12.19.11
Posted in Bill Gates, FUD, GPL, Microsoft at 3:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest badmouthing of the GPL and where it is really coming from
SLASHDOT is lending some space to the latest FUD from Black Duck. For the uninitiated, Black Duck came from Microsoft.
The 451 Group seeks to validate the claims from Black Duck, but upon a close look at comments it is possible to see the flaws.
NB: I am relying on the current set of figures published by Black Duck Software for this post, combined with our previous posts on the topic. I am aware that some people are distrustful of Black Duck’s figures given the lack of transparency on the methodology for collecting them. Since I previously went to a lot of effort to analyze data collected and published by FLOSSmole to find that it confirmed the trend suggested by Black Duck’s figures, I am confident that the trends are an accurate reflection of the situation.
There are already rebuttals to this, so we won’t make more. Another similar company that came from Microsoft, called OpenLogic, is spreading some more FOSS FUD to sell its products. Remember that the company is run by a former Microsoft guy. These are the companies that push nonsense like “Intellectual Property” in the FOSS world (like the GPL-hostile CDDL*), which smells a bit like this thing too:
Today I presented about the complicated relationship between FLOSS and Intellectual Property at the Technical University of Berlin. The presentation was part of a lecture about Intellectual Property management, targeting students in an international master’s program in business administration. This setup guaranteed for a kind of culture clash, since the motivation for students to attend this lecture is to learn about how to increase the value of their companies by building IP assets. Openness, sharing and collaborative development is usually not the focus.
Clarification (5/1/2012): the above turns out to actually be a talk from a FOSS proponent who educates people on the subject. He does not really promote “Intellectual Property” as a concept.
Watch out for another of Microsoft’s proxies for ‘open source’ infiltration. It is “squar[ing] off against the GPL” as one would expect:
I am consistently amazed by the lengths people will go to to try to succeed in the marketplace.
Actually, that’s not true. Having been around fellow humans for 45 years, I would have to say that such destructive behavior doesn’t really surprise me. What does surprise me, though, is the repeated use of the same, tired memes when it’s been proven time and again that they don’t work.
So it was with sad dismay that I read a DotNetNuke blog entry this morning that took unabashed aim at the GNU Public License (GPL) used by DotNetNuke’s (DNN) primary (and more successful) competing content management systems, WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal.
Microsoft’s front group CodePlex/OuterCurve is accommodated by this company. Surprise, surprise. Loyalty. █
___
* Quoting Wikipedia, “In the words of Danese Cooper, who is no longer with Sun, one of the reasons for basing the CDDL on the Mozilla license was that the Mozilla license is GPL-incompatible.” Cooper now works for Bill Gates based on her LinkedIn page.
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12.06.11
Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, FSF, FUD, Hardware, Intellectual Monopoly, Law, Microsoft, Patents, Samsung, Tivoization at 2:52 pm by Guest Editorial Team
The Best Tool For Freedom is a Free Tool
Two friends have a good chat about free software at OSCON.
The CarrierIQ issue, even if it is part of an organized campaign to smear and ruin Android [2], is showing people the dangers of using non free software. Even one piece of non free software can betray users, so mostly free, “pragmatic” systems can be just as bad as regular non free systems. The free software community should capitalize on this awareness to change people’s attitudes towards their devices so that they will reject non free software in the future. Software freedom must be complete for users to have real conrtol and privacy.
Richard Stallman wrote an extensive review of Android back in September. It lists all of the parts of available phones that can be used maliciously against users, which surprisingly include the radio control firmware. The conclusion was unequivocal, “Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go. … While any computing system might have bugs, these devices might be bugs.”
When the CarrierIQ scandal broke, Mr. Stallman was not surprised. His comment was,
The root cause of this problem is that the users don’t control the software on these phones. So if they didn’t put in this surveillance package [Carrier IQ], they would put in some other. The users’ only protection against malicious features (surveillance, intentional restrictions, and back doors) is to insist on free software.
Anyone in the Open Source community who’s surprised should think hard about what the Free Software Society has been telling them. About four years ago at a “Web 2.0″ meeting, Eben Moglen urged the Tim O’Reilly and the Open Source community to quit, “wasting time promoting commercial products.” O’Reilly was sad that Moglen did not want to talk about protecting people’s data on other people’s computers in “the cloud,” but CarrierIQ makes it plain that those rights and protections are meaningless if the user is stripped of privacy by malware in their pocket. It might have been useful ten years ago to hide scary talk about freedom from big companies like IBM. It worked, thanks, but talk about “best tool for the job” and “pragmatic” mixes of free and non free software should now be considered counter productive and the results dangerous.
There are community alternatives to carrier issued Android. Stallman mentions Replicant, a 100% free software replacement for Android. There is also a less careful distribution called CyanogenMod that is focused on performance and includes non free software from Google and perhaps device drivers. Jeff Hoogland, the founder of Bodhi GNU/Linux, is working on Debian for cell phones and we can be sure many others are as well. In the mean time, if you must have a smart phone, it might as well be Android because there is no chance a phone from Apple or Microsoft will be liberated, but don’t expect it to be a Freedom Box the community really wants [2 and don't trust it until it's really free.
