08.23.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, Ron Hovsepian, Deception, BSD, Corel at 7:56 am by Roy Schestowitz
What if…?
The idea of a GNU/Linux- or BSD-based Windows replacement (think Winux) has been kicked around for a long time. This notion is not so far fetched, especially if Microsoft buys Novell. While it’s not worth repeating the possibilities (we did so several times in the past), it is definitely worth noticing that, over time, other Web sites form similar opinions. They are willing to acknowledge, especially now with Midori and “7″ vapourware afloat, that big changes might be ahead.
Yesterday we showed that Novell had begun spreading GNU/Linux FUD, no matter how implicitly. It views SUSE Enterprise Linux as a special breed. The following new comment from Linux Today points out the change in attitude:
This writeup made me see a simple public call-out that the press and open source community and end customers can all ask Novell.
Please explain how this works ?
1) Your CEO said “”Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.”
(I remember a public letter/posting on Novell’s website with a strong denial right after the first deal in 2006).
2) Now you say:
Bruce wrote me that customers wanted the Novell/Microsoft package, in part, because it “provides IP (intellectual property) peace of mind for organizations operating in mixed source environments.”
It’s worth repeating whatever was said yesterday. Maybe Ian Bruce does not know what Hovsepian and Novell said before. He is new at Novell and he does not realise that he must lie to the public about the meaning of the deal with Microsoft, which, in reality, is a software patents deal.
Microsoft might crave Novell’s software patents. Moreover, we mustn’t forget that Novell owns UNIX and it could become a problem. This enables a continuation of an SCO-like indictment.
It’s no figment of imagination when one considers four possibilities:
- Microsoft buys Novell and sells an ‘enhanced’ GNU/Linux, which others cannot have.
- Microsoft continues to use Novell to pressure other GNU/Linux vendors until GNU/Linux is just one company that can be squashed.
- Microsoft borrows technology from Novell to build a Windows replacement on its own.
- Microsoft along with Novell (or with Novell acquired) launches a legal attack against GNU/Linux, probably with the exception of SUSE Enterprise Linux, which is an expensive Microsoft cash cow. It can be about patents or about copyrights (UNIX).
Here are a couple of interesting new articles:
Opinion: How much is that penguin in the Window?
How far this goes is anyone’s guess. Will Microsoft one day offer its very own Linux distro?
Microsoft and Novell: Buying In or Selling Out?
Microsoft could be investing in Novell for a complete buyout at some point in the future after Novell developers create the ultimate OS for them, using Microsoft’s money, of course. $300+ million buys you a lot of development.
If a worst-case scenario becomes a reality, then this site will cease to be targeted at a ‘Linux company’. As time goes on, Novell becomes more of a ‘Microsoft subsidiary’. Remember Corel. █
“If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”
–Richard Stallman
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08.19.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, FUD, Security, Vista, BSD at 12:52 pm by Roy Schestowitz
One of our readers claims to have spotted a phenomenon, which he wishes to share and thereby warn about. Here is his input:
This post is particularly interesting for the reason that there are many reasons why IPv6 is needed and the canard about address spaces is always offered instead as a troll to distract from:
- less overhead in routers, as the result of a more concise and modular header format
- better addressing and routing infrastructure through a more efficient and hierarchical routing
- Stateless and stateful address configuration, eliminating the need for the network security hole called DHCP
- Built in IPsec
- Better support for QOS (Quality of service) in the protocol fields
- It’s extensible, the protocol itself allows more headers to be added
- More flexible and efficient routing and handoff of mobile hosts
The main barrier seems to be that *one* software vendor’s products fail to support IPv6. MSIE has been holding back the WWW, Windows in general has been holding back the net.
Linux and BSD distros have supported full IPv6 out of the box for years now.
Here are some links I meant to add:
(Note the dates of the last pair.)
Some further readings are appended below. Be careful what you read about IPv6. Microsoft, having fallen behind, is likely to suppress or slow down its adoption using actions and words (FUD), just as it did with other advancements over the past two decades. Technical progress is risky and potentially disruptive if you are a monopoly. █
____
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Receives Department of Defense IPv6 Certification
The certification demonstrates Red Hat’s ongoing commitment to meeting the growing demands of government agencies and enterprises as they adapt to the next-generation Internet.
Varonis Extends DatAdvantage Support to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 Environments
…availability of DatAdvantage version 3.7, which extends support to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 and provides the foundation for Varonis to quickly add support for other Linux distributions such as SUSE, Ubuntu, etc.
