05.22.09
Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 6:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
In the same vein, if Novell and Microsoft call it "Microsoft Moonlight", does it make Moonlight developers de facto Microsoft employees?
Summary: A look at Novell’s Microsoft-esque activities this week
IT cannot be emphasised strongly enough that Flash is not like Silverlight. These are two very different animals and Microsoft Moonlight is no better. Here is a good new article that goes through some of the key points:
Flash isn’t going open source, but it may already be more open than Moonlight
[...]
On top of that, it’s important to note that Moonlight isn’t completely open. Like Flash, Moonlight makes use of third-party codecs that are closed.
Want more good news? Microsoft only “covenants to not sue” over Moonlight applications that utilize it 1) as an in-browser plugin 2) on a personal computer and 3) aren’t licensed as GPLv3 or a “similar license.” The icing on the cake? That protection only applies to Novell and its subsidiaries – so your independent app wouldn’t count, unless Novell owns 50% of you.
Adobe, on the other hand, grants full patent use to anyone who builds anything with Flash. So while you can develop and sell whatever the heck you want using the technologies that power Flash and Adobe will post about it on their Twitter account, developing with Moonlight could result in nasty legal proceedings.
So which platform is really more “open?” Flash or Moonlight?
Looking at the news this week, watch just what else Novell is doing. Visual Studio plug-in.
Novell’s Mono team was on hand to demonstrate a Visual Studio plug-in for Mono code development. Applications are deployed and debugged in Mono by using a Linux virtual machine. The company also previewed Mono Moonlight 2.0, an open-source variation of Microsoft Silverlight 2.
Watch this new comment:
wow, just like iFolder from Novell. If Novell just lost something else to Ubuntu. Novell, stop acting like Micro$oft, please?
Also found a couple of days ago: Novell keeps obtaining software patents. The latest additions:
Methods and systems to fast fill media players , patent No. 7,536,474, invented by Jamshid Mahdavi of San Jose, Calif., assigned to Novell, Inc. of Provo.
Parallelizing multiple boot images with virtual machines , patent No. 7,536,541, invented by Scott A. Isaacson of Kamuela, Hawaii, assigned to Novell Inc. of Provo.
This hopefully sheds light on what kind of company Novell really is. Every single week it’s just like that. A lot of Novell’s revenue comes from Microsoft. █
“[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
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Posted in Australia, Finance, Microsoft at 5:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Give us whatever you got…”
Summary: Microsoft’s plan of elevating charities is far from an elevation now that times are rough
THE COST of lock-in is very high, but it may take a while for it to ‘kick in’ — so to speak — and actually take effect. The user is always at the mercy of the vendor which can change rules and prices while preventing access to program code and formats (specifications, if any). It is a hostage situation and a forever-ticking time bomb.
Microsoft’s investors are desperate for a renaissance now that Microsoft is not only stagnant but sees its income falling by staggering numbers.
What might Microsoft do?
Demand payment from those least able to pay.
Is this a wise strategy?
Judge by this new article:
Microsoft charity crackdown spurs boycott
Microsoft faces a backlash from thousands of aged care providers and charities that are set to dump its software to avoid some A$50 million in price hikes.
The Redmond giant is pressing ahead with new global software licensing agreements, some imposing a whopping 500 percent price increase, to stamp-out what it initially claimed were illegal uses of its discounted offerings by not-for-profit agencies.
This is not the first such story from Australia. There was a similar story last year, so these charities ought to drop Microsoft immediately and hopefully move to GNU/Linux.
How funny it must be that while Microsoft plays tough with tax-exempt charities, Microsoft itself wants huge tax breaks. We previously wrote about Microsoft's debt and tax evasion as well as the tendency to find cheaper labour, betray those promises it made to senator Grassley, and take advantage of Abramoff visas. Now there is this:
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) have seen their bottom lines bulge over the years by farming out work for cheaper compensation to overseas countries. Now, with the U.S. economy reeling, President Obama’s $190 billion tax proposal that ends incentives for American companies to create employment overseas while hoping to create more jobs in America won’t necessarily have the intended impact, according to economists, businesses and some Obama insiders, Bloomberg reports.
