Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

10.31.15

Links 31/10/2015: Twitch’s Arch Linux Challenge, GNOME 3.19.1

Posted in News Roundup at 8:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Using open source in the enterprise – 11 CIOs embracing free and open source software

    Open source enterprise use cases appear to be on the rise, at least anecdotally, with an increasing number of CIOs, IT directors and Chief Technology Officers telling CIO UK about investigating and adopting free and open source alternatives to proprietary software as they seek to gain freedom and flexibility, cut costs, increase agility, improve code quality and avoid vendor lock-in.

    UK businesses it seems have also finally conquered their “irrational fears” of open source and security fears are also on the wane, reports have suggested.

    The most recent studies by the non-profit Linux Foundation in its Enterprise End User Trends reports have revealed year on year increases in Linux deployments over the last four years, with the open operating system seeing particular growth as a platform for cloud computing.

  • Neo4j Launches Open Source Graph Query Language openCypher

    Neo4j graph NoSQL database team launches open source graph query language called openCypher. Neo Technology, the company behind the graph database, announced last week at GraphConnect Conference, the launch of the open source project that will be available to technology providers as a common language for querying graph data.

  • Tor Project launches encrypted anonymous chat app to the public

    The Tor Project has launched the beta version of Tor Messenger, an easy-to-use encrypted message client for those concerned about their privacy and potential surveillance.

  • Keeping Open Source Code Safe: 5 Tips for the Enterprise

    Many organizations use static analysis security testing (SAST) and dynamic analysis security testing (DAST) for monitoring, but while these tools are excellent for finding bugs in code written by internal developers, they are not effective in detecting known open source vulnerabilities in application code. In fact, open source vulnerabilities are far too complex to be found by these automated tools.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Why Contributing to OpenStack Makes Sense for Vendors

      At the OpenStack Summit here, there have been a number of common themes and questions that keep surfacing. Time and again panels are discussing why contributions matter and how Amazon is or isn’t the competition.

      One such panel session was titled “The OpenStack Orchestra: The Next Wave of OpenStack Specialist Startups,” and included executives from Mirantis, Tesora, SwiftStack and PLUMgrid.

    • OpenStack Tokyo: The Ascendance of Cloud Networking

      Networking has always been a part of the open source OpenStack cloud platform, but it has never been more popular, or as exciting as it is now. At the OpenStack Summit in Tokyo, one of the hottest topics is networking, as organizations of all sizes turn to the cloud for Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization capabilities.

    • Why HP Helion public cloud went down for the count

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1 to launch bug hunting session

      LibreOffice 5.1 Alpha has launched, ready for the weekend. Enthusiasts and community members will be able to grab the software and partake in the first Bug Hunting Session from Friday October 30th to Sunday November 1st. The final build of LibreOffice 5.1 is expected to launch in February next year.

  • BSD

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Henning Brauer

      I’m Henning, not 20 any more, OpenBSD developer since 2002. I architected & wrote large parts of pf, started, architected and wrote large parts of bgpd and ntpd. The imsg & privsep framework I wrote for bgpd is in almost all newer OpenBSD daemons. I also worked a lot in the network stack, including many redesigns. One of the last bigger projects I did was the replacement of the queueing subsystem.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Hurd 0.7 & GNU Mach 1.6 Released

      Stepping ahead of the Linux 4.3 release is a Halloween release of GNU Hurd 0.7, GNU Mach 1.6, and GNU MIG 1.6.

      GNU Hurd 0.7 improves the node cache for the EXT2 file-system code (ext2fs), improves the native fakeroot tool, provides a new rpcscan utility, fixes a long-standing synchronization issue with the file-system translators and other components, and the Hurd code has been ported to work with newer GCC versions and libc.

    • Library of Congress issues limited exemptions to DMCA anti-circumvention provisions but leaves users without full control over their own computing

      The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains provisions penalizing the circumvention of “technological protection measures”. These measures are digital jails denying users access to the software and other digital works they possess, preventing them from examining or changing the software on their devices. While such measures are nominally meant to protect copyrighted works, in reality they function as unacceptable restrictions on computer user freedom. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) opposes such Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems. The FSF further opposes the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, and demands that Congress repeal those provisions. Other countries with similar laws should follow suit.

      Every three years, the Library of Congress reviews proposals granting limited exemptions from the DMCA’s broad ban on users controlling the software and data on devices encumbered with DRM. This flawed process is meant to lessen the DMCA’s harm by giving user rights advocates an opportunity to request exemptions allowing circumvention in particular cases. Even when such petitions succeed, the resulting exemptions last only three years, meaning that advocates must repeatedly fight to retain the limited ground they won.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • PHP 7.0 RC6 Released Ahead Of PHP 7.0 Final On 12 November

      PHP 7.0 RC6 was released today for what may be the final release candidate ahead of PHP 7.0.0′s official premiere in two weeks.

    • Ceylon 1.2 Brings New Language Features

      Ceylon, the programming language based on Java and developed at Red Hat, is out with a new version of this programming language that can be lowered down into JavaScript.

    • PyPy 4.0.0 Released – A Jit with SIMD Vectorization and More

      We’re pleased and proud to unleash PyPy 4.0.0, a major update of the PyPy python 2.7.10 compatible interpreter with a Just In Time compiler. We have improved warmup time and memory overhead used for tracing, added vectorization for numpy and general loops where possible on x86 hardware (disabled by default), refactored rough edges in rpython, and increased functionality of numpy.

    • PyPy 4.0 Released For Speedy Python

      PyPy 4.0.0 was released today as a major update for this Python 2.7 interpreter and JIT compiler.

Leftovers

Patents Roundup: Software Patents in India, the US, Microsoft’s Dubious Software Patents, and Mark Cuban

Posted in America, Asia, Courtroom, Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 6:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When competition is becoming lawyers’ business, generally unhinged from science and technology

Faculty of law

Summary: A roundup of news of interest with a special focus on software patents, which severely affect one’s ability to liberally develop software and are potentially being expanded to countries outside the United States, where the Supreme Court may have already, in effect, put an end to them anyway

RETUNING to our main focus again, this post brings together all the news we were able to find about software patents towards the end of the week. It’s sub-divided into four parts.

Software Patents in India

As readers probably know by now, as we wrote half a dozen articles about this subject alone, India’s political system, which has a lot of power in the world, is surrendering to the lobbies of multinationals and offers them patents on software, effectively stomping on India’s massive population, software developers in particular. Here is a new “[t]ime-line of Software Patent Law in India” which explains the latest development as follows:

August 21, 2015: Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions released by IPO. Provide that:
– Mere use of mathematical formula in a claim to clearly specify the scope of protection being sought would not render the claim a mathematical method. Eg. Method of encoding, decoding, encryption
– While business methods are non-patentable, if the claimed matter specifies an apparatus or technical process for carrying out invention even in part, the claims to be examined as whole
– So long as a computer programme is not claimed in itself, but in a manner so as to establish industrial applicability and fulfils all other criteria of patentability, the patent should not be denied.

These loopholes are even worse than what we have in Europe (similar to New Zealand’s loopholes). If Narendra Modi and his colleagues fail to stop this, India will suffer from inflated pricing and many software houses (local) will shut down. Nothing has actually changed in India which justifies this latest change to guidelines. It probably boils down to lobbying and corruption. We know which companies want software patents in India; they’re not Indian companies but companies that exploit Indian labour for cost-savings, ensuring that India stays dependent on foreign-made systems with imperialistic back doors.

Software Patents in the US

SCOTUS, the US Supreme Court, has emerged as somewhat of a hero in the fight against software patents. We are grateful for Alice as it’s a huge game-changer. Patent lawyers are plotting to patent software nonetheless, even after the Supreme Court banned many of them. How typical. Expect a major war of words between people who actually produce software and patent lawyers whose role is parasitic at best (as well as their very rich clients and patent aggressors, i.e. companies like Microsoft).

Microsoft’s Dubious Software Patents

PatentVue, a patents glorification site which even celebrates Microsoft’s patent troll Intellectual Ventures, has just published the article “Microsoft Has a Diverse Software Focused Patent Portfolio”.

“If Ballmer was the extortion racket CEO (like the Mafia), then Nadella is the blackmail CEO. Nothing has changed.”Microsoft needs such patents so that it can attack, extort, and blackmail Android/Linux. Microsoft has been pressuring in favour software patents in Europe (often via lobbyists and proxies, e.g. Association for Competitive Technology, which keeps changing its name in order to dodge negative publicity). This year alone Microsoft attacked Samsung, Kyocera, Dell, and ASUS using software patents, forcing them — by means of patent blackmail — to put Microsoft spyware inside Android. If Ballmer was the extortion racket CEO (like the Mafia), then Nadella is the blackmail CEO. Nothing has changed.

Quoting the patent maximalists from PatentVue: “Earlier this month, Microsoft and Google announced a settlement to end nearly 20 patent-related lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany. The deal brought to close years of patent litigation surrounding various technologies, including gaming systems, mobile devices, and multimedia streaming.

“Envision IP analyzed Microsoft’s US patent portfolio to understand where the company has focused its patenting efforts, as well as to determine emerging technologies which Microsoft may be developing. At a high level, we identified 31,209 in-force, unexpired US patents owned by Microsoft and its subsidiaries. According to the company’s annual 10-K filed in July, Microsoft owns “over 57,000 US and international patents”. Also, according to Microsoft’s Patent Tracker Tool, the company owned 29,235 patents as of December 11, 2014.”

“It’s Microsoft’s utterly shameful patent assault on a Dutch company (and by extension on Linux) using discredited patents which probably never ought to have been granted in the first place.”Rather than produce software Microsoft has been busy bullying the EPO into granting it patents as soon as possible (many of these are on software), even without proper prior art search, checks for inventive step/s, suitability based on European patent scope and so on (there is a fast track now, so an even sloppier examination process is clearly inevitable). Speaking to patent maximalists with a Microsoft Windows Web site several years ago, Microsoft’s Marshall Phelps said that Microsoft would have 50,000 patents within two years. The EPO, as he explained it, “can’t distinguish between hardware and software so the patents get issued anyway” (more so if Microsoft pressures the examiners to do their job at a rush).

For those inside the EPO who don’t understand Microsoft’s insidious (uniquely so!) role in the EPO, including the pressure for a V.I.P. lane, we can humbly suggest a quick read though the TomTom case. It’s Microsoft’s utterly shameful patent assault on a Dutch company (and by extension on Linux) using discredited patents which probably never ought to have been granted in the first place.

Shooting the Mark Cuban (Messenger)

Mark Cuban, an influential person in the US, has expressed his opposition to software patents on many occasions and even put money where his mouth was (investment in Vringo notwithstanding).

“This isn’t what the patent system was supposed to be about.”Patent lawyers and nasty (at times exceptionally rude) proponents of software patents resort to an ad hominem attacks on Mark Cuban, still (ongoing smear campaign). Here is the latest such attack. Patent examiners (technical people) and software developers alike ought to know that their enemies are often patent lawyers and lobbyists, not just their main clients (cash cows), i.e. companies like Microsoft. These people have made a mockery of the patent systems with all sorts of loopholes and corporate/V.I.P. queues. This isn’t what the patent system was supposed to be about. At the beginning it was advocated to the public as the mechanism by which a lone inventor can protect himself or herself from a corporate raid on ideas. Now it’s all reversed. It’s protectionism for the world’s billionaires. Fix it or abolish it. █

“People that use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

Microsoft’s Poaching Efforts (Against GNU/Linux) Advance, Don’t Fall Into the Trap

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 5:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It's a trap

“I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

Summary: Microsoft’s attempts to embrace, extend, extinguish GNU/Linux (convert GNU/Linux virtual instances into Windows, in the long term) an important reminder of a long-established modus operandi

JUST less than a fortnight ago we showed that the Azure 'department' at Microsoft tries poaching GNU/Linux people in events that are about the very opposite of Microsoft. Microsoft propaganda sites (treated as ‘news’ site nonetheless) are now amplifying Microsoft’s E.E.E. blog by saying: “If you’re looking for a job and possess some awesome open source chops, Microsoft might be looking for you. The Azure team is hiring, and they’ve laid out what they’re looking for over at the Microsoft Openness blog.”

“Now, Microsoft is showing its commitment to open source technologies,” Brian Fagioli wrote. No, they are just showing their E.E.E. strategy. Have they dropped the patent lawsuit? Have they stopped bullying FOSS rivals? Nope.

“Priorities may vary depending on the person, but if we want to make the world a better place we need to stop helping those whose ambitions are against public interests.”Microsoft is not about “Openness”, it’s about predation, bribes, blackmail, and mass surveillance. Days ago we mentioned how Microsoft had liaised with TASER (see the press release). Having given plenty of back doors for spooks, Microsoft now gets closer to very shady companies for income, even so-called ‘law enforcement’ (whose potentially-lethal/fatal tools are used domestically to torture dissidents like Matt DeHart in the US). Microsoft is also getting closer to the FOSS-hostile ‘security’ firm Trend Micro, based on puff pieces that accompany the press release or other puff pieces, e.g. [1, 2].

People should reject careers at Microsoft not just because it’s a proprietary software company. It’s an unethical company. Notoriously so. What comes first? Money? Freedom? Ethics? Priorities may vary depending on the person, but if we want to make the world a better place we need to stop helping those whose ambitions are against public interests. █

“Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”

–Linus Torvalds

Android is Being Disrupted by Microsoft and Its Satellite Entities Like Cyanogen, Patent Trolls, and Xamarin

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono at 4:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Forking (to turn Android into a Microsoft common carrier), patent litigation (to threaten zero-cost advantage), and takeovers (to annihilate software freedom)

Fork

Summary: A glance at the current situation in the mobile market, where Microsoft has virtually no presence, with focus on how Microsoft is trying to intervene and wrestle with the market leader, Android

THE MOBILE market is a very lucrative one. Not only has it outgrown the desktop (and laptop) market but it also thrives — from a business point of view — because of a huge number of applications which many people pay for. There is a lot of money to be made in mobility, both on the software side and hardware side. Microsoft makes money from neither.

Microsoft tried hard to enter the mobile market but since the Windows Mobile days it barely ever succeeded. Nowadays, Microsoft’s mobile platforms continue to be called off and Microsoft tries to rebrand, most latterly with the Vista 10 label.

“There is a lot of money to be made in mobility, both on the software side and hardware side. Microsoft makes money from neither.”As many of the spendings are gradually moving away from the desktops, the revenues reported by Microsoft decline a great deal and Microsoft even reports losses. Then, financial games (or accounting tricks) are used to make up for it. According to Wall Street media, Microsoft now “raises money to repurchase stock and repay existing debt. It sold its longest portion, a 40-year bond, at a yield that was 1.8 percentage points more than comparable government debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. also sold bonds today.”

This is not a sign of health; it’s rather the very opposite. Its due to a rapidly-slipping Windows dominance. Rest assured that Microsoft's force-feeding of Windows will only get worse, as the British media serves to reaffirm, as does the pseudo-British media (US company with co.uk domain and some writers who happen to be British but living abroad). Microsoft’s force-feeding of Vista 10 is painted as quite benign by Microsoft Peter, but most people find it infuriating.

“Microsoft’s force-feeding of Vista 10 is painted as quite benign by Microsoft Peter, but most people find it infuriating.”Going back to the situation in the mobile market, it could, in principle, help Microsoft find reprieve. Apple, for example, isn’t doing so badly, and that’s largely owing to its presence in the mobile market (especially where people have a lot money that they are willing to spend). Microsoft cannot sell mobile devices, hence it is unable to impose its APIs, patents, lock-in etc. on this market. This, in turn, harms Microsoft’s desktop monopoly. Based on new articles such as “Microsoft’s smartphone sales collapse and even Surface feels the pinch” or “Microsoft reports falling revenues, slowing Surface sales in latest quarter”, things won’t change for the better any time soon. To quote one report: “‘Mobile first, cloud first’ is Microsoft’s new mantra, but its fiscal first quarter financial results showed growth in only one of them. Indeed, the mobile hardware business saw its revenues fall by a huge 54% year-on-year, to $1.1bn at constant currency, a sad comedown from the glory days of Nokia, and with gross operating profit of just $100m.”

As readers of ours know by now, Microsoft is now attempting E.E.E. (embrace, extend, extinguish) of the leading mobile platform, Android, which is based on Linux. Microsoft tries to turn an open platform into its own proprietary back yard.

