01.18.08
Has Microsoft Fired Its CIO Because Hotmail Secretly Runs on Free Software?
Microsoft’s secret love affair with Linux comes to light
Some time ago we saw Microsoft pressuring to force the departure of two consecutive state CIOs in Massachusetts for ‘daring’ to support OpenDocument format. We suspect that we caught one similar incident in Finland. Surely, there are many more such occurrences, but finding ’smoking gun’ proof can be difficult. Remember the “nobody ever gets fired for choosing Microsoft” motto? There are well-disguised political forces working behind the scenes.
“Bad morale at Microsoft is only to be expected.”As we mentioned briefly on a couple of occasions in recent days, Microsoft loses a lot of top staff at the moment and it’s important that we stress the severity of the exodus. This is major! Bad morale at Microsoft is only to be expected.
Mary Jo Foley mentioned Stuart Scott’s highly mysterious departure last night. It is beginning to seem like this CIO, which Microsoft fired some time ago for reasons that it tried very hard to hide, was… well, in fact just doing his job. I have just received the following E-mail:
This one is in Danish, but you might be able to grasp
some of the last line:
http://www.comon.dk/index.php/news/show/id=34420
It looks like there is a rumor that the fellow was fired for doing his
job, which means setting up a FOSS infrastructure. I suppose HotMail
still runs on FreeBSD, though it’d be hard to find out for sure. The
front end is obfuscated.
This is perhaps far from confirmed, but having seen accusations of “paranoia and parochialism” (which are associated/connotated with aliments) it’s worth repeating something. Being alert and watching out for things isn’t over the line, especially given some of the stuff which is found in the Halloween Memos/Documents. The above may be just rumours, but there is basis for trust given the status of the publication and some of Microsoft’s existing (and sometimes secret) hidden deployments of GNU/Linux. Examples include:
It’s unofficial: Microsoft bets business on Linux
What the press statement didn’t mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign.
[…]
Pandey’s appraisal of Aruba’s technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure and higher-performing choice over Linux.
Top secret: Microsoft’s $6 billion open source play
This month’s announcement by Microsoft to acquire digital marketing services firm aQuantive has revealed little on how the companies will integrate their IT, but inside information indicates the deal may be Redmond’s largest commitment to free software.
[…]
Whether the businesses are complementary or not, Microsoft’s integration work will no doubt involve a lot of open source software used by aQuantive.
Information available from Atlas’ Web site indicates the Internet software company employs extensive use of open source software including Linux Apache, MySQL, and Solaris.
Software engineers at Atlas’ Raleigh office do client/server development in C and C++, software maintenance and “scripting”, and developing and maintaining custom reporting capabilities.
Looks like Microsoft Researches new website InkblotPasswords[.com] , aimed at helping users come up with hard to crack passwords ( while at the same time saving them in a database ) is powered by Debian and Python
The funny thing is, The site is hosted on Debian Linux…
Microsoft Hypocrites - Pro MS sites that run open source
There are some sites out there that claim to be pro-Microsoft, anti-Linux, anti-open source, or simply appear to favor Microsoft and closed source. That’s fine with me, but then why isn’t closed source good enough for your website? Here is a list of sites that ironically run open source, and even Linux.
There are many Web sites that could be added to the list cited above, including Microsoft Watch, which moved from Windows to Red Hat some months ago.
This may no longer be the case, but several months ago the Flash preloader at https://www.microsoft.com/servers/faces/default.aspx used the Fedora Spinner. Fedora is used elsewhere on the site. There’s apparently a whole MSN block which uses GNU/Linux with Apache (again, this may have changed since I last checked). Need one even mention Akamai? For several years, pretty much all of Microsoft’s big servers were sheltered behind GNU/Linux clusters which were spread worldwide. █
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.