07.22.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:36 am by
Summary: Antitrust exhibits about Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS) versus DR-DOS
IN MICROSOFT’S path of destroying superior (in quality) competition, illegal things were done. For instance, how about “Bambi” and the “Alien OS”? Today we present fuller portions from the same type of case.
In Exhibit PX_9923 (1989) [PDF], which is available as text at the bottom, Microsoft is seen analysing ROM DOS, although its people stated in public that they only ever tested MS-DOS. The message is sent to:
Mr. Leonard Liu
President
Acer Incorporated
602 Min Sheng East Road
Taipei 10445, Taiwan
R.O.C.
The next exhibit, Exhibit PX00993 (1991) [PDF], shows that Microsoft was indeed testing operating systems other than MS-DOS, which contradicts claims that were made at the time. See for example:
Does anybody know how to detect dr dos 6.0? Bambi will not run properly on dr dos 6.0 because of a quirk in their device driver handling, so we need to detect them.
And also:
What do we think? Should we test further with the patched Bambi to see if there are any more incompatibilities???
For more information about “Alien OS”, see this famous antitrust exhibit, the DOS index, and DRI index. █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit PX_9923, as text
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:54 am by
Summary: A group of new reports that would prove scary to Microsoft and symbolise triumph of Free software and SaaS
• Edmonton considers divorcing Microsoft
“I told Microsoft I’m giving them their divorce papers,” says City of Edmonton CIO Chris Moore. The municipality’s IT department is considering walking away from Microsoft Corp. applications and investing in open source instead. It’s just one step in a major IT transformation, the CIO explains.
• Google Strikes Record-Breaking NZ/AUS Deal
For at least the next three years, Google will play a significant role in the delivery of New Zealanders’ mail. The Postal Services Group of New Zealand Post has entered an agreement that’ll have it putting Google Apps in front of 2,100 employees.
• The grand Google plan against the whole Microsoft stack
As Google’s blog notes, NeatX is an X Window implementation originally created by No Machine of Italy under the GPL in 2003. The No Machine business model included a proprietary server. NeatX is an open source alternative, also offered under GPL V2.
[...]
This is the question Google must answer, at all levels of its stack. Functions must be balanced, between what’s on your desk, your lap, or in your hand, and what’s synced to the cloud. The cloud must also provide a host of software and services we presently assume will remain totally under our personal control. That control must be guaranteed.
• Murphy’s Law: A Tale of Open Source Cities (No Sims Included)
Let’s first consider the actual parameters of Vancouver’s motion, which calls for more than just switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. In it, the legislation defines three principle calls to action:
* Open and Accessible Data: the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
* Open Standards: the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
* Open Source Software: the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with proprietary systems during procurement cycles.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:40 am by
“[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”
–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO
Summary: Affinity for Microsoft code still comes from the Microsoft faithful for the most part
YESTERDAY we gave a sample as large as we could gather of the coverage regarding Microsoft's patch. We showed without great effort that Microsoft had turned this into a public relations event (manufactured self-congratulatory interviews, press release, correspondence accompanied by a lot of publicity). Some of the loudest supporters were the Microsoft-sympathetic bloggers and journalists, based on empirical evidence alone. In addition, one notable supporter from Linux was Greg Kroah-Hartman. Yes, he praised it, but many people forget that he is a Novell employee (who also bashes Ubuntu).
Novell’s public relations people are now raving about Microsoft’s patch that serves Windows.
Novell played a major role in making this happen. Novell Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman, who leads the Linux Kernel Device Driver project, approached Microsoft and helped guide them though the submission process.
OpenSUSE’s community manager (and Novell employee) pretty much sings the same tune.
The long and short of it, though, is that Microsoft has contributed roughly 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel related to their Hyper-V drivers.
As we showed yesterday, many in the Linux sphere were skeptical because they realise that Microsoft contributes a patch for Microsoft and for Windows, not for Linux. But the Microsoft-friendly press (Beta News) tries to specifically dismiss all those critics of what Microsoft did for self gain. It’s an almost-collective dismissal.
