07.13.09

More on the Amazing Story Behind SCO (and Possibly Microsoft)

Posted in Courtroom, Fraud, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, SCO, UNIX at 1:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Microsoft hardly needs an SCO source license. Its license payment to SCO is simply a good-looking way to pass along a bribe…”

–Bruce Perens

Summary: Another (public) take on the latest from SCO

SEVERAL DAYS ago we showed some mind-blowing developments in the SCO case. Groklaw chose to keep them private (for subscribers only), but the word starts percolating through subscription walls and into some other Web sites.

Slated writes: “This story demands greater exposure,  since it reveals the full extent of  SCO’s (and their  partners’) depraved  and thuggish  mentality, so please quote the full Groklaw article, for the benefit of non-members.”

Here is another new analysis which sadly enough comes from a Web site that is currently down (and has been down for a while, so Sam Johnston hopefully works on it). Here is the text from Google cache for the benefit of those who can’t access the site:

Dodgy dealings happen  all the time but it’s not often  you get to see it boiling over  into the public arena  as we have today. I  saw in my newsfeed this  morning that  GrokLaw had picked  up on  (Darl, Norris, Bryan Cave Named as Defendants in IP Litigation – The Pelican Brief) a Courthouse News article (Ex-Partner Accused of AIP Trade Secret Theft) about a recently filed complaint  by Pelican Equity, LLC against Talos Partners,  Darl McBride  (of SCO  Group fame),  Robert V.  Brazell (of Overstock.com fame), Stephen L.  Norris, Rama Ramachandran and lawfirm Bryan Cave LLP.

It claims a conspiracy to “steal AIP’s proprietary stock loan product” (EQUITAP™, [which]  helps investors  achieve their financial  goals by structuring non-recourse loans using the securities in their portfolio as collateral) and  “virtually API’s entire business from  API and its founder, Mark Robbins” (Pelican claim  to own the relevant rights). It then goes  on to explain the  whole sorry story of  a techie (Robbins) investing four years and apparently  all of his money into development of  a product,  being approached  by seasoned  businessmen  (Brazell & McBride)  as potential  partners, the  subsequent formation  of  a new business  (Talos)  and theft  of  everything  from  AIP’s products  to website to employees (Ramachandran) with the help of AIP’s own lawyers (Bryan Cave LLP) who ultimately blew the whistle with an “astonishing” conflict of interest waiver.

The truly  mindblowing part of the  whole story though  is the Skyline Cowboy site they  claim is run by McBride and  Brazell: “Finally, in a heinous effort to obliterate AIP’s business and deflect their misdeeds [they] have over approximately the  last 60 days littered the Internet with scurrilous postings on www.skylinecowboy.com, a website they used primarily for  that purpose, and  on Yahoo, Twitter and  other message boards.”

If that’s  true it’s like coming back  to stab the guy  in the carpark after  you’ve robbed him  of everything  he owns.  Not only  have they posted a  video of the  guy’s wife being  served what they claim  is a $109,627 check fraud  judgment following a $1,000 bounty  as well as a $20,000 reward for arrest and $1,000,000 reward for “full restitution” (save that both  appear to be impossible – and likely  a result of the claimed highway robbery), but now they’ve offered $30,000 for the true identity of  GrokLaw’s Pamela Jones (PJ)  who they claim  is a “Secret IBM Shill Blogger”. Let’s not  be too quick to forget the relationship to SCO  Group and  their apparently Microsoft  funded attacks  on IBM, Novell and Linux in general.

Anyway you can  see the juicy details for yourself  in the filings and if you’re a GrokLaw member, the article and associated discussion (the article has since  been updated “Now that I’ve read  it, I’ve made the article  Members Only  for now.”  and unfortunately  “creation  of new accounts has been temporarily disabled”). I have but one question: Who the %!#$ do  these cowboys think they are? It’s  amazing to think that our society routinely jails people for petty theft while leaving [what appear  to be]  career conmen  free  to enrich  themselves at  others’ expense. Anyway  at least Bernie Madoff got  his comeuppance… you’ve heard my opinion – what’s yours?

