MS continued attack on OSD #6

B Galliart bgallia at gmail.com
Tue Mar 11 01:19:20 UTC 2008


On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

>  You must really have to dig, to find that five-page PDF marketing brochure.
>  I'm unclear on how one can find it from the MSCompBio project page
>  (http://www.codeplex.com/MSCompBio):  Probably not at all.

In my case, Microsoft Port 25 blog pointed me to it.  It also appears
at http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/learning.mspx and
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/downloads.mspx

I don't go looking for Microsoft to screw up.  In fact, I would prefer
it if I could believe that Microsoft was trying to meet the open
source community on the community's terms.  These inconsistencies with
the OSI message are the type of things that Microsoft and Port 25
point to as things they are doing "right" for the community.

>  Anyhow, yes, it appears that some uncredited marketing guy referred to
>  four new codebases as open source without bothering to verify their
>  licence status, and probably without understanding the term in the first
>  place.  It would be nice if the company would rewrite or remove that
>  piece at some point, but hardly an emergency -- for anyone, let alone
>  OSI.

Fair enough.  So how many months should be allowed to pass since Jamie
Cannon claimed it would be addressed until it becomes something that
goes beyond just some uncredited marketing guy?  The OSI blog item
about QNX appeared the same exact day as QNX's press release.  Is it
because Microsoft's claims require a little more "digging" that the
OSI should remain silent for over two months?  What would have to
happen for you to consider Microsoft's actions to go against the
charter and mission of the OSI?



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