07.12.08
Posted in FSF, Patents, FOSS at 4:03 am by Roy Schestowitz
Know thy enemy
We seem to have lost sight of our focus recently because we commented on news pertaining to copyrights. However, it has plenty to do with Free software too.
For background, see the following recent stories of relevance:
We also wrote about/alluded to the ACTA in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
The FSF has just launched a campaign against this Orwellian ACTA. It breaks down the problem:
ACTA threatens free software
1. It makes it more difficult to distribute free software: Without file sharing and P2P technologies like BitTorrent, distributing large amounts of free software becomes much harder, and more expensive. BitTorrent is a grassroots protocol that allows everyone to contribute to legally distributing free software.
2. It will make it harder for users of free operating systems to play media: Consumers will no longer be able to buy media without DRM — and DRMed media cannot be played with free software.
3. It increases the chances of getting your devices taken away: Portable media players that support free formats are less common than devices which support DRM, such as the iPod. Will this make them suspicious to border guards?
4. It creates a culture of surveillance and suspicion, in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting.
The British press is already picking up the news.
The Guardian: The right to peer inside your iPod
An agreement on intellectual property rights to be ratified by the G8 heads of government highlights conflicts between ownership and privacy
The Register: Gadgets safe from global airport anti-piracy plan
Alarming headlines claiming that our laptop hard drives and iPod libraries could soon be scanned at airports for illegal copies of content are unfounded.
Several recent reports, including one by the Daily Telegraph, claim that the governments of the G8 nations are considering an anti-piracy plan that would see customs officials granted the power to examine travellers’ gadgets for digital contraband.
This is somewhat related to our focus on software patent deals. It’s another new form of intellectual monopoly rights that combat our human rights and freedom. It’s about suppression of a new market status and prevention of market diversity, which is bad news to existing monopolists. █
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07.08.08
Posted in FSF, Mono, GPL, HP at 5:32 am by Roy Schestowitz
“I am convinced we have to use Windows – this is the one thing they don’t have. We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more — Windows integration.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft
Same old and familiar maneuvers, new project though. This time Microsoft is redoing SVN. It’s doing it the ‘Microsoft way’.
This infuriates me. This cool thing they spent six months (six!) writing is called Subversion, and it had a 1.0.0 release three years ago. Subversion had its first beta in late 2003, so the Codeplex folks are waaay behind the state of the art on this one.
[…]
This problem is ingrained at Microsoft, which feels the need to brand everything, but it is in no way limited to them.
Needless to guess, there’s some .NET dependency and integration there. The following comment ‘gets’ it.
It’s called reinvent the wheels they like so that they have copyright. Then get people to help improve their wheels and not those of someone else.
It’s a strong itch because they can then integrate that (eg, GPL.. for others) code into their Monopolyware. Keep it closed and full of hooks while the community debugs most of it for Monopolysoft, spends their (the community) time doing that instead of something that benefits the community more, and even adds innovative features while at it.
Remember what they did with Ruby [1, 2]? If not, be sure to read about it.
When Stallman et al built the GNU system, they systematically created free substitutes for proprietary yet modular pieces of UNIX. What Microsoft is doing now is it embraces the power of Free software, but it tries to spit the GPL out of it, thus giving control to Microsoft, rendering developers its slaves under the ‘open source’ promise (where open source is defined by Microsoft).
Did you know that there’s an ongoing implementation of a .NET-based emacs? Remember that Microsoft tries to market its poor Vista sibling, Server 2008, as though it’s a better Linux than Linux. How about Apple and its UNIX, which gives the false illusion of open source and POSIX while hiding all the underlying lock-ins (hardware- and software-wise)? █
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07.05.08
Posted in FSF, Bill Gates, FOSS at 12:15 am by Roy Schestowitz
Independence Day Special
To pay so much attention to Bill Gates’ retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.
“Many users hate the “Microsoft tax”, the retail contracts that make you pay for Windows on your computer even if you won’t use it.”That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many computer users.
Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.
Gates’ philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people’s good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries.
Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty of reasons.
‘Solicit funds’
Microsoft persistently engages in anti-competitive behaviour, and has been convicted three times. George W Bush, who let Microsoft off the hook for the second US conviction, was invited to Microsoft headquarters to solicit funds for the 2000 election.
In the UK, Microsoft established a major office in Gordon Brown’s constituency.
Many users hate the “Microsoft tax”, the retail contracts that make you pay for Windows on your computer even if you won’t use it.
In some countries you can get a refund, but the effort required is daunting.
There’s also the Digital Restrictions Management: software features designed to “stop” you from accessing your files freely. Increased restriction of users seems to be the main advance of Vista.
‘Gratuitous incompatibilities’
Then there are the gratuitous incompatibilities and obstacles to interoperation with other software. This is why the EU required Microsoft to publish interface specifications.
This year Microsoft packed standards committees with its supporters to procure ISO approval of its unwieldy, unimplementable and patented “open standard” for documents. The EU is now investigating this.
These actions are intolerable, of course, but they are not isolated events. They are systematic symptoms of a deeper wrong which most people don’t recognise: proprietary software.
Microsoft’s software is distributed under licenses that keep users divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they don’t have the source code that programmers can read and change.
If you’re a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can’t.
If you’re a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can’t. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a “pirate”.
‘Unjust system’
Microsoft would have us believe that helping your neighbour is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship.
The most important thing that Microsoft has done is to promote this unjust social system.
Gates is personally identified with it, due to his infamous open letter which rebuked microcomputer users for sharing copies of his software.
It said, in effect, “If you don’t let me keep you divided and helpless, I won’t write the software and you won’t have any. Surrender to me, or you’re lost!”
‘Change system’
But Gates didn’t invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It’s wrong, no matter who does it.
Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system.
That’s what the free software movement is all about. “Free” refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify.
We do this systematically, for freedom’s sake; some of us paid, many as volunteers. We already have complete free operating systems, including GNU/Linux.
Our aim is to deliver a complete range of useful free software, so that no computer user will be tempted to cede her freedom to get software.
In 1984, when I started the free software movement, I was hardly aware of Gates’ letter. But I’d heard similar demands from others, and I had a response: “If your software would keep us divided and helpless, please don’t write it. We are better off without it. We will find other ways to use our computers, and preserve our freedom.”
In 1992, when the GNU operating system was completed by the kernel, Linux, you had to be a wizard to run it. Today GNU/Linux is user-friendly: in parts of Spain and India, it’s standard in schools. Tens of millions use it, around the world. You can use it too.
Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now.
Dismantling them is up to us.
This article was written by Richard Stallman, and originally published by the BBC.
Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. You can copy and redistribute this article under the Creative Commons Noderivs license.
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06.30.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, GPL, Kernel, ISO at 4:55 pm by Roy Schestowitz
S
everal days ago, Free Software Daily had shared an old video of Torvalds. The video was from 2001.
A reader who has watched the computing industry for decades wrote to share his opinion and interpretation of this apparent divide between Linus Torvalds and the Free Software movement. It was highlighted by some.
“Thank you for the reference to the Linus Torvalds talk about “the origins of Linux.” It was interesting. I’m not sure that I exactly agree with your characterisation of Torvalds’ view of the GPL.
“I do not understand why he says that “the GPL is a horrible document.” He does not elaborate, but if I try to read between the lines, I would say that it is because he is apolitical and he sees the GPL as a political document. He truly is a technical person who is just doing something that he finds to be fun and challenging. He is not doing it for political reasons at all.
“I don’t necessarily see this as a reason to distrust him. He does also say that he went for the GPL as a licence because he saw that there is a big problem with the BSD licence in that it allows contributors to make changes and keep them as secrets. He is fundamentally on the same side as Richard Stallman, whether he knows it or not. Perhaps one difference between them is that he didn’t quite have Stallman’s experience with proprietary software which upset him enough to start the GNU project and the FSF. In political terms, one would say that they have an uneasy alliance and it’s in the FSF’s best interest to use Linux for their purposes.