A lot can be learned from this about trust (and antitrust) in Microsoft.

In relation to this, Slated adds: “Microsoft  is   the  criminal organisation  that  Miguel de  Icaza evangelises for. I wonder if,  like his gangster heroes in Redmond, he also  supports SCO’s agenda? Or  is that  one of  those uncomfortable “black and white” things he doesn’t like to talk about?”

Here is a comment about “Microsoft’s impunity”, posted in reference to our evidence of Microsoft misbehaviour in sub-notebooks:

It amazes me how much Microsoft is able to get away with in terms of anti-trust crimes that go unpunished while others get punished for much less.

I suspect that this is down to Microsoft’s core business strategy. Unlike the others, Microsoft is an abusive monopoly first and foremost – that is the core to its being and the core to its business strategy. The others are business first and monopolies incidentally, and where it occurs, the abuse is not systematic. Hence Microsoft’s abuse of monopoly is effected and sustained in a far more meticulously planned way, with the subversion of DOJ (possibly through Bill Gates’ father’s law firm’s influence within the DOJ), corruption of politicians, bureaucrats, individuals in companies, the media etc. – all part of the core corporate ideology.

Is the legal system potent enough to respond to more massive crimes rather than shoplifting and doping? Or would an effective system be described as “Utopian” at best? █

“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”

–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO

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07.12.09

Links 12/07/2009: GNU/Linux Shames Vista 7 and XP in Benchmark

Posted in News Roundup at 7:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Alexandro Colorado, international open source evangelist 16 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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Mono Roundup: Microsoft Following, Deception, and the Moonlight ‘Extend’ Phase

Posted in Debian, Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 1:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It gets dark under the Moonlight

Summary: A further look at Mono, those supporting it, and where it is all likely to be heading

TO those looking for our response to the Mono CP from Microsoft, here is the short explanation and a longer analysis. Some people still inquire about this in the IRC channel.

It is saddening — albeit hardly surprising — that Microsoft is among the big advocates of Mono right now. The pro-Microsoft spinners hold the very same position; Microsoft’s ally and Mary Jo Foley’s friend Gavin Clarke promotes Mono and the Microsoft blog at the Seattle P-I claims in light of this CP that:

The move was another indication that Microsoft increasingly is embracing open-source technology.

Saying you will not sue something based on some conditions that must be fulfilled is hardly en embrace, it is a patronising insult. As Rene Levesque-Caline puts it (in reference to Sam Ramji and other Microsoft decoys [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]):

Does Carmona not realize that tHese are recyclable guys that Redmond sends out to smile and take guff and make us believe that things have changed?
ANYTHING they say is for PR benefits but in no way woyld they have authority to do what you want.
They are low level managers with no power that are sent for PR (Carmona believes that they arent).
Their job is to distract your attention from what Ballmer, Hector Gutierrez and others with REAL power in Microsoft say about free software and Linux.
Have you EVER listened to some low level serf when you want to know which way the company is going or do you listen to Jobs?
Same goes for every big company I can think off.
But because these guys smile and act nice, were supposed to forget that Linux they claim stole from them over 200 times.”Yeah guys, I dont believe what my bald boss claims. Im one of you. Pinky swear.”
Were supposed to forget that Ballmer said that Red Hat users (U-S-E-R-S) owe them money (he also reminds us that VP de ICaza’s company, Novell, has paid the extortion fee and are the ‘legal’ Linux) because Linux stole from them.
Anything the Rajmi’s of this world say has absolutely no meaning because their boss says this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CA&hl=en&v=5B0GTYf PoMo
I am a Red Hat user and Microsoft says that I owe them money because Linux stole their IP.
Has this changed?
No?
Then Rajmi is meaningless as he ever was.
Comes vs Microsoft shows us well how Microsoft acts towards Linux and NOTHING weve heard from the heads of the company has shown this is to be different.
(I dare anyone to show me one quote from a MS head which says differently. I can wait…..)
Are there people in Microsoft who use/develop FLOSS on their own?
Sure, the odds are pretty good. But in a company of that size Im sure you can find also bedwetters, pedophile, addicts and insomniacs like in any large cross section of society. Heck, Im sure you’ll find a few Windows users working at Apple. This shouldnt be considered exceptional.
None of this matters because those ‘brave groups of Redmond FLOSS lovers’ arent the ones who run the company.
And if Rajmi does make a statement now, how much do you think that will mean when Ballmer comes out with his next statement on Linux?
You think you could win in court by claiming that some meaningless peon made certain claims while no one in charge at MS says a word?
I know that we have clients sometimes claim that such and such employee promised things that they had no power or authority doing which is why we always start every partnership by specifying which empployees here speak for the company. Anyone outside these select few does not represent or have the authority to make such claims.
A Rajmi promise would be equally meaningless except it could make for great PR for Microsoft.
At least his predecessor, Bill Hilf, had a little juice then and lots more now and the only thing I remember him during his lovefest was “”The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. ”

