Summary: Interesting choice of blog theme
Check out Microsoft’s OSS blog theme:
We’ve added the Zune bit for comparison.
Microsoft must be hoping that Linux and FOSS will suffer the same fate as Zune. █
“My definition of Cloud Computing: “the Fine Art of Separating People from Their Software””
–Fernando Cassia
Summary: Criticism of OSBC and Future of Open Source, which only help redefine the goals of F/OSS so as to be nearly meaningless
BE CAREFUL of this not-so-new trend where proprietary software companies use the words “open” and “cloud” to portray themselves as something that they are not. OSBC shows many of the symptoms we have drawn attention to before; some are trying to paint the conference “cloud” or something along those lines, completely diluting the content of the conference and turning people’s attention away from freedom. The word “business” in OSBC need not exclude freedom because freedom and business are not at all opposites. We covered all of this before, so readers can be spared the explanations.
More importantly, beware of Microsoft spin at OSBC and watch out for deception from IDG’s “Microsoft Subnet”, whose most blatant Microsoft booster (Robert Mullins, not Jon or Julie) is at it again. It was only yesterday that we wrote about IDG spinning OSBC to its own clients’ advantage. Mullins at least notes that:
Microsoft hasn’t won over everyone in the open source community given comments to Gupta’s Sunday blog post on the subject.
Well, given the money Microsoft has extorted from F/OSS using software patents, given the effect of the FUD campaigns, and given the many families and developers who lost income due to Microsoft’s brutality, Mullins oughtn’t expect Microsoft to be accepted by “everyone in the open source community”. Heck, many will not even tolerate Microsoft and some will ostracise the company. In order to issue some sort of reparations for the damage Microsoft has done to the developers (not to mention damage affecting everyone due to insecurity and elimination of choice), Microsoft would need to sell and liquidate all of its assets, including the executives’, then distribute these back to the victims. The damage Microsoft has done is well documented and those who pretend that some self-serving patch somehow makes amends are extremely unrealistic. Need it be added that Microsoft currently has multiple patent lawsuits against Linux (Motorola and B&N for starters)?
Microsoft has been pouring money not into compensating victims or helping F/OSS. Instead, Microsoft just been investing in PR and funding of F/OSS conference (like Future of Open Source), with the intention of changing the agenda of them along with so-called analysts (who are essentially funded by Microsoft in this way). The Gates Foundation uses the same tricks. Jay Lyman from the 451 Group writes about “Community Linux love from Microsoft” and notes:
It seems Microsoft understands that unlike pirated Windows, which it considers a loss, the use of free, unpaid Linux — particularly by large enterprise, government and other organizations — is a big opportunity for it.
Yes, it is an opportunity to harm GNU/Linux, by putting a cost on it in the form of proprietary software, even if the GNU/Linux part is free of charge. What a nerve Microsoft has. Well, Scientific Linux is said to have just added another developer for the cloning of RHEL. Scientific Linux receives backing from some of the world’s leading research labs, so it need not be paid to change the agenda for Microsoft or anybody else. █
Another reason to dump Apple and its hyped up platforms
Summary: Why developers who carried water for hypeOS (iOS) should berate Apple for encouraging patent aggression, not antagonising it
So, we’ve been writing about Lodsys recently [1, 2, 3] and yesterday we finally found out who was behind the patent troll’s ammunition (here is news summary of eclectic nature). It turned out that it was the world’s largest patent troll, which is interesting to say the very least. Yes, the patent comes from IV (Intellectual Ventures), which was partly funded by Apple and is part of the same patent cartel which Microsoft and Apple share. Therefore, those hypePhone developers who got sued might as well point their finger at sleazy Apple, which pools its patents with Microsoft (not just through CPTN but cross-licensing too). It is not too shocking that Apple was not sued because it cannot be sued by members of the same club, including Microsoft. Moreover, Apple cannot possibly get credit for indemnifying or defending from the same threats it has been breeding. But with yet more Apple spin and hype, anything is possible. Apple is said to just be “looking into Lodsys patent claim”. Well, maybe Apple should also take a look at Intellectual Ventures, which provided the basis for this lawsuit. Apple did, after all, help create Intellectual Ventures.
What we are witnessing here is an appalling monopolisation using patents, which are controlled by companies that just plundered and pillaged others. “I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems,” Bill Gates famously said. “We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” said Steve Jobs.
Google says that it has sold over 100,000,000 Android devices. Why would anyone want to develop for Apple’s shop/platforms now? Does Apple deserve the free labour anymore? That only strengthens an enemy of software development — be it free or proprietary. █
French hacker Fabrice Bellard has demonstrated how JavaScript can do much more than simply animate web sites and process server data by creating a PC emulator written in the scripting language. JS/Linux emulates a 32-bit x86 compatible CPU, a programmable interrupt controller, a programmable interrupt timer and a serial port – taking just over 90 KB to do so. It lacks a mathematical co-processor and MMX commands, making it roughly on a par with a 486-compatible x86 CPU without FPU. It can, however, be used to run older Linux kernels (2.6.20), as they include an FPU emulator.
