Summary: How the proprietary software cartel continues to harm adoption of GNU/Linux, mostly by aligning against Google
SHARING CULTURE is under attack. The companies that thrive in artificial scarcity just cling on to a retarded state of affairs. In a lawsuit that was mentioned here twice before [1, 2] (and also noted in Reader’s Picks earlier today), Redmond attacks BitTorrent using software patents. Prof. Webbink’s Groklaw has a more in-depth analysis of the case, starting with: “Peer-to-peer provider BitTorrent is somewhat familiar with being at the center of copyright controversies, but last Tuesday, June 14, it entered the realm of patent disputes when it was sued by Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network, Inc., a Delaware corporation, for infringement of Tranz-Send’s U.S. patent number 7,301,944 (the ’944 patent). The ’944 patent, entitled “Media File Distribution With Adaptive Transmission Protocols,” was filed on April 16, 1999, and issued November 27, 2007.”
More interestingly, however, Groklaw has begun addressing the Google case again, in light of reexamination attempts. Watch what Google is doing to basically jeopardise software patents again (not for the first time):
Oracle has experienced another setback in its assertion of its patents against Google. In the reexamination of U.S. Patent 6192476 the USPTO has issued an office action in which it rejects 17 of the patent’s 21 claims. The specifics of the office action are set forth below in text form along with an updated reexamination history. While Oracle has asserted seven different patents in its claims against Google, if this reexamination is exemplary of what Oracle can expect in each of the other reexaminations, Oracle will have a hard time finding claims that it can successfully assert against Google, and there lies Oracles conundrum. Oracle either has to agree with the court’s directive to limit the number of claims it will assert at trial, or it is likely the court will simply stay the trial until the reexaminations are complete.
The above case, being a case against Linux, is something that Microsoft Florian promotes passionately, even with his old friend Dana Blankenhorn, who still offers a platform to Florian’s lies and distortions. Does the bias not tell everyone who Florian’s latest client is aligned with? Remember that this guy is a lobbyist. He has been doing this for selected clients for quite a few years now. He is still working to shoot down Google’s acquisition of Nortel’s patents (for defensive purposes) and now we see that Apple too — not just Microsoft — is standing in Google’s way.
Nortel Networks Inc. has received significant level of interest in patents that can be used for smartphone technology. Accordingly, it postponed an action sanctioned by a bankruptcy court in the United States from June 20 to June 27, at 9:00 a.m.
Remember that Apple has two ongoing lawsuits against Android, one against HTC and one against Samsung. Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple are all patent aggressors; Google is not. Whereas the former 3 snatched Novell’s patents, Google has so far attempted to even crush software patents as a whole. So whose side should a Free software supporter take? █
Summary: Software ‘thieves’ get aggressive and also get sued for their abuses; somehow, Mirosoft is getting off the hook
APPLE WAS NEVER a nice company. It was never an innovative company, either. In other words, it does not really contribute much to technology, it is an imitator that excels at marketing (a non-producing industry). Apple is about branding and at times about “enforcing” those brands, where enforcement is merely a euphemism for bullying. Consider those Chinese factories that Apple had shut down, for hypocritically claiming them to be ‘stealing’. Here is a new video that we shared earlier about this subject: [thanks to TinyOgg]
Putting new cartoons about Apple aside, there is nothing funny about what Apple is doing and we have exposed Apple’s dark side in this Web site for at least four years. Apple’s hypnosis sure is powerful and it suppresses critics in ways we explained before. This new cry from Amahi says that it has just been hit by a cease and desist nastygram from Apple. And here’s why:
After the first shock, the questions start to emerge, like … What!? … or … why Amahi?
Long story short, Apple has to show they are defending a trademark claim they have on that term. Microsoft filed a motion to oppose that trademark claim in January, among other things stating that the two words separately are generic[1], that the 2-word term is also generic in English, that it’s widely used by consumers, by the press and in the software industry to refer to the many app stores available today, and that even Steve Jobs used it in a generic way to refer to other app stores. All possible reasons to not grant the claim. Later, Amazon launched their Appstore for Android in March, and Apple filed a lawsuit against Amazon. Here is an article with a brief history of the claimed trademark. Update: apparently, Nokia is also contesting the mark in Europe.
Shame on Apple, the branding company. Without the brand, Apple’s products are just commodity PCs with a greatly inflated price and ripoff versions of BSD — or a version which is typically filled with other software that Apple merely exploited. Apple is very glad to take things from others, even vocabulary. The company is a hoarder, probably like many of its stereotypical clients. “Apple Sued In India For Practising Unfair Competition,” informed us this new article. Very well. To quote:
The Competition Commission of India, or CCI, a seven-member body that has been formed to keep anti-competitive acts at bay has found a defaulter in Apple, the manufacturer of the iPad and the iPhone. Apple’s sales practices are being questioned by the committee, and Apple has been reprimanded for practicing unfair competition in the Indian market.
According to the report prepared by the committee, Apple’s movements in a market, as competitive as India are seemingly unfair, in the sense that, its products are being made available only through a few, handpicked service providers, in addition to their own signature stores.
The Competition Commission of India, or CCI, a seven-member body that has been formed to keep anti-competitive acts at bay has found a defaulter in Apple, the manufacturer of the iPad and the iPhone. Apple’s sales practices are being questioned by the committee, and Apple has been reprimanded for practising unfair competition in the Indian market.
This report raises several questions. Is the commission really serious about anti-competitive business practices or its driven by the desire to be able to buy shiny, expensive and proprietary Apple toys with greater ease?
If the commission is really serious about anti-competitive business practices, why can’t the commission see Microsoft’s practices as killing competition? Indian users, who want to install Linux on their machines, are forced to pay Microsoft Tax, as you can’t buy a system without Microsoft’s Windows pre-installed on it. Why is CCI not suing Microsoft and hardware vendors to not force Indian users to pay the Microsoft tax?
Why can’t the commission see Microsoft’s anti-competitive business practices where most government sites endorse or support the usage of Microsoft insecure Internet Explorer and not ensure fair competition by making it mandatory that sites must support all popular browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome?
After reading this piece about a Linux keyboard PC , I got excited. I’ve been looking for a nice computer that is sold without any operating system so that I can install my own. Yes, I’m aware of the existence of System76 (Ubuntu systems) and ZaReason (several Linux offers), but I wanted to try something else. Thus, I checked the vendor’s page and, sure enough, there was a “NO OS” option. With a high heart, I selected the components of the system and submitted my request waiting to receive the quote with the price.
A day later, I received it and, with it, there came a surprise. The price was satisfactory ($555), but they had included Windows 7 Professional 32 bits and were charging me for it!
This abuse has got to end. We no longer live in a world where people can be assumed to be Windows users. Windows is a decliningplatform with artificial hype that is intended to create a perception that it’s actually desired. It’s part of the lobbying effort that falsely convinces regulators that Windows is what customers really always want.
