11.18.09
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 10:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Edited in response to a similar figure with
inversed shares from Digg (click to enlarge)
Summary: Where technical merits are considered rather than marketing and consumerism, GNU/Linux crushes the competition and continues to gain
OUR constant stream of daily news/links hopefully demonstrates that Linux is taking over the embedded/devices market. Another market where GNU/Linux has great power is one of the most luxurious ones and although it involves proprietary software higher up the layers, it still helps justify heavy development on Linux and accompanying parts, GCC included.
Glyn Moody offers this perspective on the latest numbers from TOP500.
Yes, as this shows, GNU/Linux is just as dominant in the supercomputing world as Windows is on PCs. However, unlike Windows on the desktop, which is slowly losing market share (not much, but a little), GNU/Linux is actually *gaining*: six months ago it had 88.60%. Windows, by contrast, remains stuck at a rather pathetic 1% – that’s just five machines in the top 500.
GNU/Linux also rules the most powerful machine.
Poor Apple and Microsoft are nowhere in sight. How come?
Here is a new article that touches on the subject:
Lack of Innovation a Commonality for Microsoft, Apple
[...]
Where did Windows come from? Put very simply, Bill Gates couldn’t be bothered to write his own operating system for the IBM PC, so he bought the rights to QDOS from Seattle Computer Products instead. Then he got the idea for Windows from Apple, and Microsoft’s latest innovation is, apparently, the 20 year old sudo concept.
[...]
It’s no surprise then that of the world’s most powerful computers included in the latest Top 500 Supercomputing list, just under 90 percent run Linux. The number of Windows and OS X machines in the list can be counted on one hand.
To make matters worse, Apple hardware is once again shown to be inferior to some of the ‘commodity’ options GNU/Linux runs on.
Macs not all that for reliability
[...]
A survey of 30,000 laptops has found one in three machines die within three years and netbooks do even worse, suffering 20 per cent more hardware failures than larger laptop machines.
This agrees with other such studies from 2009.
How about this new survey about Microsoft hardware?
CNET UK’s games console reliability survey: 60 per cent of Xbox 360s have broken
[...]
Sixty per cent of Xbox 360s have kicked the red-ringed bucket, compared to 16 per cent of PS3s and just 6 per cent of Wiis, according to our survey on the reliability of games consoles in the UK.
A recent survey and other such surveys agree with these numbers. Apple and Microsoft just cannot produce decent hardware, let alone an operating system that’s competitive where bare metal — not sugar coating and marketing — truly matters. █
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Posted in FSF at 8:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Richard Stallman clarifies a joke
* From: Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>
* To: foundation-list gnome org, gnome-women-list gnome org
* Subject: For avoidance of misunderstandings
* Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:22:47 -0500
Some of the people in the audience in my speech in the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit thought that my joke about the Virgin of Emacs was intended to make some kind of statement about women.
I was surprised by that reaction, since I had told the same joke dozens of times and this is the first report of interpreting it that way. In any case, it was a misunderstanding: the only intended meaning of the Cult of the Virgin of Emacs is to parody another Cult of the Virgin. The whole St IGNUius routine makes fun of me, the free software movement and religion, through parody.
To be abundantly clear, my views about women in connection with free software are simply that they deserve freedom in using computers, just as men do. Some women already appreciate this freedom and have become free software activists. We need more people, regardless of sex, to do this, so that someday all women, and all men, will enjoy the freedom that free software offers.
Misunderstanding is not a good outcome. To help avoid misunderstandings of this kind in the future, since August I have changed the joke so that the Virgin of Emacs can be of either sex.
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Posted in Apple, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 7:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A fresh look at two companies that attack Linux using patents (one of which breaks the very same laws that it’s using against Linux)
THE patent system seems to be broken and offenders include rivals of GNU/Linux, such as Apple and Microsoft. Let us look at the latest news.
Apple
Apple is not a friend, especially when it comes to software patents. To give just a sample of recent posts about Apple and patents:
- Patents Roundup: Patents as Deterrent Against Innovation, Apple’s Role, and Bilski’s Toll
- How Microsoft (and Apple) Wants to Own GNU/Linux, in the ‘Intellectual’ Sense
- Patents Roundup: Linux, Microsoft, Apple, Patent Trolls and Reform
- Patents Roundup: Apple, Microsoft Trolls, and Linux
- Novell Collects Software Patents While Apple Attacks Linux with Patents
Here is the latest:
• Apple patents anti-user attention-complianceware
Apple’s filed a patent on a design for a device that won’t let its owner use it unless that person demonstrates that she has complied with an advertiser’s demands by paying attention to an ad and taking some action indicating her dutiful attention.
• Apple seeks OS-jacking advert patent
Apple has filed a patent application for an intrusive ad-presentation system that requires users to acknowledge adverts before getting on with their work.
• Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It? [via]
Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.
Is this really a company worth supporting for our computing? One that wants exclusivity on yet another customer-hostile idea (there are other very recent examples)?
