There is a lot more about this coming from individual people, with one person saying: “congrats to the #limux team for the complete switch to #odf #linux”
Over in Brazil, there is a debate about ODF[OGG]. A rough translation of some coverage says that the “The director of the ODF Alliance Jomar Silva, @Homembit, was a guest at the table discussion on memory International Seminar of the Forum of Brazilian Digital Culture.”
Over in the UK, the OSA’s Mark Antony is told that politicians can be believed “they’re sincere when Whitehall is running on Ubuntu & documents on govt. websites are available in ODF…”
“Currently, Microsoft does not properly support ODF and it still treats it like a second-class citizen.”SJVN has his personal interpretation of the impact of the i4i decision [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. “Maybe in the aftermath of the i4i decision,” he argues, everyone will “just have to bite the bullet & support ODF.” Currently, Microsoft does not properly support ODF and it still treats it like a second-class citizen. Google too has some catching up to do, based on D. R. Evans, not to mention Apple, which has been helping Microsoft against ODF. As one person put it earlier this month, “ISO’s current defect report for ISO 29500 (OOXML) has 809 pages. That are 71 pages more than the full specification of ODF 1.1! !” Miguel de Icaza helped Microsoft address some of these errors, but since then he has been crowned and named Microsoft MVP [1, 2]. He’s like part of that company.
Our reader The Mad Hatter is making valuable information future-proof right about now:
Open Formats – I’m Moving all Mom’s Poetry to Open Document Format
[...]
Of course if you do want access to Mom’s poetry, you can just go to OpenOffice.Org, and download Open Office at no cost. There’s no reason you can’t have both Microsoft Office and Open Office installed on the same computer.
In summary, even though there are no major ODF events, this international standard continues to develop and be adopted all around the world. █
OpenOffice.org in internet cafes threat to Microsoft
Another week, another example of how Microsoft is being forced to react to the increasing adoption of OpenOffice.org as the 2010 office software of choice. Clearly worried by OpenOffice.org’s increasing market share, Microsoft has been forced to change its licencing terms in an attempt to hold on to its internet cafe business. Directions on Microsoft analyst Paul DeGroot admits that Linux and OpenOffice.org are a perfectly viable alternative to Microsoft Windows and MS-Office for web cafes.
Similarly, Microsoft is stifling a move to GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org in British schools. This is achieved through taxpayers-funded indoctrination of the young, as we explained last night. It turns out now that not only BETCA is involved [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Microsoft is also directly involved in this, so it need not rely on corruptible officials. Earlier today we found this report at The Register:
Microsoft tells UK schools: buy our software, save money
Microsoft’s UK education chief insisted yesterday that schools would continue to lap up its software despite tightening budgets and a likely change of government – and education policy – in the next few months.
[...]
Earlier this week Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a national rollout of the Home Access scheme – to get laptops and broadband into around 270,000 deprived homes. Microsoft has been a key player in that particular £300m project.
Another new article from The Register adds: “The then schools minister Jim Knight said in January 2009 that Microsoft had created something he described as a “re-investment fund”. The software maker agreed to “commit to fund a foundation in support of the Home Access programme”.”
“Commit to fund a foundation,” eh? Let us not forget the role of the Gates Foundation in education. We wrote about this subject in:
This degree of market distortion which relies on back room deals and corrupted appointees need not carry on. More people just need to become aware of it and resistant to the propaganda (PR) that eternally disguises the truth. █
Summary: Microsoft’s online store no longer has Office, due to deliberate patent infringement; Joseph Stiglitz gives talk on intellectual monopolies; Microsoft’s ally Infosys is spreading software patents and more
Microsoft has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software starting today.
“Stiglitz also alleged that Windows Vista was making things less compatible for rivals to be further stifled…”A longtime opponent of the patent system, Professor Joseph Stiglitz who won a Nobel prize for economics, has given a new talk which is finally up on YouTube. it’s a long talk where he actually mentions Microsoft’s abuses on at least 3 separate occasions. Stiglitz also alleged that Windows Vista was making things less compatible for rivals to be further stifled while insisting that several authorities (he names Europe and Korea) found Microsoft guilty, so it is beyond doubt that Microsoft is an offender.
“Stiglitz says the patent thicket and lawsuits in the software sector shows the failure of the system to promote innovation,” remarks the President of the FFII.
He also argues: “Karel DeGucht says the Lisbon Treaty will only works if we respect what is in it. I would say especially the access of Parliament on ACTA”
We wrote about the Lisbon Treaty before [1, 2, 3, 4]. It’s more policy laundry, just like ACTA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. It’s globalisation the wrong way — the way that benefits the super-wealthy and marginalises the rest.
Speaking of globalisation, Microsoft’s extension in India “awaits nod for 219 patent applications in India, US,” says the Business Standard.
