Techrights http://techrights.org Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Wed, 16 May 2012 16:34:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Android Under Patent Attacks From Nokia, Microsoft, and Oracle http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/lawsuits-over-api-and-swpats/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/lawsuits-over-api-and-swpats/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 16:34:27 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60272 Military boat

Summary: A roundup of patent news involving Android and the US patent/copyright system, which facilitates ridiculous patents or lawsuits over APIs

THE moment that Nokia started suing Android vendors with patents we knew that it was just the beginning of Elop’s ugly strategy. Nokia now uses 45 patents against HTC and Viewsonic, which are responsible for many Android devices. Nokia is not going to sue Microsoft because it has been acting more as a proxy for Microsoft since signing a bizarre real that led to lawsuits against the management.

“Nokia is not going to sue Microsoft because it has been acting more as a proxy for Microsoft since signing a bizarre real that led to lawsuits against the management.”Now that Oracle directly supplies Java updates for Apple platforms, it sure seems like Oracle has also been acting as a bit of a proxy for Apple with its anti-Android lawsuit. Oracle’s CEO considers Apple’s spiritual leader to be his “best friend” after all. Oracle has not quite been getting its way so far. “Google vs Oracle court case reached a milestone today as the jury gave its verdict,” claimed a recent article. “The verdict is clearly in favor of Google as in this phase Oracle gets nothing out of this expensive court case.”

The same source says that “Oracle has already lost the first round of its battle against Google’s Android as only 9 lines of code found to be infringing which amounts to $0 in damages.”

There is a lot of coverage in Groklaw (with a lot of comments), but it’s very much aimed at lawyers. CNET speaks of Google’s stance:

Google sums up: No ‘shred of evidence’ for patent claim

[...]

Google’s counsel followed up with its closing statements in phase two of its legal battle against Oracle at the U.S. District Court of Northern California on Tuesday morning.

CNET is also summing up Oracle’s arguments and it mentioned Europe's stance on copyright on APIs right here. CNET has a lot of coverage on this subject and it is actually not too bad. Ars Technica writes this piece about the stance of glorified lawyers (judges):

Top judge: ditching software patents a “bad solution”

For decades, the courts have struggled to decide what types of innovation are eligible for patent protection. For much of that time, the central institution in that debate has been the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the appeals court that has jurisdiction over patent cases.

The Federal Circuit has been strongly pro-patent since its inception in 1982. It was the court that opened the floodgates for software patents with a series of permissive decisions during the 1990s. And it was the court that gave the green light to patents on medical diagnostic techniques, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court in March.

Why is the Federal Circuit so enthusiastic about extending patent protection to new fields? The court’s current members are understandably circumspect, but retired judges can be more candid. So on Friday, Ars Technica traveled to Princeton University to hear a keynote address by retired Judge Paul Michel, as part of a conference on patent law. Michel served on the Federal Circuit form 1988 to 2010, and was its chief judge for the last six years of his tenure. His comments shed light on the motivations behind the dramatic changes in patent law over the last two decades.

Judges ought not to rule on those matters because being lawyers — not productive workers — they serve an agenda other than the public’s.

Over at IDG, Dr. Glyn Moody, a scientist by background and trade, explains why software patents are bad and ties that to Microsoft’s lobbying:

VideoLAN shows how real that problem is. There simply aren’t many free software projects implementing video standards, say, because it’s impossible for them to comply with FRAND licensing. The only software that has flourished in this sector – VLC – has done so because the project is located in France, with laws there that it believes allow it to use those video standards without needing any licence at all. And as the project’s final comment makes clear, VideoLAN is not claiming that its users are covered by any licence. On the contrary, it explicitly warns them that it takes no responsibility for any “illegal use” of its projects.

I suggest that in many parts of the world, open source programs like VLC are indeed being used illegally, for the simple reason that VideoLAN has no licence to implement the video standards that are subject to patents in some parts of the world. Contrary to what Microsoft would have the Cabinet Office believe, the presence of FRAND-licensed standards has had a chilling effect on the production of certain classes of free software, precisely because of this problem.

VLC’s billion downloads are a testimony to the fact that people are keen to run high-quality open source software on the desktop, even though – perhaps unbeknownst to them – their use of it in certain jurisdictions is almost certainly illegal. Allowing FRAND-based standards in the UK would ensure that even more open source software is throttled at birth; or, if written in other jurisdictions that do not recognise the need for any licensing, that it is used by people ignorant of, or indifferent to, the letter of the law – hardly something the UK government would want to encourage.

If you want to help minimise the use of restrictive FRAND-based standards in the UK, you still have time to make a submission to the consultation on open standards, which closes on 4 June. I urge you to do so.

The SCOTUS and the USPTO, just like the UK-IPO, are run by lawyers, not people whose career is really at stake here. It should not be surprising that the USPTO covers its own back by defending software patents from Oracle:

The fact that this patent is now valid for inclusion in the lawsuit means that the number of patents Oracle can leverage in the proceedings has increased from two to three. The USPTO had declared the patent invalid on 7 February, a decision that Oracle appealed. The fact that Oracle has won this appeal and managed to get the patent declared as valid again could allow Oracle’s lawyers to make a stronger argument in court than if it had not been re-examined as it has already been challenged with prior art.

Following the borderline retreat of Oracle from patents this may mark a return to that awful strategy which the EU would not endorse. Just as patents were put aside the bureaucrats from the USPTO came out again with more complications at hand:

As Oracle’s litigation against Google over copyright and patent violations in Android goes on, all sides seem determined to end the lawsuit sooner rather than later. Judge William Alsup has overruled the jury in another matter of copyright infringement, and the patent phase of the suit is expected to end some time this week.

And further, says the same source:

Although Oracle’s lawsuit against Google is now well into the patent phase, several motions have been filed over the last few days that pertain to the matters of alleged copyright infringement from the earlier phase of the trial. Google has also moved to drop the damages part of the case, which would leave the judge to decide applicable damages by himself.

Regarding the latest ruling, it may get overruled and in the mean time developers will suffer:

Developers fear they’ll be stifled by judgement in Oracle-Google suit

If Oracle prevails in its contention that APIs can be copyrighted, software developers could be stifled in how they work and innovate, say observers of the ongoing Oracle-Google trial, in which Oracle claims Google improperly used Java technology in the Android mobile software platform.

The case of Microsoft vs. Motorola can help defuse some of the aggression from Microsoft (through deterrence, such as blocking Vista 7), but the Oracle case is probably a bigger issue right now. As an Android developer myself, this has an effect on me too. The simplest fix, which is also most rational, is to invalidate all software patents and amend copyright laws (modernise them). █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/lawsuits-over-api-and-swpats/feed/ 0 Helping OpenSUSE is Helping Microsoft Tax GNU/Linux http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/opensuse-and-sled/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/opensuse-and-sled/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 16:00:44 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60266 Useful idiocy

Raking leaves

Summary: A short wave of calls to refrain from OpenSUSE promotion, which through the upstream is helping Microsoft, the sponsor

THE spreading of Microsoft file systems by Tuxera (‘little Novell’) has helped Microsoft tax Linux while Novell’s SUSE has the same effect on products or companies which foolishly go for this unnecessary option.

Muktware gives some lip service to OpenSUSE by speaking to the Project Manager of the Open Build Service (see this page), but the false supposition that helping OpenSUSE is not helping SUSE was recently shattered quite explicitly by Mr. Jaeger, whose words are interpreted as follows:

In a blog post today Jaeger explained some of the process of development at a commercial/community entity. He said that changes either come from the community edition and pushed upstream or done by the SLED team and pushed downstream. He also thinks it’s good practice to push all changes upstream and let them decide to use it or request changes.

In other words, praises like this one for OpenSUSE indirectly help the Microsoft-taxed distribution of GNU/Linux. People who say that helping OpenSUSE is not the same as helping SUSE (indirectly controlled by Microsoft) are simply not paying attention. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/opensuse-and-sled/feed/ 0 Microsoft May Face Federal Action for Blocking Rival Web Browsers on ARM http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/mozilla-on-arm/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/mozilla-on-arm/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 15:41:32 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60260 Asa Dotzler
Asa Dotzler, via WIkipedia

Summary: Mozilla’s call for action is taken seriously by people at The Hill (Washington)

A SHORT while ago we mentioned how Microsoft was using an ARM transition to block competitors (at the OS and application levels).

Mozilla spoke firmly on the subject (thanks, Asa) and according to this report, it may have worked: [via]

The Lede: Senate Judiciary Committee staffers plan to take a look at allegations that Microsoft has made it difficult for competing Web browsers to run on a certain version of Windows, an aide to Antitrust subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) told The Hill Thursday.

The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, and Google have accused Microsoft of hindering their browsers’ ability to run on Windows devices with ARM processors, which are popular in mobile phones. They say that only Microsoft’s Explorer browser is able to run on the devices.

Swapnil Bhartiya wrote:

Microsoft’s decision to block competitors will raise antitrust concerns. Mozilla warns, ” If Windows on ARM is simply another version of Windows on new hardware, it also runs afoul of the EC browser choice commitments and seems to represent the very behavior the DOJ-Microsoft settlement sought to prohibit.”

Will similar action be taken to address Microsoft’s action against Linux on ARM [1, 2, 3, 4]? █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/mozilla-on-arm/feed/ 0 Links 16/5/2012: 125,000 GNU/Linux Machines for Pakistani Students, Android 4.0 Rollouts http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/android-4-0-rollouts/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/android-4-0-rollouts/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 11:22:27 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60257

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was Nearly Lost because of a Linux Command

    In ‘The Movie Vanishes’ short animation film by Pixar, Oren Jacob and Galyn Susman tell how a big part of Toy Story 2 was almost deleted because of an accidental Linux command ‘rm’ and poor backup system.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Virginia Firm Sells Gun Targets Resembling Trayvon Martin

      An online gun retailer has been criticized for promoting an advertisement for shooting targets that resemble 17-year old shooting victim Trayvon Martin. The target depicted a hooded figure holding skittles and tea with crosshairs on his chest. Martin was reportedly holding skittles and tea when he was shot dead — in the chest — by George Zimmerman in Florida in February 2012. The horrific shooting of the unarmed youth led to a national conversation about the NRA-crafted Stand Your Ground/Shoot to Kill law and the role the American Legislative Exchange Council played in spreading the Florida law across the nation.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • LISTEN: Occupy Wall Street Gets an Album and Everyone Is On It
    • Gupta seeks calls thrown out of U.S. insider trial

      NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta, the most prominent corporate figure indicted in a U.S. crackdown on insider trading, has asked a judge to throw out more than two dozen phone conversations that the government has sought to present as evidence at his trial.

    • Goldman Traders Tried to Manipulate Derivatives Market in ’07, Report Says

      Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CMD Special Report: New Documents Confirm Koch Was on ALEC Crime Task Force Led by NRA

      ALEC announced it was dropping that task force in the wake of the controversy over the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin and so-called “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) laws. However, the co-leader of that task force, Rep. Jerry Madden (R-TX), revealed ALEC’s announcement to be a PR maneuver when he reassured The Christian Post that his task force’s work would continue through other ALEC task forces.

  • Censorship

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • US Supremes hammer final nail into Psystar coffin

        The long and sordid Psystar saga creaked to its anti-climactic close on Monday: the US Supreme Court has refused to hear the hackintosher’s request to review an appeals court’s September 2011 decision not to overturn a December 2009 permanent injunction preventing the Florida company from selling Mac OS X–based clones.

      • Music labels force pioneering MP3tunes into bankruptcy

        MP3tunes, a music locker service that has spent years locked in litigation with major record labels, announced last week that it was closing up shop. The startup scored a partial victory in court last year, helping to establish the legality of cloud music services in the process. But founder Michael Robertson says that “four and a half years of legal torment” forced his company to file for bankruptcy on April 27.

      • Who Needs SOPA When Courts Will Pretend SOPA Already Exists?

