We (the ones involved in MSDNNepal.com) have faced several questions regarding Microsoft and its activities here in Nepal. We got many regarding Free Software and others, too. But I will concentrate on questions regarding Microsoft here.

I will also not primarily discuss about their software (Windows, Office) in this post. Lets leave that for later.

Q. So, why dislike Microsoft at all?
A. These are some of the reasons:

1. Anticompetitive Practices
Microsoft has always been known for their anticompetitive practices. They don’t actually care to build better software. They believe in knocking out the competition by all means, which barely involves creating better software. Here is a paper on “Microsoft – A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm” by “European Committe for Interoperable Systems“. It is recommended to go through the whole paper. Following are some of the extracts from it to get you interested. The sources from where they have been obtained are listed in the paper.

For more than two decades, Microsoft has engaged in a carefully designed and extremely
successful campaign to protect and extend its monopolies. Microsoft has repeatedly made
market allocation proposals to its competitors and has used a broad range of other
anticompetitive and unlawful tactics to eliminate potential rivals, including tying, predatory
product design, and intentional deception.

[...]

Microsoft recognized that, if any middleware product gained widespread
popularity, “developers might begin to rely upon APIs exposed by the middleware for basic
routines rather than relying upon the API set included in Windows.” Microsoft has therefore
crushed middleware threats, such as Netscape’s web browser.

[...]

Microsoft’s past conduct demonstrates its ability and willingness to engage in unlawful acts to the detriment of consumers, and awareness of its history is valuable today in understanding Microsoft’s ongoing business practices and strategies.

[...]

…reviews a number of Microsoft’s past actions to extinguish potential competitive threats. These include Microsoft’s: (a) campaign against DR-DOS; (b) anticompetitive per processor license fees; (c) retaliation against IBM; (d) threats and retaliation against Intel; (e) elimination of Word Perfect; (f) deceptive WISE software program; (g) elimination of Netscape; (h) deception of Java developers; (i) elimination of rival media players; and (j) campaign against rival server operating systems.

[...]

This initial interoperability came to be known as part of Microsoft’s now-classic “embrace, extend, and extinguish” strategy, which Microsoft has subsequently and successfully employed in many other product areas.

[...]

To read the whole paper, click here.

Since Microsoft has done these things in the past, we cannot think that they will not do it again in different parts of the world (including our country Nepal), in different products (Linux?) and in various ways(Embrace Linux; Extent Linux – Mono/Moonlight with Novell and make developers feel safe with .NET?; and Extinguish – Have Novell stop Mono/Moonlight development and force users back to Windows?).

2. Vendor Locking
Microsoft tries to lock users into its products. To do that, it uses deviation from standards as the main tool.

In an internal memo for senior management Microsoft’s head of C++ development, Aaron Contorer, stated:

“The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most Independent Software Vendors would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead… It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move. In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.”

More information here.

They have admitted that they created Windows API to lock users into their platform. So it is obvious to think that they had similar intents when they created the .NET Framework (since it does not work well with Linux and other operating systems).

3. FUD
Microsoft uses FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubts) to enhance its sales. It says that Linux violates over 200 Linux patents and says “We will not sue Linux now”. Companies hesitate to adopt Linux because of these claims and that’s exactly what Microsoft wishes to accomplish.
They recently sued TomTom, a Linux based GPS devices maker, over “use of FAT (a file system from Microsoft)” (3 patent infringement claims) despite of the promise they made about “not suing over FAT” (that’s another story). Now, this shows that, if they find enough reasons to sue, they will do it. So what are they doing about over 200 patents? This shows that they do not have anything strong to start a legal fight, showing their claims are fallacious. Here is a “Sue me first Microsoft” list where users put up their organizations/names and challenge Microsoft to sue them.
Also, Microsoft tries put up a legal fight whenever they get a chance. They have even legally threatened a 17 year old boy named Mike Rowe who bought the domain MikeRoweSoft.com. They have even threatened Microsoft MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for adding features to Microsoft Software.
This basically means, you have a equal chance of getting sued, no matter what you use. In fact, Microsoft has sued more people who use Windows than they have done with Linux users. So it is a better idea to not touch anything that belongs to Microsoft with a ten-foot pole. The best bet is to use a Linux distribution that does not endorse Microsoft in any way (eg. Fedora from Red Hat) or BSD.

