Summary: Despite Microsoft’s ongoing abuses, a media attempt to rewrite history emerges

THE anticompetitive nature of Microsoft persists with UEFI, a deterrence against Linux and GNU GRUB. Mr. Varghese shows that UEFI is effective at that. It secures Microsoft’s common carrier from competition. Or in his own words:

It’s early days for secure boot, the new method that Microsoft is using to protect its desktop turf, but it would not be unfair to say that the company has succeeded in showing up the sharply fragmented nature of GNU/Linux.

Secure boot is a feature in the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, the replacement for the motherboard firmware or BIOS. It has been implemented by Microsoft in a manner that effectively prevents easy booting of other operating systems on machines which have secure boot enabled.

This ‘side effect’ is not an afterthought. Microsoft uses it to suppress Linux with the convenient excuse of ‘security’. Yes, offence is spun as necessity. Likewise, Microsoft spins its legal obligation as goodwill as it strives to rewrite Samba history.

Sean Michael Kerner recalls what Microsoft told him. It’s patent FUD:

Why is this so shocking? Well for one – it wasn’t that long ago (six years ago for me), when Microsoft execs weren’t all that thrilled with Samba. In April of 2006, I published an interview with Bill Hilf who at the time was the General Manager for Microsoft Platform strategy. This is what he told me in 2006:

“With Samba I’m really familiar with that technology and I’d say that a lot of what they do under the guise of interoperability is clone ability. I wouldn’t say it’s a great relationship but we have a working relationship. They ask things of us and we say, “That’s our IP.” And they say you should do it because all software should be free. ”

Now in 2012 after ten years of effort, Samba 4 is here thanks in part to Microsoft’s help. The Samba Team also thanks Microsoft for interoperability testing that Microsoft engineers helped with.

Times do change.

No, what changed since then is that multi-billion-dollar fines forced Microsoft to act differently in the practical sense. The pretence, or the act, is just a smart PR decision for them. By “IP” they meant patents and unsurprisingly Samba denounced Novell for a patent deal which the EU Commission found harmful to its case. █

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC, two firms that work together to create propaganda and scaremongering (one is lobbying and policing, whereas the other controls the press), seem to be suggesting that their client, Microsoft, is the victim in all that so-called ‘piracy’. The Microsoft booster has a new report which says:

Microsoft licence cops kick in TWICE as many customers’ doors as rivals

Redmond’s compliance troops swooped on 51 per cent of enterprises and partners polled for the 2012 Software Pricing and Licensing Survey by IDC and sponsored by Flexera Software.

Those “Microsoft licence cops” are the BSA. What’s interesting here is that Microsoft mouthpieces try to scare more businesses into paying Microsoft. Now is a good time to evade Microsoft lock-in and EU action helped in that regard.

Due to antitrust violations, Microsoft was forced to concede its CIFS monopoly, even though some Microsoft proxies want to sabotage that. Here is some of the better coverage we found that’s also applicable to the news:

• The U.K. Cabinet Office solves the open standards policy conundrum

  In an elegant bit of definitional creativity, the United Kingdom Cabinet Office has come up with an answer to this conundrum. Their achievement can be found in a document titled Open Standards Principles: For software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT specifications. What the authors have pulled off involves a bit of clever time travel, transferring the costs of later breaking the hold of a proprietary vendor back to the initial bidding process, and grossing up the vendor’s bid accordingly.

  In other words, when an IT contract is put out for bid, a respondent that does not intend to deliver products that comply with “open standards,” as defined by the Principles, must include a fair estimate of the government’s later switching costs into the vendor’s initial bid, as if those costs would need to be paid at the time of procurement rather at the time of product replacement. The result is that a vendor responding with a bid to provide products compliant with open standards would be at a substantial advantage to a vendor offering only its own proprietary offerings.

  Moreover, the definition of open standards included is the kind that precludes charging for Essential Claims or inclusion of licensing terms that would preclude implementation in open source software.

  The elegance of the approach is that it provides proprietary vendors that have to date provided only half-way compliance with open standards, or locked in their customers by adding proprietary extensions to existing standards, will now have immediate incentives to fully comply with the type of standards that are most effective to avoid vendor lock in.

  The Foreword to the Principles makes no attempt to disguise the fact that breaking the hold of large, proprietary vendors on government customers was a major goal in crafting the Principles, while at the same time creating more commercial opportunities for small and medium size businesses.

  As one might imagine, the public comment period that preceded the release of the final version of the Principles attracted a broad and energetic range of responses. All of this input was taken into account, but despite substantial pressure from some commercial interests, the Cabinet Office held firm on its key terms.

• Open Source Active Directory

  If you’re just a desktop or home user (like me), probably your only contact with Samba has been when you wanted to share files over a network between your Linux PC and a Windows PC. But if you’re an enterprise user, this is Big News. A huge number of corporate systems rely upon Active Directory, and up until now, you had to buy Microsoft’s server software. Not any more.

• Samba 4 will hurt and help Microsoft’s business

  The release of Samba 4 will no doubt cut into Windows server business somewhat, but its interoperability capabilities will ease administrative and vendor support costs and preserve Windows servers and clients in the long run as open source transforms enterprise computing

• Samba 4.0.0 Officially Released

• Samba 4 threatens Microsoft’s enterprise lock-in

  Anti-trust settlements are not just meant to punish corporations that abuse their dominant market position, they are also meant to remedy the abuse and restore competition to the affected market. In the real world, this rarely happens. But Samba version 4, released yesterday, could become one of the first open source projects to deliver an effective remedy.

• Samba 4 delivers free software Active Directory support

“Even Microsoft welcome Samba4 on their blog,” Jeremy Allison writes about their spin blog. Remember that Microsoft was merely complying with orders, it’s nothing to do with goodwill. Microsoft denied Samba’s requests for many years, allowing itself to harm many businesses in the interim. █

Summary: Remarks on particular reports that deceive the public this week

POOR journalism helps show why alternative news sites are truly needed. Right now, for example, a Microsoft MVP is spreading pro-Microsoft messages in IDG, without any disclosures of course. We saw this sort of stuff before, in other news networks.

