04.24.11
Posted in Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 7:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select die panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Summary: A key participator in the OOXML fiasco mocks an attempt to establish real standards
MICROSOFT zealots are quite the bunch. Those zealots love to characterise freedom lovers as what they themselves are, carefully using stereotypes to portray appreciators of rights, standards and transparency as the “bad guys”. We saw many examples of that last week in ZDNet and days ago we got a reminder when we saw Microsoft's "fox" speaking utter rubbish again. Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] wants to be seen as a professional, but he keeps dodging the questions that matter. Moreover, rather than apologise for helping a corrupt process be corrupt (knowing all sorts of things which turned out to be true later, including patent traps), he carries on moaning and playing dumb. What does it say about him? With UK acceptance of ODF he must be rather bitter. After all, his reputation was burned like an effigy after all he had sacrificed everything for his beloved OOXML. Strong language is all he can descend to now, writing phrases like: “Faced with such clueless fuckwittery it’s tempting simply to ask: what’s the point?” The context is “UK Open Standards”.
Andy Updegrove has responded to this one:
Presumably, being involved in standards activities that are highly relevant to the consulting and implementation business of Alex’s firm, Griffin Brown, has no impact on its fortunes at all. And engaging in some other type of community service – say, volunteering at a homeless shelter, or becoming a Boy Scout leader – would avoid all that tedious travel to the excessively dreary locations where SC 34 (the format standard working group) insists on holding its meetings. Places like Tokyo, Stockholm, Paris, Copenhagen, and Prague.
[...]
The problem, it appears, is that Alex thinks that only those that participate in working groups like SC 34 are competent to judge what should be in a standard, or which among competing standards might be superior. Never mind, of course, that legions of formal standards have never been widely adopted at all, or that consortium standards are frequently adopted over formal standards. But forget that. Those who aren’t inside the formal standards process just don’t get what standards are really and truly all about, so why don’t all you ignorant sods just bugger off?
If the name Alex Brown rings a bell, don’t be surprised. Alex was the convenor of the one week OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting held in 2008 – you know, the one that thought that a one week meeting was an intelligent way to resolve over 1,000 comments on an over 6,000 page specification in order to formalize an open standard. During that meeting, Alex made multiple decisions that were later condemned by many. Four countries filed formal appeals. Alex remains serene about that meeting, the decisions made, and the outcome.
Standards, you see, are not to be questioned by those that are expected to use them. They are to be accepted with the deference to which their developers are entitled. We, who are increasingly utterly dependent on what standards allow us to do, or not do, are never, ever to question the judgment of those that create these precious gifts.
Our role is to take what we’re given, and do what we’re told. Anything else would be “clueless fuckwittery.”
My God, Alex. Where is there an end of it?
“Do take a look,” remarks Groklaw, “and if you are in the UK, you might let the government know what standards are important to you. If you are not one for surveys, it says you can alternatively email cto at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk” █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, SCO at 7:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Same script, new players; or how the Android case resembles the situation of Linux under SCO’s legal attacks
SCO is only history, but the lesson to be learned from the SCO case is that Microsoft, for example, will compensate other companies for attacking Microsoft rivals in the courtroom. One of the people who played along with SCO and Microsoft was DiDio from the Yankee Group and she is was quoted a lot by ECT over the years, even in Linux Insider. The same goes for other SCO friends, who wrote entire columns for ECT and also moved on to ZDNet where they pushed the SCO line/talking points. ECT still quoted DiDio last week (spreading FUD about “support” for GNU/Linux, in a Web site called Linux Insider).
One of our readers, speaking in IRC, suggested that Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft might be working together/in tandem, maybe even colluding to eliminate free platforms (they are all in CPTN after all). Pamela Jones linked to this new article and wrote: “That’s the same reasoning behind SCO’s attack on Linux, to make it cost. Where are the regulators, you ask? Where are *you*? If you refuse to buy from companies that behave like this, they’ll get the message, just as SCO got the point eventually.” From the article:
It’s the same reason why Microsoft is suing makers of Android phones: to give Android a price.
