07.25.07
Posted in GNU/Linux, Marketing, Novell, Quote at 10:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
James Gaskin of NetworkWorld has courageously uttered the following words:
One word of advice, Linux people: don’t let Novell carry your flag. They have, historically, shown the ability to mis-manage and mis-market the best products in computing down to a footnote in the history books. If you rely on Novell for marketing leadership, put on your lemming suits now and hurry and finish your new Harry Potter novel. Following Novell means you will have outstanding technical products sold by vendors out standing in fields, all by themselves, wondering why the customers are back in town. Pick a new leader, any other leader, and shed the red of Novell for someone else.
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GPL at 9:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
From the least expected places comes some decent support for freedom
I couldn’t quite believe this, either.
SugarCRM — from an Open Source ‘ISO Offender’ to nothing but the GNU GPLv3.
Here’s a bit from one of the articles.
SugarCRM is to adopt Version 3 of the GNU general public license (GPLv3) for the next release of its open source CRM software after coming under pressure from its user community to move away from its own Sugar Public License.
With support at this scale, the future of GPLv3 looks much brighter.
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Posted in Australia, Deception, Formats, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 9:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The other day we mentioned a shocking article from LinuxWorld, which we now urge you to ignore. We’re investigating some possible ‘monkey business’. At this moment, take everything you hear about OpenDocument with a big barrel of salt. More details will soon be available, surely. We can’t comment at this stage though.
Red Hat has just released some wonderful artwork to promote OpenDocument format. We urge you to share and disseminate that message. For the benefit of all of us, the importance of a unified standard needs to be understood by more people.
Australia will soon weigh in on this issue. Meanwhile, here is a funny cartoon for your entertainment.
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Posted in GPL, Law, Microsoft at 6:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Hmm… an article quoting an attorney who argues Microsoft is immune to GPLv3. To quote the less pro-Microsoft parts:
These [Linux] partnerships, in some cases, restrict the freedoms normally associated with the use and distribution of open source software.
To combat this strategy, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), authors of the General Public License (the open-source license under which most future open-source applications are expected to be distributed), have included new provisions in the third version of this licence that are designed to turn such patent-protection deals to the advantage of the open-source community.
[...]
“If you ever have to defend your patent in court, you have to prove that there wasn’t any prior art. The other party is likely to cite similar ideas to your patent to disprove it. It’s possible some could be struck down.
“These patents are worth more to Microsoft challenged than unchallenged,” she added.
I have spent a quarter of an hour trying to identify ties (if any exist) between the individual/firm and Microsoft. No strong evidence can be found, so they might as well get the benefit of the doubt on this one.
With media placements such as this one from C|Net (published just yesterday), you never really know. This particular one comes from a business that sells Windows products. It takes cheap shots at Linux laptops which threaten the business and C|Net offers this FUD some room. This happened a lot in the past. The EU, ODF, GPL, and Linux got criticized in C|Net, usually by well-know Microsoft lobbyists such as CompTIA.
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