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11.15.11

IRC Proceedings: November 14th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

Enter the IRC channels now

IRC Proceedings: November 13th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 11:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

Enter the IRC channels now

IRC Proceedings: November 12th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 11:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

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#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

Enter the IRC channels now

Links 15/11/2011: Linux still Rules HPC

Posted in News Roundup at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Where Linux crushes Windows like a bug: Supercomputers

      The faster a computer goes, the more likely is to have Linux at its heart. The most recent Top500 list of supercomputers shows that, if anything, Linux is becoming even more popular at computing’s high end.

      In the latest Top500 Supercomputer list, you’ll find when you dig into the supercomputer statistics that Linux runs 457 of the world’s fastest computers. That’s 91.4%. Linux is followed by Unix, with 30 or 6%; mixed operating systems with 11 supercomputers, 2.2%. In the back of the line, you’ll find OpenSolaris and BSD with 1 computer and–oh me, oh my–Windows also with just 1 supercomputer to its credit. That’s a drop from 4 in the last supercomputer round up in June.

    • NetGear Expands Entry-Level Network Attached Storage

      Storage boxes that deliver content sit at the very heart of the cloud. When it comes to building out your own personal or small business cloud, having enough storage performance is a critical component. That’s where networking vendor NetGear aims to help, with a new generation of its home and small business network attached storage (NAS) devices.

  • Kernel Space

    • The Linux Foundation Announces Program for Automotive Linux Summit

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced its program for the first-ever Automotive Linux Summit taking place November 28, 2011 in Yokohama, Japan.

      The Automotive Linux Summit will bring together the brightest minds from the automotive industry, the Linux developer community and the mobility ecosystem. As the premier vendor-neutral business and technical conference focused on Linux and automotive technologies, attendees can expect to learn about how to use Linux and open source software in automotive applications, ranging from in-vehicle on-board systems to cloud solutions for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.

    • Evolution of kernel size

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • GNOME Desktop

      • New Desktop Interface Flops

        If you follow my work, you won’t be surprised to know that I really dislike Windows 8’s proposed new interface, Metro. That’s not because I hate everything from Microsoft. It’s because I hate anything that’s a bad design, and it’s not just Microsoft that’s guilty of that. So are open-source groups such as GNOME.

        Unlike my colleague Ken Hess who hates just about all the newest interfaces, I do like some of the new ones… in their place.

  • Distributions

    • ArchBang 2011 Review

      Here is another light, fast, and fun distribution for everyone to try, ArchBang leaves a long-lasting impression. ArchBang delivers a useful Live CD, the OpenBox window manager, and all the basic applications you might need, all on top of the powerful and robust Arch Linux core. OpenBox will allow users to experiment with a highly customizable interface that remains relatively simple. And of course everyone will be impressed by the blazing speed this distribution will bring to your system. Get the most out of your system with this great operating system, ArchBang is another excellent choice for laptops and desktops alike.

    • Five new distros you should not miss

      As one becomes familiar with the rich wealth of distros available, the developer’s and the community’s user experience too grows helping it the drive the resourceful open source platform to achieve greater heights.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia wiki finally online

        We wanted to replace that by some really nice wiki since then but there always was something with a higher priority, so it had to wait.

        Now, a few weeks ago, we already had a working MediaWiki instance and the teams were working under quite some pressure to import all the contents that has grown over the months in the temporary wiki, cleaning it up and giving it some structure while doing that.

    • Gentoo Family

      • The Linux Setup – Fabio Erculiani, Sabayon Linux

        Fabio Erculiani is the man behind Sabayon Linux, a fantastic, rolling distribution based upon Gentoo (but much easier to manage). My thoughts on Sabayon are here. Fabio does a lot of different things on Sabayon, from the desktop to the server level. You have to appreciate a person that eats his own cooking.

      • Sabayon Linux developers split the Portage sabayon overlay into two new overlays

        If you are a Gentoo Linux user who added the sabayon overlay, or if you are a Sabayon Linux user who already uses Portage, note that the developers of Sabayon Linux have just split the overlay into two overlays. One of the overlays (sabayon-distro) contains ebuilds that are specific to the Sabayon Linux distribution and unlikely to be of interest to users of other distributions that use the Portage package manager. The other overlay (sabayon) contains ebuilds that could be of interest to Portage users of other distributions.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Is Ubuntu’s Dominance on Personal Desktops Slipping?

