11.20.15
Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The golden rule: people in the Establishment protect people in the Establishment
![John Brennan](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/John_Brennan.jpg)
Summary: A look at how the EPO’s management (Željko Topić in particular) defended the unprecedented promotion of Ms Bergot (wife of the president’s close assistant), even in the face of outcry from EPO staff
THIS is the third part of a four-part series. In part one and in part two we focused on the case of Ms Bergot, who was promoted under very dubious circumstances. Now is a good time to proceed to part three, only two days after the protests that we covered here earlier on. SUEPO’s Web site has just said: “The suspension of three staff representatives in Munich and the attacks on two more in The Hague, attracted quite some attention, most of it rather critical of the EPO.”
“Ms Bergot’s promotion from grade A3 to grade A6 occurred before she had received a standard two-year performance report following her recruitment to the EPO on the 1st of December, 2010.”As a result of these shameful attacks on staff representatives we are only going to accelerate our coverage of EPO scandals, starting with this third part of our latest series (there are more series to come in the future).
In accordance with the requirements of Article 49 Service Regulations, it is established practice at the EPO that for promotion of internal candidates, the competent Selection Board takes into consideration the candidate’s staff reports and remarks (recommendations) made by his/her direct superior.
Ms Bergot’s promotion from grade A3 to grade A6 occurred before she had received a standard two-year performance report following her recruitment to the EPO on the 1st of December, 2010. The first two year reporting period beginning after the end of her probation period would have ended in December 2013.
This means that Ms Bergot, who was initially appointed as administrator at grade A3 with main duties to support her Director (of grade A5) and senior management, was promoted to grade A6 without the competent Selection Board having taken into consideration a single full two-year staff report.
“By the standards of international administrative law, the Vice-President Mr Topić who was Ms Bergot’s direct superior at the time in question could not be an impartial and independent Chairman of the Selection Board which recommended Ms Bergot’s promotion.”The Chairman of the Selection Board recommending the promotion of Ms Bergot was none other than her immediate superior, Mr Željko Topić, who is said to be facing many criminal charges in his home country. The other members of the Selection Board nominated by the President were the Vice-Presidents of Directorates General 1 and 2, Guillaume Minnoye (warning: link to epo.org
, so tracking may be possible by EPO management) and Alberto Casado Cerviño (warning: link to epo.org
, so tracking may be possible by EPO management).
By the standards of international administrative law, the Vice-President Mr Topić who was Ms Bergot’s direct superior at the time in question could not be an impartial and independent Chairman of the Selection Board which recommended Ms Bergot’s promotion.
Following the announcement of Ms Bergot’s promotion by Mr Topić on the 30th of January (the same year), the EPO Staff Committee voiced strong criticism of the appointment.
Mr Topić immediately responded with an internal Communiqué addressed to all EPO staff in which he claimed that the procedure for the appointment of a new Principal Director 4.3 “was launched and conducted in strict accordance with the applicable rules and included use of an assessment centre and interviews.”
To quote the original:
Elodie Bergot new Principal Director HR
30.01.2013
New Principal Director Human Resources as of 1 February 2013
I am pleased to announce that, with effect from 1 February 2013, Elodie Bergot is appointed Principal Director Human Resources (PD 4.3).
Ms Bergot will report directly to me. I wish her every success in her new role.
Željko Topić
Vice-President DG 4
And from the following day (probably because he could not keep silent anymore):
Communiqué from Vice-President DG 4
31.01.2013
Email to all staff from the CSC regarding new Principal Director HR
Dear Colleagues,
one of the less edifying aspects of the internal culture of the EPO – very striking to a newcomer such as myself – is the habit of staff representatives of contesting systematically nominations to senior positions.
There have been innumerable challenges over the years, though the post of Principal Director 4.3, Head of Human Resources, seems to attract sustained fire.
Such incidents do not normally call for an individual response. However, this time a highly personalised attack on the new Principal Director 4.3 has been made which crosses the bounds of acceptable discourse and which calls for an immediate rebuttal.
The procedure for the appointment of a new Principal Director 4.3 was launched and conducted in strict accordance with the applicable rules and included use of an assessment centre and interviews. Ms Bergot emerged very clearly as the strongest candidate, a substantive judgement which was reached unanimously by the five members of the selection board.
Indeed, the strict adherence to the rules accounts for the delay in filling the post; in the interim, I performed the functions of PD 4.3 myself.
Those who are appointed to senior positions of responsibility can be expected to carry a heavier burden than most. They should not, however, become the target of dishonest campaigns of vilification. I am confident that the vast majority of staff at the EPO share this view and that there will be no repetition of this lamentable behaviour.
Željko Topić
Vice-President DG 4
Topić further claimed that the decision to select Ms Bergot “was reached unanimously by the five members of the selection board.”
“Bergot’s promotion is still the subject of an appeal at the already-upset (at EPO) International Labour Organisation.”Due to the fact that the members of the selection board are bound to respect the confidentiality of the procedure, it is impossible to verify the claim made by Topić that the decision was “unanimous.”
As we stated in part two, this isn’t over. Bergot’s promotion is still the subject of an appeal at the already-upset (at EPO) International Labour Organisation. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Projection by the growingly-militaristic EPO management?
![Selective coverage cartoon](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/selective-coverage.jpg)
Cartoon source
Summary: The EPO’s management has a poor record on accuracy and truth and the latest staff-shaming tactics serve to reinforce that track record
ACCORDING to reports from the local German media (translation to English would be very much appreciated), the protests on Wednesday were massive. This serves to show that EPO is indeed experiencing a meltdown. We are glad to see this type of coverage crossing over the channel and reaching Britain as well (credit goes to Münchner Merkur, which regularly covers these issues, e.g. [1, 2, 3]).
“SUEPO is winning here (the staff is more loyal to SUEPO than to the EPO).”As British media put it, “Anti-EPO demo attracts 2,000, union member has ‘nervous breakdown’” and to quote from it: “Jesper Kongstad, chair of the AC, has allegedly implied previously that his organisation is looking to resume “trilateral talks” between EPO management, the AC and SUEPO.
“However, SUEPO has said that “meaningful discussions” cannot happen while the four members remain suspended.”
SUEPO is winning here (the staff is more loyal to SUEPO than to the EPO). It’s not getting any better for the EPO’s high-level managers and one must inevitably wonder who was even left inside the building at times of recent protests, other than Battistelli and his ilk. The question increasingly becomes, who does not demonstrate against the management and why not?
“Sources of ours said that even Directors attended the latest protest!”There is some ‘damage control’ here and it says that “2,000 people attended a demonstration at the Isar building in Munich in support of the suspended members and another is scheduled for December 10.”
That’s one week before my birthday. Let’s hope that they can get virtually everyone in the office to come outside. Sources of ours said that even Directors attended the latest protest!
We were very much disturbed to see the crudest ‘damage control’ from the EPO’s management. This was posted by WIPR and it’s claiming “threats of violence” from staff. To quote the part about the EPO’s spokesperson: “The spokesperson added that over the past two years the EPO has unveiled instances of serious misconduct including cases of fraud in the EPO’s healthcare system, violations of data protection, the leaking of confidential information, and harassment.”
That’s not “threats of violence”. Well, maybe — just maybe — there was some anonymous comment somewhere (perhaps IP Kat), maybe even ‘planted’ by the party that desires it (the agent provocateur tactic). But we’ve never seen such a thing and therefore we must conclude that the EPO’s management cannot quite produce a single example of “threats of violence”. If there is such an example, then they’ll need to show something. Be specific.