Other people whom we consider to be Microsoft sympathisers hold a similar position to that of pro-Microsoft reporters, but they cannot ignore the caveats.

Neither parts of .NET not implemented in Mono, such as ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms, nor libraries developed by Mono specifically for GNU/Linux, have ever been affected by these or any other patents, according to Mono’s Licensing FAQ. However, the affected parts have been more than enough for sections of the free software community to reject Mono, or at least to treat it cautiously.

The same issue gets raised by longtime critics of Mono.

“In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others.”

Watch this reaction from Novell’s PR team and pay attention to the fact that a Novell employee embarks on a joint .NET/Mono event (one among other such new events... like MonoSpace). Novell/Mono people are also in Gran Canaria and one reader at LinuxToday complained about “Mono Infiltration” (that’s the subject line of the message).

I run Kubuntu KDE 4.3 RC1 and I just wanted to install sysinfo to check my system specific hardware. When I tried installing it, I was surprised to see the Mono junk. I just couldn’t stand it and I immediately killed it.

Is it in Canonical’s KDE now?

Polls and reactions consistently suggest that the majority of GNU/Linux users doesn’t want Mono. People do not migrate to GNU/Linux (or escape Microsoft lock-in) just to find themselves immersed in a Microsoft movement that evolves and inflates itself from inside distributions like an illness inside GNU/Linux. And when Doctor Stallman warns about this illness [1, 2], then this doctor just gets vilified not for his expert opinion but for his personal life.

A prominent voice in Debian is meanwhile saying that Debian does not come with Mono because GNOME can be separated from Debian.

So, yes, I have overseen two issues when writing my previous blog. But I still think, that it’s wrong to say “Debian will install mono by default”. If you want to say anything at all, say “Debian might install mono with its GNOME install media, but that can still change”.

Some people are justifiably concerned:

Before You Congratulate Mono

[...]

My long held theory is that mono was never to be considered a legal threat, it is a tool to be used in a strategy of erosion … insert a compelling technology, then provide a migration path by adding on proprietary extensions. It erodes Linux and it erodes OSS… and advocacy for it, even in purely legal/ethical ways, using just the free bits, and so forth, help enhance that position and acceptability.

Dana Blankenhorn talks about the negative effect Mono has had on integrity of the Free software movement. According to Blankenhorn, Microsoft is imposing a sort of "mixed source" model on GNU/Linux. Novell, which describes itself as a “mixed source” company [1, 2, 3, 4], would probably like that. It holds the upper hand because it has special ‘protections’ from Microsoft. This includes Moonlight.

So is this just a PR stunt, or is it going to last? I suppose time will tell. If you’re looking for an answer to that question, the existing dependancy Banshee/F-Spot have on System.Data (which is not covered by the ECMA spec) is an interesting place to watch.

This debate is far from over and someone has just created a Web site called “Mono Nono”. But Moonlight is an even more complicated beast that Microsoft — through Novell — spreads in order for it to be slid into GNU/Linux distributions.

