10.14.11
Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft pays Florian Müller
We could easily tell that from what Microsoft Florian has been doing and saying since last year. Now it is Google’s Matt Cutts who writes:
Florian Mueller, the patent analyst (he’s not a lawyer) who often takes anti-Google stances, just revealed that Microsoft is funding Mueller to create a new study about patents.
FOSS Patents: Study on the worldwide use of FRAND-committed patents
Study on the worldwide use of FRAND-committed patents. Many of my consulting projects over the last few years have related to FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations..
Well, of course. That also explains why he promoted all that he did. He is not alone. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Site News at 1:13 pm by Guest Editorial Team
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft, Patents at 12:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More and more scrutiny for the Microsoft cartel as lobbying, extortion, and even lawsuits by proxy become more evident
IN THE previous post we showed Microsoft’s own reminder that it was lobbying for software patents in Europe.
To say more about Microsoft, “Alcatel-Lucent Told Microsoft Damages Award May Be Reduced,” says a Microsoft-friendly source in a new report which stresses that “Alcatel-Lucent’s patent-infringement jury award against Microsoft Corp. may be lowered to $26.3 million from $70 million, a federal judge said.”
The Alcatel-Lucent was covered here years ago as it was one of those cases Microsoft used to paint itself a “victim” of the patent system while continuing to attack Linux with extortion, either directly or through patent trolls. A couple of months ago someone who was evaluating Acacia contacted us by IRC. Some investors still try to put a worth on the patent-trolling business and Dana Blankenhorn too tries to assess their worth. “Regular readers here know,” he writes, “that Interdigital (IDCC) doesn’t make anything. Except money. Its patented technologies are at the heart of most major cell phones. It licenses those patents, and as the interest in software patents has risen, its stock has as well.”
A favourite patent troll of Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures, is now extorting quite hard for profit and becomes the subject of an antitrust-related appeal. Masnick had this to say about it:
If The DOJ Really Wants To Review Anticompetitive Patenting, Why Doesn’t It Look At Intellectual Ventures?
We were just noting the oddities of Intellectual Ventures suing Motorola Mobility Inc. as MMI is likely being acquired by Google — since Google is an IV investor, and supposedly immune from suits over IV’s patents. It would seem like once a deal closes, that the lawsuit would be moot. Along those lines, the folks at M*CAM, who spend a lot of time doing detailed analysis of patent quality, have written a compelling open letter to the Justice Department. You see, the Justice Department is investigating the Motorola Mobility buy to see if it would be anti-competitive. Now, pretty much everyone (including Google) has admitted that the Motorola Mobility buy is mostly about the patents, and patents are technically a monopoly, but they’re a legal monopoly. However, the pooling of patents can be anti-competitive. Either way, M*CAM can’t quite figure out the reasons here, noting that vertical integration isn’t seen as a problem by the Justice Department (see, Oracle, Sun)
For those who have not heard yet, Microsoft found another extortion victim. We will write about it separately because I had a post about it but lost it while editing on the Palm PDA, as usual. The key points were, Microsoft Florian carries on boosting Microsoft’s latest extortion deal (telling off Google), which targets Android and Chrome OS without mentioning any specific details. CNET also plays along with Microsoft’s racketeers and the coverage of this was extensive enough, although it suffered from lack of details (by design). IBM’s Rex Ballard, on behalf of himself only, writes in USENET: “It’s finally here – Microsoft Linux!!!
“Yes,” he writes, “Microsoft has finally found a way to use it’s monopoly power to extort more $billions from software it didn’t develop, doesn’t own, and has probably stolen.
“That’s right boys and girls who spend the last 20 years supporting Linux in hopes of breaking the Microsoft Desktop Monopoly – Microsoft has figured out that it can threaten to sue smaller companies for patent infringement. Never mind that Microsoft’s patents are on code that was released as GPL and LGPL code years and even decades before Microsoft ever filed a patent, or that several patents were filed on code Microsoft never published and protected with nondisclosure and trade secrets protections.
“Apparently, one of the 10 people who has ever seen the Microsoft code, who has worked for Microsoft and were never fired, somehow took the patented code and contributed it to Linux years BEFORE Microsoft even FILED their patents.
“Of course, Microsoft has a $2 billion a year legal budget, and if Microsoft files lawsuits against smaller companies like Quanta, the legal mess alone could drain their budgets, profits and any cash reserves in motions and other forms of attrition.
“I’m surprised that Google hasn’t just told it’s licensees that they would indemnify them against any Microsoft Patents. That would be two giants and in that scenario, Microsoft has far more to lose, because they have far more to keep hidden.” █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Patents, RAND at 12:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft AstroTurf, Apple aggression
Summary: The duopoly of Linux foes is working hard not to outpace Linux/Android but to cheat and interfere with fair competition
THE CONSEQUENCES of what Halliburton [1, 2, 3] did are still discussed in British news sites. More and more people are becoming aware of the problem. This can help bring patent trolls to the UK along with more litigation.
