10.28.11

Mozilla Foundation Harder to Trust After Microsoft Endorsement

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Mozilla’s former CEO, who was focused on important issues, Photo by Joi Ito

Summary: Why the Firefox-Microsoft arrangement is bad news which can injure Mozilla as a whole

FIREFOX does not have much to do with this Web site. Posts are edited in Kate (KDE) and due to time constraints I write most posts while away from home on my Palm PDA (Palm OS with external keyboard) and the posts are later edited and published in Konqueror, which I use alongside Rekonq and more rarely — until yesterday — with a bit of Firefox for more stubborn Web sites.

“It’s not a credible bluff because going through with it would destroy Mozilla completely.”
      –iophkWhat happened yesterday (news here for the uninitiated) changes how we view Mozilla. The “Microsoft Firefox” parody is not so amusing anymore. The financial dependence on Microsoft makes it harder to trust the Mozilla Foundation, whose new management was also tactless enough to receive money in exchange for an endorsement of a company that actively attacks FOSS and GNU/Linux. It’s not a new concern.

The subject discussed in length in the IRC channels yesterday. It is even being discussed at the time of this post. Here are some quotes from a quarter of an hour ago.

“The more I think about it,” writes Ryan, “the more I’m certain Firefox With Bing is just a bluff… their contract with Google expires next month and they probably just want to be in a position to demand more money.”

“It’s not a credible bluff because going through with it would destroy Mozilla completely,” responds iophk. This deal also fuels Microsoft propaganda not just because Microsoft will claim to be a “friend” or “partner” of FOSS but also because Bing is doctoring results to suit Microsoft’s business objectives. What are other people’s thoughts? █

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When Novell Staff Becomes Technology Writer

Posted in Novell at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Zonker responds to FUD from Forrester but spreads his own Red Hat FUD after departing from Novell

WHEN a company collapses there is often the unintended effect of having employees move to other companies. These employees carry with them the burden/baggage of bias and connections to the former employer. Biases are everywhere because truth is relative and today we’ll cover a couple of new examples.

Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier is generally a very good writer. He writes coherently and makes it all very engaging. This is why Novell hired him. Forrester, on the other hand, is a bias up for sale. We already showed how Microsoft paid Forrester to smear GNU/Linux. That’s just the business model. “Analysts sell out – that’s their business model,” explains Microsoft [PDF].

A few days ago we tried to ignore new FUD from a Forrester analyst, who immaturely heckled some Linux fans.

“Some Analysts Still Don’t Get It,” wrote Zonker in his response, posted quite suitably in Linux.com. To quote:

In the early days of Linux, analysts were spouting all kinds of nonsense about Linux. It was pretty clear that folks from firms like Forrester and Gartner weren’t clued in entirely about what Linux is, how open source works, nor did they have any vision for the future.

But after 20 years, I figured that most analysts with a major firm like Forrester would know better than writing silly posts that say mobile has killed Linux’s hopes for world domination. Unfortunately not.

Mike Gualtieri writes, “the real end to Linux’s hope for world dominance came when mobile platforms iOS and Android cleaned clocks in the mobile market. Sure, Android is built on top of Linux, but Linux is only one of many piece parts of the Android mobile operating system. It is not Linux.”

Say what?

In as much as any operating system using the Linux kernel is “Linux,” then Android certainly is Linux. Sure, Android ships a lot of different pieces compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, but it’s still Linux.

Yes, that FUD is not dead yet. Forrester is still trying. We generally don’t bother rebutting outdated FUD that has been debunked to death.

“We generally don’t bother rebutting outdated FUD that has been debunked to death.”Zonker did well when he countered that FUD (there are other refutations, but they are not quite so well written). The problem we have with Zonker is that around the time of SUSE PR and promotion (because OpenSUSE 12.1 is imminent) he took this bit of news and then decided to spin it a little for drama. Now just to clarify, Zonker (Joe Brockmeier) is not a normal journalist. He is one who received wages from Novell while he was still working as a journalist, so if he takes a shot at Red Hat while promoting Novell/OpenStack (as a reminder, OpenNebula is Hyper-V/Novell/Microsoft-laden and OpenStack is not much better), he should not be missing a disclosure of his past work which only goes over a year back.

For Red Hat it makes perfect business sense to do what it is doing, so the slant from Zonker is quite unfair. Another Joe, the VAR Guy, who had a relationship with Novell over the years, writes about the same subject and notes that:

Red Hat, Canonical (Ubuntu) and SUSE already compete in the Linux market. Now, they’ll increasingly compete in the cloud computing world. Both SUSE (owned by Attachmate) and Ubuntu are getting cozy with OpenStack, the open source cloud standard initially promoted by Rackspace and NASA. On the flipside, Red Hat is marching forward with its own cloud standards, though Red Hat insists those standards will be open and community-developed.

