TJ>”Working with Samba is a good move.”
TJ>”Opening protocols is a good move.”

MS opened protocols to the Samba team because the EU FORCED them to. This wasn’t done from the ‘goodness’ of MS’ black little heart.

TJ>”Opening source code is a good move.”

Depends on the license. MS ‘open source’ is designed to bring the naive under the eventual control of MS.

TJ>”Helping Moonlight work on Linux is a good move.”

Whether or not they “help” is debatable. MS is counting on superficial people such as yourself. While MS did offer a blanket patent covenant for the use of Moonlight what they don’t readily tell us is that Moonlight depends on Mono libs which MS does consider to be infringing on their .NET patents.

“That is false. Moonlight is usable for anyone on any distribution of Linux (redhat, ubuntu, etc.) — it is not limited just to Novell as Mono is.”
-Brian Goldfarb [Microsoft]

There you have it from Silverlight’s lead dev. So clearly MS believes that only Novell via the ‘patent covenant’ can use Mono. So this clearly tells us that since Moonlight depends on Mono libs, it is a potential patent trap.

TJ>”Allowing the Mono team to own all the copyrights on their code is a good move.”

So now you think that FOSS devs must seek MS’ permission to retain copyright to the code they write? How on earth does MS “allow” the Mono team to own the copyright of the code the Mono team wrote? This is pure ignorance.

TJ>”Promising not to sue on patents associated with their opened protocols is a good move.”

Once again, thank the EU for this. Although I’m sure MS would like the mindless sheep to parrot that it was a voluntary MS gesture.

I don’t know why I even wasted time replying to you except for the fact that there may be others who equal you in ignorance reading this who should have all of the facts.

If you are correct, however, then surely you should have nothing to worry about? If you believe Roy to be correct, though, then I would recommend that you contact other sites in order to disuade them from linking to clearly correct information.

Which is it, TJ? If he’s right, then you need to shut him up, if he’s wrong, then you can ignore, can’t you?

You talk about foss and giving it a good name or not, but what appears to be your website shows no interest in foss at all.

Or, is this another TJ B, and you’ve accidentally chosen his name?

Ta,

Mark

I put up two posts here that might be of interest http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2008080102835NWMSRL

[Read within the context of the Alfresco-Sharepoint story]

The relationship to Novell is because I think Novell is being instrumental in helping to build and sell the Trojan Horse.

They may be doing this on purpose (to leverage the monopolies for themselves, despite the setbacks it brings to the larger FOSS effort), or this result may be partially undesired by them as an unfortunate byproduct of the niche they have adopted with goals mainly to replace as much Monopolyware as possible with Linux.

The evidence suggests that they are not being entirely forthright when the claim the latter, but who can really know? The point is they are doing the Wrong Thing in many ways.. hence the “boycott” by many in the FOSS world.

We aren’t judging people. At their current jobs, I want Ramji, Ballmer, and many others to be very unsuccessful. These talented individuals can probably find other jobs rather easily if they want to.

It is a sign of respect to give people the ability to break free from you. This is where most for-profit corps fail. It’s not all there is to it, but having more people enabled and respected generally is very good. Competition is good. It keeps people honest and more considerate. It keeps prices down and variety and quality up. I want these people to fail at their current jobs.

Conversely, I want RMS, Linus, and many others to be very successful at their jobs. These people don’t have to be angels for me to wish them success here.

When you see Ramji, tell him that he can find a great job in many other places. Tell him it isn’t personal that you have great reasons for wanting his employer to fail at its task.

Roy has done a great job gathering a huge amount of material and analysis on Novell. If Novell gets off the fence and changes for the better, no small part of that will have been because of the heat kept on them.

Novell can start to turn things around by dropping the part of their business plan that supports Monopolysoft “IP” position (this includes supporting Monopolysoft controlled standards). They should break away from Monopolysoft’s lead in dotnet (though better would have been to ignore dotnet and work on improving Java as necessary if necessary.. help Parrot, etc, ..if “managed” solutions are their thing).

They should abandon OOXML (more like, “should have”). They could be putting pressure to improve ODF or other existing standards as necessary.

