Summary: In Thailand as well as other parts of Asia, the American politicians help Microsoft battle against the adoption of Free/libre software that offers benefits to Asian nations
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IPR: Concern Over Open Source Software and Data Protection
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¶9. (SBU) Microsoft-Thailand’s Corporate Affairs Director identified software copyrights as a big issue. On the one hand, he praised the Thai government (RTG) for strengthening its IPR enforcement and education efforts, and said Microsoft was “very pleased” that Thailand’s software piracy rate has decreased by two percent a year since 2006. On the other hand, he expressed concern over the RTG’s Creative Economy policy of promoting the “open source” software model over the “commercial source” model as a means to curb piracy. (Note: this is an issue for IT
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companies worldwide, and not unique to Thailand).
¶10. (SBU) The Business Software Alliance (BSA) Director for Software Policy-Asia also urged the RTG not to favor open source over commercial source. He argued that (1) the open source model has been shown to have an insignificant impact on reducing software piracy; and (2) by focusing on an open source policy, the RTG signals the market to stunt the development of commercial source software, which in turn undermines Thailand’s ability to fully service market needs.
¶11. (SBU) The BSA rep also emphasized the importance of having a strong data protection regime that is aligned with the international regime. He said Thailand’s current low global ranking in legal/regulatory environment is a disincentive to foreign investors. Passage of a date protection law would improve the country’s standing. While recent efforts to introduce such a bill in Parliament are encouraging, the current draft needs improvement. The BSA rep recommended the RTG participate in APEC’s data privacy working group in order to learn more about international best practices and develop its draft legislation accordingly – a path the Philippines recently followed with good results.
We also uncovered what they had done in the Philippines (in the links above), but more recently we saw even worse things [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. █
Update: After writing this post we looked for some more examples based on leaks from the past week. There’s a whole load of them. To quote some dents I made:
[12:27] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “Klyuchnikov briefed on Microsoft’s and BSA’s ongoing IPR outreach campaign in the regions” http://ur1.ca/4z3pa #bsa #ukraine #lobbying
[12:29] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] In #spain – Microsoft’s own propaganda (own ‘studies’) cited to exaggerate the ‘threat’ of ‘piracy’ http://ur1.ca/4z3pe politicians misled.
[12:29] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] In #egypt too – #Microsoft coopts the government for protection http://ur1.ca/4z3pk
[12:31] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “Microsoft estimated that the GOE conducts 150 raids a month against software pirates.” http://ur1.ca/4z3pm attacking own users in #egypt
[12:31] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “Microsoft Egypt described its relations with Egyptian enforcement authorities as “fruitful and long-term”” http://ur1.ca/4z3px
[12:36] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “Microsoft was hoping to reengage with the government soon.” http://ur1.ca/4z3qd #ukraine
[12:37] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “Microsoft has noted improved cooperation with the GOT” (Government of #tunis ) http://ur1.ca/4z3r2
[12:41] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] “representatives form the U.S. Embassy, Microsoft.. organized Trainings of Trainers on Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential” http://ur1.ca/4z3r6
[12:42] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] Who needs marketers and lobbyists when taxpayers fund them? #microsoft #statedept
[12:44] [Notice] -TRIdentica to #techrights- [schestowitz/@schestowitz] It’s great, isn’t it? US taxpayers are forced to give portion of their wage to people who go around the world lobbying for Microsoft profit.
As Brian points out in his article, Linux is not really out of the picture when it comes to affecting Microsoft’s bottom line. Google’s ChromeOS is Linux and . . . um, there something I’m forgetting about how Linux is trouncing Microsoft in an area where Microsoft can’t get a foothold. Wait, it’ll come to me.
Oh yeah: Android. Based on Linux, Android is cleaning everyone’s clock in the mobile realm, including Apple, and is light years ahead of Microsoft in a category where Microsoft has yet to leave the proverbial runway. Need I say more?
So Microsoft can put a red line through Linux and FOSS and tell the SEC that Linux no longer matters, while Windows partisans pop their corks and chalk up another one for their side. Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, the reality is much different.
Over the years, Microsoft has made numerous attempts to thwart the growth of Linux and the open source culture in general and now after about 20 years of intense battle, Redmond has emerged victorious. How can Linux ever be a threat to Microsoft? Their Windows Operating System runs more than 90% of the desktops worldwide and Linux just 1-2%. Not even close. And so what if 100% of the top 10 supercomputers in the world are running Linux? They still have more than 90% desktop users. And what if that blasted Android runs half of the phones worldwide? They still have 90% destktop share, they’re still no 1. Hey and don’t start bragging about the 60% market share Linux has on the server front. They’re still the kings of the desktop; still ruling the world. From NASA to Wall Street, from Facebook to Google, Linux is everywhere, but Microsoft, they’re still obsessed about their desktop dominance. Time to wake up little puppy.
