12.27.09

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Microsoft-Funded Anti-Linux Paper Gets Leaked

Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 10:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analyst’s report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.”

–Microsoft internal document for TEs [PDF]

Summary: The slanderous paper from a so-called ‘Think Tank’ is available for people to assess; Groklaw goes through Microsoft’s dirty laundry

BOYCOTT Novell has mentioned Alexis de Tocqueville on several occasions in recent months because this self-proclaimed “Think Tank” showed up again after spreading Microsoft-sponsored lies about Linux. It sought to encourage and justify lawsuits against Linux, such as the ones we mentioned this morning. One of our readers has just asked: “Seen this? http://www.angelfire.com/linux/toussaint/samizdat/ The PDF of Samizdat by the AdTI, readily available on the internet at last!!”

Apparently that’s new. The paper is now out there for people to view freely. It’s a true scandal. And speaking of scandals, in addition to full Comes v. Microsoft transcripts, Groklaw is now accumulating more data about the exhibits. This would make a nice addition to our existing archive. When handling as many as 9,000 exhibits it is extremely hard to organise them and Groklaw is struggling too.

The material is essentially a dump of all the data that the plaintiffs in Comes v. Microsoft put on their website, including transcripts of the trial and all the exhibits entered into the case. We’re trying to give the data a more meaningful structure so that it will be possible to search by keyword and find particular items in the huge collection.

What’s most important is that the raw data is placed in several mirrors, surely to be preserved for many years to come. This material is extremely damaging to Microsoft because lawyers are using it and partners become aware of Microsoft’s cards. Anyone up for a Microsoft credit card? █

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Microsoft’s Gates Seeks More Monopolies

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 10:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.”

–Albert Camus

Summary: Education is under threat because of the Gates Foundation and other bizarre moves pique people’s curiosity

MR. Gates claims to have retired from Microsoft (he is still active over there, mostly as an über-lobbyist) and as de facto minister of education [1, 2, 3, 4] he continues to bother people, even in Portland schools. Here is an interesting and very detailed post from a month ago. Gates is being called a “philanthro-capitalist”, which is a good title for businessmen who disguise their for-profit operations as “charity” (Gates is not alone in this).

The free market approach to enrollment and funding is a demonstrable failure in Portland, when measured by access to educational opportunity. Unless the district is willing to significantly reduce opportunity for the white middle class, there’s no way they can pay for equity of opportunity without balancing enrollment, that is, by curtailing school choice. This is a significant element of the high school plan. With it, the district appears to be forging a path independent of current trends pushed by Gates, at least for high schools.

But the district appears unwilling to apply the same lesson to middle grades.

Sara Allan’s contention that it’s not the structure of the school that matters, but what goes on in the classroom, also closely parrots the current line being sold by Phillips, now head of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Phillips was the keynote speaker at the Council of The Great City Schools conference held in Portland last month, attended by Allan and quite a few of her administrative colleagues. In her speech, Phillips promoted merit pay for teachers, the latest policy thrust of Gates.

While superintendent in Portland, Philips was responsible for both the transition to K-8 schools and the “small schools” initiative, funded largely by the Gates foundation, which dismantled every comprehensive high school in Portland serving majority non-white students, and split them into rigid “academies.” These academies forced students to choose a narrow field of study as freshmen, and didn’t allow students to take electives offered in other academies in the same building.

[...]

Gates’ quiet partner

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has grown to be the dominant voice in the national education dialogue, heavily influencing the federal education policy of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But even as PPS appears to be taking a non-Gates path on high schools, the district continues to be enamored with Gates’ biggest private-sector education policy ally: Eli Broad’s education foundation.

[...]

“Student performance,” entirely measured by standardized test scores, correlates highly to poverty. Broad’s scheme would almost certainly assure that teachers in poor and minority communities would make less than their colleagues in wealthier schools, only worsening the achievement gap. This puts the lie to Broad’s (and Gates’) stated mission of closing that gap.

[...]

“Student performance,” entirely measured by standardized test scores, correlates highly to poverty. Broad’s scheme would almost certainly assure that teachers in poor and minority communities would make less than their colleagues in wealthier schools, only worsening the achievement gap. This puts the lie to Broad’s (and Gates’) stated mission of closing that gap.

We have also discussed in great length Gates’ aspirations when it comes to controlling agriculture and food around the world. For the uninitiated (as Gates controls/manipulates the press which writes about the subject, using selective funds [1, 2]):

1. With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
2. Gates-Backed Company Accused of Monopoly Abuse and Investigated
3. How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
4. Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
5. Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
6. Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
7. Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
8. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
9. Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
10. Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
11. Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
12. Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
13. Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
14. Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
15. Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
16. Beyond the ‘Public Relations’
17. UK Intellectual Monopoly Office (UK-IPO) May be Breaking the Law
18. “Boycott Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China”

According to this news report, Gates may have just acquired a large farm. If this is true, what would be the motive?

Now, they’re wondering whether the company that paid $27.1 million for the very large farm is owned by Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and the world’s wealthiest man.

[...]

Local officials say the rumor is rampant, but they don’t know whether it’s true. Public records lend support to the theory but aren’t conclusive.

“The Gates Foundation and WHO attack small businesses,” says Gateskeepers, who points to this short article:

“For us to take on WHO is like David taking on Goliath. We’re not ‘big tobacco’ and our mom-and-pop retail members are just small businesses selling legal products that adults enjoy like fine wine or top-shelf Scotch whiskey,” McCalla said, “but we cannot stand by while WHO makes outlandish and outrageous claims that are an affront to the intelligence of all thinking people,” he said.

McCalla chose not to repeat the controversial WHO claims so as not to give them further coverage. However, he explained that they had to do with alleged health issues related to smoking and secondhand smoke.

“They say there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says otherwise,” McCalla explained. “OSHA has, indeed, set safe levels for secondhand smoke and those levels are 25,000 times higher than are found in bars and restaurants.”

Among contributors to WHO is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which, despite its support for WHO’s work with preventing and treating malaria, has been criticized by top WHO staffers for not allowing its funding to be more broadly spent.

What’s ironic is that they don’t actually prevent smoking. A few weeks ago we wrote about the Gates Foundation investing in Big Tobacco. This is not exactly news and it is not surprising, either. In a way, it is in Gates’ financial interests to harm small tobacco companies not because smoking is bad but because Big Tobacco’ is inside his portfolio.

It is hard to explain the rationale behind all of this, but such factual observations may help in explaining future actions. Microsoft's patent troll, whom Gates invests a lot of money in, has already begun his racketeering operation (he runs the world’s largest patent troll). He keeps those patent stunts and positive press going [1, 2] while rather awkward is the global warming-related patent promotion. They try to glorify patents by portraying them as a tool that will literally save the world. We last mentioned this right here and we also showed that Nathan Myhrvold funds studies that defend and even promote patent-trolling/harvesting.

As a side note, Microsoft turns out to have sought more control of the VoIP market, but it lost in bidding.

O2 is #1 in bid to acquire Jajah

[...]

Now it seems the company has caught the attention of O2 who has made an offer to buy Jajah for $200 million according to TheMarker financial website, as reported by Reuters. O2 beat Cisco and Microsoft who were also in the running to acquire the company.

Luckily it’s Telefonica which got it, not Microsoft. Microsoft would love to control telephony (communication) too.

Telefonica Europe, better known as O2, already has a user-base of more than 48 million as a part of its communication business, and the addition of Jajah to its stable would presumably help the company beef up its offerings to attract more customers.

Microsoft was built by a determined monopoliser, whose appetite for more monopoliies never abated. In the early days of Microsoft he told a popular magazine (only in print) about his aspiration to control the world. He actually said that. But now he wears the costume of a “philanthro-capitalist” rather than that of a ruthless, merciless dictator who disregards the law and pays the fines later, only to prove that crime pays off. █

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IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: December 27th, 2009

Posted in IRC Logs at 9:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

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Links 27/12/2009: RSSOwl 2 Reviewed, Glimpse at Fedora Omega 12

