07.11.10
Richard Stallman’s Presentation From 2009 – eLiberatica (as Ogg)
Summary: An explanation of the value of software freedom (source as Adobe Flash)
07.10.10
Patents Roundup: FFII Founder on IBM, Shazam Has No Case, Microsoft Wants to ‘Own’ Page-flipping, and Software Freedom is Hurt
Summary: Founder of FFII says Florian Müller’s IBM-bashing currently does not have a basis in any existing movement; other new examples of patent news
TODAY we would like to deal with some bits of news about software patents. Much of this was covered before but with different sources at hand.
Hartmut Pilch, the FFII’s founder, has commented on Florian Müller's IBM phobia in the comments section of this post we mentioned a few days ago. He wrote:
I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Florian M. could once more gain some following, even though some parts of his agenda, such as IBM-bashing, currently do not have a basis in any existing movement.
This is not entirely true because while the FFII remains critical of some aspects of OIN, it is not alone either. Criticism of IBM does have its place, but Müller goes too far and “FOSS” is not a priority of his, based on what he writes at least.
“One software patents story which makes a lot of people angry is Shazam’s action, which is carried out through a litigious proxy.”The patent troll called NTP was mentioned here yesterday and its lawsuit against almost everyone has generated hundreds of English headlines, including this report from AP (there is a load of other coverage [1, 2], which makes it easier for historians to find and there is therefore no need for lists of pointers). NTP has been doing this for years (targeting fewer companies) and this case will help define people’s perception of software patents. In this case, wireless E-mail is the claimed infringement. It’s rather outlandish.
One software patents story which makes a lot of people angry is Shazam’s action [1, 2], which is carried out through a litigious proxy. The story of the victimised Dutch developer has received some wider exposure [1, 2] and as TechDirt puts it, Landmark Digital is a “BMI subsidiary which owns the patents on Shazam’s music recognition technology” (i.e. it’s another front like the RIAA). Michael says:
The story is a perfect example of the ridiculous situation with patents today. Basically, the guy noted that what Shazam does in recognizing music is really not that complicated, and explained how to create something similar yourself, which he did himself in a weekend. He had not released the code, but was planning to do so when the legal threats came in. The guy wondered what patents they were talking about specifically, especially considering that in Europe, the standards to patent software are much higher. In response, he was only told about two US patents (6,990,453 and 7,627,477 — oddly, on that last one, Google still shows it as being patent pending, even though the patent was granted last year).
According to this news report, Roy van Rijn is doing something legal as long as he is in Holland. People should help van Rijn spread his code samples so that Landmark Digital/BMI/Shazam give up their patent bullying. They can fight one person more easily than they can find a whole crowd from all around the world (where their software patents are not even applicable).
Roy van Rijn, a developer based in the Netherlands, last month posted about his plans to release open-source Java code to implement a music matching algorithm similar to that used in Shazam, which lets users identify songs from brief audio samples.
His blog post describes how he implemented song matching in Java, with snippets of code. He said that while the code is not in a releasable state, he might clean it up and release it if there’s enough interest.
[...]
EFF Fellow and patent attorney Michael Barclay agreed that posting code covered by a patent could put van Rijn at risk of a lawsuit, but noted that some critical details need to be determined.
“Merely posting the code on a Netherlands Web site would not infringe any US Patents,” he said.
Landmark’s claim, he said, appears to be overreaching unless the company has patents in the Netherlands. “If there are no issued Netherlands patents, he’s free to ship and deploy all he wants in the Netherlands,” he said. “The really sketchy part, and I don’t know that this has ever been litigated, is he says don’t post the code.”
Some legal experts have gone on the record saying that software developers should consider leaving the United States because it’s too risky to develop there. That’s how Richard Stallman justified rejecting software patents in Europe; it puts Europe in a position of tremendous advantage. Brad Feld, an American VC who is strongly against software patents [1, 2], mentioned the story of van Rijn in a new post of his:
In case you need more evidence around the stupidity of the whole situation, take a look at the crap van Rijn is going through. Or maybe this patent from Microsoft on “how to turn a page in an electronic book.”