Over at ZDNet, rather scary headlines are appearing which are hinged upon a Samba flaw alone (like the many flaws that appear in Windows all the time). When one configures Microsoft Linux to serve Microsoft protocols, then it’s debatable if that too should count as Microsoft’s fault. The bottom line is, reporting on those subjects is flawed, sometimes by design (as in the case where Microsoft folks are assigned to report on Microsoft).

Since we’ve mentioned SUSE, watch how the post-acquisition VAR Guy is advertising SUSE:

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) recently became the world’s first $1 billion open source company. Now, the folks at SUSE, promoter of the rival Linux distribution, are seeking bragging rights of their own. Indeed, SUSE says it now has more than 9,200 certified third-party applications and supports over 13,500 hardware, storage and networking devices. Impressive. But is SUSE in growth mode?

The VAR Guy’s educated hunch: Absolutely yes. Attachmate acquired Novell and its SUSE business roughly a year ago. Over the past year, SUSE has been freed from Novell branding, and SUSE is once again run from its own European headquarters.
Customer Base

And then he proceeds to parroting Novell PR talking points which we debunked years ago. They make up some numbers by aggregating useless metrics and then make themselves look big. If one wants just a rewritten press release, then the above meets the standards. But will someone please verify those bogus numbers before reporting? PR is the art of making things look different from what they actually are. █

Summary: How and why Microsoft is ‘embracing’ Samba

“O

n 10 October 2011,” writes The H, “a Microsoft developer contributed a GPL licensed patch to the Samba project. The patch, which was part of a proof of concept for extended protection for NTLM and presented by Stephen A. Zarko of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center, has now been noted as the passing of a milestone by Chris Hertel of the Samba team. Samba provides tools and servers which enable interoperability with Windows’ SMB and CIFS networking on Linux and Unix based systems.”

The reactions to this move were mixed. Proponents of the monopolist (who advertise with Microsoft) make it look wonderful (identical headline from SJVN), but members of Techrights are a lot more cautious.

“I’m not sure what the real role of the Microsoft team working with Samba is,” noted one person, “but the developers should not lose sight of the whole picture that is Microsoft. Just because one small department is helpful for one group, for right now does not mean that the greater threat has diminished or gone away. In some ways it the threat is greater because it gets the Samba team and others to let their guard down.

“It’s not unlike a vendor buying them a meal or beer for them, or providing swag. It’s not done for their benefit.

“This is a little more advanced than simply buying someone off with swag or free beer, but it’s the same principle. One rogue department doesn’t set policy for the whole beast.”

Microsoft also gave code to Mono (MS-PL-licensed). At the same time Microsoft asserted that it can sue over it.

“It’s working,” noted one of us. “One problem with Allison’s statement is that he is blind to how Microsoft makes its money. It does not make it’s money from Windows and Office, that’s just a tiny fraction of the money. The big money comes from the monopoly rents on both products.

“Microsoft was trying to leverage that monopoly to get into the server room when Samba took on M$ and defeated it in court. Microsoft is still going to protect its core money-makers, the two monopolies even if Samba does now get thrown a bone.”

Microsoft has already got its former employees from Likewise paying Microsoft for patents on Samba-like functionality (with Samba code). This is not good.

Sam Varghese points out that “Samba is one of the free software projects that has moved in toto to the GPL version 3.” Muktware’s take is that: “As Linux is gaining popularity Microsoft seems to have increased its contribution to ensure their products will work well with Linux. The recent patch submission to the Linux kernel was an indicator.”

What do readers think? █

Summary: More Linux patent tax, this time courtesy of a company closely tied to Microsoft (as part of the campaign to generate more FUD, in numeric form)

THE MONOPOLIST from Redmond is part of a chain of companies, some of which are some kind of spinoffs.

Former Microsoft employees tend to use the skills they acquired at Microsoft to further perpetuate the Microsoft mindset (which is why many in the Mono community have Microsoft connections or roots, but that’s a story for another day). Likewise, for example, is part of the Microsoft group. Its managers, the people who came from Microsoft, have been spreading Microsoft APIs for several years now, for a fee.

Likewise is not new to us and we already have a wiki page about it. It is trying to compete with projects like Samba, offering for a fee what people can get for free.

Likewise never hid its Microsoft ties, but the Microsoft boosters promote its latest kissing affair with Microsoft as “Linux patent deal”, which is shameful reporting that helps Microsoft spread FUD. See the following:

Likewise, a software platform provider for identity, security and storage, has signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft, adding Likewise to the list of companies on Microsoft’s Linux patent-protection list.

The licensing agreement with Microsoft will affect Linux and Unix-based Network Attached Storage devices and provide Microsoft Server Message Block protocol support for Windows Server 8.

This is more Microsoft PR and an attempt to scare companies that use Linux. The source of the article was previously funded by Microsoft and the deceiving case of ‘reporting’ this placement of “Linux tax” inside companies is another case of collaborating with market manipulation and extortion. We have seen more of that recently. Journalists like these should be smashed of themselves.

The reality of the matter is that the press should receive a lot of flak for playing along with extortionist companies, which essentially ‘normalises’ this behaviour and makes readers accustomed to it. To give another new example, it is ridiculous headlines like “How I’m protecting my software IP with a patent” that further do damage by calling code “technologies” (illusion of physical existence). It is a very weak piece that neglects to account for copyright as the reasonable option and it makes software patents seem essential for small businesses (this could not be further from the truth). Journalists who are doing this deserve to be criticised because they do a massive disservice to the public. Some of them justify this by painting the articles “interviews” or pointing to FUD-inspiring “press releases” to pass liability. We shall write more about patent lobbying and myths in the next couple of posts. █

Summary: Likewise and Centrify carry on promoting Active Directory just like Mono promotes C# and other inferior (not to mention risky) ways of doing things