“We think this qualifies as a collective daemonisation/character assassination tactic.”This seems like a clever PR ploy. For all we know, there are no threats of violence. Remember the judge whom the EPO’s management (probably illegally) suspended for speaking about VP4. They tried to paint him — without any oversight while the I.U. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] did its possibly framing-esque gig — as some kind of an armed Nazi [1, 2, 3], The guy is not German/Austrian but an Irishman, based on the German media (it is now considered public knowledge). Is this where the “threats of violence” are supposedly coming from?
Reading through the article from WIPR, we don’t see even one example of threats of violence and we saw no such thing in any flyer, publication etc. We think this qualifies as a collective daemonisation/character assassination tactic. The EPO management now wants to paint its very own staff as violent savages. What a terrible PR move. “Don’t believe a word! That’s only typical double EPO Leader language,” wrote one person yesterday. Well, the EPO’s management does not have a good track record when it comes to truth and accuracy.
In other news, IP Kat‘s Merpel has revealed some truly fascinating details about the suspended judge. “We knew that the EBA had rejected Mr Kongstad’s request,” she wrote, “for Mr. Battistelli was driven to write a memo to the AC asking it to bypass the EBA and simply fire the Board Member, since the EBA had (he said) shown itself to be incapable of fulfilling what was a simple administrative request. In other words, the EBA’s only job (he believed) was to rubber stamp the AC’s request (see Merpel’s post “Ignore the Enlarged Board, EPO President tells Administrative Council” if you want a fuller reprise).”
“Techrights articles are now more censorship-resistant as some readers decided to mirror the site’s articles and even maintain them, fork them, etc. on Github.”Read on for more details. It’s rather jaw-dropping. What kind of a rogue organisation has the EPO become?
Prof. Dr. Siegfried Broß, a former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, recently spoke out against these actions by the EPO's management. Merpel has, usefully enough, just gotten a hold of this translation of the article from Juve. “Merpel notes,” she said, “that by coincidence, Juve has today published a rebuttal of the interview below, with EPO Vice-President Raimund Lutz.”
But sticking to the original article which quotes Broß, here is what Merpel wrote: “He has been interviewed by Juve (a leading German magazine for lawyers), in an interview published a few weeks ago. Juve have kindly permitted Merpel to republish an English translation, which may interest English-speaking EPO watchers. The interview was conducted by Christina Geimer and Mathieu Klos from JUVE, Germany. Merpel is responsible for its translation, for which she thanks a kind reader.”
For future record we have decided to reproduce this translation here as well. Techrights articles are now more censorship-resistant as some readers decided to mirror the site’s articles and even maintain them, fork them, etc. on Github. Here is what Broß had to say about the EPO’s actions against the Irish judge:
Juve – 29.10.2015
EPO Disciplinary Proceedings:
“The actions of the Administrative Council and Battistelli are devoid of any legal basis.”
The European Patent Office (EPO) suffers from a fundamental structural problem. Only a Diplomatic Conference of its Member States can help one of the world’s largest patent offices to emerge from its current crisis. This is the view expressed by Prof. Dr. Siegfried Bross, a former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and the Patent Division of the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichthof) in an interview with JUVE
JUVE: Two years ago, as a legal expert for one of the parties in a complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court, you analyzed the question of the independence of the EPO Boards of Appeal. What conclusions did you come to at that time?
Siegfried Broß: The EPO Boards of Appeal are not an independent court. We are dealing here with a self-evident intermeshing of the roles of the President of the Office and the supervision of the Boards of Appeal. Therefore, the Boards of Appeal cannot be considered to possess the character of a court.
Juve: A lot has changed since you issued your legal opinion. The President of the EPO has imposed a house ban on a Member of the Boards of Appeal. In addition to that, Benoît Battistelli’s reform proposal is now on the table. What conclusions do you draw today?
SB: These developments, especially the reform proposal, do nothing to alter the fundamental
incompatibility of the EPO’s structure with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and rule-of-law-based democratic principles. The President still remains at the head of both the administrative and the judicial departments of the EPO and can exert influence on the Boards in terms of staffing and material issues.
Juve: What needs to be done to remedy this unsatisfactory situation?
SB: The Boards of Appeal should be completely separated from the EPO and provided with their own management and budgetary resources. Furthermore, all personnel links to the EPO President should be severed. In addition, the European Patent Organisation should introduce life tenure for judges. These are matters which require action on the part of the Member States. They cannot absolve themselves from their obligations to uphold fundamental rights guaranteed by international conventions and/or by national laws merely on account of their participation in an international association of states. As a matter of fact, Germany should never have been allowed to participate in the European Patent Convention in its present form.
Juve: In the context of disciplinary proceedings against the suspended judge, the Administrative Council has recently requested the competent Enlarged Board of Appeal to make a proposal for his dismissal. What is your opinion about this?
SB: To begin with, it is must be noted out that the disciplinary proceedings initiated in this case do not comply with the rule of law but rather have been conducted in a manner comparable to criminal proceedings. Therefore, generally recognised principles such as the presumption of innocence under the ECHR and Charter of Fundamental Rights apply to those affected. Ab initio the EPA procedure has not been conducted in a proper manner because it has been directed by the President. According to rule-of-law principles, disciplinary proceedings against judges should be conducted exclusively by independent judges. From this perspective, these disciplinary proceedings are pre-destined to collapse.
Juve: The EPO published the main allegations against the accused person in a Communiqué. Is this compatible with international principles?
SB: In a disciplinary procedure the principle of confidentiality is of fundamental importance, in particular having regard to the presumption of innocence. That does not mean that press releases are prohibited, but any kind of polemical content should be avoided.
In addition to this, in an internal e-mail to all EPA employees, a copy of which was provided to JUVE, Battistelli has publicly disseminated further accusations of a personally denigrating nature against the judge.
Such behavior is unacceptable. From the very outset, the actions of the President were devoid of any legal basis.
Juve: The basis for the Administrative Council’s decision was, a report by an external investigation unit. Can this be used as a basis for the disciplinary tribunal?
SB: The deployment of this investigation unit provides the clearest possible confirmation that the disciplinary proceedings is not based on an approach which complies with the rule of law. The course of action which has been adopted could not be more flagrantly at odds with the international conventions to which all the Member States have subscribed.
Juve: What possibilities does the Enlarged Board of Appeal have now?
SB: They should reject all the requests of the Administrative Council and terminate the proceedings in order to draw attention to the fundamental abuse of procedure.
Juve: What impact might these problems have on the upcoming unity Patent?
SB: The Administrative Council must ensure that the EPC contracting states adhere to rule-of-law-based democratic principles and enforce an organisational separation of the administrative and judicial departments of the EPO. This is all the more urgent, because the Agreement on the Unitary Patent couples the EU in a blatantly unlawful manner to these structures. The regulations governing the Single Patent only provide effective legal protection in the case where a patent application is successful. If the EPO in its capacity as the competent administrative instance rejects an application, then the applicant cannot submit this decision to an independent judicial review. Such a state of affairs is contrary to Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and, likewise Articles 6 and 13 ECHR.
Juve: Could a potential complaint against the Unitary Patent, for example before the Federal Constitutional Court, be based on such considerations?
SB: Yes, of course. Due to the fact that it is only the owners of rejected patents who enjoy no judicial protection, there is additionally a violation of the right to protection of property enshrined in the ECHR. In additional, there is no objective reason for this omission – the formulation of the [Unitary Patent] Agreement is arbitrary in this respect.
