12.22.11
Posted in Interview, Red Hat at 6:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A short interview with Jim Whitehurst, who spoke to us about Red Hat’s performance
A
COUPLE of days ago a company working on behalf of Red Hat contacted us, whereupon we asked for some answers from Red Hat. We are pleased to have received them from the company’s CEO, Jim Whitehurst. Here is the quick Q&A.
How has the economic climate affected Red Hat’s performance? Has it been beneficial?
Year to date through November 30, 2011 (three quarters) we have experienced rapid growth; revenue 26%, income from operations 42% and net income 50%. Historically, we have performed well in both up and down economic cycles.
There have been numerous reports recently about Red Hat’s expansion and relocations. How does Red Hat view the prospect of expanding in Europe, where software patents are less of a problem?
Red Hat is expanding globally, including in Europe, with more than 70 offices now in over 30 countries. Software patents are not a criteria in our expansion plans.
How can a community of Free/open source software enthusiasts ensure that Red Hat — a key developer of pertinent components of the GNU/Linux operating system — maintains growth?
Red Hat is responsible for Red Hat’s growth based on our own strategies and business plans. The open source community is important to us and we actively work to encourage, cultivate and grow the community, but only Red Hat can drive its growth.
Have CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Oracle had any noticeable impact on Red Hat’s ability to sell support contracts?
No. █
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09.17.11
Posted in Law, Patents, Red Hat at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A Red Hat perspective on the recently-passed H.R. 1249
RED HAT was recently sued by MOSAID, a patent troll that Microsoft helped pass some patents to, by its very own admission. MOSAID is similar to Acacia, which also sued Red Hat.
According to Erick Robinson, whom we mentioned in March and in April, the lousy patent 'reform' we saw recently may in fact be helpful against patent trolls. To quote Red Hat’s OpenSource.com:
So it has finally happened: a patent reform bill has actually become law. Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted 89-9 to send H.R. 1249 to the White House, where it was signed into law today. While I have pointed out in the past that this bill misses out on several aspects of reform that previous bills attempted, it does include some useful aspects.
First, though, let’s discuss what the new law will NOT include. It will not include any provision tying damages in patent litigation to the specific contribution of the patent over prior technology nor will it provide any specific damages limitation. It will also not require bifurcated trials to separate liability and damages issues. It will not allow interlocutory (real-time, during the underlying case rather than post-verdict) appeal of claim constructions by courts. It will also not specifically include a provision restricting venue in patent litigation (but, as shown below, the joinder provision will have an effect on venue for some cases). Each of these provisions were included in prior versions of the legislation and would have helped fix the system.
[...]
The joinder provision included in the America Invents Act, as passed, which Red Hat actively supported, specifically states that there must be another basis for joinder beyond an allegation that the defendants have all infringed a patent. Thus, the new law should prevent the “file around the country, and add a few Texas mom and pops” tactic. In fact, the natural result of this new law should be that patent plaintiffs, especially non-practicing entities (NPEs), will generally have to file as many lawsuits as there are defendants. This will mean that each case will likely be filed either where each defendant is organized (often Delaware or Nevada) or where it has its principal place of business.
At least as important as this effective restriction on venue is the effect on NPEs of having to litigate one case per defendant. First, NPEs have been targeting multiple defendants in a single lawsuit to reduce their costs. More important, though, NPEs have been leveraging such lawsuits against defendants by forcing competitors and other unfriendly parties to either cooperate by sharing confidential documents, expenses, attorneys, and strategy or to spend even more money and resources in defending the case. The new “one defendant-one lawsuit” rule will require NPEs to try cases as many times as there are defendants. Not only is this prohibitively expensive, but it puts the validity of the patent(s) in suit in peril every time the case is tried.