Seven months ago, I posted the first statistics of my Linux box. Now it’s time to check again on it to see how it has behaved in these seven months. I’m not counting the old figures.
A. Number of attacks by trojans, spyware, or malware: 0. AGAIN!
As a demand for Linux-related jobs has jumped unexpectedly high in the last couple of years, LinuxCareer.com as a new Linux related job portal attempts to compensate for this sudden surge in demand for Linux skilled professionals and will surely accommodate both employers and job seekers. LinuxCareer.com is not affiliated with any local or international company, nor is it a recruitment or employment agency and it is specialising only in Linux based careers and closely related Information Technology fields.
LinuxCareer.com offers tools such as application tracking, job alerts, login and syncing resumes with facebook.com and linkedin.com accounts as well as screening questionnaires for employers and resume uploads for job seekers.
Jared possesses the same passion for knowledge, collaboration, and continual improvement that sparked the Linux revolution two decades ago—and that keeps it moving forward today. “I have the greatest admiration for Linus Torvalds and the team of skilled engineers that continue to evolve the Linux kernel,” he says.
“When I first started using Linux, installation was difficult, and it wasn’t easy to find drivers for the hardware. But times have really changed! Now, Linux is as easy to install as Windows, and it does everything that the average computer user needs to do.” Of course, it also does much, much more. And for ambitious developers like Jared, it’s the foundation upon which a whole world of innovation is built.
Its nearly a year after that and I’ve been scheduled to present a follow-up to his talk. Yeah, I know, that’s a lot of time-lapse for a follow-up but that’s how it is. In two days time, on the 19th of May 2011, the heat will be on during the Technical Session, as I do my best to convince my colleagues that Open-Source Software is adequate for Nigerian AEC professionals. The presentation is titled: Linux for Nigerian AEC Industry. My predecessor is an Ubuntu guy so its not surprising he showcased examples using that Distribution. I am a Fedora Guy, and I will be showcasing my examples on Fedora (Laughlin), better still, media will exchange hands. His was broad because ICT is broad, mine is narrower as I will focus on Linux and other hosted open-source tools.
Point-Counterpont. In the second of two posts about Google’s cloud-connected operating system and Chromebook, Joe Wilcox argues that PC defenders are an unimaginative lot living in the past. He refutes Larry Seltzer’s morning commentary: “I’ll take Windows and a good browser over Chrome OS.”
The X8 was first shown last week during the Interop conference running 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40 GbE) traffic. The X8 Chassis can be setup to run up to 192, 40 GbE port or up to 768, 10 GbE ports. In terms of total overall performance, Extreme is positioning the X8 as a 20 Terabit chassis.
As mentioned earlier on Phoronix, LinuxTag 2011 took place this past weekend in Berlin. One of the few talks I was able to make due to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest colliding with the event was the Wayland talk by SUSE’s Egbert Eich. The focus of this talk was whether Wayland is on the way to becoming a new desktop standard.
Ekiga is probably the best known of the Linux VoIP clients; it’s also available on Windows. On either platform it works well. It’s a SIP client, but it also supports the H.323 video-conferencing protocol. With H.323, you can use Ekiga with the older Microsoft NetMeeting conferencing program. I’ve found that a very handy feature over the years. Unfortunately, when Microsoft “upgraded” NetMeeting to Windows Meeting Space with Vista, they also broke its compatibility with Ekiga and other third-party programs.
I like Ekiga, but these days I usually use the Google package described below on Linux.
Swingswing Submarine the company that is working on Seasons after Fall (release date : when it’s done), has now released a new game called Blocks That Matter, and soon will port it to GNU/Linux.
Greedy Car Thieves has just reached a new version which brings many new features and fixes to this much anticipated Linux game. We covered this game in past and the response has been great within the Linux community. The game is heavily under development and these builds are test versions having multi-player mode at the moment.
On April 18 Frictional Games joined Valve to celebrate the release of Portal 2 and wrap up our collaboration which has spanned the last few months. During this period we have worked with not only Valve, but an entire range of talented independent developers, to give gamers a unique gaming experience. Together we created a massive Alternate Reality Game which spanned 13 Steam games, as well as plenty of internet forums and publications, and the real world. Frictional Games’ main contribution to this game was a DLC called Justine and truth be told, it plays pretty damn well even without the other stuff.
Greedy Car Thieves, the indi game that looks towards the earlier Grand Theft Auto games for inspiration has just had another version released. Readers to this site will remember we were very impressed by its retro feel, which had been modernised for today’s hardware whilst still retaining the charms of the early part of the GTA franchise.