Please stay tuned as we have a lot more to come regarding the EPO. Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’, a French politician who formed somewhat of a political ‘coalition’ against a largely French EPO management [1, 2, 3, 4], is getting involved again (translation from French required). There is coverage in several other languages, including German and Dutch (English translations would be very much appreciated, for future record and publication/dissemination across the Web). █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Treating EPO staff like they’re ISIS
![A militant EPO](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/militant-epo.png)
Picture from downtown Paris (this week) superimposed on EPO logo (fair use on the basis of criticism/commentary)
Summary: The increasingly militant approach of EPO management (with counterterrorism staff added to interrogate EPO staff) serves to show an organisation gone truly bonkers
THE massive protests by EPO staff will be the subject of our next post. We first wish to quote this comment which says:
This particular circular, as any other circular in this regard and all circulars regarding our strike regulations are deemed to be EPO-internal only and are therefore of absolutely no interest to the piblic [sic], and as such their exitence [sic] should not be disclosed to the public.
They are public to EPO-personnel, but include a reference to non-public elements of the case-files, which may include the results of the discussions with the EPO department having started the investigation.
We are happy to say that we got hold of the said circular and documents. These will be the subject of future articles in Techrights, probably after the “EPO: It’s Like a Family Business” series. The commenter also says:
Today I saw a lot more than usual security in The Hague standing at choke points of the hallways, apparently searching for some specific employees of the EPO who may be too sick to go to their office and formally receive letters signd [sic] by the head of the personnel department.
(usually I see one at the public entrance, today I saw at least three between the lifts and the cantern, and I did not pass the public entrance. In the carport entrance there was also one waiting, where ther’s [sic] usually none.)
This means that aggressive behaviour (by the management) is still the ‘norm’ at EPO. There is the same atmosphere in EPO buildings as there is in Paris and according to IP Kat: “Matters came to a head last weekend. The Investigative Unit of the EPO paid an unexpected visit to two officials in the Hague, who were taken away for an interview. On their return, they were badly shaken and required medical treatment and have been on sick leave since. Then two days ago, three or four further SUEPO officials, who knew they were being investigated for alleged disciplinary offences, were suspended from service and banned from EPO premises. The Office says, with a perfectly straight face, that it is not targeting the union. It just so happens that, at a stroke, the union has been decapitated — but this is simply an unfortunate and entirely incidental side effect, or so we are supposed to believe. [...] Two of the officials, who include the high-profile Els Hardon, are accused of having breached the first (and second) rule of Investigation Club: You do not talk about the Investigation Club. That’s right. If you’re the subject of a disciplinary investigation and decide to waive your own right to confidentiality, you have automatically exacerbated the situation and have committed a (further) serious breach of staff regulations which can lead to suspension from duties. [...] Ms. Hardon is also being investigated for having allegedly assisted “another staff member” – this being the “House Ban” Board of Appeal member suspended last year for allegedly spreading defamatory materials.”
“If it wasn’t for the EPO’s Hubris and its alleged immunity, offices would possibly have been raided in daylight, officers in suits be handcuffs and escorted into police vans.”We know the name of the person and it seems unthinkable that staff is put under gag orders and prevented from helping other staff. As Merpel correctly put it (her coverage as of later has been fantastic): “In legal terms it would appear that Mr Battistelli is the fortunate possessor of a magical artefact (Eponia is after all his domain), such as a Cloak of Immunity and Privilege. When he dons it, the law of the land stops applying to whatever activity he is currently thinking about. When he removes it, the law of the land applies with full rigour to the poor unfortunate on whom his gaze falls. I think we’d all like to have one of them.”
Where on Earth are Dutch and German authorities? If it wasn’t for the EPO’s Hubris and its alleged immunity, offices would possibly have been raided in daylight, officers in suits be handcuffs and escorted into police vans. This is very much unjust. European laws are being grossly violated and The Hague subjected to what typically constitutes “contempt of the court”.
Meanwhile, thugs from the largely-exposed [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] Investigative Unit are probably still tricking people into false confessions using dirty tricks, or leading them to self-incrimination or incrimination of others, based on false information or mere suppositions thrown over to induce pressure. These are the same tricks uses against Aaron Swartz, eventually leading to suicide. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 7:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The reaction of patent profiteers to scope/boundary restrictions, the FRAND lobby by Microsoft’s longtime front group, FRAND matters in Korea (affecting Android), Google’s response to patent threats, and Red Hat still keeping quiet about its patent agreement with Microsoft
THERE is nothing exceptionally surprising in the news today, so we are going to focus on the EPO, which is in a very poor state right now. The management is so frail that the only language it understand is aggression. We shall write several articles about it this afternoon. Before we start, however, here is a potpourri of updates about the patent situation and how it relates to Free/Open Source software (FOSS).
“When they say “patent world” they mean the corners of the world where people pursue patents — those who try to profit from patents without necessarily creating anything.”Patent lawyers’ Web sites are still bemoaning the death of many software patents in the United States (death by Alice). One of the better known ones says that “many software patent holders must feel ─ like they were walking along merrily through the woods when they fell suddenly into a blinding, winding rabbit hole. Where once their patents stood bold and tall, they have now shrunk to a seemingly indefensible size. Whether they can defend their so-called “abstract” patents in court is now as unclear as the Mad Hatter’s riddles. The famed Alice decision has certainly left many in the patent world wondering.”
When they say “patent world” they mean the corners of the world where people pursue patents — those who try to profit from patents without necessarily creating anything.
Remember FRAND lobbying in Europe back in the days (nearly a decade ago)? Well, ACT‘s new face just got mentioned by another who was paid by Microsoft, and also regularly pushes along the FRAND front (against FOSS, relying on Korea at the moment). “ACT | The App Association,” he explained, “has announced a new web resource for innovators, policy-makers, and academics. It’s called All Things FRAND and supported by significant players including Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. ACT is headquartered in the U.S. but also quite active abroad.”
Well, historically ACT had been little more than a Microsoft lobbyist. Then there is CCIA, which seemingly changed its position after being paid a lot of money by Microsoft. CCIA‘s Matt Levy, who now runs an anti-trolls site, has just released this new video. Don’t expect Levy to criticise CCIA’s funders, which include Microsoft. This monopolist, Microsoft, is acting in ways that resemble patent trolls.
“Well, right now many of the “bad guys” also use FRAND against Android, which Google distributes as Free/Open Source software.”Google, in the mean time, claims to be against patent trolls. As IEEE Spectrum put it some weeks ago: “Google’s Patent Purchase Promotion, which the company says received “thousands” of submissions during a three-week window, may prompt similar experiments in keeping patents out of the hands of what it considers the bad guys of intellectual property.”
Well, right now many of the “bad guys” also use FRAND against Android, which Google distributes as Free/Open Source software.
In other news, we are still pressuring Red Hat to reveal what it did with Microsoft regarding patents. We haven’t forgotten about this and we are not going to give up. The Free/Open Source software world deserves some answers. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
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Find everything you need to master open source software and operating systems
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Desktop
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There has been no shortage of stories over the few weeks speculating on the potential end of the Chrome OS. Google vigorously denied those rumors, but now there’s renewed talk of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) creating a new version of Android for desktop computing.
Of course, we’ve already seen a spate of Android-based laptops. Most have come and gone quickly over the past few years, although HP’s Slatebook is still around.
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Server
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Open source cloud computing company Mirantis promises a “quick onramp” for OpenStack through Fuel, a cloud deployment and management tool that has now become an official part of the OpenStack big tent.