Ultimately, however, patent trolls should not exist; neither should software patents. █
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09.16.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Red Hat, SLES/SLED at 11:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The role of SUSE, its “community”, and a new case study of SLES “Linux tax” at SAP
“MICROSOFT Linux” (also known as SUSE, which is partly funded by Microsoft by the way) is one of the biggest problems GNU/Linux has got on the server side at the moment. It’s mostly about SLES, as SLED is hardly relevant anymore. Microsoft basically takes part of the revenue made by putting SLES in the datacentre, which is exactly why Microsoft backs SUSE financially. It’s about combating distributions that do not pay Microsoft a penny, notably Red Hat/CentOS and Debian GNU/Linux.
SUSE organises an event for employees and volunteers, hoping to attract the latter using the “OpenSUSE” alter ego. To quote the latter article: “At the openSUSE Conference, we talked to the makers of openSUSE about the new developments for SUSE and for the community distribution.”
“Community” is code word for unpaid staff in this case. Microsoft is among those who profit from the work of this “community”.
The more major news this week is the announcement from SAP that it will carry on paying Microsoft a tax for using GNU/Linux. There is even a press release about it and this spin says:
“Our partnerships with SAP and IBM have enabled thousands of customers to gain from the exciting benefits SUSE Linux has to offer, including decreased operating costs and improved performance,” said Michael Miller, vice president of global marketing and alliances…
Shame on IBM for still allowing Microsoft to make money from GNU/Linux. Then again, IBM is not against software patents and it helped SUSE be acquired by Novell almost a decade ago. This whole thing is worth mentioning especially because only days earlier it was stressed that SAP supports Red Hat. When will SAP actually make Red Hat its platform of choice and stop choosing to pay Microsoft for something which is free? Some Microsoft allies like SAP actually want to do this. That’s where SUSE comes in. █
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08.26.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, Red Hat at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Software patents pressure on Red Hat and how the strategy shifted over time; a fresh report that is hostile towards patents gets published by NPR, which recently exposed Microsoft’s patent troll
THE problem with software patents is being realised by many news avenues, even the ‘Microsoft press’ which at least raises questions in a new column stating: “I’m struggling with my feelings about software patents. Although software patents might not seem directly related to your career as a SQL Server professional, software and technology are the bedrock of everything we do and that SQL Server is based on. The future direction of software and patents has the potential to have a profound affect your life and career. Every technology professional should be exploring this topic and forming your own opinions so that you can participate in shaping the future of this debate. (I encourage you to make those opinions known to your elected officials.) Aggressive use of software patents, often on questionable claims, is beginning to have a negative impact on the technology business.”
And this comes from a person who makes a living from Microsoft, which is a strong proponent of software patents not just in the US; it hires lobbyists to spread such bad policies in other countries too. People who carry water for Microsoft ought to come to grips with it. Another fairly FOSS-hostile source at least raises the question, “Are Lawyers Destroying Software?”
“The general premise was, as both companies had software patents they could work together to exclude the competition, mainly Red Hat.”It is rather apparent that Microsoft and patent lawyers are not interested in the benefit to their surroundings. It is very much the opposite in fact as they strive to gain at the expense of their surroundings. In light of this, consider what Novell chose to do when it liaised with Microsoft on software patents. The general premise was, as both companies had software patents they could work together to exclude the competition, mainly Red Hat.
Although there are still people who carry water for Novell, the company is dead (this one YouTube upload still promotes a product/project that was already killed by Attachmate) and Microsoft has found a ‘new’ Novell over in China [1, 2, 3]. It ought to be emphasised that it’s all about proprietary (taking something free and sticking blobs in it), but Adrian Bridgwater asks: “Is Microsoft trying out this much more open stance in the Chinese market where the rest of the world won’t see it happen (just in case the company doesn’t like it) perhaps?”
It is not an “open stance”. There is nothing “open” about Hyper-V.
Sean Michael Kerner does a good job explaining that Microsoft’s patent deal with Novell did not hurt Red Hat (he also rightly calls this a patent deal). To quote:
In November of 2006, Microsoft entered into a patent covenant and interoperability deal with Novell. In 2011, Microsoft has renewed and extended that deal to SUSE Linux, which was spun off from Novell as part of Attachmate’s $2.2 billion acquisition of the company.
