Posted in GNU/Linux at 8:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A reader’s take on GNU/Linux market share and why some firms get it wrong
SEVERAL years ago we wrote many posts about GNU/Linux market share. We no longer do this because it’s a subject we’ve addressed very thoroughly. One reader sent us the following thoughts last night:
The problem with [Microsoft-backed] net statistics are they don't take into account
deployments where there are less open net hits. Take academia, where hits
might be limited to mostly intra-net, and costly outside access is limited.
Take into account where Linux is greater in deployment in 3rd world countries.
Internet bandwidth is expensive, so open external usage is limited to those
who can afford. Others may limit themselves to limited bandwidth with
limited open browsing and E-mail.
So, net statistics do not tell the full picture of what is exactly out there.
The following is collated from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
Only annual month of May is shown for comparison:
Win7 WinXP MSFT Linux Mac *nix
2011 36.50% 40.70% 85.20% 5.10% 8.30% 13.40%
Win7 WinXP MSFT Linux Mac *nix
2010 18.90% 55.30% 88.30% 4.50% 6.70% 11.20%
2009 1.10% 67.20% 89.50% 4.10% 6.10% 10.20%
Vista WinXP MSFT Linux Mac *nix
2008 9.30% 74.00% 88.30% 3.60% 4.70% 8.30%
2007 2.80% 75.00% 87.10% 3.40% 3.90% 7.30%
W2000 WinXP MSFT Linux Mac *nix
2006 10.70% 74.20% 88.70% 3.40% 3.60% 7.00%
2005 19.40% 64.50% 90.00% 3.30% 2.90% 6.20%
W2000 WinXP MSFT Linux Mac *nix
2004 29.60% 51.00% 91.10% 2.90% 2.50% 5.40%
2003 41.00% 31.40% 92.80% 2.20% 1.80% 4.00%
These show that Windows is on the decline and Linux is on the rise.
In my personal site, about 16% of the visitors (nearly 1,000 people per day) use GNU/Linux. When we had tools to check this in Techrights (before implementing heavy caching) we found that for a couple of years ~40% of our visitors used GNU/Linux. █
Summary: The extortion scheme of Microsoft and its mole inside Nokia moves into first gear
HERE IT GOES. We created a wiki page about MOSAID earlier this year because we saw this coming:
Microsoft and Nokia sue Apple for Patent Infringement (via a Holding Company)
Luxembourg based Core Wireless Licensing S.a.r.l. has sued Apple for patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas. The recently filed complaint alleges that Apple’s communication devices such as iPads and iPhones infringe eight different Core Wireless patents. The Core Wireless family of patents focus primarily on communication protocols and the patent owner claims that the patents are infringed by any device that communicates using 2G, 3G, or 4G standards.
Core Wireless obtained its portfolio of 2,000 patents and pending applications from Nokia and (apparently) Microsoft. In 2011, the patent licensing entity MOSAID purchased Core Wireless. MOSAID itself is owned by the US private equity firm Sterling Partners.
Luxembourg, Eastern District of Texas, Microsoft. All the ingredients for a scary movie plot. Are regulators brave enough to watch? Will they step in to halt this anti-competitive conspiracy? █
Posted in Novell at 7:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about Novell becoming scarce and OpenSUSE Weekly News reaching the end of the line
WE will no longer keep track of Novell as closely as we have since the company was sold. The reason is, there is not much to cover. SUSE became a tool/marionette of Microsoft just over 7 months ago, Microsoft got Novell’s patents more than a year ago, and Novell is being liquidated (physical assets sold). When new releases come out [1, 2, 3, 4] it will make sense to say a few words, but not many releases come out anymore, not under Attachmate’s leadership. Why? Because it is too passive, hardly ever caring about Novell.
“SUSE is now just a subsidiary for Microsoft to sell its Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux, primarily at Red Hat’s expense.”Novell’s PR front delivered just two posts in a whole month [1, 2] (it used to be almost daily) and the OpenSUSE site has something to say only about once a week [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. One of those updates is about the demise of OpenSUSE Weekly News and another about a death. SUSE staff moves on to other ventures such as ownCloud and looks for more staff or support [1, 2]. The residue of SUSE is still around, but the SUSE focus is long gone, except in some HOWTOs. SUSE is now just a subsidiary for Microsoft to sell its Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux, primarily at Red Hat’s expense.
