Our last writing about Nokia, Finland and Microsoft received a lot of attention for no obvious reason, but it did provide some insights from a reader and explored Microsoft’s influence in that nation, which is typically associated with Linus Torvalds.
Consider this an update filled with facts. Once again, the information comes from a reader who is a researcher. He wishes to share this information and have it reach a broader readership. Here it goes:
Minister Suvi Lindén in Finland is catching flak for censoring a lot of political web sites under the smoke screen of kiddie porn. She is also catching flak for being involved in the recent ISO BRM fiasco in Geneva where Finland somehow decided to vote in favor of the Microsoft specification.
[Ed: In order for you to remember the recent proxy story, see this. The Register covered it also (among many other sites).]
“The media in Finland, as elsewhere, is both influenced and operated by many people with involvement in the Microsoft movement and thus do not cover these issues unless forced.”The petition requesting her dismissal is pushing close 15,000 names. The media in Finland, as elsewhere, is both influenced and operated by many people with involvement in the Microsoft movement and thus do not cover these issues unless forced. Even then, the issues are downplayed or misrepresented.
Suvi Lindén, who was apparently at the Geneva BRM, is Finland’s minister for communication.
The Ministry of Communications is also responsible for YLE, broadcasting in Finland. (1) YLE is under fire for locking its archives into Microsoft. (2) YLE was under fire for a scandal a few years ago where all the qualified candidates were passed over without explanation (4) and a Microsoft employee was appointed with no discussion. However, that second scandal predates her tenure (4).
(1) http://yle.fi/fbc/actyle.shtml
(2) http://openlife.cc/node/95
(3) a) http://www.ebu.ch/en/union/news/2004/tcm_6-18586.php
b) citation for article criticizing the selection process
[note - all the articles critical of Jungner's selection are gone from
the net apparently, I gave up after 1.5 hours searching]
Citation from "Hufvudstadsbladet"
Referens: 181024 (24/500)
Arkiv: A801
Tidning: HBL
Datum: 19.11.2004 (09.12.2004)
Sida: 6
Artikeltyp: Nyhet
Nivå: Allmänt
Rubrik: SDP-POLITIKER RISAR VALET AV MIKAEL JUNGNER
Landskod: Finland
Signatur: Laurén Anna-Lena
Klasser: 801
Ämnesord: television, radio, Yle,
Rundradion, direktörer, utnämningar, Jungner
(4) http://www.mintc.fi/oliver/upl116-Curriculum%20vitae%20-%20Suvi%...[PDF]
There might be more grounds to explore, so watch this space. █
A reader has informed us of a somewhat suspicious new publication. “You’re there in the UK, aren’t you?” he asked. “If so, do you have way of finding out what if any ties a PhD student (or recent graduate) Evangelia Berdou has with Microsoft? Is her work or research funded by Microsoft or a Microsoft partner?” he then continued.
“She is or was at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the department for Media and Communications.” Since we don’t typically approach personal issues my reply was simple: “I’d be careful launching smears against a single individual. And by the way, yes, Microsoft does such things. In France, it is becoming normal. We covered this before.”
The reader then responded:
I am not interested in smearing anyone, even less in bringing the dissertation to light. I simply read a few dozen pages of the dissertation and took issue with the Microsoft language in document and what appeared to be a large number of factual errors regarding among other things licensing and copyright. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
At this stage, it is worth emphasising that Microsoft did pay at least one academic researcher in order to generate GPLv3 smears (without explicit disclosure). We covered this in here, among other posts.
“…Microsoft did pay at least one academic researcher in order to generate GPLv3 smears (without explicit disclosure).”The reader then suggested that it might be best let it languish. “It cannot be unpublished,” he said.
We have done some googling on her, attempting to find a Microsoft link. We were not very successful, but we make this conversation available out there for the public to access, just in case someone wishes to find a connection (it will be at least indexed in Google). We didn’t explore this properly.
Evidence of LSE-Microsoft connections would be handy and our reader believes that this is something I could find out at one of the libraries. Again, we won’t go this far. How can one approach this? Does the thesis state no funding sources under Acknoledgement? Mine has the EPSRC listed, among others.
Readers’ feedback would be appreciated. You can help us hugely by pushing more details about this, even about the London School of Economics. Raising suspicion is not slander. █
Beneath lies a letter from a reader, which was edited just slightly (minor modifications). It present another interesting perspective.
Tone down the criticism of de Icaza in public. You see, by trashing de Icaza, we weaken Open Source and by implication help Microsoft. I can see Gartner quoting the ‘de Icaza’ issue in some future report.
