04.16.11

Moving Closer Towards Operating Systems Unbundling in Europe

Posted in Antitrust, BSD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 1:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: There is a light at the end of the tunnel for desktop GNU/Linux because a new push tackles the OEM swindle

EVERYTHING is changing so fast, and very much for the better. Discrediting GNU/Linux, for example, has become a tough task. Right now more of the Linux FUD has something to do with patents because on technical merit GNU/Linux has already proven itself and its advocates rebutted disinformation which used to repeat itself, only to be challenged over and over again. Are Linux advocates needed when those who advocate it in massive numbers are Android users showing their phones to friends (the phones have it preinstalled)? Are LUGs needed? Well, that depends.

One of the areas where GNU/Linux has not found justice is the OEMs, particularly in the area of desktops and laptops. As part of the TechChoices banner we have written on this subject before (piles of material gathered over the years). We have also amassed antitrust exhibits which we arranged in our “Hardware” wiki page (confidential OEM contracts and the likes of that).

The next push which is definitely worth pursuing was alluded to by Peter Brown from the FSF when he wrote about the Web browsers ballot. He said that the Commission was addressing the wrong problem by assuming that it was acceptable for Microsoft to continue its monoculture at the operating system level. Not so much has happened since then as not many people voiced their complaints about forced sales of Windows, usually Vista 7 (although Microsoft also counts XP sales as Vista 7, in order to produce fake numbers). We recently spotted some signs that a parliament member sought to make it a subject of active discussion because André Rebentisch from the FFII wrote about it. There is a new announcement in the FFII’s Web site and it is actually a joint AFUL/FFII press release which calls people to share their operating system bundling tales with the EU. To quote:

The FFII and The FFII and AFUL ask consumers affected by operating system bundling or businesses involved in bundling to provide their evidence to the European Competition authority.

“My choice is Debian GNU/Linux”, explains FFII Vice president René Mages. “Why have I been compelled to pay and erase Windows 7 at purchase time?”

The European Commission admits it was aware of the difficulties encountered by consumers who want to purchase a PC with a non-Microsoft operating system or without any operating system at all. But they also say they lack evidence suggesting that this is the result of practices in violation of EU competition rules.

“We want to crowd source the collection of evidence”, says AFUL’s President Laurent Séguin. “If the EU finds anticompetitive agreements that foreclose competition or abuse a dominant position on the relevant market, that would be a magic bullet.”"”AFUL ask consumers affected by operating system bundling or businesses involved in bundling to provide their evidence to the European Competition authority.

“My choice is Debian GNU/Linux”, explains FFII Vice president René Mages. “Why have I been compelled to pay and erase Windows 7 at purchase time?”

The European Commission admits it was aware of the difficulties encountered by consumers who want to purchase a PC with a non-Microsoft operating system or without any operating system at all. But they also say they lack evidence suggesting that this is the result of practices in violation of EU competition rules.

“We want to crowd source the collection of evidence”, says AFUL’s President Laurent Séguin. “If the EU finds anticompetitive agreements that foreclose competition or abuse a dominant position on the relevant market, that would be a magic bullet.”"”

There is some great analysis from Groklaw, which carries on collecting accolades while it lasts. “This looks worth doing,” says Pamela Jones. And she continues:

FFII and AFUL would like to crowd source evidence-gathering about the difficulty for customers and OEMs in Europe trying to buy a computer or sell one without having to pay for Windows..

We have been having an IRC discussion about it and for those who are interested it is copied below. We welcome comments if people can add information to it. █

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09.07.10

Apple Sells Perception of Self Worth and Snubs Everything Which is Free

Posted in Apple, BSD, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Marketing at 7:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Apple’s marketing technique is similar to L’Oréal’s, whose famous advertising slogan is “because I’m worth it”; Apple continues to serve as a barrier to GNU/Linux adoption

The FSFE’s Hugo Roy, who was in touch with Steve Jobs regarding Ogg and patents, says that “Steve Jobs’ business secret is pricing, not design.” He has just found the following two articles:

Steve Jobs “never had any designs. He has not designed a single project”

[...]

