Summary: Microsoft’s patent tolls — which almost always rely on Microsoft APIs/protocols like ActiveSync, FAT, and C#/Mono — do not make much sense in relation to the Motorola lawsuit

MICROSOFT’S lawsuit against Motorola (see our new Motorola Wiki page for background) has been discussed quite a lot in our IRC channels recently. FAT patents in the lawsuit mean that Linux too is being targeted, but everyone seems to be paying attention just to ActiveSync, which baffled us because Google appears to have resolved ‘licensing’ of ActiveSync a long time ago [1, 2]. We haven’t researched this deeply enough just yet.

Jason Perlow, an IBM person, says about Microsoft that “if you can’t compete with it, litigate it” and he has a decent article about this case:

In doing so it lost several of its traditional OEM partners, such as Hewlett-Packard, who decided it was best to build and market phones its own OS with its purchase of Palm (Which has an ActiveSync license for WebOS, so HP won’t be getting sued by Microsoft anytime soon) rather than continue on with its Windows Mobile-powered iPAQ line of PDAs and phones, most of which were outsourced to HTC.

All of this Windows Mobile decline happened years before Android became a valid player in the smartphone ecosystem.

So what were Microsoft’s options? It could compete legitimately on its own merits, and aggressively market products that people actually wanted to buy. Or it could try to throw as many legal roadblocks against its competitors as they could. It sounds like they are going to try a little bit of both.

[...]

With their previous generation of Windows Mobile phones, Microsoft clearly failed and lost sight of what products the industry demanded. Instead, Google, RIM and Apple managed to figure out what customers wanted. Notwithstanding ActiveSync licensing by any of these companies, that’s really the bottom line.

One of our readers wonders if LG, which already pays Microsoft for Android, has just dropped plans to develop an Android tablet as a result of the lawsuit from Microsoft. The Source has this new post which it titled “Microsoft’s “anti-Linux” tactic” (quoting Microsoft apologists whom we mentioned before):

What I would like to draw attention to is how silent Team Apologista gets every time Microsoft pulls out the patent card against Linux, in stark comparison to how vocal they are whenever someone suggets Microsoft might pull out a patent card against Linux.

Dare to mention one may have patent-related concerns about Mono or Moonlight, and watch Team Apologista come storming in with tired half-truths and the same old debunked defenses – but see reported news of Microsoft using patents aggressively yet again and it’s nothing but crickets chirping from Waltham’s Warriors.

I’d also like to note that despite Team Apologista’s desperate and transparent attempts to paint people as “zealots”, “freetards” and so on, that anyone even casually following Microsoft with a shred of integrity must acknowledge that Microsoft has in the past and continues to this very day to use FUD — including patent-based FUD — against Linux. I suppose Seattle Times and the article’s author, Mr. Brier Dudley, are “unreliable sources” or “zealots”? Or, perhaps – just perhaps – they are simply reporting the facts?

Even the Seattle press seems to have become rather critical of Microsoft’s adaptation and leaning towards SCO-esque tactics. That ought to say something. █

“My message to the patent world is: Either get back to the doctrines of forces of nature or face the elimination of your system.” —Hartmut Pilch, Paraflows 06

Summary: Fraunhofer continues to do a disservice to software freedom and instead does a service to Microsoft (which is among Fraunhofer’s sources of income)

Yesterday we wrote about Knut Blind from Fraunhofer FOKUS. Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat wrote his name as “Kurt Blind” and quoted him as saying that a software patent “reduces transaction costs”. This was not at all shocking to us given the similarities, intersections, and payments that go between Fraunhofer, Microsoft, and even the Gates Foundation — a subject we previously covered in:

• Fraunhofer Again Lobbies for Microsoft Lock-in
• Did Microsoft Pay Fraunhofer for Report on OOXML?
• Patents Roundup: Google Versus Patent Trolls, Patents Unrest, Microsoft’s Friend Fraunhofer to Report on Software Patents in Europe
• CompTIA, Martin Bean, Fraunhofer Fokus, and Other Microsoft Boosters
• Big Financial Link Between Fraunhofer and Microsoft: The Gates Foundation
• The Gates Foundation-Connected GlaxoSmithKline Indirectly Paid Scientists to Exaggerate Vaccine Needs

Professor Blind (yes, that’s not a pun) has initiated this survey which led Carlo Piana to writing: “Answer en masse to the questionnaire… or it’ll be slanted twrds royalty-bearing FRAND standard policy.” Blind’s background is in finance, not software development. He is influencing the EU’s legislators, so this is important.

“Answer en masse to the questionnaire… or it’ll be slanted twrds royalty-bearing FRAND standard policy.”
      –Carlo PianaFlorian Müller is meanwhile attacking all of Microsoft’s big competitors (yes, again). He labels them a threat to software because of software patents while so conveniently leaving companies like Siemens (see previous post as well as older ones [1, 2, 3]) and of course Microsoft out. That’s just why we urge people not to trust Müller and we’ll carry on showing his bias.

Unlike Fraunhofer, S.u.S.E. was a big pusher for the end of software patents, but when Novell bought the Germany-based S.u.S.E. (with IBM’s help) it turned SUSE into Ballnux, which is all about paying Microsoft for “IP peace of mind”, meaning software patents in Linux. OpenSUSE 11.3 is here, but does anyone care? There are not even many reviews of this release (here is one). Money from companies like Novell and IBM has shattered SUSE’s views on software patents and Microsoft’s payments to Fraunhofer (Bill Gates pays Fraunhofer too) can’t help Europe, can they? █

Summary: A look at some of the latest patent news and an explanation of why Microsoft and Apple (and Microsoft’s patent trolls) are by far the biggest problem

Well, we don’t write so much about the Bilski case anymore. It’s because we have done enough of that and the analyses are quite repetitive in the sense that few raise new points. To give just a small number of noteworthy posts that we missed, Brian Proffitt writes about the impact on software patentability in the US, Brad Feld is upset after spending time and money to abolish software patents in the US, IDG claims that SCOTUS leaves software patentability intact in the US, Datamation has a new cartoon about it, and Mike Masnick says that the IEEE misleads with its damned press release in the US. The headline from The Register reads: “Yes, software can be patented, US Supremes say” (false).

But they didn’t say that. They merely avoided addressing the subject.

A few days ago we wrote about the impact of biotech patents and the impact of SCOTUS on them. They are said to have received a “boost”. [via Slashdot]

Myriad Genetics Inc., Genomic Health Inc. and the rest of the burgeoning industry for personalized medicine stand to gain from yesterday’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on patenting business methods.

[...]

The decision from the Supreme Court is unlikely to end the debate over diagnostic patents.

A couple of days ago Slashdot showed that Microsoft had patented things that should not be patented.

theodp writes “This week’s USPTO patent application disclosures included a trifecta of scary health-related ‘inventions’ from Microsoft. For starters, Microsoft envisions seeing Kids’ Personal Health Records Fed Into Video Games, where they can be used to ‘regulate and/or prescribe an individual’s behavior while playing electronic games.’ Next up is Centralized Healthcare Data Management, which describes how employees’ health habits can be ‘monitored, tracked or otherwise discovered’ so employers can ‘incentivize a user for an act or penalize for an omission to act.’ Finally, there’s Wearing Health on Your Sleeve, which describes a sort of high-tech Scarlet Letter designed to tip off ‘doctors, potential dates, etc.’ about your unhealthy behavior by converting information — ‘number of visits to the gym, workout activities, frequency of workouts, heart rate readings, blood pressure statistics, food consumption, vitamin intake, etc.’ — into a visual form so that others can see the data ‘on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.’”

A few days ago we explained why Likewise is a form of patent taxman for Microsoft. Their new release got some more coverage and a Linux proponent pointed out: “This reminds me of all the alternatives to Exchange currently available on Linux, buy any of those for 10-50 users and you’ll discover quickly that buying the MS’ original is cheaper.”

Basically, clones of Microsoft protocols-reliant products that are sold by former Microsoft employees (e.g. Likewise [1, 2, 3, 4], Centrify [1, 2, 3]) are better off avoided and replaced by protocols that Microsoft does not control or by Samba, which the European Commission gave a special status after antitrust violations by Microsoft. The following new article states:

The Likewise Open core is licensed under Gnu Public License (GPL) version 2 and Lesser GPL version 2.

It’s “open core”, which is proprietary+marketing spin. It’s not GPLv3 and one should not be misled because they mix that with Microsoft’s software patents. One should just go with Samba.

When it comes to patents and GNU/Linux, Microsoft is still by far the worst aggressor. Microsoft boosters seem to be taking pride in these patents which Microsoft is stockpiling and using to attack Linux, sometimes via patent trolls [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Latest raves from Microsoft bloggers:

• Dead ‘Courier’ walking: Microsoft gets dual-screen design patent
• Has Microsoft Courier come back to life?
• Microsoft’s Courier Is Officially a Zombie

Here is some more coverage (not from Microsoft boosters):

• Patent for Courier
• Microsoft Patents Courier’s Dual Display Design
• Microsoft Courier Still a Possibility
• Is There Still Hope For Courier?

This patent won’t expire for quite some time.

Microsoft received the patent this week and TechFlash reports that this kind of patent is good for 14 years, so Microsoft has until 2024 to do something with this design.

Some dual-display tablets run Android or GNU/Linux.

Given that .NET is allegedly a patent violation, Microsoft would not be smart to go around suing people/companies, but that’s just what is does, most recently against Salesforce. Here again is the mentioning of .NET patent violation:

The world’s biggest maker of Web-based software, Salesforce.com, has not specified what damages it is seeking, but claims that Microsoft is infringing five Salesforce patents in programs, including in the Windows Server operating system and the widely used .Net platform.

Based on other reports as well as previous posts of ours [1, 2], Salesforce is equipped with David Boies, the “Microsoft Nemesis”.

Is Microsoft playing with fire? It sure alienates many people, except Monty and Müller on the face of it. The former is paid by Microsoft and the latter is just keeping his head deep in the sand (insisting that IBM is the bigger threat). Earlier today he also mentioned Apple, which is a patent violator (risking bans) that had the nerve to sue Android (including Linux). Here is a new summary of this case:

In this great hullabaloo of rivals accusing each other of infringement of patents, one is only left confused seeing the who’s who in the arena of smartphones making a claim of the same victimization. A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by the government to the inventor in exchange for a public disclosure of the invention. The big question is, will this war really see the light of a consensus and settlement?

Earlier this year in March, Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing 20 of its patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission(ITC) and concurrently in the US District Court in Delaware. Very truly it’s said that “competition is healthy, but the rivals should try and yearn to develop their own technology and not steal the existing”. This lawsuit; it’s said, is the next high profile litigation in the mobile phone business after Nokia and Apple attacking each other in past few months.

Apple’s hypePhone is having some trouble right now. Apple cannot quite compete without suing competitors, apparently. As one new essay puts it:

Ideas Are a Commodity, It’s Execution Intelligence That Matters

First of all, ideas are commodities. Look at any industry, any product or service offering, and what you really see is improvement on the existing standard versus uniqueness in the offering. These improvements can be continuous or disruptive, but in either category, to the customer they are nothing more than incremental improvement around the financial return, usability, quality, or experience of your competitor. This explains why management teams are so important; if new offerings are commodities it’s execution by the management team – what I like to call execution intelligence – that makes the difference in the market.

