09.11.10
Posted in Free/Libre Software, IBM, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 2:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about ODF, SC34 which is a farce, and some of the latest heckling from Microsoft proponents who masquerade as pro-openness or impartial
DESPITE interference from Microsoft intruders [1, 2], the OpenOffice.org conference in Hungary went pretty well based on numerous reports. People in attendance learned about the need for Open Document Format (ODF) and there are other pro-ODF articles in the press these days. The Guardian, for instance, is still making waves.
A good piece from the Guardian’s Charles Arthur yesterday, reporting teacher and Windsor & Maidenhead councillor Liam Maxwell’s analysis, of how much councils could save by switching to Open Document Format, as used in OpenOffice.org: some £200M if all councils did this for all their staff. There was some background to this, about the problems encountered by Windsor and Maidenhead, on Computer Weekly’s site on Wedensday.
The key stumbling block for councils, as for schools, appears to be compatibility with others systems, most notably those supplied by Capita. Liam calls for the Cabinet Office to strengthen its present position on open source and open standards by mandating ODF as a standards across the public sector, were this to happen I don’t doubt that we’d see Capita quickly make SIMS and their other products compatible with OpenOffice.org, making it far easier for schools and councils to choose their office suite from all those available, rather than forcing them to pay for MS Office, bundled with ‘features’ which many will rarely if ever use. Charles seems to think that such a requirement is far more likely with Francis Maude at the Cabinet Office than it had ever been under the previous administration, even in Tom Watson’s day.
Microsoft is not done throwing wrenches at ODF.
Bart Hanssens recently stated that “odf 1.2cd05 60-day review ended, comments received” (these comments are part of the openness of this system). Rob Weir, who works alongside Hanssens on ODF, found himself having to confront Microsoft minions again. Microsoft’s booster and insider Alex Brown, who was the BRM convenor for OOXML while he smeared ODF, is not being left alone by Weir, who writes about another scandalous SC34 (see coverage from SC34 in 2008 and SC34 in 2009): “If you are looking for OOXML defects to fix, how about going back to 100′s of NB issues you gaveled away at the BRM?”
Weir is then met by opposition from Brown’s longtime right-winger, the ODF-hostile Jesper Lund Stocholm [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. He is a known Microsoft booster and Weir’s responses to him go like this:
- “Are you saying that there are zero issues remaining from the OOXML ballot that should be addressed? Really? Zero?”
- “So if I understand correctly, you are asking NB’s to resubmit defect reports for issues not resolved at the BRM?”
- “It wasn’t clear. I assumed WG4 would look at the defects already submitted during BRM. You are saying they are not.”
- “You should send note to all NBs telling them that they need to resubmit relevant defect reports from the OOXML ballot”
- “With ODF we do it differently. Our defect log includes all ballot comments received for ODF 1.0. No need to resubmit”
- “I understand how to submit comments. But I wasn’t aware that the previously submitted comments were being ignored.”
- “Deferred ballot comments are either in WG4′s defect index or not. Simple question. What is the answer?”
- “Earlier Alex suggested lack of interest explained the lack of comments. Maybe NBs think they have already submitted? I did.”
“NB issues should be solved,” says the FFII to this booster (the FFII’s member also participated in squashing OOXML).
Watch Jesper Lund Stocholm belittling OpenOffice.org by implying that it’s a ripoff of Microsoft Office. Typical.
Weir finally responds to Brown by writing: “I’m not suggesting a new process. Just asking status of those defects. Sounds like they need to be resubmitted, right?”
“BRM comment processing rates can range from 0.5-1000 comments/hour,” says Weir to Mary McRae from OASIS (maintainer of ODF).
Not surprisingly, throughout this conversation the two Microsoft boosters (Microsoft is fronting with them) tried to defend Microsoft by attacking its competition. For instance, they turn to dismissing and attacking ODF, simply because they cannot defend their dirty handling of their proprietary OOXML. The conversations can be found in Twitter, so they don’t need additional exposure here.
Bart Hanssens adds: “The ironic thing is that Ecma never made public the public comments they received on OOXML. But for ODF this is an open book.”
On and on it went for a couple of days and at the end Weir gave up feeding those Microsoft minions. Microsoft rarely speaks directly about such issues, it just sends out MVPs or something else that may seem impartial to an outsider. Weir then posted a rant about ISO, which is captured by the vendor called Microsoft as far as document formats are concerned. To quote part of this rant:
We saw during the OOXML ballot, and especially at the BRM, how this totally fell apart. It was raised several times that Microsoft was dominating the committees, sometimes representing more than 50% of the people in the room. But ISO leadership dodged the issue, saying there was nothing they could do about it, based on their rules. This may be true. But that is just acknowledgment that their rules are not able to prevent domination problems.