        Back in November, we wrote about one of a series of cases we had seen where trademark holders were going to court with a list of domain names that they insisted were selling counterfeit goods and getting the courts to issue injunctions that appeared to be quite similar to what SOPA would have allowed had it passed. That is, basically upon request, a trademark holder was able to get domain registrars to kill domain names, while forcing search engines and social networks to put in place blockades barring such sites from being listed. It appears that more trademark holders are taking notice. Jeff Roberts has the story of (regular IP extremist) Louis Vuitton trying the same thing.

      • IP-Address Can’t Even Identify a State, BitTorrent Judge Rules

        The mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that are sweeping the United States are in a heap of trouble. After a Florida judge ruled that an IP-address is not a person, a Californian colleague has gone even further in protecting the First Amendment rights of BitTorrent users. The judge in question points out that geolocation tools are far from accurate and that it’s therefore uncertain that his court has jurisdiction over cases involving alleged BitTorrent pirates. As a result, 15 of these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits were dismissed.

      • MCA, the DMCA, and stifled collaboration

        Earlier this month, the world lost a music pioneer when Adam Yauch, a.k.a “MCA” of the Beastie Boys, succumbed to cancer at the age of 47. A founding member of the Beastie Boys, Yauch expanded upon his success in the music industry to exert his considerable influence and contributions outside music. He had a strong interest in film, which resulted in him directing several of the Boys’ music videos and in 2008 led to him founding Oscilloscope Studios, which produces and promotes independent films. In the 1990s, Yauch adopted Buddhism and began getting involved socially and politically in a variety of charities and activism.

      • ACTA

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/16/android-4-0-rollouts/feed/ 0 Links 15/5/2012: Linux 3.4 is Near, Mandriva to Have More Releases http://techrights.org/2012/05/15/mandriva-to-have-more-releases/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/15/mandriva-to-have-more-releases/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 14:20:28 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60253

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open-source media player VLC tops a billion downloads

    Open-source staple VLC has reached over a billion downloads, the VideoLAN Organization announced Sunday.

  • Open source software: It’s more than just free stuff

    Free software. In many ways it is an unfortunate term to describe what most people today know as open source software. Although the term is intended to convey the idea of freedom, it is often misunderstood as meaning ‘free of cost’. And while most open software is indeed available free of charge, there are still costs associated with implementing any software in a business. Open source software’s real value is not that it is cheaper than other alternatives, though that is more often than not the reality, it is that it offers a set of values that proprietary does not.

  • The next generation of open source software procurement models

    One year ago, the new Swedish framework agreement for the procurement of open source became active. Five suppliers were contracted to provide software and services. Central government, the public educational sector, all twenty county councils, and 225 out of the 290 Swedish municipalities are participating. They call off mini competitions for contracts the suppliers then have to battle for. This model differs from the recommendations made in the European ‘Guideline on public procurement of Open Source Software’, aiming to overcome current barriers and increase the use of open source.

  • Open source enables high-volume searches

    Twitter, Facebook, the Library of Congress — all of these institutions have mind-numbing amounts of structured and unstructured data that must be indexed and searched quickly. In Twitter’s case, that’s about 300 million new pieces of information to index every day.

  • OpenMAMA Project Delivers First Release of Middleware Messaging API

    The Linux Foundation announced that the OpenMAMA project has announced version 2.1 of the technology–the first release of open-source Middleware Agnostic Messaging API, or MAMA.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox’s four release channels explained

        By now, it should be easy to pick a browser. Most of you probably settled on a favorite ages ago, and it’s going to take some seriously cool new features — or a whole lot of crashing — to make you switch at this point. But even if you’re in love with your default you might be wondering if you’re running the right channel.

      • Is Mozilla Punting on Web Apps for Linux?

        While Mozilla is a leading light in the open source community, every so often I’m reminded that the same isn’t always true in the Linux community.

  • Databases

    • Looking at the PostGIS 2.0 Release

      The PostGIS database project made its long-awaited 2.0.0 release in April, marking the culmination of more than two years of development. PostGIS is an industrial-strength geographical database that serves as the storage system for a wide range of geo-data processing systems, from map servers to analysis tools.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice – Enhance desktop productivity

      LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. Works on all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, etc.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Talend updates data tools to 5.1.0

        Talend has updated all the applications that run on its Open Studio unified platform to version 5.1.0. Talend’s Open Studio is an Eclipse-based environment that hosts the company’s Data Integration, Big Data, Data Quality, MDM (Master Data Management) and ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) products. The system allows a user to, using the Data Integration as an example, use a GUI to define processes that can extract data from the web, databases, files or other resources, process that data, and feed it on to other systems. The resulting definition can then be compiled into a production application.

      • SugarCRM 6.5 Adds Just a Touch of Sweetener

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • PulseAudio 2.0 makes better use of modern hardware features

      The recently released PulseAudio 2.0 offers improved support for the jack detection feature that is available in modern sound hardware. If a user is running Linux kernels from version 3.3 and connects, for example, a second set of stereo speakers, the audio framework will detect this and offer separate volume controls along with other features. The PulseAudio developers plan to add further improvements in the future, for example to simplify the configuration of multi-channel environments.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source adoption on the rise in the French government

      In the statement, presidential candidate François Hollande also expressed his support for open source software. He agrees with Sarkozy that open source and open standards should be cultivated, especially in government and small and medium enterprises. Hollande is also strongly opposed to software patents and said that he “will ensure that the implementation of the Community patent is not an opportunity to legitimize software patents, mathematical methods and business methods.” President Sarkozy, on the other hand, is in favour of software patents.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Is open hardware creating a more open world?

        Just as retro ideas from a bygone era can inspire modern fashion, film, and TV trends, today’s researchers are being empowered by the revival of an innovative technology concept from the past: open-source hardware.

  • Programming

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/15/mandriva-to-have-more-releases/feed/ 0 Links – TPP Meeting Infiltrated, More Protest Needed. http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/links-tpp-meeting-infiltrated-more-protest-needed/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/links-tpp-meeting-infiltrated-more-protest-needed/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 22:50:12 +0000 Guest Editorial Team http://techrights.org/?p=60148 Reader’s Picks
  • Will “8″ Fly or is it Cripple-ware?

    Non free software is always cripple/mal/spyware.

  • Science

    • Emotion Can Shut Down High-Level Mental Processes Without Our Knowledge, in Our Native Language

      The psychologists made this discovery by asking English-speaking Chinese people whether word pairs were related in meaning. Some of the word pairs were related in their Chinese translations. Although not consciously acknowledging a relation, measurements of electrical activity in the brain revealed that the bilingual participants were unconsciously translating the words. However, uncannily, this activity was not observed when the English words had a negative meaning.

  • Hardware

    • Chuckle. No One Wants Small Expensive Computers.

      2012 will blow away records for tablets shipped in 2011 and M$ will be a no-show.

      Don’t expect Windows on ARM tablets till 2013. A few companies are going to launch expensive WinTel tablets

    • The Setup, Eric S Raymond

      The interesting details about my desktop setup are the peripherals. I like Model-M-style clicky keyboards (I’m typing on a Unicomp Model M). I prefer trackballs over mice and use a Logitech TrackMan. I like lots of vertical pixels for my Emacs window, so I’m rocking a Samsung SyncMaster 1100DF at 1800×1440 with 120dpi. My road machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad X60 … I like intricate music playing while I hack (Liquid Tension Experiment playing now).

  • Security

    • IAmA a malware coder and botnet operator, AMA

      The author says a lot of interesting things in comments. Of course, it’s all Windows.

    • Lauren Lauren Weinstein: More details on the .secure TLD proposal

      You may recall my posting yesterday (http://j.mp/Ku8pEd) where I suggested that the .secure TLD proposal is fundamentally flawed for many reasons. The CTO of the company involved contacted me this morning, pointing at their blog with more details: http://unhandled.com/ — After reviewing this information, which includes their proposals for a broader “domain policy framework,” I’m forced to stand by my earlier characterization. … The concept of .secure is essentially 180 degrees away from the model I believe we should be working towards. Rather than centralizing security, we need to be distributing it…

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

      The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • Anti-Trust

    • Firefox on Windows on ARM – Microsoft Says No

      you don’t get those privileges (certain API access) unless you’re the default browser and I think that’s deeply unfair (a post for later,) but at least we’re able to build a competitive browser and ship it to Windows users on x86 chips. But on ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won’t give to other browsers

      Microsoft has played API games forever, what’s new is that they are pretending it’s OK and are trying to extend their death grip to ARM [2].

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Goldman Looks to Hire Social Media Strategist

      The rich and powerful already have a tremendous astroturf presence, most graphically revealed in the HB Garry/Aaron Barr email spill. Techrights has covered Microsoft’s disgusting astroturf effort for years.

  • Censorship

    • Few Companies Fight Patriot Act Gag Orders, FBI Admits

      “Thus far, there have been only four challenges to the non-disclosure requirement,” Holder wrote, “and in two of the challenges, the FBI permitted the recipient to disclose the fact that an NSL was received.” … The FBI has sent out nearly 300,000 NSLs since 2000, about 50,000 of which have been sent out since the new policy for challenging NSL gag orders went into effect. Last year alone, the FBI sent out 16,511 NSLs requesting information pertaining to 7,201 U.S. persons.

    • If You Meet a Censor, Ask Them This One Question
    • Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Fount to be Corrupt

      … the plaintiff’s representative in the case – a professor Visser – offered commercial courses in anti-piracy, together with the judge, Chris Hensen. The plaintiff and judge were running a commercial enterprise together, one that had a direct bearing on the subject matter of the case. … It’s not just any course they do together, it’s part of the Dutch bar association’s official training program for lawyers.

    • In the US, you can still say almost anything, but someone just may be listening in

      a new kind of corporate oligopoly is emerging. Coupled with increasingly controlling activities by government, often in concert with corporate interests, the new choke points threaten to re-centralize media, or at least return control to a few dominant parties. … wired-line carriers believe that they should be able to decide what bits of information get delivered in what order and at what speed, if they get delivered at all. … The serious potential for problems with wired-line broadband is nothing next to the actual situation with mobile carriers. … The copyright industries have every intention of being another [chokepoint]. … Private companies are creating their own ecosystems, with minimal regulatory interference … If you create a journalism app to be sold in the iPhone or iPad marketplace, you explicitly give Apple the right to decide whether your journalism content is acceptable under the company’s vague guidelines. … Facebook is another potential threat to independent journalism. … journalists need to upgrade their own techniques and technology when it comes to protecting sources.

      It is not surprising that one monopoly helps the other, as big publishers and telco helped Apple, because the monopolies are ultimately owned be the same few wealthy families that want to guard their relative position. What’s shameful is the willingness of our government to serve them at everyone else’s expense.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Gay rights in the US, state by state
    • Caught on Tape: Walker Plans for a Single Party State

      Walker: “Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. . .”

      So there you have it, the attack on civil servants in Wisconsin was not motivated by budget it was politics and class warfare.

    • Dell response regarding insensitive comments from Mads Christensen

      “The IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy” he says. “What are you actually doing here?” he adds to the few women who are actually present in the room. … [more tastless stuff] … the moderator of the day finishes of by asking all (men) in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, “shut up bitch!”.

      Dell is sorry they got caught laughing about discrimination against women in the workplace. It’s amazing how little attention this got a month ago compared to the “Virgin of Emacs.” That’s more evidence of an organized campaign around to smear RMS.

    • Why Are People Resigning Before The Copyright Industries’ Will?

      When did people forget that legislators, and not corporations, have the final say over our laws?

  • Education Watch

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Digital Handcuffs

    • Technology should help us share, not constrain us

      Printed books let us do that. I couldn’t do it with most commercial ebooks; it’s not “allowed”. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict reading, so it simply won’t allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are “not allowed” for ebooks.

  • TPP

    • Live from the Trenches: TPP Negotiations in Dallas

      The public is excluded from meaningful monitoring or input.

    • Party ends badly for U.S. trade reps, federal agents

      The crowd of negotiators and corporate representatives applauded, and “Haversall” continued: “I’d like to personally thank the negotiators for their relentless efforts. The TPP agreement is shaping up to be a fantastic way for us to maximize profits, regardless of what the public of this nation—or any other nation—thinks is right.” … Mr. Haversall confidently re-took the microphone and warmly invited Kirk to accept the award.