Can the money Microsoft paid Obama help the company reverse or mitigate this? Microsoft only cares about itself. █
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
–Albert Einstein
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Posted in Antitrust, Australia, Europe at 5:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft blocks Safari and Firefox at universities
Summary: Microsoft continues to play hardball and it evades justice in the European Web browsers case
WE are fortunate to have a leaked copy of the Live@Edu offer. It shows what motivates some academic institutions to fall into this trap. It’s pure greed. Now watch this from the news: [thanks to Terry Porter]
Sydney Uni students vent about Microsoft email system
University of Sydney students have taken to online forums to vent about the institution switching its email over to Microsoft’s Live@edu product earlier this month.
Microsoft released a statement today confirming the University had selected Live@edu as its default student email system.
“The University initially began looking at solutions as the old system offered limited email and online storage capabilities,” Microsoft said.
Representatives of the student body and “other key academic and administrative stakeholders” across the University reportedly piloted the new email system before committing to it.
But it appears not all students are happy with the change.
Several hit the Bored of Studies forum and individual blogs to vent frustration, particularly at the supposed lack of features available to users of non-Microsoft browsers.
“Most of the settings pages for the e-mail service are completely unavailable in Firefox [or] Safari,” an engineering student posted on the rantingfrog blog.
It’s time for Microsoft to stop playing these games. It has become almost the rule rather than the exception.
In in other news, regarding Europe’s investigation into crimes related to Internet Explorer, how about this?
Microsoft cancels oral hearing in EC browser-bundling case
[...]
So what happens now? Will the European Commission issue accelerate its final ruling — which more than a few observers are expecting will be in favor of Opera and possibly involve a hefty fine plus un-bundling remedies, based on the wording of the EC’s preliminary findings in the matter — with no further input?
Oiaohm, who points to this page from Microsoft’s lobbying Web site, asks: “Why should a court case be allowed to work as advertisement? And why should a court case be run to the time line of the defendant?”
Does Microsoft want to ship an inherently anti-competitive operating system before the regulators get a chance to correct this? █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 4:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Companies to watch out for and their relationship with Novell and Microsoft
THIS IS A LIST OF NEWS AND OBSERVATIONS about companies which serve Microsoft. They all have something in common. They have roots in Microsoft.
Likewise
Likewise is close to Microsoft and it is also made up from its employees. According to the following press release (also here, here, and here), the ongoing relationship with Novell tightens a bit.
Likewise announced today that its Likewise Enterprise offering will ship as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 from Novell.
There is of course a journal like CIOL to just present the press release and pretend it was an original article. Kristin Shoemaker, who has an indirect relationship with Novell, wrote about that too.
This is in no small part why Likewise’s software, geared to simplify managing and securing mixed networks using Active Directory services, is now being offered to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 users. The Enterprise version of Likewise’s software will be integrated with the SUSE Desktop and available through SUSE 11 repositories.
John Fontana has an article about this in a few IDG domain, all going under the headline “Novell’s SLED 11 to ship with Active Directory gateway technology.” They are essentially paying Microsoft for this, but the payments go to Bellevue-based former Microsoft employees. This helps Microsoft control the price of GNU/Linux (namely elevate the cost and thus make it less attractive ). Why can’t they just use open standards?
Xenocode
Xenocode is a company filled with (former) Microsoft employees and since Microsoft is an open source xenophobe, this by no means helps. In its latest press release, Xenocode mentions its relationship with Novell that may involve software patents (or just licensing of proprietary code).
Xenocode also supports delivery of applications to enterprise desktops via Active Directory, LANDesk Management Suite, and BMC Configuration Management. Xenocode technology has been licensed by Novell and is available as part of Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization.
Black Duck
A couple of days ago we wrote about Black Duck, a company created by a Microsoft guy to produce proprietary software that capitalises on free/open source software. Its latest move with Microsoft might have it characterised as somewhat of a “bridge opener” — that is — an entity immersing itself in the open source world and then inviting Microsoft to become part of it in its embrace, extend and extinguish fashion. Novell is like that too. But here is another interesting observation.
Microsoft employees are now writing in the Seattle P-I (not just ghostwriting) and here is one Microsoft employee publishing to say that “CodePlex Okayed by Duck.”
As Dana Blankenhorn puts it, “Black Duck calls Microsoft open source mainstream.” In addition he points out:
Tony Rahman, a Microsoft program manager writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reader blog, says “each quarter it seems more leaders and their teams are onboard with the new attitude of cooperation, openness, and transparency.”
