After announcing its first event for “end users,” the Linux Foundation has begun to promote “individual memberships.” Available now for $50 a year, memberships include a T-shirt, quarterly newsletter, and the “ability to run for and vote for a Linux Foundation board seat,” says the organization.
Microsoft recycles its lobby platform “Voices for Innovation” to lobby against Open Source software in the European Parliament systems. Over the past few weeks radical elements in the open source community have intensified their efforts in the European Parliament.
This is far from the only Microsoft lobby of this kind [1, 2] and it’s hugely important to keep track of that. The BSA, ACT and a few other bodies that are funded by Microsoft try to plague the system with software patents, even inside standards (RAND).
Fortunately, EPO has them face resistance. Not only are software patents drawing complaints; poor (and broad) patents lead to a similar outcome. Here is a containment of the video of the recent protest [1, 2].
“Alison demission” shouts EPO examiners in Brussels
EPO examiners were asking for the demission of the President of the EPO, Alison Brimelow. Very vew examiners believes she is doing something to tackle quality problems of the EPO. EPO does not stand anymore for quality patents, but for progress (bars) and profit.
Dr Flocke: “50% of the applications are made by only 3% of the applicants
Half of the patent applications are filed by only 3% of the applicants. Which means that at least half of the patent applications are filed by large corporations.
Although it is not directly related to this Web site, now is the time to raise awareness of a similar situation where ‘small people’ loses their voice (and their valued law) to large foreign monopolies. Now is the time to act. Glyn Moody calls it urgent.
Back in July I urged you to write to your MEPs about the Telecoms Package. Well, I’m at it again: the main vote was postponed, and will now take place on Wednesday 24 September, so there’s still time to write to your MEPs and ask them to support some amendments that should help (more details from Open Rights Group.)
A reader has sent us some thoughts about it: “tomorrow the TORPEDO AMENDMENTS inside the so called “telecom package” are going to be voted in the European Parliament, this is a most serious Issue, jeopardizing net neutrality, net privacy, and anonymous free speech, which includes non-for-profit file-sharing (P2P), which is LEGAL in many countries like Spain in which we pay a compensating tax “canon” on every blank digital media sold in the country that goes to the pockets of the cinema/record and editorial industries’ lobby (SGAE) as a “tax” they managed to obtain from the government since they consider every computer user as a potential “pirate”…”
The ‘telecoms package’ is a potentially dangerous piece of legislation that will lead to many users losing internet access.
The ‘telecoms package’ is winging its way through the European Parliament under the watchful eye of French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
We wrote about related issues before [1, 2]. People lose control of their own law and most basic rights. Mega corporation attempt to modify the way trade is done. They see business as a right, not an opportunity. They see investment as a guarantee, not a risk. █
The author of this post has been adding Mono/C# patches to KDE (around August in particular). The comment at the bottom says: “Kind of the obvious question, does VB have any merit? Like are there actually developers who like VB but are scared by C#?”
Remember Brett Winterford [1, 2, 3, 4]? The guy whom Microsoft gave a free journey to Redmond (he lives far away in Australia)? The guy who writes for the already-Microsoft-biasedZDNet and soon after his visit to Redmond unleashed some outrageous articles echoing Microsoft’s accusations against IBM and ODF? Well, the same guy has just published an article with a curious headline: “VMware vs Microsoft: Place your bets”
VMware chief executive and president Paul Maritz says he is not particularly concerned about competing with Microsoft on price. The price of software is important, he said, “but only up to a point.”
Pamela Jones at Groklaw seems to concur with what we’ve been saying for months [1, 2, 3, 4]. Yesterday she wrote: “There is something very fishy about this story. It’s like a manufactured “dispute”, and considering the new CEO at VMware is a retired Microsoft executive, Paul Maritz, who worked for Microsoft for 14 years, and considering some feel VMware may be violating the GPL, and considering the nasty things VMWare said about Open Source and code licenses in its most recent SEC filing, I can’t help but wonder what’s up. This one is worth watching closely.”