The most vivid headline on yesterday’s news that Microsoft is releasing various Linux kernel modules under the GNU Public License may not have been the most accurate. That would be InfoWorld’s “Linux slips into Microsoft’s warm, deadly embrace,” which cast an agreeable horror-movie glow over the proceedings.
Fun stuff, but despite Randall C. Kennedy’s fine and impassioned argument that this is all an embrace-and-extend plot to allow Hyper-V to feast on the blood of the open-source movement, that’s probably not where things are heading.
Critics beg to differ and they provided detailed explanations.
Microsoft’s best friend, Paul Thurrott, has come up with the headline “Microsoft Enlightens Linux”. If Microsoft folks love this patch, it usually means that it is bad for GNU/Linux, which Microsoft repeatedly labels its #1 rival. According to Microsoft, there is also an announcement to come from Red Hat in coming weeks. No specifics can be given. █
Update: as further evidence of Novell’s role and encouragement, see the following new articles.
• Linux driver chief went looking for Microsoft
The Linux driver project team, a part of the Linux kernel development group, is known for pursuing companies and asking them if they want their drivers included in the kernel, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux driver project lead and a Novell fellow.
Another kernel community member noticed the [Microsoft] drivers and pointed them out to me,” he said. “Through the contacts I have at Novell and through the Microsoft/Novell interoperability agreement, I contacted Microsoft and worked out the details.”
• Microsoft Releases 20,000 Lines of Linux Code
In a statement, Novell said: “As a leading Linux solutions provider and an active player in the Linux community, Novell was influential in bringing this about and has worked closely with Microsoft to make this a reality. Under the direction of Novell Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman, who leads the Linux Kernel Device Driver project, Novell proactively engaged with Microsoft to provide valuable guidance and feedback to the Open Source Technology Center, which enabled the team to contribute the code in a way that was in line with community processes.”
• Novell CTO: Microsoft Releases GPL Code to the Community
I’m proud of Novell’s role in this. I’m proud that our partnership brought clarity on the technical optimization need. I’m proud of the personal role played by Novell Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman and the Linux driver project.
• Virtualization, cloud underlie Microsoft’s Linux kernel submission
And the vendor operates a Linux/Windows integration lab with partner Novell.
[...]
The driver code that Microsoft open sourced and submitted to the Linux kernel was first developed and certified specifically for Novell’s Suse Linux and Red Hat Linux.
• With Microsoft code dump Novell tries to make nice
Microsoft’s release of 20,000 lines of Linux drivers, under the GPL, may be a shocker to headline writers, but it’s actually smart business.
This is about Novell.
There are comments about Novell’s relation to this, such as: “In the meantime, it’s ‘business as usual’ for Novell.”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:16 am by
Summary: Soapbox to close after inability to take off
Tomorrow will be a big day for Microsoft (not in the positive sense [1, 2, 3]) and there are already more signs of reductions.
One potential vector of Silverlight inflammation (Soapbox) has just been eliminated, just as earlier signs suggested.
Microsoft’s Soapbox Headed For The Wastebin
[...]
So it makes sense that Erik Jorgensen, MSN’s corporate vice president and chief media and technology officer, told Ina Fried and Stephen Shankland, “We have decided to shut down the Soapbox feature. Beginning today, July 21, we will be notifying both our customers and our internal and external partners that on July 29th, people will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox and on August 31st, the service will no longer be available.”
The funny thing is that even Microsoft uses YouTube (and Flash). In fact, Microsoft uses YouTube for viral marketing and one of the latest examples is this one, which got pulled.
Microsoft Removes Projectile-vomiting IE8 Ad From Web
[...]
An online ad for Internet Explorer 8 that showed a woman projectile vomiting has left such a bad taste in viewers’ mouths that Microsoft has decided to remove it.
