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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11.04.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Microsoft, Samba at 4:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How and why Microsoft is ‘embracing’ Samba
“O
n 10 October 2011,” writes The H, “a Microsoft developer contributed a GPL licensed patch to the Samba project. The patch, which was part of a proof of concept for extended protection for NTLM and presented by Stephen A. Zarko of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center, has now been noted as the passing of a milestone by Chris Hertel of the Samba team. Samba provides tools and servers which enable interoperability with Windows’ SMB and CIFS networking on Linux and Unix based systems.”
The reactions to this move were mixed. Proponents of the monopolist (who advertise with Microsoft) make it look wonderful (identical headline from SJVN), but members of Techrights are a lot more cautious.
“I’m not sure what the real role of the Microsoft team working with Samba is,” noted one person, “but the developers should not lose sight of the whole picture that is Microsoft. Just because one small department is helpful for one group, for right now does not mean that the greater threat has diminished or gone away. In some ways it the threat is greater because it gets the Samba team and others to let their guard down.
“It’s not unlike a vendor buying them a meal or beer for them, or providing swag. It’s not done for their benefit.
“This is a little more advanced than simply buying someone off with swag or free beer, but it’s the same principle. One rogue department doesn’t set policy for the whole beast.”
Microsoft also gave code to Mono (MS-PL-licensed). At the same time Microsoft asserted that it can sue over it.
“It’s working,” noted one of us. “One problem with Allison’s statement is that he is blind to how Microsoft makes its money. It does not make it’s money from Windows and Office, that’s just a tiny fraction of the money. The big money comes from the monopoly rents on both products.
“Microsoft was trying to leverage that monopoly to get into the server room when Samba took on M$ and defeated it in court. Microsoft is still going to protect its core money-makers, the two monopolies even if Samba does now get thrown a bone.”
Microsoft has already got its former employees from Likewise paying Microsoft for patents on Samba-like functionality (with Samba code). This is not good.
Sam Varghese points out that “Samba is one of the free software projects that has moved in toto to the GPL version 3.” Muktware’s take is that: “As Linux is gaining popularity Microsoft seems to have increased its contribution to ensure their products will work well with Linux. The recent patch submission to the Linux kernel was an indicator.”
What do readers think? █
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09.02.11
Posted in Apple, Courtroom, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, GPL, Microsoft, Patents at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple is said to have committed a serious felony by pretending to be police and it is also attacking Linux through the courtroom, much to the chagrin of Microsoft proponents and lobbyists
THE cult which is Apple “will die with steve jobs,” wrote to me someone in Identi.ca two hours ago, after I had posted a link about Apple losing its leadership to Linux (more on that in our daily Links).
The latest disgrace from Apple is this allegation that Apple has again misused police powers that it does not have. To quote:
If accurate, his account raises the possibility that Apple security personnel attempting to recover the prototype falsely represented themselves as police officers — a criminal act punishable by up to a year in jail in the state of California — or that SFPD employees colluding with Apple failed to properly report an extensive search of a person’s home, car, and computer.
A “criminal act”? Don’t worry, cults do that a lot. Ask Scientologists. As TechDirt put it in its headline, “Man Claims Apple Investigators Pretended To Be SF Police In Searching For Lost iPhone Prototype”. Criminal if true, but Apple is never punished for such behaviour, just like it got away with it the previous time (the police typically protects rich corporations from the people, not vice versa). Quoting TechDirt:
Earlier this week, News.com broke a story of yet another Apple employee losing an iPhone prototype in a bar (stop me if you’ve heard this one before…). Unlike the last one, this one (as far as we know) did not get sold to some tech website for a few thousand dollars. However, reports are emerging that raise some serious questions about how Apple went about trying to retrieve the phone.
A man in San Francisco, Sergio Calderon, claims that six people showed up at his door claiming to be San Francisco Police Department officers, and that they had badges. They claimed they were looking for a lost phone, but didn’t say it was a prototype. The original News.com report had said that police together with Apple investigators went to the guy’s house — but the SFPD says they have no record of SFPD being involved in any such action (which it should have if they were involved). The guy whose house was searched says that no one identified themselves as being from Apple. They also threatened him and his family over their immigration status (even though he says they’re all legal). Either way, he was nervous and let them search his house (a mistake) and even check out his computer. They didn’t find anything.
What we cannot help but notice is that many of the pro-Microsoft people have become Apple boosters when it comes to the war on Android. They just cannot stand Linux and Free software, so Apple and Microsoft share common goals. Microsoft’s shameless booster Matt Rosoff continues to promote anti-Linux sides (Rosoff came from a Microsoft consultancy) and the egomaniac pro-Microsoft lobbyist we have all come to know and loathe also quotes Microsoft boosters like Ed Bott in order to make Android/Google/Linux look bad. That one example was just a few hours ago. He does this all day long. They work in unison to daemonise Android and prop up Apple’s case, which by the way has been noticed also by Neil Richards, who writes the column “I Can Sue You, But You Can’t Sue Us: Apple”. To quote:
Apple has sued almost every other company in the mobile industry, in not only US but around the globe. The company also tried to patent a rectangular design claiming monopoly in the tablet segment.