Believe him? Or is this post going to ignite yet-another Microsoft flame war?
This is just business as usual to Microsoft.
3CX
There is a new press release proudly going under the headline “Why a Windows based PBX trumps a Linux based appliance or proprietary PBX.”
Is it a study?
Is this a fact?
No, it’s just a press release from a Microsoft Gold-certified partner issuing whitepapers that are hostile to GNU/Linux. They sell Windows of course. Follow the money. It usually boils down to someone’s interests because objective studies don’t write themselves. █
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Posted in IRC Logs at 3:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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05.21.09
Posted in News Roundup at 10:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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What would you do with a $40 Linux computer the size of a three-prong plug adapter?
Marvell Technology Group is counting on an army of computer engineers and hackers to answer that question. It has created a “plug computer.” It’s a tiny plastic box that you plug into an electric outlet. There’s no display. But there is an Ethernet jack to connect to a home network and a USB socket for attaching a hard drive, camera or other device. Inside is a 1.2 gigahertz Marvell chip, called an application processor, running a version of the Linux operating system.
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Few hardware vendors have not yet launched their own mini laptop (or, “netbook”). Most brands these days produce their own version of the same hardware, with Intel’s i386-compatible Atom cpu’s and Windows XP installed on a spinning hard drive or sometimes still a solid state disk. Some Linux models are still sold by some vendors, among whom Asus, which more or less started selling in this OLPC-inspired genre of laptops.
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This week: Fab reviews the Shure SM58+X2u bundle, the new Linux.com, Wolfram Alpha, Intel gets slapped by the EU, the Ubuntu One controversy and a lot more.
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Meet Will. Will is a very versatile thing. You know what they all say “where there is a Will there is a way.” Will is so powerful that previously unopened doors of opportunity are magically opened for you. Will will carry you through adversity and have you emerge stronger than ever before. All of the most successful people I know of, read or heard about all have Will on their side. If we are sick or injured Will gives us the ability to live. It is Will which drives the Human race forward. It is Will which allowed the recent Hubble huggings. It is Will which made possible the small step for man into a giant leap for mankind.
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Linux has many advantages over other operating systems as people who actually like to use their computers can attest.
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Security Enhanced Linux was originally developed for The National Security Agency and is now merged with the 2.6 kernel to provide some additional security measures to the Linux operating system. Enabling SELinux is probably one of the most important things you can do if you care about creating a ridiculously secure operating system.
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If you had been wondering what would the future of computers be, the answer seems to lie in their sizes. The future PCs would be smaller, more economical and of course very efficient. With that in mind, CompuLab’s Fit PS2 is already being touted as the world’s smallest PC.
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Desktop
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MyLinuxSupport Inc., signs first reseller agreements with the Bordeaux Software Group and Wine Reviews to resell pre-paid open source support cards. The pre-paid support cards will help reduce costs, complexity and improve overall productivity for businesses and individuals. With a dedicated 24/7 support channel now available business can reduce their total cost of ownership and better protect current and future investments that are in place.
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Linux desktops are easier to implement than IT staff expected if they targeted the right groups of users, a study from Freeform Dynamics has found.
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Freeform Dynamics Ltd, and IBM have just released a business report titled Linux on the Desktop Lessons from mainstream business adoption.
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IBM put out a study datelined one minute past midnight this Thursday morning commenting on the fact that outside of netbooks, the recession has largely put the kibosh on PC growth. There is according to IBM, however, an area of PC investment that actually saves money for a company: the Linux desktop.
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Kernel Space
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The Linux Foundation has announced the conference schedule for LinuxCon 2009. LinuxCon, originally announced in October of last year, will take place in Portland, Oregon from the 21st to the 23rd of September. Modelled after the Linux Plumbers Conference, the event will be held annually and is aimed at Linux developers and users, as well as hardware and software suppliers.
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When people start conversations about Portland, Oregon, being a hub of open source, the conversation inevitably turns to one particular topic “Well, you know, Linus Torvalds lives in Portland.”
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The Linux kernel will soon include a driver for Creative’s X-Fi sound cards. After a long pause, the kernel development team are once again debating merging TuxOnIce.