Here is an article about this Microsoft patent:
As if to dispell all doubt that innovation is alive and well in Redmond, Microsoft has filed a patent application for – wait for it – the “Virtual Page Turn”.
Yes, with filing number 20100175018 at the US Patent and Trademark Office, Microsoft is seeking to patent the animation of a page-flip when a user makes the appropriate gesture on an ebook’s touchscreen. As the filing reads:
A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display… The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page… A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages.
John Boyd responds to Brad Feld and Paul Kedrosky, who co-wrote an article against software patents a few days ago. Boyd says:
I wholeheartedly agree most software patents are nonsense however and serve neither society, innovation or business.
Given the complications here, is it natural to suggest that the Supreme Court make law here? Should this not be within the realm of are ever capable and cogent Congress to adapt patent law to modern types of innovation and invention? Or do we need to clone Jefferson, grow him in a lab until he can make a new law for us?
For background about Jefferson and patents, see this post. Software patents may in fact be unconstitutional. “Business methods and software still patentable in U.S. following closely- watched Bilski decision,” says this new headline from the Montreal Gazette. It may take years to reverse this troubling trend, assuming it ever gets reversed. In the mean time, Free/open source software like ZFS will continue to be hurt by software patents [1, 2, 3]. The ZFS story is now among Slashdot’s promoted submissions where it is discussed extensively. █
07.09.10
Help Fight Patent Bullying From Shazam — Spread This Code!
Summary: This post looks at patent bullying against Free software and it calls for the spreading of source code which Shazam unlawfully tries to remove from the Internet
EARLIER TODAY we wrote about NetApp's threats against ZFS distributors. As one blogger put it:
Enterprise Strategy Group senior analyst Terri McClure wonders why NetApp didn’t hit Nexenta with the same letter since Nexenta supplies its ZFS software to multiple storage vendors.
“If NetApp did it would make sense – stop a number of vendors instead of just one. It certainly makes you wonder why they would single out Coraid, people could read into this that NetApp sees Coraid as a threat. Coraid’s NAS product is pretty new but the underlying platform has been on the market a while and is solid, at a really aggressive price point,” said McClure.
“[NetApp] just spent a couple of hundred dollars in lawyer’s fees and took a competitor out of the market. Quick and easy, but a little disappointing, too. At the end of the day, ZFS is open source, and while there is no way to predict how the settlement talks between Oracle and NetApp will turn out, you can’t really un-open source ZFS,” she said.
There’s still no word from NetApp on the matter.
The “patent troll, NTP, is back, buoyed dosh from RIM,” says Glyn Moody, who found this new article.
NTP, a patent-holding company best known for prying a settlement of more than $600 million from the maker of the BlackBerry, is now suing the other big names in the smartphone industry: Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola, writes The New York Times’s Steve Lohr.
The suits, filed late Thursday afternoon in federal district court in Richmond, Va., charge that the cellphone e-mail systems of those companies are illegally using NTP’s patented technology.
We mentioned NTP before and so did Patent Troll Tracker. Speaking of trolls, earlier today we wrote about Shazam's patent bullying. That previous post gave just the gist of it and the discussion at Slashdot ought to say more. From the summary:
“The code wasn’t even released, and yet Roy van Rijn, a Music & Free Software enthusiast received a C&D from Landmark Digital Services, owners of Shazam, a music service that allows you to find a song, by listening to a part of it. And if that wasn’t enough, they want him to take down his blog post (Google Cache) explaining how he did it because it ‘may be viewed internationally. As a result, [it] may contribute to someone infringing our patents in any part of the world.’”
Jan Wildeboer calls it “Patent Infringement Madness” and another post Wildeboer says “is (a) a blog entry or (b) patent infringement? I say (a) Shazam says (b)”
Two readers urged us to make a mirror just in case (other people ought to mirror this too, in order to ensure that Shazam will lose hope of successfully censoring perfectly legal Dutch code).