      Kirk moved towards the stage, but federal agents blocked his path to protect him from further embarrassment. At that point, a dozen well-dressed “delegates” (local activists, some from Occupy Dallas) broke into ecstatic dance and chanted “TPP! TPP! TPP!” for several minutes until Dallas police arrived.

      The look of panic on the corporate spokes drone in this video is almost as funny as US Trade representative Kirk’s “We came, we saw, we shopped”.

    • EFF petition: No Backroom Deals to Regulate the Internet: Speak Out Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership!
    • Before and After SOPA

      The defeat, even if only temporary, of SOPA and PIPA was surely one key factor in the sudden upswelling of protests against ACTA, which until that point had seemed almost certain to be ratified in the EU. The actions against SOPA and ACTA have led to renewed analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), currently being negotiated behind closed doors in Dallas.

      Let’s make these defeats permanent.

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/links-tpp-meeting-infiltrated-more-protest-needed/feed/ 0 Europe Rules Against Monopolies on APIs http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/copyrights-and-api/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/copyrights-and-api/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 16:22:08 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60244 Android 2.0

Summary: The case against Android notwithstanding, the highest European court rules that APIs cannot be covered by copyrights

WHILE developing for Android, one must get accustomed to API changes and harness the subtle differences between Android versions, not just different device types with a wide variety of hardware specifications. But the API is what unifies everything and enables many programs to run on many devices, bringing value (and users) to the platform. Oracle, headed by a close friend of Apple’s spiritual leader, decided not only to attack Android with software patents but it also took a blow at the API level. In Europe, a new ruling from the highest court disqualifies Oracle’s strategy. To quote: “The European Court of Justice ruled this morning that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.”

Here is another take on it:

The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that application programming interfaces (APIs) and other functional characteristics of computer software are not eligible for copyright protection. Users have the right to examine computer software in order to clone its functionality—and vendors cannot override these user rights with a license agreement, the court said.

Over in the US, however, the ruling is more complicated:

The jury deliberating over Oracle Corp.’s claims that Google Inc. infringed copyrights protecting Oracle’s Java technology reached a mixed decision Monday, which could leave Google on the hook for only a relatively minimal amount of damages.

No royalties should be paid based on European principles, but in the US it’s another story. Oracle is just trying to cause damage to Android and developers should speak out against it. In my personal blog I’ve begun writing about Android development. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/copyrights-and-api/feed/ 0 Microsoft Versus Education http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-versus-education/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-versus-education/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 16:10:11 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60240 US Department of Education seal

Summary: A bit of news/commentary on Microsoft in education (indoctrination)

SEVERAL YEARS ago we wrote a great deal about BECTA, which was responsible for making the next generation of British adults just a bunch of Microsoft robots. Outside the UK we confront a similar type of situation. Particular government officials decide to teach children Microsoft, not computing. Bill Gates contributes towards this catastrophe, but he hides his tracks better.

In this new post, Shane asks, “[h]as Microsoft ruined computer education?”

I have noticed that as the years have gone by there are less and less computer savy people around. Sure they know how to “use” computers and electronic equipment but they do not know how to make the computers do what they want. They are more of a “monkey see, monkey do” mentality. This is not from people who wore long shorts when televisions were black and white. This is from people who have never known a life without computers.

These people who have all the opportunity in the world to take control of their technological life are not doing so. From what I have read around the tubes and heard as well as seen with my own four peepers the interest, indeed ability in manipulating the guts and goo of computers is rapidly declining. So much so that a Florida university is shutting down it’s computer research lab and some bloggers are calling for more to be shut down.

I have heard a complaint or two that these types of courses are turning out to be not much more than how to use microsoft products, rather than how to control a computer. I am wondering if this unfortunate state of affairs should be put squarely on microsofts shoulders.

It is a great injustice when children are given no choice but to become ‘consumers’ of Microsoft tools, at their patents’ expense. Later this year we’ll catch up with what the Gates Foundation is doing to assure this continued dependence on Microsoft. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-versus-education/feed/ 1 Patents Are Never ‘Open Source’ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/patents-are-never-open-source/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/patents-are-never-open-source/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 16:03:36 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60234 Microsoft Florian

Summary: The disinformation tactic which ascribes patents to FOSS as seen in the news

When Facebook got sued by Yahoo some called it an “open source” patent war, which makes no sense. After all, both companies are in Microsoft’s pocket and other than lip service they give almost nothing to Open Source these days. Nevertheless, as one writer puts it:

Yahoo! said it believes 16 patents held by the Internet giant have been used in Facebook’s data centers and servers, according to a regulatory filing made by Facebook.

The social media company alerted the market of its share price for its upcoming IPO, which valued the company between US$85bn and $85bn yesterday. In its document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, however, it sought to alert shareholders of possible risks that could affect the company.

There is nothing there about Open Source. And actually, in an article about “open source innovation” we find the same odd insinuation that Facebook and patents somehow relate to Open Source (although the headline has been modified since it was first published). To quote:

You may have heard this week that Abraham Lincoln filed a patent for Facebook in 1845. Rest assured, it’s as untrue as it sounds. While the hoax ran wild around the Internet, the stories about it tended to get one piece right: Lincoln held a patent for an invention, making him the only president with that distinction. In 1849, he received a patent for a flotation system to help dislodge boats from sandbars. As Smithsonian magazine described in 2006, Lincoln traveled on the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes in his younger years and experienced the hazard of unpredictable sandbars.

The whole notion of “open source” patents (or FOSS patents) is absurd and it’s part of the FUD we strive to counter.

Originally, patents were designed to incentivise publication, but this is no longer the case. It’s all about protectionism now. Just watch what the patent office is doing now:

We’re told, repeatedly, by some patent system supporters that the whole point of the patent system is really about “disclosure.” Of course, this is a myth for a variety of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that in many industries patents are both completely useless to learn anything from and are never used to learn how things are done. This is especially true in software, where you will never hear about anyone learning how to do anything from a patent. A few years back, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) started publishing nearly all patent applications 18 months after the application came in. This is a pretty common practice around the globe. If a patent system is about disclosure, this makes sense — and in theory, allows for people to point out prior art or protest certain patents before they’re issued. There is a current exception for patents deemed in the interest of national security to keep secret (such as patents on nuclear energy).

There is nothing “open” or “transparent” about patents these days. As nobody wishes to read them, they serve no purpose other than to deter and intimidate. They are the opposite of sharing, as they impose a limitation on mere sharing of thoughts. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/patents-are-never-open-source/feed/ 0 Signs of Progress: Work for Microsoft, Get Ostracised From Panels/Public Consultations http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-moles-in-panels/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-moles-in-panels/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 15:54:19 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60229 ACT Microsoft

Summary: Convicted monopolist Microsoft has its moles’ voice invalidated, based on the conflict of interest (Microsoft versus the public)

WITH Microsoft moles like Hopkirk or Müller out there, it seems ever more reasonable to watch out for “controlled opposition” strategies. Microsoft is trying to speak ‘on behalf’ of its opposition (e.g. “FOSS patents”), as it has done for quite a while now. The H writes about this latest example where Microsoft influence poisons the well:

The Cabinet Office has confirmed that the consultation on Open Standards which was due to close next week has now been extended by a month after the facilitator of a round table discussion was discovered to have been directly advising Microsoft on the Open Standards consultation. The roundtable events have been held to bring opinions together and as a complementary source of input to the consultation, alongside the email, post and online methods for offering opinions on the government’s proposals.

According to the Cabinet Office, Dr Andrew Hopkirk facilitated a 4 April 2012 roundtable around “Competition and European Interaction”. Hopkirk, described as “a respected advocate for ‘openness and interoperability of systems, of people, processes and information technologies’”, was engaged by the Cabinet Office as a facilitator on a pro bono basis.

A few years ago Microsoft did the same type of thing in Europe, but government officials turned a blind eye, even in the face of complaints. So this latest development represents progress. See the links below. █

  1. European Open Source Software Workgroup a Total Scam: Hijacked and Subverted by Microsoft et al
  2. Microsoft’s AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
  3. Does the European Commission Harbour a Destruction of Free/Open Source Software Workgroup?
  4. The Illusion of Transparency at the European Parliament/Commission (on Microsoft)
  5. 2 Months and No Disclosure from the European Parliament
  6. After 3 Months, Europe Lets Microsoft-Influenced EU Panel be Seen
  7. Formal Complaint Against European Commission for Harbouring Microsoft Lobbyists
  8. ‘European’ Software Strategy Published, Written by Lobbyists and Multinationals
  9. Microsoft Uses Inside Influence to Grab Control, Redefine “Open Source”
  10. With Friends Like These, Who Needs Microsoft?
  11. Microsoft-Funded Fake ‘SMB’ Group Still Lobbies for Software Patents in Europe
]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/microsoft-moles-in-panels/feed/ 0 Links 14/5/2012: Linux Kernel 3.3.5, Wine 1.5.4 http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/wine-1-5-4/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/wine-1-5-4/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 11:25:48 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60225

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • AT4AM will become open source

    Some of my colleagues were keen on broader access to AT4AM, the amendment template software of the European Parliament. It is used by Members of the European parliament to draft amendments to legal text.

  • the age of pragmatists

    In the process of achieving world domination, the philosophizing was largely factored out of the community. I mentioned a few individuals in the “founding philosophers” entry, and I think it is interesting to examine what happened with them.

  • Free and Open-Source Software bring an Open-Community

    It’s often associated that open-source is referred to Linux and FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). But as equally as important is the community. And what I want to touch base on is not only the open-source community, but how “open” the development community is as opposed to the development community of Microsoft Windows. And particularly at a corporate and managerial level.

  • Nepal and the impact of open source

    Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world with many gender, educational, and digital divides. Yet it is gradually being transformed by open source and digital technology. There’s little question that as Nepal seeks to help its citizens become a part of the global digital economy, it faces a series of challenges: political instability, remote physical access, poor infrastructure, and rural poverty. In April 2012, the World Economic Forum released a report that identified Nepal as one of the least networked countries in the world, at the bottom of world rankings.

  • Open source makes you bolder

    I put on my open source hat and asked myself these question:

    1. Do I have the skills and know how to put on a good explanatory talk about Twitter?
    2. Do I know how to record such a talk to video?
    3. Do I know how to edit that video and upload it to the web?

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

        I’ve been using Google Chrome for Linux since it was first made available. I use Gmail, Google Docs (now Drive), Google Plus, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Music, and many more. I am the original owner of an original CR-48 Chromebook, having received mine way back in Dec. 2010. I promote Google services at work and have worked hard to point my business’ compass towards their entire suite of offerings. I use a Samsung Nexus S with an official build of Android 4.04 and I’m only interested in official devices moving forward.

    • Mozilla

      • Getting snappy – performance optimizations in Firefox 13

        Back in the fall of 2011, we took a targeted look at Firefox responsiveness issues. We identified a number of short term projects that together could achieve significant responsiveness improvements in day-to-day Firefox usage. Project Snappy kicked off at the end of the year with the goal of improving Firefox responsiveness.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Busy weekend with Mageia, LibreOffice, and Liberté

      After an intense week, I decided to forget about work this weekend and have some time for my hobby, software testing. So, I downloaded Mageia 2 RC, LibreOffice 3.4.5, and a Linux distro that I had never heard of: Liberté 2012.1.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD Achieved A Lot In Q1’2012

      For the first three months of the 2012 calendar year, the FreeBSD project achieved a lot when it came to advancing their open operating system. Here’s some of the interesting highlights from their quarterly status report.

      The FreeBSD Q1’2012 quarterly status report can be read in full here, while below are some of the most interesting tid-bits.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Picture-editing made easy

      Gimpshop is based on Gimp, but looks like Photoshop, and those who are used to working in Photoshop can use Gimpshop.

      I knew that though Gimp and Gimpshop were excellent free programs, there were some features he offered his customers that were not available in Gimpshop. He said he would change normal pictures to sepia or black and white or add vintage effects.