Yes, and there are good reasons for that. Sean Michael Kerner writes about why Novell chose the side that it is choosing:

What’s even more interesting is how SUSE is delivering this OpenStack distribution. SUSE is using their SUSE Studio as the platform to distribute (and likely build)OpenStack. That means that enterprises can potentially custom build their own OpenStack distributions in SUSE Studio. That’s an incredibly powerful model and one that no other vendor currently offers.

OpenStack shares its bed with Microsoft since last year [1, 2]. It is the Microsoft “open” option (open… except the proprietary), one among several which owing to Novell now include some more lock-in and non-free components. This is basically the role that SUSE/Attachmate play at Microsoft’s behest and it is why we urge people to boycott them.

Inherently, Attachmate is a proprietary software company with proprietary Novell products and SUSE is now funded by Microsoft in an attempt to tax Red Hat customers by moving them over to SUSE, with what Microsoft calls “royalty payments” (patent royalties) according to sources (this is publicly marketed as “support”, but not internally). Euphemisms make better marketing. █

“I’ve heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”…”

–Matt Asay, April 21^st, 2008

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Black Duck: Microsoft Windows Only No More

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Servers, Windows at 10:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Children and nephews of Microsoft Corporation

Summary: The presence of Microsoft-friendly entities in the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) world stressed in the context of a new announcement

THERE are some particular companies and small firms that brush shoulders with those in the FLOSS world. Such firms often have roots in Microsoft and their goals align with Microsoft’s. This should not be surprising. Those who familiarise themselves with antitrust exhibits will soon realise that Microsoft strategises this way. It even uses words like “infiltrate”. Microsoft wants to tame and control its own opposition, e.g. by repelling and ousting elements in it (e.g. FSF) that are risky to Microsoft’s business goals.

Black Duck (see Wiki) is one of the companies that were created by a Microsoft marketing executive to now serve as a de facto authority on the subject of Free/open source software licences. The SFLC has publicly complained about bias in Black Duck and over the years we did a lot to explain what Black Duck is really doing (ignore all the PR which is very well laid out and repeated). Black Duck is a proprietary software company with proprietary software, software patents, Microsoft deals, and FOSS FUD. There is absolutely nothing there which is FOSS, except the data it is digesting to sell proprietary software for Microsoft Windows only. Black Duck is often marketed as “open” something, but it’s just a scam. It’s not open at all, these are just gymnastics in semantics. According to IDG, it wasn’t until now that Black Duck’s Code Sight software even ran on anything other than Microsoft’s own proprietary Windows platform. To quote:

Black Duck Code Sight 2.0, out now, is also the first version of the software to run on Linux servers, in addition to being able to run on Microsoft Windows servers.

Yes, so people can now run proprietary software on a GNU/Linux server for the purpose of scaring themselves because their proprietary software might be misusing Free software. Quite the FOSS advocacy tool, eh?

Black Duck is not alone in this business. One of their rivals, ‘Open’Logic (not open) is run by a guy from Microsoft. This whole monkey business has helped Microsoft validate its FUD against Free software code (while denying FLOSS firms their voice). Apparently it also makes some ‘former’ Microsoft executives rich, all at the same time. What a winning strategy. █

“You want to infiltrate those. Again, there’s two categories. There’s those that are controlled by vendors; like MSJ; we control that. And there’s those that are independent. [...] So that’s how you use journals that we control. The ones that third parties control, like the WinTech Journal, you want to infiltrate.”

–Microsoft's chief evangelist

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Apple Lost Respect

Posted in Apple, Patents at 10:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: How and why people lost respect for the company which turned from an underdog into an attack dog

DISDAIN of Apple seems to have increased — not decreased — in recent years. It is not a matter of scale. Look at IBM for example. It is possible to be an incredibly large company with a huge number of employees (e.g. HP) yet not be envied or ridiculed much. Some companies choose to violate the law, some choose to brag and to attack their competitors, whereas some do a combination of all those things or none of those things.

