ORACLE, far more so than Red Hat, has been in bed with the NSA. Oracle’s very identity (its name) is that of a CIA project — a fact that many people either don’t know or are shocked to discover. Actually, a lot of VC funds for database projects comes from the VC arm of the CIA nowadays. There are decent alternatives to Oracle’s databases, such as PostgreSQL [1], NoSQL [2], various Open Source Database management systems [3], and also GPL-licensed contenders such as RethinkDB, which has just received a lot of funding [4]. Oracle, which grabbed the most popular GPL-licensed database (MySQL), is still facing strong competition [5] and these are just examples from the past month’s news, not going further back than that. Then there’s the market share of Microsoft in database. Microsoft is famously facilitating NSA snooping, so it seems safe to say that using any database from the top proprietary providers (Oracle and Microsoft) is foolish and irresponsible when security and privacy are important. Back doors are now a fact, they are not a speculation. The trust is done.

SkySQL and MariaDB now directly challenge MySQL [6], which Oracle has neglected for the most part since it took over Sun and broke it to bits [7,8]. Oracle’s record when it comes to running big projects is not exactly good anymore [9] (and suffice to say its build/clone of RHEL cannot be trusted), so it seems safe to claims that for security and privacy one should choose the primarily Europe-based — with offices in 10 European countries — SkySQL (or even PostgreSQL), not MySQL. One little cause for concern is that a board member of SkySQL “worked as a management consultant with Indevo AB, At Kearney Inc. and Booz Allen,” according to this page. Booz Allen is the infamous NSA contractor.

It’s interesting that only few people entertain the possibility that there may be NSA back doors in the databases themselves, and given the role that the CIA played (historically and at present) in databases development we should pay close attention to that. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. PostgreSQL 9.1 Advances Open Source Database Innovation

2. How NoSQL will power the Internet of Things

   Open-source NoSQL databases such as Apache Cassandra are (and will be) key enablers of the Internet of Things.

   This is the view of Jonathan Ellis, CTO at DataStax, a company known for distributing a commercially supported version of the open source Apache Cassandra NoSQL Database Management System.

3. Open Source Database Management Systems Gaining Traction

4. RethinkDB grabs $8M to show its stuff against other NoSQL databases

   RethinkDB open-sourced the database under a GNU license in November 2012, and the community is 4,000 developers strong…

5. Meet the Open Source Trio Primed to Topple Oracle

   Over the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion of new databases. Several companies are offering relational databases that directly challenge traditional offerings from Oracle — databases that designed to store information in neat rows and columns on a single machine. And thanks to research papers detailing software built by Google and Amazon, we also have a slew of open source NoSQL databases — databases designed to store massive amounts of information across tens of hundreds of machines.

6. SkySQL goes after Oracle MySQL with enterprise release

   SkySQL, the MariaDB MySQL fork company, isn’t just for open-source database management system (DBMS) experts anymore. With the release of its MariaDB Enterprise product, SkySQL is going straight for Oracle’s MySQL enterprise customers.

7. The mixed fate of Sun tech under Oracle

8. James Gosling grades Oracle’s handling of Sun’s technology

   The Java founder assesses how well Oracle has managed the technologies it acquired in the four years since it bought Sun

9. Oracle’s Oregon Website Failure

   For now, though, Oregon is stuck with a very expensive white elephant and most of its residents will not be able to take advantage of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act until 2015.

PostgreSQL, which is the principal challenger to Oracle in the enterprise, was never copyleft. Copyleft would need to be something like the GPL, which MySQL became famous and hugely popular for (the de facto database for almost every FOSS CMS). Right now, under Oracle's FOSS-hostile management, MySQL’s FOSS identity is at risk and it can ultimately destroy the project [1,2]. Some large companies already move to MariaDB. Apart from those two databases there are some Microsoft partners [3] pretending to embrace ‘open’ databases and some ‘mixed’ or ‘semi’ FOSS database providers [4]. Facebook, the Microsoft-backed surveillance company, claims to be using ‘open’ databases [5-9] and InfiniSQL, yet another contender, does not even call itself Open Source, just “open-source” [10-12]. There has been a real problem in recent years because in the area of databases many companies pretend to be FOSS but are definitely not. This dilutes the “Open Source” brand and confuses many people. It’s a very limiting and restricting trend. The “Big Data” hype has a lot to do with it. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ MySQL users open up on Open Source

   Four out of five developers plan to migrate if MySQL becomes closed source

2. MySQL needs to retain open source roots to keep developer base, survey shows

3. Netflix unlocks the potential of AWS through open source

   Netflix has made available as open source many of its internally developed infrastructure management products. These include facilities for automatically scaling a service’s hardware footprint and resources, as well as software for monitoring and maintaining the resiliency of all the supporting infrastructure.

4. Is NoSQL ready for enterprise primetime?

   There is lots of interest in NoSQL these days — at the very least from venture capital firms that are throwing money at the potential leaders in the market like MongoDB, Couchbase and DataStax.

5. RocksDB – Facebook’s Database Now Open Source

6. Facebook goes open source with its embedded data store

7. Facebook releases open source code for RocksDB flash database

8. Facebook goes open source with its workhorse embedded data store

   Continuing its practice of sharing internally developed software, Facebook has released as open source RocksDB, the embedded data store the company developed to serve content to its 1.2 billion users.

9. Facebook’s latest open source effort: a flash-powered database called RocksDB

10. New open-source database InfiniSQL aims for high performance at scale

    Some investors love backing ideas that could be the next big thing. Consider, for example, the rise of NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, which some market as something that scales easier than traditional relational (SQL) databases.

11. The “infinitely” scalable InfiniSQL database

12. An open source, infinitely scalable Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)

    InfiniSQL is a massively scalable relational database system (RDBMS), composed entirely from scratch (not built upon some other technology). There is reproducible benchmark data described on InfiniSQL’s blog proving that it can perform over 500,000 complex, multi-node transactions per second with over 100,000 simultaneous transactions—all on only 12 small server nodes.

Oracle, the selfish company run by a selfish man (who has risen to power in part thanks to CIA help), just announced a new clone of Red Hat Linux 6.5 [1,2]. This clone is not free and it’s not about Free/libre software, it is about control (by Oracle). It’s merely a copy of Red Hat Linux 6.5 [3,4] and it has some Oracle-only ‘features’ [5]. Oracle didn’t make these, it bought these from Sun.

This attitude from Oracle is not surprising. Given the way Oracle just slapped OpenOffice.org at Apache (with little or nothing done to help) [6], leaving it for people to take from there [7] and to enhance [8] amid the decline of offline word processors [9], the treatment of GNU/Linux by Oracle is not shocking. Other than btrfs, what has Oracle really done for GNU/Linux? Almost nothing. Even btrfs is hardly promoted by Oracle anymore. Let’s face it. Oracle just does its own thing the proprietary way (trying to keep up with what’s shareable [10] and then adding its own private extensions at the top). To Oracle, Free/libre software is a rival [11] which it is only ever willing to co-opt in order to help sell its expensive proprietary software. When it comes to Free software, Oracle is a user, not a developer. btrfs needed to be licensed like the kernel it targets. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Send in the clones: Oracle, CentOS catch up to Red Hat Linux 6.5

2. Linux Top 3: RHEL Clones Update as Linux Mint Gets a new Dash of Cinnamon

   This past week marked the final release of Linux Mint 16 codenamed ‘Petra’. So far, Linux Mint has been made available in two officials builds, one with the new Cinammon 2.0 desktop and the other with MATE.

3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 ships, but still no RHEL 7 in sight

   Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 has reached general availability following a six-week beta period, making it the first minor release of RHEL 6 to ship since version 6.4 in February.

4. Fact sheet: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5

   The latest iteration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (6.5) is now available, and it’s a serious contender to usurp all other platforms as king of the enterprise space. This particular release was designed specifically to simplify the operation of mission-critical SAP applications. The new release focuses on key enterprise-specific areas….

