12.16.09
IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: December 16th, 2009
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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“Enderle Has Been Paid by Both Microsoft and Dell to Say Bad Things About Apple”
Summary: New claims about a source of anti-GNU/Linux FUD, who is close to Microsoft’s PR department and executives (also paid by them)
Roughly Drafted Magazine has just gone on a round of shill-busting, slamming Strand Consult and Diaz for breaking Godwin’s law. But more relevant to us is this new essay about Rob Enderle, one of Microsoft’s more incestuous shills [1, 2].
Back in 2007, the New York Times first instated a ban on shills like Rob Enderle, who purport to be independent analysts while actually serving as paid mouthpieces for the firms they represent. In the words of Times spokeswoman Abbe Serphos, this supposedly included any “analysts who have an obvious business relationship with a company.”
It’s no secret that Enderle has been paid by both Microsoft and Dell to say bad things about Apple. It eventually became embarrassing for the Times to realize its sloppy journalists were stooping to quote him as a shortcut to performing actual investigative research, hence the ban.
Why can’t newspapers stick to the ban of people with a conflict of interests? The guy is already exposed and so are many others. █
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model…”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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Microsoft Says Selling Free Software is Not Legal, Prepares to Sue Over It
Image from Wikimedia
Summary: Using another so-called “promise”, Microsoft has just implicitly confirmed that it is on a warpath against people who make money selling Free software
MICROSOFT has a funny habit of building fences around Free software using all sorts of “promises”, such as the useless promise regarding Mono. A reader has just sent us a pointer to this article from IDG’s Microsoft Subnet: [via]
As part of the agreement Microsoft has struck with the European Commission to offer a ballet screen for browsers, Microsoft has issued what it calls the “Patent Pledge for Open Source Developers.” The pledge tells open source developers that Microsoft won’t sue them for developing open source software for its flagship products as long as they are not selling their software.
Microsoft has already sued TomTom and Melco for using Linux. But there’s more to it. Our reader says: “Remember the one where, they allow you to work on your code, as long as you don’t own it, and don’t work on it in company time?”
“Look up the original openSuSE patent pledge and compare it to this one,” he added. We wrote about this in 2006.
This is indeed what Microsoft has in mind. Microsoft has just exploited its useful affair with the Microsoft-bent European Commission (staff has changed) to threaten anyone who ‘dares’ to make money from Free software. Microsoft threatens the livelihood of Free software developers.
Regarding the Web browsers dispute, it’s not quite over yet, despite what the mainstream press is telling.
Microsoft EU dispute to last into 2010
Today (16 December) the EU ends a decade long dispute with Microsoft over its Internet Explorer browser. But the US software company is not out of the woods yet, as outstanding antitrust complaints could see the European Commission continue sparring with the giant in 2010.
This process has been a farce in recent months (see details below). █
Related posts:
- A Ballot Screen is Not Justice, Internet Explorer Still Compromises Users’ PCs
- Mozilla Unofficially Joins ECIS and Opera in Opposition to Microsoft’s Deal in Europe; Microsoft Poisoned Firefox
- Parties Behind Complaints Against Microsoft in EU Not Pleased
- Microsoft’s Older Crimes Against Web Browsers Return, Microsoft’s New Attacks on JavaScript Revisited
- Opera Complains About Vista 7
- Microsoft Bypasses the Law and Breaks the Web for Opera and GNU/Linux Users, Again
- Mozilla and Opera Still Object to Microsoft’s Deal with the Commission
- Microsoft Hopes a Tickbox Will Restore Fair Competition in Europe; Opera Disagrees
- Microsoft Crowd Incites People Against Rival Web Browsers
Erwin Tenhumberg Can Convince SAP to Stop Attacking Sun and Free Software
Summary: Erwin’s belief system dances along with the paymaster, but surely he can do better than that
AS we have been showing for several weeks now, SAP is lobbying to destroy Sun along with important projects like OpenOffice.org. Erwin Tenhumberg departed from OpenOffice.org/Sun last year, willingly moving to SAP. Ever since, his actions have been ambivalent at best. He was involved in an EU strategy document, implicitly lobbying against Free software by lobbying for software patents in the Open Source Software Workgroup.