Android is free. In some cases, it’s even cheaper than free, with Google sharing some revenue from Google searches on Android phones with partners. This is hugely disruptive to both Microsoft and Apple’s business models; Microsoft because they make money on software licenses, and Apple on hardware. And this disruptive approach is winning: Android is surging past iOS in marketshare.
A lawsuit from a big company, even if doomed, still takes a lot of time, energy and money to fight off. So a Samsung or someone else might settle, accepting to pay some form of license. If that happens, Apple can go around the other manufacturers asking for the same license and have a much stronger claim. And now OEMs have to factor that cost into the decision to choose Android. And all of a sudden, Android has a price.
Microsoft has said that it would pursue this strategy. There need not be speculation here. John C. Dvorak wrote a similar article over the weekend. In summary he adds:
The rise of the Android operating system seems to have gotten the attention of just about everyone, as Google Inc. is under attack by various patent holders looking to derail the software and the company. The beneficiaries are Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Separately, Jones wrote that “Patent Verdicts Are Usually Appealed, Often Reversed”. Her comment in News Picks went like this (it is a shame that there cannot be permanent link to her insights in News Picks, therefore reproducibility matters):
I see Florian Mueller is once again predicting gloom and doom for Linux, this time due to a jury win for Bedrock against Google, but let me show you something that should calm the waters.
Here’s the website of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the specialty court that hears appeals of patent infringement cases in the US, and the link is to the page on statistics, and here [PDF] are the latest statistics on what happens to patent infringement cases on appeal. I think you can see from the stats why patent cases so often are appealed — your chances are very good that you can get matters reversed on appeal, almost a 50-50 chance.
In fact, here’s the intro to a paper [PDF] titled TOWARD CERTAINTY AND UNIFORMITY IN PATENT INFRINGEMENT CASES AFTER FESTO AND MARKMAN: “The increasingly complex technology involved in patent infringement cases has lead many to question the ability of district court judges and jurors in such cases to issue uniform and predictable decisions. In fact, there is evidence that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals – the appellate court with sole jurisdiction and accumulated expertise in patent law – routinely overrules district court decisions regarding claim construction and prosecution history estoppel under the doctrine of equivalents. Given the frequency with which the Federal Circuit overturns district court decisions, and the fact that nearly every patent infringement case involves a dispute over claim construction or prosecution history estoppel under the doctrine of equivalents, patent infringement cases are typically uncertain until after appeal.”
So calm down. There will likely be an appeal of the jury’s decision in the case brought by Bedrock against Google. And given the nature of the patent, I expect Google will prevail, frankly. In fact just today, Dave Farber wrote on his IP list: “I believe I used that technique in SNOBOL in the early 60′s,” meaning the technique that awed the jurors so. When it comes to tech, it isn’t so easy for juries, and this was in Texas, where the juries have a rep for finding for patent holders whether they deserve it or not. So, I’d suggest everyone just relax and let it all play out. It’s way too early to be worried. I’d also point out that $5 million isn’t very much for Google, even if it were upheld, and if that were the worst that were to happen in the Oracle suit, it hardly would spell doom and gloom for Android. Of course, the real problem is that a lot of stupid patents have issued, and real solution is that software and patents need to get a divorce.] – Federal Circuit Ct. of Appeals
Let us remember that Microsoft Florian is busy attacking Android (even today) while he mostly ignores what Apple and Microsoft are doing; instead he promotes cartels like CPTN — a cartel with Apple inside it. Here is something that Glyn Moody wrote a few days ago on this matter.
So far, I’ve held off from writing about the proposed sale of 882 Novell patents to a consortium “organised by Microsoft”, since there have been so many twists and turns – first it was on, then off – that making sensible statements about the likely impact on free software was well-nigh impossible. As is so often the case, the devil would clearly be in the details.
[...]