5. Oracle integrates DTrace debugger into its Linux distribution

6. Apache OpenOffice 4.1 to Bring Enhanced Accessibility Support

   The Apache OpenOffice project is pleased to announce that it has successfully integrated support for the Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and IAccessible2 interfaces. Support for these interfaces enables screen readers and other assistive technologies to work with Apache OpenOffice, which in turn enables greater productivity by OpenOffice users who are blind or who have low-vision.

7. Stakeholders and Remixes: the other names of true communities

   This year we had a workshop dedicated to LibreOffice migrations inside the 3ctor and I spoke about what was going on in France. I was however reminded of a very important notion during my various conversations with the audience. Free Software licences pass on several rights to the users. But these rights or freedoms, while essential, do not mandate how a Free Software project community should work. If anything, that would be quite out of topic and perhaps going against the very spirit of Software Freedom. Among these freedoms, two are implied that are of particular importance but often overlooked in regard of Free Software development projects: the right to fork and the right -as a user- to leave the software or the vendor/supplier who is providing you support and services on the FOSS stack in question.

8. LibreOffice now has a built in XML-parser

9. Word processors are no longer central to the computing experience

   Word processors are no longer central to the computing experience, but there are still good reasons to use them. The question is, how well do the work in today’s computing environment?

10. Oracle Linux 6.5 and Docker

11. Devil is in the details of Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration

    EnterpriseDB execs have moved customers off Oracle, but contracts and app packages can tangle switch to PostgreSQL

Summary: A roundup of news about Oracle, which took and ripped apart many valuable Free/Open Source software (FOSS) projects

MATT ASAY, who sells FOSS databases (a disruptive force), points out [1] that “Oracle Still Hates Open Source Software” because, based on some reports [2,3], The United States’ Department of Defense is being lobbied by Oracle to avoid FOSS. Remember that Oracle has roots and connections with the CIA/NSA. This is an organisational position, not some opinion posted by an employee in some personal blog. Oracle’s current position on patents is also troubling.

As pointed out by some [4], VirtualBox is oddly enough one of the few FOSS projects which Oracle did not shoot in the back [5], maybe because it helps run proprietary operating systems. Most famously, Oracle chose to litigate with software patents over Java and pretty much abandoned OpenOffice.org, passing it to Apache at the end. Microsoft Office is widely loathed by technical people [6], so Oracle missed a real opportunity here. South Tyrol wants to be using ODF/LibreOffice [7] to avoid layoffs (through savings) while LibreOffice conferences [8] and workshops [9] show that despite SUSE stepping out of backing/support for this project (just like Oracle), FOSS is just too hard to kill. Too bad for Larry Ellison, who can’t just buy FOSS out of existence… █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. News Flash: Oracle Still Hates Open Source Software

   Oracle wants the U.S. Department of Defense to believe open source costs more and is less reliable. Too bad the DOD knows better.

2. Oracle tells the military to buy their products instead of using open source

   Oracle has never been shy about promoting its products. The Register is reporting today that Oracle is recommending that the military stay away from open source apps.

3. Oracle says open source has no place in military apps

   Oracle has popped out a white paper that may well turn some heads, because it contains robust criticism of open source software.

   Titled “The Department of Defense (DoD) and Open Source Software” and available here as a PDF to those with Oracle accounts or here in Dropbox, the document’s premise is that folks in the USA’s Department of Defense (DoD) could think it is possible to save money if they “… avoid buying commercial software products simply by starting with open source software and developing their own applications.”

4. VirtualBox 4.3 Lets You Run Many Cutting-Edge Platforms at Once

   It’s been interesting to watch which components of Sun Microsystems’ portfolio of products–many of which were open source projects–Oracle has chosen to embrace or abandon since its acquisition of Sun. One project that it hasn’t jettisoned is VirtualBox, which has just arrived in a new version 4.3. The popular hypervisor is now tuned to work with operating systems that have just arrived, including Windows 8.1 and Mac OS X 10.9 ( “Mavericks” ), and it’s also tuned to work smoothly with Linux distros. The new version also supports multi-monitor setups and touch interfaces conventions.

5. VirtualBox 4.3 comes with New Multi-Touch Support, virtual cam and more

   Oracle announced the release of VirtualBox 4.3, this is a major release that comes with important new features, devices support and improvements

6. Why Microsoft Word must Die

   I hate Microsoft Word. I want Microsoft Word to die. I hate Microsoft Word with a burning, fiery passion.

7. Avoiding layoffs motivates South Tyrol province-wide switch

8. Slides for my talk at LibreOffice conference

9. LibreOffice Marketing Workshop Milano 2013 – an overview

   This year saw, among other conferences, the second marketing strategy workshop for the LibreOffice project. While a workshop’s slides tend to be rather short and relatively unimportant, I intended to publlish some feedback that’s on the Marketing Pad as well as my own impressions about the state of marketing activities in the project. My slides emphasized what was going wrong more than what was right but it was nonetheless useful to start the workshop on that basis.

Summary: Oracle/Microsoft domination in databases is eroding as new players that consider themselves to be “open-source” gain traction

Google is phasing out and moving out of MySQL [1,2], dealing a blow to Oracle [3] after Oracle sued Google (over Android). Oracle has had a lot to fear because of Free software. Oracle essentially shares Microsoft’s pain. PostgreSQL, in the mean time, has a new release [4] and MongoDB [5], one of the NoSQL databases [6,7], shows promise. These new trends in the databases market sure work in favour of Free/open source software because the main gainers here are — for the most part — at least partly Free software. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle are poised to lose and Red Hat et al. will gain. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Google quietly dumps Oracle MySQL for MariaDB

   Linux distributors have been moving from Oracle’s MySQL to its popular fork, MariaDB – and now Google is also moving to MariaDB.

2. Google swaps out MySQL, moves to MariaDB

   ‘They’re moving it all,’ says MariaDB Foundation headman

3. Oracle Losing Its MySQL Grip to MariaDB

   In 2010, when Oracle took control of Sun Microsystems, they became the minders of a host of open source projects that included OpenSolaris, Java, MySQL and OpenOffice. They’ve since quit developing OpenSolaris, although the project lives on as the forked OpenIndiana project; OpenOffice now belongs to Apache; Java, especially on the browser side, has been beset by a long list of security issues and MySQL has been forked by its creator into MariaDB.

4. Open Source database PostgreSQL gets a new release

   MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL are three major open source databases which dominate the market. According to Jelastic PostgreSQL is neck to neck with MySQL fork MariaDB and MongoDB.

5. Create and save data with a MongoDB database

   Forget about joins and SQL and try NoSQL databases – specifically MongoDB, the leading example

6. Couchbase Brings Open-Source NoSQL Database to the Mobile Form Factor

   NoSQL isn’t just for big servers anymore, as Couchbase Lite brings open-source database technology to the mobile form factor.
   Open-source NoSQL database vendor Couchbase is growing its portfolio from the server to mobile devices with its new Couchbase Lite initiative. Couchbase is also releasing a new server version as well, providing improved security and administration capabilities.

   Couchbase develops and sells an open-source NoSQL database that to date has been a server-deployed product. The Couchbase Lite effort changes that, providing developers with a native small footprint database that can run on either Apple iOS or Google Android mobile operating systems.

7. Couchbase relaxes NoSQL derrière into mobile seats

   Database startup Couchbase has developed what it believes is the first NoSQL database for mobile devices, but why would anyone want such a thing?

–Edmund Burke

Summary: A roundup of the latest NSA violations and what they mean to us

GROKLAW wrote a heart-breaking post, but I do not share Pamela’s views when it comes to the response. When anonymous E-mail services decided to shut down it was supposed to protect the services legally and also protect the users’ privacy. With Groklaw it is an inherently different problem, so comparing the shutdowns is impossible. As early as 2006 or 2007 myself and others in Techrights advised Pamela to encrypt her mails (I sent her around 1,000 messages), but she declined. When it comes to setting things up to receive encrypted mail on her Apple Mac, that too was not embraced. So in a way, E-mail privacy cannot be truly blamed; not when you’re refusing to embrace privacy-preserving hooks which are fully facilitated. My wife and I donated to Groklaw some months ago, but this wasn’t enough to keep the site going.