What’s up with all that? Is it like Don Dodge [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], where people’s actions are aligned with whatever tyrannical* force pays the wage? This type of disloyalty to values and ethics is exactly what harms GNOME these days. What the world needs are people who stand up for justice, not capital. █
_____
* The chain of command is identical to tyranny in such corporations.
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ODF Gains in Europe, Microsoft Still Sneakily Attacks ODF
Also see: Judge Likens Microsoft’s Effect on Java to a Bang on the Knee
Summary: The ups and downs of ODF, the latter being largely the result of Microsoft’s gentle blows
ODF (OpenDocument Format) is still doing pretty well, especially in developing countries like Brazil (also here) and nations where corruption rates are low (notably Scandinavia).
According to this report from IDG, Holland is prepared to help Denmark with ODF, resisting the infinite cronyism of Helge Sander.
The Dutch government has provided Denmark with information regarding the Dutch national plan Heemskerk for open government IT.
In Denmark, there is heated debate about the approach for open IT usage by the government. One of the obstacles is the open file format for mandatory use by the government and government organizations. ODF (Open Document Format) and OOXML (Open Office XML), originally developed by Microsoft, are the candidates for use.
The Dutch Ministry of Finance shared with Denmark the experience and knowledge it has gained from the national plan Heemskerk and the resulting action plan “Nederland Open in Verbinding” (NOiV). Finance spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg confirmed to Dutch IDG news site Webwereld that the two governments are in contact. “We have shared all information regarding NOiV,” he said.
Further up in Norway, one person writes: “New task: write report for Norwegian government on whether to recommend/require ODF and/or OOXML in Norwegian public sector” (a response to which is: “I did the same for the Danish goverment about 2 years ago, “comparing” ODF, OOXML and PDF. Did I make a difference? I’d like to know”).
“On the menu: one of the smallest cities in Belgium – Nieuwerkerken – needs some new and fancy automatically generated documents in #odf,” says this gentleman from Belgium and ODF is also mentioned in German news sites.
Europe is clearly warming up to ODF and so do developers (new examples here and here).
Bart Hanssens writes from Belgium (a meeting was held in France): “uploaded proposal for #odf 1.1 Interoperability Profile http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=35565″
“ODF TC done,” writes Cherie Ekholm, “starting PDF/UA.” Dennis Hamilton announced: “ODF TC e-ballot on #ODF 1.2 Part 1 CD04 as Public Review draft ends tonight, expected to pass easily based on current votes.”
In addition he wrote: “ODF TC discussed whether to align OSI/IEC IS 26300 and #ODF 1.1 or would ODF 1.2 overtake the effort and time to accomplish. Unresolved.”
Later came: “#ODF TC Approves ODF 1.2 Part 1 Committee Draft CD04 to submit for first-ever Public Review. OASIS to announce after docs all set.”
Bart Hanssens took note and so did Pim Bliek. Mary McRae (the key person for ODF at OASIS) has also responded.
An important subject which was brought up by several people has also been shared by an OpenOffice.org guy, who wrote:
Locked out by design
[...]
Software vendors have tried on and off to lock these documents so users needed the original software to use them. This can go horribly wrong, as some users of Microsoft Office 2003 have just found out to their cost, when the software refused to let them get at their documents – their own intellectual property. This is a design feature of Microsoft Office software which happened to misfire.
What it highlights is that no-one outside Microsoft has a clue what is hidden inside their secretive software. It also highlights the importance of not using a secret format to store valuable office documents. The safe way to store valuable documents is in OpenDocument Format (ODF) – an ISO approved open standard which isn’t owned by any one company. It’s the best guarantee against being held to ransom one day by a software supplier.