I have a lot of ideas about how the Linux desktop can be improved, perhaps revolutionized, and these ideas all come from running up against walls repeatedly. I’m going to write the best ones down, the ones I will eventually turn into an open-source project (years down the road, mind you) if no one else does.
The Linux tech world has come up with numerous solutions for notifications, and I use as many as possible to satisfy my needs. Chrome has TweetDeck, Linux has libnotify, or notify-osd if you’re using Ubuntu, and all operating systems have an icon “tray.” They all serve similar purposes: they want to give you information about what’s going on right now, and that’s incredibly useful.
There are countless Windows users who have never once tried using Linux, and in many cases, they are unaware of the benefits they can get from either switching to Linux entirely, or using both operating systems (as I do). The Linux community doesn’t tend to focus its evangelism on winning Windows users over, either. However, there are a number of free resources available for Windows users who want to take the Windows plunge. In this post, you’ll find several of them worth looking into.
Linux server demand increased for the seventh consecutive quarter in Q2 2011, with revenue growing 47.5% to $2.7 billion when compared with the second quarter of 2010.
On servers, however, Linux tells a completely different story. Take for example the bi-annual list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. In 1998 there was just one top-500 supercomputer that ran Linux. Today 456 of the world’s biggest supercomputers run a variant of Linux.
Chess is a recreational and competitive board game played between two players. It is one of the most popular games in the world, played by millions across the world, in clubs, by correspondence, in tournaments, and increasingly over the internet.
If you think that flight simulators are a dying breed then you have missed out on the rise of FlightGear, an open source flight simulator started in 1997 that can be regarded as a game or as a research tool.
Shortly after Fedora 15 was GA’d, I decided to take the plunge and give Gnome 3 a try. Gnome 3 is, in my humble opinion, such a drastic change from the traditional desktop environment that I have had a very difficult time adjusting to how different it is. Call me old fashioned, but I like a few icons on my desktop, a fixed dock for shortcuts to my favorite applications, and a minimize button. My first Gnome 3 experience on my laptop, which I use for testing new releases, was a failure. Therefore, when it came time to upgrade my main desktop at work, I chose to once again attempt a conversion to KDE 4.
Local government IT directors in the UK can learn a lesson in open source deployment from the City of Kankaanpää, the main centre for trade, education and the commercial heart of Northern Satakunta, Finland.
To simplify and centralise the management of desktops, Netorek, a Red Hat Advanced Partner, deployed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation for Desktops, which allows the city’s IT department to deploy, configure and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows desktops in public institutions throughout the city. To virtualise the city’s server environment, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation for Servers has been implemented in the city’s datacentre.
Fedora 16 Alpha was released earlier this week while the final release is not due until early November. If you have not yet tried out this latest Fedora development release, in this Phoronix article is a brief look through the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.
Today’s updates for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system added a new default wallpaper to the existing ones.
With this morning’s updates, the current development release of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system got a new default wallpaper.
DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.04. This exciting new version of Dream Studio (http://dream.dickmacinnis.com) has all the features that have made past releases one of the most successful multimedia software packages out there, including: multi-user, pulseaudio-integrated realtime audio via JACK, for use with programs like Ardour; the renowned Cinelerra video editor, a full graphic and web design suite; photography tools; and hundreds of assorted audio and video effects, fonts, and utilities for everything from multimedia file conversion to simple office work and web browsing. Not only that, but this latest version of Dream Studio also included hundreds of bug fixes and the following new features:
O’Reilly Media opened registration for its Android Open Conference, scheduled for Oct. 9-11, in San Francisco, and announced speakers from companies including Arduino, Adobe, BestBuy, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Motorola, Twitter, and WalMart. Meanwhile, the 10th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 10x) has issued a call for papers for its Jan. 20-22, 2012 show in Los Angeles.
Sony Ericsson announced a mid-range, 3.7-inch Xperia Neo V phone — equipped with a Facebook-enhanced Android 2.3.4 release that will also be rolled out to all its Xperia phones in October. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless decided not to offer the Samsung Galaxy S II that’s expected to be unveiled on AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile on Aug. 29.
Open source storage: It’s an idea that makes so much sense. After all, the storage systems most of us buy simply comprise a bunch of disks with proprietary controller software on top. Such disk systems cost people the largest chunk of their storage spending, and a proprietary system locks them into their vendor’s roadmap and support structure.
At the start of the summer, you may recall Project Harmony causing a certain amount of controversy on the subject of contributor agreements in open source communities. My position on them was and is that they are a rarely needed and exceptional tool that should be avoided unless essential, because of their negative effects on the dynamics of open source communities.
