01.10.12
Posted in Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Leaked documents from the UK reveal the role Microsoft played in derailing standards in the United Kingdom
THE thugs from Microsoft are waging imperialist wars again. They do this via mercenaries of sorts — front groups that pretend to be “local”.
“So MS got the UK Cabinet office to use a broken definition of Open Standard,” says iophk. “Strange that the office was so malleable.”
Herein we see standards getting replaced by Microsoft “interop” nonsense, just like Novell-type deals with their new propaganda. The sheer abuses (including bribery) Microsoft used for OOXML were covered here closely. Rather than recall them now we’ll just say with conviction that Microsoft is a criminal company, as evidenced around 2007 and 2008 when Microsoft attacked international standards bodies, many professionals (those whom Microsoft did not manage to bribe), etc.
“MS has been pushing RAND for more than a few years now,” iophk explains. As we showed in prior years, Microsoft is using the BSA and other front groups to achieve this.
Here too we have a new report which shows what Microsoft has just done (based on a leak):
The British government withdrew its open standards policy after lobbying from Microsoft, it has been revealed in a Cabinet Office brief leaked to Computer Weekly.
The Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) also formerly opposed the policy before Cabinet Office withdrew it. BIS supported Microsoft’s position against open standards, the backbone of the government’s ICT policy. The Business Software Alliance, infamous for its lobbying against open standards policy in Brussels, also lobbied against the government policy.
Microsoft took up direct opposition to the ICT Strategy’s pledge to give preference to technologies that supported open standards of interoperability between government computer systems, said the briefing paper.
The software supplier was concerned this would prevent companies from claiming royalties on the point of exchange between those systems.
It complained specifically about the wording of UK procurement policy, which in January 2011 established a definition to explain its edict that open standards should be used in government computing wherever possible. UK policy specified that “[open standards] must have intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis”.
Microsoft said it supported the aims of UK open standards policy – specifically that government systems should be interoperable, that it should be possible for government to re-use purchased software components, and that government should not be “locked-in” to using particular technologies.
[...]
Microsoft refused to talk to Computer Weekly about its consultation with the Cabinet Office.
It said in a written statement: “Microsoft fully supports the Government’s ICT strategy and its goals of reducing cost and complexity, and increasing information sharing, interoperability, openness and re-use.”
The BSA said in a written statement it also supported government’s policy aims.
“However,” it said, “reducing public procurement expenses in the UK does not require the adoption of a policy which undermines the value of Intellectual Property and Innovation.”
Cabinet Office said in a written statement: “No lobbying has taken place that has affected our approach in creating an Open Standards definition that works for government.”
BIS also refused to discuss its differences with Cabinet Office. It said in a written statement: “Discussions are still ongoing between the departments with many options being considered.”
Glyn Moody was filled with fury over this. He wrote:
Although I am not surprised by this revelation, I remain incredibly angry about it – and I think everyone who cares about computing in this country should be too. It confirms that the UK government’s fine words about supporting open source and open standard are truly the typical and cynical political sweet-talking before you are stabbed in the back at the behest of lobbyists that wield so much power. No one should take anything the UK government says in this context seriously again.
What’s truly shocking about this episode is not that Microsoft has once again interfered with a sovereign nation’s decision to create a level playing-field – that’s just par for the course for the convicted monopolist. What’s really disgusting is that UK government has let them. This is a total scandal: anyone involved with this pathetic kowtowing to US business interests with any sense of decency would resign immediately. And those that don’t should be fired.
Free Software Magazine wrote, “look who’s behind it?”
It is at times like this I recall the Free Software Foundation’s opposition to the use of the term Open Source. Just as with “Open Standard” it is way to open to interpretation.
So once again the UK Government falls behind the pack in terms of freedom, transparency and accessibility for its citizens. This is not a party-political thing by the way – it’s a politician thing. In the UK there has been a backlash lately over the influence that the media (in particular the print media “barons”) has over government policy. Isn’t it about time the same spotlight was cast upon the influence that big business (many of them not British) have over government policy as well?
I find it saddening, disheartening and somewhat ironic that the one part of the software industry that is continuing to provide real innovation and progress is being locked out of Whitehall because of lobbying by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills!
