A reader contacted us regarding a serious problem. He said that he “pointed out on a forum that .NET had died on the vine and that when .NET projects run out of time and money people turn back to Java to get the task finished. That appears to have got the Microsoft fans going with this one.”
To conclude, he added: “.NET really does seem to have died on the vine, but Microsoft boosters see the value of tainting as many FOSS projects with software patents as possible.”
When such an important project as GNOME obviously lacks a direction, has a poor governance and a missing leadership, how can I trust it not to get more and more Mono-encumbered?
Some people object that there are very few Mono-based applications in GNOME (mainly Tomboy and F-Spot), however they are always advertised with each and every GNOME release!
* Let’s now take a historical look of how some guy wanted to screw GNOME since 2002 (Red Hat, were you sleeping those days?):
* 2002-02-01: Gnome to be based on .NET – de Icaza. «”I’d like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 - no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET,” he told us.»
* 2002-06-01: Mono and GNOME. The long reply. (Miguel de Icaza). «As you might realize by now, GNOME 4 is not planned, it is not possible to know what is in there. So my comments on GNOME 4 only reflect the fact that I personally believe that people will see that Mono is an interesting platform to write new applications.»
* 2002-06-04: one more message from de Icaza: «I was not trying to force Mono on anyone. The only reason why I thought that GNOME would move to Mono on the long term is because our goals are aligned. […] But the real reason is that .NET (and hence Mono) was designed to be an evolutionary path for applications. […] For example, it would be silly to rewrite Gnumeric or StarOffice with C#, that would be a complete waste of time. But one really useful feature for Gnumeric would be to have its VB interpreter running on Mono.»
* If the KDE flock is going with KDE4, why should we assume there isn’t a similar bunch of GNOME sheep to go with Miguel de Icaza’s Mono?
Miguel de Icaza is currently the Vice President of Developer Platform at Novell Inc. That’s the company somebody chose to write a thesis about: Managing Firm-Sponsored Open Source Communities. That’s a company for the future. And Miguel is a smart guy.
So it’s very likely that GNOME 3.0 or 4.0 will indeed be Mono-based.
And no, tiny bugs in Gedit won’t get fixed in the meantime. It’s not “sexy”, you know.
As the first comment states (and to an extent demonstrates too), it’s an eye opener to some.
People were brainwashed by the likes ofSlashdot — essentially pushed to the point of believing Miguel was an open source hero. Well, by Microsoft’sdefinition of it, maybe he is.
Now, if there are still Linux users still loving Mono, and still believing they have anything in common with FREEDOM & Open Source, they’re idiots like hell.
Proofs of MALA FIDE from Microsoft’s part:
1. NOBODY interested in a good-faith patent protection would restrict the protection to the downstream recipients of a UNIQUE source — but this is what Microsoft is doing!
2. NOBODY interested in a good-faith patent protection would restrict the protection to the UNMODIFIED AND USED “AS INTENDED” (”for the intended purpose”) for an OPEN-SOURCE project — but this is what Microsoft is doing!
3. NOBODY interested in a good-faith patent protection would restrict the protection in any ways. Simply imposing restrictions means WHATEVER FALLS OUTSIDE THE SPECIFIC CONDITIONS IS SUBJECT TO FEAR, UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT!
Yes, this is Microsoft. Yes, this covenant is ONLY and ONLY for the benefit of Novell’s SLED and SLES, and for the benefit of openSUSE. This is for people to ONLY consider openSUSE as a “safe” Linux way to use Moonlight and Mono, and therefore to increase the penetration of SLED/SLES as “the” Linux for the Enterprise.
This is the abjection of the Microsoft-Novell fascist conspiracy.
Will somebody. Anybody. Somewhere. Please stop Novell and Miguel already. I’m sure that the typical Microsoft/Novell boosters/apologists will continue to attack this Web site and do gymnastics in logic to deny all of this. That’s pointless. In fact, this item will be closed to comments.
