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07.01.09

Poll: 62% Don’t Trust Microsoft on Mono

Posted in Debian, FOSS, FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 5:10 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Pie chart colour

Summary: A lot of news about Mono with special emphasis on key developments

A GREAT DEAL has happened [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] since Richard Stallman spoke his mind about Mono. Coverage in the press was initially scarce because Stallman’s statement had been made public just before the end of the week, but here is ZDNet UK catching up.

GNU project founder Richard Stallman has called on developers to pull back from Mono, arguing that increasing use of the open-source toolset could prompt legal action by Microsoft.

Stallman does not even say much (or anything) about the fact that Mono makes Windows stronger [1, 2, 3]. Novell makes it happen. It is almost Novell’s obligation to do so because as the SCO-faithful Maureen O'Gara put it a couple of days ago, “Of course, without Microsoft propping up its Linux business, Novell would be in the tank.” To say more on the path to Windows, watch how Novell loses to its so-called ‘partner’. From the news:

Sydney Water has decided to migrate its email platform from Novell’s GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and is looking for a contractor to help implement the change.

Is Novell trying to befriend the company which takes away its Netware and GroupWise customers? If so, why? And why does it help Microsoft by promoting and spreading .NET? GreyGeek writes the following in LinuxToday:

De Icaza has been trying for EIGHT YEARS to get a distro to become totally dependent on MONO, and since Novell bought De Icaza, both have increased their propaganda efforts, with the assistance of Microsoft TEs, trolls, astroturfers and fanbois.

IF MONO is what its advocates are saying it is (the best thing since sliced bread and safe to use), it would already be in widespread adoption by now. The fact that you can count dependent programs on the fingers of one hand says VOLUMES about how the Linux community as a whole totally distrusts MONO. They are right to hold that distrust.

Java is open source and is MUCH less susceptible to patent attacks. It has CONSIDERABLY MORE tools and applications built with it and for it than MONO does.

Qt4 is GPL’d and has an excellent API and development tools, bar none. It also has excellent apps built by it and tools available for it.

MONO serves no purpose, except to raise the risk of patent attack or of being left in isolation WHEN Microsoft adds extensions to .NET that patents will prevent being added to MONO. This is backwards from Microsoft’s usual attack mode.

The remainder of this comment is well worth reading.

Perhaps the most interesting finding today is this poll. Based on 557 votes in total, 62% don’t trust Microsoft on Mono (at the time of writing). Compare that to 73% who said "No" to Mono (for whatever reason). Might it be safe to infer from this that the majority of people are with Stallman on this subject?

Debian

Looking at distributions more specifically, Stallman referred to Debian as an example. One of the Debian officials wrote an open letter to Stallman. It concludes as follows:

So, Debian didn’t change “the default installation” (whatever that’s supposed to be) but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).

This is already covered by Heise

Debian - Mono is not in our default installation

[...]

In response to the open letter written by free software guru Richard Stallman about the Mono problem, Alexander Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesperson for the GNU/Linux distribution has pointed out that Debian has no plans to include the controversial programming environment in the default GNOME installation. Stallman, who opened his letter with “Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy”, had suggested that Debian were including the Mono libraries for anyone using Debian with GNOME.

There are other noteworthy remarks and there are skeptics of Mono inside Debian. How is this for an argument?

I recently came across this very interesting article, written in 1999, which details the tactics used by Microsoft to fight IBM. They obviously saw OS/2 as a threat. Back then, Windows 95 was the trading token. They could have caused IBM a great deal of harm shall they refused to license it to them, but it seems the idea of subjugating IBM was more appealing. This is how Garry Norris (IBM) put it:

“Microsoft repeatedly said we would suffer in terms of prices, terms, conditions and support programs, as long as we were offering competing products.“

“[Microsoft] insisted that IBM sell 300,000 copies of Windows 95 in the first five months or face a 20 percent price increase“

Nice deal, eh? Make your dependancy on Windows 95 stronger, or else we’ll use your existing dependancy on Windows 95 against you. No surprise IBM abandoned the PC market. Are Red Hat and Sun/Oracle set on the same direction?

