11.10.10

Linux and ‘Open’ Core

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel at 4:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A quick word about the suggestions that Linux is “proprietary”, which helps some FUD-Meisters

Without delving into the specifics and the hyperlinks (deliberately omitted), there’s a debate right now about whether Linux is Free software or proprietary (or both). It is probably not the best question to ask. Linux — like Android — enables many people to move from a world that is purely proprietary into a world where freedom is favoured and companies adapt gradually, eventually realising that by making their program code (e.g. drivers) publicly available they get a lot of ‘free’ bug fixes and improved stability. This is true not just in Linux but in other layers of the system, even hardware. So, Techrights will not get involved in the counter-productive debate which at the moment just feeds enemies of freedom (they use Linux as ‘proof’ that free/open source software cannot succeed). Even the FSF learned to abstain from talking about it like that. █

“Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn’t all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.”

–Richard Stallman

Permalink 10 Comments      Send this to a friend

10.23.10

From Copyrights to Patents: How Software Patents Became the Top Linux Issue

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Patents, SCO at 9:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: An overview of news about SCO (copyright challenge) and software patents, which are increasingly being used to threaten the legality of Free/libre software

Microsoft’s and Apple’s #1 weapon against software freedom appears to be software patents. More and more people recognise this, especially now that SCO is passé. Groklaw still organises some old SCO texts, including some which got unsealed and now reveal:

[T]he judge’s instructions to the jury later that same day, the last day of the trial.

We also learn more on why Novell’s slander of title counterclaim was tossed, basically on a legal technicality, because of a lack of specific evidence of special damages Novell suffered, but note the plain-spoken judge on the matter and on Darl McBride’s behavior:

THE COURT: Mr. Jacobs, again, the proposed instruction in this case — and we have spent the better part of the last hour plus looking for any kind of case law to help us — would indicate the types of damages contemplated by a scienter title case are narrow and focus almost exclusively on the types of things that are described in the jury instruction. And absent anybody finding anything to the contrary, the Court feels that it is going to have to grant the Rule 50 motion because of the absence of the types of damages that are required.

I would note on the question of constitutional malice, our analysis of the evidence would be that the Court could not grant it on that basis because we believe there is evidence that indicated that Mr. McBride was aware of the fact that his company may not own the copyrights, he persisted in making public statements, and a jury — a reasonable jury could conclude that there was constitutional malice.

But in the absence of any finding of damages, the Court is going to grant the motion and we’ll just have to do the work overnight that we must in order to exclude the counterclaim, any reference to the counterclaim during the course of — and what will result is tomorrow morning I will give you another packet. I’ll have to ask if you could use your fellow attorneys here to go through that to make certain we’ve done it properly.

So, he reluctantly felt bound by law, not finding the highly refined type of damages slander of title cases require, while at the same time noting that had they been presented he believed a jury could find constitutional malice on SCO’s part, because McBride knew there was dispute over the ownership of the copyrights but he persisted with his public statements otherwise. Interestingly, SCO initially had the same damages issue with its slander of title complaint, lo these many years ago, but it was allowed to revise the complaint to replead better. Novell much later in the process was not, probably because it was now an issue of evidence.

Well, a SCO bankruptcy hearing gets cancelled again and SCO files notice of cure amounts again. Groklaw also publishes new objections to this cure notice by SCOracle and by EMC (which works with Microsoft and owns VMB_ware).

We have found no mainstream news about the SCO case. It sometimes seems like Groklaw regulars and Pamela Jones are the only ones (except the trial’s lawyers plus jury) who keep track of this lost case. Techrights never had much SCO case expertise, but our area of focus is software patents and with informants from the FFII we shall continue to share some analysis, mostly an assortment of existing analyses. It goes without saying that we do not always agree with opinions that we quote or cite here. We try to be comprehensive by presenting all sides and forming an opinion about each. One point made by the FFII’s president last night, for example, is that news about Google’s tax avoidance^* is in some way related to its policy on software patents. A reference to the news was put here earlier on in our list of links, but the suggestion that “Google is using its software patents to evade US taxes” is one we could not substantiate. I asked the FFII’s president: “Patents?”