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” stresses a famous saying. To Microsoft, however, it’s more than just flattering and also an endorsement of the One Microsoft Way. To Microsoft it is additionally a chance to discriminate and even file lawsuits. Short of a lawsuit, Microsoft can tax/extort rivals. This whole paradigm of imitating Microsoft is truly a problem. Not only Mono is beneficial to Microsoft. Anything which promotes development and deployment with Microsoft APIs is likely to make Microsoft stronger. One such example is the work of former Microsoft people who take Samba too far and add patents to it. We are talking about Likewise, which according to this new announcement has just sold AD Bridge. Another company which does something similar is Centrify [1, 2], and it too has an announcement about AD. They help spread Microsoft, which ultimately leads to FOSS or Novell replaced being by Microsoft, as in this new case (not necessarily a shift through APIs). People must understand that Wine or Samba are not the same things because they are more like compatibility shims, whereas Mono for example encourages the creation of yet more dependence on Microsoft APIs. This point was stressed as the #1 issue with Mono when I did that recent video. █

Summary: An explanation of what Likewise is really doing (serving Microsoft)

A reader has left this comment which says:

I interviewed with likewise last March for a SysAdmin/Support position (and I have the emails to prove it), helping customers with Linux and Mac Likewise installs. During the interview with Jessie DeCarlos I started asking excited questions about deploying RedHat Directory Servers to replace ActiveDirectory which would push more Linux desktops into the enterprise, thinking this was Likewises goal. I was stopped cold by Jessie and told the hard facts of Likewise which were the opposite. According to Jessie, the goal of Likewise was to go into Mac/Linux enterprises and convert their directory servers into MS ActiveDirectory while allowing them to keep their Mac/Linux desktops. When I pressed further about Likewise being a open source company I was told that a.) its open core not open source b.) the goal is to push MS server software as the executive and sales team is all ex-MS and still very good friends with Redmond.

And to seal the deal of my disgust with these trolls, I was told the compensation package included lots of bonuses, for…….wait for it…….converting Mac/Linux directory servers over to MS ActiveDirectory. I feel violated just telling the story.

One last bit, I had installed Likewise before the interview (when I was naive and thought they were pushing open source not the opposite) on my Ubuntu test box and tried to get it working on a MS domain. Ehhhh, nope, didnt work. On top of that, I uninstalled and then found Likewise changes your local user password and wont let the local user change it by removing the permissions. Crap software being pimped as ‘open source’ and its a total shame.

See our Wiki page about Likewise because there is a lot more about this sham company which tries to ‘openwash’ its public image. █

Summary: Latest examples of Microsoft’s strategy, wherein it sends out affiliates to pretend to be FOSS people and then promote software patent deals, separation between Open Source and Free software, departure from the GPL, promotion of ‘open’ core (proprietary) as “Open Source”, and demotion of free/libre platforms like GNU/Linux along with free suites/formats like ODF

MICROSOFT has a lot of nerve. But hey, it’s Microsoft!

For those who cannot recall, Microsoft was forced by the European Commission to comply with Samba’s requests (or face extremely heavy fines), but that’s not the story Microsoft wants to tell the world, so later it pretended to have done it all out of goodwill (utter lies stemming from need to spin). We covered this pattern of spin before and debunked it thoroughly; still, this FUD just won’t die. Since when is the press just a facility for Microsoft revisionism? Oh, well, keep the up count then. Mea culpa.

A few months ago Microsoft had to comply with the Commission (or face maybe billions in fines), so it very reluctantly implemented browser ballots, which are a farce (Internet Explorer is a part of all options which are selectable) and one that Microsoft could never implement properly. See the following posts:

1. Browser Ballot Critique
2. Microsoft’s Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
3. Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
4. Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
5. Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
6. Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot — Claim
7. Microsoft’s Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
8. The Microsoft Who Cried “Wolf!”

Now, here comes the key point; Microsoft used exactly the same spin that it used against Samba. Microsoft pretended that those ballots were an act of goodwill rather than obeying a law. Microsoft was also pretending that ballots are punishment enough, even though Internet Explorer remained obligatory.

“It seems like that old tactic which Microsoft calls or refers to as “infiltration”…”It’s amazing, isn’t it? Microsoft breaks the law, then it is punished for it (the punishment is so minor that it’s meaningless), and Microsoft then spins this punishment as a self-imposed limitation that Microsoft has chosen because it loves competition so very much.

Well done, Microsoft. You’re a master of spin.

Over in Budapest, Microsoft spent the beginning of the week bashing OpenOffice.org (in public), assuming the claims are correct. What a funny case of timing, eh? It happens to coincide with the OpenOffice.org event in Budapest. It turned out later, as IBM’s Rob Weir told me, that Microsoft’s Moritz Berger also decided to divide and conquer the OpenOffice.org event itself. It seems like that old tactic which Microsoft calls or refers to as “infiltration” (or “crashing” the event, as per this internal document [PDF]).

“You are totally wrong Both RDF and digital signatures are new to ODF 1.2″
      –Rob Weir to Microsoft infiltrator at OpenOffice.org eventWhy does Oracle allow Microsoft to to this? Not surprisingly, some hours ago it turned out that Microsoft’s Berger used the OpenOffice.org event to smear OpenOffice.org or ODF. “You are totally wrong Both RDF and digital signatures are new to ODF 1.2,” hollered Weir at Berger during the event.

So let’s repeat what was happening here: Microsoft staff moving on from an anti-OpenOffice.org event in Budapest to an OpenOffice.org event in Budapest where they spread FUD, as expected. Microsoft always comes to these events under pretenses of “we come in peace” (the title of the talk in this case was about “bridges”, a mere euphemism) and anyone standing in their way will be painted an “irrational zealot” and separated from the rest, singled out as “poisonous” (that’s where the “divide and conquer” approach applies). We wrote a lot more about these techniques (so do Microsoft’s internal documents/presentations to newly-recruited AstroTurfers) when LinuxTag 2010 got the ‘Microsoft treatment’ [1, 2, 3]. It’s truly distasteful and it’s damaging.

