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Publicado por Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:13 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Credit: unknown (Twitter)

Summary: Otro recordatorio de la realidad que Microsoft está muy activo en el frente E.E.E., not no sólo contra GNU/Linux pero también Android y Java

NO es un secreto que Microsoft está tratándo de obstaculizar el desarrollo de Android o dominárlo completamente, no simplemente extorsiónandolo con patentes de software o ejerciéndo influencia/control usando patentes de software. Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).

“Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).”

Ahora mismo encontramos a Jason Perlow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (un empleado de Microsoft que habitualmente ataca a los rivales de Microsoft) haciéndo el anti-Java y anti-Android berrinche en ZDNet, quién estupidamente emplea empleados de Microsoft como periodistas. La última de Jason Perlow tiene carnada en el títular, “La crisis existencial de Android: ¿El porqué Java necesita morir en devices móbiles?” (ataque contra ambos Android y Java; dos pajaros, una piedra).
Cuánt típico es todo esto. Agenda disfrazada de ‘noticias’. Ese es el modus operandi y el modelo de negocios de CBS, quien es dueño de ZDNet. Para entender mejor el porque de Perlow desearíá basurear/hablar mal de ambos Java y Android, consideren el caso de RoboVM, e cual Microsoft acaba de matar usando el clásico E.E.E método. El último nuevo artículo acerca del asesinato de RoboVM por parte de Microsoft de James Darvell (y por extensión dañar a Android y a Linux) va como sigue:

Microsoft recientemente hizo un gran ruido alrededor de su amor y apoyo de la comunidad Open Source (especialmente Linux), pero al mismo tiempo se trata de hacer medidas concretas para mejorar su apoyo a los proyectos de software libre, sus motivos no puede ser totalmente altruista. Microsoft sigue financiando ataques legales contra los proyectos de código abierto en varios frentes, y se ha aplastado proyectos de código abierto cuando conviene a la empresa.
Tal es el caso de RoboVM, un compilador de Java-a-móvil que apoya el desarrollo móvil de plataforma cruzada.
RoboVM fue originalmente un proyecto de código abierto, aunque eso cambió después de que la empresa matriz fue adquirida por Xamarin en octubre de 2015. Xamarin tenía varios productos similares que apoyan el desarrollo multiplataforma utilizando diferentes lenguajes de programación. Naturalmente, Xamarin vio RoboVM como una adición adecuada a su establo.
Poco después de la adquisición, se hizo un anuncio en el sentido de que el modelo de desarrollo de código abierto “no estaba funcionando” para el equipo RoboVM. El proyecto se cerró, y derechos de licencia se incrementaron para que coincida con las otras herramientas en la alineación de Xamarin.
A principios de este año, Microsoft adquirió Xamarin, y mientras se está promocionando con orgullo la mayoría de conjunto de herramientas de Xamarin, parece que no hay lugar para RoboVM en los planes de desarrollo multi-plataforma de Microsoft. La semana pasada, el equipo RoboVM anunció que el proyecto sería cerrada.

Actualmente, RoboVM no dijo esto después de su compra pero poco tiempo antes de ella, probablemente cuando negociaba la toma de control por parte de Microsoft todavía tuvo lugar [1, 2, 3]. Darvell del Linux Journal continua:

Sin embargo, hay algunos que dirán que Microsoft no le gusta Java. Microsoft consiguió sus dedos quemados en 1997, cuando Sun demandó a Microsoft por su intento de apropiación de Java. En aquel entonces, Java se convertirá en el “lenguaje de Internet”, y trayendo el apoyo applet de Java en Internet Explorer era un objetivo importante. Al estilo de Microsoft, Java VM de Windows admite sólo parcialmente los Java estándar lo que es más, añadido funciones publicados que no formaban parte de la norma oficial.
El objetivo era crear una situación en código que se ejecutaba en una máquina virtual de Microsoft no se presentaría en cualquier otra plataforma. Secuestrando el estándar de Java, Microsoft planea capturar base de usuarios de Sun y dictar el futuro de Java. Por supuesto, ese plan resultó en un desastre caro, lo que explica la actitud tibia de la compañía a Java desde entonces.

Nos preocupa que el próximo E.E.E. de Microsoft que haya pueda ser Canonical. Entonces allí esta la preocupación acerca de la Linux Foundation, la cual como Canonical al presente tiene dinero de Microsoft money en su mesa. Hablando de lo cual, la propaganda de Microsoft está siendo amplificada por la Linux Foundation incluso dos veces el mismo dia (ayer), levantando dudas como, ¿para quién están trabajando estos dias? Despues de permitir antiguo personal de Microsoft dentro de ellas, y haber estado recibiéndo dinero de Microsoft, el poder del dinero los amenaza también.

“No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.”

Microsoft tiene una historia de usar la corruptible influencia del dinero para demoler a sus competidores, e.g. al contratar a sus empleados, pagar por cláusulas de no competición, hacerse cargo de ellas sólo para desmántelarlas. No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.

“Infestaciónes de Linux están siéndo descubiertas en muchos de nuestros grandes cuentas como parte de los comprómisos de escalación.”

–Microsoft Confidential

Summary: Another reminder of the fact that Microsoft is very active on the E.E.E. front, not just against GNU/Linux but also Android and Java

IT IS no secret that Microsoft is trying to derail Android development or take over it, not just tax it using software patents or exerting influence/control using software patents. Then there’s the antitrust aspect; it was Microsoft and its proxies/front groups that pushed European politicians to go after Google’s Linux endeavours (we have covered this in dozens of posts going half a decade back).

“Then there’s the antitrust aspect; it was Microsoft and its proxies/front groups that pushed European politicians to go after Google’s Linux endeavours (we have covered this in dozens of posts going half a decade back).”Right now we find Microsoft’s Jason Perlow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (a Microsoft employee who habitually attacks Microsoft’s rivals) doing the anti-Java and anti-Android spiel at ZDNet, which foolishly employs Microsoft staff as journalists. Perlow’s latest piece has a bait headline, “Android’s existential crisis: Why Java needs to die on mobile devices” (attack on both Android and Java; two birds, one stone).

All we can say is, how typical. Agenda as ‘news’. That’s the modus operandi and the business model of CBS, which owns ZDNet.

To better understand why Perlow would wish to trash-talk/badmouth both Java and Android, consider the case of RoboVM, which Microsoft has just killed using its classic E.E.E. method. James Darvell’s good new article about Microsoft’s assassination of RoboVM (and by extension harm to Android and to Linux) goes as follows:

Microsoft recently made a big noise about its love and support of the Open Source community (especially Linux), but while it’s making concrete steps toward improving its support for FOSS projects, its motives may not be entirely altruistic. Microsoft continues to fund legal attacks against open-source projects on multiple fronts, and it has crushed open-source projects when it suits the company.