“Yes,” he said, “intellectual property”. It would be nice to see the correlation, if any, between software/business method patents and shifting of tax processing to other countries. Some banking tricks are actually patented (c/f In Re Bilski). The FSFE, which is based near the FFII, recently exposed the latest hostile behaviour of the BSA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], which TechDirt now accuses of sending “Ridiculously Bogus Letter To European Commission” (it’s the same BSA which lies about software patents).

Is it just me, or is the BSA becoming a bigger and bigger joke each time it does just about anything these days? For years, the organization has put out its yearly bogus stats on “piracy,” which have been debunked over and over and over again. They’re about the only trade group that still has the gall to equate a single unauthorized copy to a single lost sale (even the RIAA and MPAA have moved away from that claim). They’ve also been known to simply make up survey numbers, rather than actually ask people in certain countries. And then, even on news stories, they seem to make it clear that they have no clue what’s going on — such as last week’s announcement that ACTA was a treaty already signed by 37 countries, when it’s neither a treaty, nor has it been signed by anyone.

The BSA is not any better than the Murdoch-funded Chamber of Commerce. On behalf of big business it attacks the rights of citizens.

Jamie Love has just explained what the EU must do about ACTA in order to eliminate or mitigate the patent-related ramifications:

Jamie Love has been one of the key people writing about and fighting the worst aspects of ACTA. He’s just posed a good question on Twitter:

Why haven’t the EU civil society groups done more on patents in ACTA? It is quite possible to get patents out at this point.

Michael Geist quotes Jamie Love as saying/writing:

Only countries that want patents in ACTA are Japan, Switzerland & EU. Strongest EU voice on patents is Germany.

TechDirt has another decent new post where the idea gets pushed that “Patents Create Incentives For More Patents, Not Innovation” (needing defence against patent attacks, for example, just like nuclear weapons). From this post:

While many people (especially politicians and the press) like to equate patents and innovation (often falsely suggesting that fewer patents means less innovation), studies have shown that patents are actually a really bad proxy for innovation, in that there’s simply no direct link between the two. And that’s a problem, considering that the patent system is supposed to be about creating more incentives for innovation. In fact, however, it often appears that the patent system is actually creating incentives to get more patents.

[...]

Incentives are funny things. If you actually believe that patents are correlated to innovation, then such strategies make sense. But if the reality is that patents are simply correlated to patents, then it’s a huge dead weight loss to focus so much on patenting, rather than actual innovation.

Openuniverse speaks about the 4 freedoms and software patents in his blog:

free software license: any license that gives the user of the software all 4 freedoms.

strong license: a free software license designed to keep those 4 freedoms, even for users down the line, through copyleft- a requirement that users also grant the same freedoms for derivative works.

permissive license: a free software license that doesn’t worry about how strong it is, just that it gives the 4 freedoms.

the problem with permissive licenses is not always an issue- lots of projects will not be high profile enough (or even useful or innovative enough) to end up in the crosshairs of the competition- however, what constitutes “high-profile” varies- you may have never heard of tomtom, but it became a victim of software patent abuse by larger software companies (tomtom is a dutch company that makes gps devices.)

Here is another new post about wireless routers with embedded Linux. Red Hat’s Haish Pillay calls it “more evidence on the failure of software patents” and it goes like this: [via Slashdot]

Optimum Path is now suing basically everybody making an embedded Linux based wireless router for infringing on patent #7035281, filed September 13, 2000. This patent covers many features of the WRT-54G series (first shipped in Dec, 2002), and related products, from multiple other manufacturers, features that were built into the Linux mainline code, long before the patent was filed. Optimum Path now also holds a second patent – filed in 2005 – granted in July 2010 – which covers not only the ground covered by the first patent but includes content filtering (!?). I’m told this latter patent is not currently the subject of litigation, but it bothers me as much as the first – we were doing content filtering in Linux in 1999, also… Everybody was doing it.

In looking back on the heady years of 1998-2002, I’m now nearly certain that back in July of 1998, we actually created the first recognizable “embedded Linux wireless router”. PLEASE: Note the word choice, there – embedded, Linux, wireless, router. Eliminate any of those words and you end up with a different product, from a different person.

Here we have another illustration of software patents as the top threat to Linux. SCO ceased to be a problem several years ago. Thanks to the trial we now know that Linux has no copyright issues, but software patents are a different story because infringements need not be willful. Software developers defend copyrights, not patents. █
_____
^* Legalised but by no means ethical or acceptable — a point that’s made clear in films like “Oh Canada” and a point we covered in reference to Microsoft, which also uses tax havens in Europe.

