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Accepting the money from Microsoft would, in itself, do not harm. But Microsoft typically demands a price for its sponsorship, a price that implies a change in the nature of the event. The price might be, let someone from Microsoft give a speech. The price might be, don’t say that proprietary software is evil. The price might be, present Microsoft sponsorship in a way that inhibits
you from denouncing Microsoft’s software as unethical.
When the story about Microsoft shelling out $100,000 to Apache for ASF sponsorship broke across my radar it rather tickled my funny bone and my curiosity.
TomTom and Microsoft have settled the patent litigation. Here's TechFlash's coverage. According to the Microsoft press release, TomTom will remove functionality regarding the FAT patents within two years, which is no big deal, frankly, and in the meantime, they are covered "in a manner that is fully compliant with TomTom's obligations under the General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2)"
Microsoft announced on Friday that it would be joining the Apache Software Foundation, one of the leading organizations in the open-source world. Microsoft became a platinum sponsor of the ASF, which costs $100,000/year and is the highest level of sponsorship that the foundation offers.
Do you remember all the hoopla around the XP on the XO announcement in May? Where Microsoft gave us a press release, blog post, and a video, all announcing Windows XP for the XO laptop. Well, thanks to the sleuths on OLPC News Forum it looks like Microsoft may have faked two of the three.
On several occasions in the past we wrote about Microsoft hiding evidence of its real financial health. Well, this old paper-and-ink routine seems to have run out of stamina because Microsoft reported a significant drop in profits and its stock tanked. Here it is from Microsoft’s ‘back yard’ press, whose bias — if any — typically works in Microsoft’s favour.
One of the reason why Microsoft attracts so much bad press is their trash talk. If you follow Microsoft’s recent track record you will see a pattern. It begins with Steve Ballmer or any spokesperson from Microsoft making a disparaging comment about something