MS going for the niche markets!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11398629 1% of the population are gay, 0.5% swing both ways.
I wonder how much effort MS is putting into other marketing which targets 1% of the population?
Let's take a look...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
Linux comes out (sorry) with 1.34% of the *desktop* market, that's a market which is 34% larger than this one and its something to do with IT - somewhere they can actually sell the things they make money on.
Even having read the blog, I'm not sure why MS feels the need to lobby for legal change. How does this impact their business? They've been treating people equally since 1993, so what's the issue now? Diversity? I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to ask if someone is gay and use that as a criteria for recruitment. Religious institutions are facing ever-stronger legal bans on such behaviour, when it directly pertains to their raison d'être, so I doubt a software company would be allowed to do so.
I've heard Windows described as "gay" but I didn't realise it was anything more than an gross insult. Is there some secret gayness which improves Window's & Office's appeal to that segment of the population? Window decoration perhaps. Really, I don't see how who or what you have sex with in any makes a difference to the contribution you can make to MS' enterprise. Neither do I see how it can, in any way alter your consumption requirements of MS' products. This is a company built on monopoly and homogeneity. Compared to NT 3.5, the current version of windows supports fewer cpu architectures, fewer file systems; the licensing system is specifically designed to prevent diversity, because that makes good business sense. A frivolous comparison perhaps, but large size tends to quash diversity.
I smell a PR exercise.
Worse, I see a corporate lobbying politicians. Perhaps the people of Washington State don't want the term "marriage" applied to homosexual relationships. Or perhaps they do. Either way throwing money around skews the democratic process and shifts political power to corporations and away from the people. That is always a bad plan. Whenever there is an elite who "knows the way" and is going to push through policies whether the populace wants it or not, that's not democracy and it usually ends up with people getting hurt.
This is why we have local democracy. It allows different populations to have different policies. Would we really want our policies on sexual relationships to be determined by the largest number of votes? If you do, I hope you like the policies in India, China, Indonesia and South America. Ah, you want to move "ahead" (a term usually determined by ideology) faster than those places and not be constrained by them? Well, go ahead, that's why we have different states, precisely to allow that to happen without going to war. Like the GPL, go ahead and make your changes, but grant others the same courtesy you have received. Go ahead, make a reasoned argument, but don't try to manipulate the political process using money. The 1832 Reform Act did a lot to get rid of "rotten boroughs" - parliament seats where the incumbent would essentially buy enough votes to get elected. The massive concentrations of wealth attained by multinationals should not put us back in a similar position. It appears to be easier to buy an MP's vote after they are elected, since you can then just bypass the electorate. That isn't good. Or you can go further and buy the two main political parties so it doesn't matter who is elected, they won't be able to express their opinion or the opinion of the electorate. Non-conforming potential MP's will never be selected to stand. Once elected, MP's are unlikely to even ask constituents their opinion, because that risks being awkward. That isn't good either.