Penguin
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Preamble

Linux advocacy is all about touting the benefits of free software and open source software in a professional manner, and not looking like a raving lunatic Microsoft basher. But sometimes, they say and do such funny things that you can't help but point and laugh. So here you go...


From Steve Ballmer, with Microsoft since 1980, became CEO in January 2000.

Developers, developers, developers, developers, ...
-- try Google:developers.mpg or see http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html for a video of this

(scream) (scream) ... give it up! (I'm not entirely sure what he was saying)
-- try Google:dancemonkeyboy.mpg or see http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html for a video of this

Linux is not about free software, it is about community. It's not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money -- it started off bankrupt, in a way.
-- ZDNet, 24 Sept 2002)

We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays for software on Linux.
-- same event as above

We have prided ourselves on always being the cheapest guy on the block ... One issue we have now, a unique competitor, is Linux. We haven't figured out how to be lower priced than Linux.
-- "Fusion" 2002 conference, Los Angeles

The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
-- June 2001

There's no company called Linux, there's barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it's free.
-- Microsoft financial analyst's meeting, Seattle, July 2000


Corporate spin

Exhibit 1
CERT says
III. Solution. Until a complete solution is available, consider the following workarounds: [...] Use a different WebBrowser.
Microsoft says
"Regarding the consideration that users switch browsers, it is unfortunate that the published articles have misrepresented CERT's suggestions, and we are working with CERT to clarify their advice."

Others

I'm not proud. We really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers ... Our products just aren't engineered for security.
-- Brian Valentine, Vice-president of MS Windows Development, .NET server developers' conference 2002

I'm an American, I believe in the American Way. I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.
-- Jim Allchin, Feb 2001

We're seeing crazy uptime numbers now, like three months, six months. I fully expect we'll see a year of uptime when Windows .NET Server 2003 is finished, [...]
-- Jeff Stucky, senior systems engineer at Microsoft.com, praising Windows

We have never had vulnerabilities exploited before the patch was known, [...]
-- David Aucsmith, head of Microsoft Security Business Unit, talking about windows patches