The following bit is about applying a taxation mechanism to patents. The hope is to hinder abuse/misuse of the system.
Merpel adds, as for patent renewal fees, their adjustment will presumably affect the behaviour of the small fry far more than that of the big battalions — but it’s not the tiddlers that create the thickets and do the trolling, is it?
That all sounds good in theory, but…
Patent Reform Act “dead in the water,” eh? So says the following article, which merely repeats what we already know: the system is too corrupt to repair itself (exhorting against the corruption would be a cyclic thing). It seems hopeless, unless the system totally collapses and people take it to the streets.
The efficacy of the patent system is not equivalent across all industries, and appears to be particularly ineffective in software, said a panel at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference held at Yale University last week.
[…]
A lot of unpatented prior art, which does not make it into considerations at the patent and trademark office, said Berger, could add to this problem. She added that EFF is working with open source company Mozilla to crease a wiki-style platform of prior art in software they hope can be eventually used by patent examiners.
Efforts have failed so far in terms of patent reform, she said, citing the status of the Patent Reform Act as “dead in the water” in the US Congress for the time being, and asking what people interested in technology policy might do about this problem.
Patent attorneys, lawyers, judges and businesses have often had trouble determining exactly what inventions are and are not eligible for patent protection, particularly where the invention involves software. A 2006 ruling in the Court of Appeal was designed to settle the issue by clarifying the rules that patent examiners and judges should apply to assess whether inventions are for patentable subject matter.
[…]
“The election to solicit pre-pay clientele is unarguably a ‘business method’,” wrote Judge Fysh. “The consequence in ‘computer terms’ forms no part of the invention; it is done with appropriate software. Moreover, even if it did form part of the invention, it would therefore only involve the construction of appropriate computer programs and would also be excluded from patentability.”
Lots of the gory details are here. [via Digital Majority] Bear in mind that the likes of Finjan (London-base, sponsored by Microsoft) are already doing what they can to totally ruin the UK as well.
Last but not least, lookie here! Look who’s back. Commissioner McCreevy [1, 2, 3] talks about harmonisation, but one that revolves around legal destruction, not peace and harmony.
Ministers will discuss a progress report on this issue prepared by the Slovenian Presidency. Commissioner McCreevy will encourage Member States to continue to work constructively in this process.
For interesting information about patents and Linux in the Halloween memo, see this document. Mono’s greatest and most vocal among defenders would tell us to just “shut us and code.” Those Mono defenders who ‘know better’ blindly accept the abuse of GNOME by Novell and Miguel. After all, who needs to ever bother with all that tiresome ‘politics’, right? Well… █
“Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.”
As stressed many times before, IANAL, but based on the consensus of opinions in Groklaw, the GPLv3 is bound to bite companies that sold out to Microsoft in the rear. Several of these companies knew very well what they were getting into, or maybe they just weren’t concerned. Here is a lovely old quote from the CEO of Xandros: (highlighted in red)
Under the third version of the General Public License, expected to be published in final form this month by the Free Software Foundation, all such deals that were not inked by March 28 are forbidden. As a result, it would appear that Xandros will not be allowed to distribute open source code licensed under GPLv3 because of its relationship with Microsoft. Typaldos said he’s not concerned. “If you are a businessperson, you can’t worry about every eventuality.“
Then Microsoft offers the carrot of legal absolution. “Come with us” they say “We will protect you and your customers from our lawsharks” they promise. The poor scared sods believe them and sign a piece of paper that they think will protect themselves from the “Big Brother”. This of course makes Microsoft very happy and fits right in with their divide and conqueror plans.
Sam Varghese was a little more blunt when he advised Andy Typaldos to start selling potatoes rather than selling out. In any event, what does the licence upgrade of OpenOffice.org mean to he likes of Xandros?
The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.
