Whenever Torvalds speaks out in public, we listen because he is very influential and his personal opinion affects the opinion of many other developers. We certainly do try to parse Torvalds interviews in order to gain better insights into his views on Novell-type deals with Microsoft.
The newly-published second part of his interview with Jim Zemlin contains some good bits, including this one:
Linus Torvalds: Patents are nasty. It’s kind of hard to really say a lot more than the fact that patents on ideas in general are a huge mistake and the whole notion that you can have patents, business models and software is pretty broken to begin with.
And at least in the EU so far they’ve been able to fight that whole notion of patenting software. In the U.S., I think there are certainly more than just open source people who are realizing that software patents are a huge mistake.
There is some further analysis of this interview in NetworkWorld.
“…They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don’t think they’ve — not that I’ve gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don’t think they’ve generally used patents as a weapon,” Torvalds said. “But they’re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, ‘Hey, isn’t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.’”
[...]
Microsoft’s recent work around improving its platform’s interoperability with Linux left Torvalds largely unmoved.
“I think there are people inside Microsoft who really want to improve interoperability and I also think there are people inside Microsoft who would much rather just try to stab their competition in the back,” he said. “I think the latter class of people have usually been the one[s] who won out in the end, but — so I wouldn’t exactly trust them.”
We commented the first part if this interview here. There is a good summary with links to previous interviews here. As for Alan Cox, here you have a good summary of his views. He seems to like the GPLv3 and he also believes that it’s right for Novell to be punished for what they did. █
Novell has made the news quite a few times in the past week, especially compared to a very quiet week that we saw before that. Let us begin with OpenSUSE.
Well another alpha release is out and I’m behind on getting my screen shots out. This time I’m ahead of last time. There have already been a few articles out there already about this release with plenty of screen shots and will include links to them. This way you get twice as much. For those that don’t want to click on the links, I’ve setup a page with all of the screen shots.
Here is a photo of OpenSUSE 10.3 (with KDE 4.0) running on a MacBook Pro.
Mostly known for his work on openSUSE for packaging Mozilla applications and for testing the distribution, we present you the community contributor Wolfgang Rosenauer.
“I have followed the progress of SUSE from their 7.0 personnel edition, up to the new 9.0 version for the enterprise, and I can say they are the best choice for OSI,” said Jason Macer, founder of OSI Hosting.net, Inc. – which has designs on becoming the ‘World’s Largest Open Source Based Dedicated Hosting Company.’
Francis Giannaros announced the release of the latest OpenSUSE newsletter:
The seventh issue of openSUSE Weekly News is now out![0] For the week
starting the 21-01-2008.
In this week:
* openSUSE Build Service Expands Support to Red Hat and CentOS
* Sax2 ported to Qt4
* Open Source Meets Business, with openSUSE attendees, kicks off
* openSUSE 10.3 PromoDVDs Now Available for Order
Expensive and error-prone digital tapes has forced BBC UK, one of the world’s largest television broadcasters, to look at using computers running Linux to help produce its programs.
[...]
The team set up two dual quad-core Intel systems with 4GB of RAM and 4TB of disk storage with the XFS file system. OpenSUSE Linux is the operating system.
Going a wee tangentially, below lies one bit of news from Linspire, which is technical. It’s similar to the Build Service from Novell.
Linspire, developer of the commercial Linspire and Freespire flavours of community desktop operating systems, is to offer a custom desktop Linux OS build service to partners.
And the press release too, in case you are interested in it.
Linspire, Inc., developer of the commercial Linspire and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, today officially announced an initiative to offer a custom desktop Linux OS Build Service to partners. Designed to provide custom desktop Linux OS configurations, the Custom OS Build Service will also significantly help partners cut time to market and greatly reduce the overall expense required when building a desktop Linux operating system.
We don’t usually cover Linspire on Saturdays, but maybe we shall begin making the exception. This Web sites does, after all, overlap the goals of boycottlinspire.com and shares the very same space. █
As another Sun employee, Erwin Tenhumberg, pointed out in his blog quoting a KOffice developer, OOXML’s goal is compatibility with one particular application — Microsoft Office. Therefore, OOXML is very closely related to and dependent on the Microsoft Office implementation. In contrast, ODF is based on the OpenOffice.org XML file format, not the OpenOffice.org implementation.
That’s a huge difference because the OpenOffice.org XML file format was designed with application, vendor and platform independence in mind…
Jan and me had the chance to talk to André and Benjamin Henrion from the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) at the 24c3 Chaos Communication Congress. Besides some general talk about the activities of the FFII in Brussels we get a few insights into the current campaign against the Microsoft standard ooxml.