The KDE Promo team has just wrapped up a busy weekend at their sprint in Southampton, England. The group set out with an aggressive agenda and accomplished many of their goals throughout the weekend.
This is a question I get asked a lot recently. The latest official images are a year old. This is not inherently bad, unless you pick the wrong mirror from the outdated mirrorlist during a netinstall, or are using hardware which is not supported by the year old kernel/drivers. A core install will yield a system that needs drastic updating, which is a bit cumbersome. There are probably some other problems I’m not aware of. Many of these problems can be worked around with (‘pacman -Sy mirrorlist’ on the install cd for example), but it’s not exactly convenient.
[...]
Bleeding edge images for everyone, and for those who want some quality assurance: the more you contribute, the more likely you’ll see official releases.
Before even trying Linux Mandriva like any other UNIXoid noobs I was using Ubuntu 8.02 and 9.04, and boy how stupid I have been back then. Why? Because all this time Mandriva DVD was sharing the dust on my forgotten shelve until one day I didn’t pick it up.
Raleigh open-source software company Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and German software giant SAP (NYSE: SAP) are combining some services to provide enhanced customer service.
The companies are integrating the SAP Solution Manager application management product and the Red Hat Global Support Services support ticketing system. The companies announced the deal, financial terms of which were not released, at the Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, Fla.
However, with Microsoft’s expansionist mode into open source territory most suggest greater caution and diligence towards it as ultimately open source will allow code to remain where it belongs- to the community that developed it. This is a principle that will never be acceptable to proprietary software giants such as Microsoft.
With all the hype surrounding Gnome 3, Fedora 15 is sure to get a lot of attention when it is released, as it is one of the first major Linux distributions to include Gnome 3 out of the box. After using Fedora 14 on my work laptop for my day to day computing, I decided to take the plunge and install the beta of Fedora 15. Here are some of my initial impressions.
You might expect other distributions to be as divided about Ubuntu’s new Unity desktop as users are. That is, at least among the vocal, you might expect to find that the condemnation slightly outweighs the praise, but that both sides are passionate in their beliefs.
However, that is not the case. If anything, developers working on other distributions are surprisingly lukewarm about Unity. Most are in no rush to package Unity — if at all — and many express technical or practical objections to it. Others are waiting to see how Unity is received, but even the handful that have definitely decided to package it express no great enthusiasm.
It’s a lackluster response that may not only suggest Unity’s future, but also an increasingly isolated position for Ubuntu in the free and open source software community.
Now, if you like Awoken icon theme, you need to definitely check out this beautiful Elegant GNOME Theme Pack which uses a modified Awoken based theme as its icon theme. The whole package looks really pretty IMO.
As expected, this time too, we saw a heated exchange over the default apps in Ubuntu during the Ubuntu developer summit in Budapest. Sometimes I feel that there should not be any default apps, users should be just allowed to use one as per his convenience. Most of the time the debate ends in a stalemate; then why do we need to point to any one application as the default? This time the victims were the two popular clients email clients – Thunderbird and Evolution to be included in the next release of Ubuntu.
Canonical’s Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” may still be occupying much of the Linux world’s attention, but at last week’s Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, the next version of the free and open source Linux distribution began to take form.
[...]
3. Evolution — or Thunderbird?
For email, Ubuntu 11.0 is still on track to include Evolution, the Ubuntu standard. There’s a chance, however, that Mozilla Thunderbird may be adopted instead, as noted in the software’s blueprints.
Back to five years ago, when I first started my blog, many of my articles were just translated from the English articles.
After five years’ writing, I have a lot of my own thoughts, so most articles were written by me. A friend told me that it’s time to translate my articles back to English, to share with the people over the world.
So, here’s the first article not about Ubuntu Tweak. I don’t have a good written English yet, but I will improve. Just point out the grammar/word mistake, thanks!
I have commented several times on the 2-weekly cadence that we follow at the certification team, but I haven’t gone into much detail on our 6 monthly cycle. We have just completed the Natty cycle (normally release date + 2/3 weeks) and we are about to start our Oneiric one.
6 monthly cycles help to plan achieving longer goals that drive the user stories implemented by the team in each iteration/sprint. During Natty, we had a loose coupling between these two. I regularly (once a month) reviewed the progress of the Natty backlog and made sure that nothing was falling through the cracks. Despite the good completion rate in Natty, it was more of a case of the user stories forming the Blueprints (6 monthly requirements) than the other way around.
If you’ve ever wondered why a particular bug report about the Launchpad project is marked as Low, High or Critical, you should read our bug triage guidelines.
…Ubuntu Software Center (USC) has for purchase games and apps?
