10.02.09

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: October 2nd, 2009

Posted in IRC Logs at 6:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

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Microsoft Fights Back as More Nations Adopt ODF

Posted in Africa, Apple, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Another migration to Free software and ODF in Denmark; ways in which Microsoft currently responds to the “ODF threat”

NOT only the third world is embracing ODF, thanks in part to a recent initiative from Canonical and IBM^*. Highly developed nations too have decided that ODF is the better route, debunking myths of “poor man’s standards”.

As a spurious reminder, Microsoft is no friend of ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], which it fought like fire. ODF is currently gaining ground in Denmark, despite the many offences of Microsoft over there. For details, see:

• The Microsoft OOXML ‘Corruption Train’ Reaches Denmark (Updatedx2)
• OpenDocument Takes One Giant Leap, One Step Backwards
• OOXML Watch: Sweden’s OOXML Fiasco Representative of the Norm?
• Today is the Day — The Day the World Will Learn That Crime Pays
• OOXML in Norway, Denmark, and Poland… Looking More Closely at the Stories (Updated)
• ODF and OOXML in Denmark
• Quick Mention: Summary of Microsoft OOXML Manipulation and Ballot-stuffing
• How Microsoft ‘Bought’ Nicolas Sarkozy, France, and Parts of Europe
• Software Patents and Colombia
• Microsoft Stacks the Danish Panel Too
• More About OOXML in Denmark, Jesper Stocholm
• OOXML-style Stacking Against the Web, Denmark OOXML Complaint Filed (Updated)
• Another Official Complaint Against Microsoft/OOXML: Denmark’s Turn
• Germany and Denmark Show Signs of Endorsement of Appeals, Complaints Against ISO OOXML
• Venezuela Appeals ISO Decision on OOXML (Denmark Reportedly Also)
• Another Backlash Against Microsoft in Denmark; Anger Over Microsoft Office Lock-in
• Reminder of What Microsoft Did in Denmark and What It’s Up to Now

According to this latest report from the Observatory, another migration to ODF in Denmark is now being implicitly confirmed.

The administration of the Danish municipality of Lyngby-Taarbæk is installing OpenOffice on some 1700 school desktop PCs, the administration announced yesterday.

There is other good news about OpenOffice.org, including an approaching conference. Rob Weir writes: “OpenOffice.org 2009 Conference draft programme posted. Best ODF track ever.”

This ought to be enough to make the Danish Microsoft ecosystem at least a little nervous. When one place sets an example for others to follow, then it becomes akin to Kissinger mercilessly chasing the “Red Threat”. Microsoft McCarthyism, anyone?

Microsoft’s bestest [sic] friend in Denmark still heckles ODF all the time, as he has done for years while pretending to have genuine interest. “I’ve been fixing various bugs for koffice2.1 that should make ODF interop much better,” writes Thomas Zander from Nokia. “Hope you can test that version,” he tells the Microsoft provocateur.

“I think I see informal signs of migration of XML folk from working on OOXML to contributing to ODF, wondering if stats over time document it”
      –John CodyMicrosoft Denmark would love more control of ODF too [1, 2, 3]. If enough people forget the many scandals, Microsoft’s minions will manage to get nearer and they might as well get their way. For the time being, things appear to be safe enough. “Despite to soaring rhetoric from Redmond OOXML meetings are just Microsoft,” remarks Scientes. “ODF has a broad coalition,” he adds while citing Rob Weir’s latest report.

Mary McRae, the Director of Technical Committee Administration for OASIS (this includes ODF), agrees with Weir and John Cody, who seems to be in a position to influence New York’s policy on ODF, currently writes: “I think I see informal signs of migration of XML folk from working on OOXML to contributing to ODF, wondering if stats over time document it”

Apple is still a bit of a lost cause and one person is “Wondering if/when Apple will get round to adding ODF support to iWork, specifically ODP import/export to Keynote?”