In short, Jobs’ only contribution to the Macintosh project was to try unsuccessfully to cancel it.

How Apple plays the pricing game

Next time you’re sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple is a technology or design company, chime in: “Nope. What Steve Jobs sells is pricing.”

Pricing? You bet.

Jobs is a master of using pricing decoys, reference prices, bundling and obscurity to make you think his shiny aluminum toys are a good deal. Apple’s Sept. 1 announcement of new products was a classic

The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points – $229, $299, and $399 – all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls.

Apple has this new thing going on and it’s called “Ping”, which GigaOM claims to be stuck inside “Walled Garden” (once again this whole exclusivity factor):

As I discuss in a post at GigaOM Pro, Ping’s lack of integration with other social networks, or even with the web itself, is now its most compelling feature, at least from a strategic perspective.

Here is the effect on GNU/Linux users:

Users have to upgrade their iTunes installation to access Ping. Something that you cannot do on Linux.

Apple probably hates Linux so much that they intentionally integrated Ping in iTunes to block Linux users. Just kidding of course.

Apple hardly ever cares about supporting free platforms like BSD and GNU/Linux. That’s just why Apple is far from a friend of “Open Source” and merely an exploiter. It also makes defective products in the same factories as all of its rivals (the branding is different and there is retaliation). But some go too far by blaming hypePod for what’s generally just the fault of any portable media player (PMP). From The Age:

Pedestrian death rise blamed on iPods

The ”iPod zombie trance” people get into when walking, driving or pedalling around listening to their mobile devices is being blamed for an increase in collisions and even deaths in Europe and the US.

The issue has been highlighted in Sydney by the death of a 46-year-old Glebe woman reportedly wearing headphones when she was knocked down and killed by an ambulance on Saturday night.

Well, that’s just like blaming particular console makers for violent games and what these games may cause. In any case, Apple has many reasons to be distrusted and ignorant customers is not one of them. It’s them who pay a premium only to feel better than fellow human beings (Apple sells them this arrogance) and exclude others. █

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06.07.10

As Promised, Google Delivers GPL Compatibility and GNU/Linux Starts Embedding VP8/WebM Support

Posted in Apple, BSD, FSF, GNU/Linux, Google, GPL, OSI, Patents at 2:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux dives right into it

Summary: Why the next version of your Web browser, media player or GNU/Linux distribution will probably contain VP8/WebM code; Apple and MPEG-LA continue to be the main barriers to VP8/WebM adoption

OUR last post ended with a word of warning about Microsoft patents that prevent access to one’s own videos, assuming that they are encoded using Microsoft’s own formats. The lesson to be learned from all this is that software patents which cover video compression are unacceptable and dangerous to society. This is why Ogg Theora/Vorbis and VP8/WebM are so important. The latter is currently being implemented/deployed in GNU/Linux, which already supports Ogg in all its varieties.

All in all, the Linux community has made a lot of progress implementing support for WebM in two short weeks. Given that few content providers are supporting the codec yet (Google-owned YouTube being the major exception), free-software users are ahead of the curve on this issue. And that’s definitely the right side of the curve to be on.

More developers get access to the code and Chrome gets it too [1, 2]. That was fast!

The Open Source Programs Manager from Google writes to inform everyone about necessary changes to the WebM licence. In his own words:

You’ll see on the WebM license page and in our source code repositories that we’ve made a small change to our open source license. There were a couple of issues that popped up after we released WebM at Google I/O a couple weeks ago, specifically around how the patent clause was written.