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Docker this week announced new security enhancements at DockerCon EU in Barcelona, Spain, including hardware signing of container images — an industry first — through a partnership with Yubico. Docker Content Trust offers hardware signing through support for Yubico’s YubiKey. The YubiKey 4 lets Docker users digitally sign code during initial development and through subsequent updates, ensuring the integrity of Dockerized apps throughout the application pipeline, Yubico sai
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Splice Machine has announced the 2.0 version of its RDBMS, which it bills as “the first hybrid in-memory RDBMS powered by Hadoop and Spark.” Apache Spark has rocketed to success as an in-memory data processing framework that is now widely used with Hadoop, and it’s also becoming a hub around which other data-processing tools work.
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Docker Inc. founder Solomon Hykes explains how Docker container virtualization has become one of the hottest technologies on the planet.
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It’s common knowledge that high-performance computing (HPC) generates a lot of heat. At HPC datacenters, a lot of time and energy is spent figuring out how to cool these powerful computers. Not only does this have a significant environmental impact, Qarnot sees this as wasted energy (and wasted opportunity). As a solution, they’ve designed a “digital heater” that they call a Q.rad.
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Redmond has built Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) which it calls a “a cross-platform modular operating system for data centre networking built on Linux.” and “our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches.”
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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Microchip has announced the MOST Linux Driver, which supports the company’s MOST network interface controllers, is now incorporated into the staging section of the Linux Mainline Kernel 4.3 operating system. The Linux Driver is designed to allow designers to use the MOST specification for high-bandwidth applications such as automotive infotainment and shorten time-to-market while curbing costs.
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The NMI (non-masking interrupt) system in Linux has been a notorious patchwork for a long time, and Andy Lutomirski recently decided to try to clean it up. NMIs occur when something’s wrong with the hardware underlying a running system. Typically in those cases, the NMI attempts to preserve user data and get the system into as orderly a state as possible, before an inevitable crash.
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An unheard of independent developer has proclaimed designing a new, fast, and unbreakable encryption algorithm. While he admits to not being a mathematician or cryptoanalyst, he’s wanting to get this encryption algorithm in the mainline Linux kernel and distributions.
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Graphics Stack
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Nvidia has published a new Linux driver that brings a few fixes and support for X.Org xserver ABI 20 (xorg-server 1.18). It’s not a major update, but it has been pushed already to a few repositories.
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Jonas Ådahl announced the formation this morning of the Wayland-Protocols Git repository that will march to its own beat, separate of Wayland/Weston releases.
The Wayland-Protocols Git repository will decouple the Wayland protocol development from the implementation in Weston and run by its own release schedule. This will allow developers more flexibility in adding/changing the Wayland protocol and now not enforcing that the new protocol be implemented immediately by Weston.
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Applications
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One day after the announcement of the Wireshark 2.0 open-source network protocol analyzer software, the developers behind the Nmap free and cross-platform network scanner utility are proud to inform us all about the release of Nmap 7.00.
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Intel quietly released the XenGT 2015-Q3 release at the end of October as the newest quarterly update to their mediated graphics passthrough solution for virtualization customers.
Intel has been working on Xen GT for a whole now as a mediated pass-through solution for Intel graphics hardware in the Linux virtualization space. Xen GT works with the Xen hypervisor as implied by the name while with this 2015′Q3 release the KVMGT code is part of this unified code repository.
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Just a few moments ago, the developers of the powerful and open-source Pitivi video editor software uploaded a new Beta version of the upcoming Pitivi 1.0 build, which is getting closer to reality.
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Proprietary
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SoftMaker is putting its new Office package to the test, with a free beta version of SoftMaker Office 2016 for Linux. Available from Wednesday 18th November 2015, SoftMaker Office 2016 is the powerful office suite that works seamlessly with all Microsoft Office file formats.
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A few minutes ago, the developers behind the cross-platform and free Vivaldi web browser had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia about the release of a new snapshot build for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
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The Opera web browser continues to move forward at an unrelenting pace, and its developers have just announced a number of features that will arrive with the 35.x branch. It’s going to be a great release and users can already download and test it.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Games
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Probably one of the stupidest games I’ve ever heard of looks to be adding a Linux version, I give you: Gabe Newell Simulator.
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It’s a shame, but it certainly looks like Mad Max isn’t actually coming out for SteamOS & Linux. We covered it initially thanks to being told about the press release, but nothing since then. The developers have been utterly silent on it, which is quite annoying. It’s one thing to announce something and publicly state it’s no longer happening, but to be totally silent on it is just weird.
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Yes, it’s that time of the week again, when we want to delight our readers with yet another blog post from the “Watch” series of articles, and this time is going to be a lot of fun because it involves Ubuntu Phone devices and an old-school FPS game loved by millions of players around the globe.
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I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but Road Redemption has finally released their promised Linux version (Early Access). The problem isn’t only how long this took with it being years over-due after being promised for Linux in 2013, but how bad it is right now. Something fishy is going on, as it says “Trial version” in the corner.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The KDE Community just announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.5 Beta, which brings a ton of new features and significant changes.
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Over the years, one thing that has been always guaranteed about the free software and open source software community is that periodically there will be some unholy row or the other, mostly over issues allegedly to do with sexism and inequality.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Hello all,
Tarballs are due on 2015-11-23 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.19.2
unstable release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which
were proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule
so everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will
be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that
will probably be too late to get in 3.19.2. If you are not able to
make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you’ll be late,
please send a mail to the release team and we’ll find someone to roll
the tarball for you!
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New Releases
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The Solus operating system is approaching a stable release once more, and it looks like we might be able to boot that elusive 1.0 version before Christmas.
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Steven Shiau, the creator of the GParted Live and Clonezilla Live projects, has had the pleasure of announcing the release of a new testing version for his Clonezilla Live GNU/Linux distribution.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family
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We have a newcomer in the Mageia ecosystem: the young French company SIVEO has taken over the development of the open source server-related solutions of the former Mandriva, and they decided to base all their products on Mageia. Giving back to the community, they are now employing a long-time Mageia contributor and maintainer of the KDE stack, Nicolas Lécureuil (neoclust), to work on packaging their free software products in Mageia. The following is a joint press release by SIVEO and Mageia.org.
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Red Hat Family
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Are your Red Hat Enterprise Linux programmers chomping at the bit for the latest and greatest development tools? Then, Red Hat Software Collections 2.1 and Red Hat Developer Toolset 4 are just what they want.
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Global marketing leader at the open source software vendor details the customer, data, technology and functional pillars that prop up her corporat marketing function
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Red Hat Inc., the leader in open source solutions, has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2 operating system for desktops, servers, and cloud.
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As I read Jim Whitehurst’s The Open Organization, as well as articles about initiatives involving educators and students in open source projects and communities, I imagined what the future might look like in primary, secondary, and higher education around the world.
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) should head towards $85.06 per share according to 17 Analysts in consensus. However, if the road gets shaky, the stock may fall short to $72 per share. The higher price estimate target is at $92 according to the Analysts.
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Bangalore: Wipro today announced the launch of its Managed Service Offerings for Verification, Validation and Performance Tuning of Telco clouds. This will be available globally to Network Equipment Providers and Communication Service Providers who are embarking on their SDN/NFV enabled cloud transformation journey.
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Fedora
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oday in Linux news, OpenSource.com has some gift ideas for the Open Source enthusiast. The Register said today that Debian founder, Ian Murdock accepted a position at Docker. InsiderMonkey posted their list of five “beginner friendly Linux distributions” and I bet you can guess most of them. Scott Gilbertson said Fedora 23 is “workin’ it like Monday morning” and Jack Germain wrote that Ubuntu Studio is a “treasure trove for creative types.”
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Like its predecessor, this Fedora comes in three base configurations – Workstation, Server and Cloud. The former is the desktop release and the primary basis for my testing, though I also tested out the Server release this time around.
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Debian Family
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Debian daddy Ian Murdock has joined Linux container shop Docker.
Murdock, who founded Debian in 1993 and led the project for three years during its birth, has taken up position as a member of Docker’s technical staff.
Details of Murdock’s role or responsibilities were not available at time of writing.
Docker, though, has a huge interest in perfecting the deployment of Linux applications in its container technology for cloud and micro services. Murdock was, until October, vice president for platform for Salesforce’s marketing cloud. He’d been with the as-a-service provider for four years. He joined Salesforce through the cloud firm’s $2.5bn acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013. ExactTarget was renamed Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu will soon work on phones and desktops, so people are asking whether the desktop will have the same restrictions. The answer is not as straightforward as you might think, and the Ubuntu developers are still analyzing how much access will be granted to users.
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A new OTA update for Ubuntu Touch has been released, and users should start receiving it right about now.
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If you’re reading our website often, you might have noticed that the Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 software update has been officially announced and that we’ve written a lengthy article about its new features and bugfixes.
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If you want a desktop that’s reliable, solid, but also pushing things forward—which is to say, if you want the experience Unity has been providing for the last three or even four releases—you will likely want to get the 16.04 LTS release coming next April. It will probably be the last Unity 7 release. But if you want to live on the edge, Unity 8 will be, if not the default, at least only a login screen away come this time next year.
In the meantime, enjoy your quiet days of Ubuntu 15.10. The days of such calm releases are limited.
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I’ve previously written about Canonical’s obnoxious IP policy and how Mark Shuttleworth admits it’s deliberately vague. After spending some time discussing specific examples with Canonical, I’ve been explicitly told that while Canonical will gladly give me a cost-free trademark license permitting me to redistribute unmodified Ubuntu binaries, they will not tell me what “Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries” actually means.
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The winning Indiegogo campaign for an Intel “Cherry Trail” based, USB 3.1-enabled “MagicStick” stick-PC has added Snappy Ubuntu Core to its preloaded OSes.
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MagicStick is a new PC-on-a-stick device that promises to be the most powerful launched until now, and it’s in the middle of a very successful Indiegogo campaign. To top it all off, MagicStick will also provide the users with the option of loading it with Ubuntu Core.
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On November 19, Canonical, through Jamie Strandboge, informs Ubuntu Snappy users that, as of today, the Snappy Ubuntu Core 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) images no longer use the click compatibility hooks for AppArmor (“Application Armor”).
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Flavours and Variants
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Today the Bodhi project announced an unscheduled bug fix release primarily to address a usability issue as well as bring a few other updates to users. Fedora 21 is fast approaching its end of life and Clement Lefebvre announced some Mint 17.3 betas. Elsewhere, Red Hat released an update to their developer toolkit Software Collections and Bruce Byfield said we should go to “task-based” desktops.
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I’m Sean Davis (bluesabre in the FOSS world). I am the current Xubuntu Technical Lead, an Xfce core developer, and I’m a web developer during the day. I’ve been an Ubuntu/Xubuntu user since 2005.
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Canonical’s Zoltán Balogh has had the great pleasure of announcing the general availability of the new Ubuntu SDK IDE (Integrated Development Environment) packages for supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems.
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Today the Bodhi team and I are releasing an unscheduled bug fix release in version number 3.1.1. The 3.1.0 release we released back in August had an issue where users were not always prompted automatically for wireless passwords when connecting to encrypted networks. This lead to enough confusion / user frustration that we feel it warrants an updated install image now as opposed to waiting for our scheduled 3.2.0 release early 2016.
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Silicon Labs unveiled reference designs for home automation and lighting networks, based on its ZigBee SoC and middleware plus a Raspberry Pi-based gateway.
Silicon Labs, which bills itself as the ZigBee market share leader, has integrated its ZigBee “Golden Unit” Home Automation (HA 1.2) software stack, “EM358x” ZigBee mesh networking SoC, and various ZigBee sensor and lighting technologies in several reference designs for home automation. The Dimmable Light Switch, Connected Lighting, Door/Window Contact Sensor reference designs work with a WiFi and Ethernet ready ZigBee Gateway Reference Design that runs Linux on a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B SBC.
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In San Francisco, Parrot unveiled a smaller, faster, longer lasting version of its Linux-based Bebop drone, helping to solidify its dominance in the mid-range consumer market. One of the key new features is an emergency cutoff that instantly kills the quadrotor motors when a blade hits an obstacle. The increasing focus on safety was also demonstrated this week when 3DR (Solo) and DJI (Phantom) announced similar new technology to make it easier for their customers to avoid restricted airspace (see farther below).
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No operating system support was listed on the SOM6330 product page, but Linux is the go-to OS for the SoloX, OpenEmbed notified us about the module directly, and the OpenEmbed modules listed above all run Linux. Other SoloX based COMs include the Efus A9X from F&S Elektronik Systeme.
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The Arduino platform’s simplicity, open architecture and ease of use helped make it the most popular embedded development tool within the Maker community. In this article, we will look at the new Linino framework, which makes it possible to seamlessly integrate Linux into the Arduino platform as well as some of the boards, protocols and development tools that can support advanced functionality, such as real-time control of multiple functions, IoT applications and integration of cloud-based services.
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Geekbuying is launching a small computer with an octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, Gigabit Ethernet and support for 4K video playback. It’s called the Geekbox… and it’s being positioned as much more than just another media streamer.
The Geekbox comes with Android and Ubuntu dual-boot software preloaded and there’s an option to install Rockchip’s Light Biz OS version of Android.
And you can also open up the Geekbox case, remove the system-on-a-module that houses most of the tiny computer’s guts, and use it for other projects.
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Today we will introduce you, guys, to a new open-source and open-world hardware device, a TV box called GeekBox, which is capable of booting the Ubuntu Linux and Android operating systems.
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Geekbuying has this week unveiled a new mini PC they have created in the form of the GeekBox which has been designed to dual boot both Ubuntu and Android operating systems from one small device.
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Internet association CZ.NIC launched the campaign for its Turris Omnia router not too long ago. In less than 24 hours, the team reached their $100,000 goal, and pledges are still rising. Currently, the project has amassed $191,098 from 916 backers and still has 55 days of crowdfunding to go.
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Phones
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Android
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It’s hard to see GNU/Linux systems taking major share even in Europe where it is most popular but in small cheap computers, Android/Linux is king in Europe as in much of the world. Most of the countries in Europe are making 10% or more of their page-views from Android/Linux devices. I’m sure there is some of that share coming from folks who don’t use desktop/notebook PCs. Just the fact that many young folks have their Android/Linux smartphone bolted to their hips precludes them from needing a classical PC to get what they need, connectivity in a connected world. Many of them care nothing for a keyboard because they have flexible thumbs and sharp eyes…
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Take the time to weigh your options, and answer some basic questions. Which device is easiest for me to access in the kitchen? How is the system I store them on backed up? What features are a dealbreaker? Whatever you decide, here are a few open source software solutions to recipe management you might want to consider.
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What does it mean when an organization that saw software as an asset worth protecting commits to open source? Or one that viewed software as the ends rather than the means and had tens of billions of dollars worth of evidence supporting this conclusion? The short answer is that it means that open source is being viewed more rationally and dispassionately than we’ve seen since the first days of the SHARE user group.
