02.12.08
Microsoft’s Burton Group Asked for an Apology, Other Proxies Explored
Proxy wars using so-called ‘analysts’
Microsoft’s connections with the Burton Group were shown and explained yesterday, so that needn’t be repeated. It is, however, worth adding IBM’s latest remark on the Group’s smears against ODF.
Guy [Burton Group], excuse me, did you say “conflicts of interest”? Please explain. Or maybe when Peter O’Kelly comes back from speaking at Microsoft’s Office Developers Conference he can explain it for us?
[…]
The Burton Group has denigrated the work and the members of the OASIS Open Document Format Technical Committee (of which I am Co-Chair) with published statements that have been shown to be false. The Burton Group owes us an apology and an immediate retraction.
Only yesterday in the news we saw another fine example of proxy battles, namely:
Last October, Whitworth, 52, threatened a proxy battle unless Sprint made leadership changes. Later that month, Sprint Chief Executive Gary Forsee stepped down. He was succeeded by Hesse in December.
It remains a fact that the Burton Group is acting as a proxy or a mouthpiece to Microsoft against rival technologies such as Google Apps and ODF (mind the citations at the bottom). It is protecting its interest. Most shameful is the fact that many reporters failed to see this. Yahoo is coming under similar types of pressure at the moment and some of those who are influenced (or somehow compensated) by Microsoft get visibility in the press.
There are many other examples. All of these litigious by-proxy battles aside, another proxy Microsoft is using at the moment is Citrix, which based on this new article continues to hold Xen back.
Did the Citrix acquisition slow XenSource down? Looks that way to us, since XenSource used to say that 4.1 would arrive in the fourth quarter of 2007.
[…]
So, Citrix - with its good chum Microsoft - will continue to present VMware as the proprietary overlord of the virtualization game.
You can read more about this stunt here. It is a move against VMWare and Red Hat, of which Microsoft is afraid. █
Related articles:
- To Sir, with Love
- OOXML: the propaganda war has begun
- [Response to Burton Group’s older FUD:] Google denies its Apps just a Microsoft Office add-on
Microsoft’s proxy strategy (2007):
A = Apple
C = Corel
F = Fuji Xerox
Cx = Citrix
L = Linspire
N = Novell
S = Samsung
T = TurboLinux
X = Xandros
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.