Summary: An old position paper from Sun Microsystems helps shows a certain resistance to patents such as those which Oracle uses against Android

GROKLAW has some superb coverage of the Oracle vs. Google case, so as the trial kicks into full gear we mostly refrain from covering it. A lot of bloggers use Groklaw as a source while providing summaries.

One interesting post from Groklaw shows Sun’s position on software patents.

“I can’t find it on Oracle’s website any more,” writes Pamela Jones, “but thanks to Internet Archive, we can find Sun Microsystems writing about software patents in 2006 and explaining its position. This was back when the European Union was for a while considering adopting software patents. You will not believe what Sun’s position was. It’s definitely relevant to the Oracle v. Google litigation.

“Sun’s position paper was titled, “Software Patents: A European Union (EU) Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions must not Jeopardize Interoperability.” The title says it all, but I’m going to show the entire statement to you in all its glory, so Oracle can’t pretend, as it tried unsuccessfully to do with the Jonathan Schwartz corporate blog, that it wasn’t an official company statement. Sun strongly urged that Europe, if it adopted the Directive, “allow for the creation of products which can interoperate with the protected products to safeguard competition in the sector and to provide greater choice and lower costs for consumers.”

“Imagine that. Sun said publicly that interoperability was more important than IP rights, even patents, because it led to competition and hence greater choice and lower costs for consumers.”

Can this be used to weaken Oracle’s case? We shall see. █

Summary: Microsoft continues to discriminate against rival platforms, office suites, and the monopolist prefers to withhold information required to make technology work across platforms

A WEEK and a half ago we debunked Microsoft's "interoperability" claims, only shortly afterwards to discover that Microsoft’s Jean Paoli carries on with the same talking points. For Microsoft to claim respect for interoperability would be a good stand-up comedy show. Here we have a company which is buying another company that worked with GNU/Linux and demonstrated its software on GNU/Linux; then, Microsoft made it Windows-only. We’re talking about Photosynth here.

Microsoft has a habit of talking other UNIX/Linux-based products and making them Windows-only. Where is the interoperability? Going back to Photosynth, consider this new “sponsored by Microsoft” project which claims to be the world’s largest digital photograph. It’s Silver Lie-only. Wonderful, right? Try this.

Truth be told, Microsoft continues to deliberately decrease interoperability. Even Microsoft’s friends at the Burton Group [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24] (now part of Gartner) admit this:

Microsoft is essentially bolting Office to SharePoint to prevent customers from moving to other office products, Creese said.

That’s nice, isn’t it? Paoli, whom we named for his role in the OOXML corruptions circus, has just received belated coverage from the Microsoft booster at The Register. It says:

While open sourcers, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and others lined up to establish the Open Document Format (ODF) as an official standard, Microsoft predictably went its own way.

Rather than open Office to ODF, Microsoft instead proposed Office Open XML (OOXML) in a standards battle that saw accusations flying that Microsoft had loaded the local standards voting processes to force through OOXML so it wouldn’t have to fully open up.

Then there were the real-world battles, as government bodies began to mandate they’d only accept documents using ODF. Things came to a head in the cradle of the American revolution, Massachusetts, which declared for ODF but then also accepted OOXML following intense political lobbying by Microsoft, while the IT exec who’d made the call for ODF resigned his post.

The sour grapes of ODF ratification, followed by the bitter pills of local politics, left people feeling Microsoft had deliberately fragmented data openness to keep a grip through Office.

Paoli was once one of Microsoft’s XML architects who designed the XML capabilities of Office 2003, the first version of Office to implement OOXML. Today he leads a team of around 80 individuals who work with other Microsoft product groups on interoperability from strategy to coding.

What lessons did Microsoft lean from OOXML that it can apply to pushing data portability in the cloud?

“I think collaboration is important in general and communication,” Paoli said

“If MS’s lesson from the OOXML debacle is the need to communicate better then they haven’t really learned,” responded IBM’s Rob Weir. Yes, this is not the first time that Microsoft blames poor communication for blunders. Novell said so too, regarding its 2006 deal with Microsoft. It goes along the lines of, “there is nothing wrong with what we did, people just didn’t understand it.” That’s an insult to people’s intelligence, but the target audience might actually buy it because it’s insufficiently informed. █

–Microsoft's chief evangelist

Summary: A close look at Microsoft-initiated ‘infiltration’ into a Linux users group (CLUG) and analysis of ZDNet and IDG reports where Microsoft’s “open source” party line is routinely promoted

ONCE IN a while Microsoft insists on making it seem like it’s an “Open Source” (or open source-friendly) company and it tries to push/impose itself upon those who obviously dislike Microsoft, for justifiable reasons. One of Microsoft’s arrogant people from South Africa seems to have gotten marching orders to come to “Linux people” and these people made the mistake of letting him come (probably not inviting him). This is the type of thing Microsoft calls “infiltrate”. It is trying to put people off or making them look bad (intolerant). They target particular events such as Mac and GNU/Linux conferences, shoving/injecting themselves in and inviting themselves to become part of events where they are obviously unwanted. Sam Ramji did this in some US LUGs that turned him away and the following guy is speaking to a Linux group in South Africa for about an hour and a half. We’ll refer to him as “the speaker” rather than name him, which would make it too personal.

We decided to watch this and rebut his nonsense machine. There is so much nonsense there, so we pick just a few points and remark on them. This clip is from last year and it’s titled “Microsoft: Interoperability and Open Source”. Here it is as Ogg:

As one can see almost immediately (but more so towards the later parts), here we have a pretentious speaker from Microsoft, who insists he knows better than everyone else in the room, yet avoids hard questions, or simply lies. First he talks about “interoperability”, mixing this old notion with “intellectual property” and trying to suck up to “open source” developers, luring them to “write into Microsoft applications”. What we put in quotes by the way are actual quotes from the talk. We have no complete transcript.

Soon after the beginning he names Linux patent extortion as “collaborations” (euphemism) and uses the term “open engagement” — a PR term routinely used for either AstroTurfing or “evangelising”. It soon turns out that they are also trying to recruit. The speaker starts talking about a vacancy and invites them to Microsoft online forums. Later on he starts lying about standards and pretending that Microsoft adheres to rather than fights standards (like ODF). Don’t worry, he’ll be challenged over these claims later on (in the questions session), but he’ll keep trying to escape tough questions from the audience by saying things like, “I wasn’t involved in the decision.”

“The speaker starts talking about a vacancy and invites them to Microsoft online forums.”The speaker describes the whole OOXML scam (and fight against ODF) as a good thing which he wants credit for. What a nerve. Rather than apologise he wants credit. He also doesn’t say that Microsoft won’t support ODF properly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] — an issue that will only come later from the audience. He hardly ever addresses the questions, just dodges them and tries using poor humour to do so.

“I really can’t answer the question,” he says on quite a few occasions, especially when the questions help expose the unethical/criminal nature of his employer. He gets asked about Microsoft’s deviation from standards, for example, or even about “vendor deals” (like Novell’s). The speaker goes something like, “I don’t know what…”

These exclusive patent deals and secrecy helped show that the guy is talking nonsense, but he doesn’t seem to care. When asked about it he gives no answer.

Microsoft clearly makes an attempt to control Free software, under Windows. The speaker does not deny it. The issue of Mono soon comes up and he starts defending the project by talking about “good understanding” and how “the community drives this project” although “we don’t have any interest,” he argues. Well, they co-develop it now. Soon after that part, the issue of Moonlight is raised and the speaker says: “we made specification available” and it’s “up to the community” to implement it. He doesn’t seem to mention Microsoft’s active role (with Novell) to push Moonlight. He praises Miguel (de Icaza, who is now a Microsoft MVP) and when asked critically about it by the audience (which dislikes Mono and Moonlight) he just says things like “I couldn’t answer that question” and something along the lines of “we just make specifications available”; “if anything, Microsoft is actually supporting development of these,” he says. Well, duh. It helps Microsoft and harms GNU/Linux. He just can’t answer questions about the limitations imposed by Microsoft, especially in terms of licensing. Very unsatisfactory.