Microsoft’s role in these situation is easy to see, even when Microsoft hides behind front groups. Over in a smaller country we find news about another FOSS-hostile government position:
A state which has been popular for using FOSS has now entered in a conditional pact where they ‘willingly’ chose to spend money on proprietary software despite the availability of free and open source alternatives.
Bribes come from proprietary software and overpriced goods. It should not be surprising that politicians turn their back on Free/Open Source software. █
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12.15.11
Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 6:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Europe’s transition to Free/Open Source software is stifled by the existence of Microsoft’s fake ‘open’ format
THE SUBJECT of OOXML/ODF was covered here thoroughly in 2007 and 2008. We showed a great deal of lies, corruption, and cover-up.
Putting aside the corruption behind OOXML, the anticompetitive aspect of it returns to haunt Europe. Ryan says that “they should get rid of it and use ODF” and notes that the “Open Source Business Alliance” has created a new working group – “Office Interoperability.”
“Business Alliance,” notes Ryan, is similar to the BSA and many times before we explained that interoperability is just a weasel word used to marginalise open standards. “I smell Ballmer,” Ryan says, but the report is not so amusing. To quote:
IT authorities from Germany and Switzerland have announced that they are working together, under the auspices of the Open Source Business Alliance, to improve the way that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org display and process OOXML-formatted documents. The authorities involved include the IT groups from the cities of Munich, Jena and Freiburg im Breisgau, the Swiss canton of Waadt, the Swiss Federal Court and the Schweizer Informatikstrategie Bund (Swiss IT Federation) whose representatives met at a workshop in Zurich in October to launch the “Precise reproduction of OOXML documents in Open Source Office applications” project. Slides for the workshop provide more details of what was discussed.
This was the purpose of OOXML all along — throwing users back into the same loop and the same lock-in/trap. █
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09.14.11
Posted in Australia, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 10:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Encouraging new signs in Australia (an OpenOffice.org pilot) amid a major blunder for Microsoft, whose dirty OOXML secrets are leaking out years after the acts
THE Cablegate stash has made available key evidence which we have covered a lot since the beginning of this month. The OOXML-related exhibits (cables) have gotten quite far by now, with articles that were written not just in English. The importance is this is that it brings back to international awareness the fact that OOXML relied on corruption at all levels. We most collected evidence to show this in 2007 and in 2008. Cablegate is like a wormhole that takes us back in time and lets us see back room string-pulling this will hopefully affect this AGIMO review of document standards in Australia. “Last month,” claims this new report, “Department of Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos revealed that 100 corporate staff had been using OpenOffice in a year-old, “semi-formal” trial.”
This is good news. They will hopefully realise that their initial leaning towards OOXML was a mistake also due to public awareness that OOXML correlates with crime, as once shown using a bar chart, just after a vote on OOXML (corrupt countries were more likely to vote “Yes”).
Cablegate posts will resume shortly. It’s just a matter of dedicating free time to the task. There is enough in there to last for a long time and have considerable impact. █
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09.10.11
Posted in America, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo by Espen Moe
Summary: The impact of leaked diplomatic cables on current affairs and perceptions people have about companies, government, and elected officials
OVER the past day or two we have been receiving a record number of links to this site, mostly pointing to Cablegate posts. People from all over the world share with their friends what they previously suspected but could not prove.
One person from Brazil is pulling skeletons out of Microsoft’s closet and embarrassing the cowardly, supine government at the same time. Following some blog posts about American diplomats lobbying for OOXML (including our own post), we are notified about this very detailed post which provides further background to the leak from someone who was nearby:
Let me make clear here that I don’t believe that this meeting between Microsoft and the major representative from the American Government in Brazil has been a personal initiative of Mr. Michel Levy, but for me it was an corporative initiative. Even being a Microsoft employee, Mr. Michel Levy is a Brazilian, and I prefer not to believe that he has, on its own initiative, decided to start an initiative to put the American Government against the Brazilian Government, thus violating our sovereignty and our national technical merit.
The first question that I leave here is on how many other countries that voted NO to OpenXML the same kind of initiative also happened, and how much of these countries “have accepted” an eventual intervention by the U.S. government.