Such is the case with RoboVM, a Java-to-mobile compiler that supported cross-platform mobile development.

RoboVM originally was an open-source project, although that changed after the parent company was acquired by Xamarin in October 2015. Xamarin had several similar products that support cross-platform development using different programming languages. Naturally, Xamarin saw RoboVM as a suitable addition to its stable.

Shortly after the acquisition, an announcement was made to the effect that the open-source development model “wasn’t working out” for the RoboVM team. The project was closed, and licensing fees were increased to match the other tools in Xamarin’s lineup.

Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired Xamarin, and while it’s proudly touting the majority of Xamarin’s suite of tools, it seems there’s no place for RoboVM in Microsoft’s cross-platform development plans. Last week, the RoboVM team announced that the project would be shut down.

Actually, RoboVM didn’t say this after the buyout but shortly before it, probably when negotiation with Microsoft’s outpost still took place [1, 2, 3]. Darvell of Linux Journal continues:

But, there are some who will say that Microsoft just doesn’t like Java. Microsoft did get its fingers burned back in 1997 when Sun sued Microsoft over its attempt to appropriate Java. Back then, Java was set to become the “language of the Internet”, and bringing Java applet support to Internet Explorer was an important goal. In true Microsoft fashion, the Windows Java VM only partially supported the published Java standard—what’s more, it added features that were not a part of the official standard.

The goal was to create a situation where code that ran on a Microsoft VM would not run on any other platform. By hijacking the Java standard, Microsoft planned to capture Sun’s user base and dictate the future of Java. Of course, that plan resulted in an expensive debacle, which explains the company’s lukewarm attitude to Java ever since.

We worry that next on Microsoft's E.E.E. queue there might be Canonical. Then there’s concern about the Linux Foundation, which just like Canonical currently has Microsoft money on its table. Speaking of which, Microsoft propaganda is being amplified by the Linux Foundation even twice in one day (yesterday), raising questions such as, who are they working for these days? After letting former Microsoft staff in, and having received money from Microsoft, the power of money threatens them too.

“Don’t underestimate Microsoft’s malice. It’s still run by virtually the same people.”Microsoft has a history of using the corrupting influence of money to demolish competitors, e.g. by poaching employees, paying for non-compete clauses, taking over only to dismantle and so on. Don’t underestimate Microsoft’s malice. It’s still run by virtually the same people. █

“Linux infestations are being uncovered in many of our large accounts as part of the escalation engagements.”

–Microsoft Confidential

Summary: Microsoft has just killed yet another FOSS project (using money to shut down competitors) — one that was helping Android and Java

THE headline “Embrace, extend – and kill. Microsoft discontinues RoboVM” says it all really. Several people in our IRC channels noticed this original story (from the original statement) rather quickly and later on in the day some people told me about it privately, so it obviously wasn’t overlooked at all.

“Nice,” Lirodon wrote in the afternoon, “and now Microsoft has killed RoboVM dead. It was already dead when they became non-free.”

“Microsoft,” MinceR responded, “where projects go to die [...] just like they killed entire video game developer companies (Terminal Reality and Ensemble Studios)” (we covered this years ago).

Microsoft is just the same old evil company, there is no ‘ new’ Microsoft. Microsoft will try this against GNU/Linux if it can. It’s its classic modus operandi, but taking on a project as big as these (to “extinguish”) is a monumental task.

What Techrights wrote about RoboVM when it was first “embraced” [1, 2, 3] turns out to be true. We foresaw exactly what Microsoft would do about RoboVM once it’s payday (yet again!) for Miguel de Icaza.

Some people still wonder, what exactly happened to RoboVM? Here it is in their own words: “Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working with the teams at Xamarin and Microsoft to assess the technology and business conditions of RoboVM to determine the path forward for the products. After looking at the complete landscape for mobile development with Java, the decision has been made to wind down development of RoboVM.”

After they had made it proprietary (shortly before Xamarin stepped in formally), essentially stabbing the whole community in the back, the Microsoft people (all of them are Microsoft staff now) did this:

For any fools out there who still think Microsoft doesn’t do E.E.E. against FOSS, here we go again. What would it take to wake people up? How many more companies need to die? How could RoboVM not know that Xamarin was an evil proxy of Microsoft? It was common knowledge as it wasn’t hard to see where Xamarin’s money had come from (Microsoft veterans).

Microsoft is now essentially shutting down another pillar of Java, so this is classic E.E.E. via Xamarin. As one person put it to us, “and today Microsoft ordered RoboVM to wind down operation” (linking to the original announcement).

A lot of the utter rubbish about Microsoft “loving Linux” is a villainous lie. It’s the best lie money can buy as it’s clear that Microsoft is still very aggressive; it hates GNU/Linux, it hates Android, and it hates Java. Don’t let the Microsoft-funded media fool you (Microsoft Peter, for instance, moved from the UK to the US to write for Condé Nast, which is paid by Microsoft). Microsoft basically buys articles from various large media networks; it pays networks to tell us that Microsoft has changed, but nothing is changing, it’s only escalating.

The above, says Fernando Cassia, “reminds me of VirtualPC, which was a product of Innotek Gmbh and offerend Windows virtualization under OS/2 hosts….”

He then told me, “guess which product they dropped after being acquired by Microsoft? Yes, Virtual PC for IBM OS/2 :-/”

He further emphasised that “everything Microsoft does is about leveraging its cash cow to hurt competitors or whatever it sees as a menace” and “the war on Java started ten years ago… “Operation Sunblock” never really stopped” (here is the article about “Operation Sunblock”)

“20 years ago,” he added a few hours later, “boy how time flew [...] “+options available…including tools that will help you PORT TO XAMARIN” //Competitor eliminated.Mission accomplished”

When will be the next antitrust probe against Microsoft bribery, racketeering, blackmail, and extortion? Did it get enough lobbyists in all the right places in order to shift any such focus to Google? Remember that Microsoft is still run by the same thugs (only the CEO changed) and they want Android and Linux to be next in the E.E.E. pipeline. Microsoft loves nothing but itself and its own monopoly of lock-in and back doors. New charm offensives try to lull us into sleep and inaction (no defensive/reactionary statements from the community).

As one person told me yesterday: “Remember Microsoft’s charm offensive with Nokia? We all know very well how that ended and what happened to MeeGo & Meltemi.”

We wrote a lot about what Microsoft did to Nokia. How many more Linux and FOSS backers need to die (out of work) before the media acknowledges that Microsoft is a liar and an assassin? █

THE MEDIA, including Microsoft-connected sites, is openwashing Visual Studio right now [1, 2]. A mixture of misleading headlines and half-truths are the means. We recently showed a lot of Visual Studio openwashing [1, 2, 3]. This in itself is disturbing and it is part of a trend to watch out for.