Further to this previous discussion about Mono/Moonlight in immutable systems, one person looking for an explanation for “the mischievous wording in their [Moonlight] license” learned that Debian replaces Microsoft codecs with ffmpeg. Further, it was added that:

1. Debian is not an immutable system (do they ship Moonlight on a LiveCD?)
2. Distributing ffmpeg is a patent risk (MP3 and others)

If we hypothetically assume, for one moment, that the core of Moonlight is not, itself, patent encumbered, but that reliance on these codecs pulls-in patent risks, then that would leave a choice of one of the following, equally unacceptable scenarios:

1. The vendor ships Moonlight prebuilt against ffmpeg, which is a patent risk, since ffmpeg has not licensed any of the patent encumbered codecs it uses (most notably MP3). End users won’t really care about this though … until the vendor goes to court. Fedora bans such software for this very reason: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems

2. The vendor ships Moonlight prebuilt against a sanitised version of ffmpeg (essentially nothing left except vorbis and theora), thus leaving the end users with software that, in practical terms, is nearly useless

3. The vendor complies with patent law (no ffmpeg), but can/will not distribute proprietary software (Microsoft codecs), and therefore chooses to ship Moonlight “naked”. End users must then either accept Microsoft’s proprietary and patent encumbered “codec pack” as a “pushed” download, or somehow figure out how to rebuild Moonlight against ffmpeg themselves, by downloading the source from patent safe-harbours (I tried and failed to rebuild Moonlight, as seen in the link I provided). Note that unlike modular media players, such as Xine, ffmpeg does not utilise loadable plugins, therefore users must either obtain binaries that already support the required codecs, or rebuild it themselves. Rebuilding ffmpeg is not particularly difficult (for someone like me), but rebuilding Moonlight has proved to be rather less easy. Most users (noobs in particular) will just give up at the first hurdle, and default to accepting Microsoft’s proprietary blobs

4. The vendor ships Moonlight with Microsoft’s codec pack under license (e.g. Novell), and thus both the vendor and users are protected by both copyright and patent law (explicit grant). However, the vendor is now distributing proprietary software, and so end users have lost their Freedom as a de facto condition. They also have the technical disadvantages of Microsoft’s blobs (bugs, privacy, security, etc.)

Now consider that Moonlight is in fact patent encumbered, and that Microsoft only provided indemnity for direct “downstream recipients” from Novell to use this software.

Conclusion: The only practical and legal way to obtain and use this software, is to be a Novell customer running SUSE, and use their distribution of Moonlight in conjunction with Microsoft’s proprietary codec pack.

This hurts GNU/Linux, Open Standards, Free Software, developers, and users, whilst greatly benefiting Microsoft’s agenda of software and standards dominance.

Can you see why this might be a problem?

[...]

The LGPLv2.1 does not prohibit distribution under immutable systems.

The license for Moonlight does prohibit LGPL distribution under immutable systems.

Therefore Moonlight is not licensed under LGPLv2.1.

At best, it could be described as “LGPLv2.1 with modifications”, but given that the LGPL explicitly prohibits “further restrictions”, and Moonlight’s license stipulates such a “further restriction” (the “immutable” clause), then I don’t really see how it can be truthfully described as LGPL software at all. Novell would be more honest if they described it as a “Microsoft EULA”, since that’s only one small step away from what it really is.

What role (if any) does Moonlight play in Microsoft’s infamous “extend” phase? Thoughts welcome. █

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How Microsoft Gags Dissenters and Bribes or Rewards Supporters

Posted in Marketing, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 9:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that this is ethically indistinguishable from bribery. Even if no quid-pro-quo is formally required, the gift creates a social obligation of reciprocity. This is best explained in Cialdini’s book Influence (a summary is here). The blogger will feel some obligation to return the favor to Microsoft.”

–Former Microsoft manager

Summary: Another in-depth look at how Microsoft can guard the public image of Windows (or how to police the Web)

WE HAVE BEGUN assembling this experimental list about Vista 7 truths. We are not alone in suggesting that Vista 7 is a lot of marketing built on top of Windows Vista. Our reader Goblin has a batch of new posts on this subject, the first of which calls Vista 7 a “deja vu” because the hype surrounding it resembles the hype around Vista back in 2006.