NTT America and Internet Systems Consortium Advance IPv6 for Open Source Community and General Public
“The FreeBSD Project greatly appreciates the opportunity to use ISC’s high-performance IPv6 transit,” says Robert Watson, president of the FreeBSD Foundation and Hosted@ISC participant. He continued, “As early
adopters and implementers of IPv6 networking, this gives us the chance to exercise and improve IPv6 support in our operating system, as well as serve our current IPv6-ready users better.”
Vendors worried Vista IPv6 too slippery for managed networks
Researchers have raised new questions about the security of Vista’s IPv6 implementation. James Hoagland from Symantec and Suresh Krishnan from Ericsson wrote an Internet-Draft that calls attention to the Teredo protocol and the fact that many firewalls don’t understand this protocol, and therefore can’t inspect the packets embedded within it.
Vista’s IPv6: Not an easy upgrade
If you think migrating to IPv6 is as simple as upgrading to Microsoft Windows Vista, think again.
Vista not playing well with IPv6
Early adopters of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system are reporting problems with its implementation of IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s primary protocol.
Black Hat 2007: Vista users urged to beware of IPv6Black Hat 2007: Vista users urged to beware of IPv6
Hoagland noted that the Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec has already discovered one Teredo/IPv6-related flaw in Vista, which Microsoft patched in the MS07-038 security update released last month. According to the researchers, the Teredo interface in Vista was not properly handling certain network traffic, allowing remote attackers to bypass firewall-blocking rules and obtain sensitive information via crafted IPv6 traffic.
The $200 Billion Lunch: We’re switching to IPv6, dontcha know, and it might be worth it.
To a certain extent, it is Sputnik all over again. Some people see this as a place where there will be a commercial disadvantage unless the U.S. keeps up. It is comparable to NTSC vs. PAL television standards (hint: PAL is better but we don’t have it).
[…]
And what is happening in the USA? Well we have Net Neutrality. We have a telco rebuilding a national monopoly. We have Cisco and Microsoft working together on Network Admission Control (NAC). I can see a time in the near future when they’ll try to charge me for every PC in my house. While China is building a national resource, our government is letting companies turn the public Internet into an expensive private toll road.
Embedded Linux vendor adds IPv4/IPv6 stack
In March of 2006, Wind River paid $20 million for Interpeak, a Swedish networking software vendor offering stacks for routers, access equipment, WiFi nodes, and small-footprint networked devices. Interpeak was noted for shipping the first TCP/IP stacks for Linux hosts and routers that were certified “IPv6-ready.”
Entire city of Vista users can’t access the internet
Lundis Energi blamed Microsoft because Vista has got a bug and it isn’t going to change the configuration of the server just to cope with the flaw.
FLOSS Weekly 14: Jeremy Allison of Samba
‘In the section of the interview from around 33m30s to 39m00 Jeremy Allison reports how he was told that the Microsoft team implementing SMB2 were ordered to “f**k with Samba”.’
Longhorn server and Ubuntu do they still play together?
There real question however is can linux boxes still join and authenticate against Active Directory domains running at Native Longhorn Server levels. Well the answer a non surprising NO!
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06.11.08
Posted in Microsoft, Finance, FOSS, BSD at 1:07 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Don’t! Tell! Anyone! That! We! Adopted! Mafia! Approach! Against! Yahoo!
A couple of months ago we showed that Microsoft was preparing for a proxy war whose purpose was to unseat Yahoo’s board. This is nothing new. Separate warning came at different times. It did Microsoft some great public relations damage at the time.
Microsoft later confirmed (openly even!) that it was prepared to launch an attack shall an ultimatum be ignored, but it then backed away very abruptly and pretended it had no interest in Yahoo anymore. Then came someone called Icahn out of the blue and suddenly Microsoft expressed some interest in Yahoo again. As the following article (among other sources) ought to teach us, it’s likely that this man is merely Microsoft’s headhunter. Days ago he even admitted that Microsoft needed Yahoo in order to compete. Why is he so concerned and why is he communicating with Redmond now?
Microsoft cops to talking with Icahn on Yahoo
Dispensing with its previous above-the-fray posture, Microsoft has admitted conspiring with talking to activist Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn, who is trying to oust the Internet company’s board and Chief Executive Jerry Yang for failing to sell out to the software giant.