Will Hill points out that “Something odd is happening between Oracle and Xamarin. Oracle is strong arming customers into “the cloud” with license audit threats. What’s really weird is psycho babble about Xamarin being some sort of force in mobile and that silly cloud stuff with millions of developers. As far as I remembered Xamarin was a nasty little Microsoft shell designed to keep Mono around after Novell collapsed (2).

“I’ve asked Christine Hall on G+ what she knows about Xamarin and Oracle. Oracle pushing their customers onto Mono sounds like a suicide pact to me.

“Maybe they were dumb enough to push C# tools onto their database used [sic].”
      –Will HillRemember that Xamarin has been one of Microsoft’s tools for openwashing both .NET and Visual Studio.

“No response from Christine Hall yet,” Hill added today. “The name Xamarin left an unpleasant buzz in my head, so I did a Techrights search and remembered who they were. I thought, “that can’t be those Mono monkeys, they don’t do that.” Then I dug to the stock fraud site and, yep, that’s who they are talking about. There’s still room for it to be a typo, but I’d laugh and laugh if Oracle were to saddle their “cloud” with C# or Mono via Xamarin.

“Maybe they were dumb enough to push C# tools onto their database used [sic]. I’ve seen it in medical software because one of the vendors is a terminal Microsoft used.” [sic]

We shall update this post with any additional information or clarification. █

Summary: The US Supreme Court may soon start dealing with a legal assault on Android and in the process hopefully end the notion of copyright on APIs

SOFTWARE bully Oracle, which pretty much put to rest all of Sun’s Free software except few successful items (e.g. MySQL and VirtualBox, but not OpenOffice) and now attacks Java’s integrity by preventing deviations using abuse/misuse of copyright law, is still at it. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), one of the most ridiculous and insidious courts in the world (both corrupt and biased), let Oracle have its way against Android, essentially sending a warning shot not just to those inspired by Java but everyone who reuses names of/in interfaces. This is dangerous and it is heading for judgment by the highest court, SCOTUS.

“Just like software patents, here we have something that both Free software and proprietary software developers should be united against.”According to some articles about SCOTUS, such as this report from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, the case that can affect so many programmers is potentially to be decided by the same court that recently defanged a lot of software patents (much to the regrets of the USPTO). Vaughan-Nichols writes: “Google has had enough of its long-running legal battle with Oracle over whether application programming interfaces (API)s can be copyrighted. The search giant has asked the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to bypass further battles in lower courts and address the API copyright issue once and for all. SCOTUS, in return, is soliciting the Obama administration for its view of the case before moving forward.”

Well, it is proceeding pretty much as expected. The British media put it like this:

The US Supreme Court hasn’t decided whether it will hear arguments in the long-running dispute between Google and Oracle over Java copyrights, and it has asked the Obama administration to weigh in before it makes up its mind.

An expert in legal matters of the Free software world recently [1] named this case one of the top 10 “FOSS legal developments of 2014″. It is probably one of the top “legal developments of 2014″ if not one of the top “technical legal developments of 2014″, especially when it comes to programming. The case affects not only FOSS. Just like software patents, here we have something that both Free software and proprietary software developers should be united against. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Top 10 FOSS legal developments of 2014

   The litigation surrounding Android continued this year, with significant developments in the patent litigation between Apple Computer, Inc. (Apple) and Samsung Electronics, Inc. (Samsung) and the copyright litigation over the Java APIs between Oracle Corporation (Oracle) and Google, Inc. (Google). Apple and Samsung have agreed to end patent disputes in nine countries, but they will continue the litigation in the US. As I stated last year, the Rockstar Consortium was a wild card in this dispute. However, the Rockstar Consortium settled its litigation with Google this year and sold off its patents, so it will no longer be a risk to the Android ecosystem.

   The copyright litigation regarding the copyrightability of the Java APIs was brought back to life by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision which overturned the District Court decision. The District Court had found that Google was not liable for copyright infringement for its admitted copying of the Java APIs: the court found that the Java APIs were either not copyrightable or their use by Google was protected by various defenses to copyright. The CAFC overturned both the decision and the analysis and remanded the case to the District Court for a review of the fair use defense raised by Google. Subsequently, Google filed an appeal to the Supreme Court. The impact of a finding that Google was liable for copyright infringement in this case would have a dramatic effect on Android and, depending on the reasoning, would have a ripple effect across the interpretation of the scope of the “copyleft” terms of the GPL family of licenses which use APIs.

Summary: Red Hat is increasingly worried about Oracle, which seems to be doing nothing but leech and close down FOSS development (with Oracle-only features)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is just around the corner [1], having reached “beta” [2-4] and made MariaDB its default database [5]. This new release [6] does some cloudwashing [7,8] as if surveillance-friendly computing (or Fog Computing) is somehow a selling point now.

What’s very curious about this announcement is the reinforcement of known policy that excludes Oracle’s MySQL. Oracle Linux 6.5 has also just been released [9,10] and Oracle’s treatment of it is dangerously selfish. It’s not just about MySQL, RHEL, and LibreOffice; there’s also the Java angle [11] now that Red Hat has Ceylon. Oracle is trying to ‘steal’ customers from RHEL and it has been trying to do this (without much success) for years, trying to appeal to GNU/Linux administrators [12] with increasingly-long (and expensive) support contracts [13].

Oracle has just joined the OpenStack Foundation [14], but the attempts to describe Oracle as “open” fail miserably because Oracle is actively suing FOSS projects, abandoning some (LibreOffice is thankfully evolving without Oracle [15,16]), and liaising with Microsoft to sell proprietary products.

Those who want to support GNU/Linux development would be better off supporting Red Hat or projects like Debian and CentOS. Oracle’s clone is not like any other clone; it’s more like a trap. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Just when you were considering Red Hat Linux 6.5, here comes 7

2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta now available

3. Red Hat Signals Arrival Of Enterprise Linux 7 Beta

4. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Enters Beta

   At long last, Red Hat’s flagship Linux platform now has a next-generation milestone, including new performance, storage and virtualization capabilities.

5. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta arrives with MariaDB as its default database

   Red Hat’s newest enterprise Linux takes one giant step forward to its release and shifts from MySQL to MariaDB for its database management system needs.

6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta Released

7. Red Hat is OpenShifting into the cloud

   Best known for its Linux distribution, Red Hat’s introduction of OpenShift Enterprise 2 shows that the open-source giant has its eyes on the cloud.

8. Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 2 Goes Live

   The next version of Red Hat’s (RHT) OpenShift on-premise private PaaS offering is about to hit the proverbial shelves. Ashesh Badani, Red Hat’s general manager of Cloud and OpenShift, unveiled OpenShift Enterprise 2, which was designed to provide customers with the ability to increase the speed, efficiency and scalability of their IT service delivery.