Why don’t people learn from history? It is an immense loss to ignore all these lessons. Consider what Bill Gates, for example, had to say on this subject.

Ubuntu

Canonical repeatedly insists that it will not change its Mono policy, not even after recommendations from the FSF and SFLC. There is a lot of coverage about it, such as:

  1. As It Stands, Ubuntu Has No Issues With Mono
  2. Ubuntu’s Position on Mono Revealed (Update)
  3. Mono Discussion: Stallman Warns, Ubuntu Dismissive

This comes at a price. From yesterday, for example, there is this:

Our company also takes the potential threat of patents seriously. As such we stand by the position of the SFLC, FSF and RMS in that Mono is just too dangerous.

We are therefore going to look at switching from Ubuntu to Fedora.

The threat is too great to ignore. I wish the UTB would reconsider this as more harm will come to Ubuntu rather than good.

For context, there is more in this address.

Sam Varghese cites the assessment of the SFLC and aligns this with Canonical’s relative apathy.

The Ubuntu technical board has announced that it sees no reason to consider a dependency on Mono as an issue when suggesting applications to be included in the default set included in the GNU/Linux distribution.

[...]

The Software Freedom Law Centre, which provides “legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free, Libre and Open Source Software” has a diametrically different view.

Following the statement made by Free Software Foundation chief Richard M. Stallman against Debian’s inclusion of Mono as a default, SFLC technology director, Bradley Kuhn , has written an essay, backing Stallman’s view about it being better to avoid a language like C#.

And to conclude, popular blogger devnet writes about Ubuntu’s decision: “I think this is pretty bold…they’re inviting someone to throw the first stone so to speak.

“I’m with Stallman on this one….better safe than sorry.”

“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”

Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist

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Rating: 8.5/10 (28 votes cast)

Proprietary Software Falters

Posted in Database, Europe, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML, Windows at 4:34 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Wall Street

Summary: Microsoft demonstrates that non-Free software is simply incapable of handling mission-critical tasks like GNU/Linux does (in Wall Street for example)

BACKED by roughly 20 references, we have already written quite extensively about the recurring issues at the LSE (the stock market, not the school). It is considered to be Microsoft’s poster child that they brag about in commercials all over their Web site. By some people’s assessment, this is considered the case study for Microsoft, never mind the excessive redundancy (cost) and poor track record.

Well, guess what?

The LSE is calling it quits and dumping the platform.

What an unbelievable PR disaster. IDG has the details:

London Stock Exchange reportedly to dump £40m platform

[...]

Dropping TradElect would be a dramatic about-face for the exchange, which had heavily promoted its ability to rival newer, dedicated electronic exchanges, and plumbed millions of pounds into doing so. It runs on HP ProLiant Servers and Microsoft .Net and SQL Server 2000 systems, and within a Cisco network architecture.

How will Microsoft respond to this PR gaffe, which was probably an expected blunder? Analogous systems running GNU/Linux are true success stories.

In a similar vein, now that the UK abandons this system, who can ever rely on proprietary formats like OOXML, for example? That too will be at risk if Glyn Moody gets his way. He is rallying for support at the moment.

Next week, I’m taking part in a debate with a Microsoft representative about the passage of the OOXML file format through the ISO process last year. Since said Microsoftie can draw on the not inconsiderable resources of his organisation to provide him with a little back-up, I thought I’d try to even the odds by putting out a call for help to the unmatched resource that is the Linux Journal community. Here’s the background to the meeting, and the kind of info I hope people might be able to provide.

Not surprisingly, the meeting is neither for my nor Microsoft’s benefit, but for that of Richard Steel, who is CIO of the London Borough of Newham. Those with good memories may recall that back in 2003 it looked like Newham was going to switch to open source, in what could have been a real breakthrough for free software in the UK, but that it then changed its mind and signed a long-term - and secret - deal with Microsoft. Winning Newham was so important to Microsoft that it helped set up a competitive trial…

The Newham situation is one that we wrote about in:

Indeed, it is rather ugly. Newham’s people are hopefully paying attention to the significant news from LSE. It is also in London.