In any event, several months ago (before the NSA leaks) we asked readers if we should increase focus on privacy. Techrights helped defeat Novell, Microsoft is now rather feeble (poor prospects), software patents are not quite spreading as quickly as we feared, and Linux is a victor through Android, with GNU and Free software becoming so commonplace that they are taken for granted and hardly even named anymore (they are definitely more widely used than ever before).

Once in a day or two we will try to summarise the latest NSA abuses, highlighting everything which readers ought to know about the Espionage Department which has bases all around the world, protecting the empire and surveying populations in secrecy (it has to remain secret because it’s illegal, alas with no accountability).

Today’s most troubling story shows that the war on Tor is advancing [1], banning IP masking under some circumstances. The NSA would absolutely love that, criminalising Web use that subverts surveillance.

The second bunch of articles proved that the NSA deliberately broke the law, with impunity of course [2-8]. Obama tried to hide it on their behalf [9-10]. Some “Hope”, eh?

FAIR TV covered some of the latest [11] and we also found the CIA approaching the NSA’s territories [12-13] (remember when IBM helped the Nazis put ‘barcodes’ on people after surveying them?).

The latest revelations are likely to change legal cases [14-15] and some fake “investigations” are being used by government in an attempt to suppress scrutiny from the outside [16-19]. Some ‘investigators’ are from the CIA. That sure inspires confidence. Interestingly enough, the New York Times predicted 3 decades ago that this would happen [20-23]. NSA employees correctly feel like they are above the law [24].

According to Snowden, the ‘Independent‘ is now ‘leaking’ on behalf of Britain’s (NSA’s) GCHQ and the United States, trying to subvert publication by The Guardian [25-29].

Politicians and plutocrats still try to evoke “9/11″ to justify the NSA’s abusive acts [30-31] while Julian Assange deals a blow to the Chairman of Google, Mr. Schmidt [32]. There are a couple more posts that deal with general issues (not news) [33-34] and pro-FOSS sites cover these matters, also addressing no news in particular [35-37]. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. US court rules masking IP address to access blocked Website violates law

   But the verdict is probably far narrower in its implications that some believe. Still, it’s a troubling decision about a controversial law.

2. The Trickle of NSA Revelations Now Includes Intentional Privacy Violations

   The giant jigsaw puzzle that is the NSA-led surveillance state had a few more pieces added on Friday, including the revelation that NSA analysts have intentionally violated privacy protections on multiple occasions.

   Despite repeated and adamant claims from the security agencies and members of Congress that any such violations have been accidental or technical, Bloomberg reports that’s not always the case.

3. NSA analysts deliberately broke rules to spy on Americans, agency reveals

   US intelligence analysts have deliberately broken rules designed to prevent them from spying on Americans, according to an admission by the National Security Agency that undermines fresh insistences from Barack Obama on Friday that all breaches were inadvertent.

   A report by the NSA’s inspector general is understood to have uncovered a number of examples of analysts choosing to ignore so-called “minimisation procedures” aimed at protecting privacy, according to officials speaking to Bloomberg.

4. NSA employees spied on their lovers using eavesdropping programme

5. NSA officers ‘spy on love interests’

   NSA officers have been using agency tools to keep tabs on their partner or spouse for at least the past decade, according to a Wall Street Journal report Friday. The spying isn’t often, but is has been given its own code name, according to the Journal, ‘LOVEINT.’

6. NSA admits rare willful surveillance violations

7. NSA analysts ‘wilfully’ skirted policy to spy on Americans, agency admits

8. NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests

   So, this week, we wrote about the NSA quietly admitting that there had been intentional abuses of its surveillance infrastructure, despite earlier claims by NSA boss Keith Alexander and various folks in Congress that there had been absolutely no “intentional” abuses. Late on Friday (of course) the NSA finally put out an official statement admitting to an average of one intentional abuser per year over the past ten years. The AP is reporting that at least one of the abuses involved an NSA employee spying on a former spouse.

9. NSA report reveals some agents abused power, while Obama says improvements needed

10. NSA Admits Abusing Spy Powers, Contradicts Obama, NSA Head, Members of Congress

    The National Security Agency (NSA) admitted today that some NSA employees have abused their power to spy on the American people.

    This statement contradicts President Obama, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and National Security Agency head Army General Keith Alexander, who have all denied the NSA has abused its spying powers on Americans.

11. FAIR TV: Snowden the ‘Spy,’ Stop-and-Frisk Factcheck, Student Loan Rates

12. CIA Wrestles With Analytics Challenges

    While there is a lot of controversy these days about the amount of data that the National Security Agency and other intelligence groups are collecting, analyzing all that data in ways that make it actionable is still a major challenge, regardless of how omnipotent an organization is perceived to be.

13. Amazon legal filing flames IBM’s ‘materially deficient’ CIA cloud

    Redacted document reveals seething hatred in spook cloud battle

14. Ruling Reveals NSA Lies to Courts, Congress About Scope of Surveillance

    In an 85-page ruling handed down by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (commonly known as the FISA court) judge John D. Bates, the NSA was called out “for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a program that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic e-mails and other Internet communications of Americans each year,” the New York Times reported on Thursday.

15. Latest NSA revelations could help pending lawsuits

    On Wednesday, the Obama administration released three opinions issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

16. NSA Abuses of Spying Power Probed by U.S. Lawmakers

    The leaders of U.S. congressional intelligence committees said they want to probe the intentional abuses of surveillance authority committed by some National Security Agency analysts in the past decade.

    [...]

    Most of the cases didn’t involve the communications of Americans, Feinstein said.

17. Three Illusory “Investigations” of the NSA Spying Are Unable to Succeed

    Since the revelations of confirmed National Security Agency spying in June, three different “investigations” have been announced. One by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), another by the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, and the third by the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally called the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

18. White House picks names for NSA review panel, led by former CIA chief

    The White House has named its choices for the NSA review panel, charged with investigating data collection practices in the wake of the Snowden leaks. According to an ABC News report, the panel will be lead by Michael Morell, who served as acting director of the CIA until March of this year. Morell will be joined on the panel by legal scholar Cass Sunstein, State Department veteran Richard Clarke, and privacy advocate Peter Swire. The group plans to file an interim report to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in 60 days, followed by a full report to be filed by the end of the year. As per earlier White House statements, the panel will not officially report to Clapper, but file its findings directly to the president.

19. Obama Appoints Four White House Insiders To NSA Review Panel

    Two weeks ago today, President Obama proposed a number of reforms to the NSA and FISA court in response to the Snowden leak. The reforms were largely cosmetic changes meant to give the illusion of real change, but there was one proposal that could actually do some good. He proposed the creation of an independent review board that would determine if the NSA ever overstepped its boundaries.

20. The New York Times Predicted the NSA Scandal 30 Years Ago

21. This Incredible Last Paragraph From A 1983 New York Times Article Predicted The NSA Scandal

22. No laws define the limits of NSA’s power – David Burnham, 1983

23. The silent power of the NSA, circa 1983

24. NSA admits to some deliberate privacy violations

    Despite characterizations of domestic data-gathering as accidental, the agency says some of its analysts engaged in “willful violations” of legal restrictions.

25. Exclusive: UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks

    Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn web project still being assembled by GCHQ

26. Four ways the Guardian could have protected Snowden – by THE NSA

27. Edward Snowden: Guardian and Independent Row over NSA and GCHQ Middle East Leaks

    The Guardian and the Independent newspapers are embroiled in a row over the latter’s exclusive story which claims the UK runs a secret internet monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept data on behalf of Britain’s GCHQ and America’s National Security Agency (NSA).

28. Snowden accuses UK government of leaking documents about itself in smear campaign

    This morning, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden responded, bluntly denying that Snowden had worked with The Independent and suggesting that the UK government intentionally leaked information in a smear campaign. “I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent. The journalists I have worked with have, at my request, been judicious and careful in ensuring that the only things disclosed are what the public should know but that does not place any person in danger,” said Snowden in a statement. While Snowden has revealed details of several surveillance programs, he has stopped short of describing anything as concrete as a base location.