Arguably Novell is doing some good things. Some might even argue that they are trying to get inside the monopolies and help break them apart. Unfortunately, we’d have to trust them. I like putting faith in things that are straightforward and aren’t relying on deception. “Trust me” is not good enough, especially when I have little reason to do so and I know their main priority, by law, is to maximize stockholder wealth. Are they taking a position that shunning the big cash and contracts from Monopolysoft is the best for the long-term benefit of the company? I don’t think they have. [They did do something very good by revealing their contract with Monopolysoft.. to the extent what they revealed accurately reflected the nature of the contract and wasn't intended to deceive.]

Now, that’s a valid criticism of the argument. Whether correct or not I’ll leave up to the readers to determine.

> Perhaps you missed when I said

I quoted what you said. It blatantly misstated the headline. For someone who argues the other side is lying, that’s no way to convince anyone. The fact that you changed your wording in a later post is immaterial to my point.

Also on the same subject, Novell continues bragging about its own version of OpenOffice.org. It won’t say out loud (with rare exceptions that it’s only for Novell’s paying customers.

You state specifically that go-oo isn’t available unless you are a paying customer. Then you state you said support (which isn’t what you said).

Does Sun provide free support? Does any company really provide free support?

Novell offers a bugzilla, forums and irc, pretty much the same as anyone. And again, guys like Meeks respond very politely to direct email as well. So they provide more than reasonable free support.

You repeatedly throw up random details talking about how Microsoft has this evil past.

That is an absolute argument. It depends on the premise that everything they ever do is evil. That argument is not only silly on principle (absolutes generally don’t hold up), but easily debunked in a matter of seconds.

Microsoft often does evil things. I was upset Novell struck a deal with them because of the precedent, that it enabled Microsoft to continue to spread patent FUD.

Neither have any bearing on you attacking Ramji without merit, nor attacking Meeks and the go-oo team. This vitrol is unwarranted, petty and juvenile.

Again, I intend to write to linuxtoday.com asking them not to link to content like this anymore. It just makes the FOSS community look bad.

He was talking specifically about providing support for the go-oo patches on a dev build. Working as L3 support (which isn’t his job title anymore) technically his job was to provide support for paying customers, but he states “but we’re interested in bugs of course anyway”.

I don’t pay for even L1 support, and he has kindly responded to all my requests.

He then goes on to explain how he sees bug reports for up-stream problems come his way.

Again, you ignore the facts (that he often provides support for free to those who contact him, and that he submits fixes upstream for free) and twist half a sentence out of context in the face of facts.

Again, I should forward this to Meeks and let him respond directly. He’s a rather nice guy, and I’m sure he’ll appreciate the vicious slander you’re sending him.

“Everything else that is applied to our product Novell offers L3 support for – if you find something broken, we will fix it (well, if you’re a paying customer – but we’re interested in bugs of course anyway).“

I use those builds on Linux and Windows and have yet to notice a difference between them…

Ah. The perfect scientific proof. Rest your case.

Parable: “I asked a couple of cab drivers who they vote for and both said Republicans, so McCain must be the next president.”

Suffice to say, OOo on top of Windows is already tightly integrated to a proprietary software environment. It’s also ‘licensed’ to have particular fonts you cannot have on GNU/Linux.

Oh I live to dream!

Because antitrust authorities are watching, OOXML is to be preferred by Monopolysoft. This is because OOXML is broken and full of loopholes. There will be a ton of incompatibilities for anyone not using Monopolysoft sanctioned API (their own, but to a lesser controlled degree, Novell’s, and maybe those of some other royalty paying partners). This will happen because of all the ambiguities and inconsistencies that exist with OOXML. OOXML needs to be broken by design. This way there will be many excuses to give to the antitrust cops when interop obviously fails among independent parties trying to decipher OOXML.

They’d also prefer OOXML because their products are integrated tightly with it. Simply, it is much easier for them to support OOXML than ODF today in a competitive fashion because their products are designed around OOXML today and not ODF. They have billions invested towards the OOXML end already. They also have a huge lead over everyone else, not just with OOXML but with OOXML *extensions*. There are the legal extensions (new features) and there are also the de facto extensions since every single bug or implementation decision they make that contradicts the standard in any way (easy to do if the standard is already very broken) is a de facto extension (closed source at that). There will be many of these extensions.. and many likely designed for maximum effect of interop failures.

They’d also prefer OOXML because they probably have many carefully designed patents around OOXML (like dotnet etc). Their goal would likely be to make it impossible to implement their extensions (post some degree of successful reverse-engineering of their closed implementation) without violating the official standard, thus losing out on the patent covenant. Those “lucky” few to have found some of the secrets will thus have become lawsuit targets. Pay to live or die.