The purpose of this article is to highlight a few points, firstly, the PR that Vista received pre-release from the MS faithful was, IMO very much the same as we see today for 7. Regardless of what people try to claim, I think its a given that Vista did not receive the reception that Microsoft would have liked.

In order to build up the hype, Microsoft’s leadership must punish Vista 7 dissenters [1, 2] (of which there are fewer before the official release, so they are relatively controllable) while rewarding or bribing influential voices whose opinions will ‘cascade’ onto readers/viewers and form a positive preconception/expectation until products are actually made available. At the same time, those who are used to attack dissenters can be awarded for it (or bribed, to put it more bluntly).

This is a very simple and common PR doctrine. It is sometimes called “perception management” [1, 2], which Microsoft cements with some legal terms and conditions. For example, at the beginning of this month we wrote about the London Stock Exchange (LSE) dumping its Windows platform and one person rightly argues (in the comments):

It’s quite likely that all of those related to the project who would actually know the exact nature of the failure. When posting via private e-mail, they can leak the information, but if they posted the information officially, their employers would be in violation of nodisclosures with LSE and LSE’s NDAs with Microsoft.

Funny how that works. The Consispiracy of Silence – all crafted by Microsoft’s lawyers.

Going back to Goblin, here is what he writes about Microsoft’s habit of bribing bloggers using Windows laptops.

Here, the concept of Microsoft giving away free laptops is covered: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061227/microsoft-free-ferrari/ and the author comments:

“But if you write about Microsoft, they might even give you one for free. Is it ethical? Probably not. Is it worth something to hard-working sweat and tears bloggers? Hell yeah.”

Having said that, there are others who appear to have the same opinion as me, David Flynn said at the time:

“Any blogger with pretensions of being considered an independent voice and a ‘professional’ in their field or even their attitude, not to mention a sense of ethics, should be returning this ‘gift’ laptop to Microsoft.”

As he correctly points out, the FTC intends to combat this practice which Microsoft relies on. We wrote about this earlier [1, 2].

The FTC is allegedly planning to crackdown on bloggers/posters who recieve gifts/freebies for promoting products. Its a practice we have highlighted here before and one in my opinion that completely destroys the faith in “honest held belief” in the writings of many bloggers.

Ever read something praising a proprietary product where it has no resembelance to your experience? Its these type of posts which, because of the actions of certain proprietary firms means that when talking about proprietary software/products there is always a question of doubt in an honest held belief. (IMO)

The practice though is commonplace here (that being word of mouth marketing) one such company who can create a marketing buzz for you (as mentioned in the CNET article) http://izea.com/ and its worth keeping in mind when you see a person praising a product. What are their motives for doing so?

Will the FTC severely fine and shut down such companies whose only role is to deceive the public? █

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Gartner Group Pretends Only Microsoft Competes with VMware, Novell Helps Microsoft Too

Posted in FUD, Microsoft, Novell, Servers, Virtualisation, Windows, Xen at 8:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Novell sidles with Microsoft’s end of the spectrum and Gartner promotes Hyper-V by comparing VMware to Novell

MICROSOFT HAS ALREADY used up most of its ‘puppets’ in order to attack VMware and advance Hyper-V. It used the Burton Group, which needed to be asked for an apology in some other circumstances. It also used the Yankee Group, which was soon forced to pull what seemed like a result of the usual fraudulent study methodologies [1, 2]. Then there was IDC versus VMware. The only pro-Microsoft analyst which has been conspicuously absent from this slog was the Gartner Group [1, 2]… until now. It is now Gartner’s turn to take shots at VMware. Gartner’s David Cappuccio published this article in the Indian press and his own turf. Characteristically enough, he too is totally ignoring anyone but Microsoft, pretending it is just Microsoft’s game. It is a familiar pattern of promotion through deception.

Matt Asay falls into this trap and spreads the word further in a blog about “open source”.

Could VMware be the next Novell? That’s the question Gartner managing vice president and chief of research for Infrastructure David Cappuccio asks in a provocative post, one that bears further discussion. While VMware is at the top of its game, there are several historical analogs between VMware and Novell.