29. NSA leaks reveal UK passes ‘snoop-data’ through secret Middle East station

    London: The leaked NSA documents have brought forth another key element to the US’ mega ‘snoop-op’ suggesting that UK’s spy agency runs a secret internet monitoring station in the Middle East and passes the surveillance data through its channel and shares it with the US.

30. The Defense of NSA Spying that Wasn’t

    Mueller vaguely cited “various programs,” giving them a retroactive chance of preventing “a part of 9/11.” But even this defense of post-9/11 powers is insufficient.

    [...]

    That absence of foresight is a twin with retrospective assessments like Mueller’s, which fail to account for the fact that nobody knew ahead of 9/11 what devastation might occur. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, everybody knew what such an attack could cause, and everybody began responding to the problem of terrorism.

    Would Patriot Act programs have prevented at least a part of 9/11? Almost certainly not, given pre-9/11 perceptions that terrorism was at the low end of threats to safety and security. A dozen years since 9/11, terrorism is again at the low end of threats to safety and security because of multiplicitous efforts worldwide and among all segments of society. It is not Patriot Act programs and certainly not mass domestic surveillance that make us safe. Even Mueller didn’t defend NSA spying.

31. NSA spied on Americans to prevent another 9/11 attack, Bloomberg reports

    About 10 times in the past decade, National Security Agency employees intentionally abused access to the organization’s surveillance systems to spy on Americans, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

32. Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?

    So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.

    The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the acknowledgements.

33. US publishes revealing review on NSA surveillance

    Surveillance conducted by the NSA under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated ‘the spirit’ of federal law, the ruling found.

34. This NSA Twitter Parody Account Is Both Hilarious And Upsetting

    When the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence launched its Tumblr account and accompanying Twitter feed two days ago, it was a little hard to believe that transparency initiative would truly shed light on the inner workings of the country’s spy programs. As with many of the recent National Security Agency developments, an online parody was born. And it’s pretty good, if not a bit unsettling.

35. The End of the Internet…

36. Paranoia Optimization for Our Modern Times

37. Groklaw, Domestic Surveillance and the True Measure of Risk

Summary: Proprietary software from the dominant database players (which recently got together) is expected to further violate privacy

After a recent interview with Larry Ellison it is no longer secret or just mere speculation that he is an NSA proponent (Oracle’s founders and the business have a renowned CIA-assisted/subsidised past), but what’s noteworthy is Microsoft’s view, which based on the company’s relationship with the NSA is more than happy and even eager to strengthen the NSA. How would China feel if it knew all those facts^*? It is already investigating some US companies like IBM over privacy intrusions and it should know that HP has back doors in its storage servers (caught red handed).

Oracle recently got closer to Microsoft, which helped devour Java and add NSA surveillance to it (on the ‘cloud’). It is being noted by IDG that:

The new Microsoft-Oracle partnership benefits both companies, as Oracle gets access to Azure and Microsoft can finally license Java. Will the deal have any effect on either company’s enterprise customers?

Anyone who runs a program or a GNU/Linux distribution on Microsoft’s ‘cloud’ should expect NSA surveillance. But it’s not like this would bother Larry Ellison. More and more people will, over time, realise that the PATRIOT Act made it risky to host with US companies (or US-made software) anywhere, respective of the datacentre’s location (the Internet is global). █
___
^* Having just spent 2 hours at a Chinese superstore, it seems evident that we in the West increasingly come to depend on China for everything, rather than the other way around. The US and UK governments are openly worried right now about dependence on Chinese hardware which could facilitate back doors.

Summary: Patent litigation, de-emphasis on freedom etc. now a common trick for dismantling FOSS projects as they emerge

With a licensing fiasco and other scandals abound, MySQL is hardly treated so favourably these days. Oracle‘s megalomaniac CEO (God complex like his best friend Steve Jobs) warned a long time ago that if some FOSS competition gets good enough, then he will just buy it. He bought several such products/projects and also started attacking FOSS in court, using patents of course. Recently he also joined hands with Microsoft. The real contender these days is free/libre software, not any particular brand. Few people will challenge this claim because of Android, Firefox, Apache, the GNU toolchain and so on (Microsoft is already trying to crush or subvert Apache from the inside, making it just another Windows/SQL Server ‘app’). The main point, however, is that one way to challenge FOSS is spurious litigation, potentially SLAPP, and another is buyout. Just look what Microsoft recently did to Barnes and Noble.

“The real contender these days is free/libre software, not any particular brand.”A few days ago we found this article about Microsoft’s friends at the Washington D.C.-based Blackboard, who infiltrated and disrupted the good FOSS project known as Moodle (I installed it on my site and experimented with it earlier this year)

The article asks: “How does one compete against FREE? That’s an interesting question for Blackboard, a company which creates learning management systems (LMS). Blackboard previously engaged in buying up and either dismantling or integrating the competition into its own products–such as Elluminate, Prometheus, or WebCT–but open source alternatives like Moodle and Sakai present a different issue.”

“The main point, however, is that one way to challenge FOSS is spurious litigation, potentially SLAPP, and another is buyout.”This has indeed been disturbing, We wrote about it before.

“In the meantime,” says this article, “officials at Blackboard, Moodlerooms, and NetSpot paint a rosy picture with a “statement of principles” that commit to keeping the OSS development alive. So far, there is no word on what may occur if a value conflict arises between Blackboard and Moodle, and there is no indication if there will ultimately be a split in the development community as happened after Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems forked LibreOffice from OpenOffice. Informed of some pending corporate strategies, Moodle creator Martin Dougiamas shows cautious optimism for positive synergies resulting from more interrelation between Blackboard’s products and the two companies it purchased.”

Blackboard is trying to do here what other proprietary software giants did and it can result in reduced community support for the FOSS side, helping to strengthen a proprietary agenda. █

Summary: Update on the WordPerfect case and remarks on the need to remember what Microsoft did

JUST before Christmas there were some developments related to the WordPerfect case. We covered them in the IRC channel at the time. Basically, even the dangerous charlatan Bill Gates was called in to testify about those competition crimes against Novell. Shortly after hung jury as we covered at one time it was evident that this 'old Novell' case was about to proceed and Groklaw has this update:

As promised Microsoft has now filed its renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law [PDF; Text] in the Novell case. Nothing terribly surprising here, and we don’t know what arguments Microsoft will set forth to support this motion, although Microsoft renews its arguments set forth in its original motion from November 17.

[...]

Given that the only thing the jury was undecided about was the degree of damage to Novell, are we to conclude that the jury was, in fact, unreasonable in all of its other findings? That seems a bit rich. On the other hand, judges have been known to override juries before, and what a reasonable jury would have done is the basis for a judgment as a matter of law. In this case, however, it would seem that, if the Judge Motz thought Novell had failed to prove its case as Microsoft suggests, he would have never allowed the matter to go to the jury in the first place.

This action by Microsoft is likely simply a matter of protecting its right of appeal and attempting to strengthen its hand in any settlement discussions with Novell. We will await Microsoft’s brief, which is due February 3.

WP is virtually dead and also its employees die if this news is something to judge by (WP/Corel is an old company). Novell too is pretty much dead and to quote:

Fluent in several languages, he used this aptitude working for the LDS Church, WordPerfect, and Novell and pursuing his passion for genealogy.

The pathway of Microsoft’s road of destruction. Doc Searls writes about another former Novell employee who died:

I got to know Judith Burton when she was still Judith Clarke and Senior VP Corporate Marketing for Novell, in 1987. Novell had just bought a company called CXI, which had been a client of Hodskins Simone & Searls, the Palo Alto advertising agency in which I was a partner. By that time HS&S had come to specialize in communications technology clients, and the chance to do something with Novell as well seemed moe than opportune, especially since it was clear that Novell was smarter about comms than just about anybody at that time.

