07.30.07
‘Buying’ Linux Companies, ‘Buying’ ISO Votes, and ‘Buying’… Countries
As recent examples show, Microsoft’s deep pockets enable it to manipulate a thing or two. Its ability to orchestrate a patent fear campaign led by Linux companies is one thing. Gross manipulation of ISO voting which protects a franchise and a monopoly is another. Let’s turn our attention to a couple of new stories where such manipulation happens at an even larger scale.
One story, which for some bizarre reason has escaped the media’s attention, comes from Chile. We haven’t a clue how this whole things happened ‘below the radar’, but Microsoft apparently obtains a lock-in that shackles all citizens in Chile. The details, if true, are quite shocking.
Just today, a secret agreement between MS and the Chilean Government came to light. In it, every citizen was sold as a potential user of a Windows Live Spaces model where every SSN is linked to, overbypassing any privacy term and cashing Bill some bucks. It wouldn’t be so awful to all if that agreement wasn’t approved yet (Spanish follows).
SJVN has just published another op-ed piece. In his column he has no mercy. The headline spins story which talks about a “Microsoft win” and calls it what it is: Microsoft merely bought a so-called ‘win’.
When all is said and done, the real reason why Microsoft is “winning” in China and has won elsewhere is that Microsoft is willing to break the law, pay the fines, dump products on the market at far below cost, and continue on in the belief that in the long run the costs of doing business the Microsoft way will win out over the higher quality, security and features of Mac OS X and the Linux desktop.
This discussion could drift further and discuss coordinated sabotage of the not-for-profit OLPC project, among other things. Intel is facing the EU’s wrath at the moment. Antitrust allegations talk about dumping and kickbacks, both of which are crimes.
However, to close this post without being distracted, the take-home message is that Microsoft has a pattern of paying for control, not earning it. It uses its deep pocket to tolerate some short-term deficit and later on benefits from a lock-in and a monopoly, which enables prices to be raised and merely any anti-consumer ‘feature’ to be strapped onto must-have products. Microsoft bought its deals with Linux vendors. None of this vendors was truly interested in the deals if regrets and bank statements are any indication.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
SubSonica said,
July 30, 2007 at 3:01 am
The story about chile IS TRUE and, yes it is, to say the less, SHOCKING. There already a citizen movement has spread in order to protest and counter it:
called “Digital Liberation”:
http://www.liberaciondigital.org/
The actions of MSFT are becoming so nasty, it is already spurring revolt movements…
You can´t run a business that goes AGAINST your customers… so how can MSFT be so successful?
Let’s think about all this from a different perspective
Jaroslaw Staineck proposal might be true:
“The guy at the keyboard of a Windows Vista box,
using Microsoft Office at work, and Windows Media
Player at home is not the customer, he is _the product_.
The customers are Dell, AOL, media licensing conglomerates, and so on.”
source:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2349
I.E: and actually, the millions of users of Microsoft’s software are not Microsoft’s customers, but Windows/Office users are a PRODUCT of Microsoft: The actual customers of Microsoft are the big media conglomerates, the big OEM manufacturers, the governments (that are allegedly able to control in a given moment, Microsoft’s software users through the backdoors inserted in the system by the security agencies, or think for a moment how Microsoft -among others- have accepted and collaborated with China’s demands for control and censorship of the net against free spech and human rights… )… and Microsoft is offering them a PRODUCT that is the users MSTF have “formed” for them: harmless, helpless, vulnerable, locked-in, controllable, unknowingly running programs they trust even if they have not the slightest idea of all the hidden information and private data they are trasnsmitting…