There used to be the issue of patents and GPL incompatibility. This is resolved. It’s all rather lovely, “but still no patent indemnification,” claims Florian Müller. Brett Smith from the FSF is more satisfied than that. “Google just updated the WebM license to make it GPL compatible,” he writes. Being a key GPL person, Smith also published the official statement from the FSF:

A couple of weeks ago Google announced their WebM project, which provided a free software implementation of their VP8 video codec and a license to exercise the patents the company held on the software. (This after we appealed to them to do just that a couple of months prior.) The license they chose was unambiguously free: a three-clause BSD license combined with a patent license based on one found in the Apache License 2.0. Unfortunately, the interaction between the copyright license and the patent license made the result GPL-incompatible. Based on the concerns of developers writing GPL-covered software, Google publicly stated that they would take some time to review the WebM license and try to address the community’s concerns. Today, they released a revised license, and it is GPL-compatible.

Simon Phipps (OSI) had this to say:

Google has also eliminated the incompatibility with the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licences that existed in the original language, which means that it will be possible for WebM to be readily incorporated in the GNU environment and in GNU/Linux.

More here:

By removing that part of the custom licence, what is left is a “three clause” BSD licence which is an OSI approved form of open source licence. Simon Phipps, the OSI board member who pointed out the original problem, was “pleased to say that project is now fully open source” in his blog where he congratulated Google on the “timely and welcome” correction of its “licencing and community-relations error”.

“Google open codec wins OSI love after patent shield rethink,” reports The Register.

Google has rejiggered the license on its open-source VP8 video codec after complaints that it wasn’t really open source.

Ars Technica emphasises compatibility with the BSD licence.

Google is adopting the BSD license for WebM in order to address a licensing conflict. When Google opened up the VP8 codec and announced the launch of the WebM project during the Google I/O conference last month, the actual license under which the code was distributed was not an official open source software license. It was a custom license that had not yet been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization responsible for maintaining the open source definition and validating licenses.

Google’s custom license posed some problems because it included clauses that made it incompatible with GNU’s General Public License (GPL), the most widely-used open source software license. It was a minor technicality, but one that would have broadly precluded adoption of WebM in many popular open source software applications. Fortunately, Google has rectified the conflict and has found an acceptable way to harmonize its licensing terms with the GPL.

[...]

To avoid the resulting incompatibility with the GPL, Google decided to use a standard BSD license instead for the software copyright and draft a separate set of terms for the WebM patent grant.

“Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we’ve decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license,” wrote DiBona. “This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.”

It’s all good news, until Apple comes in.

In a new post on the subject of HTML5, Christopher Blizzard from Mozilla complains about Apple's latest lies (also see [1, 2]). Here is another take on the subject:

There’s open as the rest of the world thinks of it and there’s Apple open, which is what Steve Jobs wants it to mean. Jobs is very keen to dismiss Flash as a proprietary product, which it is, although iPhones and iPads also run proprietary operating systems.

[...]

Google is going down a different path entirely. Last month, it released VP8, a genuinely open compression format designed to handle multimedia on the web and not be beholden to proprietary software. Unlike Apple, the company does have a genuine commitment to openness. Having said that, there is a debate as to whether VP8 is quite as open as it appears to be – and whether it differs much from H.264.

But the difference is that Google is, I believe, genuinely looking top open standards, while Apple is a law unto itself.

Separately, writes Florian Müller to us, “I’ve commented once again on WebM. As you can see in case you read this, I don’t take the same position as FSF/OSI. Their concern is to push for a “free” codec no matter what. My concern is whether early adopters of WebM would be exposed to too much of a risk and whether Google should do more to protect them. All of that is independent from the fact that I’d prefer to see software patents abolished, which would spell the end for MPEG LA and anyone pursuing a similar “business model”.” Here is the blog post which raises fair points.