Patents are supposed to encourage publication of ideas, not to suppress them. The following code is not in any way infringing Shazam copyrights. █
07.08.10
Patent Bullies Roundup: Intellectual Ventures, NetApp, and HP’s ‘Donation’
Summary: Patent aggression vectors are named; HP is criticised for taking away what’s public and then ‘donating’ it back
THE Bilski decision’s interpretations regarding software patents continue to arrive [1, 2], but we won’t delve into them because it’s becoming too repetitive. It also applies to just one country, which happens to be home of the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures.
Despite all its abuses (racketeering), Intellectual Ventures is said to have just received a “superplug”:
I enjoyed Levitt & Dubner’s “Freakonomics”, and picked up the followup “Superfreakonomis” recently at an airport. The last chapter, however, was astonishing. The entire chapter was devoted to a glowing advertisement for Intellectual Ventures, pointing out that they own 20,000 patents “more than all but a few dozen companies in the world”, but of course “there is little hard evidence” that they are patent trolls.
But this bunch of wacky genius billionaires have solved global warming (much of which they dispute anyway) and can control malaria and prevent hurricanes from forming. Unlike the rest of the book which covers analysis of well-known facts and disputes them with insightful economic research, this chapter is so breathless and gushy that it makes me question the rest of the author’s work.
I first came across Intellectual Ventures when The Economist reversed their 100-year opposition to patents, and the only reason I could find was a similarly cheerleading piece about this company. (I had naively expected new research revealing some net positive of patents, or some such revelation).
The PR from Intellectual Ventures appears to be working whenever anyone describes this parasitic bully as something worth keeping around.
Speaking of trolls, NetApp happens to be one among the few companies that sue Free/open source projects using software patents [1, 2] and it is doing it again:
NetApp has threatened Ethernet and ZFS storage supplier Coraid with implied legal action unless it stops selling its EtherDrive Z-series NAS. Coraid has buckled under the threat and temporarily withdrawn the product.
The back story here is that NetApp sued Sun in 2007 for infringing its patents with the ZFS file system product which it used in its 7000 storage system and which it made available to the open source community. Sun counter-sued NetApp to destroy the validity of the patents in question by showing that there was prior art – existing IP – rendering the patents null and void.
The two legal actions were combined, with the case ongoing in a northern California court. Oracle has inherited the case with its acquisition of Sun. A letter from Coraid’s CEO, Kevin Brown, to Coraid users and partners says NetApp and Oracle are trying to resolve the dispute out of court.
Now we see a significant hardening of NetApp’s stance as it directly attacks the open source community using ZFS with this offensive against Coraid. This could be part of a negotiating tactic against Oracle.
One last news item which is worth addressing is this PR move from HP, which takes away from the Commons and then sells it back. It’s like ‘donating’ what you took away in the form of a monopoly, just like IBM and like Google:
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) announced late last week that HP will join the likes of IBM, Nokia and Sony in making some of its patented technology freely available under the Eco-Patent Commons scheme. The scheme, launched in January 2008, is a joint effort between the WBCSD and IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony.
Why are they allowed to acquire monopolies on these ideas in the first place? Those who are already cynical about the patent system will only be inclined to strengthen those beliefs of theirs. The better solution is to just reject all patents of this type at the USPTO level. Certain things are beneficial neither to the economy nor society when they become a government-protected monopoly. █
Software Patents Not a Done Deal in New Zealand, Mozilla Weighs in
Summary: InternetNZ and other groups that actually represent New Zealand’s population speak out against software patents; Mozilla’s Robert O’Callahan offers words of wisdom
THE patent situation in New Zealand is an important matter because few countries other than the US and Japan actually accept software patents (although there may be loopholes). The “software patent debate rages on,” says this new report from IDG which quotes InternetNZ:
The question of software patents looks unlikely to go away soon, with significant lobbies forming on both sides and a wealth of comment in live forums, letters to the Minister by InternetNZ and the NZ Computer Society, in Computerworld’s own online comment space and on Twitter and Slashdot.
