04.28.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 3:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Android continues to have real impact in the mobile market whereas Windows has none; The company could ‘pull an Elop’ again
THE RISE OF Linux is marked by the decline of some lucrative Apple-branded products — integrated products which face a really big challenge from Android. I was close to buying an Android tablet yesterday as the vast majority of tablets on the shelves run Android; none runs Windows. Microsoft and Apple can hardly do anything but sue at this stage; they just don’t know how else to win. Mr. Pogson shows that the manager of Microsoft’s phone effort left only to join another company and he adds: “Come on, Phoney “7″ shows at 0.08% of page views on Wikimedia, and 0.67% of the mobile page views.”
The report says it’ a marketing person:
The well-known provider of mobile Internet services confirmed Monday that it has hired Gavin Kim to the newly created position of Chief Product Officer.
According to details made available in an official press release, Gavin will lead NQ Mobile’s product, solutions and strategic partnerships.
Sound like another potential Elop. The thing about Elop is, not only did he help assassinate MeeGo; he also helped “weaponise” Nokia’s patents (see MOSAID for example). The Microsoft cult is not to be underestimated. It needs to be watched. █
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 3:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: In the infamous case which shows how software patents harm Free software/Linux Motorola hits back against Microsoft and Apple. scoring a win against both
WE recently outlined how Motorola had hit back against Microsoft, using its own patent arsenal as tool of deterrence against Android-hostile aggression (invoked by Microsoft).
Motorola adds another victory by getting deterrence going against Apple. “It’s a busy week at the International Trade Commission, which today found that Apple has infringed on a 3G patent held by Motorola,” says The Register.
It continues: “Administrative Law Judge Thomas B. Pender today issued an initial determination that found Apple guilty of patent infringement by importing and selling the iPhone and 3G-enabled iPads in the U.S.”
“The amount of money remains unknown and some suspect that the main purpose it to seed FUD and deter those who choose Linux for tablets.”“Patent litigation has become little more than a tax on innovation that drives companies from the U.S. market and discourages investment in the next Facebook or tomorrow’s Twitter,” explains Julie Samuels in her latest column. To quote further, “more than all of that, the case serves as an important teaching moment, illustrating much of what doesn’t work in our patent system.”
“That system is of course enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power to “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to … Inventors the exclusive Right to their … Discoveries.” But when we start talking about software patents, we really only see barriers to innovation, often in the form of expensive litigation and licensing fees. What gives?
“For starters, software often does not require the type of heavy investment that should result in a 20-year monopoly. Instead of expensive laboratories or years of testing for FDA approval, for example, you often just need a coder and a computer. Even complex programs don’t require 20 years of exclusivity to recoup their investment. Software patents are often not even necessary for successful businesses: Facebook and, yes, Google — never relied on software patents to grow their early businesses.”
Much to our regret, while I was down in London Microsoft found another extortion victim. This is the type of action which Techrights was conceived to counter. Microsoft had not signed any extortion for a while with FAT patents being on the rocks. To quote TechEye, “Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron has agreed to pay Microsoft licensing fees for each Android or Chrome device it makes.
“Redmond told ZDnet that it is the latest in a long string of such agreements, and covers smartphones, e-readers and tablets. It has signed deals with Quanta, Wistron and Compal already.”
The amount of money remains unknown and some suspect that the main purpose it to seed FUD and deter those who choose Linux for tablets. Clearly this is not working. But it’s taxing customers, bringing no benefit whatsoever to anyone. The customers should rebel against the patent system and its misuse for protectionism, extortion, and intimidation. █
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04.24.12
Posted in Google, Patents at 3:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Google continues to fight against Oracle, but at the same time Google helps the USPTO, which is the root of the problem
TWITTER DID the reasonable thing (given the circumstances) and based on the will of engineers, Google might follow suit one day, even though the problem, as shown before, is that Google hired a lot of lawyers, to whom more patent mess is simply a work preference.