Again, it is pretty amazing to read in an official press release from the terribly serious German Cartel Office concerns about the use of patents to spread FUD, specifically against open source. This argues a widespread appreciation of the way in which broken patent laws have allowed what was designed to be a spur to innovation to become a weapon for hobbling competitors – not just directly through the courts, but as a vague but real threat to hold over them.
The fact that the US Justice Department clearly shares that view – and “will continue investigating the distribution of the Novell patents to the CPTN owners” – is significant; it means that all of those involved in the CPTN consortium will remain under scrutiny to guard against any future abuse of the patents involved, or FUD based on them.
Now that Microsoft’s gadgets die along with all the rest of its products (bar the cash cows), even ZDNet does an article about it, even though it spins it a bit (as expected). For example:
Microsoft declined to confirm the rumours, although plenty are speculating that the company will keep the Zune brand and continue to produce media player software for Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox 360. If true, that would relegate the much hyped device to the dustbin of failed tech products.
Zune is one example among many where Microsoft fails in gadgets. This is why it wants to tax Android, for example. Increasingly, Apple chooses a similar route because Android is taking over many areas, thanks in part to its licensing model and wide channel strategy.
As CPTN includes the company behind iPatent, its legal actions make it a suspect. Not only Microsoft had something to gain from the SCO case. Sun too paid SCO. As we explained before, there is some evidence that can suggest collaboration on patents between Microsoft and Apple (they are already cross-licensing), including the irrational litigation against Android.
This post hopefully contains enough pointers to encourage further reading. █
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Posted in Asia, Microsoft at 1:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News suggests that amongst Indian companies it is Microsoft’s partners who file for the most monopolies (patents), not just lobby for those
DUE to the nature of today’s attacks on software freedom, Techrights is becoming more focused on legal issues and there might be a new site/subsite pretty soon — one that concentrates on legal issues. A couple of years ago we started assembling articles about software patents in India, which matters a lot when it comes to software.
We have already shown how TCS is causing damage with patents; it does India a great disservice and to make matters worse, TCS is helping Microsoft along with Infosys, which is like an extension of Microsoft India. They are both taking the “lead in Indian tech patent applications” according to a new article which also states:
The biggest filer of technology patents in India is not an Indian firm, but the US chip-maker Qualcomm, India’s Controller General of Patents and Trademarks, PH Kurian has revealed.
[...]
Unlike the US, Indian law considers software code as less of an invention and more of a literary work and are therefore protected under the copyright laws. Many technology industry veterans therefore argue that the regime allows companies to steal software technology by rewriting the code from scratch, known as ‘clean room’ re-engineering.
Kurian said this may be a factor in the poor track-record of patent-filings by Indian companies. “In some cases, I know some of our software companies are filing outside India because we are stricter about software patents,” he said.
The monopolists have been trying to change the law though. Microsoft plays a pivotal role in this and it is helped by its semi-subsidiaries — such as Infosys — which do a lot of the lobbying. █
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04.23.11
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Finance at 2:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: La dominación de los medios de comunicación y la opinión pública causa una preocupación mayor cuando una entidad haciéndose pasar por una organización de caridad compra las noticias.
Es una práctica común para los plutócratas para crear un brazo de inversión hace pasar por una organización de caridad para ser exonerados de impuestos. Muchas familias ricas lo están haciendo y la palabra “Fundación” – como la Rockefeller o la Fundación Gates[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique]- son comúnmente usadas. Tales fundamentos se basan en gran medida de controlar a la prensa y el cambio de la opinión pública a favor de los súper-ricos, la difusión de una percepción de la benevolencia y la dependencia (de una nación de la clase dominante). Gates está, probablemente, convertiéndose en un líder (si no en un monopolio), a este respecto por el gasto de un millón de dólares al día sólo por la compra de los elogios de la prensa (no haciendo trabajo real, sólo publicidad). Hemos escrito sobre esto antes y lo han hecho muchos otros, que están claramente preocupados por la adquisición de Gates de las fuentes de noticias. De acuerdo con esta nueva lista de la cartera de Gates[http://seekingalpha.com/article/260308-which-stocks-are-in-bill-gates-portfolio-part-2], que también está invirtiendo en más compañías de medios, no sólo dándoles dinero para cubrir las ‘noticias’ en la forma en que él quiere que se cubran: [a través de Groklaw]
Qué acciones se encuentran en la cartera de Bill Gates? Parte 2
[...]
# Groupo Televisa SA (TV): Esta empresa de medios con sede en México se especializa en la televisión y la publicación tanto a nivel nacional y en el extranjero. La compañía alcanzó un máximo de 52 semanas de 26,67 dólares el 4 de enero de 2011, ya partir de la última transacción, precio de sus acciones estaba en 23.95. Su final de P/E es de $ 2,998.75, y su delantero P/E es $ 17.77.
Algunas de las siguientes empresas de la parte 2 de la lista que ya hemos recorrido antes. Por ejemplo:
British Petroleoum PLC (BP): Próximamente en el primer aniversario de su derrame masivo de petróleo en el Golfo de México, BP se encuentra todavía en un período de recuperación. En la última operación, sus acciones se encontraba en 46,65 dólares, un aumento considerable de su mínimo de 52 semanas de 26,75 dólares en junio de 2010. rendimiento de la compañía dividendo es 3,70% y su avance P/E es de $ 7.02. Gates no es el único inversor importante escollo para BP. Buscar inversión Underground a la cartera de T. Boone Pickens reveló que en fecha reciente a sus acciones de la empresa.
Los monopolios de patentes de Monsanto son también en los intereses financieros de Gates:
La empresa Monsanto (MON): Monsanto ofrece productos agrícolas a los agricultores en los EE.UU. y el extranjero. Recientemente, la compañía entró en un acuerdo con la sede en Alemania, BASF para colaborar en un sistema de cultivo que le ayudarán con el control de malezas y la seguridad de los cultivos. Su precio actual es 71,23, y su rentabilidad por dividendo es de 1,60%. Monsanto arrastra P/E es $ 34.58, y su delantero P/E es $ 21.19.
Y por último, la compañía que causa hambre[http://techrights.org/2010/09/07/banking-interests-in-africa/] (con fines de lucro):
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS): Nueva York, Goldman Sachs Group se especializa en banca de inversión, valores y gestión de inversiones. Sus acciones se encuentra actualmente en 157,81, y su rentabilidad por dividendo es de 0,90% hacia delante. Actualmente, P detrás de Goldman Sachs/E es 11.98 y su delantero P/E es 8,44.
La función principal de la Fundación Gates es la inversión. Se las arregla para hacerlo sin los impuestos que se aplica a la mayoría de los inversores, siempre y cuando la fundación se puede pintar como “filantrópica” (lo que explica su parte publicista ). Una gran cantidad de otras fundaciones usar el mismo truco y la misma escapatoria y esto es un problema que debe abordarse inmediatamente. Las personas más ricas del mundo simplemente no pagan impuestos y al mismo tiempo que se quejan de la mala economía (que no los ha tratado tan mal) y asesoran sobre estos asuntos[http://techrights.org/2011/01/13/guiding-government-policies/] “en nombre” de los pobres. █
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the esteemed administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Patents, SCO at 10:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO’s strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO’s financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital.”
–Bruce Perens
Summary: Important information about Bedrock, those who bolster their case, and what we know about Microsoft’s role in arming patent trolls, CIA coup d’état style
The poorer the patented ‘invention’ is, the more it will probably be worth (at lease once patented and never invalidated) because the more damage it can cause owing to breadth. The Linux Foundation and OIN recognised this when they defused attempts by Microsoft to pass around Linux-hostile patents, i.e. ammunition to disruptors (even that is not Microsoft’s innovation). And right now there is a ridiculous patent being used against Android. Who is behind it? A defunct entity known as Bedrock (more details in our IRC logs). There is a paywall standing in the way of this article/analysis which contains “EVIDENCE OF AN UNACCEPTED OFFER FROM INTELLECTUAL VENTURES TO BUY THE BEDROCK PATENT”.
