10.22.07
Slated on Microsoft’s Open Source Deals & Acquisition Strategy
From the humour-of-desperation dept.
Slated comes up with the following humurous bit:
Santa: And what do you want for Christmas, baby Ballmer?
Steve Ballmer: World Domination … Muuuaaaha-ha-ha.
Santa: I don’t think I have any left. Here, have Monopoly instead.
“Slated argued that if Microsoft cannot beat its competitors, it simply buys them.”In the particular context, Slated argued that if Microsoft cannot beat its competitors, it simply buys them. With “buying”, exclusionary deals, such as the one with Novell, can be considered as well.
He also sarcastically argues that Ballmer does not “give a damn about alienating parts of the GNU/Linux community. Oh wait … he does - Divide and conquer: rule 23 in the Pearly Handbook of the Rules of Acquisition. They even stole the book from the Ferengis. Has Microsoft ever actually made anything, other than everyone else miserable?”
Therein Slated refers to statements from Microsoft, such as the following:
Asked about these problems, Arno Edelmann, Microsoft’s European business security product manager, told ZDNet UK… “Usually Microsoft doesn’t develop products, we buy products…”
This seems to align with this weekend’s writeup in MarketWatch, from John Dvorak. Microsoft is slowly becoming more of a holdings company rather than a software powerhouse.
Mind the fact that several day ago, Microsoft promised to buy only small companies. 20 companies a year, to be precise, and open source companies too.
You know what they say:
“One competitor a day keeps the FTC away.”
Microsoft has truly found an antitrust loophole. Another one was the use of proxies for acquisition of threats. Novell is a case of appeasing, subverting, and exploiting threats. Novell is simply paid to do this.
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.