Google’s WebM initiative is somewhere in the middle between a true act of generosity and an IBM-style scheme:

* There’s no reason to assume that Google wants to hurt the FOSS cause in any way with WebM, especially not in any IBM-like way. I don’t put it past Google to have that intention elsewhere: they might do anything, including the use of patents, to destroy an open source search technology that could adversely affect their core business. However, in this particular context of video codecs, I don’t think they intend to cause harm. I do believe them that they want more competition in this case.

* What Google does do — and what I believe the FOSS community must approach cautiously — is to shift most of the risk to others while keeping most of the benefits to itself. Businesses like to do that, but FOSS developers and users shouldn’t lose sight of the risks just out of excitement over the idea of getting a seemingly “unencumbered” codec.

Google will retain control over WebM despite open-sourcing program code and publishing specifications

A common misconception about open source and “free” specifications is that this would make something such as the WebM project independent from a single vendor or a group of vendors. Some think this puts “the community” in charge.

There are lessons to be learned from Android. Google has not yet done anything which substantially reduces trust. Control is not the main issue here; the main issue is probably patents. There’s an urgent need to get past them. █

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05.23.10

YouTube is Embracing VP8/WebM, But Software Patent Trolls and DRM Stand in the Way

Posted in Apple, BSD, DRM, Free/Libre Software, Google, Patents, Videos at 2:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The closet patent troll Larry Horn as well as Steve Jobs are still the loudest opponents of VP8 and they prove the need to abolish software patents and DRM too

SOFTWARE patents are becoming a real headache, more so than before. The other day we mentioned the response from the ECIS to implicit legitimisation of software patents in Europe. As pointed out by someone in Groklaw:

I noticed that ECIS statement did not say anything about software patents. However, it did say that it’s goal is to allow all people to access without being charged by proprietary vendors. I wonder, when the EU finally allows software patents that there will be a provision that specifically prevents patents from being used as a weapon in the monopoly wars as far as public interoperability (whatever that means) goes.

The European Commission needs to be pressured to revise its digital agenda. They were led to using words like “interoperability” instead of “open standards”. Another common tactic is to squeeze in terms like “market standards”. It sounds almost like standards, but it’s not. ‘”Market standards” as a euphemism for monopolies is a rather astute piece of spin doctory for the technically inept,” said this person whom people recognise as the FSFE’s founder (Georg Greve).

“Market standards” as a euphemism for monopolies is a rather astute piece of spin doctory for the technically inept
      –Georg GreveSome people would say that H.264 has become the “market standard” for video, but it is totally inappropriate because of software patents. MPEG-LA stayed in the background with its patents so that people naively help it become the “market standard”. At the very least, European authorities need to see this and respond to it by exclusion.

Several days ago Google formally took action and released VP8 as free software (BSD). “Flash embraces Google’s open video codec,” reports The Register.

Adobe has rolled out an HTML5 development kit and announced that Flash will use Google’s freshly open sourced VP8 video codec. The company wants you to know that despite its tussle with Steve Jobs, it very much believes in web standards.

Steve Jobs is being very disruptive and it matters because as katonda.com puts it:

The relation between Freedom and Apple is like that of fire and ice. They cannot co-exist.

Steve Jobs reportedly had an email exchange recently with Gawker Media’s Ryan Tate. Gawker Media is the blog firm which owns Gizmodo, the blogsite that bought published photos of a lost iPhone prototype.

I cannot comment on Gizmodo’s iPhone stint, or Tate’s intentions behind his email to Steve Jobs. However, I do care what Steve Jobs says; many people take his word seriously.

Steve Jobs reportedly replied to an email, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some some traditional PC folks feel like the world is slipping away. It is.”

That’s not where freedom stops. This freedom is not even a grain of sand in the vast desert of freedom.

Choosing Apple devices to get these few freedoms is like choosing prison to get safety.

Apple’s Jobs just keeps ridiculing VP8. It means that he sees it as a threat to his business, which is probably a good sign. TechRadar has this decent new report:

Google on VP8: ‘We hope to start an arms race’

Google’s new open source VP8 video codec can’t do DRM, so YouTube will still use Flash to play protected content (and to insert ads).

