04.13.08
A Time to Demand Truth and Indulge in Triumph of FOSS
“Linux is a very complete and sophisticated operating system. And there is a lot of work being done to improve it in and of itself, particularly to make it easier to use and easier for people to set up on their personal computers.”
–Paul Maritz, Senior Vice President, Microsoft
“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Here at BoycottNovell we try to keep track of GNU/Linux adoption. It is one of our points of focus and many daily findings are accumulated in the digests. Recent examples of progress include Europe putting this GNU/Linux migration proposal on its table. Venezuela has just gone FLOSS and Ecuador likewise. Even Gartner, despite being Microsoft funded, has just estimated that 4.5% of the desktops in eastern Europe already use GNU/Linux. And that’s just a lower bound, especially once credibility of the source is considered. In BoycottNovell, the ‘market share’ of Windows is less than 50%.
Now is the time to fight against propaganda. The rather old quotes which are prepended at the top provide a clue (Big Lie strategies). Microsoft is likely to continue with its demoralisation attempts. But they will fail. Quite miserably in fact, as long as deep down we know the truth and spread it openly. To repeat a quote which was included just an hour ago: █
“Truth is treason in the Empire of Lies.”
Image from Wikimedia
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.