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Rating: 9.3/10 (13 votes cast)

Web Browser Links

Posted in FOSS, FUD, Microsoft at 4:13 pm by Roy Schestowitz

IE 8 Get the facts campaign gets it wrong

If Microsoft wants me and others like me, to take IE 8 seriously, I expect them to treat our intelligence with some respect. Anything less, and after a while, we’ll have been taught to discount their bold claims.

Excellent example for the threat to the openness of the internet

Were you ever worried that the internet could be controlled by single vendor technology? That there is certain information that you can only see and get when using one specific browser? That interoperability is at risk?

You are certainly not paranoid if you have such worries. Microsoft Australia now gives an example for what is possible and done by offering the chance to get $10,000 by finding information on some website - WHICH CAN ONLY BE VIEWED USING INTERNET EXPLORER 8 !!

Browser Wars: Get the facts! Sort of…

But… consider the situation in Europe where Windows 7 will be supplied sans browser.

Related posts:

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MSCOSCONF ‘Winner’ is a Marketing Guy, Attacks FOSS

Posted in Asia, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Windows at 4:40 am by Roy Schestowitz

Thaumaturgic

Summary: Microsoft is giving awards to marketing people who help its fight against GNU/Linux (and Free software in general)

FOR the uninitiated, learn how Microsoft trains its evangelists to crash competitors' events by attending them and stealing the thunder. This is not a side-effect but an actual intention which Microsoft employees are trained to adhere to.

Having just taken a second look at the Open Malaysia blog, the MSCOSCONF entry which we wrote about at the beginning of the month appears to be ‘decorated’ with new comments. Nasrul, who was the winner of the maligned ‘LAMP2WIMP’ contest (push GNU/Linux software towards Windows) is attacking the Malaysian FOSS proponents. His rude attacks are in Malay, but the answers are mostly in English, which helps the international crowd understand what is happening.

Being a winner of the Microsoft contest, he may deem it necessary to defend Microsoft. He is not a FOSS guy, but mainly a marketeer. See some of the comments, e.g.:

naah, I dont envy that advertisement. It was of no use for me. It was your facial expression and tone change after the people in the secretariat room (we) stated the advertisement was too large for the screenshot for the launch was what I see as something need to be fixed.

[...]

Free
its not free as in free price
its free as in Freedom

Open
its not just about opening up your source code
its also about the culture of Openness

[...]

Nasrul,

It is interesting that you are criticising our actions as FOSS proponents, when your comments itself certainly gives a bad impression to all the other LAMP2WIMP winners. Are all the winners of Microsoft’s money so hell bent in attacking FOSS people? I hope not. I really hope that you are the only anomaly. So lets try to fix that.

Can you state exactly what I criticized which has gotten you so riled up? As far as I can see, the above blog post on “the cognitive dissonance within MDeC” is a fair representation of the current state of events. I elaborated in the post to provide constructive corrections for MDeC and the communities to take in the future, so as to be more consistent with the FOSS message.

After your first comment, I tried to get in touch with you via Facebook, your favourite Social Networking platform, so as to take this issue offline. However you did not respond privately but instead preferred to engage in the name calling and petty personal attacks online. If thats the image you want to project for yourself, by all means, keep going. We’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.

So Nasrul, can you please tune down your vitriol? You are hurting your standing in the community more than you realise.

If you intend to contribute to the community, please realise that you need to thicken your skin with regards to taking constructive criticisms. You, like what I went through, will get alot of it. You should know by now that geeks like us are more direct and blunt with our messages.

We arent smooth tongued salesmen ala experienced marketeers, who have are thick in skin for self promotion even at the most inappropriate occasions, yet thin in skin when it comes to self criticisms.

Read my article again. I “spat” out my thoughts, but it was to heal the wounds [0 : follow the link; your favourite word, "licking," is involved too].