In fact, says Google engineering VP Linus Upson, “DRM is fundamentally in conflict with open source and open standards because to do DRM you need secrets”.

Chromium already supports WebM videos and YouTube does too. Dana Blankenhorn understands that Google works to promote its own interests here (for reasons we explained before) and the FSF welcomes Google’s move. Groklaw too has positive things to say, whereas the patent troll Larry Horn is still taking shots at VP8 (it’s a threat to his business). He talks about patent pools rather than litigation (Larry Horn uses his trolling entity — a sort of alter-ego — to sue companies if they don’t comply with MEPG-LA). “MPEG-LA Gearing Up To Go Patent Nuclear On Google’s Decision To Release Open Video Standard” — that is the headline TechDirt went with:

It’s no secret that MPEG-LA, the private company that handles patent pools for a variety of digital video standards, including the widely used H.264 — and recently began dabbling in patent trolling, has suggested that there can be no digital video without licensing patents from its patent pools. And, of course, there were just rumors (kicked off by a Steve Jobs email), that MPEG-LA was gearing up to sue any “open” video standard out of existence. Well, that whole story got a bit more complex this week when Google announced its plans to open up its VP8 video codec, and make it royalty free, under the WebM name.

Here is an independent confirmation that the patent troll said what he said to Rupert Murdoch’s employees:

Asked it the MPEG-LA was creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM, a larger open source media standard that includes VP8, Horn said:

“Yes. In view of the marketplace uncertainties regarding patent licensing needs for such technologies, there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses that would address the market’s need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so.”

An MPEG-LA spokesperson confirmed the comments in an email to The Reg.

The threats originally came from Rupert Murdoch’s press. It is potentially just FUD which is intended to suppress VP8 adoption. Some people say it should be ignored despite the bad press (e.g. [1, 2, 3] MPEG-LA generates for its competitor, VP8.

VP8 is crucial for a variety of other Google products (some are Linux based), as the following article might remind us:

WebM will make the hippies among the free-software movement (“software patents are like Nanking Massacre, only obviously far worse”) happy. It’ll allow developers to create free and open-source streaming apps and technologies without worrying about the licensing expense; one can only hope that Google has also ensured that there won’t be any risk that a patent shark might come along and sue the developers at a future date, but only time will tell. Otherwise, WebM a non-entity.

“Patent shark” is an outdated term. It’s now known as “patent troll” and Larry Horn pretty much admitted being one (that’s the work he does ‘on the side’, so to speak).

Have a look at the post titled “Oh my… the hypocrisy around WebM / VP8″

For years we were told by Mozilla and the like that they won’t ship MPEG codecs, because they are patented. At the same time they refuse to support the patent-free but high-quality Dirac codec (developed by the BBC using techniques whose patents expired – Xiph used the same method when designing Vorbis).

Then one day Google shows up and releases the sources to a codec that’s merely a derivate of the patented MPEG-4 AVC Baseline codec. Suddenly all hell breaks loose, Mozilla immediately supports the new (possibly patented) codec.

[...]

I suspect that since Mozilla (and Opera as well) gets many million dollars per year from Google for being the default search provider, questions about WebM are not asked. I think Mozilla mainly wants to please its pimp to get the money.

Luckily KDE is not part of the discussion (I merely state my opinion as an individual). Konqueror simply uses Phonon to play back HTML5 videos, hence the video can be in whatever format as long as a compatible Phonon back-end is used – WebM, Dirac, AVC,…

This sort of accusation against Mozilla and Opera is not fair. Even Microsoft had to give VP8 the nod. They are being pragmatic. Here is the response of Monty Montgomery from Xiph. “WebM VP8 Video Codec Won’t End Theora,” as one site puts it. They are complementary and Google helped fund Theora for particular architectures/form factors.