Yes, the intervention may have occurred, because if you notice the general line of argumentation used here in Brazil, the national technical decision is presented as being an initiative against the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and one of the things that cause retaliation in free trade agreements with the United States are eventual IPR violations. I have my own collection of rumors from the times of OpenXML, where possible sanctions motivated by IPR violations were brought to the negotiation table to get the governmental votes in some countries (if your country has changed the vote after the voting in September 2007, please investigate and you will probably find a ‘key’ governmental role on that vote changing). Maybe one day, WikiLeaks could help us to investigate that too!
[...]
Finally, they try to insinuate that the ODF is an anti-American standard. I confess that I would like to know what IBM, Oracle, Google and Red Hat (and other North American companies) think about the that, since they work hard on the past years on its development and worldwide adoption. Actually I prefer that these companies explain directly to the American Government if the ODF is anti-American, and I still hope they ask clarification from the American Government about Microsoft’s similar initiatives in other countries during the 2007 and 2008 years.
For those who did not follow the whole story, the ODF was adopted in Brazil, OpenXML rejected here and just didn’t had a major role on the international scene, because we were silenced on the last day of the BRM, just when we would submit a proposal that could change the end of this history. I’ve already told this story here.
Special thanks to WikiLeaks, for helping us get the skeletons out of the closet. For those who want to understand how Microsoft deals and negotiates with governments that have pro-FLSOO policies, it’s worth reading this other cable here.
Well, now there is proof too.
Several days ago we found out what American government officials were saying about Neelie Kroes. We published this yesterday and Jan Wildeboer notes that there is plenty more where that came from. Sooner or later we shall get around to it. This promises to change the way Microsoft and its lobbying practices are widely perceived. █
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09.06.11
Posted in America, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Patents at 3:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s Michel Levy uses propaganda to daemonise a pro-ODF policy, insult the president’s pro-freedom policies, and pressure politicians to permit proprietary lock-in
IN THE YEARS 2007-2008 we spent a lot of time covering OOXML corruption. Microsoft had done in a few months the amount of misconduct most companies do not do throughout their entire existence. James Love has found this newly-release cable which shows lobbying for Microsoft in Brazil, at taxpayers’ expense and against the interests of taxpayers. Quoting Mr. Love:
Levy claimed to be in possession of unsigned letters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which is referred to as “Itamaraty” in the cable), to foreign governments, asking that they collaborate to support the open source ODF as the international standard. Of course, if this was true, it would not be surprising, since at the time, there was broad support among non-US governments, non-Microsoft software companies, consumer groups and free software advocates to push for ODF as an open standard for file formats.
The cable says that Microsoft was seeking confidential advice, rather than advocacy, from the Ambassador. Such advice was forthcoming: “Ambassador Sobel did offer advice on various SIPDIS approaches Microsoft could take in generating support for standards that would have room for both ODF and XML software.”
The subject of the original cable is “MICROSOFT SEES GOB ATTACKS AGAINST IPR” (GOB is Government of Brazil and IPR is a propaganda term for copyrights and patents). Here is the original Cablegate cable:
ZCZCXYZ0026
OO RUEHWEB
DE RUEHSO #1001 3551359
ZNY CCCCC ZZH (CCY ADDED CAPTION AD04181F2 MSI3697 508,
O 211359Z DEC 07
FM AMCONSUL SAO PAULO TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7773
INFO RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA IMMEDIATE 8916
RUEAWJF/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SAO PAULO 001001
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
(C O R R E C T E D C O P Y: ADDED SIPDIS CAPTION)
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/20/2017
TAGS: ECON[Economic Conditions], ETRD[Foreign Trade], ECIN?[Economic Integration and
Cooperation], PREL[External Political Relations]
SUBJECT: MICROSOFT SEES GOB ATTACKS AGAINST IPR
Classified By: Econ/Pol Chief James Story for reasons 1.5 b and d.
¶1. (C) SUMMARY: In a December 20 meeting in Sao Paulo with Ambassador Sobel, Microsoft
Brazil President Michel Levy stated that current GOB policies are antagonistic towards Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR). According to Levy, the GOB through the Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty) has
mounted an international campaign to discredit Microsoft's proprietary XML format and is pushing
for countries to adopt the ODF (Open Document Format) at the expense of XML at the March
meeting of the International Standards Organization in Geneva. Levy sees both ideological issues
as well as commercial interests at work in the GOB position. END SUMMARY.