Apple also contributes towards MPEG-LA’s war on free/libre video. For background, see:

• Canonical Needs to Tell Ubuntu Users How Much It Paid MPEG-LA for Patent ‘Protection’
• Microsoft and MPEG-LA Called “Patent Trolls”, Antitrust Complaint Filed
• Patent Troll (MPEG-LA) May Own Your Personal/Family Videos
• Alexandre Oliva Explains Why the Patent Troll Larry Horn (MPEG Cartel) is Bluffing
• “We’re in the Era of Digital Video, and It’s a Mess,” –Steve Jobs, MPEG-LA Proponent/Lobbyist
• Simon Phipps: “MPEG-LA is a Parasite Using Standards Bodies as Its Host, Whether They Want it or Not.” (and a Rant About Banshee/Mono)

Here is a new article on the subject:

Video Prison: Why Patents Might Threaten Free Online Video

[...]

On June 20, 2009, nearly 150,000 people witnessed the death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, but unlike the Iranians who passed her by in the street, they weren’t bystanders to the post-election turmoil in Tehran that claimed her life. They were merely the first of over 600,000 who have since viewed a now-symbolic YouTube video that helped propel the opposition political movement forward in the following days of protest. The democratizing power of the Web lies in video like this one–not just because of its content, but because anyone with an Internet connection can contribute to a global dialogue.

But imagine if the person who shot this video had been unable to post it anonymously or if YouTube viewers had to pay to watch it. If online videos were subject to patent licensing fees, users could be charged per-view to capture those fees. Beyond the ethical dilemma profiteering from a tragic death, video licensing could reduce the democratic nature of free and open Internet content to monetizable media. The funny cat videos would be gone forever (perhaps not the greatest loss), but so too would the movement-inspiring Nedas of the future remain unknown.

TechDirt says that Britannica has also gone sour:

It Appears That The Encyclopaedia Britannica Entry On Shaking Down GPS Providers With A Bogus Patent Needs Updating

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has not exactly been having a good decade. In the minds of much of the public (though, certainly not all), the usefulness of Britannica has long been surpassed by Wikipedia. A couple years ago, we gave Britannica’s president a chance to explain his views on where Britannica is going, but it still seems like an uphill battle. Among the more ridiculous things that Britannica has tried to do is to also turn itself into a bit of a patent troll. Back in 2007, it sued a bunch of GPS companies for patent infringement. Scratching your head over why Britannica holds patents on GPS technology? The answer is even more convoluted than you can imagine.

Here is another potential aggressor to watch out for. “Patent Calls Inc. buys Dallas competitor for $16M,” says this report. There is still a difference between a patent holder and a patent aggressor. Microsoft and Apple are both and they are specifically targeting Linux with their lawsuits. Not many companies do that. In fact, no real companies do that, except Microsoft and Apple (patent trolls like Acacia aside, although Acacia too has Microsoft connections). █

Summary: A look at some issues where Microsoft walks among patents and uses their enforcement to pursue its own goals

LAST month we showed that Microsoft helps MPEG LA (patents cartel/pool), notably at the expense of patents- and royalty-free formats. It is possible that the maze of patents makes video/audio compression as a whole unsafe from infringement (where software patents apply) and BetaNews argues that it is challenging because Microsoft tried in vain.

Google may face legal challenges if it open-sources VP8 codec

[...]

But there’s already historical precedent for a company attempting to offer a royalty-free license for a codec whose underlying technologies it didn’t completely own. In 2005, Microsoft offered its WMV9 technologies as the royalty-free standard VC-1. As Microsoft soon discovered, WMV9 was not “patent-free” outside of Microsoft, and its underlying technologies were not royalty-free either. Today, Microsoft’s service agreement on VC-1 includes a notice saying, among other things, that AVC — one of the bedrock encoding technologies claimed by other rights holders — may be used in the VC-1 codec, under a license granted to Microsoft by MPEG LA. That license covers Microsoft when it, in turn, licenses the use of VC-1′s three essential encoding technologies, for non-commercial purposes.

This almost gives the impression that Microsoft did the right thing, but as always, it requires modest understanding of Microsoft’s motives. Microsoft — unlike the W3C for example — is a profit-driven business. The same goes for Microsoft’s use of its new power in the W3C [1, 2]. Not so long ago Microsoft was trying to push DRM for webfonts into the W3C. Apparently it was not accepted because we have not heard about it since, but Microsoft boosters and others speak about Microsoft sponsoring a new Web font standard.

With a surprise boost from Microsoft, the promise of rich typography on the Web just got a big step closer to reality.

The software company’s involvement emerged Monday with sponsorship of a newer effort at the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize Web-based fonts with technology called the Web Open Font Format (WOFF).

Whose methods will be used? It is possible that Microsoft will try to advance its own way of doing things. We don’t know yet, but we saw that before. There’s HD and the JPEG thing, where Microsoft tried to impose its own implementation upon the standard. Similarly, Microsoft tried to make WMV9 ‘the standard’ (WM is Windows Media), so this whole codec anecdote was not an act of charity.

Speaking of Microsoft and software patents, Likewise, which is former Microsoft staff that stuffs Samba with Microsoft’s software patents and then sells it [1, 2, 3, 4], is hooking up with HP, which charges a premium on GNU/Linux (presumably for patents, although that’s speculative excepting Likewise’s relationship with Microsoft).

These HP StorageWork servers will use Likewise-CIFS, a high-performance, commercially supported, Windows-compatible file server, and Likewise Identity Service. Likewise-CIFS started as a commercially supported Samba but is now a CIFS (Common Internet File System) server in its own right. Likewise Identity Service is an Active Directory bridge technology providing authentication of non-Windows systems to Microsoft’s Active Directory.

Likewise is like an extension of Microsoft and it makes a dangerous precedence because of software patents (complying with Microsoft and overriding Samba, whose special and exclusive deal with the Commission has this loophole). It’s almost as though Microsoft had Likewise created by its people to promote software patents in/and Microsoft protocols.

There is another new announcement from another company created/headed by a former Microsoft employee. We are talking about OpenLogic [1, 2, 3, 4]. █

Summary: A new story of migration to Microsoft (due to Apple’s reliance on Microsoft) offers an important lesson about the purpose of Novell’s Mono and Moonlight

AS we have shown before, Microsoft’s supine friends at Apple have helped OOXML and continues doing this. Based on the news about “Office for Mac 2011″ [1, 2], Mac OS X will accommodate more promotion of monoculture the Microsoft way. Matt Asay, for example, is a Mac user who extols the virtues of Microsoft Office and openly mocks OpenOffice.org. That’s apparently what Apple enthusiasts are for. Ironically enough, Canonical has made him a COO (a decision that we criticised in [1, 2, 3, 4]). COO rhymes with coup.

As one of our readers has said repeatedly, Microsoft inserts its APIs and non-standards into the competitors’ products and once that’s ‘injected’ they can proceed to infiltrating the server/desktop side interchangeably. As a specific example, this reader gave Office for Mac OS X (or Entourage). Based on the following new example from Internode, he was right. Internode is moving from FOSS to Microsoft Exchange and here is its explanation:

So what changed?

Snow Leopard was the key.

[...]

Apple delivered a huge corporate software upgrade in Snow Leopard, by tightly integrating Exchange client functionality into the operating system – in Apple Mail, iCal, and Contacts.

Now watch this discussion at Linux Today. “The lockin begins at internode,” says Petem. Rainer Weikusat reconstructs the arguments and starts with: “I have rarely seen such an amazing amount of BS in a single text.” Someone from Citadel writes: “Just wait until the first time Exchange blows itself up. That always happens eventually.” And one person says: “To pick this apart. All of your staff needs to have access to configure your filtering? Wow!!! Just plain WOW!!!”

“I have rarely seen such an amazing amount of BS in a single text.”
      –Rainer WeikusatSo anyway, what Microsoft did here is simple. It used proprietary integration with something it controls not to facilitate interoperability but to upsell Microsoft products/stacks. It is the same with Mono and Moonlight. In more or less the same ways, Mono and Moonlight are ramps to Visual Studio, Windows, and other proprietary Microsoft products.

Why are Novell and Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza promoting these? We venture to guess that for selfish gain, some people promote this inside GNU/Linux. If their new interests are rewarded by Microsoft, then they would do anything. Stephane Rodriguez told us a couple of years ago: “So far, Microsoft has got all the marketing PR they wanted from “open-source” groups that are remarkably compatible with Microsoft minds. Again, I think those guys are just Microsoft persons who take a pride not to be on their payroll. (DeIcaza told me in the past that he’s rich). [...] DeIcaza took the role of [Microsoft's] Brian Jones, the technical person. (technical person who concentrates on never answering the good questions)…”

Here is Moonlight being used in what seems like a sort of Microsoft advert. Meanwhile we learn from a reader of ours that “Someone made Ada for .NET? (A#)”. Embrace and extend much? █

Summary: Microsoft’s software patent war on Linux carries on, albeit very quietly; a patent troll represented by McKool Smith and Ward & Olivo strikes (quite massively too)

UBUNTU has been mostly apathetic when it comes to Mono and Moonlight problems, so it is good to see that Canonical’s technical chief gets a lecturing from Dr. Tridgell, whose warnings about software patents we have already mentioned (right after his talk at LCA 2010).

Matt Zimmerman writes

Andrew Tridgell: Patent defence for free software

I missed the start of this talk, but when I arrived, Andrew was explaining how to read and interpret patent claims. This is even less obvious than one might suppose. He offered advice on which parts to read first, and which could be disregarded or referred to only as needed.

Invalidating a patent entirely is difficult, but because patents are interpreted very narrowly, inventions can often be shown to be “different enough” from the patented one.

Where “workarounds” are found, which enable free software to interoperate or solve a problem in a different way than described in a patent, Andrew says it is important to publish them far and wide. This helps to discourage patent holders from attacking free software, because the discovery and publication of a workaround could lead to them losing all of their revenue from the patent (as their licensees could adopt that instead and stop paying for licenses).

Tridgell’s colleague, Jeremy Allison, has just warned about this as well (also at LCA 2010). He previously advised Ubuntu to move Mono and Mono-based applications to the ‘restricted’ repositories [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. His take on OOXML was seen as noteworthy and some would say prophetic.

Dana Blankenhorn wrote about Allison’s talk as follows:

Open source evangelist Jeremy Allison was in New Zealand yesterday, where he issued dire warnings of Microsoft launching a patent attack against open source to win back mobile market share. (Picture from Wikipedia.)

Allison, who famously quit Novell after it announced its patent pact with Microsoft, told a Linux conference in Wellington that Microsoft has to go to court or Windows Mobile is dead. He called a patent fight its “nuclear option.”

Allison is in the business of having no choice but to mimic or comply with a Microsoft protocol. The European Commission is on his side thanks to an exclusive resolution which came after a decade of fighting against Microsoft (which must now comply with the law or heavy pay fines, so it’s not a case of playing nice with Samba).

Let’s remind ourselves that Microsoft sued TomTom over filesystems in Linux. Andrew Tridgell personally suffered from this (he eventually posted a patch enabling Linux to work around the VFAT patents) and the FAT crusade continues as Microsoft signed a patent deal with Funai (for exFAT) a few days ago. Novell’s deal with Microsoft is mentioned in this new article about Funai:

Microsoft inks patent deal with LCD builder

[...]

Microsoft has a long history of signing high-profile patent sharing deals. The company’s landmark 2006 deal with Novell sent shockwaves through the open source industry, and the firm has signed similar deals with Brother, Kyocera and Nikon.

See our posts about Tuxera in order to understand Microsoft’s plan to tax GNU/Linux through filesystems (to begin with). It all started with Novell, which came to Microsoft looking for a deal.

A few days ago Microsoft sued TiVo. Asay (formerly of Novell) writes:

As Red Hat evangelist Jan Wildeboer suggests,

The 6,008,803 patent…looks very broad. Might affect all kinds of media center [software]. So also Linux apps. The real question is, “Which Linux media center app infringes on Tivo patents?

In other words, we’re not out of the woods yet, though it does appear that Microsoft’s interest is in supporting the largest customer of its Mediaroom software, not in undermining Linux. Not this time, anyway.

