Kurt Granroth and Andreas Pour: “Business Ethics” in the Open Source Community?

[ Thanks to Kurt
Granroth for this link. ]

“What do we do when “one of our own” turns their back on our
community’s code of ethics?”

“A few “get rich quick” companies hoping to capitalize on “the
Linux craze” have tried to apply the old tactics to this
community.. but for the most part, they have had little effect. We
tend to watch out for these companies and let them know that they
aren’t welcome in our community if they can’t play by our rules.
This is usually pretty effective.”

“But what do we do when one of our own, a company with long-time
roots in our community, rejects our code of ethics and resorts to
underhanded, deceitful tactics for the express purpose of
undermining an Open Source project? I never expected this to
happen. Much to my dismay, it appears that the now flush-with-cash
IGS/Helix Code/Ximian company is doing just that….”

“Go to the popular Google search engine and try a search on any
of the following terms: “KDE”, “K Desktop Environment”, “koffice”,
“kword”, “kspread”, “konqueror”, “dcop”, “kparts”, “qt” or
“trolltech”. Now look at the “Sponsored Link” on the right side of
the page. You will find the ad shown below, loudly proclaiming
“Free Linux Desktop” and advertising “Download it now!”. The link
goes to — not KDE, but Ximian. Huh?…”

“The intent of these ads are clear: they are deliberately
attempting to confuse people looking for free KDE code into buying
Ximian products instead. Think I’m reading too much into this?
Well, look again at the ad above and then look at the ad below.
This is what Google produces when one searches for “ximian”,
“gnome”, or “evolution”.”

Complete
Story