We wrote about this a few days ago and so did Microsoft. Wolf Corcoran-Mathe writes: “[Microsoft Fixes Office 2003 Document Lockout] Great. Now if they could only stop breaking ODF.” He is referring to Microsoft’s inability (or unwillingness) to obey interoperability needs [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
“Brown’s private firm benefits from Microsoft as we showed many times before, so he never relents.”Now we get to the ugly parts where Microsoft is attacking ODF, as usual. Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22] is sticking his nose again, trolling/heckling John with some poison against ODF (see the comments in the blog above). Brown’s private firm benefits from Microsoft as we showed many times before, so he never relents. Microsoft’s very unethical Doug Mahugh is also pushing the same Microsoft line, which gets passed around by others who are associated with Microsoft. It's like a cult of money and power. Corruption is a key ritual, which the heavily-spammed ANSI pretends never happened. But to quote Brown’s predecessor: “This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.
“The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible.”
It indeed became impossible and ISO is now corrupt [1, 2, 3, 4].
So, Microsoft got away with misconduct, who cares? Many people said the same thing when George Bush stole the elections. Whatever.
A post that we cited the other day comes from Rob Weir and Glyn Moody calls it a “good summary of where we are, and why Microsoft’s moves are fishy…”
Microsoft’s obligations are by definition unethical and very much against ODF. That’s just how the company operates, for its shareholders. “[T]hat’s super screwy because “O”OXML is Microsoft’s format. ODF is the REAL open format,” says this one person to a peer/friend, later adding that the nature of this situation is “making ODF far more resilient against bugs, because they can easily be patched.” █
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“Things Are Going Downhill at Novell These Days”
Summary: Novell deceives the press just as the company is imploding, as well as getting much smaller
NOVELL is falling apart as a company and as a brand. Quite symbolically (of Novell’s bleeding to death), one person has just uploaded a video titled: “Novell Provo Campus Building H Water Leak”
The description of the video goes like this: “Things are going downhill at Novell these days. There was a massive water leak and huge amounts of damage done to the Lobby of Building H. Novell Provo Campus Lobby Water Leak”
Novell’s much bigger internal issues are actually a lot less visible than the above. Novell is currently trying to ‘dress up’ the real news about the management exodus that we covered last night. The press is catching up very quickly, but the company’s press release [1, 2, 3, 4] tries hard to spin, spin, spin. That’s what PR is all about: defensible omission, distraction, selectivity, and reasonable distortion.
“They announce the departure of many executives (as a bundle) and then treat such big departures as minor, describing the whole move as “reorg”, which is a vague concept.”Novell’s PR Director, Ian Bruce, completely ignores the departures and pretends that the decoy of “reorg” is all there is to talk about. This is an old trick devised also by Microsoft. They announce the departure of many executives (as a bundle) and then treat such big departures as minor, describing the whole move as “reorg”, which is a vague concept. It is ambiguous as this can be interpreted as either bad news or good news. They sort of “package together” (or group) a lot of bad news that must reach shareholders and mix it with something that’s positive or only seemingly positive in order to just bury the bad news and be done it.
Many news sites have fallen into this PR trap, which was set up by Novell’s marketing/management people, no doubt. Those who were docile and gullible only/mostly spoke about “reorg”, just as Novell had hoped. Examples:
1. Novell announce a reorganisation
2. Novell reorganizes business and management
3. Novell Corporate Restructure
4. Novell reorg aims at solution sales
In this reorganization, three current units—identity and security management (ISM); systems and resource management (SRM); and open platform solutions (OPS) will meld into one security, management and operating platforms business unit headed by senior vice president Jim Ebzery.
Well done, Novell. You lied to journalists and here they are rewriting your press release (more or less). It’s a disgrace to both Novell and to the practice of professional journalism.
