02.16.09
Posted in GNOME, GNU/Linux, Patents at 4:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
SOME months ago we showed that software patents were responsible for the permanent removal of a GIMP plugin. We’ve finally found the source and binary of this plugins, but it seems as though the author had removed the plugin for GIMP v2.x. It says that “For the GIMP V 2.0, the following additional plug-ins are available in source/executable for download…”
For GIMP v2.2, the plugin is on this page. This plugin is trivial and this is the type of thing it achieves. It takes multiple pictures and assembles them into a mosaic. The source code is in pmosaic.c. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security at 3:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
WE RECENTLY showed Microsoft’s attacks on NC, as demonstrated very clearly using internal communication. This was practically done by the Gartner Group at Microsoft's behest and with Microsoft’s invocation.
There are many other such cases where Microsoft uses the Gartner Group against Microsoft’s rivals (including GNU/Linux), typically using Microsoft funding. Gartner also negotiates its coverage of Microsoft products... with Microsoft. We gave plenty of examples like these before, but the following new example sure resembles the group’s attack on NC, which is a paradigm shift (away from the ‘desktop’) that Microsoft simply cannot allow. Is the following man yet another ‘attack dog’ of Microsoft?
Analyst: SaaS and open source ‘won’t happen’ in 2009
Software as a service, the model by which software is hosted and delivered over the network, “will not happen” in 2009, according to Gartner research director, Andrew Rowsell-Jones.
Was this opinion bought? Did he truly believe what he said with a subconscious bias?
Another known ‘attack dog’ of Microsoft is Fortify, a Microsoft ally that’s currently attacking messengers who promote Free software, including the conservative party in Great Britain.
Microsoft’s past talking point was that Free software is more expensive, but having realised that the public no longer buys this FUD, the company and its partners proceeded to attacking using "security" as ammunition, not “cost”. Here is some more analysis which contradicts the latest FUD:
First, Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne no less put out another chapter in his tech emerging manifesto, extolling the wonder of open source and berating the Government for its inability to see the light. His job is to berate governments, which tend to be easy targets, and open source software makes a hard bat.
That, predictably, prompted one vendor with an axe to sharpen, Fortify Software, to remind the media, to remind the media of a report released last July by the company that found security patching fault in 11 Java packages. Disclaimer: Fortify sells software assurance products.
Inevitably, a number of sources have slated Fortify in turn, and one, Coverity, has even come up – hey presto! – with its own report showing that, on the contrary, open source programs had fewer flaws than closed source, not more.
It sure seems as though Fortify was lying or bending truths to promote itself and vilify its ally’s nightmare. It’s easy to make up supportive numbers while hiding the rest [1, 2, 3]. █
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Posted in Formats, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 3:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
WHEN it comes to OOXML shills, it’s clear that they want to ruin ODF as much as they want OOXML to succeed. These two tasks are not mutually exclusive.
Last week we saw one familiar crony making his way into ODF mailing lists and this time we find another who is technically a Microsoft employee too. His mischiefs and misconduct we have already mentioned when his name came up, e.g. in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31]. We’re talking about Doug Mahugh, who earned bad reputation and is known to some people as “Elephant in the Room” for pretty much faking his identity and breaking rules in the midst of many OOXML corruptions.
It is neither secret nor news that Microsoft wants to hijack ODF [1, 2, 3, 4], potentially with the intention of applying an embrace-extend-and-extinguish routine. Well, here they are going loose on the public ODF mailing lists. Microsoft says:
I still don’t understand the intent of removing and/or deprecating support for foreign elements, however, which seems to be a direction that has only come up very recently. There are a growing number of organizations building custom solutions around those sorts of extensibility mechanisms, which allow for the best of both worlds: standards-based formatting markup for use by desktop apps (word processors, etc.), and custom markup for non-visual processing by custom systems.
I won’t belabor the reasons I think this is a good approach, but for anyone who’s interested, here are a few blog posts with more information on this topic:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/03/03/microformats-and-open-xml.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/03/26/custom-xml-markup.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/05/19/custom-schemas-revisited.aspx
I think we all agree that introduction of foreign elements can cause interoperability problems, but I’d rather see us fix those problems than give up on custom schema support altogether. The use of class attributes in microformat-tagged HTML and the use of WordprocessingML’s customXml element are both examples of approaches that allow rigorous standards-based validation without foregoing the benefits of custom schema support. It would be great if ODF 1.2 could offer similar capabilities, in my opinion.