“Finally, he’s obviously been spending too much time with Microsoft and has ended up slightly brainwashed.”Microsoft engaging with Novell is a very clever move. If Mono becomes ubiquitous then Microsoft wins as well. If Novell becomes side-lined then Microsoft wins as well, as it’s one more Open Source player out of the market. A win-win strategy for Microsoft, only some devious bastard could have thought this one up ..
[In response to “You’re right. I told him some days ago he was a “pawn”, a one night stand (Microsoft’s own words in Comes vs Microsoft antitrust exhibits).”
In a historical context it would be interesting to ask him why he created Mono. Wouldn’t it have been more in Novell’s interest to create a truly open framework. What was Novell thinking in cloning .NET, did they have meetings with Microsoft? If not, then why not? What did the Novell lawyers think of the deal? Who suggested it first? When Microsoft found out, did they object or do the monkey dance? Taken with the more recent patent covenant, it is most curious.
[...]
Finally, he’s obviously been spending too much time with Microsoft and has ended up slightly brainwashed. That quote is precisely where Microsoft would like ‘open source’ to be at: “you’re free to tinker as long as we control, own and get the revenue from your work…”
“What you need to do is have a mixed strategy… and use open source as a tool,” said Miguel de Icaza.
Microsoft: Microsoft will indemnify you against getting sued.
Me: sued by who exactly?
Microsoft: getting sued by Microsoft…
Arguments in public can indeed be damaging. The next post will attempt to explain just why, but take a bit of a gamble. █
This Web site continues to grow in terms of its readership with an average of 12,000 pageviews per day (search engines excluded). We thought it might be nice to present a pie chart showing where the readers actually come from*. Here is what it looks like.
Mostly visited by Americans, as you can probably see (click figure to view it un-resized). █
___ * Where the address is resolvable without a sophisticated lookup, but just a superficial DNS lookup, then consideration of the suffix.
The remainder of the news from the past week (spillover, miscellanea) goes here. Firstly, let’s have a quick look at Novell’s new membershipin the Climate Savers Computing Initiative
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative today announced Novell has joined its ranks. The Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing computer power consumption by 50 percent by 2010. Together, Novell and the other industry-leading members of the Initiative will work to increase the adoption of energy-efficient PCs and servers, and increase awareness and use of computer power management.
This item is out of date, but it made a recommendation of NOVL prior to the crash.
S&P MAINTAINS HOLD RECOMMENDATION ON SHARES OF NOVELL (NOVL; 7.14):
January-quarter operating EPS of $0.05 vs. a loss of $0.01 is $0.03 above our estimate. Revenue rose 5.7% to $231 million, $7.5 million above our forecast. NOVL cites strength in Linux products revenue, which rose 65%. Other businesses are improving, with low single-digit growth. We see FY 08 (October) revenue rising in mid-single digits with non-GAAP operating margin expanding to 8%, reflecting cost savings from restructuring. We are raising our FY 08 operating EPS estimate by $0.06 to $0.17, but keep our 12-month target price of 7.50 based on an enterprise value of 1.4 times our FY 08 revenue estimate. – J.Yin
Google set up an office in SA last year, poaching Stafford Masie from networking company Novell as its country manager. Yesterday it held its first local media briefing, and was big on promises if thin on figures. Masie would not say how many people it employed in SA, although “a lot” were South Africans who had worked abroad for Google and had come home to launch the local branch.
Event: ‘Identity & Systems Management For Healthcare – Presented By Novell & Synapse SE In Minnesota’
Without a highly automated, flexible, and secure systems & identity management solution in place, it has become increasingly difficult for healthcare organizations to effectively manage the growing amount of complex, valuable, and sensitive devices and identity information.
Darl McBride said Monday he regrets that he is being pushed out as CEO of The SCO Group software company but not his decision to sue IBM and Novell, lawsuits that led to the company’s bankruptcy and ultimately his departure.
There are a few Novell products and announcements which are worth mentioning here. The first is the point of sales product from NCR, which uses SUSE.
Novell and NCR are cross-promoting their products as an integrated POS solution.
[...]
Linux grew 32 percent year-over-year, according to figures released by IHL Group. The research firm reckons Linux accounted for $475 million of the $5.56 billion market, putting it third overall with an 8.5 percent market share. More details can be found here.
The hardware for the prototype SAP is showing at CeBIT is provided by open-source software specialist Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise.
We wrote about this negatively earlier this week. SAP is a Microsoft partner, so it’s hardly surprising that it uses a “Microsoft-approved” (i.e. Microsoft-taxed) distribution, despite the recent Red Hat certification for SAP.
Over at Linux Journal, Novell’s ICEcore Workshop gets highlighted.
It turns out that Novell’s Open Source Technology Center is sponsoring a workshop on ICEcore, an open source collaboration toolkit (it’s written one way on their website and another in the email, I don’t know which one to believe.).
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