Over at Wikipedia, Microsoft’s hAl adds lengthy OOXML promotion to the article on ODF (OpenDocument). They just can’t help it, can they? It’s their nature. █
____
^* They bring ODF along with GNU/Linux, so these two are not entirely mutually exclusive.

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LSE Dumps .NET and Moves to GNU/Linux — Claim

Posted in Asia, Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Servers, Windows at 5:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: One of the biggest proprietary failures ends up turning to Free software; Korea has lesson to teach the UK

AFTER repeated failures [1, 2], the London Stock Exchange (LSE) — being the black sheep that does not use UNIX/Linux for trading — is dumping Microsoft/.NET, according to this report.

Last month, the LSE announced it will acquire Sri Lankan trading firm Millennium IT for £18 million, replacing its Accenture built, Microsoft .Net-based TradElect platform. The new platform is understood to be based on Linux.

What we were unable to determine last month was the underlying framework of Turquoise, which is now said to be bought by the LSE.

The London Stock Exchange is in exclusive talks to buy Project Turquoise, the rival trading platform set up by nine banks in order to push down transaction fees.

One of our British readers, who was unfamiliar with Turquoise and its use of GNU/Linux, asked us: “What technology does this rival platform run on and when will Microsoft be reported to the monopolies commission?”

The other day we wrote about potentially-illegal deals that Microsoft signs in the United Kingdom's public sector. They turn the nation into a monoculture filled with vendor lock-in, so Glyn Moody, who is based around London, currently uses Korea for a cautionary note:

Korea Cottons on to the Microsoft Monoculture

[...]

That is, by instituting a monoculture, and becoming completely dependent not just on one manufacturer, but on one particular – and very unsatisfactory – technology used by that manufacturer, the Koreans find themselves trapped, left behind even by Microsoft, which wants to move on.

There could be no better demonstration of why mandating one proprietary technology in this way, rather than choosing an open standard with multiple implementations with the scope for future development, is folly.

Here is the post cited by Moody:

The article goes on to cover a lot of the issues affecting web users in Korea and how many valiant efforts have gone into trying to affect change, most significantly the 3 lawsuits that Dr. Keechang Kim has brought against various Korean policy-making bodies, without success.

Microsoft already has antitrust convictions in Korea — two of them so far this year [1, 2]. █

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Novell Carries on Losing Business

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Novell at 4:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Novell loses business to Microsoft and other companies

THIS title states the obvious, but the news bears fresh evidence, starting with this report from Hungary:

Novell sees revenue from small companies shrink

[...]

The Hungarian company is not allowed to publish local business and financial data due to the parent company’s stipulations.

Another report speaks of an apparent departure from Novell, in favour of its close ally Microsoft. This happens in the UK where Novell suffers a lot these days.

As part of the migration strategy, Salford Software will upgrade all the existing Novell Netware and Microsoft systems to Microsoft’s Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 platforms. This will provide a distributed, resilient foundation for the College IT infrastructure.

Lastly, also from the UK comes this column which mentions past lessons Novell refuses to learn from.

That could lead to the kind of damming of revenue streams Microsoft has been famous for inflicting on the likes of WordPerfect, Novell, Lotus and others in the past.

Novell has plans for countering the blows. It is already offshoring and outsourcing jobs without making too much noise. The man in charge of Novell’s Open Source strategy happens to be reading about outsourcing at the moment. He used to work for Microsoft by the way. Yes, the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source at Novell used to work there when he met Miguel de Icaza. █

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Microsoft Search Dives 28%. Time to Call it Quits?

Posted in Google, Microsoft, Search at 4:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Will Microsoft concede defeat and head towards the nearest exit now that its search falls deeper into irrelevance?

MICROSOFT’S losses on the Web are colossal and their latest brand for a supposed “search engine” keeps declining globally, down to about 2.5% according to one survey (that’s 1 in 40).