You know that Microsoft entered a mailing list when there is no line wrapping, top-posting is practiced despite common conventions, and a flood of links to MSDN appears. Microsoft is interested in OOXML. It is also interested in ODF’s… destruction. █
“It’s a Simple Matter of [Microsoft’s] Commercial Interests!“
–Doug Mahugh on OOXML
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02.15.09
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 9:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
WITH much disproportional hype, Moonlight 1.0 made some headlines again, but it’s really just patent-encumbered non-Free software from Microsoft and Novell and therefore it should not be touched.
Do not be mooned by the hype that Novell generated by reannouncing old news (it’s still fooling some innocent reporters) and always be aware that Moonlight is not Free software. It is a patent Trojan horse that’s suitable for Novell customers who purchased ‘protection’. It’s not something to promote to GNU/Linux users, who instead should insist on Web standards, not DRM and software patents on the World Wide Web.
To the extent possible, warn friends, peers, and family. Friends don’t let friends be mooned. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 9:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“I
T’S Déjà vu all over again,” to borrow the famous saying from Yogi Berra. There is a defensible reason why we labeled Windows 7 just “Vista 7″ and it’s not just the fact that Vista and Vista 7 are codebase siblings sharing identical DNA in the digital sense. There are many other parallels in the marketing techniques, such as the endless AstroTurfing, public availability of test builds, and bribery of bloggers (the first time it was carried out by Edelman on behalf of Microsoft and this time around it is Waggener-Edstrom).
When it comes to Windows Vista, so much was promised and so little was eventually delivered*. But due to heavy marketing, people had not realised this until Vista was released and drove early adopters to misery or disgust.
Vista 7 has already lost some of its promised features (i.e. vapourware) such as quick booting, but people are convinced to forget about this very fast. Talk about quickly booting memories instead…
Here is yet another component of Vista 7 being dumped ahead of release.
Microsoft dumps Ultimate Extras from Windows 7
[...]
Ultimate Extras was among the elements Microsoft cited in the months leading up to the early-2007 release of Windows Vista Ultimate to distinguish it from lower-priced versions. According to Microsoft’s marketing, Extras was to be “cutting-edge programs, innovative services and unique publications” that would be regularly offered only to users of Vista’s highest-priced edition.
But users blasted Microsoft for the paltry number of add-ons it released and its leisurely development pace. Just five months after Vista was launched, critics started to complain, which led Microsoft to promise that it would do better.
Over at Chris Pirillo’s Web site (he is a Microsoft MVP), more dissent can be seen in the form of Vista 7 bashing. Well, even some of Microsoft’s fans have already expressed dissatisfaction/disappointments, so this is just another example.
Die Windows! Die!
[...]
None of this would have come about without the regressive behavior of Windows 7, the interface’s thinly veiled rewrap of the Windows 3.1 look and feel, and the lack of real innovation. No, putting the system on a diet does not qualify as innovation.
As I have shown before, touch is not a new item on the list of things an operating system can enable either, so Microsoft should stop its harping on that, too.
Last but not least, here is a new article from the Herald News:
Dear N.W.: Microsoft’s Vista is an errant abomination. Picture a black, foul-smelling and bloated whale carcass washing ashore and thousands of angry, yelling beachgoers trying to pull, push and tow it back to sea. That’s Vista! Frankly, the older Windows 95, Windows 96, Windows 97, Windows 98, etc. operating systems are superior to 2007 Windows Vista by orders of magnitude.
Based on these patterns of coverage and taking into consideration the artificial crippling we found out about at the beginning of the month, there may be a good reason why BetaVista7 got pulled some days ago. It is no longer available for downloaders perhaps because radical changes are being made to it, and not necessarily improvements. It may also be rushed through. As an amusing signature from Peter Köhlmann goes, “Microsoft software doesn’t get released – it escapes, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.” █
___
* It became a poster child for "freezing the market", with a Longhorn release projected/promised by the end 2003 (Vista was only released in 2007).
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Green computing frequently makes the news either for its cost-saving potential to businesses, or as a way for eco-conscious consumers to reduce their environmental footprint. But UK-based Aleutia, Ltd takes a different approach, using green to produce ultra-low-power-consumption Linux PCs for classrooms and businesses in developing countries. The company’s flagship product is the E2, a compact desktop system that consumes just 8 watts.
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Why does nearly every modern computer – whether it runs OS X, Vista or Linux – take considerably longer to boot than an ancient Amiga?
With a hard drive, an Amiga could go from power socket to Workbench in around five seconds.
With a modern multicore processor and a 12-month-old installation of Windows, you’re lucky if your desktop is responsive before the kettle boils.
