01.23.11
Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle at 1:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Disregarding the truth allegedly for financial reasons
Summary: Ben Edelman is accused of working on behalf of Microsoft and Microsoft Florian too seems to be flogging the same agenda, even if they both distort the truth
GOOGLE is under attack. Techrights is not a defender of Google (in fact we challenge Google to change for the better and to abolish software patents), but when the attacks on Google affect Free software, then everyone in the community should view these attacks as somewhat personal.
In 2010 we wrote a great deal about the Edelman-backed “Consumer Watchdog” attacking Google, probably at someone’s behest (Microsoft is a major client of Edelman) and days ago we also showed Microsoft Florian libelling Google as part of a series of his disgusting attacks on Android/Linux. We’ve been tracking many of them and also addressed the lies they contain. We’ll do so again in a moment.
First, we wish to draw attention to this article from the MSBBC (which everyone ought to know is biased in favour of Microsoft due to entryism). It says that someone called Ben Edelman has launched a little smear campaign against Google and Google says he is working for Microsoft. Yes, we have seen this before and the MSBBC insists on denying it. It writes:
The Californian company responded by suggesting he was actually working on behalf of its rival, Microsoft.
But Mr Edelman told the BBC that Google was launching “personal attacks” to distract people from its own behaviour.
And yet, he does not deny a payment from Microsoft. Bear in mind that Microsoft has done that before, even recently in LSE [1, 2, 3]. It’s not unusual for Microsoft employees on full-time payroll to do that too. Many of them are disguised as “researchers”.
Microsoft is unable to catch up with Google, so the strategy shifted to characterising Google as an evil empire. There’s nothing new in this strategy and we gathered dozens of examples.
“No doubt that’s the goal of “closed source partisans” for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawThe second person who is attacking Google these days (regarding patents, codecs, Android, etc.) is “closed source partisan” Microsoft Florian, which is what The Inquirer called him. Not so easily deceived by the name “FOSS patents” then, eh? “No doubt that’s the goal of “closed source partisans” for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press,” wrote Groklaw. “Here’s my advice: consider the source, and stay tuned.”
Assume it’s a case just like TurboHercules, which turned out to be partly owned by Microsoft. It was the same with T3 and with SCO, which later turned out to have been paid by Microsoft too. Going back to Microsoft Florian and examining the news, before his latest lies got exposed (he helps pull another SCO while communicating with the people who helped SCO in the same way), Groklaw wrote: “Folks, like I said earlier, stay tuned. No one can know until discovery is done and the experts have presented everything. This insightful comment from Slashdot shows you why you shouldn’t assume but need to trace code and licenses more carefully than some are doing. This isn’t a case like SCO’s where a party was speaking regularly to the press. So we can rely on the filings only, not on those who may or may not have agendas and who may or may not be reliable anyhow.”
Here is one of the better known rebuttals to the lies from Microsoft Florian. It puts it quite nicely when it says:
Florian Mueller, who by the way is neither a lawyer nor a developer although he plays one on TV.
Other mobbyists/lobbyists, who also front for Microsoft, are actually more like actors than they are technical people. Jonathan Zuck comes to mind. Being a pretender is part of the job and Microsoft minions will play along with the script. Guess what? Just as expected, Microsoft booster Matt Rosoff [1, 2, 3, 4] continues his FUD campaign from the new platform; he writes falsehoods like “intellectual property lawyer Florian Mueller,” which is total disinformation. Groklaw wrote about it: “First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He’s neither. How he gets journalists to repeat his oeuvre without doing any fact checking is a skill, no doubt about it. What would the word be for that skill? : D”
“First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He’s neither.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawWell, that’s the same thing ACT is doing. It pretends to be working for small businesses when it fact it does exactly the opposite. It is paid by Microsoft to do this. Mass-mailing journalists and deceiving them is part of this lobbying campaign, stuffing panels too sometimes.
Groklaw has this very comprehensive rebuttal to the FUD from Microsoft Florian. Usually he is just ignored there, or banned even. Barbara put it nicely in her comment where she called Microsoft Florian F[redacted] M[redacted] because of the obvious consequences:
There are two ways to deal with lying trolls like F[redacted] M[redacted].