There are new stories of software patents being used offensively, but these are mostly stories from the US. The danger is that by letting multinationals and patent trolls expand their lawsuits or their arsenal to Europe there will be less opportunity for European businesses to work in peace. Apple is already among those who harm Europe by denying access of certain products and certain features into the continent. “Samsung To Alter Smartphones To Skirt E.U. Ban” says a headline from IW and Apple evidently continues to innovate even after Steve Jobs' departure — innovating in the legal department by blocking Android tablets [1, 2]. Apple suppresses innovation having taken all of its ideas from others.
Microsoft too is a major problem because it lobbies for the EU Patent (allowing bans and fines to have their scope expanded). The other day we were not quite so sure what to do to counter all that lobbying, but Glyn Moody used his IDG blog to push a rebuttal to disinformation into public awareness. Quoting the article’s opening paragraphs:
One of the striking changes at Microsoft over the last twenty years is how savvy it has become in terms of lobbying and influencing political opinion. There was a time when, like most serious tech companies, it regarded this kind of sneaky activity as beneath it – something that only tobacco companies would stoop to. No more; today, it bombards everyone and anyone with a constant stream of carefully-crafted policy papers and posts designed to achieve its goals.
Here’s the latest one. It comes form the “Positions” page of Microsoft’s Digital Policy site in Europe. It’s called simply “Intellectual Property”, and is written in a deceptively simple style, as if it were some non-contentious statement of truths universally acknowledged.
“After failure of introducing EU swpats [software patents], the unitary patent idea has become the back-door way of achieving the same goal,” writes the FFII’s president, quoting the above.
There are patent boosters in the UK working to make FRAND (patents in standards) more commonplace. Moody wrote a great deal about this subject before, even in the very same blog. In the next blog post we will show how Microsoft uses all that lobbying to actively suppress Linux adoption and also to tax its use (Android and beyond, even GNU/Linux). This is an issue we have warned about for 5 years. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents at 11:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Freedom in mobile squashed by Mono and the Linux-taxing distributor (funded by Microsoft)
In a new blog post from Christine Hall she warns about this type of plug for OpenSUSE, where Jos Poortvliet tries to recruit people using MeeGo as the excuse du jour. Remember that Novell's main contribution to MeeGo was Mono applications. To quote Christine:
I have a feeling that Poortvliet is probably a decent enough sort of open source guy, but I figure he’s got a pretty serious case of denial going on. Does he realize that SLED has an indemnity agreement with Microsoft that’s only legal under the GPL because SUSE lies about their end of the bargain? Or that SUSE is like a kept lover, that Redmond regularly pours $100 million chunks of cash into the company?
So, when I hear the community development project openSUSE is opening their arms and offering MeeGo a home, I have to wonder if the suits at Attachmete, SUSE’s owners, are behind this. Then I wonder, what’s in it for them?
Maybe it’s simple and innocent. Maybe they realize their love affair with Microsoft is a public relations disaster and they’re opening up a home for orphaned open source projects as a way of building up some FOSS cred. That wouldn’t be so bad, but if that’s the motive I wouldn’t count on it lasting very long if I were involved with the MeeGo project. There’s also the possibility they have some idea of having a mobile OS that’s highly integrated with their server OS. I can see where that could have some potential value for enterprise customers down the line.
My fear, however, which may be entirely unwarranted, is that this somehow has something to do with SUSE’s close relationship with Microsoft. I have absolutely no idea what this could be, except I’m pretty sure that Windows Phone 7 would somehow be involved and that ultimately it wouldn’t be good for Android or any other open source mobile OS. In other words, I smell some sort of FUD attack in the making.
Will support for this platform too be offered by a site run by Microsoft to put a tax on Linux?
Only days ago we wrote about OpenQA because Jos, an employee of Attachmate, tried to recruit people to give their time away for free.
It’s not really Jos’ fault that his boss assigns him tasks like that, but with posts like these it just ought to be obvious what he is doing to remove the costs of testing OpenSUSE. The head of SUSE is quoted as touting Microsoft “interop” (or patent tax in disguise) as the key feature. Here is the summary of the new interview:
In an exclusive interview, Suse president and GM Nils Brauckmann talks about strategic partnerships, building clouds, and whether the economic downturn presents an opportunity for open source
“Strategic partnership” is a euphemism for patent deal that helps Microsoft makes money from GNU/Linux. People should avoid SUSE to get across the message that Microsoft is not entitled to make money from GNU/Linux. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Tivoization, Vista 8 at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The largest Free/libre software advocacy group issues a formal statement and call for action against Microsoft’s TiVoization push
ON SEVERAL occasions before we mentioned the situation with regards to UEFI for Vista 8 [1, 2, 3] and we are gratified to see the FSF getting involved because it has a lot of influence, so it can make things happen. From its formal statement:
Microsoft has announced that if computer makers wish to distribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to implement a measure called “Secure Boot.” Secure Boot is designed to protect against malware by preventing computers from loading unauthorized binary programs when booting. In practice, this means that computers implementing it won’t boot unauthorized operating systems — including initially authorized systems that have been modified without being re-approved.