“Interesting but fully expected,” said one of our readers about this finding.” About the source, though, the LA Times material, IIRC, tends to evaporate over time, so it’s not necessarily the best for a link you plan to return to in a few weeks, months or years,” he added. It ought to be noted that the crossing out at the top came a little while later. The RSS feed said just “conspiring with” when the article got captured (no strikeout).
Target #1 appears to be Yahoo’s brainchild, as cruel as it may seem.
For more of the nasty details of this fight, and the details are illuminating, see my blog “Why Icahn Now Wants to Boot Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang.”
Use of the word “replace” seems to be misplaced. Mind aggressive terminology like “boot” and “kill”. Many people are already getting tired of terms like “dump”, and “<product x> killer” in the press. It’s intended to add drama and inspire fear.
As another new article about this endless Yahoo saga, consider impending lawsuits. We wrote about it the last time. Some of these lawsuits may be backed by Microsoft in one form or another. Encouragement in this case is not illegal (let alone lawsuits by proxy).
In its own filing, the shareholders suing Yahoo say the chairman of its compensation committee is due to be deposed Friday, while another outside director also has been served notice for deposition. Microsoft also has been served with related subpoenas, the plaintiffs say, and “will shortly provide a date for its deposition.”
for trial before meeting
To conclude and describe the situation at hand, consider the following thoughts from a reader (sent in earlier today):
“It appears that he wants Yahoo to destroy itself voluntarily so that Microsoft can hang on as a company for a short while longer.”The nauseating part is that he is pleading for a handout / bailout from Yahoo. It appears that he wants Yahoo to destroy itself voluntarily so that Microsoft can hang on as a company for a short while longer. Just how does that benefit anybody besides Icahn? Since when are profitable companies expected to be liquidated to keep unprofitable money pits (c/f indications of Enron-style money shifting) like Microsoft a float a while longer? I thought everyone in the know had long since sold their Microsoft stock, if they ever had any in the first place.
Let’s ask Icahn if maybe Microsoft is scraping by primarily through buying and selling its own stock.
However, be that as it may, if a main purpose of the bid is to screw with and stress-out Yahoo’s many PHP, BSD and other FOSS developers, then attacking the severance plans makes a lot of sense:
* Worrying about the severance plans and job security reduces productivity, which helps Microsoft by hurting Yahoo and its FOSS projects.
* Removing the severance plans means some staff will bail, disrupting Yahoo and FOSS development, regardless of how quickly staff relocate.
* Removing the severance plans mean that if Icahn is able to hand his Microsoft masters Yahoo, they can mess with the FOSS developers effectively stopping development on projects dependent on those developers.
We will keep an eye on this never-ending story because the impact on Free software can be high. █
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05.02.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, FUD, GPL, Antitrust, BSD at 1:22 am by Roy Schestowitz
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
Yesterday I attended an inspirational talk from Richard Stallman that contained many familiar bits, a healthy dose of humour and an interesting questions session, which touched on the AGPL, GPLv3 and other currently-debated topics that are more about the present than about the past.
Stallman’s vision is a very scary one to those who have the most to lose. It puts in jeopardy many of those who suppress and exploit the most, but again, this philosophical discussion needn’t be repeated. What’s more concerning are the personal attacks against Stallman, some of which are intended to distract people from his important message and place focus on things like appearance, politics and various forms of disinformation, including deliberate misinterpretation of Stallman’s jokes. We covered some examples of this before and so has Bruce Perens (also see this response from the OSC).
“We all share common goals, but ways of achieving these goals vary somewhat.”In the news digests that we post in this Web site we happen to include announcements and reports about the BSDs because they really ought to be our friends. We all share common goals, but ways of achieving these goals vary somewhat. There is hardly any justification for hostility. So why do we see people fighting?
Theo de Raadt has a good sense of humour and he is very outspoken. He deserves credit for pressuring insidious companies like Intel to open up properly. As you may or may not know, OpenBSD 4.3 has just been released, but Theo is once again taking a shot at Stallman. He did this recently also. Why, Theo, why? Is he once again trying to receive greater publicity by mocking someone whose licence is more widely used?
Several people who are very familiar with BSD seem to suggest that some certain company in north-west America might — just might — be using one rival project against the other. This doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy or that an agreement exists, but such things can be done more gently with subtle moves such as an invitation for a visit or a meeting with Microsoft-sympathetic figures, poisonous messages ‘injected’ into a mailing list, or anything else that incites hostility and encourages division.
Some people would say that all of this is far-fetched and rather silly. Fine. That’s acceptable. This is only a speculation. However, it would be foolish to ignore some things that we are already aware of, such as this ’smoking gun’ internal document from Microsoft which served as an antitrust exhibit in Comes vs Microsoft (Iowa). The court exhibit [PDF], whose authenticity has already been confirmed, is available from at least 3 sites which hold a mirror. It’s a very large item to explore, so to quote one fragment of relevance (from Microsoft’s own mouth):
“Gathering intelligence on enemy activities is critical to the success of the Slog. We need to know who their allies are and what differences exist between them and their allies (there are always sources of tension between allies), so that we can find ways to split ‘em apart. Reading the trade press, lurking on newsgroups, attending conferences, and (above all) talking to ISVs is essential to gathering this intelligence.”
Yes, Microsoft wants to “find ways to split ‘em apart.” Microsoft needs to do some intelligence work to identify “sources of tension between allies.” BSD versus GPL, anyone?
For more context see this overview of “The Slog”, along the marketing “road trip” Microsoft refers to as “Jihad” (holy war). It has been seen many times before (even by myself, e.g. in USENET) that one common technique used by Mucnhkins is to divide people who share common goals.
Sometimes, in order to disguise or reduce suspicion, fake accounts and names are created whose character and postings are made solely for the purpose of defending one half of the crowd that supports Free software and attacking the other half of the very same crowd. Elevation of tensions is the purpose. Microsoft makes ‘civil wars’ beyond ‘enemy lines’ [1, 2]. Militaries use similar tactics and some nations go as far as providing physical ammunition for one country to devastate another. █
Disclaimer: I like BSD and I use some BSD-licensed software. The purpose of this post is to make friends, not accusations.
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04.12.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, Novell, GPL, FOSS, BSD, OSI at 10:17 am by Roy Schestowitz
Difference of opinion is no excuse for fighting though
The Novell-LF special relationship was demonstrated in the past in order to explain their attitudes. If following of the moneyflow is the path to better understanding of action, then caution will be required when the Foundation delivers a message on behalf of its f[o]unding members, collectively.
The business-oriented approach of the Linux Foundation was noted on several occasions before and it’s pretty well expressed in the following new article.
I came away from the second annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit with mixed feelings. I mean, it’s hard not to support the group that pays Linus Torvalds to spend his time continuing to lead the poster-boy project for free and open source software. But at the same time, those golden chains are my biggest concern about the Linux Foundation.
IBM sponsored the event, and they are the biggest supporter of Linux in the corporate world. The foundation membership is made up of almost all the large and and many of wanna-be-large IT firms around the globe — including Adobe, which is one of the foundation’s newest members.
“…Perens will be better off defending and promoting the GPLv3.”There are other similar issues that apply to the OSI. In order to prevent greater influence by Microsoft inside the OSI, Bruce Perens recently stepped up to be elected, yet it does not appear as though he was successful, despite the overwhelming support in his online petition. In any event, the OSI had already lost some credibility with dilution of key values, so Perens will be better off defending and promoting the GPLv3. In fact, the software that runs his news site, Technocrat, has just been released under the AGPLv3, which on a separate note Google continues to snub (whereas Palamida had it welcomed). Where is Chris DiBona and when will there be an open explanation for this?
There are other noteworthy frictions in the Free software world. Theo de Raadt goes on the offensive against Richard Stallman again, although he would be wiser to bury the hatchets and let all this hostility slide. We showed before, using Microsoft’s internal documents, how the company encourages civil wars, friction and hostility among allies which jointly become great threat to it. These are ugly, unethical and maybe even illegal measures to take.
Anyway, those wondering what Theo is up to at a moment will find information here.
The song for the upcoming 4.3 release is titled, “Home to Hypocrisy”, with scathing references to some recent postings on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list by Free Software Foundation creator Richard Stallman.
He now uses some humour against Richard Stallman, but it’s unnecessary and hardly amusing. Criticism is fine, but being polite and gentle is a virtue. █
“Real men don’t attack straw men”
–Richard Stallman, December 2007
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03.02.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Deals, BSD at 3:53 am by Roy Schestowitz
While trying to locate some old articles in my archives I accidentally came across this old USENET post, which is probably quote-worthy. Mind the date. It was posted a day after the Novell/Microsoft was announced.
Message-ID: eifq36$e1h$1@web.aioe.org
From: RINGO ringo.lefrak@geemail.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,microsoft.public,alt.os.linux.suse
Subject: Novell Sells Linux Down The River To Microsoft. I’m moving to FreeBSD. Screw Linux.