Microsoft appears to have lied about its interests though. Moreover, as we explained the other day, any attack on TiVo — whether it targets Linux or not — can lessen the usage of Linux by weakening TiVo.

From the comments on this: “More reason to detest Microsoft, just wonderful…. Microsoft needs to be dismantled.”

In other patent news, watch what McKool and Ward are up to:

McKool’s promotional material doesn’t emphasize its work for FotoMedia, a patent-holding company whose only apparent business is filing infringement lawsuits. As part of its litigation campaign, FotoMedia has been demanding royalty payments from more than 60 companies with photo-sharing websites. The McKool lawyer in charge of the FotoMedia cases was not available for interviews on Friday, and FotoMedia has not responded to TPA interview requests in the past. FotoMedia is also represented by John Ward & Olivo, a firm out of New York that frequently represents patent-holding companies.

[...]

FotoMedia is a patent-holding company that claims just about every photo-sharing website you can imagine infringes its three patents. Its lawsuits, covered by TPA last May and June, are notable not just for the audacity of the claims they make, but also because they target dozens of small- and medium-sized software companies that provide various types of photo-sharing services over the Internet.

Disgusting. Patent trolls and parasites, including FotoMedia which we mentioned here before. Their site lists not a single product and their job openings are just “for an experienced candidate to join the licensing team of FotoMedia’s parent company, Scenera Research, as a Patent Analyst/Engineer.”

Got that? It says “licensing team… Patent Analyst/Engineer.”

A “licensing team” is basically a bunch of racketeers like Sisvel [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] and Microsoft. What the hell is a Patent Engineer? A fancy terminology for a lawyer?

We wrote about McKool Smith in [1, 2, 3]. As for Ward, he is working for patent trolls and suing critics (and their employers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]). According to this, he’s also pumping money into politics (assuming it’s him). These people should not be allowed in this business if innovation is the real goal. They are leeches and Ray Niro is probably the nastiest of all of them [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. █

Summary: An accumulation of observations about how Microsoft treats the industry and how peripheral agents help it accomplish goals

EARLIER today we wrote about Microsoft's anti-counterfeiting chief quitting the company. It happens just as the ‘Microsoft police’ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] goes hard on businesses that use proprietary software. From eWEEK Europe:

Software Auditors Crack Down As Recession Bites

[...]

Software auditors risk becoming “revenue-generating” traffic cops as the recession put pressure on vendors to collect every penny of revenue

Now, check out this new press release which shows Directions on Microsoft acting as more than an analyst firm focused on Microsoft. They are just making money from the Microsoft ecosystem by assisting with Microsoft licensing, for example, offering remedies to the above "illness". Essentially, they are like Microsoft salespeople, but some have a blog at CNET. What a farce, as if CNET didn’t have enough Microsoft blogs already…

The funny thing is that this press release (with Paul DeGroot at the bottom) says: “Directions on Microsoft is an INDEPENDENT analyst firm formed in 1992 to focus exclusively on Microsoft.” Yes, they even capitalised “INDEPENDENT”. Maybe it’s “INDEPENDENT” in the Peter O’Kelly sense [1, 2]. Eventually he worked directly for Microsoft.

“Essentially, they are like Microsoft salespeople, but some have a blog at CNET.”Then there’s Microsoft Enderle, the “INDEPENDENT” analyst who has just come out with a 3-part series boosting Microsoft. He is routinely attacking Microsoft’s competition and even prominent critics like Groklaw. Private E-mails revealed that he’s working with Microsoft's PR department, Waggener Edstrom (examples in [1, 2]). There’s no shame to these people.

About a week ago we wrote about Centrify and mentioned Likewise; both of these companies engage in Microsoft methodologies (they are run by former Microsoft employees, at least in part) and do protocol promotion with software patents, even on UNIX/Linux (unlike Samba, which is exempted from these unacceptable terms). Likewise is preparing for change. It’s to do with perception and public engagement.

Speaking of which, Microsoft has just sparked some more cheap PR efforts (there’s a $36,000 ‘carrot’ involved) and it offers free lunch to developers (well, breakfast actually):

It will be attended by some of Silicon Valley’s most well known companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Mozilla, Yelp, and plenty more. Microsoft is even sponsoring breakfast.

Microsoft also organised/sponsored an anti-Google ("Screw Google") luncheon. Microsoft pays for — not earns — supporters. █

Summary: Europe is losing its intellectual freedom and sovereignty due to treaties for monopolies, surveillance, and artificial limits on programming

THE GREAT REPRESSION that occurs these days (partly owing to intellectual monopolies) has spurred strong — but by all means tongue-in-cheek — remarks from the FFII’s president, who says that “Swedish Patent Trolls were meeting in Stockholm, slides online, we need ACTA to send Microsoft and Linus to jail”

Their site says:

During the last couple of years intellectual property rights has grown in significance. Society has shifted. Intellectual property rights have come into focus in a way that we haven’t seen before.

That’s what they would hope, wouldn’t they? They created a meta-industry that benefits nobody except themselves. In the process, it empowers monopolies and slows down scientific progress.

The FFII has already warned about the Swedish presidency's role in legalising or at least legitimising software patents in Europe. To make matters worse, the Microsoft-EU deal on interoperability [1, 2, 3, 4] is a big disaster because it legitimises Microsoft’s software patents in Europe without any parliamentary veto power (or obedience to the constitution/s). Nellie Kroes’ agency should be brought back to the table and mend the agreement. There is great fury at the FFII at the moment and Scott Fulton admits that “Microsoft’s interoperability pledge not free enough for Free Software” when he writes:

The agreement between the European Commission and Microsoft announced last Wednesday did not mention “Free Software” by name. There is no corporation or partnership by that name, at least not officially, though up until the resolution of the dispute last week, there had been occasional hints from outgoing Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes that any agreement with Microsoft must take “free” into account, almost as though it were “Free Software, Ltd.”

It’s a very serious issue for many European developers, as Free Software had been treated as a worthy-of-all-caps entity in drafts of the European Interoperability Framework from last year. But recent discussions on revising the EIF have included suggestions from many sources, including a controversial one from the Polish government, that strike references to Free Software as a legal entity, especially as one that deserves equal protection as a limited legal body.

Thus the omission of reference to FS or FOSS from last week’s agreement drew a harsh warning from Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), one of the only entities to criticize the agreement for legal, as opposed to technical or operational, reasons.

This needs to be mended as the patent system seems to have been hijacked by a group of bureaucrats who simply do not understand technology and are therefore easy to fool. Multinational corporations lead them to recognising software patents, which are simply not legal under their sovereignty (and for good reasons!).

As TechDirt puts it in this new post about the UK, the patent system is seeking to retard science and technology with even more intellectual monopolies. Lawyers would absolutely love this.

But all such things really do is encourage more patenting, but less actual innovation. That’s because the tax rate on actual innovation — actually bringing these products to market successfully — remains significantly higher. So, if you do any research at all, you have every incentive in the world to try to just gain income from the patents directly (such as by threatening any company that actually does any innovation and demanding licensing fees) rather than doing the work of actually implementing the product yourself. After all, that’s exactly what the government is telling you to do. It’s saying that if you actually produce an innovative product, we’ll tax you at a very high rate.

As we pointed out some days ago, UK-IPO might be breaking the law and it also serves Microsoft by sneakily approving software patents. █

Summary: Microsoft’s political side shows its face in many areas, both in Europe and in the United States

AN important subject that wrote about a few days ago [1, 2] is this arrangement between the US Department of Justice and Microsoft. This is summarised by the Microsoft reporters as follows: “Microsoft Nears DoJ OK to Collect Protocol Fees”

Microsoft will deliberately avoid standards, create proprietary substitutes and then withhold information, bringing to a halt progress, then documenting some stuff (maybe a decade later) and demanding money for software patents adjacent to these anti-standards specifications. We made a comparison to Rambus the other day and now comes this IDG report:

EC Agrees to Close DRAM Antitrust Case Against Rambus

[...]

And it could have a bearing on how the European Commission deals with the controversial decision by the international standards body ISO to recognize Microsoft’s OOXML document format, according to some observers.

[...]

The Commission is in the process of settling a much bigger antitrust case against Microsoft. A final decision to accept the software giant’s settlement offer is expected next Tuesday.

In addition to creating a level playing field for competition among Internet browsers, Microsoft is understood to have also made promises not to unfairly withhold information from companies that want to make products compatible with the word processing, spreadsheet and office management tools contained in Microsoft’s Office suite of software applications.

As part of this probe the Commission was examining whether OOXML is sufficiently interoperable with competitors’ products, and in April last year, when OOXML won ISO status, the regulator suspected foul play.

Microsoft was suspected of having unfairly influenced the vote by national ISO affiliates in order to secure the ISO label on OOXML.

It is unclear how the anticipated settlement announcement of the Microsoft case next week will deal with the questions surrounding OOXML. “Microsoft’s settlement offer in the interoperability case has addressed the main concerns other companies had, but I don’t know how this specific issue has been settled,” said one person familiar with the Commission’s thinking who asked not to be named.

Microsoft and SAP want to decide on Sun's (and ODF's) fate for all of us (they lobby heavily [1, 2, 3, 4]) and to many people’s surprise, they are actually allowed to do so, despite obvious conflicts.

With an assist from Microsoft, SAP is making a renewed push against Oracle in the EPM (enterprise performance management) space, and has a rip-and-replace success story to show for it.

As long as Microsoft is controlling the government’s judgment, such problems are likely to persist. The OOXML corruptions involved a lot of political pressure as well.

Former Microsoft employees are now looking to gain more government positions.

Microsoft alum challenges Inslee

James Watkins, a Redmond entrepreneur, on Wednesday announced he would challenge Rep. Jay Inslee, the Democrat from Washington’s 1st Congressional District.

Microsoft is getting closer — physically — to Washington D.C.. The Gates- and Microsoft-hired lobbyists will soon be joined by 10,000 guests. Just see the press stories, as it’s appalling.

Here is another new press release about a manager of “Microsoft banking, capital market”:

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Joe Pagano has accepted the role of Managing Director of Banking and Capital Markets in the Worldwide Financial Services Industry Group. Joe will report to Susan Hauser, vice president, Worldwide Financial Services, effective December 2, 2009.

This pitiful role will be tied to anti-GNU/Linux FUDMeister, Susan Hauser. Since when is there a “Microsoft banking” part?

Microsoft has appointed Joe Pagano as the new managing director of Banking and Capital Markets in its Worldwide Financial Services Industry Group.

Pagano, who has been working at Microsoft for nearly 15 years, will report to Susan Hauser, vice president of Worldwide Financial Services.

Microsoft banks on banking interventions and it has been getting closer to bankers. According to this new article, even after the Microsoft disasters inside banks across Denmark, Microsoft is trying to push into them the same software that had the London Stock Exchange (LSE) crash [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is another new press release about Microsoft’s attempts to penetrate banks.

“And then comes more advertising from the Microsoft blog that only ever praises Microsoft.”Speaking of Microsoft disasters in Danish banks, last week we wrote about Microsoft PR stunts in Copenhagen and a new one with AARP as well. Yes, Microsoft uses Copenhagen (environment-centric summit) for PR, despite being a major polluter and offender/denier. Some of this PR comes from Microsoft’s de facto PR blogs (Silver Lie only), which then leads to more PR: “Dickerson reached out to seattlepi.com after reading our Tuesday piece on Microsoft’s work in climate change.”

And then comes more advertising from the Microsoft blog that only ever praises Microsoft. In general, it is all coming from de facto Microsoft press (Seattle), which emits the usual PR fluff almost endlessly.

