In this guest editorial, consultant and project manager Oliver Fels responds to Microsoft's online comparison of Windows XP Embedded to Embedded Linux . . .

History is known to repeat itself over and over again. If anything is necessary to prove that, just take a look at Microsoft. Whenever a new and interesting technology arises, we can be sure Microsoft will care about it, for the sake of the customers, as they say. Listening to Microsoft's PR department I sometimes get the feeling, that we as potential customers should be prevented from potential mistakes we might be making by accessing competitional technology. So the gods from Redmond show us ways into the right direction, the direction of enlightenment and we should all be thankful for that.

It is the old story. Instead of coping with new ideas and technology, suppression is used. If we think about the JAVA dispute some years ago, Microsoft tried to adopt and, when they noticed that they wont succeed, started ignoring.

The same is happening here. Linux is the new enemy-of-state in Redmond.

The former practice of adopting, adapting, owning and then killing it does not work here, so they are just trying to kill and skip the rest.

The people at Microsoft are not bad nor stupid. Indeed this PR campaign is a clever one. They know that the PR capabilities of Linux are somehow limited — Microsoft has a broad audience listening to them, most are decision makers with little technical background. On the political layer, Linux has very few supporters.

Additionally, the arguments used for Embedded XP are well chosen and applied against the least common nominator of a real bare Embedded Linux platform — which is not the platform used for production purposes.

From our daily work, we all know that most of the arguments are ignorant and misleading. But the truth is that nobody cares. Whenever Microsoft is talking about Windows issues we can be sure that there is enough audience listening to it. Embedded Linux issues should have the same effect.

There is a strong demand for PR action here. We better jump on the waggon and look for audiences.

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About the author: Oliver Fels is a consultant and project manager working for InnoTek, based at beautiful Lake Constance in southern Germany. Bridging the gap between open enterprise technologies and the mobile world is one of his main professional interests. Being a long time JAVA supporter, he is also committed to open technologies and the Linux world.

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This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.