Please go ahead and sign the statement.
This just helps show that the FSF was right all along about TiVoization. It had insight and foresight. Speaking of the FSF, its founder Richard Stallman has just told me that “My feelings regarding Jobs are about his work, not about him personally. What I said about Jobs was about his work.” This is worth clarifying for all those who took his words out of context (and we chose not to feed these by doing an article about it). █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 6:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
-
The free Linux desktop is mature. It’s not only on par with proprietary desktops on other operating systems, it actually is innovating and moving beyond what other systems do. It covers all the needs of the vast majority of use cases. It has a variety of office suites, it runs several fine web browsers (another area where Windows has lost relevance up to the point of being made fun of), it has excellent tools and applications in almost any area you can think of, it’s a primary choice for software developers, it even moves beyond classical desktops to netbooks, tablets, and more.
-
Desktop
-
So, not only is GNU/Linux on the desktop doing well, people who actually use it for their living have become confident enough to switch distros without much fuss. Compare that with the German Foreign Office which found GNU/Linux brought complaints from users and was too expensive. What’s wrong with this picture? Instead of whining that users should go to M$, users are choosing the distro of their choice. No complaining about “compatibility” or “complexity”. Just getting on with it.
-
Server
-
Kernel Space
-
If you are not taken by today’s release of Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”, here are some new Radeon graphics benchmarks comparing the Catalyst driver on Ubuntu 11.10 to the latest R600g driver from Mesa 7.12-devel on the soon-to-be-released Linux 3.1 kernel.
-
Can computer science change the world? Ask Ken O’Brien, a first-year Ph.D. student at University College Dublin’s Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory, and he’ll answer with a resounding “yes.” With his focus on green scientific computing at CASL, Ken works with physicists, mathematicians, statisticians and computer scientists to develop new energy optimization solutions for scientific applications.
-
Graphics Stack
-
For those interested in the GPU hardware acceleration support for Opera 12 that was made available with this morning’s release of Opera 12 Alpha, here’s the stipulations regarding the “out of the box” Linux GPU driver support.
-
Applications
-
Looking for an enterprise back-up solution for your servers? Is your network too complex to be handled by simple back-up utilities? Does the thought of making backups feel like a headache? Do not worry, there’s Amanda to the rescue!
Amanda is probably one of the best open source network back-up solutions available in the market today. The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (AMANDA), as the name suggests, was developed at the University of Maryland. It allows the administrator to set up a single master back-up server to back up multiple hosts over the network, to tape drives, to disks or to optical media, and even the cloud (with the help of Amazon S3 Web services). It provides an array of options for the type of media that can be backed up to, and a multitude of client environments.
-
Back-ups are a crucial part of our digital lives, yet they don’t always get the love they deserve. Keeping back-ups is sometimes confusing, thanks partly to the jargon—should I have ‘differential’ back-ups or is a ‘full system image’ a better way? To address questions like these, this article sheds light on all aspects of back-ups, from its basic definition, to information that can help you perform the kind of back-ups you need.
Backing up data is the process of making a copy (or more) of our data files—documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-books, movies, music, browser bookmarks, settings, installed programs—almost everything. Fundamentally, the questions are:
1. What to back up?
2. When to back up?
3. Where to back up?
4. What type of back-ups to perform?
5. Do you need more than one back-up?
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Wine
-
Games
-
Desktop Environments
-
GNOME Desktop
-
I was busy with other things when 3.2 was released, hence my only writing about it now. Having just started using the new release full time, I have to say that I’m really impressed with how it turned out. The rate of progress since the 3.0 has been extremely high.
-
-
Red Hat Family
-
Red Hat Wednesday announced the new JBoss Enterprise SOA 5.2, JBoss Enterprise Data Services Boss Enterprise Business Rules Management System (BRMS) platform releases.
Pierre Fricke, director of SOA product line management at Red Hat told, InternetNews.com that the overall goal of the new product releases is to help build intelligent, integrated enterprises.
-
Fedora
-
I was hoping to wait a bit before announcing my project but I’m having problems getting my ducks in a row. Because of this I’m reaching out to the community for help.
-
Linux distributions have been improving by leaps and bounds, and those improvements are becoming visible in the latest beta releases. Fedora, one of the flagship distributions carrying GNOME 3, is no different and should have plenty of new features to make your mouth water.