To Apple’s credit, it hardly forces people to buy its products. Its founder is not rallying politicians to abuse the education system and turn it into taxpayers-funded indoctrination of children for use of his own products, unlike that other dangerous charlatan. Bill Gates “acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was,”said Ed Roberts, Gates’ employer at MITS in the 1970′s
Another reason to crack down on Microsoft is its current patent abuses. The patent extortion is clearly a sign of Microsoft’s imminent death, but while the company is dying it is trying to destroy other companies along with it. We already know that patent extortion is the last thing companies do before they implode.They just cannot yield anything of real substantial value.
“The patent extortion is clearly a sign of Microsoft’s imminent death, but while the company is dying it is trying to destroy other companies along with it.”To summarise the key findings we’ve put together in this Web site, Bill Gates, world’s biggest extortionist who misuses a $500,000,000,000/annum education budget to indoctrinate the young and lobby for companies like Monsanto (for profit) so that even all our food becomes patented, i.e. taxed, also created the world’s biggest patent troll, with whom he lobbies against elimination of software patents this month. Their plan it to turn Windows tax into patent tax on all technology. US citizens ought to report them to the authorities and explain these abuses to family/friends. These bullies see themselves as overly entitled and they control the government with their money. Bill Gates also spends on average $1 million per day buying the press, not donating (the money which would otherwise go towards taxes).. It’s a reputation laundering operation that distracts the public. Having seen the writings on the wall ($18 billion in losses for MSFT in 1998) they move on to their next scheme for world domination. Just over a decade ago Gates faced the government after he committed his crime; now that he is whitewashing his image no regulators dare to approach him. If that’s not scary, what is? Regulators are scared of him. They don’t punish Microsoft. █
Tilted coverage which British taxpayers are forced to fund
Summary: Tesco is again the victim of people who choose Microsoft for platforms, the BBC does not tell the real story though
TECHRIGHTS previously covered Tesco's agreements with Microsoft and denial of GNU/Linux. Well, it didn’t work too well for Tesco, did it? Their Windows-based Web site is a catastrophe and we previously wrote about Windows-imposed downtimes affecting Tesco’s tills, too. But do not expect anyone to call out Windows, especially not in the UK.
As for the BBC, which is the taxpayers-funded medium that is run by former Microsoft UK managers (and is Bill Gates-funded since a while ago), do not expect to get the full story from it. They’ll just omit what suits them. It’s the same source which is naming Android only when there is something negative to say about it, at the same time hiding the platform exclusivity of problems whenever an arisen problem is bad for Microsoft. “Tesco Bank has confirmed that some customers are still unable to access their online accounts,” quoted someone in USENET. “Tesco’s [Windows-based] website was hit by technical problems,” says the BBC (no mention of who is affected), “after the bank updated its computer systems.” Yes, that would be Windows.
Notice what a Tesco spokesman says: “We are aware that some customers are experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts when using Internet Explorer 9.”
Wait, why did the BBC not mention this upfront?
“Just found out that this looks like an IE problem,” quoted the person from USENET, “download and try firefox. You will get a one time password to your mobile and you['re] in [...] if you are running IE9 you need to log in to tesco bank website, press ‘Alt and T’ – then go down to Compatability Settings and accept Tesco Bank and make sure all 3 other boxes are checked.”
Here is the BBC article. Fair and balanced or “Fair and balanced” the Fox ‘News’ way? █
Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s director, has some heartening news for Linux world professionals. He waslinux-logo recently quoted saying, “Linux’s increasing use across industries is building high demand for Linux jobs despite national unemployment stats. Linux.com reaches millions of Linux professionals from all over the world. By providing a Jobs Board feature on the popular community site, we can bring together employers, recruiters and job seekers to lay the intellectual foundation for tomorrow’s IT industry.”
In the latest Top 500 Supercomputer list list, which was released on June 20th, Linux accounts for 91.00 % of the top supercomputers. Linux is followed by Unix with 4.6%; and Windows with 1.2%. When it comes to super-fast computers like supercomputers or IBM Jeopardy winning Watson, Linux rules.
Of the fastest of the fast, the top ten supercomputers all run Linux. The top ten, lead by the K Computer at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe Japan, are all capable of performing more than 8 quadrillion calculations per second (petaflop/s) This ranking is determined by how fast the computers can run Linpack, “a benchmark application developed to solve a dense system of linear equations.” The highest ranking pure Windows supercomputer, the Magic Cube at China’s Shanghai Supercomputer Center, comes in at 40th.
Man, what a busy time lately!!… I have struggled big time to finish any of my ongoing articles, but fear not, this blog is very much alive and kicking. Stay tunned for upcoming articles, for there are some interesting things on the way, including reviews for Fedora 15, Fuduntu 14.10, Zorin 5 OS and (maybe) an article on why I decided not to review Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity.
Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing (HPC) solutions, today announced the immediate availability of PODtool, an interface that makes it easy to offload excess workload to Penguin’s on-demand environment Penguin Computing on Demand (POD).
The kernel hackers have optimised the Btrfs code and extended it to include new functions; a substantially improved tool for testing the experimental filesystem is soon to be released. Ext4 now supports the “punch hole” technology for deallocating unused memory areas within a file.
Early this week, Linus Torvalds released a new pre-release (RC) for Linux 3.0. In the release mail for the fourth RC, he mentions some more extensive changes to the DRM subsystem. Among those changes are patches that improve support for the graphics core of AMD’s recently introduced Llano, which was introduced between RC2 and RC3.
After much discussion we decided we bite the bullet and upload a 3.0 kernel. At least we get a chance to identify problematic applications, while still keeping our options open to move to a 3.0.0 kernel for release should that be prudent. As expected this was not smooth sailing, not least for the kernel packaging which needed much love to even correctly build this version. Plus we had to hack the meta packages to allow that to be reversioned later too.
James Simmons has written a status update to the OpenChrome development list concerning his ongoing work towards enabling kernel mode-setting (KMS) support for VIA hardware with this community-maintained VIA Linux project.
When you receive and need to handle multiple text files that use characters that are not natural to the English language, you may run into the problem that is dealing with different character encodings. This is particularly noticeable in websites, where if the browser try to interpret the text file with an encoding that differs from the actual encoding that the file is using, we can see strange symbols where this characters were supposed to show, but it is not limited to websites, any program that is made to work with languages other than English may present a similar problem if it is not appropriately handled.
Today we’ll be talking with Tom Wickline, leader of the Bordeaux Technology Group, a company specialized in development of Windows compatibility software, supporting Linux, FreeBSD, PC-BSD, Solaris, OpenIndiana and Mac OS X.
Russell Ossendryver and his WorldLabel company do an amazing job of supporting the open source software movement and individual open source projects. His company’s blog often features articles by prominent tech writers covering Linux and open source software. And now WorldLabel has kindly agreed to sponsor a competition for the best digiKam tip, where the winner will bag a cool Ubuntu-based Teo Pro netbook from ZaReason.
