LinuxWorld, which will begin tomorrow, promises to deliver some major news for Linux. But people should remember the planting of articles to sabotage a Linux announcement on behalf of Microsoft (via a marketing proxy, as usual). King of the Microsoft Munchkins, Waggener Edstrom [1, 2, 3] , was directly involved. This seems like criminal stuff and it was covered here before. It’s a smoking gun, no doubt. Other names that are mentioned there include John Markoff of the New York Times. Be sure to read it. other bits of interest (not related to the smoking gun) include:
Speaking of plots thickening, back when Maureen O’Gara published her stalking article, I received an email from Jeff Merkey in May of 2005, claiming to have been involved: “If you are wondering who gave MOG your address and who tracked you down, well, guess who? Now that you have been exposed, my task is complete here.” I have no way to verify if the claim is true, of course. It may be like bombings in the Middle East. How do you know if those claiming responsibility are being truthful? I mention it because someone using the nym basicdistrust whom the locals on SCOX Yahoo! message board seem to think is Merkey just posted a rant about me, which ended, “Death to Linux! Hell to dishonest paralegals!!” I take that as a potential threat against my person, actually. Just in case anything happens to me, you’ll know where else to begin looking for clues in SCOworld and its environs.
Growlaw has various bits that suggest Victor Raisys may be another Microsoft/SCO mole. She draws no conclusions, but only shares evidence. Be sure to read and learn.
Do you, by any chance, remember the name Victor Raisys? He was a technology analyst at Soundview Technology Group, who predicted difficulties for Linux when the SCO litigation began in 2003.
[…]
I’m a simple soul, and while I realize that odd coincidences do happen in life, I still can’t help but notice a man, whose job at Microsoft was to figure out how to stop Linux, showing up at Soundview just when the SCO litigation began, where he mirrored the Microsoft position regarding the threat to Linux SCO represented and dissing Red Hat. In the end, what it all means I’ll have to leave to others. My role is research, which I present with links so you can verify and reach your own conclusions.
This story is more than the apparent history lesson - a history that we’ve lived through together.
Microsoft has seeded employees throughout industry - and occasionally that placement has been blatant - as brought to light in the MA-OOXML and ISO down-your-throats debacle.
In propagandist positioning, this tendency has been particularly strong - recall MoG and her husband and their transparency concerning towing the Microsoft barge down its canal.
The “single source of negativity” articles that Victor Raisys has participated in certainly fits into that pattern.
They work like a movement (of Microsoft), backed by insiders. Don’t believe anything you read and trust nothing that happens. You only ever see the facet of a watch, but none of the many cogwheels behind the shiny casing. █
Earlier on we wrote about Microsoft using its patents offensively. It keeps claiming to be a victim, but it’s nothing more than double-speak — a case of buttering both sides of the toast. Since Microsoft sues using its patents in an unprecedented fashion, people begin to react. There is nothing extraordinary here, but Microsoft tried to justify going hostile.
Bruce Perens brings back memories of the confidential E-mails predating (if not preluding) the SCO lawsuit. He seems very convinced that Microsoft had a hand in it and he’s looking for more ’smoking guns’ so that he can share his research in high-reach press (maybe trade journals).
Crimes Microsoft Gets Away With - So Far
News publications are cautious about making accusations, and because of that, some nasty acts of Microsoft are essentially being erased from the record.
[…]
Microsoft convinced Baystar Capital to put $50 Million dollars into SCO’s lawsuit against IBM and other Open Source users, and promised to “backstop” Baystar’s investment if SCO lost money, according to this sworn testimony. But I’m told that one person’s testimony, even sworn testimony, isn’t proof.
“The road to OOXML has been riddled with Microsoft corruption.”Some of the examples given there are from the OOXML fiasco. We wrote about this earlier today. A ZDNet article now cites CompTIA. It’s a Microsoft lobbying arm that fought for OOXML (Van Der Beld [1, 2, 3], anyone?). Total loss of credibility there, for sure! History is being rewritten.
