Topic: Microsoft Infiltrated.

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

Microsoft has recruited the father of a popular Linux distribution, under a continuing mission to further understand - some would argue "extinguish" - the open source operating system.

Daniel Robbins, founder and chief architect of the Gentoo distribution, is moving to Redmond to help Microsoft "understand open source and community-based projects" according to OSNews.

Robbins' recruitment comes as Microsoft makes increasingly friendly noises towards Linux. According to reports, Red Hat chief executive and prez Matthew Szulik has been courted by Microsoft and even joined chief software architect Bill Gates for lunch at an exclusive New York eaterie earlier this year.

Linux fans will likely suspect the latest moves are another example of what critics say is Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy.

[toasty0]

Interestingly, the recruitment of Robbins follows last year's release by Microsoft of the WiX command line tools for installation of Windows from XML packages to the community. WiX is now reportedly being used in MySQL 4.1 to generate binaries for deployment of the open source database to Windows. Microsoft also last year released its FlexWiki and Windows Template Library (WTL) to SourceForge.®

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[E_Look]

I still am more inclined to believe Nemesis' hunch.  That Gates fellow is up to no good in regard to Linux or any open source software... and from a business standpoint, it would make sense; not that I approve, as one of the poorer users of technology, but hey, who am I?

[Nemesis]

I still am more inclined to believe Nemesis' hunch.  That Gates fellow is up to no good in regard to Linux or any open source software... and from a business standpoint, it would make sense; not that I approve, as one of the poorer users of technology, but hey, who am I?

Actually I was (jokingly) meaning that Microsoft had been infiltrated by the Linux community.

(If I were paranoid) I would say that Microsoft could afford to spend $100 million dollars and hire the top 200 open source programmers in the world to hobble development.  Get them signed up working on MS projects and under contract not to release code without MS permission and a non compete clause and for a palty few million you could do a lot of damage to the competition while perhaps gaining some brilliant coding for your side.  (I don't think that MS is doing that)

On the other hand MS and other proprietary companies have been working to project an image for Linux programmers of hobbyists working in their parents basements on an amateur OS that isn't worth using.  The image changes once it turns out that those people are good enough to be hired by Microsoft, IBM, HP etc..  Hard to claim that they were useless amateurs right up to the moment you hired them.

[Nemesis]

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The secret is out ....  toasty is really a cunningly devised Eliza program running Microsoft Propaganda 3.2.  The toastybot.


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