Mike Kaginski, a LibreOffice developer (who works for Collabora), has had his Microsoft-hosted email account, which he uses for open source development, locked for “activity that violates our Microsoft Services Agreement”.
Kaginski discovered this when attempting to send an email to the LibreOffice development mailing list (hosted by FreeDesktop). It remains unclear if that specific email (which he sent via another address and was rather bland and technical) was the reason for the ban… or if attempting to send the email was simply the first time the ban was noticed by him.
This happened just days after LibreOffice officially accused Microsoft of engaging in a “Lock-in” strategy by creating “artificially complex”, XML-based office documents.
Are the two events related? Hard to say with any certainty.
To make matters worse, Kaginski has had no success in getting Microsoft to lift his locked email account — with the company making him jump through numerous, impossible hoops (such as requiring him to sign in to submit an appeal for his account being locked… but not allowing him to sign in… because his account is locked).
You got that? Sign in to fix the account you can’t sign in with.
Gotta love a good Catch-22.
Good job, Microsoft.
The Lunduke Journal reached out to a contact, within Microsoft, who made it clear that their group was not aware of the LibreOffice Developer’s locked account, but they were aware of the LibreOffice complaint article regarding “artificially complex” XML lock-in. Adding, “wow that looks bad”.
The Lunduke Journal’s Analysis
The odds of locking a LibreOffice developer’s email account being an official Microsoft corporate decision seems highly unlikely.
Microsoft, as a company, makes a lot of bad decisions — but this would just be too stupid for words. A massive PR blunder.
But could a single employee, feeling grumpy, have done it on an impulse? As some sort of revenge for LibreOffice’s “harsh” words about Microsoft? Sure. That seems entirely plausible?
Though, it’s also entirely plausible that some poorly designed AI-driven “naughty activity” detection bot flagged his account. Or, perhaps, the developer was reported by some random Open Source hooligan who likes to cause chaos (there’s a lot of those).
Either way, the fact that Microsoft requires people to log in — on accounts which cannot log in — in order to file an “appeal” is incredibly amusing. And is very, very typical Microsoft.
