04.16.08
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft, Novell, Windows at 4:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell wants to “boost its presence” in India, which is not something that we criticise but merely point out. The news came from Reuters only hours ago.
Business software maker Novell Inc plans to invest $100 million in India over the next three years as it seeks to boost its presence in Asia’s third-largest economy, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
Bear in mind that over in the United States, large-scale Novell layoffs are still expected. There was a warning about it back in December, but those layoffs have not been announced yet.
Previously, we also saw American workforce of Novell getting replaced by a new workforce India. Do not be mistaken, however, for it is something that many companies appear to be doing, including Microsoft, which develops Windows 7 in India.
Microsoft India centre working on Windows 7
Designers and engineers at Microsoft R&D centre in India have a new mandate for development of Windows 7…
We wrote about the associated deception from Bill Gates not so long ago. In short, he deceives the public and the administration by insulting the intelligence of American engineers. This helps him justify cost-saving decisions made by Microsoft, due to increasing necessity. █
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Posted in Antitrust, ECMA, Europe, IBM, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Under investigation, under great pressure, scrutiny
Our recent coverage of the situation at ISO was almost excessively critical [1, 2, 3], but we are by no means alone. Glyn Moody has just taken a look at the latest FAQ to judge it for himself and he was equally appalled by what he found. Among his observations:
This is amazing: since when did proprietary lock-in represent “additional functionality”? That’s a bit like saying handcuffs offer “additional functionality” to boring old handcuff-less freedom. Proprietary lock-in – even when dignified with the euphemistic moniker of “legacy documents” – is what open standards are supposed to avoid; touting it as an “extra” is a simple betrayal of the fundamental underlying idea.
[...]
In other words, ISO’s FAQ, designed to quell the storm, ends up confirming many of the very issues its critics have raised, and feeding it. Well, I suppose that’s a kind of progress.
How did ISO end up sidling with a single company that went face to face against an entire industry? ISO will probably blame ECMA and Microsoft will surely give credit to ECMA, but at the end of the day it is clear that this system of (mis)trust is utterly broken and it needs to be fixed very quickly, before other proprietary technologies like XPS are passed as 'standards' on the Fast Track.
Remember that XPS can be made reliant on modules of OOXML, which itself, as we already know, is rather horrific. Under the “it’s already an ISO standard” excuse, this sordid mess can be further complicated with dependencies that bring a whole chain that makes a proprietary stack. How long before Windows is made a standard a la POSIX? (the sarcasm of desperation should be noted here)
IBM, which is merely one among hundreds of ODF supporters, has just published the following article about OpenDocument Format for those who intend to read a primer.
The OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is an XML standard that lets you store and exchange office application documents, including word-processor, spreadsheet, and presentation files. Whether you try to perform special tasks on files saved from such applications or work on applications to process such files, you should become familiar with this important format. Learn about the two possible forms of OpenDocument files, as multipart packages and as single XML documents, and learn how to structure text and tabular information in OpenDocument.
There is something else which is worth highlighting today. In the Indian press, the following headline has just turned up: “Microsoft never opposed ODF”. Why not implement it then? Why duplicate? Why literally go against the entire industry? Why run a smear campaign against ODF? Why steal Document Freedom Day?
Here in this article you have Microsoft even admitting that OOXML is deficient.
It is almost impossible to resolve 100% of issues, as you are resolving some issues which you have identified like software codes, someone would come with 2-3 new issues.
And that is why standards go into maintenance, and maintenance is of two kinds – to fix any flaws that had been identified or may get identified or to add any new capabilities to the standard. If there are issues that could be resolved later on, then members take this to the standards body as it was out of the hands of the Microsoft. So, this vote kind of reflects that sentiment.
In other words, Microsoft shoved a buggy set of specifications, which Office will never have implemented by the way, down ISO’s threat. It’s left for ISO to choke on.
On the brighter side of things, the abuses for an ISO (and inside ISO) are being studies by the European Commission (EC) which is yet to report back. It has almost two months left, during which OOXML as an ISO standard can be retracted and ISO left very embarrassed, humiliated and even publicly shamed using the EC’s findings. In the mean time, having gathered initial evidence that Microsoft has not changed its ways, Europe will continue to evaluate its migration to GNU/Linux as well as a Microsoft embargo (at a a high level, namely government tier). There are several newer articles that cover these developments, including:
The Commission, which has not responded yet, is allowed a few weeks to reply.
A European MP has called for the EU to stop doing business with Microsoft until it complies with an order to open up to competition.
Recall that recent video which shows Neelie Kroes as she speaks about the price of fleeting [sic] the rules. This could be expensive for Microsoft. It is a matter of contracts and reputation, not just heavy fines. For reasons that we highlighted before, the United States is unlikely to intervene as it should. █
“I’m sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn’t on our radar screen. We were just making great software.”
–Bill Gates
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04.15.08
Posted in Courtroom, FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Open XML, Patents at 10:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
About a year ago, Novell joined forced with the EFF. It needed to give the impression that it was just as concerned as many of us about patents. But meanwhile, Novell advocates the very same thing it purports to be fighting.
Novell initiatives
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They are presented with opportunities for patents and papers and to participate in Standards Bodies with an exposure to a worldwide platform. They closely work with the corporate L&D function to provide management development programs for the managers.