4. Misinformation
Since it has been shown by various researches and deployers that have used both of the technologies that the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is less using Linux, Microsoft has always been funding researches to show that Microsoft’s technologies are better (in pricing) than equivalent Linux implementations. They have started “Get the facts” back in 2004, but that is full of case studies, that generally highlights spam filtering capabilities of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. I personally use Gmail (which runs on a Linux server) with Thunderbird (on Linux) as my mail client and get almost zero spam without any email filtering extension in place. Those who are serious about the spam issue should probably go with spam filtering add-ons at client side too.
Moreover, they even quote their consumers saying that they saved hardware costs. I simply don’t get it. The minimum system requirements for a Windows 2008 server is 1.4 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, SVGA Display with 800×600 resolution, 10GB disk space. So that is the hardware required for just the OS to run. If you wish to make it any useful, you need lots more. And if you wish to scale it further, you need even more.
Compare that with bare minimum requirements of Latest Ubuntu Server; 300 MHz processor, 64 MB of system memory (RAM), 4 GB of disk space (for full installation and swap space), VGA graphics card capable of 640×480 resolution. Even the Recommended minimum for Linux software is a lot lesser than equivalent Microsoft Software.
Now, talking of software, the pricing is similar. However, the benefit you have if you choose Linux server is that you can start it at zero price for software.
Conclusion: Get the facts you require yourselves. Don’t depend on (probably paid) reviews from third party that appear on Microsoft Site. If the reviews didn’t favor Microsoft, they wouldn’t be on their site.

Please feel free to add reasons why you like or dislike Microsoft via comments. I may also choose to include it in the main post with correct attribution.

Q. Okay, but isn’t it a good idea to let Microsoft help our country since our country needs technology?
A. Yes, our country is technology-hungry. That is the very reason we should not let Microsoft dominate our country’s market. If we let Microsoft (or any other proprietary software, which is non-competitive by nature) dominate our technology market, we will have to pay software tax in every payment we make. Consider paying for items in a departmental store which uses Microsoft software in their computer systems. Since the departmental store is a profit making entity, it will have to make enough profit to pay for the software it uses. So, it will add the price to the items sold. This seems like a small amount of money. But consider this in all businesses. Even worse, consider what will happen when every government/non-government entities using Microsoft (or other proprietary software. That will make the consumers pay for each installation of the Microsoft software and expensive hardware required to run their Softwares. This is indeed a serious issue considering a poor country like ours.
Most importantly, it is very difficult (or expensive) even if we decide to move to other technologies because of vendor-locking explained above. So, it is essential that we must use Free Software in every aspects of technology.

Q. But Microsoft is using legitimate ways to spread their technology. It is not possible to stop them, unless of course we become non-democratic and stop the use of their software by making it illegal.
A. First, they might be using seemingly legitimate ways, but they are not always so. It is possible if we understand what ways they are using to help foster their software here in Nepal. They use the following ways to spread their technologies. I have explained how to counter them, the best I can.

MSPs & Awareness (Misinformation) Programs
They select Microsoft Student Partners, from colleges, who are supposed to make the students aware of their technologies. But what they are doing actually is using them to promote their technologies over others. They use the students to organize their programs in the respective colleges with hopes of providing them a good career. The programs basically are brain washing stunts that make students believe that if they don’t get the Microsoft Certification or don’t use Microsoft Technologies, they will achieve nothing. They will have Engineering Students believe that they will not become successful engineers or won’t get a job if they don’t get Microsoft Certifications. Basically, there is nothing wrong with that. They are free to promote their products. However, they also add hatemongering towards other technologies in the process.