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Applications
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Ultra X Linux V1.3 Media Edition will be released May 22 2009, we are uploading to the web as we speak it may be up today; go to http://ultraxlinux.org to check.
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My average customer wants to do a few key things with their system and not much else – download music, chat, send email, store digital photos, and play some casual games. Many of their preferred Windows programs are also available for Linux.
Limewire – Just because you’re switching operating systems doesn’t mean you have to give up downloading music. Limewire is built on Java and is available for Linux.
Picasa – Most of us have digital cameras by now, and many of us have hundreds (if not thousands) of digital photos. You may have grown to love Picasa on Windows, but you won’t have to give it up if you switch.
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Games
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While the Unigine game engine may not be as widely known or used as the Unreal or id Tech engines, its capabilities and features have been increasing at an incredible rate. Last year there were two tech demos released by Unigine Corp to demonstrate the capabilities of their proprietary engine — both of which were very impressive — but since then their software stack has picked up a slew of new features like improved physics and multiplayer support. This year they are slated to release a new in-house game / tech demo that will be even more impressive and will go head-to-head with the latest high-end commercial game engines. Through all of their game engine development work, they continue to support Linux gaming, so we recently carried out an interview with them to learn more about their current and future work.
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If you haven’t already seen the first part of our 100 open source gems, read it now – and here’s the next 50 great apps!
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Desktop Environments
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KDE and GNOME are the mainstream desktop environments for GNU/Linux. There are lightweight options that use fewer resources, such as Xfce or Fluxbox, but new users are more likely to encounter KDE or GNOME, which most closely follow the familiar desktop metaphors common to Windows or Mac.
The historic challenge for the KDE and GNOME developers has been to reproduce the functionality available to users of other operating systems, and a bit more besides. But in recent times the developers have begun to look towards a future that might take the desktop further beyond the accepted conventions.
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KDE
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I found that both versions of KDE did swap, to a certain extent, on both PCLinuxOS (KDE 3.5.10) and sidux (KDE 4.2.2), but the memory management was excellent on each system, not too aggressive, nor too inactive, allowing swap where needed, keeping at least a modest amount of free memory at all times, and trimming swap usage when memory requirements were relieved. The result was acceptable performance, even on a system that is nearly a decade old, and contains a Pentium 3 processor with about a 1 GHz CPU and 256 MB of memory.
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It will be interesting to see whether KDE keeps heading in the right direction, or they end up dropping the ball and screwing it up. It’s off to a very promising start, and I could foresee KDE becoming the default X desktop if they continue in their present direction.
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I wrote my this post last Sunday, but completely forgot to actually publish it. In any case, I’ve been running x86-64 Arch on an ext4 partition with KDE 4.2.3 since. It has been interesting, to say the least.
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GNOME
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One thing we have learned from KDE4 is that its not a good idea to make drastic change to a desktop environment that the users have been used to for a long time. Hopefully the Gnome developers will keep that in mind as they work on Gnome 3.0 release for next year. Gnome is known for making subtle incremental changes instead of doing major overhaul, but the changes they have planned for Gnome 3 is much bigger than we have come to expect from Gnome.
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This is the second update to GNOME 2.26. It contains many fixes for important bugs that directly affect our users, documentation updates and also a large number of updated translations. Many thanks to all the contributors who worked hard on delivering those changes in time. We hope it will help people feel better in their daily use of computers!
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First of all we would like to thank the 1000+ people that took the survey in the margin of one week and thus contributed for a better gnome. I (Anton) would like to thanks the others from Gnome Usability team too about their response and advices regarding the questions asked. I have tried to present the results as better as possible by using Open Source tools and the online services of Google Docs. You can view a summary for each question as well as some thoughts at the end of the Summary Data Chapter.
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Writing for power users, I assume that you have a good working knowledge of Windows and computers in general, but little or no experience with Linux. Therefore, this article will not tell you to compile anything from source code, and no sentence begins with “bring up the terminal” or any other UNIX techno-babble. Common Linux pitfalls like hard drive partitioning, installing software, and setup of essential plug-ins will be addressed entirely by using the graphical user interface (GUI).