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

10.16.10

Jim Zemlin: A New Approach to Open Source Compliance

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Videos at 3:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Zemlin’s talk from LinuxCon 2010 in Boston

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

10.10.10

VMB_ware — Now Headed by Former Microsoft Executives — is Claimed to be Promoting Microsoft DirectX Inside Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Mono, Patents, VMware, Wine at 4:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Paul Maritz
Photo by Robert Scoble

Summary: Non-standard and Microsoft-controlled APIs are said to be pushed into Microsoft’s #1 competition (Linux) via the VM company people should beware as it also strives to buy Mono

MICROSOFT is not the only company which attacks GNU/Linux using software patents, not anymore anyway (thus the need to diversify). But some of the companies which are attacking GNU/Linux using software patents are either Microsoft partners or entities which are accommodated by former Microsoft staff and today we’ll show some examples from the news. This post concentrates on VMware, which would be better off known as VMB_ware.

As we’ve been stressing and documenting for a couple of years, VMB_ware is the home of several ex-Microsoft executives. Even Microsoft bloggers are saying it. This does not take some crazy theory to show, one just needs to read the CVs of the top management there.

We have written several lengthy posts which explain how VMB_ware suffocates Zimbra [1, 2, 3], which poses a risk to Microsoft’s Exchange (VMB_ware’s parent company, EMC, appears to be promoting Exchange). Why can’t more people foresee the negative effects of SUSE being offered to VMB_ware?

One of our readers who goes by the name of gnufreex raised a curious point a short while ago. By the way, his opinions are his own are there are attempts by mobbyists to smear Techrights over mere informal words (IRC) of people who participate, so be sure to check context. To quote just a portion of a much longer discussion:

[...]

