By Sabine Buerger,
Special Linux Today European Correspondent
Microsoft just can’t get enough information about Linux. In
Switzerland employees of the local Redmond-branch searched
Linux-related portal sites, newsgroups or mailing lists. Registered
users of the Swiss Linux portal site www.linux.ch were contacted and
questioned about their motives and the advantages concerning the
use of Linux. “Although nothing illegal, we were very annoyed,”
said open source activist Marc O. Gloor. Together with Stefan
Heimers, he published a communique’
about Microsoft’s exploitation of Linux sites for marketing
purposes.
The story became public when Swiss companies and organizations
— registered as Linux users on www.linux.ch — were contacted.
“They told me I was on a ‘Linux user list’ they have, and they
asked me why I was using Linux, if I was using Linux in place of
Microsoft products, and for what applications”, one user
reported.
“The companies concerned are partially bound to the ‘Microsoft
SELECT contract’, says the communique’, “… but this license
agreement contains no restrictive paragraphs for the simultaneous
use of other operating systems”.
(source: Blackserver-Redaktion
http://www.blackserver.at/linux/
e-mail: redaktion@blackserver.at)