Another thing we wish to draw attention to is IDG’s fuaxpen source blog, which delivers more and more messages from Microsoft staff (here is another one from the Microsoft employee who compares/likens Free software to communism and says that “No one is working for free”). How did Microsoft’s team end up writing in this blog? It’s simple. Bort from the Microsoft Subnet now explains who brought him in (Walli), augmenting the Microsoft ‘open source’ think tank which they broadcast to the world via IDG Web sites:

So, I got a hold of Stephen Walli (pictured), who recently joined Network World’s Open Source Subnet as a blogger. (He writes the Open Minded blog). Walli is Technical Director of the CodePlex Foundation.

Bort’s colleague/co-writer, who works for a Microsoft partner, is currently trying to separate “Linux” from the rest (another common Microsoft tactic commonly seen in this Microsoft auditorium). When someone’s colleagues work for a company that spreads proprietary software (there are more of them), it’s likely that more will follow, gradually separating the platform from the notion of Freedom — including the GPL — which otherwise belonged under the “Open Source” badge/brand. Likewise, they are separating it from GNU/Linux.

Watch out for those who take Microsoft and “Open Source” and combine the two. IDG is marrying them quite a lot these days, occasionally taking input from Microsoft Florian (when it comes to patents). Another person who takes input from Microsoft Florian is ZDNet’s Blankenhorn and he got some flak for it from Groklaw, which he once gave an award to. █

“Entryism (or entrism or enterism) is a political tactic by which an organisation or state encourages its members or agents to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits, or take over entirely. In situations where the organisation being “entered” is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are, in fact, an organisation in their own right.” –Wikipedia

Microsoft’s Paoli, who played a role in distorting the nature of Microsoft Office formats (portraying them as “open”), has been busy recently ‘openwashing’ Microsoft’s Fog Computing effort. Paoli’s latest spin on ‘open’ is a subject we tackled here before [1, 2, 3], so we won’t be going into the rebuttals again.

Roughly two weeks later it’s time for the 'Microsoft press' to recite those very same talking points.

Microsoft believes that customers own their data in the cloud, Paoli said. To support data portability in Windows Azure, Microsoft advocates the Open Data Protocol (OData).

This whole spin around OData is also loved by Microsoft’s MVP Mr. de Icaza, who uses Mono to ‘openwash’ .NET. One of his colleagues is already creating patent traps using Mono (a project called Banshee) and there are equally scary derivatives. Novell is by all means part of this problem. Novell Inc. — and its VP de Icaza in particular — also promoted OOXML.

One reader has told us that Microsoft’s “VML is back” and it is using OOXML as a carrier, further demonstrating Microsoft’s SVG snub [1, 2] (expected all along).

The Strict compliance level disallows some of the really MS Word early versions-flavoured features. For example, the Strict compliance level specifies that all drawings in an OOXML document are specified as DrawingML shapes, not as VML (Vector Markup Language).

Microsoft never changed. Having corrupted standards bodies all across the world it continues to ensure that only Microsoft Office will be able to handle people’s personal files. Frank Ohlhorst has this new article advising people to buy proprietary software (disguised as “open” using the ‘open’ core trick) from former Microsoft employees [1, 2] (people should use Samba instead) to integrate networks the Microsoft way rather than the standard way. How long will it take for everyone to understand that “open” at Microsoft is a sham (usually Windows-only) and that falling into Microsoft protocols and formats is a technical nightmare? █

“Microsoft’s case wasn’t helped when two books, Undocumented Windows and Undocumented DOS, written by Andrew Schulman, appeared on the shelves. The books charged Microsoft with building secret interfaces into its operating systems, giving its own applications developers an advantage over its competitors by making Microsoft’s own applications run better than anyone else’s.”

–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul

Summary: A few remarks about Centrify and Likewise — the Microsoft-esque companies which pretend to serve open source

Centrify is an interesting case [1, 2, 3] of software patents and Microsoft promotion disguised as “free”. Centrify is a subject we covered here many times before (even days ago) and it makes some more headlines at the moment due to this press release that helped produce some articles [1, 2, 3]. They use the term “Express” — just like Microsoft does — in order to introduce a gateway to software patents and pricey proprietary software that strengthens Microsoft’s monopoly.

Centrify Express is a set of free software applications and tools, content resources and community forums designed to help organizations improve security and compliance of data center and desktop systems.

Another new article that’s related to it helps remind us of the bad side of Active Directory, which Microsoft controls and Centrify promotes. We have already explained the Centrify-Microsoft connection (including staff commonalities), which reminded us of Likewise (created by Microsoft folks and currently stepping on Samba with ‘open’ core and with Microsoft patents). “Likewise Software has Record First Half,” says this new press release. Apparently it pays off to pretend to be “open source” (Likewise is not open source) and to promote Microsoft in open source circles. Likewise — unlike Samba — helps put a software patents tax on SMB/Samba functionality. It’s just something to watch out for. Likewise is what Microsoft wants Samba to be. █

Summary: Carlo Piana is also among the critics of Peer To Patent

Earlier today we explained yet again why Peer To Patent is not the best solution to the problem Free software is having. Carlo Piana, the Samba lawyer who says that “the *only* solution is abolition NOW” has also just said: “#peerpatent, however deserving high praise, is a colossal waste of time when examines #swpats, which shouldn’t exist”

Even Florian Müller echoed his remarks. “Sadly,” I explained to the messenger, “what Peer To Patent seems to be doing is in some ways making software patents stronger.” OIN is not an optimal solution, either; far from it, but that debate is different. If companies like Oracle, IBM and Google could align with the pushers to end software patents, this goal would be achievable. █

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: Carlo Piana seems to have just explained why attempts to work around software patents or use patent pools are probably a waste of time and genuinely good effort

THE SCOTUS decision regarding Bilski is imminent [1, 2]. Red Hat’s Richard Fontana writes: “SCOTUS issues several opinions in argued cases today – but still no Bilski”

Over at Slashdot, IBM is still shown to be doing bad things with the patent system. IBM is a key player in the Bilski case for many reasons, but IBM is also a proponent of software patents. Even in Europe, IBM has been in favour of software patents. Some friend, eh? IBM believes that patent pools like OIN and patent promises will somehow defend Free software as a whole. The FFII disagrees and so do many others.

Over at The H, Glyn Moody writes about software patent thickets and adds: “time for free software to ignore [software patents] locally?” (software patents are not formally legitimate in Europe for example)

Most people in the hacking community are well aware that patents represent one of the most serious threats to free software. But the situation is actually even worse than it seems, thanks to the proliferation of what are called patent thickets. To understand why these are so bad, and why they represent a particular problem for software, it is necessary to go back to the beginning of patent law.

The patent thicket As their name implies, patents are about making something “patent”, or public, so that others can use and build on an invention – but only after a certain period, during which time the patent-holder has a monopoly right (what kind of right is discussed below). Indeed, the origin of British patent law – and of many anglophone countries that base their law on this tradition – is the 1623 Statute of Monopolies.

“Afraid that the *only* solution is abolition NOW,” argues Carlo Piana, the famous lawyer who represented Samba in Europe.

Piana adds: “We must solve the problem from the root, or we’ll be submerged by [software patents]. “Abolition” is the only way out!”

That’s what the FFII has been saying all along.

Last week we wrote quite a lot about the situation in Germany with regards to software patents [1, 2, 3]. The impact of the Siemens case as a “landmark ruling” is fortunately being disputed in a patent lawyers’ Web site (subscription required).

German Supreme Court software patent decision ‘not a landmark ruling’, says expert

Yesterday I reported on a blog posting from the well-known European anti-software patent campaigner Florian Mueller about a recent decision of the German Supreme Court which he said would open to the door to many more software patent grants (and litigation) in Germany. At the end of the piece I stated that if I were involved in the software industry I would be looking to get some clarificaiton on developments from a German patent attorney.

Perhaps it’s time to accumulate voices which jointly call for abolition of software patents not just in the United States. Software patents would harm computing a great deal, universally. █

“The European Patent Office is a Corrupt, Malicious Organisation Which Should Not Exist”

–Richard Stallman

Summary: How software patents tax comes into Ubuntu (at OEM level)

YESTERDAY we mentioned Canonical’s awkward situation when it comes to MPEG-LA. This whole subject has generally been explored recently in (chronologically ordered):

1. Microsoft Brings MPEG-LA-LA Land to the Web and Threatens GNU/Linux With Software Patent Lawsuits
2. Steve Jobs: “A Patent Pool is Being Assembled to Go After Theora and Other “Open Source” Codecs Now.”
3. Apple’s and Microsoft’s New Motto: Do More Evil, Together
4. “Behind the Open Codec FUD Attack, W3C Captured by Microsoft, Apple, Nokia and So On?”
5. Behind the Microsoft Puppetmaster: SCO-Type Libel, Acacia-Type Patent Trolls, and Novell-Type Patent Deals to Make GNU/Linux Not Free (Gratis)
6. Patents Roundup: Red Hat on Patent Trolls; Apple Antitrust; Microsoft Attacks Theora, Which is Needed to Save Our Video Culture
7. Apple and Microsoft a Threat to Culture (Data), Not Just Software (Tools)
8. “The fight has been around a long time, now the target of Microsoft is Theora”

Canonical is based in the UK, where software patents are mostly invalid (bar Nokia’s utter greed [1, 2], which makes no sense).

Gizmodo and Engadget have both just covered the legal minefield which is H.264 and more comments on the latter article can be found in LWN (a GNU/Linux perspective).

The president of the FFII interprets the above by quoting “In order to ship an H.264 decoder with Firefox, Mozilla would have to pay the MPEG-LA something around $5 million a year” and he also cites this item from The Register, which says: “What’s more, Canonical – Ubuntu’s commercial sponsor – is now the only Linux maker to license H.264/AVC, the closed and patented technology used to compress video.”

This is not entirely new to us and it can certainly explain price oddities. The H says that “Canonical clarifies its H.264 licence” and so does The Register.

When purchasing an OEM machine with Ubuntu pre-installed, there is currently no way to tell, without the manufacturer explicitly specifying them, which software and codecs are bundled with the machine. A device may be validated as Ubuntu Compatible, which means the OEM has tested the system and Canonical has verified the test, or as Ubuntu Certified, which means that Canonical have performed the testing. Kenyon points to the Ubuntu Certified list on the Canonical site, which lists systems from Lenovo, ASUSTek, HP, Toshiba, Samsung and Dell. Kenyon added “We have explored setting some minimum requirements for codecs, but this is not something that we presently do”.

So the rule of thumb is that an arbitrary Ubuntu system does not have a H.264 licence via Canonical, unless it’s an OEM system which specifically lists the H.264 licence in its documentation or marketing materials.

H.264 is not the only patent issue in Ubuntu. Last week we wrote about Likewise in Ubuntu and here is someone who is not concerned about it:

It’s funny, but when you talk to Jerry Carter, he doesn’t sound like someone who’s part of a conspiracy to bring down Linux/Windows interoperability and from there enable the downfall of Linux itself. He comes across as far less evil.

Yet last summer, Carter, who is Director of Engineering at Likewise Software, and his co-workers were practically accused of doing exactly that when Likewise CEO Barry Crist detailed the hows and whys of Likewise-CIFS pulling away from the Samba codebase.

In our previous posts about Likewise [1, 2, 3, 4] we explained their role in playing the software patents game. They are former Microsoft staff, hacking on Samba and selling it with patent ‘protection’. Ubuntu should stick with just Samba. As for codecs, people can fetch these themselves (if they are required at all). █

Summary: Microsoft’s assault on GNU/Linux takes new routes as additional deals get signed to undercut it or to make it more expensive

THE previous post spoke about Microsoft’s racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] against Android [1, 2]. This is an aggressive action, it is not an interaction, no matter how Microsoft employees try to paint that.

Microsoft has gotten all sorts of witty ways of imposing software patents upon GNU/Linux. One way to get around Samba’s deal (patent concessions) in Europe appears to be a group of former Microsoft staff (called Likewise [1, 2, 3, 4]) which is bringing such patent fees into the latest Ubuntu GNU/Linux (or Kubuntu, the latest version of which I am trying at the moment, alongside PCLinuxOS 2010). But this isn’t the main subject of this post.