The road to OOXML has been riddled with Microsoft corruption. From start to finish. It is all well documented. Interestingly enough, they also quote Microsoft’s Oliver Bell, who seemed to be concerned with BoycottNovell’s exposure of the corruption (he asked about us). Gray Gray Knowlton too was concerned. Might they end up escaping the company like others already have following the embarrassment and breaking of laws?
The EC has yet to slap Microsoft with heavy fines when the investigation is complete. The market cannot take care of itself when abuse becomes the ‘norm’.
“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
I think that ISO and IEC are on the edge of a precipice which, if they fall off, will cause them to rapidly lose relevance to IT (ICT) developments in many parts of the world, especially emerging markets.
What they appear to be saying to India, Brazil, South Africa, and Venezuela is “Go away, our process works. We love our process. You are wrong. Live by our rules and be quiet.”
If the appeals process is cut off without detailed community examination of the charges against what happened in the OOXML experience, I think that the reputations of the ISO and IEC will continue to diminish. It does not seem to me that anyone at the senior levels of these organizations get this. Rather than giving these four nations the cold shoulder, and doing it with what appears to this reader as having arrogant undertones, it makes far more sense for ISO and IEC to allow the process to carry on.
Complaints will surely continue to come. In fact, the process was so obviously broken and abused that Rob Weir has just published this detailed item. It shows what a disaster it has been from beginning to end.
When a new 6,000 page DIS is submitted to JTC1 only one month after the publication of another standard (ODF) in the exact same space (XML document formats for office applications) and 19 NB’s submit contradiction statements, and the JTC1 Secretariat’s “best effort” is to hold no consolations with the NB’s claiming contradictions, to hold no meeting, to make no attempt to resolve the question, then I believe that any NB would has a legitimate grounds for appeal on the inaction of JTC1 with regards to contradictions. There is no evidence that a “best effort” was made here to resolve the contradictions. Doing nothing is clearly incompatible with the required “best effort”.
It starts gently and gets down to more gory details. Just imagine that the BSI was taken to court over the abuses [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
The fight against the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard is continuing in many countries. In the UK the UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) unsuccessfully, sought a judicial review of the British Standards Institute’s decision to vote yes. UKUUG are now seeking to appeal against that rejection of a review and you can help them.
“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
I was coming in from Sunday School this past week into the main church service when I was summoned to the audio/visual booth. There was to be a presentation that morning and the PowerPoint file was not compatible with the A/V computer. Why? Because the file was created in Office 2007 & the computer ran Office 2003.
[…]
Now all the A/V people have to do is get the Microsoft update and there will be no other issues. But why should they have to go find it? Why wasn’t it automatically pushed to them. People with Office 2003 will (at some point or another) open Office 2007 files. They don’t want to find out that it doesn’t work. Most times, they won’t even know why it is not working or how to get it to work. All they want it to do is have it work.
So thanks, OpenOffice, for just working.
As this post hopefully demonstrates, not only has Microsoft broken compatibility with rival office suites; it also jeopardised users by breaking compatibility with security software whose filters are not ‘OOXML-fluent’ (and never will be).
A World of Freedom, Choice
Aside from Web-based substitutes to Microsoft Office, the following new article presents one among many options.
Another change has been the spread of the open-source software movement. Desktop competitors to Microsoft Office, such as OpenOffice.org, have begun to get some traction. These suites may not come with all the features of the Office apps, but they don’t come with its price tag, either. They also offer good functionality, good support for Office document formats (as well as truly open formats of their own), and you pay whatever you want to pay — or nothing at all.
As a result, users have become more open to considering alternatives to Microsoft’s ubiquitous suite.
OpenOffice.org gets a lot of attention these days as a practical, no-cost alternative to Microsoft Office. While OpenOffice.org does a fine job, however, there are times when a smaller, faster, feature-packed word processing program would be useful. There is another open-source application that fits the bill perfectly here — and it deserves far more attention than it gets.
