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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 2:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: Beware of the Microsoft bearing “addictive” gifts
THIS is not another post about EDGI, but it sure illustrates how Microsoft spins its “addiction” trips (see quote at the top) as something of charitable value. Todd Bishop captured the situation pretty well under the headline:
> Microsoft: Sorry, you can’t use these vouchers to learn Linux[...]The vouchers are being made available as part of Microsoft’s Elevate America retraining program, announced in February, which aims to train up to 2 million people over the next three years.
They also neglect to comment on one crucial ingredient: competition. It’s not about training; it’s about training for Microsoft, turning civilians into customers.
This “Elevate America” scam is a subject that we remarked on before and we are finding a similar scam in the Australian press right now. A fortnight ago we saw Microsoft exploiting poverty in east Africa to turn people into agents of the company. Now there’s this:
> Microsoft Corp. announced Monday it would be giving away more than 30,000 vouchers over the next 90 days to help unemployed people in Washington state get new computer skills.
By “computer skills” they mean Microsoft products. It’s about “Microsoft skills”. It’s a good time to stare again at the Gates quote appearing above. Microsoft did this in Africa too — using financial distress to spread Microsoft software even more. The sad thing is that the press usually parrots Microsoft press releases that spin anti-GNU/Linux dumping as one of a variety of benevolent euphemisms. This is very typical and there are many examples, e.g. [1, 2]. █
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