09.17.10
Strengthening Windows by Marginalising the Freedom Component
Summary: News from Microsoft-oriented companies (or companies that are run by former Microsoft employees, sometimes promoting .NET) such as Likewise, OpenLogic, IDG, and Daydream
EVERY now and then we write about Likewise, which pretends to be GPL but is actually ‘open’ core [1, 2, 3], i.e. proprietary. Likewise has a new press release and also a new deal which helps the strengthening of Windows (Likewise comprises former Microsoft employees):
Likewise announced membership in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program as an Advantage Alliance Partner. As an Advantage Partner, it can assist NetApp customers with heterogeneous environments to leverage their investments in Microsoft Active Directory to achieve unified directory access.
Another company headed by former Microsoft staff we consider to be quite ambivalent when it comes to “Open Source”. It’s called OpenLogic. Its new press release is about Open Source and GPL, but it talks mostly about violations, which is how OpenLogic is trying to make money. This time they focus on mobile for some publicity and one article says: “Open source licenses are being widely used inside of mobile app store applications, according to a new study from software services and support vendor OpenLogic.
“So they are just trying to sell some proprietary software, just like Black Duck (also with roots in Microsoft).”“OpenLogic analyzed over 450 Apple App Store and Google Android apps and found that 88 percent of Android and 41 percent of Apple iOS apps had an open source component. The data helps underscore OpenLogic’s new commercial service called OLEX App Store edition, which is intended to help enable App Store developers and managers to identify and maintain compliance with open source licensing requirements.”
So they are just trying to sell some proprietary software, just like Black Duck (also with roots in Microsoft). “Be very afraid of the GPL” is typically their marketing message. To quote further from this article:
“We suspected that there would be a lot of open source used in mobile apps, since there is so much open source used in software in general,” Weins said. “What was a bit surprising was the level of GPL usage in iOS apps given the recent statements by the Free Software Foundation about the incompatibility with the iTunes Store Terms of Service.”
OpenLogic found that GPL type licenses represent 8 percent of the Apple apps and only 3 percent of Android apps. Weins added that in this research, OpenLogic scanned for a subset of all the possible open source licenses.
What was the scanning done for? Was it an academic study? Was it promotional (to ‘plug’ a proprietary software product into articles)? Either way, this helps intimidate people to a degree (fear of GPL compliance/penalties, not a celebration of its wide use).
Over at IDG there is new promotion of Microsoft’s parallel universe of something it calls “open source” (it’s typically just addons for Windows, Office, and other proprietary software).
It’s no secret that not all software is designed as it should be. Thankfully, for Windows admins, a wealth of tools can be found to bridge the gap between what our software can do and how we’d like it to perform. And some of the best of these tools can be had for free, as any perusal of the CodePlex open source project hosting website will show.
CodePlex is a joke and it is hostile towards software freedom. Here we have a new press release about a .NET application masquerading as AGPL (surely it needs Microsoft’s proprietary software just to run). From the press release:
Leading digital asset management software vendor, Daydream, have announced a public beta release of their DAM system, FocusOPEN under an AGPL open source licence, providing a tried-and-tested, fully featured .NET DAM system to more businesses at zero cost or risk.
Leading digital asset management vendor, Daydream, have announced a public beta release of their .NET open source digital asset management system, FocusOPEN Digital Asset Manager under an Affero General Public (AGPL) open source licence. Offering a public release marks a strategic change for Daydream, who have been providing high-end enterprise digital asset management software to corporations worldwide since 1995.
Microsoft and its partners are finding new ways of using the term “open source” to refer to Microsoft-dependent software and to isolate/marginalise software freedom (as the FSF/GNU defines it). At the same time Microsoft openly mocks "open source" while claiming the opposite depending on the venue/motive [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Software patents are a top issue this Software Freedom Day and Microsoft is a top threat with the embodiment of a company as opposed to a phenomenon. No company is trying to impose software patents on free/open source software as much a Microsoft does [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
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