04.02.10
Windows Wimpy (22.22)
Update: just to clarify (this might be elusive), the image shows Ubuntu influencing Microsoft rather than the other way around.
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04.01.10
Questioning Ubuntu’s Direction
Summary: Now that the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux pushes users into the Microsoft ‘cloud’, doubts rightly increase when it comes to the project’s vision
IN ORDER to keep this constructive, we won’t repeat old explanations about why Matt Asay was not a good choice for Ubuntu. This is not a personal attack, just a simple factual observation.
Several days ago we spotted remarks from Asay (Canonical’s new COO) which we found rather concerning but not surprising at all. We decided not to remark on these remarks, but Pogson has done just that when he scattered some thoughts about the ramblings of Asay:
Matt Asay wrote this on his blog, “Microsoft became the biggest software company in the world by creating an ecosystem of software that works well together.“.
[...]
I know I take the quotation out of context, but I found it a shocking view for someone of influence in Ubuntu. Later in the article he writes, “I didn’t like the Linux “desktop” until Lucid’s release.“. At the same time that M$ could not keep me happy for more than a few hours, GNU/Linux (eDesktop from Caldera Systems) purred for six months on five machines without a hitch. That was in 2000 and GNU/Linux has constantly improved since.
I am glad Mark Shuttleworth is the one working on the user interface… Matt Asay does not seem to be in touch with reality.
Mark Shuttleworth at least has a long history as a GNU/Linux user who respects Free software. Asay, on the contrary, has been promoting “open core” and the whole Fog Computing paradigm. As a follow-up from Pogson shows, Asay is still buying into the whole ‘cloud’ hype, which is just a new marketing identity/name assigned to old ideas that Richard Stallman criticises as it achieves nothing that defends the users’ freedom. In some ways, it’s even worse than proprietary software.
“Mark Shuttleworth at least has a long history as a GNU/Linux user who respects Free software.”The gist of Stallman’s thesis is that any so-called ‘cloud’ (we call it Fog Computing to emphasise the risks) gives tremendous power to the owner of this ‘cloud’. As we pointed out earlier this year, Canonical decided to take money away from Mozilla developers and instead pass it to Ubuntu developers, who willingly sell Ubuntu users to the Microsoft ‘cloud’ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. It’s about search, which leads to other services. Whose masters are they anyway?
Anyhow, for those doubting the situation with Microsoft and Yahoo!, the following news from India is an early sign that not only US queries will be passed from Yahoo! to Microsoft (as expected all along).
Microsoft will be offering positions to 400 of Yahoo’s software professionals, most working on search technology, to boost the search-domain collaboration the two technology giants announced sometime back.
These are the people who will deliver search results that discriminate against Ubuntu. These are the people whom Canonical will send Ubuntu users to. In summary, Ubuntu is not going in the best direction, to put it politely. █
“Anyone who doesn’t fear Microsoft is a fool.”
–3Com CEO Eric Benhamou
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03.29.10
If You Distrust Mono, Then You Are Called a “Microsoft Hater”, “Paranoid”, and “Conspiracy Theorist”
Summary: Microsoft’s obey-or-be-ostracised method for daemonising and thus silencing opposition expands to GNU/Linux through former employees and other collaborators
THE FSF already knows that Mono and Moonlight are a patent liability. It doesn’t take an expert investigator to look at the simple facts, but it does take some thick skin to face insults from Mono bullies. Several of those Mono advocates who try to poison Ubuntu (Canonical) just like they poisoned Novell are former Microsoft employees whom we prefer not to name. Both Mark Shuttleworth and Matt Asay are currently being pressured by former Microsoft employees whom we see, which leads to entryism and newer Mono incursions [1, 2] (Canonical hired some people who worry us). Microsoft influence probably ruined SUSE, which had the best desktop distribution at the time of the Microsoft deal (I used only SUSE on all my computers at the time, except one which ran Ubuntu 4.10). It becomes increasingly important that people stand up and talk about the Pandora’s box or the jar of worms that is Mono. It’s about assimilating GNU/Linux to Microsoft and saturating job ads with “.NET” and “Silverlight”. It’s about ruining Free software not just with patents but with the notion and tool of control. Microsoft could adapt to Java, PHP, Python and so forth; but instead, it is trying to persuade Free software developers to work in reverse and coming to its rescue are former employees, existing Microsoft MVPs, and people whose wage comes via Novell from Microsoft. Mono would not pass the ‘smell test’ if it was developed inside Microsoft.