A Citrix veteran pushed out there not one but two articles that give magnitude to this Microsoft promotion from Gartner:

First: “Gartner Wonders; Will VMware become the next Novell?”

Back in the early 1990’s Novel owned the local area network market – they were as dominant as VMware is today with well over 90% of the market and had an incredibly loyal following (I can attest to this having attended multiple Brainshare events with 10,000+ attendees – and I have the t-shirts to prove it).

Second: “Is VMware More Like Novell or Oracle?”

Unlike Noorda’s Novell, VMware’s CEO, COO and Executive VP all come from high-level positions at Microsoft. They understand the Microsoft culture, strengths and threat. VMware is a company with a laser beam focus on virtualization that is undistracted by a personal vendetta.

They are giving Microsoft credit (only Microsoft), not to KVM, for example, despite the fact that it runs/will run on many Red Hat (and generally GNU/Linux) servers out there.

And then there is Citrix, which is all about Windows and Microsoft. Yes, it truly shows. From The Register:

It will launch a freebie version of its Citrix Essentials virtualisation tool set that works in conjunction with Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor for Windows Server 2008.

This whole article shows the bias at Citrix (just Hyper-V/Xen and Microsoft/Novell). Linux is hardly a consideration after Citrix hijacked Xen. The Linux Foundation appears to have noticed that too. In another article from the The Register, it is shown that Novell chooses to help Microsoft and its semi-subsidiary Citrix. Novell will not help KVM, which competes directly with Microsoft, the Microsoft-influenced Citrix, and the Microsoft-dominated VMware (after Tucci’s aggressive transitioning).

SUSE Linux 11 has a technology preview of Red Hat’s alternative KVM hypervisor, but Novell is still pretty cool to it, having made big investments in Xen. “We don’t see an ecosystem developing around KVM yet,” says Steinman dismissively. But when Red Hat gets its freestanding version of KVM, called Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, or RHEV for short, out of beta and into production later this year, Novell will have to make up its mind what to do. Red Hat already has, and Xen is not its future.

Novell finds itself stuck with Microsoft. It is obliged to keep Microsoft happy in order to receive those cash infusions, without which it probably could not survive. █

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IDG’s Microsoft Subnet Spreads Linux FUD, Cites Microsoft Pundits

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 7:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Rob Enderle’s lies echoed/propagated by IDG

MICROSOFT’S vandalism of Java is well documented and it continues to this date according to the following article, whose author was ‘kind’ enough to include Microsoft FUD from Rob Enderle [1, 2, 3].

With nearly no explanation, Microsoft sent out an alert notifying customers that it was removing download information for 10 security patches “because Microsoft Java Virtual Machine is no longer available for distribution from Microsoft.” The revised bulletins are rated as critical and affect patches from the years 1999 through 2003.

The affected patches are: MS03-011, MS02-069, MS02-052, MS02-013, MS00-081, MS00-075, MS00-059, MS00-011, MS99-045, MS99-031.

[...]

It is sheer speculation as to why, on July 1 2009, Microsoft has suddenly discovered, and removed, software that contained the MSJVM. Can this have anything to do with the pending sale of Sun to Oracle? In April, the latest scuffle between the proprietary and open source worlds was more remarks about the so-called ownership of Linux, made by none other than industry pundit Rob Enderle. He seemed to think that much of the code in Linux belongs to Sun, and therefore will soon be owned by Oracle, who will turn around and use its so-called power to control Linux.

Commenters quickly pounce at this unnecessary inclusion of FUD — a series which Groklaw debunked some months ago.

The comments on the article above add:

Enderle also believes that

[...]

Enderle also believes that the moon is made of green cheese, and that the SCO Group will be rolling in cash after they beat IBM in court.

Another one:

Enderle said SCO owned Linux back in 2003

[...]

Enderle was impressed with the code that SCO was showing to the select few who would sign an NDA. Enderle believed that SCO would own Linux. Enderle and Didio are two people who should not be paid for their ‘contributions’ to the IT world.