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I can understand why an old-fashioned corporation trying to come to terms with open source in the early stages of the road to freedom might think they need a contributor agreement. But it’s churlish and contrarian to start a new business today that relies for its revenue on the artificial scarcity of yesterday. There are plenty of scarcities to monetise – cloud infrastructure, operations skill, stack integration, jurisdictional differences and many more – without the need to try to apply a gateway to open source software. The requirement for a contributor agreement in order to create an artificial scarcity is the genetic marker for a desire for control. In the meshed society that the internet is creating, that’s a sign of damage that needs working around.
I just returned from a great trip to Vancouver for LinuxCon North America 2011. Here’s a quick (and visual) report on the proceedings, with a bias toward the FOSS compliance presentations.
Who cares if Google isn’t necessarily the patron saint of openness? However much Google may depend upon open source, due to the advantageous development economics it fosters – as recently highlighted by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst – is Google somehow wrong to disproportionately benefit from open source even as it churns out closed products and services based thereon?
It’s not as if Google is alone. Facebook, for example, is no different, and some argue it’s using mountains of open source code to create a Compuserve-esque Internet experience that some feel fundamentally threatens the freedom of the web.
Open source, the great enabler of serious lock-in?
Speed Dial is a feature first introduced by Opera almost four years. It is basically a grid of the top websites you visit. From my experience, this is a very convenient way to get to my favorite websites after firing up the browser. This feature has been adopted by Google Chrome as well. Recently, Opera added more features to its Speed Dial by introducing Live Speed Dial.
“(Open source) has been helpful for us as we accelerate our development,” the Ottawa native says, pointing out features like translation are done by volunteers. Firefox 7 was just released in beta form this month; the 11-year-old browser also had versions 4, 5 and 6 released in 2011.
PostgreSQL specialist EnterpriseDB’s new Postgres Enterprise Manager aims to simplify management of large database deployments. The tool can manage both the open source PostgreSQL and EnterpriseDB’s commercial Postgres Plus Advanced Server.
Oracle VM 3 doesn’t quite have the same name recognition as its primary competitor, VMware vSphere. It’s an enterprise-focused virtualization solution that comprises Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle VM Manager. Oracle’s VM Server for x86 is a bare-metal virtualization solution. VM Manager provides the centralized management environment for configuring and managing the server, network, and storage infrastructure using browser-based tools.
Grant will also take the reins of FOSS promotion as well. He says he’d like to facilitate connections with OLPC too, and connecting with FOSS groups in Nairobi as well.
Geeks Without Frontiers, an initiative by Manna Energy Foundation, is at the final stage of building a low-cost, open source Wi-Fi software that aims to provide affordable broadband for all, especially in areas where legacy broadband models have not been considered economical.
The chairman of Google has delivered a devastating critique of the UK’s education system and said the country had failed to capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering.
A Chinese military television program has hinted at cyberwarfare against China’s “enemies,” as it included footage of what appears to be software meant to target specific IP addresses, a news site reported.
As part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties–the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime–is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention’s intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are amongst those who have ratified within the last year. However, among non-European countries, only the U.S. has ratified the Treaty to date, making Canada and Australia’s efforts unique. The Treaty has not been harmless, and both Australia and Canada are fast-tracking legislation (Australia’s lower house approved a cybercrime bill last night) that will enable them to ratify the Treaty, at great cost to the civil liberties of their citizens.
Following the meeting, the Home Office said in a statement that ”the discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and cooperation to crack down on the networks being used for criminal behaviour.’ It looked like the Home Office were backing away from suggestions that they are seeking powers to cut off access to communications networks.
The absence of any talk about blocking access to social networks is of course a victory. In principle giving the state greater powers to prevent people using the means to communicate with each other is worrying. And in practice, there’s little evidence that simply cutting access would have prevented some of the unrest.
Me: “I need the manual configuration instructions for ISUNet.”
Him: “Are you sure? Are you running Windows or Mac?”
Me: “Linux.”
I was slightly surprised at this point, normally saying that “L” word to customer support for tech trips them up a whole lot, this guy seemed to know his stuff though.
Him: “Oh, well the setup will vary with your system – but what you are looking for is WPA2 Protected EAP (PEAP) in your security settings. Once there just use your ISU login for the user name and password.”
This is your first step. Linux is not homogeneous like Windows or OS X. Linux comes in a range of different versions, called “distributions”. The majority of the underlying code in each of these distributions is the same with most of the differences being in the interface and some of the management tools. Choosing the right distribution can be tricky, especially as there are literally hundreds of versions of Linux available. Fortunately most of those you can forget about, for now. What you need is an easy to use version of Linux, which leaves you with a short-list of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva and Linux Mint. Picking one of these will make you life easier as they are all easy to install and pretty simple to maintain.
