The following patent video is not only poor in terms of quality (it’s grainy and noisy); it also shows something that is poor in terms of actual quality. Watch this and try to keep a straight face.
Patent-happy businesses are becoming a real menace. Not only do they accept anything without sufficient scrutiny, but they also enable their clients to become a real menace. Here is a longer video that shows you the skewed type of mentality and approach — a ‘meat market’ patent system.
Here are some very recent stories about patents and their abuse. The stories appeared in the press in the past couple of days alone, which gives you an indication of how recurrent — and thus serious — these issues have become.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has established an expert panel at the request of the United States to probe whether China has taken sufficient action to protect intellectual property rights (IPR).
Andy Updegrove has written a nice piece of the East’s perception of intellectual property and what it means to the economy. Patents are about control, usually to be handed over to the titans. It’s not about innovation and progress; it’s about building fences. And in a world without fences and walls, who needs Windows and Gates (patent licensing)?
On any given day you can find thousands of words of reporting, advocacy and debate over the role of patents in technology. One side promotes the availability of patent protection as the source of much innovation, while the other contends that patents have exactly the opposite effect, and many other vices besides.
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The issue also includes revised versions of two pieces that have already appeared here in the Standards Blog, the first of which (called OOXML, ODF and UOF: What’s Up in China?) uses the development of UOF and the recent defeat of OOXML in China as an example of how developing nations are taking action to promote their industries in spite of the efforts of First World industries efforts to maintain their primacy.
Speaking of ODF and OOXML, you can send your thoughts to Microsoft’s press. Previously, they revealed that even Softies dislike OOXML. That was a week ago.
Recently we reported that anti-piracy company Viralg is selling the patents to its technology on eBay for $1,000,000. Most people didn’t think it was value for money but Viralg have been in touch and they have a new idea – selling the patents to P2P’ers to help prevent some future anti-P2P technology.
The following is arguably a biology patent, which is related to controversies that surround DNA/gene patents (“patenting life”).
Japanese to patent transparent frog
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Japanese boffins have used artificial insemination to breed mutant frogs with transparent skin. The scientists reckon this will make biological research – not to mention school biology lessons – signifcantly less messy and traumatic, as it will no longer be necessary to cut the slime-filled creatures up in order to examine their innards.
“You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don’t have to dissect it,” enthused noted Hiroshima University* sunroof-amphibian man Professor Masayuki Sumida, according to AFP.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a technology patent case that has the potential to throw the entire technology supply chain into upheaval — or prompt closer adherence to technology licensing terms.
Those disparate outcomes are both possible from a case involving two parties that aren’t even U.S. companies. In 2000, LG Electronics of Korea sued Quanta Computer and several other Taiwanese PC makers, claiming the firms were violating LG’s U.S. patents by using them without authorization — courtesy of Intel.
Washington, D.C. – The Computer & Communications Industry Association today applauded two opinions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that limited the scope of patentable subject matter, In re Nuitjen and In re Comiskey.
“These are landmark decisions, said CCIA President Ed Black. “Since the Federal Circuit abolished the exclusion for business methods in the 1998 State Street decision, it has often been assumed that there are no limits – that you can patent anything.”
The issue of patents will continue to be discussed as long as Novell and Microsoft continue the abuse. Never in the past have Microsoft and Novell told us what patents they spoke about (if any at all).
For those who have not noticed, the sidebar now contains a ladder-type banner which spins Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” and presents some facts about the Novell/Microsoft deal. The cited page strives to explain in a very succinct form why the Microsoft/Novell deal is as terrible as it is. It’s feared that the mainstream press completely overlooks these factors, for a reason. A short explanation should hopefully fit people’s attention span.
Here is the banner that will usually appear at the bottom of each page served, which makes it over 200,000 times per month (including search engines).
Thoughts? Too strong to be effective? Be sure to follow the link, which is where substance is contained.
“Yes, the site no longer exists because Microsoft — through its proxy and shill, Dan Lyons — got involved.”Show Us The Code is (was) a Web site that revolved around Microsoft’s unsubstantiated claims. It contained a highly-cited letter protesting against Microsoft’s attempt to spread fear.
Remember the last update from showusthecode.com? It was made public before the initiative’s leader was pressured to take the site offline. Yes, the site no longer exists because Microsoft — through its proxy and shill, Dan Lyons — got involved. All that’s left are broken links and an isolated blog somewhere else.
The following amateur video contains the remains of the letter. It’s a vocal copy of what apparently cannot be found anymore.
Don’t let opposition be silenced. BoycottSUSE @ Blogspot no longer exists either, but for other reasons.
The past week was a fairly busy one for Novell (many events showed up in the RSS feeds) and it was a busy one for me as well, so I’m likely to have missed some stories. After a year of procrastination (primarily because of dedication to Free software and Linux advocacy), I finally submitted my thesis yesterday. I was prepared to do this a year ago when I was 24, but there was no harm in waiting. With that out of the way, in weeks to come this Web site can hopefully be made more active. Posting frequency is likely to increase.