“Mono would not pass the ‘smell test’ if it was developed inside Microsoft.”We are occasionally seeing people dismissed as “paranoid” if they suggest that Microsoft has something to do with slow adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Honesty is important. Setting information free is important for the goal of spreading the software, at least through education of people, distributors, and decision-makers. “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent,” argued Napoleon Bonaparte.
We sometimes suspect there is a PR effort to make labels like “Microsoft hater” [1, 2] and “patent piracy” (yes, they now say this about patents too) more commonplace until people repeat them. Bruce Byfield prefers using terms like “conspiracy theorists” (Miguel de Icaza called Jeremy Allison just that because he had criticised Mono [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) and there is a plethora of other terms to capture mental pictures. McCarthyism was similar to this (“Soviets sympathiser” and the likes of that).
If more people get the courage to speak out against Mono, then Microsoft and its followers will struggle to just paint everyone a “Microsoft hater”. They try to classify and separate. Mono disdain should be the norm, not the exception or the silent sentiment. █
“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”
03.24.10
Canonical Learned Nothing from Novell
“We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.” –Jim Allchin, Microsoft
Summary: Microsoft hugs “open source” in order to change what it actually is and Matt Asay, a former Noveller who came to Canonical, denounces Microsoft critics and defends engagement with Microsoft
YESTERDAY we mentioned de Icaza’s latest boosting of Microsoft. He helps Microsoft promote OData. Here is what The Source has to say.
Mr. de Icaza continues to fawn over / promote Microsoft technologies. I find it amusing and revealing at the same time that his infatuation isn’t simply with COM or C# or .NET or Silverlight, but has over time come to be more and more fanboy-like.
I don’t recall any big blogs or tweets from Mr. de Icaza about gData – but I’m sure I just missed them. But when it comes to Microsoft’s .NET-based knock-off, well then boy howdy that’s an exciting topic for Team Mono!
This “Team Mono” admires everything from Microsoft, which is why it spends its time mimicking Microsoft with Mono and Moonlight. It’s about money and about the people whom Novell hired in recent years. Novell pays their wage (and Microsoft pays Novell), so their admiration of Microsoft doesn’t come cheap. Novell continues to spread the illusion that there is something “open” about .NET and Silver Lie.
“Canonical hires people from Microsoft and Novell, thus making the most fundamental human resource mistake and not surprisingly the company is suddenly willing to put Microsoft behind its back.”Pointing to this ACT/Microsoft lobbying event (see the original page at EuropeanVoice.com), one reader tells us that Microsoft is faking "open source" again, even when it comes to Silver Lie. “Open Source on top of Silverlight and other MS technologies” is what our reader calls it. He also shows that Microsoft promotes these lies, whereby bogus claims of “open source” neglect to mention prerequisites. See the Twitter page where Microsoft lists some familiar crooks from the OOXML fiasco in the side picture.
We are genuinely concerned about what Microsoft is doing to “open source” because it’s no accident that Microsoft causes harm to it. First of all, Microsoft is controlling the debate with former Microsoft employees like Mr. Walli, who still try to tell open source people how to do business.
Then, there’s more nonsense from former pseudo-journalists who spin Microsoft’s work as “communicators” on the company’s payroll [1, 2]. They won’t admit that it’s about harming Free software (GPL) and GNU/Linux, undermining the foundations that “Open Source” initially relied upon. It’s as though Microsoft wants to change its opposition party from the inside, essentially taking control of it or changing its nature so as to weaken and assimilate it.
Watch another former Microsoft employee (who occasionally promotes Mono) pushing into Linux news sites his story which is titled “Should Ubuntu Have Been Created?”
Microsoft knows damn well that you need to get behind someone… before you stab that someone in the back. Canonical hires people from Microsoft and Novell, thus making the most fundamental human resource mistake and not surprisingly the company is suddenly willing to put Microsoft behind its back.