“The speaker just escapes the hard subjects and uses diversion tactics.”Then he proceeds to pretending Microsoft helped Samba. That’s not the case; They were forced to by the EU Commission, but he carries on pretending that they help (after about a decade in court). Then he gets asked about the corruption caused by Microsoft at ISO (although not in these words). South Africa formally complained about this and it wasn’t alone. The speaker just escapes the hard subjects and uses diversion tactics. For instance, first he seems to be trying to ask the name of the person asking the question (as if that matters) and then switching to other subjects. Once again he lies (probably knowingly) and says “we didn’t oppose ODF”. This is probably a lie, but it’s hard to prove intent. It obviously does not correspond with facts. About OOXML, he says it’s “documented” and he doesn’t say that Microsoft itself never implemented it. He pretends it’s a standard (because of the corruption that put it inside ISO) and when someone raises the point about Microsoft not complying with ODF to encourage interoperability the speaker just lies and tries to contradict the fact with a ‘study’ (probably one that’s sponsored by Microsoft, but he doesn’t actually say which study). All those systematic lies are necessary given the position he is in. He needs to defend the indefensible because he chose to work for a corrupt company.

The speaker then moves on to discussing “Open Source” (the second talk or the second part of his presentation). It’s not about Free software and the term is never brought up. “Let me tell you how I look at Open Source,” he says. Yes, Microsoft wants to define what it is, taking over its own competition’s definition. The speaker’s vanity is really showing here. He tries to pretend it’s a choice of Microsoft to just take someone else’s term, only to disagree and change it. Then he exposes his feelings of superiority over his audience (he must be thinking, “oh! Those Linux zealots!”); he distances himself from them, as though they don’t belong in “Open Source” and Microsoft is the centre of this universe. “We don’t need to agree on this by the way,” he says quite angrily. When told about the formal open source guidelines he just prefers to avoid the subject. He is clearly rushing out of this discussion because he loses this debate. Then, “in interests of time,” he argues, they move on and skip this debate. The speaker is still being asked why they (Microsoft) had to go their own way with licences and repositories. The speaker can’t provide a reasonable answer; the truth is hard to admit.

“The speaker is still being asked why they (Microsoft) had to go their own way with licences and repositories. The speaker can’t provide a reasonable answer; the truth is hard to admit.”Then the speaker discusses repositories like SourceForge. He tries to say that many of the applications there are cross-platform or are for Windows. This is a very familiar talking point, trying to portray “open source” as Windows. We saw that coming also from former Microsoft employees who entered SourceForge as staff (after SourceForge bought Ohloh). This is nasty talking point/spin to watch out for. The notions that include “mixed source” are soon introduced and the speaker is trying to pretend they — the developers — “gain value” from Microsoft’s stack, as though they should all be thankful to Microsoft.

Shamelessly enough, in this Linux-type meeting the speaker starts trying to sell some more Microsoft proprietary software to the developers there. He gets very uncomfortable at this stage, clearly agitated and nervous because the crowd tells him that he promotes proprietary software (while trying to paint it as “open”). He then encourages them to visit Port 25 and other Microsoft sites. “Go read Port 25,” he says, where they “engage with” the public (yes, again with this term; he uses the “engage” word quite a lot and it’s a PR term). Then CodePlex gets promoted and he admits it’s Microsoft’s, not an independent entity like Microsoft now tries very hard to characterise it. He then pretends that they have great relationships with F/OSS companies; he names MySQL and JBoss and brags about OSI-approved licences of Microsoft (never mind if Microsoft shoved them down OSI’s throat under controversial circumstances and backlash). He gets asked by the audience: “why do you need them?”

“I can’t answer” is his reply. Yes, of course.

Then he uses PHP/Zend for self-praise. Typical. This contributes to/promotes their own stack. One person asks: “Why would someone pay money for this WISP platform?”

He struggles to answer. Then he moves on to another subject and mentions KnowledgeTree because of its South African roots. Microsoft worked with them just to put it on Windows.

Silverlight, which is proprietary, is strangely enough being brought up by the speaker. Huh? How come? It’s not clear what it has to do with open source. Then he starts promoting Azure, which has nothing to do with Free software or Open Source.

A few days ago Microsoft was also promoting its proprietary software (Hyper-V) in OSCON, an Open Source convention. From ZDNet:

Microsoft, for its part, announced at OSCON 2010 a new set of Linux Device Drivers to enhance the performance of Linux when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Going back to the talk in question, it gets worse towards the end when the speaker is mentally exhausted. He seems to have run out of things to cover at this stage and instead he uses the defunct Open Solutions Alliance (not open source) to promote Microsoft. He wraps up and he obviously fears more questions. “I’ll open myself to some more damage right now,” he says (he refers to questions). Towards the end he invites them to Microsoft.com (yes, in a Linux group) and in response to questions about Visual Studio (like “why do you have to pay for it?” They don’t give away the tools to develop for the platform) he says: “Again, I can’t answer that question.”

Well, that’s pretty useless.

Then he promotes BizSpark, which is anti-Free software dumping. It’s not development tools, it’s more of an anti-competitive tactic for Silverlight saturation and blocking of F/OSS — a tactic which we covered in:

• Poor Microsoft Gives Poor Software to Youngsters, Hoping to Remain Relevant
• Microsoft’s Anti-Linux Dumping Crusade: Chapter 11.1
• Microsoft Tries to Fight Libre with Gratis
• An Open, Gentler Microsoft: The Best Illusion Only Novell Can Buy
• Microsoft’s Last Breath: BAD (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping)
• Microsoft’s B.A.D. (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping) Comes to the Philippines
• Down with Microsoft… in India (Updated)
• Microsoft Takes Dumping Tactics up a Notch
• The EDGIfication of the Philippines
• Microsoft Dumping in SXSW, Barnardos, and Samsung

How miserable. The locking in of students (to Microsoft) is then portrayed as something positive. This speaker has been extremely weak at answering questions and his own presentation too has many holes in it, occasional lies/embellishments, and basically it does nothing to change one’s mind about Microsoft’s back-stabbing attitude towards software freedom.

“Microsoft has a strange open source turn,” said the headline of this article a few days ago.

Open source site Xen.org’s community manager Stephen Spector wrote in a Network World op-ed that it “just makes me want to go right out and start working on this project… I am also still searching the site to find out who owns the source code written and what license the software will be placed under, a basic concept in open source projects.”

Spector clearly thinks Microsoft might not really support its own open source project, and he might be right. The Vole clearly hates open source and has been trying to co-opt and subvert it.

The article cites this one from IDG:

There is a Getting Started section on the website that directs users interested to sign up for the Wiki as well as the mailing lists which is pretty standard for most projects. However, the website itself is a Wiki which does not show all the comments and information on the site unless the user registers. I consider this to be a significant issue as a majority of people in the open source community are not in favor of registering for general websites. Hiding information without registration is not what I would consider a friendly open community.

There are a lot of responses in Linux Today. They don’t trust Microsoft for a second.

Speaking of deception and exploitation, watch this site called “IT Expert Voice” which “is a partnership between Dell and Federated Media.”

For those who don’t know, Federated Media works for Microsoft and this site contains falsehoods about the GPL, as pointed out in Free Software Daily. “Misleading information,” says the comment, which quotes from the article: “If you modify the software and redistribute it in binary form, you have to also release the source code for your changes. This prevents the software from being incorporated into a commercial product”

The commenter says, “You mean like Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Selling free software is allowed, it’s explicitly stated in the GNU GPL section 4.”

The Web has become filled with GPL misinformation, possibly inspired or directly connected to misdirection from Microsoft (whose official Web site also tells lies about the GPL, in Word documents). Microsoft apologists are still abound in IDG; just watch the reactions to Dustin Puryear and Eric Gries. These people who now write for IDG have some history of Microsoft apologism and yet they are presented as “open source” people, supposedly writing about or in favour of “open source”.

Dana Blankenhorn from ZDNet now claims to admire Richard Stallman, but we are sceptical given some of Blankenhorn’s recent writings on the subject.

Some ZDNet writers are sick of Richard Stallman, but I’m still an admirer, because he continues to stand for FLOSS purity.

Well, ZDNet writers comprise a lot of people who are hostile towards Free software. Some of them are Microsoft employees and we covered this before. ZDNet is essentially “stacked” to have a particular bias, through selection of writers.

Here is what Blankenhorn says about ‘open’ core, which Microsoft loves. Blankenhorn gives that a lot of attention this month.

If everything in your “secret source” isn’t rock solid and golden, you can also create trouble for yourself, as Eucalyptus recently found out.

