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11.21.13

Acacia, Which Has Former Microsoft Managers and Agenda, Apparently No Longer Good for Microsoft

Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ghost of Microsoft, they know where it came from…

Stranger

Summary: Microsoft, which is the source of many patent trolls in the world of software, is trying to present itself as “against trolls”

TECHRIGHTS has written a lot about Acacia since 2007 (the Wikipedia page looks like a PR masterpiece). 2007 was the year Acacia, a patent troll, launched an attack on Linux. 6 years later Microsoft sues Acacia and just as a reminder of news we covered before: “In 2010, Microsoft agreed to pay an Acacia subsidiary to license a portfolio of patents related to smartphones and tablets ultimately owned by Tokyo-based web browser firm Access Co.”

According to this Microsoft booster (altering the above report from Reuters), “Microsoft sued Acacia Research Corp. today, accusing the company of breaking a contract “to license various smartphone and mobile computing technologies to Microsoft,” Reuters reported.

“The suit was filed in US District Court in New York, but it’s currently under seal, which means that details are thin. The Microsoft accusations come in response to recent suits Acacia subsidiaries filed against Microsoft that allege infringement of more than a dozen patents. Acacia filed these lawsuits despite the fact that “in 2010, Microsoft agreed to pay an Acacia subsidiary to license a portfolio of patents related to smartphones and tablets ultimately owned by Tokyo-based Web browser firm Access Co.,” Reuters wrote.”

‘”Acacia’s lawsuits are the worst kind of abusive litigation behavior, attempting to extract payment based on litigation tactics and not the value of its patents,” Microsoft Deputy General Counsel David Howard told Reuters.”

This claim does not hold water. Acacia has been rather helpful to Microsoft for years and it also absorbed senior staff from Microsoft.

In other news from the same source, Newegg is still going after patent trolls. To quote the writer (who is definitely not a Microsoft booster): “After a five years of legal battles over Jones’ patent, involving hundreds of lawsuits and tens of millions of dollars in payments, that question still has no clear answer.

“Whatever the invention, hundreds of companies have paid tribute to it. Jones’ patent, now wielded through a holding company called TQP Development, has become one of the most widely asserted patents in history. In complaints, TQP lawyers have accused website after website of patent infringement for using one of the most common Web-encryption strategies: combining the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol with the RC4 encryption algorithm.”

Newegg has been very serious when it comes to fighting patent trolls, whereas Microsoft has been openly feeding patent trolls and using them as a weapon against competitors like Android. We must not let Microsoft portray itself as “against trolls”; Microsoft itself it the troll and it’s the source of the world’s biggest patent troll. Heck, its co-founder is a patent troll, too. The other Microsoft co-founder uses patents for huge profits at taxpayers’ expense.

IBM and Microsoft: The AstroTurfing for Software Patents Continues

Posted in IBM, Microsoft, Patents at 1:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Lou Gerstner

Summary: Microsoft is AstroTurfing and IBM has learned no lessons from mistakes like going along with Microsoft

THE OTHER day we showed that a longtime Microsoft AstroTurfing group, ACT, had morphed again and lobbied for software patents under the pretence that it represented small businesses and developers (to whom software patents are really horrific).

Well, two of the biggest software patentors, IBM and Microsoft, are still at it. As TechDirt put it, “Microsoft’s Intense Lobbying Works: Goodlatte To Drop Plan To Allow For Faster Review Of Bad Software Patents” (software patents).

To quote: “Last week, we wrote about Microsoft’s intense, and somewhat dishonest, lobbying to try to remove one aspect of proposed patent reform: the covered business methods program, which would have allowed approved technology patents to get reviewed by the Patent Office much more quickly. It was based on Senator Chuck Schumer’s plan, which enabled the same feature for patents related to financial services. Many have seen that Schumer’s effort was somewhat successful in stopping bad financial services patents, and so it makes sense to do the same thing for software as well. In fact, it makes more sense, since so many patent lawsuits and patent troll shakedowns involve software-related patents.”