Today, the Linux kernel is the most pervasive piece of software in all of computing. It runs the world’s stock exchanges, transportation systems, consumer devices, smart grid technologies, 90 percent of the world’s supercomputers and much, much more.
When Linus Torvalds released Linux 0.01 on the internet 20 years ago, his idea of a free Unix clone to which anyone could contribute touched a creativenerve in people. Today, it would be impossible to imagine an IT world without Linux.
It has been twenty years since Linus Torvalds programmed the first few lines of what would become the Linux kernel. An IT student at the time, Torvalds wasn’t yet thinking of an operating system, he just wanted to explore the capabilities of his PC’s 386 processor. Eventually, his memory management, process switching and I/O experiments developed into something that resembled a rudimentary operating system kernel.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, started the celebration of Linux’s 20th anniversary at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, but when is Linux’s real birthday? Is it August 25th, when Linus announced the project? October 5th 1991, when 0.02, the first public release was made? I decided to go straight to the source and asked Linux’s creator, Linus Torvalds.
Developers on the mailing list and end-users (in the forums) have been largely positive about this move to drop the aging and not actively maintained Mesa code. The only developer actively objecting to stripping out the old code is Luc Verhaegen. Michel Dänzer raises a (minor) interesting point though, “DRI1 is basically the only reason for the r300 and r600 drivers to still live in the light of r300g and r600g, but I believe they (along with radeon and r200) are still pretty far from dead on non-Linux OSs.”
Yeah folks, we know it often feels like that there are too many music players available for Linux, but when they’re as innovative as Tomahawk we’re more than happy to take them for a spin…
“Little games” is a term I use to describe those that are quick to start, easy to play, and quick to exit. These are the ones that usually come installed by default with most Linux distributions. Some have GNOME and KDE counterparts, but all are fun. Here are a few of my favorites.
Graduate Games are soon going to release their unique dog solitaire game Best in Show Solitaire, you can preorder the game at lower price and play the beta now !
I am a huge fan of the Enlightenment desktop. The following items in this post are things I believe the Enlightenment desktop (and it’s developers) are doing better than some of the other open source desktops.
Applications and workspaces will follow the frameworks – Plasma Active’s influence and why the traditional desktop won’t be killed by the mobile space
After years of focusing on further improving KDE4 two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer – and Plasma team leader – Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum, making it easy for developers to port their applications. He goes on to explain that Frameworks 5.0 is only the first step and new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later, talks about Plasma active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME.
I’ve spoken about Amarok’s Dynamic Playlists before. Despite my best attempts, I couldn’t quite get it to work correctly. However, Amarok 2.4.3 has revamped the dynamic playlists engine and interface, so I wanted to check it out and see if it worked better as well as testing out some of the new features. For one thing, they changed the interface to more closely match the interface for static playlists. See:
The IPFire project has announced the release of an update, Core Update 51, to version 2.9 of its IPFire open source firewall. According to Project Leader and developer Michael Tremer, the latest update addresses several security issues in the Linux kernel – Core Update 51 is based on the 2.6.32.45 longterm Linux kernel – and improves the distribution’s overall stability and performance.
The Arch Linux team has released the first new all-in-one update for its minimalist, rolling-release distribution in 15 months. The Arch Linux 2011.08.19 installation media features support for Linux 3.0 and the syslinux bootloader, and offers experimental Btrfs and NILFS2 file-systems, and more flexible source-file selection.
Today, in celebration of 20th birthday of Linux, we totally freezed Mandriva 2011 repository. No more additions, no more fixes, no more anything. We started the final countdown till “copying to gold”.
Gentoo is not like other Linux distribution. The Gentoo swims faster than other penguins, and dives deeper. Where more fashionable distributions worry about fast installation and ease of use, Gentoo worries about efficient compilation and degrees of customisation. Richard Hillesley explains its history.
Gentoo is not about ease of use or making installation easier for the new user. Computers are what you do with them, and most users have little or no knowledge of how their systems are put together, and care even less. Gentoo is for the users who want to reach under the hood, get their hands dirty, and learn.
The two biggest corporate and real estate stories in the Triangle converged Thursday as software maker Red Hat agreed to occupy one of Progress Energy’s two downtown Raleigh office towers.
The deal will bring hundreds of high-paid technology workers downtown and help offset the job losses that are expected to occur as a result of Progress’ merger with Charlotte-based Duke Energy.
Koji is an open source build system. While many are familiar with Koji because of the Fedora Project’s use of it, Koji is a generic system that is used by different groups around the world.
Is Fedora really not a good choice for a server? I think it all depends on the situation. But first, let’s try to figure out what are the requirements for a distribution to be called server-worthy.