Some of these competitors have in the past and may in the future take advantage of their existing relationships to engage in business practices that make our products less attractive to our end users. For example, Microsoft has implemented distribution arrangements with x86 system vendors and independent software vendors, or ISVs, related to certain of their operating systems that only permit the use of Microsoft’s virtualization format and do not allow the use of our corresponding format. Microsoft has also implemented pricing policies that require customers to pay additional license fees based on certain uses of virtualization technology. These distribution and licensing restrictions, as well as other business practices that may be adopted in the future by our competitors, could materially impact our prospects regardless of the merits of our products.
dead format walking?
Microsoft’s controversial OOXML document format is not going anywhere, observes Jason Brooks in a blog posting at eWEEK. Brooks points to discrepancies between the ISO-approved version of the format and that used in Office 2007 in suggesting that OOXML hardly measures up with ODF (Open Document Format).
Forget the DOJ. They’re too busy trying to cover their own A$$es. Besides, they’re all on the take anyway, just like everybody else in Washington DC and Redmond Washington. Not to even mention Wall Street.
Last night Pamela Jones wrote: “Here’s how my brain processes this [Rob Weir on ODF translation]: the OOXML folks are deliberately trying to increase the amount of “issues” found in ODF, using a process that normally isn’t used that way, translations and errata. Look for them to later announce such issues, like an OOXML “Get the Facts” style of “comparison”. Why might they want to find fault? They want, I believe, to force ODF into their hands and control. Just saying.”
Open Document Format (ODF) could find its way as becoming an open standard for e-governance projects by the Indian government and help its supporters grab key government IT business, according to government officials and industry sources.
The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker is expected to announce the review Tuesday, according to company officials. IBM has become frustrated by what it considers opaque processes and poor decision-making at some of the hundreds of bodies that set technical standards for everything from data-storage systems to programming languages, those officials said.
Groklaw is equally disappointed by “what Microsoft wrought.”
There will be a summit meeting of experts in the field from around the world, by invitation, in November under Yale’s auspices to discuss recommendations for improving standards setting. What hath Microsoft wrought! Well, they don’t say that. I’m letting you hear my inner thoughts. If you have any ideas that you hope the experts will consider, now is the time to speak, right now, right here.
The Wall Street Journal is publishing an article mentioning the OOXML fiasco, and the intention of IBM to leave some standards organisations (ECMA Microsoft-proxy is probably on the shooting line). With the disgusting Microsoft committee stuffing and the non-reaction of ISO, I would say this is something I should do now in terms of protest. The current way to define standards behind closed doors, closed rooms, and with archaic methods of patching standards proposals outside of the public eye is something that should be reformed.
To encourage improved tech standards quality and transparency, and promote equal participation of growth markets in globally integrated economy
ARMONK, NEW YORK . . . September 23, 2008 – IBM today announced that,
effective immediately, it is instituting a new corporate policy that
formalizes the company’s behavior when helping to create open technical
standards. Such standards enable electronic devices and software programs
to interoperate with one another.
In the globally integrated economy, open technical standards are integral
to enabling the delivery of everything from disaster relief services and
health care, to business services and consumer entertainment. They enable
governments to create economic development platforms and deliver services
to their citizens.
The tenets of IBM’s new policy are to:
Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and
openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property
policies.
Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global
standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.
Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology
decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent
participants, protected from undue influence.
Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure
that open software interoperability standards are freely available and
implementable.
Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual
property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling
standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and
business decisions.
IBM encouraged members of standards communities to adopt similar
principles, which are more stringent than required by existing laws or
policies. IBM’s new standards policy promotes simplified and consistent
intellectual property practices, and emphasizes that all stakeholders,
including the open source community and those in growth markets, should
have equal footing as they participate in the standards process.
IBM described steps to put these principles into action. For example, the
company will:
Review and take necessary actions concerning its membership in standards
organizations.
In the regions and countries where we do business, encourage local
participation in the creation and use of standards that solve the
problems and meet the requirements of all affected stakeholders around
the world. We will advocate governance policies in standards bodies
that encourage diverse participation.
Work for process reform in standards organizations so that proxies or
surrogates cannot be used in standards creation and approval.
Collaborate with standards organizations and stakeholders to streamline
and consolidate intellectual property licenses and policies, with a
focus on enabling software applications to become more easily
interoperable by the use of open standards.