Intellectual Ventures, created out of Microsoft money, is known to be using a lot of “satellite” companies to sue/extort companies on Intellectual Ventures’ behalf. Only rarely does Intellectual Ventures sue directly, but sometimes it does. It’s a proxy game and the victims struggle to validate the connections in the courtroom because when papers get exchanged as opposed to something physical, traces can vanish. We have covered several cases like this.
“Remember Microsoft trying to sell some of its patents that read on Linux, or so they claimed, to patent trolls? OIN played man in the middle on that one, but who is to say that was the only one?”
–Pamela Jones, Groklaw“Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a great article about the Bedrock v Google decision,” writes walterbyrd in IRC. “Idiotic Anti-Linux & Google Patent Decision. Red Hat has sued Bedrock to get the patent revoked for numerous reasons. Among others, they point out that Linux, which dates to 1991, predates the 1997 patent; that no one has ever used the patent; and that in any case Bedrock has no claims to the patent,” he quotes. Groklaw too is linking to SJVN (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols) and adds: “If I might remind you, Mike Anderer told us years ago, back in 2004, that this was Microsoft’s plan, to see to it that FOSS companies got sued over and over again for patent infringement, until they gave out: “In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space.” So that’s what he said. And 50 or more lawsuits lined up means using proxies, obviously. Remember Microsoft trying to sell some of its patents that read on Linux, or so they claimed, to patent trolls? OIN played man in the middle on that one, but who is to say that was the only one? That’s why it’s an antitrust issue, I’d say, using patents like this as an anticompetitive weapon. And if you want to know what is wrong with software patents, the damage they are doing, read the quotations from various business executives (like Andy Grove) in the footnotes to this article.”
Here is the link given to analysis of important news reports which are only in the Web Archive now (content ages and rots quite sadly, along with the crucial evidence). We reproduce this below in the interests of preservation:
Legal
S2 ‘mystery man’ Anderer speaks on MS, SCO, and licensing
Friday March 12, 2004 (05:30 PM GMT)
By: Chris Preimesberger
Mike Anderer was the author of the S2-to-SCO Group memo that comprises the “Halloween X” document that was released to the press by Eric Raymond last week. Anderer, the CEO of S2 and the middleman in the SCO Group’s $50 million PIPE transaction of last October 16 contacted us today, and while he is under a non-disclosure agreement and can’t say very much about the $50 million PIPE deal, what follows are some of the thoughts he can share.
I am certain people would like to know what is happening but I cannot talk to you without permission. I will tell you my background is integration and I am OS agnostic; the more there are the better. I will file close to 20 patents this year for companies in many spaces, including homeland security, anti-terrorism, several grid computing and virtual machine patents, and, ironically, I should have one issued in the expiring and disappearing e-mail arena. It was initiated 4-5 yrs ago.
I have helped many companies and individuals who run companies in the GNU/Linux, BSD, and Unix world as well as those in the Microsoft world. I admire the good parts and despair the bad parts.
Most of my time is currently spent on new technologies on several different platforms. Many of my companies and several of our offices have been merged into other companies, moved or sold as part of a technology deal, some even sold during the deepest parts of the downturn. I helped build the channels for most of the products that corporate America is currently using and some they will be using soon. In several cases, I am finally finding or developing ways to solve problems I have been working on for the last 20 years. The only way I can hide is to work so hard that it becomes close to impossible to track all the companies I have owned, bought, sold, rolled up, or sat on the board of. If you include the ones where I helped entrepreneurs and companies through tough times, or sat on non-profit boards, the list would be even tougher to follow.
Anybody who knows me or really analyzes what they found on the Web will find I don’t hide well. I also have a lot to say in most situations.