The LGPLv3, especially in the context of Novell’s OpenOffice.org controversial ‘fork’ for SUSE Ballnux, was discussed before in [1, 2, 3]. Can Novell carry on doing what it does? If so, at what cost? █
Remember FreeSUSE and other discussions which had a SUSE fork proposed? It never truly materialised and it remains rare to find work which is derived from OpenSUSE or SLED (some GNOME/KDE menus being the exception), let alone whole distributions. Well, Linux Caixa Mágica used to be based on OpenSUSE, but it has just changed its course.
The first release candidate of Linux Caixa Mágica 12, a Portuguese Linux distribution, is now available for download and testing. The most interesting change is the fact that this release is no longer based on openSUSE, as was the case with the project’s all previous releases, but on Mandriva Linux 2008.
In our little just-for-fun comparison, we the judges find that Mandriva wins by 4 categories to 2. But to the original question the answer would be to go buy the Mandriva Power Pack or try PCLOS or ALT Linux in which advanced power saving feature do work out of the box. Also, YMMV.
It would be interesting to know what made Caixa Mágica developers change their minds. █
Letting two gorillas fight rather than relying on guerrilla
Oracle has been a quiet (yet giant) GNU/Linux user and vendor. We had it mentioned in the context of Novell and Microsoft recently. Given Oracle’s membership in OIN, is it truly an enemy of the spirit of Free software? Arguments can be made which support both sides; one side says that Oracle will protect Linux and another says that Oracle will destroy, crush, and even steal Linux from its parents and origins.
The main victim which is repeatedly mentioned in this context is Red Hat, whose product Oracle uses (some would say “rips off”). But what about Novell? Yesterday, the following article appeared in ComputerWorld and contained an interesting bit.
He noted that Burlington Coat Factory is also evaluating whether to replace its SUSE Linux software with Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux implementation, which would give the company another reason to use Oracle VM.
Therein lie some interesting possibilities. Several weeks ago, another article was published to say that Oracle’s goal with Linux may be to eliminate a Windows (Microsoft) dependency and basically weaken this beast which is known as the “Microsoft ecosystem”, of which Novell seems to have become a part.
Thus, a win for Linux is a win for Oracle as it immediately eliminates SQL Server, Exchange, and Visual Studio from the equation and increases the likelihood that a customer will choose Oracle software, Aslett said.
That’s true regardless of whether customers choose Oracle Unbreakable Linux – or Red Hat.
Ellison’s hatred (or jealousy) of Microsoft is nothing new. Watch this video for some more visual evidence.
Of course, it would still be silly to assume that Ellison and Oracle have become friends of Free software. As Matt Asay shrewdly pointed out a fortnight ago:
Larry doesn’t understand open source. This isn’t surprising since the people who report to him apparently don’t, either (though I don’t include Mike Olson in that crowd - he’s a victim of golden handcuffs . Oracle desperately wants open source to be “just another tool” that it uses for IT domination. It’s not. It actually has the opposite effect.
Oracle just can’t grok this.
It wants to own the Linux kernel. It can’t. It wanted to own JBoss. It couldn’t. Open source is about controlling through sharing, but Oracle doesn’t do the “share” thing very well.
And so we’ll have to sporadically endure Mr. Ellison’s ego pronouncing himself god of the Linux world, despite his Linux business being so anemic that he won’t break out its numbers. If the numbers are so great, report them, Mr. Ellison. (Having said this, it’s important to note that Oracle stopped breaking out revenue by product line many years ago.)
To put things in perspective, consider the following half a dozen recent articles as well:
Ellison also acknowledged Red Hat’s growth in “a healthy market” for both companies. “We’re also doing something Red Hat isn’t, which is shipping Oracle VM underneath our Linux offering so there is a single stack of code. If you have applications that run on Red Hat, it will run unchanged on Oracle’s enterprise software.”
“At Oracle we’ve been in the Linux business for a year now,” he said.
“With the Red Hat code all we did for the first year was fix bugs. Now Oracle growing a lot faster than Red Hat. Red Hat’s been growing too because it’s a growing market.”
Despite Oracle’s fast growth, Red Hat remains the top dog in the enterprise Linux market, with tens of thousands of subscribers to its support business. During its Q1 2008 call with analysts, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik said it added “multiple of thousands of customers” in that quarter alone.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison didn’t display much of his traditional flamboyance Wednesday at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference, but he did preview the company’s next-generation Fusion Applications and said its Unbreakable Linux offering has met with initial success.
Buried under the surface of Oracle Corp.’s Monday announcement that it plans to get into the virtualization market is the fact that the company won’t support its database and many other applications if they are running on virtualization software from VMware Inc., Microsoft Corp. or even Red Hat Inc.
That effectively limits enterprise users who want to run their Oracle applications more efficiently through virtualization to just one platform: Oracle’s new VM.
No offense, Oracle, but if it looks like a fork, smells like a fork, and acts like a fork, it’s a fork, and “fully compatible” is simply not a credible guarantee. You can’t change someone else’s code and crown it “fully compatible.”
Taking all the above into consideration, it seems fair to say that Red Hat is snubbed by Oracle, but the compatibility limits (artificial they might as well be) are bad news to Novell as well. In the long term, despite Oracle’s denial, it is expected that Oracle will go its own way and create its own, fairly independent Linux distributions. Articles to watch out for include:
After initial cynicism I have been forced to rethink my opinion on a couple of occassions, notably Oracle’s patent pledge, the naming of customers and the naming of partners, although I remain unconvinced that OEL is a long-term strategy for the company as opposed to an attempt to disrupt the market.
Linux is clearly a long-term commitment. Oracle Enterprise Linux? Not sure.
Oracle has the ability to support Linux, and doing so could have “tactical value” for the database company, the founder of Ubuntu Linux–and a potential Oracle partner–said Friday.
Oracle is using LinuxWorld to try and calm concerns its Enterprise Linux and Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) will fork Red Hat and fragment the Linux market.
The impact of Oracle’s Linux endeavors on Free software as a whole will be interesting. If Oracle permits Novell’s Linux to gain acceptance and receive ‘interoperability’ (under discriminatory terms), then Oracle lets Microsoft get its way. Oracle has a lot of weight that can stop this, along with giants like IBM and Google, who are also in OIN (essentially as Linux guardians). █
However, Meeks is not ruling out an eventual forking of OOO if Sun refuses to give up its control of the project and establish an independent non-profit foundation to govern it.
Concerns about a possible fork arose because the Go-OO build, an OpenOffice implementation maintained by Meeks and others, decided to include a feature that Sun rejected for inclusion in the next OpenOffice because the developer refused to sign Sun’s contributor agreement.
Meeks said in an interview that it is customary for Go-OO to include new technologies and that the latest build should not be viewed as a fork. But he hinted that a fork is not out of the question if Sun doesn’t loosen its grip on the OpenOffice project.
“It’s clear that if Sun continues to refuse to include changes under their own license then you will see a growing set of changes that can’t be included in OpenOffice, and then we’d see that delta increasing over time. Eventually, users can understand they can get a better OpenOffice than at OpenOffice.org,” Meeks said this week during a telephone interview.
It would appear, that according to Simon Phipps, Sun is at this time content with the changes that they have made in recent weeks - including the replacing of the Contributor Agreement and creation of a Community Advisory Board. Phipps goes on to question Meeks’ motivation for mounting this challenge now, after having been an historical supporter of the contributor agreement.
In his blast at Novell’s Meeks, Phipps points to great strides made by OpenOffice over the past several months, including new participation by Red Flag 2000 and IBM.