Novell was outsmarted by a company that broke the law in order to get its way and later sneak its way out of justice. Microsoft’s attempt to just assassinate competitors in illegal way continues to this date and we should learn from the past. One day there might be nobody left to tell these stories first-hand; instead, Gates’ PR/reputation laundering operations will continue to rewrite history (including the case against Microsoft, as covered so poorly in the press last month). █

The US is in the midst of an insurance industry push towards electronic medical records. Tax breaks and other incentives have been offered to doctors who make the move to electronic records keeping. This will be good if adequate protections are in place.

The privacy of electronic records is supposed to be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, but there are obvious and gaping problems. Frequently raised concerns include nosy clerks especially at satellite institutions like pharmacies, unauthorized remote intrusion, court orders and a lack of action by regulators who take complaints. Mostly overlooked is the fact that software owners like Microsoft will have unfettered access to any medical record that any Windows system has access to. Google recently proved that Microsoft was spying on ordinary users, so the threat is no longer a theoretical matter of the company exercising the broad rights to snoop they gave themselves in their EULAs a decade ago [2] with or without your permission.

Every business and government office that uses non free software should realize this threat and end it by migrating to free software. Moving to free software won’t protect institutions from malicious clerks and other commonly mentioned problems but it is the only solution to unauthorized access to records by software owners. That access and power is at the heart of the bad deal propitiatory software has always offered but is exposed in an ugly way when all of our records are electronic and computers must be on a network to be considered useful.

Businesses that do not move out of customer and self interest should be forced by law. Customers and citizens concerned about their privacy should be protected. Because no such privacy can be guaranteed by propitiatory software, no propitiatory software should be allowed to operate on customer business records. Only software with the four software freedoms should be allowed.

Summary: Microsoft wanted Web SQL dead “just because they don’t have sql92 level sqllite implementation,” alleges a reader of ours

IN RECENT weeks we’ve written critically about the W3C [1, 2, 3], which does dubious things that help Microsoft (it has a chair there).

According to an update from 2 days ago (18 November 2010), “W3C kills Web SQL Database,” says Reddit. Over a hundred comments were posted about it and one reader of ours, who is very knowledgeable in the area of databases, came to say: “w3c (Microsoft) kills web sql (just because they don’t have sql92 level sqllite implementation)” █

Summary: Leader of Sun’s open source programme is not at all positive about Oracle’s commitment to Free/libre software

THE ORACLE-GOOGLE case has gotten us increasingly distracted [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], but it’s an important issue. Simon Phipps‘ initial reaction was:

Hmm. Aren’t these both Linux Foundation members and OIN licensees? Fighting over open source technology in a Linux distro? Presumably this also indicates Oracle’s decision on Apache’s request for a TCK for Harmony.

Phipps was Sun’s key “Open Source” guy, so his opinion matters a great deal. He is calling for everyone to abolish software patents (again). “If you still think software patents are a spur to innovation, you’re not paying attention,” he wrote. More importantly, he goes on to show that Oracle is not serious about Free software, except as a control freak or a ‘consumer’ (exploiting without contributing much, pretty much like Apple). Oracle has grabbed MySQL and other such projects which relate to databases. In a 2006 interview Ellison made a revealing statement:

FT [Financial Times]: Is open source going to be disruptive to Oracle?

LE [Larry Ellison]: No. If an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better than our own web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that’s what we’ll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Keep in mind it’s not that good in most places yet. We’re a big supporter of Linux. At some point we may embed Linux in all of our products and provide support.

Phipps also links to Carlo Daffara’s second insightful post about the subject:

I believe that the first one is the most probable one; Larry Ellison should know that cornering Google would not be sufficient to make them capitulate – they have too much to lose. But this will not be sufficient to create an opportunity for Oracle; I believe that the lawsuit will actually bring nothing to Oracle, and lots of advantages to Google. But only time will tell; the only thing that I can predict for sure right now is that Solaris will quickly fade from sight (as it will be unable to grow at the same rate of Linux) exactly like AIX and HP-UX: a mature and backroom tech, but nothing that you can base a growth strategy upon.

The FSF-backed swpat.org is already stepping in and Google promises to fight Oracle to defend Android/Dalvik. █

Summary: How the emergence of SkySQL weakens Monty’s case against the company which bought (and continues to maintain) MySQL

“SugarCRM jumps the Open Source shark claiming closed is open and it’s the rest of us who are mistaken,” wrote Simon Phipps in Twitter. Phipps used to be the Open Source symbol of Sun Microsystems (now he is in OSI), whose employees that moved to Oracle might as well attempt to pass ‘open’ core as “Open Source” (hot subject at the moment [1, 2, 3]). Roberto Galoppini has published an opinion on ‘open’ core from Giuseppe Maxia (Oracle/MySQL), who calls it the “pragmatic freedom”. As Pamela Jones (Groklaw) put it earlier this month, “I don’t share his views, but I thought you’d like to hear from an open core defender, who also happens to work at Oracle on MySQL, as he presents what’s been jokingly called the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense (“I had to pay my mortgage, etc.”).”

“SugarCRM jumps the Open Source shark claiming closed is open and it’s the rest of us who are mistaken”
      –Simon PhippsJones also points out that Michael “Monty” Widenius from MySQL (and from Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation) had personal financial interests while lobbying against Oracle’s takeover of MySQL (he helped create SkySQL). “Another happy coincidence?”

That is what she asks anyway. “Consider the timing of the appeal of the Oracle-Sun deal by Monty before you answer,” she adds. This is an especially hard subject for us to address because Techrights uses a MySQL database. So does Groklaw for that matter. As for Phipps, his Web site uses MySQL and he refuses to talk about MySQL under Oracle (at least in FLOSS Weekly). We are grateful to Widenius for MySQL, but this project is no longer his. He sold it and made millions. █

Summary: Timely reminder of the fact that software patents opposition is not the same of Free software advocacy

THE MOST effective lobbyists are sometimes those who pretend to be the very opposite of what they are. There are many example of that, extending well beyond the realms of IT. We wrote about “controlled opposition” in April [1, 2] and in June when we gave Association of Competitive Technologies (ACT) as an example.

Yesterday we wrote about OIN — the body which endorses Linux and software patents at the same time. It’s bizarre, no doubt about it, but that’s how companies like IBM seem to perceive Linux (more on that in the next post). Others join this same bandwagon for practical reasons [1, 2] that are simple to explain.

Here is what someone wrote to Bradley Kuhn (FSF/SFLC) a short while ago: “Wouldn’t OIN being proactive against [software patents] nullify some of their own member’s patent claims? That would explain their approach.”

The CEO of OIN (Bergelt, the successor of Rosenthal from IBM) says that he is in favour of “good” software patents — whatever that actually means.

“My guess is that he [Florian Müller] is being paid handsomely to act the way he does.”
      –Stefan GustavsonGroklaw wrote about OIN the other day (not explicitly referring to IBM’s role), defending it unquestionably, as usual. The president of the FFII quoted Groklaw as saying that “Bergelt is highly respected in the FOSS community, as is OIN”; What did he label it? “When Groklaw get it wrong” — that’s right, the FFII was never a big fan of the OIN, either. Certain things which the OIN does are commendable [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but there might be better ways to defend the freedom of GNU/Linux. On the other hand, there are those who consider OIN’s foes to be foes of GNU/Linux.

Over at Groklaw, Stefan Gustavson writes: “You may be confusing the Florian Müller from 2005 with the person we see blogging now in 2010. He might have been honest then. At least he did some good when the EU patent “reform” was shot down. He certainly isn’t honest any longer. He spreads lies about free software and its proponents, and throws mud in any general direction where Linux is being discussed in public, with a clear intent of spreading FUD. He is not stupid, so he can’t be excused for not knowing better. My guess is that he is being paid handsomely to act the way he does.”

Müller does not seem to have responded to that yet. When we had our suspicions about him and people started to turn up the heat he ended closing comments on his blog. It makes a more controlled platform for him, but he can’t control Groklaw, which continues to accuse him sometimes. Other former colleagues of Müller are equally suspicious.