Official bodies and individual commentators are not easily letting go of an apparent reinterpretation of a Select Committee’s wishes regarding a clause excluding software from patent in the Patents Bill. In some quarters the argument is sliding over into one of openness in the legislative process and who truly represents the local ICT industry.
Committee member and Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran is uncomfortable with what she calls the “revisiting” of the clause. At last week’s OpenGovt2010 “unconference” she cited the incident as a good example of how the lawmaking process is sometimes less than open or transparent. She referred to “how legislation gets made and the discussions that go on behind closed doors” – discussions that should, she said, “happen in a more transparent environment”.
[...]
NZICT’s most prominent members are multinational ICT companies, like IBM and Microsoft – companies used to having their intellectual property stringently protected.
[...]
In its own letter to Power, InternetNZ has called for the “changes” in the Patents Bill on software to be referred back to the select committee, with an opportunity for further input by “those who originally made submissions”. Ironically, this would cut out NZICT, who did not make a submission. To get a representative point of view the committee may be forced to open submissions more generally.
As we explained before, the “NZ” in NZICT is deceiving because NZICT is a front for multinationals [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
The following text has just come from New Zealand’s Robert O’Callahan (Microsoft boosters quote someone as saying that he is “work[ing] for Mozilla full-time as an employee of Novell in New Zealand”). Although not a formal response from Mozilla, the following is worth quoting:
Mozilla produces the Firefox Web browser, used by more than three hundred million people around the world. Firefox is open source and is the result of a collaboration of a large group of paid developers and volunteers. In fact, Mozilla funds a team of paid developers in New Zealand working on core Firefox code; some key innovations in Firefox, such as HTML5 video, are the work of our New Zealand team. The work we do is some of the most highly skilled and high-impact software development to be found anywhere in the world. I write about software patents in my personal capacity as one of Mozilla’s senior software developers, and manager of our Auckland-based development team and also our worldwide layout engine team. I also formerly worked for three years at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where I participated in the filing of several software patents based on my research.
[...]
The patent system was designed to promote invention and especially the disclosure of “trade secrets” so that others can build on them. Research casts doubt on whether it has succeeded at those goals (see an example), but even if it did, in software development — especially open-source software development — it is clear that no patent incentive is needed to encourage innovation and publication of our work.
[...]
Software development is uniquely able to have huge impact on the world because copies can be made available to users for free. If we had charged users for each copy of Firefox there is no doubt we would not be nearly as successful as we have been, either at changing the world or even at raising money — Mozilla has substantial revenues from “tie-ins” such as search-related advertising. The patent system threatens this business model, because most patent licensing arrangements require the licensee to pay a per-unit fee. This is not necessarily a problem for traditional manufacturing, where there is a per-unit manufacturing cost that must be recouped anyway, but it completely rules out a large class of software business models that have been very successful.
So basically, every coder is an inventor and all the inventions are published in the form of source code. This is not a statement from Mozilla, just an employee’s blog. █
Microsoft’s Courtois Uses the “Religious” Slur to Denounce Freedom Goals and Sell Fog Computing
Summary: Current and former employees of Microsoft belittle software freedom and instead advance Microsoft’s agenda, typically while dismissing those who do strive to achieve real autonomy and independence
Microsoft’s Jean-Philippe Courtois, the president whom we mentioned a lot in relation to his lobbying [1, 2], is using the old trick of evoking religion and describing his competitor as “religious”. In a new post titled “A Perspective on Openness” Courtois explains why people should embrace Microsoft’s Fog Computing platform:
These debates have gotten heated at times, and have even been characterized as more “religious” than technical.
We have already explained this debating strategy where one compares the opposition to religion or to terrorists. There is even a very recent example. But anyway, Courtois decided to talk about “open”, which means merely nothing when it’s bent (like “free market”, which stands for no regulation). Freedom is not mentioned there in the post, in which Courtois is instead describing Fog Computing as “openness” and there is the mentioning of “choice” too. That’s a dirty old trick which is apparently being used as an excuse/trick in Brazil just like it was used against OLPC XOs and Magalhães with GNU/Linux [1, 2].