“In the midst of all this, I see my friend Michael Meeks has been challenging Sun in a creative way - it even made Slashdot today. I remember the days when Michael used to enthusiastically encourage OpenOffice.org community members to sign the contributor agreement, as recently as last December…,” Phipps wrote on his blog recently, questioning Mr Meeks’ motives. It’s a shame Michael has chosen now - a turning point in OpenOffice.org and a moment when Sun has radically improved the SCA in response to broad feedback from many communities - as a time to mount a fresh challenge to Sun that by implication also harms OpenOffice.org. And when you distill out all the details, that’s what this turns out to be even by Michael’s admission - a competitive issue, not a community one.”
So, it appears that the line in the sand has been drawn between Sun and Meeks, yet we still have not heard anything in an official capacity from Novell. I would expect there to be quite a bit more from both sides on this highly contentious subject in the coming weeks leading up to the first meeting of the Community Advisory Board, and perhaps beyond.
Well, now let’s look at the present times - all over the web, reports abound about the Novell-Sun rift and Michael Meeks forking of OpenOffice.org. Some say it is a fork, some say it is not, and this all sounds very familiar but a little confusing - again.
Bear with me now: The OpenOffice.org project is developing import filters for OpenXML, but not export filters. Why? Because, I believe, it does not want to make a service to Microsoft by being the second major office suite to produce OpenXML documents on the fly. Novell sees this issue from a different point of view, but let’s not get carried away. Working with Microsoft on interoperability, as Novell claims, includes working on OpenXML filters and plugins. While Novell contributes quite normally to OpenOffice.org’s import filters, it is also developing an OpenXML export filter that won’t be available in OpenOffice.org– that is, if you choose to use OpenOffice.org and not “Open Office, Novell Edition”. And since these export filters are supposedly developed in collaboration with Microsoft, this technology would logically include Microsoft’s sacred intellectual property that Sun and many others don’t want to see covered by the JCA. This could, perhaps, explain Michael’s odd questions on this list of OpenOffice.org
So these new builds from Novell would thus include new features, but features that will carry sometimes an unverified intellectual property. And that’s certainly an issue if Microsoft joins the game. Would that mean Michael’s move was made in order to serve some corporate interests?
So, it looks like Novell is indeed intent on making available a fully OOXML-compatible, yet likely IP-encumbered, version of Novell OpenOffice.org - features that will not or cannot be sent back upstream. Of course, they cannot rightfully be expected to pay Microsoft their per-unit royalty on all copies of OOO that is distributed, as their thirty pieces of silver just doesn’t stretch that far, so fork they must.
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 thatquite 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.
It should be very obvious by now what Microsoft intends to achieve with Novell-type deals. This new article says it loud and clear.
Instead of slaughtering open source with patent lawsuits, injunctions and damage claims, it appears the goal is to milk, or bleed, open source software companies through licensing, and indemnification deals. You can’t say there’s anything secret or hidden about that strategy.
Microsoft’s legal war chest is greater than the gross national products of numerous nations. They can, at will, become the RIAA of the operating system and user software worlds.
[…]
My strong suggestion is a very easy one, if you believe that it’s time for Microsoft to put up or shut up: Make your own Linux distro and publish it.
[…]
Then publish it; send the info to distrowatch.com. You’ll get no money for it, but you’ll be one of a few million people for Microsoft to sue. Since they’ll be forced to stop making innovative software and spend money on litigation, quality will suffer for a little while. Then it will get better again.
As you may know, Shane has its own educational Linux distribution, but is it time for FreeSUSE? SUSE Linux without the litigious burden and without any affiliation or relation to Novell? CentOS and Oracle (among others) did this with Red Hat, but in terms of obligation to a third party, there was none.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
Send this to a friend 
View as PDF
Sam Varghese was a little more blunt when he 
The main victim which is repeatedly mentioned in this context is Red Hat, whose product Oracle uses (some would say “rips off”). But what about Novell? Yesterday, the following article appeared in 
. Oracle desperately wants open source to be “just another tool” that it uses for IT domination. It’s not. It actually has the opposite effect. 
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.