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The other day my partner left the market shopping list at home. I took a few minutes off from cleaning the house to try SMSing it to her using Skype, rather than using the small keyboard on my mobile. However I found that the latest Linux Skype client, version 2.0.0.72, does not include SMS functionality (amongst quite a few other features that Windows users have). Frustrated with Skype’s treating Linux users like second-rate citizens, I resolved to see what alternatives there are to Skype. I started with Ekiga, which is pre-installed on Ubuntu. Read on to find out how I went getting rid of Skype and its limitations.
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By having a Dell-specific repository for software updates, they’re making themselves a one-stop shop for all things Ubuntu on their hardware. The folks who want to explore the wealth of additional free software available to Ubuntu users can add additional repositories, but the average user just looking for a reliable, supported system should be extremely well served by Dell’s repository, and the work they do to make the packages secure and stable.
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The very fact that Canonical supports Ubuntu brings credibility towards Ubuntu. Ubuntu One will also likely be a *great* vehicle of publicity toward Ubuntu. Have you noticed Windows Live and Mobile Me already exist ? Which other alternative has Ubuntu to offer ? (don’t name DropBox, that’s a whole different thing with a different purpouse).
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Today I also stumbled across the great artwork by Adrien Pilleboue titled meditating koala.
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gNewSense Version 2.2 (pronounced “guh-new-sense”) Code name DeltaH – Origin Ireland, started by and continues to be maintained by bbrazil and ompaul. A live Distribution. Gnome: 2.22.3 Build Date 2008.07.31 – Debian 5.0 Lenny is 2.22.3 Build Date 2008.09.18. gNewSense is a pure 100% Free Software Ubuntu base GNU/Linux sponsored by the Free Software Foundation and it does not contain any proprietary licence code; therefore it is completely legally distributable. gNewSense is a great Operating System.
[...]
Conclusion – almost everything worked right of the disk. Using most of the applications contained in this release worked without any problems. Memory sticks were accessed quickly, I burned an *.iso to disk and listen to a Music CD. I like the idea of gNewSense free from non-free software – I joined the Free Software Foundation. Is it newbie ready, well I’m a new Linux user and I got it up and running – easy as abc’s.
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“We believe Linux is the right OS for the entire architecture,” McHugh said
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Embedded Alley has upgraded its “Development System for Linux” with tools to create software Bills of Materials, track open source components, trace binary sources, and help OEMs comply with open source license obligations. The new platform also adds support for the Freescale i.MX31 PDK (pictured).
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Open source hacker community GizmoForYou is shipping a Linux hardware/software kit for building a modular touchcreen smartphone. Based on the OMAP35x-based Gumstix Overo Earth single-board computer (SBC), the Flow phone offers modules including GPS, 3.5G cellular, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a camera, says the group.
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Phones
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Acer said it would be releasing this year a smartphone that’s powered by the Google-backed Android operating system.
The PC maker jumped in the smartphone market this year with its Tempo line of devices. The company is looking to capture up to 5% of the growing smartphone market within five years by offering handsets that are free with contract or have a low price.
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Since it runs the Android operating system, you’ll get the usual features including Google Maps (complete with Street View’s compass mode), the application marketplace, and other Google services such as Talk, Gmail, Calendar and YouTube.
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In April the Openmoko Project announced that after only ten months it was discontinuing production of the Neo FreeRunner phone and after drastic staff reductions would be moving forward with a ‘Plan B’ product. It seems Plan B has now been revealed as Openmoko is inviting the developer community to not only tinker with the software and the casing design of the open smartphone, but it’s also now releasing the hardware design of the FreeRunner (GTA02) for anyone to join in, under the codename gta02-core. The aim is to develop a modified and completely open phone hardware for the FreeRunner within the next six to twelve months.
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So where is the massive diversity in mobile platforms? Right now, there is Android in smartphones, LiMo targeting smartphones, Maemo in personal internet tablets and Moblin on netbooks. And except for Android, they are all leveraging the work being done by projects like GNOME, rather than re-inventing the wheel. This is not fragmentation, it is adaptability. It is the basic system being tailored to very specific use-cases by groups who decide to use an existing code base rather than starting from scratch. It is, in a word, what rocks about Linux and free software in general.