Looking at some recently-uploaded videos, we were able to find Novell promotion in YouTube, as well as old press appearances (also in German). We’re afraid there’s not much more to say about Novell; the company is history, so finding news about it has become very hard. █
Posted in Australia, Novell at 7:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Attachmate receives very bad ratings and cancels its call for loans (more debt)
THE buyer of Novell had debt and could barely buy Novell. The whole sale smells like some kind of corruption and there is secrecy around it. Novell is being liquidated now, as Glyn Moody alleged. Consider the fact that Attachmate is not new to controversy; its CEO was arrested for mass-murdering animals with a firearm. Attachmate’s purchase of Novell faces a lot of opposition from Novell shareholders, but that was not enough to stop it. Attachmate debt and fragility will most likely mean the death of Novell. Microsoft gets Novell’s patents, Attachmate puts the rest in the graveyard. It’s cheaper than buying the whole lot and it also evades regulators (although CPTN did receive some scrutiny at the end).
Last month we wrote about a major downgrade of Attachmate and later on we showed some desperate moves. Attachmate has since then cancelledthe call for loans (which made the company’s evaluation drop):
Credit Suisse AG was arranging the debt, which included a $300 million incremental first-lien term loan due in April 2017 and a $100 million incremental second-lien term loan due October 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said that its rating and outlook on Attachmate Corp. are not affected following the company’s announcement that it has withdrawn its proposed $609 million dividend recapitalization transaction.
Still, dividend activity remains inside the $8.7 billion monthly average of the liquidity-drenched opening half of 2011. And the fact that Attachmate recently pulled its transaction shows that investors have limits and are not willing to go along with the most aggressive dividend proposals.
The planned dividend was large. Attachmate was seeking to pay out $609 million, comprising the entire cash equity position of the owners plus an estimated $40-50 million of additional payout. Although the absolute increase in leverage was not outsized at a one-turn increase, to 3.7x, investors were wary about the business trend line. Indeed, the recent Attachmate-Novell merger represents cost-cutting play as opposed to the equity-friendly growth story pitched by Asurion. Existing lenders were in a power position, having to amend to approve the incremental debt used to fund the dividend, and second-lien investors in particular were concerned about the additional first-lien debt coming in ahead of them. And some investors felt that the corresponding leverage would be uncomfortably close to Attachmate’s total valuation in a downside scenario.
Not to end on too pessimistic a note, Attachmate still has presence in Australia and this is perhaps the only area of expansion based on what we’ve seen in the press this year and last year. Here is a new example:
Lilli’s commercial space also now houses US IT company Attachmate, which has made the building its Melbourne headquarters. The company is occupying half the building’s 2500 sq m of office space.
It was days later that we began seeing articles like this one:
The Salt Lake City Office of CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE) announced that it has been selected by Novell, Inc., a global enterprise software leader and wholly owned subsidiary of the Attachmate Group, to arrange the sale/leaseback of Novell Tower and the sale of six office buildings in the adjacent East Bay Business Park. The campus includes a total of nearly 900,000 SF of office space.
Novell Inc. announced Monday it has selected CBRE Group Inc. in Salt Lake City to arrange the sale/lease back of the Novell Tower and the sale of six office buildings in the adjacent East Bay Business Park in Provo. Novell will continue to manage the day-to-day operations of the property without change after the sale.
According to a CBRE news release, the sale will include a total of nearly 900,000 square feet of office space. While Novell will lease back the Tower and cafeteria portions of the property, the other six buildings, currently occupied by a number of companies or vacant, will be sold and not leased back.
The Salt Lake City office of CBRE Group Inc. has been selected to handle the sale of six office buildings owned by Novell Inc. in Provo’s East Bay Business Park.
CBRE also will try to arrange the sale and lease back of the adjacent Novell Tower, an eight-story, 397,346-square-foot structure that will continue to house Novell’s operations in Utah.
“Provo is the center of technology and technological innovation in Utah, and Novell has been a big part of the city’s evolution and rich history,” said Bob Flynn, president of Novell.
We may come back to this subject later. The important thing is, for the time being, Novell is being liquidated and dismantled under Attachmate’s leadership. █
This is Phoney “7″ all over again folks. The latest revelation is that “8″ on ARM will not fit into the “management” system that M$ uses on other hardware… I imagine that will prevent most organizations from issuing ARMed gadgets running “8″ to staff or students. With GNU/Linux there is no such limitation. SSH running on an ARMed machine can do the same as on any x86/amd64 system.