Following the success of last years’ event, the Spanish KDE community again held its national Akademy event, Akademy-es 2011, between the 20th and the 22nd of May 2011 in Barcelona. The event was sponsored by Google and Qt/Nokia and was supported by the Linux and Todo-Linux magazines. KDE enthusiasts from all over the country gathered to discuss free software and KDE.
This year the event had two different hosts: the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (UPC) made its Master Classroom available for Friday’s presentations, whereas the School of Sant Marc-Sarrià hosted us on Saturday and Sunday.
The GNOME Foundation today announced that it has appointed Karen Sandler as Executive Director. Sandler’s dedication to software freedom, her non-profits experience and her involvement in a wide range of free and open source software communities distinguish her as the logical choice for GNOME. “I’m very excited that Karen is joining the GNOME Foundation as Executive Director!”, says Stormy Peters, former Executive Director who has recently joined the GNOME Board as a new Director, “Karen brings a wealth of experience in free software projects and nonprofits as well as a passion for free software. That experience will be invaluable as GNOME continues to expand its reach with GNOME 3.0 and GNOME technologies.”
In November 2010, after I informed the GNOME Foundation that I’d like to submit some names of potential Executive Director candidates, Germán Póo-Caamaño invited me to serve on the GNOME Foundation’s Executive Director Hiring Committee. We agreed that the Committee’s work would remain confidential (as any hiring process is wrought with complicated and frank discussions). I usually prefer open processes to confidentiality, but with things like hiring, confidentiality is somewhat of a necessity.
You may hardly find a hard-core GNU/Linux user who has not heard of, or used, Mandriva. Mandrive once was the Android of Linux world. It was user-friendly and powerful. But the company went into trouble and the project was forked.
Mandriva fork Mageia took birth recently, quit a lot of ink was spent on Mageia, we covered it regularly, keeping a close eye on the development of the project. I believe it is very important for the users to have multiple choices. Ubuntu is the king, the emperor of the GNU/Linux world. We do need a prince (Linux Mint is a king in its own right). We need a distro which is not only easy to use but also continues the legacy of Mandriva — the #1 distro which ruled the DistroWatch list before Ubuntu arrived.
One of the great things we’ve got at openSUSE is openSUSE Build Service. Web service where we can commit sources and recipes and it will produce bunch of binaries for various distributions. Not just for openSUSE. We are friendly people and we love to work together with other distributions. After all, we all have a common goal – make open source succeed and defeat common enemies (some greedy people trying to steal some of our freedoms). OBS follows this path and it is a great tool that can help anybody to package his software for any distribution. It is easy to use and easy to get involved. We even have a public instance where anybody can submit a data and use package for his own purpose. If you want to build a package just for Fedora, we will let you do that. Of course we will be much happier if you’ll consider building it for openSUSE as well, but we don’t force you to do so.
Itway SpA announced that it has signed a commercial agreement for the distribution of the Open Source solutions born through the collaboration between Red Hat, Inc., a supplier in the open source solutions, and Acronis, a company active n the production of solutions for backup, restoration and security of physical, virtual and cloud environments.
Red Hat Italia organized its fifth open source day last week in Rome, and it was quite a success by the numbers: 700 people subscribed to the event, about 500 attendees, 6 talks in the plenary session and 12 speeches in the parallel sessions.
I have been following the whole event before running the final round-table, and I wish to share here some notes from the event.
On Friday my new Lenovo ThinkPad x220 arrived and of course in the evening after I finished work, I was jonesing to put Fedora 15 on it. The machine is a type 4286CTO (Smolt info here). I started by booting into the BIOS and checking the options as shipped by Lenovo. There wasn’t much to change here, other than to enable hardware virtualization so I could more easily run KVM on the laptop should I choose to do so later. I didn’t enable the extra direct IO option, VT-d, because I’ve seen it cause weird installation problems in a lot of cases.
Unity Grab Handles are a fun and aesthetically beautiful way to resize windows in new Ubuntu Unity. Even though they are not enabled by default in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, you can easily turn Unity Grab Handles on by following a few easy steps.
Figures from Distro-watch show that the popular front of Linux, Ubuntu, is sliding in popularity.
While the distro is still tops, it is starting to look like others are eating into its user base faster than Homer Simpson at an all you can eat penguin steak buffet.
Some of the work done to enable Sandybridge Suspend (S3) and Hibernate(S4) showed how painful it can be to get hardware to do what it oughts to do! The problem arises when you find yourself with not many tools to debug what is going on, since your console and half of the OS functionality has already gone to sleep.
Freescale Semiconductor announced a series of 28nm-fabbed QorIQ multicore processors, featuring a 64-bit PowerPC core clocked up to 2.5GHz. The Linux-ready Advanced Multiprocessing (AMP) QorIQ series will debut in early 2012 with the T4240, offering 12 cores dual-threaded to 24 virtual cores, numerous acceleration engines, and cascading power management, says Freescale.
Nokia announced its long-awaited MeeGo Linux-based follow-up to the N900 phone — but when this ships later this year it may well be the company’s first and last MeeGo device. The Nokia N9 features an OMAP3630 processor, up to 64GB storage, a 3.9-inch AMOLED display, an eight-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, NFC, and a “Harmattan” UI with swipe-gesture support, says the company.
ZTE is one of the leading Chinese brands in the world, and they have announced decent and affordable handsets in past, like the trio of new Android phones at MWC. Now ZTE is back again with the announcement of their new Android device, the ZTE X880, codenamed Libra. The Libra is yet another good looking, mid-range device from ZTE. It runs on Android, and there is no custom UI. Yeah, this baby is running stock Android.It was launched in several Asian countries this week, and soon this device will find its way to the UK, maybe as a successor to the ZTE Blade.
All you patient Android users waiting on an official TiVo app might not have to wait much longer. According to a full-page TiVo advertisement found in the latest issue of CEPro’s magazine, the TiVo app will be coming “soon” to Android OS products.
Exactly what “Android OS products” it will be coming to remains a mystery, as does the specifics of what features the app will include. The statement does come after a reference to the TiVo app for Apple’s iPad so one can assume the Android version will include the same features.
We’ve been hearing a bit more than normal about our friends from Sony Ericsson. First there was the announcement that they’ll be incorporating NFC chips into future devices, and now this. We’ve gotten our hands on a photo of what’s being dubbed as the Xperia Duo. We don’t have any real specs at the moment, other than the fact that it’ll be packing a dual-core processor and what appears to be a rather large screen. Our best guess is that it’s hovering somewhere around 4.3 inches, possibly even 4.5, with a front-facing camera. One thing that stands out to me is that the display seems to be nearly edge-to-edge, which should make for an excellent viewing experience.
Panasonic, the maker of Toughbook laptops, is joining the Android fleet. Panasonic is working on an enterprise-grade Android tablet to the market in the fourth quarter of this year.
The new Toughbook tablet will appeal to a wide variety of users, including mission critical government personnel, highly mobile field forces, SMB’s looking for a competitive edge, security conscious IT managers and bottom-line focused CFOs.