There are exceptions however. The very prominent (as in widely-syndicated) Associated Press came out with a more appropriate headline, but it leaves out major news about major departures. Apart from the raw article there were copies in news sites such as ABC, BusinessWeek, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Only one publication (as far as one can tell) has modified the Associated Press headline to add: “[Novell] says 2 executives to leave”
That’s the main news. It is about Novell shrinking and losing key suits (managers). It is very bad news, it’s not just a “reorg”. To quote from another news source:
On an interim basis, Jeff Jaffe, who has served for the last four years as CTO and executive vice president of the business units, has agreed to report to Hovsepian as a strategic advisor. He will be leaving the company this February. Senior Vice President of Strategic Development Roger Levy will also be leaving Novell.
J.P. Morgan’s response? “Change Does Not Always Make it Different” sums it up.
Manek, a British consultant who writes at ZDNet UK, has just published this short article about Novell. The headline says: “Whither Novell?”
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Novell still doesn’t know what it’s for. Recent news that the company has once again re-organised itself, following a fairly abysmal set of financial results, smacks slightly of desperation.
[...]
What’s depressing is that I seem to have been making the same or similar comments every few years about Novell, ever since the company went bonkers buying Unix, WordPerfect and a whole host of other bits and pieces as it looked to replace its failing NetWare business.
Boycott Novell is linked there among the comments, in relation to Mono. In other news this week, Miguel de Icaza is still looking appease Microsoft. Perhaps that’s all Novell has left, namely fusion with Microsoft. █
“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”
–LinuxToday Managing Editor
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Microsoft Assumes You Too Are a Criminal
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
–Albert Einstein
Summary: Microsoft treats everyone like a criminal with its COFEE software; preventive measures are therefore created
BACK in November we wrote about Microsoft’s COFEE [1, 2], which makes use of diagnostic/forensic antifeatures that Microsoft put in Vista and in Vista 7, right under many people’s noses. After Vista in particular, Windows is a really user-hostile piece of software and after a lot of noise (especially against DRM) people seem to have forgotten about it, much to Microsoft’s delight. They even renamed “Vista”.
In essence, Microsoft has Windows spy on any user by logging his/her actions. What is wrong with all this? Well, it is not there for the user really, thus it’s an antifeature; it’s there to be used against the user.
The danger of COFEE was explained by Bruce Schneier last week (incidentally in response to Eric Schmidt).
Schmidt said:
I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.
This, from 2006, is my response:
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.
[...]
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.
[...]
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And it’s our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
Abuse of power is a true danger to democracy, which is precisely what laws were establish to prevent (e.g. requirement of a search warrant). But Microsoft is turning in all users to authorities/policemen, who can also abuse their power to weaken democratic dissent (here in the UK even pro-environment activists are abused, harassed and sometimes arrested after eavesdropping, despite doing nothing wrong). Microsoft does not make “COFEE-readiness” selective based on prior activity like a criminal record or inclusion in a suspects list.
Software that’s called DECAF has just made its debut and the Microsoft folks write about it.
Two developers have created “Detect and Eliminate Computer Assisted Forensics” (DECAF). The tool tries to stop Microsoft’s Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password protected or encrypted sources.
[...]
More specifically, the program deletes COFEE’s temporary files, kills its processes, erases all COFEE logs, disables USB drives, and even contaminates or spoofs a variety of MAC addresses to muddy forensic tracks. It can be told to disable almost every piece of hardware on a machine and delete pre-defined files in the background. The 181KB DECAF program even has a ‘Spill the cofee’ mode in which it simulates COFEE’s presence to give the user an opportunity to test his or her configuration before actually using it. Source code for DECAF has not been made available, since the authors fear it will be reverse engineered, making it unclear what else the tool might be doing and whether or not it is completely safe to use.
This seems like a tool that any activist who is still not using Free software should make use of.