The Microsoft booster Tim Anderson now bashes Free software using a case of a company bought by a Microsoft proxy, Xamarin. To be fair to Anderson, maybe it was the editor’s own bait headline, “RoboVM: Open source? Sorry, it’s not working for us” (well, surely it worked well enough until Xamarin decided to take over because the project thrived and then got acquired).

Microsoft and Xamarin appear to be crushing the freedom of Android, one piece at a time, after Xamarin formally took over RoboVM [1, 2]. To quote from Anderson’s article:

The company, which was recently acquired by Xamarin, used to publish its core compiler under the GPL licence. However, users noticed that the latest published version on GitHub was 1.6, while the product itself is at 1.9.

So they turned from copyleft to proprietary. Xamarin sure is a kiss of death to software freedom. As The VAR Guy put it, “RoboVM has made its mobile app development platform closed-source. Previously, the platform was an open source product licensed under the GNU GPL.”

“Xamarin sure is a kiss of death to software freedom.”Quoting further: “So far, the company has not offered details about exactly what went wrong with its open source model. It has only made general statements about how its open code failed to attract many contributions and apparently made life easier for the company’s competitors.

“It’s also unclear to what extent RoboVM’s recent acquisition by Xamarin may have played a role in the decision to close-source the compiler. But we’re betting the timing was more than a coincidence.”

There was also a report from the Microsoft-connected ‘news’ network, 1105 Media, which contains a lot of details. Given this chronology, which probably serves to indicate time overlap between takeover negotiations and the transition to proprietary, there must have been a correlation. To quote: “The six-employee RoboVM last month announced iOS 9 support in a new release, version 1.8, the final release issued under the open source GPL license. Earlier this month, the company announced updated pricing, and shortly after came news of the Xamarin buyout. One disgruntled developer attributed these events to the company’s decision to revert to a proprietary source code model.”

Here are some other interesting parts:

“Cool,” wrote a poster identified as Carsten in reply to Müller’s message. “Now we understand. You were in talks with Xamarin for a while and one of the requirements was an updated price model (no more free stuff!) and closing down the source. Thanks for translating this process into corporate bs-bingo. Attract people for years with an open source model until you attract enough users and are acquired by the next bigger fish. Then we immediately go from open source feel good to updated pricing, closed source. Genius!”

[...]

“Complaints also abounded on a Reddit thread, and a couple Google Group discussions have sprung up to investigate interest in forking the project to keep it open source…”

Miguel de Icaza and his mates appear to love money a lot more than they love software freedom, so they squeeze this goose, RoboVM, for some golden eggs. In due course this can kill the project’s popularity. Cui bono?

“In due course this can kill the project’s popularity.”To quote someone who commented in LXer, “I have to admit, I’m a little confused. On one hand, Microsoft open-sources some components of the .NET framework, and on the other hand they closed-source a vital tool for some Android developers. I’m still convinced that Microsoft doesn’t care about FOSS or GNU/Linux, or their communities. They’re simply trying to nip a market trend in the bud… they’re competing in a manner that appears collaborative at first glance.

“I think it’s time we took a moment to re-evaluate how we look at corporate entities that offer open-source software, and if they are susceptible to buyouts, whether their projects are viable for the community to invest precious time and effort into. RoboVM would never have been such a huge loss if it had forked from the very beginning and managed by a non-corporate entity. We’ve already decided not to trust MySQL any more because of what Oracle has done to it. Why should we not apply this same decision to several other company-offered projects?”

Here is another comment:

In order to put this into perspective, it is important to keep in the forefront of our minds that we are not talking about some small company out there trying in earnest to make a go of it with a free-software project. We are talking about MICROSOFT.

Of course, we have seen this pattern repeated time and time again:

FEAR:

Oh my, a small company was taken advantage of by those evil free-software developers.

UNCERTAINTY:

Well, is this really Microsoft in action or is it Xamarin or is it RoboVM?

DOUBT:

We are all supposed to wonder now if a business model involving free-software is really a good idea… Doubt, please doubt, everyone.

blah, blah, blah… I am so bored by all these pattern repetitions.

Judging this based on the article from the Microsoft booster at The Register (especially the headline), there is indeed a lot of FUD right now, leading people to questioning of the Free software business models. Again, cui bono? █

“Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information. And that’s profitable by definition. How would you like to own the printing press?”

–PaineWebber Media Analyst Christopher Dixon

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts