Bonum Certa Men Certa

What to Make of Nokia... Regarding Licences, Patents, and Formats

Nokia: pro-software patents, pro-DRM, allergic to Ogg, GPL, but supportive of ODF.

FOR a variety of reasons that mainly involve software patents, Nokia was mentioned on several occasions this month [1, 2]. Nokia is lobbying for software patents in Europe, which makes it part of the problem, as opposed to a potential resolution. It is a damn shame really because Nokia has been trying to befriend developers with GNU/Linux platforms like Maemo, but at the same time it's throwing some FUD at the GPL. That FUD has already spread from ZDNet to other 'sister' sites like CNET whilst the press hails Symbian for becoming an "open source" player in a large number of places. It bodes rather oddly although the EPL, which Symbian has chosen, is considered open source.



Nokia phone



It was only yesterday that Groklaw grokked: "Watch out for Nokia. Microsoft suddenly likes the Eclipse Foundation too. Here's the very smooth Sam Ramji on the subject. "It's all about the developer," he says. Well, not if you're an end user. End users benefit from the GPL and we know it. There's a project regarding Eclipse tools for Silverlight now. Just what you were hoping for. Not. It was probably predictable when Ward Cunningham left Microsoft to join Eclipse years ago."

Note the following take on this appointment of a Microsoft man inside Eclipse. A term is coined there and further discussed in the comments. That term is "mono-sourced."

Eclipse the tools framework is in great shape but Eclipse the exemplary IDE that competes with mono-sourced offerings from NetBeans and Visual Studio is showing signs of growing pains. Eclipse is trying to build a large system without a Linux-style benevolent dictator, in fact with dozens of corporate interests large and small that don't necessarily share the same vision. The result has been that offerings such as Web Tools and Profiling have not been as well integrated as the base Java development environment.


Further, writes Groklaw: "I believe it's all part of Microsoft's hatred for the GPL, its determination to kill it off and make everyone use BSD-like licenses instead (so it can proprietize whatever it pleases), and its determination to redefine Open Source to mean visible code that Microsoft controls through patents instead of copyright. If you are stupid, you'll help them. Thanks for nothing, Nokia. Licenses matter, as this latest shift should tell you in clear strokes."

That possibility has been somewhat easy(ier) to suspect since around June when Nokia went a little offensive. The same goes for Microsoft, which seems to have 'polluted' Nokia with some of its own employees, who now attack Ogg and lobby for DRM.

On the other hand, Nokia (or Qt/Trolltech) has been a friend of OpenDocument format. this new article shines some more light on it.

Nokia Joins Open-Source Trend for Mobile Platforms



[...]

The development of a mobile OpenOffice platform for wireless devices is also in the works. Earlier this year, java.net opened a new project that aims to build a new set of tools for creating and updating OpenDocument format (ODF) documents in mobile devices. Though still in the early development stage, the new Java SE and Java ME platform tools eventually should enable mobile devices to interact with the ODF-compatible OpenOffice.org productivity suite.


As a timely note, another lesser-known office suite which supports ODF is AbiWord. OStatic wrote about it the other day.

Word processor. Let's start with AbiWord, my favorite open source word processor. It came out in a great new version earlier this year, and is not only totally compatible with Microsoft Word, but it even sports an interface very similar to Word's. It's clean, with straightforward menus and toolbars, and as you exchange files back-and-forth with Word users, you won't run into problems such as incorrectly formatted tables. AbiWord also supports Open Document Format (ODF), for completely open document sharing.


AbiWord was previously mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Slightly troubling was its stance on OOXML when the whole world was fighting it, amid sheer abuse.

"Compatibility with DRM. We understand that this could be a sore point in W3C, but from our viewpoint, any DRM-incompatible video related mechanism is a non-starter with the content industry (Hollywood)."

--Stephan Wenger (of Nokia) lobbying against Ogg [PDF]



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025