The monolithic nature of Microsoft Office (one size fits all) and the monopolistic data formats typically mean that people’s computers must obey Microsoft’s hardware requirements, which they negotiate with companies like Intel to boost their profit. It’s never about the consumer or developer; the customers are OEMs, hardware manufacturers, the government, and the media industry.
Europe’s Commission intends to bring an end to this abuse. It seems genuinely willing to do the right thing and there’s room for citizens’ feedback until the end of September.
The draft document based on which the final EIF v2.0 will be elaborated is now available online on the IDABC website of the European Commission. External comments from all of those interested are welcome by 22 September 2008.
Even the Commission seems more open than ISO. Long live ISO. █
his was going to be mentioned very briefly in this evening’s digest of links, but the response to a previous short analysis was very positive. It’s worth expanding on it now that Microsoft’s ’shocker week’ is through.
Things haven’t gotten much better. To give just a quick overview, an analyst quoted in Reuters suggests that Microsoft should go into debt with another round of buybacks.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) should take on debt to repurchase stock as a way to revive its flagging share price, a financial analyst said in a new report issued on Tuesday.
Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co analyst David Hilal called on the company to take advantage of its predictable cash flow and rock solid balance sheet to execute a leveraged buyback.
As a reminder, Microsoft is estimated to have just $26 billion in the bank. It is far less than it has had for decades. If Microsoft had bought Yahoo!, it would would have borrowed over $20 billion from the bank. Their CFO even headed over to check these option, as reported by Reuters back in March.
This is bad for Microsoft. It had already completed buybacks valued at around $45 billion over the past 3 fiscal years. Will it be more? The frantic investors dropped their shares regardless and the stock nosedived in the past year.
It gets worse. Would you believe that Microsoft has lost $90,000,000,000 in value so far this year? So says Bloomberg.
Microsoft Holders Say Web Spending Masks Idea Drought (Update1)
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer says he plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the company’s unprofitable Internet business. His investors say they want proof he knows what to do with the money.
After walking away from six months of on-again, off-again talks about buying all or part of Yahoo! Inc., owner of the No. 2 Web search engine, Ballmer has left shareholders wondering if he has a plan B.
Microsoft, the biggest software maker, has lost about $90 billion in market value this year as Ballmer vacillated on Yahoo and failed to show how he would crack Google Inc.’s dominance of Internet advertising.
Looking elsewhere in the news, there are too few encouraging signs. Microsoft has apparently just elevated its marketing budget for Windows Vista from $300,000,000 to $500,000,000. That’s a lot of brainwash.
Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time. ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:
Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say. Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next operating system will be better. Pinky swear.
After the rejection of Windows Vista by so many large companies, including Intel, for whom a heavy Vista was possibly created, there is not much hope for change in the enterprise. Even Microsoft Watch seems to have given up. Here is a new catch of an opinion on Vista:
“Personally, I can’t stand it,” said Aaron Nettles, president and CEO of Vorsite, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Seattle. “It just seems more unstable to me, and I can’t stand not being productive.”
Mind this person’s role and location.
Another important point to make is that other Windows-based products like Server 2008 and Home Server are based on the same code and they are equally problematic on the face is it. We looked at Home Server before. It took about a year to fix a serious data corruption bug (resolved this week). What does that say about trust in the product? It’s all an illusion, a fairy tale wrapped in brand name.
The other day we also mentioned the financial fraud. Here are some more details to ensure this information is never lost (long-term).
When John Heilemann began working on a book about Silicon Valley in 1998, he discovered that he was hitting up many of the same sources as a group of lawyers from the Department of Justice. The DOJ, of course, was building its antitrust case against Microsoft, and Heilemann wanted in: “I started calling around and got the assistant attorney general to let me inside a lot of the case — as long as I didn’t write anything until the trial was over.”