Thus, for every once-new single-vendor open source project there will be an eventually-new community project, in addition to the originally-new community projects. The ratio may play out to be something like one single-vendor for two community-owned projects, though I think the total number of new community-owned projects is likely to be much higher. So the ratio of successful single-vendor / community-owned projects may well be stabilizing in the 1-10% range. (Please note that I’m just guessing; also, I’m excluding small random ultimately not successful hobby projects here.)
These days, more and more people work at home at least part of the time. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, more than half of the 29.6 million small businesses in the country are home-based.
If you add to those figures the number of people who telecommute to their jobs part of the time, the Telework Research Network estimates that between 20 to 30 million people work from home at least once a week. And WorldatWork claims that approximately 44 million Americans work at home at least one day a year.
Openness matters. Even in the land of open-source software, where openness is the default.
What this means, as Riehle further elaborates, is that even single-vendor open-source projects, which have open licensing but comparatively closed development processes, will give way to community-led projects over time. “Ultimately, all single-vendor innovation will be commoditized through a community-owned project.” Not a good prognosis if you’re in the business of selling support or “enterprise” versions of open-source software.
Brian Behlendorf, the founder of the Apache Web Server project and a lead developer on Subversion, discusses how to get started on an OSS project — and what to expect
Open source is not only software, but also an approach to software development. The public nature of open source projects lets us show how open source software development scales to the largest project sizes. The following figure illustrates the scalability of open source software development. I call it the big bang of open source.
Shortly after releasing software for audio and video chat as an open-source project called WebRTC as open-source software, Google is beginning to build it into its Chrome browser.
The real-time chat software originated from Google’s 2010 acquisition of Global IP Solutions (GIPS), a company specializing in Internet telephony and videoconferencing.
From today’s viewpoint, Chrome is a fantastic browser that has shaped an entirely new generation of Internet software. If we credit Firefox with waking up Microsoft in 2004 and convincing the software giant that browsers need to be more secure, then we need to credit Google with waking up both Mozilla and Microsoft and reminding them that the web browser was stuck in the mud and simply did not evolve anymore.
Mozilla just released Firefox 5, and while most of the updates are under the hood, there are a few cool new features worth mentioning.
* “Do not track” options for Android, better visibility in Preferences of desktop version
* CSS animation support, which helps developers build more dynamic websites
* Better support for JavaScript and Canvas
* Updated support for MathML, HTML 5, XHR, and SMIL.
After the wildly successful launch of Firefox 4 not all that long ago, it’s hard to believe the next iteration of Mozilla’s popular and free open source browser is already here.
Firefox 5 has been released today as the part of its Rapid Release Program. There are lots of under the hood changes in this release that improves overall performance, speed, stability and security for the World’s second most popular web browser.
The latest stable release of Monty Widneuis’s MySQL fork MariaDB, 5.2.7, has been made available. A new addition is HeidiSQL, which is bundled with the Windows installer for MariaDB.
A new version of Open Office, the free office suite, has just been released into the wild. Apparently it’s been through a revamp and is now more compatible with Microsoft Office files. The press release accompanying the launch boasts that OpenOffice has gone from being the “free alternative” to the “preferred choice”. Interestingly, though, the new version hasn’t gone with a Microsoft Office-style “tabbed” Ribbon interface, but has instead stuck with familiar menus and toolbars.
Given that office users are more or less evenly divided between those who love and loath Microsoft’s tabbed interface, this seemed like a good time for a head to head. Has OpenOffice really managed to cut through the tangle of the old-style user interface to produce an office suite that’s both familiar and easy to use?
Probably the most boring open source story recently has also been the one getting the most ink. The problem with with the Apache/OpenOffice saga is that the real story already happened, it’s history.
Oracle’s “gift” of OpenOffice.org to Apache, and the change of license from copyleft to permissive, is merely an epilogue referring back to a prologue: Oracle’s sudden ownership of the open source office suite as a mere byproduct of their acquisition of Sun.
Google has filed its response to Oracle’s damages claim and as expected the filing rips apart the arguments of an expert witness. One of the more notable items in the filing is the issue of when Java was fragmented.
Oracle wants a hefty damages for what the company alleges is Android’s patent and copyright infringement on Java. Florian Mueller estimates that Oracle is seeking at least $1 billion or so from Google. That figure—given the Nokia and Apple settlement on Tuesday—seems plausible.
Acquia’s social business software distribution, Drupal Commons has allowed many developers to build community sites easily with Drupal. This has always been one of the major goals of Drupal Commons – to help Drupal adoption by making it easy for people to create great community sites quickly without having to build from scratch.
If AVM succeeds in forbidding others from exercising the freedoms explicitly granted by the GNU General Public License terms, it will directly contravene the legal rights of the original authors of the programs, who decided that software freedom and cooperation is more important to them than directly receiving license fees. Moreover, there are also significant economic and business implications. First, it will give device manufacturers the chance to veto software from third parties on their products, resulting in worse products for the user and them being locked-in to purchasing future products from a particular vendor. Second, it will give companies like AVM an unfair advantage over their competitors who are in compliance with the Free Software licenses which they use. Third, it will threaten the cooperative software development model, which has been successfully used by many companies worldwide for three decades.
How can the Internet help spread scientific discoveries? The internet has heralded a new level of openness and data sharing since its inception. While this revolution of information has swept across our society, openly sharing information in the scientific arena has yet to see a boon in activity. With scientists remaining extremely protective over their discoveries, we have to ask if this behavior is hampering future scientific discoveries.
When writing documentation for GNU/Linux or any other FOSS project it makes sense to license it under some sort of Free license. Doing so will allow others to redistribute and build on it. But with the plethora of Free Documentation licenses available it can be confusing to choose the right one for you. This article will explain the differences among some of the most common licenses so that you can make the best choice.
The language road in computer science is littered with the carcasses of what was to be “the next big thing.” And although many niche languages do find some adoption in scripting or specialized applications, C (and its derivatives) and the Java language are difficult to displace. But Red Hat’s Ceylon appears to be an interesting combination of language features, using a well-known C-style syntax but with support for object orientation and useful functional aspects in addition to an emphasis on being succinct. Explore Ceylon and find out if this future VM language can find a place in enterprise software development.
The Haiku open source software project, which is building a clean-room implementation of the BeOS platform, has published its third alpha release. The new version was made available over the weekend, and it offers enhanced hardware support, better stability, and a wide range of new features. I tested Haiku Alpha 3 in VirtualBox and on my HP Mini netbook.
BeOS was one of the most advanced desktop computing platforms of the ’90s, but it failed to gain mainstream acceptance. Be’s assets were sold to Palm and eventually ended up in the hands of Japanese browser vendor Access. After Be’s demise, the subsequent owners of the BeOS copyrights declined to continue development or release the code base. The Haiku project was formed in 2001 with the aim of rebuilding the operating system from scratch.