9. Oracle Linux 6.5 Now Available

10. Oracle Linux 6.5 Arrives with Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Kernel 3.8

11. Red Hat’s Ceylon will get up Oracle’s nose

    As the Linux market gets crowded with more and more players, the control of standards becomes important; that’s how one gains marketshare and outwits rivals.

12. Make the Oracle Service Bus IDE feel at home on Linux

13. SUSE, Red Hat, Canonical Lengthen Open Source OS Support Cycle

14. Oracle Joins OpenStack Foundation, Announces Integration Plans

15. New Goodies Coming in LibreOffice 4.2

16. Stealth Mode

    Upcoming LibreOffice 4.2 will start to offer this feature in stealth mode, so to say. The Options dialog’s “Security – Options…” page contains a new “Block any links from documents not among the trusted locations” check box, using the list of trusted locations managed on the “Security – Macro Security… – Trusted Sources” page. When enabled, a matching document’s references to any external entities are not resolved. This includes resources like linked graphics, movies, and sounds, references to external settings like color and gradient tables, and ODF’s “auto-reload” feature.

Photo from Oracle Corporate Communications

Summary: Oracle’s latest casualty is commercial support for Glassfish JEE Server, but replacements for Java continue to multiply

Oracle has hardly been friendly towards FOSS, and that’s putting it very politely. Oracle actively attacked some FOSS (like Android) and shelved some important FOSS projects like OpenOffice.org, eventually turning it into Apache OpenOffice and then turning its back on it. In addition, Oracle’s abandonment of Java products seems evident [1] (Glassfish JEE Server this time), leaving the likes of Red Hat to bridge the gap [2], joining the likes of Google with Dalvik. Oracle has been a disappointing steward of Java and Java-based projects, so when it comes to branching off in different directions, that’s just fine. As for MySQL, MariaDB — like LibreOffice — helps keep it somewhat safe from Oracle’s neglect [3] (a lot of applications out there still depend on MySQL [4,5]) and there are some big new storage players [6,7] which jeopardise Oracle’s core business (MySQL was an Oracle rival, but so was Postgres, well before Apache Cassandra and and Apache Hadoop).

It remains hard to explain why Oracle turned its back on OpenOffice.org like this. Back in the days Oracle put its weight behind ODF and even opposed OOXML, which is a growing problem [8]. Now we have two options [9], both the IBM-backed [10] Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice, which is mostly driven by users’ needs (see [11] from Charles-H. Schulz), has frequent releases [12], and is focused on innovation [13], not profit. There are smaller players in this lucrative area of office suites, both Free/libre [14] and proprietary [15], but none is as important as what used to be StarOffice. Nothing other than OpenOffice.org could really challenge and replace Microsoft Office in businesses (from proprietary lock-in to freedom and standards).

The important thing we can learn from all this is that when software is free in the licensing sense it is extremely difficult for aggressors like Oracle to kill. The licence of the code protects the software; developers can take the code and continue the work elsewhere, as long as there is enough demand to drive development. There is another lesson to be learned here. For a business, it is a lot less risky to choose Free/libre software as chances of discontinuation are fairly low, especially when the software is well-established (like Linux and Apache). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Oracle abandons commercial support for Glassfish JEE Server

2. Red Hat ships piping hot Ceylon to curry favor with Java-weary devs

   After more than three years of development, Red Hat has released version 1.0.0 of Ceylon, its homebrewed, open-source programming language that’s designed to be a replacement for Java.

   Early on, Ceylon was billed as a “Java killer” by some, but lead developer Gavin King has denied that doing away with Oracle’s platform was ever his intent. In fact, even the earliest builds of Ceylon produced code that ran on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

   Instead, King sought to create a new language that could run alongside Java but would be based on more modern class libraries and would have a syntax more amenable to defining user interfaces – something King believes there is “no good way” to do in Java.

   In its current form, King describes Ceylon as a “cross-platform” language. The 1.0.0 release, announced at the Devoxx conference in Antwerp, Belgium on Tuesday, includes compilers that can output either Java bytecode or JavaScript.

   That allows the same Ceylon source modules to run on either the JVM or a JavaScript execution environment such as Node.js, interchangeably. Or, a Ceylon program can be written to target only one of Java or JavaScript, in which case it can interoperate with native code written in that language.

3. Oracle’s nemesis MariaDB releases sleekest seal yet to beta

   The news came out at the Extremely Large Databases (XLDB) conference in Stanford, California on Wednesday, one month after El Reg reported that Google had assigned one of its engineers to the MariaDB Foundation. News of the swap was not an official announcement by Google, it came out during a presentation by Google senior systems engineer Jeremy Cole on the general state of the MySQL ecosystem.

4. MySQL Performance and Tuning Best Practices

5. MySQL Security Best Practices

6. Cassandra 2.0: The next generation of big data

   Apache has just released Apache Cassandra v2.0, the latest version of its popular highly-scalable, big data distributed database.

7. Hortonworks to seek IPO within two years, CEO says

   The Palo Alto, California-based company is a Yahoo Inc spin-off founded in 2011 by a team of software engineers working on Yahoo’s Apache Hadoop implementation.

8. Shall we waste twelve more years promoting Free office suites instead of open office formats?

   Twelve (TWELVE!!!) years ago I asked OpenOffice users “Are you advocating OO correctly”. Six years ago I said the same things in a different format. A couple of weeks ago, I came across a perfect proof that that kind of advocacy IS right, but so far has been never practiced enough.

9. Apache OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice

   Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice are the modern descendants of OpenOffice.org. For the last few years, almost all Linux distributions have included LibreOffice as their default office suite. However, in the past eighteen months, OpenOffice has reappeared, newly organized into an Apache project, and free software users now have the choice of two full-featured suites instead of one.

10. IBM Support for Apache OpenOffice

    The latest, and most significant, enabler of enterprise use of Apache OpenOffice is our IBM Support for Apache OpenOffice offering. Although individual end-users and even small businesses can easily deploy Apache OpenOffice on their own (75 million downloads testifies to that), larger enterprises with more complicated and demanding needs benefit from the kind of expertise that IBM can provide. So I’m glad to see this offering available to fill out the ecosystem, so everyone can use and be successful with Apache OpenOffice, from individual university students, to small non-profits, to large international corporations.

11. Users: the Final Frontier?

    A few weeks ago we started to have a quite interesting discussion on the LibreOffice project’s marketing mailing list on how to engage users in our community. Readers of Moved by Freedom – Powered by Standards may remember that during the LibreOffice Conference of 2012 in Berlin, the marketing strategy had already defined that the mission of marketing for the LibreOffice project was not to market a product but rather to grow the size of the community of contributors, improve the communications and raise the brand awareness of LibreOffice. This strategy was clearly reaffirmed during our second marketing workshop in Milano in September 2013.

12. LibreOffice 4.2 Alpha 1 To Bring Many Improvements

    LibreOffice was bumped today for version 4.2.0 Alpha 1, the next major update to the popular open-source office suite.