Here is what a Microsoft Trainer, an Electronics Engineer, said to us in one of their programs: “Engineers do not build things. They use it. Microsoft has already created software for us, we should use it rather than try to build our own”. This program had a tremendous effect on the students and almost all of them were ready to start the training. But thanks to the Department of our college that took an immediate action and informed the students that it was just an “advertisement” of the training program that they offered and warned the students responsible for bringing such programs to our college to not do it again. There are trainings that are based on other technologies, which are equally good or even better. Thanks to the seniors and knowledgeable friends that helped the students correct their misunderstanding. Not all colleges have department, teachers and seniors who are well informed and gracious enough to share their knowledge.

However, I have thought of several ways to counter this misinformation campaigns via MSPs and such programs. Here are a few I can think of:
1. Create a FOSS group in the college which organizes more programs than the Microsoft Programs to share information of Free Software and its benefits over proprietary software.
2. Discourage students to become a MSP. Inform them of the ill effects to their studies, their way of perceiving software and technologies, the misinformation they will be forced to give out to students and the ill effects they will cause to the country’s economy and innocent minds.
3. If there has to be (a) MSP(s), encourage students who are capable enough to know both sides of the coin and take appropriate decisions to which programs are good for the students and which are not. They should also be open and capable to discuss with other students (including the FOSS group) before enforcing a program to be held.
4. If such students are not available, some FOSS member who is ready to reject all the Microsoft programs should be encouraged. The MSP should “mis-inform” the advertising company that they are doing good or say that they do could not make arrangements to conduct the programs due to time constraints or such.
5. If such students are not available, students who are capable of “doing nothing” should be recommended to join the MSP program, so that their plans almost always don’t work.
6. If such programs are organized, all the members of the FOSS group must participate so that the seats of innocent students are occupied and hence the misinformation does not reach the innocent minds at all. If this is not possible (due to fees), at least one student of the FOSS community should participate who should correct the presenter when s/he gives out improper informations and suggest other alternatives too. Free awareness programs must follow inviting the students who participated in the programs held by Microsoft helpers.

I know that not all of them may not seem ethical, but I think they are legitimate. Please correct me or add more.

Contests
They open contests occasionally. You generally win advertising prop (T-Shirt, Watch or something with a Microsoft Brand Name) or a piece of their software. One such quiz is going on at the time of writing this article.
I have thought about countering these stunts:
1. All FOSS enthusiasts should participate in these contests and get the prizes. That reduces the chances of an innocent student.
2. If you win, you should collect the prize and if it is an advertisement prop, you should destroy their logos if you wish to use it. If that is not possible, you should destroy it all together.

They also come up with paid programming contests. The best way of going about them is not participating at all and discouraging others to participate as well. This way, the advertising agencies here will get lesser success and hence hopefully they will stop getting funds from Microsoft.

ELMS and Dreamspark
They have the ELMS and Dreamspark programs to provide Microsoft Product Licenses to students at no costs. However this may seem great at first sight, it is not. Nepali people have been using pirated software till date and most of us (Nepali) can’t tell pirated software from non-pirated ones. These programs have multiple benefits from Microsoft point of view. Not only they inform people about pirated software (“You’ve been using our software illegally”), they are also getting the students use and get accustomed to their software.
To counter this, the students must be made aware of the licenses, that are not covered in detail in their misinformative programs. Not only these licenses are “not supported” after the student is no longer a student, the software under these licenses cannot be used for any profit motives. That means if a student wants to develop a software that she wishes to sell, she must buy a retail copy of the OS and development tools used. This has been covered by fr3ak here.

I have given the required references and interpreted the information in my own personal way. Please “Get your own facts” and don’t depend entirely on this article to draw conclusions. Your comments will help the readers and us to make improvements in our way of thinking. Thank you for your time.

Further Reading:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://en.windows7sins.org/
http://boycottnovell.com/

If you think that this article is helpful, please share it in Facebook or Social bookmarking site of your choice below.

They (Micro$oft) seem to have acknowledged the beauty of opensource in development and have started using it in their development long ago. Have a look at the Sep 2007 history of http://www.microsoft.com/opensource at archive.org. This proves that they had started the site back in September 2007 or earlier.