The global consulting firm McKinsey & Company set off a firestorm when it released a report last week suggesting that 30 percent of U.S. businesses will stop offering health care benefits to their employees after most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in 2014.
The White House was quick to challenge the validity of the report, noting that McKinsey has so far refused to provide any details of the methodology used to reach its conclusion. All McKinsey will say is that its report was based on a survey of 1,300 employers and “other
proprietary research.”
If you haven’t gotten much of a raise lately, it’s probably because the extra money that might have been put in your paycheck instead went to your health insurer if you are enrolled in an employer-sponsored plan.
Many Americans haven’t seen a pay increase of any kind because their employers can’t both increase their wages and continue offering decent health care coverage. It has become an either-or for people like Zeke Zalaski, a factory worker in Bristol, Connecticut, who hasn’t had a raise in years.
Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the public health advocacy group Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights have posted a YouTube video about the plight of casino workers, some of the last employees in the country forced to breathe secondhand cigarette smoke at work.
Beginning September 2012, FDA will require larger, more prominent cigarette health warnings on all cigarette packaging and advertisements in the United States. These warnings mark the first change in cigarette warnings in more than 25 years and are a significant advancement in communicating the dangers of smoking.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has enlisted former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and ex-White House chief of staff Andy Card for a “road show” to promote a bipartisan blitz against what it deems excessive and costly government regulations.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) that would immunize the tobacco industry against many FDA regulations preventing them from making tobacco more addictive and marketing it to children.
In his first-ever Netroots Nation appearance, former Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold asked the crowd to take back the Democratic Party and the U.S. government.
To see if this is truly a difficult task, or if the challenger is just another anti-Linux FUDster that is too ignorant to know how easy it can be to administer a Linux PC. This person does not really explain what is meant by “all apps”, so I am guessing that to mean usable in Office suites and programs like The GIMP by any user on the PC to set the font for creating documents and text in graphics.
The Linux user spent the next ten minutes showing the other guy his system. He fielded the “complaint” of needing Windows for certain things by opening VirtualBox and demonstrating his Windows XP install within. He let the other student navigate throughout his laptop and provided instruction when needed.
In the end, the biggest obstacle was convincing him that the entire shootin’ match didn’t cost anything, aside from a Windows and MS Office license for his VirtualBox and even then, it was going to be largely unnecessary.
They then retrograded into a comparison of their classes the first semester, where each was from and other mundane conversation. After a few more minutes, the Linux guy shut down his computer and stood to leave. I glanced up at him and he looked in my direction.
The answer is simple: Microsoft has a better, more aggressive marketing strategy. Moreover, companies prefer to purchase licenses so that that they can blame somebody when something goes wrong.
Eucalyptus was one of the first companies on the cloud computing scene and Mickos is among the most respected open source entrepreneurs in the industry (having been CEO of MySQL AB before its acquisition by Sun Microsystems).
Mickos took a few minutes to share his thoughts on cloud computing and Linux, the new Open Virtualization Alliance, and how Linux has shaped our lives over the last 20 years.
Mainframes are dead! I was told this when I first started working in the computer industry in 1994. However, in 2010 Mainframe revenue was approximately $2.55 billion. Perhaps Mr. Twain stated it best when he said, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Future versions of the Linux Kernel (such as 3.0) will include support for the Xen hypervisor. This means that Linux distributions will typically offer out of the box support for both hosting Xen and running as a guest operating system under Xen.
The power of collaborative development is doing wonders in the world of computing. Open source software is no longer just a cheaper alternative to those premium software tools, but now they are technically superior and user centric too. There are open source alternatives now for all types of software’s in cloud computing, OS, editing tools, office suites and the list just goes on. Today we take a closer look into UM Player (Universal Media player), an Open Source media player which is in fact gaining huge user base in Ubuntu community too.
Dolphin is the default file manager in KDE and it features an easy to use interface, tabs, previews, three view modes (icons, details, columns), vertical window splitting, file and folder sorting, service menus, tags, two-mode location bar.
First of, I never ever been a fan of Adobe Air apps, their lack of integration with the native OS UI (At least on Linux) is a big turn off of me. Hence when Adobe announced that they would be pulling the plugs off adobe air for Linux. My reaction, similar to that of many Linux users, was Meh
The Desktop Summit 2011 is a joint conference organized by the GNOME and KDE communities in Berlin, Germany from the 6th August 2011 to the 12th August 2011.
The organizing team is now inviting applications to hold workshop and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions at the Desktop Summit. Read on for more details and how to make a proposal.
How do I make my debugging with KDE more productive? What steps do I take? How have you debugged KDE-based applications? I know about the KDE wiki page, but is there anything else?
A desktop is more than just panels and widgets. It’s also an ecosystem of applications specially written to use its resources and to fit its concepts of usability. That means that when you weigh GNOME against KDE, you need to consider their applications as much as the desktops themselves.
Not all software categories vary with the desktop, of course. The time is long gone when KOffice and the only partly realized GNOMEOffice vyed with each other for users — although KOffice is becoming increasingly mature, and GNOMEOffice’s AbiWord, and Gnumeric are all going concerns, most people just use LibreOffice.
DoudouLinux is a Debian-based distribution targeting young children, with a goal to make computer use as simple and pleasant as possible. The project’s version 1.0, code name “Gondwana”. DoudouLinux provides tens of applications that suit children from 2 to 12 years old and gives them an environment as easy to use as a gaming console. Kids can learn, discover and have fun without dad and mum always watching!”
Cloud is the next big thing when it comes to desktop computing. There are many big software companies who are busy readying themselves for the cloud in one way or the other. First it was cloud-based or online backup services, and then cloud-based music, and now cloud-based operating systems are here.
I always keep an eye out for interesting and different Linux distributions. There are quite a few which are very specialized, either for a particular purpose or application, or for particular kinds of hardware. One of those which caught my eye recently was AV Linux, a Debian-based distribution which includes a lot of audio and video creation and editing software. It is described on the AV Linux home page as first and foremost a well-rounded OS suited for most common daily computer tasks and runs on most Windows PC’s and Intel Macs. That’s fair enough, because it is a nice, solid derivative of Debian GNU/Linux – oh, and I should mention here that it is running Linux kernel 2.6.39.1, making it the first full release I have seen running 2.6.39 – but then they go on to describe the operating system optimizations they have made and the packages they have included in the base distribution, and it becomes clear that multimedia creation and editing is where this distribution is really interesting.
One thing in Ubuntu, which has always hit rock bottom in terms of popularity, is Ubuntu Software Centre. The reason often cited is its weak design and layout. Lot of attempts were made, but none of them brought a wind of change in perception among the user community. The guys at Canonical have been under fire recently to resolve this problem. One more attempt is round the corner, Ubuntu Software Centre 5.0 is expected to launch soon.
Last month I did a post detailing Bodhi’s desktop of the week contest. If you spent any time poking around the rest of our spiffy new website you will also notice that several other useful pages have appeared.