Eucalyptus is not open source. We warned about this last year. Perhaps it’s time for “open source” sites/blogs to just stop covering “open core” and treat it for what it is; it is proprietary software marketed as “open source”. Microsoft would love to pass that as “open source” to help the illusion that Microsoft too qualifies as “open”, to echo Monty’s sentiments which he expressed very recently (he serves Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation). █

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: Red Hat still insists on not paying Microsoft anything for distribution of GNU/Linux; Novell and Microsoft use Forrester as their advertisers in suits

LAST YEAR we wrote about the agreement between Red Hat and Microsoft. It wasn’t as sinister as it may sound and we provided explanations in:

1. Novell the Biggest Loser in New Red Hat-Microsoft Virtual Agreement
2. Red Hat-Microsoft Agreement Not Malicious, But Was It Smart?
3. Red Hat-Microsoft: Take III
4. Summary of the Red Hat-Microsoft Story

As it’s put in reference to Red Hat’s event this week:

To this day, as far as I know and have been informed, Red Hat still has no intention of engaging in any kind of patent deal with Microsoft. Yet the two can and do work together.

Red Hat did something without discriminating and harming fellow distributions of GNU/Linux, unlike Novell (but Microsoft goes directly to large Red Hat customers like Amazon, which it then extorts). As Matt Asay — a former Novell employee — put it, Novell is still all about software patents now that 'new' Novell is dying.

Either way, I suspect we’ll see some significantly improved bids for Novell. Its patent portfolio, coupled with its maintenance revenue and technology portfolio, offer too much strategic value to pass up.

Novell’s unhealthy obsession with software patents has led it to a bad deal with Microsoft. Now that the Free software community is upset with Novell, the company turns back to proprietary software for identity management [1, 2] and proprietary software for Fog Computing, with new examples like ‘cloud’ manager. These are just 3 examples from the past 2 days.

“The staff at Novell which cares about software freedom sometimes just leaves as a result of that atrocious deal (sometimes to be replaced by ex-Softies).”Novell was never truly focused on software freedom, but before signing the Microsoft patent deal it at least tried. The staff at Novell which cares about software freedom sometimes just leaves as a result of that atrocious deal (sometimes to be replaced by ex-Softies).

What makes it impossible to forgive Novell is the fact that it continues to brag about that deal. It never expresses regrets. Using a joint press release Novell bragged about the Microsoft deal yet again (that was on Monday). It turns out that they apparently also paid for propaganda from Forrester, which is now promoting software patents deals with Microsoft because it was bribed paid to say so. Here is some preliminary coverage:

Two newly published customer studies by independent research firms, Forrester Consulting and Oliver Wyman Group, further quantify and detail benefits of Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc.’s joint business and technical collaboration, and detail the significant return on investment (ROI) customers have realized by investing in the partnership.

It says right there that the “study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft and Novell” and we are never surprised to see propaganda from Forrester (example from last week), which Microsoft also pays to belittle/smear GNU/Linux.

Watch how this paid-for propaganda is being used in mainstream media and also promoted by Microsoft boosters like Marius Oiaga. On top of this, the ‘Microsoft press’ still promotes this patent extortion because it’s good for Microsoft; this time it’s Lee Pender taking his turn after similar ‘Microsoft press’ coverage from the same company. His colleague did this earlier too (Monday or Tuesday, i.e. a day after the press release, almost as though he had been briefed).

Microsoft is clearly desperate to convince customers and vendors to pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux. The fact that it manufactures some propaganda and then uses its bogus press to push this agenda is what makes it so shameless. Novell is clearly an accomplice here because it stands to benefit from it. █

–Steve Winfield, Microsoft

Summary: How Microsoft’s money and unwatchable influence allow it to subvert laws in foreign jurisdictions while projects like Xen and Apache are paid money to keep quiet on the matter and occasionally defend Microsoft

Earlier this month we explained why Microsoft is the biggest enemy of “Open Source” and warned that IDG has a new spin blog (the “open source” blog in IDG is not pro-”open source”). This blog is currently peddling some hogwash from someone who is working for Citrix, Microsoft’s ally.

The message of appeasement is all too comforting, but Microsoft is not interested in it. Microsoft keeps suing, threatening, and lobbying to make “open source” illegal or impractical to use. A good example of Microsoft’s direct attack on “open source” is currently found in Europe, where Microsoft’s role is described under:

1. European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Corrupted by Microsoft et al, Its Lobbyists
2. Orwellian EIF, Fake Open Source, and Security Implications
3. No Sense of Shame Left at Microsoft
4. Lobbying Leads to Protest — the FFII and the FSFE Rise in Opposition to Subverted EIF
5. IBM and Open Forum Europe Address European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Fiasco
6. EIF Scrutinised, ODF Evolves, and Microsoft’s OOXML “Lies” Lead to Backlash from Danish Standards Committee
7. Complaints About Perverted EIF Continue to Pile Up
8. More Complaints About EIFv2 Abuse and Free Software FUD from General Electric (GE)
9. Patents Roundup: Copyrighted SQL Queries, Microsoft Alliance with Company That Attacks F/OSS with Software Patents, Peer-to-Patent in Australia
10. Microsoft Under Fire: Open Source Software Thematic Group Complains About EIFv2 Subversion, NHS Software Supplier Under Criminal Investigation
11. British MEP Responds to Microsoft Lobby Against EIFv2; Microsoft’s Visible Technologies Infiltrates/Derails Forums Too
12. Patents Roundup: Escalations in Europe, SAP Pretense, CCIA Goes Wrong, and IETF Opens Up
13. Patents Roundup: Several Defeats for Bad Types of Patents, Apple Risks Embargo, and Microsoft Lobbies Europe Intensely
14. Europeans Asked to Stop Microsoft’s Subversion of EIFv2 (European Interoperability Framework Version 2)
15. Former Member of European Parliament Describes Microsoft “Coup in Process” in the European Commission
16. Microsoft’s Battle to Consume — Not Obliterate — Open Source
17. Patents Roundup: David Hammerstein on Microsoft Lobbying in Europe; Harrison Targets Lobbying on Software Patents in New Zealand, Justice Stevens Leaves SCOTUS

The EIFv2 is a fine example not only of Microsoft’s lobbying for software patents (almost all of Microsoft's patents are software patents) but also the company’s unethical activities that involve AstroTurfing, cronyism, and intimidation in other countries. This is a company which is not interested in producing technology; rather, it bends laws, overthrows opposition, and bribes with great pride.

The Free Software Foundation Europe has just updated its Web page which shows what Microsoft did to Europe’s digital agenda through its lobbyists, essentially rendering it useless, discriminatory, and unfair.

EIFv2: Tracking the loss of interoperability

[...]

From our analysis, we can conclude that in key places, the European Commission has taken on board only the comments made by the Business Software Alliance, a lobby group working on behalf of proprietary software vendors. At the same time, comments by groups working in favour of Free Software and Open Standards were neglected, e.g. those made by Open Forum Europe.

As we speak, Microsoft lobbies to legalise software patents in Europe. When it does not sue it intimidates in order to earn “protection money” as it so often gets in the far east (where software patents bear some legitimacy, as in the United States).

It is important to say “United States” and not “America” because south America rightly disregards many unjust monopolies, Mexico is fighting against software patents, and Wayne gives a Canadian’s perspective:

Richard Stallman, one of the truly elite software developers has spoken out many times about the dangers of software patents. Curiously those most in favor of software patents appear to be lawyers from the Patent Bar.

Here is the term “Americans” used loosely in the second part of this essay.

One issue is that Americans think that their patent system is the be all and end all, and that everyone else should imitate them. Curiously a lot of Americans even believe that their Constitution requires that a patent system exist, due to a misreading of it.

One famous case where the system in the United States was shown to be corruptible involved the FDA (Microsoft connection noted), which has a close relationship with Monsanto because employees are shared among the regulators and the regulated company. Here are some “corporate takeover videos” from GM Watch:

One of the greatest concerns about genetic engineering is the way in which it facilitates the corporate takeover of the food supply. These videos show how GM crops are removing the ability of farmers to freely use their own seeds or grow food in the way they choose.