AstroTurfing gets called PR now: “Oh, and to the PR guy from Microsoft who sent me a laughable email trying to argue that Microsoft is supportive of patent reform and that my post was unfair because I didn’t mention that: next time stay on topic. Yes, Microsoft supports some forms of patent reform. Just the kind that stops trolls from hitting it directly. What it doesn’t support is the kind of patent reform that would stop Microsoft’s all too common practice of shaking down all sorts of innovators and entrepreneurs with crazy patent licensing demands from its bundle of patents. No, Microsoft isn’t a patent troll, but it is a patent bully with a lot of bad patents, which apparently it’s scared that real innovators might invalidate a lot of those patents under a covered business method review.”

Here is more on what happened [via] and a reminder that they are “pretending that the problem is “bad” patents rather than software patents in and of themselves,” as iophk put it.

“On Wednesday,” says the article, “the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider legislation aimed at reining in abusive patent litigation. But one of the bill’s most important provisions, designed to make it easier to nix low-quality software patents, will be left on the cutting room floor. That provision was the victim of an aggressive lobbying campaign by patent-rich software companies such as IBM and Microsoft.”

It’s just like what happened in NZ. Those two proprietary software giants and software patents hoarders just can’t help harming society. They do this quietly or by proxy to reduce public backlash.

Links 21/11/2013: Applications and Instructionals

Posted in News Roundup at 6:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

11.20.13

Richard Stallman on Software Patents in Europe

Posted in TechBytes Video at 5:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

TechBytes with Stallman

Direct download as Ogg (00:01:11, 3.8 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, offers his analysis of the Unitary Patent and what it means for software patents in Europe now that the EPO increases its influence over continental law


Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense

11.19.13

GNU/Linux News Sites in 2014

Posted in Site News at 1:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Paper

Summary: The scarcity of independent coverage of Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and GNU/Linux and what it all means

2013 was an exceptionally bad year for news sites which focus on FOSS. The H ceased publication, Groklaw did too (this time for good), Tux Machines relinquished control due to lack of time (my wife and I keep it going now), and some blogs that focused on Linux and GNU no longer do. In addition, audiocasts which used to regularly cover FOSS no longer do (or rarely do).

“Real journalism tries to appeal to readers, not advertisers and sponsors.”For one who pursues news items and good reporting in this area, the sources became meager and some are repetitive/unoriginal. In order to keep the message out there and in order to prevent FOSS from being abducted by large corporations that sell proprietary software we really need to consider our options. If there is no light shed on the success stories of FOSS and actions of enemies of FOSS (those who seek to destroy it) we will definitely lose momentum. Sure, Linux and FOSS are everywhere, but without the community’s scrutiny companies like IBM and Google silently close down some parts (e.g. in Android) or turn them hostile (TPM, UEFI restricted boot, DRM and so on).

Free-as-in-freedom software is 30 years old, but the second half of its life (about 15 years) characterised corporate transformation under the “open source” wing or brand. Right now, even a hugely corrupt proprietary software giant like Microsoft affiliates itself with this movement. This is wrong.

Real journalism tries to appeal to readers, not advertisers and sponsors. The latter should be an afterthought and hardly a consideration at all. “Linux Voice” will be fresh breath of air because no more will its talented writers be pressured (implicitly) to write corporate sponsors-friendly articles (I have seen it from the inside); the sponsors are people who read the work and this is how it should be done. This is how independent news channels like “Democracy Now” work. It is the only way to guarantee that software patents get bashed (large corporations like IBM love them) and companies like Novell get treated very harshly for colluding with Microsoft to extort FOSS using patent lawsuit threats. The community’s voice has been an essential regulator and proactive enforcer of ethics.

