Hypocrisy

[*sigh*]

Various vaguely-related questions about Mr. Balmer's comments:

• Why does this sound oddly familiar? (Okay, it's a leading question.)
• Does this have anything to do with the sudden reversion to that truly horrible TCP/IP stack in the new version?
• Do people yet realize that a covenant means that they won't sue but there's nothing to keep the originator from calling you a pirate, a thief, or worse?
• Does Mr. Ballmer believe that the only way his company can profit is to keep the communities alienated? (There is a not-small population that lives in both. I'm one of them.)

I hereby call for Mr. Ballmer to list the misappropriated intellectual property used in Linux so it can be removed and we can get on with life. (Who needs yet another court case where the claim is that Linus or one of his fanatics stole from so-and-so?) (It's been four years and we still don't know what was stolen from SCO.)

Call me a pessimist but I think that PJ and crew are going to have enough material to keep them busy for a decade or more.

Oh, and before I get beat up for being anti-MS, remember that I usually don't criticize the OS. Rather, it's the company's marketing tactics that I am vocal about.

When does it stop? One pont to keep in mind is that the same tactics used against the open source community are readily adapted to the shareware and freeware programmers on both sides of the fence. Once a company decides that lawsuits are a legitimate (in their view) source of revenue, they will eventually strong-arm anyone they think is profiting (financially or otherwise) without "paying tribute" (MS's phrase, not mine). It might also be called "vig".