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Patent program—They have been aggressively building up their patent portfolio. Currently it exceeds 320 patents, and continues to grow every month with help from dedicated Novell inventors. Novell IDC alone has contributed close to 14 patents to this existing patent pool.
Bravo, Novell. Everyone is very impressed. Not.
Meanwhile, what have we in the news? Another company attacks its rivals using patents of course.
Seagate Technology, the largest maker of computer hard drives, made a pre-emptive strike against an emerging competitor on Monday when it filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing STEC Inc. of patent infringement.
Also from news, watch how 4G technology is already being arranged in a discriminatory way — discriminatory in the sense that Free software players seem to be excluded.
The companies involved – Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sony Ericsson – have all agreed to a framework based around fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing, which should prevent the kind of ongoing patent spats which dogged 3G technologies.
What would be the terms of use to those who haven’t things to ‘license’? Must everyone put development on the ice and organise piles of papers in order to merely participate in communication? Recall OpenMoko's dilemma. Since when are protocols requiring software patents and has nobody learned from past miseries?
The notion of patents becoming an inherent or essential part of a standard is something to learn from at least based on precedence. The same type of principles apply to a variety of things including Microsoft’s taxoperability program and OOXML, which is, whether we accept it or not, a patent trap, among many other things. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Ron Hovsepian, SUN, UNIX at 10:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell: just misinformed or even delusional?
“I think the vast majority, and I’d quantify that at about 80 percent to 85 percent, of the open source community actually supports this deal [with Microsoft].”
–Justin Steinman, Novell
Recently, Simon Phipps addressed some of Ron Hovsepian’s remarks about OpenSolaris. Phipps contacted me for a correction or clarification. He was not slamming Novell in any way, but merely correcting them. Here is a full-length interview with Phipps where he addresses this mild confrontation.
Question: Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian said in a Linux Foundation interview recently that Sun’s Solaris and OpenSolaris aren’t going anywhere. I would venture to say that you don’t agree, but do you want to elaborate?
Phipps: Well, as it stands, the very fact that the question was asked at all says that something has changed and that OpenSolaris is now on the map. The comments that Novell’s executive made were very ill informed, as I recall… I remember when I read them that they seemed to be based on data that was five years old. It seems to me that Novell’s shareholders ought to be worried that their chief executive isn’t keeping up on the competition.
This was actually pointed out before. Mr. Hovsepian appears to know very little (or nothing) about the Fedora project. █
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Posted in ECMA, Formats, GPL, ISO, Microsoft, Novell, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 9:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
ECMA 2.0 in the making, captured by ambitious monopolists
A gentler way to put this would be hard to find because ISO continues to show what a disgrace it has become. It was given a chance to change. It was given a chance to listen to polite critics and respond sensibly. It was given a chance to tell the world that it had been captured. But no. Despite its admission that OOXML is poor, it thinks of ODF and OOXML as a case of survival and competition, having approved a second and muchly inferior set of specifications that are GPL-hostile, vendor-specific, messy to the point of being unimplementable (buggy legacy as part of the ‘standard’), pushed forward by well-documented corruption and so forth.
Brief coverage of the latest you can find in the Inquirer, which picked out some more alarming bits.
Otherwise, the body expects Microsoft’s OOXML and the open source ODF document formats to face one another in a direct competition for “survival”. The outcome will be decided by the market, it said.
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If Microsoft doesn’t misbehave, the standards body said that the standards would be left to prove themselves: “After a period of co-existence, it is basically the market that decides which survives,” a spokesman said.
Remember what we were told by a credible source recently about Microsoft's likely attempts to pressure out ODF. As we already know, Microsoft spends obscene amounts of money trying to achieve that goal. It goes as far as offering businesses incentives to choose OOXML over ODF. The same goes for developers such as those at Novell. It makes Novell a big part of this problem and also a Microsoft partner against ODF, against competition. Obligatory banner below.
Groklaw makes some more comments on these latest bits from ISO. PJ is equally disappointed.
Dear ISO, damage control doesn’t work, if you let the damage remain. That’s like putting out a statement that if an oil spill you caused does any damage in the future, you’ll clean it up right away, but for now, you’ll leave the spill in place and wait to see what happens going forward. Oil spills need to be cleaned up before they do more damage.
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There is a difference between market *place* and market *players*. Microsoft is a player, and we all saw how fairly they play. The market place tried to speak, and we were called emotional or secret operatives for a market player. For shame, ISO, for shame. So, after the monopoly-distorted market “chooses” OOXML and “kills” ODF, as the FAQ suggests, I’m sure ISO will withdraw OOXML. Not. And even if it did, the poor victim of Microsoft’s litigation pincer move will not benefit. It will be too late.
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I am sure you are relieved to hear it. Anyway, now you know. If Microsoft plays dirty with patents, ISO might withdraw OOXML as a standard. And as we’ve seen watching the OOXML standards process play out, when ISO says something, they reeeeeally, reeealy mean it.
ISO seems unwilling to change its behaviour. Many times before it was caught disobeying rules and then and then attempting to sweep everything under the rug. This mustn’t be the way the International Standards Organisation operates. It’s an big embarrassment whose scale is global. █
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