    • Richard M. Stallman, free software leader falls ill at conference

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • History of open source in government

      It is difficult to imagine the Federal government moving in one well-coordinated direction on any matter, and so it has been with the adoption of open source software. Some agencies were early adopters, especially the academic and research communities. As it did in universities, open source adoption in the US government originated in research settings, where sharing and collaboration were already part of the culture of pedagogy. In this way, the government had been using and creating open source software even before it was called “open source.” Other agencies and departments have been more conservative, for a variety of reasons, and are only just now bringing open source software into their operations. With this in mind, the history of open source in the US government is best understood as a series of individual stories that have collectively led to the pervasive adoption of open source we see today.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Kansas City explores open government, civic life, and innovation

      The exploration of open government and civic participation in Kansas City has already begun. This weekend, a new chapter begins. A chapter that will include open source, open data, citizen engagement, a Bike Walk hackathon, and more. In fact, it might materialize into several chapters that could start with rapid-fire lighting talks and end with dueling mayors who are innovating beyond borders. And what would a CityCamp be without an unconference? That’s a whole chapter by itself.

    • Sharing the open source journey with Kansas City

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 for Audio Applications

      Recently, “cloud”-based music services, from big names like Amazon, Google and Apple, have been getting attention in the press. These services allow you to store your music on a corporate server and access it through your own Internet-connected device anytime you like. It’s easy to see the appeal of these services. This is the kind of thing the Internet is for, right?

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

      Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”

    • Why Bank Equity Is Not Expensive

      Since the 2008 market crash, banking interests and economists have clashed over how much of their operations banks should fund with equity as opposed to debt. Bankers and others often say that, “equity is expensive.” By contrast, a recent paper, coauthored by three faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, argues that this conventional wisdom is incorrect, and that, “Quite simply, bank equity is not expensive from a social perspective, and high leverage is not required in order for banks to perform all their socially valuable functions.”

  • Privacy

    • FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites – now

      CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • Velasco: ACTA only for WTO members

          During the recent Civil Liberties Committee meeting (8 may) Pedro Velasco-Martins (Commission DG Trade) claimed that ACTA only targets WTO members as participating nations. I do not read that from the text of the agreement where it says prospecting nations. I do not see any provision which says that only WTO members are eligible to join.

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/14/wine-1-5-4/feed/ 0 Links 13/5/2012: Xfce 4.10, KDE 4.8.3, GNOME 3.5.1, GIMP 2.8 http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 16:28:12 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60222

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nagios Vs. Icinga: the real story of one of the most heated forks in free software

    In March 14, 1999 Ethan Galstad released the first version of Nagios. Then, nearly exactly 10 years later (May 2009), Icinga (a fork of Nagios) was born. What happened there? Why a fork? In this article, I will shed some light about what made the Icinga developers decide to fork (although they still send patches to Nagios). In this article, I will talk to both Ethan Galstad himself, and Michael Lübben (one of the founding Icinga team members and Nagios addon developer). I will quote Michael and Ethan in the article. You get to read their points of view here.

  • Guidelines for Starting Your Very Own Open Source Project
  • Forrester: Hire software developers who take part in open source projects

    Analyst firm Forrester has encouraged businesses to recruit software developers who take part in open source projects, as it shows they are keeping their skills current.

  • Open source has become mainstream but still drives innovation

    At that time, most open source vendors were trying to replicate what proprietary vendors were doing, or what they had failed to do. The value proposition was simple: vendors would say they were like X, but more open, more extensible, and less expensive. Take a few of the successes of the late 2000s and who they were compared to: MySQL (Oracle), JBoss (WebSphere), Jaspersoft (BusinessObjects), Talend (Informatica), SugarCRM (Siebel).

    By and large, these vendors were successful. The first “billion dollar baby” of open source was MySQL, when Sun bought the company for $1 billion. At that time, Techcrunch headline was: “Sun Picks Up MySQL For $1 Billion; Open Source Is A Legitimate Business Model.” And indeed, 2008 marked a turning point for open source: more and more enterprise deployments; acquisitions, like in the “real” corporate world; more and more funding. The 451 Group tracks the history of VC funding in open source – the graph in this post shows that investment in 2008 was at an all-time high, which would only be matched again in 2011.

  • Inktank launches to change the face of open-source storage

    The lead developers behind open-source storage system Ceph have launched a company, called Inktank, to commercialize the software. The company describes Ceph as a “fully open source, distributed object store, network block device, and POSIX-compatible distributed file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability.” It’s uniqueness comes in part because Ceph does all these things within a unified platform.

  • Open source enables high-volume searches

    Twitter, Facebook, the Library of Congress — all of these institutions have mind-numbing amounts of structured and unstructured data that must be indexed and searched quickly. In Twitter’s case, that’s about 300 million new pieces of information to index every day.

  • Open Source: Homeschool Computing

    Many parents in recent years have chosen to homeschool their children. The reasons for this vary, but most include some measure of the understanding that to truly pass on one’s values to one’s children one needs to be the primary source of information for that child. To place one’s child in a school, public or private, is to give up at least part of one’s responsibility to and for that child. There is usually also a desire to have more control over what that immature mind is experiencing as it grows. Some life events should be shielded from a growing mind until that mind is mature enough to handle such events in the context of the desired values imparted by the parents.

  • GNU Octave for the Life Scientist: An Interview with biochemist and author Heino Prinz

    I have studied Physics in Bonn, did my PhD in Biochemistry at a Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen and got my habilitation (In Germany and Austria you need such a licence to teach) at Innsbruck University in the Pharmacology department. I worked most of the time at the Max-Planck-Institute for molecular physiology in Dortmund. It always was somewhat strange, being a physicist working in biochemistry, chemistry and pharmacology. For a physicist, an equation or a reaction scheme is easy, because it is logical and precise. For a chemist, reaction schemes often seem to be incomprehensible and equations may lead to immediate paralysis when used in lectures. In contrast, chemists can perform complex chemical reactions which are admired (not really conceived) by physicists. I have spent most of my scientific life trying to help life scientists to bridge that gap.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Why Big Sites Run Drupal

      For the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), the decision to dump its aging content management system (CMS) was easy. Running 65 state government websites on two different versions of proprietary software — Vignette 6 and 7, one of which is no longer supported — had become cumbersome and costly. And moving all sites to Vignette 8 was too much of a “force fit,” said state CTO Steve Nichols.

    • WordPress is suddenly big business

      All Things Digital reported last week week that the company behind WordPress could generate almost $50 million in revenue this year.

      If you blog at all, you know WordPress is a big deal, but fewer people are aware that there is a company behind the platform called Automattic. The public face of Automattic and WordPress is Matt Mullenweg.

      Recently we published a story that WordPress was the platform of choice on 48 of the world’s top 100 blogs. According to Mullenweg’s “about” page on the Automattic site, it accounts for 15 percent of the world’s websites.

  • Business

    • Open Source Ceph Storage Filesystem Goes Commercial

      When open source software gets used in production grade environments, commercial support businesses tend to show up. That’s exactly what is now happening with the open source Ceph distributed storage filesystem.

      Ceph is now backed by Inktank, a commercial venture led by Sage Weil, founder of Ceph. The company had originally incorporated under the name Ceph Inc, but it decided to take a different route to help preserve the integrity of the open source project.

    • Open Source Business: How to Support A Family of 5 By Running An Open Source Project

      Lately, I’ve been recording music in my spare time. Since I try to use as much Free and Open Source software as possible, I found the free digital audio workstation Ardour. When I went to download the software, I was asked for a donation before I could download it. Intriguing!

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Survey data: nginx poised to become number 2 web server

        If current trends hold, then sometime late this summer, Microsoft’s Internet Information Services will fall to the number three web server position in global domains, behind two open source web server platforms: Apache and nginx.

      • Pentaho 4.5 Visualizes Big Data Analytics
      • Oh Certified Asterisk, Where Do You Come From?

        A couple of days ago, Malcolm Davenport posted here about Certified Asterisk, a new series of Open Source Asterisk releases being produced by Digium. Since that post went out, there’s been some discussion (almost confusion) in the Asterisk community about exactly where the Certified Asterisk releases are coming from, and what they contain. In order to try to help describe how this whole process works, I’ve created this page on the Asterisk Wiki which includes a diagram showing how all the current development and releases branches relate to each other, where tags (and releases) are made, and most importantly, how the Certified Asterisk branches are produced.

      • IBM ditches Siebel for SugarCRM

        Technology giant IBM is replacing CRM vendor Siebel and replacing its CRM systems with cloud-based SaaS provider SugarCRM.

        According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, SugarCRM is set to snap up the contract to manage sales, marketing and customer relationships for Big Blue. The contract sees Oracle-owned 67,000 Siebel seats swapped out for the open-source vendor.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • MIT and Harvard Team Up on Open Source-Driven Online Education

      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University have teamed up to deliver online learning to millions of people around the world, through their new edX initiative. “Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone,” the edX site reports. (If you’re familiar with MITx, it is now a part of edX.)

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Support for ODF from the Hungarian government

      The Hungarian government has committed to invest just over a million pounds (370 million HUF) in the development of applications that use the open document format (ODF), according to a report on the European Union’s Joinup web site. Two organisations will benefit from the funding: the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Szeged and the open source development company, Multiráció. In December of last year, the Hungarian government announced that from April 2012 all official documents would need to be prepared in internationally recognised open-standards-based formats.

    • The conflict between video on the web and open standards

      Few web video standards are truly open or free, and the major players have no interest in pushing them, says Richard Hillesley…

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • America’s Mad Cow Crisis

      Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was confirmed in the United States in December, 2003, it was major news. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been petitioned for years by lawyers from farm and consumer groups I worked with to stop the cannibal feeding practices that transmit this horrible, always fatal, human and animal dementia. When the first cow was found in Washington state, the government said it would stop such feeding, and the media went away. But once the cameras were off and the reporters were gone nothing substantial changed.

    • Syngenta Celebrates Earth Day by Ladling on the Pesticides

      Herbicide manufacturer Syngenta had an interesting way of celebrating Earth Day this year, touting the joys of pesticides.

    • Syngenta Hired Guns Attack New Documentary

      As a new film highlights water contamination throughout the U.S. Midwest from Syngenta’s flagship herbicide atrazine, the world’s largest pesticide company has mounted a PR counter-attack downplaying the human and environmental health risks of a chemical linked to birth defects, low birth weight and certain cancers. Atrazine was banned in the EU in 2003, leaving the U.S. market as one of Syngenta’s most profitable and vigorously guarded markets.

  • Security

    • Buyer’s Guide to Full Disk Encryption

      When a corporate laptop goes missing, do you worry about the risk of a data breach? There is good reason for concern: According to recent research by Symantec, 34 percent of data breaches are the result of lost or stolen devices such as laptops.

      The good news is that this is a preventable issue. A Full Disk Encryption (FDE) solution can ensure that sensitive information isn’t exposed in the event that one of your organization’s laptops is lost or stolen.

    • PHP patch quick but inadequate

      The updates to PHP versions 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 released on Thursday do not fully resolve the vulnerability that was accidentally disclosed on Reddit, according to the discoverer of the flaw. The bug in the way CGI and PHP interact with each other leads to a situation where attackers can execute code on affected servers. The issue remained undiscovered for eight years.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘Cornucopians in Space’ Deliver a Dangerously Misguided Message

      In some sense, TED is the techno-innovators’ version of the faith expressed by neo-liberal economics, in which the market solves nearly all of its own problems. The enduring posture at TED, therefore, is one that acknowledges serious world problems, ranging from war to famine, water and food availability, but which nearly always concludes that amazing and ingenious people – geniuses – are working to solve the problem. The Great Man theory of history would find each TED conference a comfortable place to be.

  • Finance

    • The Inflation’s In The Poverty
    • American Houses and the Oil Denominator
    • The Washington Post Continues Its Love Affair With NAFTA and Disdain for Facts

      The Washington Post was a strong supporter of NAFTA at the time the deal was approved. It continues to be a strong defender of the pact nearly two decades later. It has repeatedly shown itself willing to make up facts or just ignore them to push its pro-NAFTA line.