I posted a topic on MSDNNepal.net/forum recently. I had saved the screenshot of the post. Here it is:

OpenSource @ www.Msdnnepal.net (Click to view image)

Now, they have deleted it already. They have given no specific reasons to have deleted the post. I would certainly like to know what they have to say about it.

I think they do not understand the term OpenSource and believe OpenSource is an antonym of Micro$oft. It is hilarious that such people are moderators and/or administrators of Micro$oft Nepal Community Portal. Long live Micro$oft.

What do you think?

Regards
_khAttAm_

Welcome to Technet Nepal!
We have always learnt that 'to share is to care' and 'in teaching do we learn'.
For the IT Professionals in Nepal, we are presenting a portal to ensure that there is a portal to learn as well as to teach, to share and collaborate; to educate as well as to be educated.
We use a triple-E approach:
Education and Awareness: This portal hopes to be able to increase the awareness level on the latest technologies and products from Microsoft!
Engineering: This portal also aims at being able to share source codes, troubleshooting tips, experiences and tricks and tips in helping IT Pros to be better able to implement the solutions.
Embrace: This portal hope to be able to assist our users to embrace Microsoft products and technologies.
I am sure you will join, blog and share your knowledge in the forum section of this portal.

Those were warm words of welcome from our honorable,

Mr. Allen Bailochan Tuladhar
Country Manager
Microsoft MDP Nepal

Only a dumbass cannot notice that the forum is just a promotional measure implemented by M$, so that IT pros don’t shift to other alternatives. Hell, the banner in the forum is a silverlight video which was previous a Windows only video rendering solution. And thanks to Novell for wasting their precious time, making me able to run silverlight video on my Linux machine.  Thank you novell.

Now looking back at the country person’s words, I found some terms(maybe the whole sentence) not that satisfying.

The baseline of the community suggests the name “IT Pro Community” and here is what I found:

Education and Awareness: This portal hopes to be able to increase the awareness level on the latest technologies and products from Microsoft!

Well Mr. Country Manager, are you trying to point out that M$ products are only the one aiding to technology? If I’m wrong please some representatives form the community, correct me. I would like to suggest them(the community leaders), please change the website baseline and make it something clear like ours. An IT Pro in Nepal like me don’t require M$ products or its technology professionally.

Engineering: This portal also aims at being able to share source codes, troubleshooting tips, experiences and tricks and tips in helping IT Pros to be better able to implement the solutions.

Hmmmmm.. I find the statement a bit confusing. Is the portal designed to share and gain experience? And what kind of freedom I get while sharing? Is it the author’s choice or what? And why should I help an IT Pro with his project if he is going to sell the project to my community for thousands of bucks? I’ll rather waste that time developing a new and useful software for the community. I will like to help an IT pro with his project if and only if the community is benifited by it.

And the last statement

Embrace: This portal hope to be able to assist our users to embrace Microsoft products and technologies.

Again, I don’t support the statement either.

The baseline should be changed(my view). Something like, M$ IT Pro Community.

^ These are my analytic views. Yours can be better. Please feel free to share.

Regards

fr3ak

[Note: The material copied here inside the code are great words form our M$ Country Manager. He holds the complete right over the words and are included here just for illustration purpose only.]

But what if I’m cannot use the computer my way? Well, I use Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and I’m free from the threat. But what if you cannot use the computer the way you want to use it? What if the basic freedom, “freedom to use”, isn’t valid in your case?

The main reason I shifted to Ubuntu was far more urgent than hardware support. Yes, I moved to Ubuntu two years ago because Windows didn’t support my hardware(that’s the reason my friends think of). I’m not sharing here why I shifted to Ubuntu but pointing out why you should shift.

As most people think, their computer should obey their orders, so do I. But when I found out that, with a plan called “trusted computing” and a program called “Windows Genuine Advantage“, Microsoft and others are planning to make my computer obey them instead of me.

Now let us have a review of M$ and its privacy issues. If you are a M$ lover or advocate then you wouldn’t love to hear this as you may be stuck between your love and freedom. The choice is yours, completely yours fellas.

Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is M$’s system for remotely checking your computer. WGA scans various parts of your hard drive to reassure M$ that you are running an “approved” version of Windows. WGA is mandatory monitoring system and if M$ decides you are not “approved” they can disable your computer’s functionality. Currently Microsoft confirms that WGA checks:

• Computer make and model
• BIOS
• MAC address
• A unique number assigned to your computer – Globally Unique Identifier or GUID
• Hard drive serial number
• Region and language settings of the operating system
• Operating system version
• PC BIOS information (make, version, date)
• PC manufacturer
• User locale setting
• Validation and installation results.
• Windows or Office product key
• Windows ID

WGA have caused a number of privacy related problems, including deletion of software. WGA gets automatically updated as part of M$’s critical update procedures, giving users little choice but to accept changes to the systems M$ can monitor. Many have claimed that WGA is spyware, and although M$ have denied such intent, they retain the power to decide what counts as an invasion of your privacy. Well let us not forget Windows Media Player in Windows 7 Beta phase corrupting mp3′s.

For Windows 7 they are changing the name of the product to Windows 7 Activation Technologies (WAT), but the functionality remains the same.

Microsoft’s version of a “Trusted Computing” scheme is called “Palladium“. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but Palladium would make it universal.

Hollywood and the record companies will use Palladium to ensure that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer and the sharing of ‘authorized’ files will be entirely impossible.

Making sharing impossible is bad enough, but it gets worse. There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents–resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company.

Consider a scenario, your teacher told you via email, to do something nasty and risky. After weeks of the task being completed, your teacher steps aside and you have no proof that it was your teacher’s decision.

Moreover, Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all.

Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer.

You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime.

Now let us not speak of foreign affairs and step back to out country, our society and M$ Nepal.

Let us have a look back at how M$ Nepal is violating its own privacy statements.

Forum Post - Mr. ubuntubay

Forum Post - Mr. Allen

You can go to the forum here to view the full discussion. In the above image you can see that although the user ubuntubay was hidden behind a handle, his information (name) was disclosed publicly. I think the Mr. Admin hadn’t seen the movie Spider Man.

“With great power, comes great responsibility” – Uncle Ben, SpiderMan

This shows that M$ shows no respect to its user’s privacy.

If you still think that you are a human, you have rights and you respect you privacy and want to ship to free OSes like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc then visit our FORUM. Feel free to ask questions there. We are heartily willing to help people to shift to Linux.

Feel free to comment.

Regards
fr3ak

Reference: http://en.windows7sins.org/

The forum can be found at:

http://technetnepal.com

Its all the love and response of all our readers that have encourage us to host a forum.

Feel free to comment on the forum.

Regards,

fr3ak

Now it has been pulled down from the Microsoft Website saying that they will investigate the matter.

The source code was taken from the ImageMaster project, which was licensed GPL V2, at Codeplex. That means they should have provided the source code of the modified program or a way to obtain it, which they did not. It should also have been released with the same license, i.e. GPL V2. But they failed to do so. Microsoft’s version of license even restricted users from distributing the binary, leave alone the code.

This was discovered when the author of WindowsWithin decompiled the program (yes .NET codes can be decompiled) and looked into it.

I think this is just a mistake from Microsoft’s part but big mistake it is.

We don’t know what other tools from Microsoft violate the GPL or other licenses due to their closed source practice. And there is only one way to find out. Dig into them.

I would like to see what you readers think about this.

References:

http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/11/06/microsoft-lifts-gpl-code-uses-in-microsoft-store-tool/

http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-windows-7-download-tool-or-microsoft-to-open-source-the-windows-7-download-tool.aspx

MSDN Academic Alliance --Student Use Guidelines
As a member of the MSDN Academic Alliance, the department in which you take credit courses is authorized to provide you with program software for use on your personal computers. To be in compliance with the MSDN Academic Alliance program requirements, you must follow these usage guidelines when using the program software on your computer. You must also agree to the terms of the MSDN End User License Agreement (EULA),the Amendment to Master End-User License Agreement, and any conditions required by your department.
The MSDNAA Site Administrator at your school will be responsible for maintaining records of student use and ensuring there is full compliance with the program among all department users, including students, faculty and systems administration staff. Please see your Site Administrator for any questions that you may have about the program, or refer to www.msdnaa.net.
By installing, copying, or otherwise using the Product, you agree to be bound by the terms of the EULA and the License Amendment. If you do not agree to be bound, do not install, copy or use the Product.

