Mike Stone

Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

What Microsoft Thinks Violates Their Copyright

17 Jun 2020

Day 52 of the #100DaysToOffload Series:

Microsoft has recently filed a copyright claim against an app called Ninjutsu OS. Microsoft files copyright violation claims all the time, so what makes this one special? The phenomenal reason they’re claiming their copyright has been violated.

I don’t often follow Microsoft news. It’s just not interesting to me. I don’t use Microsoft products unless I really have to, and then my uses are pretty minimal. For work I have to use Windows 10, Office, and Teams. I don’t use a Microsoft browser, and pretty much the remainder or my work is done in a terminal session to a better OS.

Still, this little bit of news caught my eye. Microsoft is suing Ninjutsu OS for what it does, and this is what that is:

That’s right. Ninjutsu OS isn’t a copy of Windows 10. It’s an application you install that makes changes to the OS you’ve already bought. Those changes are mostly to remove junk from the OS you don’t want anyway.

This is yet another reason using Linux is just better. True, distros will often come laden with stuff you don’t really need or want most of the time, but you’re never going to be sued by Canonical because you took something out of Ubuntu. Red Hat isn’t going to come after you legally because you customized your installation.

Microsoft has been making a show over the last couple years of “loving” Linux and open source, but it’s moves like this that, I think, show their true colors are still very different than the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement. This is the reason I still don’t trust Microsoft.



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