Sadly, US law is mostly a hindrance. Senator Al Franklin had some very pointed questions about possible violations of law for the company and a lawsuit has been launched against the guilty parties - Apple, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Carrier IQ. That's good but it will be difficult to prove what actually happened, and the free software community can do better. Like Vista and Windows 7, CarrierIQ establishes encrypted communications to hide the data transmitted. It would be better to have free software on your cell phone, so the FSF has petitioned the Librarian of Congress for a DMCA Exemption Without that, it may be against US law for people to replace the software on their phones or even to delete CarrierIQ malware.
The lack of freedom in cell phones is not a natural state but is unlikely to end without changes and enforcement of US law. Android has emerged as the top cell phone OS because it is free software and creates a productive commons for the odd hundred companies that must cooperate to make a cell phoneThe obnoxious US patent system has allowed Microsoft and Apple to practice judicial extortion that should have been blocked by US anti-trust and racketeering laws[1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Spectrum licensing itself is a technically obsolete and harmful practice but the FCC could demand adherence to technical standards, demand the publication of technical standards required to operate phones, and forbid practices such as phone locking as the price carriers pay for spectrum as it transitions to open spectrum.
We are in this hole because a long running propaganda campaign by non free software owners has played down ethical issues while convincing people that they are helpless. Billions of dollars in propaganda spending still drown out the basic truth of the situation and non free software use remains prevalent even among people who have every reason to fear spying by the rich and powerful. CarrierIQ gives us a good chance to fix that.
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11.23.11
Posted in FUD, Microsoft at 11:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More propaganda from Microsoft and its lobbyists, as well as rebuttals to that
Microsoft front groups like the BSA are using IDC and other so-called ‘analysts’ to manufacture self-serving propaganda. We gave many examples of this in prior years.
IDG (IDC patent company) helps promote this nonsense under the banner of “reporting” or “news”and the language says it all really. This on example goes like this: “Pirated software saves its users in developing countries more than $2.9 billion annually. So finds a study of manufacturers in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific commissioned by Microsoft. ”
Yes, paid for by Microsoft. As TechDirt points out, Microsoft shot itself in the foot:
Microsoft ‘Anti-Piracy’ Campaign Explains Why It’s Bad For Businesses To Pay For Microsoft Software
[...]
In the distant past, Microsoft used to be willing to admit that — especially in developing countries — the company was significantly better off due to infringement. Bill Gates famously said: “As long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” More recently, of course, Microsoft has been increasingly aggressive when it comes to its anti-piracy campaigns. The company recently did a PR stunt around Global Play Fair Day, in which it released a study, done by Keystone Strategy, which I think is supposed to explain the importance of not infringing. However, the message that it actually seems to be sending is: “paying for Microsoft software is bad for business.”
I’m not joking.
We wrote about the BSA previously, e.g. to explain who was funding SOPA lobbying. The BSA seems to have had unintended effects:
Late last week and over the weekend, supporters of SOPA started pushing a slightly ridiculous idea that a bunch of big tech companies “supported SOPA.” This was based on the fact that the oftentimes extremist organization, the BSA, had come out in favor of SOPA, and a few people chose to believe that meant every member of the BSA — including companies like Apple, Intel and Dell — supported SOPA. The attempt to pretend that Apple must support SOPA was angering a lot of Apple fans, and it appears that something happened behind the scenes.
The BSA has now come out with a blog post “clarifying” its position…
Then again, when they hide behind “BSA”, the paymasters almost manage to hide their participation. █
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11.14.11
Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GPL, Microsoft at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A quick status update about FUD firms that piggyback FOSS concerns to sell proprietary software (unsurprising they have their roots in Microsoft)
EVERY now and then, the more notable firms which spread GPL FUD appear in the press again, either with a press release or a placement. Here is the latest example from PR person Kim Weins, who spreads some licence FUD on behalf of her boss from Microsoft, who created and runs this company called OpenLogic, just like Black Duck was created by a Microsoft marketing guy and serves a similar purpose now. We were somewhat baffled to see this announcement which says:
The partnership will help deliver complete code inventory and licensing reports to facilitate the adoption of open source Linux-based systems among automotive OEMs and Tier1 companies.
How is the spreading of GPL FUD with proprietary software and software patents “facilitat[ing] the adoption of open source Linux-based systems”? █
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11.11.11
Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 1:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Influence For Sale, Inc.
Summary: Microsoft Florian and other spinners whom Microsoft paid are performing a reality distortion exercise that they try to push into the press as “independent”, in their usual deceitful ways
“Microsoft [is] facing Android patent competition probe” says this one new headline about Microsoft’s crusade to make money from products it never developed at all.
Barnes & Noble has asked US antitrust regulators to investigate if Microsoft is abusing its position by demanding royalties from companies making kit running Android software.