I will be happy to report to Microsoft that their Marketing monies in sponsoring their brilliant LAMP2WIMP competition has worked beyond their wildest dreams; Their investment has created some really fanatical anti-FOSS marketeers from within. So unless you want to remain a testament to their strategy, do us all a favour and educate yourself in what really FOSS means, and not be a tool for others.

Remember: Free as in Freedom.

The following response ought to explain who the “winner” of this Microsoft competition really is:

I am surprised, as an expert in Facebook marketing (after all, you wrote a whole book on it) that you could leave your Inbox so poorly maintained. Perhaps you could add that as the 12th Mistakes you can do in Facebook Marketing: [ http://www.rahsiapemasaranfacebook.com/buku/ - Bonus Tambahan ] : Prune your Inbox to Catch that Important Sale!

So besides that, I guess you missed the tweet I sent you at 2:25pm, Fri 27th June 2009 as well, reminding you that I sent a FB message?

http://twitter.com/yoonkit/statuses/2356075761

“@nasrulrpfb tone down the vitriol, dude. You are making yourself look lame #osdcmy you may take it offline if u like, if FB’d u 3 days ago.”

And yet you continued to comment on this public forum at 9pm later that day. As a PAKAR in viral marketing, I would expect you to handle your online communication logistics better.

So for those who keep pleading us to keep this private (Kage and Rafe), I let the evidence show that I gave him ample opportunity to do so. Nasrul, you obviously thought that you had to have your say, and I am not denying you that right. How you want to proceed is entirely up to you.

You asked, what is my purpose to be involved in the FOSS community? I dunno. I could tell you my history with regards to FOSS, but I believe you are not interested in it. After all your response was dripping with sarcasm, so I wont waste both our times.

[...]

Just how many people is Microsoft hiring to attack GNU/Linux under the disguise of "open source"? It’s getting shallow enough to see through.

“There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free.”

Steve Ballmer

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06.30.09

In Praise of Mozilla Firefox 3.5

Posted in FOSS at 1:05 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Firefox

In order for records to be approached or even broken, if you are a Firefox user (about 60-70% of our visitors are), don’t forget to grab a copy of the latest great release some time before the end of the day. Having just installed it, the software looks fantastic and it’s faster than before. Out of the box it also plays all those embedded Oggs we’ve spread in pages since last year. Plug-in developers will hopefully regain compatibility shortly.

Great job, Mozilla.

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Rating: 9.1/10 (10 votes cast)

06.29.09

New Examples of Questionable Press Coverage

Posted in FOSS, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:12 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Smoking gun

Summary: Assorted brow-raising items in the news

There has been something fishy about LinuxInsider ever since ECT took over (mentioned here). This is actually pointed out by other independent observers as well because the whole news network gives the impression that GNU/Linux is problematic, either because it serves the advertisers better or because the editor was not even a GNU/Linux user until some time ago (true story). Last week it was claimed that an article sought to give the impression that Mono opposition is irrational and hateful and this week we find an article starts with phrases like “Conspiracy Theories” in the headline (we wrote about this dismissive term before).

It basically seeks to dismiss Groklaw's fundamental claims that Microsoft worked behind the scenes to derail GNU/Linux. Groklaw may have not offered the piles of evidence that we have, but it does put forth a claim which is obvious to those who have been following the saga closely enough.

Groklaw’s reaction: “Mystery solved. Totally blatant… next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people *prefer* their software to Linux on netbooks, you’ll know better. If they really believed that, they’d let the market speak, on a level playing field.”

To discredit Groklaw, the author uses comments from people with names like “hairyfeet” and “drinkypoo”. And since Microsoft has PR folks patrolling Slashdot, to just pick arbitrary quotes like this would be as careless as discrediting valid convictions based on gut feeling or guesswork. To support this whole storyline, the author is again quoting “M$” from the other side, thus discrediting this whole side of the debate. Maybe it is not intentional, but either way, the outcome seems biased.