One of the most complex things we need to deal with in the Ubuntu community is scale. We are a big community and as I have talked about before, I am really keen to ensure that as many people as possible get a very personal Ubuntu experience. We are keen to ensure that everyone who strives to become an Ubuntu Member, Core Developer or MOTU gets the very best support and guidance they can from the community to help them be successful.
Last week the Ubuntu project met in Budapest for the Ubuntu Developer Summit. The Kubuntu team discussed an incredible amount of cool things, of which I’d like to present a number of generally interesting topics.
A very strong focus of the 11.10 release will be continuing innovation in the area of embedded systems such as mobile phones, but also for the first time on tablets. Since the work in embedded systems is quite extensive, information on that will be posted separately in a special ‘Embedded Sneak Peak’.
[...]
Muon is developed by one of the Kubuntu Developers and uses, unlike KPackageKit, the native APT libraries. As it is using APT directly it enables Muon to have a much tighter integration into Debian-like systems (such as Kubuntu) as well as expose specific functionality of APT/DPKG more directly.
Console servers are critical bits of infrastructure, that many of us tend to overlook. Not so for opengear – a company whose sole purpose is to build console servers leveraging open source software for both the OS and the underlying application.
I’ve been writing about opengear for the last 6 years or so, when they first introduced an open source KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) solution. The company has since grown into bigger servers and broader monitoring capabilities.
Barnes & Noble updated its Nook for Android app Friday, adding support for digital periodicals on a variety of Android tablets.
Previously, the Nook app only offered digital magazines and newspapers on the Android-powered Nook Color. Now, it will now be available on Android tablets 7 inches and larger, running Android OS 2.1 and higher, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom. It will not be available on Android smartphones.
According to Google:
* 100 million Android devices have been sold, more than Apple…,
* 36 OEMs, 215 carriers, and 450K developers push Android/Linux,
* 310 different devices sold in 110 countries,
* 400K activations daily, 4.6 per second,
* 200K available applications exist, and
* 4.5 billion installations of applications have been done, an average of 45 per device.
Google’s Android 3.1 Open Accessories initiative for connecting Arduino-based gadgets via USB has attracted third-party support. In addition to the RT-manufactured Google reference platform, Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) is preparing a compatible product using a “Vinco” development board that incorporates the Vinculum II USB controller, and Microchip is shipping a compatible PIC24F Accessory Development Starter Kit that uses its own PIC microcontroller.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang confirmed his company is building quad-core Tegra 3 processors for new Nexus tablets or smartphones running the upcoming Android “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system. Meanwhile, a Tegra 2-based Motorola Droid X2 is coming to Verizon May 26, followed later by a Droid 3 that switches to Texas Instruments’ dual-core Cortex-A9 OMAP4430, according to industry reports.
I want to thank you publicly for all of the work you have done on Groklaw.
And it certainly has been a lot of work. I should know.
It is very difficult to address the many issues that have surfaced over the last 8 years or so. Copyrights, patents, antitrust, contracts and other issues are all very complex legal issues. And they are not easy to understand much less explain to the public. You have done a very good job in that regard despite not being a lawyer yourself.
I am also glad to hear that you have been able to pass on some of the responsibilities to Mark Webblink. It believe it is true that Microsoft will try to use patents to prevent the growth of competition. All you have to do is read the recent litigation against Barnes and Noble. Microsoft wants to charge more for a few minor patents than it intends to charge for the whole of WM7. Clearly it wants to just force Barnes and Noble to use Microsoft software.
And I think both PJ and Mark Webblink know that digging up prior art is a key strategy in defeating software patents. It has been know for many years that software patent applications have been devoid of proper prior art references. Either the prior art is unknown or simply ignored hoping to get a patent issued. And certainly a group or site such as Groklaw is ideal for digging up that prior art. Knowledge is power in this regard.
Pamela “PJ” Jones, editor and creator of Groklaw, the leading open-source legal news and analysis site, has kept her word. After eight years, PJ is leaving Groklaw. The site though will continue under the guidance of Mark Webbink.
Mark Webbink is also Executive Director of the Center for Patent Innovations, a research and development arm of New York Law School’s Institute for Intellectual Law & Property. Webbink is also a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Before that, he was Red Hat’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel. In short, Webbink knows intellectual property (IP) law and open source about as well as anyone on the planet.
All of that FUD was not true and the same can be said about the surviving FUD about software for clients.
It should come as no surprise that Red Hat and Google are ranked among the top open source companies to watch, according to an annual survey conducted by an industry VC and market researcher.
And it comes as no surprise that Acquia, EnterpriseDB and JasperSoft made the top 8 list again, published today as part of the 2011 Future of Open Source survey, conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners and the 451Group. The Waltham, Ma. VC is an investor in Acquia.