Towards the end, Courtois notes that he is “pleasantly surprised to see a new pragmatism emerge in this debate.” (where “pragmatism” is of course a codeword for adoption of proprietary software)
In order to attack LAMP (to use the description from Red Hat’s Jan), Microsoft is retrying a failed strategy with another old name. Mary Jo Foley provides some background:
Back in 2003, Microsoft had a plan to attract Web site developers to the Microsoft platform with a skunkworks project called WebMatrix. On July 7, 2010, Microsoft brought back that discontinued effort, via the introduction of a new tool suite known as WebMatrix.
So basically, now that Microsoft suffers some more layoffs, it is miserable enough to run to old (and failed) tactics. They are losing developers.
“Microsoft is totally off the radar of the cool, hip, cutting-edge software developers.”
–Not Tim O’ReillyAs someone other than Tim O’Reilly put it a few days ago, “Microsoft is totally off the radar of the cool, hip, cutting-edge software developers.” The young generation is walking away from Microsoft and articles like this new one from the New York Times are a public relations disaster for Microsoft. O’Reilly later begged for an update that led to this addendum: “Tim O’Reilly says that while he “[doesn't] disagree with all of his conclusions,” he’s not happy with it Ashlee Vance’s piece, writing “I was not the source for the various comments that were attributed to me,” including the bit about “totally off the radar.” (Thanks to reader gbll.)”
O’Reilly must have felt like his words were faked, taken out of context, or put in a bad context. That’s typical for Ashlee Vance, who used to write troll articles in The Register.
Anyway, in order to pretend that Microsoft is “open-source” too, the company resorts to marketing nonsense while former employees like Fulkerson (MindTouch [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) are being attributed the disturbing trend of “Open Core”:
It should be noted up front that I may have been a bit presumptuous in assigning the origins of open core to Aaron Fulkerson, the CEO of MindTouch. In a comment on my blog, Fulkerson himself corrected the issue:
“I can’t take credit for ‘open core.’ When we began capitalizing MindTouch I employed a model that made sense to me because it seemed to strike a nice balance between the needs and wants of the community of MindTouch users and the needs (and wants) of our company. I didn’t have a name for it until Lampitt coined the term. I simply adopted it. Furthermore, I don’t think this is a new model. Indeed, we’ve been employing this model since the very dawn of software.”
The greater problem with MindTouch is that it promotes Mono. Former Microsoft employees tend to do this. Another former Microsoft employee is the CEO of OpenLogic, which issued a GPL-hostile press release some days ago. The resultant coverage mostly came from none other than OpenLogic staff whom IDG gave a blog [1, 2]. IDG also gave a blog to an executive from Black Duck, which was created by a former Microsoft employee and is now spreading similar GPL fear which helps it sell proprietary, patents-’protected’ software.
By this stage, it’s hopefully more evident that former Microsoft employees pose a risk too. Microsoft is not just another company and as this new article reminds us, it’s Microsoft’s opposition that helped derail a Free software bill in the Philippines several years ago.
Earlier that day, during the Usaping Balita Media Forum at Serye Restaurant and Cafe with Ms. Toni Torres in the panel, Bayan Muna Partylist Rep.Teodoro Casiño, reiterated that there is a need for a law directing ICT. It should remembered that, as early as 2006, the said author of Free and Open Source Software Act, had been seeking the creation of an attached agency under the CICT to oversee the agencies’ migration to open source, especially in government and education. But the bill’s biggest hurdle is the lack of awareness on open source, aside from Microsoft’s opposition. On the other hand, National Solid Waste Management executive director Emelita Aguinaldo echoed what she presented during the Asian Development Bank Urban Day 2008: “The truth is that we lack proper segregation of recyclable/recoverable waste material at source resulting to low recycling ratio and low quality of recyclable materials. Technological and financial capacity of the domestic recycling industry is limited. No outflow of recyclables to international big market such as China. We are dependent on the collecting and trading of recyclable/recoverable materials upon price fluctuation based on market mechanism and unstable domestic supply of recyclables. There is fragmented information and network for optimizing the flow of recyclable/recoverable materials from generators to the final users.”