I’ll tell you what, after all of that talk about forks last week, it’ll be nice to turn my attention to something less controversial today. Let me check my Topic O’ the Day board and see what’s next for discussion… Monday… ah, here we go…
[...]
But despite the quiet origins of these forks, the problem has grown to the level where Linux kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds has publicly threatened to stop pulling ARM-related changes into the mainline Linux kernel; a threat that could effect dozens of companies’ livelihoods and the course of embedded Linux development.
Android operating system’s strong integration with existing Google products and the wide offering of devices and carriers, makes it a strong challenger for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
Rumored details have surfaced concerning the Nexus 4G, the upcoming addition to Google’s line of pure-blood, no-nonsense Android phones. The 4G will reportedly feature a dual-core CPU running at up to 1.5 GHz, along with the ability to record 1080p video. Traditionally viewed as a developer phone, the Nexus line may appeal to other sorts of buyers as well.
anasonic announced it will release a ruggedized, “enterprise-grade” Android tablet in the fourth quarter of this year. The Toughbook-branded device will have a daylight-viewable, 10.1-inch touchscreen with active stylus, a GPS receiver, “full-shift” battery life, and an optional 3G/4G cellular modem, the company says.
Huawei announced a seven-inch tablet that will apparently be the first to include an upcoming Android 3.2 version of Honeycomb — said to be better optimized for seven-inch designs. The MediaPad offers a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, as well as a WSVGA display with a pixel density of 217 points per inch (ppi), and is set for a global launch in the third quarter.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard any major news about India’s ambitious $35 tablet, but a new report suggests that it’s finally inching toward reality. According to the Times of India, the controversial project is approaching the finish line with 100,000 units expected to ship this summer, starting this month. The government is expected to deliver 10,000 tablets to IIT Rajasthan in late June, while another 90,000 units will be rolled out over the next four months.
Zemlin: Yeah. When you have open source components within a product — let me back up — today if you have a dedicated supply chain, you use a product data management product or some sort of supply chain management product to have data about your bill of materials across your supply chain. You get different components from different suppliers, they’re getting integrated into a factory somewhere, and so on and so forth.
Chrome Web Store is all the more important after the arrival of Chromebooks powered by Chrome OS- a radical-re-thinking of Google that assumes all the programs reside on the web. Chrome Web Store has almost anything you can look for! And thankgod, its not just apps related to work you will find some addictive games as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, a few minutes ago (June 20th) Mozilla unleashed the stable version of the highly anticipated Mozilla Firefox 5.0 web browser for Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
As expected, the Mozilla Project has released version 5.0 of Firefox. The update to the open source web browser comes just three months after the project’s last major version, Firefox 4.0, which suffered a number of delays – Mozilla has adopted a version model similar to that used by Google for its Chrome browser.
One of the most important additions in Firefox 5 is support for CSS animation, a feature that browsers such as Safari have offered for some time. When creating a CSS animation, a developer specifies the animation’s duration and name in the CSS rules for the HTML element in question. The @keyframes selector associated with this name is followed by the rules that describe the element’s beginning and end points as well as optional intermediate stages.
Webian Shell is a full screen web browser that has been designed to replace your current operating system. It can be used with Windows, Linux and OS X. Get the free download here.
Mozilla today released Firefox 5, three months to the day after Firefox 4 was released. The new Firefox 5 release marks the successful debut of Mozilla’s rapid release process, which iterates new releases every three months.
Firefox 5 includes new performance, standards and privacy improvements as well as improving the overall stability of the browser for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android users.
“Firefox 5 is the fastest Firefox ever, and also the fastest ever to market,” Johnathan Nightingale, Director of Firefox at Mozilla told InternetNews.com. “Our new rapid release cycle means that the improvements get into users hands more quickly. The latest version of Firefox includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements that make it easier to discover and use all of the innovative features in Firefox. “
LibreOffice gained a fresh burst of momentum last week as the makers of productivity software not only released a new, stable update but also announced the participation of Google and other big-name sponsors in its brand-new advisory board.
Now, we’ve released a freely available new white paper, “A Five-Step Compliance Process for FOSS Identification and Review” that discusses key aspects of two compliance actions: identifying open source in a product’s code baseline, and performing architecture and license reviews on the path to approving FOSS inclusion. The white paper reviews inputs, outputs, and essential process elements involved in five interrelated compliance steps: scanning source code; positively identifying FOSS, its licensing, and its provenance; reviewing licenses and license compatibility issues; reviewing architectural interactions of proprietary and open source components; and achieving final approval for FOSS use. So, download the white paper for some useful information!
A Germany company that provides DSL modems, using in part the Linux kernel, is trying to deny another company the right to modify GPL’ed software. The company, AVM Computersysteme Vertiebs GmbH (AVM), says that Cybits AG is violating its copyright by distributing Internet filtering software that modifies AVM’s software. Harald Welte, who has spent a great deal of time pursuing GPL violations has intervened in the case.
Version 4.6.1 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is imminent. A 4.6.1 status report issued this morning signals there are no outstanding P1 regressions and that this point release branch is now frozen. The GCC 4.6.1 release candidate was subsequently issued.
For a long time I’ve been thinking about just how much Github has revolutionized open source. Yes, it has made managing the code base significantly easier but its real impact has likely been on the social aspects of managing open source. Github has rebooted how the innovation cycle in open source while simultaneously raising the bar for good community management.
The irony may be that it has done this by making it easy to do the one thing many people thought would kill open source, more easy: forking. I remember talking to friends who – before Github launched – felt that forking, while a necessary check on any project, was also its biggest threat and so needed to be managed carefully.
This Plugfest is a two day interoperability workshop on open document exchange formats hosted by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in Berlin, in collaboration with OpenDoc Society, the OASIS ODF TC, OASIS ODF OIC and the OASIS ODF Adoption TC.
Adobe simply “is not serious about GNU/Linux,” said blogger Robert Pogson. “They’ve made many of their GNU/Linux releases second-rate and refused to release many products for GNU/Linux.” The longer the company continues on that path, “the more irrelevant they will become. … If Adobe cannot or will not compete in the FLOSS market, to hell with them. The world can cooperate to make the software it needs.”
So, as The Economist observed in 1100100 [100 in binary] and Counting in its June 9, 2011 issue:
“The firm’s centenary is an occasion to reflect on many things digital, but one question stands out: why is IBM still alive and thriving after so long, in an industry characterised perhaps more than any other by innovation and change? This is not just of interest to business historians. As IBM enters its second century in good health, far younger IT giants, such as Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft and Nokia, are grappling with market shifts that threaten to make them much less relevant.”
The Haiku operating system, which seeks to be free software and implement compatibility with the BeOS platform, has now experienced its third official release in ten years of development. Haiku R1 Alpha 3 is this new official release and it offers a lot of changes.
Sony’s unprecedented spree of security breaches in the last two months may be finally cooling off, as profit- and attention-seeking hackers move on to other vulnerable targets. But it’s not quite over yet.