1. Ignore them.
2. Expose them.
For this site (groklaw), ignoring Mr. Flagrant Misdirection is the best policy,
since he *wants* his name mentioned on high-profile reputable sites. As one
scammer said, anything that gets him a higher search engine rank is worth it.
It’s why I won’t post his name here, and would encourage others to do the same.
Other pseudo-nyms, if you don’t particularly like using the “redacted”
brackets:
Florid Mullet
Florian Sockpuppet
F****** M******
“The FMTroll” (goes well with “The MoGTroll”)
People in the know will know who you’re referring to, while not giving
Florescent Mulehead any google-juice.
“More people realize that F[redacted] M[redacted] can’t be just filtered out,” gnufreex wrote in IRC a few hours ago, pointing to this LWN comment that says: “The problem with MF is the fact that he pushes his “news” to non-geek press so we can not just ignore him. We can ignore his comments (this is great feature to have and it is implremented on LWN), but we can not ignore MF-pushed articles in mainstream press! I don’t know if he pushes Microsoft agenda for low reason called “money” or for some higher reason, but the fact of the matter: he does it regularly and quite efficiently. Thus we should keep attention on what he’s doing… To filter him out is as dangerous as to filter out Oracle-related or Microsoft-related news in general: few people likes most of these news, but we can not just ignore them.”
LibreOffice’s Charles-H. Schulz wrote to me: “do you think Florian Mueller has gotten a new customer? #ORCL”
Wayne Borean wrote a quick post about it last night:
OK, so Florian is claiming that Google has infringed on Oracle’s copyrights, and he’s written up a huge explanation of what he’s found. But he’s not a programmer. In other words, he most probably doesn’t have the skills to evaluate what he’s looking at.
Curiously his arguments sound just like the arguments that Ken Brown of The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution made in Samizdat, his as yet unpublished proof that Linus Torvalds isn’t responsible for the Linux Kernel. It’s what, only six years overdue?
Here is Slashdot setting the record straight. Jan Wildeboer, who knows Microsoft Florian personally, says that “Microsoft sees Android taking over the mobile market. Florian Mueller produces “evidence” on Android and Oracle. Coincidence?”
A lot of the nonsense germinates/originates from Microsoft Florian’s ‘planting’ of the FUD in Engadget, which embarrassed itself by spreading false information that came from this load of nonsense that’s a ripoff of research which Microsoft Florian pretended to be his. Rather than apologise for its mistake, Engadget added more noise and it just shows what low standards Engadget really has. For those who cannot remember, Engadget also gives room to former Microsoft employees who attack Android in there. It is named and shamed here, with specific reference to the writer Nilay Patel:
I don’t know the credentials of Mr Mueller, but the name of the blog FOSS Patents is ironical as Free Software Foundation has been fighting against ‘software patents in general.
[...]
It appears Mueller’s findings are nowhere close to ‘help’ Oracle extort money from Google over Java. As the database company, which has been sued by the government for overcharging them, Oracle has taken a U-turn from their stand on Java, which resulted in Apache resigning from Java Committee. Free Software Foundation also criticized Oracle’ Java accusations and came out with support for Google.
Popular blogsite Engadget posted a blog rebuffing such claims. Nilay Patel wrote nothing new but repeated what Mueller wrote in his blog. The worst part of Patel’s blog was ‘unrelated’ mention to Prystar vs Apple case. Prystar was selling hardware with MacOS installed on it. If this is the best example Patel came come out with, I can do nothing but sigh.
[...]
In today’s coverage, especially by the pro-Apple blogs, I see it as nothing more than creating FUD to scare developers and users, especially when the battle is far from over.
The name of Engadget has been harmed by this whole routine/stunt of Microsoft Florian. Android’s reputation too has been harmed, no matter how many corrections will be posted. The ROI in lobbying is very high and this whole saga just proves it. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 2:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft suffers another blow in the mobile space where it loses to Android and is forced to compensate customers whose data it lost
OVER a year ago we argued that SideKick was most likely on its deathbed, but since the brand may still have some life left in it, T-Mobile seems to have moved over to Android and it now plans a relaunch.