“It is possible to be an incredibly large company with a huge number of employees (e.g. HP) yet not be envied or ridiculed much.”Apple reputation among non Apple followers (not the same as customers) took a hit when the company chose to create its own scandals, choosing litigation over innovation and underpaid labour in China over American workers for example. There are many reasons to dislike Apple, but this post will not make a comprehensive list (there is one for Microsoft in multiple languages). To us, Apple’s main ‘sin’ is that it is attacking Linux. We do not concentrate on labour law, environmental issues, or even the personal lives of people (or even the death of people, with exceptions where truth gets perturbed). Steve does not get much love in Diaspora, not even after his death. There are derogatory characterisations of him (reminiscent of Nazi propaganda posters) and junk patents like the infamous slide to unlock are not helping the popularisation of the company over there. One noteworthy article that we found published this week is this response to Steve Jobs’ lies:

Why Steve Jobs Was Wrong About Android Being a ‘Stolen’ Product

One of the many revelations in the biography of Steve Jobs from author Walter Isaacson is Jobs’ assertion that Android was a “stolen product.” According to Hayley Tsukayama’s report in The Washington Post, Jobs was furious about Android and vowed to spend all of Apple’s cash to destroy it. The problem is Jobs was wrong about Android. Or if he’s right, then the iPhone was also a stolen product.

The reason that Steve Jobs was wrong is fairly simple to see if you’ve watched technology product development over the years. Nearly every product grows on the work done before it and the iPhone (and iPod Touch) are no exception. Apple created a very nice design for the iPhone, a design that was innovative, included new ways of doing things and most of all was attractive. But the iPhone was a derivative of other products, and while it was an improvement over what came before it (as it should be), it still depended on the ideas developed in those earlier products.

You have to ask yourself what it was that Jobs thought made Android a stolen product. Was it the user interface of icons on a screen that launched applications when touched? Palm had that feature years before Apple ever had a phone. Was it the touch-screen? Palm had that, too, although it worked better if you used a stylus, but then, so does the iPhone. Was it the third-party applications? Several handheld devices had that long before the iPhone, including some Windows-driven phones as well as those from Palm. Was it the integration of email and the personal digital assistant? There were a lot of those out there, too, including the BlackBerry devices.

We wrote about Jobs' allegations last week. “Only Apple thinks they have the right to borrow ideas that then — somehow — become their exclusive property,” wrote Ron in USENET. He is right. Considering Steve’s lies to disown his own daughter, nobody should be too shocked. “Please leave us alone,” Jobs wrote to a college student. Why should we be exceedingly respectful to those who never respected their neighbours? Moreover, it would be sick to admire and glorify such people. Some readers insist that it is bad for us to criticise Apple and Jobs. But why should they be treated differently from Novell and Microsoft?

Notable Apple followers are currently cursing Richard Stallman (yes, still), characterising his reasonable remarks. Dr. Stallman found our what happens — at least from a PR angle — when criticising a company which acts more like a monastery led by someone deceased on a pedestal (North Korea comes to mind), only further reinforcing the belief that there is something sinister and irrational about Apple. We won’t ignore it. █

“FSF did some anti-Apple campaigns too. Personally I worry more about Apple because they have user loyalty; Microsoft doesn’t.”

–Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC)

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10.27.11

IRC Proceedings: October 27th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channels now

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Microsoft Linux Marketing

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE at 4:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Co-authored with XFaCE

Summary: Gold Microsoft Certified Partner Attachmate has a new strategy masquerading as “open” and “community” for earning volunteer labour while benefiting these two proprietary software companies

YESTERDAY, we spotted Attachmate/SUSE’s latest plea for volunteer labour towards developing Microsoft Linux. As always, we strongly urge people not to fall for these red herrings.

The mission of the original SUSE distro was to develop a “technically superior Linux distribution with the large number of employed engineers”. The ulterior motive of the Attachmate SUSE distribution, on the other hand, is about increasing Microsoft’s control and influence in GNU/Linux and FLOSS development. This is why Microsoft funnels money into the remnants of the original project. A new openSUSE release candidate is out to help entice peons for bug reporting. The SUSE conglomerate meanwhile is working to refine its marketing so as to distract more suckers towards this quasi-community. From this new openSUSE News post:

“Friday 16.09, while working on the openSUSE 12.1 marketing actions during the Marketing Hackfest, two of us had the spontaneous idea to suggest an interview to Michael Miller(Vice President of Global Alliances & Marketing for SUSE), asking him a few questions we could have in the openSUSE community. We did not have the time to go around, to find the FAQ or to choose the “best questions”. It was kind of “shall we do that, around a cup of coffee ? Why not ?”. And Michael Miller accepted our proposition, without any objection or any “joker’s need”.”

True proponents of GNU+Linux should not feel obligated nor pressed to help out Microsoft’s recommended (and patent-taxed) distribution. There are many other projects much more worthy of volunteer time and effort. Most of these other projects are not coordinated by people's on Microsoft payroll, either (indirectly). █

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Patents Roundup: Microsoft Patents PR, Red Hat/Groklaw’s Response, and Apple’s Slide to Unlock Thermonuclear War

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 3:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft pays more lobbyists to encourage software patents, Microsoft Jack defends racketeering, and Apple’s lust for patents becomes a serious issue

WITH THE seminal goal of pointing out and countering FUD, we are still naming people whom people should watch out for because of their funding sources or agenda.