And yet another (among more):

Who is this “Microsoft Subnet” person? Are they really that desperate to churn page hits to link to a quack like Enderle? That guy fell off the wagon long ago and suffered a bit of brain damage in the process. It would not surprise me in the least if “Microsoft Subnet” turned out to be Enderle. Is that you Bobby? You put the “L” in lame.

A year ago, “Microsoft Subnet” called for Microsoft bloggers to unite and probably just praise the company in an outlet that makes the news feeds.

There are a lot of poison pens out there. As one reader points out by mail, “Microsoft [spreads] Open Source Licenses FUD.” Here is what Microsoft writes about Open Source licenses over at Microsoft.com [DOC]:

Contrary to popular belief, most open source software does not give users complete freedom to do with it as they please [...]

2. Viral open source licenses inhibit innovation.

3. Government-funded research should not be licensed using the GPL.

As the reader points out, “An endless river of piss flowing out of Redmond. Most probably room full of trained legal monkeys typing this drivel. Delivered fresh daily to the likes of Microsoft Jack.” The reader is referring to this chap [1, 2], a pundit who is hostile towards Microsoft’s competitors and writes favourably about everything Microsoft. █

“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

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Lenovo Wants GNU/Linux Users to Pay Microsoft for Imaginary Patents

Posted in GNU/Linux, Lenovo, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Servers at 7:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Lenovo still discriminates against market leader Red Hat and instead pushes the Microsoft-encumbered SUSE

NOT so long ago we remarked on Lenovo’s relationship with Microsoft. The companies appear in tandem more often than not and we have written about Microsoft staff who entered Lenovo’s top ranks, as well as Lenovo’s preference for SLE* (Microsoft-taxed) over Red Hat [1, 2, 3, 4].

Over at The Register, a new article expresses bafflement over Lenovo’s preferential treatment for the Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux distribution.

All of the ThinkServers support Windows Server 2008 in the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, and Essential Business Server flavors. Novell is the preferred Linux supplier at Lenovo, and customers can also get SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on the new ThinkServers.

As for server virtualization hypervisors, VMware’s ESX Server 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 are certified on the machines, as is Hyper-V for Windows 2008 and the Xen hypervisors inside of SLES 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Given the proximity between Red Hat and Lenovo in North Carolina, you’d think they’d be best buddies. Anyway, if RHEL didn’t make the cut as a preferred Linux operating system, it is at least designated as a hypervisor. Yes, that is silly.

More here:

The servers are “virtualization ready,” meaning they are available with a choice of virtualization technology from Microsoft, Novell, VMWare or Red Hat pre-installed. With the expanded memory and storage capacity, the latest computers can be used to consolidate applications running on several legacy servers into one system.

At IDG, there is also this new reminder of what Novell did with Microsoft. The author later tries to defend it.

For me, this deal looks rather like the agreement between Microsoft and Novell back in 2006. While some open source advocates suggested Novel had sold its soul to the devil, the real story was Microsoft’s recognition that in future proprietary and open source software would exist side by side in most IT shops.

This is mostly the self-serving story told by Novell. To Microsoft, the Novell deal “clearly establishes that open source is not free,” to quote Steve Ballmer shortly after the deal had been signed. █

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Microsoft Executive Quits as Microsoft’s Startup Business Accelerator Shrinks

Posted in Microsoft at 7:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Another notable departure follows large-scale cuts at Microsoft

A DAY AGO we wrote about some more shuffles inside Microsoft’s executive ranks, which quickly erode [1, 2, 3]. Here is the latest executive to leave Microsoft and some background information:

The Startup Business Accelerator, under chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, was among the groups hit hard by the company’s latest round of cuts. The MSN Direct and .Net Micro Framework teams, other parts of the startup group, were also affected by those cuts.

GNU/Linux might not need to pull off anything exceptional; it need only wait patiently for Microsoft to take itself out of business. GNU/Linux is rapidly destroying Microsoft's margins. █

“Microsoft can’t charge $80 or $100 when there’s Linux for free on netbooks,” Rosoff said. On regular PC sales, Microsoft’s profit margins are typically about 70 percent to 80 percent, he explained.”

–Microsoft Press

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