At Google’s I/O conference, the search giant this week released the VP8 video codec as open source and launched the WebM project for online video. The effort has already been embraced by multiple browser vendors.

Pogson concludes with some amazing numbers.

I wonder whether Hollywood will see it is in their best interests to use an open format for video? If not, Youtube may pass them by. Youtube is already the largest source of video on the planet. Who needs Hollywood if they do not want to be open with us? According to Wikipedia, “It is estimated that 24 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the United States.”

Without a doubt, given Google’s domination of web video, VP8 can gain great power very rapidly. The trouble which remains are patent trolls for their FUD or their genuine intent to sue over VP8. This is yet another example where software patents harm culture, in this case the free access to videos. This includes our own home videos. █

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04.17.10

IDG ‘Forgets’ to Name Microsoft for Bending “Open Source”

Posted in BSD, Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 4:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“More Open Than Open [...] I am constantly amazed at the flexibility of this single word.”

–Microsoft’s Jason Matusow, integral part of the ‘Open’ XML corruptions (further background in [1, 2, 3])

Summary: Companies which are faking/misusing “Open Source” are named and shamed, but Microsoft, which violated the GPL several times last year and casts “Open Source” as “Open APIs”, gets a free ride

AT NASA, Microsoft’s “Open” or “Open Source” simply mean that “open source” platforms like BSD and GNU/Linux are excluded [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. When Microsoft talks about “choice”, it talks about "Microsoft or Microsoft". In many ways, Microsoft is the most guilty of subverting the meaning of “open”, “open source”, and “standard”. And yet, in IDG’s own mind, this point is being left out entirely. The following article does not cover Microsoft’s role in this perversion of the term.

Closed source vendors hijack the term ‘open’

[...]

The ultimate irony? What is really posted on GitHub, at least as far as 15 minutes of searching would reveal, is not even the API itself, but merely a wrapper written Ruby for the API.

Open source? NOT.

The second instance of attempted-open-source-by-association was for a new software/hardware/storage bundle I can’t tell you about until Monday. On Monday, a vendor will be introducing what it says is the first “open” product for <ok, I can’t tell you that yet>. The vendor has determined that its new product is “open” because it will be publishing an API.

Open source? NOT.

Open? Well, let me just note that Windows has had an API for decades (it is an operating system after all). After so many rounds with antitrust litigation in both in the U.S. and in Europe, I doubt anyone would call it open.

Actually, Microsoft does call it that and has done this for years, with help from O'Reilly and others whom Microsoft is paying (IDG is also receiving money from Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). There are even software patents on these APIs, and Microsoft does guard these patents.

So Microsoft’s fake notion of “open source” (usually Windows-only) is being boosted by the ignorant and those whom Microsoft is paying. When it comes to real Open Source (or Free software) like Drupal, Microsoft is attacking. Let’s not forget Microsoft smearing Drupal in its ads. After this had happened and Microsoft apologised, Matt Asay, who considers himself a friend of Microsoft’s Jason Matusow, was right there defending Microsoft and this time he writes about Jive bad-mouthing Drupal and Liferay.

In a somewhat Quixotic quest, Jive Software has been showcasing a white paper titled “Jive vs. Open Source” (PDF), with a page devoted to what it claims are the negatives of Drupal and Liferay.

On one hand, as CMS Watch argues, it’s Marketing 101 to accentuate one’s positives while highlighting the competition’s weaknesses.

But by choosing to focus on open source, in general, and Drupal, in particular, Jive has effectively taken out a billboard advertisement that essentially proclaims: “We’re really worried about Drupal. It’s a big-time threat to our business.”

[...]

Jive doesn’t have the heft of Microsoft, but perhaps it’s taking a page from the same marketing handbook.

Compare that to what Asay wrote when it was Microsoft — not Jive — attacking Drupal in its ads.