Regarding AARP, last week we stressed that its work with Microsoft was likely to have hidden goals (as always [1, 2, 3]) and there really is a hidden goal, based on the following newer fluff:

• Microsoft Says Graying Boomers Will Never Surrender Their Gadgets!

The New York Times reports on a study, jointly sponsored by MSFT and the American Association of Retired Persons, that suggests many more years of spending on upgrades and gizmos. Instead of clinging to their old VCR players, TRS-80 computers, and brick-like cell phones, boomers will continue to splurge on the latest neat high-tech toys.

• What Do Baby Boomers Want From Technology?

Those were the sorts of questions explored in a somewhat unusual marketing research project sponsored by AARP and Microsoft. Earlier this year, 60 people in total gathered for dinner and after-dinner discussions about their attitudes toward, use of and expectations for technology. The lengthy sessions were in four cities: San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago and New York. The participants ranged in age from 50 to 60.

Nice to see AARP and Microsoft shilling together. It gives them ammunition with which to lobby the governments. █

“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”

–CIO.com

Summary: How the Novell-backed Silverlight impacts GNU/Linux users and what NASA is doing with it

NOVELL’S sick obsession with Silverlight (may lead to “drooling” or foaming at the mouth) is a subject we explored in recent days [1, 2] because Silverlight turns out to be a Windows-only technology that can only be a compromise for other (non-Windows) platforms. Here is the implication as one writer puts it:

Silverlight gives the multi-platform market to flash

What I get from this decision is that the objectives Microsoft had with Silverlight have changed. It looks like competing with flash in the wider, multi-platform market is taking a back seat to the introduction of new functionality. What Microsoft is pushing is Silverlight as the default web based development platform for Windows, with some limited compatibility with non Windows platforms. This goes in the opposite direction to Adobe Flash which seems to favor a consistent set of functionality and compatibility across all platforms. Flash is not only available on Windows, Mac and Linux, but also on the Wii, and soon an ARM version should be released for smartbooks. And that does not even cover gnash, the open source version of flash that is more or less to Flash what Moonlight is to Silverlight. In short, Microsoft is giving up the multi-platform market to Adobe.

Groklaw has just processed some more Comes vs Microsoft exhibits, including text where it shows Microsoft’s treatment of ‘extensions’ to APIs/protocols and such things. The title says: “Gates: ‘I have decided we should not publish these extensions.’”

You might find it interesting to compare this memo with Bill Gates’ July 20, 1995 letter to Novell’s Robert Frankenberg, Microsoft’s Exhibit 15 [PDF] in its collection attached to its Cross Motion for Summary Judgment. It’s a hoot. Frankenberg had complained about undocumented calls, and Gates writes that both the FTC and the DOJ has “thoroughly investigated” the allegations and found them to be “not provable”. That was then. This is now. Here’s my favorite part of the letter:

In fact, Microsoft goes out of its way to make early copies of API and protocol specifications available, hold design reviews (that even our competitors attend), and run the largest beta test programs in the industry. Novell has been invited to participate in many of these “Open Process” events — and all without requiring a tit-for-tat arrangement.

Does Novell pay attention to this at all? It is currently fighting against Microsoft in court over discriminatory extensions and APIs, such as the ones it’s falling for when dealing with Silverlight. This is contradictory.

A few days ago we wrote about what Microsoft was doing at NASA and one of our readers, The Mad Hatter, is now arguing that Microsoft had NASA exclude non-Windows users, yet again.

After a couple of minutes of talking to a very polite receptionist, who finally understood that I was having a problem with a website, I got transferred to Mark in Public Services. I explained the problem to Mark, pointing out that:

1) Most geeks are fans of the space effort.
2) Most geeks don’t run Windows.
3) Most geeks refuse to have Microsoft software on their systems.
4) Does CalTech/NASA/JPL really want to annoy their biggest fans?
5) Does Microsoft have the right to force us to run Windows?

Mark had never heard of the website, so I pointed him to it, and he spotted the bit about the Memorandum with Microsoft immediately, and pointed out that of course Microsoft would use Silverlight. And he’s correct. Of course Microsoft would use Silverlight. However NASA/JPL is a government institution, with responsibility to the American taxpayers, not Microsoft, and that it could be argued that any memorandum that blocked access to a significant part of NASA/JPL’s core constituency might not be legal.

This should be treated as an antitrust issue. It almost was, but Novell and cronies helped Microsoft escape this after an investigation had been launched in Europe (2007).

Carla Schroder is mystified by the decision to remove GIMP from Ubuntu [1, 2, 3] (Canonical could remove Mono or OpenOffice.org instead) and she offers this explanation:

I have a suspicion that this demonstrates how deeply Mono has become entrenched in Ubuntu. Gimp critics like to complain that it’s not Adobe Photoshop. True, it lacks CMYK support and other features essential to producing very high-quality professional color prints. For everything else it’s great, it makes excellent Web images and darned good color prints.

How different is Gimp? Not very, I think the critics have never touched it. Virtually all image editing programs have similar toolsets, the brush, pencil, airbrush, bucket fill, crop, eraser, fonts, and so on. Higher-end ones support layers and bales of plugins and add-ons. I think what the critics really want is Photoshop for free just because it is expensive, like the trendy folks who only wear brand-name apparel with high price tags. Like paying more makes those denim jeans that came out of the same factories as the cheap ones wear better. At any rate anyone who has touched a decent image editing/paint program before will do fine in Gimp, and someone who has never used one has some learning to do. Requiring a user of a product to learn anything seems to be a criminal offense anymore.

The latest episode of Tux Radar debates the issue and mentions “Mono haters” at one stage. Would that include “haters” like the FSF, for example? Resistance to Mono exists because of a real problem in Mono. To suggest that “irrational hatred” is behind all opposition to Mono is like casting people who get vaccinations “Swine flu haters”. █

Summary: Microsoft’s perversion of the word “open” (as George Orwell once warned) put in perspective

IN SEPTEMBER we showed that O'Reilly had grown closer to Microsoft, then a few days ago noting that both are neglecting web standards. There is a new article in eWEEK, going under the headline “Why Tim O’Reilly Sees Microsoft as a Proponent of the Open Web”

This is not intended to be humour. To quote from the opening paragraph, “O’Reilly says Microsoft’s recent deals to index Twitter tweets and use Wolfram Alpha’s APIs for computational data show a shift in its willingness to work with other Web companies.”

“When a company uses APIs or makes some available, it is merely looking for increased use, it has nothing to do with Freedom.”O’Reilly’s perception of “open” is a very biased and personal one, like “Web 2.0″. He eyes APIs as “open” when in fact there is no such thing as “open APIs”; an API is open by definition, for it begs to be used as an access point to Free or non-Free code. When a company uses APIs or makes some available, it is merely looking for increased use, it has nothing to do with Freedom.

O’Reilly must also have forgotten about .NET, which is proprietary and even a platform lock-in. It’s a case against the cross-platform, GPL-licensed Java. Microsoft boosters/bloggers are also busy at the moment spreading FUD about the GPL, helped by some other useful idiots who echo Microsoft talking points.

In the previous post we showed Novell’s de Icaza sharing this post from Mary Jo Foley about XAML as an anti-GNU/Linux weapon (Chrome OS specifically). Novell’s de Icaza then praised Silverlight.

Will Microsoft’s Silverlight dampen the appeal of Google’s Chrome OS?

[...]

First, as others have noted, Google’s Chrome OS is a new windowing system layered on top of Linux that is being customized to run on netbooks.

Microsoft is fraudulently trying to characterise Silverlight as “open source” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], usually with Novell’s help.

This is clearly an attack on web standards, making parts of the Web Windows-only (and blocking Google spiders, not just end-user software). So how can O’Reilly be so blind to deals and partnerships that only make a Closed Web, not an “Open Web”? Whose side is he on? Reality? Or marketing? It’s not even about Microsoft, it’s about standards and those who oppose them, including Adobe whose blobs are now required to read O’Reilly-published literature. And just to think that O’Reilly used to stand for “open” (whatever “open” means). Richard Stallman was right all along about “open”. █

[More Open Than Open]: “I am constantly amazed at the flexibility of this single word.”

–Jason Matusow, Microsoft (for background see [1, 2])

Summary: As HTML5 is approaching, vendors continue in their attempts to gain ownership and exclusivity over content using formats and protocols

MICROSOFT’S control of the media is an important subject because it leads to “perception management” [1, 2], as exemplified in the previous post. Glyn Moody reveals that “the Editor of The Next Web Italy, @Contz, is “Junior PR at Microsoft Italy”; tiny conflict of interest there, perhaps…?“

It’s not just publications as such which are affected by Microsoft marketing people. O’Reilly and Microsoft decided to work together some months ago and now we find that O’Reilly is abandoning web standards and requiring that Web users install proprietary software to read books.

Safaribooks online were availabe in HTML-View for a long time and were accessible with free software.

Now the O’Reilly Safari team has decided to stop this and deliver online books in Adobe flash format only for online reading. As expected gnash does not work.

This means reading and browsing O’Reilly books online is no more possible with free software.

This is not about Microsoft, but it shows that O’Reilly lost its way. From a UNIX/Linux-oriented (and thus standards-friendly) origin it found its way into “Web 2.0″ and other such abstract nonsense.

Speaking of standards, Microsoft starts talking about Internet Explorer 9, which is another departure further away from web standards (DirectX in addition to XAML and ActiveX). Microsoft just cannot permit the World Wide Web to be interoperable.

Glyn Moody shares this new article about HTML5 and also looks with concern at the Open Web Foundation, where “open” is a deceiving term (Orwell must love this!).

The great promise of HTML5 is that it will turn the web into a full-fledged computing platform awash with video, animation and real-time interactions, yet free of the hacks and plug-ins common today.

While the language itself is almost fully baked, HTML5 won’t fully arrive for at least another two years, according to one of the men charged with its design.

In the mean time, Moody shows why the Open Web Foundation is not on the good side.

But independently of these details, there’s another big problem with the Open Web Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation has been pushing the idea of the Open Web for some time now; the appearance of this new foundation, with its agreement, is likely to muddy the waters around the concept of the open Web considerably. But then, that’s maybe what some companies involved in the OWF want…

Heise has some more coverage of the OWF. █

“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”

–Bill Gates [PDF]

Summary: An example of disinformation about history being spread by those to whom open, royalty-free standards are a foe

ONE of our readers has alerted us about what seems like revisionism — a topic that we covered many times before, e.g. in:

• IDG/IDC Does Microsoft’s Revisionism to Deny Crimes
• More Microsoft Jack Revisionism
• How History Gets Warped — Not Forgotten — to Conceal Microsoft Violations
• The New York Times, Hosted by Microsoft Revisionists

Getting down to the latest claim of revisionism, our reader points to this article which says: ‘“In the dot-com bust it was Unix to Linux migration because Linux was cheaper than Solaris on SPARC,” says Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise, a maker of integration and identity management software for mixed environments. “Phase 2 [of corporate open source adoption] has been accelerated by the current economic conditions. IT is looking to do things in a cost-effective manner and there are a lot of viable open source solutions out there.”‘

Our reader says: “It looks like another Microsoft partner trying to establish revisionist history of the history of the WWW.

“You can spot the Microsoft partners by how they stick to Microsoft talking points and how they exist to rope businesses into Microsoft infrastructure and elimination of open standards.”
      –Anonymous“During the dot-com, Linux was being added in addition to SunOS on Sparc and Digital Unix on Alpha. Microsoft had not yet even begun to infect the server room at the time, despite the beginnings of FUD and even a smattering of false advertising.

“Linux was often used to get a web service up and running with the least amount of delay on old PCs while the real hardware request was making its way through administrative channels.

