01.25.08
Eben Moglen: Microsoft Remains a Very Dangerous Party
In this seemingly-new interview with ComputerWorld’s Todd Weiss, Eben Moglen pretty much explains why Microsoft is the biggest threat to Free software.
What do you see as the biggest danger to open-source software today? On the one hand, there’s still a locus of resistance. Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and indeed necessary model. And so as long as a company that sells a billion dollars a week in software is in that sense fundamentally still trying to [fight] the free way of doing things, Microsoft remains a very dangerous party.
Here is a video that was added to YouTube just a couple of days ago. In this video, Eben explains how introducing royalties with Novell’s kind ‘help’, the freedom of software gets jeopardised (in all senses of the word “free”).
With apologies to Professor Moglen about the use of Flash. We do try to use Ogg every time it is possible. We tried locating the Ogg version of this video in the FSF’s Web site, to no avail. Here is another noteworthy video about this subject.
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.