Aside from the news about Android, there is apparently a SideKick settlement (we cannot find more reports to corroborate). The Microsoft boosters say:
A proposed settlement has been reached in the class-action lawsuit over the high-profile October 2009 outage of the data service behind T-Mobile’s Sidekick, run by Microsoft’s Danger Inc. subsidiary.
In any case, the major news is this new report which says “Sidekick reborn as Android-powered Sidekick 4G”. To quote: “The Sidekick was one of those mobile gadgets that everyone knew about, but not everyone used. It was powered by Danger, which Microsoft picked up and then used for the KIN, but T-Mobile always had the rights to the Sidekick name.
“Well, this morning the Sidekick was re-launched, at a press breakfast but this time it will be powered by Android. So far there’s no word on pricing or official launch date (first half of 2011), but what we do know is that it will run on T-Mobile’s 4G network.”
There are many more articles about it (e.g. [1, 2, 3), but some reports show more certainty than others, so we’ll wait until it’s made more official. █
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01.22.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 4:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s #1 competition is being attacked using the Achilles heel which is patent extortion, not just from Microsoft but also Microsoft offshoots
THE other day we wrote about Assistant Attorney General David Kris joining Microsoft's patent troll, which is also the largest patent troll in the world. It is already reportedly attacking Linux by taking payments from companies which use it. How convenient for Microsoft, eh? This news about an appointment from the government was actually more widespread than we expected and articles about this include:
TechDirt says that “Justice Department’s Top Terrorism Prosecutor Goes Patent Troll”. Mike Masnick argues that “his expertise was supposedly in national security law, and you could see how that could be put to good use in private practice, instead it appears that Kris has decided to go patent troll. He has joined uber patent troll, Intellectual Ventures as its new General Counsel… just as the company has finally started suing companies for not agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to gain protection from its giant patent portfolio. While I certainly didn’t agree with Kris on many of his positions, pretty much everyone agreed that he was really smart and thoughtful on a lot of these subjects. It seems that having his talents go to the world’s biggest patent troll in an effort to disrupt innovation by putting a toll on it is a huge waste of talent that could have been put to productive, rather than destructive, use.”
Shouldn’t Kris have just called for the arrest of his new boss, who makes money from terrorising businesses? He chose money over ethics.
Meanwhile, other patent cartels are being formed by Microsoft, its two co-founders aside (both have firms that are also patent trolls). Written by Gareth Halfacree we have another article about CPTN, which was previously covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. It says:
The Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundations – two organisations fighting for the same cause, but traditionally in very different ways – have joined forces in an attempt to prevent Novell patents falling into Microsoft’s hands.
Novell, which ended months of speculation by announcing its acquisition by Attachmate in November of last year, made $450 million by selling 882 patents to a consortium known as CPTN – a group of technology companies including Apple, EMC, and Oracle, headed up by Microsoft.
Microsoft already engages in patent racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], so letting Microsoft have this cartel is not acceptable. It is worth adding that the European Commission’s response to this was not formal or surprising (OSI reported the issue not to the European Commission), but the liar Microsoft Florian decided to spin it and feed journalists with a story that defends CPTN (Microsoft Florian is a hypocrite, defending what Microsoft does with patents while criticising defensive bodies like OIN). Utter lobbying, utter nonsense.
“Uniloc Decision [in Microsoft case] Helps SAP Void $139 Million Patent Verdict,” alleges this new report from Law.com
The Federal Circuit’s decision last Tuesday in Uniloc v. Micosoft (for which we awarded Donald Dunner of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner Litigator of the Week honors) has already prompted one court to press the reset button in a major case.
On Thursday, Marshall, Tex., federal magistrate judge Charles Everingham vacated a $139 million jury award for Versata Software in its patent infringementcase against SAP. Citing Uniloc, Judge Everingham held that the lower court had erroneously admitted certain damages testimony and that the jury had relied on an invalid damage calculation model.
We most recently covered the Versata case and the Uniloc case just days ago.
In other news about software patents, watch this new press release (ITWire too posts such press releases now):
-The e-Zassi.com subscriber base continues to expand as the medical device industry recognizes the actionable benefits of how the patent pending software platform is addressing the challenges of technology transfer.
If medical devices too will suffer from software patents, more people will die. I’ve had discussions with colleagues of mine about it. How about this new story?