Those who believe that Microsoft is still in a strong position and gaining further power are easily carried away by corporation-generated hype and glorification attempts that serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. “If Microsoft does great, so are its products,” right? They just need you to believe. It boils down to perception. █
e have been through this more than once before [1, 2]. Samsung was caught in the midst of a huge scandal and even its chairman was personally involved. He not only quit the company but he is now going to prison.
The ex-chairman of South Korean firm Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty of tax evasion in Seoul and given a three-year suspended jail term.
[…]
The charges followed a three-month investigation into alleged corruption at South Korea’s biggest conglomerate.
Lee, one of South Korea’s richest men, had headed Samsung for two decades before his resignation from the chairmanship in April.
Remember that Samsung signed a Linux-hostile deal under Kun-hee’s leadership.
A noteworthy thing is the similarity between Samsung’s business practices and those of Microsoft. For instance, information about Microsoft’s tax evasion you’ll find in [1, 2]. Lest we forget other mischiefs, including the recent crusade of corruption, all in the name of lock-in. There are some other questionably-criminal activities here and here. Windows Vista too is still blushing at the courtroom after collusions.
It almost seems as though there is more justice in Korea than in supposedly ‘more civilised’ parts of the world. Had justice prevailed in the west, governments would not handle Microsoft so submissively and cowardly. Then again, enforcement of the law typically boils down to political manipulation (or corruption). █
“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”
–CIO.com
Disclosure: My father traded with and distributed Samsung electronics almost exclusively for 20 years, so there hardly any bias against the company.
“The Norwegian [OOXML] affair was a scandal and we are still pursuing it. We haven’t given up hope of changing the vote back to No, and we hope people who experienced similar travesties in other countries will do the same.”
–Steve Pepper (just days ago)
Had Microsoft played by the rules like a gentleman, then we would only say that OOXML is deeply flawed (which it is), not a deeply-rooted fraud. Some folks are determined to bring justice, but in a world of intellectual insanity and lawyers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], justice is expensive whereas corruption comes cheap.
A group of UK open-source advocates is seeking donations so it can continue its fight against the approval of Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format.
UKUUG claimed in a statement today that Lloyd Jones “was wrong in his reading of papers,” before adding: “The matter will now be heard in open court.”
The group, which is made up of influential open source advocates in the UK, also quoted Lloyd Jones as saying UKUUG’s application “does not disclose any arguable breach of the procedures of BSI or of rules of procedural fairness”, and that it was “in any event… academic in light of the adoption of the new standard by ISO”.
The British press seems to be all over this. Here is the article from The Inquirer.
The standard was being used by Microsoft as a barrier to competitors getting a piece of its market, said the statement. The group is still trying to raise money to fund its action. Microsoft’s standard was given approval in a multinational vote at the International Standards Organisation. Four countries are contesting the award.
List of incidents (mostly misconduct) in the BSI and the UK you can find here, under “United Kingdom”. We assembled this list over a long period of time and it contains heaps of external references. The UK’s story is far from unique; it seems to be representative of the ‘norm’. █
“I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft.”
It’s official: Microsoft will not accept any external code contributions to its planned Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which will run Microsoft’s new scripting languages for the web and Silverlight content on .NET
Microsoft will, though, continue to accept source-code contributions to its slowly emerging implementation of Ruby for .NET, IronRuby. Contributions are helping to build IronRuby and shepherd the language towards the first-full release.
[…]
The reason Microsoft decided to leave the DLR closed, despite taking contributions to the languages that will run inside it, is to protect itself from unwanted licenses and IP claims.
If you look more closely you’ll find that what Microsoft wants is free labour — moreover labour that results in developers and end-user getting dependent on proprietary and pricey programs.
“Give us code, lots of code, more code…”
“But it’s ours. We control it.”