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Sub-notebooks
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Intel has fine-tuned Linux for Atom-based netbooks with a simple user interface and improved power-saving features
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I’m sure some will dismiss Mr. Lim’s projections as self-serving since Linpus is a Linux distributor heavily invested in the netbook market. It turns out Mr. Lim isn’t alone in seeing Linux equal or even overtake Windows on netbooks. ABI Research sees it happening but they see it taking a bit longer than a year. They see Linux regaining dominance on netbooks by 2012. ABI cites the arrival of low-end ARM-based netbooks as part of the reason for a Linux resurgence. They also cite the arrival of Linux distributions designed for mobile devices, particularly Android and Moblin. Windows doesn’t run on ARM processor based systems.
While ARM has been getting lots of notice in the tech press a Spanish company called iUnika announced the first netbook with a MIPS processor (pictured). Linux already runs on MIPS processors. The support dates back to MIPS-powered SGI workstations running Linux back in the ’90s. Windows, on the other hand, doesn’t run on MIPS powered systems.
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openbiForgive The VAR Guy if he sounds like Yogi Berra today, but our resident blogger has deja vu all over again. The reason: The folks at OpenBI, a systems integrator in Chicago, have scored yet another win promoting Pentaho’s open source business intelligence software to customers. This is becoming a familiar story for OpenBI and Pentaho’s channel. Here’s the scoop.
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“SAP is a big fan and supporter of open source,” Sikka said.
Now Sikka did not detail any specific open source project or efforts that SAP may be involved in, but it’s still interesting to note how supportive his comment are of open source.
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Meanwhile, Digium (the upstart company known for Asterisk) is building an online community for ISVs and partners that want to write unified communication applications.
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Surveyor makes open source robot controllers that have quite a fan following among do-it-yourself drone enthusiasts. The company’s core product is the SRV-1, a programmable mobile robot controller that is open source,wireless and video enabled.
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We’re often asked why there are so few ECM open source options, when at the same time the Web CMS marketplace supports so many open source alternatives? In the Web CMS world, there are easily 20+ open source CMS options. We cover 10 of the most significant in our Web Content Management research. Conversely, there are really only 4 ECM options globally available today. For the record those are Nuxeo, KnowledgeTree, Alfresco, and InfoGrid.
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ZooLoo.com, a soon-to-launch online environment, announced today its support of PostgreSQL, a powerful, open source object-relational database system.
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The nominations for the first ever Kenya Open Source awards, to be held on the 27th May 2009, has been declared open.
The awards recognise information and communication industry developers, system administrators and end users who have made notable contribution to Open Source technological advancement.
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With open source platforms, developers can access technology and community feedback free of charge. “I’d say open source is more economical for all types of development,” says Caleb Houser, a software specialist professionally, as well as a student at Spokane Community College. Open source saves money that could be going for other things, he adds.
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This is Michael Tiemann, I am President of the Open Source Initiative and Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat.
The IT industry is headed for its own crisis, with plenty of red flags visible if you bother to look, as well as a clear and simple plan to avert the hard landing. But, in an industry famously long on ego and short on humility, can we really hope for a change before these CEOs destroy their companies and the assets of their customers?
[...]
The greatest objection raised by software industry participants about Open Source software is that if users are free to read, modify, and share software, then it’s not possible to extract monopoly rents. Based on what we have seen from the monopoly these past 10 years, I’m not really sure that is such a problem.
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In the open source era, do vendor developer programs matter as much as they once did?
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What all this should tell people in the health IT sector, whether proprietary or open source, is that the game is afoot, and that negotiations on how open source and proprietary programs will interact in a new health IT infrastructure are underway.
The lobbying has begun in earnest.
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OpenOffice is already a complete desktop office suite that is at par in terms of features with the proprietary Microsoft Office. However, its functionality can still be improved by utilizing useful extensions that are easily available.
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Drupal is a Webware 100 winner for the third year in a row. This year Drupal was in the Social & Publishing category with well known services including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.com. Drupal was one of 10 winners in the category.
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Mozilla
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In this issue…
* New Labs Design Challenge!
* Personas update released
* Fennec Alpha 1 for Windows Mobile
* SUMO: Part of Mozilla’s periscope
* Subscribe to the SUMO newsletter!
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Note: this is a draft icon rendering for Firefox 3.5, subsequent iterations will be posted every 24 hours or so. Also note that while these drafts appear with numbers and in a chronological order, each draft experiments with a variety of different ideas as we try things out to see what they look like. It’s better not to think of these as a formal sequence, but rather a series of experimentations to explore the overall design space.