Improved computer server connections earn patent for Cy-Fair-area man
[...]
A technology to help computers more easily find servers on networks has earned a U.S. patent for a Cy-Fair-area man.
More software patents on basic functionality. Where does it end really? Can Google help end this madness for its own sake too? It was not long ago that Google did step in this direction and Groklaw reported this. █
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents, SCO at 3:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s hope of boosting Vista Phony 7 [sic] still relies on lies regarding Android and many lawsuits; Microsoft Florian plays an instrumental role, even if he just keeps lying
ANOTHER week, another attack on GNU/Linux, courtesy of course of Microsoft Florian, who is trying to be another Enderle/O’Gara (attacking Android like these people attack Linux). Those big lies and unbacked allegations carry on flying, such as the claims he made for TurboHercules (that’s how he started the anti-Linux lobbying a year ago) before it turned out that TurboHercules is partly owned by Microsoft. For the uninitiated, Microsoft Florian’s strategy involves flooding forums with repeated messages (he denied comments in his blog after people had exposed him right there in his own platform) and he is mass-mailing journalists with bits he wants inserted into articles, attributed to him of course. Journalists will need learn to ignore mobbyists (Florian personalises his messages slightly, so they can’t see it’s mass-mailed), especially ones who do not deny a connection to Microsoft and have a proven history of being paid to lobby. Microsoft Florian himself would not deny this. He is an experienced lobbyist and his shameless tactics (like abusing mail and schmoozing journalists) are well documented in Techrights.
Florian has just been caught lying again, but the mainstream press does not appear to have caught up with it yet. One forum that Microsoft Florian regularly trolls (inserting anti-Linux tripe to a pro-Linux forum is considered Internet trolling) is right now slamming Microsoft Florian while linking to this report, which says:
A close look at the actual files and accompanying documentation, however, suggest that it’s not a simple case of copy and paste. The infringing files are found in a compressed archive in a third-party component supplied by SONiVOX, a member of Google’s Open Handset Alliance (OHA). SONiVOX, which was previously called Sonic, develops an Embedded Audio Synthesis (EAS) framework and accompanying Java API wrappers which it markets as audioINSIDE.
“More proof Florian Mueller is a paid Microsoft troll,” called it one reader of ours (IRC logs to appear shortly) and “Florian in fact copied this research,” alleges another. There is a more in the IRC logs (I was away the entire time it was discussed, recording TechBytes and then sleeping).
“I had deja vu reading FM’s “analysis”,” wrote one reader, “because I have seen it before. This what Florian does is just vague FUD. It can be proven or disproven. It is just to FUD people… To make manufacturers think about WP7″.
There is also pathetic damage control from people who hate Linux and attack it while pretending not to. Those anti-FOSS minions try to imply that everyone who disagrees with Microsoft Florian is yours truly, even though I never had any account in Reddit. That’s libel. As gnufreex put it, “Microsoft cronies at Reddit are telling me that I am you 
… In fact, they say that to everyone who points out Florian Mueller lied about Android”
Here is one of the key analyses that disprove all that FUD from Microsoft Florian:
Sometimes the sheer wrongness of what is posted on the web leaves us speechless. Especially when it’s picked up and repeated as gospel by otherwise reputable sites like Engadget. “Google copied Oracle’s Java code, pasted in a new license, and shipped it,” they reported this morning.
Sorry, but that just isn’t true.
[...]
Sadly, while sensational articles like Engadget’s and Mueller’s will get splashed all over the web and lavished with thousands of views and hundreds of comments, the boring truth will rate no such attention.
Exactly.
“Copied code not in Android source after all,” says the headline from Android Central.
The other 37 files exist as well, but are inside a zip file in an area of the source tree used for one particular audio chipset. These files look like they were uploaded by mistake, and also aren’t used to build Android or ship with any Android devices. These will probably just be deleted from the tree, as they don’t do anything.
One more anti-Android story proven false and put out to pasture. Let’s get ready for the next one, because everyone wants to see some of those beautiful, green Android dollars. [ZDNet]
“If I were Google,” wrote gnufreex, “I would be suing Florian Mueller for libel. He clearly tries to create FUD so device manufacturers dump Android for WP7″
He also linked to this FUD from Microsoft Nick, alleging that the “article is veeeery incorrect… Schmidt left from Novell for Google in 2001. That is before Novell bought SUSE and Ximian. And yet, that article claims that it was Schmidt who started those.”