Across the last five years, Microsoft has acquired over $300 million worth of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) subscriptions for resale and now has the option for an additional $100 million with SUSE. The Microsoft Novell deal shocked the Linux world at the time it was announced and potentially represented a risk to others in the Linux market.
As it turns out, five years later, it’s a risk that hasn’t affected SUSE Linux’s rival, Red Hat all that much, if at all.
“Patents always come up in the same way that it always comes up for any piece of proprietary software,” Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat told InternetNews.com. “I don’t think it’s any different for us than it is for any other software company.”
Whitehurst explained that Red Hat provides patent indemnification to its customers. He added that Red Hat has also defended itself in lawsuits as have others in the software industry.
“The thought that it (patents) were somehow different for open source than regular software, that has gone away,” Whitehurst said. “I don’t ever hear from customers that there is some differential and they need to be more worried because the software is open source.”
[...]
Whitehurst said that he never hears from customers that they will choose SUSE over Red Hat for interoperability issues. Going a step further, one of the Novell Microsoft partnership customer wins that the two companies announced back in 2007 was a win with Walmart.
As we explained at the time and on other occasions, Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner (very Linux-hostile) came from Walmart and Microsoft distorted this story about the Walmart deal. The FUD against Red Hat carries on as more patent trolls (some with Microsoft connections) carry on suing the company, e.g. Acacia a year after the Microsoft-Novell deal. One of the latest is MOSAID. We covered this at the time, but Professor Webbink looks at it more closely now. To quote his early analysis:
MOSAID Technologies, Inc. filed a patent infringement complaint [PDF] against Red Hat, IBM, Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks, NetApp and VMWare on August 10. The interesting thing about the complaint is that all of the defendants, except Red Hat, are sued under one patent, while Red Hat is the only defendant under the other patent. Why the actions under these different patents should proceed as a single action is beyond me, and I will be surprised if Red Hat doesn’t look to sever the complaint and proceed alone.
MOSAID is a Canadian company and a non-producing entity (yes, go ahead and call them a troll if you would like). Its sole business is to acquire and enforce patents, although it does claim to have developed some of its own patented inventions.
The patent asserted against Red Hat is U.S. Patent No. 5,892,914, entitled “System For Accessing Distributed Data Cache At Each Network Node To Pass Requirements And Data.”
As Pogson puts it:
I trust the judge will laugh this one out of court and send the troll the bill for cluttering up the court system.
The problem is, there are cases in the past where Red Hat paid patent trolls to just go away. NPR exposed Microsoft's network of patent trolls some weeks ago (over 1,300 proxies circling IV) and it’s not quite over yet because now comes the new report “Patent Wars Could Dull Tech’s Cutting Edge”. It says:
Some call it an international patent arms race: Tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Google are launching lawsuits over competing patent claims related to smartphones and tablets.
As NPR’s Laura Sydell tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne, companies are mounting takeovers aimed at gaining control of thousands of patents.
Google recently spent $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility, a cellphone manufacturer with more than 17,000 patents. And as Sydell has previously reported, “patent trolls” are on the lookout for potential infringements and the payday that a lawsuit might bring.
They are doing a good investigative job despite Bill Gates putting money on their table for self-promotion (which they give him). The most major patent attacks on Google come from Microsoft’s cartel, alleges Google. I’s not a mere theory as there is far too much evidence, including leaked strategic documents. █
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08.20.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents, Red Hat, Servers at 9:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Poor reporting on the subject of SUSE and Microsoft’s promotion of SUSE, which helps Microsoft turn GNU/Linux into its own cash cow
Sean Kerner has published a valuable article where he quotes SUSE as saying that they “Don’t Get the Credit [They] Deserve”. Funny, eh?
Have a look at this piece where Kerner does not neglect to mention the Microsoft ties (the incidental case of good journalism from him):
According to Clark, Attachmate didn’t buy Novell just to ‘milk’ the SUSE business, it bought it with the intention of aggressively growing the business. To that end, at the LinuxCon event, SUSE hung out a ‘we’re hiring’ sign. Clark said SUSE is hiring approximately 20 people to help staff various parts of the business.