Maybe it was just part of the publicity stunt because it received great exposure.
Speaking of Internet Explorer, try going to http://research.microsoft.com/ and see how nothing shows up (Firefox in GNU/Linux). A reader says to us: “On Firefox I clicked on http://research.microsoft.com/ and it prompted me to install Silverlight. I closed the link and started it up in iExplorer and now research.microsoft.com won’t respond. Is Microsoft being clever with non iexplorer users?” The Web was built on standards and it should stay that way. Videos needn’t be proprietary, either. █
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:45 am by
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:39 am by
Contents
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The Linux home desktop. This is the coveted property that untold numbers go home to play video and music on. Create home made birthday cards and print their digital photos from.
[...]
So, start the schools using OpenSource software and Linux. The students will be trained and proficient on it. Workplaces will buy into it to accommodate to meet the capabilities and experience of the incoming generations of skilled new workers.
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Updated: We’ve had a number of reader requests to make available some of the imagery we use in Linux Format magazine. Naturally we’re happy to share with you all, so we’ve put this page online where we’ll upload artwork as it’s requested.
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What’s even better than recycling your old computer? Donate it to a good cause!
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Desktop
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Can Linux co-exist peacefully with Mac OSX? Of course it can, and it’s my opinion there are some real advantages to having both available on your Mac system. So, with this beginner article it is my hope that others will be open to trying out the power of Linux on their Mac.
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I’ve been working on tuning the Linux installation I have on my work Lenovo Thinkpad T400, and it’s time to add a few more applications. I’ll break them down by category.
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I finally had my fill of Visaster on my office desktop. The final kick in the teeth delivered by Visaster was a document that flat out disappeared while I was attempting to move it to a remote shared drive. Explorer did its typical “white-out” and then locked up the desktop and the system had to be power cycled to get responses from the keyboard or mouse.
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Mighty impressive effort here on the part of Dell and Canonical.
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Server
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eBox is a server management platform that handles some really advanced configurations and makes them easy to set up. I reported about eBox a couple of weeks ago and told you that there were some cool new features in the pipeline.
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Kernel Space
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Head on over to Phoronix-Test-Suite.com to give 2.0 Sandtorg a try, which introduces a horde of new features. More on some of the new features and capabilities to be found in Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 are described in Driving Linux-based Benchmarking With Sandtorg and Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 Enters Alpha. In this release there are more than 100 test profiles! Share your feedback on this testing software of ours within the Phoronix PTS Forum.
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It’s been an interesting past few months in the Linux graphics world, but to mark the end of four months of development, Carl Worth on the behalf of the Intel Open-Source Technology Center has announced the release of an updated DDX driver. This new Intel driver is, of course, xf86-video-intel 2.8.0.
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Microsoft’s operating systems have exploded in size during the past 20 years or so as their functionality increased to include thousands of features that weren’t considered necessary in DOS. Nowhere is this more true than Microsoft’s Vista — a classic case of an OS so bloated and unwieldy it barely crawled along on machines that could run Linux like a bat out of hell.
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For ages people have complained about how there’s no drivers for certain products in Linux (or insufficient drivers), despite Linux having the largest driver database in the entire world, easily twice as large as Microsoft’s largest collection.
However, the problem doesn’t lie in what’s supported, but rather when it’s supported. Too many products are released on the market with Windows drivers, but nothing for Linux.
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Applications
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I’ve installed “chromium-snapshot” from Arch’s AUR yesterday (means user contributed, unofficial packages), and I must say it’s come a long way. In the very beginning, this was described by the devs as a 500MB binary that displayed a window. I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea. Then it developed into something browserlike, but without tabs, or flash, or stability. Now it has all those things, plus it actually follows your GTK theme. Flash works, albeit a bit buggy. It’s the only thing that has been able to crash a page at this point. The browser itself hasn’t died on me yet.