13. Forget about meeting customers’ expectations: Innovation comes first

    … and so does pesky market research. The IT bubble has been spreading the word about this Forrester report and as you can imagine it got many of us wondering what it really means. Well it got me wondered about a few things too, but perhaps not for the same reasons others twisted their heads around..

14. AbiWord: The little word processor that could

15. Pages 5: An unmitigated disaster

    It certainly is not intended for people who, like me, appreciated the combination of simplicity and power that was the hallmark of previous versions of Pages. I realize that it must be hard to maintain the right balance between simplicity and power when you try to add more features, more customizability, and so on. But Apple’s engineers appear to have chosen to keep the emphasis on “simplicity” at the expense of “power”. They have not just neglected to add features to bring the feature set of the application closer to that of a word processor like Microsoft Word. They have actually removed many features for no apparent reason other than to bring the application in line with its iOS counterpart, which is, inevitably, much less powerful.

    [...]

    I guess that, in an era of mobile, touch-based computing, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Apple engineers to understand that document writers spend most of their days with their hands on an actual keyboard, and providing easy access to functionality via the keyboard is particularly important for them.

Summary: Microsoft wants to befriend its prey, but antitrust complaints against Microsoft helps remind the prey of what it is

Microsoft has got unbelievable nerve trying to devour Java and GNU/Linux (see prior coverage in [1, 2]), which it files antitrust complaints against.

The real antitrust abuser is Microsoft, not Free software, where free means freedom. Here is an update about the UEFI antitrust complaint, which says progress is being made because “The European Commission is waiting for Microsoft’s comments on a complaint against secure boot in Windows 8 before it takes its next step, according to the lawyer who filed the complaint.

“The real antitrust abuser is Microsoft, not Free software, where free means freedom.”“José Maria Lancho, a Spanish lawyer who filed the plaint in March on behalf of 8,000 computer users who are part of Hispalinux, told iTWire that once the Commission heard back from Microsoft, the next step would be to review the company’s comments and then decide about the preliminary injunction request which he had lodged.”

As covered here before, there are additional reasons to worry about UEFI, patents included [1, 2], but the matter of fact is, there is an inherent incompatibility here with the concept of freedom, unless of course the user manages the keys on his/her computer hardware.

For Microsoft, UEFI is a victory on two levels; one is the fact that GNU and Linux become harder to explore and the other is that people become accustomed to having no freedom with devices they buy (Xbox One takes that further with the application layer and surveillance). █

Summary: Reality check for those who try to characterise Microsoft as ‘playing nice’ with GNU/Linux and Java

Java and Linux found ubiquity of unprecedented scale owing to Android. Microsoft knows that it lost the operating systems battle of this decade, so it responds by trying to extort, blackmail, and sue for patent tax. In addition, it is trying to devour the competition.

The other day we wrote about malicious attempts to absorb Free software in the spying platform called Azure. Well, we missed some references from Microsoft boosters and “useful idiots” like Cynthia Harvey (on “Open Java” in proprietary Microsoft) and Adrian Bridgwater, who promoted this dangerous move as well. The Microsoft “Linux”-flavoured marketing from Mary Jo Foley was equally bad and as noted the other day, they say nothing about patent tax, surveillance, and proprietary trap. Anyone stupid enough to choose Microsoft for GNU/Linux or Java hosting deserves a Darwin Award.

The FSF, in the mean time, warns that Vista 8 is a PRISM Edition, noting:

Microsoft is intercepting your stuff and sending it to the NSA (and the CIA and the FBI).

Everything from Microsoft should be assumed to be embedded with NSA surveillance and no OEM should impose Windows on new PCs for this reason. Of course, as usual, Microsoft will try playing dirty with Intel’s UEFI, making it abundantly difficult to install and run GNU/Linux. Watch how hard it has become for some who experiment with GNU/Linux. To quote a new example:

I have decided to run ArchLinux for the upcoming experiment. As of yet, I’m not sure what my contributions to the community will be, however, there will be more on that later.

One of the interesting things I wanted to try this time around was to get Linux to boot from the Windows 7 bootloader. The basic principle here is to take the first 512-bytes of your /boot partition (with GRUB installed), and place it on your C:\ as linux.bin. From there, you use BCDEdit in Windows to add it to your bootloader. When you boot Windows, you will be prompted to either start Windows 7 or Linux. If you choose Linux, GRUB will be launched.

Before I go into my experience, I just wanted to let you know that I was not able to get it working. It’s not that it isn’t possible, but for the sake of being able to boot into ArchLinux at some point during the experiment, I decided to install GRUB to the MBR and chainload the Windows bootloader.

Guess how this ended. Microsoft is trying to portray itself as a ‘friend’ of GNU/Linux now, despite doing more than ever before to impede its use, especially on desktops. No well-informed person can say that Microsoft is no longer a criminal organisation masquerading as a producing business. The marketing changed (PR and euphemisms, even embedded ‘journalism’), but the reality is much worse. Don’t get devoured by Microsoft. █

Summary: The company which is attacking Linux/Android/Java in court is trying to lure GNU/Linux and Java proponents into its own yard, which is taxing Free software and letting the NSA spy on everyone

Last week we reiterated the warning about Azure surveillance, noting that everything on Azure can be directly accessed by Microsoft’s close partner, the unaccountable NSA (effectively no privacy policy there). Some Microsoft PR campaign seeks to attract Java developers to Azure (Azul), not warning them about the many risks.

“The SCO case helps remind us how Microsoft really feels about GNU/Linux.”Meanwhile, as other reporters reveal, Microsoft’s proxy Silver Lake is still trying to occupy Dell, with limited success. This is a big deal as it would deal a big blow to GNU/Linux servers from Dell.

Microsoft’s booster Kurt Mackie is currently openwashing Windows Server, trying to portray it as “supporting Linux” while a British Microsoft booster does the ‘pledge’ PR. All of these moves should be treated as nothing other than occupation.

As this ongoing case serves to remind us, Microsoft legal assault on GNU/Linux at IBM is not over. Here is the latest:

IBM has now filed its promised Motion and Memorandum for Partial Summary Judgment Based on the Novell Judgment [PDF] in SCO v. IBM.

I started to write IBM v. SCO, because that is what it really is now. For those who keep track, IBM had received an extension of time to file, until the 22nd, giving it an extra few days.

IBM points out that SCO doesn’t own the copyrights it sued over, the pre-1996 UNIX code, Novell does, so SCO is in no position to complain about copyright anything. SCO has already claimed that it’s talking about claims that now, after it lost the pre-1996 copyright claims, really have to do with post-1996 copyrights or contract issues. But you don’t get to rewrite your complaint any time you think it would be handy, and SCO’s complaint was all about pre-1996 code. Until now, the SCO attempt at a workaround.