IBM’s principles were inspired by the results of an online conversation
facilitated by IBM during the summer of 2008, in which 70 independent,
forward-thinking experts across the globe — from academia,
standards-setting, law, government, and public policy — debated the
question of whether standard setting bodies have kept pace with today’s
commercial, social, legal and political realities. Actionable suggestions
to modernize their processes were offered during the six-week discussion
(research.ibm.com//files/standards_wikis.shtml), with an eye toward
increasing standards transparency, fairness, and quality.
An invitation-only summit is planned for November, under Yale University’s
auspices, that will flesh out recommendations from the online discussion
and begin steps toward improving the standards-setting environment.
“Common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable
standards bodies help ensure that each of us can easily purchase and
interchangeably use computing technology from multiple vendors,” said Bob
Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. “The ways in which
they are created and adopted provide reasonable assurances that disparate
products will work with one another, and withstand the test of time.”
Time after time we’ve warned that Microsoft’s involvement in ‘open source’ would prove detrimental to Free software [1, 2]. One company of a ex-Microsoft employee spreads FUD while another company that houses former Softies uses and advocates Mono. Here is another one, Ohloh, which was founded by Microsoft people and tends to attract like-minded folks. In the following post, which is probably shared lacking background of the parties involved, an impression is given that everything but C# is declining.
I came across my name in a site called Ohloh. I remember it coming out a few years ago. Now it has had time to really get going, I thought it was about time that I review the site here.
Watch the Web page. These are some very bad charts to show. They are population-biased.
So, former Microsoft employees entered the FOSS world and they now publish ‘studies’ (or at least charts) about C# beating everything. For insight incorporating more comprehensive studies, one must consider recent results like:
Stanford and Harvard teach businesses how to squash open source
[...]
It’s nice to see that $48,921 in Stanford MBA tuition going to a such a worthy cause.
More intriguingly, despite open source’s still-small market share relative to the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, it’s surely meaningful that professors from the world’s elite business institutions are turning their attention to figuring out how to beat open source. If it weren’t a threat, there would be no market for research like this.
Who is funding this thing? It’s probably innocent, but anything that harms Free(dom) software and serves an exploiter is conspicuous, particularly due to precedence. Remember money and tables. █
“Microsoft did sponsor the benchmark testing and the NT server was better tuned than the Linux one. Having said that, I must say that I still trust the Windows NT server would have outperformed the Linux one.”
–Windows platform manager, Microsoft South-Africa Reference: Outrage at Microsoft’s independent, yet sponsored NT 4.0/Linux research
The Intel e1000e driver on openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1 might have a serious issue with the potential to damage the network card in a way that it cannot be used any longer.
Intel and Novell are currently working to analyze and solve the issue.
It’s a severe issue — severe enough for Zonker to just quote verbatim in his blog. Maybe Novell should issue a press release about it [sarcasm /]. Sort of, like… to warn customers using SLES beta on live servers.
It does not say anywhere whether the issue may be distro specific, buy it could be related to the kernel (possibly Intel’s fault). Either way, there’s this comment:
“Btw, this seems to be an upstream problem, so users of latest kernel snapshots should be carefull as well on their systems …”
Also:
“Have you any idea how retarded this request is for anything with an SLE prefix? C’mon guys, get with the programme. Jeez, blow up HW with a SW upgrade, what is this, a TRS-80 retrospective?” █
Update: Alex Hudson tells us that it’s a kernel bug.
A quick look at this month’s snapshot reveals that an estimated 41.9% of the page requests come from GNU/Linux users, of which 4.1 % are on Fedora boxes and 3.5 % are on SUSE boxes. The rest of the list is below:
Debian: 2.8 %
Ubuntu: 2.7 %
Mandriva: 2.4 %
Centos: 0.2 %
Red Hat: 0.1 %
GNU Linux (Unknown or unspecified distribution): 25.7 %
That last figure ought to show why it is so difficult — if not altogether impossible — to track proper numbers based on Web statistics. It’s an issue of diversity (HTTP headers), among many other factors.
These statistics must be taken with a grain of salt because, like all statistics, they are bound to be meaningless or deceiving. Interesting to watch nonetheless! █
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