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Business
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But the more dramatic shift for Wall Street right now is that it is considering open-source alternatives for fundamental, industry-specific applications, applications like Marketcetera’s open-source trading platform, which I’ve called “a lifeline to the hedge fund industry” because it enables the industry to become more efficient and more productive. REvolution Computing, Esper, and others are also benefiting from this shift.
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Marketcetera, a provider of open source platforms for automated trading, has released an update of its automated trading platform. The open-source software offers four new features.
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FSF/GNU
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We just announced that we’ve settled the lawsuit we filed against Cisco a few months ago. (See this previous blog post for more information about that.) The press release explains the terms we’ve agreed to, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about what people can draw from this.
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Government
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Why isn’t our government considering doing something similar? It is about to sign another deal with Microsoft locking the government in to using Microsoft software for another 3 years. This deal is called “G2009″. The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) has called for an immediate halt to the G2009 process. “We rush to criticise banks for profit-taking, but here we are negotiating for marginal cost savings from one of the government’s biggest IT suppliers while they take massive profits from the taxpayer,” says NZOSS President Don Christie.
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But, so far as I am aware no one actually is throwing money around. Which is disappointing, given that the Australian government donates $100 million a year to the copyright lobby and even more to the closed source lobby.
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In order to understand the government’s interest in open source software, one must understand the government acquisition process.
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Licensing
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The Wikimedia Foundation, after a community vote and approval by the Board of Trustees, announced that Wikipedia will primarily be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA). The license is likely to be applied to the sites sometime during the next month. The decision came after the results of a community wide vote on the proposed the licensing change were released: 88% of voters with an opinion were for the change. The currently used license, GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), will not be removed, just made secondary.
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Openness
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As a result of my new enthusiasm to ‘get out more’ I found myself listening to a detailed and balanced ‘non-advocacy’ presentation from a respected OSS Watch staffer.
He explained patiently how open source licencing worked and how it differed from proprietary licences. But what he did say whilst looking for an everyday resonance to make his points accessible to a non-geek audience, and which really sharpened every-one’s attention, was that proprietary software was built on secret code whereas open source software had transparent code.
Proprietary software IS composed of secret code. You can’t read it, you don’t know what it does (other than what you can see it do), you don’t know how it does it and you can’t change it.
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At some point over the last 10 years, copyright became a sexy topic. An issue that was once purely the domain of lawyers, politicians and record industry executives has seeped into the consciousness of everyday Canadians — people who feel that something just isn’t quite right about the way copyright works in this country.
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Movie and music lawyers in Sweden have appealed The Pirate Bay verdict, even though they won the case. More money (and a new legal charge) are behind the appeal. Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay claims that the new judge, the one who decided whether the first judge was biased, may be biased himself.
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A new team of lawyers representing accused music uploader Jammie Thomas said Wednesday they would defeat the Recording Industry Association of America on its own turf. Stay tuned for the upcoming do-over of the nation’s only music file sharing case to go to a jury.
Steve Weber, creator of the phrase “anti-rival goods” 18 (2005)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 10:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The BBC wants to hijack loads of Windows PCs (again) while hiding their inherent vulnerability from the British public
Going a couple of months back, the BBC got slammed for breaking the law and paying botmasters in order to create entertainment (a television show) in which not a word was truly or properly said about Microsoft Windows being a culprit. We wrote about this in:
The BBC seems not to have learned its lessons about recruiting malicious people who can spam the Internet and take down Web sites. It did, however, learn something about asking for permission before hijacking innocent people’s computers.
The BBC has followed its recent controversial botnet demonstration with a new filmed demo of how a Trojan attack works – except this time it made sure to ask nicely.
Looking at this morning’s news at the BBC, there is this article about malware, but Windows and Microsoft are not mentioned even once! This is part of a disturbing pattern which shows that the BBC is not willing to educate people. Microsoft is the BBC’s technical partner and it shows. For some background see:
The latest from the BBC:
The struggle between computer security firms and hi-tech criminals has often been likened to an arms race.
Does it affect GNU/Linux? How about Apple Macs? Are they merely victims of spam and DDoS attacks that arrive from Windows botnets? The article says not a word about operating systems. To the BBC, it’s as though they don’t exist and Windows is just synonymous with (and embedded into) a computer.