The move was revealed in a letter from the book seller to competition regulators and comes in the wake of Microsoft taking legal action earlier this year over five patents that it claims were infringed in the Nook ebook reader.
As Techrights‘ Ryan puts it in his interesting new blog:
Moving further on, into Microsoft’s patent racket operations. You might remember that Foxconn, a global manufacturer of PC and Mac motherboards (sometimes sold under different brand names), was conspiring with Microsoft a few years ago to break non-Windows operating systems with corrupt ACPI implementations in the board’s BIOS firmware. As a reward for carrying water for Microsoft in their Corrupt PC BIOS Initiative 
, Foxconn ended up being named as a defendant in Microsoft’s patent-racketeering lawsuit against e-reader maker Barnes & Noble.
Microsoft is also attacking Android with copyright FUD. A lawyer previously working for Microsoft (he tried to hide payments from Microsoft, without success) is at it again: [via]
And, it should be clear, neither does a position paper from a lawyer possibly working on behalf of a client. Or, yes, even a blog.
Is this a reference to Microsoft Florian, who loves to amplify the FUD from Naughton while always portraying Google as a patent aggressor? These lobbyists need to be exposed and people who cite them without naming their clients (that make a conflict of interest) ought to be notified. Microsoft has a well-funded PR campaign going to whitewash its extortion campaign. The regulators are coming, so Microsoft depends on a lot of spin and “perception management” (which Florian has been selling as a product). In his so-called ‘blog’, Florian is now spinning the B&N complaint against B&N. It’s a load of nonsense, but that’s all that Microsoft can offer at this stage. It just needs some mouthpieces that appear external to the company and it pays them for it. Watch out for Microsoft playing dirty by recruiting corruptible people who masquerade as “analysts” and mass-mail journalists for their clients’ agenda. How despicable. █
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10.28.11
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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10.20.11
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, Microsoft at 11:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Why it matters who’s on whose side, especially when one side infiltrates the other
OVER time we have been flagging and providing supportive evidence about allies and friends of Microsoft — people and groups whom people might call “independent” when in fact those come from Microsoft or work with Microsoft. We have not updated our credibility ranks for years, but having said that, those ranks upset some people who are listed. They don’t want their biases to be up on display. We still stress the importance of knowing who is who and where one’s wallet is. Consider for example Bott and his latest insult to GNU/Linux users who worry about Microsoft’s anticompetitive abuses [1, 2, 3, 4]. Some people who do not understand his relationship with Microsoft are citing him, mistaking his message for something genuine and objective. Microsoft sometimes hires “journalists” who spent their time in papers promoting Microsoft, almost as though Microsoft gives them the rewards (wages) once they are done. And then we have companies like Centrify putting their stuff inside Ubuntu without anyone calling foul. We explained what Centrify is doing before. It is similar to Likewise, which one reader tells us has infiltrated Ubuntu Forums. These are former Microsoft people, just like many of those who are associated with Mono and even Xamarin (its CEO is a former Microsoft employee and funding comes from a Microsoft MVP). Understanding who is a friend of Microsoft is very essential for the protection of software freedom. In a later post we are going to show what Microsoft Florian is doing (he is still afraid of Techrights‘ explanations of who is really is) and in Diaspora there are some more examples of friends of Microsoft doing their thing in the name of “FOSS”, especially in IDG. It’s either controlled opposition or fake journalism (like Rupert Murdoch’s). █
“As discussed in our PR meeting this morning. David & I have spoken with Maureen O’Gara (based on go ahead from BrianV) and planted the story. She has agreed to not attribute the story to us….
“[...] Inform Maureen O’ Gara (Senior Editor Client Server News/LinuxGram) or John Markoff (NYT) of announcement on Aug 28, 2000. Owner dougmil (Approval received from BrianV to proceed)
“Contact Eric Raymond, Tim O’Reilly or Bruce Perrins to solicit support for this going against the objectives of the Open Source movement. Owner: dougmil [Doug Miller]. Note that I will not be doing this. Maureen O’Gara said she was going to call them so it looks better coming from her.”
(From Microsoft’s smoking guns)
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10.16.11
Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Threats by proximity and dependency, as covered in the news
Patents
Microsoft is attacking its competition with patents while IDG’s Microsoft boosters take a break from openwashing and whitewashing Microsoft, instead raving about the patents Microsoft gets with Skype. They also write about embrace & extend moves that put Microsoft nearer to the core of Linux, as we saw elsewhere recently.
Microsoft Linux
Mac Asay writes about Microsoft’s latest embrace and extend (for more proprietary lockin), which he comments on here (ignore the headline, Asay does not write the headlines). Microsoft exploits hooks even in the kernel, which is not new. We have explained Microsoft’s goals dozens of times before.
Black Duck
When releasing proprietary scareware is “Support[ing] Open Source” (news here too), then we know that Black Duck is lying again. But then again, Black Duck was created by a former marketing exectuive from Microsoft.
We already have a detailed idnex page about Black Duck. It explains what’s wrong with it, unlike newspapers that just repeat the deceitful press releases. █
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