DiabloD3	Tekk_: yes, but they cant patent anything here that GL isnt already in violation of	Oct 08 17:59
Tekk_	oh, so there’s hope	Oct 08 17:59
DiabloD3	its just an API	Oct 08 17:59
DiabloD3	it works the same way GL3 in future mode does.	Oct 08 17:59
Tekk_	so they could basically just make it a wrapper?	Oct 08 18:00
Tekk_	cool	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	well, wine is “just a wrapper”	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	they’re making a native state tracker just to make it faster	Oct 08 18:00
gnufreex	But there is again problem.	Oct 08 18:00
DiabloD3	theres no “problem”	Oct 08 18:00
gnufreex	Games will port to Linux and it will be DirectX	Oct 08 18:01
gnufreex	That is bad.,	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	you can write D3D10/11 native code on linux… but you cant run that code on windows	Oct 08 18:01
gnufreex	They should be OpenGL	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	and you cant take your windows code and compile it on linux	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	so you still need wine	Oct 08 18:01
DiabloD3	gnufreex: and no	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	go look at d3d10/11	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	its almost an entirely different API	Oct 08 18:02
gnufreex	OpenGL is better. I looked.	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	opengl3 in future mode, and d3d10/11 do shit how the card wants it	Oct 08 18:02
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[mairin/@mairin] @fabsh i could tell from the smaller version – it’s brilliant. the circuit board roots too		Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	they both act and work the same	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	microsoft basically admitted d3d was trash, and cloned opengl with a d3d naming style	Oct 08 18:02
DiabloD3	its sorta like what c# is to java	Oct 08 18:03
gnufreex	So they will later do extend and extinguish	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	get what Im saying?	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	well, they cant extend and extinguish	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	opengl keeps pushing features first	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	microsoft has to somehow get AMD and Nvidia both to support d3d features before opengl has them	Oct 08 18:03
DiabloD3	which is impossible	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	microsoft refuses to let vendors be part of the design process	Oct 08 18:04
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[fabsh/@fabsh] @mairin Hehehe…. Thanks. @bkuhn had the original idea and we refined it together. I really like doing logos!		Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	which is extremely hilarious about d3d10	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	they copied an API that has 100% vendor input AND is older than d3d	Oct 08 18:04
gnufreex	Stupid people think DirectX is better than OpenGL. And most people are stupid. So it doesn’t matter.	Oct 08 18:04
DiabloD3	gnufreex: well now it no longer matters	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	d3d IS opengl.	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	well, d3d10/11 is	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	its the same fucking api, just with incompatible syntax.	Oct 08 18:05
gnufreex	I have tough time beleiving that.	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	microsoft has basically killed d3d10/11 adoption because of it	Oct 08 18:05
DiabloD3	all the hardcore opengl haters wont go to 10/11 from 9	Oct 08 18:05
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[bkuhn/@bkuhn] @fabsh sounds like you and @vinzv should fight over who gets the !FaiFCast logo,then. competing logo proposals could be fun for me & @kaz		Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	(which 10/11 is vista7′s big selling point for gamers)	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	So then, this is the time when OpenGL should be pushed hard. No phuckin DirectX	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	gnufreex: not at all.	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	the problem is, the state tracker doesnt do anything for me	Oct 08 18:06
DiabloD3	portal 2 is a d3d9 game.	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	Why to let MS kill DirectX	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	?	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	If Linux have DirectX, OpenGL is dead	Oct 08 18:06
gnufreex	Nobody will use it	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	not at all	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	the most important game of the year is d3d9.	Oct 08 18:07
gnufreex	Everybody thinks DirectX is best thing since slice bread.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	and no, NO ONE thinks directx is any good	Oct 08 18:07
gnufreex	Everybody are idiots.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	it costs sales.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	no android sales, no mac sales, no iphone sales.	Oct 08 18:07
DiabloD3	and theres only one game console that uses d3d, and thats xbox, and the xbox doesnt do 10/11, it uses a customized version of 9	Oct 08 18:08
DiabloD3	so if they’re shipping pc AND xbox, its going to be a d3d9 pipeline (or multiple pipelines, and everyone hates that)	Oct 08 18:08
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[fabsh/@fabsh] @bkuhn OK. I have an idea for one. Will try to squeeze it into my schedule…. @vinzv		Oct 08 18:09
DiabloD3	all the other game consoles either offer some opengl or opengl-like api, or the rendering pipeline is completely different (ps2/psp/ps3, etc)	Oct 08 18:09
DiabloD3	gnufreex: dx is rather dead	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	most games being sold are either opengl, or are neither gl or d3d.	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	why sell a silly PC game, when you can sell 25 times more on the DS? or 15 times more on the wii?	Oct 08 18:10
DiabloD3	or if you need those next gen graphics, 10 to 15 times more on a PS3.	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	xbox has very few native xbox titles, and they dont sell well	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	gnufreex: so d3d10/11 on linux really doesnt mean shit at the end of the day.	Oct 08 18:11
DiabloD3	not only that, they’ve cut themselves out of the largest gaming segment: casual gamers	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	I already mentioned iphone and android	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	but appletv and google tv may end up being casual gamer platforms as well	Oct 08 18:13
DiabloD3	and microsoft is totally fucked out of that.	Oct 08 18:13
gnufreex	Apple has propriatary OpenGL extensions. Stipid Steve Jobs.	Oct 08 18:14
DiabloD3	nope.	Oct 08 18:15
DiabloD3	Apple is a vendor, they actually CAN name new extensions	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	its legit	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	and several apple extensions have made it into core.	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	apple maintains their own opengl stack for osx, and also a different one for opengl es on iOS hardware	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	mesa also has extensions	Oct 08 18:16
DiabloD3	gnufreex: you cant just mysteriously have a phantom extension	Oct 08 18:17
DiabloD3	you have to register for a number, and you cant register without a completed spec	Oct 08 18:17
DiabloD3	gnufreex: I have no problem with Apple proposing new extensions	Oct 08 18:19
DiabloD3	even Microsoft had that power at one time, before they quit the opengl board	Oct 08 18:20
gnufreex	When I last heard about that, Apple was not feeding back into core.	Oct 08 18:20
gnufreex	You say they are.	Oct 08 18:21
gnufreex	Then it’s fine.	Oct 08 18:21

The short story is that it’s being suggested that VMB_ware is promoting Microsoft’s DirectX at OpenGL’s expense, even inside Linux. The problems are obvious; just like with Mono, it’s about control and patents. It’s something to keep an eye on, for sure.

Microsoft is already attacking GNU/Linux using patents (even in the courtroom several times) and that’s a subject we’ll cover in the next post. █

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

10.03.10

ACCESS (ALP) is Now Dead, Freedom Lives

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Patents at 6:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us.”