What will Canonical’s COO Matt Asay say about those remarks from former Microsoft employees? Well, based on this new post, he is willing to reconcile with Microsoft, maybe conditionally (well, if only Microsoft stopped attacking with software patents, lawsuits by proxy, smears, et cetera). The sad thing is that Asay daemonises Microsoft skeptics who merely interpret the company’s present actions, not just its history of endless abuse. The Source responds to this post from Asay by saying:
People that do want want Microsoft baked into every level of their Linux experience are not “spewing invectives”: Perhaps they see no need to rely on a court-convicted abusive monopolist. Perhaps, having finally broke free of Microsoft lock-in, they hesitate to expose themselves again. Perhaps they see how far Linux has come despite Microsoft’s best efforts, and see no margin in changing.
People that have moral, ethical and philosophical objections to the restriction of user freedoms are not “spewing invectives” – they are simply attempting to live a life in harmony with their beliefs.
Stop trying to paint all criticism as “invectives” or “zealotry” or whatever derogatory and dismissive label you would rather apply than actually deal with the substance of the criticism.
[...]
I do agree with Mr. Asay that “it gets old”. Which is why I honestly don’t understand those who intentionally fire things up by promoting Microsoft technology. You know it will be controversial. You know it will cause problems. That is obvious, inarguable and proven time and time again.
So, why do it? And, then having done this thing you knew would be divisive, pretend to be suprised and against divisiveness?
That’s what gets old to me.
This is why we still generally distrust Asay. Microsoft has been trying to suck up to him for several years in order to soften Alfresco (Microsoft had meals with him) and now to weaken Ubuntu, which already uses Mono and Microsoft for search (via Yahoo!) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Let’s not forget what Microsoft did to Yahoo! It ought to give Asay a clue. Yahoo! is a wreck after Microsoft crashed the company and Yahoo’s chief technologist is the latest person to quit. Given Canonical’s flirts with Microsoft, it treads on some very shaky ground and simply refuses to see this because, as Allchin once put it when he spoke about Novell:
“We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger….If you’re going to kill someone, there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s Platform Group Vice President
Asay should really get his eyes open. Canonical is listed as a risk factor in Microsoft’s filings for investors. Microsoft wants Canonical destroyed or deformed such that it serves Microsoft like Novell does. █
03.20.10
Señor de Icaza Meets Other Microsoft MVPs
Summary: José, Miguel, and other boosters of Microsoft Corporation have a get-together at the company’s annual event
IT’S this time of the year again. Microsoft Mix 2010 is on, so it’s time for Novell’s VP (who is behind Mono and Moonlight) to mingle with some other Microsoft boosters (like José Antônio Farias) and speak about some ideas for promoting failed products like Xbox. Yes, for those who missed the news, Novell is now helping Xbox 360 [1, 2]. How pathetic and predictable. It’s worth mentioning this scoop from the same event (regarding Microsoft’s failed mobile business): “Win phone 7 marketplace can automatically revoke apps – delete them from your device! #mix10″ (originally from a Microsoft booster).
We have just found this video of Miguel de Icaza speaking to Microsoft colleagues/MVPs at Microsoft’s Mix 2010. Sadly, it’s in Spanish. Can anyone please provide a translation?
Novell’s other .NET people compare Ruby and C#, probably looking for justifications to support and promote Mono (and by extension .NET). Novell does the same thing by belittling Java. This newer post is less about belittling Ruby but perhaps about luring in Ruby developers so that they consider moving to .NET. It’s a bit speculative though.