One publisher that we mention quite a lot is IDG (parent of IDC). It appoints Microsoft boosters to run an “open source” blog and it shows. Julie, for example, is their latest writer to do a Ubuntu FUD marathon, succeeding Tony in a sense (he did that some months ago for 30 consecutive days). Julie also runs the Microsoft blog and has run it for years. It’s where she comes from and where she still writes primarily. Not so long ago she trolled Jim Zemlin in her headline. We wish we could keep the credibility index up to date, but people whom we add to it choose to feel insulted and then smear us, which makes it a somewhat unwise strategy. Julie is not alone in this. The pro-Microsoft bloggers from IDG (pretending to be pro-FOSS) carry on bashing Ubuntu in another new IDG marathon of Ubuntu FUD and now Android FUD too (using patents against Android). Expect more of the same. We wrote about those writers before, One of those Microsoft boosters from the same network is now infecting Ars Technica. People who are unfamiliar with his past repertoire will not understand that there is bias there. Unsuspecting readers tend to be unaware of affiliations and they can only ever assume that a writer on a particular topic has no conflict of interest. It is bad enough when publication get misused for promoting one’s agenda; it’s even worse when these get misused to attack the opposition’s agenda, under the veil of “objectivity” or “journalism”. This applies to both sides and there is no hypocrisy here. Most people probably know that Intellectual Ventures, for example, is very much tied to Microsoft and also to Lodsys, whose attacks by proxy on Android are not being overlooked by Groklaw, whose new editor does have a little conflict of interest because of the funding sources of Peer to Patent. None of this is secret and in his latest post he tackles Lodsys’ attack on Android (among others), summarising as follows:

New York Times v. Lodsys

This case has been dismissed without prejudice by the consent of the parties and by order of the court. New York Times v. Lodsys (N.D. Ill.) (38 [PDF; Text]) The Eastern District of Texas case between these parties remains pending.

OpinionLab v. Lodsys

As with the New York Times case, the parties have stipulated to a dismissal with prejudice of this case, OpinionLab v. Lodsys (N.D. Ill.). (45 [PDF; Text]) The Eastern District of Texas case between these parties remains pending.

ForeSee v. Lodsys

Instead of a dismissal, in ForeSee v. Lodsys (N.D. Ill.) the parties have stipulated to a transfer of venue of this case to the Eastern District of Wisconsin where several other DJ actions remain pending against Lodsys. (45 [PDF; Text]) As a part of the stipulation, Lodsys has retained its right to seek a further transfer of venue to the E.D. Texas where Lodsys’s complaint against ForeSee remains pending. The other interesting point in this stipulation is that Lodsys has stipulated that ForeSee’s DJ action could have been brought in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, which should help the other DJ plaintiffs in that venue (Wolfram, RightNow).

LivePerson v. Lodsys

The one case still remaining in the E.D. of Illinois is the LivePerson declaratory judgment action against Lodsys.

Over in Europe, following the distasteful decision in the UK [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] there are British patent lawyers who smell the pounds and encircle software developers like vultures, saying:

This piece is not about what happens should you lose your mind and decide to perform a zany, dangerous practical joke at the Hearing Officer’s expense. No, the “mental acts” the IPKat is concerned with are those mentioned in Article 52(2)(c) EPC among the exclusions from patentability, which were recently considered in the Halliburton decision from HHJ Birss QC (reported here).

British patent lawyers will find new victims to leech in their parasitical ways. It is sad, but there is not much that can be done about it other than protest. The plutocrats still write the laws that govern our lives and if multinationals along with their lawyers (lawmakers and politicians are usually lawyers) decide to screw over 99% of the population, they will.

This is not pure speculation. Watch how Microsoft pays Microsoft Florian to help them bamboozle politicians, gaming the system for some money. Yes, Microsoft pays him to do this (a bit like passing a bribe for the work he has done, under the guise of “consulting contract”) and the same goes for the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which we now learn is lobbying again for software patents in Europe.