Added below is a popular video which shows what happened to Monsanto in Canada (where it didn’t have enough insiders). This might as well teach us about the role Microsoft entryism has played over the years, even in the European Commission (we gave many examples). Things also changed for Xen when Microsoft put its hands on the project, brought it to its back yard, and put Microsoft managers in it. Matt Taibi famously described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”; perhaps Microsoft’s entryism is evidence that it became a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of IT just as Monsanto became a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of agriculture. Unless people emphasise a message of software freedom, Microsoft will continue its takeover of “open source” and suppress Free software, replacing it with software patents and so-called ‘interoperability’ that depends on them. █

Summary: Lawyers in Europe strive to net some extra money by promoting “interoperability” (with software patents) rather than making use of open standards

EUROPEAN lawyers are trying to repeat the mistakes of the USPTO, which is permitting the patenting of business methods, software patents, and other insane things that must never become one person’s government-protected monopoly. Look at the latest numbers from the USPTO. There is clearly a gold rush when everything under the sun becomes patentable and examiners mistake that for “increased innovation” or whatever. From Patently-O:

The USPTO issued more patents during the past two weeks than in any fortnight in history. A primary driver of that upswing appears to be a dramatic rise in the allowance rate.

Lawyers who make a living by granting and managing people’s ‘ownership’ of other people’s lives are concerned about the Bilski case, which may axe many patents and limit their scope in the United States.

Betting on Bilski: The Supreme Court and Biotechnology Patents

[...]

Reviewing Bilski and the Biotech Patent Landscape. Recall that Bilski involves a form of method patent (the so-called “business method” patent) that claims a method of hedging commodities prices by setting up a relationship between a regular seller (a coal mine, for example) and regular buyer (a power company). The question is whether such a method constitutes patentable subject matter—that is, is the Bilski method the sort of “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter” that meets the standards of Section 101 of the Patent Act. In its 2008 en banc decision, the Federal Circuit established—or re-established, since it had been lurking in the case law for years—the so-called “machine or transformation” test for method patents. Under this test, the method must be tied to a particular machine (whatever that means) or transform some article into a different state or thing in order to qualify as patentable subject matter. According to the Federal Circuit, Bilski’s patent failed both branches of the test.

By contrast, in its 2009 decision in Prometheus v. Mayo, the Federal Circuit upheld a patent on “a method of optimizing therapeutic efficiency for treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder.” The method comprises “administering” a specified drug to a patient and then “determining” the level of the drug in the patient. The remainder of the claim specifies threshold levels of the drug’s metabolites (the chemical products of metabolism in the body) in the patient’s blood below which the dose should be increased (because of lack of efficacy) and above which it should be decreased (because of potential toxicity). The court found that both administering the drug and determining the metabolite levels (by withdrawing and testing blood) worked a sufficient physical transformation of the body.

Greed, greed, greed.

Those lawyers are always greedy for more and more patents. They don’t care about the consequences as long as they enrich themselves through filing and litigation.

Obviously, lawyers in Europe want software patents. They don’t actually develop any software, but it’s not software they care about. It’s all about money and Free software supporters stand in their way in Europe^*. So what do they do? They have just set up yet another event whose overall message is something along the lines of, “why can’t Free software and software patents just get along?”

Read the following new message (it’s always posed as a series of suggestive questions. as in push polling):

From: Cristina Palomares
Subject: REMINDER: Intellectual Property, Open Source, and Standards: Friends or Foes?
To: [redacted]

Intellectual Property, Open Source, and Standards:

Friends or Foes?

Date: Tuesday, 1st June 2010

Time: 9:30-12:30

Venue: Maastricht University Campus Brussels, Avenue de l’Armée / Legerlaan 10, 1040, Brussels

The Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation at Maastricht University Faculty of Law and the Stockholm Network Intellectual Property & Competition Programme are delighted to invite you to a forum and debate on “Intellectual Property, Open Source and Standards: Friends or Foes?

The importance of standards to our societies is growing as technology moves into increasingly complex territories, and competing companies are inclined to establish common ground. This common ground helps to ensure that the assortment of technological possibilities is kept to a necessary minimum, whilst also establishing a widespread level of compatibility and quality. Standards offer a shared language that technologies use to communicate with one another, allowing for greater interaction between products or components. This can mean improved interoperability, interconnectivity, and commoditisation – all buzzwords for a more beneficial market.

“How should we consider the relationship between patents and standards, and what are the implications of not allowing standards to be protected by IPRs?”In the discussion on standards, a distinction (and at times even a dichotomy) is often made between standards based on proprietary efforts – which are to be protected by intellectual property rights – and standards that are based on collaborative or open efforts – such as via an open source. Indeed, there is a heated Europe-wide debate on the nature and characteristics of future technological standards, not least in the context of government procurement and policies in this area (such as the Expert Panel for the Review of the European Standardization System).

This event aims to address some of the burning issues in the standards debate. Key questions to be discussed include: Should standards be based on open-efforts or on proprietary models? Should countries in Europe opt for a more specific model of standardisation? How should we consider the relationship between patents and standards, and what are the implications of not allowing standards to be protected by IPRs? Is the dichotomy between open and proprietary standards at all justified, or are these types of standards in fact complementary?

Speakers include (in alphabetical order):

Ms Helen Disney, Chief Executive, Stockholm Network;
Malcolm Harbour MEP, Chairman of the Internal Market and Consumer
Protection Committee, European Parliament;
Prof Anselm Kamperman Sanders, Director Masters Intellectual Property
Law and Knowledge Management, Maastricht University Faculty of Law;
Dr Meir Perez Pugatch, Director of Research, Stockholm Network & Senior Lecturer, University of Haifa;
Dr Dalindyebo Shabalala, Assistant Professor, Maastricht University Faculty of Law;
Prof Alain Strowel, Universitaires Saint-Louis et Université de Liège;
Prof Damien Geradin, Partner at Howrey LLP and Professor of Competition Law and Economics at Tilburg University.

***************

To RSVP please contact Dr Cristina Palomares, Chief Operating Officer, Stockholm Network on T +44 20 7354 8888, F: +44 20 7359 8888 or via e-mail on: cristina@stockholm-network.org

Speakers who are software developers are conspicuously missing. Whose agenda is being served here? See what we wrote about Europe’s Digital Agenda in recent days [1, 2, 3]. The agenda above jives the same way.

People should boycott this event. It’s apparently just a ploy to push for software patents in Europe, quelling those who oppose. A fair event would not be stacked by its attendees. █
____
^* Small- and medium-sized businesses generally suffer from software patents, but they can tolerate patent encumbrances if they are proprietary software companies.

Summary: The Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) mischaracterises the response of Free/Open Source groups to Neelie Kroes and the Digital Agenda; we attempt to set the record straight

OSOR has come up with a misleading article that mistakes politeness for cautious acceptance. Glyn Moody calls it a “misleading headline” too. Readers can just for themselves:

Advocates of open source and standards cautiously welcome ICT plan

Advocacy groups on open standards and open source software cautiously welcome the European Commission’s five year ICT plan.

This page leaves out or forgets the FFII, which is a leading advocate in the said area. As we showed yesterday, the FFII is not too happy about the Digital Agenda. By contrast, Openforum seems fairly pleased.

Openforum Europe (OFE) welcomes the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, and commends Vice President Neelie Kroes for her determined effort to build an open, competitive and innovative ICT market for the benefit of citizens and businesses in Europe.

OSOR mentioned the statement from the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) which was summarised with: “Lack of Open Standards “gaping hole” in EC’s Digital Agenda” (clearly negative)

The European Commission has officially published its long-awaited Digital Agenda, outlining its policy plans for the next five years. “While it includes some important building blocks for Free Software, the omission of Open Standards rips a gaping hole in this agenda,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Here are some other ones [1, 2] and there is the ECIS statement, which we haven’t mentioned yet. It goes like this:

ECIS commends European Commission for its Digital Agenda

BRUSSELS, 19 May, 2010 – ECIS is gratified that the European Commission’s “Digital Agenda” released today sets a timetable for making sure that government-purchased software adheres to open standards, so it will work smoothly and easily together, thus ensuring citizens have open access to their governments.

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) is also pleased that the Commission frowns on software that is hemmed in by closed, proprietary standards.

“As our name suggests, interoperability is a central tenet of our group,” said Thomas Vinje, counsel and spokesman for ECIS. “We’re pleased the European Commission has given broad support to interoperability, and gratified it believes government acquisition of software should adhere to open standards.”

“That approach assures that governments will avoid granting a monopoly to a proprietary software company, which can then charge citizens for the software they need to access and interact with their governments.”
      –Thomas Vinje, ECISThe broad-ranging Digital Agenda focuses in part on the importance of making software work together. Among its conclusions are that because all technology is inherently standards-based, “Interoperability between these standards is the only way to make our lives and doing business easier – smoothing the way to a truly digital society.”

