Make mine Linux

There's an interesting article in Seattle's Alt Weekly The Stranger this week about Microsoft caving in to fundamentalist pressure on a gay rights bill in Washington State.

At the April 4 meeting, [Microsoft general counsel Bradford L.] Smith told members of GLEAM, the gay and lesbian employees group at Microsoft, that the company had switched its official stance to "neutral" on the bill, and took personal responsibility for the decision. He characterized the shift as part of a broader general review of company policy designed to more precisely formulate criteria for determining when Microsoft should involve itself in "social issues," but also disclosed the pressure that had been brought to bear on him by Hutcherson.

Ironically, Microsoft is apparently a pretty good place for LGB employees to work (don't know about the T employees). There is some speculation that Microsoft has its metaphorical finger to the wind, and has decided that it's blowing from the past.

As for Murray, he believes the company was faced with a "profound" moral test, which it failed. The backpedaling "sends an incredible message of weakness and shows a lack of moral backbone," he says. "I mean, what is this? Is this the 1930s, and are they Krups?"

We hear a lot these days about the new-fangled Democrats coming out of the Tech Industry (Chris Nolan calls them "Progressive Libertarians", others call them the "New Democrats"), and if this is an example of what we can expect from them, then we're going to need to look elsewhere.