I’m not telling anyone to go ahead and trust Microsoft or any altruism from the company. My bias is toward the business perspective on open source and in Microsoft’s case, I think Redmond is looking to open source users as business opportunities, not legal targets. Besides, there are plenty of people who think a visit from a MS salesperson is as bad as a letter from its legal department.

JL

Thanks to the Halloween documents, numerous other court exhibits of internal Microsoft emails, MS being exposed with their tactics with DrDos, the AlmostPerfect story on what Microsoft did to Wordperfect’s company, more recent predatory actions like buying up virus scanning companies that run on Linux servers for scanning viruses for Windows clients, etc., thanks to their shaking the trees by mentioning “problems” with patents and Linux…by the leaked stories about Microsoft shaking down other large tech companies for money for patents plus forcing a cross-license agreement on the other companies’ patent portfolio (stories on a couple of oem companies based in Asia, can’t recall the names, LG may be one, or companies selling products similar to LG’s products), thanks to their statements in the last few years where Linux is the number one competitor to Microsoft, Linux is a virus, their statements that to beat “free” they’re going to take on Linux at every point possible…

What will Microsoft do with this survey and the countless other surveys they no doubt have privately commissioned… they will, without a doubt, hand the results to every one of their sales reps and marketing department to target every single corporation listed in the survey as having a less than desirable ratio of Microsoft applications compared to FOSS…they will, without a doubt, spin the data on their “get the facts” portion of their site… they will, without a doubt spin the data during their sales calls… they will, without a doubt, use the data to target corporations for their whisper campaign mentioning patents and possible “problems”, after which the contacts at the corporations will consult with their superiors, then consult with the compliance and legal departments, then, like they buy Red Hat instead of going with CentOS because of the reassurance of thousands of certifications for individual apps that work with Red Had but which CentOS lacks and Novell even lacks anywhere near the same number, then they will enter into an agreement and cough up licensing fees for Microsoft patents “in linux”.

To summarize, Microsoft will use the survey to its every advantage. Including their whisper campaign to extract money and in some cases use of the other companies’ patent portfolio. To do any less would be a violation of its fiduciary duty to its shareholders.

Most of the GNU/Linux community understands your reluctance to bite the hand(s) that feed you. But it’s better to just stay away from the topic altogether rather than attract attention from the community over ridiculous statements on Microsoft’s altruism. To do otherwise just reinforces your image as a laughingstock because of your bias which you will, without a doubt, deny.

Impressive will be when they GPL the entirety of whatever system they want us to support. And “to GPL” means to allow for the complete, correct, and transparent building of the OS.

It’s untrustworthy computing otherwise. I don’t support untrustworthy computing. Do you consider your customers friends or what?

http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2008061901626NWRHEV There is a big difference when you go with Linux.

Again, I don’t support untrustworthy computing.

I can dream, can’t I?