The Digital Agenda says member states should by 2013 carry out goals enunciated in April by EU Telecommunication Ministers during their meeting in Spain, whose Granada Declaration calls for the “systematic promotion of open standards and interoperable systems” for governments across the European Union.

“That approach assures that governments will avoid granting a monopoly to a proprietary software company, which can then charge citizens for the software they need to access and interact with their governments,” said Vinje.

Open standards permit inter-operation without the necessity of paying special fees. For example, the common electric plug is designed to an open standard. Anyone may build an electric plug without paying a royalty to design prongs to the right size and shape for a power point. In software, two of the best-known open standards are those that created the Internet and those that created the World Wide Web. Anyone may write software that works on the Internet or the Web, without paying special fees.

“These open standards have transformed the way we do business,” said Vinje of the Web and the Internet. They are clear examples of the way that open standards promote creativity and competition.

“Open standards will help create such things as health records that will be readable anywhere in the European Union, using a variety of software from a number of providers,” said Vinje. “They set the stage for economic growth. We’re gratified that the Commission is backing this approach.”

Open standards are distinct from “open source.” Using the latter, a group or company makes public the underlying source code of its program. Open standards are aimed at allowing pieces of software to work seamlessly together. Proprietary software business models based on open standards and open source business models both allow a high degree of interoperability and consumer choice. ECIS strongly believes that in adopting measures to implement the Digital Agenda, the EU should take care in ensuring that one particular model is not favoured over another, as long as the aims of openness and interoperability are met.

In summary, Free software groups are unhappy with the loophole that facilitates software patents (Germany’s situation with software patents [1, 2] will be discussed shortly), so it would be unfair to say that they “cautiously welcome [the] ICT plan”; they actually criticise it.

The European Commission needs to expose the lobbyists who derailed the “Digital Agenda” and those companies they represented. Some of them pretend to represent small European businesses while actually serving Microsoft. It is a known AstroTurf tactic when one takes over the opposition to misrepresent that opposition. Perhaps the European Commission got bamboozled. It ought to be mended. █

Summary: A migration away from SUSE shows that bindings between Windows and SUSE are not so crucial after all; Microsoft publicly explains reluctance to be interoperable

Novell and Microsoft market themselves based on “interoperability” as a key selling point, but as we pointed out yesterday, Kuwait had no problem moving from SUSE to Red Hat. Here is the press release about it.

Yesterday we also showed that Microsoft excludes GNU/Linux when it comes to a Web-based Office (there are more reports about it, mostly derived from the one we referenced earlier). Is this interoperability? Of course not.

Here is Microsoft’s ‘Office man’ explaining the motives:

From ChannelWeb

Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division and one of the company’s foremost cloud proponents, also dismissed Google’s claims of Office-Docs interoperability.

“It clearly shows their lack of maturity and lack of understanding for the business market,” Elop told The New York Times Wednesday. “Companies don’t want to mix their technology.”

I am shocked, shocked, to hear Microsoft come out against interoperability.

We wrote about Elop a few days ago and shown above is an explanation of why Microsoft persisted with bribes and other corruption to pass OOXML as ‘open’ rather than embrace real standards.

But the more important point is that despite Microsoft’s attempt to make the Microsoft-taxed distribution work better with Windows, large deployments can easily have SUSE substituted with Red Hat. Nobody needs SUSE. █

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

Centrify

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

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

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

Google

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

Google Patents Country-Specific Content Blocking

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

That is a soft patent.

Red Hat

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

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

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

Quintura

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

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

Patents are not products. They are only a hindrance.

ACTA

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what changed?

Snow Leopard was the key.

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

Summary: In both Europe and in India, Microsoft is trying to exclude Free software with patent tax inside basic interoperability information

NEELIE KROES said some controversial things last week [1, 2, 3, 4]. She has been criticised recently for allowing Microsoft to embed software patents in interoperability ‘standards’ (these are not real standards), despite software patents being illegal in the EU.

Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat defends Kroes and argues that she is a better position-holder than others in the Commission. He is probably right, but it is important to remind Kroes that what she is doing is harmful to Free software sometimes. Some of the key issues she just fails to grasp as the Microsoft lobbyists fool her.

This comes after her hearing last week. If you take a closer look at what Neelie told us in that hearing, I fail to see why it is wrong. However I fully understand that some other companies and organisations are alarmed. This is what she had to say wrt Open Standards (transcribed from the hearing which is ironically only accessible with non-open Microsoft stuff):

5- Digital society depends upon open standards and interoperability. And with this in mind, public organizations should practice what they promote. If they don’t use open standards, why should citizens? I will pursue this from local authorities up to european institutions. If public data such as maps, weather information and health advise is not interoperable, how can it be exploited in new ways? And for such reasons I want to explore new ways to develop ICT standards in Europe.

So Neelie wants to explore new ways, wants to enforce the use of open standards, wants to free public data. I am not going to tell you who might have a different opinion. But I am sure, my dear Lazyweb, that you know which company I am talking about.

Over in India, a new report suggests that Microsoft is also trying to shove software patents into standards, despite the fact that software patents are illegal in India.

India’s open source software lobbyists allege that the country’s proposed draft recommendations for adopting open technology standards and software for automating different government departments and functions, favours popular software solutions from large companies such as Microsoft.

According to people familiar with the draft recommendations, a meeting of the apex body on Standards for eGovernance was held last week, and the policy is close to being approved. ET was shown a copy of the proposed recommendations by one of the persons who requested anonymity.

[...]

The most contentious point of the policy is that it includes standards which may be royalty free and non discriminatory (RAND) as compared to fair royalty free and non discriminatory (FRAND), which many experts had recommended.

“The entire standard should be royalty-free and not just the “essential” parts of it. In other words, All patent claims necessary to implement the standard should be royaltyfree. Also, royalty free on FRAND/RAND is self-contradictory. If a Standard is Royalty Free (RF) then it cannot be RAND,” says Venkatesh Hariharan, a blogger and expert on open source affairs.

Microsoft previously bullied even Indian professors [1, 2] for daring to stand up for real standards — standards that are neither software patents encumbered nor the ownership of Microsoft. █

“I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft.”

–Professor Deepak Phatak

Summary: How Centrify is strengthening Microsoft’s patent FUD against GNU/Linux; Microsoft’s patent violations and attacks on GNU/Linux explored further

When it comes to Microsoft Active Directory (AD), Microsoft is playing games with software patents. Back in September we wrote about what LikeWise was doing to Samba (not for the first time) and we are finding similarities in Centrify Corporation, whose Chief Technology Officer “was a Program Manager in Microsoft’s Windows 2000 development group, where, among other things, he drove the integration between Active Directory and the Windows 2000 enterprise print subsystem. Moore also represented Microsoft on various industry standards committees, and authored several RFCs and other industry standards.” It’s just like LikeWise and Centrify too is Bellevue-based (Microsoft’s back yard). They establish Microsoft AD as the industry ‘standard’, under the pretense of helping other platforms (same with Mono and Moonlight). One might argue that they act as a peripheral extension of the Microsoft monopoly.

“They establish Microsoft AD as the industry ’standard’, under the pretense of helping other platforms (same with Mono and Moonlight).”At the top of the page it says that “Centrify is led by a team of senior executives from industry leaders such as NetIQ, Microsoft, Computer Associates and Novell.” Well, we already know that Centrify is working with Novell's SUSE. “Our partners include Microsoft, Red Hat, Novell, VMware, Apple and others,” says the corporate overview and there is clear evidence that Microsoft and Centrify are partners based on both companies’ Web sites.

Why does this matter? Well, in 2008 Centrify sort of defended rather than denounced Microsoft's patent allegations against GNU/Linux. It called it an “off-topic” post. Moreover, Centrify has just issued the following press release:

Centrify Awarded Patent in Identity Management of UNIX and Linux Systems

Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of Microsoft Active Directory-based identity and access management and auditing solutions for non-Microsoft platforms, today announced it has been awarded patent #7,591,005 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patented technology facilitates the capability for UNIX and Linux service accounts and root accounts to be authenticated within a centralized directory.

Wow. Software patents. Clients who are using GNU/Linux must be very, very impressed.