Posted in News Roundup at 6:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Joerg Heilig, Sun Microsystems Senior Engineering Director talks about OpenOffice.org 12 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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gNewSense Abandons Ubuntu, Microsoft’s Mono Agenda Revisited

Posted in Debian, FSF, GNU/Linux, GPL, Law, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 10:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: gNewSense is shifting to Debian codebase, shafting Mono, and the debate about Mono and Moonlight reaches new levels

THE FSF has already taken a stance against the use of Mono and the SFLC has shown that Moonlight is not acceptable from a legal perspective (the latest “promise” from Microsoft has at least 10 holes in it).

gNewSense, the distribution which Richard Stallman is currently using, has already removed Mono [1, 2] and gNewSense developers are now “dropping Ubuntu” (not our words) and moving to Debian, just like MEPIS did. From the site’s updated FAQ (“modified on December 23, 2009, at 09:42 PM”):

13. Will gNewSense 3.0 be based on Debian instead of Ubuntu, and why?

Yes, because:

* Debian separates free and non-free software better, so it’s easier to make a fully free derivative out of it.
* Debian supports the architectures we want to support (e.g. MIPS).
* it suits our infrastructure better (easier development).

Since Gobuntu never materialised [1, 2], this means that there is no longer a truly free/libre variant of Ubuntu.

gNewSense’s reasons are known (see above). In the case of MEPIS, the reasons had to do with infrastructure too. One cannot help wondering if Ubuntu’s increasing reliance on Mono also had something to do with this decision, even subconsciously.

To quote a conversation that came up an hour ago in our IRC channel (the full log will be posted tomorrow):

Regarding the text of the new Moonlight covenant, Groklaw writes: “So Moonlight is being framed as a proprietary product, then, I gather.” Groklaw highlights what it calls an “interesting bit” from the covenant, namely: ““Moonlight Implementation” means only those specific portions of Moonlight 3 or Moonlight 4 that run only as Conforming Runtimes within a Conforming Host on a Personal Computer and are not licensed under GPLv3 or a Similar License.”

One of our readers, Brandon, has written a long post to explain Microsoft’s “Mono/Moonlight Agenda”. To quote just a portion (it is a very detailed analysis):

Many relevant points are brought up in this section. James Plamondon states (infamously) that “Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat.”

This would imply that by using the C# standard (ECMA 334 & 335), Microsoft receives a small victory. An example of defeat would be lines of code written in Java, C++ (Standardized, C++98 or C++03 for example), Python, etc.

The second paragraph explains that they want to use psychological, economic, and political weapons to convince people to adopt their standards. Often I hear a lot of business talk about wanting to use Microsoft because most of their customer base is Windows machines. Other excuses for sticking with Microsoft has been the FUD “Total Cost of Ownership” studies that falsely prove Microsoft is cheaper or that GNU/Linux is more expensive.

Some days ago we wrote about Novell’s removal of GPL-licensed code from MonoDevelop [1, 2]. Why is Novell still against the GNU GPL? Its ally Microsoft hates the GPL with passion, so this may not seem so absurd a move after all.

In defence of the GPL, Groklaw writes regarding Glyn Moody’s article and Google’s highly-cited document: “The GPL would mean there’d be no need to work hard to avoid fragmenting. If you choose a license that can fragment, you will get fragmenting, because proprietary desires are sure to come into the picture, as they did with UNIX. That’s exactly what is wrong with Apache. It’s open, until it isn’t.”

At this stage, Mono too is being closed. It’s not so surprising considering the fact that Novell calls itself a “mixed source” company. It’s false marketing [1, 2]. █

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Even During Christmas, the Multiple-times Convicted Monopolists Spur Attacks on OLPC Charity

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, Hardware, Microsoft, OLPC at 9:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Picture from Wikipedia

Summary: Slime continues to be thrown at OLPC, thanks in part to Intel and Microsoft, the outlaw companies whose role in fighting OLPC was confirmed before

LAST week we shared some revealing information about OLPC (see the OLPC index). A few days ago we showed that OLPC was coming up with a new design whose architecture probably excludes Windows (ARM/MIPS). OLPC News opines that Windows got its way, but see the comments on this post (GNU/Linux was never a problem for OLPC). Evidence has actually been suggesting that OLPC lost interest in Microsoft and Microsoft lost interest in OLPC, which was never valuable to its shareholders in the first place.

For Microsoft, getting involved in OLPC was about derailing Google and GNU/Linux, as revealed by internal documents [1, 2]. It was not about children or education.

“The main perpetrators were Intel and Microsoft, which systematically dealt blows to this charity.”Over at Groklaw, there is a pointer to the article “Skeptics Question OLPC’s Focus With $75 Tablet”

“Because they always do,” adds Pamela Jones, “Perhaps some monopolies need to stop trying to make it an unachievable goal? That is, from my perspective, what happened to the first XO. So it’s a bit rich to accuse OLPC of not reaching a goal that certain monopolies tried to crush so as to make it not achievable. Shame on them, and go OLPC! I love the new design, which once again shows what vendors could give us if they only wanted to. It’s unrealistic only if you define realistic as making a huge profit on each device, n’est-ce pas?”

OLPC was a good case study in corporate corruption. The main perpetrators were Intel and Microsoft, which systematically dealt blows to this charity. Last year the London Times launched an investigation and published an exposé about it. Its verdict was that Intel and Microsoft indeed attacked the project. They harmed its reputation, too. █

“Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

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ISO Should Withdraw OOXML After Microsoft and Alex Brown Lied About Patents

Posted in Deception, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Patents, Standard at 9:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: With the ending of the i4i case OOXML should be removed from ISO and cease to be used

THIS is a subject that we wrote about before, right after it turned out that Microsoft had deliberately lied by saying that OOXML had no patent issues. Microsoft was already struggling against i4i in court [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], knowing damn well the implications it would probably have when it comes to OOXML. Microsoft lied with pride. Microsoft also corrupted ISO with the help of insiders — “accomplices” as one might label them.

Sun’s Tim Bray has just said what many came to witness a few months back.

At the time of the huge OOXML dogfight, one of the reasons Microsoft claimed that the world needed OOXML, even though there was already a perfectly-good ISO-standard XML office-document format, was that it enabled this wonderful customization feature.

What Bray calls the “OOXML dogfight” was a phenomenal display of disregard for the law (see the OOXML Abuse Index), in which the BRM convenor, Alex Brown, personally participated [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones writes: “I wonder how Alex Brown and the gang will handle OOXML now that Microsoft has been found guilty of willful patent infringement in the i4i case and so must remove functionality from XML in its Word products? Does it mean that the standard is no longer “in use”? That it must be withdrawn due to a patent having been asserted against it?”

ISO is probably too corrupt and vain to withdraw OOXML, but that’s what it ought to be doing at this stage. Microsoft rammed something ridiculous under false pretenses, not just with bribery.

Speaking of patents, here is interesting news:

A recent Microsoft patent application applies a similar approach to defining navigational queries. The inventors of the patent filing tell us that queries can be generally classified as falling into a couple of broad categories: discovery queries and navigational queries.

More here:

He compares the Microsoft filing to a recent Yahoo patent filing that details what the Sunnyvale, Calif., company might look for when deciding whether a query was navigational or not. Slawski bases some of his analysis on Microsoft’s “best match” feature.

We previously wrote about the possibility that Microsoft would use patents against Google. █

“The ISO process, brutal and corrupt as it was, has been covered to death by everyone.”

–Tim Bray

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Groklaw Suspects Microsoft May be Behind Neon’s Attack on GNU/Linux in Mainframes

Posted in Antitrust, Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Patents, SCO, Servers at 8:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The everlasting pattern of legal attacks almost convinces Groklaw that Microsoft is driving more lawsuits against GNU/Linux

FOR THOSE who do not know yet, T3 is partly owned by Microsoft after it attacked GNU/Linux-powered mainframes. We covered this case in:

• Has Microsoft Just Invested in Another Lawsuit Against IBM?
• Microsoft Pays Professor to Write a Paper Against IBM’s GNU/Linux-Powered Mainframes
• Microsoft Innovation is Lawsuits by Proxy
• T3 Receives Millions from “Unnamed Entity” After Microsoft Investment, to Attack GNU/Linux on Mainframes
• What People Say About Microsoft’s Alleged Anti-Linux Lawsuit (via T3)
• The Microsoft Lobby and Heavy Investments Put IBM in Antitrust Probe
• T3 is Partly Owned by Microsoft Now

Last week we wrote about Neon suing in a similar fashion. At the time it happened, Groklaw made no speculation and its opinion on this subject matters because Groklaw had spent over 5 years looking at an anti-IBM and anti-Linux lawsuit which was funded by Microsoft but came from SCO.