And on Balance, ANSI says:
The standards development process should have a balance of interests. Participants from diverse interest categories shall be sought with the objective of achieving balance.
Like committees containing almost exclusively Microsoft Business Partners? Fail. In fact you can go up and down the list and ISO fails to meet these minimum requirements.
ISO got poisoned some years ago, at least the parts of ISO which Microsoft had to ‘stuff’ with workers who are in Microsoft’s pocket. We did give examples at the time. Other Microsoft minions are harassing the FFII right now, but the FFII is not alone among their victims. Microsoft Florian, for example, is labelling Eben Moglen “Fidel” (as in Castro) and calling him that many times. How low has Microsoft sunk in its battles against the SFLC/FSF? Microsoft’s MVP Miguel de Icaza is also attacking the FFII right now. Anyone who still believes that this man exists in the GNU/Linux world in order to serve an agenda not of Microsoft need look no further than some of this man’s most recent actions. He apparently still trolls ODF too. The FFII wrote to him: “Feel free to submit ODF1.2 bug reports to @rcweir and Oasis, 5 days to go.” There is increased friendship and collaboration between the Mono camp and Microsoft Florian, both of which attack the FFII, trying hard to cause trouble. Microsoft Florian maintains his rude habit of mass-mailing people to achieve his goals. █
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Posted in Courtroom, Free/Libre Software, Law at 10:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New court ruling provides more ‘ammunition’ to those who warn peers and clients about the dangers of proprietary software (transfer or resale is officially forbidden in the US)
THE ugly side of proprietary software EULAs was highlighted here many times before, e.g. in [1, 2, 3, 4]. It’s not just a Microsoft issue. A court in the United States has just ruled that the first sale doctrine doesn’t apply to licensed software (last year we asked whether Microsoft violated this doctrine). This ruling is probably good news to all proprietary software vendors, even though it only helps show why proprietary software should be avoided.
This news was mainly covered in Wired Magazine although the original ruling is here [PDF] and there is a massive (over 600 comments) discussion in Slashdot and some comments in our IRC channels. From the original report:
A federal appeals court said Friday that software makers can use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares, an apparent gutting of the so-called first-sale doctrine.
The first-sale doctrine is an affirmative defense to copyright infringement that allows legitimate owners of copies of copyrighted works to resell those copies. That defense, the court said, is “unavailable to those who are only licensed to use their copies of copyrighted works.” (.pdf)
The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal, if it stands, means copyright owners may prohibit the resale of their wares by inserting clauses in their sales agreements.
Pogson remarks that “[i]f I buy a licence to drive my car for a year, I cannot resell it because it expires but forever might outlast me or my car. Same thing goes with a PC. If I pay for forever and the thing goes belly-up in a few weeks through infant mortality, am I denied the use of that software for which I paid because the machine died? That’s not right. I should be able to sell the CDs on eBay and go on with my life without that PC if I choose. Why does M$ get to insist that I buy a new PC if I do not want to. Why do they get the right to charge for forever and only deliver a few weeks?” █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GPL at 9:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another player in the licence FUD market steps in for a round of self promotion
THE business of selling a solution to a problem this business itself creates or exaggerates — how about that? Well, several companies have capitalised on perceived threat/fear of the GPL and turned it into money, earned essentially by selling proprietary software. Black Duck has been doing this, to a lesser extent OpenLogic too [1, 2, 3], and few others that are known to fewer people arrive at the scene. One of them is Protecode, whose Director of R&D and Product Management has just published self-promotional talking points. It’s titled “The Cost of Open Source Licensing Compliance” and it’s actually not as FUD-filled as their previous ‘plugs’ in the media. Towards the end it says:
Proper licensing and copyright compliance, implemented as part of the normal QA process, can yield savings of between and 40% and 65%, relative to the potential costs of non-compliance. Combining QA testing with preventive tools for software license management at the developer’s workstation can raise the level of savings to over 85%.
Those who are needing proprietary software to obey Free software licences may simply overlook the fact that proper education and creation of Free software obviates many if not all the issues, bringing the so-called “Cost of Open Source Licensing Compliance” down to about zero.