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I’m also encouraged, as well, to see Dell offering this hybrid line of computer that put Windows and Linux side by side with capable hardware support for both. Don’t think it means much for Linux to be a quick-boot option? Check out some of Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin’s thoughts, which I think help put this potential in perspective.
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Desktop Environments
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Air was the wallpaper we introduced in KDE 4.2, but that is just the beginning of something larger. Air is supposed to be different than what Oxygen is, something that tries to appeal to a user base looking for a more “sexy” experience than Oxygen (yeah I know you are out there 
), but to still have the capability of merging nicely with what we have now.
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Today is a good day, the University of Informatics Sciences – Havana, Cuba, released Nova Linux, the Official Cuban Linux distribution and guess what, it uses Entropy, the most promising Sabayon Linux technology.
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Debian 5 Lenny is an excellent desktop or server option that is worthy of consideration. I have been running the Debian 5 Lenny candidate for awhile and have been very pleased with the stability and features. It actually functions and acts more like the distribution I need and work on than Ubuntu. Not so say that Ubuntu is bad, just that I typically do not need or use the latest applications.
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I decided to get deeper into Puppy 4.1.2 on my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop.
[...]
The end result is that while Puppy 4.1.2. runs quite well at first blush, I need to look closer at why I was so unsuccessful at getting Flash and Java to work. It should be easier than this.
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As I write here I’m downloading the beta 3 of PCLinuxOS 2009, which will be my first go at the Ripper gang’s newest version since 2007. Based on that experience, my expectations are high. I guess that’s what happens when you produce quality stuff, Texstar: people start anticipating better and better.
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Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #129 for the week February 8th – February 14th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu LoCo Teams Meeting, New MOTU’s, Rockin’ LoCo Docs Day, Ubuntu Hug Day, Improved mail server stack: Testing needed, Drupal 5.x and 6.x LoCo Suite Released, Ubuntu Honduras being organized, Launchpod #17, Triage in Launchpad suite, PPA page perfomance improvements, Ubuntu Training for USA, HP Mini Mi Screenshots, Server Team Meeting Feb. 10th, and much, much more!
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Palm has finally decided to abandon its Palm OS operating system after an illustrious run of over twelve years in favour of its new webOS operating system that is expected to power its Pre range of smartphones.
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Hi there! Have you already jumped onto the netbook bandwagon? I currently own a MEDION PC, a MacBook and a Nokia E71, but my inner-geek still craves for a cool little Linux netbook. Sub-notebooks are great stuff: they are, like Linus Torvalds said in a recent interview, “laptops done right”. You can carry them around, they are light, small and cheap so you do not have to worry as much if you lose, or break them. At the same time though, you can do some serious work with thee mini laptops.
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After months of courting three potential e-mail service providers to replace the current Webmail system, members of the Student E-mail Initiative have chosen not to accept an offer from Zimbra, a subsidiary company of Yahoo!
If the initiative signs with a new e-mail provider, the choice will be between Google’s Apps for Education and Microsoft’s Live at Edu, according to Stan North Martin, the director of Outreach, Communications and Consulting for the Office of Information Technology.
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Étoilé, a GNUstep-based user environment that enables users to create their own
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I first heard from Flowplayer from the guys at Floobs. Kaitsu, their CEO, said that I might want to check out these guys. The line was something in the lines of ‘…yeah, He’s really good. He worked for us before but wanted to go and develop his own open source project. It’s all cool’. This healthy attitude is something that other industries should copy. Very rarely you hear such a supportive attitude toward someone who takes off to develop his own project.
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Google
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Let’s face it, Google’s influence on the Web is quickly approaching that of Microsoft’s on the desktop. This means that, just as Microsoft can’t make major changes to the Windows API without breaking thousands of apps, when Google makes a major change, it breaks thousands of apps too.
From Search Engine Land comes news that Google is toying with a new, AJAX-ified search result system. Good for the user, right? Maybe. But in the process, it changes the format of the referrer header that the destination Web site will be sent. This means that anyone parsing those referrer strings from Google trying to do analysis of their keywords… well, they will need to rewrite their software to parse the new strings. Is it an easy rewrite? Sure, probably one line of code for most applications, and three or so if you want to include the old and the new referrer strings.
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At Google, we love open source for a few reasons. First, it speeds innovation. Open source lowers the barrier to entry for users, website owners, and application developers. It means there can be another Google, or another Yahoo!, started from someone’s garage in Auckland or Arhus with very little capital required, because the building blocks for success are freely available.
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Business
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Over the past 10 years, open source software has become an important cornerstone of the software industry. Commercial users have adopted it in standalone applications, and software vendors are embedding it in products. Surprisingly then, from a commercial perspective, open source software is developed differently from how corporations typically develop software. Research into how open source works has been growing steadily [1]. One driver of such research is the desire to understand how commercial software development could benefit from open source best practices. Do some of these practices also work within corporations? If so, what are they, and how can we transfer them?