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 11:17:54 -0500
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.1600.60
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.1600.60
Looks like the SOB’s at Novell have sold Linux’s future down the river. Get ready for the greedy executives to pump and dump the stock as Microsoft absorbs Novell and then destroys it. It looks like Linux is doomed.
It’s quite radical, I do not agree with it, but it was worth quoting nonetheless. Here is another one from USENET. People knew from the very start that this deal was no good. █
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02.22.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Mono, BSD at 6:50 am by Roy Schestowitz
“I’m in a New York Microsoft Mono State of Mind…”
A few moments ago, someone expressed some thoughts about Mono as an issue that revolves around software patents. He was referring to Mark Shuttleworth’s response to our query. We wish to share a bit of correspondence which is only an hour old. It should be attributed to Beranger, who has permitted us to share this in public.
Roy,
I suppose your fight against Mono has [at least slightly] different motivations than mine; whereas your stance seems to be [strongly enough] related to patents and other risks coming from Microsoft, I am primarily focused on some other concerns.
First, I think that BSD and Linux and generally open-source operating systems & software were invented for providing people with freedom, and freedom means “out of the Microsoft Konzentrationslager”.
From this standpoint, it’s obvious that people don’t want to get “blessed” with Microsoft technology anymore. Sure thing, many Linux users will consider that they need Samba connectivity, some other would require NTFS-3g, but this is not only optional, it’s required in some cases because they are “de facto” technologies in some environments, and “interoperability” is at times just that.
Microsoft .NET is however more than a protocol (Samba) or a filesystem format (NTFS): it’s a whole new concept that changes almost everything: it invents a new language (C#) midway between C++ and Java; it creates a unified CLR; by introducing the CLR as a runtime, it introduces a new layer of abstractedness between a binary and the operating system, just like Java does.
Note however that the Java hype didn’t managed to impose silly small Java programs on everyone’s desktop; instead, the best use of Java is for large enterprise applications, and several Java application servers are available for that.
“With .NET, everybody started to write silly small C# desktop gizmos.”With .NET, everybody started to write silly small C# desktop gizmos. And then it came Miguel de Icaza to clone it as Mono, and many people thought it was good this way: “Hey, if I can run this on Linux, I can get rid of Windows!”
It is all wrong. Notice the proliferation of all kind of Gtk# applets and small applications. If Miguel’s Mono were created for interoperability, for replacing .NET, and for cross-platform compatibility with regards to serious business approaches (i.e. to replace Windows 2003 Server with a Linux/BSD/Solaris box), then ASP.NET should have been made the #1 priority, not the silly GTK+ bindings for Mono!
Instead of creating freedom by making possible the replacement of a Windows Server with a Linux/BSD box, Miguel’s Mono is doing exactly the opposite: it creates an unhealthy dependence of a Microsoft technology!
If there are really people in this world who genuinely believe that the Microsoft .NET technology is so very much revolutionary that we should really be using it, as if Microsoft were the one and only company that would save the IT from the lack of vision and lack of future it might have had, then… why aren’t they using the original .NET platform? Is it only for the price? Are they feeling better to use the open-source Mono, whose compatibility with .NET is mediocre at best?
I would very much like to see a big ASP.NET application running on Mono, and without modifications. But no, what I can see is an increasing number of Gtk# applications that are making a lot of GNOME users dependent of the (otherwise unnecessary) Mono framework.
Are we really running Linux on our computers, or are we running a mix of Linux and “Windows under disguise”?Maybe Python (PyGtk) is less effective than C# (Gtk#). Does it mean we should rewrite everything Python in C#? And that we should thank Microsoft for it has had “the vision”?
I know that .EXE and .DLL are simply conventions for naming PE files. Nevertheless, before Mono there wasn’t any way to see such files on a Linux/BSD box other than because you wanted to run a genuine Windows applications through an emulator. Nowadays, we’re more and more impregnated with those brilliant DOS/Windows concepts that made Microsoft so popular.
Are we really running Linux on our computers, or are we running a mix of Linux and “Windows under disguise”?
Instead of the bravado self-sufficient attitude of “Hey, you can run on Linux the same stuff you can run on Windows, so we win!” (not entirely accurate, as Mono doesn’t perfectly match .NET), we should rather be aware that in the long run the winner is Microsoft: its concepts and technologies will be present not only on Windows systems, but on no matter what systems.