The writer of the piece above, Kamal Hassin, does not mean to cause harm, but he promotes proprietary software which he monetises using fear of Free software licences. He describes himself as “a thought-leader in the area of open source licensing and is the author or co-author of a number of papers on Software Intellectual Property management.” Why not encourage businesses to make their software free (as in freedom) and then evade this whole issue called Intellectual Property [sic]? It would be both productive and safer, and it would help foster an industry which creates more code and employs fewer lawyers/enforcers (or none). █
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09.10.10
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 5:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original MBR cartoon from Penguin Pete’s highly recommended series
Summary: Windows continues to show that Microsoft is far from “open” and actually very hostile towards anything that’s near Windows
JUST OVER A WEEK AGO we wrote about Windows applications harmfully messing about with GNU/Linux partitions, just like Windows does (Microsoft does nothing to resolve this). Very recently we also heard some new lies from Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and the cartoon above captures it perfectly by poking fun at Microsoft’s lies about having changed its attitude. “Slowly the Rift Between Microsoft and “Partners” Widens,” claims Pogson right now. They too have grown tired of relying on Windows. “[Acer's] Shih clearly sees the value of openness and M$ and its OS is the least open part of the IT landscape,” the short post explains. █
“Steve [Ballmer], I’m sure you’re aware of this. Our call lines are being overrun. [by Windows Vista complaints]“
–Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF, Videos at 6:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Video from the conference of the Free Software Foundation this year (original in YouTube)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Credit: TinyOgg
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09.09.10
Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents, SUN at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Gizmodo sells out to Microsoft’s patent troll; Oracle pays NetApp for alleged software patents relating to the Open Source (ish) ZFS
JUST OVER A WEEK ago, someone in our IRC channels mentioned Gizmodo selling out to Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest patent troll which is groomed by Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Apple (all are founding and/or funding sources). We were going to post a rebuttal to Gizmodo, but decided it would be better to just never give attention to that puff piece. TechDirt has just caught up with this embarrassment at Gizmodo and responded by blaming “PR”.
A bunch of folks have been sending over this somewhat ridiculous love letter to Intellectual Ventures written up at Gizmodo (a site that usually is a lot more on the ball than what this post shows), which basically takes all of IV and Nathan Myhrvold’s favorite talking points (many of which make little sense) and simply parrots them back, acting as if the company is some sort of Willy Wonka chocolate factory of invention — but leaving out the hundreds of millions of dollars companies pay up as a sort of “don’t sue us tax,” and the incredibly sketchy nature of the over 1,000 shell companies set up by the firm and the entirely secret nature of many of its business dealings. Instead, the guy at Gizmodo is wowed by the fact that the company has computer hackers trying to cure cancer.
[...]
Why would that be mistaken? The article doesn’t say. Instead, the writer just seems wowed by the fact that IV has lots of old scientific equipment. What a shame. It would be nice if someone actually asked Myhrvold and his crew some actual tough questions, rather than fawning over the fact he once dug up dinosaur bones.
Nathan Myhrvold’s foolish patents are currently being promoted by Gates, for profit. It’s a mostly untold story, but one which we covered several times before. The above is yet another story of success in exploiting the media — convincing it to tell fairy tales, thanks to an army of PR agencies just like Gates’. Gizmodo should hang its head in shame for playing along with it. Just over a month ago Groklaw alleged that Gizmodo was getting close to Microsoft because it was riling people up against Apple and praised Microsoft projects at the same time.
Intellectual Ventures not only has a lot of PR with which to deceive the press; it also spends a lot of money lobbying governments, pushing for the obvious policies (allowing patent trolls, software patents, and so forth). Recently we showed how New Zealand’s patent law got subverted by foreign lobbyists, only for changes to eventually be reversed in some sense, as also explained in this new legal analysis.
Moving on to something a little different, Phandroid has this new article which characterises Palm as a gold mine of software patents, which is probably true.
After we figured HP was just about done with Android after their acquisition of Palm (which gave them full access to webOS and tons of neat software patents), rumors began swirling that those earlier suspicions were a tad bit preemptive and that HP still had plans to bring out an Android tablet.
It wasn’t long ago that Android came under a lawsuit from Oracle, not just from Apple (whose CEO is a close friend of Oracle’s CEO). Apple itself threatened Palm using patents and it is said to have withdrawn from ZFS because as we explained last year, patents killed ZFS to an extent. NetApp's aggression was a major factor and not much has changed because NetApp is now harassing Coraid for its use of ZFS. Watch how Oracle sells ZFS down the river, unlike Sun (paying ZFS so very submissively). That’s just another new example of software patents endorsement at Oracle:
- NetApp, Oracle Drop Suits
- NetApp, Oracle Drop Suits
- NetApp Rises: Settles Sun Suit With Oracle
- Oracle and NetApp dismiss ZFS lawsuits
- NetApp, Oracle dismiss patent suit
- NetApp, Oracle End ZFS Litigation
- NetApp and Oracle Agree to Dismiss Lawsuits
- Oracle and NetApp settle patent dispute
- NetApp, Oracle Agreed To Dismiss Patent Lawsuits Started In 2007 (ORCL,NTAP)
- Oracle and NetApp drop Sun Microsystems lawsuits
- NetApp and Oracle lift ZFS patent cloud
- NetApp, Oracle Agree To End Patent Litigation – Update
- Oracle, NetApp agree to settle patent litigation
- Updates, advisories and surprises
- NetApp, Oracle Agree To End Patent Litigation – Update
IDG says: “Storage vendor NetApp said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Oracle to dismiss patent litigation stemming from a 2007 suit NetApp filed against Sun Microsystems, which.Oracle acquired earlier this year. Terms were not disclosed.” NetApp’s founder speaks at Oracle OpenWorld 2010, so it seems like an amicable resolution.