Yesterday we found out from a Microsoft apologist (Thom Holwerda [1, 2]) that Microsoft is exploiting Joomla! too, essentially trying to help Windows at the expense of GNU/Linux through such a Free software project. Yes, it’s ironic. To quote Holwerda:

So, the deal with HTC isn’t the only partnership Microsoft entered into today. The Joomla! project has announced that Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement, meaning the Redmond company is now a contributor to this GPL project. Microsoft code has already found its way into the upcoming Joomla! 1.6 release, and closer cooperation between Joomla! and Microsoft will follow.

The news was announced by Open Source Matters, Inc., the not-for-profit organisation behind Joomla!. The fruits of the closer cooperation between them are already finding their way into the code base; Joomla! will be better optimised for running on Microsoft’s IIS, while it will also be delivered through the Web Platform Installer.

This is not about Free software. It’s about connecting Joomla! to proprietary software, which would have a negative effect. Microsoft also hooks onto Moodle in the form of a plug-in [1, 2, 3] in order to advance its own proprietary software/services and it hooks onto Linux (with Novell’s help [1, 2, 3]) in order to promote Windows and Hyper-V, which are both proprietary. Suffice to say, there was a violation of the GPL in there, but this wasn’t the first such incident, either. Microsoft does not respect software licences [1, 2, 3, 4]. In any event, all that Microsoft ever contributes in terms of code are connectors to Microsoft databases, services, operating system, etc. It doesn’t actually add real function.

Anyway, there is something to be learned from XOOPS, whose governance crisis has just been covered by Zonker:

The XOOPS community was dealt a bad hand last week. The Dutch Court has rejected its suit against former project manager Herko Coomans and allowed Coomans to keep funds totally more than €15,000 held in a fund earmarked for the project.

This is hardly the first open source project to come into a bad way when early or original founders split due to disagreements. Gentoo had all manner of drama surrounding founder Daniel Robbins departure and attempted return. CentOS experienced issues with control of its funds and its domain last year. There’s the split from Mambo to Joomla, X.org from XFree86… most of which have their roots in poor governance issues.

Joomla! is a free/libre CMS software derived from Mambo and XOOPS is similar to that. Joomla! has a history of disagreements; It has been quite troublesome at the management level since the Mambo-server days. Already we are seeing some people who are very unhappy about Joomla!’s engagement with Microsoft. Regarding the news, Oiaohm wrote: “Think about it, Microsoft has to pay their staff to do the open source work. How are Microsoft going to get money back from it?”

By selling Windows and IIS, of course.

We have also just been sent a press release from Opsview, which is taking pride in Microsoft being involved using the headline “Global brands Ericsson, Microsoft, Allianz and Electronic Arts are turning to Opsview”. The press release itself hardly mentions Microsoft, but it does show that Microsoft is trying to ‘embrace’ its competition (open source included) in order to help itself. It’s an attack on Free software because proprietary software is promoted and it is especially an attack against GNU/Linux. Already, we are seeing coverage about Microsoft front groups like CompTIA speaking about “open source”. Well, there are many forms of “open source” and it’s not always free/libre. █

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: myTriggers’ legal action against Google has Microsoft fingerprints, Microsoft employees go vocal against Google’s advertising business, and the New York Times talks about Icahn’s role in Microsoft’s proxy battle

SEVERAL weeks ago Microsoft confirmed that it had a proxy battle going on against Google in Europe. According to this, the same thing might be going on in America.

Microsoft Bangs the Antitrust Drum Against Google

[...]

Significantly, myTriggers’ lawyers include a prominent state attorney, Stanley Chesley, as well as Rick Rule, the chief antitrust lawyer for New York-based Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, who also has served for many years as an antitrust lawyer for Microsoft.

[...]

Microsoft also may gain from another lawsuit, in which Viacom sued Google’s YouTube subsidiary for copyright violations. U.S. federal Judge Louis Stanton agreed to release voluminous documents and statements from the $1 billion lawsuit (See related story).

Also see the following previous posts:

• Microsoft is Still Attacking Google via Publishers
• More Antitrust Pressure for Yahoo!-Microsoft, Google Blocked by MSDOJ
• Microsoft, Google Sued; Microsoft Funds Legal Action Against Google
• Who’s Bugging Google and Apple? (Updatedx2)
• Lobby Which Google Said Was in Microsoft’s Pocket Wants Google’s Street View Shut Down
• Microsoft and Politics (Against Google)
• Microsoft Sues Google

It is Microsoft’s nature not to play fair and instead try to injure its competition. Steve Ballmer’s primal instincts have given that away when he said what he said (while throwing a chair across the room). It’s a lot simpler to assassinate one’s competitor than to develop something better.

There are some other interesting moves involving Microsoft’s people who were competing against Google. A lot of aQuantive executives left Microsoft [1, 2, 3], but some are landing inside companies that compete against Google. Jeff Wood is the latest example:

In the words of Jeff Wood, former VP of Publisher Sales at Microsoft Advertising and now CEO at aiMatch:

“While so many solution providers have been focused on helping publishers monetize remnant inventory, we recognized that publishers invest heavily in their content and need new tools to increase the value of their direct sold products. That is why we are dedicated to offering solutions that leverage advertising intelligence to maximize their return on that investment.”

“New online ad company aiMatch has roots at Microsoft, aQuantive,” says John Cook, whose Seattle publication (TechFlash) is favourable to Microsoft and receives Microsoft sponsorships. Several Microsoft speakers will soon appear at the TechFlash event.

Microsoft announced the promotion of Robert Youngjohns, who will become vice president [1, 2] (many vice presidents are leaving, including this example from yesterday).

There is another new appointment:

Microsoft Advertising promotes Jonathan Lewen to head of agency sales

Digital giant Microsoft has promoted group sales manager Jonathan Lewen to the role of head of agency sales for Microsoft Advertising UK, replacing Paul Carolan, who left in September to start his own business.