Maybe people shouldn’t *hate* Microsoft that much. But should they *love* when F/LOSS people are embracing Microsoft technologies and they’re also imposing them to a desktop environment like GNOME, who was born for the licensing fears with regards to KDE?
Patents and licenses are completely different matters; but giving credits to Microsoft is a little too much. What will be the next step: will Novell reimplement the whole Vista, supposing it would be covered by a few ECMA standards? And how about NTFS, why isn’t Linux adopting it if reimplementing Microsoft’s projects is the right thing to do?
I can choose to send DOC files to people who can’t open other kind of documents, and I definitely want to be able to read such files when I receive them. But again, this is only a file format for a document; when I will see that my Linux box is using EXE files to give me the information I need (no, I don’t use Tomboy), then I will know that Microsoft is never going to die.
Mark Shuttleworth is seeing Mono only from the legal side: non-important patent risks, not more than with the rest of a Linux system, so why worry. He is a business person, and the principles guiding him are not the same that are guiding RMS for instance.
I am so very amazed that open-source people (once again, I’ll mention RMS) are not bothered at all by the cloning of a Microsoft platform. UNIX was not supposed to mimic anything. We’re living hard times, where common sense is gone.
Best wishes,
Radu
My personal response to this is perhaps worth adding as well. From what I can gather (it is somewhat of a speculation, so be warned in advance), Richard Stallman is not too happy about Mono, but he does not make too much noise about it, either. Smears are risky and Microsoft (sometimes the BSDs too) attack him whenever they get a chance. So, be careful what you read and also believe about his stance. █
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02.06.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Deception, Standard, GPL, OpenDocument, Europe, Open XML, Kernel, BSD at 9:10 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Whatis and Whatif
The following is nothing but a theory, but it is worth presenting nonetheless.
Let us begin with an antitrust court exhibit. From a leaked Microsoft document (Comes vs Microsoft trial, 2006):
“[Microsoft:] Gathering intelligence on enemy activities is critical to the success of the Slog. We need to know who their allies are and what differences exist between them and their allies (there are always sources of tension between allies), so that we can find ways to split ‘em apart Reading the trade press, lurking on newsgroups, attending conferences, and (above all) talking to ISVs is essential to gathering this intelligence.“
Be aware that Gary Edwards and Marbux (of the organisation formerly known as “The OpenDocument Foundation” [1, 2]) have begun submitting links to their new site. They use Digg where they post elaborate comments about a decoy, a distraction. They comment on each other’s submissions, which are barely receiving any attention at all. The OpenDocument Foundation’s Web site has meanwhile become a link farm (inactive) with many inbound links. This is not very ordinary.
“At times, however, new people are introduced to intervene and create tensions, misunderstandings, and civil wars.”Also be aware that Microsoft tries to have its rivals fight against one another (BSD vs GPL, RMS vs Linus, Tanenbaum vs Linus, Sun vs Linux GNOME vs KDE etc. etc.). Watch the quote from the antitrust exhibit at the top again. The Foundation’s work may therefore leave you suspicious.
There is a story behind some of the examples given here, e.g. a subtle bribe offered, which is provable. Knowing all the people at the Foundation, I know their intentions were good, but it is possible that their minds are being poisoned by an external source which deceives. Nobody knows for sure and it’s extremely unlikely. At times, however, new people are introduced to intervene and create tensions, misunderstandings, and civil wars. This happens in many places. The next post will possibly provide another such example that is new (Apple turned against Linux).
Ironically, here we are doing the very same thing that we complain about (civil wars), but the take-home message is that whenever a civil war crops up, pause and ask yourself if an outside force is responsible for it in one way or another. If so, the issue must be raised and explored until it’s resolved.
Timely quote again:
“A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…”
–Andrew S Tanenbaum, father on MINIX
In other OOXML/ODF news, we continue to see signs of disorganisation ahead of the BRM.
Rather remarkably for a 6000-page specification, OOXML is on a fast track, but it has come into collision with over 3000 comments on that specification, many of them negative. The question is, how on earth can the national bodies (NB) who do the prodding, poking and voting, work their way through those comments to pick out the really key ones, and make sure that they get sorted before approval is contemplated?
That would be a good question if only it was possible to get access to these comments that affect virtually all of us. As we explained before, the process if closed and it is deeply flawed [1, 2, 3, 4]. Also see [1, 2, 3, 4]. █
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« Previous entries ·
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.