Microsoft
A lot of discussion began after allegations and accusations against a “sudo” patent. This is a subject that we covered twice before [1, 2] and it continues to be explored because of Groklaw’s misinterpretation.
The newer story is to do with an older lawsuit which has just ended, leaving Microsoft guilty. “IP champion accused of IP theft” is how The Register sums it up. [thanks, Will] Watch the implications: “Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling Windows XP in China after a court ruled that certain fonts in the operating system infringe on a Chinese firm’s intellectual property.”
To Microsoft, halting sales of XP in China might actually seem desirable. Now they have an excuse.
Broken System
Some rather philosophical essays have just been published to explain why the notion of intellectual monopolies cannot stand. From Mises:
If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?
[...]
So on this score, Rand had perfectly sound instincts (a person should charge as much as he or she can for first run) but Rand’s rationale was rooted in this modern notion of intellectual property, a theory, shared by nearly all her contemporaries, on which she was never once challenged. In fact, to a great extent, her philosophy exalted the role and rights of the creator more than any, probably, in the history of ideas. This is a great contribution, but she took the notion too far — for Rand, intellectual rights trumped real rights.
From Libervis:
Implications of rejecting ‘intellectual property’
[...]
Critics should think long and hard before they continue to defend “intellectual property”. Not only is it based on pure fiction, something with no basis in reality, but their objections are silly and baseless showing more the lack of imagination and an unwillingness to think beyond their current paradigm. Furthermore their defense of IP only helps to prevent any meaningful change to the corporatist society we’re living in, EVEN when they root for the Free or Open Source licensing.
According to the FFII’s president, ‘[USPTO Director] Kappos treats software authors as inventors: “young people find new ways to write software in a school computer lab”‘
This comes from the same person who called patents “20-year monopoly”. Groklaw argues that patent lawyers simply don’t understand software.
AN EXPERT IN COMPUTING has suggested that most patent lawyers can’t locate their buttocks with both hands when it comes to the nitty gritty of computing, and that computers quite simply don’t work the way that most members of the legal profession presume that they do.
It could be worse. Over in East Texas, guess who gets sued for patent violations? “Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, [and] Others,” claims TechDirt.
Of course the lawsuit was filed in East Texas, and it’s amusing to see the reasoning for this: according to the lawsuit, all of the performers likely had residents from East Texas who attended some of their concerts, and thus it makes sense. As for the Lakers, well, their games are broadcast in East Texas (even if the screen in question is in LA and probably not of much use or concern to those watching at home in East Texas).
How long before this system is redone or scraped? This insanity cannot prevail because patent critics multiply, even in Europe. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Google, GPL, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 6:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft and its apologists rewrite the story of GPL violations; Microsoft is seen invading more competitors and panels, using money at times
AS we showed over the weekend, a Microsoft Vista 7 tool had broken the law as stated by the GPL [1, 2, 3, 4] and Bruce Perens made the argument that this can help Microsoft.
Now is the time for Microsoft to spin it all. “Revisionism revisionism revisionism revisionism,” as Steve Ballmer might put it. We see a lot of revisionism these days and Microsoft did the same thing when there were GPL violations in its loadable module for Linux [1, 2, 3].
Here is a Microsoft-sponsored news site getting close and personal with the developer who saw someone victimised and here come the usual apologists to Microsoft’s rescue.
First off, Microsoft deserves credit for doing the right thing in a timely way.
Credit for what exactly? For violating the law? To deserve credit, Microsoft ought to have obeyed the law in the first place, not after getting caught. Here is more apologism:
Redmond’s response to the problem “does indicate a growing maturity with respect to free and open source licenses,” said RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady.
Obeying the law after violating it is not “growing maturity”, but Microsoft is among RedMonk’s clients, so it is not exactly an unbiased source. Money matters, so the whole embarrassing situation becomes a PR thing.
“It is the same spin as when Hyper-V led Microsoft to a GPL violation.”Watch the coverage from IDG (which relies on Microsoft as a large source of revenue [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). Holy cow. Look how IDG spins Microsoft’s violation of the law. It is the same spin as when Hyper-V led Microsoft to a GPL violation. Microsoft tried to redo the story as “we’re kindly releasing GPL-licensed code”.
Matt Asay goes further and uses Microsoft’s violation of the law to actually daemonise those who watch and criticise Microsoft for attacking GNU/Linux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Wow, just wow! How does Microsoft do that? That’s PR genius (but then again, that’s the same guy who also invited Microsoft/ushered it into OSI).
Microsoft has just found another body that’s associated with “open” to throw money at, just like with Apache [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. It takes very shallow minds to actually buy this gesture.
Microsoft is joining at the promoter level, which is OFA’s highest membership level and gives Microsoft a seat on the OFA [OpenFabrics Alliance] board, full voting rights, membership in all working groups, and the opportunity to influence the long-term evolution of the most widely adopted middleware for high-performance computing, networking and storage.