But there are a few names – SugarCRM and Cloudera – new on the list this year, while other companies that showed up in last year’s ranking – Talend, Ingres and Canonical – got bumped. .
The German Foreign Office announced it was dropping its policy of using only open source software in February prompting an inquiry by the green Bündnis 90/Grüne party. But the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) said that the government’s responses to this inquiry have “led to more pending questions than answers.”
“Many replies show that the government either doesn’t understand important aspects of free software or is deliberately offending free software in general as well as free software companies in particular,” said Matthias Kirschner, Germany coordinator of FSFE.
The German Foreign Office first started using Linux as a server platform in 2001 before making Linux and open source software their default desktop choice in 2005. Most observers thought the move a success. However, the government will now transition back to Windows XP, to be followed by Windows 7, also dropping OpenOffice and Thunderbird in favor of MS Office and Outlook.
Hard on the heels of the Free Software Foundation’s Day Against DRM earlier this month, the advocacy organisation last week launched a new campaign targeting the Nintendo 3DS.
“The Nintendo 3DS comes with Terms of Service (TOS) that should not be accepted,” wrote the group’s campaign manager, Joshua Gay. “In fact, the TOS are so unbelievable that we have included a more detailed summary of them on a separate page.”
This article summarizes when the U.S. federal government or its contractors may publicly release, as open source software (OSS), software developed with government funds. This article is intended for non-lawyers, to help them understand the basic rules they must follow.
If you happen to work each day around other computer users, you’ve probably noticed that more and more of them have dual-monitor setups on their desktops. A closer analysis of this phenomenon reveals that certain kinds of users benefit most from having two monitors instead of one. Working with that idea, Computeworld has an interesting analysis posted on whether developers benefit disproportionately from dual monitors. In my experience, developers can definitely benefit from this setup, but so can open source enthusiasts who work in more than one desktop environment, and open source users who favor both of the leading open source browsers: Firefox and Google Chrome. Here is why you should investigate a two-monitor lashup if you haven’t already.
A firm employed by the French government to track down net pirates has been hacked.
Former U.S. ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci asked senior corporate executives with a major weapons firm to press Stephen Harper, while opposition leader, to take a stronger stand on Canadian involvement in the controversial continental missile defence system, according to U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by APTN National News.
Weapons maker Raytheon was already actively lobbying Canadian government officials behind the scenes to support the missile defence system and had asked Cellucci what it could do to “turn things around,” the cables show.
About 2,000 young people angry over high unemployment have spent the night camping in a famous square in Madrid as a political protest there grows.
A big canvas roof was stretched across Puerta del Sol square, protesters brought mattresses and sleeping bags and volunteers distributed food.
A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.
The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.
On the face of it, Glencore International AG doesn’t look too scary. With about $80 billion in assets, the Swiss-based commodities trader is a lightweight in comparison to global megabanks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), one of its trading rivals. Goldman has assets more than 10 times Glencore’s, is more leveraged and has less capital.
So why do executives at Goldman, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase argue that lightly regulated or unregulated companies operating “in the shadows” — private equity firms, hedge funds and commodities traders like Glencore — risk another financial calamity?
Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, undoubtedly holds the first right of refusal in the newly open Wisconsin Senate race. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn have already spoken to him about the prospect. His rising stardom would almost guarantee him to be a prolific national fundraiser. And even Democrats who loathe his ideology acknowledge he’d be a substantive, formidable opponent.
This is the source of some of the GOP’s leverage. It’s very difficult for Democrats to argue for a clean debt-ceiling bill when raising the debt-ceiling is so unpopular. But it’s also why the major mistake in this negotiation was when Democrats refused to attach an increase in the debt ceiling to the 2010 tax deal. That was an instance where Republicans were a) on the wrong side of public opinion, b) championing a giant increase in the deficit, and c) had skin-in-the-game on increasing the deficit. Plus, the election was over, so it was easier to do something unpopular, and attaching an increase in the debt ceiling to the tax deal would have emphasized the fact — and it is a fact — that unpaid-for tax cuts increase the deficit.
The United States reached its $14.3 trillion limit on federal borrowing Monday, leaving Congress 11 weeks to raise the threshold or risk a financial panic or another recession.
At issue in the case is a 2010 law that requires companies to file reports before the primary and general elections disclosing spending for or against candidates. One such report showed that certain corporations had contributed to MN Forward, a pro-business group that is supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, and the disclosures angered groups at odds with Emmer’s opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the Star Tribune.
But other companies have made very different calculations. Take Microsoft, for example, whose Bing search engine emerged in 2009 as a serious competitor to Google. But unlike Google, Bing automatically enforces safe search on users who set their home base to one of several countries, among them India, Thailand, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and the entire Arab world. Flickr, the photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo, recently came under fire for deleting a series of photographs posted by Egyptian journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy. The images of state security officers had been retrieved from Amn El Dawla, the Egyptian security apparatus, and contained no offensive content. Flickr’s justification? El-Hamalawy hadn’t taken the photos himself, therefore they were in violation of the site’s terms of use.
