGTroll")

People in the know will know who you're referring to, while not giving Florescent Mulehead any google-juice.

"More people realize that F[redacted] M[redacted] can't be just filtered out," gnufreex wrote in IRC a few hours ago, pointing to this LWN comment that says: "The problem with MF is the fact that he pushes his "news" to non-geek press so we can not just ignore him. We can ignore his comments (this is great feature to have and it is implremented on LWN), but we can not ignore MF-pushed articles in mainstream press! I don't know if he pushes Microsoft agenda for low reason called "money" or for some higher reason, but the fact of the matter: he does it regularly and quite efficiently. Thus we should keep attention on what he's doing... To filter him out is as dangerous as to filter out Oracle-related or Microsoft-related news in general: few people likes most of these news, but we can not just ignore them."

LibreOffice's Charles-H. Schulz wrote to me: "do you think Florian Mueller has gotten a new customer? #ORCL"

Wayne Borean wrote a quick post about it last night:

OK, so Florian is claiming that Google has infringed on Oracle’s copyrights, and he’s written up a huge explanation of what he’s found. But he’s not a programmer. In other words, he most probably doesn’t have the skills to evaluate what he’s looking at.

Curiously his arguments sound just like the arguments that Ken Brown of The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution made in Samizdat, his as yet unpublished proof that Linus Torvalds isn’t responsible for the Linux Kernel. It’s what, only six years overdue?

Here is Slashdot setting the record straight. Jan Wildeboer, who knows Microsoft Florian personally, says that "Microsoft sees Android taking over the mobile market. Florian Mueller produces "evidence" on Android and Oracle. Coincidence?"

A lot of the nonsense germinates/originates from Microsoft Florian's 'planting' of the FUD in Engadget, which embarrassed itself by spreading false information that came from this load of nonsense that's a ripoff of research which Microsoft Florian pretended to be his. Rather than apologise for its mistake, Engadget added more noise and it just shows what low standards Engadget really has. For those who cannot remember, Engadget also gives room to former Microsoft employees who attack Android in there. It is named and shamed here, with specific reference to the writer Nilay Patel:

I don't know the credentials of Mr Mueller, but the name of the blog FOSS Patents is ironical as Free Software Foundation has been fighting against 'software patents in general.

[...]

It appears Mueller's findings are nowhere close to 'help' Oracle extort money from Google over Java. As the database company, which has been sued by the government for overcharging them, Oracle has taken a U-turn from their stand on Java, which resulted in Apache resigning from Java Committee. Free Software Foundation also criticized Oracle' Java accusations and came out with support for Google.

Popular blogsite Engadget posted a blog rebuffing such claims. Nilay Patel wrote nothing new but repeated what Mueller wrote in his blog. The worst part of Patel's blog was 'unrelated' mention to Prystar vs Apple case. Prystar was selling hardware with MacOS installed on it. If this is the best example Patel came come out with, I can do nothing but sigh.

[...]

In today's coverage, especially by the pro-Apple blogs, I see it as nothing more than creating FUD to scare developers and users, especially when the battle is far from over.

The name of Engadget has been harmed by this whole routine/stunt of Microsoft Florian. Android's reputation too has been harmed, no matter how many corrections will be posted. The ROI in lobbying is very high and this whole saga just proves it. ⬆