IT behemoth Infosys Technologies, which today came out with its third quarter earnings, is awaiting approval for 219 patent applications in India and the US.
Infosys has been helping Microsoft in legalising software patents in India [1, 2, 3] (it also helped OOXML [1, 2] and other negative things [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]). The company stands for exploitation of Indian people and its existence (or right to exist) should be questioned among citizens of India.
When we wrote our year end posts for 2009, we should’ve added patent trolling to our list of trends. In the past year we’ve covered a number of patent disputes including the Word-blocking patent against Microsoft and VoloMedia’s patent on podcasting. Union Square Ventures’ Brad Burnham wrote an excellent piece today on independent invention and how patent reform can minimize trolls.
Said Burnham, “Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No! That’s not what is happening…Our companies are being attacked by companies that were not even in the same market, very often by companies they did not even know existed.”
Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No! That’s not what is happening. Our companies are driven by imaginative and innovative engineering teams that are focused on creating social value by bringing innovative new services to market.
Our companies are being attacked by companies that were not even in the same market, very often by companies they did not even know existed.
Regarding the above article, the President of the FFII says that “Patent trolls go after the smaller companies first.” Microsoft does too. █
“Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft COO Bob] Herbold told Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to Microsoft or a larger company or ‘not go into business to begin with.’” -Newsweek, March 1998
The Microsoft boosters from ZDNet and CNET have just stated that Microsoft will allow “renting” of Office and Vista 7, but perhaps they fail to understand that this already is rental; that’s what proprietary software with licences to run binary code is all about. They should read the EULA.
Until Microsoft added this option, DeGroot said, Microsoft really only had the option of threatening to shut down a business or potentially pushing rental businesses toward Linux and OpenOffice.
Freeing myself from the vile clutches of Microsoft
I’ve decided that Windows 7 holds absolutely no appeal for me. According to what I’ve heard, most of the new and “improved” features gear more towards people who couldn’t handle Vista or otherwise just don’t know how to use a PC. Plus, I’ve also read that it has the same software compatibility issues as Vista does, so that’s no good. And, lastly, $120 USD for an upgrade to the HOME version is friggin’ ridiculous, especially in this economy. So, I’m officially working on leaving Microsoft.
It is stories like this which make Microsoft nervous. It knows better than anyone else what is really happening because Windows reports to Microsoft which programs are installed (that’s a verified fact), maybe even which partitions. █
“I’m not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn’t need an interpreter.”
Ongoing problems with a Microsoft Web site handling software licenses have left some business customers unable to activate and use their Microsoft apps for more than a month.
It has been predicted Microsoft’s Office 2010 will cause migration headaches, but for some, the pain is already here.
[...]
Problems include having to rewrite and test old VBA Office macros because they won’t work in Office 2007, file incompatibilities, major interface changes, and instances where Outlook won’t work on different versions of Microsoft’s Exchange Server.
And while Microsoft has documented known problems, customers have complained it’s the undocumented stuff they are uncovering that’s really tripping them up and where Microsoft is not being helpful.
Welcome to Microsoft — where programs fail to function as advertised. But Microsoft wants to force you to use them anyway. █
“Their [Microsoft] documents display a clear intent to monopolize, to prevent any competition from springing up. And they have used a variety of restrictive practices to prevent that kind of competition.”
–Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee
Summary: OOXML to behave differently and have a different function depending on where one buys Microsoft Office
Microsoft is not giving up in the i4i case, but interestingly enough, while Cliff Saran from the UK claims that Microsoft is removing custom tags, ZDNet UK indicates that this removal won’t happen in the UK. Software patents are invalid in the UK and the injunction is based in the US (i4i exports its products from Canada).
An update to Microsoft Word that will remove some XML functionality will not be provided to British users, Microsoft has confirmed.
Since OOXML is a format and not a standard (it is a new name given to Microsoft’s proprietary format in Office), the above is interesting. UK users of Office will have XML functionality that their peers in the US are missing. This increases fragmentation and thus it introduces incompatibility.
Here is the reason Microsoft is doing it. This is a matter of urgency.
Microsoft on Wednesday posted an update for Word 2007 that ditches the custom XML tagging technology a federal court banned the company from including in its software after Jan. 10.
Industry observers have expressed concern over the proliferation of software process patents since they became generally accepted in the mid-nineties, and some of the most egregious abusers of the over-burdened system have been the large, lawyered-up industry giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The recent spectacle of Microsoft being hoisted by its own petard has provoked considerable glee in some circles, but that’s not why I find it interesting. Rather, it illustrates that, increasingly, conventional on-premises software is becoming just another subset of Software as a Service (SaaS).