California could force Facebook and other social-networking sites to change their privacy protection policies under a first-of-its-kind proposal at the state Capitol that is opposed by much of the Internet industry.
Under the proposal, SB242, social-networking sites would have to allow users to establish their privacy settings – like who could view their profile and what information would be public to everyone on the Internet – when they register to join the site instead of after they join. Sites would also have to set defaults to private so that users would choose which information is public.
A coalition of industry associations and Internet companies including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, Match.com and Skype this afternoon submitted a formal letter of opposition to proposed California legislation that would mandate new privacy policies for social networking sites.
The Belgian Court of Appeals ruled this week that Google is infringing the copyrights of Belgian newspapers by linking to and posting portions of the articles on Google news. Google must remove all articles and photos from Belgian newspapers in French and German or face a fine of 20,000 euros per day.
The Canadian Private Copying Collective is seeking to establish a new levy on the cards used to store photos, video and music to compensate songwriters and record labels “in recognition of the fact that Canadians copy hundreds of millions of tracks of recorded music for their own private use.”
Following a weekend security breach at Trident Media Guard, the outfit spearheading data collection for France’s 3 strikes anti-piracy drive, the country’s HADOPI agency has severed interconnection with the company. This means that, pending an enquiry, French file-sharers are no longer being tracked, a major embarrassment for the government.
AndroidCentral.com – Crazy Android Dance at Google IO
Credit: TinyOgg
Summary: A preliminary look at the new home of .NET boosting that’s masqueraded as “open source” (even though it is open core or proprietary)
A MICROSOFT MVP is creating and currently registering a Mono company with a registrar near Microsoft. “Mono’s Not Dead Yet,” claims this headline and we never claimed it was dead. Nobody claimed that. What happened was, the project got orphaned and de-funded. As far as Novell and AttachMSFT were concerned, the team got canned. We patiently waited to see the team’s next move and after a long pause, the ringleader blogged about his plans.
Throughout the day we did some research via IRC and here are some of our findings (full IRC logs will be available for reading tonight). Oiaohm wrote: “just did my first check Xamarin does not have a trademark registration yet. [...] My problem is I don’t know where the USA equ[ivalent] to Australian ABR. Australian business registry [...] [in] Australia we have 3 central registrations to check.”
Later I inquired: “Why won’t the funders be identified?”
Miguel and his workers mostly live in Boston, but travel to Microsoft a lot (at least Miguel does). “Boston is Massachusetts,” replied Oiaohm, “Massachusetts requires anyone who is conducting business under an alias (i.e., any name other than their own), including corporations, to file a business certificate (“doing business as”) in the city or town where the business is principally headquartered. Nice… no searchable index. Washington does have a index.”
Then I asked, “but must they have registered it by now? And if so, will the site DB have been updated?”
“Project lead of mono makes out that he was trying to break mono away for over a year, so why did a domain/trademark need taking out at the last minute?”
–Oiaohm“No list in Washington,” Oiaohm claimed after checking, “and Washington is like Australia, the record is with their tax department. I would guess registered in Massachusetts [...] And failed to take out the require trademark. In theory someone else could take out the trademark and shut them down. Basically what has been done is legally risky and I am not surprised from the lead developer of mono [...] Before annoyance a trading name to the world you really should hold the trademark.”
“Exactly what day was the mono project lead fired,” Oiaohm asked. I told him the date. “So why so many days delay,” he asked, “[t]o holding the domain name.”
It is “probably all those days were spent groveling at Microsoft,” MinceR said jokingly, “that or coming up with another x* name…” (like Ximian).
“I am reading the registrars of the domain record,” claimed Oiaohm. “I know it does not reveal that much information. [...] Project lead of mono makes out that he was trying to break mono away for over a year, so why did a domain/trademark need taking out at the last minute?”
BetterWhois.com doesn’t reveal additional information. The owner is masked, oddly enough. “Also take a close look at the moonlight logo,” Oiaohm suggested. “It is the “same as the new xwhatever logo,” claimed MinceR and Oiaohm too said: “same logo as what is dominate on the new mono site. It was just a observance thing. interesting not there now. No part of the company any more you should not be using the logos. [...] All Novell trademarks and the like are Attachmate’s. This include the name Mono [...] the old project lead of mono is about to be in a legal crap storm.
“They don’t even have there own logo yet either. [...] little bit of observance is showing major problems.”
Indeed, the service that xamarin.com is registered through is a non-existent Whois Agent with a sex site (whoisprivacyprotect.com). The company that carries Mono (rename possibly required) announced its existence just one day after the domain had been registered (registered for just one year, so not much of a future perhaps). It’s all rather odd.