“Those who honestly believe that profit-driven stewardship on its own will take us in a better direction should learn the history of Hippies and their movement.”In 2014 we won’t have many independent sites left. Those that remain deserve to get support from their readers. Ruling out a sellout, their only other option is to shut down, potentially paying for hosting to keep old stories accessible free of charge (some old newspapers turn to paywalls). Once we lose our collective voice as a community, it will all be left for corporate vultures to devour (companies like Cisco and Microsoft, which go out of their way to help the NSA).

There is an important point worth reiterating (we already made it earlier this month). Don’t count on the Linux Foundation to represent the community. It is all about corporations, which make up almost all of its budget. Recently, Juniper joined the circles of the Linux Foundation. Juniper is a company heavily occupied by many Microsoft executives who moved there. Former Microsoft staff inside those circles is now in management, too, not just membership.

Those who honestly believe that profit-driven stewardship on its own will take us in a better direction should learn the history of Hippies and their movement. The direction taken when corporations alone dominate a movement is surely good… for corporations. It gives them more power at people’s expense. They extinguish grassroots and leave activists a little sandbox to play in, mostly as a marketing exercise. In recent years it has felt like this is where the Open Source folks are taking us, unlike the FSF.

Worldwide Adoption of FOSS in Public Services, Including Education and Healthcare

Posted in America, Australia, Free/Libre Software at 6:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Government

Summary: Free/Open Source software (FOSS) is increasingly being adopted by those whose budget comes from the public (through the state)

Federal agencies are said to be embracing more and more FOSS [1] and Australia follows a similar trajectory [2], realising that savings and quality through sharing and collaboration serve the public better. In education, which is also funded by taxpayers (and thus should serve the public), FOSS has new gains [3] and in healthcare too we see major signs of progress [4-6]. What makes the public sector so unique is that by definition it must serve the public interest, which typically means creating jobs for domestic developers, reducing spendings on unnecessary software, and giving back all the code to the public which paid for it. Every branch of the public sector should make FOSS obligatory, not just a recommended item.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Agencies Widen Open-Source Use

    Federal agencies, looking for new ways to lower their IT costs, are exploiting open-source software tools in a wider range of applications, not only to reduce software costs, but also to tighten network security, streamline operations, and reduce expenses in vetting applications and services.

  2. South Australia to test use of Joinup for sharing and re-use

    The South Australian Government is considering running a trial of the Joinup platform, hoping to use it as their internal sharing and collaboration platform, a spokesperson for the CIO confirmed today. According to Stephen Schmid, general manager of the Open Technology Foundation, the South Australian is also working towards federating the internal platform with Openray, a similar platform open to the public sector in Australia and New Zealand.

  3. Open hardware for education with littleBits library of electronic modules

    Littlebits is disrupting the open hardware space. It’s “an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun.” The company is the invention of Ayah Bdeir, an MIT graduate and TED senior fellow, and was founded in September 2011.

  4. Open source collaboration with VA betters VistA EHR security
  5. OpenEMR Free Hosting
  6. OSEHRA, VA reveal open source EHR security patching benefits

    The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the open source IT community have paired up to prove the benefits of fixing technical security flaws within an open source system. According to the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) corporation, Georgia Tech graduate student Doug Mackey evaluated the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) EHR for a term project on computer security and found a substantial security vulnerability.

Links 18/8/2013: Free/Open Source Software News

Posted in News Roundup at 5:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • OSv: The Open Source Cloud Operating System That is Not Linux

    For most tech professionals, the words “open source operating system” naturally translate to Linux. And so it’s understandable that those same tech pros would be a bit confused by startup Cloudius Systems’ announcement in September of a new open source operating system for the cloud, OSv.

  • 25 Open Source Alternatives For Costly Applications
  • Inspiring words from a Citrix open source exec, using GitHub for beehive building, and other interesting news
  • Inside the OpenMIND: Open Source Social Media Datamining and “Predictive” Policing

    Records obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD) shed new light on a technology, OpenMIND, utilized by law enforcement/counter-terrorism fusion center personnel in gathering and analyzing mass amounts of “open source intelligence” derived from the online lives of Americans.