Microsoft’s very unique hostility towards software freedom is why we treat it quite separately from the rest. Yesterday we showed how Microsoft excluded Free software in Switzerland (possibly in illegal ways) and additional coverage suggests that Microsoft continues to get away with it:
Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court yesterday decided that a government organisation’s renewal of its proprietary software licences without a public tender does not harm the business interests of open source software service providers
With that the court dismissed the claim by a group of eighteen open source companies that the Department for Building and Logistics (BBL) should have issued a call of tender in 2009. BBL in May that year had renewed a three year contract worth 42 million Swiss frank (about 31 million Euro) with a proprietary software vendor for licences, maintenance and support. The contract involves the software on PCs for 40,000 federal employees.
This backfired in Quebec [1, 2, 3], so hopefully there will be an appeal.
To summarise, Microsoft’s existing and former staff are squarely targeting advocates of Free/open source software (especially the “free” part). To pretend that Microsoft is not the main issue as far as entities are concerned is to ignore a lot of evidence on the ground. █
07.07.10
Free Software: Technically and Ethically Better
Summary: The BBC helps daemonise the idea of crowdsourcing, Google shows that proprietary software falters, and Bradley Kuhn (FSF/SFLC) explains why “proprietary software licensing produces no new value in society”
THE BBC is losing talent fast, by its very own admission (as published early in the day). Even Jonathan Ross is leaving. Earlier today we mentioned the corporate bias that the BBC helps push (including that of the Copyright Cartel) and another new example is a critique of crowdsourcing — the idea of pooling ideas. Here is a rare positive part of this Monday piece which was titled “Should we trust the wisdom of crowds?” (it’s a rhetorical “no”, as implied by the form of this question)
Open source computer operating systems, such as Linux and Google’s Android, the big rival to Apple’s iPhone, are written and refined by members of the public.
Another good example of such collaboration is Wikipedia, which allows users to write and edit entries for its online encyclopaedia: “For the first time millions of people can aggregate their talent and expertise,” says Williams.
A form of meritocracy works very well. Attempts to dismiss this approach often come from the likes of Jaron Lanier. Here is a new article which explains why more eyeballs can indeed improve reliability and security in the case of code: (more here for background)
Youtube Hacked – Ramifications for the Connected TV Industry?
[...]
Let’s start with a fact. Youtube is not like Android – it is not open source software. It is reasonably open however, and does have API’s available. But it is web-based and apparently has had some vulnerabilities exploited by creative hackers over the years.
[...]
There are far fewer minds at work on a proprietary project than there are on an open one… less testing, less debugging, less resources available.
People also develop differently when they are aware that their code is ‘naked’ for everyone to assess. It encourages high-quality programming.
Coincidentally, Bradley Kuhn has this new essay titled “Proprietary Software Licensing Produces No New Value In Society”:
Meanwhile, I’ve also spent some time applying this idea of “creating nothing and producing nothing” to the proprietary software industry. Proprietary licenses, in many ways, are actually not all that different from these valueless financial transactions. Initially, there’s no problem: someone writes software and is paid for it; that’s the way it should be. Creation of new software is an activity that should absolutely be funded: it creates something new and valuable for others. However, proprietary licenses are designed specifically to allow a single act of programming generate new revenue over and over again. In this aspect, proprietary licensing is akin to selling financial derivatives: the actual valuable transaction is buried well below the non-existent financial construction above it.
[...]
Software freedom is another principle of this type. While you can make a profit with community-respecting FLOSS business models (such as service, support and freely licensed custom modifications on contract), it’s admittedly a smaller profit than can be made with Open Core and proprietary licensing. But that greater profit potential doesn’t legitimatize such business models, just as it doesn’t legitimize strip mining or gambling on financial derivatives.