PJ slaps Cade Metz’s inflamatory, GPL troll piece, “Open Sourcers Drop Software Religion for Common Sense”
Puh lease. First, calling people names is not journalism. It’s also not nice. Make money if that is your goal. But don’t pretend it will keep the code more open or grow the pot of code anyone can freely use. It won’t. It will produce a lot of Apple wannabees, who will take the code and run away with it. At least be honest. What is the benefit of Open Source code if it becomes proprietized and locked up? It’s the difference between Open Source and Free Software. And it’s a difference that matters. Having code contributions back is what builds advantages for Free Software developers to be able to compete with the proprietary dudes, who otherwise have all the advantages. And that leads to more software that anyone can use, modify and share. Do you want the whole world to be like the Apple app store? *All* you can do is look. That’s where BSD-like licenses take you, because they can. And I am very sad to see IBM’s Rob Weir link to this article on Twitter, as if it’s a good thing. Businesses do what they do, because of the way they think. They will always lock you in, if they can. But the community should not be confused. I mean, what did the BSD guys get out of Apple? Apple is making megabucks from their code, and they get nothing? What businessman would consider that a good deal? Businesses want code for free and without any obligations to give back anything. They don’t want to pay and they don’t want to contribute back code, and if you are stupid you will use a license, like the Apache license, that lets them do it. Because then when you set up your business with your code in competition with them using their code for *their* business, they will out-market you, and your business will die.
This is from Groklaw’s news feed and is worth repeating. As usual, the non free software people insult the people they would convince to give up code without strings by calling them rude, irrational and unpleasant. In reality, GPL and GPL3 are both growing and doing well.
This is an extreme case of the general point that you can’t trust nonfree software. Do you want your country to use weapons with nonfree software in them?
Has Stratfor, which maintains various contracts with the Defense Department and other federal agencies, penetrated the US intelligence establishment for its own benefit? (“Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them,” Stratfor said in a statement on Monday; the company did not respond to a message from Mother Jones.
Today WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. … They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods
Wikileaks noticed 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange and outlines many of the above stories of corruption.
By saying OWS posed a threat to critical infrasctructure, the DHS was calling OWS terrorists. They did this because the owners of the infrastructure, aka banks, told them to. DHS then smeared OWS and coordinated the crackdown with local officials.
On Friday night, the judge-picked lawyers for 120,000 victims of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out cut a back-room deal with oil company BP PLC which will save the lawyers the hard work of a trial and save the oil giant billions of dollars. It will also save the company the threat of exposing the true and very ugly story of the Gulf of Mexico oil platform blow-out. …The judge picked the lawyers [and] side-lined the legal “A-Team,” like Cajun trial lawyer Daniel Becnel, guys with the guts, experience and financial wherewithal to go eyeball-to-eyeball with BP and not blink.
The claims process was already a joke bad enough to merit RICO accusations, and BP hopes to squirm out of that. There is some hope for Federal lawsuits but so far the Federal government has worked for BP rather than for citizens.
In recent years, Microsoft has emerged as Google’s chief legal antagonist, working publicly and privately to get antitrust cops in Washington and Brussels interested in Google’s activities. As part of his new job, Mr. Long will likely continue those efforts before the FTC
The source article is behind a WSJ paywall. The revolving door looks a lot like bribery and stinks of corruption. See also this failed piece of lobbying.
The difficult ethical issue concerns stealing and publishing emails, such as Antisec did to Stratfor and parties unknown did to climate scientists. This is wrong, but it is a small wrong compared to the alleged wrongs of the targets.
the Pentagon is getting worried and thus intensifying its agitprop to ever more manipulative extremes. Last year, for example, it cemented its first full sponsorship of a major film, X-Men: First Class, integrating the movie into recruitment ads. It’s now going even further, fully financing its own feature-length film, Act of Valor,
Protesters in Portland, Oregon, and Tucson, Arizona, faced very different weather when they hit the streets yesterday, but they had one thing in common: they were among 70 cities nationwide where Occupy activists and others spoke out against members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose decades-long history of authoring and pushing pro-corporate legislation through the nation’s statehouses has been criticized for strangling political and economic participation across the country.
It was apparently not enough to obliterate funding for bike lanes and walking paths and kids trying to get to school. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants to keep our tax dollars from paying for public transit as well. … Republican leaders apparently believe that bike paths, trains, and buses are all a part of a vast United Nations plot to demolish the “American way of life.”
Oil companies don’t want people to have alternatives to burning gasoline.
Article was removed from Google indexes by a porn company complaint on January 20th, while it was important. An obviously non infringing article by Torrentfreak was also censored. The company sort of apologized, saying their robo-censor was in error.
The Indian government wants Google and other Internet companies to evolve a mechanism to quickly remove objectionable content … This step is in accordance with Google’s long-standing policy of responding to court orders
Google is more often in the news than Bing/Microsoft for two reasons, Google puts up a fight and Gates owns or indirectly controls a large portion of traditional media.
