● 03.16.09
●● Microsoft Wants War: Starts Blatantly Attacking Critics with Cowardly Attacks via Employers
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 2:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft’s Latest Smear Campaigns Against FOSS Proponents
Summary: National Microsoft CEO attacks critic, contacts boss too (part of a pattern)
IF you write critically about Microsoft, then Microsoft may be ‘kind’ enough to contact your boss and try to get you in trouble (maybe even fired). We know this from a couple of new victims, whose names and nationalities we keep off the record so as to not aggravate it further.
“One person suspects that Vivek Kundra may be the latest case of high-level retribution.”The first story story is that a national manager of Microsoft has threatened, personally, a critic of the company’s policies and attacked the person through the employer. We have actually heard a similar story from 2 people in the past week, but not in both cases was a Microsoft manager (local CEO) directly involved.
Having written critically about Microsoft, writes one person to us, “this got me in a world of shit… but it was worth it. Or I hope it was. It remains to be seen.
“The CEO of Microsoft [country name omitted] called me up on [...] and had a very long talk with me about how naughty I was. The first fifteen minutes he was all, “this is lies!” .. then he slowly changed the tone to “you shouldn’t underestimate what good we’ve done” [...] and then, at the end of it, I managed to pin him to the wall, and he kind of backed off after that.
“And then [he] called my boss.”
Remember Peter Quinn? One person suspects that Vivek Kundra may be the latest case of high-level retribution. “This looks like it might be worse retribution than what happened to Peter Quinn,” wrote a reader to us one hour ago. But in this particular case, no proof exists.
Anyway, this would be typical Microsoft behaviour. For details, see for example:
Microsoft Smear Campaigns in India: Watch and Be DisgustedOOXML Defeated Easily in India; Microsoft in Hot Water in New Zealand Over Smear Campaign“If you Can’t Deny the Truth, Run a Smear Campaign” (Updated)Bullying, Intimidation and Smears, Courtesy of MicrosoftMicrosoft Launches “Get the Facts”-esque Smear Campaign Against ODF and OOXML’s CriticsSmear Campaign Against Boycott Novell (Updated)
More examples (external links):
Windows DRM: A Response to the Disinformation (Peter Gutmann)Life Is Complicated (Tim Bray)Intimidation (Pamela Jones)Ethics (Pamela Jones)A Microsoft Slur in the OOXML Saga — Did I Tell You or Did I Tell You? (Mathew Holloway)Microsoft Says Worker Wrote Smear of Rival
There is another incident we had reported to us, but the details are too sensitive and would lead to a risk of exposure.
What is Microsoft so scared of? Well surely, as one reader explains, “here’s some old news, but maybe worth bringing up again. Deploying FOSS, would be the functional equivalent of a major double-digit billion dollar economic stimulus plan:
Linux Kernel Worth $1.4 BillionOpen source Linux worth billions, Microsoft warnedEstimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution
“In the case of Fedora, it would be the equivalent of $ 11 billion USD,” says the reader. This is a lot of money and Microsoft is set to lose the most. But for Microsoft to turn to personal attacks against critics is utterly disgusting. And it’s part of a long, ongoing pattern. █
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