Glyn Moody responds to it by claiming that:
This idea of getting money for work already done is precisely how copyright is regarded these days. It’s not enough for a creator to be paid once for his or her work: they want to be paid every time it is performed or copies made of performances.
So ingrained is this idea that anyone suggesting the contrary – like that doughty young Eleanor – is regarded as some kind of alien from another planet, and is mocked by those whose livelihoods depend upon this kind of entitlement economics.
But just as open source has cut down the fat profits of proprietary software companies, so eventually will the exorbitant profits of the media industry be cut back to reasonable levels based on how much work people do – because, as Kuhn notes, there really is no justification for anything more.
Microsoft was born out of desire to suppress sharing of code, at least based on the manifesto-like document of its co-founder. A company that arises by striving to maximise wealth at the expense of good engineering is bound not only to produce shoddy software but software that also harms a community of software developers. The next post will show how developers feel about it. █
News Reports About Microsoft’s Confirmation of Layoffs
Summary: Layoffs inside the main opponent of software freedom are now confirmed and the story is widely covered by the media
AS we mentioned a few hours ago, the layoffs at Microsoft carry on, which doesn’t really surprise us because we have heard rumours for several weeks now (since May in fact). Reuters makes the news more official, but special credit goes to Ziodotmatrix for being the first to inform us of the news by pointing to an article from yesterday (in IRC):
Microsoft is preparing to make a new round of job cuts as early as tomorrow, according to people with knowledge of the situation, but the unconfirmed numbers we’re hearing are relatively small in the scheme of things — far less than the thousands of jobs cut by the company last year.
Microsoft boosters such as Ina Fried spin it with headlines like “Source: No broad job cuts planned at Microsoft” (it gives the impression of no layoffs or minimal layoffs without giving actual numbers). The other reports that we found sometimes mentioned “KIN” and sometimes mentioned the affected locations/projects:
- Microsoft plans job cuts: Report
- Microsoft Plans Small Job Cuts: Report
- More Microsoft job cuts coming?
- Microsoft Planning Small Job Cuts
- Microsoft Will Make Small Layoffs
- Which Do You Prefer for the Press Release, Mr. Ballmer: Downsize, Rightsize or Amoritize?
- Microsoft’s “small” job cuts may reach Israel
- Are new layoffs coming at Microsoft?
- Microsoft Expected to Make Small Job Cuts
- Microsoft set to make small job cuts, says report
- Microsoft Reportedly Preparing to Cut More Jobs (MSFT)
- Rumors abound of upcoming Microsoft layoffs
- Microsoft to axe a few workers
- Microsoft Reportedly Plans Small Round Of Jobs Cuts
- Microsoft Reportedly to Cut More Jobs
- Job cuts going to be soon in Microsoft-How many?
- Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Cuts Jobs
- Microsoft planning small job-cuts as it begins it new fiscal
- Microsoft Plans Job Cuts
- Microsoft Laying Off Workers…Again
- Microsoft may slash jobs on Wednesday
- Microsoft plans new job cuts
- Microsoft ‘planning job cuts’
- Microsoft prepares to cut jobs – reports
- Microsoft Reportedly Plans Small Job Cuts – Quick Facts
- Microsoft To Cut More Jobs
It was very late last night when mini-Microsoft wrote about it. See the interesting comments, which often come from anonymous and/or disgruntled employees like “mini”. “Look at the Linkedin profile of Matt Bencke,” writes one person, “This dude has degrees in Political Science, and still is a GM in a technological company.”
Bureaucracy.
The significance of this news is that despite Microsoft’s claims of strength (like those fabricated/exaggerated numbers it used over a week ago in order to raise morale), the monopolist is suffering. Without a mighty Microsoft, Free software will thrive a lot more easily. Microsoft has cost many innocent people their jobs when it violated laws and although it’s nothing personal, the tyrannical entity known as Microsoft is better off dismantled. █
“Pearly Gates and Em-Ballmer
One promises you heaven and the other prepares you for the grave.”
–Ray Noorda, Novell
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