“If you where breaking away you would think names and icons for a split away company would be designed,” added Oiaohm. “Particularly if this was planned 12 months go. To me all the evidence points to a last min attempt to save tails. The angel funding might be the employees own separation pay.”
“[P]robably all those days were spent groveling at Microsoft”
–MinceRMiguel has a lot of money as he admitted to people who used to comment in this site. But the Mono developers are still look for more funding and they might actually find it. Microsoft staff suggests that Canonical should sponsor Mono. Well, if Microsoft wants Mono to survive, why does it not fund it directly? Is it like SCO’s lawsuit? Does it want other companies to offer payments that serve Microsoft’s interests? Even Novell was paid hundreds of millions to serve Microsoft’s interests. That was before Novell gave its patents to Microsoft. “Novell MS deal is not transferable,” Oiaohm reminded us. “Neither is the sale agreements of Novell [...] so unless Mono can get MS backing they are basically a complete legal sitting duck now. This is not the Novell sale this is after the sale. Attachmate is starting to make a new home for itself. Also, Attachmate has not shut down the mono project sites. So their could be more hell to come yet. I would not put it past Attachmate to allow mono developers to setup shop by themselves then patent black mail them for free labour.”
Yes, the sites could be shut down (or used for leverage), “But at this stage Attachmate has not [done so],” said Oiaohm. “Why fire the staff and leave the site up [...] Basically something is badly off here.” Attachmate still owns all the mono sites/domains. Will it bother paying the hosting bill? Will it relinquish control? Oracle gives concerning precedence after the Sun takeover.
Looking elsewhere, positive spin on the news was not at all welcomed in Linux Today, leading to comments like: “Mono was a zombie project since its inception. Attachmate put a bullet in them, but, as we all know, zombies are hard to kill. You must take out the brain…” (some comments are a lot more offensive). Susan Linton (who appears to be sitting on the fence regarding the Mono question) writes:
Although his brand took a hit with Mono, there’s little doubt of his contribution to the Open Source world. So, I guess if he was announcing a candy bar company it’d be big news.
Microsoft Florian retweets the Mono news twice, which helps keep those Microsoft APIs in circulation. It’s rather telling, isn’t it?
Speaking of Bellevue (where the new Mono company had the site registered), it is the home of many Microsoft executives and former executives, including the world’s latest patent troll, who is filing lawsuits via other companies. According to Microsoft booster Todd Bishop, this patent troll does not wish to speak about his patents being used to attack small developers:
Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures, the patent holding company and invention house run by former Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold, confirmed today that it once owned the patent at the center of a controversy over in-app purchasing in third-party iOS applications.
To be clear, that would be past tense. A spokeswoman for the company tells GeekWire that IV sold the patent and has no ownership interest in Lodsys LLC, the company that sent cease-and-desist letters to a series of iOS developers last week.
We wrote about this case in [1, 2].
Todd Bishop also has this article about Nokia allegedly working to sell Microsoft its Mobile Unit. Murtazin’s claims is translated as saying: “Next week Nokia will start the negotiations about the sale of it’s phone unit to Microsoft. For now the results of the negotiations won’t be public, but the deal might close before the end of 2011. Both companies are in a big hurry.”
Nokia denies this. “So, denial from Nokia but this hasn’t stopped the rumour mill going into overtime,” concludes this article. But that just goes beyond the scope of this post. █
Summary: More of IDG’s shameless spin explained and the straight dope regarding the CentOS news
IDG, which controls a lot of technology news sites and gets paid by Microsoft through IDC and though advertising, still insists on deceiving using the pattern which can only be excused when they call it a “blog”. And this spin which we wrote about many times before should not be easily excused, as IDG should be more responsible/liable than any other media outlet for doing this. The hiring of writers affects their convictions and biases.
Free/Open Source software proponent are very much able to see the reality-bending, but IDG might be appealing to the village fools and maybe some bosses who do not understand technology. They can in fact be the target audience and find themselves on the receiving end of a reality distortion field.
So, what is the latest example that we speak of? The sites we follow link almost exclusively to IDG regarding stuff like this. It is whitewash from IDG’s Microsoft boosters, designated to the “blog” or “Subnet” area. One booster says: “OSBC 2011 also gives Microsoft another opportunity to declare its love for open source with a keynote on vendor collaboration around cloud computing.”
As we showed some years ago (and got confirmation for that), the person who brought Microsoft to OSBC was Mac Asay, who recently posted an article saying that Google goes proprietary and Microsoft goes “open”. It is truly baffling. He parroted the Microsoft spin that they have been trying to propagate. “Matt Asay Tweets Re Microsoft and CentOS,” writes Groklaw, listing some examples of his recent tweets, e.g
Microsoft just announced at #osbc that CentOS is now a first-class citizen on Windows Server R2 Hyper-V platform.