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The interoperability assessment was done on a mesh network consisting of several Ekinops 360 Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) nodes. To perform this live demonstration, 100 Gbps second wavelength routes were created via the Onos controller and automatically routed within the mesh network.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Review Wileyfox is the first new British phone brand in over a decade, and it’s hoping to cash in on the Shenzhen economic miracle.
Not so long ago, cheap Android phones were synonymous with “Landfill”. There was usually something lacking. But rapid advances in component manufacturing and packaging have seen companies enter the market offering extraordinary value for money. The upstarts offer near high spec devices for a fraction of the cost of a top brand flagship, benefiting from huge economies of scale gained by selling into India and China, and some novel (for hardware) low or zero margin business models. These are dubbed “flagship killers” or “super midrange” devices. So if Chinese startups can do it, why can’t we?
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SaaS/Big Data
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Cloudera, which provides a complete data management and analytics platform built on Apache Hadoop and related open source technologies, has announced the availability of Cloudera Enterprise 5.5.
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CMS
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At this point, I started making WordPress websites—taking a theme and customizing it to create a branded site for companies. I definitely felt empowered. WordPress is open source, and I am grateful for this, as it has become the very core of many successful businesses across the globe. It is the core of what I do every day, whether writing, consulting, or developing a website.
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Healthcare
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Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)
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Netflix has released Spinnaker, an open-source tool for testing and rolling out software updates in the cloud.
The Apache 2.0-licensed code provides continuous delivery of applications, including managing and monitoring their deployment. Netflix said Spinnaker will replace its Asgard project.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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GuixSD is not like your parents’ distro. Instead of fiddling with configuration files all around, or running commands that do so as a side effect, the system administrator declares what the system will be like. This takes the form of an operating-system declaration, which specifies all the details: file systems, user accounts, locale, timezone, system services, etc.
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Public Services/Government
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The government of Bulgaria has proposed to start a repository for open source software. The government also wants to make it mandatory to use the web based code revision and code management system for all future government software development projects.
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A free software advocate has created an editable version of the UK government’s Open Document Format manuals, the “ODF Guidance”. Making the texts available on the Github software development repository facilitates others to edit, update and translate the texts, explains Paolo Dongilli, uploaded the documents to Github on 28 October.
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Openness/Sharing
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Of all the beverages out there, one stands out among the rest. Tea.
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Open Hardware
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Most able-bodied people don’t really understand exactly how expensive it is to be disabled in a world built for people who are not. I have heard several people, after reading an article about e-NABLE, comment about how shocked that they are at the cost of traditional prostheses. I would imagine that the same sticker shock would apply to those who have never had to purchase a wheelchair. On the low end, wheelchairs still cost several hundred dollars, but they can reach costs up into the thousands. And electric powered chairs are even more expensive, with prices often doubling the cost of their manual counterparts. That is hard for most people to afford in a developed country like the United States, but would be nearly impossible for a poor person in developing countries.
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Programming
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its three national labs have reached an agreement with NVIDIA’s PGI® software to create an open source Fortran compiler designed for integration with the widely used LLVM compiler infrastructure.
LLVM (formerly Low Level Virtual Machine), a collection of reusable compiler and tool chain technologies with a modular design, facilitates support for a wide variety of programming languages and processor architectures. The Fortran front-end module created through this project will be derived from NVIDIA’s PGI Fortran compiler.
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In the digital era, computer bugs can affect our lives, the economy of a nation and even the well-functioning of society in general. As the internet of things gradually invades all aspects of our environment, the importance of identifying and preventing computer bugs grows exponentially.
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Security
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Moen added that in sharp contrast, when the servers of the Debian GNU/Linux project were broken into in 2007, developer Wichert Akkerman posted what he (Moen) described as “an excellent report” about what had happened. Moen added that when the servers of the Apache web server were compromised, the Apache Foundation did not hold back on detailing what had taken place.
And when the Debian project released a version of OpenSSL with a serious vulnerability unwittingly created by one of its own developers, it made no bones about it and made a full public confession.
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Last week has seen an explosion of e-commerce sites infected with the Linux.Encoder.1 ransomware. For those not familiar with the term, ransomware is a particularly vicious type of malware that aims to extort money from the owners of compromised systems.
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In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris on Friday, there have been renewed calls to find some way to allow the government to read encrypted communications. And on the surface, it sounds simple and obvious — why wouldn’t we want the government to be able to monitor terrorists? But the reality is that it’s a very bad idea, not only because it won’t work, but because it will hurt Internet security more broadly.
Of course, at this point, we don’t even know if the Paris attackers used encryption. There’s speculation they did, because reports suggest that no intelligence agency has found any traffic by them. But right now it’s just that: speculation.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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In its effort to vet one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Dr. Ben Carson, the New York Times didn’t properly vet its primary source in this vetting, former CIA officer Duane Clarridge—an indicted liar and overseer of Contra death squads in Central America.
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Before it was determined that a bomb caused the crash, Associated Press‘s Jim Heintz (11/7/15) wrote a speculative piece that began, “No matter what caused the fatal crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the answer will almost certainly hit Russia hard—but not President Vladimir Putin.” Whether it was terrorism or mechanical failure, Heintz wrote, “Either answer could challenge Russia’s new self-confidence—but could also be used by Putin to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”
Needless to say, we’re not seeing a lot of coverage of how France’s François Hollande could use the Paris attacks “to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”
While US outlets were circumspect to the point of being unintelligible in drawing a connection between France’s war against ISIS in Syria/Iraq and the Paris attacks, AP had no trouble making it clear that Russia had been targeted not because of its values or symbols but because of its military attacks against a violent adversary: “A faction of the militant Islamic State group claimed it had downed the airliner in retaliation for Russia launching airstrikes on IS positions in Syria a month earlier.”
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The debates continue over whether last week’s ISIS terror bombing in Beirut was undercovered by the media or just unappreciated by an uninterested public — even though, as Jim Naureckas pointed out on Tuesday, US news outlets overwhelmingly skewed their coverage toward the next day’s mass killings in Paris, in quantity, placement and level of sympathy for the victims, not just in number of Facebook shares. (As of this morning, the New York Times had run 130 stories mentioning Paris and terror attacks since November 13, versus 20 mentioning Beirut — with much of the Paris coverage being front-page news, while Beirut was mostly relegated to brief mentions deep within the paper—often in articles that were primarily about the Paris violence.)
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Dina Jaber: “I’m Sure If You Were To Hear What They Have Been Through, You Wouldn’t Think That They Were A Threat To You”
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Transparency Reporting
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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I just watched a recording of Westminster yesterday where Tory Minister Amber Rudd announced the government was rapidly dropping the subsidy for solar energy down to zero. Yet the government has just agreed to pay to the nuclear industry a subsidy that will dwarf, in real terms, all the subsidies ever given to the coal and renewable industries combined, and what is more will be paid to the Chinese and the French. I am lost for words.
Nor am I in any way pleased to be proved instantly correct, that Western governments view terrorist incidents like that in Paris primarily as a means to enhance their power and social control.
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The Kochs have been complaining about a “lack of civility in politics” as they seek to boost their public image–but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.
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The Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group exposing corporate influence on democracy, has submitted evidence to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman showing how Exxon Mobil has promoted climate change denial through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). CMD believes this information is relevant to the landmark investigation into whether Exxon Mobil deceived its shareholders and the public about the impact that burning fossil fuels has on climate change.