“Unluckily, Linux ended up giving managers the idea that Windows servers worked. Most of the claims of growth for Windows in the server room can be blamed on Microsoft eating Novell Netware’s market through false advertising (see court cases) and BSA strongarming. Once those were in place, users bitched up a storm at the loss of reliability. The fast response by the IT dept was to slap Samba on a machine and not tell anyone. The increased reliability of files services for Windows users was attributed then to Windows Server, rather than Samba on Linux. Often the Windows server that a zealot manager forced on the IT department sat in the corner humming away, consuming electricity, WITHOUT a network cable. Then came the day, that under the belief that the server room was using Windows, the managers replaced a departing tech with a Windows monkey who promptly zapped the Samba…”

We gave several examples of migrations without permission back in August. This issue is real.

As for Likewise, it is the "Microsoft version" of Samba (adding software patents to the original software). Our reader shares this older article which starts with: “What’s it like to be an open source company that’s also a Microsoft partner dependent on the Windows world? Not bad, says Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise Software…

Our reader then adds: “You can spot the Microsoft partners by how they stick to Microsoft talking points and how they exist to rope businesses into Microsoft infrastructure and elimination of open standards. That company is peddling Microsoft alternative to Kerberos+LDAP+(puppet/radmind)

“Another apologist company is Cloudera, which seems to be one of Microsoft proxies to damage the Apache foundation and Hadoop in particular.”

Our reader points to a press release, but this latter assessment/speculation is highly questionable. Cloudera was formed by a man from Oracle, whose company had been bought before he left (one can see its genesis in the official Web sites), so any suggestion that its GNU/Linux-based Hadoop distribution is a negative thing would require considerable proof. Regardless, the part about Likewise was worth a quick discussion. There are reasons for distrust, many of which we covered before. █

“What we are trying to do is use our server control to do new protocols and lock out Sun and Oracle specifically”

–Bill Gates

“Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the US Department of Defense.”

–Richard Stallman

Summary: How Microsoft uses ActiveSync to shut out Free software with software patents; OOXML patents and other issues revisited; Bilski to be revisited by the Supremes, who can axe software patents in the United States

Microsoft’s plan for fighting Free software involves software patents that essentially impose a tax on use. One example of a software patents vector is ActiveSync, which we last wrote about right here, with other examples in [1, 2]. Now there is another Microsoft patent deal (ActiveSync), which serves the same agenda of imposing a tax on access to protocols. What will the European Commission say about that? Is it familiar with this issue already?

It happens to be a similar case with OOXML, which Microsoft knew all along had patent issues but kept them secret and lied to the public about them. Microsoft Nick is now showing that OOXML has other issues too; even users of Microsoft Office are unnecessarily facing barriers because Microsoft changed its proprietary formats.

Microsoft is optimizing its upcoming Office Web Apps for .docx, .pptx, and .xslx, which will boost the online accessibility of documents uploaded from users’ desktops—but in the process, perhaps making life more difficult for those using older versions of Office. During testing of the Web Apps technical preview, eWEEK found that documents with .xls and .ppt file extensions could not be edited through the browser, although they could still be viewed and downloaded.

Meet the OOXML upgrade treadmill. Many say that OOXML is about forced upgrades along with other tricks like breaking compatibility with rival office suites, all while pretending to have gone “open”. And again, what about the patents? OOXML remains a patent trap. Groklaw has just published an article that challenges Microsoft’s Bilski amicus brief, which is in favour of software patents of course.

I have noticed something about PDF the amicus brief from Microsoft, Philips and Symantec submitted to the US Supreme Court in the In re Bilski case. This amicus brief relies on a particular interpretation of the history of computing and on its own description of the inner workings of a computer to argue that software should be patentable subject matter. I argue that both the history and the description of the actual working of a computer is inaccurate.

The Supreme Court’s decision could put an end to software patenting in the United States and the hearing is very near. It’s only a week away.

The United States Supreme Court will hear a patent case on Nov. 9 that has implications for both method and software patents, and it has gained widespread attention from industry groups, professors and businesses looking to influence the high court’s thinking.

But at least one lawyer expects that the decision made in this case will not fix anything at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Interestingly enough, the previous ruling on the Bilski case already kills software patents. █

BITS and pieces that appear in the news play a role in the adoption of Free software, even though they are legal issues rather than technical. This post takes an overview.

Microsoft

Microsoft has just found another ActiveSync victim from which to extract patent tax. With new licensing deals, Microsoft hopes to extract revenue out of patents and other imaginary products. We gave some more ActiveSync examples in [1, 2]. Microsoft basically charges for the use of protocols and even Android (Linux) is harmed by it:

DATAVIZ has made available a version of its Roadsync client for Microsoft ActiveSync via Android Market, allowing users of Android phones to link with Exchange email servers.

The Wall Street Journal has this new article about the patent bill. From the opening:

Twelve Republican U.S. senators on Thursday sent a letter to Senate leaders criticizing pending patent legislation, saying the bill “threatens to diminish the value and enforceability of U.S. patent rights.”

The Oct. 15 letter backs criticism against the legislation being levied by independent inventors and academics who argue the bills favor major technology companies. If approved the legislation would be the most sweeping rewrite of federal patent law in 50 years.

Critics say two similar bills now in Congress would broadly make it harder for individuals, universities and start-ups to defend their inventions against companies with deeper pockets.

Microsoft too is mentioned in the full article, which states that “Microsoft and IBM are two of the most active companies involved in filing patents.” IBM makes about a billion dollars per year from taxation of competitors and IBM is what the FFII calls a “fake” supporter when it comes to patents. IBM’s actions speak for themselves.

Law.com has this article about the Eastern District of Texas, which is known as patent trollville. Microsoft is mentioned also:

The story, of course, is also bigger than Powers and Davis. There’s the fact that Microsoft is signing off on both the trial strategy and the briefs being filed. That suggests that the big old software company is taking a more aggressive tack in the Eastern District these days, not just backing up its lawyer. After losing a couple of big cases there, it seems like the company is eager to show up a judge who it believes did it wrong. Sort of like in baseball when there’s a questionable call and the manager runs out on the field to jaw with the umpire: The purpose is not only to get the call reversed, but to make him think twice the next time.

Red Hat

The FireStar case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] may be old, but the Prior Art Blog has some interesting new details about those who were involved:

* In October 2006, in the lawsuit’s early stages, FireStar told Red Hat it wanted $100 million to settle its patent claims—and Red Hat said “there was nothing left to discuss.”

[...]

After the case was underway, FireStar apparently tired of the patent litigation game. The company was reluctant to make engineers available for deposition because, Foley’s brief states, they “were focused on product development rather than the Red Hat case and as a result were not sufficiently responsive.” By December 2007, the bankers at Amphion had agreed to take the suit off FireStar’s hands by creating DataTern, a shell company solely focused on patent enforcement that acquired the patent in early 2008. (Amphion also agreed to compensate FireStar for employee time spent on the litigation.) At about the same time, DataTern stopped paying Foley’s bills, and turned to IP Nav and its lawyers to press the suit.

Those lawyers—Texas solo Dan Perez and Michigan-based Patrick Anderson, both of whom frequently work for Spangenberg and his patent companies—quickly hammered out the $4.2 million settlement. The figure, Foley notes, was lower the total litigation budget it had agreed to with FireStar. If the plaintiffs were willing to settle for so little, Foley lawyers Michael Lockerby and Greg Neppl write, a deal could have been struck “without the expenditure of much in the way of legal fees.”

Patent Crisis

The following stories ought to speak for themselves:

• EFF Challenges VOIP Systems Patent

As part of its Patent Busting Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claims it has discovered a prior patent and published reference material that should invalidate a patent granted to Acceris for implementing VOIP using analog telephones as endpoints.

• USPTO Removes Rule Changes

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) published a final rule in the Federal Register in August of 2007 to revise the rules of practice for patent cases pertaining to continuing applications and requests for continued examination practices, and for the examination of claims in patent applications (Claims and Continuations Final Rule). The Office is revising the rules of practice in this final rule to remove the changes in the Claims and Continuations Final Rule from the Code of Federal Regulations.

• Bits and Bytes

* I am teaching obviousness this week in my introductory patent law course here at the University of Missouri School of Law. The Justice Douglas concurrence in the 1950 A&P case always gives me pause:
o “The Constitution never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. Patents serve a higher end–the advancement of science.”

• Are Technology Patents Lost on Jurors?

Attorney Tucker Griffith brainstormed for months about how to best illustrate the inner-workings of his client’s patented technology.

[...]

“I’ve seen judges ask questions that show they’re confused,” said Menard, who works in areas of electromechanical technology such as hydraulics and pneumatics. “You have 48 minutes of hearings and the judge asks a question that shows they have no clue. Then the lawyers just look at each other and say, ‘That was a waste of time.’”

Change is still needed urgently. Can Kappos deliver? █

Summary: Large assortment of Novell news from the past week

IT HAS not been a packed week for Novell, not judging by the news anyway. This week we combine some elements of SUSE with the rest of the bunch. Novell’s business is also mentioned in this new report.

SUSE Studio

SLE* is virtually out of sight and this has been the case for several months. It is mostly being sold as a ‘solution’ and part of other ‘solutions’ (software/hardware products), but although it’s on the verge of being just OpenSUSE, here are some bits of news about SUSU Studio, all found in the past week alone. Novell’s PR people wrote about it in their blog.

Back in August this year we launched SUSE Studio, a new product designed to make it very easy to build, test and deploy full-functional software appliances using Linux. SUSE Studio earned strong support from the ISV community and in the days following the launch new users were signing on at the astonishing rate of more than one a minute.

Here is a selection of new reviews, which were mostly very positive:

i. SUSE Studio – Make your own Linux

I’m very pleased with the Studio. It’s Kiwi, simplified, polished and made available to the masses. A truly great step in the right direction.

ii. SuSE Studio TestDrive: Slightly Customizing an Linux OpenSuSE 11.1

One of strengths of GNU/Linux is the proportional degree of freedom that enables the user to modify or recreate key components of the operating system. On Sept. 24, 2009 I attended the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. During the morning lunch, informally chatting with an Intel employee who claimed to be involved in his organization’s efforts in compiler development, I refuted his assertion that the multiplicity of GNU/Linux distributions was detrimental to the operating system commercial support.

iii. Suse Studio Review

Suse Studio is an excellent tool for anyone who wants to build their own Linux distribution. The online environment is comprehensive and doesn’t require any effort on your part to use. You can be using your own distribution in minutes with Testdrive, and can have tested, built and downloaded your distribution in a fraction of the time it would take you to setup the necessary environment yourself.

From Australia comes this IDG report which includes elements of SUSE.

Student Jesty Karl Salvatierra beat out his competitors in a close field, with contestants having seven hours to complete their infrastructure and IT systems configurations. Designed to test the competitors’ skills and abilities in the key areas of PC support and network maintenance in a ‘real world’ business environment, the participants had to install a guest operating system of SUSE Linux 10.2 onto a host running VMware Server.

Xandros

This is not about Novell, but the following press release is about a product which has impact on Novell at the server side. It also involves a company that signed a Microsoft patent deal similar to Novell’s.

Netherlands-based Systems Integrator employs BridgeWays Management Packs to Extend Microsoft System Center Administration to Business Critical Applications on Windows, Linux, and Unix

Recollections and Old Software

Novell happens to be mentioned in this opinion piece from Scott Fulton, who opines that size is the issue with particular companies, not just behaviour. This is not true and a long explanation can be written to counter this point of view.

Looking at this report from IDG, it appears as though Novell disappoints some customers who rely on it for DNS.

Boise State isn’t the only organization to discover that it could save money by switching from DNS software to DNS appliances. The Nevada Department of Corrections recently bought DNS appliances from BlueCat rival Infoblox to replace DNS software from Novell that was requiring too much time from network administrators.