Here are some of the news stories about Novell, which were not covered before.
The openSUSE project is a community program sponsored by Novell.
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This VMWare image lets you try it out without installing it or even rebooting your machine, and works in the Free VMWare player.
Installation & multimedia support is something which the OpenSUSE Web site covered last week.
openSUSE 10.3 has seen a lot of changes with the media selection; the most prominent one being the new 1-CD installation for KDE, and 1-CD installation for GNOME. Multimedia support in the distribution has also been improved, with MP3 support out-of-the-box for Banshee and Amarok. Today we bring you a special double-bill covering these two stories, and we’ll be talking to Michael Löffler, the Product Manager of openSUSE, to give us a little more insight.
Some changes in openSUSE 10.3 have ensured that if you are interested in just about any type of popular virtualisation, then openSUSE is the operating system to be on. From Xen to VirtualBox, QEMU and KVM — it’s all available in the new version. Today we’ll be going through a few of these new additions and we’ll be talking to Frank Kohler, the project manager for Virtualisation at SUSE, to help us learn a bit more.
Stephan sent the following E-mail to the “announce” mailing list on Tuesday:
Hi!
As mentioned in the RC1 announcement, we’re doing only internal testing
of the following release candidates to avoid storming the mirrors. But we
decided to upload the live CDs, so you can test these and see if there are
regressions in what you reported.
We’ve been hard at work on openSUSE 10.3, to be released in a couple of weeks. RC1 marked the “transition point” for me. I’ve moved my main machines over to 10.3 RC1 from 10.2. It’s very nice to be running the latest GNOME again.
This is an actual recollection of how I installed Suse Linux 10.3 RC1 64bit onto my system.
I downloaded this version for testing as well finding the difference between 64bit and 32bit version of Suse Linux.
There’s no point in pretending. OpenSUSE is a top-notch distribution, but given its ties to Novell, this site calls for a boycott against it. Stories such as this one from Andrea bring regret to mind because some really talented and passionate developers are probably unable to make up for their managers’ poor and selfish decisions.
We have mastered now the media and will now prepare our staging server and then give the mirrors some GBs to download and distribute.
Some nice photos therein.
Last night, Novell expressed its desired to find the next Ted Haeger, AKA Reverend Ted (well, a personal interpretation anyway).
From the message [opensuse-announce] openSUSE is looking for a Chief Linux Evangelist:
To strengthen the openSUSE project we’re looking for an enthusiastic Chief
Evangelist to:
- promote and spread the adoption of openSUSE
- be a public face for the project on conferences and events
- act as voice of the community back to Novell’s leadership team
- develop and nurture the openSUSE communities
- pro actively drive openSUSE marketing
This is a global role and as such, you can be located anywhere in the world.
For detailed information see
[http://www.novell.com/job_search/servlet/eJobSearch?Detail=007086]
We’re looking forward to you!
– Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH – Nürnberg – AG Nürnberg – HRB 16746 – GF: Markus Rex
Intel yesterday launched an open-source project called LessWatts.org, which it hopes will reduce the power consumption of Linux-based servers, PCs and other devices.
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Oracle, Novell and Red Hat are among the projects participants.
Remember Greg Kroah-Hartman’s comments earlier this year about offering up free Linux driver development for all companies willing to provide hardware specifications to the developers? Novell has realized the potential of this open-source work and is now allowing Greg Kroah-Hartman to work full time on developing free software drivers that are free of charge to companies that are interested.
New York City Transit moves more than 7 million people each day. To do that overwhelming task requires a high level of synchronization among its 49,000 staff members spread out in 500 locations. This year, the Transit Authority is evolving to a computerized environment not only for its mammoth train control system, but also for its employees.
NYC Transit sought a solution that would ensure its employees and contractors could quickly and securely access network applications and buildings. Revoking network and building access for terminated employees was also time consuming and posed security risks. NYC Transit selected a Novell identity and security management solution consisting of Novell Identity Manager and Novell Access Manager to automatically synchronize user identities across multiple access systems and operating platforms. Employees and contractors have role-based access to applicat
As part of the “Control Your Identity” campaign launch, Novell will conduct a live demonstration of the Bandit Project’s DigitalMe and Windows CardSpace information card selectors using Bandit Cards to perform identity transactions online at the Digital ID World Conference this week in San Francisco. Further promotion will take place at various IT industry events over the next six months, culminating at Novell’s annual BrainShare® user conference in March 2008.
Miscellaneous News
Here is a nice story where Novell’s Linux solutions are used.