They’d also prefer it because they have more control over the future development of the official OOXML standard than over the official ODF standard. This helps ensure they can continue to develop OOXML “properly” based on what their $5 billion in R&D decides is best for preserving the monopolies.

Thus, Monopolysoft gives away OOXML version X, but will use trade secrets, patents, and anything else to protect the actual “OOXML” they will use in their monopoly products. If you can’t figure it out, you can’t interoperate with the monopoly product. Their monopolies are protected. If you figure some secrets out, you then get to pay royalties to live a little longer independently of Monopolysoft API or else be sued to death. But upon a future update, you will find it will have been for little since the products will have changed (and with it many existing files that are opened and automatically resaved to include the new distinct secrets.. or maybe even resaved just by residing on a Monopoly Platform like Windows). Their monopolies are protected. People will learn that only Monopolysoft APIs will work decently. Thus people will stay on the treadmill. [Eventually this "good" API will break/fail, bitrot, miss security and feature updates, etc, if not "upgraded" after an expenditure of $$ (round and round we go).]

ODF implementations currently can create extensions to anyone’s heart’s content legitimately according to the standard. But this little loophole may be closed at some point. What would remain would be a very decent standard. Even with the loophole, ODF is designed better to allow competing products and there exist open source implementations (even if not perfect). With its faults, ODF is a lot less palatable to Monopolysoft since the above OOXML benefits would not exist. Monopolysoft will eventually be able to extend ODF (ie, their products will produce ODF that won’t interoperate and they will have added OOXML-ish extensions.. as many as they want). I hope ODF will have had more of its loopholes closed by then, so that Monopolysoft’s ODF extension treck doesn’t become a walk in the park.

I did read your embedded links, in which again I noticed people in the comments completely debunking your claims.

Keep your tin foil hat if you want it. Frankly I don’t care. I saw this blog linked from linuxtoday.com, and I will encourage them not to link to you in the future.

For some information about this beast which is Novell’s OOo for Windows (incompatible with GNU/Linux, naturally), see:

http://boycottnovell.com/2007/03/24/openoffice-compatibility/
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/03/14/novell-openoffice/

Same tricks with Apple?

http://boycottnovell.com/2008/06/04/mac-2008-compatibility-mso07/
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/11/30/novell-apple-deal-similarity/

It’s essentially impossible to get full interoperability even when you want to if you do NOT share source code.

Monopolysoft would lose out if they (were able to and) provided full interoperability. They don’t want to lose their monopolies because the stock will crash and who knows what else. [Monopolysoft has played around with derivatives before so their might actually be a nasty chain reaction.] Besides the stock, the company would start losing serious money unless they cut back significantly in expenses and well… it would be downhill for all of the Dinosoft owning stockholders from there out.

Now, if Monopolysoft really wanted interop, they would show source code [the actual source code] and they would “promise” not to show you one thing but change it. I would not take their word, naturally. I’d simply want the free-toolchain-compatible source, and when I had Windows up and running well, I would say “they followed through.. now all DIYers can stop paying for a Windows OS.” This is not going to happen though. [It's a wonder of nature that source code can actually be changed very easily.. it's also a wonder of nature that a group of humans can easily keep secrets and mislead another group only to spring (parts of) the surprise changes at the last minute.] Monopolysoft’s monopolies require closed source and deception and bugs and tiers of quality code and switcheroos etc. Monopolysoft needs to ship closed source products that no one can see and which they control.

Monopolysoft needs open source on Windows. It’s one of the few weapons they have for holding back Linux.

If a company doesn’t want to change to Linux, I say, let them keep going along their merry Monopolysoft path. I will be smiling further on down the race when they do switch or get bought out cheaply. You can’t save someone that doesn’t need or think they need any type of saving. If they are happy, why would I want to interfere?

OO.o on Windows is not open source because the functions of that application on Windows constantly are interacting with closed source software controlled by a single Monopolysoft and changeable very readily (“soft” ware and closed).

Think about it. All calls to the “kernel” (and even interrupts out of OO.o’s control) invoke closed source functions. OO.o on Windows is not open source. There are no guarantees about what it will do the next time it runs; hence, I don’t support it. End users don’t have control. Not to mention that supporting Windows with FOSS app level ports helps sustain the Windows monopoly — something I consider dangerous when you consider how much of value in all areas of society run on software out of our control.