Did Novell shoot itself in the foot? A NetworkWorld writer believes so.

What technology does a small business need, whether real estate office or dry cleaners or restaurant or muffler shop? What comes to mind first, thanks to Microsoft’s constant marketing, is a server. Since Novell shot itself in the foot so often it lost the majority share of the server market years ago, a server automatically means Microsoft to most people.

SCO

Novell is still hanging out in the courtroom with SCO. Mr. Cahn, the Trustee of SCO, is still inquiring to find out what goes on inside.

I have a friend whose theory of life is that when you are down to your last $100, rather than skimping, you should go out and spend it on a luxurious, wonderful meal, because afterwards you’ll think of something. SCO’s Chapter 11 Trustee must be a kindred spirit.

Mr. Cahn has filed with the bankruptcy court an application to hire a financial advisor/investment banker, Ocean Park Advisors, to advise him on what he should do about SCO. Should they reorganize, sell off and shut down or what? It’s complicated. Not to mention expensive. Wait. Does SCO have any money it doesn’t already owe to someone?

In a later post from Groklaw, Darl McBride’s criminal investigation is being responded to.

Here, the plaintiff wants to sue him and some other defendants, some of them in New York, over an alleged conspiracy hatched and at least partially executed in New York, according to the complaint. McBride is claiming that Pelican can’t sue him in New York State, since he says he has no connection to that state at all. Pelican claims he does, as I’ll show you, but it also claims the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act provides supplemental jurisdiction.

Virtualisation

Earlier this week we wrote about Novell's latest shot at Red Hat. This is still being mentioned in the context of Red Hat’s arrangement with Microsoft.

The agreement between Microsoft and Red Hat has significant implications for Novell. For a while Novell enjoyed a unique status in terms of being the only Linux partner that Microsoft has agreed to work with. And while the respective management frameworks offered by Microsoft and Novell are better integrated with their respective operating systems; that may not be a strong enough argument to get customer to give up their Red Hat distributions in favor of Suse Linux from Novell.

The author misses that point that Novell sold out by involving software patents and doing projects for Microsoft, whereas Red Hat’s deal is quite benign. There is more the subject here.

I recall a time not too long ago when Novell was the only Linux distro vendor playing ball with Microsoft. Of course, that was when both Linux companies were backing Xen for the long term.

Forbes has this new article on virtualisation myths. it was jointly written by David Convery, who holds Novell certification.

Mail

Someone has uploaded the following Novell commercial

GroupWise was mentioned in this article in relation to the BlackBerry and also mentioned in the following press release.

Research In Motion recently updated BlackBerry Enterprise IM Clients from v2.2 to v2.5 and includes clients for Novell GroupWise Messenger, IBM Lotus Sametime, and Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007.

The old story about Los Angeles is being repeated in the following analysis.

Fed up with Novell e-mail software first installed in 1995 and dubbed “the slowest, most inefficient, crash-prone e-mail system in the history of mankind,” by the mayor’s office, LA city officials last year solicited bids for a modern replacement.

Security

Novell may be losing Los Angeles, but it has just gotten a contract in New York City. From the press release:

Novell today announced the City of New York has turned to Novell for improved integration of the city’s identity and security information technology infrastructure.

From another short report on the subject.

Jim Ebzery, senior vice president of identity and security management at Novell, said: “More than eight million New Yorkers use government services for a variety of daily needs. It is essential that the city’s agencies and systems not only operate efficiently but are protected against potential security risks. With Novell, the city can deliver simplicity and security to New Yorkers by providing a single digital identity that provides access to various city agencies.”

New York is to rely on Novell for security just as another vulnerability is found in Novell eDirectory, which is proprietary. In relation to Hotmail and Gmail intrusion, the following point was made:

Data Technique has developed a tool to integrate Gmail with Novell s eDirectory for account provisioning and management.

Identity Management

Identity is related to security and TMCNet delivers some fake reporting with a tweaked press releases, as usual. Novell is listed as part of the Liberty Alliance.

These vendors include Entrust, IBM (News – Alert), Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens.

Over at ZDNet UK, Novell also got mentioned as part of DMTF :

There are several cloud interoperability initiatives that are underway. In April, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) formed an Open Cloud Standards Incubator (OCSI) group. This group’s board includes representatives from AMD, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Savvis, Sun and VMware.

Additionally, there is this report from Hungary:

„IT systems’ continuous and secure operation and the compliance with the legislation and sector wise standards is an enormous task for the IT departments” – said Zsolt Hargitai, commercial support manager of Novell Magyarország. „Clients need a cost-saving and efficient soluton that works well with their existing systems while providing a safe infrastructure and the compliance as well,” – he added.

Novell’s Sentinel Log Manager helps them search efficiently through logs and the open source format makes it possible to store and archive data and reports on any available hardware, resulting in reduced compliance costs as well.

People

Novell will be speaking alongside IBM and Eric Schmidt was mentioned as Novell’s former head in a couple of places. Schmidt will speak in Utah.

Eric Schmidt came in from Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL).

Another former Novell officer was mentioned in The Chronicle.

Mr. Ricart’s arrival follows the six-year tenure of Tom West, LambdaRail’s first chief executive. Mr. Ricart has also founded three technology start-ups, served as Novell’s chief technology officer, and acted as the military’s technology liaison to the Clinton White House.

One last unimportant mention of Novell in relation to John Cruz:

John later developed video player add-ons for Macromedia Director and Novell development tools.

Partners

In India, Novell has launched a “PartnerNet” programme.

Novell will launch its global partner program-PartnerNet-in India in November, 2009. The revised version of this program was launched globally a year ago, to translate the company’s aggressive push of its open source solutions in the indirect channel space since 2008.

There is also a lookout for partners/customers in Australia:

Vasco has signed a distribution agreement with Sydney-based Novell specialist Open Channel Solutions (OCS).

Under the agreement, Novell’s largest Australian distie OCS will distribute Vasco’s full range of authentication products including Vasco’s Novell-certified range.

Novell makes friends in Scotland:

Indicia Training, which now employs six office based staff and a core of 15 freelance trainers, has seen turnover rise by 36% over the past two years to £550,000 this year. They are the only training company in Scotland to be awarded the Novell Gold Partner status – a much sought after industry accreditation – and can now count the likes of the Scottish Government, the NHS and Mars among its impressive client list.

In addition, Novell partners were mentioned mostly among lists of companies and some press releases.

Marketing

Grant Ho from Novell’s marketing team has just exploited another perceived problem in order to market Novell:

This may be good for a company that is only looking to manage their data center, but key questions remain — what’s going to happen to LANDesk, a subsidiary of Avocent? Will Emerson keep LANDesk? What’s going to happen to current LANDesk customers or future customers? What’s going to happen to LANDesk partners? Does Emerson’s focus on the data center mean it will get out of the endpoint management business? As a LANDesk customer or partner, I’m sure these are just a few of the questions you’re asking.

Not so long ago, Novell’s marketing team also used its "bloated" Linux remark as means of marketing SUSE Studio. How opportunistic. █

Summary: A critical vulnerability lacking any real patch has now an attack code which puts in jeopardy Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2, even Windows 2008 Service Pack 1 (soon 2)

For context, see: Microsoft ‘Fixes’ Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 by Disabling Entire Features

Now comes this:

• Exploit published for SMB2 vulnerability in Windows

A fully functional exploit for the security vulnerability in the SMB2 protocol implementation has been published. It can be used to discover and attack vulnerable Windows machines remotely. By integrating the exploit into the Metasploit exploit toolkit, attackers have access to a wide range of attack options, ranging from issuing a warning to setting up a convenient backdoor on a user’s system.

• Hackers release new attack code for Windows

On 18 September Microsoft released a Fix-It tool that disables SMB 2, and the company said then that it was working on a fix for its software.

• Pressure on Microsoft, as Windows Attack Now Public

Metasploit developer HD Moore said Monday that the exploit works on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and 2 as well as Windows 2008 SP1 server. It should also work on Windows 2008 Service Pack 2, he added in a Twitter message.

Will Microsoft do better than with XP? █

Summary: Richard Stallman to help New Zealand defeat software patents, which are mathematical monopolies based on the New Scientist; reform suffers setbacks and Microsoft is unable to obey patent law

Resistors

THE father of Free software, Richard Stallman, shall soon speak about software patents in New Zealand. Here is an introduction/abstract.

In this insightful discussion, international Free Software advocate Richard Stallman (RMS) will argue that software patents seriously and significantly obstruct software development.

Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. Stallman will argue that they restrict the development of software to the point that the risk of legal action as a result of design decisions is dramatically raised. Stallman will also make the point that patents in other fields restrict factories, but in IT, software patents restrict every computer user and consumer.

Stallman was giving such talks several years back when European activists staved off attempts to legalise software patents in Europe (Microsoft was among the large forces lobbying for it). Similar attempts are now being made to legalise software patents in New Zealand where Microsoft tries to colonise, not always successfully though.

Software is Mathematics

Here is a very recent article from the New Scientist, which is a distinguished publication. Therein we find a clear, scientific explanation of why software is mathematics (and should therefore not be patentable).

To prove mathematically that the 7500 lines of its kernel’s code were secure, Gerwin Klein of NICTA and his team first had to come up with a mathematical method to express the code. “In the end, programs are just mathematics, and you can reason about them mathematically,” says Klein.

One can join the latest discussion about software patents at Groklaw, where the invaluable finding shown above was first identified and brought to more people’s attention.

Reform

As we mentioned the other day, the Rick Frenkel (aka Patent Troll Tracker) case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] is now settled and Law.com offers some more coverage. The sad thing is that those patent trolls managed to gag and perhaps permanently silence their biggest critic. According to Patently-O, on Obama’s agenda there are more intellectual monopolies, not less (no surprise there). Here are some details.

President Obama’s speech today focused on its newly formed “strategy for American innovation” — his “strategy to foster new jobs, new businesses, and new industries by laying the groundwork and the ground rules to best tap our innovative potential. . . .

[...]

Protect intellectual property rights. Intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the industrial age. We must ensure that intellectual property is protected in foreign markets and promote greater cooperation on international standards that allow our technologies to compete everywhere. The Administration is committed to ensuring that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has the resources, authority, and flexibility to administer the patent system effectively and issue high-quality patents on innovative intellectual property, while rejecting claims that do not merit patent protection.

There is some very strong language here; it is almost propaganda-inspired, as though it was written by patent lawyers to advance their personal agenda. The Director of the USPTO, David Kappos, says that patents are a “20-year monopoly”, which is not the same as referring to patents as a “property”, a “right”, “protection”, or intellect. It’s more of a blockade, but monopolies love those.

Microsoft

Microsoft still treats Exchange protocols as patents — a practice which is wrongly seen as acceptable (or a “necessary evil”) by some players in the relevant sector; Google is among the victims of ActiveSync, others being Linux vendors which succumbed to Microsoft's patent plot. The funny thing is that Microsoft ignores patent law when it suits its needs. Here is the latest turn of events in the i4i case, as described in the Wall Street Journal.

I4i Inc. doesn’t want to prevent Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from selling its flagship Word product, it just wants Microsoft to remove i4i’s technology.

And the closely held Toronto company, which won its patent-infringement case against Microsoft in May, doesn’t appear willing to compromise on this point. “You can never say never,” said i4i Chairman Loudon Owen, regarding a settlement with Microsoft, “but we’re here to build our business and we’re here to compete.”

More information about the i4i case can be found in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. It’s an embarrassment to Microsoft and it shows the company’s endless hypocrisy when it comes to software patents. █

“The only patent that is valid is one which this Court has not been able to get its hands on.”