–Richard Stallman

Summary: Good news to Free software proponents as a ‘proprietariser’ of Linux and defender of software patents finally exits the scene

A SOURCE of agitation against the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Techrights, and few other pro-software freedom groups is no more. The staff was laid off a short while ago and there is no loss to anything but a software patents pool and proprietary software; the winners are probably Android, MeeGo, and software freedom. Bruce Perens was right when he called ACCESS “a sinking ship.” All it did was divide GNOME, belittle Android, smear Richard Stallman, and led to the firing of at least one Free software supporter. That is a terrible legacy to be leaving. █

Related posts:

• ACCESS Surrenders to Google
• ACCESS Co. is Dying
• Bruce Perens on the Recent Attacks on Richard Stallman and GNU

Permalink 13 Comments      Send this to a friend

10.01.10

Microsoft Offers More Filesystem Patent Traps (While Suing Over Them Again), Red Hat’s Rob Tiller Speaks

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 10:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft keeps using filesystems to extort money out of Linux users and Red Hat explains its latest amicus brief in Bilski

WE ARE STILL preparing a post about Microsoft’s patent lawsuit against Motorola, which ought to serve as a wakeup call to Mono and Moonlight boosters. The short story is that Microsoft is suing Linux again and filesystems seem to be at the core of it.

Coincidentally (or not), it was only days ago that Tuxera made it into the news again, offering a Microsoft-taxed (owing to software patents) filesystem module for Android and Linux. Here is the press release and some press coverage. Tuxera — or Tax-era as we sometimes call it — is helping Microsoft put a patent tax on Android and Linux, the #1 competition. We’ll shortly write about Microsoft’s latest patent attack on Linux, which shows that Microsoft is losing.

Do not let Microsoft spin the words of the EFF to make itself look good or make it seem as though EFF is sympathetic towards Microsoft (to which it’s only a case of resolving i4i-like trouble).

What we need now is elimination of mathematical barriers that are imposed by USPTO/ITC/US courts. Red Hat has filed a submission against software patents in the USPTO [1, 2] and Rob Tiller has just said more about it:

When the Supreme Court decided the Bilski case, it didn’t speak directly to the issue of software patents. But the Bilski majority emphasized that abstract ideas are not patentable, and recognized that allowing patents for abstract ideas could hinder innovation. Thus there’s still room for discussion of the legal standard for when, if ever, there should be patents on software.

The Patent and Trademark Office is on the front line of the issue, since it has the duty of deciding whether to grant patent applications. Whatever interpretation of Bilski it adopts, its decision will affect the patent landscape. It was good, then, to see that this summer the PTO invited public comments on its proposed interpretation of the Bilski case.

This is an issue that Red Hat has been involved in, having previously submitted an amicus brief in Bilski. Earlier this week, Red Hat responded to the PTO’s request and submitted an understanding of Bilski that would mitigate some of the harm caused by poor quality software patents.

The “quality” should not matter. All software patents are of low quality because they are an aspiration to lower the quality of software in the market, not improve it. Phrases like “poor quality software patents” are what we’re accustomed to hearing from OIN, which is not trying to simply end all software patents. Maybe Tiller just abstains from a strongly-worded article/amicus brief and maybe it’s just his background as a lawyer that makes him act this way (software patents are a basis of his career). Either way, the only solution is the total ending of software patents. █

“What we [Novell and Microsoft] agreed, which is true, is we’ll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That’s kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft. And we took a quota, you could say, to help them sell so much Suse Linux. That’s part of the deal. We are willing to do the same deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors, it’s not an exclusive thing. But after a few years of working on this problem, Novell actually saw the business opportunity, because there’s so many customers who say, ‘Hey look, we don’t want problems. We don’t want any intellectual property problem or anything else. There’s just a variety of workloads where we, today, feel like we want to run Linux. Please help us Microsoft and please work with the distributors to solve this problem, don’t come try to license this individually.’ So customer push drove us to where we got.”

–Steve Ballmer

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

09.22.10

Novell Does Not Want GNU/Linux Choices

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Very poorly-put PR response from Novell, which fears Oracle’s attempt to sell its own ‘version’ of Linux

ORACLE has just done something really sneaky. It bashes Linux (yes, the kernel) in order to sell its own ‘improved’ version of Linux and Red Hat’s PR response is as follows:

• Leading With Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we continue to provide an industry-leading application platform, all based on open source technology, designed with the goal that end customers are and should continue to be the largest benefactors of Red Hat and our product offerings.

Novell’s former manager for the OpenSUSE community (Zonker) has posted the most widely-cited response so far:

• Oracle’s “new” kernel for RHEL clone: The real truth

Now, watch the tactless response from Michael Applebaum (Novell’s director of Linux and Appliances), who decided to say that “we don’t need a third Linux distro” (i.e. choice is bad and duopoly is good):

• Guest blog: Why we don’t need a third Linux distro

  Ultimately, the market just isn’t demanding a third Linux distro. The presence of two strong players – Novell and Red Hat – keeps the market extremely competitive, and our respective R&D teams along with the talent of the open source community drive exceptional innovation in areas like virtual appliances, cloud computing, high availability clustering and systems management. While it’s certainly in Oracle’s interests to play in the Linux space, its market uptake has lagged.

This is Novell’s PR response. They try to tell companies to stay out of their way. If that’s not arrogance, what is?

In any event, the bad company in this case is Oracle. What it’s doing will in no way be beneficial to the Linux ecosystem. But Novell too has its own Linux kernel, so there is room for claims of hypocrisy. █

Permalink A Single Comment      Send this to a friend

08.30.10

Microsoft’s Boosters Continue to Attack Linux/Android and Say Microsoft Loves Open Source

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Kernel, Microsoft, Virtualisation, Windows at 9:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The smears and the deception continue to focus on just one weak phone or flawed line of reasoning, all intended to just make Windows look like an ideal host to all software developers

WE CAN’T get a break from FUD, thanks in part to IDG, whose “open source” writers are sometimes people who are fighting against Open Source (as defined by the OSI). We gave a new example yesterday (Microsoft writing for IDG about “FOSS”) and last year we showed fake coverage of open source from an Apple and Microsoft shareholder, Bill Snyder. He is still there writing for IDG and his attacks on FOSS and on Linux carry on as usual. He is now finding a weak Android device (there are almost 100 types) and then extrapolating to the whole of Android (Linux) to say it has “flaws” (there is a more reasonable take for Aero critics). Gartenberg, a former Microsoft AstroTurfer (on the company’s payroll) who occasionally writes for IDG, associated Android with Nazism some weeks ago (he tried to find ‘dirty’ apps, which have nothing to do with Google). Microsoft’s booster Gavin Clarke associated Android with “porn and pirates” (in the headline even) just a few days ago (here is another new example of Clarke’s disdain for Microsoft’s rivals, saying in his headline that “OpenSolaris board commits ritual suicide”).

Stephen Withers, a longtime Microsoft booster at ITWire (Withers keeps posting advertisements like this one), gets around to promoting/advancing Microsoft’s “open source” spin, which is still circulating after it got seeded by Jon Brodkin at IDG (then spun further by IDG [1, 2] by Bort and Shimel). Withers plays along with similar lines to help an “embrace and extend” strategy which marginalises Freedom and GNU/Linux, making “open source” just another class of third-party applications for Windows. To quote part of his spin piece:

Microsoft has released more than 300 projects as open source. Its contribution to existing projects includes 20,000 lines of code submitted to the Linux kernel in the form of device drivers for use with hypervisors.

This was released due to Microsoft's GPL violation, it is just 14,100 lines of code, it is almost tossed out because they have poor stewardship, and it is only used to sell more of Windows and Hyper-V, which is proprietary software. It’s also used for Microsoft’s PR purposes. As for those “300 projects”, they are for Microsoft’s stack. The whole “Microsoft loves open source” nonsense is also ridiculed by Groklaw. Pamela Jones writes: “Oh. ‘Love’ as in marriage of convenience.”

She also links to the “Microsoft Open Source Strategy is Upside Down” article which we cited last week, remarking that “[t]his is the clearest explanation of Microsoft’s hateful Open Source position that I’ve read yet. And I have to inquire: Why is Apache helping them do this?”

Microsoft’s PR moves around ‘open’ take another step with a charm offensive in Slashdot (headlines say “Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle under Creative Commons License”). Harish Pillay says: “so what? Needs AgLight. FAIL!” █

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend