MS continued attack on OSD #6

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Tiemann (tiemann at opensource.org):

> Rick, I don't understand at all what you are talking about.

I was talking about "B Galliart's" complaints being couched in an
overblown and distortive fashion, which is annoying, especially when he
does it repeatedly.  There _is_ a small nugget of genuine concern hiding
within his posts, i.e., it's indeed a bad idea for a site supposedly
hosting open source projects to include at least one proprietary one,
even if the information page clearly proclaims it an exception.  And
it's indeed bad for the firm to have a marketing PDF brochure claiming
that three hosted projects are open source, when one of them clearly is
not.  

Likewise, his implication that an off-the-reservation intern (a
"Microsoft Ambassador") somehow voiced corporate policy and that
clueless commentary by net.randoms in _Slashdot_ thread, of all things 
indicated "a need to more alarmed" are both ridiculous in context.

If Galliart would cease attempting to thus overstate the facts, then it
would be easier to focus on what actually is real and significant, and
see it in reasonable perspective.

> You seem to be saying "hey, the smart people know it's crap--no harm
> no foul".

I made _no_ such claim.  I merely pointed out that Galliart's example of
a project page attempting to pass it off as open source cannot be fairly
called that, when it very clearly says "Available for academic
non-commercial use".

Once the overblown and annoying rhetoric has been ashcanned as it
deserves, it becomes possible to focus on the actual issue, the
inappropriateness of including, at all, a proprietary project on a site
supposedly devoted to open source -- irrespective of disclaimers.

> Maybe I don't understand your complaint.

I object to distortive advocacy.  It's annoying and wastes everyone's
time.