Elsewhere on the Web, in a news site that we mentioned earlier for its propagation of Microsoft studies, routine guest posts from the Microsoft-funded Rob Enderle (LinuxInsider/ECT allows him to publish too), and other patterns of obvious bias suddenly comes this Google-hostile article, which gently tries to put the “evil” label on Google. Watch who is cited:

Consumer Watchdog managed to get hold of the slides that Google is touting around earlier this month, and it’s clear that Google wants us all to think that it’s just a minnow compared to giants like Microsoft and IBM. Interestingly, it doesn’t include Intel in the figures - Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO is on Google’s board.

We wrote about Consumer Watchdog last month [1, 2]. It hardly gets more suspicious than this and the Microsoft advertisements do not contribute to confidence in the publication’s motives, either.

Yesterday we wrote about ACT’s report, which was the latest Microsoft-commissioned attack on Free software. IDG gave this some obedient coverage, but Glyn Moody at the UK section of IDG tried adding balance by reminding people what ACT really is.

There you have it: that well-known friend of teensy-weensy companies everywhere, Microsoft, is a “sponsor” of ACT. That would probably explain the fact that ACT’s position, notably in Europe, has been resolutely pro-Microsoft, and anti everything that is anti-Microsoft.

ACT was created to serve as a Microsoft front amid antitrust trouble, just after ATL had been exposed for participating in “letter from dead people” and engaging in corrupt tactics. Jonathan Zuck was behind both fronts. More information about ACT we have already accumulated in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], so it would be wasteful to repeat it.

Last but not least, watch how one Microsoft-funded site (TechFlash) promotes another (MSNBC).

Zumobi, a Microsoft spin out, has been on a roll lately with a number of high-profile apps for media brands and retailers. It also recently unveiled the iPhone app for the Today show, also a property of NBC.

It all stays in the family.

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Microsoft’s Assault on the Web, Rival Web Browsers, and HTML

Posted in FOSS, Interoperability, Microsoft, Standard at 4:28 am by Roy Schestowitz

Writing spider
Predator on the Web

Summary: Microsoft uses aggressive, dishonest marketing to promote proprietary software that interferes with standards

Microsoft has gone very aggressive in its fight against all Web browsers other than its own [1, 2, 3]. It is a repetition of “Get the Facts” as applied to Web browsers, not operating systems. As Savio Rodrigues puts it:

But this comparison table treats me like a moron, especially when you consider that I’m using Firefox and have pre-existing views on many items on the comparison table. Only IE8 gets a check for security, privacy, and ease of use? Really? At a minimum, Microsoft should have used Harvey Balls to show that the competitors have capabilities, which may not be as strong as IE8. Microsoft could have posted videos that show how easy it is to carry out a common task in IE8 and compare it to Firefox with the relevant add-on installed.

This actually begs for the story about Microsoft "sabotaging" Firefox to be brought up again [1, 2]. Here is how Microsoft’s ‘malware’ can be removed from Firefox.

Several journalists have independently been complaining that IE8 causes them great trouble. From the past week in the press we gather:

i. Thinking about upgrading to IE8? Think twice

For example: One day last month Cringester D. L. discovered when he logged onto the Net, he couldn’t get to his e-mail or view Web pages. He then enjoyed several quality hours on the phone with Dell tech support, which determined the cause: His daughter had clicked a button and updated the browser to IE8 without telling him. The support tech logged onto his computer remotely and downgraded it to IE7. Problems solved.

ii. Collateral Damage & The Browser Wars

After I downloaded IE8 two weeks ago, my Sony audio programs got hung up and wouldn’t load. When I went to the Microsoft and Sony sites and found no help, I decided I didn’t need nuanced improvements to my web surfing, and did a system restore. Oops. Then IEx wouldn’t run at all. Somehow, the update had destabilized somethingoranother. I was out of luck.

iii. Microsoft IE8 Hype Is Beyond Belief

Internet Explorer 8 is a very good browser, especially when compared to IE7 and (ugh) IE6. However, it still lags behind most of the other browsers in both performance and standards compliance. That doesn’t seem to bother Microsoft, which has been pushing IE8 using hype that they rarely use even for Windows or Office.