Aha. That’s another departure that we haven’t noticed.

The staff above is mostly associated with advertising (where Microsoft loses a lot of money, still). We keep track of smearing or cheap shots from such Microsoft employees, who are pretending that the convicted monopolist is a knight on the white horse for advertisers. “Microsoft Slams Google’s Ad Practices,” says this new article from AdWeek and another new article bears the headline “Microsoft condemns Google’s ad operation” (no surprise here).

Microsoft wants a piece of Google’s search advertising business, and the company is not afraid to let marketers know. A Microsoft executive publicly trashed Google’s ad selling practices this week and implored marketers to expect more from the search giant.

Check out this shameless new plug (from the British Marketing Magazine) that quotes Microsoft’s mole Ashley Highfield [1, 2, 3], trying to characterise Microsoft as “the underdog”.

It would, of course, be unfair to blame Highfield, managing director and vice-president, consumer and online at Microsoft UK, for any of these difficulties. The public will this week get to scrutinise his most high-profile campaign since taking up his role just over a year ago: ads for search engine Bing. The push, says Highfield, is intended ‘to be light-hearted, humorous, and in a tone of voice that is more self-deprecating and light-hearted’.

There was nothing “light-hearted” and “humorous” about what Highfield did to the BBC. There was also nothing “light-hearted” and “humorous” about Microsoft’s hijack of Yahoo!, which is further described in the New York Times right now. Proxy battles are a nasty thing, but that exactly is what Microsoft did against Yahoo!

In the spring of 2008, Roy J. Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo, and his fellow directors were coming under a barrage of criticism from investors after Microsoft abruptly broke off merger talks.

[...]

Mr. Icahn said that while his firm did not make money in Yahoo, it was supportive in bringing on board Carol A. Bartz, the company’s C.E.O., and instrumental in eventually forging an Internet search and advertising partnership with Microsoft. As for the criticism from Mr. Jackson that his methods do not work, Mr. Icahn said, “To say that we don’t add value is absurd.”

His job was done after he had spoken to Microsoft and arranged the removal of opposition to Microsoft.

Microsoft cannot handle fair competition, nor is it able to comply with competition rules unless it is threatened with fines. The Web browsers ballot is an example that and it continues to be deficient for more reasons than we mentioned before [1, 2, 3, 4].

Small Browser Makers Ask Microsoft to Change Browser Ballot Box Again

Small browsers can only be found by scrolling sideways

Microsoft has found itself having to alter its practices on several occasions in Europe and the U.S. after regulators stepped in and forced change. One of the most recent instances was when the European Commission asked Microsoft to make browser selection more open and fair to other browser makers in Europe.

For apologists who love to spin this, Microsoft is not being nice here. It is forced to do this or face more severe consequences. The same goes for its work with Samba. █

THIS post will be kept as short and compressed as possible due to lack of time.

Centrify

Centrify is a company whose genesis we explained before (Microsoft). We do not trust Centrify and its new product does not excite us because it brings Microsoft patents over to UNIX and Linux instead of encouraging standards. But anyway, here is its latest press release:

The new DirectManage Deployment Manager discovers UNIX and Linux systems within the environment, determines their readiness to join Active Directory, and enables administrators to promptly deploy the Centrify Suite to the targeted systems, and join the systems to the Active Directory domain.

The problem with Active Directory is similar to the problem with Mono and Moonlight. With Samba, Microsoft is at least forced to play nice (because of the European Commission).

Google

It is no secret that Google has been somewhat of a problem when it comes to software patents (just like IBM). We have already produced a lot of evidence, including videos that show Google executives talking about the subject, but here is more new evidence for the pile:

Google Patents Country-Specific Content Blocking

theodp writes “Today Google was awarded US Patent No. 7,664,751 for its invention of Variable User Interface Based on Document Access Privileges, which the search giant explains can be used to restrict what Internet content people can see ‘based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document.’ From the patent: ‘For example, readers from the United States may be given “partial” access to the document while readers in Canada may be given “full” access to the document. This may be because the content provider has been granted full rights in the document from the publisher for Canadian readers but has not been granted rights in the United States, so the content provider may choose to only enable fair use display for readers in the United States.’ Oh well, at least Google is ‘no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn.’”

That is a soft patent.

Red Hat

Rob Tiller, a top Red Hat lawyer who frequently speaks about the subject of software patents, has just unleashed this post titled “Calling a troll a troll” (with the picture we used a few weeks ago).

It is clear enough what message Tiller is trying to get across:

There is increasing recognition in the FOSS ecosystem that troll lawsuits are a serious problem for open source. This is an unfortunate but real indicator of the remarkable success of open source. As the profits and profiles of open source products have risen, even trolls have taken note. So much for the good news. The bad news is that trolls view open source like a Somali pirate views a container ship – that is, purely as a target. Troll lawsuits are at best a tax on collaborative innovation and at worst, for a particular target, an existential threat.

Quintura

Speaking of trolls, here is what DownloadSquad has to say about Quintura: “Quintura chooses software patent claims as revenue stream”

I’m not a fan of software patents, and I’m particularly not a fan of companies who use them as a business model. While the concept of patenting software makes sense, in practice it is a complete mess.

Patents are not products. They are only a hindrance.

ACTA

On many occasions in the past we’ve explained why ACTA makes the patent system even worse. The president of the FFII therefore tracks developments around the ACTA and some days ago he showed a European “MEP ask[ing] for ACTA docs, [should] start a motion based on Lisbon Article 218 “parliament fully informed”.” He also wrote about a “New ACTA leak, it is a memo from the European Commission to the European Parliament INTA (LIMITED!)”

The cited posts are not in English [1, 2], but they hopefully help. The FFII’s president is Belgian. Yesterday he linked to this article and wrote that the “European Parliament points to the high cost of the patent system for SMEs, and the threat of litigation of patent trolls.”