The CRTC’s hearings on vertical integration begin Monday. For the next two weeks, this means that the four major vertically integrated media companies in Canada – Bell, Shaw, Rogers and Quebecor – could face tough questions about whether they have the clout to dominate telecom, media and Internet services across the country and, if so, what should be done to curb that potential?
Sources say that the European Parliament’s Trade Committee (INTA) will tomorrow consider asking the Parliament’s Legal service to answer questions about ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Here are some questions the FFII would like to suggest. The questions may resolve uncertainties regarding ACTA.
Join us for an informative discussion on the effects of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on music. Known as ACTA, the agreement has been for years under international negotiation and is designed -amongst other issues- to drastically change the policies concerning counterfeiting copyrighted works.
While ACTA has attracted strong support and fierce opposition, this talk brings together trade associations, artists and academics with different views to discuss the effects of the legislation to the creative process. The panel will tackle important questions like: How the proposed ACTA will affect ‘fair use’ and equivalent practice? What will be the effects of the enforcement practices on the creative economy and music creativity? Issues of finance, property and matters of sampling/remixing will also be discussed.
Summary: Haven from absurd laws is offered by countries which are in turn being corrupted (through crooked oliticians and domestic partners) such that software patents are inescapable
A FEW years back, when the second-biggest financial collapse (in the past century) happened in the United States, a lot of Americans migrated to places like Australia and New Zealand. Amid the rise of Bush and the war he brought about, some people left the country in protest and moved to New Zealand, which is also where a former colleague of mine moved with his wife partly for idealogical reasons. If the goal is to drive away talented people (including veteran professors and immigrant students), then parts of the administration are doing a darn good job. For everyone else in the States this should be cause for concern and alarm because this puts in jeopardy the nation’s status as a leader in innovation (marked by achievements from NASA for example). When patenting becomes a norm and patent trolls a fact of life, surely there is a deterrent that can suppress absorption of “real” scientists — those interested in researching in peace. Colleagues in my field cannot obtain software patents, so they can only ever apply for such monopolies in the USPTO. And what for? We work for the Computer Science department that is ranked 15th in the world and patents were not needed to get there at all. In fact, ranks do suggest that for researchers, the United States becomes a less desirable vocation. To what extent has the USPTO been responsible for this? It is hard to reliably measure this because, as stated earlier, it’s a multi-factor/factered problem which includes debt, militarism, competitive trends (notably the rise of the Far East), and even the network effect that drives Nobel prize winners to countries where they are better funded (which in turn takes their research groups to those other countries). Software patents can truly depress a field and limit one’s freedom of exploration. Who on Earth would engage in this practice of self-punishing by bringing legitimacy to software patents? As Dr. Richard Stallman explained a few years back, Europeans should repeal and repel any attempts to legalise software patents because it puts Europe in a considerable advantage over the neighbours across the Atlantic (consider the European developer who was safe from Shazam’s software patent bullying [1, 2]). Needless to say, if the US lobby manages to turn the EU into a hub of software patents, e.g. via the unitary patent, then it instantaneously belittles Europe, which has almost no software patents and thus “starts behind”, so to speak. Replace “EU” with “New Zealand (NZ)”, “China”, “India”, “South Africa” and so on, then realise that the same applies to all of those countries, where American multinationals assisted by their government (which they fund through campaign contributions) are trying to corrupt through selected politicians — some of whom we named here before — so as to enslave foreign populations by the “IP” arm and the lawsuits boot. Treaties can usher bullying, even if the bullying is silent and often blamed on illusionary culprits. Too political? Fine. Get used to it, as that’s how patent policies are set in stone. It’s not about technical merit but about those who lean to the green (money).
With that long introduction aside, we shall turn our attention to the southern hemisphere. NZ is having the same problems Europe is having at the moment and there is this new “Podcast on software patents legislation in New Zealand” (links directly to a software patents-encumbered file, ironically enough). Well, the file is an MP3, so for the sake of those without MPEG-LA patent licences we have made an Ogg version (direct link) and we hope someone can transcribe.
“Over and over this island nation has proven a rational understanding of innovation in software as something that can and should be copyrighted but not patented.” –ClearFoundationNZ is reaping the benefit of Free/open source advocacy groups like NZOSS (which recently drove away Microsoft software patents [1, 2], as still reported by the neighbours in Australia too) and the general policy in this large island, which is admirably hostile towards software patents. In our NZ/kiwi software patents wiki we provide some chronological background for the uninitiated and we are routinely getting some gratifying feedback from readers based in NZ. Just yesterday, Aaron Bylund, writing to me in Twitter, explained “[w]hy ClearFoundation (non-profit entity supporting ClearOS) is incorporated in New Zealand.” He is going to connect us with the ClearFoundation. He links to this post which says: “As our involvement with the Clarkconnect team grew tighter and tighter, we realized that to protect something that is fundamentally protected by copyright alone (as it should be) we needed to keep it safe and untainted. In our search we considered some great places like Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore and even the Principality of Hutt River. In the end we decided on New Zealand. Over and over this island nation has proven a rational understanding of innovation in software as something that can and should be copyrighted but not patented. Additionally, it grants freedoms to businesses better than nearly any other nation. So, we give a shout out today and cheer to New Zealand. Let those that would seek to implement software patents there join the ranks of those that have decided to back down. Long live New Zealand, home of ClearFoundation! Hip Hip Huzzah! And thank you NZOSS and NZCS for all your hard work.”
Well, yesterday we explained Microsoft’s lobbying for software patents as a FUD weapon against Linux and Android and based on this good NZ-based source Microsoft is angry and its executives are not even hiding it. Quoting the article at hand:
The Government may need to go back to the drawing board over the way software patents will be treated under its proposed Patents Bill, after guidelines drawn up by officials to safeguard hi-tech manufacturers were slated by legal experts.
Parliamentarians delighted the open-source software movement and troubled large corporates such as Microsoft last year by including a clause in the Patents Bill that says software is not a patentable invention.
Microsoft New Zealand legal counsel Waldo Kuipers hoped dissatisfaction with the separate guidelines, which are designed to accompany the legislation and address the specific issue of embedded software, would open the door to a fundamental rethink.
A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Simon Power said he had received advice from the Economic Development Ministry, but it was too early to say whether the Government would consider amending the Patents Bill, which is currently awaiting its second reading.
Critics of software patents have argued they have mainly been used to lay claim to rights over obvious ideas or to extort money, creating a nuisance and stifling innovation.
Intel too is named there by the BusinessDay.co.nz reporter, Tom Pullar-Strecker. He ‘forgets’ to mention who NZICT actually serves (it’s a lobbying group for the likes of Microsoft, pretending to stand up for "NZ" for extra credibility) and there is also the Institute of Patent Attorneys. No need to tell the expected bias there, right? None of these is interested in the interests of NZ but only in profit, usually for some billionaires abroad (lawyers too need them as clients).