According to the web analysts at StatCounter, Microsoft’s Bing search engine continued its worldwide decline in September, down to 2.59 per cent, a slippage of 28 per cent per cent from its peak of 3.59 percent in July.

We strongly emphasise many times (e.g. [1, 2]) that Microsoft loves citing US-only figures because they massively exaggerate Microsoft’s impact in search; in reality, Google commands close to 90% of the world’s queries. Here is more on the same topic:

According to comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen, Bing gained ground in August, but StatCounter has released info indicating that Bing has experienced its first monthly decline in the US, in September.

Microsoft partner comScore [1, 2, 3], Hitwise, and Nielsen claim to be measuring US market share, which is almost meaningless because China alone exceeds that Internet population, in terms of size.

Microsoft spent about $100,000,000 just marketing its new brand and even paying blogs for publicity. Given the trends seen above, Microsoft will carry on losing billions of dollars on the Web. How long can it afford this burden? █

“Bartz says search engine Bing unlikely to make significant mark”

–MarketWatch (June 2009)

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Links 02/10/2009: OpenBlockS 600 Debuts, KDE 4 Gets Cool Review

Posted in News Roundup at 3:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Why Larry Ellison hates Cloud computing

Direct link

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Company That Attacks ODF Gains More Control of ODF (and Why Open Source Should be Careful, Too)

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, ISO, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Open XML, OpenDocument, OSI, Standard at 4:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Credit: Rob Weir

Summary: Microsoft manages to grab seats in its competitor’s table; Explanation of why CodePlex it to “Open Source” what OOXML is to “open standards”

WE HAVE already shown ISO ODF being stuffed by Microsoft under everyone’s nose [1, 2]. The press did not cover this important issue, unlike last year's obvious indication that Microsoft had hijacked SC34.

In the following new post, figures are being shown to demonstrate the obvious — that ISO got cracked by Microsoft, which then pushed a proprietary format (controlled by Microsoft) down its throat using illegal means. From the conclusions:

I suppose this [OOXML] is “global” in a sense, in the same way one could stage an “International Food Festival” and then have McDonalds show up and contribute a Big Mac from the U.S., a Big Mac from Germany, a Big Mac from the Ivory Coast, a Big Mac from Finland and another Big Mac from Brazil and so on. Certainly, you could claim this was “international”, but you would be laughed right out of the festival if you did.

[...]

Evidently there is no one capable of fixing this. ISO says that domination by a single corporation is not their responsibility, because only NBs vote and each NB determines its own participation rules. But individual NBs also don’t see a problem, because any single one of them only has one Microsoft employee at the meeting. So the NB itself is not necessary stuffed (although that does happens occasionally as well). So by placing Microsoft employees in many NB delegations and putting the overflow into the Ecma delegation, Microsoft can still dominate the ISO committee and not trigger a rule violation in ISO or in any NB.

This is essentially how Microsoft hacked ISO. Now that the flaw has been demonstrated, any large international corporation with sufficient funds and interest can exploit it as well. So long as the rules remain as they are, ISO is vulnerable. ISO defends this criticism by pointing out what good work they’ve done in the past, and how they rarely have problems of this kind before. But this shows little appreciation for the nature of the problem which have been demonstrated. It is like arguing that a newly discovered (though long latent) security flaw in an operating system is insignificant because you’ve never had an attack before now. Of course, this misses the point entirely. Once the vulnerability is known and publicly exploited, you’re living on borrowed time until you can secure the system. Today ISO is living on borrowed time and is very close to becoming a Microsoft-infested zombie server.

The author, Rob Weir, is already being heckled by Microsoft employees and their MVPs, who try to change the topic of discussion because defending corruption is so much more difficult. Sadly, Weir is perhaps too shy to admit that he is not happy with the company that attacked ODF so viciously and now forks it [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] sitting on the ODF table.

To repeat an old analogical expression, Microsoft wants to stick its finger in all the pies, including Linux and Free software (or “open source”) where it is doing the same type of routine.