    • Weaker US 1st Q GDP

      To avoid social discontent and, in addition to stimulate the economy, China has embarked on a (serious?) policy of building cheap housing for the urban poor. A total of 5mn homes are expected to be built this year, with goal of reaching 36mn by 2015. However, the financing for this proposed rapid build out is questionable. The Government has increased central funding for low income housing by +23% to 212 Yuan this year, though the expected bill for the 36mn homes comes in at Yuan 5tr !!!. Local Governments, however, are not keen on spending on social housing. In addition, corruption has, in the past, meant that affordable homes have been sold to relatives/friends etc, etc – estimated at near 80% !!!! (Source GK Dragonomics) and authorities classify certain building programmes as social housing, when they are clearly not. As a result, I remain totally sceptical of this programme;

    • Money won’t decide the next president. But it may decide the next Congress.

      President Obama’s reelection campaign is likely to have more money than any presidential campaign in history. Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign, when you factor in the super PACs supporting him, could have even more money than that.

    • Muppets Protest at Goldman Sachs
    • Mirabile Dictu! Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein Makes Case for Breaking Up Big Banks

      Goldman seems to be making a renewed effort at PR in the wake of the letter by derivatives staffer Greg Smith accusing the firm of caring only about profits and treating customers as stuffees (“muppets” was revealed to be the new term of art). That observation probably came as no surprise to anyone save Goldman staffers, most of whom probably thought they had conned their clients into believing otherwise, and a few like Smith who believed the party line.

    • Goldman Sachs pays £4.1m tax on £1.9bn profit

      The London arm of Goldman Sachs paid only £4.1m in corporation tax to the Treasury last year despite making pre-tax profits of £1.92bn, annual accounts have revealed.

      Goldman Sachs International (GSI) had a corporation tax bill of £422.3m but it deferred £418.2m – or more than 99 per cent of the amount – that it had to pay immediately in “current tax”. The Wall Street giant, presided over by Lloyd Blankfein, was able to postpone payment because of “timing differences”, according to the accounts.

    • Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis

      Several of my savviest readers wrote expressing disappointment and consternation with the Frontline series on the crisis, “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” The first two parts of the four part series have been released, and it’s probably safe to say that this program is far enough along to be beyond redemption.

    • Goldman Sachs Closes Canadian Dark Pool Seven Months After Open

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) closed Sigma X Canada today, shutting down the dark pool for equities seven months after starting it.

      The stock trading venue stopped taking orders, according to a statement from the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. Since all orders expire daily on Sigma X Canada, none will be open after it closes, the agency said.

    • Goldman’s O’Neill tipped to join Bank governor race

      In theory the post of next Governor of the Bank of England won’t even be advertised for several months.

      In reality, the scheming and jostling for position are already in full flow. A new name in the frame today is Jim O’Neill, the affable Goldman Sachs economist now chairing the bank’s asset management division.

    • Goldman Looks to Hire Social Media Strategist

      Goldman Sachs may dominate financial markets, but there is one frontier it has not yet conquered: social media.

      So the Wall Street firm that many on the Internet love to hate plans to hire a “social media community manager,” according to a posting on its Web site. The position involves overseeing the firm’s online communities and developing a “positive online presence.”

    • Memo to Schneiderman Mortgage Task Force: When You are in a Hole, Quit Digging

      So we have yet to be completed incremental staffing of a grand total of 15? 65 people pursuing to the biggest consumer fraud in American history, when the savings & loan crisis had 1000 FBI agents tasked to it?

      The worst is the insulting five financial analysts. Tell me how “financial analysts” are supposed to get up to speed on securitization. There aren’t that many people who are experts who are willing to educate people going against the banks, and I’d bet big money that the Feds won’t be able to hire anyone of that caliber (they’d make more doing expert witness gigs).

    • Goldman Sachs Wins Dismissal of Some Claims in CIFG Suit

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) won dismissal of some claims in a lawsuit brought by CIFG Assurance North America Inc. over $275 million in residential mortgage-backed securities.

      The insurer sued Goldman Sachs in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in August, accusing the investment bank of making misrepresentations in connection with the securitization of a portfolio of 6,204 mortgage loans.

    • Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy

      Perhaps because we don’t trust our government, our big corporations or our other institutions to do anything very helpful for the country. Indeed, we don’t trust our government, big corporations and other institutions to even allow a fair playing field where we have a chance of competing fairly to get ahead on our own initiative.

    • Wrangling over anti-bribery law rages on, with top firms facing investigation

      The U.S. anti-bribery law that Wal-Mart may have violated in Mexico has ensnared leading companies from virtually every sector of the economy as federal prosecutors increasingly crack down on a wide range of transgressions, from improper accounting to giving foreign officials computers and bags of cash.

    • Councilmembers discuss ways to get out of bond debt deal with Goldman Sachs

      The City of Oakland should find a way to get out of its interest rate swap agreement with Goldman Sachs, a deal that costs the city $4 million annually, according to a city staff report. The problem before the city council now is figuring out the best way to do that without costing the city more money.

    • Want to stop banks gambling on food prices? Try closing the casino

      Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world’s food supply has long been suspected, no one has been able to prove it. The world’s most precious resources may have been transformed into a casino for high rollers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out who is betting how much.

  • Censorship

    • German Ministry Advises Developing Countries Not To Sign ACTA

      Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) advises developing countries against signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, BMZ official Frank Schmiedchen said during a meeting of the Committee of Petitions of the German Parliament yesterday.

      The committee discussed a petition signed by over 60,000 German citizens calling for a stop to the ratification of ACTA by the German Parliament.

  • Privacy

    • Privacy concerns over popular ShowIP Firefox add-on

      A popular Firefox add-on appears to have started leaking private information about every website that users visit to a third-party server, including sensitive data which could identify individuals or reduce their security.

  • Civil Rights

    • Press Freedom Day – the world looks to Azerbaijan

      Today, 3 May, is United Nations World Press Freedom Day. For me this is a chance to remember the fundamental rights, including to self-expression, that are safeguarded for all of us in the European Union – whether you’re a journalist, blogger or ordinary citizen.

      And a chance to remember those people around the world who don’t have those protections, and are often restricted in what they can say or investigate.

      In places without human rights safeguards, the right to express oneself is all the more important. People who struggle for democracy must have a voice. People like Eynulla Fatullayev: Azerbaijani journalist, human rights activist and winner of the 2012 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. He dared to speak up to defend freedom of expression — and was for a time imprisoned for having done so. I salute his brave work.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • How and How NOT to Re-License your Work for Free Culture

        The last week has been terrific for “Lunatics”. We’ve cleared the licenses on almost all of the music — and certainly the most important pieces. However, for a moment, I want to focus on the little problem with the one minute of music we probably won’t get to use, and the right and wrong way to relicense your art if you are ever in that situation.

      • Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Found To Be Corrupt
      • Programming languages not copyrightable, rules highest EU court

        The European Court of Justice ruled this morning that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.

        Europe’s highest court made the decision in relation to a case brought by SAS Institute against World Programming Limited (WPL), effectively leaving the door open for software companies to “reverse engineer” programs without fear of infringing copyright.

      • What’s at stake in Oracle v. Google

        Traditionally, application programming interfaces (APIs) have been presumed to be non-copyrightable, because unlike other elements of a software, which involve creativity, APIs are typically comprised of facts that enable one specific task: how does my software program talk to your software program and vice versa?

      • TLWIR 36: Why Hollywood MUST Embrace Free Software Concepts To Survive

        Google’s ultra high speed Internet project aims to bring Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri Internet speeds 100 times the current U.S. average. This has Hollywood petrified. Will users with gigabit connections pirate enough movies to decimate the movie industry’s revenue? Will piracy crush Hollywood in the way that it crushed the music industry? Not if Hollywood is smart: they need to CAREFULLY study how the Linux kernel is developed, and how Free Software is developed in general.

      • ACTA

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/13/gnome-3-5-1-gimp-2-8/feed/ 0 Software Patents and Trolls Devour Jobs While Microsoft Proxies Sue Android Companies http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/devouring-jobs/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/devouring-jobs/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 14:25:12 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60217 Monkeys

Summary: An accumulation of news about software patents, patent parasites, and patent trolls

THE parasites who are patent lawyers continue to give misguided (but self-serving) advice. They wants programmers to think that patent applications — not automatically-acquired copyrights — are needed for funding from VCs and the likes of them.

Companies like MOSAID make a living (for some lawyers) by litigation alone. Having recently gotten some patents from Microsoft and Nokia, MOSAID may soon be suing companies that already pay Microsoft for Android. B&N complained about MOSAID, but Microsoft paid B&N a considerably expensive/meaningful bribe for its silence. Meanwhile, as this report reveals, Nokia patents are being used against Android companies with a weak patent portfolio:

Nokia just announced that it’s suing HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic for patent infringement in the US and Germany. All told, there are 45 patent in the various lawsuits, covering what Nokia says are proprietary technologies — i.e., not industry standards. Specifically, Nokia’s patents cover hardware features like antennas, radios, and power management, as well as software features like multitasking, navigation, app stores, retrieving email attachments on mobile, “conversational” message display, dynamic menus, and certain types of data encryption.

HTC and Viewsonic — unlike Motorola and Samsung — haven’t many patents. So it is clear who will be harmed the most by such a system.

“Software patents [are] destroying business of SMEs in Germany,” says OPENTIA and it has become rather obvious that all this patent nonsense is just serving giants and their lawyers. Vivek Wadhwa, a critic of software patents (who regrets applying for some in the past), alleges that patent trolls are destroying jobs. As he put it in the Washington Post:

Where are the jobs? Ask the patent trolls.

President Obama has been touting patents as a way to create jobs and increase U.S. competitiveness. “These are jobs and businesses of the future just waiting to be created,” he said of patent applications last September, “somewhere in that stack of applications could be the next technological breakthrough, the next miracle drug, the next idea that will launch the next Fortune 500 company.”

The President is mistaken—at least when it comes to the patent system as it relates to software patents. These patents—and the patent system—aren’t creating innovation, they are inhibiting it and, by extension, job creation. Why? Because the breakthroughs aren’t in the patents, they are in the way ideas are commercialized and marketed. Because of flaws in the patent system and government leaders’ misunderstandings, there is an arms race of sorts happening in the tech industry that is sapping billions out of the economy and crushing technology startups. This system is enriching patent trolls—companies that buy patents in order to extort money from innovators. These trolls are like a modern day mafia. Given this, I argue software patents need to be eliminated or curtailed.

In order to re-ignite the economy several steps have to be taken other than regulation. Some obviously bad ideas like software patents, for example, must go. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/devouring-jobs/feed/ 0 Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Microsoft http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/antisocial-element-at-microsoft/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/antisocial-element-at-microsoft/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 14:05:08 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60211 Comparing one’s opposition to Unabomber

Kaczynski

Summary: Microsoft funds an AstroTurf which compares particular people to mass murderers

THOSE who challenge Microsoft in response to its many crimes probably know too darn well how far the company goes to daemonise and intimidate the lone messengers. One of the company’s employees, working without disclosure in a so-called “TE” role (AstroTurf), was once harassing me in this Web site. See older posts such as:

Microsoft’s Wong decided to compare me to Unabomber and publicly insult me until I filed a complaint to the FTC. In a new E-mail titled “Charles Manson, the Unabomber…and you?” (dated 5/11/12 7:38 PM) Mike Palamuso from the League of Conservation Voters wrote:




Tell Microsoft, Comcast and other corporate donors to stop funding the
Heartland Institute's offensive, climate-denier propaganda:
http://action.lcv.org/site/R?i=kkLMsFUXoSE0Z-yr8zOZ9A .

[snip],

Have you heard what they're calling us? Serial killers and terrorists.

I know it seems like a joke, but this was actually put up on a
billboard last week in Chicago. The Heartland Institute, a leading
anti-science think tank, launched a campaign with images like this -
implying that if you believe global warming is happening, then you are
no different than the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, or mass
murderer Charles Manson.