            For at least five years, Ubuntu has been the pre-eminent Linux distribution for desktop users. None of the other polished distros, such as Fedora or Debian, came close to capturing Canonical’s market share or mind share in the open source world. But writing on the wall is beginning to suggest that the Age of Ubuntu could be coming to an end, at least on the desktop. Here’s why.

            Lest I come off as too sensationalist, let me point out that neither Ubuntu nor Canonical is going to disappear anytime soon. Even if Ubuntu ceases to be the most popular Linux for personal desktops, we can expect it to remain important as a second or third choice for years to come.

          • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Will Not Support Old CPUs
          • Ubuntu’s Tablet Ambition: Doomed to Fail

            For several years now, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions have worked to make their Linux releases available as a pre-installed option whenever possible. Some of the most famous examples are the Linspire and Xandros offerings that were once found at Sears and Walmart.

            A few years after these flopped, Dell introduced PCs pre-loaded with Ubuntu. However, each of these pre-installed efforts met with an untimely demise. The PC sellers blamed the lack of demand, while others such as myself blamed the worst PC marketing attempts in history.

            The pre-installed Linux PC failure in big box stores coincides with the inability to clearly identity the target of who would want the Linux PC. I feel confident in saying this, because other vendors that sell Linux PCs exclusively have done very well for themselves. Even when targeting non-Linux enthusiasts, the target message was always clearly spelled out.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 241
          • Will 12.04 changes bring Ubuntu back to prominence?
          • What Changes Will Ubuntu 12.04 Bring?
          • HealthCheck Ubuntu – The search for unity

            Ubuntu has over 20 million users around the world and is by far the most popular Linux distribution on the planet, but for the first time since the release of Warty Warthog in October 2004, an Ubuntu release is not being greeted with universal acclaim and there are mutterings of discord among the Ubuntu community.

          • The best Ubuntu backup tools

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Download Linux Mint 12 Release Candidate

              Right after our first look aticle of Linux Mint 12, Clement Lefebvre proudly announced on his blog that the Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux Mint 12 operating system is available for download and testing.

            • Pinguy OS 11.10 (Final, Yet Beta) Released

              Pinguy OS 11.10 has been released today and comes with GNOME Shell (on top of GNOME 3.2.1) as default. Even though this is most probably the final version, it’s called “beta”…

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Piracy bill could waylay FLOSS projects

    If you’re at all tuned into the Internet, then it’s very likely that you have heard about two bills currently making their way through the two houses of the US Congress that several organizations have said will “break the Internet.”

    The bills, PROTECT IP (S. 968) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (HR. 3261), are two pieces of legislation with essentially the same theme: give private copyright holders more tools to pull down pirated copy from the Internet. That sounds good on paper, but delving down into the details of each bill reveals some potentially serious problems for free and open source software (FLOSS) developers.

    Each bill has the same basic approach: if a copyright holder finds content on a website that they believe infringes on their copyright, then they can go to any vendor who helps provide revenue to that site and request that the vendor cease working with the site. For instance, the request could go to any ad providers for the allegedly infringing site, and under the new law the ad provider would have five days to cut their ads from the site. Or, if the site uses credit cards or an online payment system like PayPal, the copyright holder can also get those organizations to stop supporting the website.

  • Making an open source software can be more profitable in the long term

    Imagine what would happen if Coca Cola shared its secret formula, or a popular restaurant shared its secret sauce recipe. When source codes of software are shared beyond the secret society of their proprietors, a whole new world with unimaginable technical possibilities is opened. Contrary to popular belief that the proprietors of the secret sauce would lose their pie, they actually get a slice of a much, much larger pie, which makes better business sense.

    After all, many of today’s tech rock stars like Google and Facebook follow the open source paradigm. These firms had implemented their ideas using open source technologies when they had started. And today, they allow free distribution of software developed by them for their internal use. Such open-sourcing enables newer startups to take advantage, yet again.

  • Introducing the ColorHug open source colorimeter

    For the past 3 weeks I’ve been working long nights on an open source colorimeter called the ColorHug. This is hardware that measures the colors shown on the screen and creates a color profile. Existing hardware is proprietary and 100% closed, and my hardware is open source. It has a GPL bootloader, GPL firmware image and GPL hardware schematics and PCBs. It’s faster than the proprietary hardware, and more importantly a lot cheaper.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 10, What’s New?

        After having some initial troubles getting my add-ons to work under Firefox 10 Aurora I had time to look at the changes and new features of this release. Firefox 10 will be the next but one stable release of the web browser which means that stable channel users will have to wait about 12 weeks before they can upgrade their browser to this version.

      • Firefox 10: Can Mozilla Afford To Miss Silent Updates?

        Mozilla released the downloads of Firefox 9 Beta, which will be released just before Christmas as final, as well as Firefox 10 Aurora, the developer version of Firefox. But even with six new versions within one year, Mozilla may not have accomplished what the rapid release process promised: Most notably, Mozilla released substantial memory improvements this year, but it will miss some features it so desperately needs to compete with Chrome.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • OpenOffice.org: Five Months of Incubation at ASF

      At Apache, they have 75 developers and they are still reviewing the code to check licensing to ASL.

      “Before we can produce an Apache release, we must complete the code clearance step, ensuring that the license headers include License and Notification files for all artifacts in the build be done to the satisfaction of the PPMC and the Incubator PMC which governs the Apache OpenOffice podling. This will clear the way forward to develop a realistic target date for issuing our first ‘Apache OpenOffice.org’ release “

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Swedish activist receives Nordic Free Software Award 2011

      Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award 2011. With the award, the Swedish Foundation for Free Culture and Free Software (FFKP) honours Josefsson for his achievements as a campaigner for freedom in the information society.

      “We are proud to honour Erik for the tremendously important work he has done over the past ten years”, says FFKP Executive Director Jonas Öberg. “Erik has an exceptional ability to understand and explain the link between policy and technology. We are hugely grateful for his work. He is an inspiration to all of us.”

  • Project Releases

    • QEMU 1.0 Is Coming Quite Soon

      Version 1.0 of QEMU will be released next month in time for the holidays with several interesting advancements. QEMU is the popular open-source machine emulator and virtualizer that also plays a role in the Linux KVM virtualization stack.

      QEMU 1.0 is expected to be tagged on the first of December. New features to QEMU 1.0 will be a new memory API, support for the Tensilica Xtensa, SCSI improvements, and a Tiny Code Interpreter (TCI).

  • Licensing

    • Copyright in Open Source Software – Understanding the Boundaries

      Copyright ownership tends not to be an issue in closed-source, software development. In that model an individual or business owns – or in-licenses – the copyright in all of the code used in the software application, licenses it to end-users under a binary-only license, and relies on a combination of copyright and trade secret law to enforce contractual rights in the code. By contrast, when software is developed in an open source model, copyright issues abound, and many of these copyright issues are not well understood by software developers. This lack of understanding can undermine the intent of the developers and can potentially lead to unattractive outcomes. As early as the launch of conceptual design in open source software, issues can arise as to ownership of the work and its progeny. When a wide range of hands can touch the open source code, ownership and rights in the code can become blurred. Moreover, not all code contributions to an open source project will be protected by copyright. This paper seeks to explore the application of U.S. copyright law to software, and particularly software that is developed and licensed under an open source model. We address the boundaries of copyright protection and ownership, the importance of intent, timing and creative expression in determining these boundaries, and provide guidance to those looking to launch open source projects.

    • German courts say embedded open source firmware open to modification

      A major challenge to the principles of free software was thrown out of a German district court last week.

      German DSL router vendor AVM had attempted to stop Cybits, which produces children’s web filtering software, from modifying any part of the firmware used in its routers, including a key piece of Linux-based free software.

  • Programming

    • Five years of open-source Java: Freedom isn’t (quite) free

      Open source Java has a long and torrid history, rife with corporate rivalry, very public fallings-out, and ideological misgivings. But has all the effort and rumpus that went into creating an officially sanctioned open JDK been worth it?

      Java co-creator James Gosling certainly thinks so – although he didn’t seem entirely open to the idea in the early days.

Leftovers

  • Google flings Bing into search engine bin

    According to ComScore, Bing is struggling to add users – despite Microsoft’s expensive efforts to make the search engine a serious contender against the Chocolate Factory.

  • Security

    • Search Engines Can Expose Open Source Holes

      Tools such as Google Code Search can provide hackers with a wealth of information hidden in open source code, writes Eric Doyle

      The downside of open source is its very openness. Hackers are using Open Source Intelligence (OSint) to find personal information and even passwords and usernames to plan their exploits.

      Organisations like Anonymous and LulzSec have been using Google Code Search – a public beta in which Google let users search for open source code on the Internet – according to Stach & Lui, a penetration testing firm. In Code Search, they can unearth information to assist them in their exploits, for instance finding passwords for cloud services which have been embedded in code, or configuration data for virtual private networks, or just vulnerabilities that lay the system open to other hacking ploys, such as SQL injection.

  • Finance

  • Spam

    • South Korea proposes restricting all e-mail sending to official e-mail servers

      According to the BBC, South Korea’s Internet and Security Agency is asking all ISPs to block all e-mail sent from anything but “official” e-mail servers. The idea is to block spam, but will it really accomplish this goal?

      It’s not like this is a new idea. The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance proposed it as a best e-mail practice for ISPs in 2004. It’s a simple idea. If an ISP blocks the default Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) port, Port 25, from sending e-mail messages, users will be forced to use their ISP’s mail servers. This, in turn, the theory, goes will magically stop spam.

  • Civil Rights

  • Copyrights

    • Keystone XL and the Future of Bill C-11

      In 2005, the then-Liberal government introduced Bill C-60, the first attempt at digital copyright reform in Canada. The bill included digital lock provisions that linked circumvention to copyright infringement (as supported today by dozens of Canadian organizations) and did not create a ban on the tools that can be used to circumvent. The approach was consistent with the WIPO Internet treaties, but left the U.S. very unhappy.

11.14.11

Links – Anti-Trust and US Parasite Laws.

Posted in Site News at 4:50 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

  • Hardware

    • Color profile collector.

      For the past 3 weeks I’ve been working long nights on an open source colorimeter called the ColorHug. This is hardware that measures the colors shown on the screen and creates a color profile.

    • Integrated color management with colord

      color management is essentially a solved problem that has yet to be implemented system-wide on Linux. Every display or input device can be profiled — that is, its color characteristics measured and saved in a standardized format like an ICC color profile. With profiles in hand, applications need only to perform a transformation on RGB data to map it from one profile (say, a camera’s) to another (a display’s). … Colord is a framework for automating the storage and retrieval of color profiles. …

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Finance

  • Anti-Trust

    • Gates groupie, Warren Buffet, buys ten billion share of IBM.

      Parrish said Buffett was probably attracted to IBM because of its practice of buying back stock to increase earnings per share — not because of any hot patents IBM owns or because Buffett is now a fan of servers and open source software …

      Ted Parrish should not be confused with the astute Bill Parish, but we can be sure that Buffet is not a fan of free software. The purchase is roughly five percent of IBM. The same amount of money would purchase all of Red Hat.

    • Piracy bill could waylay FLOSS projects

      It would also harm non free software too but big publishers don’t mind that.

    • EFF: Hollywood’s New War on Software Freedom and Internet Innovation

      for the free and open source software community — which contributes many billions of dollars a year to the American economy — legal obligations to blacklist domains would be an utter catastrophe. … any software product or service, such as many encryption programs, that is not responsive to blocking orders could be under threat.

      One of the points of free software is that users can remove malicious features. Laws that outlaw such removals are laws that violate your freedom.

  • Censorship

    • The Coming Fascist Internet

      The attacks on fundamental freedoms to communicate that are represented by various government repression of the Internet around the world, and in the U.S. by hypocritical legislation like PROTECT IP and SOPA (E-PARASITE), are fundamentally fascist in nature … Anyone or anything that is an enabler of communications not willingly conforming to this model are subject to attack by authorities from a variety of levels — with the targets ranging from individuals like you and me, to unbiased enablers of organic knowledge availability like Google. For all the patriotic frosting, the attacks on the Internet are really attacks on what has become popularly known as the 99%, deployed by the 1% powers who are used to having their own way and claiming the largest chunks of the pie …

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Copyrights

    • Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA) tells us to kill people who share.

      With their “Shoot the Pirate” campaign, music and TV industry players have taken to the streets with threats to “fight violence with violence.” Hacks into Sony computers to obtain content and warnings of a blood bath only add to the bizarre mix.

      It’s not surprising that people who use violent language to demonize their neighbors resort to real violence to keep power.

Bogus Patents as the Last Resort

Posted in America, Antitrust, Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ballmer sweats

Summary: Competition crimes/violations from Apple and Microsoft in particular but also in general, exploiting the broken patent system in the United States

IN MONTHS or years to come we are likely to cover Apple’s and Microsoft’s patent attacks on Linux. It’s really that old guard and a case of last resort in action. Apple and Microsoft have reached the point of actually collaborating (or colluding) in their fight against Linux/Android. They use some bogus patents, embargo based on fake evidence, extortion, and patent trolls.

Windsor apples
No fruit, just lawsuits!

Apple fan sites, in their usual way, spin Apple as a “victim” by saying that “Apple [got] Sued by a Third Party using Powerful Patents from Palm & 3Com”. To quote this fan site would be unwise, but it’s just something to be aware of. The reality is, Apple has been threatening several Linux-based platforms over the years, always using patents. It also threatened Palm. So who is Apple to claim to be a victim of Palm patents? How silly do these fan sites have to be? The patents in questions are worse than a joke; they are an insult to the USPTO and a real harm to everyone who buys electronic products. Apple and Microsoft just generally cannot compete fairly, so as Google puts it (paraphrased) “when Microsoft’s products fail, it wields patents”. The same goes for Apple, whose sales are falling behind those of several Android backers, even in isolation.

The problem with patents is widely understood. A OECD study says the quality of patent filings has fallen dramatically. To quote:

The quality of patent filings has fallen dramatically over the past two decades. The rush to protect even minor improvements in products or services is overburdening patent offices. This slows the time to market for true innovations and reduces the potential for breakthrough inventions, according to a new OECD report.

In other news of more minor relevance, things are not so rosy in India, either:

Reference to the name Upaid instantly reminds one of January 2009, the Satyam shock and class-action suits. The dispute between the two ended up with a tax issue, which was referred to the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR). Among withholding tax issues, the AAR recently ruled on “hidden royalties”. Upaid was in the business of designing and developing software technology relating to payment-processing platforms and services. It conceived of an intelligent processing platform for which it outsourced the software development to Satyam. After all the agreements were done and dusted, two products — Call Manager and Net Manager — were developed. Patents were approved.

Two employees of Satyam also produced declarations that they had developed the patents which were assigned to Upaid, who turned out to be bad paymasters, forcing Satyam to acquire 22.06 per cent of its equity and offset its receivables. Disputes resulted in the termination of all agreements, with Upaid getting the intellectual-property (IP) rights and Satyam discontinuing software development.

Notice the terrible language in this article, not just “intellectual property” but also “develop patent”. How on Earth does one develop a piece of paper with ink on it? This whole system seem to have become somewhat rotten, especially when nothing physical is produced (e.g. in the software industry), which implies natural abundance.

Dr. Glyn Moody has this good new analysts of the antitrust violations of Microsoft as well as those mafia-like tactics which we wrote about before (that make it racketeering too). To quote:

Why Barnes & Noble is an Open Source Superstar

As I’ve noted many times, one of the biggest threats hanging over open source is patents, because of the way trivial but indispensable software techniques have been patented in some jurisdictions (mostly the US). Things are made worse by the fact that vague threats can be made in this area, for example this famous assertion in 2007:

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

It’s striking that Microsoft has never said exactly which patents it thinks free software infringes upon, although not surprising. If it did, it would be possible to see whether there were any likely infringement and, more damagingly for Microsoft, to look for prior art or other grounds for those patents to be revoked. By keeping everything as vague accusations, Microsoft gets the best of both worlds: it is able to imply that free software is in big trouble, but without running the risk of being proved a paper tiger.

