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Despite recession, the finding seems to suggest that the pace of obligatorily-disclosed amounts now trivially exceeds $10 million for Microsoft alone (annually).

Now get a load of this. The only sponsor of SourceForge.net2008 Community Choice Awards is Microsoft. Yes, you heard that right.

MySQL is likely to face issues that are associated with ways of extracting revenue from its users. Another largely forgotten issue is the increased pressure from the outside to extract revenue for collisions involving ideas, especially ones pertaining to algorithms.

There was clearly a transaction of money made by Microsoft in Norway, which passed it on to ISO. Good catch. Watch the picture inside this page and recall our old entry about soft briberies.

Some have voiced concern at Red Hat’s move to deemphasize the desktop, yet it’s a strategy that should be seen in a larger context.

Yes, Microsoft wants to “find ways to split ‘em apart.” Microsoft needs to do some intelligence work to identify “sources of tension between allies.” BSD versus GPL, anyone?

Novell carries on assisting Microsoft's fight against a member of the Linux Foundation (Adobe) by promoting an anti-Linux, anti-GPL Silverlight

Just days after accusations had been made against IBM and a ban put in place, IBM was cleared of all charges and the ban was lifted. The Register was quick with its report and so was The Inquirer. [...] As you can trivially find in the latest news, the whole accusation turns out to be some kind of a horrible mistake that no-one understand (total bafflement) and it’s worth stressing that the timing was interesting — almost as interesting as those responses from Microsoft apologists who defended Microsoft’s actions by wrongly accusing IBM.

“Microsoft did sponsor the benchmark testing and the NT server was better tuned than the Linux one. Having said that, I must say that I still trust the Windows NT server would have outperformed the Linux one.” –Windows platform manager, Microsoft South-Africa

There is enormous overlapping jurisdiction between national standardization body responsibilities and those of antitrust regulators. There is a pretty fair argument that JTC 1 should put DIS-29500 on ice until the antitrust proceeding is concluded, in order to avoid the possibility of inconsistent decisions.

Let us quickly accumulate pointers to posts which summarise the problem and use this page as somewhat an index that makes it easy to understand for those unfamiliar with it.

To sum up, not a single “Yes” voter was not in Microsoft’s pocket. Is this voting? Microsoft virtually had 5 seats. It holds them by the money, the mutual favours, the incentives, the personal relationships. Shouldn’t an impartial panel be deciding on OOXML, based on the technical quality of the candidate alone?

Bruce Perens, as you are probably aware, is one of the louder and best-known protesters against the Microsoft/Novell deal. He continues to focus on this issue, which he has not forgotten. He wants to keep Microsoft out of the OSI’s board as well, possibly preventing an effect akin to that of companies like Novell inside the Linux Foundation.

A look at the latest role of Microsoft executives, consultants and analysts in the fight against GNU/Linux and FOSS

Back in August we warned that Microsoft had just made a very suspicious donation at a very strategic time. It only days before the September vote on OOXML. The article which was cited at the time has vanished, but you can find a copy here:..

As pieces start falling into place, it becomes clearer why Microsoft's time to recover is running out. For a fact, Microsoft might soon enter debt and we have been studying for quite some time the true story behind Microsoft’s PR and accounting walls. Not so long ago we returned our attention to the issue of misconduct, including systematic kickbacks. There is more to bribery then just kickbacks, which themselves as a subtle form of bribery more severe than lobbying, which is legalized to a greater or lesser degree.

Mark Shuttleworth, whom we have great respect for after maintaining his stern stance against intimidation tactics, has responded to our concerns regarding the existence of Mono in Ubuntu. His message to us was CC’d to the Technical Board and the leader of Fedora. It would be worth bringing it to our readers’ attention because some were concerned (if not outraged) about the subject.

There were other curious funds that SCO received throughout its lifetime, even when its main role was that of a plaintiff in court. These include court declarationan investment from BayStar, a venture capital firm. In a court declaration it emerged that Richard Emerson, a Microsoft employee, was involved in BayStar's investment in SCO. A BayStar representative later added: "Yes, Microsoft did introduce BayStar to SCO."

Think about tomorrow’s generation of Linux-based mobile devices and Microsoft ambitions of turning the Net into .NET, most notably using Silverlight. Where does that position Linux? What about Moonlight? And why is a Microsoft ISV trying to shove the patent-encumbered Mono into Linux phones?

One thing I noticed this week is that the mono group has been able to encumber a growing number of Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) applications with proprietary Microsoft technology. However, the documentation and program descriptions do not warn of this (of course they want to keep it under the radar).