In other security news, it is turning into chaos in China, but they fail to realise that criminalisation does not result in prevention.
A year ago, when a Time Magazine reporter told Tan Dailin that he’d been identified as someone who may have hacked the Pentagon, he gasped and asked, “Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest me?”
The answer, it turns out, was, “No, the Chinese government will.”
Dailin, better known in Chinese hacker circles as Withered Rose, was reportedly picked up last month in Chengdu, China, by local authorities. He is now facing seven years in prison under a new Chinese cybercrime law that was passed in late February.
Prevention would come from changes in infrastructure, not law and enforcement.
Writing in relation to the economic stimulus, one reader tells us that Conficker alone cost 9.1 billion dollars in damage and still growing. From today’s news:
Conficker still infecting 50,000 PCs per day
The Conficker worm is still infecting systems at a brisk rate and continues to snag computers in Fortune 1000 companies, according to security researchers.
“Even Microsoft still has infections,” he claims, “which puts a bullet in the myth that the company’s products can be secured if one “knows enough”. The number of Microsoft Office users is reckoned [PDF], rightly or wrongly, to be about 500 million. We can speculate that that’s slightly greater than the number of Microsoft Windows desktop users. So the damage comes out to…”
Your guesstimate. █
More on Conficker:
- Microsoft’s Blame-Shifting Strategy Precedes More Trouble
- Leave Microsoft Alone
- Never Blame Microsoft, Blame Users and Exploits
- Botnets and Bounties Versus Real Security
- Is Windows to Blame for Cracking of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)?
- Windows Problems Take Down Airplanes, JFK Airport, Houston Municipal Courts
- Turkey, France, United Stated Under Attack by Microsoft Windows Insecurities
- Microsoft Adopts Malware Techniques to Advance .NET
- Windows Botnets Go Out of Control, Obama Web Site Delivers Windows Malware
- One Windows Worm, One Week, and Possibly 250,000,000+ New Windows Zombies
- Death by Microsoft Windows
- UNIX/Linux Offer More Security Than Windows: Evidence
- US Army Becomes Zombies Army; London Hospitals Still Ill (Windows Viruses)
- Eye on Microsoft: Another Messy Week for Security
- Why Conficker is a Blessing to GNU/Linux
- New Casualties of Microsoft Windows?
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell at 9:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Smear campaigns from Novell employees
Employees of Novell have not been posting comments from their PCs at work ever since we publicly showed that they used to do this. It does not, however, prevent them from doing this in other Web sites where there is less supervision or control. Groklaw famously argued that SCO preferred Slashdot (as opposed to Groklaw) because SCO was able to send its spinners to Slashdot without getting caught (and potentially exposed) by Pamela Jones and Mathfox.
Apart from personal abuse, of which there is plenty at the moment, there is also intimidation and hate (Web sites got flooded with slander and smears about me around the time of those DDoS attacks). In addition, as we know that Novell.com IP addresses are leaving anonymous comments not only in this Web site but in other Web sites too, it was interesting to find the following in Digg just two days ago. The managing editor of LinuxToday, for example, wrote:
I’ve seen a number of troll campaigns against Roy on my site. Mostly one or two people posting multiple comments from the same IP address and using different names on each comment (Like duh, people! Who do you think you’re fooling?), sometimes even from Novell.com addresses. (Like duh again, sheesh!) It’s rare when any of them attempt any kind of factual rebuttal using their real names, or at least disclosing their Novell affiliations. Love Roy or hate him, stooping to these tactics doesn’t do much for their credibility.
ps- I haven’t seen anything that even hints that Novell management have anything to do with the trolling or other attacks, and I think that is the least likely explanation. There are plenty of thin-skinned fanbois.
It is really pathetic when they go personal. They should counter the points, not the person. Additionally, disclosure would only be fair if they comment as Novell employees. Companies are, after all, just embodiments of their employees.
Microsoft is doing similar things and then there is the verge of AstroTurfing. Days ago I received this message: “Microsoft XBox 360 (XBox360Free) is now following your updates on Twitter.” We have already written a lot about Microsoft’s Twitter AstroTurf [1, 2, 3, 4]. Perhaps tweeting about something that says “Microsoft” just triggers Microsoft bot accounts that want attention from people who might co-follow. And maybe this one example is not directly affiliated with Microsoft, but other examples are confirmed. █
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