The idea that criticizing a government is treason because the country’s interests may suffer from resulting condemnation is one we have seen in many countries including the US.
the national censorwall must intercept all your outgoing internet requests and examine them to determine whether they are for the banned website. That’s the difference between the old days of censorship and our new digital censorship world.
NAFTA [and other free exploitation treaties] included an array of extraordinary new rights and privileges for foreign investors that incentivized offshoring of jobs and exposed an array of our domestic environmental health, land-use and other laws to attack. … Most stunningly, these new rights in a public treaty are privately enforceable. A little-known mechanism called “investor-state” enforcement allows foreign firms to skirt domestic court systems and directly sue governments for cash damages (our tax dollars) over alleged violations of their new rights before UN and World Bank tribunals staffed by private sector attorneys who rotate between serving as “judges” and bringing cases for corporations.
Facebook is currently fighting the patent at the Patent Office. After re-examining the patent, an examiner rejected the patents claims—which would render the patent invalid—but the rejections have been appealed.
There is speedy justice for the rich and powerful but same system allows the rich and powerful to ruin the rest of us.
A Luxembourg company by the name of Core Wireless Licensing has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple in the Texas Eastern District Court. Their wholly-owned subsidiary in Texas known as “Core Wireless Licensing Ltd” is holding all of the pertinent documents in this case. The bewildering twist in this case is that the eight counts brought against Apple are using Nokia patents. A settlement between Nokia and Apple was announced in June 2011. The settlement somehow now drags Apple into infringing 3GPP standards…. -
“Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analyst’s report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.”
Summary: Microsoft still pays Google-hostile people, sometimes paying them entire wages
THE DIRTY politics of revolving doors and gentle bribes are well understood and there is a lot of literature on the subject. In a nutshell, a company can promise a person a reward later (e.g. a job) provided particular acts in public office. Considering the fact that Microsoft pays Google bashers like Florian Müller, Ben Edelman, probably the Edelman-connected Consumer Watchdog and many more, it is not too shocking that a lot of Google backlash is organic, and it is coordinated from above by someone or someones. We are careful not to play along with AstroTurf, such as the Koch et al.-led Tea Party movement.
Microsoft also used to attack ODF through all sorts of people whom it later paid and people in the government were paid (hired) by Microsoft to later return favours (e.g. Barnett [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]). According to an article from CNET, “Microsoft hires FTC attorney and public critic of Google”. Judging by this, Microsoft is doing it again:
Randall Long, who led investigations into Google’s acquisitions of DoubleClick and AdMob, will become a lobbyist aiming to keep federal regulators on the search giant’s case.
As Mr. Masnick puts it: “Microsoft appears to be stepping up its “saddle Google with antitrust charges” battle by hiring Randall Long from the FTC. Long was the key “anti-Google” lawyer within the FTC, who led multiple antitrust investigations into Google, and recommended that the FTC block Google’s acquisition of AdMob (something he was outvoted on). Microsoft doesn’t even seem to want to hide the fact that his role will be to lobby politicians in DC to hit Google with antitrust charges.”
Considering the position Microsoft has been in, the revolving doors syndrome makes a lot of business sense. Microsoft is trying to misuse government intervention to interfere with competition. Apple does the same thing with patent systems around the world, but it’s not working out so far:
A spokesman for the Mannheim state court said judges had dismissed both cases involving ownership of the “slide-to-unlock” feature used on their respective smartphones.
We wrote about this not too long ago. Microsoft’s patents too — those that it quietly uses against Android — are currently being challenged. We’ll write about this tomorrow when we focus on patents. █
Everyone makes mistakes, but for Microsoft to make a killer leap day blunder with its Azure cloud service is inexcusable.
He continues:
Even after Microsoft had a fix in, faults continued to spread across the Azure cloud in America and Northern Europe. As some areas came back up Compute functionality in the North Central US, South Central US and North Europe regions, functionality was downgraded or even turned off on a range of Azure services.
It’s all because Microsoft cannot code and something similar happened to Zune some years back (clock issues, see our Zune Reality Log). Azure has just suffered the fate of Zune. █
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust
Pretending there is a violent, physical threat that is imminent, Paranoid in Chief Benoît Battistelli is alleged to have pursued weapons on EPO premises
A look at actions taken at a political level against the EPO in spite of the EPO's truly awkward exemption from lawfulness or even minimal accountability
Last month we wrote about a major downgrade of Attachmate and later on we showed some desperate moves. Attachmate has since then 
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