One thing is for sure; Müller is nothing like the lobbyists from ACT and especially Jonathan Zuck (see video below) who denied wrongdoing in his E-mail to me.

It is astonishing that the European authorities even give this man a seat after he produced fake letters 'on behalf' of dead people, as always in support of Microsoft which funds him. It’s people like these who tear down Europe’s software sovereignty, just as Hollywood’s lobbyists are subverting copyright law in Europe and in Canada (the latter is hot in the news at the moment).

Going back to Müller, he seems to have a fixation targeted at IBM (a bit like Jeff Gould with his anti-IBM rants that he pushed into GNU/Linux Web sites in the form of submissions from “AlexGr”). Müller may be against software patents, but he is not a proponent of GNU/Linux or software freedom. We also know that Müller is close to Monty, who is in Microsoft’s CodePlex. Glyn Moody has just written this detailed article which explains why CodePlex is still an embodiment of Microsoft, even the CTO. [via]

Not surprisingly, CodePlex has been subject to much suspicion – and derision. It was a pretty blatant attempt to jump on the open source bandwagon, in a form that was strictly controlled by Microsoft, which allowed it to place its own interpretation on what open source meant (by including licences that weren’t on the OSI list, for example). And so no surprise, either, that the open source world has pretty much ignored CodePlex as a result. I must confess that I am guilty of this sin too, and that is unfortunate, because something is happening there that is potentially very interesting.

CodePlex is based around .NET, Microsoft licences, and other parts of Microsoft’s proprietary stack. Open Source projects for .NET developers are no better than Mono and Moonlight. They are actually worse because many of them are Windows-only, SQL Server-only, and SharePoint-only. That’s not Open Source, it’s a farce. But Windows sites happily defend this.

Speaking of suspicious ‘friends’, somebody from Finland has told us about the latest giveaway from Tuxera:

Directly related to this is the European case of looming software patents.
Today Mikko Välimäki from Tuxera wrote several blog entries on their law firm’s page, main one is this:

http://www.turre.com/2010/06/softan-patentoinnille-euroopassa-lopullinen-ok/

Title in english: “Final ok for patenting software in europe?”

He even goes to say that decision to allow/approve software patents in Europe would be JURIDICALLY correct. What a nice bat called FUD that is.
And “oikeusvarmuus” is translatable to “assurance of juridical rights”, the same once again.. pay us or be sued.

In conclusion, some who protest against software patents are not in favour of Free software, some who develop for Linux are in favour of software patents, and in the next post we’ll put our sceptical eye on IBM (yet again). █

Summary: Oracle blog rant about EIF 2.0 said to have been removed; the role of the BSA in fighting software freedom is explained

THE PRESIDENT of the FFII points out that “Oracle´s blog post over EIFv2 open standards lobbying has disappeared” and that it can still be found here (titled “The EU goes bananas over EIF 2.0″). What’s the matter with all that? Is it possible that Oracle found it unacceptable to defend software freedom and standards (like Sun removed MySQL’s anti-software patents page following the acquisition [1, 2])? Here is a portion of what this newer Oracle post about the Digital Agenda says despite the fact that it too has been derailed.

The EU Digital Agenda (I gave it an 85/100 score), while laudable, stops short of using the term. The speech is a nice interpretation of her own document. I am told all other relevant Commissioners saw and accepted the speech in a brief interservice consultation. What that means is another thing. Are they blind? Have they changed their mind? Or, do they simply let her have her own opinions, but were not prepared to go as far as this in the Digital Agenda? Whatever lies behind what happened and what was said today, it is progress.

The next step for the European Commission is defining the term open standards. If they do that, and do it right, Vice President Kroes will go into history as having made a significant contribution towards global progress in e-government by possibly eradicating lock-in forever. Moreover, she will put Europe’s SMEs in a better position to succeed in a global IT market filled with barriers to entry from players not fully understanding, using, or unpacking standards.

For some background about the lobbying, see the following posts.

1. European Open Source Software Workgroup a Total Scam: Hijacked and Subverted by Microsoft et al
2. Microsoft’s AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
3. Does the European Commission Harbour a Destruction of Free/Open Source Software Workgroup?
4. The Illusion of Transparency at the European Parliament/Commission (on Microsoft)
5. 2 Months and No Disclosure from the European Parliament
6. After 3 Months, Europe Lets Microsoft-Influenced EU Panel be Seen
7. Formal Complaint Against European Commission for Harbouring Microsoft Lobbyists
8. ‘European’ Software Strategy Published, Written by Lobbyists and Multinationals
9. Microsoft Uses Inside Influence to Grab Control, Redefine “Open Source”
10. With Friends Like These, Who Needs Microsoft?
11. European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Corrupted by Microsoft et al, Its Lobbyists
12. Orwellian EIF, Fake Open Source, and Security Implications
13. No Sense of Shame Left at Microsoft
14. Lobbying Leads to Protest — the FFII and the FSFE Rise in Opposition to Subverted EIF
15. IBM and Open Forum Europe Address European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Fiasco
16. EIF Scrutinised, ODF Evolves, and Microsoft’s OOXML “Lies” Lead to Backlash from Danish Standards Committee
17. Complaints About Perverted EIF Continue to Pile Up
18. More Complaints About EIFv2 Abuse and Free Software FUD from General Electric (GE)
19. Patents Roundup: Copyrighted SQL Queries, Microsoft Alliance with Company That Attacks F/OSS with Software Patents, Peer-to-Patent in Australia
20. Microsoft Under Fire: Open Source Software Thematic Group Complains About EIFv2 Subversion, NHS Software Supplier Under Criminal Investigation
21. British MEP Responds to Microsoft Lobby Against EIFv2; Microsoft’s Visible Technologies Infiltrates/Derails Forums Too
22. Patents Roundup: Escalations in Europe, SAP Pretense, CCIA Goes Wrong, and IETF Opens Up
23. Patents Roundup: Several Defeats for Bad Types of Patents, Apple Risks Embargo, and Microsoft Lobbies Europe Intensely
24. Europeans Asked to Stop Microsoft’s Subversion of EIFv2 (European Interoperability Framework Version 2)
25. Former Member of European Parliament Describes Microsoft “Coup in Process” in the European Commission
26. Microsoft’s Battle to Consume — Not Obliterate — Open Source
27. Patents Roundup: David Hammerstein on Microsoft Lobbying in Europe; Harrison Targets Lobbying on Software Patents in New Zealand, Justice Stevens Leaves SCOTUS

The BSA was among the lobbyists for Microsoft. In other news that covers the BSA’s actions regarding software patents and policies, we have this:

The largest growing part of the software sector, and which most threatens the legacy business models of BSA members, is the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement. I joined this multi-sectoral movement, which includes but is not limited to commercial software companies, in the early 1990′s. Most of the policies promoted by the BSA since the mid 1990′s have been aimed at stopping or reducing the growth of this movement. The two most active policies are software patents and legal protection for technical measures.

[...]

Independent software authors have obvious allies with other independent software authors. There is the Open Source Initiative, the Free Software Foundation and the Linux Foundation in the US, and various software user/developer groups in Canada such as CLUE: Canada’s Association for Open Source.

If you look at the membership for the Linux Foundation and the BSA, you may notice there are overlapping companies between who I consider to be my most obvious opponents and allies. This is not only true within these associations, but within individual companies. I’ve observed informal policy debates between employees of IBM, with these different employees being as far as two individuals can be from each other on key areas of technology policy.

[...]

The BSA members are using the labels as their public face to the political process, just as the labels have always used specific famous musicians as their public face. Michael Geist has suggested that the major labels are behind the latest Astroturf campaign, and from what I have seen I suspect this is true.

Oracle is not listed as a BSA member. It could do a lot more to rectify EIF 2.0 and the Digital Agenda, especially now that it has important Free software projects in its portfolio. █

Summary: Another live example of Microsoft ‘security’ at work; debunking the latest Linux lies from Ed Bott

“SECURITY through obscurity” sounds like a good idea in theory. As we recently found out (and had confirmed by Microsoft), part of this obscurity is lack of disclosure. Microsoft is silently patching flaws that it never discloses, which is dishonest if not fraudulent when Microsoft issues security reports based on such oversight.