Windsor’s “mixed source” approach includes OpenOffice, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and proprietary technologies like Microsoft Windows Server, Novell NetWare and Novell ZENworks.
on Edwards, an IT Officer for the two faculties, said: “We knew that finding an affordable solution that could work seamlessly in a Netware environment and that would effectively transition us to a networked storage model while giving us reliability, support, and ease of use was going to be a challenge. Like most educational establishments, for us, money is not a bottomless pit. Our servers and direct-attach storage infrastructure were dated and we wanted to deploy a cost-effective, network-based data protection solution that would work with our Novell and Linux servers.”
IAITAM 2007 Annual Conference & Exhibition announces HP, Novell and other leaders in the IT Asset Management space as sponsors of the November 7-9 event in Palm Springs California.
Linspire, the troubled Linux distribution vendor, has recently lost a top executive and a lead developer to the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu, has hired former Linspire staffers Randy Linnell and Brian Thomason.
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Thomson was the lead engineer in charge of Linspire’s CNR Warehouse. The new CNR is meant to make it simple for users to find, download, and install Linux applications from a combined wiki and file repository. The multi-Linux distribution CNR is still in alpha development at this time.
“The question remains, how much money did Kevin Carmony get paid to destroy the company?”Congratulations to Randy Linnell and Brian Thomason, who appear to be in very safe hands now.
Let’s analyse to see what Microsoft has achieved here and how.
Microsoft pays about $20 million to Linspire
It then gets Carmony to go out there and throw mud in the face of other Linux companies (the “high-brow pirates” remark)
it claims that another company now supports OOXML
it claims that another company now pays for interoperability, whatever that actually is (in pragmatic terms, to Linspire at least)
Then, it backstabs Linspire and uses that betrayal to spread more FUD about the GPLv3
Saving the best for last, Linspire is as alive as SCO
Does anybody still think that deals with Microsoft are a good idea?
At the end of the day Microsoft gets all of this for a mere $20 million. It takes Microsoft minutes to make that sum — minutes that are spent completely destroying a rival.
Linspire could have and should have seen better. Looking at recent history, it should be crystal clear what happens when you liaise with a ‘Friendly’ Neighborhood Lord (Neelie Kroes had something to say about this yesterday). The question remains, how much money did Kevin Carmony get paid to destroy the company? Ron Hovsepian appears to have received personal rewards as well, just like Dark McBride who received a pay rise when SCO’s bankruptcy was declared. Isn’t the world of finance crazy?
It is no secret that there are at least 3 large companies that are out to steal Microsoft’s lunch. They are all united by a single unified format, and a single standard that promotes healthy competition and defends the user’s data.
OpenOffice and Symphony are compatible with the OpenDocument format (ODf), an industry standard that allows programs from different developers to read each other’s documents and preserve typefaces, paragraphs, indents, tabs, bullets, numbering and so forth.
As always, Dr. Sutor is optimistic and calm. He celebrates a wonderful September for open standards and ODF in particular.
In early August I stated in this blog that after the OOXML JTC1 ballot closed on September 2, the sun would rise, the birds would sing, and so on. As we are now at the end of the month and about to move into October, I can state that those things all happened. Indeed, from my perspective, September was a very good month, maybe a historic month, for open standards and open source.
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I like to say that every day, every week, every month, the world gets more open. In September this was measurably true.
IBM is very pleased with the download rates of its blue OpenOffice.org ‘sister’. It even unleashed a press release and here is one article that expands upon the fact that IBM’s Symphony was downloaded 100,000 times in just one week.
IBM and ODF supporters such as Sun Microsystems and Google have been waging a public battle against Microsoft to promote their interest in ODF, on which all three companies have based productivity applications.
Michael Meeks has a tough job. Anyone who’s struggled with making documents not created in the Word interface with Microsoft Office should be able to sympathise.
Novell is still supporting OOXML is the sense that it implements ‘translators’. These would not have been necessary had Novell not signed an binding ‘interoperability’ deal which required and started a chain reaction (TurboLinux was the latest company to join in).
Is this just a random coincidence? The median of the CPI index of the above mentioned 70 countries is 3.95. Of the most corrupted half (CPI index less than 3.95) 23 or 77% voted for approval (approval or approval with comments) and 7 or 23% for disapproval; 5 abstained. Of the least corrupted half (CPI index more than 3.95) 13 or 54% voted for approval and 11 or 46% voted for disapproval; 11 abstained – see the table below.
However the 11 new countries are refusing to say how they will vote. These include Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Malta, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela. Most people seem to think that these have been put there by Vole [Microsoft] to make sure the standard gets pushed through.
Novell is by orders of magnitude larger than Xandros and Linspire, so there tends to be a lot more news coming from Novell. This does not, however, stop those smaller companies from introducing themselves in the press, stirring up controversies, and making product announcements. It does not mean that they do not deserve equally harsh criticism; for what they did is as bad as what Novell did.
Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users.