[...]
SUSE has also recently extended its deal with Microsoft to the tune of an additional $100 million. As part of the deal, Microsoft resells SUSE Linux and works with SUSE on interoperability issues. Microsoft also provides SUSE with a patent covenant that it promises not to sue SUSE users over any alleged infringement of Microsoft’s intellectual property that might be in open source software.
Microsoft is funding SUSE to harm free distributions. Nothing has changed since 2006. Now, watch this weird new blog post from the 451 Group. Well, in an amazingly whitewashy piece, it is Jay (of all people) who neglects to see the bigger picture (Microsoft trying to injure Red Hat, for example, while turning GNU/Linux into its own cash cow). Jay lets it seem like Microsoft is the “world’s broadest supporter of Linux” (trollish headline). But to quote:
Despite the concerns about Microsoft’s control over SUSE Linux or Linux in general, the fact of the matter is Microsoft’s investment of both dollars, including its SUSE deals worth a few hundred million, and investment of of resources, such as the interoperability work with Novell/SUSE, the kernel contribution, the cross-OS and hypervisor support work with Red Hat and the support of CentOS, Microsoft is significantly supporting Linux development and use in the enterprise.
I wrote last year about the uncertainty around Novell/SUSE kernel contribution given the Attachmate acquisition.
Microsoft is still turning GNU/Linux into its own cash cow, which at the same time makes it harder for GNU/Linux to compete. It is the same strategy it uses to attack Android. How can anyone not see this?
As we pointed out yesterday, there are those who play the role of “apologist” for SUSE for purely technical reasons. There is that component called “OpenSUSE” (which organises events and contests), but its goal is to help sell Microsoft-taxed SLE* at the expense of Red Hat and Debian GNU/Linux, for example. Who benefits from this? We are not arguing that OpenSUSE is technically broken; in fact, based on this new review “[t]he only real sore point in the whole [OpenSUSE] experience was the perceived slight slowness of the system, though the numbers in the system monitor somehow did not bear that out. Otherwise, it’s stable, relatively user-friendly, quite professional, and reminds me of my favorite distribution, Linux Mint.”
But it’s not about the technical nature of the distro. Vulnerabilities too aside [1, 2], the main issue is that Microsoft is exploiting SUSE — OpenSUSE included — to make Free software a Microsoft cash cow. To give SUSE credit or to say that Microsoft is “world’s broadest supporter of Linux” is worse than stupid; it’s possibly dishonest, depending on intent. █
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07.06.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat at 2:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Paul Cormier remarks on the death of Novell and what Novell actually did before it got sold (and its patents passed to Microsoft)
OVER THE YEARS we’ve explained how Novell was migrating people to proprietary software while preserving a sort of bogus public identity of an “open source” company. In this new interview from the Massachusetts press, Paul Cormier says about Novell: “It’s a travesty. An absolute travesty. Customers were starting to want open source. So they’d come in with open source and [Novell would] try to switch them to the stuff that wasn’t open source. I think that was one of the nails in the coffin. And I also think cozying up to Microsoft. The Linux community felt sold out. It hurt their credibillity [sic] with the Linux community.”
In the next post, “Thoughts on Novell”, I will try to explain what happened to Novell over the years. I will try to do this in video because it’s quicker (too busy at work these days). █
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06.14.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu at 12:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Volunteer Gardener
Summary: How communities of large GNU/Linux distributions are often perceived by their patrons, even if this is not explicitly stated
ONE taboo subject in the GNU/Linux community was brought up last night in IRC. People get insulted or fearful (depending on their role) if someone points out the value of communities to the company with trademarks and control over these communities. If an unpaid volunteer perceives peers as people more worthy and better rewarded, there is backlash (see what selective monetary invectives did to Debian about 4 years ago). There are certain things that just cannot be said and certain illusions that are necessary for the status quo.