Microsoft and its army of partners have their limits though. They did not manage to stuff OSI like they did stuff ISO, so they created their own separate entity [1, 2, 3, 4], akin to OOXML. Jason Brooks, writing on the subject in his latest column, thinks that this could lead to flames.

For its part, the FSF has spent the summer alternately blasting individuals and groups for and warning them against using or adopting technologies distributed or even invented by Microsoft. For instance, the FSF this summer launched a Website devoted to cataloging the “sins” of Windows 7 and has weighed in on multiple occasions as to why, despite what Microsoft promises, no open-source developer should code in Microsoft’s C#.

As Groklaw showed a few days ago, Novell is a big part of this problem [1, 2]. Groklaw received flak for saying so. The Mono-Nono Web site adds:

For one thing, PJ has a bit of experience dealing with such nastiness. The irony of course is that she gained it while investigating SCOs attacks on Linux, and will probably be using it for Team Mono and Friends attacks on Freedom now! There’s a certain symmetry to that, I think.

Another thing is that I’ve noticed that the pro-Mono attacks are looking a bit faded lately.

I guess that’s what happens when you keep attacking honest people truly interested in Freedom and your basic weapons are ad hominem and disinformation.

Matthew Aslett makes the following brow-raising statement:

Microsoft is no different from any other proprietary vendor in this regard. The like sof IBM and Oracle and SAP have all had to find their own ways of coexisting with FOSS.

This is not so accurate. Microsoft is unique for the reason shown below (which still applies). █

“Microsoft is unique among proprietary software companies: they are the only ones who have actively tried to kill Open Source and Free Software. It’s not often someone wants to be your friend after trying to kill you for ten years, but such change is cause for suspicion.”

–Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC)

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Another Microsoft Product Gets Buried: Recite

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Windows at 3:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: As Windows Mobile’s small market continues to decrease (while Linux gains), Microsoft drops Recite

A FEW days ago we witnessed the end of two Microsoft products and now comes the end of another.

Microsoft has announced that it is discontinuing Microsoft Recite, an application for Windows Mobile that uses voice-search technology to let users record and search voice notes. The product never made it out of the Technology Preview status.

From another source which is closer to Microsoft:

Microsoft is discontinuing Recite, a Windows Mobile application that lets people record audio notes to themselves and search them later by voice, according to a notice today on the Microsoft Recite site. The app will no longer be offered as of Dec. 31, 2009, the company says.

This is indicative of the declining relevance of Windows Mobile, which Microsoft intends to complement or replace with its own phone, assuming the rumours are true.

Other coverage of the ending of this relatively new product says: “It’s a shame this has been discontinued so quickly. Recite showed real promise in giving Windows Mobile a technical advantage so desperately needed, especially given Ballmer’s admission that they are lagging the competition.”

Among Microsoft’s competitors in this field: Linux.

Linux-powered phone platforms include Android, WebOS, and LiMo. According to the following, Microsoft’s CEO still cannot say the “G” word, let alone the “L” word.

Ballmer Won’t Call Google by Name in Interview

In a strange part of what was otherwise and interesting and insightful interview with TechCrunch this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went out of his way to avoid naming Google, instead referring to them repeatedly as “the incumbent.” This seemed to be a deliberate strategy and left me shaking my head wondering why he couldn’t refer to Google by name. (The whole interview is interesting, so I encourage you to watch it, but the part I’m referring to begins at around 6:30.)

One of the reasons Comes vs Microsoft exhibits are valuable is that Microsoft publicly avoids using the “L” word, unless there is no choice. But looking at internal mail, it is beyond evident that Microsoft knows its "most potent" competitor. █

“Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

“[If I ask you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?] Open…Linux. I don’t want to say open source. Linux, certainly have to go with that.”

–Steve Ballmer (Microsoft’s CEO), February 28^th, 2008

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