This system needs mending, but ACTA takes it in the very opposite direction. █

Summary: Novell promotes Microsoft Silverlight, .NET, and other negative endeavours while demoting the GPL and reducing work on Linux

Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is promoting Silverlight once again by stating that his patent-encumbered project might enable access to Olympic content. The real solution is for the Olympics to use standards instead of serving Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. What de Icaza is doing here is simple; he keeps regulators away from Microsoft^*. We wrote about this before, particularly when Microsoft came under fire for Silverlight and US regulators stepped up. The Novell/Microsoft patent deal had similar ramifications in Europe (harming Samba’s case). Needless to say, Novell is behind de Icaza, so it is not just his personal infatuation with Microsoft. Novell’s tactless PR Director [1, 2] is endorsing de Icaza’s message:

Can’t get to Vancouver for the Winter Games? The Moonlight Team just made it that much easier to watch all the competition right from your desktop, anytime of day, in any part of the world.

Mono is a prerequisite and as we have shown several times before, Moonlight is still an unacceptable trap [1, 2, 3], so the following news coverage is misleading:

Microsoft also updated its agreement not to pursue patent claims on versions 3.0 and 4.0 of Silverlight. The software giant has also offered protection to third-party distributions of Moonlight, not just those using the Novell-sponsored Moonlight.

No, Moonlight remains suitable just for Novell customers (until January 2012 when the patent deal with Microsoft expires). Why is de Icaza doing all this? A couple of years ago he publicly expressed regrets and used as an excuse the infamous “pay grade” line. Here is what was said about it:

“What’s this about pay-grade? It’s a military term, often misappropriated by civilians who are avoiding an ethical decision. It’s a good excuse in the military: politicians are accountable for the decision to enter a war, while the military are oath-bound to follow orders at pain of court-martial and possibly execution, and are only accountable for the conduct of the war. But Miguel is no soldier. He’s the founder of a company previously merged into Novell, and would not be subject to treason charges or capital punishment over this issue. Others, like Jeremy Allison, chose to leave the company while Miguel stayed.”

–Bruce Perens

A few months ago, Groklaw wrote: “Jason Perlow has responded to this article in an audio discussion with Ken Hess. They agree that I do not understand that Miguel has to feed his family and pay his mortgage. I believe that is called the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense. I will quote from Wikipedia:

In the Christopher Buckley novel Thank You for Smoking and its film adaptation, the main character Nick Naylor justifies his career to a reporter by telling her that “Everybody has a mortgage to pay,” and referring to his response as the “Yuppie Nuremberg Defense”.

In other words, de Icaza’s excuses are all very weak. He is helping Microsoft while harming GNU/Linux (it’s impossible to help both) and deep inside he might actually understand that. But it’s working well for him, personally. He even serves on a board now (even though it is Microsoft’s).

Anti-GPL, Pro-Mono

This latest post from Novell’s Jeffrey Stedfast, who is Miguel de Icaza’s close colleague from back in the days, is also a curious new find. Notice the part at the top which says: “All code posted to this blog is licensed under the MIT/X11 license unless otherwise stated in the post itself.”

“[De Icaza] is helping Microsoft while harming GNU/Linux (it’s impossible to do both) and deep inside he might actually understand that.”Novell just doesn't like the GPL. A good example of this is the project called Pinta, which we wrote about quite a lot in recent days [1, 2, 3, 4]. It is still being mentioned in some news sites where it is described as a “Paint.NET clone” which is written in Mono by a Novell employee. It’s not GPL licensed.

Another project that’s somewhat of a statement against the GPL is written by Novell employees who use Mono. It’s called Banshee.

Even after his departure from Novell, Joe Brockmeier promotes this Mono project that only Novell customers can use. Here is something from the latest post about it:

This means that Banshee 1.5.4 will be GNOME 3.0 ready.

We still worry that GNOME 3.0 might accommodate more Mono than before [1, 2]. Our reader Pawel shows us what he calls “another mono evangelist which is a gnome dev“:

People who know me also know that I think those anti-.NET people are disruptive ignorable people. I also actively and willingly ignore them (and they should know this). I’m actually a big fan of the Mono platform.

Going back to Silverlight, watch how Microsoft uses IronRuby:

IronRuby 1.0 Hits Release Candidate 2 (RC2)

[...]

Just as Novell is building an open source implementation of Silverlight dubbed Moonlight, so Microsoft is hard at work producing an open source implementation of the Ruby programming language for .NET and Silverlight. Charlie Calvert, C# Community program manager revealed that this week the team behind the project announced the availability of the second Release Candidate of IronRuby.

This project is a curse that mostly serves Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4]. It’s an embrace-and-extend approach of Microsoft inside Ruby.

Priorities

To Novell’s credit, it did participate in some important projects like RadeonHD which Phoronix mentioned some days ago.

Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and motherboards on the market. Luc has worked on support for flashing the BIOS on ATI graphics cards, native VGA text mode support, and other work to help the CoreBoot project. Today at FOSDEM in Brussels, Luc Verhaegen is about to give a talk on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS.

Novell seems to be focusing less on kernel space [1, 2] and more on .NET these days. Novell consciously laid off this important developer of RadeonHD. What’s the logic here?

How Novell CEO Changed a Quarter of His Staff

The following piece was published earlier this month and it contains some very interesting parts, such as:

One of the toughest challenges facing public companies in this country is figuring out how to satisfy Wall Street without decimating their loyal but costly workforces. I’ve met no one who has defined this problem more strikingly than Ron Hovsepian, the CEO of Novell.

In an interview a couple of years ago, Hovsepian told me that over the course of the preceding year, he replaced a quarter of his workforce in order to acquire the skills he needed:

One thousand of our 4,000 employees are new to Novell. So the change we’re going through is pretty significant. Candidly, among all the good revenue stories and the profit improving, people don’t realize how much we’ve really gone in and changed our workforce to get the right skills here.

Maybe some of those “changes” in workforce better align the company with Microsoft's objectives. We previously showed that Novell was hiring more .NET developers while generally laying off many people. █

“[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

___
^* Miguel de Icaza publicly took Microsoft’s side in the antitrust litigation in Europe.

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]. █