From Australia comes another reminder of the Microsoft Office lock-in. ODF is needed to restore competition, not only to have a real standards mandated for objects that we all use extensively.
IT managers considering the future of their organization’s desktops need to be wary of the amount of dependence workers have on Microsoft Office documents — which cause the most lock-in, according to one consultant.
What do you see as the biggest danger to open-source software today? On the one hand, there’s still a locus of resistance. Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and indeed necessary model. And so as long as a company that sells a billion dollars a week in software is in that sense fundamentally still trying to [fight] the free way of doing things, Microsoft remains a very dangerous party.
Here is a video that was added to YouTube just a couple of days ago. In this video, Eben explains how introducing royalties with Novell’s kind ‘help’, the freedom of software gets jeopardised (in all senses of the word “free”).
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
–Mrs. Warren’s Profession, 1893
The last time we boasted a project whose choice was the GPLv3, it was SimCity. Other large projects include Funambol (AGPLv3) and SugarCRM (GPLv3). Here is another ground-breaking transition that is certainly going to have ripple effects. It might also instill confidence in the minds of some of who are still cautious and hesitant.
Trolltech CEO Haavard Nord announced today at the KDE developer conference that the company’s cross-platform open source Qt application development toolkit will be released under the GPL 3. This move, which comes shortly after the release of KDE 4.0 (watch for our review on Sunday night), will allow the open source desktop environment to adopt the new version of the GPL.
Also on the same subject, Free Software Magazine has an excellent new interview with Richard Stallman. Among the things that he says there with regards to Tivoization:
Companies making consumer electronics products want to impose DRM on us; they want to do this in programs that they receive as free software, then pass them on to us in such a way that we do not have the freedom to change them. So they invite us to allow our software to be tivoized, and offer us, as an inducement, that our software will be “more popular” if we cave in.
The only way to keep our freedom is to have the steadfastness to reject those tempting offers. We have to move to a license like GPL version 3 that will stop these tempters in their tracks.
With Qt’s new licence, courtesy of Trolltech whose business is on the incline, the future of GPLv3 is all about business, not against it. █
Marketing: Unfortunately the best product does not always win and unfortunately, getting open-source products in the hands of users is a hard task. Also, established, closed-source software vendors do their best to prevent open-source from spreading. They use a number of techniques to achieve this.
The first is about formats and interoperability. The game here is to prevent competing products accessing files data (files or documents) created by a proprietary application. For a long time, this issue was more important in the office applications realm. Now we are in a connected world, this issue has extended to new domains like network protocols (SMB/CIFS for printing and file sharing, for example), Internet applications (Microsoft Silverlight applications running in the browser, requiring a proprietary plug-in) and Digital Rights Management.
The second technique used by proprietary players is in the legal field, using software patents and royalty schemes and open source software is often unable to respond. For example, embedding a piece of software requiring a royalty-fee codec (such as a video) breaks the open source nature of the code, because it prevents redistribution.
Right now, such methods are being used by some vendors and are threatening the open source model. I think open source has a great future if it manages to ‘avoid’ these threats. As individual users, we need to make sure that the products we adopt are open source: In today’s world we are ever more dependent on technology and keeping it open is the best way to master it in the long term.
It is rather amazing to see how hard he tries not to name Microsoft, referring it as “some vendors”. Do you know why? Because if he points a finger specifically at Microsoft, people will call him a “zealot”, a “bigot” , a “fanboi”, a “Microsoft basher”, or even a “conspiracy theorist”. These are well-known methods for stealing attention from those who ‘dare’ to criticise abuse. Over the years, this was the technique used to paint people black because they told the truth. Just look at the personal attacks on Nicholas Negroponte and even Richard Stallman. But anyway, let us stick to the main subject again.
Mitchell recently left Mozilla (remaining on the board though) and she will be replaced by John, who gets promoted internaly. Mozilla seems to be too focused on a single product (the Web browser) although it can grow, even without Google’s money. Firefox is still at risk. It is integration and all sorts of similar tricks that can elevate Silverlight and pressure Mozilla in years to come. They need to look ahead. Just recall that recent JavaScript head-butting incident which involved Mozilla and what Tristan calls “some vendors”. Microsoft can’t sit idly while it’s losing market share and it will fight back. Memories of Netscape spring to mind.
“Anything Novell does is likely to be tied to Microsoft’s long-term ambitions.”So, what is this Silverlight/OOXML/XPS/HS/Sharepoint stack all about? Should it blindly be embraced by GNU/Linux? Will Novell sell us patent ‘protection’ for it? Do we get a discount if we exclude and subtract Mono protection (some of us don’t use it anyway)? Novell is not doing so well financially these days, and it was looking for ways to make more sales. We mustn’t forget that it willfully became a vassal to Microsoft (and it shows). Anything Novell does is likely to be tied to Microsoft’s long-term ambitions. Novell still hopes that Microsoft will save it from drowning. Remember a certain struggling company called SCO?