Does anyone still believe that Microsoft cares about Free/open source software? Microsoft is just exploiting it to sell its proprietary stack that restricts and discriminates. █

“I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

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04.16.10

Microsoft is Not Promoting the Open Source Community, It’s Just Exploiting It

Posted in BSD, Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Office Suites, Oracle at 8:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Worm heart versus warm heart

“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”

–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft

Summary: Embracing, extending, and extinguishing something is hardly a case of promotion, but gullible minds remain

THOSE who refuse to learn from the past will sooner or later be devoured by the company whose CEO said that “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Microsoft is all about software patents, which are inherently incompatible with Free/open source software.

One can either laugh or cry at this new sight of a press release stating:

“Companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM have been active in promoting the open source community,” said Jim Miller, IWS Chairman and CEO.

This is a bizarre statement. Microsoft is a very bad example, probably the worst example one could possibly give in this case. When Microsoft supports something that it labels “open source”, this is simply done in order to sell proprietary software. Writes someone from OpenOffice.org: “Except that I have been able to talk with Paula Bach (from Microsoft) who was one of the organizers of the FLOSS usability workshop” (to make OpenOffice.org use Microsoft’s ribbon? That’s what our source alleges anyway).

The Microsoft-boosting blog at IDG writes about Microsoft’s attempt at embracing, extending, and extinguishing Ruby, using IronRuby which we wrote about in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. Further down the post, the writer at least points out that:

Since 2007, Microsoft has done a stream of things that angered the open source community. We don’t need to list them all here, we’ll mention TomTom, and Amazon and leave it at that.

Microsoft engages in racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] against Free/open source projects whose existence it does not approve/tolerate. This makes Microsoft hardly a “promoter” of open source; rather, it’s a predatory exploiter. IronRuby too is a case of trying to consume Ruby using .NET. More in The H:

Microsoft’s Jimmy Schementi and the IronRuby team have announced the first stable version of IronRuby, the Ruby runtime for the .NET platform’s Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR. IronRuby 1.0 is available in two versions, one for .NET 4.0 and one for .NET 2.0 SP1; the former is more .NET feature complete and has faster start up, the latter is compatible with the Novell developed, .NET compatible Mono. IronRuby is generally Ruby 1.8.6 compatible and supports Rails 2.3.5.

Thanks to Mono, right? Novell is helping Microsoft as it embraces, extends, and extinguishes Free software as an independent platform/paradigm. IronRuby is about Microsoft and about .NET. It’s not same old Ruby or Ruby on Rails (RoR). It’s all about control for Microsoft, not about independence.

Apple seems to have realised all this, so it is blocking Novell’s MonoTouch [1, 2, 3, 4], which would have enabled Microsoft to gain more control over the hypePad (Apple has just delayed its international launch after failing to meet sales expectations in the US). Here is another new article on the subject:

Such wording appears to exclude not just Flash and Java runtimes from the iPhone platform, but also cross-compilers that translate foreign platforms into iPhone binaries. That nixes technology forthcoming in Adobe’s Flash CS5 and MonoTouch, a Novell tool that allows developers to compile iPhone apps from C# code.

This whole episode has led to sarcasm that daemonises Apple.

On closer inspection we noticed that iTunes didn’t even use the real windows API! They make their own scroll system and their own chrome COMPLETELY bypassing our fantastic Windows OS. So, we’ve decided enough is enough. We’ll allow iTunes back into Windows when they (Apple) make the following changes.

* Apple MUST write a specialised version of iTunes on Windows and use Windows compilers and Windows languages ONLY
* Apple MUST use native windows controllers such as our in built Windowing system and scroll objects.
* Apple MUST lose this RIDICULOUS attitude of writing code once and deploying to multiple operating systems. Just don’t go there.