“[N]ot much to celebrate in this settlement,” said to us FurnaceBoy, a Solaris/ZFS expert. Legitimising software patents is possibly what Oracle does here, so the FSF’s denouncement of Oracle for its unnecessary patent aggression [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] comes at a fairly good time. █
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09.08.10
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 1:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Companies that are selling proprietary software present their products and themselves publicly as “open source”; some are actually linked closely to Microsoft
LAST WEEK we wrote about Likewise getting sued for patent violation. We had no sympathy because Likewise is a proprietary software company masquerading as “open source” and exploiting the work of Free software developers [1, 2, 3, 4]. Not surprisingly, Likewise is connected closely to Microsoft and it endorses software patents too. Here is Likewise getting chummy with former Microsoft executives who now run VMware and here it is announcing that it will promote working the Windows way at the Ohio LinuxFest. The audience there will hopefully know what it’s up against.
“Even the bad guys are using the term “open source” right now.”Likewise is not the only faker of “open source” (it’s really 'open' core, i.e. proprietary the way Microsoft loves it).
To give some new examples of fake “open source”, here is a company which markets its ASP.Net-based project as “open source” even though it clearly says: “Source code price is just US$ 700.”
Another new example of a faker comes from India. “The source code is available in three different licensing versions,” says the press release. It goes as follows: “Single site License, Enterprise License and OEM License. The pricing for these licenses are $5K and $10K accordingly. The OEM License is open for negotiation.” Even the bad guys are using the term “open source” right now. Will OSI step in and police the term? It’s a hard rope to walk. █
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09.07.10
Posted in Apple, BSD, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Marketing at 7:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple’s marketing technique is similar to L’Oréal’s, whose famous advertising slogan is “because I’m worth it”; Apple continues to serve as a barrier to GNU/Linux adoption
The FSFE’s Hugo Roy, who was in touch with Steve Jobs regarding Ogg and patents, says that “Steve Jobs’ business secret is pricing, not design.” He has just found the following two articles:
Steve Jobs “never had any designs. He has not designed a single project”
[...]
In short, Jobs’ only contribution to the Macintosh project was to try unsuccessfully to cancel it.
How Apple plays the pricing game
Next time you’re sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple is a technology or design company, chime in: “Nope. What Steve Jobs sells is pricing.”
Pricing? You bet.
Jobs is a master of using pricing decoys, reference prices, bundling and obscurity to make you think his shiny aluminum toys are a good deal. Apple’s Sept. 1 announcement of new products was a classic
The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points – $229, $299, and $399 – all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls.
Apple has this new thing going on and it’s called “Ping”, which GigaOM claims to be stuck inside “Walled Garden” (once again this whole exclusivity factor):
As I discuss in a post at GigaOM Pro, Ping’s lack of integration with other social networks, or even with the web itself, is now its most compelling feature, at least from a strategic perspective.
Here is the effect on GNU/Linux users:
Users have to upgrade their iTunes installation to access Ping. Something that you cannot do on Linux.
Apple probably hates Linux so much that they intentionally integrated Ping in iTunes to block Linux users. Just kidding of course.
Apple hardly ever cares about supporting free platforms like BSD and GNU/Linux. That’s just why Apple is far from a friend of “Open Source” and merely an exploiter. It also makes defective products in the same factories as all of its rivals (the branding is different and there is retaliation). But some go too far by blaming hypePod for what’s generally just the fault of any portable media player (PMP). From The Age:
Pedestrian death rise blamed on iPods
The ”iPod zombie trance” people get into when walking, driving or pedalling around listening to their mobile devices is being blamed for an increase in collisions and even deaths in Europe and the US.
The issue has been highlighted in Sydney by the death of a 46-year-old Glebe woman reportedly wearing headphones when she was knocked down and killed by an ambulance on Saturday night.
Well, that’s just like blaming particular console makers for violent games and what these games may cause. In any case, Apple has many reasons to be distrusted and ignorant customers is not one of them. It’s them who pay a premium only to feel better than fellow human beings (Apple sells them this arrogance) and exclude others. █
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