Microsoft loves to abduct companies, fire 'disobedient' staff, and bring in its own moles. VMware and Yahoo are good examples of this. The strategy is used a lot by Microsoft, quite consciously too.

"Microsoft never needs to be allowed to join, it just needs to abduct companies which are already in."Right now we learn that a "Winamp Petition Emerges as Microsoft Considers Purchase". Win is short for Windows, so it would not be too shocking if Microsoft took over to exploit (and ruin) the brand. But there are problems close to home, involving Linux in particular. There are more Elop-type threats -- ones which turn Linux leaders (like Nokia) into Linux foes that go as far as patent litigation against Linux. Now that people from Microsoft are becoming managers in the Linux Foundation (and managers of distributions like Ubuntu) we must pay attention. Nokia is a Linux Foundation member too, so with its surrender to Microsoft (like Novell) there are more Trojan horses (steering power) for the monopolist inside the foundation. Microsoft never needs to be allowed to join, it just needs to abduct companies which are already in.

There is another longtime mole which deserves to be named now that there is this new puff piece and shameless PR for the company that attacks Linux. The puff piece comes from EFY Times and it's basically a softball monologue for Microsoft, courtesy of K. Y. Srinivasan from Novell (his online profiles are still out of date). He now receives his salary directly from Microsoft and he is always whitewashing Microsoft and trying to match-make Linux with it (his focus is proprietary Hyper-V, which he and Novell helped Microsoft interject into Linux). Watch how Microsoft is grooming him in an attempt to make Microsoft seem Linux-friendly (article by Kerry Godes from Microsoft's marketing team). To quote K. Y. Srinivasan: "It’s all part of our larger vision, which is to ensure that anything our customers want to run, they can run on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. This is what customers tell us they want."

So in other words, it is about taxing and controlling (and spying on) GNU/Linux by making Microsoft its seller. It is also about running GNU/Linux merely as a guest on Windows hosts, using proprietary software of course. So much for friendship with Linux... ⬆