  • SourceForge responds to GIMP grump with crowdsourcing caper
  • Andy Hunt: What are you going to invent next?

    Andy’s first point began with an astute observation. Open source software is often discussed in terms of being a “stack” (LAMP, for instance). It is no longer a stack, however, but a tower. A tower that spans software and hardware. With the source or schematics being available, not only can we stand on the shoulders of the giants of our field but on the shoulders of everyone who contributes. It’s an embarrassment of riches.

  • How to Run Your Small Business With Free Open Source Software

    From simple bookkeeping packages to full-blown ERP systems, open source software can provide free options for small businesses that don’t have the budget for big-ticket enterprise applications.

  • GIMP leaves SourceForge, EFF Tackles NSA & More…
  • Then, now, and the future of open source fonts

    In August, the Fedora Project held its first Flock conference, a replacement for the North American and European FUDCon (Fedora Users and Developers Conference) events. Flock was a four-day, planned conference with talks, workshops, and hackfests, in contrast to FUDCon’s barcamp model. In the interest of reaching beyond the community and reminding everyone that Fedora is so much broader than just a Linux project, the invited keynote speakers were from open source areas outside of the Fedora Project. One of those keynotes was by Dave Crossland, creator of the open font Cantarell and an active part of the free font movement.

  • Open Source: A Platform for Innovation

    The hobbies that inspired the scientific curiosity of my generation were Erector Sets, Science Fair Electronic Kits from Radio Shack and model rockets with balsa wood fins that we meticulously assembled and painted. While these toys piqued our curiosity in science and engineering our ability to share our discoveries were limited by geography. These fascinating distractions were often purpose-built and confined our creativity within their intended purpose.

  • A developer’s story about passion for Open Source and Security

    This story is definitely a first for me. Not just because every story is unique in itself, but that it’s one of personal matter. The thing is, I quit my well-paid job, just to spend time on the things I’m very passionate about: open source development and information security. Not only was quitting my job a serious step, also the decision to share my personal story after 10+ years of working with open source software and security. Well, here you go. It’s my hope to intrigue others, find their passion in life and also go for it!

  • Salsa: an open source syllabus creator for educators

    Who wants to tackle the complex problem of helping educators create learning service agreements? I don’t see too many hands. How about you there, reading this article? Wait, you weren’t aware that this is an issue that impacts the education system? Well, here’s an open source project that solves this problem and needs more collaborators.

  • Facebook Open Compute Project picks switch specs
  • Facebook’s hardware VP says we’re very close to open source switches
  • Cisco-threatening open switch coming from Facebook, Intel, and Broadcom
  • This 23-year-old’s open-source project, a server running on Raspberry Pi, gives the middle finger to Google

    For most of us, Google shutting down Reader was annoying. For Jacob Cook, it was a call to arms.

    He’s now building an operating system that anyone can use to replace all of the services that Google provides — or any other cloud company, for that matter. Email, chat, file sharing, web hosting: With Cook’s arkOS, you’ll be able to run all of those essential services on a secure, private server in your own home that’s about the size of a credit card.

  • HHVM Going On A Big Performance, Feature Push

    Facebook’s HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) open-source project that’s been seeking to implement a high-performance PHP, is in the middle of a lock-down and for three weeks they are focusing on nothing bot boosting the performance of their PHP implementation and seeking to hit feature parity.

  • Matt Dugan Makes Case for Enterprise Open Source

    There was nothing new in what Matt Dugan said. There were no ground breaking revelations. He just methodically made his case, point by point, explaining why open source was usually, if not always, the best solution for business.

    To me, this was just what the doctor ordered. I’d just sat through a forty-five minute lecture in that very same room from an open core guy that had left me fearing that enterprise open source companies were just as greedy and potentially as unethical as the proprietary guys. Dugan fixed that and quickly reaffirmed my faith in the notion that open source is where the good guys live.

  • Machine Learning with Apache Mahout: Refining the Recommender

    Mahout components implement popular algorithms and can be unplugged easily when no longer needed.