All these attacks on Google often turn out to be connected to Microsoft. Is anybody shocked? █
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01.21.11
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Co-authored with G. Forbes
Summary: Linux projects such as MeeGo continue to be threatened by the influence and corporate culture of Microsoft
EARLIER this week we wrote about some former Microsoft executives relocating to other companies [1, 2]. Once installed, they will often link their new employer back to Microsoft, causing great harm in the process.
Essentially, they are allowing Microsoft to take over these companies without the need to purchase them. Microsoft instead infects them like a virus.
A good example is Huggers, the Microsoft UK executive who left and joined the BBC. Regardless of the government-funded nature of his then-new employer, Huggers allegiance was still with Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. He turned the BBC into the sock-puppet we call the “MSBBC”. Among other things, the MSBBC attempts to portray Microsoft in a positive light as much as possible, regardless of the circumstances and/or actual facts. Now Huggers has been effectively laid off, having caused sufficient damage while reaping many financial benefits from this service mostly paid for by British citizens:
Huggers was on a £330,000 salary and total £407,000 remuneration package in 2009/10.
Amongst his last acts has been planning to cut 25 percent from the BBC’s online budget and staff by 2013, under cost measures announced in the autumn.
Huggers has left the MSBBC in a weaker and Microsoft-dependent state. So naturally Techrights is worried that his next truck stop is Intel, which is involved heavily with the Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system. Stay alert. As mentioned in the last TechBytes episode, the MSBBC continues its Microsoft bias in coverage and someone else noticed it (MeeGo and Android ARM/x86-based tablets being mostly ignored):
The BBC finally stops ignoring Android, but..
…starts criticising it instead.
Having just witnessed the next instalment of The MSBBC Click’s coverage of CES 2011, once again I’m appalled by their pro-Microsoft bias, which is more obvious now than ever.
The introduction mentions Microsoft first and foremost, with the reporter positioned so the Microsoft stand is clearly visible behind him, giving the false impression that the whole point of CES is as a
showcase for Microsoft products, despite the fact that its presence is little more than a token gesture, as it has nothing new or innovative to show. The reality is that, at CES 2011, Microsoft is completely
irrelevant, and “Click” shouldn’t have even mentioned them at all, much less given Ballmer an advertising slot for Microsoft’s lame and archaic technology.
Then another reporter mentions tablets are dominating the show, and admits nearly all of them are running Android, but then claims this is a problem because “Android won’t really work on tablets until later this year”, conveniently ignoring the swath of popular Android tablets already on the market, and he makes no effort to actually demonstrate any of the new Android tablets at all, despite the fact that he’s inundated by them.
Meanwhile, his tag-team partner upstairs is busy playing the straight man to Ballmer, as he explains why everyone should use Windows 7 on tablets … that aren’t really tablets, because they all have keyboards and big, energy-sucking processors. Or IOW Microsoft “can’t do tablets”, so they’ve decided to redefine them as “all-in-one PCs with detachable keyboards” instead. Again. The reporter makes a comment about the touch screen experience being a bit fiddly on Windows, then lets Ballmer carry on fecklessly showboating.
Overall, everything “Android” was painted in either a negative or questionable light, and everything “Microsoft” was made to seem like a foregone conclusion of success, despite the fact that Android is here and now, and very successful, but Microsoft’s mobile efforts are, and have always been, a miserable flop, and are mostly non-existent vapourware.
To be fair, there were MeeGo devices there too and they are considerably more “open” (or hackable) than Android. MeeGo of course is also a Nokia project, not just an Intel one. It’s a combination of Moblin and Maemo, projects which Nokia seems to have lost a lot of interest in. Not surprisingly, this loss of interest began ever since a Microsoft president was made Nokia’s CEO. Now Murdoch folks are saying that “Nokia’s Miracle [Could] Be Microsoft”:
Should Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, continue executing the strategy established by his ousted predecessor, strengthening it by improving execution and operating costs? Or should he map out an entirely new strategy, perhaps one based on a third-party operating system. Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley favors the latter, suggesting Nokia make the jump to Android or Windows Phone 7. And interestingly, he feels WP7 is the better option of the two.
Why?
Well, for one thing, Elop is a Microsoft veteran. He seems to have left the company on good terms and presumably still has close ties to it. For another, Microsoft and Nokia are a better cultural fit than Google and Nokia. And finally, the two companies need each other to succeed in the mobile market long term.
Glyn Moody asks, “could Nokia’s *buyer* be Microsoft?” This speculation goes a while back.
It is questionable if Elop will stay committed to Linux-based mobile operating systems, having arrived from Microsoft with words of encouragement from Steve Ballmer. This, along with people like Huggers installed at Intel, has put MeeGo’s future further in jeopardy.
Some of Nokia’s recent strategy does not inspire much confidence. For example, today we found out that:
Nokia ditches plans for X7 smartphone on AT&T
[...]
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news today, but a source close to the situation, who didn’t want to be named, confirmed Nokia had pulled the plug on the launch of the new smartphone on AT&T’s network.
Here is the source of the report. Also today we found some announcements of events, so such pessimism may be premature:
-
This is the place to learn about the new MeeGo open source operating system, view the newest MeeGo-based devices and see what all the buzz is about. You will learn about the benefits of enrolling in the Intel AppUpSM developer program, developing for MeeGo and other available operating systems/run times (Windows C/C++, Adobe AIR, Java, .NET). Hear why you should develop for the Intel AppUpSM center, discover the great monetization opportunities, see live coding demonstrations and talk to Intel experts about your own code.
-
The first annual conference, called MeeGo Italian Day, is a one-day free event focused on the MeeGo open-source linux-based OS and Qt environment.
How about this gadget (see photo)?
Nokia has to do something big if it wants to crack the US smartphone market. We can agree on that, right? And believe us, Nokia wants this — nothing will make the mighty Finns (and the company’s global investors) prouder than to gain some traction in the home of Apple pie and Google desserts. So how will the company do it? With Symbian? Oh, hell no. By introducing another MeToo handset? Nope, with MeeGo on a rockin’ platform like the rumored N9 slider pictured above.
Let’s watch what Nokia does next. Jan from Red Hat speculates that Elop will surround himself by former Microsoft executives, as we saw before in other companies. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Google, Patents at 9:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Google’s new CEO Larry Page would be wise to protect his company from attacks by eliminating the real source of this problem
THE current debate about Chrome and WebM became a broader debate about proprietary/patents-encumbered codecs versus free ones. We covered this a couple of days ago because Microsoft boosters are lying.
One of our readers noticed this MPEG LA announcement which everyone appears to have overlooked. MPEG LA is calling for even more patents.
MPEG LA invites any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the MVC Standard to submit them by February 18, 2011 for evaluation of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators in order to participate in the creation of, and determine licensing terms for, a joint MVC patent license.
Steve Jobs, who has just vanished again, warned that his mates at MPEG LA (run by a patent troll) will fight against free codecs using patents. This one person seems to agree if not corroborate too. The opening says:
People say I am a troll, a hater of Open Source, an H.264 fan boy, a dozen other things, but I am just a realist. (And was on the SMPTE VC1 Ratification committee).
The title by the way is “Google Will Have To Pony Up To Mpeg LA: Why WebM Is NOT Going To Be Royalty Free”.
As one person put it in Twitter, it is better to have a free format/codec which may later come under dispute for Google to resolve than to go straight into the codec Hell offered by the MPEG LA cartel.
“Help those who actively support abolishing software patents.”Google would be wise to lobby for shutdown of software patents, but as we noted before, Google’s patents database for the US shows that it is part of the problem (see this ludicrous patent). Google says: “Because of our long-term interests in open source, we may not have adequate patent protection for certain innovations” [via Benjamin Henrion].
Fine, Google. Then get rid of patents already. Help those who actively support abolishing software patents. The wrath of MPEG LA is only relevant to the United Stated and Japan, where software patents are formally acknowledged as valid. Changing this is not an impossible task. SJVN said last night that “[w]hen [he] spoke with Chris DiBona, Google’s open-source program manager, a few years back when Google was big but not yet Google, DiBona told [him], that Page was “passionate about open source.” DiBona added, that Google also supported its engineers working on “open-source and Linux,” and that “many of them use part of their time to work on open-source projects.”” Unlike Page, Eric Schmidt defended intellectual property (“fundamental to how we operate”).
Someone should pressure Mr. Page to start rebelling against the US patent system, which also harms Android. Software patents are neither Google’s friend nor society’s friend. Do no evil, Google, and help us get rid of those evil software patents. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 8:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft mobbyists and people whom the company feeds material for attacks on the competition are especially afraid of OIN and Android
WE OFTEN state that objects and entities which Microsoft proponents target the most are those which worry Microsoft the most. This general rule usually proves to be applicable in a wide range of debates, including the recent one about codecs (more on that in a later post).
For those who have not been paying attention, Microsoft has been patenting a lot recently. A lot. New products hardly come from the company, but staff is very busy filling out paperwork and coming up with some of the most ludicrous ideas (if they can even be called that) and try to gain a monopoly on those, in order to scare competitors and have them pass ‘protection money’ to Microsoft. This is not business, it’s racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
One resistor which piqued Microsoft’s curiosity is the OIN, where many companies pool their patents strictly for defensive purposes. Some make the claim that the OIN would render the patent system obsolete, but this is truly a stretch.
Techrights continues to stress that Microsoft has begun playing a reactionary game (or a reaction to OIN’s reaction) by setting up all sorts of entities, including CPTN [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], which puts a large lump of OIN’s patents in Microsoft’s own pool. Needless to say, it’s a cold war; it is unlikely that a war will erupt as it’s more like a bunch of lawyers flexing their muscles papers and seeing who can be extorted in order to “maximise shareholders’ value” or whatever.
“Microsoft mobbyists even brag about the number of lawsuits against Android.”There is no need to hide the fact that Google uses Linux to win the mobile/smartphones war. Android has begun moving up the food chain (greater scale), so at stake here we have not just phones anymore. Microsoft understands this, which is why Microsoft and its shells or allies are suing Google — a trend we have been tracking and showing for many months. Microsoft mobbyists even brag about the number of lawsuits against Android. This mirrors exactly what Steve Ballmer et al. tell journalists. Google is a member of the OIN, which is still trying to find new ways to ‘hack’ the patent system and defend Linux from it.
There are all sorts of theories about CPTN and its purpose. The mobbyists try to spin it and mass-mailing journalists is one of their tools. As Gordon puts it in relation to an observation made here yesterday, “apparently in [Microsoft Florian's] world Microsoft are innovators, so there are other worlds than this it seems… lol, just noticed the “he’s been writing it since Jan 2010″ so a whopping ONE YEAR adventure then…”
The presence of Microsoft Florian in The Guardian also came under fire by Satipera, who wrote: “The Guardian is repeating Florian Mueller’s paid for propaganda word for word. #swpats #Guardiantechfail”
One line of propaganda is that Android is “risky” because of patents. Another line of propaganda from this mobbyist is that despite complaints from both Free software and open source entities, there is nothing wrong with the CPTN patents cartel (the mobbyist uses the European Commission’s response, which was mentioned initially by him, but later by the press and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols [1, 2]). When there is some insider material about Microsoft (especially if it’s favourable to Microsoft), the mobbyist usually gets it first and leaked/exclusive documents from the past show us that Microsoft tends to feed those. How about those TurboHercules letters (Microsoft Florian got the “scoop”) which smeared IBM before it turned out that Microsoft owned part of TurboHercules? Someone is probably being briefed for lobbying purposes. Groklaw responds to it all as follows:
It also means that the EU Commission’s answer to a question on January 17 that “on the basis of the information currently available at this stage” it seemed unlikely the deal “requires a notification to the Commission under the Merger Regulation” or that “the mere acquisition of the patents in question by CPTN Holdings would lead to an infringement of EU competition rules” came prior to this renewed filing, which was filed not with the EU Commission anyhow but with the German Federal Cartel Office. That is who will decide the matter there, and the US DOJ will consider the matter in the US. No one has filed a complaint with the EU Commission that I know of, not that it couldn’t happen. There is a lot of subtle FUD in the air from the usual suspects, if I might say so.
Hopefully other companies and entities will express their concerns as well.
For those who insist that Microsoft Florian still deserves the benefit of some doubt, bear in mind that this week too the mobbyist links to Maureen O’Gara repeatedly (vice versa too) and still chats with Rob Enderle. These are some of the vilest, most dishonest and ethically-corrupt people who have attacked Linux for a long time. Microsoft Florian attaches himself to these people, amongst others of their type. He links to Mary Jo Foley, who links back to him. It’s like Club Microsoft. As we showed before, the mobbyist has been defending CPTN and smearing OIN; he talks to pro-Microsoft reporters and anti-Free software Internet trolls. People can draw their own conclusions and also realise that the attacks on OIN and Android do confirm that they are major threats to Microsoft. █
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01.20.11
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Windows at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Fake sorts of coverage and spin come from people whose career is not reporting but lobbying
IN THE PREVIOUS post we showed that Microsoft funds books which are favourable to its agenda. News sites too are becoming filled with Windows book authors (sellers) who pretend to provide unbiased coverage. Examples include Mary Jo Foley and Ed Bott from ZDNet, even Preston Gralla from IDG. Some people do not know these authors’ relationship with Microsoft and that’s fine. They might learn over time and we still have this out-of-date “Credibility Index” for those who wish not to memorise.
Earlier today some reader from Europe sent us this link which says that Vista Phony 7 [sic] is a huge, huge disaster for some gullible buyers who actually opted for it (there are not many such buyers).
Some customers’ phones were downloading 50 GB per day, leaving them stuck with $10,000+ bills
For those to whom this is new, we have a decent old post about it. Like the MSBBC did at the time, Peter Bright is spinning it in Fox Technica (Peter and Emil are the principal Microsoft boosters in Fox Technica). Peter is blaming “unnamed 3rd party” along with Microsoft as he gives visibility to Microsoft’s damage control without at all being sceptical as any reporter should be. It is also means of diversion, where the entity all blame gets diverted to is not named and therefore cannot and need not defend itself, or bounce back blame at Microsoft. In summary, this is classic spin that took weeks to prepare and it resembles what Microsoft did when Zune froze at the end of a year due to a major bug. It’s all just a strategy for averting a bad name and spreading a fairy tale to stick — one that Microsoft can point the finger at later and pretend innocence. We gave some examples in the past, but none which involved Vista Phony 7 [sic]. It was released prematurely and it shows.
“Peter is blaming “unnamed 3rd party” along with Microsoft as he gives visibility to Microsoft’s damage control without at all being sceptical as any reporter should be.”Speaking of phones, Microsoft Florian pushes his anti-Android/Linux venom not by promoting Vista Phony 7 (which he did to a degree) but by advancing Microsoft’s more major competition to Android, which is patent lawsuits. This includes lawsuits from friends of Microsoft. And having sucked up to the technology editor for a while (in Twitter and perhaps privately too), Microsoft Florian managed to spread his rhetoric outside his tiny blog. Since he is consistently promoting Microsoft’s agenda and always refusing to deny being paid by Microsoft, many people just assume he is a Microsoft lobbyist right now (a one-word answer would confirm/deny it, but he chooses to decline to answer). He is also pushing his anti-OIN and pro-CPTN views these days, which leaves too little to the imagination and since sites in many languages discuss the CPTN situation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], he strives to warp the coverage, mostly by mass-mailing journalists.
Here is the first report that we found about the joint complaint from the OSI and the FSF. Joab Jackson and Chris Kanaracus co-edited this report:
OSI and FSF argue that there is not enough public information surrounding the deal, and that, given the influence of the companies, such secrecy could hide “nefarious intentions,” the statement charges.
“Given the potential for collusion between these competitors to reduce competition amongst them and to harm competition that exists in the marketplace today, competition would be better served by the Department of Justice thoroughly investigating the facts and evidence concerning this transaction, rather than giving them the benefit of the commercial doubt,” the statement reads.
Earlier this week, the European Union expressed no opposition to the deal. OSI and the FSF had also filed a request with the German Federal Cartel Office last month.
Can the German Federal Cartel Office also investigate Microsoft’s relationship with Microsoft Florian, since the subject is so suspiciously secretive? █
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