The SCO case helps remind us how Microsoft really feels about GNU/Linux. When I spoke to the technical manager (director) of UKFast, a large UK host based near my house (and whose founder I have known for a decade), he told me that they were running GNU/Linux instances on top of Hyper-V and at the offices I saw GNU/Linux support staff being forced to work from Windows. This is utter incompetence and it’s a disservice to GNU/Linux. █

“On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO’s strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO’s financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital.”

–Bruce Perens

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. █

Summary: Almost two years since the launch of Oracle’s case over Java/Dalvik this whole argument carries on

THE CONFLICT over Dalvik meets conflict within Sun’s former management and one former head makes his views clear; Android is not infringing on patents/copyrights. The local press (California) further adds that this case shows the flaws of the patent system as a whole. To quote:

The big news out of the Oracle versus Google showdown on Monday was that one of Oracle’s patents was brought back from the dead, put back into play after the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office reversed its earlier rejection.

But let’s be clear: One zombie patent isn’t the remarkable thing in this case. The remarkable thing is that, when the dust settles, five of the seven patents Oracle claimed that Google violated will likely be overturned because Google forced the patent office to take a second look.

Developers of Android applications (of whom I will soon be one) suffer a great deal from software patents, but to giant corporations and their lawyers this is not a problem at all. All they want patents for is everything but innovation or competition. Throughout this coming month we’ll re-attempt to catch up with older patent news (personal life got in the way). There’s still a pileup of old news that’s important and relevant to us. █

Summary: Recent steps from Oracle and the OIN indicate a weakening of the case against Dalvik

ORACLE has been trying to tax Android using software patents, but Groklaw thinks that “Oracle Must be Nervous” because the case sinks yet lower with the latest events taking place in the courtroom:

Oracle’s Case Against Google Sinks Lower

[...]

Ouch! Judge Alsup seems to be on his game. Neither the lawyers nor the judge could get the maths right on the potential damages in the case. Rather than $billions, they seem to be headed towards a few tens of millions, provided no more patents are thrown out and Google is found to violate copyright. Google is arguing that Java APIs are not copyright protectable and Oracle is holding that they are. Damages, if any could be very small in any case compared to the worth of the two companies.

Oracle is now asking for a fast trial (it began in 2010) and the OIN, which Oracle is a member of, is stepping up to defend some Java-like software (this was understated in the news, even our own coverage). If Oracle retreats from the patent case, will we see a lot of it ending like the SCO case, except for the bankruptcy? █

Summary: Microsoft Linux (sometimes known as SUSE) still plays into the hands of Microsoft Corporation

OpenSUSE (the community/volunteer facet of SUSE) indirectly signed a deal with Microsoft and a sort of pact with Xamarin just over a month ago. Another release of OpenSUSE seems to be on its way (hardly any news from the project except for that) and despite the fact that Mono is a patent liability, OpenSUSE 12.1 removes Sun/Oracle Java but not Mono. This is consistent with everything we expect from a Microsoft-sponsored distribution and all the Novell videos in the world (here are some of the latest one [1, 2, 3] cannot hide the company’s close ties to Microsoft. In anything, those videos only validate Novell’s dependence on Windows and on Microsoft. █

Summary: Amid growing pressure from Apple, Microsoft, and perhaps its drone Nokia, Google plans to buy companies for their patents, thus becoming part of the problem for the sake of “defending” Android

“Abducted by lawyers” is how we recently described Google, after it had clarified that it would not join the abolitionists^*. Dennis Crouch meanwhile covers Apple’s and Microsoft’s latest cartel additions, i.e. patents accrued (Apple reported paid for about half for this assault on Android) and Professor Mark Webbink has this important update on the Oracle vs. Google case, showing of course the opposite of what pro-Microsoft lobbyists want the public to see. Oracle’s case is quickly falling apart. “Sorry for the movie analogies,” notes Webbink, “but these images keep popping to mind. The latest is Larry Ellison as Golum, grasping his “Java” patents and declaring, “My Precious.” This comes to mind because of the revelation yesterday that Jonathan Schwartz, then CEO of Sun Microsystems, praised Google and others for incorporating Java into Android back in 2007.

“But thanks to the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine, Schwartz’ statement survives.”
      –Mark Webbink“Then the patents fell out of Sun’s hands and into Oracle’s (My Precious), and Schwartz’ statement became an embarrassment. What to do? Why remove it from the internet, of course. But thanks to the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine, Schwartz’ statement survives.

“Now the interesting question about this and other similar comments that were apparently made by Sun executives is whether the statements communicated an understanding to Google and others that they would not be threatened with Sun’s patents; statements upon which they relied. This is the legal doctrine of estoppel.”

Watch the screenshot too.

Some people are piecing together FUD pieces about Google, and not just lobbyists like Florian and those whom he mass-mails for placement in the press. Here is just one example and a reminder that Google’s plan is to buy patents as a response to this. This seems like more than a rumour now.

Search engine giant Google is looking to acquire mobile chip technology maker InterDigital, after failing to purchase Novell’s massive patent portfolio.

[...]

InterDigital, which has a market value of about $3.1 billion, saw its shares rise by 29 percent to $68.67 thanks to the takeover rumours.

It has been hinted even by Nokia itself — now that it is a Microsoft drone — that it might be next in its attempts to extort Google and raise the price of Android using patents. Just pay attention to this news report:

Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest phone maker by volume, posted better-than-expected quarterly profit thanks to a major royalty boost from settling a patent dispute with Apple.

Nokia reported a second-quarter underlying operating profit of 391 million euros, above all expectations in a Reuters poll, which ranged from a loss of 35 million to profit of 285 million.

Nokia is part of the same cartel as Microsoft’s, especially after the company got hijacked by Microsoft, with Microsoft’s big private shareholders appointed to become the company’s CEO. Symbian was taken proprietary by him and MeeGo, the Linux effort, virtually abandoned. █
___
^* In software patents opposition — like in many other areas of activism — there are many factions and attitudes. Some classify certain software patents as “bad” and others as “good” (usually “theirs” versus “ours”), some want to get rid of patents altogether, some target only software patents, some target patent trolls, etc.

Summary: Apple takes further baby steps towards inappropriate conduct by removing Java runtime

Apple keeps removing software that competes with Apple and can help advance Android at the expense of hypeOS (Objective-C). The Register explains why it’s reasonable to say that Apple removed Java after initial clues and the Java founder’s claims that Steve Jobs is a liar. To quote: “Apple has removed the Java runtime from its upcoming Mac OS X Lion, according to a report based on firsthand experience with a preview release of the OS.

“Appleinsider reports that the latest developer release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion removes both Java and Rosetta, the package used to run PowerPC code on Intel-based Macs. But according to the fanboi news site, Lion includes a mechanism for automatically downloading the latest version of Java for the Mac.”