“It’s never good riddance at Google, not when patent lawyers have their own selfish interests inside the company.”The source of this whole problem is the USPTO. It’s never good riddance at Google, not when patent lawyers have their own selfish interests inside the company. Although Google decided to get get rid of one product (Patent Search Homepage) it is evident that Google is just shuffling a little bit while taking the same mess to the EPO. To quote: “We’re redirecting the old Patent Search homepage to google.com to make sure everyone is getting the best possible experience for their patent searches. Over the past few months, we’ve been making updates and improvements to the Patent Search functionality on google.com—not only are you able to search the same set of U.S. patents with the same advanced search options, the new experience loads twice as fast as the old Patent Search homepage, contributes to a unified search experience across Google, and sports Google Doodles as well. The team looks forward to including patents from other countries soon, and will be rolling out additional features to Patent Search on google.com in the future.”
In other words, Google is still helping the same system which is punishing Android and Linux. In some sense, Google does even more evil by extending that patent system aide to more countries, for profit, as usual. Ken Hess, who has been baiting Android in his blog, says that “Google should have found a Java alternative. But software should not be patented”. Groklaw continues helping Google [1, 2, 3, 4] while “Oracle’s Copyright Case v Google Takes a Big Hit”, but one must not forget Google’s reluctance to squash patents as a whole. Google should strike at the root by ending the USPTO’s participation, not just for Android but for software as a whole. Google is said to be spending a record amount of money on lobbying (see today’s news), but what ever happened to an ambition to eliminate software patents? If Google wants to do good — not just do “no evil” — then it will actually use its lobbying power for good causes. One might blame the Hubris at Google, the company which, as Fernando Cassia puts its, “knows better” than those mere peons who “play” in its online “playground”. To quote: “Many people who thought they could get away with running the old GMail user interface despite contant nagging to “switch to the new look” have quickly discovered that the almighty Google has decided it knows better, and proceeded to force everyone to the new. UX designers are ‘humbled’, but not for long…
“…Google has decided it knows better, and proceeded to force everyone to the new.”
–Fernando Cassia“Nine months ago when the GMail New Look was being introduced, Jason Cornwell, UX designer for GMail said in his Twitter account that he was “humbled” by the response from users. If we take the dictionary´s definition of the word we get “Made low; abased; rendered meek and submissive; penitent”. Hmmm, in other words, it looks like an “Epic fail” to me. So, they learned from past mistakes, right? Wrong.”
GMail also suffered downtimes recently, proving to people that Fog Computing means computing you can’t rely on. Google is trying to convince governments to walk into this trap (downtime and handover of citizen data to a private company), which makes its lobbying not at all benign. To earn more respect from the public Google will need to start showing that it antagonises — not supports — the patent offices around the world. █
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04.21.12
Posted in Google, Patents at 8:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Twitter’s latest move (making patents self-destruct upon offensive use) inspires many across the Web, including senior people at Google
TWITTER received some good karma for its latest patent moves. As one person said in Twitter, “By and large, we software developers don’t like software patents. Given that, twitter’s patent agreement is a recruiting tool, period.”
“Google’s Matt Cutts responded to Twitter’s move in an encouraging way. “Here is a VC’s response to the patent pledge from Twitter. It’s the story of a VC who invested in a company (with a patent) that went bankrupt and then their patent was used to sue 2 other companies he invested in. Another lesson about the absurdity of patents, right?
Google’s Matt Cutts responded to Twitter’s move in an encouraging way. “The more I read about Twitter’s “defensive uses only” patent agreement,” he says, “the more I like it.” So can Google follow suit? How about Red Hat? Cutts, who somewhat of a Google celebrity, links to the New York Times blog, which can be found here. Suffice to say, patents boosters are offended by this decision from Twitter. Less for them (the parasites), more for technologists. █
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04.20.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Oracle, Patents at 2:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Jobs image licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later versions); Ellison patch By Thomas Hawk
Summary: The case against Android is falling flat on its face as even the leader of Oracle falls on his sword in court
SEVERAL months ago we remarked on Steve Jobs' highly misguided claim that Android was "stolen". Putting aside the misunderstanding of the word "stolen", what’s really just a copycat is the toy collection of Mr. Jobs. It’s a bunch of “glorified” (i.e. with apple-shaped logo) merchandise, made in the very same factories that produce Apple’s competition, assembled with the very same components that are sold to many companies including Apple.
There is some coverage of the Oracle-Google trial in the Microsoft/Intel-friendly press (reporting on where the big advertising money is) and as it kicks off we are fortunate to have Pamela Jones on the case, remarking on “the first live witness for Oracle, namely Larry Ellison” (to whom, by his admission, Steve Jobs is a “best friend”). Ellison messes up the testimony because of his ignorance. “Larry Ellison knocks Oracle’s Linux strategy,” argues Zonker. Just watch what he said. Even a Microsoft booster was unable to spin it against Linux/Android. He wrote:
Oracle’s argument is that while Java is an open-source language free to all, using the APIs as Google did requires a license—and the fact that Google doesn’t have one puts them on the wrong side of copyright law.
Another longtime anti-FOSS guy looked at this from another angle:
Computer languages and software interfaces may fall under copyright protection if Oracle succeeds in its Java lawsuit against Google. Amazingly, “copyfighters” appear to have paid little or no notice to this rare extension of copyright into new realms. But the consequences and costs for the software industry could be enormous.
Google’s CEO seems to concur on that, so what’s this legal fight all about? Putting aside the lies from the Oracle/Microsoft lobbyist, this whole lawsuit seems like a misunderstanding. Ellison just acted upon passion, not logic, just like his best friend Steve Jobs, who even in the courtroom is unable to stop Android; in fact, it all comes back to bite Apple in the rear end. Here’s the latest:
Samsung targets Apple in the US with eight more patents
Samsung has finally answered Apple’s second US patent infringement lawsuit with patent infringement counterclaims of its own. On Wednesday, Samsung filed a response to Apple’s lawsuit over the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, claiming that iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and Macs infringe one or more of eight patents. Two of those patents have been declared essential to 3G wireless standards, however, which could complicate the European Commission’s investigation of Samsung’s alleged abuse of standards-related patents.
It sure begins to seem like the lawsuits against Android are more like SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). No wonder Oracle is retreating. There is no successful case against Android, even 2 years after it all began. █
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents at 1:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is trying to hijack the voice of “bloggers” and “FOSS” by hiring lobbyists, but Florian Müller has more clients for the astroturf campaigns
WHILE I WAS busy at work several readers of Techrights enthusiastically told me that Florian Müller had exposed himself again. But is it really news? We knew this all along and after some words that came through the grapevine this shameful lobbyist was forced to disclose that Microsoft was paying him. He wants to be treated with respect while for heaps money from malicious interests he is disrespecting society as a whole, then plays/acts like a “victim”.
“Hopefully this will stop tech news sites from citing him on #swpats.”
–ClaudioWell, the business model of Florian Müller is to pick up some money for an agenda/propaganda, which is not so different from that same old agenda of few others who attack Linux in public and seed the press with Linux-hostile coverage. Right now we see the Microsoft propaganda army (‘open’ nonsense, a loophole for patent attacks), where people are paid indirectly to do the spinning and all the systematic liars pressure journalists. Here is one of those spinners pressuring the former COO of Canonical to repeat the Microsoft talking points rather than think critically. From his own mouth: “When I tweeted as much, Microsoft’s Peter Galli was quick to email me to suggest I hadn’t understood; that “open source does, and will continue to, permeate Microsoft”. I am sure Galli and the rest of the open-source crowd at Microsoft sincerely believe this, but it’s hard to see how Microsoft can hope to embrace open source and other open technologies while sidelining them to a subsidiary.”
Just like other proxies that Microsoft sets up as controlled opposition inside FOSS, this one is a trap and it is worse than nothing at all. We are disappointed to see Red Hat letting a Microsoft employees spew out the propaganda in a Red Hat site and feeding the PR talking points, countering the scpeptics (those who use their heads, not press releases). It’s all just perception management, they try to remove opposition to set an organic/fake consensus. Red Hat issued a polite statement, which Microsoft spinners then use to pretend that Microsoft is now loved by all that is FOSS. This relentless PR campaign that’s just costing slush funds-level expenditures for the monopolist has been a smashing success. The goal is to pretend that Microsoft is not attacking FOSS and then allow Microsoft to speak on behalf of FOSS. We have given many examples of this over the years. One of their current lobbyists calls himself “FOSSPatents”, but nobody with a brain is falling for it. As one auidocaster put it, “Florian Mueller outs himself as #Oracle employee. Hopefully this will stop tech news sites from citing him on #swpats.”
So the trial began and Groklaw is all over the papers. Pamela Jones remarks on the fact that Oracle is paying Florian Müller, who served Oracle by having his lies implanted in the press (this is what they groom him for). To quote Jones:
Florian Mueller has confessed — in the interests of being “transparent”, he says — that Oracle has hired him, for his analysis of FRAND issues. I know. You are shocked, shocked. Who’d have ever guessed?
We did. Groklaw did. We get suspicious when someone’s “analysis” is uniformly that Google is doomed. It’s my Spidey sense. And it’s usually on the money, as they say.
It seems, according to the story, that Mueller and Oracle kissed and made up after he fought against Oracle and lost before the EU Commission, back when it was considering whether or not to allow Oracle to buy Sun. Remember the MySQL affair? No doubt Oracle deeply admired his work. Well. That’s not what *I* heard.
Anyway, he has known, I gather, that he was going to be working for Oracle as an “analyst” and “for the long haul” for some time, he indicates. But he didn’t think to mention it until now.
Does that clear up some mysteries for you?
Read the Slashdot and Groklaw comments as they are a lot more blunt and less polite. “Florian Mueller Outs Himself As Oracle Employee” is the headline in Slashdot. As Ryan said in our IRC channels, “he’s a whore, whores are always for sale, the price is negotiable… A guy walks up to a woman and asks “Would you have sex with me for a million dollars?” she says “Sure!”… so he asks “How about for $100,000?” “OK”… so he asks her “What would you do for $100?”… she says “What do you think I am? Some kind of prostitute!?”…guy says “We already established what you are, now we’re just talking price” 
”
We have already established a lot of evidence to show that Florian Müller is making money by attacking society for unethical corporations. These corporations are grooming their lobbyists and the end outcome is press distortion — a subversion of public opinion and trial by media. Florian Müller, whom his former boss dislikes with a passion, is exposed by him further, as follows: “Florian Müller (or Mueller when he is quoted in english articles), a self-acclaimed “expert” on software patents and nowadays quite a mouthpiece for FRAND licensing, has always been someone I had a love-hate relationship with. We fought together against software patents in the 2003-2005 years. And while he lost interest and left the stage with a loud announcement that he will never ever work on software patents again, decided to switch to soccer lobbying etc, I was hired by Red Hat, which was (and is) a dream come true and I continued my fight against “IP”-extremism.
“Out of the blue Florian came back to the spotlight a few years ago, fighting appartently for David against Goliath in the Turbohercules case (which later turned out to be a company that was funded at least partly by Microsoft), fought for (former) MySQL’s Monty Widenius to stop the SUN/Oracle merger (where Monty later supposedly admitted that Florian was the wrong guy for the job), admitted that he did some “strategic” consulting for Microsoft, shouted about billions and billions at stake when Oracle sued Google, admitted he worked on a research paper for Microsoft to explain that FRAND is somehow compatible with Free Software and Open standards – or in short: He came back with a flurry of stuff that seemed unrelated but not exactly on the same side as my fights.
“And while he lost interest and left the stage with a loud announcement that he will never ever work on software patents again, decided to switch to soccer lobbying…”
–Jan Wildeboer“I accused him at various times that a lot of what he claimed is FUD, blown out of proportion etc. But who am I to criticise Europe’s biggest expert? 
“Now the court case in Oracle v Google has started. And after all the shouting about billions and billions at stake I was sure that Florian would either be in the court room or at least report the hell out of that case. As, after all, it was him who reported on it for a long, long time. But what did I see? Nothing.”
Here is what the site that habitually feeds the lobbyist wrote about him:
“So you’re commenting on your highly visible blog about patent case after patent case that deal with corporations battling over open source stuff, what does it matter if you’re taking money from one and not the other? If you don’t see any ethical problems with that, you might be Florian Mueller. Groklaw’s PJ (who has been suspicious of Florian’s ties to other giants like Microsoft for quite sometime) has noticed that Florian Mueller has decided to go full disclosure and admit that all his commentary on the Oracle v Google case might be tainted by his employment by Oracle. It seems he’s got a bunch of consulting money coming his way from Oracle but I’m sure that won’t undermine any of his assessments like Android licenses violate the GPL or that Oracle will win $6 billion from Google and Google was “at risk” of not settling despite the outcome that the charges later dropped to a small fraction of the $6 billion. Like so many other times, PJ’s hunch was right.”
If Slashdot keeps feeding this lobbyist (giving him a platform), then how come it’s publishing an exposé too? Lobbying is a malicious thing, and it’s time to react to it accordingly. This is of course part of the PR effort, and this piece of the puzzle must be recognised to realise that Microsoft is still AstroTurfing. █
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04.17.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Office Suites at 4:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bits and pieces from the news about phones and office suites
THE duopoly from the West Coast has met Linux and it doesn’t like what it’s seeing.
Android makes the hypePhone less desirable and analysts notice this. “Walter Piecyk, an analyst with BTIG Research, issued a rare downgrade on shares of Apple Inc. on Monday,” says a pro-Apple site, “moving his recommendation from “Buy” to “Neutral.” In a research note to clients, Mr. Piecyk said that changes to aggressive carrier subsidy policies will result in fewer smartphone upgrades. He also expressed doubt about Apple’s ability to wrangle US$600 per iPhone in emerging markets where carrier subsidies are few and far between.”
Microsoft itself is deep in the gutter of mobile platforms, as a matter of course.
Microsoft has been relying on people buying a computer with Windows or OS X on it, then paying for a copy of the cash cow, Microsoft Office. Now that more people move into mobile computing (and off Windows) this cash cow is in danger. Even Microsoft-affiliated publications like Slate dare to call for the death of Office (or Word). The crux of the argument:
Nowadays, I get the same feeling of dread when I open an email to see a Microsoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone’s archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax of the early 21st century: cumbersome, inefficient, and a relic of obsolete assumptions about technology. It’s time to give up on Word.
People prefer to be given URLs to access work through. This is why Microsoft plays catchup with Office 360 (5 days downtime).
Cash cows like Office and iPhone are losing share to Google, so it’s no wonder that the duopolists attack Google together. █
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Posted in Google, Oracle, Patents at 4:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News analysis and preparation for patent news catchup
THE lawsuits against Red Hat and Google help teach us that once someone is making money with Linux, patents come knocking on the door in pursuit of a share of the profits. As Simon Phipps recently explained, everyone loses from this practice (except lawyers). He speaks specifically about the Oracle case and it is summarised as follows:
Besides Google, biggest loser is free culture in general and open source in particular. Here’s your guide to what’s at stake
As a former manager at Sun (of Java fame), Phipps understands what’s at stake and in the rest of this month we are going to catch up with patent news that we missed in March and April (due to personal reasons).
The new Android case kicks off and Groklaw provides detailed analysis while the less legalese-savvy press follows the lead. As Pogson puts it, “Oracle [is] is clutching at straws,” for reasons we covered here before. █
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