10.08.07
Forking, Software Patents, Format Incompatibilities, and Corporate Selfishness
When competitive goals lead to lock-ins and hurt the consumer
In yesterday’s post about Rob Weir’s clarifications, some new issues were debated. Such issues involve the role of Novell in OpenOffice and their implications on ODF. It was several days ago that Brian Proffitt wrote about the views of the ODF Alliance, with whom I’m a bit of friend. Here is what Brian wrote to conclude:
Like I said, interesting, in that regardless of how “right” people think ODF is over OOXML, it’s still just one more thing for big vendors to fight about. In the end, Gary [Edwards] and the Foundation are saying, it’s the customers that lose out, trying to get their documents opened.
I was a tad upset with Rob’s assessment because he took a shot at the Alliance’s reputation. That’s just disrespectful. Rob was upset because they implicitly characterized themselves as those who “fight for the people against greedy corporations.” Groklaw concurs with this assessment. As far as some companies go, this is true however. Consider Novell’s OpenOffice.org fork and consider the apparent motivator and cause. To Novell, it boils down to commercial interests. Where have we heard that quite recently? Does that justify a fork? Does it necessarily improve the product? Will it bring greater pleasure to the consumer by reducing complexity, confusion, and incompatibilities (mental/perceived or technical)?
Matt Asay argues in favour of what he calls “strong forks“, but he does not seem to understand that Novell is likely to extend OOo the ‘Microsoft way’, with patent ‘protection’ and other elements they have incorporated since the release of a derivative in March this year (Windows only). They introduce incompatibilities between the Windows and Linux version because, according to Ron Hovsepian, Microsoft had imposed some legal restrictions.
For those who are led to believe (probably by Novell) that Sun neglected OpenOffice.org, watch the impressive set of features planned for the 3.0 release.
OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2007) is taking place this week. Among the first information available is a talk about the future of OOorg.
For those who think that Novell saves OpenOffice.org from a “lazy Sun”, think again. IBM’s symphony may be diluting some effort, but it does not have patents an other such issues introduced. Novell enters iffy territories as far as Free software is concerned. The prospects of Novell forking projects to get around the GPLv3 materialise in a completely different fashion now. Patent provisions are propagated in other ways. Recall what Ron Hovsepian said (we covered that interview with him before). It is Microsoft that has Novell’s hands in cuffs, so it remains baffling who is benefiting from such a fork.
An OpenOffice.org which is developed by Novell for Novell customers only (recall what’s included from a legal perspective) shall remain an application which is no longer worth having.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.