Some things that servers require are: stability, security updates, mature software, long-term deployment, support, no incompatible changes, point-in-time release, etc. But what do these attributes really mean? Stability means that the server performs well, without unexpected and unknown issues causing downtime. Timely security updates must be provided in forms of package updates, etc. Mature software is one which has been pounded upon by many, many users in different environments and has performed well. Long-term deployment means that if you plan to deploy your server for many years, it should be able to handle the length of time without needing constant attention. Support includes software and knowledge support: can you find people to help you if something does go wrong? No incompatible changes refers to package updates, where no major functionality changes are made. Point-in-time release means fixing the design of your server, from hardware to OS to applications; if a package is at major version 1.2.3 then it should remain at 1.2.3 (it could be 1.2.3.1 or 1.2.3.10 but always 1.2.3) and not become 1.2.5 or something newer when an update is applied.
So here we are in the thick of the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot development cycle, and I am really excited about the progress that is being made. I thought it could be interesting to show off some of the work that is going on with a quick screenshot tour.
This cycle has been very much focused on integrating GNOME3 into Ubuntu and focusing on fit and finish both at a software and design level on Unity and it’s components. The goal with Ubuntu 11.10 is to build on the accomplishments in Ubuntu 11.04 and to continue refining the experience.
There’s nothing you need TO DO after installing a new Linux distribution. Ubuntu, as well as many of its counterparts, offer a complete common experience, with a very decent set of programs, tools, drivers, and aesthetics. In recent Ubuntu versions, you get to install codecs and updates while installing, so there’s even less fuss. A handful of useful applications has been removed from the default installation, like GIMP, but then, it’s not meant for everyone out there. Regressions must never happen, but then again, this applies to every distro out there.
It’s approaching the one-year anniversary of when Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu is going to deploy Wayland with Unity, eventually. As those know that pay attention to the continual flow of information from Phoronix regarding the next-generation Wayland Display Server and Linux graphics drivers in general, it’s being developed at a brisk pace and with several key open-source projects now betting big on its adoption, but how’s it playing in the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu 11.10?
Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” has been frozen: now that the beta and user interface (UI) freezes have been announced, any further changes to the range of new features or user interface will require explicit approval by the release team. However, bug fixes will continue to be accepted so that they can be integrated into the forthcoming Beta 1 of Ubuntu 11.10, which is now being finalised. The first beta is scheduled for release next Thursday (1 September).
A lot has been written about Bodhi Linux in its short existence. Bodhi appeared out of nowhere not even a year ago it seems and quickly gained followers aplenty. Usually there’s a good reason for something like this. So much has been written in such little amount of time, I’m not going to go into all the aspects of this little distro, for example that Bodhi means Enlightenment, a nice word play on the default desktop environment of choice E17, just a quick look.
Actually, mentioning or for that matter running Bodhi without this desktop would make little sense as it is its sole purpose to bring us a nicely customized and integrated Enlightenment desktop that the lead developer and founder Jeff Hoogland evidently is so fond of. This is tightly wrapped around a Ubuntu 10.04 LTS core with an updated 2.6.39 kernel in 1.1.0, a good choice that guarantees utmost stability, at least in Ubuntu terms, and steers clear of potential pitfalls later versions might have introduced with all the upheaval moving from Gnome to Unity. Thus, after almost all earlier releases were test releases, this latest one promises a degree of maturity, which is probably underscored by the fact that it hasn’t been updated for nearly three months, which for the Bodhi project is a long time.
Because Linux is free software and belongs to no-one, it is often assumed that Linux is “surrounded by legal uncertainties,” but Linux is no more or less prone to legal uncertainties than any other software. Richard Hillesley looks at the latest attempt to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt around the GPL and the Linux kernel…
The Linux kernel is released under the GPLv2. The GPL was devised as a means of enhancing and protecting the freedoms of the user, the coder, and the code.
X10 has begun selling a seven-inch Android 2.3 tablet for $200. The X10 AirPad has a 1.2GHz, Cortex-A8-based Rockchip 2918 processor, 4GB of flash storage, a seven-inch, 800 x 480 pixel capacitive display, a two-megapixel camera, plus an HDMI output delivering 1080p, says the company.
Are you using a pocket USB drive to store applications and backup data? If not, the time is ripe to do so. You can get entire sets of useful open source applications in one download for free on a USB Flash drive, and the drives themselves offer a lot of capacity now for very little money. Here are just a few good, free resources you can take advantage of with a pocket USB drive and a few minutes to do a download.
In the first of a short series of articles introducing the upcoming TransferSummit in Oxford, Ross Gardler and Sander van der Waal explain the principle of open innovation and how this applies to free and open source software.
Following the recent fire sale of HP’s TouchPad tablet, members of the Hack N Mod hacker and modder community have setup a cash bounty for the first functional port of Google’s Android OS to replace the default Linux-based webOS mobile operating system. The Hack N Mod prize is intended to “speed up the porting process” and is currently valued at a total of $1,500.