“This newer post is less about belittling Ruby but perhaps about luring in Ruby developers so that they consider moving to .NET.”According to another new post, Evolution’s Mono extensions (or “plugins”) make people think. The SUSE/Novell camp denies everything using special words like “conspiracy” [1, 2]. From the opening: “Someone, who probably has no idea of what it takes to maintain a large codebase, suggested that Canonical/Ubuntu should fork Evolution. He also sensed a non-existing Microsoft conspiracy. These days we seem to hear more about conspiracies by evil corporations than about technology/user-needs 
”
Of all companies, Canonical is probably the least likely to fork Evolution, which is Novell’s own product by the way. If there is a distribution that truly dodges Mono and even maintains Gnote, it is Fedora (Red Hat). No former Microsoft employees and Microsoft MVPs appear to have occupied that project. The same cannot be said about Canonical, which hired from Microsoft and Novell and has former Microsoft employees making suggestions to its developers (we would rather not name the people, but they do exist). █
03.19.10
Democracy is Not the Same as Freedom
UDS Karmic Group Photo, by Kenneth Wimer
Summary: People have lost track of real mistakes that Canonical is making and instead they focus on buttons and themes
ANYONE who wishes to fork a GNU/Linux distribution can do just that, provided the GPL is obeyed and trademark law too. That’s the power of Free software. Some people conflate that with democracy, which is an entirely different — if not a Utopian — view of the world where everyone is said to be perfectly happy based on consensus (an impossibility). In some sense, “democracy” is just a word that people like to say.
Ubuntu GNU/Linux can’t be everything to everyone, which is why we defend its latest decision to change the theme and we have no problem with Mark Shuttleworth’s latest response, which led to resentment or at least suspicion. Linux development and Wikipedia editing are the same. People give advice and offer an opinion for all to see, but it’s a meritocracy, not a democracy.
Here is Shuttleworth’s controversial message in full (it more or less repeats what Jono Bacon has been telling us in the Boycott Novell IRC channel for several weeks).
On 15/03/10 23:42, Pablo Quirós wrote:
> It’d have been nice if this comment had been made
> some time ago,
> together with a deep reasoning on the
> concrete changes that are in mind.
>
> We are supposed to be a community,
> we all use Ubuntu and contribute to
> it, and we deserve some respect regarding
> these kind of decisions. We
> all make Ubuntu together, or is it a big lie?We all make Ubuntu, but we do not all make all of it.
In other words, we delegate well. We have a kernel
team, and they make kernel decisions. You don’t get to
make kernel decisions unless you’re in that kernel
team. You can file bugs and comment, and engage, but
you don’t get to second-guess their decisions. We have a
security team. They get to make decisions about security. You
don’t get to see a lot of what they see
unless you’re on that team. We have processes to help make
sure we’re doing a good job of delegation, but being an open
community is not the same as saying everybody has a
say in everything.This is a difference between Ubuntu and several other
community distributions. It may feel less democratic, but
it’s more meritocratic, and most importantly it means (a) we
should have the best people making any given decision, and
(b) it’s worth investing your time to become the
best person to make certain decisions, because you
should have that competence recognised and rewarded
with the freedom to make hard decisions and not get
second-guessed all the time.It’s fair comment that this was a big change, and
landed without warning. There aren’t any good reasons
for that, but it’s also true that no amount of warning
would produce consensus about a decision like this.> If you want to tell us
> that we are all part of it, we want information,
> and we want our opinion
> to be decisive.No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback,
good data, are welcome. But
we are not voting on design decisions.Mark
People keep arguing over something as unimportant as a default theme which any new user can trivially change. This is a waste of effort because Ubuntu’s real problems are different. We have a problem with Ubuntu’s attitude towards Mono* (dependency increases over time [1, 2]), its relationship with Yahoo!/Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], and some also criticise the company’s promotion of the music store/online storage (reasons vary and include the involvement of Amazon, DRM, patented formats, and so on). Here is another new rant:
Ubuntu One Music Store: Tops or Flop?
Music seems to be a viable income stream also under Linux. After Amarok and Rhythmbox have earned at least a few hundred bucks with Magnatune, Ubuntu is now breaking into the market as well.
What Canonical does here is fair enough and the company did try to establish a deal around Ogg. It’s not so simple to make the market fit minority demands, rather than popular demand driving the market.