[...]

There is no way that Microsoft can claim anything close to parity with standards compliance of the other major browsers. For example, IE8 retains a non-standard event model that does not get anywhere close to the W3C standard published in 2000. Just a few examples: Form elements don’t bubble events. There is a global event object instead of an event argument passed to the handler. Rather than document.addEventListener, IE uses the non-standard document.attachEvent method.

As the following new article shows, Microsoft lied to the court about IE being impossible to remove from Windows. Microsoft was too busy ‘extending’ the Web in order to turn it into another vector of operating system lock-in. Nothing has changed since. Last week we showed that this serious violation came from Bill Gates himself. He wanted to make E-mail and Web pages dependent on Microsoft Office. People are still furious over this, but Microsoft is ignoring their pleas. From the news:

i. Microsoft, Outlook Is Broken, Says 6,000 Tweets (And Growing). Fix It.

While it is pretty much the standard email client, Microsoft Outlook has long had problems rendering HTML correctly in emails. And the latest version, Outlook 2010, due sometime in the next several months, doesn’t look like it’s going to be any better — and it actually may be worse. And a lot of users aren’t happy about it at all.

ii. Microsoft misses the Outlook point

Continuing a decision made in 2007 to render HTML with Word in Outlook, Microsoft confirmed that Outlook 2010 will also use Word. In response to this decision, the fixoutlook.org campaign was created in an attempt to change Microsoft’s mind.

iii. Microsoft rebuffs Twitter protest over Outlook’s rendering of HTML e-mails

Showing again the power of Twitter for quick social organizing, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday was forced to defend itself against complaints that its market-leading Outlook e-mail program wreaks havoc on rich-HTML e-mails.

Outlook 2007 and the upcoming Outlook 2010’s use of Microsoft Word to display rich HTML content is to blame, according to blog posts by Dave Greiner, the Sydney, Australia-based organizer of the protest.

iv. Microsoft shows once again how it doesn’t listen

There’s been a lot buzz on Twitter about a movement to try and get Microsoft to backtrack on its decision to use the Word rendering engine for HTML based email in Outlook. So far some 22,000 plus Twitterers have heeded the call and visited fixoutlook.org to register their vote on this.

Antitrust regulators should grill Microsoft over it. The motives are crystal clear and they are anti-competitive. Even E-mails that were standards-based (and intended to be a commodity) are being subverted by Microsoft, which deliberately reduces interoperability between mail clients and across operating systems.

“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.

“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”

Bill Gates [PDF]

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06.28.09

Microsoft Publishes Anti-Free/Open Source Software Paper via Lobbyists

Posted in FOSS, FUD, Microsoft at 4:12 am by Roy Schestowitz

ACT label

Summary: Microsoft front attacks FOSS in a new paper which IDG gives visibility to

IT IS NOT UNUSUAL for Microsoft to reach out to the likes of Alexis de Tocqueville Institution for attacks on Free software. It is just so much better than appearing like an aggressor. These attacks are safer when they seem to come from ‘independent’ (Microsoft-funded) lobby groups.

It is well established that Jonathan Zuck’s Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] is a Microsoft lobby group which was created specifically to defend Microsoft in Washington (and later on in Brussels). Grant Gross from IDG seems to not be aware of it because he gives attention to ACT’s latest attack on Free/open source software.

The report’s goal is to help “avoid creating any kind of expectations that there is such a thing as a free lunch in IT,” said Braden Cox, a co-author of the report and research and policy counsel at ACT.

Let is be emphasised that Microsoft, the company behind many such smears against FOSS, is the funding source of the above FUD, yet it is invited to speak at OSCON 2009, also in exchange for payments. This brutally corrupt culture of attacks on competitors via lobbies absolutely must end. For IDG to not mention what is happening here is truly a shame, but then again, IDG too is financially tied to Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (although nowhere to the same extent). This is part of a pattern where IDG gives ACT exposure.

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