¶2. (C) Microsoft Brazil President Michel Levy requested a meeting with Ambassador Sobel
on December 20 to discuss ways forward on working with what he characterized as an
antagonistic GOB. According to Levy, Itamaraty has pressured the purportedly independent
Brazilian Technical Standards Agency, ABNT to adopt a more aggressive posture against
using XML as one of two possible standards, along with ODF, in Brazil. In addition, Levy
stated that he is in the possession of unsigned letters from Itamaraty to various foreign
governments requesting that the governments work together to support only the open source
ODF as the international standard.
¶3. (C) Levy believes that this issue has turned ideological and is a manifestation of
anti-Americanism within Itamaraty. He cited President Lula's Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff as
well as high-ranking advisor Celso Alvarez as being the chief architects of an anti-IPR, anti-royalties
strategy within the GOB. According to Levy, these advisors have convinced President Lula that
there is no difference between ODF and proprietary XML software. His main concern is that the
GOB will use the ABNT to adopt an ODF only standard by decree rather than going through
Congress where Microsoft would at least have an opportunity to explain the differences between
the software systems. Levy used as an example that all of Embraer's designs are created through
XML and that the current ODF software simply can't do the same job. If ODF is the only
standard, Levy argued, there could be economic ramifications for Brazil.
¶4. (C) Levy then pointed out that commercially Microsoft faces an uneven playing field in Brazil.
He stated that in addition to several bills in the Brazilian Congress that would deny the
GOB the ability to buy proprietary software, there are reports that many recent bids that
went to tender had specific, if unwritten, instructions that disallowed any Microsoft bids. He
further stated that the issue of cross-retaliation on IPR from the cotton subsidies case is alive
and well and could potentially come to pass in 2008.
¶5. (C) While Levy made it clear that Microsoft is not asking for any USG advocacy at this point,
and in fact requested that our communication be kept strictly confidential, Ambassador Sobel did
offer advice on various SIPDIS approaches Microsoft could take in generating support for
standards that would have room for both ODF and XML software. Specifically, the Ambassador
thought Mircosoft should work through various trade groups to begin a discussion with the GOB
on this issue. The Ambassador also indicated that Microsoft should get Brazilian companies to put
this issue high on the agenda of the CEO Forum meetings to take place with Department of
Commerce Secretary Gutierrez early next year.
¶6. (C) COMMENT: The debate among various international standards (GPS, telecommunications,
etc.) is not new in Brazil, and Levy's concerns about an anti-American ideology in the Brazilian
Foreign Ministry are not only Microsoft's concern. Microsoft's concerns that the GOB is seeking
to adopt one standard that does not allow for proprietary softwear, bears watching. A multi-industry
push for a strategy that allows for Congressional debate over the relative merits of the software systems
will certainly yield better results than Microsoft fighting this issue alone. END COMMENT.
WHITE
Microsoft is trying to portray distrust of Microsoft as hatred of the US, which is a trick it pulls a lot. The above says that “Levy believes that this issue has turned ideological and is a manifestation of anti-Americanism within Itamaraty.” If there is any “anti-Americanism”, it is because of the likes of Levy who seek to disrupt policies overseas and turn entire massive populations into clients of some American monopolist that rose to power through criminal activities. Notice the daemonisation of Lula as well, using the “anti-IPR, anti-royalties” terms that mean nothing but protectionism and artificial monopoly enablers. Also mind this part: “The Ambassador also indicated that Microsoft should get Brazilian companies to put this issue high on the agenda of the CEO Forum meetings to take place with Department of Commerce Secretary Gutierrez early next year.” Also see: “Microsoft’s concerns that the GOB is seeking to adopt one standard that does not allow for proprietary softwear [sic], bears watching.” How so? It is when the government accepts lock-in and code that cannot be audited that one should be concerned. It’s the public which pays for it after all. █
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06.17.11
Posted in FUD, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Security, Windows at 4:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The company which made viruses so abundant (and whose operating system is insecure by design) is using excuses and tricks to daemonise WebGL
WE HAVE seen it all before. Whether it was the case of not supporting ODF or even something like Ogg, Microsoft never blamed competitive reasons; it’s just not good for PR and the whole antitrust karma too would be impacted. See how Microsoft used security FUD to promote OOXML [1, 2]. It sure is amusing when Microsoft spinner Mr. Bright excuses Microsoft for avoiding WebGL by citing its talking points (headline says “Microsoft: no way to support WebGL and meet our security needs”). Truth be told, there is clearly more to it considering what’s done with Silverlight (hardware acceleration and Web integration, even with proprietary software).