–Supreme Court Justice Jackson

Summary: The latest analyses and moves from Microsoft, which increasingly relies on software patents in its eternal battle against Free software

CARLO Piana, who represents Samba on a legal basis in Europe [1, 2], has just published this long post which explains how Microsoft continues to use software patents and other nefarious means to suppress adoption of Free software. This is particularly important right now because Microsoft has an opportunity to do to the Commission what it did to the US Department of Justice, namely putting its friends in charge (Charlie McCreevy may leave, but the FFII shows that a likely replacement is also a supporter of software patents).

The point is that the current Commission is going to step down in a few weeks, and Commissioner Kroes – who has an incredibly good track record on the Microsoft case – might feel the urgency to close everything behind her, leaving the office empty and her case teams without a case. But at which conditions?

[...]

The single biggest issue is patents. The current WSPP agreement does not contain any meaningful provision or license or promise or non-assertion pledge or anything that is useful to Free Software projects. Without that clearance, once everything is over, who is going to stop the patents to be asserted or, worse, merely threatened (call it FUD, patent rattling, whatever)? Microsoft has been very clear to reserve this right. If it is home free with a broad undertaking, there will not be any real pressure against the assertion of the patents, apart the reaction of some friendlier companies and of the OIN. We have seen just a small preview with the TomTom case.

[...]

And the future will bring Silverlight. And the future will bring OOXML mandated by public authorities as if it was an open standard. And by the way, I am still awaiting the first attempted implementation of ISO/IEC IS 29500 (what the standard is called) because Microsoft Office’s file format is not even close to be that, and it is not even ECMA 376. It is a proprietary, undisclosed file format. To add insult to the damage, I start hearing that even those corrections that were hurried in during the Ballot Resolution Meeting to pass the standard like a square pin into a round hole are now rolled back very quietly in JTC1 SC34 – hijacked by Microsoft – because of lack of interoperability with MS Office. Which incidentally confirms my assessment that the implementation is the standard and the standard is the implementation. The process we underwent to approve or disapprove an international standard was merely a sham.

The Commission falsely promised that it would investigate this, but the complexity of such an investigation (requiring a lot of travel all around the world) is the reason it backed off, leaving Microsoft unpunished for criminal activity such as blackmail and bribery.

We recently showed that Microsoft had attempted to have GNU/Linux vendors sued by patent trolls [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. That was the allegation made by Red Hat and others, including the OIN, which is now releasing details of the patents in question (there are about 20 software patents in total, so this list is not complete). It’s exclusive to The H (London-based apparently) — part of Heise, which is in Germany where software patents are not valid anyway.

What was in this lot of 22 patents that would specifically worry the Linux community? The OIN supplied The H with a list of the patents:

* Encoding a URL into the playback of a media file (5987509, 6499057, 5774666, 6963906)
* Broadcasting video over distributed networks (6005600, 6792468, 7448062)
* Launching a browser and sending it to a URL by clicking an icon (5737560, 5877767, 6072491, 7032185)
* Launching applications through a movie (5745713)
* Colour space conversions (5946113, 6147772)
* Web page annotations (6081829, 6571295)
* Web publishing hypertext (5890170)
* Web publishing and editing with templates (6026433)
* A Method for painting on a computer (5182548)
* Virtual Address Translation (6205531)
* Dynamically generating graphics for the web on the server (6098092)
* Dynamic information clipping service (5649186)

Going back to Samba in Europe, there is absolutely no reason to assume that Microsoft will accept an exclusion of software patents. According to this post, Microsoft may still be working on it. [the emphasis in red is ours]

Basically, the IM mob are desperately trying to con unions into doing their dirty work by pushing out propaganda on intellectual monopolies. I just love the line “The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and IIPA (International Intellectual Property Association) were both very enthusiastic about this proposal”: you bet they are. Their own ham-fisted efforts have backfired so spectacularly that they are desperate for someone else not tainted by their inept approach of punishing consumers to try.

The following is also significant:

The discussion on future work mostly focus on climate change. General Electric and Microsoft were particularly outspoken in highlighting their fear that some current negotiations over green technology and IPR would weaken IPR. They also denounced the inclusion of proposals that limit patentable subject matter and recommend compulsory licenses or licenses of rights.

As well as Microsoft’s usual bleating about not being allowed to patent software in some jurisdictions, it’s interesting to note that both it and General Electric seem to rate the preservation of intellectual monopolies rather higher than the preservation of our planet. Pure evil.

MS and GE are both in MSNBC delivering their own angle on the news and they also cooperate on legalising software patents in Europe, never mind their realisation that the patent system is inherently broken (GE complains about patent trolls, whereas Microsoft deals with embargo threats due to the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]). Here are some more thoughts about i4i and patents:

Canadian Law Professors Insist Banning The Sale Of Word Is Good For Society & Innovation

[...]

Again, beyond common sense, the historical evidence suggests that these law professors are simply wrong. Countries with no or weak patent protection have seen tremendous innovation over time. And it’s because it’s competition that’s the mother of innovation, not a lack of competition.

In other interesting news, the arguably-unconstitutional ACTA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] is now being criticised even by the UK-IPO, which is surprising. But it’s not ACTA itself which gets the criticism; it’s the secrecy. Glyn Moody writes:

Cracks in the ACTA Wall of Secrecy

[...]

Hitherto, there’s been no suggestion of any dissension within the ACTA ranks; so this comment in a blog post from Jamie Love about a lunch meeting of civil society NGOs held by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office during the WIPO meeting is intriguing:

The UK IP office said it had complained frequently of the secrecy of the ACTA negotiations.

Perhaps if we can get a few more of the insiders moaning about this unnecessary lack of transparency, things will finally start moving.

As pointed out a few months ago, Facebook is flirting with Microsoft's patent troll, Nathan Myhrvold. Now that Facebook is sued for patent infringement (yes, again), one might wonder if Facebook wants the patent troll to act as a shield or an arsenal for counter lawsuits that annul (settle) the originals. It’s only speculation.

Facebook has been sued by a software company in Baltimore that claims the social-networking site is violating a two-year-old patent.

WhoGlue Inc., a Canton company with fewer than five employees, filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for Delaware, where Facebook is incorporated.

[...]

It’s unclear whether the patent infringement case that WhoGlue is trying to make against Facebook can be applied to a host of similar social networking sites that use similar technologies for helping their users manage online interactions.

The company which is suing at least has a product, so it is not a patent troll. █

TODAY’s Comes vs Microsoft post is a particularly long one, so we attempted to shorten it so as to keep the signal high and leave the details aside for separate inspection by those who are curious and have more time to spare.

“The authenticity of them was confirmed when the Comes vs Microsoft case produced exhibits for the broad public to access.”Many regulars are probably aware of the Halloween Documents. Eric Raymond (ESR) has a complete mirror of the text with commentary, so we will not replicate the documents, which have already been out there for years. The authenticity of them was confirmed when the Comes vs Microsoft case produced exhibits for the broad public to access.

Interestingly enough, Bill Gates said about these reports (Halloween documents): “The two documents in here from Vinod are the ones I want the board to see.” He was referring to Halloween Documents I and II. Here is Halloween Document I as text and as PDF. Here is Halloween Document II as text and as PDF.

Background

The documents which Gates referred to are already in ESR’s Web site (as plain text), so there is no point repeating the process of posting them publicly. However, to highlight some particular bits from them, here are some portions from the above. Microsoft explains that:

OSS is a concern to Microsoft for several reasons:

1. OSS projects have achieved “commercial quality”
2. OSS projects have become large-scale & complex
3. OSS has a unique development process with unique strengths/weakness

Microsoft later adds that “to understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company.”

Then come the issues of APIs, e.g.:

Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust – if not more – than commercial alternatives. [...] [E]vangelization of API’s in a closed source model basically defaults to trust, OSS API evangelization lets the developer make up his own mind.

The strategy in general:

Beating Linux
In addition to the attacking the general weakness of OSS projects (e.g. Integrative / Architectual costs), some specific attacks on Linux are:

* Beat UNIX
* All the standard product issues for NT vs. Sun apply to Linux
* Fold extended functionality into commodity protocols / services and create new protocols
* Linux’s homebase is currently commodity network and server infrastructure. By folding extended functionality (e.g. Storage+ in file systems, DAV/POD for networking) into today’s commodity services, we raise the bar & change the rules of the game.

That was about 10 years ago. As we noted before, Bill Gates once wrote: “What we are trying to do is use our server control to do new protocols and lock out Sun and Oracle specifically.”

How can Microsoft capture some of the rabid developer mindshare being focused on OSS products?

Some initial ideas include:

* Provide more extensibility – The Linux “enthusiast developer” loves writing to / understanding undocumented API’s and internals. Documenting / publishing some internal API’s as “unsupported” may be a means of generating external innovations that leverage our system investments.

It says “Documenting / publishing some internal API’s as “unsupported”…”

Does that sound familiar? As we shall show later, Microsoft also speaks frankly about “undocumentation”.

Here is embrace & extend in action:

OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

From Halloween Document II we pull the following (thanks to Jason):

The Linux community is very willing to copy features from other OS’s if it will serve their needs. Consequently, there is the very real long term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features and incorporate them into their codebase.
The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated.

Later came the SCO lawsuit, the Novell deal, and patent racketeering which carries on to this date.

New Material

Today’s main exhibit ties the above documents together and we believe that there is no copy of it anywhere else (as text), so Wallclimber kindly contributed her time to process the text, which we then analysed. Wallclimber says that this “strategy” document outlines exactly what they’ve done to Novell. “I especially got a kick out of the “fatal flaws”,” she added. Here is the original exhibit (PX08175, 1999) [PDF] and several points of interest that are extracted from the full text, which can be found at the bottom.

This short document is titled “Our Linux Strategy” and it was authored by Vinod Valloppillil.

Watch number 1 and number 2 in the list, then think about the loadable module [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], which added Microsoft hooks to Linux (hypercalls).

1. Embrace Linux: MS APIs / Linux kernel — release an MS version of Linux and/or release key MSFT platform technologies on Linux (e.g. parts of Win32, app server, etc.)

Pros: Ride the wave & try to evangelize Win32
Cons: Dramatically evangelizes Linux & may risk MSFT IP due to GPL license issues
Fatal Flaw:
– Impossible to make this revenue neutral with Windows biz.
– Doesn’t protect the “crown jewel” IP from being targeted at a later date

2. Embrace Linux: Linux APIs / MS Kernel — try to get Linux API’s on Windows — get more hardcore about POSIX subsystem on NT to capture Linux app base

Pros: Capture some of the Linux dev mindshare by making it easy to bring Linux apps to NT
Cons: Hurts Win32 evangelization
Fatal Flaw:
– There are no Linux apps that we covet.

Also think about Mono, Moonlight, and OOXML.

Prior to that, Valloppillil states:

This document discusses both our strategy and our plans for competing with Linux. To understand the strategy it is important to remember the following:
- Linux isn’t most importantly a product/feature; it’s a philosophy change
- Linux has no new specific features to co-opt
– Unlike the NC: the NC touted TCO benefits, and thus we introduced ZAK/ZAW
– Unlike the Internet: the Internet was loaded with technology changes, and thus we invested in browser technologies and reexamined all our existing products

The core strategic thrust of Linux is NOT an attack against some product/feature weakness of Microsoft. It’s an attack at the base of the commercial software industry – Intellectual Property.

Previous threats to Microsoft (the NC, Java, etc.) have been about replacing Microsoft’s IP with another company’s IP that claimed some new benefit (e.g. TCO). What differentiates Linux is that OSS attempts to extricate Intellectual Property all together.

Learn from what Microsoft did to NetPC (NC) and to Java. Watch what else Microsoft put forth as an option:

Cons: ISVs getting hooked on undocumented API’s, support costs, etc.

So, “undocumented API’s” are an option, eh? Microsoft admits their existence.

