Unfortunately, M$ never does anything for nothing. Everything is motivated to produce something for the company, now or in the future. It will take more than this to mend fences which are mainly damaged by M$ unfounded and unspecified charges that Linux violates M$'s patents, a charge that has been challenged by open source developers and some have even dared M$ to follow up and sue them. Instead M$ prefers to sow seeds of discontent, spread FUD and engage in petty and unsubstantiated campaigns which they have never repudiated or withdrawn.
Never take them at their word. The corporate landscape is littered with the remnants of companies that made the mistake of trusting M$. I don't say this to start anything. Just be wary. M$ has continued to rag on about open source, particularly Linux's violations of M$ IP and has active programs to discredit Linux, mainly in servers, but Ballmer continues to spout off in every direction. Do not be surprised even if they buy into Linux by purchasing Red Hat or Novell, for example They would do this just to cause disunity and turn what is good into crap, simply so they could say they told you so. If you dance with the devil, you will get burned. Cynical maybe, but better to be wary and pleasantly surprised than to go the other way and suffer disappointment or worse, the loss of Linux. Novell owns Unix source code and if M$ bought Novell they would own it and could cause real problems. They already have an agreement with Novell and sell SUSE for profit. They also bankrolled SCO which lost in court knowing that it was a lost cause just to cause maximum anxiety in the open source community. What makes you think that they wouldn't do it again, but worse? The only saving grace is that M$ is losing money for the first time and its stock price fall could be the best thing for open source. This is likely little more than a PR job to bolster its image which could not be worse than at the moment among IT experts who would not touch Vista for anything and IT experts all use Apache servers. Read between the lines. Roy Linux: Fast, friendly, flexible and .... free! Support Open source. <*,)}}+< Only dead fish go with the flow! ----- Original Message ---- From: Steve Saxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 2:10:32 PM Subject: [LINUX_Newbies] BBC E-mail: Microsoft backs open source work Steve Saxon saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you should see it. ** Message ** I actually think that this is a genuine move by Microsoft to contribute to the Open Source Community, with no strings attached. It is of course important to M$ that the most popular web server software plays well with Windows. ** Microsoft backs open source work ** Software giant Microsoft is giving financial aid and code to open source projects. < http://news. bbc.co.uk/ go/em/fr/ -/1/hi/technolog y/7528857. stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc. co.uk/email > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/help/ 4162471.stm __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now at http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] & you will be removed.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