If you find this as outrageous as I do, sign our petition urging the
Heartland Institute's corporate donors, including Microsoft and
Comcast, to end their funding today:
http://action.lcv.org/site/R?i=G8Fr2S5UeLFQHO3-Vrm4YQ .

For years, the Heartland Institute has been producing climate-denying
propaganda to benefit Big Oil and Dirty Coal. But this goes too far.
In their press release, they actually said that "people who still
believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of
society... they are murderers, tyrants, and madmen." This kind of
inflammatory, hateful rhetoric is offensive to the millions of
Americans who support common-sense solutions to the climate crisis.

Luckily, public outcry forced the Heartland Institute to take these
billboards down after just 24 hours. Yet, they are still not
apologizing for this deceitful campaign and will keep feeding the same
rhetoric to the media, members of Congress, and even our schools
unless we take action now.

Our partners at Forecast the Facts have been busy organizing a rapid
response from activists, which has already convinced some major
corporations like State Farm to pull their funding from the Heartland
Institute this week. Now they've asked for our help in adding
thousands more voices of activists like you to the call on other
corporations to end their funding to the Heartland Institute.

Will you sign our petition to Microsoft, Comcast, and the other
corporate funders of the Heartland Institute today?

http://action.lcv.org/site/R?i=eMaVmZ25VA6-XVKdtcDGvA

It's time for any corporation that cares about its reputation to stop
funding climate-denying groups like the Heartland Institute. With
enough people behind us, we can make that happen. So please take
action, and then share it via email, Facebook and Twitter.

Only together can we set the record straight on climate change and
ensure a clean energy future. We'll get back to you soon with updates
on the campaign as it progresses.

Thanks,

Mike Palamuso
Vice President, Communications
League of Conservation Voters

Here we have merely one more example where Microsoft funds predatory bodies that do this type of things. We mentioned more in the past. The AstroTurfing must stop and the anti-social element at Microsoft should be brought to justice. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/antisocial-element-at-microsoft/feed/ 0 Andrew Hopkirk Exposed http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/hopkirk-and-microsoft/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/hopkirk-and-microsoft/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 13:52:13 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60207 “Consultants: These guys are your best bets as moderators. Get a well-known consultant on your side early, but don’t let him publish anything blatantly pro-Microsoft. Then, get him to propose himself to the conference organizers as a moderator, whenever a panel opportunity comes up.”

–Microsoft, internal document

Summary: A ‘mole’ funded by Open Source-hostile interests is revealed for what it is by a government Web site

TECHRIGHTS mentioned quite recently a "controlled opposition" approach which Microsoft uses to infiltrate and subvert panels. Here is a UK government site complaining about what Microsoft is doing:

e aware of our recently re-launched consultation on which we have been soliciting your views since 9th February 2012. One of our first discussion roundtables held on the 4th of April (Competition and European Interaction) was facilitated by Dr Andrew Hopkirk who blogged about the event for Computer Weekly and who was engaged by Cabinet Office as an independent facilitator on a pro-bono basis.

But guess who paid him? As André Rebentisch puts it:

The UK cabinet office washes its dirty laundry in the open. They accuse the facilitator of their controversial round table on open standards, Dr. Hopkirk, of a conflict of interest: an advisory role for an American software manufacturer which is an outspoken opponent of open standard policies.

Hopkirk is a backstabber, a deceiver, and a manipulator. May he be banned from panels for trying to subvert them for secret paymasters. Based on what we heard through the grapevine, Hopkirk did this before. It’s not an isolated incident. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/hopkirk-and-microsoft/feed/ 0 Xamarin is Still an Anti-Java Company http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/xamarin-on-android/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/xamarin-on-android/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 13:40:24 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60202 Gorilla

Summary: The Microsoft boosters from Miguel de Icaza’s company find new ways to disrupt Android promotion and promote Microsoft .NET instead

Fernando Cassia reminds us that “de Icaza is hell bent on destroying Java since he started his .Net clone”

He links to this new article which relates to Xamarin‘s attempt to sabotage Android with Microsoft .NET (or Mono):

A company has substantially ported Google’s Java-based Android software to use C# and the .NET framework, a move that could be the first step towards creating an Android-like operating system that avoids legal entanglements with Oracle.

When will the Microsoft fans from Xamarin realise that the Free software community does not care for their work? All they do is damage Free software and a lot of Microsoft promotion. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/xamarin-on-android/feed/ 2 Microsoft Wants Browser Monopoly, Blocks Rival Browsers on ARM http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/blocking-rival-web-browsers/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/blocking-rival-web-browsers/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 13:33:17 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60197 Competition? Do not want.

Chess board

Summary: Mozilla complains about Microsoft’s scheme to block rival Web browsers despite antitrust actions

SEVERAL days ago Mozilla complained that Microsoft was blocking it again. “Mozilla issued a statement Wednesday,” said one report, “expressing concern about some of the technical restrictions that Microsoft is imposing on its ARM port of Windows 8. Microsoft’s policies will effectively prevent Mozilla and others from bringing their Web browsers to the Windows 8 desktop on ARM systems.”

Using UEFI [1, 2, 3], Microsoft sought to do the same to Linux on ARM [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is the original complaint and some analysis:

Mozilla and Google are both crying foul because Microsoft is restricting Firefox and Chrome from running natively on Windows RT–the only version of Windows 8 that will run on ARM devices.

Even the WSJ covered it:

The company behind the Firefox Web browser says Microsoft Corp. is hindering its ability to distribute the software on some devices being designed for the next version of the Windows operating system.

Mozilla Corp.’s contention focuses on future tablets and personal computers that exploit chip designs licensed from ARM Holdings PLC—which are being supported for the first time in the next version of Microsoft’s flagship Windows software.

Microsoft is impeding on mobile devices any form of competition provided Microsoft gets leeway. We must really learn from Korea what happens when browser monoculture is allowed [1, 2]. This latest article explains:

The trouble is ActiveX is only supported on one platform: Microsoft Windows. As a result, when the South Korean government made the technology mandatory for online e-commerce, the entire South Korean Internet sector become enslaved to Internet Explorer

The importance of this is that monopoly breeds abuse. Mozilla’s complaint should be fully supported, not downplayed. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/blocking-rival-web-browsers/feed/ 0 Did Microsoft Buy FUD From Barnes and Noble? Did Microsoft Simply Pay a Bribe? If So, Is That Legal? http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/aggression-and-market-distortion/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/aggression-and-market-distortion/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 13:18:55 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60190 Dollar

Summary: News updates about Android/Google defence in the face of aggression and market distortion from Microsoft and from Oracle

THE wide range of bribe types includes gentle bribe [1, 2, 3, 4] and lobbying.

Not every bribe is being referred to as such; this is the art of buying influence short of classical bribery. Sometimes it is being painted with the “just politics” or “just business” brush.

“Sometimes it is being painted with the “just politics” or “just business” brush.”We recently alluded to the Barnes & Noble deal, about which Jay Lyman writes: “with the deal in place, Barnes & Noble is no longer putting pressure on Microsoft to explain exactly where it asserted IP rights over Android.”

This is a trick that Microsoft pulled before. It’s like buying terror, paying the reluctant victim some money to stop fighting against extortion and thus paving the way to more of it. As the same source put it, “Microsoft has bought a share of Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader business.”

Nice way to pass a bribe — “buying a share”. Barnes & Noble was important in this battle for Android freedom (gratis) and Microsoft has just neutralised it. It may make “business sense” for both sides to make such a transaction, but it’s akin to a bribe that helps Microsoft further distort the market.

As SJVN put it:

So, did Microsoft do the deal just because they realized that if their anti-Android patents would be ruled to be FUD? No, but it did have a heck of a lot to do with it. As Alison Frankel, senior writer at The American Lawyer, commented, “Microsoft paid B&N, the patent defendant, a sum of money that exceeded the marketplace value of its investment. How often does a patent plaintiff pay the defendant in a settlement? Especially when that defendant is on the ropes and urgently searching for a strategic investor?”

I know the answer to that one: Never.

Yes, but it’s a bribe. The “b” word oughtn’t be a taboo.

On another front, APIs in Android are leading to copyright madness. “Irrespective of my opinion on the subject,” writes one analyst, “what will the impact be should APIs prove copyrightable? It is likely to be extensive, cascading and a lesson in unintended consequences. Even parties with no intention of asserting their intellectual property rights concerning APIs – think authors of permissively licensed programming languages, as one example – will presumably be required to commit to non-enforcement, contractually. And obviously those parties wishing to realize another revenue stream, limit competition or both will ramp up legal actions around unlicensed usage of the APIs in question. It’s difficult to fully predict the downstream effects, but given the accelerating servicification of the world, a decision in favor of copyrightable APIs is likely to be at least as damaging as the patent system is today.”

Here is what Simon Phipps wrote while the Microsoft boosters used it against Android. Joe Mullin said that headaches loom, whereas the FSF issued this statement and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols mocked the case, calling it a “Dead lawsuit walking”:

Oracle’s case is as dead now as when it began. Like SCO with its insane attacks against IBM and Linux, Oracle doesn’t have a leg to stand on in its Google litigation.

Later on SJVN remarked on this whole copyright nonsense and the Against Monopoly Web site used it to show how outdated copyright law is becoming. To quote:

The courts continue to get to make copyright and patent law. The latest involves Oracle which is suing Google over Oracle’s Application Programming Interface (API) as well as other lesser elements.

It has become more apparent that copyrights law — not just patent law — is an impediment to software freedom and programming in general. Tech dinosaurs use those antiquated laws to hold back progress. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/aggression-and-market-distortion/feed/ 0 Links 12/5/2012: Dell Linux Laptops, OLPC Supported by Australia http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/olpc-supported-by-australia/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/olpc-supported-by-australia/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 07:14:47 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60187

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What on earth is Dracut?

    Dracut is a new system to generate, in the same way for all Gnu/Linux distributions, the special programs and files that make Linux boot.

  • Linux-libre

    I came across the GNU/Linux-libre almost by accident and have enjoyed taking Trisquel and Parabola gnulinux for a test drive. I found both communities friendly and helpful.

  • OSHackers – Find a Linux lover near you!

    OSHackers is a website that aims to count GNU/Linux users and place them geographically using their Linux distribution as the marker. You can visit OSHackers and put yourself on the map, and you can search for people that use Linux around your area.

  • The Biggest Problem For A Linux PC Vendor

    Optimus has already long been causing issues for those not after Linux pre-loads but installing Linux by themselves on laptops with an integrated Intel GPU and discrete NVIDIA GPU. AMD’s technology is also in a similar sour spot, but at least it’s less popular than NVIDIA’s hybrid technology.

  • Innovate or Imitate? Where Linux Lags, Where Linux Leads
  • Announcing printerd

    For the last few weeks I’ve been working on an experimental new print spooler called printerd. It was designed in collaboration with Richard Hughes and it aims to be a modern print spooler for Linux.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • 5 Reasons Why You Should Update Your Kernel Often [Linux]
    • Control Centre: The systemd Linux init system

      A variety of distributions now let systemd, rather than sysvinit, take care of bringing the system up. The newest of the three big init system promises to speed up booting and requires no explicit system service dependency configuration; as a side-effect, it also eliminates some distribution-specific peculiarities.

    • Linux Hardware Support Myths and Legends

      Linux is compatible with more hardware than any other OS bar none. That certainly includes Windows. Try installing Windows 7 on some random laptop from scratch and see how much is missing or unsupported without third party drivers. My experience doing Linux installs for my customers is that a lot of off the shelf hardware “just works” and the rest needs proprietary drivers downloaded to make it work, just like Windows. There is, indeed, some hardware that doesn’t work with Linux and years ago that was a real issue. The fact is that more and more manufacturers are supporting Linux well and other drivers have been adequately reverse engineered.

    • Top 3 Websites To Check Whether Your Hardware Is Supported By Linux
    • Kernel Log: Coming in 3.4 (Part 3) – Graphics drivers

      Linux 3.4 includes a whole host of changes to drivers for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics chips. The new kernel, expected to be released later this month, also contains a new USB DisplayLink driver and lays the foundations for better support for hybrid graphics technologies such as NVIDIA’s Optimus.