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The Koch network’s secret bank, “Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce,” spent big during the 2014 midterm elections, including doubling its investment in voter data collection efforts and secretly backing U.S. Senate candidates associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
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As environment and energy ministers prepare to meet in Paris for the COP 21 climate change talks, CEO takes a look at how the revolving door ensures that the EU institutions remain close to Big Energy.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Fisher’s piece notes a fact of human nature: “People start with a narrative they feel is true, and then look for evidence to support that narrative.” To find evidence to support that claim, Fisher need look no further than the mirror.
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Censorship
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…we need to raise an additional $100,000 above our regular Project Censored budget in the next three months.
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Privacy
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All of this is no surprise, as just a couple of months ago the intelligence community’s top lawyer flat-out admitted that he and his friends planned to wait for the next terrorist attack to push their agenda.
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It’s no surprise that Friday’s Paris attacks are already being used to push for both more and continued surveillance here in the U.S.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday speaking before a House subcommittee, making the case for expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which compelled telecom companies, Internet providers and some VoIP services to make their networks easier for law enforcement to access. Wheeler would like Congress to consider expanding the scope of the law to include devices such as gaming platforms, which now have capabilities that go beyond mere gaming.
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Carnegie Mellon University this week denied reports it was paid by the FBI to help identify criminal suspects on the Dark Web.
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Civil Rights
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During the 1930s and early 1940s, the United States resisted accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi terror sweeping Europe, in large part because of fearmongering by a small but vocal crowd.
They claimed that the refugees were communist or anarchist infiltrators intent on spreading revolution; that refugees were part of a global Jewish-capitalist conspiracy to take control of the United States from the inside; that the refugees were either Nazis in disguise or under the influence of Nazi agents sent to commit acts of sabotage; and that Jewish refugees were out to steal American jobs.
Many rejected Jews simply because they weren’t Christian.
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David Cameron relies on the complicity of mainstream media and the gullibility and disinterest of the British public to get away with an extraordinary switch. Two years ago he was strongly urging military action in Syria against the forces of President Assad. Now he urges military action against the enemies of President Assad. That includes against groups and individuals who were initially armed and financed by western intelligence agencies, and are still being financed by our Saudi “allies”.
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Today the French National Assembly adopted the bill on the state of emergency. This text was adopted in great urgency in an unprecedented one-upmanship autoritarian atmosphere. La Quadrature du Net expresses its concerns about several measures found in the bill, especially regarding police searches of electronic devices, Internet censorship and freedom of association. Rather than enganging in any thorough consideration of the causes that led to the killings and of the way to solve this complex situation, the entire French political class betrays itself by responding to this unprecedented attack on our liberties with a broad restriction of our civil liberties.
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But each such demand raises two issues: one of practicality, and one of principle. That is: would the proposal actually help, and does the proposal conflict with the supposed principles, and way of life, we are presumably seeking to defend.
In terms of practice: just doing “something” does not mean you are doing the right thing. It may make no difference, or it may make things worse. In terms of dealing with terrorism, one false move can cause problems for a generation. The history of dealing with the terrorist problems in Northern Ireland is packed with examples of things being “done” which just caused greater difficulties later on.
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The 2016 election will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. Joining us now to discuss the significance of that is Ari Berman. He’s a senior contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an investigative fellow at the Nation Institute. He’s author of, most recently, Give Us the Ballot: the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Welcome to CounterSpin, Ari Berman.
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One of the most illiberal and misconceived measures adopted by the Ministry of Justice – perhaps by any government department in recent years – was the criminal courts charge.
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The people of Scotland thus have multiple citizenships. They are citizens of Scotland, and of two over-arching bodies, of the United Kingdom and of the European Union. Both UK and EU citizenship are very real, with EU citizenship in particular conferring a wide range of individual rights to the citizen enshrined in numerous international treaties. This dual citizenship is reflected on your passport. On both the cover and the inside page, it says European Union above United Kingdom.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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This Kat, who has received a considerable volume of correspondence relating to Anne Frank’s Diary, has been frustrated that the volume of incoming correspondence and matters arising from recent blogposts on other subjects has distracted him from pursuing a spot of research on the copyright aspects of this intriguing, historically significant and sensitive topic.
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Permalink
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11.19.15
Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Unlocking the door for parasites
Summary: Analysis of the views of academics (profiting from solid research), contrasted with patent lawyers (profiting from feuds and conflicts), and the latter group’s exploitation of Benoît Battistelli’s misguided policies
THERE is excellent new coverage about the uniquely US patent troll problem in the Washington Post, which is read by many US politicians. It was composed by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer, whose work in this area has been influential. Bessen is a Lecturer in Law at the Boston University School of Law, but he’s not a maximalist of litigation, unlike many law professors. In fact, he studies the economics of innovation and patents and he works quite closely with Meurer (they co-authored Patent Failure).
“Bessen is a Lecturer in Law at the Boston University School of Law, but he’s not a maximalist of litigation, unlike many law professors.”They begin their coverage by stating that a “third of the economy is at stake — and patent trolls are to blame”. They say that “[p]atent lawsuits have become a big business. Over six times as many patent lawsuits are filed today as in 1980, and businesses of all sorts have become vocal about the burden of undeserved lawsuits, many over vague or overreaching software patents.”
They then ask about a reform: “Is this necessary? The evidence suggests that it is, but even more should be done.”
Well, patent lawyers fight back in social media. They deny there is even a problem and the echo chambers of patent lawyers (patent profiteers inviting patent profiteers speak to other patent profiteers) are a big part of this problem.
“They feel empowered by Battistelli’s controversial practices because he actively lobbies on scope rather than focus on examining patents based on rules handed down to him.”The biggest proponents of software patents, including Patent Watchtroll (or Watchdog, although they’re watchers in the opposite/inverted sense), still try to influence the EPO by pushing for the UPC, citing the maximalist Benoît Battistelli for support. They feel empowered by Battistelli’s controversial practices because he actively lobbies on scope rather than focus on examining patents based on rules handed down to him. To quote the patent maximalists (and lawyers):
In October, Italy, one of the last holdouts to the European Unitary Patent, joined the party, leaving Spain and Croatia as the only members of the 28-member European Union (EU) opting out. As the fourth largest market in Europe in terms of population, gross domestic product (GDP) and patent validation, Italy’s reversal is a huge step forward. According to Benoît Battistelli, president of the European Patent Office (EPO), “Italy’s accession will … render the Unitary Patent more attractive to companies from other European countries and from across the globe.”
However, there are still many more hurdles to cross before companies or individuals can expect to use the unitary patent to protect their intellectual property throughout the EU, although Battistelli is confident it can be completed by the end of 2016.
So what is it exactly, and what hurdles is it still facing?
Under the new system, one patent will be in effect across all of the participating EU member states, including at least Germany, the United Kingdom, France and 10 others, without having to further validate the patent in each of the individual countries. Infringement, invalidity determinations and injunctions on the unitary patents will be enforceable across the participating states as well. The unitary patent will not only reduce the complexity of protecting IP in Europe, but will significantly reduce the strain on IP budgets, as it currently costs around 36,000.00 EUR (approximately $48,000 USD) today to acquire patent protection in all 27 EU member states.
But at whose expense? What UPC practically means is that more business in more countries shall become instantaneously exposed to more patent lawsuits. Who pays the price? Everyone. Who benefits? Patent lawyers and their largest clients, who wield massive patent portfolios in a lot of countries. To these large multinational this can mean cost savings and easier/broader injunctions/royalty-gathering.
We occasionally hear from critics of the European patent system and they too worry about the UPC.