The following is simply my opinion. This is all I can really give you considering the NDA. As for the PIPE deal, I cannot comment at all, but I also would have nothing of interest to add beyond what has already been made public.
I would state that this licensing project represented only a small fraction of my time over the last year and has completely gone away in recent months. This was a job for me, and licensing IP has been an increasingly significant portion of my work.
Many thousands of licenses have been sold to Unix over the years. I cannot think of any major hardware or software company or even university that does not have a license directly or indirectly. If you see the world moving forward as a (GNU/Linux/BSD/Unix)/Windows world it does not take an MIT rocket scientist to think it would make sense for the largest software company in the world to increase their rights by taking another license (remember they did develop and own a portion of the code originally sold as MS Xenix). In fact I saw several postings on Slashdot hammering them for including what people saw as BSD property (with proper copyright attribution) in some of their products. It was also no secret that Microsoft licensed and even purchased companies in this arena over the last several years (look where Windows Services for Unix came from). They developed some pretty incredible functionality into things like SFU 3.5 (which I just got for free with a systems magazine). If you consider this licensing an indirect financing of SCO, then everybody (or at least the thousands of licensees) is responsible at some level. The licenses in some cases exceeded $100 million, so these were not even close to the largest ones. The hard part for me was finding somebody who was not already a big licensee.
Just as I see Microsoft developing stronger interoperability from their side, I see a huge community developing stronger connectivity from the GNU/Linux/BSD/Unix side. We will work from both sides and hopefully contribute to making things more functional for customers whatever they choose. The only really interesting point here is that people finally benefit from more stuff working together. It still takes work, but things are getting better in many areas.
I think one real issue, that people are skirting, is who will be the ultimate guarantor of IP-related issues in a world that is governed by the GPL and GPL-like licenses. I could easily see IBM, HP, Sun, and many of the other large hardware players solving this problem tomorrow by settling the dispute with SCO and maybe even taking the entire code base and donating it into the public domain. I know this is what I originally thought would happen, at least the settlement part. I am not certain what people who paid tens of millions for licenses would say if what they paid for was now free, but that is a different issue.
In a world where there are $500 million dollar patent infringement lawsuits imposed on OS companies (although this is not completely settled yet), how would somebody like Red Hat compete when 6 months ago they only had $80-$90 million in cash? At that point they could not even afford to settle a fraction of a single judgment without devastating their shareholders. I suspect Microsoft may have 50 or more of these lawsuits in the queue. All of them are not asking for hundreds of millions, but most would be large enough to ruin anything but the largest companies. Red Hat did recently raise several hundred million which certainly gives them more staying power. Ultimately, I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space.
Since the GPL type license agreements push the liability to the users, who do you go after? I think this is a key problem. Nobody wants to be the ultimate guarantor for software that was free (or close to it). I think the dispute with SCO would have been settled a long time ago if everybody knew this was the last one. The problem is there will probably be hundreds or even thousands of these disputes in the future and the targets will be the companies with the deepest pockets. Even if the large vendors disclaim all responsibility initially, I do not think the customers will accept this from their vendors for very long. In the meantime, I don’t see anybody being in a hurry to write the first big check.
The world of software is changing. I think everybody sees that part on the product side, but the economic underpinnings are changing too. It used to be you included R&D and patent development costs into your license add your costs and a markup and you could make a living. We relied on cross-licensing, licensing, and innovation, and our ability to prevent other people from copying our work without permission. Now things are shifting, but I am not certain anybody has completely figured out this new model, and if you think it is just any one company that is concerned about this, you are wrong.
I do think things will work out, and the sooner the better. I believe the software industry is in an incredible renaissance and that means maybe there will be a lot more people out there making things better and a couple fewer people with enough spare time to flame under five separate handles, all registered as underage so they can exploit the better privacy laws we afford to children.
I do appreciate all the effort and help people have provided by digging up old sites and even stuff I had long forgotten about. I am still hoping people dig up some of the more positive projects I have been involved with. I have also had several long lost friends contact me. I think they thought I might need some support.