When thinking about user interface design, many will focus on the application itself, but Claire Rowland, an interaction designer and researcher, looks at things a bit differently. She came to the Desktop Summit in Berlin to describe “service design”, which encompasses more than just the interface for a particular application. Looking at the service that is being provided, and focusing on the “touchpoints” for that service, makes for a more holistic view of interface design. That will become increasingly important as we move into a world where more and more “ordinary” devices become connected to the internet.
Recently Mozilla implemented a rapid release process, where we release a version of Firefox every 6 weeks. This has involved changing a number of our processes. It’s also raised some new issues. For example, some enterprises find the idea of rapid browser change to be disconcerting at best and potentially unmanageable at worst. Add-on compatibility is another. I acknowledge these issues are complex and difficult. There is work to be done to make the rapid release process smoother and hopefully more useful to more of our userbase. I’d like to describe why I believe the rapid release process is important enough to pursue despite these difficulties.
If you’ve used the latest version of Firefox to visit a UK government website in the last few weeks, you may have noticed something unusual in the browser address bar.
EnterpriseDB, a provider of enterprise-class products and services based on PostgreSQL, today announced Postgres Plus Cloud Server, which the company has billed as “a full-featured, Oracle-compatible, enterprise-class PostgreSQL database-as-a-service for public and private clouds with support for Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, Rackspace, and GoGrid.”
While Oracle is most often criticized since their acquisition of Sun Microsystems for shafting the open-source community, in particular for OpenOffice, MySQL, OpenSolaris, and other projects, not everything they do is bad for open-source and Linux. They have VirtualBox, various kernel developers, Chris Mason works for them on Btrfs, etc. They also still employ some graphics developers. One of these developers for some time now has been working on improving the GPU memory management situation in virtualized environments.
As the Linux kernel celebrates its 20th anniversary today, the impact of open source and free software in broad areas of technology continues to be felt. A new report from Black Duck Software reveals that in the health care sector, the number of open source software projects has risen by 31 percent since last year.
According to Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, open source software projects are accelerating the pace of software development in the health care industry, which is typically a slower-moving sector than other technologies, such as mobile.
The developers behind Nagios fork, Icinga, have released version 1.5 of the open source monitoring package. Icinga 1.5 has a new user interface which includes a pre-installed integrated reporting tool, a guide to which can be found on the Icinga wiki. It is based on Jasper Reports and includes 20 frequently used templates, such as a list of available services and the top 10 problematic hosts or services.
Apple may or may not change without Steve. Assuming he was OK with suing the world instead of innovating, I won’t miss him. If I were his employer, I would not mind him quitting with no notice. I would say, “Good riddance!” Perhaps his replacement will realize that having half the world hate the company is not good for business. Think of all the people loving Android who see their “fix” in terms of importations from the Far East jeopardized by groundless legal suits. Are they ever going to feel the same about Apple? Nope. Cross Apple off their shopping list forever. How about the suppliers of Android/Linux hardware components? Are they going to want to support Apple when Apple is trying to take away their livelihood? Nope. What about the many distributors of Android/Linux? One even asked the US president to block the ITC on this. What about Google? Is Google ever going to want to cooperate with Apple on anything after 2011? Nope. Apple is sawing off the limb on which it rests, people being comfortable with Apple’s existence.
As a FOSS supporter, I’ve often found myself POd by actions taken by Steve Jobs, especially in recent months as he’s pulled out his patent portfolio and declared war on Android. However, I’ve never viewed his actions through the same lens I’ve used to see the anti-FOSS moves made by the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Larry Ellison. Indeed, I’ve always viewed Jobs as something of a kindred spirit and have understood that his commitment to protecting Apple has been brought about because he knows what it’s like to be ripped off by the likes of Microsoft. It’s happened to him in the past and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let it happen to him again. I like Jobs. I admire him. But he still pisses me off sometimes.
Shane notes that the government’s censorship effort “amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath,” particularly given the imminent publication of a book by CIA agent Jose Rodriguez — who destroyed the videotapes of CIA interrogations in violation of multiple court orders and subpoenas only to be protected by the Obama DOJ — that touts the benefits of the CIA’s “tough” actions, propagandistically entitled: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”
China has “vastly increased” the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology that will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its reactors reach the end of their lifespans, according to diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beijing.
The warning comes just weeks after the government in Beijing resumed its ambitious nuclear expansion programme, that was temporarily halted for safety inspections in the wake of the meltdown of three reactors in Fukushima, Japan.
Following the already failed attempt by captured pan-European regulators to stop the local bank Friend-o treatment by instituting a short-selling ban, whose effectiveness as we pointed out lasted, oh, about 7 days, we find just what Plan B is. And, yes, Rothschild is involved. From the WSJ: “Societe Generale SA, whose shares have come under severe pressure in recent weeks, said Tuesday that it had signed a liquidity contract with Rothschild & Cie. to prevent excessive volatility in its stock price.” That’s right: Rothschild is now in the Plunge Protection business. And they all have the ECB to thank for it: after years of not learning from the New York Fed-Citadel Joint Venture, which “never” steps in at precisely the right time (wink wink), they have opened the market for third party PPT incursions. It only seems fitting that the bank that started it all, would step in and fill the void. Because after all if SocGen falls, Rothschild will sooner or later follow. That said, the official explanation is worth its weight in laughter: “The idea is not to keep the stock price high, but rather to keep it steady” a representative for Societe Generale said. After hearing such… brilliance… what really is there to say?
Late Monday afternoon, after word broke on Reuters that Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., had hired Reid Weingarten, the criminal defense attorney with an especially scary list of white-collar clients, Goldman’s stock plunged and the firm went into damage control mode.
Think Progress had a fun story last week about Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs VP now working for Darrell Issa on the House Oversight Committee and advocating for the interests of the banks. Haller changed his name shortly before moving to work for the Oversight Committee.
Now we learn that Haller was involved in the weak attempt by Patrick McHenry to embarrass Elizabeth Warren. Back in May, McHenry chaired a hearing with Warren and rescheduled the date several times, leading to Warren having to leave the hearing early. McHenry accused Warren of lying about the scheduling of the meeting.
Summary: Software patents pressure on Red Hat and how the strategy shifted over time; a fresh report that is hostile towards patents gets published by NPR, which recently exposed Microsoft’s patent troll
THE problem with software patents is being realised by many news avenues, even the ‘Microsoft press’ which at least raises questions in a new column stating: “I’m struggling with my feelings about software patents. Although software patents might not seem directly related to your career as a SQL Server professional, software and technology are the bedrock of everything we do and that SQL Server is based on. The future direction of software and patents has the potential to have a profound affect your life and career. Every technology professional should be exploring this topic and forming your own opinions so that you can participate in shaping the future of this debate. (I encourage you to make those opinions known to your elected officials.) Aggressive use of software patents, often on questionable claims, is beginning to have a negative impact on the technology business.”
And this comes from a person who makes a living from Microsoft, which is a strong proponent of software patents not just in the US; it hires lobbyists to spread such bad policies in other countries too. People who carry water for Microsoft ought to come to grips with it. Another fairly FOSS-hostile source at least raises the question, “Are Lawyers Destroying Software?”
“The general premise was, as both companies had software patents they could work together to exclude the competition, mainly Red Hat.”It is rather apparent that Microsoft and patent lawyers are not interested in the benefit to their surroundings. It is very much the opposite in fact as they strive to gain at the expense of their surroundings. In light of this, consider what Novell chose to do when it liaised with Microsoft on software patents. The general premise was, as both companies had software patents they could work together to exclude the competition, mainly Red Hat.
Although there are still people who carry water for Novell, the company is dead (this one YouTube upload still promotes a product/project that was already killed by Attachmate) and Microsoft has found a ‘new’ Novell over in China [1, 2, 3]. It ought to be emphasised that it’s all about proprietary (taking something free and sticking blobs in it), but Adrian Bridgwater asks: “Is Microsoft trying out this much more open stance in the Chinese market where the rest of the world won’t see it happen (just in case the company doesn’t like it) perhaps?”
It is not an “open stance”. There is nothing “open” about Hyper-V.
In November of 2006, Microsoft entered into a patent covenant and interoperability deal with Novell. In 2011, Microsoft has renewed and extended that deal to SUSE Linux, which was spun off from Novell as part of Attachmate’s $2.2 billion acquisition of the company.
Across the last five years, Microsoft has acquired over $300 million worth of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) subscriptions for resale and now has the option for an additional $100 million with SUSE. The Microsoft Novell deal shocked the Linux world at the time it was announced and potentially represented a risk to others in the Linux market.
As it turns out, five years later, it’s a risk that hasn’t affected SUSE Linux’s rival, Red Hat all that much, if at all.
“Patents always come up in the same way that it always comes up for any piece of proprietary software,” Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat told InternetNews.com. “I don’t think it’s any different for us than it is for any other software company.”
Whitehurst explained that Red Hat provides patent indemnification to its customers. He added that Red Hat has also defended itself in lawsuits as have others in the software industry.
“The thought that it (patents) were somehow different for open source than regular software, that has gone away,” Whitehurst said. “I don’t ever hear from customers that there is some differential and they need to be more worried because the software is open source.”
[...]