“Do not listen to US-based multinationals, who are willing to lie for their own wallet.”If Mirosoft is dissatisfied, then it means that it is good for software freedom and for the freedom of the population in NZ. Do not listen to US-based multinationals, who are willing to lie for their own wallet. It’s their obligation to their mostly American shareholders. For example, Intel participating in this FUD and it should be disgraced for this. In another article from NZ (this time from IDG, which is based in the US), there is a complaint about the current NZ patent policy. It says: “Most submissions on the guidelines formulated by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) on patentability of software suggest the guidelines have not achieved the desired clarification of proposed legislation and may have served further to muddy the question of what software is or is not patentable.
“Section 15 (3A) of the Patents Bill – currently awaiting its second reading in Parliament – simply states “a computer program is not a patentable invention”. This clause was inserted by the Commerce Select Committee, on the strength of a number of submissions.”
“Show us the way, NZ, and prove to the world that even small nations can stand up to multi-trillion-dollar (aggregated market cap) coercion machines that grease up politicians and retaliate against critics.”Well, loopholes using the “embedded” or “device” trick, companies like Microsoft can probably get around the law (hacking it), just as they do in Europe already (no hacking “as such”), IDG seems to be missing this important point, but then again, it’s IDG, so don’t take it too seriously. It’s the Fox 'News' of IT.
All in all, the press in NZ usually gives a lesson to the US-based press, which hardly does enough (if anything) to oppose the bad laws that permit software patenting. The watchdog press is dead there, as we noted several days ago in relation to US coverage on software patents (too conformist, too obedient to existing law and afraid to challenge them). Show us the way, NZ, and prove to the world that even small nations can stand up to multi-trillion-dollar (aggregated market cap) coercion machines that grease up politicians and retaliate against critics. █
Summary: The SCOTUS on Mayo Collaborative Services vs. Prometheus Laboratories; The Chamber of Commerce on fake patent ‘reform’; a look at a patent troll, Scott Redmond; continued fight against patents inside standards, courtesy of Xiph.org and the FFII
According to this short update from the SCOTUS Blog (generally a reliable source of information), there is an important ruling in the pipeline, on which Dan Ballard (pro-patents person) comments as follows:
Supreme Court decided to hear another #patent case today. Issue is patentability after Bilski
We have summarised our posts about the Bilski case in our wiki. The case did not provide the basis for eliminating all software patents as we had hoped, but it did help on occasions, e.g. by eliminatingsome software patents, upon court rulings.
The Chamber of Commerce, a scrupulous lobby for big businesses (and for patents), is meanwhile promoting a fake patent reform that can make things worse. As one political site put it:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce came out in support of the bipartisan patent reform bill on Tuesday as opposition to one of the bill’s key provisions grows in the House.
The Chamber expressed public support for the America Invents Act for the first time in a letter to the House, arguing the bill would help drive economic growth and create jobs.
That’s a lie. Patents may help create jobs like patent lawyers, which are of no substantial value to economic growth. If anything, they depress it.This whole ‘reform’ is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” to quote an analysis we cited the other day when we also mentioned Microsoft's lobby regarding Nortel's patents (Apple reportedly wants these too). On the same day which is yesterday we also mentioned the lawsuit against Torrent software (algorithm or design as allegedly patented technology) and we happen to have found something out about the source of the lawsuit, Redmond. “Interesting Gizmodo piece on the guy apparently behind the BitTorrent patent troll, ” writes Len Sassaman who shares details about Scott Redmond and his scams. To quote: “The Greatest Scam in Tech? Scott Redmond would like us to clarify.Last week we posted an exposé of Peep Wireless. Despite repeated attempts, we initially couldn’t reach the company for comment, but founder Scott Redmond has since contacted us. He’s nonplussed. For transparency’s sake, we’d like to show you his objections.
“What follows is the Peep Wireless post, in its entirety — and then some. Mr. Redmond demanded that we remove the original story by 5pm today but instead, we are reposting it with his comments included — the @’s and bold red text were his idea. Read his grievances and judge for yourself whether we were too harsh.”
Patent trolls are ruthless sociopaths. Here we just see that again. The world’s biggest patent troll is located near Redmond, too (the place, not the person). Finally, on that same day we wrote about the Xiph.org complaint (I wrote all of these posts in Media City), on which Dr. Glyn Moody remarks in an excellent post:
This episode emphasises Xiph.org’s other important role, alongside writing great codecs: standing up to attempts to cow the free software world with vague threats of software patent Armageddon. Long may it continue to do so.
Free software is under a constant attack from software patents proponents and RAND proponents (there is major overlap between those two groups). In Europe, for example, the Commission has been working recently towards RAND as permissible for standards (meaning software patents through the back door). We have shown some documents confirming this, thanks to research from the FFII, which is now warning about today’s discussion. The head of the FFII wrote yesterday: “Software patents to be legalised in Europe with the Unitary patent, discussion tomorrow in EU parliament” (so let us keep watching). He also shows this page about ludicrous patents that demonstrate the corruption of the patent system as a whole. To those who write the policies it no longer matters what will benefit the customers (over 95% of the population, putting top managers, developers, and lawyers aside), it just matter what gets them re-elected, usually with funds from big business that adore patent monopolies, i.e. protectionism. More on that in our next post… █
Summary: The degradation of the entity once known as Novell following the Microsoft-assisted buyout (euthanasia) which left the patents in Microsoft’s coffers and the OpenSUSE volunteers rather aimless, disinterested even
TECHRIGHTS spent entire years covering Novell and upon the company’s demise we continue to track its last days (pre- and post-acquisition). In recent posts we noted that managers and PR people had vanished from Novell and the OpenSUSE community lacked the level of activity it once boasted. Over the past week we have observed more of the same trends and this post is a short summary of evidence.
“In recent posts we noted that managers and PR people had vanished from Novell and the OpenSUSE community lacked the level of activity it once boasted.”Novell in Poland (Novell w Polsce) is the only source of new Novell videos [1, 2] and the only PR blogger left (there used to be a handful) is pushing proprietary software (SUSE-washed though) while a Novell-oriented site emits a couple more [1, 2].
As in prior weeks, with the exception of weekly news (from Sascha Manns in his blog and elsewhere), it is hard to see much evidence of progress on the Free/open source side of things, namely OpenSUSE. SUSE bloggers move to other places and some resort to less activity due to new jobs. To quote this one new example:
Nevertheless, Yast has fallen behind on design. The program is powerful and versatile. But there could be some improvements made in organization and space-use customization.
There is still a lot of stuff from Greece in the Planet and the blog, e.g. this post. There is some support and funding from other companies — that which is able to keep some progress going. Google Summer of Code, as we noted before, helps fund some projects that are beneficial to OpenSUSE [1, 2]. For Google it is a good investment for PR reasons and also for advancement of the Free software commonwealth that Google’s largely proprietary empire is built upon. Google is mostly a ‘cloud’ (or Fog Computing) company and the hype around this buzzword does not escape OpenSUSE, either. But just riding the Wave [pung intended] won’t save it. Attachmate is not genuinely interested in helping Free software. █
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