– Mike
Microsoft Florian (aka “FOSS[will be killed by]Patents”) is rubbing this in people’s faces (consider the headline, “Texas jury finds against Google in Linux patent case, determines damage award of $5,000,000″). ZDNet feeds Microsoft Florian’s drama and so does CNET, a sister site in some sense (ZDNet bloggers also played along with SCO's side). Florian keeps bragging about the number of lawsuits against Android and amplifies the magnitude of the threat to Android by repeating news like this. Harry McCracken, the Microsoft booster, does something similar to what Florian did some months ago, amplifying the perceived problem. Let’s not forget other Microsoft mouthpieces like Rob Enderle and Paul Thurrott with his anti-Android rhetoric (patent-related accusations and FUD). Meanwhile, the president of the FFII is told that “Google should really start to actively fight against #swpat it could donate a million to #ffii and #endsoftwarepatents.org each.” The messenger is right in this case and we wrote about it earlier this month. Google ought to know that just getting more patents won’t help it against trolls.
“Patent incumbent H.264 will soon lose its dominance as YouTube, the world’s biggest online video content creator, switches to WebM, the free and open source codec.”
–MuktwareCould Google work on research that proves ties to Microsoft and then initiate legal action for these mafia-like tactics (including the SCO and maybe Elliot saga)? Potential patent trolls whom we know Microsoft was trying to feed with anti-Linux patents are pretty solid evidence [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Microsoft never refuted this, it only tried deflection by announcing CodePlex news noise within hours. There is also MPEG-LA, which Microsoft is paying. Google does mitigate the issue by addressing that attack vector the way it should. From the news: “Patent incumbent H.264 will soon lose its dominance as YouTube, the world’s biggest online video content creator, switches to WebM, the free and open source codec.” OIN’s growth [1, 2, 3] is not enough to prevent MPEG-LA from acting like a mafia, bidding/searching for Google assassins and then getting exposed. Fortunately, the US Justice Department launched an investigation over this and I should probably mention, based on my private discussions with Microsoft Florian, that Florian has contacts inside MPEG-LA, which he keeps promoting. Yes, I can produce evidence to show this, but he probably won’t contest or challenge the claim for fear of more damage control.
Here is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explaining that Microsoft Florian is falsely amplifying the scare over patents and Android:
Now, I hate all software patents, but even if I didn’t, this patent is garbage. As I read it, I think I violated it myself back in the 80s. I mean, just read it, it’s a description of how to use hashing with a linked list. Come on! That might not be programming 101, but it’s not far from it!
Red Hat has sued Bedrock to get the patent revoked for numerous reasons. Among others, they point out that Linux, which dates to 1991, predates the 1997 patent; that no one has ever used the patent; and that in any case Bedrock has no claims to the patent. This case, however, has not been settled yet.
Yes, I know, I know, you’d think that case would have been settled first and then the matter of Red Hat’s customers would have been addressed, but that’s not how it works in the U.S. Verdict first and trial later to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen.
Now some people, such as Florian Mueller, would have you think that “This patent infringement case has major implications for the IT industry in general and for Linux in particular.” The emphasis is his. I disagree.
I think this is an especially striking example of a bad patent decision by the EDTX. It only shows just how bad the U.S. patent system has become that such a ridiculous suit could ever be taken seriously never mind actually winning. Google should appeal this case and, unlike other recent software patent cases, such as Microsoft vs. i4i, I’d expect the anti-patent side to win.
It remains to be seen if Microsoft also plays a role in Apple’s lawsuits (see this nice new parody), but given motivations, it is unlikely that Apple needs Microsoft’s encouragement to sue Google’s Linux-based platform. It should be noted, however, as we noted last year, that very shortly after Apple sued Android Microsoft made a formal statement validating and endorsing Apple’s action, adding that there will be more of that. It was almost as though the pair had conspired. █
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