We are generally optimistic about the next release of Ubuntu and in our daily links we include a lot of positive news about the distribution. Bruce Byfield says that this next release is “Ubuntu’s Most Innovative”, but in his article he also casts a mistake as a merit:
Early in Lucid’s development cycle, the Ubuntu Development Summit announced that The GIMP would be dropped from the default selection of software installed. Since The GIMP is widely considered an example of excellence in free software, the announcement created some controversy, but the decision was in keeping with Ubuntu’s general priorities. Not only does The GIMP take up considerable space on a CD, but, more importantly, its features far exceed what beginning users could need.
For those who do not know or remember, most users voted to keep The GIMP, but their opinion was ignored or at least just ultimately rejected by the ruling majority. That’s what meritocracy means and that’s fine. The problem is, does Canonical realise the consequence of its actions? By ignoring a majority opinion it creates the perception that Free software is not receptive to feedback. Nowadays, our reader Ryan keeps ranting about Ubuntu being the “same as Windows” (development- and feedback-wise) and last night he argued that “Ubuntu beat Rhythmbox up and stole their lunch money. They modified the referrer in Rhythmbox and now Magnatune owes them $100. Are they really so petty that they’re going to keep that money and deny it to GNOME?”
We previously explained why Canonical’s search deal with Yahoo!/Microsoft was merely a case of taking money away from Mozilla — money that was used to develop Firefox, Thunderbird, and other great software. Canonical will be paid by Microsoft (via Yahoo!) at the expense of Mozilla, which was paid by Google. That again is the type of thing worth criticising, not some petty issue to do with a default theme and buttons that can easily be changed. █
____
* Some minutes ago, Popey from Ubuntu wrote: “Liking the new automatic sync feature in the latest Tomboy” (they just don’t see the problems with Mono).
Amazon and Dell: Friends or Foes of GNU/Linux?
Amazon does worse things than killing of trees for books
Summary: What Amazon does not want to tell us about software patents in its recent deal with Microsoft; more reasons to suspect that Dell pays Microsoft for Ubuntu GNU/Linux
ONE of our readers, who goes by the name of “Mad Hatter”, has just explained why he will not link to Amazon anymore. As some people may recall, we called for an Amazon boycott* [1, 2, 3] not just because what Amazon does to the patent system but also because it joined Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux racket after hiring many executives from Microsoft (entryism). Here is the explanation about reasons to avoid Amazon:
By signing a deal with Microsoft, for technology that the Free and Open Source Community developed, Amazon has shown a lack of respect for the ‘Intellectual Property’ of the Free and Open Source Software Community. Amazon’s action is an attack on the community. It can also be considered an attack on the Constitution of the United States of America, which states
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The wording above makes mention only of the Authors and Inventors. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution clearly meant that only the Author or Inventor of a work or invention can speak for that work or invention. Therefore if there are issues with a work or invention, the party who has the issues must approach the Author or Inventor, not a third party such as Amazon. In simple terms, Amazon has no right to admit that the Linux Kernel infringes on Microsoft’s patents, only the Authors or Inventors of the Kernel have that right. By making an admission that they have no right to make, Amazon has engaged in what is known as ‘Slander of Title.’
As he put it in a previous post:
So if you are considering a lawsuit against a competitor who uses Free and Open Source Software in the product you claim infringes on your patents or copyrights, don’t expect the community to like what you are doing, and do expect them to do something about it.
In other news, Dell appears to be lying about GNU/Linux, Vista 7, and maybe software patents (Dell announced in 2007 that it had joined the Microsoft/Novell deal).
On many occasions before we explained and showed why we suspect that Dell pays Microsoft for so-called “Linux patents”. The potential evidence comes from many places, including videos from Dell. And now we find this disappointing report showing up in the news, shortly after it turned out that Dell sells machines with Ubuntu at a higher price than equivalent machines with Vista 7.
Dell bars Win 7 refunds from Linux lovers
Dell has told a Linux-loving Reg reader that he can’t receive a refund on the copy of Windows 7 that shipped with his new Dell netbook because it was bundled with the machine for “free”.
In October, another Reg reader succeeded in gaining a $115 (£70.34) refund from the computer maker after he rejected the licence for Microsoft’s OS and installed Linux instead. Microsoft’s EULA, you see, provides for such a refund.