My feeling about OO.o on Windows is that it can be a short-term Good Thing IF it is taking sales from the major money earner that is MSO (and help crack that monopoly), but I am not convinced OO.o on Windows is a good idea for Linux growth. People would change to run Linux just for OO.o (firefox, etc) if they could only get access to OO.o on Linux. [Not everyone would change or change right away, but many would. And those not changing would take Linux a lot more seriously and plan future investments accordingly].

I think once Google, Sun, and others believe that development on Linux for the average developer will be easy (and will have achieved a significant uptick in mindshare and projects.. something that is happening), they will start to withdraw quality support for Windows for the FOSS products they back.

However, Novell has made their position clear. They want Monopolysoft to exist and they want to leverage the closeness and power of the monopolies since being the strategic doorman pays fine tips. Novell will keep giving out little bits of candy (assuming what you said was true) if that can help drive a community away from Sun and towards them.

I have a preference for Sun over Novell because of their history and contributions, but long term I would not care too much … if and when Novell broke ties with Monopolysoft. Dump OOXML and the rest. If Novell can’t do that, I will not support them and will actually continue to actively oppose/shun them (to the extent I do already).

Monopolysoft will go down when we all focus on open platforms (eg, Linux/LSB).

Plus, the worse off Novell does, the more of a bad investment the Monopolysoft cash infusion will have turned out to be. The more difficult a time Novell has, the higher the price tag on future Monopolysoft investments of that sort. Naturally, Monopolysoft shops around because they want their “partners” to compete against each other since that helps drive the price down.

The longer Monopolysoft doesn’t have their way completely, the higher the price on Monopolyware, and the closer we will be to the breaking point of the monopolies.

As an advocate, invest in Linux and in the select tools that are the least likely to be bought out. If something gets bought out, at least it is costing someone a pretty penny. Not to mention that the community will fork and move away to allow that investment to rot.

Sorry Novell. Next time, you should consider more carefully on which side of the fence you really want to be. Then again, the deal with Monopolysoft was likely a good move for the then existing crop of shareholders. As you might be able to tell, I was not and am not a major NOVL shareholder. [I have owned tiny amounts of NOVL for hours or maybe even days at a time.]

His goal is interoperability? How evil.

It’s not about interoperability/compatibility though. It’s about optimising software like PHP (maybe Apache) so that Windows is chosen at the expense of other platforms. There’s also the chance of ‘enhancing’ software to make it dependent on proprietary, Windows-only modules, which then imperil portability (e.g. from Windows to another platform). It’s the infamous embrace and extend, can’t you see? Just watch how they try to suck OOo users into OOXML, which they already ‘extend’.

His goal is interoperability? How evil.

Wait, I thought the FOSS community has been asking for interoperability for years. We want Windows protocols and apps to work better with Linux, but you’re arguing it is evil if they’re doing exactly that.

As I said on Slashdot, just as Windows shouldn’t be the only choice, Linux shouldn’t be the only choice. We’re multiplatform in my company, but we have a lot of proprietary, industry specific software that is Windows only. I encourage the use of FOSS, but quite frankly that FOSS has to play nice on Windows, or we can’t use it since almost all of our systems are Windows.

If I ask my manager to move the entire company to move to Linux I get scoffed at. However, I’ve got my company seriously looking at migrating to OpenOffice because within our corporation we’ve got users all the way from Word 95 to Office 2007, and they can’t share files. The economy is down, and people don’t want to pay for Office licenses.

Even the cheap “volume” license I just priced is $366 per seat. Try buying 1,000 seats of that at once. You’re talking $366,000. Or install OpenOffice for free.

When people make small changes like that, it starts to open their minds to benefits of FOSS, and they’ll consider it more in the future. Better enabling FOSS on Windows is a good thing.

Trying to force people into a paradigm that the stack must be 100% pure is antagonistic, and removes choice from the user.

As for Novell and OOo, I’ve emailed Meeks and he is always really nice to talk to. He has gone on record saying that the Linux version should always be as nice as the Windows version. The upstream OOo has quickstart on Windows, but not Linux, so he developed a quickstart for Linux. He focused largely on Bdirect patches for binutils to improve Linux performance. A recent interview a couple days ago focused on improving how widgets are handled with GTK.