This is not charity. This is Microsoft buying seats so that it can influence the OpenFabrics Alliance. It gives them some influence on the cheap.
To say more about influence, Google has foolishly hired Don Dodge. That is the same person who earlier this month promoted Microsoft's software patent deals regarding Linux. He is now added to Google, but there’s more:
Which sounds quite close to the truth. But we can’t help but wonder: Now that this Microsoft evangelist has suddenly disowned five years of Microsoft evangelism, shouldn’t we apply a certain, well, skepticism to anything he now says about Google?
So at Microsoft he was an “evangelist”, eh? In a way, that’s euphemism for AstroTurfers [1, 2, 3, 4], just like the undercover "evangelists" who were trolling Boycott Novell on Microsoft's payroll.
Whose “perception management” [1, 2] will Dodge do? Will he promote .NET and ActiveX in Google, for example? Our reader who links to this item writes: “This is the kind of person who tirelessly defended Microsoft’s technologies in the face of nasty inconveniences like facts.
“The closing line ought to be re-worded: “he will likely be a great asset to Microsoft in dealing with Google’s developer community.”
“I wonder what Matt Assay will have to say about it in his apologies for Microsoft?
“Google can’t employ Microsofters without them bringing the quality and mind set that Microsoft has been infamous for.”
Speaking of deception and spin, also from IDG we have this familiar troll and Microsoft shareholder Bill Snyder mocking Free software. It’s all about money to him.
I don’t write for free; my editors don’t edit for free. I know, I know – some of you are going to bring up open source.
He has used the same type of daemonisation repeatedly, so this is not the first time. He also uses Microsoft talking points like “no free lunch” and TechDirt shreds his arguments to pieces.
And, of course, that’s the problem with Snyder’s analysis. It doesn’t take into account the wider business model. The reason that Snyder’s article is available for free is because InfoWorld has decided that it has a better chance of monetizing that content by offering it for free and selling advertising. It’s other option would be to charge people directly to read Snyder’s economically confused analysis — but then no one might pay. So which makes more sense? According to Snyder, the latter.
[...]
Snyder figured out the wrong thing. Yes, getting paid is important, but the question is what you get paid for, and he’s asking people to charge for the parts of a business that make the most sense being free — and doesn’t explain why he gets to decide what should be free and what shouldn’t. The answer, really, is that none of us decides: basic economics tells us. If you have a competitive product with no marginal cost, it’s going to eventually get driven to free. Whether you like it or not. And then you shouldn’t whine about the evils of “free.” You should instead figure out ways to use that to your advantage.
There is nothing wrong with being gratis and libre. In fact, Google is now using both of these to market Android and Chrome OS. We need to work together with our neighbours on this planet, not against one another based on borders or commercial boundaries. The real troublesome borders are ones of control, power, and class. Those who use technology and intellectual monopolies to rule the majority would be weakened if this same majority shared knowledge and worked cohesively to produce powerful systems that put control in the hands of all users — those who do not merely rent or acquire permission to use one single corporation’s tool, whose structure is secret (and is illegal to probe thanks to self-guarding laws such as DMCA). Why aren’t proponens of proprietary software described as “zealots” or “dangerous”? It’s probably because they still control the press (and thus perception). █
“There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.”
–Sam(uel) James Ervin, Jr.
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Posted in Australia, Europe, Free/Libre Software, Mail, Microsoft at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A new snapshot of the battle for the minds and hearts of technical staff in academic institutions
THIS is a subject which affects a lot of people. We explained this before, as recently as just a couple of weeks ago, in relation to the Open University, which is now adopting Free software, for a change. From the news:
The British Open University took upon itself in 2005, together with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the task of bringing online learning into the future. Unusual is that it didn’t decide on Moodle for merely financial reasons or that it didn’t go for professional support.
Worth mentioning is also the following new article about the role of the British government in Microsoft lock-in (a subject last addressed over the weekend).
Mr Brown Goes Shopping for the Nation’s Software
I am sure many of you know that we have signed and resigned an MOU with Microsoft which stands for ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. Many will also know that UK plc is Microsoft’s biggest European customer.
So, given the above, how many of you know what we spend on MS software?
I’ll tell you. Only the folk who sign the cheques know and they are not telling.
When HM Gov had a FOI (Freedom of Information) request lodged last year asking (not unreasonably) how much we as a nation helped swell the software giant’s coffers, they were told to ‘go away’. When it was followed up, the Courts upheld Microsoft’s ‘protection of commercial confidentiality’ claim.
In other words ‘really go away you nosy, plebian taxpayer’.
But anyway, today’s latest problem is caused by lazy IT staff that are passing (externalising) the costs down to students, who will be coerced and used by Microsoft in due time.
Flinders University gives open source the boot
[...]
The Adelaide-based university signed the deal [with Microsoft] after a 12-month trial of the internally developed open source platform, Google and other hosted email systems.
Did they receive Microsoft's Live@edu bribes in order to do this? █
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