According to this new article, “tens of thousands of sites” running Microsoft’s software are paying the price for having ‘secret’ vulnerabilities:

There’s a large-scale attack underway that is targeting Web servers running Microsoft’s IIS software, injecting the sites with a specific malicious script. The attack has compromised tens of thousands of sites already, experts say, and there’s no clear indication of who’s behind the campaign right now.

The attack, which researchers first noticed earlier this week, already has affected a few high-profile sites, including those belonging to The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post. Some analyses of the IIS attack suggest that it is directed at a third-party ad management script found on these sites.

This must be the latest example of why nobody gets fired for avoiding Microsoft.

Speaking of Windows security, “Juniper Networks Protects Customers From New Microsoft Vulnerabilities” after Juniper became filled with Microsoft managers [1, 2, 3]. It’s just something to bear in mind.

There is some bad FUD about Linux security at the moment (coming primarily from Ed Bott). SJVN has already responded to this FUD:

Here’s what really happened. UnrealIRCd, a rather obscure open-source IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server, wasn’t so much hacked as the program it was letting people download has been replaced by one with a built-in security hole. Or, as they explained on their site,

Microsoft boosters like Bott have been desperate to show that GNU/Linux is not more secure than Windows. As companies like Google dump Windows for security reasons, Microsoft will carry on with this FUD campaign but rely on peripherals/extensions (like Bott) to do the attacks]. That’s just how Microsoft operates when it needs FUD. See the “smoking gun” below. █

“As discussed in our PR meeting this morning. David & I have spoken with Maureen O’Gara (based on go ahead from BrianV) and planted the story. She has agreed to not attribute the story to us….

“[...] Inform Maureen O’ Gara (Senior Editor Client Server News/LinuxGram) or John Markoff (NYT) of announcement on Aug 28, 2000. Owner dougmil (Approval received from BrianV to proceed)

“Contact Eric Raymond, Tim O’Reilly or Bruce Perrins to solicit support for this going against the objectives of the Open Source movement. Owner: dougmil [Doug Miller]. Note that I will not be doing this. Maureen O’Gara said she was going to call them so it looks better coming from her.”

Microsoft uses reporters as attackers

Summary: Inhumane practices are being implemented in the United Kingdom (UK) for Microsoft to become richer and the British population tracked through finger-based surveillance

MICROSOFT Corporation, the company which US congress accused of “enabling tyranny”, is now bringing its tyrannical practices to the UK. Having already helped implement an ID card scheme in India (the UK is canning its own plan for ID cards and thank goodness for that), Microsoft will now participate in the fingerprinting of toddlers, who shall be catalogued like books and numbered based on their small gentle fingers (which the “bad guys” would love to have). From The Telegraph:

Children, 4, ‘to be fingerprinted to borrow school books from library’

Students in Manchester are having their thumbprints digitally transformed into electronic codes, which can then be recognised by a computer program.

[...]

But critics said they were “appalled” at the system, developed by Microsoft which is also being trialled in other parts of the country.

Thank you again Microsoft for protecting those children from paedophiles, terrorists, and those evil evil evil people who borrow a textbook from the library without permission (we all know what a menace to human kind they can be, having gained knowledge!!). Sadly, you failed to protect the children’s fingers, which will now become a hotter commodity.

“Sadly, you failed to protect the children’s fingers, which will now become a hotter commodity.”Having already hijacked the irreplaceable British Library, Microsoft keeps looking for new national assets and institutions with which to make entire states totally dependent on Microsoft, even for curation and long-term access to historical records that are invaluable items.

With just a bunch of developers, Microsoft seems to be doing more damage than many years with Labour have wrought upon human rights (and I am not against Labour at all, just their policies that neglect people’s liberties and freedoms, which were long fought for). █

Summary: Microsoft hires Donna-Bea Tillman from the FDA in order to increase its influence in the United States government and help Microsoft control healthcare systems

MICROSOFT’S connections with the US government continue to be tightened. According to The Seattle Times, Obama’s CIO Vivek Kundra may have just met Steve Ballmer, who also visits the White House on occasions [1, 2].

After his San Francisco tour, Kundra is coming to Seattle for a day Thursday beginning with breakfast at Microsoft with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and other local executives.

Microsoft will show Kundra advanced research projects before he speaks at the University of Washington in the afternoon. He’ll also meet with executives at Amazon.com before making an appearance at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s awards dinner.

This possible encounter is not the subject of this post though; it merely serves as a precursor and a reminder of Microsoft’s relationship with the government. Politics and commerce are never separate, unless one insists on oversimplification.

The FDA is connected to Microsoft through the pharmaceutical cartel, as well as the Gates Foundation, which works for Monsanto [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and has former Monsanto staff (which in turn has a notorious exchange of staff with the FDA). With high-level Monsanto employees inside the Gates Foundation, the connections to the government become a tad more apparent, but we won’t delve into it any further because that’s not the point.

The main story is the following one. According to this report from the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is going to hire a Fed from the FDA.

The director of the Office of Device Evaluation, one of the highest-ranking positions at the Food and Drug Administration, is leaving this month to join the Washington office of Microsoft Corp., according to an email she sent Monday morning.

Donna-Bea Tillman, who has been with the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health since 1994, said in the email that she will become part of the software giant’s health solutions group as the director of regulations and policy. The FDA and Microsoft confirmed the move.

There is more information in the blog — details that didn’t make it into the main article.

You probably wouldn’t put Microsoft on the list of companies in the market to hire former FDA officials, but the software giant snagged a top medical-device regulator today.

Donna-Bea Tillman, head of the office of device approvals, says her jump to Microsoft isn’t as unusual as it may seem. She told colleagues in a memo she has long had “a love for all things computer.”

Here is another news article which cites the Wall Street Journal.

Donna Bea-Tillman will leave her post at Food and Drug Administration to join the Washington, D.C. lobbying office of Microsoft Corp., according to the Wall Street Journal

Donna Bea-Tillman, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s office of device evaluation, will apparently resign her post to join the lobbying office of software giant Microsoft Corp., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

[...]

Tillman told her colleagues in the email that she took the position with Microsoft because of the potential for health information technology to, “reduce the skyrocketing cost of health care,” according to a copy of the email obtained by the paper

So quite clearly, the purpose here it to lobby for control over people’s medical records [1, 2]. There needn’t even be speculation about it being just more Microsoft lobbying, which works against the interests of people and instead benefits a private corporation. If people learned something from the healthcare fiasco and the insurance companies, this ought to be it. To usher this whole campaign for Microsoft as the steward of health/patient records, Microsoft seems to have started a whole tour and media blitz. In the past week alone we’ve found a lot of press releases about Microsoft in health. The number of press releases was very, very unusual. It includes:

• Microsoft Case Study Spotlights OrthoCarolina and Mariner Partnership in Medical Practice Efficiency

• Cleveland Clinic/Microsoft Pilot Promising; Home Health Services May Benefit Chronic Disease Management

• Greenway Medical Technologies Advances Patient-Provider Benefits (about Microsoft)

• Patients will be granted the ability to see medical records with Microsoft Technology

• Cleveland Clinic, Microsoft project: Home health tracks chronic conditions better

Now, watch what else Microsoft is doing. “Microsoft Health Users Group Innovation Awards” are announced and from these “Innovation Awards” we get another press release:

• NextGen Health Information Exchange and Doylestown Hospital Recognized as Winners of Microsoft HUG 2010 Innovation Awards

Microsoft is even sponsoring/arranging a “hospital luncheon” (recall the “Screw Google luncheon”, which we last mentioned here).

Mission Viejo Microsoft Store takes title sponsorship for hospital luncheon

[...]

The Microsoft Store at The Shops at Mission Viejo is slated to be the title sponsor of Mission Hospital’s 14th Annual Valiant Women Luncheon on Friday, March 12, at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.