“So I no longer hate Apple products,” says this other new article. “In fact I use them every day. But I never feel like I own them. More like I’m renting them from Skynet.”

Apple is not about user choice and user control. It merely turns customers into consumers and repeatedly it bans its competitors using platform control. █

Summary: Google starts arguing against patenting of software having had its flagship operating system attacked by the Oracle and Apple patent portfolios

THE PREVIOUS post was yet another discussion about the harms of patents, especially when they get used offensively. Oracle and Apple are both large companies, so patents (monopolies) work well for them. Java’s founder recently said that Steve Jobs is a liar (not exact quote). It happened right after Java was harmed by Apple which had indicated no real commitment to it. Now, let us bear in mind the relationship between Jobs and Ellison [1, 2, 3]. Why would Apple want to harm an Oracle product? Well, the answer turns out to be that it’s not so simple because “Apple Joins Oracle For Java Development” and this means “Android Trouble” (and thus good news for Apple’s hypePhone). As one insightful blogger put it:

Bad news for Google Android. Oracle and Apple have announced the OpenJDK project for Mac OS X.

Apple will contribute most of the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client.

Oracle chief and Steve Jobs are close friends and Oracle recently sued Google over Java use in Android. Since then Oracle has intensified efforts to marginalise Google by taking IBM off the development of Harmony Project which Google’s Android relied on. Now, getting Apple involved with OpenJDK means added troubles for Google.

IBM was at one point accused by some for similar reasons (upon its recent announcement). We mostly cover Java news in our daily links, but this time we make the exception to also show the following aftermath:

• IBM Backs Oracle, Increases Trouble For Google Android

  Corporates have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests. IBM is standing with its rival Oracle to protect its Java interests.

• Reducing Java-Dependency

  After the attack by Oracle on Google, everyone should be finding ways to minimize dependency on Java. Libre Office will do that, too.

Suffice to say, adding to this we have Microsoft MVPs like de Icaza and some other longtime .NET boosters like Tim Anderson flinging FUD at Java (we choose not to add links here, especially so as not to feed their FUD). Groklaw, on the other hand and despite smears from Microsoft mobbyists (again, we choose to exclude links or name names), helps show that Google’s tactless stance on patents may be changing now that it’s a common litigation target (even Google's free/libre software gets sued for patent violations, which can complicate distribution and redistribution). Not only Groklaw pointed this out in an analysis we cited over the weekend; patent boosters too are starting to feel rather baffled by Google’s 180:

Google Says Oracle’s Patents Are Invalid Abstract Ideas, But Why?

[...]

Granted, its fairly common to “throw in the kitchen sink” when raising claims and defenses, and time will only tell whether this Bilski defense is just posturing, or whether Google will use this case as a platform to campaign against issued patents (recall the Bilski decision itself deals with a patent application).

Jonas from the FFII enthusiastically asks, “Google ready to kill software patents?”

Google on Oracle vs Google:
“Each of the Patents-in-Suit is invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because one or more claims are directed to abstract ideas or other non-statutory subject matter.”

CUDOS Google! Refusing software patents like this the right thing to do for innovation!

An article written by the brilliant Mark Ballard may therefore require some updating; Google is said to be involved in reforming UK copyright/patent law. How so? We shall see. Based on the above, Ballard may be off target this time around when he states in the beginning (alongside a famous image):

British coders have awoken with a fright after a two-year sleep of reason to find the software patent threat looming.

The bells have been ringing in Blissville ever since the Guardian reported that David Willetts, the science and universities minister, was reopening the software patent question with a review of UK intellectual property laws. And that Google was behind it.

The mail list of the UK chapter of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure sprang into life on the news, and after displaying barely a hint of life for a year, and not much more than rapid eye movement for long before that.

The UK hasn’t looked so perky for two and a half years, having slept even through all the jitter in the US over the Supreme Court’s Bilski decision on business method patents.

Google’s priorities appear to have changed and all those lawsuits against Android have hopefully helped Google understand that it does not really need software patents. It’s the cost and complication (e.g. distribution and redistribution) which make it so. Java too gradually became Free software, so it’s time for its patents to go “poof!”

If one wants to really have patent trouble (with Microsoft even), there are some new instruction on how to install the Mono Trojan called Banshee:

Banshee team has announced the release of version 1.9.0, which is a development release. The new Banshee has a neat option called ‘Play After’, which inserts a track into the queue right after the track, album, or artist currently playing thus giving more control to the listener.

Mono is also required by an application which is being promoted in YouTube this month.

One must pay attention to the anti-Java FUD that comes from Mono boosters these days. Google on the other hand seems to be softening and hopefully it will decide to help abolish software patents altogether. The productive approach to take here is to give Google the benefit of the doubt because never before did Google use patents offensively (it did use them defensively). Google recently took a major shot at MPEG-LA — a move not quite foreseen by anyone (freeing videos from codec patents), so maybe there is genuine change brewing. █

Summary: Mr. Java is the latest among many to criticise Apple for its behaviour this past week

YESTERDAY WE NAMED some of the latest people and groups who criticise Apple after it made some very tactless (and demonstrably incorrect) remarks, as well as selfish design decisions that may harm developers. There are exceptions, however, such as a Gentoo developer, “flameeyes”, who wrote: “I don’t understand… Apple is trying to get us rid of two techs we ranted on for years (Flash and Java) and yet they are doing it wrong?”

In the eyes of Java developers (of which there is a huge number), Apple is doing plenty of wrongs.

“Gosling calls Jobs a liar,” says Simon Phipps, Gosling’s former colleague. From the post in question:

Macrumors has an article on the fuss about Java on the Mac. They quote Jobs as saying:

Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it.

It simply isn’t true that “Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms”.

Our readers have talked about this in IRC, alleging that Mac fans attack Gosling like he insulted their religion (see the comments). “Well, Apple is rather rotten to it’s open core,” wrote David and gnufreex replied with: “I saw how Apple fanboys blasted Gosling on one of his posts earlier. He said something about Google trying to compete with Apple which is “borg-wannab-be”. Apple fanboys attacked him one after other. Sick zealots. Church of Apple.”

What’s truly rotten at Apple is not necessarily people who merely admire the company. Apple is not accountable for the behaviour of its customers. But Apple itself is killing computing and anyone who still cares about any morsel of openness should pay attention to posts which say:

Apple doesn’t want you use your computer to control an Arduino, write custom printer drivers, run a game server or control your house lights. They want you to shut up and consume. Us nerds? We’re fine with our Space Station Control computers. But everyone else? Apple wants them to have their iPad, bag of Cheetos and credit card handy. You want to watch 30 Rock on your iPad? Apple gets 30%. You want to buy the latest BedazzleMyAngryBirdGemLoop game? Apple get 30% and could not be happier.