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With the recent announcement of Google’s Chrome OS, open source zealots everywhere have been licking their lips raw and playing their trumpets loud. But is another big corporation going to be a good thing for OSS? We take a trip down memory lane and look for whether Google can (or wants to) buck the old trends.
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Email clients are becoming less and less of a frequently used program, now people can go to Yahoo, GMX or Gmail and just put some few details down for registration and they have some few gigs of email space and an online client. And with the popularity such as the Mozilla prism project, web clients can be turned into normal looking programs and be used even off-line, making normal clients less of a necessity. But for some, email applications are still their first choice, one main advantage is the multiple use of accounts at the same time. Since awareness in email applications is decreasing, here is a list of email applications for Linux that shows many of the email clients available.
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1. K3b
Not many can argue against this one. K3b is the most popular burning application for Linux, and although it uses KDE3 libraries, many GNOME users prefer it too over native GTK burners.
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KDE
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KDE announced today that the one millionth commit has been made to its Subversion-based revision control system.
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For some unknown reason, Ole Andre Rodlie seems to have decided that KDE3 is more interesting than XFCE for a desktop OS, and — unannounced! — he is building beta versions of «Draco K3 Desktop Enviroment 1.0», which is otherwise based on Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.1.
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So what of 4.5? Well, we won’t have an army of gsoc students; a lot of us will be in school. But if we’re on git, and the branch layout is what i hope it’ll be, then perhaps i can focus on bugfixing while the rest of kde is doing features, then start my features when they’re in feature freeze – because that’s when i’ll have *time* for features. Of course, that means any feature i write over xmas break will be in 4.5…
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WattOS Beta 3 is a lightweight Linux Distro geared towards running on less energy and for recycled or low power computers without compromising on features or performance that you’d expect from a full power system.
Their motto “Light, Fast, Now” seeks to provide a low-energy full featured Linux distro.
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The excellent distribution suggestions keep coming from Brian Masinick and here’s yet another one, Sidux 2009-2. Sidux is based on Debian and you can download a version that uses the XFCE or KDE desktop environments. You can also opt to download the lite version that weighs in at about 600MB or the full version that weighs in at around 2.1GB. Being the greedy app pig that I am, I opted to download the full KDE version.
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We are proud to announce the launch of the public beta of apperi.com. A new linux app store for Debian and Ubuntu users. Apperi.com currently supports users of Debian 4 & 5 as well as Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04 with a total of 119,295 packages.
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Mepis 8.0 Linux is a Linux distro designed for ease of use and suitable even for beginners.
Mepis is built on Debian 5.0 stable core with the 2.6.27 Linux kernel and comes in a 32bit and 64bit version.
You can download from the Mepis mirror sites here.
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Mandriva
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Mandriva Flash 2009 Spring brings all the extras you wanted. You will find the Mandriva Linux 3D workstation and the complete Linux gamut, such as Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Skype, Google Toolbar, and the OpenOffice suite…
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The fact that Pardus made me actually enjoy using KDE 4 is by itself an indication of the overall quality of this operating system. It’s easy to install, easy to configure, 100% up-to-date and more importantly, very stable. I’ve used many distributions that shipped with ages-old software “for improved stability” that performed much worse than Pardus. Hopefully, the future will bring a bigger software repository and maybe support for other desktop environments.
Turkey, you’ve got yourself one of the finest OSes out there!
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Red Hat
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The open source world is cheering as Red Hat joins the S&P 500. It’s a huge vote of confidence in Red Hat. But is it a vote of confidence in the open source business model? Or more of a sign that Red Hat is miles ahead of its open source rivals on Wall Street and in the channel? Some clues from The VAR Guy…
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The schedule for the forum is below, and note that all sessions will start at Eastern Standard Time, so if you’re on the West Coast in the U.S. and you want to participate live, sessions kick off at 6:30 a.m. The citation below for the 12 p.m. session with Eucalyptus Systems says “Mitch Wolski,” but that’s actually Rich Wolski, who we’ve talked with a number of times. Eucalyptus Systems has strong venture capital backing, and has several innovative open source efforts focused on the cloud. The session with Mike Olson, CTO of Cloudera–focused on Hadoop–also looks excellent. Cloudera provides support and services for Hadoop’s clustered speed-queries across large data sets.