Microsoft supporting CentOS is a first-class capitalist move. Red Hat’s #1 competition is non-paid Linux, now Microsoft accentuates it.
I think it’s a bold, bold move, and one that threatens Red Hat in a way that Oracle’s own Linux never could.
“Makes me wonder what side Matt is on,” Groklaw remarks. Well, when OSBC becomes a Microsoft showcase, then it has clearly jumped the shark. But it was the same in previous years (they needed the money [1, 2, 3]).
Just in case, let it be clarified that this is not what the IDG spin has suggested. There is no goodwill here, just self interest. Microsoft tries to make PR out of selfish acts, just as it is infiltrating Linux conferences, trying to pretend it gets along (or that Linux proponents are intolerant). But actually, Linux proponents and GNU users can get along just fine with Microsoft. The problem is that Microsoft won’t leave them alone. It is spitting at their work and taxing their Linux gadgets using even blackmail and lawsuits against TomTom, Motorola, and Barnes & Noble.
“The problem is that Microsoft won’t leave them alone. It is spitting at their work and taxing their Linux gadgets using even blackmail and lawsuits against TomTom, Motorola, and Barnes & Noble.”Another one of IDG’s Microsoft boosters, Jon Brodkin, has moved on from just Microsoft advertising to Microsoft whitewashing (which can be even worse because it distorts reality in retrospect). Here is the spin on the news, where patches that only help sell proprietary software from Microsoft are somehow compared to “love”. Very cheeky. And this author goes further than that as he has been pushing it into Linux sites like this one, setting the ground/scene to misunderstanding by the site’s followers.
There is yet more of that fluff which fills aggregators.
The problem is that unlike Windows sites that mock GNU/Linux these days (see the editor’s remark here), IDG pretends to be objective news and sometimes it’s even labelled “open source” when it fact all it does is distort the values of open source and sell us Microsoft as a “Open Source Hero” (as Microsoft sometimes uses as a slogan of sorts [1, 2]). To be fair to Brodkin, the Microsoft booster of The Register did the same, so it does not seem as though IDG is the only culprit.
In summary, while Microsoft is extorting and suing Microsoft hires ‘geishas’ of sorts to give gifts and compliments to reports, whose role then becomes to whitewash Microsoft for more rewards and “access” to staff. It is then them — not their victim — who claim to be “hated” and claim to be victim of “hatred”. It’s amazing reversal and a well-funded PR campaign might actually be able to achieve this.
As we said it before, IDG is like the Fox News of the IT World, assuming proprietary giants are the GOP. Guess where advertising money and analyst contracts typically come from. █
Summary: After about 8 years of following SUSE/OpenSUSE news, I struggle to find much or almost anything at all of substance in the project
OpenSUSE recently lost Rex, which is not a good sign. Well, to be fair, Rex was more of a Novell management person. Maybe his departure was not so fatal. But yesterday I did further research about the OpenSUSE project, running through no less than 500 recent blog posts. The signal from them was low, comprising either personal experiences or rants of some kind. The release of version 11.4 of OpenSUSE did not generate much hype compared to previous years and some of the project’s key people are altogether absent. It got even quieter when Novell was sold and SUSE separated. Nevertheless, it is expected that a conference for the project will take place later this year. This event, unlike Brainshare, is likely to happen despite massive layoffs.
“SUSE is just a shadow of its former self; deals with Microsoft tend to do that.”Sascha Manns’s blog has moved (others too) and it does not matter much, except the fact that he has been the main and sometimes only source of OpenSUSE news. Without him, or in case he moves on to other endeavours, the project will lose a lot of momentum. Even polyglots depend on him — those who help inspire others to actually deploy OpenSUSE rather than other distributions.
It is very unfortunate for Novell’s Duncan Mac-Vicar P. that his blog got hosed, with other things going wrong all around the same time. it just isn’t a good time for SUSE and Novell’s ripoff of Red Hat work is all the project seems to be able to rave about. Techrights does not cover OpenSUSE as often as it used to simply because there is hardly anything to cover there. SUSE is just a shadow of its former self; deals with Microsoft tend to do that.
Over the past couple of years we have shown that the project lost some talented people and the group is looking for volunteers, even with public calls for participation. As much as I would hate to acknowledge this, the distribution that I have used for the longest period of time is going down, not up. There are even frequent downtimes reported by the OpenSUSE community this year. GNU/Linux will be fine, but the SUSE flavour of it has fallen behind after it climbed up for a while. A lot changed when Microsoft signed the deal with Novell. To many users, that deal was a deal-breaker. A few days ago we discovered yet another high-profile person who left SUSE as a result of this deal. █
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