It's now possible for public school districts in California (and maybe Iowa) to acquire decent Free Open Source Software computers, courtesy of Microsoft. The purpose of this article is to lay out the basic process involved, because the documentation available on the official websites is murky, at best. Hopefully this article will summarize the process a bit.

If you've ever used Microsoft Access or Excel, you have likely used a product that Mike Gunderloy had a hand in developing. The irony is that Gunderloy himself doesn't use those products anymore. He's given up Microsoft for open source -- and he's not going back.

If you know anything about Microsoft’s war against Open Source, you can imagine the irony when I seen the below image in the body of the email.

I really, really don't understand this. I understand that Microsoft has a history of aggression against open source, as Chris DiBona wrote recently on the Open Source Initiative's (OSI) license-discuss e-mail list. I compete with Microsoft and have for many years. I get that Microsoft has been bad.

Reading the comments left publicly and privately for “Why would I care about Microsoft?”, I realize that many people’s view of free software is outdated. To many, free software is a small, delicate idea that a juggernaut like Microsoft can overrun at will. In this circumstance – which may have existed ten years ago – fears, obsession, and paranoia are only natural.

The OSI License-Discuss mailing list has been ablaze for the past few days since Microsoft submitted its Permissive License (MS-PL) to the OSI [Open Source Initiative] for official open source license approval.

Director of Source Program at Microsoft Corporation Jon Rosenberg submitted its Shared Source License called "Microsoft Community License" to Open Source Initiative for considering it as an OSI approved Open Source License.

War is peace and Microsoft is the new "open". Details on the latest attack of Microsoft against GNU/Linux, using proxies

To some folks outside of Microsoft, the Open-Source Software Lab has been a sort of mysterious place. A place where we study Linux and open-source software, cursing our enemies while brewing our malevolent plans to combat those nasty FOSS developers. Oh, and we also have a death ray on the roof of building 17. It's Linux-powered, of course, just to add a little irony.