I’m ok with all that.


Installation Guidelines:
* Your department will provide either server access for you to download program software, or may create up to 50 copies of the software to be checked out on a temporary basis to install on personal use computers. All software reproduced for checkout will be a complete copy, and include all copyright and trademark notices.
* You must be registered in at least one credit course within the member department to be eligible to load program software on your personal use computer. Students registered solely for non-credit courses in the department are not eligible to receive program software.
* You may not give copies of loaned software to anyone else for their use. Other qualifying students must obtain software via the method(s)set up by the MSDNAA Site Administrator.
* In order to install certain components of the Product, you may need an Academic Alliance Product Key (“Product Key”).The Product Key will be assigned to solely to download authorized software. You may not disclose the Product Key information to anyone else.
* The MSDN AA Site Administrator will maintain records of software downloaded from server or checked out, and will provide those records to Microsoft upon request.
Usage Guidelines:
* You may use the software for non-commercial purposes including instructional use, research and/or design, development and testing of projects for class assignment and tests or personal projects. You may not use the Program software for any for-profit software development.

So, the products that are so called free aren’t really free in the sense freedom to the users. A famous M$ quote, “We are M$, we never give anything for free.” comes true. What if I haven’t read the EULA and downloaded the key for Visual Studio Professional, coded a project for a software competition or so and presented in front, finally knowing that my platform was illegal(for non-commercial purpose only) and hence the whole project. I have seen many projects either being close or transferred to M$ hands because of such issues.

* When you are no longer a registered student in a department that is a member of the MSDN Academic Alliance, you may no longer receive updates for your personal use computer. However, you may continue to use previously installed software on your computer, provided you continue to follow program guidelines.
* If you violate the terms of the License Agreement and EULA, the MSDNAA Program Administrator will demand confirmation of removal of the program software on your personal use computer. MSDN Academic Alliance --Student Use Guidelines

Right now I’m just remembering a saying of famous Hollywood Movie(not that), Bruno, “Yo maan… F*** maan…”….

I think they are just making us acquainted to their product. Let’s us move back into the history. M$ has suffered a great loss in European countries due to EU’s policies. EU forced M$ not to bundle various softwares like Media Player, etc. EU criticized M$ of dominating other software vendors by bundling these software with its OS. Moreover EU forced M$ to opensource some of its codes. It had to release an e-Windows version of its famous product for European Market. A bit back in the future, we can find M$ facing various lawsuits regarding bundled softwares. After suffering great losses because of these issues, M$ had no other options other than haunting the developing IT countries.

In developing IT countries, like ours, people cannot afford for M$ fancy called OSes and products. As a result, either they have to use pirated softwares or switch to their opensource alternatives. Well, providing students with genuine keys of various versions of various M$ products, it is making us acquainted to it, for its future goal. For Balmer sake, please anyone don’t comment that they are giving keys for free and that’s good. You you still have the same thought then please read the bold portion of the EULA again.

Not let me focus on the main goal of M$ behind providing us genuine M$ keys. They are making us used to and addicted to their platform and tools. So, that in the future, when we pass out(remember the EULA, the license is invalid after that), we are deployed in the market. At that situation, we will only have two choices again, buy M$ products or switch to opensource alternative. The second one will be harder under that scenario.

The market will be full of M$ experts and they will be the cheapest employees for an organization. Keeping in mind long term organizational benefits, company would love to one time invest on M$ product and use cheap M$ employees for the maintenance and support. This way within 4-5 years from now when 4-5 batch of M$ acquainted products(we IT personals) are in the market it’s goal will be complete.