Here is an example scenario. If it is said that some volunteers help with the expectation of receiving a job that way (like placements and internships), they deny this aggressively. If a volunteer is called an employee of the company which pays a wage to run its community, then too opposition comes from many directions. It’s not that the claim is untrue, it’s just not a convent one to grasp.
“It’s not that the claim is untrue, it’s just not a convent one to grasp.”But let’s face it and be true to ourselves. Companies like Novell, Red Hat and even tiny Canonical have obligations to themselves and often to shareholders. The development communities are convenient to them because they reduce the cost of doing business (key products which are carriers to the rest of the portfolio), where the toll is the time and effort of people. As long as a company maintains full control of a community and has a clear priority when it comes to strategic direction (e.g. through paid community members) it remains an integral part of this community and also its proprietor. To merely say this is not heresy; it’s common sense. Perhaps it’s just the way one says which really counts at the end.
To be critical of the above is not the same as highlighting it and to self-censor based on what is ‘safe’ to argue is to no longer care about what’s true.
Speaking of which, “NOVELL” news is very scarce now because the company no longer exists as an independent entity, a lot of the staff was laid off, and managers mostly moved on and joined other companies. With the exception of few people like one who still organises Weekly News, we hardly see OpenSUSE activities from unpaid members. Communities collapse when the volunteers base gets to grips with the reality of exploitative companies like Novell. █
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05.26.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE, Red Hat at 7:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Co-authored with G. Forbes
Summary: OpenSUSE is fading away as AttachMSFT is phased in
THE formerly vibrant Planet SUSE is usually very quiet these days, save for a few fun events here and there. Recently though, there have been a large amount of blurbs from Greece that have suddenly rushed in, such as this one. Thomas Thym has attempted to reassure everyone that “Strategy is alive”. There are even some releases of OpenSUSE flavours/derivatives, such as a medical one. There is also an announcement for SUSE appliances for Fog Computing. This, however, does not relate directly to OpenSUSE per se.
As we have explained in recent posts, OpenSUSE has not received much assurance of a continued existence, unlike SUSE [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Jos Poortvliet, who has headed the project’s community following the departure of Zonker, carries on the cheerleading. Nevertheless, his attempts at morale boosting can only go so far. Based on this announcement from Jos, “OpenSUSE Build Service” is no more because the Linux Foundation has taken charge; the “OpenSUSE” part (Novell/AttachMSFT trademark) will be dropped:
“The openSUSE Build Service Team has decided to rename its cutting-edge packaging- and distribution build technology to Open Build Service,” Poortvliet explains. “The new name, while maintaining the well-known OBS acronym, signals its open and cross-distribution nature.”
It is a good time to review what OpenSUSE actually is anymore. The basic recipe is YaST from SUSE and all sorts of customisations applied to default desktop environments. Outside of that, there is also some kernel development from Greg Kroah-Hartman (who had an important role in OpenSUSE), but this portion of Novell is pretty much irrelevant to SUSE itself. Kroah-Hartman himself acts as mentor for Linux projects rather than a SUSE developer:
I’m a Google Summer of Code mentor for a project to port Linux to a specific system on a chip that happens to be in a number of older game platforms. Here’s one of these devices. I’m going to be in Taipei and Tokyo over the next few weeks, and it would be great if I could pick up one of these myself to help in the debugging effort of this project. Does anyone know of anywhere in either of those cities I might be able to get this device?
Incidentally, Sean Kerner has this new article titled “New Linux Kernel, New RHEL and New Boss for SUSE Linux”. Kroah-Hartman’s work will get applied to RHEL, among many other distributions, as well. Sean suggests some scepticism towards SUSE’s future in Free software:
The new SUSE Linux business also apparently remains fully committed to open source as well as the continuity of its existing projects.
This is not true based on the actions and inactions taken by AttachMSFT thus far. No commitment was expressed by laying off the Mono developers, and AttachMSFT has not proclaimed any commitment to “OpenSUSE” as a project. AttachMSFT is determined to remain a proprietary software company by all indications. █
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