FSFE: "Microsoft's bugs result in the corporation having a multiple personality" - "customers should know who they are dealing with!"
Having been plagued by permanent problems with viruses, worms and other bugs, software-giant Microsoft seems to be developing a multiple personality. "Microsoft's customers should wonder about the sanity of their business partner", remarks Joachim Jakobs, Press Speaker for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
Last Wednesday the German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported that Microsoft tried to stop the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) from becoming involved as interested party in Microsoft's appeals procedure against the European Commission at the European Court. Microsoft's lawyers wrote only one line about the appeal in their two-page letter, making no formal objection to the process. Only to ramble in great lengths for the rest of the letter why the FSFE has no reason to be involved in the case. A spokesperson of the corporation contradicted these statements when speaking to the Handelsblatt newspaper by stating that more involved third parties would benefit the case: the more, the merrier. Whether this sudden change of mind is somehow related to Microsoft's request that the involved Third Parties pay their lawyers is not entirely clear.
Jakobs draws a short summary of these apparently contradictory statements: "It seems somewhat as if Microsoft's left hand did not know what its right hand was doing. However, this is more like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, depending on what seems more useful at the time." Either alternative should make Microsoft's business partners uncomfortable: they should realise that anything that upholds its monopoly seems fair to Microsoft. The FSFE suggests that market participants take a view of this confused policy, which is dangerous to the European economy. It seems like Microsoft is intent on ignoring the experience from numerous free software trials worldwide over the past years.
"We would also like to remind all private and corporate users of software that building and preserving freedom in an information society is sometimes an expensive undertaking," concedes the president of FSFE, Georg Greve. Donations to the FSFE [1] will be appreciated.
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/help/donate.html
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE, which was founded in 2001 as the European sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org