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The open source client and server software enable Android handsets to sync contacts, calendars, pictures, music and videos with any backend data source and desktop.
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Releases
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The syslog-ng Open Source Edition application is a mature, stable system logging application that has become the most common alternative logging server of the Linux/Unix world. It is estimated to be used by tens of thousands of organizations on hundreds of thousands of computers, which probably makes it one of the most successful Hungarian products.
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These are exciting times for photography on Linux. With Krita 2.0 round the corner and GIMP getting (some) higher bit depth functionalities in its next 2.8 version.
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Funding
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Exponents of open source software (OSS) hail the technology as a way to help organizations cut cost in the current downturn, but HR executives are less convinced that the recession has boosted demand for skills needed to manage open source environments.
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FSF
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In the earliest days of computers, just about everything could be considered free software. Computers were so large, unwieldy and difficult to understand that any reasonably well-written program would be passed around via punch cards or paper tape. Into that free software world Richard Stallman was born.
[...]
“I spent a couple of years punishing Symbolics by attacking it and giving an ultimatum to the people at the AI lab,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life punishing somebody. I wanted to rebuild what was destroyed. I wanted to be able to use computers while having freedom. This is impossible if you have a proprietary program.”
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Asia
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The demand for open-source software in the country and the expertise required in this area is rising, according to the Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) which spearheads the MSC Malaysia initiative.
Open-source software, said networking systems giant Sun Microsystems, is gaining popularity mainly because the advantages of user malleable programs are becoming more apparent.
Since the source code is accessible to users, a company could tweak open-source software to better meet its needs, compared to proprietary software which arguably has to be used as is.
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Uy, also the founder of Touch Group of Companies, is regarded as one of the leaders in open systems services in the Philippinese. He has introduced the use of enterprise grade Linux and other open source software to the country’s top companies as well as small and medium enterprises.
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Sun
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The flexibility of open source, and the handy Extensions system, lets the community write functionality for OpenOffice.org without having to make it part of the main program…
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RedOffice is one of the “distros” of OpenOffice.org, along with Go-OOo, Lotus Symphony, OxygenOffice, NeoOffice, EuroOffice, and probably some others.
RedOffice is developed by a company in Beijing and specifically addresses the Chinese-language market.
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It’s a good point, but again, I don’t think “encouraging…cloud operators to use open source software” does much to prevent lock-in, unless they actually make that software transparent and usable to end-users. Regardless, most, if not all of them, already use open source in abundance due to the quality of open-source components like MySQL.
No, the real emphasis must be on open data. Perhaps we need to invent open-data licenses, similar to open-source licenses. Perhaps the Open Source Initiative should get involved.
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Government
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Buried deep in the details of the US stimulus package is an interesting provision that might go a long way toward helping Open Source software break into the medical area. It says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should study the availability of open source health technology systems (PDF, page 488), compare their TCO against proprietary systems and report on what they find no later than Oct 1, 2010. Slashdotters may also be interested in the language that starts on page 553 of that PDF to see just what the final package says about broadband.
Bdale Garbee, Hewlett Packard computer wizard and Debian lead 11 (2004)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 12:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“”[...] we know that Microsoft is getting patents on some features of C#. So I think it’s dangerous to use C#, and it may be dangerous to use Mono.”
–Richard Stallman
AS STATED before, Moonlight is not Free software, but it’s actually a lot worse. Moonlight is also a patent trap, as finally acknowledged by CNET.
Moonlight and the patent encumbrances thereto serve as a constant reminder that Microsoft really doesn’t grok the Web, which is about freedom of access and open protocols.
Patent issues (and freedom) aside, Moonlight is also a technical mess, unless the user is a SUSE user, i.e. one is encouraged to use the Ballmer-blessed GNU/Linux distribution, aka “Ballnux”.
As pointed out by one of the few commenters in SJVN’s Web site: “So I made sure Firefox was 100% up-to-date, installed the Moonlight plugin, then Firefox crashes any time I go back to the http://abock.org/moonshine/ site to install the Moonshine plugin.
“I think I’ll stick with my flaky, buggy, proprietary flash video… as unreliable as it is from a linux box, at least it doesn’t make Firefox insta-crash.”
This was written in reference and response to SJVN’s post about Moonshine, which is new. Another usual suspect promotes Moonshine, having done the same for Moonlight just a few days ago. █
Don’t let Mono and Moonlight tarnish GNU/Linux
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