According to the president of the FFII, the BSA makes its move:

BSA lobbyist writing “studies” for the European Commission on software patents and standards ur1.ca/5i2it

The BSA is a Microsoft front group. There is also this subsequent update:

BSA lobbyist Benoit Muller writing “studies” for the European Commission on software patents and standards ur1.ca/5i2it

Microsoft Jack — just like Microsoft’s lobbyists — promotes Microsoft racketeering in blog comments in ZDNet right now. Apparently these people are not taught ethics in journalism school, so the cult of Microsoft comes first. We oughtn’t allow people like Microsoft Jack ‘normalise’ racketeering, making it described as a standard procedure in the “real world”. Some of those Microsoft lobbyists have a hard task of making crime seem like “business as usual”.

This is something that we wrote about earlier this week and last week. It’s like some sort of PR campaign and Jay from the 451 Group tries to look at the glass half full by writing this iffy response:

There’s been a lot of attention on the amount of money Microsoft is making from Android, including Microsoft’s own proclamations. Maybe it’s just that I’m more of a fan of Linux and open source software, or maybe I’m overly focused on the lawsuits and threats against Android, but I see serious downsides to all of those dollars for Microsoft from Android.

I believe Microsoft’s strategy to pursue patent licensing deals rather than sue, as we’ve seen from Apple, may prove to be a more effective strategy. Rather than limit or destroy Android, Microsoft is actually supporting its growth, meaning more Android devices and users in the market. Since it’s making so much money from Android, Microsoft may be less interested in limiting or attacking it, so that’s a benefit to Android. However, I do see some significant drawbacks to Microsoft’s Android strategy, all of which serve to limit Microsoft’s opportunity in the future.

Agree or disagree with Jay, what Microsoft does is extortion and it should be reported for the authorities to handle as soon as possible. This really requires US intervention because Microsoft is a US-based company. But need we hold our breath while the vast majority of Americans believe that money buys results and companies do whatever they want with their elected/appointed government?

We keep seeing patent promotion in press releases, vanity posts and announcements, realising perhaps that while the corporate press (with propaganda like this from Bloomberg) help reinforces an industry where ideas are”property” and are to be monopolised, then “sold” or “licensed”. This is the same corporate press which calls sharing “piracy” and refuses to accept that there is another perspective which is legitimate and even plausible.

There is news right now about Klausner (a patent troll) suing Oracle and HP over ideas. Red Hat is meanwhile sharing some thoughts on the software patents situation in the United States. Its blogger/staff writes:

Last week, I participated in a panel discussion at the Eastern District of Texas/Federal Circuit Joint Bench-Bar Conference in Dallas. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the specialized appellate court for patent cases. My panel was on corporate counsel opinions of patent litigation and recent judicial and legislative patent reform. The discussion was moderated by Judge Richard Linn of the Federal Circuit. It was a great opportunity to present some views of the patent system, and to provide options for improvement to the very people who can enact judicial change.

In my remarks, I pointed out that while there have been some significant judicial changes over the last five years (regarding damages, injunctions, obviousness, indirect infringement, and willfulness), much is still needed. As my colleague Rob Tiller has repeatedly discussed software patents exact considerable costs to innovation in this country. Although we are still waging the war on patent coverage for software, other battles are also in play, which I present here.

Tiller and his colleague are sadly enough not proposing the elimination of all software patents. Maybe they just don’t want to aim this high in an event which is clearly affected by the cult of patents, to which Apple sites mostly subscribe (because the cult of Apple says so). Apple’s patents boosters still worship Steve Jobs’ patents while Android sites voice concerns about Apple’s “slide to lock” patent, arguing: “Using the words “convoluted” or “confusing” to describe the patent battles going on in the mobile space might be going a little easy on them. Everywhere it seems companies are suing one another over anything they can think of, while others collect license fees from device and software makers just looking to avoid ending up in court. Just about everyone owns a small number of the patents necessary to create a smartphone or a tablet, and they’re all constantly at war over them.

“But a new patent just awarded to Apple brings a whole new level of pain to the game. According to a story from ZDnet, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just issued Apple a patent for a design feature that’s found on every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, as well as just about every single Android device currently in existence: “slide to unlock.”

“This is the feature on touchscreen devices that requires users to “unlock” the device by sliding a thumb over a specific section of the screen, where it looks like they’re moving a button from one position to another. The slide feature has been widely adopted because it’s both simple and genius – it’s hard to accidentally unlock your phone in your pocket and start making inadvertent calls with the “slide to unlock” feature in place.”

Apple has gone too far and Techrights takes this very seriously because Steve Jobs’ made it his top goal to obliterate Android/Linux. For a guy who disowned his daughter by lying about being “sterile”, Steve Jobs is far too widely admired. His real legacy, as far as we are concerned, is a "thermonuclear" patent war that harms Linux. █

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Links 27/10/2011: Chrome 15 is Out, Mozilla Sells Out to Microsoft

Posted in News Roundup at 9:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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