Is it not hysterical that Microsoft pretends that it cares about privacy? Microsoft remains a great threat to democracy. Unlike Google, Microsoft does not ask if you are willing to be spied on and there is no option to opt out, either. This spyware/malware is already preinstalled on most new computers. It’s ‘baked into’ Windows. █
Recent Attacks on GNU and Richard Stallman Based on Distortions, Lies
Photo by Brandon Lozza
Summary: “Much ado about nothing” sums up the recent attacks on the role of GNU inside GNOME; clarifications are hereby presented
YESTERDAY we responded to criticism of GNU inside GNOME [1, 2], noting in part that there is a lot of distortion and thus misunderstanding. Here is a good new post that sheds light on the subject (there are discussions in other languages too).
A very key point was made here by The Source:
Listen people, you don’t have to agree with RMS. He’s not a god or infallible. Just stop lying about the man and what he says. Just stop lying.
If it only happened once or twice, I would be generous and assume it wasn’t malicious. But it is constant, and seems to come too easy to be an honest misunderstanding. I’m tired of trying to determine if a person is misrepresenting RMS because they are a malicious liar, or merely an uninformed moron parroting a malicious liar. It is quickly become a distinction without a difference.
One more thing before I move on: straw man. We see you doing it. You aren’t fooling anyone. It’s disgusting, dishonest, childish and malicious. Stop it. Stop lying.
Over at Linux Magazine, Bruce Byfield proceeds to suggesting that a Free software community does not exist.
To outsiders, the first answer that comes to mind may be hostility to proprietary software in general and Microsoft in particular. In fact, to many outsiders, this is probably the defining characteristic of the community’s members. But the hostility manifests itself in everything from rabid denunciations to mild distaste, and I can think of one or two examples of people who do not share it at all.
This is not true, but regular readers are smart enough to know how to respond to it (the “Microsoft hater” paradigm [1, 2, 3]). Linux Magazine also has this inaccurate report which calls Miguel de Icaza a “Novell coworker”.
Stallman had also run into conflict with the Gnome initiator and Novell coworker Miguel de Icaza. He had persistently criticized the work on Mono and the involvement of Microsoft in various projects.
The comments are quick to correct the author.
One commenter writes: “This is much ado about nothing, and the article is misleading. Peters and de Icaza said nothing advocating splitting from GNU Project in the foundation-list thread in question. The reference to Stallman’s and de Icaza’s previous dust-up seems to have given the previous poster the misguided notion that they are involved in this. Any split was entirely proposed (unofficially and non-bindingly) by Philip van Hoof in reaction to a perceived attempt by RMS to control the content of pgo. He also said that he would not seek to bring an actual proposal to to the foundation, but would support anyone else who did. Only other person seriously entertaining the option was David “Lefty” Schlesinger. It’s a long and convoluted thread that touches on a number of related and unrelated issues, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to get the reporting right. Yes, there was debate over purpose of planet gnome over what should be considered “appropriate” content. No, there’s no (as of yet) organized move to dissociate GNOME from the GNU project. Linux press is in tabloid mode in this tempest in a tea pot.”
Another commenter writes: “Stallman’s comments are actually quite mild – he only says it would be preferable not to see adverts on Planet Gnome. He does not suggest a prohibition, or state that they are evil. The (over)reaction to his comments is (yet another) incomprehensible example of hysterical self-harm within the open source community.
“I guess Peters and de Icaza have some deep-seated insecurities about their new proprietary masters.”
One person even says that “Gnome without GNU is a place in Alaska: Nome.” It’s a reference to the fairly recent Xbox incident.
Last but not least, Sam Varghese points out that the GNOME Foundation wants to hide this under the covers.
A few members of the GNOME Foundation have submitted a petition to the board, asking for a referendum to be held on making the Foundation’s mailing list archives private and limited to its members only.
It may be a sensible thing to do when some people abuse the list by distorting Richard Stallman’s words and then attacking straw men (not for the first time, either). Those who have looked at what Stallman actually said may find it moderate and polite. Dave Neary too was mature about this and he can hopefully lead this tension to an end. It serves nobody. █
“Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us.”
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