    • Graphics Stack

      • A Look At Why Linux Graphics Drivers Have Issues

        Here’s an interesting look at the state of the Ubuntu bug count as it concerns Linux graphics driver issues.

      • Why Opensource Xorg/Gallium drivers suck on linux desktop
      • Compiz, Merging, Forking – Other UDS-Q Notes

        Here’s some other interesting notes from the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit this week in Oakland.

        - The Compiz compositing window manager will move from using OpenGL 2.x to using OpenGL ES. The porting of Compiz to OpenGL ES (GLES) was originally done by Linaro and will now be used within Ubuntu. While designed for the benefit of mobile users, the Linux desktop graphics drivers — including those using Mesa/Gallium3D — do support OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0. This change in moving from GL to GLES for Unity’s compositing window manager may initially cause some pain with broken plug-ins, etc. Notes here.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • My first video editing experience with KDEnlive
      • The Overhead of KDE Software

        When Calligra 2.4 was released there was a flurry of interest resulting in a number of articles in the press and blog posts. Some of these were regular reviews of higher and lower quality. One of them, which I think was one of the better ones, was this one by Påvel (in Swedish). In the review he says that Calligra has a good foundation, he likes it but there are obvious problems with it. I find that an honest and true assessment, especially since it is obvious that he has really tried it and been bitten by some bugs. (Some of these bugs are already fixed in 2.4.2, most of the rest will be gone in 2.5.)

      • [Sneak Peek] Vivaldi Content Store Shows Ankles For The Cinematograph

        Our good friends over at opentablets.org have posted a video from aseigo’s blog demoing the beginnings of the Make-Play-Live content store. No word yet on whether that name is official, but it does drape itself quite dramatically across the application’s login screen.

      • partner network, 8gb storage, applications

        Today is a day in which I find myself passing through many doorway as all sorts of milestones for our little project are coming up at once.

        As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, we’ll be shipping the Vivaldi tablet computer with 1GB of RAM .. and today I can tell you even more good news: we’ve doubled the internal storage to 8GB as well. We’ll be settling on the USA pricing shortly as well, and I think people will be pleasantly surprised with where that lands.

      • KDE Plasma Netbook Revisited

        With Unity, Cinnamon, and Gnome 3 getting all the buzz, it’s easy to overlook other interesting projects that attempt to rethink the traditional desktop metaphor. Case in point, the KDE Plasma Netbook interface. Despite its moniker, the KDE’s alternative interface is not limited to netbooks, although it’s designed for devices with small screens. KDE’s alternative interface has been around for a while, but I only recently started using it as a primary environment on my trusty ASUS Eee PC 1005HA netbook, and I grew fond of it for a number of reasons.

      • KDE Commit-Digest for 22nd April 2012
      • KDE Commit-Digest for 29th April 2012
      • LaKademy 2012 ‒ Artwork, Localization, Promotion, Development

        LaKademy brought together 19 Latin American participants, including developers, translators, designers and promoters. The full report has more information about major LaKademy outcomes related to artwork, localization, promotion, and developing.

      • Akademy Community Keynote: Agustín Benito Bethencourt (toscalix)

        Agustín Benito Bethencourt (aka “toscalix”) recently joined the KDE e.V. Board of Directors. He will be presenting the KDE Community Keynote at Akademy 2012 in Tallinn.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Make GNOME Shell Your Own: 10 GNOME Shell Extensions to Install

        GNOME Shell has been criticized for lacking many familiar features found in GNOME 2, but you can add them yourself with extensions. If you’ve installed GNOME Shell and didn’t like it, don’t write it off until you try some extensions.

        If you’re using Ubuntu, check out our guide to installing GNOME Shell and getting started. GNOME Shell is the default desktop on Fedora and should be available in most distribution’s package repositories.

      • Ubuntu Forks Gnome Control Center

        Ubuntu systems team has forked Gnome Control Center as Ubuntu Control Center which will be used in Ubuntu from 12.10 onwards.

        Bilal Akhtar, a young Ubuntu developer writes, “Gnome-contacts will be installed by default, clutter will be on the CD, totem will be updated to the latest version, and Ubuntu 12.10 should ship with a near-complete GNOME 3.6 stack (sans Shell, of course, and control-center).”

  • Distributions

    • The Eternal Distro

      Distro is short for distribution which in the software world mainly means Linux and BSD these days.

      Now, as good as the existing distros are (I use a bunch of different versions of Fedora Linux including fc1, f10 and f14, and also Vector Linux Classic and OpenBSD) they all have one irritating problem in that their software repositories disappear. OpenBSD 4.7 disappeared recently and Fedora Core 1 disappeared ages ago.

    • Rosa Marathon 2012lts
    • Best distributions for off-line use

      Internet is the the “Alpha and Omega” of our daily experience with computers, dominating, enriching and engulfing everything we do. This is the case with almost everyone around the world, but somewhere out there, there are computers that are not connected to the internet for some reason that we will not analyse in this article. What would be the ideal GNU/Linux distribution for such systems? Are there any linux distributions that can cover almost every need of an off-line user? Yes there are!

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 2 RC Released, Final Delayed

        The release candidate for Mageia 2 was released earlier today along with the note that the final release date had been changed. The changes are hard to see in the release notes, but perhaps prospective users might want to pay more attention to the errata list.

      • Dear Community – II
      • Mandriva: A new appeal to the community

        In a corteous and somewhat longer-than-usual post, Jean Manuel Croset has communicated with the Mandriva community again to inform some details of the situation (always mentioning that he is unable to disclose as much information as he would like) and to throw a new date on the table. This time, it is the third week of May, the moment in which the company will unveil its roadmap.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Strengthens Asia-Pacific Operations with the Expansion of Two R&D Centers in India
      • Red Hat, Dell announce OEM partnership

        The announcement Tuesday of a new partnership between Dell and Red Hat could mark a further expansion of open-source software use in the enterprise.

        OEM customers looking to Dell for custom products will now have additional open-source options. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss join SUSE as standard choices for Dell OEM.

      • Why I Bought Red Hat

        For a long time, corporate IT was managed by IT professionals. Such management had a lot of drawbacks. IT professionals are not easy people to get along with, they have strong opinions, talk to other people like children who don’t understand simple things. Unfortunately, they are usually right. Their strong opinions are based on knowledge and experience. And other people really don’t understand how IT works.

      • Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst Sells Shares for $6.8M – cbl

        CEO and President James Whitehurst sold Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) shares for $6.78 million, according to an SEC filing.

      • Something to Watch With Red Hat

        It had $209 billion of assets on its balance sheet, and $128 billion of that was in the form of goodwill and other intangible assets. Goodwill is simply the difference between the price paid for a company during an acquisition and the net assets of the acquired company. The $128 billion of goodwill in this case was created when AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000.

      • Red Hat to debut OpenShift PaaS solutions for on-premise enterprise use soon

        As it prepares for battle against VMware on the cloud front, Red Hat announced today that it will launch later this year its fee-based PaaS service with support and will begin shipping this summer integrated PaaS solutions that enterprises can deploy on premise that give its developers freedom to innovate while allowing IT to manage how apps are developed and deployed

      • Fedora

        • Grub 2 theme for Fedora 17

          Fedora 17′s grub2 screen won’t be the ugly black and white thing you saw in Fedora 16. The reason for the ugliness in Fedora 16′s grub splash is that it was the first release we used grub2 and there were some missing files that prevented the theme from working at all. We punted on it because grub’s splash is not shown by default and we had higher-priority issues to work on for Fedora 16.

        • It’s back! Fedora Reloaded Podcast

          This week Dave Le Sage, Suz, and I discuss Fedora 17, the upcoming release of the Free and Open Source Llinux computer operating system Fedora.

        • Fedora Project is naming names

          The Fedora Project is still trying to clarify its process of naming major releases, a process that has been met with calls for revision within the Fedora community.

          To address the problem, Fedora Advisory Board member Toshio Kuratomi is working to build a new naming process that will avoid some of the pitfalls of the most-recent naming concerns.

    • Debian Family

      • The Debian Administrator’s Handbook is available

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 12.04 vs. Windows 8: Five points of comparison
          • Ubuntu 12.10 Working To Play A Sound Theme

            Discussed on Monday during the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit were the plans to introduce a new sound theme to the Quantal Quetzel.

            Through a community-driven submission process, they’ve narrowed down the sound theme they’re looking for but are still trying to make it sound “more human and less robotic.” With Ubuntu 12.10 they’re also looking at the ability to customize sound themes and briefly discussed at UDS-Q was the ability to have a LightDM start-up sound.

          • Ubuntu releases open hardware VGA Switch

            As part of his keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced the Ubuntu project’s first open hardware device. The Canonical created VGA Switch (VGAS-01) allows the disconnection of a VGA display from a system with the push of a button.

          • Reports from Ubuntu Developer Summit Highlight Major Momentum

            This week the Ubuntu Developer Summit is going on in Oakland, California, and Mark Shuttleworth and others have been filing some interesting reports coming out of the conference. According to Shuttleworth, today will be “Cloud Day” at the meeting, with speakers including Richard Kaufmann, CTO of HP Cloud, Randy Bias of Cloud Scaling, and Mark Collier of Rackspace. Perhaps the most interesting points coming out of the summit so far, though, have to do with new market share claims for Ubuntu.

          • Mark Shuttleworth Explains HUD for Ubuntu 12.10

            Mark Shuttleworth, father of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, proudly announced earlier yesterday, May 7th, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Oakland, USA, the goals for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 operating system.

          • My Ubuntu 12.04 Tweaks
          • First Post Release Unity Update Brings Massive Fixes to Ubuntu 12.04

            Ubuntu 12.04 has already received first post release Unity update and its only second week since final Ubuntu 12.04 was released.

            This release, specifically Unity 5.12 brings numerous fixes and optimizations including improved HUD and multi-monitor support, compiz fixes, dash improvements, music/video lens fixes and many more.

          • Install Latest Gimp On Ubuntu
          • Ubuntu 12.10 To Target Linux 3.5 Kernel, Maybe 3.6
          • Why a Developer Laptop?

            At the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week, Dell announced an effort they’re calling Project Sputnik. The basic idea was Dell’s latest and greatest XPS hardware pre-provisioned with developer infrastructure: a developer laptop, in other words. As Barton George discussed, this was in part – full disclosure – an idea of mine. One of the questions we’re fielding from the media following this announcement is why? What’s the point of a developer laptop? I cannot speak for Dell on their motivations or the project logistics, but there are two primary reasons I believe a developer laptop program broadly makes sense.

          • Dell readies Ubuntu Linux laptop for developers
          • New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support
          • Ubuntu Friendly Wasn’t So Friendly After All

            Ubuntu Friendly — the Canonical-spawned initiative for the community to try to provide information on computer hardware that’s “friendly” to run Ubuntu Linux — is not being actively maintained.

            Just months after it launched, Canonical QA engineers are more or less letting Ubuntu Friendly stand still and wanting to hand the work off to others. Ubuntu Friendly basically came down to a hardware database that listed computer systems and their components known to be compatible with Ubuntu. Ubuntu Friendly never really took off as a community success and evidently have too much on their table to maintain, so a session on Tuesday was held where they were kicking around some ideas or how to make it a success. They want to “hand the project to better hands.”

          • Ubuntu Friendly Wasn’t So Friendly After All

            In a UDS session for Gnome 3 stack in Ubuntu 12.10, Canonical discussed about future plans of Unity interface.

          • UDS: He did NOT say that . . . did he?

            For reasons mentioned in yesterday’s blog item, I’m not at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in Oakland. Oh, I could go up there and attend — it’s only 80 miles from the cozy confines of the Felton redwoods — but I value my life and I’d like to keep it, thank you very much.

          • Ubuntu Still Trying To Lock Down Third-Party Debs

            In the name of security, Ubuntu developers are looking at ways to lock-down or verify the way third-party Debian packages are handled on Ubuntu Linux.