Beware, there’s still time.

My last words,
“A war starts with a single person and ends with one”
“Changing the world is easier, than changing yourself”
“Change your views, the world will change itself”

Micro$oft has left no loop holes in their publicities as their die heart followers (M$P’s) continue to convince every single student to take part in the competition. After researching some more about such competitions being held in Nepal, I found that this was the second of its type being conducted by Micro$oft and its sister organization.

Previous year, I remember some man representing M$ running through college to college convincing students to take part in the software competition named “The Leading Edge” whose theme was cloud computing and localization. I remember hundreds of our friends registering to take part in the competition. The winner of the competition was promised an Xbox 360. But ever since I have never heard any news of the competition being held nor anyone being awarded Xbox 360.

Ever since this competition, I found that Micro$oft favorable activities have grown in the society like appointing a or two community leader/s from each college(M$P). Their main objective was to clear the student’s brain with their mind blasting (Note: not mind blowing, mind blasting) technologies. Students have been given access to Legal copies of Micro$oft softwares. When I dug deep into the issue, I figured it out that this was a policy to overcome their great loss in Europe. They are creating a developer’s base. In the coming years maybe 4-5 years, Micro$oft is going to corner all the government and other organization(not only in Nepal but also in other IT developing countries), forcing them to either buy a legal copy of Micro$oft or switch to an Open Source alternatives. With programmer base being low for opensource alternatives and lacking local support, the government and other organization will have no other option than buying Legal copy. This way they can overcome their losses. Moreover, the license copy that we obtain through Micro$oft’s so called Academic Alliance cannot be used for bussiness purpose. The software that are developed using those licensed copy cannot be sold.

Now back to the software competition, I don’t even remember any of my friend being provided the certificates. Now through Multi Point they are again trying to boost their reach. They are even charging the student’s to take part on the competition. When inquired, one of the guys related to Micro$oft said that they use the approach “We are Micro$oft, we never give anything for free.” Last year my friends wasted their Rs. 75, registering for the competition, some of them giving their valuable time and effort but no response for the Micro$oft software competition committee.

Maybe this year too they are just using the competition as a means to boost their reach. These are all my analytical view regarding Micro$oft Multipoint challange (BahuBindu) and its policies regarding not only Nepal but all the IT developing countries.

Your open views are highly welcome.

The post below just exists for historical reasons.

ORIGINAL POST: Aug 27, 2009:

We are offering you free blogs on this site. The blogs will be based on wordpress and hosting space will be provided by us. The blogs will be as subdomains to this site, i.e. WhatEverYouWant.msdnnepal.com.

Every month, we will choose the best blog based on the content and visitors to your blog and we will consider providing WhatEverThatIsAvailable.com (or WhatEverThatIsAvailable.net) for your blog. We are even thinking of providing free space for your existing domain (eg. yourname.com.np, yoursite.com) if you comply to our terms and conditions.

Interested candidates should simply post in comments here. Please do not forget to mention the Title of your blog and the URL you want (eg. myblog.msdnnepal.com) while applying.

Also, please read these terms before applying:
1. You must be a Nepali Citizen should be able to verify it if needed to be. Candidates who do not have a Nepali citizenship (because of their age) or are a citizen of different country but have been staying in Nepal for study for over a year may also apply.
2. The content of the blog may not be offensive legally.
3. No pornographic content.
4. You will not use the site for commercial purposes. (However you are allowed to place your own ads.)
5. You should put in a dofollow text link to msdnnepal.com from index page of your blog.
6. All decisions will be made by us.

A detailed version of Terms and Conditions will be available after we start and that should be after a month or so. You may create any blog as long as it does not violate the terms and conditions. You need not be a Micro$oft Disliker to apply.

We will need to move to our own dedicated host (or some reseller hosting, whatever fits our budget. We are students, so we will have a hard time. But we will manage if you cooperate. But we promise you that it will be free of cost and we will never impose any cost, no matter what.) before we do so, so please expect some delays.

Please feel free to contact us via comments box below for any issues or questions.