“As for the future, who knows? Perhaps if locked down hardware which only allows certain “approved” operating systems becomes the norm, it would upset Torvalds enough to take a strong stand.”
It is true that he vehemently dislikes DRM because it is a form of restriction that is never effective. He does, on the other hand, defend Tivoization — moreover saying that he likes it. He recently said in an interview that he was glad to see DRM fading away (at least for music distribution).
The introduction/popularisation of Digital ‘Manners’, ‘Trusted’ Computing and other not-so-polite and not-so-trusted technologies might — just might — change his mind.
“It’s truly understandable that, being an engineer, he can ignore the problem and let his colleagues deal with this burden.”When Torvalds set up a PC for his wife, and it was quite recently in fact, he chose Fedora. He reported bugs and some people in OS News spotted and elaborated on this. This might tell that he values Free software (somewhere deep inside).
Based on interviews, he seems fearful of distraction that comes from ‘politics’ and emotional attachment. Software patents opened up his eyes and some months ago he said he was worried about them. It’s truly understandable that, being an engineer, he can ignore the problem and let his colleagues deal with this burden.
Our reader later concluded by saying: “My gut feeling is that Torvalds is honest and that’s the fundamental reason which makes me want to trust him. I have less respect for someone who just goes with the flow and says whatever is convenient at the time. At least, he doesn’t concern himself with being “popular” or “unpopular.””
It was roughly a week ago that you could also found out what Richard Stallman thinks about Microsoft. Some people have argued that he does not pay enough attention to Microsoft but looks at a broader pictures instead.
“Microsoft suborned the One Laptop Per Child project, converting it into a massive Windows training campaign. The project says it is giving the purchasing governments ‘more choice’ by supporting Windows as well as GNU/Linux, but those governments will tend to choose Windows by default. In some countries, people will campaign to prevent that. If these campaigns succeed, the OLPC project may yet make a positive contribution to the world. Otherwise, it will do overall harm.”
Second, talking about the standards fight in which Microsoft succeeded in having its OOXML format accepted as an open standard in rivalry to the ODF format favored by OpenOffice.org and other free office applications, Stallman notes that “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.”
Despite all of this, ISO continues to deny the obvious.
The main post of this post has been to show that Torvalds’ and Stallman’s thinking is not so different after all. They just happen to focus on different areas/angles of the very same thing, trying to resolve the technical and ‘political’ issues, respectively. Both sides ought to respect one another. They’ll both win that way. █
“When I do this, some people think that it’s because I want my ego to be fed, right? Of course, I’m not asking you to call it “Stallmanix”!”
–Richard Stallman
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05.22.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, Deception, Patents, Standard, OpenDocument, Europe, Antitrust, Open XML at 10:56 pm by Roy Schestowitz
“There won’t be anything we won’t say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go.”
–Bill Gates (Microsoft’s CEO at the time)
Microsoft intervening with the ODF committee up, close and personal? Boy, that’s exciting!
Legal Issues
It took Groklaw a while to respond to the latest announcement from Microsoft, but after some studying, a detailed article was dispatched. The analysis at the start is eerily similar to ours (serving as further validation), but PJ then notes that there are legal traps too. Do take a look because it sounds similar to the RAND+OSP stunt.
Microsoft Supporting ODF? — Close, But No Cigar
[…]
Once again, the problem is software patents. Internet News indicates that commercial Linux/FOSS vendors, and the GPL license that Linux comes with, will be excluded…
[…]
GPL developers can’t obtain patent licenses. That would violate the terms of the GPL. Period.
Like Microsoft doesn’t know that.
But, you say, Linux is GPL’d and that’s Microsoft’s primary competition. Can it be that commercial vendors and the GPL will be exiled again from the “even” playing field everyone else gets to be on? Why yes. It appears so. Commercial Linux vendors need not apply. Or they can sell out.