As a general note, OpenSUSE will be fine even without Novell, but only if volunteer developers keep up th good e work or defect to create a separate company that capitalises on SUSE’s codecase independenly. One thing to watch out for is this gotcha (watch bottom part about a pledge to OpenSUSE developers, which is atrocious). No wonder the (Open)SUSE folks are so afraid of the FSF. It’s probably reciprocal because the FSF is quietly angry at Novell.
Watch this cheap shot from SUSEForums. It’s part of a pattern of smears that sometimes involve the GPL, sometimes the FSF, and sometimes Groklaw. We covered some other examples here before [1, 2, 3, 4].
Warning: This interview contains Richard’s view of reality, which may or may not match the reality you’ve observed.
Is that really tactful?
Novell has been hoping to find and buy forgiveness using good deeds. Novell continues to contribute but also to detract. We mustn’t accept this risk which involves Microsoft milking money from all Linux vendors and threatening large companies until they shell out money secretly (oh yes, they do!).
“Microsoft currently collects royalties from some companies that use Linux in their computing environments, Gutierrez said. However, he declined to indicate the number, the dollar amount Microsoft receives from those payments, or identify any of the companies by name.”
As the above illustrates, the reality you hear about in the press isn’t the reality on the ground where there are back-door and boiler room deals. Al Capone would be jealous at this sight. █
“…it can be seen as a myth and a damaging stereotype which makes Free software users and supporters seem like a sinister conspiracy.”It was several days ago that we mentioned the fact that there is no “the community” in Free software. We cited a nice short article that addresses this issue. The ‘community’ does not exist. It’s merely an attempt to portray Free software as “communism” or a dangerous clique which is always scheming to take over the industry, wreaking chaos in the process. In other other words, it can be seen as a myth and a damaging stereotype which makes Free software users and supporters seem like a sinister conspiracy. It’s a demonisation tool, also.
The Linux Foundation has just announced a new series of audiocasts which makes its debut with a Linus Torvalds interview. The 451 Group has already dived into this first audio and it makes the observation that even Linus agrees with the above. “There is no open source community”, argues Torvalds. Here is a fragment from this excellent analysis:
How can software vendors engage with the open source community? An important step, according to Linus Torvalds, is to stop believing such a thing really exists and start engaging in the development process.
This specific issue is worth emphasising particularly because many times in the past Jeff Waugh tries to wave the “community” wand and claim that we do not serve “the community”. A few of this site’s readers, as well as ourselves, took offense in Jeff’s remark and the especially use of the word “community”, which was seen as out of place.
While on this subject of “community” smears and myths, we wish to present a set of very relevant articles which show how stereotypes get used against Free software. It’s easy to discredit that whom you successfully demonise.
It is, however, uncommon for a writer to set out to deliberately provoke Linux users with over-the-top stuff – just to prove his contention that said users are a bunch of ferals.
Given how the technology and methods the Linux community uses are constantly villified, ridiculed, and held in contempt by competitors; by ill-informed IT professionals and hobbyists; and now by journalists who use lies and outrageous comments to hold the community’s response up for ridicule–is it any wonder why the community is so defensive in their responses?
That’s not a justification of bad behavior, but it certainly puts such responses in another light.
Articles (1) and (2) were actually published to address the issue of provocative articles, sometime written by those who are secretly hired by Microsoft[PDF].
The problem here is that the powers that be have created enough FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about Linux that most decision makers feel it is safer to stick with Windows (including XP). That FUD is fueled by many myths and misconceptions about what Linux can and cannot do.
Naysayers position open source as a sort of geeky pleasure that’s best reserved only for unwedded twenty- and thirty-something males residing in basements owned by parental figures. That the Linux platform is the product of a wide network of hobbyists. That the solutions which subsist within the Linux system are not worth equal attention to big-name products from firms like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and others.
“Back then, to base a business on products built using Linux and open source was a fairly new idea. We were out in the market for fundraising and venture capital, but the investors we talked to were very averse to the idea that with open source that you would not own your intellectual property. Our employees got the idea, and the customers loved it, but the investing community seemed allergic to open source. We were forced to bootstrap for two or three years until we could show traction.”
Matters such as SCO’s Linux assault and Microsoft’s hints of legal action against open source software makers and users tend to dominate the public discourse around open source code.