One of our readers asks, “If it’s ‘free’ then how does MS factor in the revenue into its accounts? If it’s not ‘free’ then who enthused DELL to not pay the refund?” █
__
* Boycott as an action to correct a corporation’s behaviour, not to ostracise.
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Unsolicited Mail from Microsoft Canada Wants Developers to Create/Increase Government’s Windows Lock-in
Summary: Microsoft wants volunteers to help their countries become hostages of Redmond
Back in 2008 we recalled an incident where Microsoft scraped the names of Austrian GNU/Linux users and then sent them unsolicited/bulk mail trying to ‘convert’ them. One reader of ours, an avid user of GNU/Linux, has just been sent such a message by Microsoft, perhaps because they found out that he can also develop.
This happened in Canada, where Microsoft’s trouble with the law is a subject that we wrote about several times over the past week [1, 2]. Parts of the public sector in Canada move to GNU/Linux, so Microsoft probably wants the Canadian government (which Gates invests in for unknown reasons) to become more Windows dependent. Microsoft depends on developers. As Steve Ballmer stressed in his eccentric fashion (see video at the top, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the nürnberg rally), it’s all about developers. It’s also why Mono and Moonlight are so beneficial to Microsoft; they give Microsoft control over developers, not mere users. They want more control even over KDE developers, but fortunately, they never quite got there.
By contrast, yesterday in the news we found this post about Gnome Do, which is a case of Canonical employees manufacturing more Mono for GNOME. Novell’s staff has this new project called Pinta (mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]), which is built by the same guy who worked on Paint.NET (and a Novell employee, which means that some of the income comes from Microsoft's investments in Novell). Earlier this week in OStatic, Pinta was promoted as a Mono-based substitute for the GIMP.
Pinta is a Solid Image Editing Alternative to GIMP
[...]
Modeled after Paint.NET, Pinta makes a great lightweight alternative to GIMP. It works on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and has enough features to get all but the heaviest of editing jobs done.
We have already written enough about what Pinta may mean for Microsoft’s strategy around developers and around patents, so we won’t be discussing this again. Instead, let us look at what Microsoft is doing in Canada. Here is a screenshot of part of the E-mail it sent out to many people (even GNU/Linux users).
To quote the text (bar the hyperlinks, for obvious reasons):
The ultimate coding competition has returned.
Are You A Talented .Net Developper?Want to try your hand at developing on Windows Azure or Windows Server ®? There’s over $15k worth of prizes up for grabs if you do.
Now’s your chance to put your skills to the test, going toe-to-toe with Canada’s best and brightest web developers during the FTW! Coding Competition.
Here’s The DealShow us your web applications deployed on Windows ® + IIS or Windows Azure and enter the competition in either of the following two categories:
Best Windows Azure Application:
Write a new application to run on the Windows Azure cloud platform.Best Open Government Application:
Create an app that uses any of the existing Canadian Open Data Catalogues, such as those published by Vancouver, Toronto or Edmonton.That’s it! So sign up, and may the best developer win!
PrizesThe winners will walk away with $15,000 worth of top-of-the-line DELL products, with the 1st place prize being the ultimate Dell Office Computer Make Over. Plus you could win 1 of 4 bonus prizes.
The competition’s Grand Finale will be taking place this spring during Microsoft’s Make Web, Not War 2010 conference in Montreal.
Prizes
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What’s with the slogan “Make Web Not War”? What is “War” in this context? Microsoft insists that “Evangelism is WAR!” [1, 2]
At first sight, there was nothing too rogue about the E-mail, but our reader who received it said that “it’s a .NET programming competition for an app that accesses “open” government records. [...] They say any language for one, except its for a windows app.”
It also gives Microsoft control of the citizens’ data (because of Azure and the so-called 'cloud' option for government), just like in NASA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], which is a travesty.
What we found most curious is the use of a “competition”. This is how the greedy control freaks from Microsoft always do something they don’t want to be seen as doing. Basically, they look for free labour which also achieves something that the company wants no direct involvement in (like AstroTurfing, which it externalises to outside agencies). In Japan, for instance, they organised some competitions for porting L[inux]AMP applications to Windows. Microsoft paid almost nothing for people to discriminate against and harm GNU/Linux. █
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