03.05.08

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Nokia and Finland: A Mystery Behind OOXML and Silverlight

Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Open XML at 8:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A concerned reader contacted us as soon as the following news had first made an appearance. You ought have come across some stories about Nokia and Silverlight by now, but if you haven’t, here we go.

Herein we present some analysis rather than offering a more superficial breakdown of the news, in which case no new information will be added. From the Inquirer (to be considered as background):

Nokia signs up to Silverlight

[...]

Last year Silverlight announced its support for Linux and Macs. With this latest mobile push, Microsoft is moving toward making Silverlight a main competitor to the likes of Adobe flash.

Again, this is not true. Microsoft never announced such a thing for Linux, but it clearly continues to deceive with Novell’s help. Moonlight is not Silverlight, either. It’s not even a Flash alternative.

Here is what our reader told us:

Hi, Roy,

Something’s going sour in Helsinki:

Five delegations gave default approval to the Ecma comments (Chile, Cote D’Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, Norway)
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html

Nokia to turn its back on web standards in older phones.

[...]

It’s toxic for sure. What have Bruce Perens or Eric S. Raymond (ESR) had to say about this? ESR publicized the ‘Halloween documents’ which talked precisely about problems like that one, i.e. decommoditization of technologies.

On the issue of OOXML, mind pressure in the potentially-stacked panel in Finland. Follow the links contained in this cross-reference for more information about OOXML in Finland. Nokia was involved in what seemed like misconduct at the time (nepotism and interest/partnership-oriented decisions). More recently we saw the 'donation-as-a-lockin' trick being pulled in Finland, as well.

“Additionally, coming to mind is the recent incident where a former Softie, who now works at Nokia, intercepted Ogg…”It would be interesting to find out if Microsoft’s departing head of the Mobile Unit, who recently moved to take charge of Vodafone, is related to this somehow. Can any of the readers help us find out? Additionally, coming to mind is the recent incident where a former Softie, who now works at Nokia, intercepted Ogg, whipping it right out of HTML5. He kept insisting that Ogg is proprietary (even affected by patents) and that DRM is the way to go. Both are lies of course.

Let’s not forget Nokia and Qt. The acquisition of Trolltech may have been somewhat malicious [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and it was soon followed by a flirt with Microsoft. It was about Windows Mobile. There are other deals including one that revolves around Microsoft DRM. To repeat this older news:

Nokia is to support Microsoft’s PlayReady content access technology into the Nokia S60 and Series 40 mobile device platforms, starting in 2008.

Silverlight, just as a reminder, is a swing at Google and at LAMP, including of course GNU/Linux. Novell is sadly enough helping with this and I’m arguing with de Icaza over there in USENET at the moment. Me and others give him a very hard time with questions he is unable to answer about Moonlight and Mono licensing, especially when it comes to Novell and patent licensing. Responding to this latter issue our reader adds:

You have to wonder what’s going on in the heads of people like him. Advancing the agenda of his movement not only sidelines better technology but causes active harm to the public in many countries.

Further to this, he points out suspicious decisions that relate to our earlier observations:

I would very much like to find out the rational for Finland and Norway moving NO -> Abstain -> YES recently and all in the face of corruption, irregularities, procedural violations, inappropriate constraints, and technical hortcomings.

ISO is not there to *develop* standards and MOOX is very clearly in the *early* stages of development. ISO is there to ratify finished standards. Clearly ISO’s relation to Ecma needs to be reexamined.

[...]

It would help if we could get MS reflagged as the noxious and malevolent anti-American movement that it is…

A one-liner summing up the conflict of interests the Microsoft employees are under, would help.

Here is a timely press release from yesterday:

Curl Delivers First Open Source Product with Web Services Development Kit

Curl’s RIA Platform Version 6.0 was announced in the fall of 2007 and makes it easier for developers to build enterprise-class RIAs.

Slightly older:

Enterprise Web App Platform Maker UnCurls Code

“The decision to release all of the Curl source code above the RTE was made to encourage broad adoption of Curl as a viable enterprise RIA platform and provide all of the components required to support development of Curl applications,” Richard Treadway, vice president of product strategy for Curl, told LinuxInsider.

Rich Web technologies debated

With the proliferation of mobile devices however, HTML browsing will not be available on all these systems, and the iPhone does not have Flash and probably will not have Silverlight either, said Ferraiolo. AJAX, however, is always there and is open and can be counted on, he said.

Those who say that RIA and Free software cannot go hand in hand are simply fulfilling their own prophecy and defend a selfish desire to take the proprietary route. Curl is Apache-licensed.

Some more timely warnings about Silverlight:

Avoid, avoid and avoid Silverlight. Do not allow Microsoft to seize the World Wide Web, which was established and succeeded owing to open standards and no cost barriers like software patents. █

Silverlight toilet