It ought to be added that Microsoft itself is violating software patents, even deliberately. CNN presents this post-mortem of the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. In it, i4i explains how to win against Microsoft despite its abuse of the legal system (Microsoft was fined for trial misconduct in the i4i case and also abused the legal system by dodging local courts in India, then fined for it).

i4i’s tips include:

Prepare your case. When it comes to taking on a company the size and stature of Microsoft, don’t expect legal eagles to bang down your door.

Instead, Owen says, “we assembled the [patent infringement] claim, the background and the history in an extraordinarily detailed, analytical way. We prepared the case as best we could independently before meeting with leading counsel and luminaries in the industry.”

Don’t lose track of your day job. A much-ballyhooed, two-year legal battle against Microsoft can significantly distract employees and completely consume a company’s top brass.

We are still stressing rather strongly that Microsoft’s EDGI may be a violation of the law. We wrote about this a few days ago and last night we found another new post about it:

Microsoft wants to hire an anti Linux Guru

Steve Balmer, the CEO of Microsoft gets pretty scared by the success of Linux & other Open Source Software. Microsoft wants to hire a so-called “Linux and Open Office Compete Lead”, as the job description in one their recent marketing job ads shows.

Microsoft is also attacking GNU/Linux using software patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Those who do not help abolish those are unfortunately part of the problem. This includes IBM, Novell, and Apple. █

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

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

Their site says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IBM has been charged with “anticompetitive” allegations by a company that appears not to be connected with Microsoft. Coverage about this includes:

• IBM served with mainframe lawsuit
• Austin company sues IBM
• Neon sues IBM over ‘anticompetitive’ mainframe tactics
• IBM Facing Lawsuit Related To Mainframe ‘Workaround’
• IBM Slapped With Suit Alleging Unfair Mainframe Competition
• Neon sues Big Blue

Now, look at the company’s homepage. We have captured screenshots because the homepage will change in the future.

Let’s look more closely:

The company’s news section is narrow in terms of scope:

T3′s homepage was also all about IBM immediately after T3 had sued IBM. We captured screenshots of that too, writing about them in previous posts about T3, whose connection to Microsoft we wrote about in:

• Has Microsoft Just Invested in Another Lawsuit Against IBM?
• Microsoft Pays Professor to Write a Paper Against IBM’s GNU/Linux-Powered Mainframes
• Microsoft Innovation is Lawsuits by Proxy
• T3 Receives Millions from “Unnamed Entity” After Microsoft Investment, to Attack GNU/Linux on Mainframes
• What People Say About Microsoft’s Alleged Anti-Linux Lawsuit (via T3)
• The Microsoft Lobby and Heavy Investments Put IBM in Antitrust Probe
• T3 is Partly Owned by Microsoft Now

The above might become handy in the future. At Groklaw, Pamela Jones points to this article when she writes: “Well, without knowing anything about the facts of this case yet, I do recall Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith’s remark when the EU Commission announced the deal about the browser, “It is important we believe to create a level legal and regulatory playing field,” Smith said. “Everyone that has a high market share needs to respect the same set of rules. I think a number of these rules are likely to be applicable to other companies and other products.”

Groklaw’s response to the atrocious deal with the European Commission (the “interoperability” aspect of it [1, 2, 3, 4]) initially went into negative territories, after citing the ‘Microsoft press’ that says:

First, Microsoft has committed to implement a range of important industry standards in its software, including Web standards in Internet Explorer. Our agreement also recognizes that standards are often complex, and sometimes imprecise or even incomplete. To account for that, we will publicly document how we have implemented relevant standards so the information is readily available to all software developers. Our customers can reap the benefits of some of this work already in the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010, available today, which enables users to save and open documents in a variety of industry standard formats. These formats include Open XML (a standard originally sponsored by Microsoft) and the Open Document Format (a standard originally sponsored by competitors to Microsoft)….We also are posting our protocol documentation on the Internet, so any developer can access it easily without entering into a license with Microsoft.

Quoting Todd Bishop/Brad Smith from the Microsoft-funded Microsoft blog, Jones mocks the part which says: ‘“The most important question that we look at is whether a feature has APIs, or application programming interfaces, that are going to be important to the developers of Windows applications,” explained Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, in an interview with TechFlash this morning. “The browser is such a piece of software today. It has APIs that other applications call. That’s one reason we included the browser as part of Windows in the late 1990s. I think there was a recognition of the value that this creates for the industry as a whole by the courts in the United States and now the European Commission, in effect, today, because an important part of the announcement today is that Internet Explorer will remain a part of Windows, including in Europe.”‘

Jones writes: “Recognition of the value… hahahaha. Pass out laughing. But first I will point out that this seems to be an indication of what the settlement is about from Microsoft’s standpoint.”

Opera expected this to happen, but it is funny how Microsoft views its role. Last year it was Craig Mundie (Microsoft’s Chief Strategy Officer and lobbyist [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) who said: “Google Owes Its Business To Us”

Does Microsoft really want people to believe that there would be no computers without Microsoft?

As a side note, Jones also remarked on the Moonlight news, highlighting the following important bit:

There is one catch, however.

The new patent covenant extension is only for Moonlight and does not extend to the full Mono project, which is Novell’s implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework. Novell updated Mono to version 2.6 this week. As a result, the agreement covers only the subset of Mono that comes as a part of Moonlight. “This patent covenant only applies to Moonlight and the version of Mono that ships with Moonlight,” Goldfarb said.

So the problems with Mono basically remain and Moonlight is still Novell-only software for other reasons. One piece of software that only Novell customers can use safely (that would Banshee) is latching onto Docky now.

No need for a massive evolution from the Gnome-Do Banshee control plug-in, this is a nice addition for Banshee users.

It’s a bit like Telepathy. Mono is grabbing all sort of other parts of GNOME, just like moss in a highly-fertilised garden. Novell is paying for this and Microsoft does too (it pays Novell). █

Summary: Another look at a bad EU deal; software patents revisited; Microsoft’s copyright violations remembered

YESTERDAY we wrote about the European Commission failing to negotiate with Microsoft a deal that respects Free software users [1, 2]. Microsoft has been buying time and procrastinating until Neelie Kroes and others in the Commission needed to step down. Steve Ballmer's "schmoozing" trips to Neelie Kores did not help much, either.

It is rather surprising to see that even the ‘Microsoft press’ is covering some of the criticisms right now, notably by quoting critics other than itself:

Essentially, companies can sue if they think Microsoft is not following through with providing proper API documentation, according to a blog post by Groklaw, a frequent Microsoft critic and a site devoted to software legal issues. The Groklaw post noted that nothing has really changed for commercial software companies working with open source software under the GNU General Public License because Microsoft’s interoperability agreement appears to restrict commercial distribution of software without royalty agreements first being in place.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) backed that view.

“The patent commitments are clearly insufficient, because they don’t allow commercial exploitation,” said Carlo Piana, FSFE’s legal counsel, in a released statement. “This keeps out competition from Free Software, which in many areas is the biggest competitor to Microsoft’s programs.”

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) was also skeptical.

“Whether the public undertaking will create a more level competitive playing field where open source software is not subject to Microsoft patent FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt], as has been the case in the past, is not yet clear,” the ECIS declared in a released statement (PDF).

Keith Bergelt (OIN CEO), who last got publicly involved when Microsoft floated anti-GNU/Linux patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], has just published this outlook for Linux in a world filled with intellectual monopolies, which are Microsoft’s weapon of choice against its #1 competition.

In the coming decade, Linux and other open source implementations will continue their migration from back office transaction processing and mission critical applications to the mobile and desktop computing spaces. This will transform the nature of communications and computing devices from static and utilitarian to dynamic and intelligent. This change has already begun to show itself in the Google mobile operating system – and the proliferation of devices that have been built on it by HTC and Motorola, among others.

Leveraging open source as a key building block for rapid innovation and reducing time-to-market is an irreversible trend.

Yet, as Linux and other open source initiatives usher in a new model for invention and value creation and further reinforces Linux as a permanent condition, longer term changes in the nature of the codification and management of the intellectual capital are prefigured by a set of observable trends in 2010.

It is interesting that OIN accepts rather than battles against software patents [1, 2] (Peer to Patent causes the same problem by legitimising “good” patents). But being somewhat of an IBM front, the OIN is expected to retain such a stance.

Microsoft would love people to think that GNU/Linux disregards intellectual monopolies, but Microsoft couldn’t care about them either, especially when applied to Microsoft. The Plurk incident is a fine example of that [1, 2, 3] and Microsoft is still expected to be sued.

Owners of Taiwanese Plurk microblog site have not decided yet whether and how to respond to cases of theft of code made by the company, which was commissioned by Microsoft to build another microblog service.

While Microsoft took upon himself the full responsibility, but apparently does not want to bear the legal consequences of this incident. According to the message given out Plurk site owners are wondering what legal action in this situation should take.

So it’s OK when Microsoft snubs intellectual monopolies (it knowingly and willfully infringes patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]) but very “naughty” and “communist” if GNU/Linux is against software patents. █

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

–Richard Stallman

–Mark Shuttleworth

Summary: The European Commission is either unwilling or unable to understand how Microsoft uses software patents against Free software, even in Europe where such patents are illegal

ACCORDING to Charlie McCreevy's (shown above) vision of Europe, one unified patent law might soon become a reality that incorporates software patents. The European Commission is being either totally bamboozled or simply lobbied to death. It’s already manned by the wrong people. André Rebentisch has this little update about McCreevy’s folly (he is no longer one among candidate Commission heads whom André is watching):

Issue 56 features the outgoing Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. McCreevy’s pet project financial market deregulation was cratered last year together with the Irish model and won’t come back in the new portfolio. He assumes an ideological mission to defend the single market for his successor:

The job of the next Commission, I believe would be to stand against those who, for a variety of political reasons, some of them may be ideological or philosophical, whatever they’d be, block the Single Market. To not allow the Single Market, the European markets to be interfered with.

Indeed, there are such forces, for instance those who prefer protection of geographical indications or the member states patent offices which obstruct the creation of a community patent for the single market.

Microsoft front group ACT is lobbying for this as it enables Microsoft to bypass the law. It is more or less the same with EIF, which we mentioned in:

1. European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Corrupted by Microsoft et al, Its Lobbyists
2. Orwellian EIF, Fake Open Source, and Security Implications
3. No Sense of Shame Left at Microsoft
4. Lobbying Leads to Protest — the FFII and the FSFE Rise in Opposition to Subverted EIF
5. IBM and Open Forum Europe Address European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Fiasco
6. EIF Scrutinised, ODF Evolves, and Microsoft’s OOXML “Lies” Lead to Backlash from Danish Standards Committee
7. Complaints About Perverted EIF Continue to Pile Up
8. More Complaints About EIFv2 Abuse and Free Software FUD from General Electric (GE)

Microsoft is meanwhile patenting everything under the sun. Yesterday in Slashdot there was another new example:

“A newly disclosed Microsoft patent application — Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic — takes aim at fat people, proposing to generate fat avatars in gaming environments for individuals whose health records indicate they’re overweight, limiting their game play, and even banning them. From the patent application: ‘An undesirable body weight could be reflected in an overweight or underweight appearance for the avatar. Only requisite health levels are allowed to compete in a certain competition level. A dedicated gamer could exercise for a period of time until his health indicator gadget shows a sufficiently high health/health credit in order to allow reentering the avatar environment.’ Linking one’s gaming avatar to one’s physique, explains Microsoft, will produce healthy and virtuous behaviors in individuals. Microsoft also proposes shaping gaming experiences by using ‘psychological and demographic information such as education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc.’”

We have already shown that using a new deal with the EU Commission Microsoft is trying to ban commercial use of Free software. The ‘Microsoft press’ is working to distract or to hide it, but Simon Phipps, whom we mentioned in the previous post, writes the following words about the Microsoft-sponsored blogger who was speaking to Brad Smith for the Microsoft spin: “Well worth reading to understand Microsoft’s world-view. Sadly Smith wasn’t asked about the “patent promise” I mention below, but this interview helps us understand why Microsoft believed IE was important (developer APIs) and why they love “interoperability” (because it was the keyword for release from 12 years of investigation).”

“[T]he Microsoft “patent promise” is roughly useless for open source communities as it only gives protection for non-commercial uses…”
      –Simon PhippsIn reference to the FSFE’s complaint, Phipps writes: “The long war is finally over, without really correcting any of the injustices but with a few small concessions from a Microsoft that wants us to think it is contrite and changed. But the FSFE is right – the Microsoft “patent promise” is roughly useless for open source communities as it only gives protection for non-commercial uses; the very essence of open source is the alignment of fragments of (usually commercial) interest by many community participants. This should be the first thing Microsoft’s new head of open source addresses on appointment, but to do it will be tough since it will take air-cover at the highest levels to address.”

It’s not about the browser ballot screen (which is no justice, either), it’s about Free software. Some reporters like Paula Rooney wrongly describe the Web browser case as though it is related to Free software, even though Opera (case originator) is proprietary. In fact, too few publications wrote about the stunt Microsoft has just pulled on the “interoperability” front. █

Summary: Microsoft’s legal team keeps trying to screw Free software and people do notice, then respond

IN A prior post on the subject we explained that Microsoft managed to pull out of punishment for crimes that it had committed against rival Web browsers (Microsoft was found guilty). According to news sources (some more mainstream than others, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]), this might be the end of it, but Glyn Moody refers to the part we wrote about last night, namely the part which is a threat to Free software.

[Y]ou can code away to your heart’s content without needing to worry about those nasty patents that Microsoft claims; but as soon as you or anyone else starts offering that code commercially, “You do not benefit from this promise for such distribution or for these other activities.”

Now, if memory serves me correctly, this is precisely the utterly useless promise that Microsoft offered previously when it came to its patent pledge for the open source community, so it’s shocking that somebody within the European Commission didn’t pick up on this weakness and ask for it to be changed. For, clearly, the current wording means that the patent pledge doesn’t apply to precisely those companies that are most of a threat to Microsoft.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has already responded, warning that “Free Software is excluded from interoperability.”

The European Commission is also investigating the way Microsoft prevents competitors from interfacing with many of its desktop productivity programs. Microsoft has offered a unilateral commitment. Yet these promises are useless for Free Software developers, since they exclude commercial use of Microsoft’s interoperability information.

Carlo Piana, FSFE’s legal counsel, says: “The patent commitments are clearly insufficient, because they don’t allow commercial exploitation. This keeps out competition from Free Software, which in many areas is the biggest competitor to Microsoft’s programs. Instead, Microsoft will continue to threaten commercial Free Software developers and their customers with patent FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).”

Speaking of which, the FSFE is still challenging WIPO. It did so earlier in the year, but WIPO is philosophically against Free software.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations system of organisations. Its role is administrating 23 international treates dealing with different aspects of limited monopolies on knowledge.

According to its own web page, it is

“an international organization dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. These works — intellectual property — are expanding the bounds of science and technology and enriching the world of the arts. Through its work, WIPO plays an important role in enhancing the quality and enjoyment of life, as well as creating real wealth for nations.”

As explained in articles such as “Fighting intellectual poverty” or “On ‘Intellectual Property’ and Indigenous Peoples” on FSFEs web page — as well as many others on the net — the statement above did not match reality in the past. The Geneva Declaration states clearly how in the past WIPO has had a history of “intellectually weak, ideologically rigid, and sometimes brutally unfair and inefficient policies.”

Despite obvious discrimination against Free software (the deal needs to be mended), a Microsoft-funded blog gives the source of discrimination (Brad Smith) a platform so that he gets to tell their own self-glorifying version of their story. CNET’s Microsoft PR puppet Ina Fried does the same thing with Smith. █

Summary: Microsoft is attacking Linux using software patents (with US DOJ approval) while a Microsoft reporter spins the whole situation as “peaceful coexistence”

BACK in October we summarised Microsoft's pattern of push-polling using many examples as well as an admission from top executives. Bob Sutor from IBM warns that Microsoft is currently running a survey to inappropriately warp people’s understanding of the perception of “interoperability” (usually meaning software patents at the expense of standards, a la Novell).

Microsoft appears to be running a survey on “perceptions of interoperability.” I’ll let you decide for yourself whether this is phrased in a completely neutral and objective manner, but you might want to weigh in if you feel you want to help separate perceptions from reality.

To give previous examples of push-polling, other than suspicion alone (e.g. Forrester) we noted that “Microsoft does this all the time, e.g. against Google and in favour of the patent deal with Novell. The Microsoft-corrupted ISO did the same thing after very sheer corruption had led to formal complaints from several national bodies.”

In a step that was mentioned here twice before (earlier this week), Microsoft “urges Flash makers to pay fat dollar for exFAT format”

In March, Microsoft signed an IP licensing deal with TomTom, after the companies exchanged legal threats in court over patents related to the FAT formats. The pair eventually agreed to play nice, much to the chagrin of many in the open source world.

The role of Linux in this whole exercise is finally explained more properly. Microsoft is fighting it using software patents and our reader Oiaohm has shown us this new report which completes a circle in the strategy that came about with the EU Commission.

US DOJ lets Microsoft resume collecting protocol royalties

Microsoft may begin collecting royalties again for licensing some protocols because clear technical documentation is now available, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Tuesday.

The change comes after the DOJ issued its latest joint status report regarding its 2002 antitrust settlement with Microsoft.

The settlement required Microsoft to make available technical documentation that would allow other vendors to make products that are interoperable with Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.

As we mentioned the other day, the US Department of Justice is already in Microsoft’s pocket [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] (much like the rest of the government after the late nineties).

Microsoft loses ground to Free software in France (despite abuses), but Microsoft Nick does some spinning around fakers like Ramji, pretending again that Microsoft is part of the very same ecosystem that Microsoft is attacking with software patents (and thus patent tax).

Microsoft recently lost one of its key open-source advocates when Sam Ramji, the company’s senior director of Platform Strategy, officially left to become interim president of the CodePlex Foundation on Sept. 25 (although considering that CodePlex is Microsoft’s open-source software project hosting repository, I’m sort of confused as to how Ramji “left Microsoft”). In a blog post at the time written by Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy, Ramji had pushed a vision of Microsoft coexisting peacefully “in a heterogeneous IT world.”

Nice try, Nick. But Microsoft does not want to ‘coexisting peacefully “in a heterogeneous IT world.”‘ Microsoft wants to subjugate its rivals until they play by Microsoft’s own rules and become Microsoft cash cows. That’s not peaceful coexistence, it’s racketeering [1, 2]. █

“Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won’t say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay,” that’s illegal. It’s racketeering.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Summary: More information about Microsoft’s tax dodging and its renewed push for competitors to pay for exFAT patents

ONE OF MICROSOFT’S FORMER members of staff has decided to blow the whistle — so to speak — and force the company to pay fees that it avoided paying for many years. We wrote about this in recent weeks [1, 2, 3, 4] not just because it demonstrates a pattern of fraud [1, 2, 3] but also because it shows Microsoft’s hypocrisy when it comes to liability and tax.

Here is the latest update from Jeff Reifman:

According to the Department of Revenue, 3,088 taxpayers (or SUCKERS! as Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer might call them) paid B&O Royalty Tax in 2009.

Below is the history of B&O Royalty taxes paid in Washington since 1999 (source: Wa. Dept. of Revenue via e-mail). Note: I calculated the taxes paid column at .00484 of taxable revenue.

While $6.3 million in royalty taxes were paid in ’09, if Microsoft had been paying the tax on its $18.7 billion in licensing revenue – the state should have recorded more than $87.6 million in tax receipts.

This may explain why Ballmer has so far refused to respond to our call to open up Microsoft’s Washington and Nevada tax records.

Mary Jo Foley brings back memories of Tuxera [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], which helps Microsoft tax Linux users (using software patents).

Microsoft has been licensing its exFAT flash file format for licensing for a while now. In case you forgot, on December 10, the company reminded folks that exFAT is available for licensing.

exFAT, or EXtended File Allocation Table, is an enhanced version of the FAT file system from Microsoft that uses less overhead than the Windows NTFS file system. It extends the maximum file size of 4GB in FAT32 to virtually unlimited. exFAT is part of part of Windows CE and Windows client.

This is another wonderful example of Microsoft stifling interoperability and using proprietary means to extract money from its competition, by holding data hostage. TomTom found it out the hard way.

In light of all this, how can the US Department of Justice (already in Microsoft’s pocket [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]) let Microsoft settle? Nothing has changed.

Microsoft has been working to meet the requirements of its antitrust settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice since the settlement was approved in 2002. A joint filing in the case this week indicates that process is “substantially complete,” according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The absurdities above can only ever endure when it is Microsoft and other large companies running the government rather than it being the other way around. █

“Microsoft is pulling out every favor it’s got … It has a very close relationship with DOJ and the White House, and all of that pressure is being brought to bear.”

–Knowledgeable tech industry source [via]

Summary: The Microsoft-stuffed European Commission is caving in to Microsoft and the threat of software patents in Europe grows

THERE are (at least) two antitrust-related cases in Europe which affect Microsoft. The first relates to Web browsers and the second relates to interoperability, along with the relation to software patents. What will the new European Commission do regarding these cases now that it’s filled with more Microsoft-sympathetic people?

The first type of case we have covered in:

1. Mozilla Unofficially Joins ECIS and Opera in Opposition to Microsoft’s Deal in Europe; Microsoft Poisoned Firefox
2. Parties Behind Complaints Against Microsoft in EU Not Pleased
3. Microsoft’s Older Crimes Against Web Browsers Return, Microsoft’s New Attacks on JavaScript Revisited
4. Opera Complains About Vista 7
5. Microsoft Bypasses the Law and Breaks the Web for Opera and GNU/Linux Users, Again
6. Mozilla and Opera Still Object to Microsoft’s Deal with the Commission
7. Microsoft Hopes a Tickbox Will Restore Fair Competition in Europe; Opera Disagrees
8. Microsoft Crowd Incites People Against Rival Web Browsers
9. A Ballot Screen is Not Justice, Internet Explorer Still Compromises Users’ PCs

The second case we most recently covered in:

1. Glyn Moody on European Commission’s Inability to Defend Free Software in Face of Microsoft Lies
2. Microsoft Wins Free Software-Hostile Deal in Europe, Its Front Group ACT Pleased
3. European Commission Still Protects Microsoft Lobbyists
4. ECIS on the Patent Licensing Paradox, Microsoft Confesses Licensing Tricks

According to Reuters, there might be a settlement regarding the first case. It might be announced later today.

Three people familiar with the situation said the European Commission was expected to approve on Tuesday Microsoft’s plan to make it easier for consumers to choose rival browsers on the firm’s Windows operating system, which is used on a majority of personal computers.

The decision would allow Microsoft to avoid another hefty penalty, after it had been fined a total of 1.68 billion euros ($2.5 billion) by the Commission over charges it breached EU antitrust rules.

Opera Software, which initiated this case, is seeing a growth in userbase.

Opera Software announces that within one week of its release, more than 12 million people downloaded Opera 10.10 with Opera Unite.

Regarding the second case, the patent situation in Europe [1, 2, 3] must make Microsoft very pleased. Neelie Kroes was not principally against software patents, despite the fact that they are illegal in the continent. Microsoft and its lobbyists must have brainwashed her. Not only its pressure groups lobbied for this to happen but Microsoft too made it clear that it wants a single patent system (a global one) through which to impose software patents on everyone. As eWEEK Europe puts it:

Companies including Microsoft have been pushing for a more international approach to patents. In September, Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez corporate vice president and deputy general counsel said that over 3.5 million patent applications are pending around the world, including over 750,000 in the U.S – and the costs and time-delays are too high at present. A single global patent system would ease the burden on companies and patent offices.

“In today’s world of universal connectivity, global business and collaborative innovation, it is time for a world patent that is derived from a single patent application, examined and prosecuted by a single examining authority and litigated before a single judicial body,” he said.

In 2006, Microsoft and Linux-distribution owner Novell signed an interoperability collaboration agreement which included some protection relating to Microsoft’s ownership of intellectual property in the open source operating system.

It is all said in relation to pan-EU patents, which pose new problems other than the overriding of existing patent law in many countries.

European ministers have reached agreement on a new EU-wide patent structure after lengthy negotiations but have failed to find a way past the biggest obstacle to an EU-wide patent: the cost of translation.

Ministers have approved a new litigation system to deal with a new Europe-wide patent in a deal that will still require the approval of the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Translation is not the greatest problem if patent law gets perturbed to fit the agenda of stakeholders such as Microsoft, not to mention the pharmaceutical cartel which turns out to be killing people by driving competitors out of the market. [via]

Drug-Makers Paying Off Competitors To Keep Cheap Generics Off Market

Republicans and their allies in the business community talk a good game about the virtues of free-market competition. But, as we’ve seen in the debate over the public option, that stance often goes out the window when corporate profits are at stake.

And now we’ve got another example — one of the sleaziest and most blatantly self-serving yet.

Another great example of patents being used against people. Bill Gates is investing in this practice [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], amongst others. █