For Microsoft it is not unusual to snub new standards and create its own proprietary extensions that require Windows with IE. It is no secret that even Microsoft’s Web developers write hacks especially for IE6 (and they detest IE for this reason, based on comments found in page source). Watch Microsoft’s booster Bott spotting a new “Microsoft security versus Microsoft Web” gaffe. Of course he is spinning this. It’s his job.
Microsoft makes shoddy Web products because it wants to turn the Web into a sandbox of lock-in, not interoperability. Instructions for this come from the top. █
“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.
“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”
–Bill Gates [PDF]
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06.02.11
Posted in Bill Gates, IBM, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Patents at 1:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look back at how Microsoft distorted the market of office suites and a candid suggestion for IBM to open up on the real issues, not the minor details
THE “RUTHLESS” Bill Gates is nowadays buying newspapers to call himself something else and distract from his evil side, rewriting history to a sufficient extent so that people will forget his poisonous legacy that everyone suffers from, to this date. It is called reputation laundering. Today we would like to go back and show people the real Bill Gates. Later this month we hope to get a helping hand from another editor who can help show some of today’s offences from Gates (but that’ll be left aside for now as it is partly off topic).
“On another occasion Gates showed not only his hatred of standards and interoperability but also his love of patents.”So yesterday we wrote about how IBM becomes a key player in ODF. IBM and Microsoft are rivals as much as Apple and Microsoft are rivals. They actually collaborate in some areas where it is beneficial to both companies (not necessarily to the externalities). Microsoft, which is is run by sociopaths, has quite a history of copying and also breaking Lotus. We showed this using Comes vs Microsoft court exhibits. A Techrights informant has just reminded us that, in Comes vs Microsoft, “PXE 3078 has Lotus working for interoperability and MS working against it.” We covered this several years ago. Bill Gates said that giving out the Office 2000 formats to competitors seems crazy and this type of remark occurred later too. On another occasion Gates showed not only his hatred of standards and interoperability but also his love of patents. On several occasions he tried to use software patents against OpenOffice.org, even resorting to patent blackmail against Sun. A lot of publications speak of the OpenOffice.org news in the context which excepts and excludes patents (see examples at the bottom of this post). This is a mistake. To give just one example of a typical interpretation of this announcement:
Continuing what it likes to describe as its “long-standing commitment to open source,” IBM has this week confirmed that it will now take an active role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache Software Foundation Incubator.
IBM and open source you say? Should that be unusual?
This does not tell the whole story. Remember what we wrote about the Apache licence some weeks ago (this led to FUD). Remember who likes this type of licence, which Microsoft proponents sometimes champion (and Microsoft now gives money to the ASF too). As we stated yesterday, too much would have been written about the news and we wish not to bore with repetition. But what we shall say is that Microsoft is vehemently opposing interoperability (the problem is at the core, including Bill Gates), so we must defend ODF, even if it means tolerating IBM. But IBM should not be treated as our friend here (nor should The Document Foundation, which has some residues from Novell). After many observations were being made in our IRC channels we have reached the conclusion which some of us accept. It is possible that IBM, which cross-licenses (software patents) with Microsoft, can now take its proprietary version of OpenOffice.org (Lotus Symphony) and further extend it legally without contributing back the changes. That’s what an Apache licence will do assuming that the passage of copyrights to Apache works as IBM hoped. This whole thing shows the dangers of copyright assignment agreements (pay attention, Canonical) and if the LGPLv3 is abandoned as Bradley from the FSF suspects [3], then it will be possible for IBM to make Symphony the only patents-’covered’ derivative of OpenOffice.org (indemnification for example). The big vendors are playing evil games to increase their own power and ODF gets wedged somewhere in the middle. IBM could have joined hands with LibreOffice and its umbrella organisation. It hasn’t done so yet. There were even snide remarks from IBM. One person who urged IBM’s most relevant Vice President in this area claimed that the latter has not approved his comment, although after some discussion and an E-mail from this vice president we learned that he was too busy (which is probably true and not an excuse/afterthought). Anyway, IBM needs to clarify two things now: 1) will it join LibreOffice? 2) Where does it stand on the subject of licensing/copyrights and patents? IBM is generally a silent company after the antitrust complications, so it has communications problems (even when it communicates it is trying to hide the communication). █
References:
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The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.