That’s what makes Barnes & Noble’s principled stand against Microsoft’s patent bullying so important. As PJ writes on Groklaw:

Barnes & Noble has done the world a tremendous favor, by pulling aside the curtain and revealing Microsoft’s patent campaign tactics against Android in lurid detail.

It reveals the assertion of “trivial” and “invalid” patents against Barnes & Noble and some shocking details about an “oppressive” license agreement that would have controlled hardware and software design features that Microsoft presented, thus limiting to what degree Barnes & Noble could offer upgrades and improved features to its customers if it had signed it, features it says none of Microsoft’s patents cover. Microsoft worked so hard to keep it all secret, and I think you’ll see why. It’s ugly behind that curtain.

[...]

However, the Barnes & Noble filing goes further than simply listing these patents: it also provides detailed information about prior art or other reasons why they are all invalid. But even if they were valid, they are pathetic in the extreme. That Microsoft is using such flimsy weapons against Barnes & Noble exposes how its whole approach is a sham.
It is obviously hoping that the sheer effort and expense of fighting them in a long-drawn out court process will persuade manufacturers simply to roll over and license them as the easier option. And indeed, that has worked with companies like HTC and Samsung signing up, to their eternal shame.

Barnes & Noble, by contrast, emerges with considerable honour here, since it refused to buckle, and as a result is able to provide us with the first real glimpse into Microsoft’s new strategy as a patent troll following the continuing failure of Windows Mobile in the market. And that is a key factor, as Barnes & Noble points out in its submission to the FTC (also on Groklaw), where it calls for a full anti-trust investigation into Microsoft’s behaviour

The rest is worth reading. We are working on a petition to have Microsoft executives prosecuted for these acts. Rich powerful people never/rarely get prosecuted because of the bias of the system, but at least it makes a loud statement about the lack of justice. This raises awareness. █

Former Microsoft Managers Still Monetise Fear of GPL

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GPL, Microsoft at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Server rack

Summary: A quick status update about FUD firms that piggyback FOSS concerns to sell proprietary software (unsurprising they have their roots in Microsoft)

EVERY now and then, the more notable firms which spread GPL FUD appear in the press again, either with a press release or a placement. Here is the latest example from PR person Kim Weins, who spreads some licence FUD on behalf of her boss from Microsoft, who created and runs this company called OpenLogic, just like Black Duck was created by a Microsoft marketing guy and serves a similar purpose now. We were somewhat baffled to see this announcement which says:

The partnership will help deliver complete code inventory and licensing reports to facilitate the adoption of open source Linux-based systems among automotive OEMs and Tier1 companies.

How is the spreading of GPL FUD with proprietary software and software patents “facilitat[ing] the adoption of open source Linux-based systems”? █

Novell People Still Incite Against Techrights Rather Than Focus on Their Products

Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Green sheep

Green sheep

Summary: A look at the inactivity at Novell and a quick mention (without examples) of smears from SUSE/Novell/Attachmate

THERE is a flood of ‘new’ Novell videos (over 40 of them in two or three days) from some account called NDMSolutions, but apart from those old videos (re-uploaded) there is radio silence from Novell. The only thing on their lips right now is the release of a new version of OpenSUSE. Some of them are insulting yours truly and trying to incite journalists against Techrights (there are many examples, none will be linked here though for obvious reasons). They try to silence us, as usual. Some of them retaliate against people who cite us. We noticed this funny new bit in Weekly News:

The rights for the compilation itself are copyright by Sascha Manns.

Hilarious. So one just takes bits of news and tries to claim a monopoly on no original content. In other news (packaging for OpenSUSE):

The Unknown Horizons development team has announced the release of Unknown Horizons 2011.3. Since I have full maintainership on this project and I don’t depend on no one to make this release, openSUSE is the first one to provide Unknown Horizons 2011.3. Debian should be the second next monday.

Not many people are even using OpenSUSE at this point. It might make more sense to just target Debian first. Oiaohm, who prefers Debian, wrote a couple of hours ago: “Really you have not done a positive story on anything suse has done. Maybe about the build system they designed that is nice… Just to confuse them a little.” █

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