It’s not much of a satire; Microsoft has a long history of abusing “third-party” developers who target Windows. The only popular platforms that have a good record when it comes to their attitude towards developers are probably BSD and GNU/Linux. █

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03.16.10

“Call Out Windows”

Posted in BSD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 6:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Prelude to a new campaign which strives to change the coverage of Windows-specific security problems

ONE of our readers is in the process of starting a new campaign he wishes to name “Let’s call out Windows” or simply “Call out Windows.” The purpose of this information campaign is to urge journalists to call Windows malware and Windows viruses just what they are: Windows malware and Windows viruses. Reporters have become knowingly negligent of the fact that these problems affect Windows and not all computers run Windows. It’s time to restore journalistic integrity and accuracy.

The following new post, titled “GNU/Linux: Don’t Call Them PC Viruses”, arrives in a very timely fashion and states:

I call that hogwash. The reason Microsoft Windows is so often successfully attacked is because of its flawed security design. I run FreeBSD Unix and Mandriva GNU/Linux on my PC systems. I keep my systems patched with up to date bug fixes and security fixes. I will not install software that I do not know from whence it originates. I do not run any anti-virus software and yet I will never get a “PC Virus” on these systems. There is no such thing as a “PC Virus”, call them “Microsoft Windows Viruses” or “GNU/Linux Viruses” or “Apple OS X Viruses” depending on the operating system which they successfully attack. Don’t call them “PC Viruses”.

Last week we showed that Apache was only vulnerable on Windows (not IEEE POSIX®).

There is a lot of correspondence going on privately, trying to establish an effective campaign that changes how people cover Windows malware and Windows viruses without coming across as rude. █

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

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Government Should Avoid Proprietary Software and ‘Clouds’

Posted in Apple, BSD, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 7:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Reporters wonder if Vivek Kundra (national CIO) can resist the temptation to just hand over government operations to private companies, some of which are abusive and dangerous to sovereignty

THE United States government should ideally deploy Free software, just as it used Drupal and LAMP to redo the official White House Web site. This gives the government full control of the software that it uses, which is crucial. Favouritism to some overpaid people who are hiding behind some company names is not an acceptable practice, especially given that the money comes from taxpayers and the government is often funded by those same companies that it returns favours to (Microsoft funded the Obama campaign for example).

According to this report, “Obama’s $79 Billion Tech Plan May Favor Web Programs”

Watch which companies are being listed:

Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc. are all offering more databases and programs online, allowing customers to curb storage costs. Sharing software and data that way would shrink U.S. storage needs, helping to cut expenses after previous governments spent more than $500 billion on data centers and other technology initiatives in the past decade, Kundra said.

The government is able to employ its own IT staff that will build and maintain systems that are based on Free software. There is no need for a Microsoft or a Google or an Amazon.com. If businesses choose to do trade with them, that’s fine. It’s their choice. But governments are different, they are inherently obliged not to become just an extension of commerce for reasons we won’t go into.

“Steve Ballmer visits the White House a little too much given that he is not a politician (or isn’t supposed to act as one because he was never elected).”As we have already shown, Steve Ballmer visits the White House a little too much [1, 2] given that he is not a politician (or isn’t supposed to act as one because he was never elected). Ballmer and Obama’s CIO may have met at a university recently and Investor Spot now asks: “Will Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft & Obama’s Administration Share A Cloud?”

This would be a total farce if it became true. Likewise, as Apple/Mac developers find out that they are merely being exploited, one person finds it worthwhile to say (in IDG): “It’s time to end government-funded iPhone apps (and curb Apple’s control-freak tendencies)”

Now we’ve got Apple’s Developer License Agreement with terms so controlling that developers must seek prior approval from Apple before even commenting on the license itself. We only know this because the Electronic Frontier Foundation snared a copy from NASA via a Freedom of Information Act request (view PDF on the EFF site. Apparently, federal law still trumps Apple’s corporate attempts at secrecy. At least for now.

NASA also appears to have been intruded by Microsoft boosters [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], who in turn use NASA to block/turn away GNU/Linux and BSD users. █

“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”

–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft

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