That’s not open source (Free software aside). The story behind Microsoft’s grab of Ruby with .NET is noteworthy also, particularly in light of those Silverlight-bound ‘extensions’. It’s mainly about control. Remember what Microsoft said just days ago and this quick interpretation also: “So could you ask, what is this collaborative development, this new syntagm [Microsoft’s] Mr. Matusow is using all over the place? Well, buried deep towards the very end of his post,”
Sadly enough, Nokia too seems far from committed. It is adamant about enforcing software patents, DRM and other consumer-hostile mechanisms. Bruce Pernes has just responded to that latest lecture from Ari Jaaksi.
…perhaps the community has some education for Jaaksi and Nokia. Jaaksi hosted me at a Nokia dinner in 2000, he’s a nice guy and has been interested in Linux for a long time. But Nokia’s barking up the wrong tree this time, because Nokia can do everything it wants with DRM, IPR, and SIM locks without bothering the Linux developers about it - and both Nokia and the Linux developers will like it better that way. It’s surprising that Nokia doesn’t understand that at this late date.
Here is what Pamela Jones said about this: “Do what you like, but if you wish to use the code, you obey the license. If not, please write your own. Personally, I won’t use DRM’d products. I can wait. I understand Hollywood is a problem for you, but until they wake up and realize they are destroying their old business model by scrupulously avoiding any new ones, instead trying to graft the old one onto a new age, I’ll just avoid their offerings. I can live without Hollywood, I find, when it’s something this vital. I understand that puts Nokia in a tough spot, because they want to do deals with Hollywood. Go ahead and do deals, but leave me out. And please don’t use FOSS code until you are ready to play by the rules. I just won’t buy or use any Nokia phones if you break the rules. I think that’s fair.”
Why can’t these 2 companies simply abide by the rules and spirit of the licences/establishments they embrace (OSI in the former case and GPL in the latter)? Novell is no exception. Novell too happens to be among those sinners. It uses GNU/Linux to sell proprietary software (”mixed source”) and it signs software patent deals. █
Recently we presented what seemed like a blackmail incident in Kenya. Microsoft managed to turn a “No” vote into abstention after it had allegedly threatened to cut some funding. It’s extortion and it’s totally unacceptable as a technique for bypassing the judgment of technical committees. It’s reverse-bribery, if there is such a thing at all (taking away rather than giving).
The Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), taking the first step toward developing national IT standards, is inviting experts to join technical committees.
[…]
The call for nominations comes after what had generally been considered a successful multistakeholder discussion and subsequent abstention from the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) vote on the Microsoft-backed OOXML.
Mind the use of the word “multistakeholder” and look back at the allegations, which indicate there was ballot-stuffing by Microsoft. Why the sudden nominations (reappointments)? Might this be a coincidence? Timing is what’s a key factor here. We saw this in other nations too. Recall the very recent departure of ‘puppet nations’. It’s too shallow and obvious.
For several months there has not been much of news flow to those who keep track of OpenDocument format, but the recent scandals and backlash have brought forward stories such as this one and also this one, whose headline is “Countries Line Up Against OOXML as Global Standard.” How quickly the tune changed. From hero to zero in 60 days.
“I am not surprised by the number of appeals given the reported irregularities,” Marino Marcich, managing director for the ODF Alliance, told LinuxInsider. The ODF Alliance seeks to promote and advance the use of OpenDocument Format (ODF).
“Countries felt their concerns were not allowed to be voiced, or simply went unaddressed,” Marcich explained. “The number of formal appeals is unprecedented and underscores the deep-seated concern over how well OOXML plays with the software of vendors besides Microsoft.”
As can be read in this German review, the Windows version of the Asus Eee PC 900 will have StarOffice pre-installed. This definitely will lead to more adoption of ODF!
That’s just the type of losing battle Microsoft is fighting. It wants to prevent document formats from becoming a commodity, as they should have been all along. Where would the World Wide Web be without universal standards? And why does Microsoft strive to change the Web by making it proprietary and Microsoft-dependent? This latter challenge remains just ahead though. █
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
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Coincidence or bad incident?
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.