          • Precise Pangolin: Ubuntu Grows Up

            Precise Pangolin is a big step up in many regards. The new Ubuntu OS is friendlier with legacy hardware. It’s peppier and more responsive. I find it is far less sluggish on my older gear. It flies on my newest hardware. However, while its Unity interface has been improved somewhat, it’s still too limited and too confining, at least for some experienced Linux users.

          • EA Games and Ubuntu

            LINUX VENDOR Canonical has pulled out all the stops with Ubuntu 12.04 to get enterprises to give its Linux operating system a go, and on the whole it succeeds, even if some features might put off traditional users.

            Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04 is known as Precise Pangolin and it is the firm’s fourth long term support (LTS) release with extended support for both desktop and server distributions for five years. As part of Canonical’s push into the enterprise, Ubuntu 12.04 rolls up the big changes seen in the four Ubuntu releases since Ubuntu 10.04 rather than introducing new ones, and the result is an operating system that feels more complete than other recent Ubuntu Linux releases.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 May Get Wayland as a Tech Preview

            In a UDS session today, Canonical discussed plans to implement Wayland Tech Preview in Quantal.

          • The X.Org Plans For Ubuntu 12.10

            - When it comes to the kernel side, as mentioned already, for Ubuntu 12.10 they are looking at shipping with the Linux 3.5 kernel or possibly Linux 3.6 depending upon the features and schedule.

            - They’re undecided whether to ship X.Org Server 1.12 or 1.13 in Ubuntu 12.10. X.Org Server 1.13 should be out in early September and will feature more input improvements, GLX_ARB_create_context support, and various other enhancements. Shipping xorg-server 1.13 comes down to there being NVIDIA/AMD binary blob support in time, whether the 1.13 changes end up being too invasive (namely if Airlie’s DDX driver rework is merged), and their bug count.

          • Ubuntu 12.04

            Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) is out. By now there are a zillion reviews of it already, but I wanted to take a little more time to use it before writing one of my own. Before I get into this review, I want to be clear that I’m not going to be reviewing Unity. By now most people know what it is, and either like it or don’t. There really isn’t any point in complaining about it any more. If you hate it then do not use Ubuntu, just find another distro.

          • Ubuntu TV Is A Popular Topic This Week

            Last year plans began to surface for Ubuntu TV — a version of the popular Linux distribution intended to be deployed by television manufacturers — and during the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week there was much talk about the Ubuntu TV plans.

            Back in January at CES I checked out the interesting Ubuntu TV prototype, which did use a modified version of Unity and was looking interesting. Ubuntu TV though has yet to ship.

          • Mark Shuttleworth, Open-Source Software’s Sugar Daddy

            Ten years ago, just ahead of a trip into space, Mark Shuttleworth took out an insurance policy on his reproductive future. “I put a couple swimmers on ice,” he says. “There was going to be a gamma ray source about a foot from my balls under my seat on the Soyuz. So I made a deposit in a secret location before I flew.”

          • The new Business Desktop Remix is out now

            Today, we released the latest version of the Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

            Most businesses deploying Ubuntu on corporate desktops perform a similar set of tasks – from removing consumer-focused applications and integrating with existing infrastructure, to installing commercial software for application virtualisation.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 To Further Binary Blob Handling

            While things are coming to a close in Oakland at the last day of UDS-Q, there was an interesting session that concerns the future of third-party driver installation on Ubuntu 12.10 and future releases.

          • Ubuntu Plans For A Future With Upstart

            If you were hoping that Ubuntu 12.10 would mark the switch from Upstart to systemd for its init daemon, there was no surprise announcement and the Ubuntu developers are continuing to push for the advancement of Upstart.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • 13 surprises from Kubuntu 12.04
            • Kubuntu Likely To Retain Name Despite New Sponsor
            • Xubuntu 12.04 REVIEW

              Most of the machines I use are laptops or tablets, but I also have a desktop that I use for recording my music. On that desktop, though, I have two different hard drives split in three (roughly 250GB) partitions, something that allows me to have different distros installed on it. Since late 2010, that machine had Ubuntu 10.10, PCLinuxOS KDE and Ubuntu Studio 9.04 spread across those three partions available. It was about time I went for a change, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Ubuntu 10.10 recently went out of support (needless to say, so did Ubuntu Studio 9.04). On top of that, PCLinuxOS had been stuck on KDE SC 4.6.5 for about a year, so I wanted a fresh update on all my partitions to get fully supported distros and up to date applications and features.

            • A GNOME Flavor Of Ubuntu – “GNOME-buntu”

              Thanks to growing user-interest, it looks like there is going to be a GNOME Shell flavor of Ubuntu to satisfy those who aren’t fond of the direction of Canonical’s Unity desktop.

            • Ubuntu 12.10 Won’t Have Btrfs Filesystem

              Canonical announced at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for Ubuntu 12.10, that they plan to stay with the good ol’ EXT4 filesystem for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) distribution.

            • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: The morning after

              Following the official release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), I took the plunge and upgraded my main work PC from Ubuntu 11.10. Up until the release I had been running the 12.04 beta on a second machine. Although I can switch to GNOME 2 (Classic) quite happily on this system, for some reason — yet to be resolved — I can’t do this on my work PC. So I decided it was time to scrutinise the latest version of Unity running on the latest version of the OS. Some of the observations that follow relate to new features and some to features already present in Ubuntu 11.10 and earlier versions.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • OLPC Gets Backing in Australia

        For years, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative drew major headlines even as promises made by the initiative’s organizers were routinely missed. The original idea behind OLPC was to create $100 computers that could arrive in the hands of poor kids all around the world. Too bad that $100 price point was never achieved, and other problems arose.

Free Software/Open Source

  • What Would I Tell Developers About Using Open Source Software?
  • Do robots need a Linux or a Mac OS to thrive?

    Willow Garage sets its open-source software free to attract software developers and help make robots commonplace, but detractors say giving the software away is bad for business.

  • Nvidia contributes CUDA compiler to open source

    Nvidia Corp. said Wednesday (May 9) that LLVM, a popular open source compiler, now supports Nvida GPUs.

  • Web Browsers

  • Open Source Suites

    • Open Ballot: Should Apache abandon OpenOffice?

      In 2010, Libre Office, a new fork of OpenOffice was created. The main goal was to return control of the premiere free office suite to the community and creating new processes that would reinvigorate its development. By all accounts, it succeeded. Developers are getting behind the project, as are companies, and it seems that there’s something of a feature gap opening up between the two projects.

    • Apache Releases OpenOffice 3.4

      Today the Apache OpenOffice Project announced the availability of their inaugural release of Apache OpenOffice, version 3.4. Apache obtained the rights and code to OpenOffice last year and have now ‘vetted” and built “a solid and stable codebase, with significant improvement and enhancements over other variants.” But some are wondering if anyone cares?

    • Apache OpenOffice – Interview with Jürgen Schmidt

      Last week I spoke briefly with Jürgen Schmidt about the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 release, and he was able to give us a little insight into what was involved in getting this release out, and what’s coming in future versions. (Official Release Announcement)

    • When is a release not a release?

      Sixteen months after its last release. OpenOffice.org has released version 3.4, its first as an Apache Incubator project. The release was covered matter of factly by The H (http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Apache-OpenOffice-3-4-0-debuts-1570353.html), and with a dash of skepticism by Brian Proffitt (http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Apache-OpenOffice-3-4-0-debuts-1570353.html). A week ago, it was even trash-talked by LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks (http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-04-26-ooo-comparison.html), whose eagerness to discredit it was just a bit too obvious.

    • Open Source Suites Highly Active

      While the news about the ongoing Oracle-Google trial in the US has been holding my attention, there have been a sequence of news releases about desktop productivity showing up over the last few weeks. It’s all too good to miss, so here are summaries in the order the news broke:

      * First, Calligra Suite is starting to look interesting. They have released version 2.4.1 of Calligra Suite, and it’s a fine step forward. With its roots in the K Desktop Environment (KDE) it’s only realistically available for GNU/Linux at present, but there’s an experimental Windows build and talk of a future mac build. The user interface is clear and appealing and there’s support for the important Open Document Format (ODF) file format. It’s available online. The project has also announced it’s Google Summer of Code student activities, which will add useful new capabilities when they are ready.

    • Calligra Suite, the Promising Not-An-Office Suite

      Once upon a time there was KOffice, all full of unrealized potential. And then it was forked as Calligra Suite. The first release of Calligra was on April 11, 2012. Is this a contender, or another niche productivity suite?

      It’s a tough row to hoe, building an office suite. The applications are complex, even without thinking about interoperability. Microsoft Office is the tail that has long wagged the office suite dog, with all of its flaws and lard and barriers to interoperability and portable data. If an office suite doesn’t have MS Office compatibility it’s going to appeal to a limited audience. But times change, and now the Open Document Format (ODF) is nearly universal, which (theoretically) means that we can open our files in any application that supports ODF. And thus even the most stubborn titan of lock-in must eventually succumb, and now even MS Office claims ODF support.

    • Open source suites go beyond Microsoft Office

      Open source desktop productivity suites are experiencing an injection of enthusiasm, as recent burst of news releases confirms

    • Apache OpenOffice Downloads

      Here the issue. What makes a document? The physical form? The logical frame? Sheer convention? So, too, the “office” document. A generation has come to expect of a suite those things that are found in the prevailing application. But that assemblage is, however useful, nevertheless rather arbitrary. It was also spawned by the desires of white-collar workers in large corporations, not by the needs and desires of those outside of the corporate walls. Times have changed. Today, and even more so, tomorrow, virtually all people will have access to some form of a computer, and they will be wanting to create, edit, distribute their works. The number of those coming to this 21st century table is not small, it’s in the billions.

    • Apache OpenOffice turns to SourceForge for Distribution
    • Apache OpenOffice.org 3.4: Download it Now!

  • CMS

    • Winner Takes All: WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla!

      When it comes to CMSs, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal are the three leading names today. All three are open source software, and are free to use and customise. Each has its own community and user base, as well as a well-maintained repository of themes/templates and plugins/extensions. And all three have their pros and cons.

  • Business

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • To GNU or Not to GNU? That Is the Question

      There’s no denying the incendiary nature of the topic of desktop Linux, which tends to gets rehashed in heated detail every so often both on these pages and beyond.

      What some may not remember, however, is that there’s another recurring Linux subject that can be equally controversial. It hasn’t appeared in some time, but apparently some slow fires have been burning all along, because they just flared up anew.

    • Richard Stallman Cancels Event, Rushed to Hospital

      Reports state that Stallman was admitted to the hospital, but has since been discharged. Reports from Spain say Stallman was most likely suffering from symptoms of high blood pressure. The short note on www.fsf.org states that “he did not have a heart attack, as has been reported in some places.”

  • Standards/Consortia

    • OSI Supports Open Standards

      Nearly a decade after that original discussion at OSI – which itself was in the context of fairly established thinking – the UK Government seems to think this is still an open, undecided question. Why is that? It appears to be because industry bodies with a deep interest in protecting their existing, proprietary interests in the UK Government have lobbied that Government to re-open the issue. Moreover, during a change of leadership the responsible individuals in the Government decided to give those incumbents a second chance.

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/05/12/olpc-supported-by-australia/feed/ 0 Reports: Microsoft Has Been Trying to Get Rid of Bing http://techrights.org/2012/05/11/censorship-doesnt-sell/ http://techrights.org/2012/05/11/censorship-doesnt-sell/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 17:17:54 +0000 Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/?p=60183 Searching for a way out out of censorship as “search”

Mussolini says Bing

Summary: The failed ‘search’ engine assembled by Microsoft (by censoring, hijacking Yahoo!, acquiring companies, and scraping Google results pages) is on its last toe

WORD on the street is, Facebook was offered Microsoft’s money sink which is known as “Bing” (we usually call it Bong). This one report helps show that Microsoft too has lost hope and Mac Asay writes:

Microsoft, incidentally, also apparently tried to dump Bing at Facebook’s door – what’s one loss-generating search business between friends? – but Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t interested.

Microsoft’s other investments have been major misses.

The company’s financial situation raises questions. Have the debts been paid back yet? The online business of censorship giant Microsoft has been losing billions for years. █

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