Watch what Microsoft thought about Wine back when it was a lot less mature and capable:

– Microsoft is an IP company. Like the rest of the software industry, >90% of our IP valuation stems from Trade Secrecy of the source code. Open Source is mutually exclusive with Trade Secrecy. This plan would instantly make the various Win32 clones (e.g. http//www winehq.com) an order of magnitude more capable.

More compelling stuff from Microsoft:

2. Innovating, Creating New IP

(Re-)recognize that we are an IP company and that in our networked world, functionality delivered via protocols is steadily replacing functionality which was once delivered via APIs Thus, innovation must occur both internal to our products, but also between computers.

Windows clients must always be able to communicate with Linux servers (and vice-versa). However, there MUST be additional value created when a Windows machine is touching another Windows machine. NOT doing this is akin to giving away the Win32 APIs. Every group defining protocols needs to remember this.

Also:

We must innovate and keep our great advancements to ourselves. The fine balance between protecting/financing our innovations and interoperability will get more difficult overtime But, it is relatively easy today.

Notice the following:

4. Compete with Linux Head-On
BED marketing is currently making the transition towards engaging Linux as a tier-1 competitor in the server & client markets. There are still some decisions to be made here (and headcounts to fill) to ensure that on a tactical basis, NT out markets Linux Some of the core deliverables include white papers, benchmarks, etc. More peripheral questions / issues include reclaiming retail shelf-space from Linux, etc We need engagement throughout the company (e g, retail) on this. Finally, getting the word out on NT’s architectural advantages over Linux is an imperative.

Then it says:

Open Source development is the greatest cloning machine of all time. Consequently, we must recognize that “Trade Secrecy” of source code will provide increasingly minimal protection over time and that aggressive patent procurement is our only investment defense. Additionally, strong patent procurement is a key enabler which allows us to publish more of our source code to leverage evangelization benefits (the patent application process is, in a manner of speaking, a form of source publication)

Initiatives (NOT discussed further in this paper) are underway to understand the options in this space.

“The following are all underway,” eh? What would that be? Those lawsuits Jim Allchin spoke about [1, 2]?

“The two [Halloween] documents in here from Vinod are the ones I want the board to see.”
      –Bill GatesIt is worth remembering that all these documents are spread with Bill Gates’ oversight and endorsement, just like the AstroTurfing which he loves. At the time, when these documents leaked, Microsoft tried to portray the AstroTurf as an act it had nothing to do with; a lead participant, James Plamondon, insistingly denied this, saying that Bill Gates was a supporter of the tactics all along. His colleague Marshall Goldberg confirmed this in an internal presentation.

Likewise, when it comes to the Halloween Documents, Microsoft tried to dismiss this as “an engineer’s individual assessment of the market at one point in time.” The exhibits clearly show Bill Gates distributing this material quite enthusiastically to chief people at Microsoft. It means that Microsoft simply lied to save face.

At the end of the document we find out what’s already “underway” at Microsoft:

The following are all underway:

1. Ramp-up / staff Linux competitive marketing efforts.
2. Ramp-up source licensing initiatives. DRG/MSDN is the owner for the umbrella but all component teams must begin evaluating what codebases would benefit the platform if they were evangelized via less restrictive licensing.
3. More proactively & aggressive secure patent rights to MSFT innovations that will be significant to the OSS fight. Development teams must shift mindsets from source code secrecy towards patents as the primary means of securing our key innovations.
4 [on-going] Create new IP in base scenarios – file sharing, management, etc.

“Ramp-up / staff Linux competitive marketing efforts” sounds like potential reference to more AstroTurfing, which is a reality. The remainder has a lot to do with patents, which we now know are used against GNU/Linux. The document as a whole is worth reading, assuming one has the patience. It’s properly formatted below. █

Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit PX08175, as text

Microsoft Confidential

Our Linux Strategy
VinodV
5/19/99

Microsoft Confidential; © 1999, All Rights Reserved Do Not Forward without Approval from Author.

Introduction
This document discusses both our strategy and our plans for competing with Linux. To understand the strategy it is important to remember the following:
- Linux isn’t most importantly a product/feature; it’s a philosophy change
- Linux has no new specific features to co-opt
– Unlike the NC: the NC touted TCO benefits, and thus we introduced ZAK/ZAW
– Unlike the Internet: the Internet was loaded with technology changes, and thus we invested in browser technologies and reexamined all our existing products

The core strategic thrust of Linux is NOT an attack against some product/feature weakness of Microsoft. It’s an attack at the base of the commercial software industry – Intellectual Property.

Previous threats to Microsoft (the NC, Java, etc.) have been about replacing Microsoft’s IP with another company’s IP that claimed some new benefit (e.g. TCO). What differentiates Linux is that OSS attempts to extricate Intellectual Property all together.

Since many people have proposed how to deal with Linux, we thought it might be helpful as a thought exercise to quickly examine some of the alternative strategies we could consider. For each we include the “fatal flaws” that make them untenable.

1. Embrace Linux: MS APIs / Linux kernel — release an MS version of Linux and/or release key MSFT platform technologies on Linux (e.g. parts of Win32, app server, etc.)

Pros: Ride the wave & try to evangelize Win32
Cons: Dramatically evangelizes Linux & may risk MSFT IP due to GPL license issues
Fatal Flaw:
– Impossible to make this revenue neutral with Windows biz.
– Doesn’t protect the “crown jewel” IP from being targeted at a later date

2. Embrace Linux: Linux APIs / MS Kernel — try to get Linux API’s on Windows — get more hardcore about POSIX subsystem on NT to capture Linux app base

Pros: Capture some of the Linux dev mindshare by making it easy to bring Linux apps to NT
Cons: Hurts Win32 evangelization
Fatal Flaw:
– There are no Linux apps that we covet.

3. Embrace Open Source: Publish NT Source — release NT source code under a license similar to Sun’s community source license

Pros: Try to capture Linux’s evangelization benefits by publishing NT source
Cons: ISVs getting hooked on undocumented API’s, support costs, etc.
Fatal Flaw:
– Microsoft is an IP company. Like the rest of the software industry, >90% of our IP valuation stems from Trade Secrecy of the source code. Open Source is mutually exclusive with Trade Secrecy. This plan would instantly make the various Win32 clones (e.g. http//www winehq.com) an order of magnitude more capable.

4. Lower the price of Windows — release older / stripped versions of the OS for at lower price

Pros: Try to capture people who use Linux due to price sensitivity

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Cons: Building new versions of windows. Long-term support headaches Cannibalization of the “real” windows?
Fatal Flaw:
– Assumes that price is the primary motivator for Linux usage. This has not been borne out in reality.

What are the core strategies that we are going to pursue?

1. Fix our Sins

Linux’s most immediate contribution is highlighting our sins in some key market segments. There are already (large) investments in the company spun up to deal with our most pressing concerns such as reliability; remote admin; etc so we won’t spend further time describing them here. It is critical that we make progress in these areas

Currently, Linux gains horsepower due to VASTLY exaggerated negative claims about our abilities and corresponding VASTLY under reported positive claims about our innovative work. We must reverse the “conventional wisdom” that UNIX is technically superior to NT which is the foundation for Linux marketing. In most ways, NT is superior & the technical message needs to get out.

2. Innovating, Creating New IP

(Re-)recognize that we are an IP company and that in our networked world, functionality delivered via protocols is steadily replacing functionality which was once delivered via APIs Thus, innovation must occur both internal to our products, but also between computers.

Windows clients must always be able to communicate with Linux servers (and vice-versa). However, there MUST be additional value created when a Windows machine is touching another Windows machine. NOT doing this is akin to giving away the Win32 APIs. Every group defining protocols needs to remember this. Some core initiatives that are excellent demonstrations of this are:

Management – Deep, rich WMI instrumentation is an area where Windows and Win32 apps must excel. In addition to IP boundaries, Linux’s development methodology makes this difficult for Linux to provide leadership in breadth & uniformity of coverage/implementation.

Storage — Rich, structured, remotable, queriable storage dramatically raises the bar versus today’s basic file system functionality. The benefits to client application vendors & server vendors are numerous and well detailed in other presentations.

These areas demonstrate functionality that IT managers — once they’ve tasted it — will (hopefully) find compelling enough to mandate across as many systems within their computing universes as possible. Letting our protocols become commoditized is a recipe for failure. We must innovate and keep our great advancements to ourselves. The fine balance between protecting/financing our innovations and interoperability will get more difficult overtime But, it is relatively easy today.

Outside of protocols we need advancements throughout the system. Advances in file formats (e.g., the disk structure), technology such as security, etc. are areas that are critical for us to innovate. We need to accelerate patenting every invention

3. Form Factor Proliferation
This is a well-discussed area. Obviously PC’s will not be the exclusive center of computing in the near future and this addition to the OS requirements list provides the opening for low innovation competitors such as Linux in. We need to spread our technology everywhere And where we don’t have our OS present, we need to ensure the protocols are not IP latent and in fact open for us to use.

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4. Compete with Linux Head-On
BED marketing is currently making the transition towards engaging Linux as a tier-1 competitor in the server & client markets. There are still some decisions to be made here (and headcounts to fill) to ensure that on a tactical basis, NT out markets Linux Some of the core deliverables include white papers, benchmarks, etc. More peripheral questions / issues include reclaiming retail shelf-space from Linux, etc We need engagement throughout the company (e g, retail) on this. Finally, getting the word out on NT’s architectural advantages over Linux is an imperative.

5. Getting Credit for the Openness and Availability of our Sources
One of the key lessons learned from the Linux OS is the power of the Open Source model with respect to creating passionate, technically savvy development communities around a body of code. Reclaiming the hobbyist developer / “scratch an itch” developer communities is paramount for us (they were the original “long hairs” who introduced the PC to corporate America). While we may never be able to fully detract from Linux’s energy in this space, it is very important for us to focus our TREMENDOUS developer relations assets into this new “channel.” JimAll presented a plan at the 3yr review that involved a 2-pronged attack on this channel:

a. Depth Licensing — Ramping up full, formal source code licenses to ISVs/IHVs/Corps etc. by at least a factor of 10 vs. today’s efforts.

b. Breadth Licensing — Reorganizing & creating new widely licensed, derivable, redistributable source code bases hosted on web sites targeting specific Win32 developer niche’s (e.g., ResKit level functionality).

6. Securing our Current & Future IP
Once again, the core of the Linux phenomena — and the #1 reason it tries to claim the “glow of inevitability” — is it’s aversion to Intellectual Property (IP). Obviously, in terms of economic effects, IP is on par with motherhood & apple pie in its role in the world economy.

The belief that the “Open Source” pie will eventually gobble up ingredients from all the other pies is more dangerous to us & the software industry than the current Linux product

Open Source development is the greatest cloning machine of all time. Consequently, we must recognize that “Trade Secrecy” of source code will provide increasingly minimal protection over time and that aggressive patent procurement is our only investment defense. Additionally, strong patent procurement is a key enabler which allows us to publish more of our source code to leverage evangelization benefits (the patent application process is, in a manner of speaking, a form of source publication)

Initiatives (NOT discussed further in this paper) are underway to understand the options in this space.

Immediate Next Steps:

The following are all underway:

1. Ramp-up / staff Linux competitive marketing efforts.
2. Ramp-up source licensing initiatives. DRG/MSDN is the owner for the umbrella but all component teams must begin evaluating what codebases would benefit the platform if they were evangelized via less restrictive licensing.
3. More proactively & aggressive secure patent rights to MSFT innovations that will be significant to the OSS fight. Development teams must shift mindsets from source code secrecy towards patents as the primary means of securing our key innovations.
4 [on-going] Create new IP in base scenarios – file sharing, management, etc.

Please direct any questions / discussion to VinodV

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Credit: wallclimber