“…Groklaw had spent over 5 years looking at an anti-IBM and anti-Linux lawsuit which was funded by Microsoft but came from SCO.”Pamela Jones has had more time to assess the latest case and in reference to this recent summit, she wrote: “I’ve been listening to the keynotes from Red Hat’s Summit 2009, and IBM’s [Robert] Sutor gives a talk on Linux being in use everywhere, and he was pointing out that if you are talking about mainframes, you are talking about Linux. So, I said to myself, is *that* why there is another antitrust allegation against IBM in the mainframe space even after the court just ruled against T3′s similar allegations — is this another attack on Linux using the judicial/regulatory system? That would explain the Microsoft shadow in the picture, would it not?”

Here at Boycott Novell we choose not to speculate about this but rather to present other people’s speculations. It only makes sense to do this, in case we discover something new in the future. Let’s look at the verified facts. Larry Goldfarb (BayStar), a key investor in SCO, said that Microsoft’s “Mr. Emerson and [him] discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured [his] that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”

Considering the way Microsoft stepped behind T3 right after it had sued IBM, one cannot help wondering if there were similar arrangements surrounding the latest case.

Since we’ve mentioned Red Hat’s Summit, worth recalling is the legal case against Microsoft’s alleged corruption with the government of Switzerland. It’s appearing again in this week’s news, under the headline “Microsoft rebels”:

When monopoly meets budget crunch

Over the past couple of years, Microsoft shops have been increasingly wooed by vendors offering alternatives to Windows, Exchange, Microsoft Office and other Microsoft wares. The competition has grown so fierce that in May, Red Hat went so far as to sue Switzerland (and win), saying that it could not grant Microsoft a no-bid contract for Office when so many other options exist.

It’s not Red Hat actually, it’s many companies. We highlighted this pattern of disinformation before:

1. Microsoft Sued Over Its Corruption in Switzerland, Microsoft Debt Revisited
2. Can the United Kingdom and Hungary Still be Sued for Excluding Free Software?
3. 3 New Counts of Antitrust Violation by Microsoft?
4. Is Microsoft Breaking the Law in Switzerland Too?
5. Microsoft Uses Lobbyists to Attack Holland’s Migration to Free Software and Sort of Bribes South African Teachers Who Use Windows
6. ZDNet/eWeek Ruins Peter Judge’s Good Article by Attacking Red Hat When Microsoft Does the Crime
7. Week of Microsoft Government Affairs: a Look Back, a Look Ahead
8. Lawsuit Against Microsoft/Switzerland Succeeds So Far, More Countries/Companies Should Follow Suit
9. Latest Reports on Microsoft Bulk Deals Being Blocked in Switzerland, New Zealand
10. Swiss Government and Federal Computer Weekly: Why the Hostility Towards Free Software?
11. Switzerland and the UK Under Fire for Perpetual Microsoft Engagements
12. Lawsuit Over Alleged Microsoft Corruption in Switzerland Escalates to Federal Court

In conclusion, Microsoft still seems to be investing in spurious lawsuits against GNU/Linux, whereas its own corrupt behaviour in government (contracting) is having it sued by dozens of companies. One might suggest that Microsoft is trying to distract people away from its own crimes by accusing others (notably IBM) of crime. But Microsoft, the company which brought "Jihad" to computing, does not make these accusations directly; it pays other companies to do the dirty work, just as it had Murdoch badmouth Google for weeks [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. Remember those anti-Linux software patents it marketed to patent trolls just a few months ago [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]? █

“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”

–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO

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