-
Some people have a beef with this release name and have been going out of their way to grill its proponents on what a huge faux pas and injustice this is. Beefy Miracle — how could you name something like that? Don’t you see it will make you a laughingstock? What were you people thinking?
-
Debian Family
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
-
Ubuntu received a major update today. The developers behind the popular Linux distribution released version 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot. The update brings a wide range of improvements, including some much-needed enhancements to Ubuntu’s Unity shell.
-
-
-
-
Ubuntu 11.10 a.k.a Oneiric Ocelot has just been released. This highly anticipated release brings the latest open source applications along with some great improvements to the Unity interface. In case you’ve been dying to find out what’s so great about the Ocelot, read on as we give you a quick overview of everything that’s new in 11.10.
-
For the new version of Ubuntu, code-named Oneiric Ocelot, the developers have put particular effort into revising the applications area, improving the usability of the Software Centre and enhancing Ubuntu’s Unity interface.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Ubuntu 11.10 (“Oneiric Ocelot”) was released, featuring makeovers for its Unity desktop and Ubuntu Software Center, plus a switch to the Thunderbird email client and a new backup tool called Deja Dup. On the server side, Ubuntu 11.10 adds ARM support, as well as a new “Juju” cloud management framework, and the integration of OpenStack within Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure.
-
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot was released couple of hours ago and quite a few people would have already downloaded and installed or upgraded it. If you’re one of those wondering – “How does it look?” – here’s a brief screenshot tour.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Hey, here’s one for you: would somebody explain to me why we’re at the point where statements like “OpenOffice.org can’t be allowed to die!” are being made?
Those are the words of Stefan Taxhet, CEO of Team OpenOffice.org e.V., the German non-profit responsible for managing the fundraising for the Apache OpenOffice.org project. Taxhet made this statement in a press release Tuesday that announced new fundraising efforts for the project, which is apparently in need of a cash infusion.
-
Dennis Ritchie
-
Most of you who follow the tech industry have likely heard of the passing of computer programming icon Dennis M. Ritchie (also known as dmr) on October 8 at the age of 70. While it could be argued that Linus Torvalds is more famous in today’s world than Dennis Ritchie, it’s quite safe to say that there wouldn’t be a Linux without Dennis Ritchie.
-
-
Today marks the passing of the pioneer of C and Unix, Dennis Ritchie, the R in K&R. I personally compare his innovation to language. Because both of them gave us the ability to communicate with another creature: humans, and computers. Without him and his partner, programming would be as hard as Electrical Engineering. He is a prophet among computers.
-
-
-
-
Dennis M. Ritchie, co-creator of UNIX and father of the C programming language, died this past weekend after a long illness. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Ritchie, modern computing would not be what it is today.
Often known as “dmr,” Ritchie was born in Bronxville, NY in 1941. He studied at Harvard University, initially focusing on physics. Ritchie said that he entered computing because “my undergraduate experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be a physicist, and that computers were quite neat.”
-
-
-
-
“When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn’t even know who he is.”
-
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
In a ground-breaking opinion on Net neutrality, the European Data Protection Supervisor stresses that restrictions to Internet access inevitably harm privacy. As the European Parliament enters in the final stage of the negotiations on its resolution on Net neutrality, this opinion underlines that the EU Commission’s “wait and see” approach is bound to fail and is unjustifiable. Members of the EU Parliament – who will soon hold a crucial vote on the matter – must preserve citizens’ privacy by requiring strong regulatory measures to ban discrimination of online communications.
-
Copyrights
-
The Government now has a chance to set out clear strategies for assessing the impact of infringement and the effectiveness of different enforcement strategies. Doing so is stage one in finding a way to bring the voices in this debate – be it rights holders, artists, or civil society – closer together to discuss practical, effective and proportionate policy.
-
One of the most irritating myths promulgated by the entertainment industry is the idea that copyright is an ethical imperative because it’s bad to “steal other people’s ideas”. This is frequently combined with an illustrative story of plagiarism — in other words, a situation in which someone fraudulently claims credit for someone else’s work. Of course, this is nonsense. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two completely different things. Although they sometimes occur together, there are many examples of either without the other. And if your eyes just glazed over — no problem: Nina Paley has made it easy with her new Minute Meme for QuestionCopyright.org, called “Credit is Due”.
-
ACTA
-
ACTA is a multilateral agreement which proposes international standards for enforcement of intellectual property rights. According to the FFII, research has shown serious fundamental rights issues.
A group of prominent European academics published an opinion on ACTA. They conclude that certain ACTA provisions are not entirely compatible with EU law and will directly or indirectly require additional action on the EU level. They invite “the European institutions, in particular the European Parliament, and the national legislators and governments, to carefully consider the above mentioned points and, as long as significant deviations from the EU acquis or serious concerns on fundamental rights, data protection, and a fair balance of interests are not properly addressed, to withhold consent.”
Permalink
Send this to a friend