I also find it more than a little funny to see how Microsoft was crying about how unfair it all was not just to Microsoft but, as Microsoft’s lawyers put it at the time, to all the little people out there “who require new copies of Office and Word would be stranded without an alternative set of software.” Microsoft’s attorneys also claimed that the situation would be a “major public disruption,” and would “have an effect on the public due to the public’s undisputed and enormous reliance on those products.”
Cry me a river. OpenOffice works just fine and it’s free to boot.
Yes, this was argued several times before. Microsoft is very arrogant when it comes to its market position. There are more details about it in Law.com, but nothing terribly exciting. █
“The reality is that we already have two OOXML variants, and two more are coming when Office 2009 ships: OOXML 1.0 (i.e. ECMA 376 today); Office 2007 (i.e. OOXML 1.0 + all undocumented bits + all fixes); OOXML 1.1 (whatever is the outcome of Feb’s BRM); Office 2009 (OOXML 1.1 + undocumented bits)”
National Journal’s Under the Influence blog has a piece up on a new lobbying shop whose selling point appears to be that they can provide some services lobbying firms would provide, but without the reporting requirements.
Citing what its founders call a “volatile climate for lobbyists,” K Street Research opened shop today in hopes of helping clients with policy and research needs while lowering their lobbying disclosure numbers.
First, “policy and research” are incredibly vague descriptions.
Second, the lobbying disclosure act was designed to require disclosure of this sort of research. See 2 USC 1607 (7):
(7) Lobbying activities
The term “lobbying activities” means lobbying contacts and efforts in support of such contacts, including preparation and planning activities, research and other background work that is intended, at the time it is performed, for use in contacts, and coordination with the lobbying activities of others.
[...]
They should also succeed in drawing attention to the need to update the Lobbying Disclosure Act, since this business is apparently based on the benefits of skirting it.
The Microsoft lobby must absolutely love these loopholes. The real scale of lobbying/lobbyists is nowhere near what’s publicly reported. Some of the most effective lobbying is done under another ‘umbrellas’ like “campaign funding”, “charity”, “donations”, and “favours”.
Bill Gates, the de facto education minister and one of the world’s biggest lobbyists [1, 2, 3, 4] is still thriving in secrecy as he attempts to control more of the education agenda using his new firm. Here is some new information about a $10 million investment that gives Gates the influence he requires:
A representative of the Gates Foundation is in town today to meet with the new board members. Why is this significant? Well, the district and the teachers have been working together to submit a grant to the Gates Foundation to fund a new teacher evaluation system.
[...]
So…we’re having meetings with the program officer of the Gates Foundation today. I requested joining a meeting in which two other board members were in attendance, but the Superintendent’s staff told me that they wanted to avoid having to post a meeting notice and record the briefing (three board members present triggers “Sunshine” laws because it constitutes an official meeting). I asked why this had to be behind closed doors. I stated that the public has a right to know not only the bad, but also the good.
Later on, it should not be surprising that children around the world are grown and raised into a Microsoft Office ecosystem. The schools act as mono-cultural (against choice) indoctrination facilities for these proprietary products. Only then it becomes even a job requirement (“Minimum Intermediate aptitude using MS Project Server 2007 and MS SharePoint 2007 team collaboration tools“). As Jonathan Eisen puts it (with Glyn Moody’s remark), “Xprize seeks Genomics Prize Lead, but reqs include MS Office proficiency…” █
“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.”
Summary: Microsoft is blocking “mass migration of students to OpenOffice” using EDGI and migration of Danish schools to OpenOffice.org using a “scare campaign”, according to sources
YESTERDAY we wrote about the role of Kevin Turner and Steve Ballmer in the latest moves against GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org [1, 2]. It sure looks like EDGI based on the wording and descriptions. Microsoft is willing to drop its products free of charge in selected areas, as long as these areas don’t touch a competitor’s product. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” said Bill Gates1. “As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours,” said Gates on another occasion and Jeff Raikes, who was Microsoft’s Business Group president before joining Gates’ newer business venture, said: “If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else.”
According to this new article, Microsoft’s strategy is aimed at blocking “mass migration of students to OpenOffice” because the article’s summary says:
Microsoft is up to its old tricks in the new year, as evidenced by a recent job posting for anti-FOSS personnel. This time, the thing that has Redmond sweating is what appears to be a mass migration of students to OpenOffice. And why wouldn’t they? “It’s free-as-in-beer and good enough — much better than the Microsoft Works that came on their computer,” noted Slashdot blogger David Masover.
In another site, yesterday we found the following regarding a migration of Danish schools to OpenOffice.org:
Microsoft’s technology director Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen then sent an open letter to the municipal mayor, which he denied that that OpenOffice should be an equal and cheaper alternative to Office. It led to accusations that Microsoft tried to implement a scare campaign.
Scare campaign? We showed one in the previous post from 20 minutes ago. █
___ 1 The Economist, Piracy: Look for the Silver Lining (July 19th-25th, 2008 ed.), pp. 23
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