Whitehurst said that he never hears from customers that they will choose SUSE over Red Hat for interoperability issues. Going a step further, one of the Novell Microsoft partnership customer wins that the two companies announced back in 2007 was a win with Walmart.
As we explained at the time and on other occasions, Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner (veryLinux-hostile) came from Walmart and Microsoft distorted this story about the Walmart deal. The FUD against Red Hat carries on as more patent trolls (some with Microsoft connections) carry on suing the company, e.g. Acacia a year after the Microsoft-Novell deal. One of the latest is MOSAID. We covered this at the time, but Professor Webbink looks at it more closely now. To quote his early analysis:
MOSAID Technologies, Inc. filed a patent infringement complaint [PDF] against Red Hat, IBM, Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks, NetApp and VMWare on August 10. The interesting thing about the complaint is that all of the defendants, except Red Hat, are sued under one patent, while Red Hat is the only defendant under the other patent. Why the actions under these different patents should proceed as a single action is beyond me, and I will be surprised if Red Hat doesn’t look to sever the complaint and proceed alone.
MOSAID is a Canadian company and a non-producing entity (yes, go ahead and call them a troll if you would like). Its sole business is to acquire and enforce patents, although it does claim to have developed some of its own patented inventions.
The patent asserted against Red Hat is U.S. Patent No. 5,892,914, entitled “System For Accessing Distributed Data Cache At Each Network Node To Pass Requirements And Data.”
Some call it an international patent arms race: Tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Google are launching lawsuits over competing patent claims related to smartphones and tablets.
As NPR’s Laura Sydell tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne, companies are mounting takeovers aimed at gaining control of thousands of patents.
Google recently spent $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility, a cellphone manufacturer with more than 17,000 patents. And as Sydell has previously reported, “patent trolls” are on the lookout for potential infringements and the payday that a lawsuit might bring.
They are doing a good investigative job despite Bill Gates putting money on their table for self-promotion (which they give him). The most major patent attacks on Google come from Microsoft’s cartel, alleges Google. I’s not a mere theory as there is far too much evidence, including leaked strategic documents. █
Summary: Microsoft copies more of KDE4, even several years after KDE 4.0 was released
IN ORDER to push aside discussions about the declining sales of Windows, Microsoft likes to bring up Windows 8, which we sometimes refer to as “Vista 8″ because it’s merely a succession of Vista, just a better-looking version of it. Technically, it is more retarded than predecessors (like a phone). It’s also a catchup job based on this Microsoft booster who admit that Vista 8 “will combine file download dialogue boxes into a single box, you’ll be able to stop and pause downloads, and rather than trying to estimate how long a download has left to run, the new operating system will instead feature a graph that shows the data transfer speed, transfer rate trend, and how much data is left to transfer.”
So basically, Microsoft copies KDE 4 about 4 years late. Back in 2005 or 2004 I found in the KDE sites (maybe KDE-Look) a suggestion for this in the form of a mockup, so the idea goes a long way before KDE4 development, even before KDE 4.0 was out.
Vista 8 will be little different above the surface (still mimicking GNU/Linux) and mostly the same under the hood, i.e. a slow piece of junk, especially for file transfers (I/O in Windows is notoriously poor). Some time in the future there will be a poor man’s (or woman’s) GNU/Linux and it will be called “Windows 8″. Can anybody explain what Windows can do that GNU/Linux cannot? We are talking about operating system features here, not applications. Real innovation happens in GNU/Linux; neither Apple nor Microsoft, which mass-market and take credit for other people’s work. █
Summary: People of Romania stand up against corrupt procurement and the press is paying attention
FOLLOWING many complaints about rogue policy in Romania (Techrights motivated more exposure [1, 2, 3] as it may also be illegal), there are some news reports that apply more pressure for the Romanian government to get its thing together.
Fresh doubts have been cast over the Romanian government’s position with regard to open source. The minister for Communication and Information Society, Valerian Vreme, announced back in May that the government would recommend open source “wherever appropriate”; however, a tender from the government emerged in August that specifically prohibited the use of open source software in any offer made in response. Now, a report from OSOR.EU quotes several authoritative sources doubting the validity of the prohibition and whether “it would stand in court”.
The August tender concerned the development of an “Information System of Romanian Criminal Records (Rocris)”; this is in response to the EU initiative for the development of a European-level interoperable system, enabling the exchange of information on criminals’ previous convictions. The Romanian ministry maintained that it was this interoperability requirement that had forced it to ban the use of software published under a free software licence. It also stated that its own internal security policies “prohibit the existence of the possibility to amend the source code”.
Unacceptable policies cannot stand provided enough people know about them.
Someone from Romania sent us this bit of news a short while ago, saying that money for Romanian public IT projects does not go where it ought to. Let’s keep the pressure up. █
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