Then, Microsoft uses Philips to storm the medical system and consume private data (also covered here). This a colossal mistake given Microsoft’s proven disregard for people’s privacy and very poor reliability in general. To seize control of the medical system becomes more of a matter of life and death in this case. Microsoft has abysmal record here, with Windows zombies becoming the menace of many hospitals. See for example:

• Security Links: Another Hospital Falls Prey to Windows Spyware; Another Trojan and Botnet
• US Army Becomes Zombies Army; London Hospitals Still Ill (Windows Viruses)
• NHS Never Learns: Windows Viruses Leave British Patients to Die, Again
• How Many People Must Die Before Abandoning Windows?
• Utah Has Novell, SCO, and… Conficker in the Hospitals
• New Casualties of Microsoft Windows?
• Yes, Windows Causes Deaths Sometimes

People should be killing Microsoft’s attempt to invade hospitals before they kill people. Sadly enough, some reporters play along with this media blitz [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], which is backed by new lobbyists and marketing people, with people’s lives at stake (to Microsoft it’s just the smell of money and crucial dependency/lock-in).

“It’s not about embrace but about exploiting rivals’ platforms to help Microsoft, which has almost no market share in phones.”On a related note, Microsoft is trying to control (with patents) bar codes and it’s advertising this through Linux/Android phones [1, 2]. Just like Hyper-V drivers for Linux, it’s self serving. It’s also the same with Microsoft applications for iPhone — ones that merely have users connect to Microsoft services. It’s not about embrace but about exploiting rivals’ platforms to help Microsoft, which has almost no market share in phones. The reporters totally missed that or chose to ignore it. Mary Jo Foley looks at this news and wonders if Microsoft will use this strategy to also advance Silver Lie, much like Microsoft uses the *Spark programmes to achieve this (with free advertising from IDG).

Last but not least, Microsoft wants to manage people’s national identities [1, 2]. In India, Microsoft had NASSCOM facilitate this but in Germany too Microsoft apparently found some guinea pigs.

Microsoft released its new identity management software at the RSA conference on Tuesday and is working on a prototype national ID card system in Germany that is designed to give consumers control over the amount of personal data they share with specific organizations.

ID cards are a terrible idea for many reasons (including surveillance but a lot more than that). We won’t go into it. In any case, Germany ponders implementing an unnecessary system and even putting it in the hands of a private company from abroad, and one that’s highly abusive and irresponsible. What an utter disaster. █

Summary: Microsoft wants to control more aspects of people’s lives and those who enable this are identified and named

(Mis)Education

Microsoft is still exploiting the education systems for more control over the curriculum and the tools, just as it recently did with the IEEE (more on that here). Microsoft proceeds to Imperial College (London) and Washington University, based on the ‘Microsoft press’ which masquerades as academic media (1105 Media). They are advertising the Live@edu scam.

Health Vulture

Microsoft’s HealthVault uses Silverlight, so it punishes those who are not Microsoft customers, but there are worse things. For more control over people’s medical records [1, 2] Microsoft is now misusing the word "choice" and coercing HHS while unleashing press releases and attending/organising events. No medical system anywhere should allow a corporation to have private control of vital tools and patients’ data. Microsoft claims “choice and flexibility” in its press release, as long as you choose Microsoft (i.e. no choice and no flexibility). It even (mis)uses the word “open” in the title. Microsoft Nick and others have covered this [1, 2, 3], but they did not list the drawbacks or outline the deception. It’s more like ghost-writing or editing (of press releases), it’s not journalism.

India (Microsoft’s Future)

Over in India, Microsoft is to manage people's identities (it’s a scary thought) and Microsoft is still moving jobs over there. More recently it was the legal team and here is another new article about it:

Microsoft Outsources Legal Work to India Amid Budget Cuts

In a surprising move, Microsoft Inc. has inked a contract with a legal outsourcing provider to outsource to India. The provider CPA Global will employ lawyers in India to get the legal work done.

Law.com chose the headline “Tech Lawyers Say ‘Uh Oh’ as Microsoft Outsources Legal Work to India” and “India is critical to Microsoft’s strategy” says another news headline from last week. Expect more parts of Microsoft to move to India and reduce the company’s expenses.

Goldman Sachs Meets Microsoft Slime

We previously wrote about Microsoft and Goldman Sachs in [1, 2]. The ‘Microsoft press’ and the Seattle Times report from last week’s Goldman Sachs event where Microsoft promoted itself (including some of the above, namely ‘cloud’ services for government/public service to store data on Microsoft servers), with help from Microsoft booster Gavin Clarke, who is sliming Oracle by quoting Microsoft’s slurs.

Addressing Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, California, Microsoft’s server and tools chief Bob Muglia criticized Oracle for peddling a return to “1960s computing,” as the rival company goes against industry trends and backs obsolete technologies.

This is utter nonsense. Muglia has said other darn things about Free software, going back several years ago [1, 2].

If Microsoft is so future-proof as Microsoft wants people to believe, then why did Bill Gates carry on dumping Microsoft (MSFT) shares last week? He seems to be dumping these as fast as he is allowed, being an insider. This has gone on for years.

Director of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) William H Gates Iii sold 7,000,000 shares during the past week at an average price of $28.77.

He is investing in other monopolies.

Elsewhere in the World

Over in Jordan, Microsoft continues targeting the government and the business sector. Elsewhere in the Middle East Microsoft is trying to control Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Microsoft Jordan hosted a training workshop for 150 of its customers and partners on the increasing importance of effective and integrated business intelligence (BI) solutions that will help drive better decision making across organisations and government institutions, resulting in improved IT skills, reduced costs and enhanced business performance.

Here is Microsoft exploiting UNESCO again. It makes a partnership while publishing this press release to start a whole lot of media fluff.

Microsoft Corp., in collaboration with UNESCO, has launched an initiative of its own kind to save several rare languages from being lost after they have been falling victim to the ever-changing cultural landscape.

The news is missing the point by repeating sound bites from UNESCO.

“Linguistic diversity is under threat,” UNESCO director-general director Irina Bokova said in a release. “This loss not only erodes individual communities and cultures, but more broadly, the very makeup of our societies.”

It is Free software — not Microsoft — that keeps languages alive. There are many examples to that effect, but it’s not what this post is about. In general, it’s sad to see that UNESCO sometimes plays along with a convicted monopoly abuser. UNESCO was previously promoting ODF [1, 2, 3], which is about communication across platforms (multilingualism being similar). As for the language issue, last month we explained the language game Microsoft is playing [1, 2]. It’s doing this a lot in Africa and South America, but the new examples which we gave last month were all from Africa. █

“It’s possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s going quite well I must admit.”

–Bill Gates

Summary: Microsoft is preparing to poach users/customers of the most ubiquitous Free database software

SEVERAL MONTHS ago we showed that Microsoft was embracing and extending MySQL in some special sense. Now there’s this in the news. From Mary Jo Foley:

Microsoft tests tool for migrating MySQL to SQL Server

[...]

It’s no secret that even though MySQL has been a Microsoft partner, it also is a Microsoft competitor. And ever since Oracle made overtures to buy Sun and (get MySQL in the process), Microsoft’s been even more of a foe.

Given that context, it’s probably not too surprising that Microsoft is readying a tool designed to help customers migrate from MySQL to SQL Server and/or SQL Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-hosted version of its database. That tool is currently in the early test stage (Community Technology Preview 1), and is downloadable from the Microsoft Download Center.

Everyone knows that Microsoft is a terrible partner. Another very ubiquitous database, Sqlite, is being embraced and extended by the Mono people.

Those who have been speaking about Monty’s connections with Microsoft can make further speculations, but speculations are all they can ever be. █

Related posts:

1. SAP/Microsoft Attack on Java, OpenOffice.org, Other Libre Products Culminates in Alliance
2. The ‘Microsoft of Europe’ Instructs Oracle on Free Software
3. Is Microsoft Lobbying to Burn Sun?
4. Microsoft Has Lobbyists and Cronies Around European Commission, Working to Shatter MySQL and Defend IE Monoculture
5. Why Does Microsoft Decide for the World?