It’s a convenient fiction that a vocal minority within the open-source community believes Microsoft is the source of all evil in the technology world.
For “such people“, it is far easier to denounce an imaginary one-dimensional straw man directing irrational “hate” towards a single entity than a principled stand against anti-freedom activities, no matter the source.
The fact of the matter, as a moment of honest research will show, is that the “vocal minority” has something to say about Microsoft, Apple, Intel, the MPAA, the RIAA, and many other entities – large and small – that engage in anti-user, anti-Freedom activites.
It is a laughable claim – I don’t want to flat out call someone a liar – that any one thinks Microsoft “is the source of all evil”. It is true that soley by its shear size and influence, Microsoft may receive more attention from critics - such is the nature of being a large target – but this still falls far short from being named the “source of all evil”.
One who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
I want to beat this horse one more time: No actor of any import at all thinks Microsoft is “the source of all evil”. Such a claim is clearly untrue hyperbole intended to create an easy target. Why has such demogogy become an acceptable practice among “such people”?
As a related aside, let me point out the poison of using weasel words like “such people” and not identifying the target. It becomes next to impossible to consisely refute the allegations, because then the original party can slip back in to mud claiming “oh I was talking about some other entity you didn’t clear” or some other evasion, leaving the odor of vague knowing accusations lingering in his wake – this is another characteristic of demogogy, “demonization”.
Consider the recent dust-up on Microsoft’s latest GPL violation as pontificated upon by “such people”. Let us take Microsoft at face value and assume this admitted violation was a mistake by a 3rd party: that’s fine, mistakes happen.
However, it makes no more sense to take this single incident and use it as exculpatory evidence than it would to use this single incident as damming evidence. Yet, by connecting this single “error” to the hateful straw man, that is exactly what “such people” are attempting – avoiding any mention of over a decade of history of clearly-not-mistake hostile and illegal actions.
Such dishonest apologetics do no one a favor. They do not cast Microsoft in a more favorable light. They do not strengthen the credibility of the apologist. And they do not convert the critic.
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