If someone bets or even relies on Linspire for commercial support, then it’s worth exploring and finding the chances of the company surviving the next few years. Linspire already forbidden access to a lot of code. Since GPLv3 is adopted more quickly and widely than anyone predicted, Linspire is left behind. If it chooses to touch that code, it then faces the wrath of Microsoft.
Xandros(oft) ‘Windows’
Another distributor that is a threat (and thus no longer a friend) is Xandros. Xandros sold out and apparently received a lot of money in the process, just like Linspire. It later snatched and ‘infected’ another company, called Scalix, by association.
Asus is about to unleash a nice and affordable device onto the market. It is known as the “Eee” and many people anticipate it because it’s inexpensive, it Linux-based and it’s similar to OLPC (one laptop per child), which is also Linux-based but serves an entirely different audience (primarily — but not only — young children in developing nations).
“Boycotting the Asus Eee seems like a necessary evil.”Sadly, Asus chose to use a derivative/variant of Xandros for that spectacular Eee. The poor device has been therefore been tainted by the ‘Xandros tax’. You would be wiser to spend your money on an OLPC (Fedora), which will be available in the United States (at the least), not a Linux that pays Microsoft money for unsubstantiated claims, FUD, and “patent terrorism”. Xandros received their millions of dollars to spit in the well we all drink from. They sold out for selfish reason. Don’t give them even more money. What’s more, don’t give Microsoft any money when you buy Linux. Boycotting the Asus Eee seems like a necessary evil.
Last week we covered the ruling in Europe, which is very much related to Microsoft’s deal with Novell. By signing the deal, Novell immediately helped Microsoft’s battles in Europe, for a variety of reasons that we already mentioned.
As you might recall, Neelie Kroes has had yet another smear campaign coordinated and orchestrated against her agency. She quickly responded to this a week ago, but she now makes available a more formal response[PDF].
There cannot be many businesspeople who doubt that a monopolist can use its market power to squash even the most efficient rival producers of goods or services that interact with the monopolized product. There cannot be many venture capitalists who would invest in a company whose market can at any moment fall under the sway of an entrenched neighboring monopolist whose behavior was subject to no limits.
What I will do is continue to look hard at the actions of monopolists. I will use my practical business experience to help me understand the dynamics of markets. I will look for answers that maintain the incentives of everyone on the market to innovate, and not just the friendly neighborhood monopolist. Power has to be used responsibly, by the enforcement agencies and by the monopolists. I will not look for fights, but where interventions will make consumers better off, I will not shy away from them.
That would make Novell a friend of “the friendly neighborhood monopolist,” to use Neelie’s own words. This is not the first time that Neelie gets under the scrutiny of the US government, the Microsoft lobbyists, or even Microsoft itself (Steve Ballmer impolitely phoned her last year and the same was done in Korea). It is merely a case of Microsoft motoring its agenda using a variety of seemingly-independent proxies, whom it considers partners, whether paid or not.
As we’ve witnessed before, Novell has become one such partner. de Icaza, for example, felt the urge to strike back at EU regulators some time ago, essentially taking a hard line along with Microsoft. His rebuttals are highly cited. Why would a Novell vice president do this?
In Groklaw, Georg Greve has responded to some common FUD (repeated over and over again for a Big Lie-esque propaganda effect). This FUD comes from Microsoft and proxies that we mentioned above. It is then echoed by the mainstream media, which is obedient to those who fund it (large companies seeking assets and information control). Georg’s main points that are squashed:
1st Fallacy: That the Ruling Punishes Innovation
[...]
2nd Fallacy: That Google, Apple and All Successful Companies Need to Fear
How convenient a generalisation. Hopefully, all that spin will prove ineffective.
Elsewhere on the Web, an interview with Novell was published. Watch how many of the questions, which are collected from different individuals, attack Novell over patents (about half of them) and related issues.
It is known that the Novell-Microsoft agreement has caused an enormous wave of unpopularity against Novell, no matter how much the company tries to tranquilize their users. If it is demonstrated that this unpopularity is negatively affecting the growth of the distribution, do you intend to cancel the agreement? (Patola)
[Novell:] Is is important to keep in mind there are many different groups that look at the Novell-Microsoft agreement in different ways. There is no doubt that there is a part of the open source community that is vocally opposed to the agreement.
Yes, many people dislike the deal and the questions in this interviews prove this. Novell repeats the same line of defense which is, “we did it for the customer.” They pass liability to incognito. According to Novell (not exact quotes here), “patents are not an issue,” but Novell decided to sign a deal which includes them anyway. It knew what this would cause. It could easily predict that Microsoft would use this as a weapon (even if just FUD but no legal action). Novell actually liked the idea, and according to a recently-departing Novell executive, it perceived this as a competitive advantage.
Was Novell drunk when it signed the deal? Was it bribed? Or was it just tactlessly selfish?
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