In short, I think Microsoft has no intention of interoperability with its actual competition, namely commercial Linux, like Red Hat and Ubuntu, et al, all the vendors who refuse to sell out to their patent demands. I’d say it has to be deliberate on Microsoft’s part, because when Microsoft offered its Open Specification Promise (OSP), the promise not to sue over OOXML, sorta, kinda, it was clearly informed by the Software Freedom Law Center that the OSP’s terms are inconsistent with the GPL and that the promise provides no assurance for FOSS developers. And Microsoft is certainly knowledgeable about the problems with RAND terms for FOSS. But they persist in offering what they know commercial GPL developers can’t accept.
[…]
Please note that they too expressed dreams of maintaining ODF, not just OOXML, and making the two “interoperable”. So, now Microsoft says it will join OASIS and “help” ODF and it hopes ODF will go to the same folks who mangled OOXML.
Does that sound helpful?
I wish they were sincere. I’d love to be proven wrong. But I’m afraid, having watched Microsoft shove OOXML through the Fast Track process, despite it not even being usable, that ODF will be harmonized out of meaningful existence. I suspect that is the plan. And so to me, the announcement of “support” for ODF sounds like it could just be the next chess move in Microsoft’s strategy to maintain its heavy footprint.
The fragments and findings above were missing from Glyn Moody’s new analysis, so he was sent a headsup on these overlooked aspects. Here are some of his own reasons for skepticism, as he articulated them in Linux Journal:
As I’ve written elsewhere, I see increasing signs of new Microsoft approach to open source, which involves loving applications to death, while undermining GNU/Linux. The idea might be to lull the wider free software community into a false sense of security while digging away at the foundations, so that one day open sources apps find themselves running mostly on Windows, with Microsoft in the driving seat.
That’s more of a long-term threat, albeit one that the free software world needs to be aware of. So, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Microsoft is sincere, that it really will offer proper ODF support in Office, and that it really wants work with rather than against the OASIS technical committee: why might that be?
Microsoft wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the regulators off its back while at the same time finding itself able to EE&E ODF. Don’t believe it yet? Then read on.
What the EC May Think
Europe’s regulators took a cautious stance. They formally said only that Microsoft’s announcement had been noted. There was no praise or protest. Looking a little deeper, you find some further analysis such as this good one.
The sudden moves by Redmond point out two hard facts:
1. It’s not nice to fool Mother Europe.
2. If Microsoft says you’ve got five fingers on each hand, many people will insist on an independent count.
In my view the second problem is bigger than the first. Credibility may not mean much in the proprietary universe, where money counts for everything and truth is a commodity.
In the open source world, political values like credibility are real. Microsoft has only just begun to recognize this.
More from Marcich:
Marcich advised caution for now, noting that Microsoft announced its intention two years ago to implement “support” for ODF for via a third-party translator that is still in beta (under development) and will not be completed until the first half of 2009. There was limited functionality available via the converters and they were poorly integrated into the overall Microsoft user interface, as compared with the integration and functionality Microsoft offers for its own OOXML format.
“What governments want is direct, internal support for ODF in Microsoft Office. Governments do not want to waste time waiting for translators to load or re-engineering default-save functions for their workforce,” added Marcich. “If Microsoft actually follows through with this most recent promise, it will reinforce the global market-led demand by customers, particularly governments, seeking open standards based interoperability through ODF.”
Here is the BBC quoting Marino Marcich of the ODF Alliance: “Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases.”
More of the same here:
Microsoft’s ODF support looks good … but on paper only
Microsoft’s pledge to support ODF as a native file format in Office 2007 SP2 is good news for OpenOffice – but on paper only.
The devil is in the details – and Microsoft hasn’t spelled out precisely how or if its ODF 1.1 implementation will support macros and other challenging aspects of document interoperability. And it will be some time before we find out. Office 2007 SP2 won’t appear until the first half of 2009.
When Microsoft says “first half of 2009,” it does not actually mean this. Remember that when Windows Vista got RTMed, Steve Ballmer promised a release of Windows every two years. Almost 20 months later Ballmer called Windows Vista “work in progress” and there are no signs of a Vista successor coming any time before November 2008. In fact, there are hardly any signs that anything as such even exists. Mary Jo Foley reported a few days ago that Microsoft is oddly mum on this issue.