Some of the examples above were intended to show the impact of FUD and misconceptions that are fueled by stereotypes and fear. This can also lead to legal action and responsive legislation.
Moore notes that most Linux distros are now illegal in Germany as well, because they include the open-source nmap security scanner tool — and some include Metasploit as well.
Last week, the United Kingdom adopted similar laws.
What if Linux and Free and Open Source Software became illegal to use due to “national security?” Never mind the fact that the American military uses it. Never mind the fact that Microsoft funded both political parties in the year 2000. Never mind that Richard Stallman has accused Microsoft of enabling terrorism in the first place.
The sheer ignorance regarding casual Linux users astounds me to no end. While I’m not interested in pointing fingers, there is a lot of misinformation about the Linux community, and we will help to dispel some of these myths, once and for all.
1. Linux Users Are Cheap. Ah, this is one of my favorites. It seems that Linux users have long since been seen as cheap, despite the fact that so many of them in the States earn up to six figures. First, define cheap? Are we cheap because we choose not to buy brand new everything with every release of our selected OS?
After a long and arduous journey that included a suspended validation last year [...] OpenSSL has regained its FIPS 140-2 validation
“We called it the FUD campaign,” he says. “There were all kinds of complaints sent to the CMVP including one about ‘Commie code.’ [...] Silly or no, each complaint that’s filed really slows down the process.”
“…the ones they did see often contained redacted, or blacked-out, data about who had filed the complaint .. in some cases, proprietary software vendors were lodging the complaints.
What is it about Ubuntu Linux that makes otherwise competent technical writers switch to Moron Mode? Everywhere I turn, I see articles on how to do obvious things in Ubuntu. Books on Ubuntu concentrate on listing every insignificant detail of every obvious procedure; things that are inherently self-explanatory are explained in depth. Subjects that have any inkling of technical complexity are skipped because, “Whoa — those are way too hard for you stupid Ubuntu users to grasp, so let’s just skip them and pretend everything’s peachy.”
Repeated efforts at Nationwide Mutual Insurance to try Linux on the mainframe faced internal opposition, some of it from IT employees worried that a mainframe-based server consolidation would be a threat to their jobs. They “fought tooth and nail to keep it from happening,” said James Vincent, a mainframe systems engineering consultant at Nationwide.
Their resistance taught Vincent a lesson that he put to use after the Linux project was finally approved in 2005. Part of Vincent’s job involved working with the employees who had feared the project, including IT staffers who worked on Unix systems.
Because proprietary companies will always spend more of their money on marketing than open source outfits, it pops up regularly in the best of places, such as at Time Magazine recently. Or Microsoft sends CEO Steve Ballmer to London, so he can rant about how his lawyers are going to make all Linux users pay Microsoft for their stuff.
It’s nonsense.
This is not “the gift economy,” as Justin Fox calls it in Time. This is people taking advantage of the fact that the Internet has no distribution costs, which means marketing costs can also sink to zero. No ads in Time doesn’t make you a communist.
I can understand that a teenage, underprivileged geek reacts like that, but not mature people who are blessed with the gift of words and the privilege of a good education. Regular visitors of my blog know that nothing outrages me more than people who apply these guerrilla tactics. Whether it is Ian Ferguson who said that “the flaming Linux bigots should take a backseat”, Mohit Joshi, who equaled GNU to communism or the more recently Bruce Byfield, who obviously couldn’t take the heat anymore and decided to proclaim unilaterally that all bloggers who don’t agree with him are automatically “conspiracy theorists”.
I found this comment while I was browsing through an MS-Windows oriented site where a blogger said something nasty about Microsoft. It isn’t even worth to refer to the link, because it has nothing to do with this story. It’s about the name-calling these Microsoft fans do. I heard ‘zealots’, ‘bigots’, ‘advocates’, the whole lot. Words I never knew before, because English is not my native tongue. I don’t mind to be called a fanboy, because that is what I am. What may be not too clear to these Microsoft zealots is why I am a fanboy. It’s not because I really dig this “free the software, free the world” ideology. That came much later. It’s because I like this “gimme the source” idea.
[...]
As a matter of fact, I think that Microsoft itself has created the “Linux fanboys” they are complaining about, just like all the legal trouble they have found themselves in the last few decades. In Dutch there is a saying “wie goed doet, goed ontmoet”, which means that all good things come to those who make them happen. I think the reverse is true as well. So next time you call me a “Linux fanboy”, remember why I became one. To all those “Windows fanboys” I’d like to say, I’ve become a Linux fanboy because I have used Linux for a long time. Have you? I know first hand what MS-Windows is all about..
These references will hopefully prove valuable for one purpose or another. █
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