  • MediaCore CE renamed to MediaDrop

    MediaCore CE is the community edition of MediaCore, a Web application that powers a multimedia hosted platform targeted towards the educational market and run by MediaCore, Inc. It is a Python application built atop the Django Web framework.

    Published under the GNU General Public License version 3, MediaDrop is free to download and use. However, because it is a Django application, installing it is a little bit more involved than the point-and-click process commonly associated with PHP applications.

  • OpenWFD Aims to Bring Wireless Display Streaming to Tablets, Phones

    Wireless connectivity between devices and display monitors remains mostly fantasy today, Google’s Chromecast notwithstanding. But it could become a big deal for tablets, smartphones and even traditional PCs in the future. And it may even work on Linux, if the nascent OpenWFD project succeeds—which would be very good news for open source hardware vendors.

  • Open-Source HTML5 Terminal Emulator To Support X11

    The Gate One HTML5-powered terminal emulator and SSH client that goes without needing any browser plug-ins and supports many SSH/terminal features is working on bringing X11 support to the web-browser. The developer claims that this X11 support in the browser written in HTML5 will be fast enough to support video playback and he’s made a video demo as proof.

  • 5 Open Source Platforms That Will Define 2014

    Linux and MySQL are old news. Partners must now open their minds to NoSQL, Hadoop, KVM, OpenStack and OpenDaylight

Free/Open Source Software Almost Reduced to Marketing Label

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD at 5:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

National Organic Program

Summary: Exploitation of the good reputation of FOSS as noticed in habitual non-factual media coverage

IN a recent article about “misconceptions”, misconceptions were being spread, using FUD to supposedly counter FUD [1]. If a piece of software is not Free/Open Source software (FOSS), then it is proprietary. By that standard, TrueCrypt for example is proprietary, as the OSI’s president explained a few days ago [2]. Being “half open” is like being “half pregnant”, so the misuse of terminology needs to stop. To some, the debate about FOSS is not about freedom; it is framed as “To Pay or Not to Pay” [3] or a matter of “Profiting”, to use Matt Dugan’ angle [4].

There are many companies out there which claim that they spread FOSS while they are in fact some kind of a mixture (like WSO2 [5]). When dealing with such companies it’s often found that “Open Source” is just a marketing label to them; in practice they make money by selling proprietary software. We need to put more emphasis on this issue and help reveal companies which merely exploit FOSS for promotion (without delivering FOSS).

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. On the misconceptions of open source vs. proprietary debate in Big Data

    When it comes to open source versus open core proprietary there can be some mistaken assumptions. For instance, proprietary is equated to meaning closed and implies vendor lock-in. Yet, not all “non-open source” software solutions are proprietary or closed.

  2. TrueCrypt or false? Would-be open source project must clean up its act

    Security isn’t TrueCrypt’s only controversial point — its claim to be open source doesn’t hold water, either

  3. FOSS in the Enterprise: To Pay or Not to Pay?

    One of the big attractions behind the growing popularity of open source software is the ability to get it and use it for free. In a world of ever-rising costs in pretty much every other aspect of business and life, “free” is an offer that’s increasingly difficult to refuse.

  4. All Things Open: On Vendor Mistrust, Containerization & Profiting From Open Source

    I was very pleased, however, with Matt Dugan’s presentation, “In Defense of Vendor Mistrust.” A Middle Solutions Architect for Shadow-Soft, Dugan was on target with the reasoning behind his conclusion that in most cases enterprise users will gain in the long run if they move to open source.

  5. Boeing uses open source to build cloud-based digital aviation platform

    The world’s largest aerospace company and aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, has used open-source application development software firm WSO2′s service-oriented architecture (SOA) to build a cloud-based digital aviation platform.

    The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution, dubbed the Boeing Edge, has been used to refocus the manufacturer’s attempts at connecting with its airline customers, Jim Crabbe, senior product manager at Boeing, told delegates at WSO2′s developers’ conference in San Francisco.

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