The same company whose ex-CEO quotes “We are shameless about stealing from others.” has sued everyone else over minor similarities in the box of the product, icon design and rectangular shape.
[...]
This is not the first time anti-FOSS bloggers are trying to spin the story. They recently twisted the story of Samsung’s victory in the Dutch court as the victory of Apple diluting the fact that Apple lost its design patents and all other software patents except for one. The court gave Samsung 7 weeks and one day’s time to fix the problem or the injunction will be enforced. Trusted sources like BBC also fell for this trick and covered the defeat of Samsung.
It is interesting to see that such blogger, with no legal expertise, are supporting Apple’s foul cry that Samsung and Motorola are abusing their patents. What they won’t tell us is its Apple which is suing everyone else using software patents.
It’s interesting to see that the same anti-Android lobbyists while support Apple’s ‘right’ to use a broad rectangular design and block everyone else from selling a device, but they criticize competitors when they try to defend themselves using the technologies they actually invented!
We mentioned this yesterday and also this morning. Apple has no shame left. And on the same subject, for those bolstering the anti-Android camp there’s the Oracle case on which Groklaw remarks: “Google’s response is a thorough recitation of the current law of copyright when it comes to analyzing software on the issue of copyright infringement, at least within the 9th Circuit. Google’s strongest arguments are that the JAVA API’s at issue are functional and, thus, not protected by copyright and, to the extent Google has copied anything, the copying has been de minimis, i.e., a few lines of code out of thousands.”
What’s very popular right now among anti-Android lobbyists is to claim copyright-related problems in Android that almost nobody cares about (not even the developers). They try to cause friction and infighting. Some of these people have employment history in Microsoft. We know those tactics. █
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08.07.11
Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, GPL at 2:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Romania ‘bans’ the GPL, whereas in Italy, the Puglia region council is starting to mandate the opposite type of policy
SEVERAL weeks ago we wrote some posts about procurement rules in the UK. These are unjust and one might even say “corrupt”. These rules ensure that those who lobby for them will continue to profit without having to work hard, let alone compete. The public suffers from this because of cost and quality. In the nation of Romania we have seen many such examples of misconduct and covered some of them in, e.g.:
Someone from Romania has just informed us of this translation of articles whose main message is:
There’s a government procurement bid going on in Romania for creating the software and infrastructure to modernize criminal records’ access within the country and to interoperate with European countries’ similar systems.
It is likely to become one of the many overpriced, poorly specified and poorly implemented solutions that are cranked out by companies that would not survive in the private sector but are close to the decision-makers and are tacitly supported by large IT companies whose proprietary software and expensive hardware have key roles such projects. Nothing new here.
What sets it apart however from other cases, at least to my knowledge is that in the general requirements section there’s a small paragraph stating:
“All versions of sofware that are part of the offer must not be published under a ‘free software license’ – GPL or similar”
Is that truly the case? And if so, then the FSFE has work to do there. The very opposite policy — one preferring or enforcing the use of Free software — should be embraced in the public sector. So once again we come across ridiculous regulations which must have been influenced by the fox in the hen house. Recall what Nichi Vendola did when Free software was gaining ground in Italy (Puglia). We now discover that, based on research from OSOR, Vendola may not get his way entirely:
The council of the Italian region of Puglia is about to approve the law proposed last December that will make the use of open source and open standards mandatory for the region’s public administrations, according to news reports. The region expects to save up to a million euro per year by increasing its use of this type of software, at the same time creating business opportunities for small and medium sized enterprises.
What about the education sector? Activism in this area is very much needed to ensure that policies are not perverted to the point of no return (like software patents in the United States). █
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06.23.11
Posted in Bill Gates, FUD, GPL, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 3:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: ex y actuales funcionarios de Microsoft se reunen a su alrededor y difunden propaganda.
CUANDO MUCHOS altos directivos abandonan Microsoft[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_-_Major_Departure], hay más y más topos para su uso de Microsoft (Elop, por ejemplo). Es algo muy preocupante. Bill Gates ha estado haciendo mucho más daño[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique] desde que salió de Microsoft y en la actualidad, uno de sus movimientos más preocupantes es su cabildeo de patentes. Es lo que se necesita para Microsoft para sobrevivir unos cuantos años más, a expensas de su competencia, literalmente. Hemos hecho un recuento no oficial en torno a Microsoft y llegamos a la conclusión de que las únicas dos personas principales que quedan dentro de Microsoft, serían Mundie (convoy de Microsoft a las congregaciones del gobierno [1[http://techrights.org/2009/04/28/quotes-craig-mundie/], 2[http://techrights.org/2009/05/02/craig-mundie-lobbies-big-eu-guns/]] y Bilderberg[http://techrights.org/2010/06/06/electionmall-and-lobbying/]) y Ballmer, cuya presencia en Microsoft podría terminar pronto debido a una mayor presión.
“Tal vez su continua calumnia de la GPL es un intento de una profecía por auto-cumplirse.”Se debe hacer hincapié una vez más que para que los administradores de Microsoft salgan verdaderamente de la compañía por lo general tienen que retirarse. Si no lo hacen, entonces se limitan a difundir la cultura de Microsoft para otra compañía como un tipo de contaminación. Hemos visto lo que ocurrio dentro de Amazon, que ahora está pagando a Microsoft por Linux[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Amazon] (después de haber absorbido a muchos altos ejecutivos de Microsoft). Un director de marketing de Microsoft fundó una compañía llamada Black Duck[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Black_Duck], que actualmente es la única fuente que clama que la GPL está en declive. Seguimos viendo los artículos que repiten acríticamente esas alegaciones que se basan en métodos propios con datos de propiedad de una sola dudosa fuente. Tal vez su continua calumnia de la GPL es un intento de una profecía por auto-cumplirse. Mira las publicaciones de Microsoft simpátizando con Black Duck[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/black-duck-software-named-to-sd-times-100-for-fourth-consecutive-year-124277339.html]. Muy peligroso. Otra de estas empresas, que está dirigido por un veterano de Microsoft quien ha creado un blog de software “libre” con el fin de atraer tráfico. Pocos de los visitantes conocen la hostilidad contra la GPL de esa empresa. Debemos estar al tanto de la agenda-setting por ex funcionarios de Microsoft, no sólo su personal existente. Ah, y por cierto, este año también Craig Mundie de Microsoft, el jefe de investigación y estrategia para el monopolista, asistirá a la secreta reunión de Bilderberg[http://bilderberg2011.com/bilderberg-members/bilderberg-2010-images-exposed/attachment/009/]. Tal vez él va allí cada vez sólo porque hacen un buen café. █
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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06.22.11
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, FUD, GPL, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 7:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s former and existing staff gets around and gets its propaganda spreading
AS MANY top managers leave Microsoft, there are more and more moles for Microsoft to use (Elop for example). It is a very troubling thing. Bill Gates has been doing a lot more damage since he left Microsoft and currently, one of his more troubling moves is patent lobbying. It’s what it takes for Microsoft to survive a few more years, at the expense of its competition, literally. We have done an unofficial headcount around Microsoft and came to the conclusion that the only two core people are left inside Microsoft; those would be Mundie (Microsoft’s convoy to government congregations [1, 2] and to Bilderberg) and Ballmer, whose presence at Microsoft might end soon due to increased pressure.
“Maybe its long-going GPL smear is an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy.”It ought to be emphasised once again that for Microsoft managers to truly leave the company they usually must retire. If they don’t, then they merely spread the Microsoft culture to yet another company which they sort of contaminate. We saw that happen inside Amazon, which is now paying Microsoft for Linux (after it had absorbed many top managers from Microsoft). A marketing manager from Microsoft founded a company called Black Duck, which is currently almost the exclusive source claiming the GPL to be on the decline. We keep seeing articles that uncritically repeat those claims that are based on proprietary methods with proprietary data from a single dubious source. Maybe its long-going GPL smear is an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy. Watch the Microsoft-sympathetic publications groom Black Duck. Very dangerous. Another such firm which is led by a Microsoft veteran has just created a FOSS blog in order to attract traffic. Little do the visitors know about the GPL hostility from that firm. Be aware of agenda-setting by former Microsoft staff, not just existing personnel. Oh, and by the way, this year too Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer for the monopolist, will attend the secretive Bilderberg meeting. Maybe he goes there every time just because they make good coffee. █
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06.09.11
Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, GPL, Microsoft at 12:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Firms with Microsoft roots do a disservice to FOSS and a favour to the Microsoft agenda
THE SUBJECT of Microsoft veterans turning to the FUD business was addressed here thrice recently.
This is a serious issue that definitely deserves more attention. One journalist who used to edit the Linux Today Web site (Brian Proffitt) writes about the latest from Black Duck:
I pulled a thread today, and found a little FUD that turned out to be a marketing pitch.
The headline on my newsreader read “Legal Challenges in Android Development,” with a byline on Law.com. This sounded like another legal expert taking potshots at Android, so I clicked the link to see what was what.
What I found was an article that, while not as harsh as some I have seen, seemed to single out Android development as more potentially hazardous to a developer’s legal health than other open source projects.
Imagine, then, my surprise when I noted that the article’s author was Mark F. Radcliffe, who currently acts as the General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative.
The article, in and of itself, wasn’t too far afield of any other kind of licensing article a lawyer might put together. Know your license, know what you’re getting into, and execute plans accordingly. Open source fans may get jumpy about such advice, because we tend to get defensive, but in truth it’s no different than any advice about any license, proprietary or otherwise. “Respect the License” is solid advice no matter the license.
And on it goes.
Black Duck was in fact delivering FOSS FUD for quite a while. Its support of software patents (by action) does not contribute much to its credibility and it is one thing that they have in common with Microsoft Florian. the headline in Linux Today was “Is Black Duck spreading FUD about Android for profit?”
Aptly titled. It’s a rhetorical question. But Black Duck is not the only for-profit entity which is doing it. There are also many corruptible analysts whom Microsoft pays to parrot its own nonsense and consultant whom Microsoft hires (i.e. pays money to) for bias, or at least for self-censorship. Some of these analysts eventually receive a wage from Microsoft, but not before they manage to also pollute the minds of journalists who receive free trips to the US, funded by Microsoft. Recall what we wrote about the standards debate after Winterford had accepted a bribe from Microsoft [1, 2] (and brainwash from a so-called ‘analyst’,Peter O’Kelly, who would later get a job from Microsoft). Sadly enough, this is how the industry works and to be blind to it or unaware of it leads to bafflement.
Interestingly enough, years after the embarrassing incident Winterford highlights the situation with Silverlight, whose adopters are being abandoned by Microsoft like we showed earlier this month (the same goes for Moonlight developers, who helped ‘openwash’ Silverlight and merely pretend it was cross-platform). He notes that:
Thousands of Silverlight developers converged on Microsoft’s forum pages to ask why there was no mention of Silverlight or .Net in the vendor’s brief video preview of the upcoming operating system.
Developers expressed fears Microsoft might let their investment in skills “die on the vine” as Redmond finally embraces open standards.
The same goes for those who went with OOXML, which even Microsoft did not follow (it was just about getting a rubber stamp). Well, maybe it’s for the better because OOXML is a patent infringement and Microsoft has just lost the case over this in SCOTUS. The following news is just in:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Microsoft Corp. must pay a $290 million judgment awarded to a small Toronto software company for infringing on one of its patents inside its popular Microsoft Word program.
The high court unanimously refused to throw out the judgment against the world’s largest software maker.
Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool used in Microsoft Word. The technology in question gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way to edit XML, which is computer code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document’s contents.
The lower courts say Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft willfully infringed on the patent, and ordered the world’s largest software maker to pay i4i $290 million and stop selling versions of Word containing the infringing technology.
We are going to write about this later. Time to end software patents, right? Well, Microsoft would not like that. To Microsoft, “bad” patents are only those that are used against it. █
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06.08.11
Posted in FUD, GPL at 10:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A closer look at those who disparage the GPL and where they come from
AS MY PH.D. is associated with statistics, I believe that I have the critical skills necessary to show, even without auditing the data, when methods are selected to fraudulently show outcomes that are false. When it comes to firms with origins at Microsoft, there is no data available. They keep it to themselves and they probably know why. While trying to gain power as spokespeople for FOSS, these firms do everything the proprietary way, even with software patents.
“Be sceptical of what you read regarding software licences. There is a war for people’s perception and people with media clout are being paid to change these perceptions.”On a couple of occasions this week we wrote about the latest numbers from Black Duck. One of the participants in this was funded by Microsoft. The other actually has Microsoft roots and it is this firm which gets challenged by Free software defenders because it “doesn’t give any information on how the three hundred new sites [for example get] added” (this included Microsoft sites at the time, as we mentioned repeatedly [1, 2] because Microsoft had announced a special partnership). The most problematic repository at the centre of all of this (so-called ‘analysts’ typically point at it) is maintained privately by Black Duck, which was founded by Mr. Levin and “in the early 1990s, Levin was a marketing manager at Microsoft,” say many reports like this one. Microsoft marketing, eh? We have a wiki page about the subject that we find so disturbing as firms like these discourage the use of copyleft licences. Microsoft does not like the GPL and it says that “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
Given that SourceForge erroneously marked a GPL-licensed project of mine as Public Domain (I found this out by accident earlier today as I begin working on another FOSS project), there is a lot of room for bias and error. It is not surprising that analysts who are paid by Microsoft try to tell us that the GPL is declining. OpenLogic is also part of those messengers. It is headed by a guy from Microsoft. Be sceptical of what you read regarding software licences. There is a war for people’s perception and people with media clout are being paid to change these perceptions. By selecting methods and data in a proprietary way one can show anything and ‘prove’ anything (assuming the peers are gullible). █
“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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