All Microsoft offered was vapourware. Remember that Longhorn (Vista) was intended to be released in 2003. That’s what Microsoft told us when it showed flashy videos comprising some futuristic mockups (it tries this again at the moment with OLPC, so be warned). It never materialised and came to no no fruition, even 3-4 years late. Almost 7 years later people choose to jump back to 2001 (XP days, when I was a teenager) rather than tolerate the pains of Windows circa 2008.
A couple of days ago, the FSFE’s newsletter covered document formats, among other things.
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
“FSFE published its ‘Six questions to national standardisation bodies’
before the September 2nd vote last year. [1] Considering the statements
about progress made on MS-OOXML, one would have hoped that at least one
of these questions enjoyed a satisfactory response,” states FSFE’s
German Deputy country coordinator Matthias Kirschner. He continues:
“Unfortunately that is not the case. Issues like the ‘Converter Hoax’ [2]
and the ‘Questions on Open Formats’ [3] are still equally valid. As the
‘Deprecated before use’ [4] and ‘Interoperability woes with OOXML’ [5]
documents demonstrate, MS-OOXML interoperability is severely limited in
comparison to Open Standards. In addition to these issues, there are the
legal concerns that were raised by various parties. [6]”
FSFE vice-president Jonas Öberg states: “Governments have to start
asking themselves what the ISO seal of approval really means. As
demonstrated by the MPEG standards, it never meant that something
qualifies as a meaningful ‘Open Standard.’”
The BBC also quoted Georg Greve from the FSFE regarding the very latest developments (unaccounted for in the message above): “Support for ODF indicates there are problems with OpenXML that Microsoft cannot resolve easily and quickly.” █
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05.07.08
Posted in FSF, Videos, GPL at 10:08 pm by Roy Schestowitz
This new talk is warmly recommended to all. As one who attended it, I can say that it was memorable and inspiring. Stallman touched on a lot of points, not just technology. A friend whom I brought, who has no prior experience with Free software, found it to be a very valuable lesson too. █
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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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04.18.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, GPL, Google, Fraud, Samsung, OSI at 6:57 pm by Roy Schestowitz
One of Microsoft’s lesser-known partners, which also signed a software patent deal involving Linux, is Samsung. We wrote about Samsung’s corruption allegations just a fortnight ago and also provided many contextual links for background about this deal.
The New York Times has more information at the moment. It is suggesting that the chairman of the company is personally involved and also charged. This looks bad for this gigantic company as a whole.
The chairman of the Samsung Group, Lee Kun-hee, has been indicted on charges of evading taxes on billions of dollars that he hid in stock accounts under the names of his aides, a special prosecutor announced on Thursday.
The weaker and less credible Microsoft’s partners become, the better it is for freedom of software. The abuse of the GPL must end and the GPLv3 is one possible solution to these deals.
While on the subject of GPLv3, some readers are likely to recall the AGPL-Google kerkuffle [1, 2, 3] because it led to a few discussions in this Web site. As it turns out, Google’s AGPLv3 snub is no accident and there’s more to it.
Chris [DiBona]:
Actually, we think that creating individual pools of software that cannot be shared amongst other licenses is less open, which is why we are against license proliferation.
SoC isn’t much about recruiting, but more about creating more open source code and developers.
mtg [Milking The Gnu]:
So the argument is that of compatibility? (e.g. creating less ‘pools’) but then by the same token you could have only the X/MIT license …
It raises another issue though: does it mean Google doesn’t really trust the OSI?
What if OSI starts delivering say an “Open Choice Repository” label to those repositories offering all OSI-approved licenses; does Google code want to end-up next to Microsoft CodePlex which denies hosting to GPLv3 projects?
Bear in mind that Chris DiBona used to be a very active participant in the OSI. We corresponded on several occasions. In this blog post (correspondence), DiBona says that he likes beer and wine. Well, it’s time to sober up.
The AGPLv3 is a reality and it’s extremely important to defend it. If Google disregards even the OSI’s approval (never mind the FSF’s principles), then Google will further complicate status issues amongst some developers. Time to face reality, Google. Your shareholders need the faith of the geeks. █
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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.