Danny Pickle remarks:

Apple has announced it’s bringing the App Store to the Mac. How long until MacBooks need jailbreaking too?

Danny links to this latest call for action from the Defective by Design campaign:

Well, it’s official. Apple has now announced it’s bringing the App Store concept to the Mac and it looks like they’ll be restricting apps with FairPlay DRM too for good measure. When we first began talking about the problems with the App Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch, people wanted us to drop it and stop talking about the DRM tricks being pulled by Apple on the grounds that the iPhone wasn’t a general purpose computer (it is, and the iPad is too) but rather an appliance.

Presumably, Apple won’t (yet) be stopping the Mac from installing software from other sources as they have with the iPhone, at least not just yet. But consider this: just like the original iMac shipped without a floppy drive, the MacBook Air (recently updated) was the first Mac without an optical drive — will this have the effect, intentional or otherwise of making the App Store the only place to buy certain software, including its own iLife suite of ‘lifestyle’ applications?

For the sake of software freedom and for people to control their computers (unlike telephones, which tend to be very rigid) it is important to educate people and to discourage buying products from Apple. Do not allow one Microsoft to be replaced by another because Apple is no better, it’s just different. The company is clearly not interested in technology, it is obsessed with total control^*. It even openly mocks those who do try to give customers more control. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” — that is a relevant quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Apple needs to lose because its goals are antisocial. █
____
^* Microsoft too was used by Gates for world domination (to the extent he could attain it).

Summary: FUD against Java is on the rise (Microsoft partly accountable), Miguel de Icaza receives another role from Microsoft, and more Microsoft projects which are complementary to .NET are now dead

SEVERAL weeks ago we wrote about signs that .NET is suffering, not Java. There are some new Microsoft hires that throw FUD at Java and Microsoft boosters who work as journalists lend their pen to this Slog, too (we prefer not to give examples as they would feed the FUD). Frankly, however, Oracle has supplied a lot of ammunition to those who are trying to injure Java. It’s not deliberate and it’s why Oracle is making a strategic mistake.

“IronPython and IronRuby get kicked out into the cold by MSFT.”
      –Jan WildeboerAnyway, this post is not so much about Java. It’s actually about IronRuby dying. We saw the writings on the wall back in August [1, 2, 3, 4] (also see recent posts about IronPython, such as this one) and now there is almost a funeral. Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat writes: “#IronPython and #IronRuby get kicked out into the cold by MSFT. #RIP? http://is.gd/gcCON thinks so, http://is.gd/gcCQn doesn’t. We’ll see ..”

The nymshifting CodePlex Foundation (this Microsoft front is now called Outercurve [1, 2]) has been used as somewhat of a basket for Microsoft in which to put projects ‘externally’ (it’s about impression and appearance, not practice). Microsoft's MVP Miguel de Icaza has been part of it and at sight of the situation with Java at Apple he already throws FUD at Java using the news, as well as other recent Java news. According to this Microsoft employee, de Icaza et al. are supposed to try and rescue IronRuby and IronPython for the sake of greater .NET relevance. This is another Microsoft job for Miguel:

Today signifies a big step in Microsoft’s commitment to open-source: Jason Zander announced new leadership for IronRuby and IronPython, namely Miguel de Icaza, Michael Foord, Jeff Hardy, and myself. Since Microsoft has officially put the project in our hands, both languages will be open to contributions from the community, not just the core team members. Also, any previously unreleased work as been released, include the IronRuby tools for Visual Studio and groundwork towards IronPython 2.7 and 1.9. You can find the appropriate releases on both IronRuby and IronPython’s CodePlex sites.

[...]

Also, Miguel is a big-shot at Novell, but I’ll let him comment on how his company is supporting the projects. =)

He is a big-shot to Microsoft. They groomed him (e.g. with interviews and other publicity like this recent example) so that he can help Microsoft from outside Microsoft. His job at Novell (it’s a team effort) is to promote Mono/.NET and apparently demote Java in the process (also with FUD in his blog and in Twitter).

“In Twitter, de Icaza speaks quite a lot with the mobbyists; like them, he pretends to be pro-FOSS whilst actually doing a lot of harm to software freedom.”Who is this man kidding? Just watch him blogging about Microsoft folks this week (Ozzie in this case [1, 2]). If he loves Microsoft so much, maybe it’s time to reapply for that job he wanted.

It would be so much more appropriate if he just worked directly for Microsoft. In Twitter, de Icaza speaks quite a lot with the mobbyists; like them, he pretends to be pro-FOSS whilst actually doing a lot of harm to software freedom.

Anyway, based on this post from Microsoft MVP Jeff Hardy, we are adding IronPython to our list of dead projects from Microsoft (if someone continues it outside Microsoft, then that’s not a Microsoft product, still). It symbolises the continued collapse of .NET, which also relates to Moonlight and other cancelled/failing parts of Microsoft’s stack.

Well, the shoe has finally dropped: IronPython and IronRuby have been axed.

In weeks to come we’ll be covering a lot more stories about Apple. Microsoft is just growing irrelevant like Novell. The upsurge of FUD, the lobbyists, and the mobbyists are just a symptom. █

Summary: Apple is discontinuing Java in Mac OS X despite the inter-personal connection with Oracle

Oracle and Apple are unlikely to ever sue each other over patents because of the relationship between Jobs and Ellison [1, 2, 3]. It is hard to figure out why Apple seemingly phases out Java then, as claimed on a speculative basis in several places like this one: [via]

Scant months since beginning a public spat with Adobe over its decision not to support Flash on iOS devices, Apple now also appears ready to abandon Java in Mac OS X.

If true, what might Apple be trying to achieve? It’s not about patents, is it? To Apple, removal of Adobe Trash (at least temporarily, until antitrust scrutiny) was arguably a matter of control.

As people may already know, Apple benefits from Oracle’s lawsuit against Android/Google, which is a lawsuit over Java patents. The Economist has this new article titled “The great patent battle” and it’s about the many patent battles in the mobile arena:

Hardly a week passes without a new case. Motorola sued Apple this month, having itself been sued by Microsoft a few days earlier. Since 2006 the number of mobile-phone-related patent complaints has increased by 20% annually, according to Lex Machina, a firm that keeps a database of intellectual-property spats in America.

Most suits were filed by patent owners who hail from another industry, such as Kodak (a firm from a bygone era that now makes printers), or by patent trolls (firms that buy patents not in order to make products, but to sue others for allegedly infringing them). But in recent months the makers of handsets and related software themselves have become much more litigious, reports Joshua Walker, the boss of Lex Machina.

Could patents have anything at all with Apple’s treatment of Java (assuming those rumours bear substance)? That seems unlikely. Either way, Microsoft too has been attacking Java with FUD recently.

Postscript: at the time of publishing it turns out the speculations are true as Apple “threatens Java” by deprecating its release and Steve Jobs talks about it. █