“I haven’t gone over to the dark side of the force [i.e. patent attorneys],” told us one reader, “but have nevertheless been reading volumes and volumes on patent law. My feeling is that there is a gulf between those who write laws, and those like me who have [or had] to apply them, sitting down and staring at the documents wondering where to begin, to eventually reach a solid decision. The former talk about “flexibility” and not presuming about the direction where innovation will head into, and the latter must figure out what the former actually meant. I banged my head on the wall over with expressions like “technical” or “as such”, and the US approach [e.g. Alice] isn’t a whole lot better.”
It is clear that even patent examiners don’t quite know how to deal with patent scope and boundaries, especially as patent lawyers try to blur gaps and mislead by lobbying. Non-technical managers contribute to this and pressure examiners (calling it “production” or “efficiency” rather than maximalism).
“What would be needed from critics of the patent system [such as Greenpeace],” our reader said, “is clear thinking. If there is to be a patent system, then one should strive for a fool proof litmus test for deciding what is allowable and what’s not, and not something of the “I know it when I see it” kind. I know, it’s hard, if not impossible.
“The people attempting to draft implementing regulations and reflect about the way in which these may be applied on real-life applications by real-life examiners, and how these would interact to obtain a patent law framework consistent across all fields, e.g., from chemistry to computer science.
“Industry lobbies know how to be at the right place at the right time to slip in their favoured wording, or drafting sweeping treaties bypassing national parliaments [e.g. TRIPS].”
We are seeing much of the same in UPC right now. We previously wrote about how can usher in a lot more software patents.
“A case in point is the biotech directive of the 1990s,” our reader said, “where the EU eventually adopted an outwardly impressive, but in practice rather useless biotech directive, which found its way in EPC Regulations. The tale of how it came into existence was told in German in at least two different books, and is impressive in its illustration of the shabby PR tactics employed by industrial interests.
“Farmers, software people, generic manufacturers, third world countries, patients and the NHS, etc. should heed this example, and aim upstream [the legislator], rather than downstream [the patent offices].”
What we are close to getting right now in Europe is a lot more patent trolls (this is already becoming a serious problem), having repeated the mistakes of the US with low examination standards (for the sake of artificially elevating numbers), little in terms of borders (cross-state separation), and expansion of patent scope to software (empirical evidence shows that most patent trolls use these). █
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 5:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Paid by Microsoft, still serving Microsoft’s agenda under misleading organisational names, hoping nobody will notice
Summary: The Microsoft-connected ACT has just morphed into another entity, in an apparent effort to derail Android (as well as other Linux-powered mobile operating systems boasting Free/libre code) with patent tax in ‘thicket’ form
SO, Microsoft’s most infamous lobbyists are still around and they use patents as a weapon, not just lock-in such as OOXML. There is now a new mask for this particular group of lobbyists, and a new Web site too. Watch who follows and promotes this site (and Twitter account), it’s just people from ACT. This is yet another campaign Web site (one of many) belonging to this longtime Microsoft AstroTurfing group.
“The name of their site/campaign is probably designed to imitate or borrow the reputation of AllThingsD (Wall Street Journal) or All Things Open (ATO), a conference about FOSS.”See our Wiki for some background on Association for Competitive Technology, formerly known as ATL. It had previous names, but evidently it saw the need to keep renaming/rebranding because its agenda and clients become public knowledge, compromising its ability to operate effectively as a lobbying group.
In recent years these lobbyists were trying to masquerade as an alliance for ‘apps’ developers, disguising the anti-Linux and anti-FOSS agenda as ‘apps’. “Today marks the launch of http://AllThingsFRAND.com,” they announced in Twitter. “Follow our site for the latest news & analysis on patents, standards, and FRAND licensing” (the inherent foes of FOSS, Android, and Linux).
Anyone who follows this site will basically be following lobbyists. They are selling something. They sell agenda, not information.
“[W]hen you see all the complains at the EU level against Google, some company is pulling the strings from behind”
–Benjamin HenrionThe name of their site/campaign is probably designed to imitate or borrow the reputation of AllThingsD (Wall Street Journal) or All Things Open (ATO), a conference about FOSS.
André Rebentisch (FFII) noticed this and said that “ACT [had] launched a #FRAND web site” (FRAND in this context are patents — mostly software patents — that act as a tax that’s virtually impossible to avoid).
“ACT launched a FRAND web site…”
–André RebentischSomeone should perhaps tell the not-so-open-anymore Red Hat that Microsoft is still attacking FOSS (via front groups), with patents inside so-called ‘industry standards’ (thickets/cartels Microsoft is in). Well, so much for ‘standstill’… they are still on the offensive, albeit discreetly (through satellites).
Benjamin Henrion (FFII) told André that “ACT is still ACT. [Is] Zuck still around?” (he was one of their leading lobbyists even back in the ATL days)
Henrion added that “when you see all the complains at the EU level against Google, some company is pulling the strings from behind” (indeed, and we have covered this many times before).
“Here too we have patent lawyers trying to pressure politicians to support misguided policies that enrich lawyers and their big clients (multinational monopolies/oligopolies) at the expense of everybody else.”Henrion has noticed yet another curious thing about lobbyists. “Patent lawyers are forming working groups,” he wrote, citing Patent Watchtroll, a longtime prominent booster of software patents, “in order to draft law for software patents in the US after the Alice storm” (Alicestorm is a term used to refer to the avalanche of software patents after the Alice case).
Patent lawyers are basically the equivalent of weapons companies with their pro-war lobbying groups, set aside their soft bribes to people in Congress (to ensure politicians become hawkish or that only hawks are electable). This is why US Congress supports militaristic policies which in turn pass public money to weapons companies. Here too we have patent lawyers trying to pressure politicians to support misguided policies that enrich lawyers and their big clients (multinational monopolies/oligopolies) at the expense of everybody else. █
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Posted in Microsoft at 5:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft is openwashing its lock-in (like greenwashing or whitewashing)
Summary: Ill-informed journalists are helping Microsoft disseminate false messages (or half-truths) about Visual Studio
MICROSOFT finally addressed a criticism we made here before, but it wants the world to misinterpret that and wrongly extrapolate. The following criticisms are still applicable:
Remember that Visual Studio is not “open source” and is not “cross-platform”. Microsoft probably hopes to mislead or confuse the public by opening up and then merely compiling for other platforms just a portion, whereupon it can use misleading headlines to give people the impression that Visual Studio is on equal footing with Eclipse, for instance. It’s the “just enough” openwashing strategy.
It might actually work!
See this week’s news headlines.
Cynthia Harvey [1] deemed .NET “open source” even though it’s still proprietary and patented (we have more promises than deeds), Apple-oriented sites covered it from a Mac-centric point of view [2], some Linux sites [3-5] focused on just one small component of a large proprietary bundle (with no plans of becoming “open source”), and Microsoft apologists [6] or dedicated boosters [7-9] did their best to openwash Microsoft because this tiny portion of a proprietary software suite, Visual Studio (with a proprietary compiler that can potentially sneak in back doors into a lot of programs), had its source code liberated.
This might help get some non-Windows developers ‘addicted’ to Microsoft’s tool and if they later want the full (complete) bundle they’ll need to buy a Windows licence, buy a Visual Studio licence, and then rely on proprietary software from an NSA partner.
Is the world really better off with yet another code editor? One that is Microsoft-leaning? █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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A version of the clang/C2 compiler is already used for Project Islandwood. Extending it to all Visual Studio C++ development is an exciting prospect for C++ developers; although Microsoft’s own compiler has made great strides in recent years, clang offers superior standards support in a number of areas. Being able to take advantage of that in Visual Studio will be very welcome indeed.
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