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Reaction to News of Microsoft's Support of Open Source Census
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| When we first told you about the Open Source Census back in April, there were
| already a number of sponsors, "with more expected to sign on in the future."
| Well, today, another sponsor was announced and the name may surprise you --
| or maybe not. Microsoft. As expected, some open source supporters are in a
| twist over the news, while others are waxing philosophical.
|
| ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley thinks that perhaps the move is motivated by
| Microsoft's desire for greater interoperability with open source systems, and
| also to gain a "better understanding of where/how open-source software is
| gaining traction in enterprises in order to better fight it."
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http://ostatic.com/165226-blog/reaction-to-news-of-microsofts-support-of-open-source-census#rss
Groklaw: "Um. They want to figure out who to sue over their stupid patents they
allege are being infringed? You think? Learning from history and past
Microsoft paid-for studies, I'd also predict that we will see a headline that
Novell is winning in adoption rates, thus "proving" that it was right to sell
out and sign a patent deal with Microsoft. A secondary finding could be that
enterprise use of Linux otherwise is slowing, compared to a healthy Microsoft,
I've no doubt. Thanks, Mary Jo, for letting us know Microsoft is funding
this "study", so we can ignore the results. I naturally hope no one joins the
study, now that Microsoft is sponsoring it."
Conspiracy theory: Microsoft sponsors open source census to prepare for
lawsuits
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| My guess? I think Microsoft wants access to the results both so it can
| understand open source but also so it can start to consider legal actions
| against the most popular products and the companies that develop them.
|
| I'll apologize in advance if the motives are completely altruistic but if the
| past is any evidence, we should really avoid giving this kind of information
| to Microsoft with no benefits attached to open source.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9969662-62.html
Michael Tiemann: According to Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census): "A census is the procedure of acquiring
information about every member of a given population. [...]
"The census can be contrasted with sampling in which information is only
obtained from a subset of a population. As such it is a method used for
accumulating statistical data, and also plays a part in democracy (voting).
Census data is also commonly used for research, business marketing, planning
purposes and not at least as a base for sampling surveys."
I do not see how it is valid to call this a census, unless there is a means to
compel every single member of the open source community to surrender their
information for the sponsors and executors the census. Is Microsoft promising
to provide such muscle for OpenLogic? Or is Microsoft unclear on what the
term "census" actually means. (I have my own opinions on whether they
understand what "open source" means, at least when they use the term
publicly.) Either way I don't see this producing a valid result, just more
confusion.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-06-16-010-26-NW-MR-MS-0002
Microsoft buddies up to open source "census": Conspiracy?
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| I think Microsoft just wants to be associated with any good-hearted
| open-source effort, so that it can appear...good hearted, without actually
| engaging open source in any deep, meaningful way.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9969819-16.html
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| This permits MS to find out the truth and to suppress any "bad news". MS will
| also be able to "talk to" people that are getting started with FOSS.
|
| All we will hear is how Linux/FOSS is struggling and just not getting
| deployed to any real extent.
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http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-06-16-010-26-NW-MR-MS-0000
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