Here’s the complete agenda…
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1. Foreword
2. Announcements
1. Break-In Attempt on www.CentOS.org
3. Featured Articles
1. The Definitive Guide to CentOS
4. Community Threads
1. Web Environment
2. OS Protection
3. Is there an openssh security problem?
4. Better CentOS hardware support
5. Interview
6. Jokes and Funny Stuff
1. How could he ?
2. Comment your code
7. CentOS Errata
1. CentOS-3
2. CentOS-4
3. CentOS-5
8. CentOS in the Spotlight
9. Upcoming Events
10. Contributing to this newsletter
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Fedora
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There’s a nice entry on the Red Hat press blog about some of the interesting items that went on at FUDCon Berlin 2009.
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Put Fedora 11 on my laptop just out of boredom, some notes:
* Fedora 11 SELinux by default: Cool but confusing
* Fedora 11 repositories: Better selection than previous releases, still not as many choices as Ubuntu
* Ubuntu still wins on the default menu organization for new users (just a bit easier to navigate)
* Fedora bootup vs. Ubuntu bootup is about a wash, they both look good and are fast
* Default themes: Neither will win a competition on looks, Linux Mint is much better looking than both
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Ubuntu
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As I become more knowledgable about Linux, the thought has crossed my mind to create my own distribution. However, I’ll readily admit I’m not the most technical user, but at least I’m getting to a point where I could give it a try. Using Ubuntu as the base would probably be easiest, starting from a minimal install, and using my favoruite window manager: Openbox. It wouldn’t be a minimalist or leightweight distribution, just one that provided almost all of the functionality and none of the bloat.
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Note: This blog post could also be titled “Reinstalling Ubuntu and Keeping Your Applications and Data” or “Migrating Ubuntu Data and Applications from One Machine to Another”.
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Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” was released a little while ago, so before it became too old of news, I thought I’d take a whack at experimenting with it for the sake of netbookers everywhere (and for myself, naturally). As I type this on gedit after about two weeks’ use, let’s just say that the system on my EeePC 1000 HE is, for the most part, rather glorious– pun intended. As a bonus, I also got Google’s Chromium browser to run on it, so keep on reading to find the section on that.
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Don’t like the fact your Ubuntu does not have everything you want or need? No Flash Player installed? No MP3 codecs? Where’s Google Earth? Worry not. That’s what Ultimate Edition is for.
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Are you looking for a Linux distribution with an ultramodern look with plenty of eye candy? One that will run on older desktop computers or current netbooks? Does the well-known stability and security of Linux interest you? Does a high level of user customization( without having to edit configuration files manually) sound like something you’d like? Are you an experienced KDE user who has heard the (accurate) horror stories about early versions of KDE4? A. Lizard thinks that Kubuntu-Jaunty just might be the distribution you are looking for.
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I spoke with Andrew Shikiar, director of Global Marketing for LiMo Foundation, on Tuesday to get a status report on LiMo, as well as to uncover what makes the foundation tick.
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So far we’ve heard quite a bit of comparisons between the webOS platform and OSX (for the iPhone), as well as Android vs. OSX. But so far, comparisons between both Android and webOS have been nonexistent. What makes this lack of coverage quite interesting is the fact that both operating systems are built off similar frameworks and use similar languages for programming. So I think it’s only fair that both systems get compared side to side and see who wins.
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Those of you who read my blog regularly know by now my computer operating system of choice is Linux with Simply Mepis being the particular distribution. A quick look through my Computer Category will show you several posts written on the subject. Several of those posts have been published in a various internet computer magazines, for which I’m grateful.
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But finally, it appeared that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix project had managed to produce a version of Ubuntu that would be running smoothly on weak systems, plus it would support almost all of the AA1 hardware out of the box. Trying it out now for couple of days, I am pretty happy. It is not a speed demon, but I am amazed at the scope and quality of functions they have managed to pack into a lowly 512 MB netbook machine. Reason to be happy for a while! 
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This is a post I’ve been looking forward to for a long time:
Launchpad is now open source!
We released it today under the GNU Affero General Public license, version 3. Note that although we had previously announced that we’d be holding back two components (codehosting and soyuz), we changed our minds: they are included — all the code is open.
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It’s easy for people who are skeptical of open source software to come up with a dozen reasons — some perfectly valid — to not give it a chance. Chief among them are uncertainty about which applications to try and an unwillingness to alter their computers in any way. Click2Try is a great way to try open source software in a virtual environment without the hassle of downloads and installation.
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Adobe has announced two new Flash Platform open source initiatives: Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) and the Text Layout Framework (TLF). The former is part of the project previously known as Strobe.
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The Inverse Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PacketFence 1.8.4. This is a maintenance release of PacketFence which focuses on stability and includes many bug fixes and several small enhancements.
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I don’t think Stallman’s remarks are particularly tasteful, especially in an era of political correctness such as the one we live in. However, to accuse him of sexism, when he has clearly explained what he meant to convey, is a bit of a stretch.
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As the new version of Microsoft Windows 7 is nearing completion, many users are gearing up for the big upgrade. Since it is the most popular operating system, many people who use an alternative OS miss out on some good software made for Windows, such as Photoshop, many new games et cetera. Even though we have partial solutions like Wine, they are not perfect and remain the main obstacle for wider adoption of open source operating systems.
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Understanding gender or race diversity can be hard since we’re all born into one group or another. But all of us might find ourselves an uncomfortable outsider in some stereotypical situation or other. A nerd on a sports team. A jock on the chess team. An atheist at a church function. A 30-something in a college class.
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You would think that with our long and growing history, we in IT could be realistic about the prospects of any early implementers putting interoperability high on the list above functionality, wouldn’t you?
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Firefox/Mozilla
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Mozilla has announced it’s new Project – Mozilla Firefox 3.6 which is codenamed “Namoroka“, with an intended release target of early-to-mid 2010
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There are camps of people who use different browsers and have long-winded, heated arguments over which one is best. I have no strong feelings about browsers. They’re tools that help get the job done. That being said, if a tool can make my life simpler, more efficient, and fun, I’m more likely to use it. Firefox 3 fits the bill and gives me a lot of gadgets and options that make me smile. Here are a few reasons why I like it.
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Of course our project and technologies go back much further, but it was on this day in 2003 that the Mozilla Foundation was launched.
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London, United Kingdom (PRWEB) July 17, 2009 — It can now be cheaper to shop using Firefox. Vouchers.Im Indicator for Firefox is a new add-on which will keep consumers aware of all promotions and discount voucher codes available on the websites they visit.
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Business
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One other area to consider: open-source solutions. Having a strong knowledge of open-source alternatives to commercial products can give you an edge over competitors that are only using purchased package solutions. Giving your customers options, especially a lower-cost option, should help you get work from companies that can’t afford a purchased package solution. Open-source solutions are going to be more and more viable in the future.
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Glamour, glitter, and champagne all around because Drupal has gone Hollywood. The Emmys website has just switched to Drupal in preparation for the announcement of nominees tomorrow, and the subsequent annual Emmy award ceremony later this year. The Emmys are annual awards to outstanding television programs and performers.
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Licensing
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… are greatly exaggerated.
It’s funny, from my small corner of the world it seems like the GPL is under attack of late. First, back in March, esr questioned the usefulness of the license. And now a lot of discussion has built up around a post by Benjamin Black comparing the GPL to DRM. Since I am nothing if not fashionable, I felt I should throw my opinion into the mix.
I have to disagree with Mr. Black’s premise that
it [the GPL] acts as a virus to force the release of ever more source. the gpl serves to rigidly control what you can and cannot do with software covered by it, and is thus the license equivalent of digital rights management
The GPL is a rather simple license, and I don’t view its requirement that changes to GPL’d code must also be GPL’d as “rigidly controlling” what one does with it. I can run GPL’d code on any device I want. I can modify GPL’d code any way I want. I am free to do whatever I want with GPL’d code as long as any changes I make are given to whomever I share the code. Heck, if I don’t share the code the license doesn’t apply, since it is based on the making of copies (copyright) and not possession.
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It’s fair to say that while OSI certification is meaningful, the absence of it means very little. To avoid this, the OSI needs to change its licensing procedure.
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Programming
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PHP 6, the next major revision of the popular Web application development language, looms on the horizon and promises many changes. Learn what’s new and what’s obsolete and how to prepare your code for tomorrow.
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Standards/Consortia
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I’m pleased to report that the 0.7 release of the ODF Toolkit Union’s ODFDOM library has just been released. This is an open source (Apache 2.0 license) Java toolkit for programmatically reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents. The code is 100% Java and does not require that you have OpenOffice or any other ODF editor installed. It operates directly on the document itself.
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This extension add one theme to your gallery with more than 100 signs dealing with security, not as bitmap but as vector graphic in ODF format : you may modify them or retrieve some parts to build your own signs. It contains :
* 9 new official signs for chemical products and other danger (http://www.inrs.fr)
[...]
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A BlackBerry update that a United Arab Emirates service provider pushed out to its customers contains U.S.-made spyware that would allow the company or others to siphon and read their e-mail and text messages, according to a researcher who examined it.
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The Government is spending $150,000 on website “filtering” software, outraging some bloggers who say the move amounts to censorship of the internet.
Since 2007 the Department of Internal Affairs’ Censorship Compliance Unit has worked with a small group of internet service providers on a “trial” project to block access to websites distributing child pornography.
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The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime.
A tour of School Park mashup art and Free Software space in Santo Andre, Brazil 02 (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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07.21.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:29 am by
Summary: SCO bankruptcy gets a lot more interesting and serves as a reminder of patent trolls
THE MOST recent SCO scandals [1, 2, 3] showed that funds had arrived rather mysteriously and pushed to create a company whose domain names SCO staff had registered.
In the legal procedures, Novell and IBM take the stand and present documents that further complicate things for SCO, at one stage bringing “fraud” into it. Groklaw has a new article about it.
We’re in OMG territory now, y’all. Let’s continue:
14. Of course, the very involvement of Mr. Robbins in introducing Mr. McBride to Mr. Norris calls into question the good faith of the contemplated transaction. In its January 8, 2009, disclosure to the Court, the Debtors represented that Mr. Robbins — Mr. Norris’s “partner” — had “extensive experience in structured finance and private equity as co-founder and managing partner of Peninsula Advisors” and “served as Investment Director and lead negotiator with several leading financial institutions.”… And Mr. Robbins first introduced Mr. Norris to the Debtors, laying the foundation for the PSA…. But both Mr. McBride and Mr. Norris have testified that they believe Mr. Robbins to be involved in fraud. … Mr. Norris “had come to find out and pretty definitively that Robbins had been lying to everyone and misrepresenting essentially everything to everyone and had probably engaged in a whole variety of frauds.”
This proposed deal is dead in the water, methinks. It turns out, according to IBM’s filing, that there is no one actually committed to invest in this deal:
15. Financing for the PSA Transaction. Mr. Norris claimed that he had fairly firm plans to line up capital for the transaction proposed under the PSA, but he did not provide particulars…. He admitted, however, that he has no executed agreements from anyone to invest in this transaction, that there are no written commitments to back up either the Letter of Credit-Balance or the Letter of Credit-Sun and that he has no scheduled meetings over the next two weeks with any potential investors…. He claimed to have a variety of interested bidders, but did not clearly explain his solicitation process and, apparently on the advice of counsel, refused to identify any of the potential bidders
[...]
Now that the word “fraud” has entered this bankruptcy, we find ourselves in a new universe. Bankruptcies spin the other way, once there is fraud in the picture. And it’s about time, too, I know you are thinking. If I had to read the judge say one more time that SCO was doing its very best, I was in danger of becoming a cynic. Why doesn’t someone tell this judge what is *really* going on? That was what I was thinking about over the weekend. And now someone has.
In a separate context — one that relates to trust in Microsoft — Jason has just reiterated the fact that Microsoft gave money to SCO and it can also fund patent trolls like Acacia or Intellectual Ventures to attack Linux. Microsoft's patent troll recently extorted a Microsoft rival ($120 million in ‘protection money’) and this troll would never do this to Microsoft. The founder, Nathan Myhrvold, dislikes GNU/Linux, obviously.
Food for thought there, especially considering the proxy battles Microsoft has waged against Linux in the past; $86M to SCO, for one example.
Maybe it’s worth explictly telling those people that say things like: “Microsoft would be suicidal to sue” that that is simply not true. Microsoft could easily sell off one patent to any patent troll company to attack Linux with – then what? It’s not like Microsoft doesn’t spawn patent troll companies.
The SCO case is very relevant to us because there are parallels and future lessons at stake. █
Other new Groklaw articles:
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:53 am by
Summary: Another look at notable policies that are still ignored by some
NOW THAT the FSF is more openly a critic of Mono (despite Microsoft’s Community Promise), there are two options for those who strive to characterise Mono criticism as “zealous”; one is to try calling the FSF “zealots” and another is to just come to the realisation that Mono is indeed problematic inside GNU/Linux. Jason has a little new post about this subject and he explains:
FSF on Microsoft’s “Empty Promise”
[...]
Now I’ve been preaching this gospel since Day 1. It is pure dishonesty to pretend like every company present the same risk and hostility to Linux, Free Software, or Open Source that Microsoft does. Microsoft’s hostility and desire to destroy Linux is not the fevered imaginations of wild-eyed zealots. It is documented. It is proven. It is inarguable.
Now, you may want to advance the idea that Microsoft has changed. That is a possibility, sure – but it is not documented, proven or inarguable. The safe and sane position towards Microsoft is suspicion and wariness. Microsoft made it so, not wild-eyed zealots. It also becomes on open question on what type of change it is.
The Linux Action Show, which is FSF-hostile [1, 2], is of course ignoring the FSF’s stance and almost accusing Red Hat/Fedora of spreading FUD (or blames those who cite Red Hat’s concern). But why be so close minded? If both the FSF and Red Hat see issues in Mono, it is worth listening to them and judging the allegations based on facts. The labeling of people as “black or white” is not helpful and those who accuse us of it are often hypocritical.
“If both the FSF and Red Hat see issues in Mono, it is worth listening to them and judging the allegations based on facts.”Fedora has sort of acquired protections from F-spot (and by association from Banshee [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], which contains non-ECMA portions), so it’s not just about Gnote, which already replaces Tomboy in future versions of Fedora (Red Hat). F-spot can be conveniently substituted by Solang, which is available from this Fedora repository.
To paraphrase someone from this Web site, “Novell ‘supports’ Red Hat” only in the sense that it is looking to poach Red Hat customers. One reader sent a pointer to this old marketing proposal from Novell:
Choose SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server and get top-ranked Novell support for your Existing Red Hat Environment.
[...]
When you transition from your existing Red Hat environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, you can recognize dramatic cost savings—perhaps as much 50%…
This one has nothing to do with Mono, but can Novell use Mono against Red Hat? Will it ever? █
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