-
IBM’s Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Collaboration Solutions., which lobbied for Oracle to spin OpenOffice off after it became clear that Oracle wasn’t going to put much, if any, resources into OpenOffice, said in a statement, “IBM welcomes Oracle’s contribution of OpenOffice software to the Apache Software Foundation. We look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the technology beginning with our strong support of the incubation process for OpenOffice at Apache.”
-
I was disturbed today to read that Oracle will seek to relicense all OpenOffice code under the Apache-2.0 license and move OpenOffice into the Apache Software Foundation.
I’ve written recently about how among the permissive licenses, my favorite is clearly the Apache License 2.0. However, I think that one should switch from a copyleft license to a permissive one only in rare circumstances and with the greatest of care.
Obviously, in this case, I oppose Oracle’s relicense of OpenOffice.org under Apache-License-2.0. It is probably obvious why I feel that way, but I shall explain nonetheless, just in case. I’m going to mostly ignore the motives for doing so, which I think are obvious: Oracle (and IBM, who are quoted in support of this move) for their own reasons don’t like The Document Foundation fork (LibreOffice) of OpenOffice.org. This is a last-ditch effort by IBM and Oracle to thwart the progress of that fork, which has been reported as quite successful and many distributions have begun to adopt LibreOffice. (Even non-software sites sites like Metafilter have users discussing changing to LibreOffice .)
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There is an entirely different class of CAAs where you give a company full right to your code, however. Sun (and later Oracle) demanded this for contributions to OpenOffice.org. They need this to be able to incorporate the contributions into non-free versions of OpenOffice like StarOffice or IBM’s Lotus Suite. So in essence, you have to give them the right to sell non-free versions of your code or you can’t contribute. As far as I’m concerned, this is clearly not a good use of CAAs!
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I guess Oracle thought the same thing. They ignored OpenOffice and its contributors after buying Sun. Sure they killed OpenSolaris first. It was only a matter of time before they ankled OpenOffice.
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06.01.11
Posted in IBM, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Standard at 11:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo by Dan Farber
Summary: OpenOffice.org is moving to Apache, which helps IBM after a short moment of uncertainty and doubt
PR blunders aside (IBM PR telling me, “if you blog about the end of this case, none of this information came from IBM, okay? Cheers…”), it has just been announced that, as SJVN told us all last night, OpenOffice.org is going to Apache and the IBM folks are quick to issue remarks about it, led by Brill, Weir, and Sutor. Weir says that:
Oracle has followed through with their earlier promise to “move OpenOffice.org to a purely community-based open source project.” OpenOffice is moving to Apache.
Prior to that Weir also said: “Disappointing to see so-called open source proponents desperately trying to squash an open source project. It must be Tuesday.” It is not clear if he was referring to the petition to Oracle. Perhaps he should clarify his statements, e.g. with a link.
Remember how IBM reacted after Oracle had sued Google. The issues of patents will be discussed here later. IBM almost bought Sun.
Sutor writes:
It’s been an interesting road to get to this point over the decades, with well and not-so-well publicized twists and turns, but I’m glad we got here.
We’ll have more about this shortly, hopefully something unique (although the Internet will be flooded by pundits). Let us remember that OpenOffice.org is Free software and so is LibreOffice. There is a lot to be said now which probably will be said by every FOSS/Linux site.
In defence of IBM, the company is bigger than Microsoft, but it is not fundamentally against Free software. Scale is not the problem (SCO, for example, was always quite small). Prepare for a lot of FUD from the Microsoft camp, which harbours the #1 cash cow. █
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