12.02.11
Posted in News Roundup at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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A new debate’s upon us! No one would argue the fact that smartphones, tablets and similar devices are “computers”, but would it be appropriate to label the same devices “PCs”? With an analyst firm doing just that recently, we’ve decided to take a look at multiple factors to see if such a classification is a good or bad thing.
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Desktop
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Roll back the calendar only 5 years…
After playing around Linux for a few months I decided to get a version installed on an old Dell Inspiration 3200 laptop so I could surf the Internet without fear. Such an old laptop didn’t have a built-in WiFi adapter, so I used a PCI Card WiFi adapter plugged into a PCI Card slot. A WiFi card that was very common but it had no Linux driver. I used the Windows driver and NDISWrapper to get the WiFi working with Linux
In my first ½ year of experimenting with Linux (mid 2005) many basic functions were not part of the kernel (2.4) of the RedHat 7.2. I had to write scripts to mount and access my digital camera or USB FlashDrives.
Windows NTFS support on RedHat 7.2 was non-existent. Then NTFS support in Linux became experimental. Now it’s completely transparent and build in. It “Just Works”
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Server
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To your typical IT organization, the Top500 Supercomputing list released twice a year — while interesting — has little bearing on today’s operations. Grand proclamations and goals, such as reaching Exaflop performance by 2018, also have little impact on the day-to-day goings-on in most data centers. (As quick background info: A FLOP is the number of FLoating Point Operations performed Per Second; an Exaflop is 1018 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 FLOPs.)
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Kernel Space
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A number of changes to Btrfs mean that filesystem structures will not be as prone to corruption in case of system crashes. By bundling blocks into clusters, Ext4 should be a lot faster in some scenarios. CIFS also promises speed gains.
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Among many other enhancements and alterations, the Linux 3.2 kernel, the Btrfs file-system has some “pretty beefy” changes. Btrfs in Linux 3.2 merges in some long-standing Btrfs branches with new capabilities.
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Graphics Stack
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Applications
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One of the most widely used open source picture editing software; My Paint has undergone an upgrade and its latest release i.e. MyPaint Version 1.1.0 has been brought into existence. Subtle yet highly functional changes have been made to the software which includes a new configurable toolbar, configurable mouse actions and many more. Significant changes have been made to the performance and speed of the software and so are its brush collections. There are lots more, so let us take some time to check it out.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine
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There are certainly arguments to be made against the use of Wine. Linux purists say it defeats the purpose of using free software. Others simply think it doesn’t work very well. But sometimes you just need a Windows app that has no suitable Linux counterpart, and virtualizing a full version of Windows or buying a whole other computer isn’t an option. Time to pour yourself a glass of Wine and hope for the best.
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Games
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For fans of both gaming and open source software, few major video game companies have been revered as id software, one of the only major game studios that has not only perpetually released game clients for Linux, but has also released the source code for many of their proprietary game engines. Admittedly, the source code is always released once the next generation of id’s gaming engine was launched.
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Desktop Environments
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GNOME Desktop
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In an effort to slim down and improve its cross-platform capabilities, the developers of the Chrome browser and ChromeOS itself appear to be shifting away from Gtk use.
This bit of information was quietly pointed out earlier in the month on the Aura window manager pages for the Chromium Projects. Chromium is the open source implementation of Chrome and ChromeOS, and Aura is the new window manager and shell environment that will support the various interface elements on these implementations.
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Don’t use DistroWatch as a measuring stick in any way for the popularity of a Linux distribution.
Seriously, stop it.
In fact, why are we even asking the question at all?
“Popularity” is a term that smacks of our days in high school, when we thought we should care about social standing and where we fit in that ranking. Now apparently, we seem to be locked into this notion of figuring out which distro is most popular, too.
This is a silly question, for multiple reasons.
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New Releases
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With all the excitement and discussion surrounding the recent release of Linux Mint 12 (and Fedora 16, and openSuSE 12.1), it is easy to overlook the smaller Linux distributions. Vector Linux is a good example of this, with their recently announced 7.0 distribution. The relatively small number people behind the Vector Linux distribution have put a phenomenal amount of work into this release – I saw the first VL7.0 Beta releases early this year, and there have been several Release Candidates since about May or June. The result of all that hard work is what I consider to be one of the nicest of the Slackware-based “easy-to-use” Linux distributions.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Today Denis Koryavov, lead interface developer at ROSA Labs, announced a new media player for ROSA/Mandriva. ROSA Media Player (ROMP) is a fork of MPlayer and SMPlayer with a sleek design and new features. Today a beta of 1.0 was made available to test and Koryavov says it’s stable.
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Gentoo Family
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Aside from a few applications failing to start before updates were applied, another issues I observed with Sabayon 7 KDE is that a connected printer was not automatically configured, even though cupsd, the printer daemon, is started out of the box. In Pardus, a KDE-based distribution that made the list of the top 6 KDE distributions for 2011, any connected printer in the printers database is automatically configured.
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Red Hat Family
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Recently it was published by DistroWatch that the Linux Mint distribution has passed Ubuntu and is now considered the most popular. In order from most popular on down, this list at DistroWatch starts with Linux Mint, followed by Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE. There are others listed as well.
But I wanted to take a moment and touch on Fedora and the Red Hat based distributions to distinguish the differences among them. I am a huge fan of the Red Hat based distributions. Why? Well, I’ve used them since the early days of Linux distributions, and have been hooked ever since. I’ve had excellent luck with Red Hat, I like the tools that Red Hat develops and places in their distributions, and there is a huge support community for it. I’ve also found that Red Hat is a good company, and stands behind its products. It has been VERY supportive and active in the open source community for decades, and continues to show its commitment to open source software. I also think their software models are highly successful, with the Fedora / Red Hat split that we saw in 2003. Back then I was surprised with the split at first, but after a couple of years using both Fedora and Red Hat Linux, I soon discovered that the move to split the two was ingenious. I will explain why below.
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At a company that values engineers as highly as Red Hat does, Pinchev still commands profound respect, not to mention fear, despite not being able to write a line of code. Over the last nine years, Pinchev’s relentless, dogged determination to increase sales has paid for huge contributions to the Linux kernel and open-source software, generally.
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Fedora
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If you are a Fedora using running Fedora 15 or even Fedora 14 and want to upgrade to the latest, and the greatest, version of Fedora, you can easily do that using PreUpgrade. The goal of PreUpgrade is to provide a way for Fedora users who wish to upgrade from one release to a newer version of Fedora by easily pre-resolving and downloading all the necessary packages before rebooting the system into the Fedora installer to complete the update.
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Another interesting addition inside the context menu is the “Restore Missing Files” option, which lets you connect to an on-site or cloud server to recover from accidental deletions.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Although officially a version 10 refresh and still under the “Statler” moniker, the latest Crunchbang release constitutes some notable changes.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Inspired my Mark Shuttleworth’s recent post about Alan Bell’s Unity TV mockups, I’ve decided to try my hand at some. Alan did his using Pencil, which is an awesome tool for UI mockups that I wrote about previously, so it was easy enough for me to get started. Here is my first one, a mockup where just the Launcher and Unity panel are showing (no Dash):
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For the past few years, Ubuntu has been considered the most popular Linux distribution. Recently, there has been a flurry of blog posts claiming that Linux Mint is now more popular than Ubuntu. While Linux Mint seems to have gained greatly in popularity since the first release in 2006, all meaningful statistics (if there is such a thing) point to Ubuntu’s clear lead in usage and popularity.
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In his own words: “By 14.04 LTS Ubuntu will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart screens from the car to the office kitchen, and it will connect those devices cleanly and seamlessly to the desktop, the server and the cloud.”
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Jan Lehnardt, Chairman of the Apache CouchDB Project Management Committee (PMC), writing on behalf of the CouchDB developers, shed some light on why Canonical dropped its use of the CouchDB NoSQL database from the cloud synchronisation service Ubuntu One. The announcement by Canonical had created some uncertainty about CouchDB and its capabilities. The message from the developers is “Do not worry, the project is alive and well” said Lehnardt.
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The Gnome project has dropped a bomb today by announcing a site for Gnome 3 Shell extensions. The site is in alpha stage and brings the much needed extensions for Gnome 3 Shell under one site.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint, which has effortlessly managed to usurp the top spot from Ubuntu (according to DistroWatch ranking), has just released its latest version. Codenamed “Lisa”, Linux Mint 12 is based on Ubuntu 11.10 and features a perfect blend of GNOME 3 and the newly designed Mint GNOME Shell Extensions (MGSE).
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Linux Mint appears to be soaring in popularity at the expense of high-profile distros such as Ubuntu, figures from DistroWatch have suggested. The site’s latest page hit numbers show a sharp decline in the last month for Ubuntu, which having occupied second spot throughout year has now dropped to fourth place, behind even Fedora, openSUSE and top performer, Mint.
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The Apache Software Foundation has been making life better for open-source developers since 1999, but has its time passed?
A recent blog argues that nonprofit ASF is causing more harm than good by being mired in the past.
“It is my belief that we are, right now, in the middle of a very large evolution in the ecology of open source,” wrote Mikeal Rogers, a developer advocate at Yammer, a private, secure social network for companies. Yet Apache remains focused on problems that no longer exist — removing barriers to entry — creating a “chasm between Apache and the new culture of open source,” he said.
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Events
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A little history: Mimi Cafiero (yes, that’s my girl) and Malakai Wade, two teenage girls who are helping to organize SCALE 10X’s young people’s conference, staunchly proclaimed that, “We are not kids.” So the title of SCALE 10X Kids Conference was in peril from the start.
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CMS
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According to the fourth annual study by water&stone, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are the three most popular among 20 free web content management systems, narrowed down from an initial list of 35. WordPress is in the lead by a long way, followed by Joomla. Having lead the field two years ago and been overtaken by WordPress last year, it is natable how Joomla’s popularity has declined since last year. Among the .NET-based CMS players, DotNetNuke dominates, while among Java-based CMSes, Liferay and Alfresco are the joint leaders.
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As I wrote earlier this week, few markets have such a rich selection of quality open source products as does the content management systems (CMS) space. One of the leaders in the open source CMS market is Drupal. In fact this blog post is written on a Drupal system. Down in the Big Easy on December 8th and 9th there will be a Drupal conference called Drupal on the Bayou.
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Public Services/Government
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The regional administration of the Italian island of Sicily is to consider a law nudging public administrations to use of free and open source software. The proposal, by Massimo Ferrara, a member of the Democratic Party, might also help prevent the break-up of a school on the island, the Instituto Majorana, involved in producing instruction videos on this type of software.
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Cablegate
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange launched the website’s new project Thursday, the publication of files it claims shows a global industry that gives dictatorships tools to spy on their citizens.
In parallel to Assange’s announcement, Wikileaks’ partner Owni.fr released evidence that a French firm helped Moamer Kadhafi’s former Libyan regime spy on opposition figures living in exile in Britain.
It had already been revealed that the electronics firm, Amesys, had worked with the Libyan regime — and French rights groups are attempting to take the group to court — but Owni’s files will prove embarrassing.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has teamed up with Wisconsin’s right-wing John K. MacIver Institute on a website and TV ad to support Governor Scott Walker as he faces recall. AFP and MacIver are aiming to convince residents that Walker’s fiscal policies have been good for the state.
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Last year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) attracted attention when reporters revealed Arizona’s SB1070 anti-immigration law was pre-approved by ALEC corporations that stood to benefit from its passage. As ALEC’s legislative and corporate members descend upon Arizona for meetings this week, a new report (pdf) shows that ALEC’s influence in Arizona goes beyond SB1070 to include bills that suppress voting, attack worker’s rights, privatize public education, and limit environmental protections.
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Censorship
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After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered “all Internet search engines” and “all social media websites”—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to “de-index” the domain names and to remove them from any search results.
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Civil Rights
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The rootkit belongs to a company called Carrier IQ and it seems that it has low-level access to the system that allows it to spy on pretty much everything that you do with your handset. This, on the face of it, seems like an extremely serious breach of security, privacy and trust.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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To avoid the reach of U.S. copyright laws, numerous online pirates have set up shop in countries less willing or able to enforce intellectual property rights. Policymakers agree that these “rogue” sites pose a real problem for U.S. artists and rights holders who aren’t getting paid for the rampant distribution of their music, movies and other creative works. The question is how to help them. Lawmakers keep offering proposals, but they don’t seem to be getting any closer to the right answer.
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12.01.11
Posted in America, Patents at 7:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bits and pieces of news from the United States and what it helps teach us about the dangers of US-style patent law spreading to other countries
THE state of Texas has become known for its harbouring of patent trolls. There are other parasitical occupations forming there, such as this one:
iRunway, a technology research firm specializing in litigation support and patent portfolio analysis, has reported increased demand for source code analysis as software and Internet patent infringement cases and awards grow at a dramatic pace.
This seems more like a generator of lawsuits. Here is one who “oversees the electronics and software patent practice at Kilpatrick Townsend’s Palo Alto office.” And here is Facebook buying a patent aggressor:
Two years after suing Facebook for patent infringement, Baltimore-based WhoGlue, a small developer of software for membership organizations, has now been acquired by the social networking giant, according to multiple reports.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Facebook reportedly plans to incorporate the company’s technology, which allows membership organizations to form private social networks.
More here:
A patent-infringement lawsuit ended up leading to an acquisition, as relationship-management-software developer WhoGlue announced that it was acquired by Facebook.
WhoGlue filed suit against Facebook in September 2009, claiming that the social network “violated a patent awarded to WhoGlue in 2007 for an “information management system’ to control personal information as human networks and technology increasingly mesh.”
What does that really tell us about the patent system? This certainly is not an example of entrepreneurship.
In the United States, where software patents are not a dirty word, the litigation frequency has gone through the roof (with some causal relationship wrt software patents) and a software parents competition is being launched by the USPTO to celebrate this chaos. How about this from the news? What we are trying to show is, these are mostly troublesome situations that a system with software patents is permitting. Outside the US there are still debates on the subject and the FFII managed to make it into ZDNet Asia. To quote the relevant portions:
The current intellectual property (IP) rights and patent system is flawed and some markets are already in the midst of reforming the system, but authorities need to avoid making minor tweaks and look at how changes can better spur innovation and boost the economy, observers pointed out.
Foundation for a Free Information Structure’s (FFII) general secretary Andre Rebentisch, for one, said the current mobile patents war waged by various companies such as Apple, HTC, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft, is an example of how “things only got worse” with the existing IP regime. The FFII is a not-for-profit organization registered in 20 European countries dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition and open standards, according to its Web site.
Right now in Europe we are struggling to keep out the interests of multinationals and their lawyers. It is clear what would be better for local businesses, but there are front groups/lobbyists that hijack their voice very maliciously.
In the US, states might think that more patents are the answer, but this is just that same old propaganda. Monopolies do not have economic value for the whole system. To quote the dumb statement of the day:
The State Auditor says California needs to do a better job at protecting intellectual property rights.
In a new report this week, State Auditor Elaine Howle says California needs to create guidelines to make sure it gets fully compensated when others use inventions and software developed by state workers.
What utter nonsense and a misuse of the word “invention”, which has nothing to do with royalties and patents. Next week will be interesting because of the crazy idea of bringing Europe’s patent law into closer alignment with the chaos above. A global patent system would not be kinder; it would be orders of magnitude worse. Which in a was is good for wealthy companies (deep pockets) and lawyers; chaos is then profitable and it is also a framework for driving away entrants. █
Broken and dead
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google at 7:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple — the best money can buy?
APPLE was hoping to magically embargo its competition (Linux-based) in one fell swoop. Apple followers who think with their ego and not with their mind might think this is just, but it is a total abuse of everything we know about due process and adherence to law. According to reports, Apple is still trying hard to ban, ban, ban. Apple is a disgraceful company, a sore loser. To quote:
Apple is now seeking yet another ban on Samsung’s modified Galaxy Tablet in Germany. The iPad maker earlier succeeded in getting a ban on Samsung’s Galaxy tab in Germany in a ‘moronic’ ruling by the Düsseldorf court.
Meanwhile in Australia, Apple loses the case, which might make one wonder if Apple fraudulently files a lawsuit to just take the competition off the shelves (like false DMCA claims). Apple targets trolls-friendly courts and presents fake evidence. For that too Apple should probably have legal action (maybe antitrust) invoked. Apple is just out of control. Here is one report about Apple’s case falling apart:
Chalk one up for Samsung in the great patent rumble of 2011; the company has had Apple’s sales ban on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 overturned in Australia.
Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster has reversed the sales ban, as was predicted late last week, although it’s still in place until Friday this week.
There are British reports on this and they put things in context:
Samsung has been handed a rare win in its patent battle with Apple, with Australia’s Federal Court deciding to overturn the injunction that prevents it from selling its Galaxy 10.1 tablet in Australia.
Originally, a single judge of the court, Justice Annabelle Bennett, had granted Apple’s request for an injunction against the sale of the fondleslab, triggering a complaint from Samsung that it would miss the opportunity for Christmas sales of the product.
However, in a full bench sitting, Justices Dowser, Foster and Yates have decided the device can hit the stores after all – although it’s not known to The Register how long Samsung will need to get shipments into the country and in front of punters. The only hint is earlier evidence that devices could land here within seven days.
Apple and Samsung are involved in an increasingly-bitter – and spreading – battle over fondleslab patents, with each accusing the other of patent violations. Apple says the Galaxy 10.1 is a slavish copy of the iPad, while Samsung is focussing on the internals, dragging in patents covering wireless technologies that are part of the 3G standard.
It is Apple that started this. It showed its inability to catch up with Android/Linux.
Take a look at Apple land for a day. The battery issues are widely reported even in Apple forums and phones go on fire. It’s defective, overpriced junk with an Apple logo on it. Quality control is MIA. To quote:
Where there’s smoke, there’s…if not exactly fire, how about a glowing red iPhone on an airplane? No really, someone’s iPhone apparently turned the color of molten rock (aka “lava”) and began venting “dense smoke” on an Australian regional airline last week, prompting a flight attendant to break out the cabin’s fire extinguisher.
Apple — the best money can buy? █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: European Advocate General and a UK government report get involved in the debate
FOLLOWING the embarrassing news about the EU Patent, sane lawyers such as Carlo Piana point out that the “Advocate General @ ECJ says that monopolize an idea is detrimental to technological progress and industrial development. #swpats torpedoed”
It is too premature to say that they are torpedoed because patent lawyers work hard to change practices in Europe, along with their clients and their lobbyists. Here is more about that and some thoughts from Dr. Glyn Moody, who writes: “One of the many hopeful signs that the Hargreaves team knew what they were talking about was the recognition that patent thickets were an increasing danger in many fields, notably that of mobile technology. One of the actions flowing from the report was to investigate this area further, and now the UK government has released its report”
Here is a good summary from Slashdot:
bhagwad writes “The EU continues to ooze common sense as a court insists that software functions themselves cannot be copyrighted. Drawing a box or moving cursor are examples. To quote: ‘If it were accepted that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such, that would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.’” Note that this is a “non-binding opinion by Yves Bot, an advocate-general at the Luxembourg-based EU Court of Justice,” and that the court “will rule on the case next year.”
Over at Reuters, it is stated that “[t]he case is seen as crucial for the European computer industry and could determine how companies create products that can work with rival services without breaching copyright rules.
“The non-binding opinion by Yves Bot, an advocate-general at the Luxembourg-based EU Court of Justice (ECJ), is in line with a verdict reached by the High Court of England and Wales in July last year. ECJ judges will rule on the case next year.”
The remark from the FFII is that:
Copyright puts software authors in the driving seat. Why do others drop bricks on the highway?
Here are some remarks on the reports [1, 2]. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Despite seemingly democratic structures, the EPO and its ilk manage to sneak in a restructuring of the patent systems in Europe
Early in the week we found some troubling news about software patents in Europe. Gérald Sédrati-Dinet says about the unitary patent that “approval is planed for Dec 5, Dec 22 is the ceremony”
“Even worse,” Ben jamin responds. He thought it was something more benign in comparison:
Unitary Patent to be approved by the Council next 22 December with a signature ceremony.
He carried on arguing [1, 2, 3, 4] while patent lawyers from Germany got baffled: “Why does the #EU webpage showing the time schedule for agreement on Unified Patent Court not work any more?”
There is a discussion about software standards inside patents [1, 2] and the lawyers’ powwow [1, 2, 3, 4] gravitates towards the position that within a few days we may have a rather troubling presentation:
EPO presentation about the Unitary Patent, the patent system designed outside Europe and its institutions ur1.ca/66vqa
December 5th is named as the big day and it is the same day that I fly away for a week (for vacation). Hopefully there are many European activists out there who will inform others and do something to stop this. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google at 6:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Millions of Linux devices will be sold this Christmas
Summary: How Google leads the way with a Linux-powered operating system and what this will mean for Microsoft and its alter-ego Facebook
IN THIS day and age when people can use phones and tablets to replace laptops and desktops for some tasks, it has become increasingly clear that the boundary between PC and non-PC is becoming harder to define. Since Android is growing rapidly in phones and tablets we also know that claims about Linux being “dead” (or “dying”) are at best a joke. Nobody can take such claims seriously anymore.
According to my co-host Tim, Facebook’s attempts to capitalise on the trends (with Facebook phones) might meet the same lukewarm response that KIN received. Android is owned by Google, which is probably Facebook’s #1 rival right now. To quote:
Whilst Microsoft struggles to get interest in WP7, its often forgot that the ailing firm from Redmond have already been here before courtesy of the doomed Kin, even proclamations by Microsoft MVPs as it being the “greatest social networking phone ever” didn’t save it from failure, with the lifespan of the device lasting only 60 or so days. I would like the Microsoft advocates who came to Openbytes when I predicted the failure of the Kin to maybe retract their protestations that they voiced at my views at the time. That won’t happen, there’s a new Microsoft phone to make claims about and sell, I would think they have forgotten all about the Kin which not only serves as an uncomfortable reminder of failure but maybe also a reminder in general about Microsoft’s doomed mobile strategy.
It is not too clear what Facebook is thinking. People can use Facebook even without a specialised phone. We are no friends of Facebook, but seriously, they would be better off advised not to ‘pull a KIN’ of their own. No matter what Facebook does in this case, there is trouble ahead because the dominant OS is Google’s and Microsoft, Facebook’s big shareholder, is a non-starter in this area. The new these days says that Windows will fail in tablets just like it failed in phones. To quote a pro-Microsoft source:
Just a couple months after one study claimed the majority of tabet-buying users wanted a device based on Windows, another research outfit is reporting that consumers are sick of waiting for a true iPad competitor from Microsoft.
Consumers’ interest in buying a Windows tablet has plummeted in the past six months, according to a new Forrester Research report on November 29.
Forrester is a friend of Microsoft in general and the article is from from Mary Jo Foley., the company’s longtime booster (specially in recent years).
Vista 8 seems more like a dangerous experiment and some news sites report a decrease in interest, not an increase in interest:
Punters appear to be turning away from the Windows 8 tablets Microsoft hopes will get it back into the fondleslab game.
Back in January, Forrester Research, a market watcher, asked consumers which tablets they favoured. Some 46 per cent said they’d prefer a Windows device.
Asking the same question afresh later in the year, Forrester found that only 25 per cent of punters picked out Windows tablets in Q3.
The bottom line is, Google, Android and Linux are in a wonderful position to gain even more. Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have many reasons to worry.
We ought to stress that Techrights is not a Linux advocacy site but a site primarily dedicated to the patent issue at its very core, since the genesis 5 years ago (Microsoft/Novell patent deal). We promote reason and truth; as for Linux, it has already reigned the market, starting with servers and right now devices. It is does not require advocacy because it’s unstoppable now. Advocacy is for underdogs. █
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Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
- Video: French State Secretary for Digital Economy Speaks Out Against Benoît Battistelli at Battistelli's PR Event
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
- When EPO Vice-President, Who Will Resign Soon, Made a Mockery of the EPO
Leaked letter from Willy Minnoye/management to the people who are supposed to oversee EPO management
- No Separation of Powers or Justice at the EPO: Reign of Terror by Battistelli Explained in Letter to the Administrative Council
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
- FFPE-EPO is a Zombie (if Not Dead) Yellow Union Whose Only de Facto Purpose Has Been Attacking the EPO's Staff Union
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
- EPO Select Committee is Wrong About the Unitary Patent (UPC)
The UPC is neither desirable nor practical, especially now that the EPO lowers patent quality; but does the Select Committee understand that?
- Links 1/1/2017: KDE Plasma 5.9 Coming, PelicanHPC 4.1
Links for the day
- 2016: The Year EPO Staff Went on Strike, Possibly “Biggest Ever Strike in the History of the EPO.”
A look back at a key event inside the EPO, which marked somewhat of a breaking point for Team Battistelli
- Open EPO Letter Bemoans Battistelli's Antisocial Autocracy Disguised/Camouflaged Under the Misleading Term “Social Democracy”
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Complains About Battistelli's Bodyguards Fetish and Corruption of the Media
Even the EPO's Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
- Translation of French Texts About Battistelli and His Awful Perception of Omnipotence
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
- 2016 in Review and Plans for 2017
A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
- Links 31/12/2016: Firefox 52 Improves Privacy, Tizen Comes to Middle East
Links for the day
- Korea's Challenge of Abusive Patents, China's Race to the Bottom, and the United States' Gradual Improvement
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
- German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, Who Flagrantly Ignores Serious EPO Abuses, Helps Battistelli's Agenda ('Reform') With the UPC
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
- Links 30/12/2016: KDE for FreeBSD, Automotive Grade Linux UCB 3.0
Links for the day
- Software Patents Continue to Collapse, But IBM, Watchtroll and David Kappos Continue to Deny and Antagonise It
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
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