08.21.08

Did Novell Contact You As Well to Manipulate News Coverage?

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Deception, KDE, Patents at 6:52 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Novell wants volunteers for code, time, Novell’s self-glory
Top KDE developer not happy with the Microsoft/Novell deal

We have already seen this many times before. If and when someone becomes a critic of Novell, the company tries to shut him or her up. If someone can produce good coverage about Novell, then the company greases him or her up. It’s just like Microsoft, only at a smaller scale.

We highlighted incidents where journalists or bloggers came under pressure after they had denounced Novell. It’s Novell seniors who often contact them ‘behind the scenes’ (Dragoon for example [1, 2])

Aaron Siego, who is probably the best-known KDE developer (he’s one of their public figures), does not like the Novell/Mirosoft deal and he tells the story we already know about — th story of Novell messing with people’s mind for positive coverage. They probably did this with Matt Asay, which is why he had a ’sudden’ change of heart. How widespread is this phenomenon?

So I read this latest announcement, thought about the implications of it and then moved on .. until I was spammed by Novell’s marketing department asking what I thought about the press release. They said that if I wanted, I could even ring up their director of marketing via instant messenger and chat about it! This is a good example of public opinion management: they evidently know that it’s a sensitive area and so are trying to head off any problems by engaging people in the community directly and early on. Very early on in fact: I received my email just a few minutes after the press release was sent out and they attached a PDF of the press release to the email for my reference. Well done! (I mean that: it was a well executed plan.)

Who else did Novell contact like this? It’s supposed to be hush-hush.

Aaron continues:

And since they asked, I thought, “Sure, why not share my thoughts!” However, I thought I’d do it here instead of over AIM or Yahoo! Messenger with Justin S., partly because I don’t like being managed by other people’s marketing departments, but mostly because too many of the people who do speak in non-positive terms about this deal tend do so with argumentation that is too easy to discount by simply playing the “let’s be reasonable” card.

“Novell has already muted some of the possible ‘trouble makers’.”He too is beginning to realise that it’s about software patents. He should be furious. Novell’s message to him is something along the lines of: “please carry on coding for us, don’t bother with the details, we’ll just make some money with Microsoft and only we can offer peace of mind.”

Aaron closed this item, preventing comments from being added. What’s to be afraid of? That people might utter the truth, which seems misappropriate for a blog that represents opinion of a lead Plasma developer? Remember that Novell pushes money into this (Akademy funding, for instance) and it’s hard to slam your backer, no matter how selfish it may be.

We won’t be hearing much criticism, will we? Novell has already muted some of the possible ‘trouble makers’. █

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08.16.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: SUSE, Xandros, and Turbolinux Catch-up

Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, SLES/SLED, KDE, xandros, Turbolinux at 2:28 pm by Roy Schestowitz

OpenSUSE:KDE

It has been an important week for KDE, whose developers got together. At the same time, Novell seems to be hiring programmers for KDE.

OpenSUSE remains one of the bleeding-edge distributions as far as KDE4 is concerned and here’s a look at the latest stable version on OpenSuSE 11.0.

I’ve added the Factory repository to the list of repositories I use to update my OpenSuSE install and now I am running KDE 4.1.

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08.15.08

Assorted Updates: Patents, OSI, Mono, KDE and Novell

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, SLES/SLED, Mono, KDE, Patents, Asia, FOSS, OSI at 8:54 am by Roy Schestowitz

From the Campaign for Document Freedom

Gentle Protest Against Software Patents in India

The situation in India has been covered quite a few times recently because it’s getting grim [1, 2, 3, 4]. Fortunately, now comes the organised opposition.

Bengaluru Meetup

When: 10am, Saturday 16th August 2008

Where: BMS College of Engineering, Basavanagudi

Agenda: Indian Patents office has called for a meeting of stakeholders in Bengaluru on 27th August (date still to be confirmed). We should submit a written appeal to stop introducing software patents in India. We will prepare this document here.

Software patents are, as stressed here before, merely a mechanism to have multi-nationals (and their local business partners) inherits the country’s assets. These patents are being marketed differently, however, in order for them to pass as a new amendment to the law.

Groklaw: “Enemies of FOSS Are Attacking”

Pamela Jones pointed this out yesterday. We are well past the “then they laugh at you” phase, so it’s only reasonable to prepare for more of the “then they attack you” outbursts. The OSI is explicitly mentioned by Pamela and Bruce Perens warns that Microsoft can have it ruined. The context is slightly different though.

It means that while OSI’s handling of a list of approved licenses worked very well for a community made up of FOSS programmers, who are decent folks all on the same page overall, now that enemies of FOSS are attacking, we need a new organization to vet licenses going forward a lot more carefully, one made up of experienced FOSS lawyers, none of them with a history of hostility to, or ignorance of, the GPL, with the community as advisors.

KDE

We are still watching KDE and Mono closely, hoping not to find irreversible intersection between these two. Some people have already noticed the growing trend inside GNOME.

As I briefly mentioned in another post, I am seriously concerned with GNOME’s infatuation with Microsoft technologies.

As a newcomer to the Linux scene, I was not aware that GNOME was tied up with Novell and all in a 3-way with Redmond. However, the more I find out about, the more discomforted I become…

And then there’s this comment.

Keep KDE Kleen

KDE needs to poll their own users before allowing proprietary sewage like C# and Mono to infect our relatively clean desktop.

I think most will be strongly opposed.

I will certainly be looking for a new desktop, for the first time since becoming involved with Free Software.

Just as a quick recap, consider Novell’s role.

SUSE is a good tool for Microsoft. It enables Microsoft to clog up some gaps where Windows would never fit. SUSE enables the monopolist to replace GNU/Linuxes with something that it ‘owns’ (in the mythical/’intellectual’ sense) and it’s therefore paid for (’compensated’). Using hypervisor/format/’protection’ caveats, Microsoft hopes to elevate its own asset (SUSE) at the expense of Ubuntus and Red Hats that roam freely, without per-copy restriction and Microsoft’s wrath.

Novell needs to be stopped. SLED/S/RT needs to be stopped. At the moment, if a company insists on using GNU/Linux, Microsoft can give them GNU/Linux, but not the GNU/Linux they want and need. Mono could part of the plan to transform ownership, passing more of it to Microsoft. █

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08.14.08

While Everyone is Sleeping, Mono Sneaks Into KDE

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, KDE at 6:24 am by Roy Schestowitz

We have already been tracking the progression of this for while [1, 2]. The latest KDE Commit Digest sheds light on the latest patches from Richard Dale, who adds: “How should mono KDE apps be installed? Should they be installed into the bin dir, or they should they be started from a C++ shell like Ruby KDE apps?”

Other

Development Tools

Richard Dale committed changes in /trunk/KDE/kdebindings:
* Add an Akonadi C# binding
* In the list of headers for the Akonadi smoke lib qualify the names with the akonadi directory
Diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (+ 64 more) Revision 836460

Richard Dale committed changes in /branches/KDE/4.1/kdebindings:
* Promote the Smoke, Ruby, kalyptus and C# kdebindings from the trunk to the KDE 4.1 release branch.
Diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (+ 619 more) Revision 836531

Richard Dale committed changes in /trunk/KDE/kdebindings/csharp/ktexteditor:
* Add a port of the KWrite shell to C#

* There are some problems to be solved:
* Accessing some functionality requires qobject_cast<>’s
* How should mono KDE apps be installed? Should they be installed into the bin dir, or they should they be started from a C++ shell like Ruby KDE apps?

* Couldn’t see how to convert this call:
QTextStream input(stdin, QIODevice::ReadOnly);

* The KUrl.List class needs more work to be usable with drag and drop
Diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (+ 4 more) Revision 837777
View Visual Changes (to 7 files)

To repeat what Groklaw told KDE developers a week ago: “I told you. I told you. I told you. If you look at the go-oo.org site, you’ll see Mono and “OpenXML” being pushed. Please watch out, KDE. He says they want to share code between Gnome and KDE. Patents are still an issue, in my view. There is no new Microsoft. And I believe Microsoft plans to use their patents at some point, upon which Novell will suggest safety in their arms.”

Novell recently announced that it was hiring more KDE developers and OpenSUSE advertising in Akademy 2008 stands out. █

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08.12.08

Mono Spreads, Fails

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, KDE at 4:59 am by Roy Schestowitz

A few days ago, we spotted Richard Dale facilitating C# in KDE, which is reason for some concern. This carries on, based on the very latest commit digest.

Richard Dale committed changes in /trunk/KDE/kdebindings/csharp:
* Add a QtScript module for scripting C# apps
Diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (+ 10 more)

With that in place, there’s room for more Mono in KDE, but the biggest Trojan horse is actually affecting merely every desktop environment. It’s Moonlight, which depends on Mono. It needs to be rejected (it already is), just like Silverlight, which is poison on the Web. The Commission investigates it for anti-competitive reasons while Novell shields Microsoft from regulators, just as it did to harm Samba.

Yeah, it would have been nice to be able to watch the Olympics event playbacks and live feeds on Linux using Moonlight. But right now, Moonlight only supports Silverlight 1.0 apps, and NBCOlympics.com is implemented using 2.0. As Novell’s chief Mono/Moonlight developer, Miguel de Icaza told me several weeks ago before the NBCOlympics content launch, “Work on this has started, but it will take a lot of work. And sadly, there are very few people willing to contribute to make this happen on time.”

And yet, Microsoft gets to wrongly claim that Silverlight is cool with GNU/Linux. It keeps some critics lawyers away. Another special thank-you to Novell. If it were not for Novell, Microsoft would have ported Silverlight to GNU/Linux, for better or for worse. It suggested this some months ago. █

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08.10.08

Groklaw: Microsoft and Novell Poison OpenOffice.org; Watch Out, KDE

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, KDE, OpenDocument, Java, Open XML, OpenOffice at 6:44 am by Roy Schestowitz

We have warned about this for ages (as far back as 2006), but some folks consider this Web site biased, so our words were not taken seriously by a few developers. Maybe it’s the right time to point out what Pamela Jones wrote some hours ago about this new article: “I told you. I told you. I told you. If you look at the go-oo.org site, you’ll see Mono and “OpenXML” being pushed. Please watch out, KDE. He says they want to share code between Gnome and KDE. Patents are still an issue, in my view. There is no new Microsoft. And I believe Microsoft plans to use their patents at some point, upon which Novell will suggest safety in their arms.”

We wrote about this article here. Novell, being a “Microsoft partner”, just wants more customers, so Freedom becomes secondary. It chose not to play friendly with other GNU/Linux distributions. This observation is the raison d’etre of this Web site.

Mono

It is important to remain cautious. In the latest KDE Commit Digest, which was posted yesterday, you’ll find this:

Development Tools

Richard Dale committed changes in /trunk/KDE/kdebindings/csharp/plasma/examples:

* Added a tiger example C# applet.
It wasn’t possible to build an executable called ‘main’ as mono gave an error about it not having an extension.

Maybe some sort of special cmake macro is needed for building C# plasmoids.

Richard Dale might not understand the consequences. Is the 2004 April Fools’ Day story about Richard coming to fruition? Regardless, don’t allow Novell et al to contaminate KDE with software patents for which only they are ‘covered’ by Microsoft. Mono is only for Novell. Microsoft says so and Miguel de Icaza wants this to happen. He would want Mono widgets/Plasmoids to materialise. Remember that it’s all about the holder of the patents and they need a ’smoking gun’ to make less deniable claims (threats). They wants to extract money and they needn’t sue because the secret extortions have already begun.

Personally, I sometimes wonder if the Vista-esque KDE menu from Novell (yes, it’s Novell’s work) is some grounds for a submarine patent from Microsoft. Many people resist that new menu. In fact, Mandriva has just decided to use the classical menu by default.

OOXML

OOXML is still not safe.

The impossibility of implementing the darn thing and the fact that Microsoft will ignore ECMA OOXML only to deviate into its proprietary trajectory aside, there are legal issues.

Will Microsoft support ODF? Of course not. It will do minimal work to just put an “ODF complaint” label on its boxes (the oldest and out-of-date version of the standard), but will then steer all users towards OOXML using intimidating dialogues that shout out “data loss”. Here is how SJVN puts it in this new article from Fox News:

The headline reads, “Microsoft Bows to Pressure to Interoperate with ODF.”

Oh no, Microsoft isn’t. The Redmond crew has an entirely different agenda for “supporting” the OpenDocument Format with its own Open XML Translator.

It’s not even news, actually, according to Andrew Updegrove, a partner with Boston law firm Gesmer Updegrove, and the editor of ConsortiumInfo.org.

[…]

Why, oh why, do I think that Translator’s technical-support line will often be telling users that the fault for a botched document transfer lies at ODF’s door? And somehow I think Microsoft’s technical support’s usual suggested “fix” will be to just use Microsoft’s own Open XML instead. “It’s so much better,” they’ll say to annoyed users.

In conclusion, don’t play with the monopolist by embracing OOXML. Resist it instead. Study from history. There is no “new Microsoft” and the scorpion will always pinch the frog. A couple of days ago, Andy Updegrove brought back this oldie:

So, what I have gleaned from my researches (though that is probably too strong a word) so far is that while there are some valid discussions to be had, the majority of participants are either staunchly pro-ODF, or they are working for Microsoft. I do know that, were I an end-user, I would remain ignorant - but given the mud flying around, perhaps ignorance is bliss.

It rings a bell.

“If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).“

A Memo to Patrick Durusau

Miscellaneous ODF News

A tool that was mentioned here before, ODF@WWW, got some coverage in Linux.com. There is also this free Java library for manipulation of ODF files.

We are pleased to announce the last beta version of the next version of our open document library.

Remember ThinkFree, which may have been pressured by Microsoft not to support ODF? Well, the good news is that it has already come to GNU/Linux.

I tried out Thinkfree about a year ago and just recently check back and it was a pleasant surprise. The website looks much more professional and the user interface for the online version is total awesome. Best off all, Thinkfree offers an offline version that sync seemlessly with the online storage. I love it. This post will not be some kind of tutorial but only my opinion about the suit. Visit my tutorial on how to install ThinkFree office suit for instruction.

Here is an older story about it. As ECT reported a couple of days ago, there are more signs of ODF coming to Apple Macs, too.

“But the Mac presence grants CIOs and others tasked with choosing the right software for their organizations the assurance and confidence that they can adopt the OpenDocument Format (our native format and the only published ISO standard file format for office documents) and have an office array that includes Macs, Linux, Solaris, Windows and so on.

“In short: OpenOffice.org and the Mac version in particular, suture the wounds inflicted by 20 years of divergence. The connecting thread is the file format and the understanding that what counts is creating, communicating, preserving files in a format that resists the fragility of monopoly and the reliance on any one company. In fact, there is a plugin that gives users the ability to read/write ODF, and with Open Office 3.0 and StarOffice 9.0, we’ll have native support of OOXML, which MS Office 2007 uses.”

Here is a new academic study on document formats inter-operability. It uses ODF and OOXML as examples.

Open standards are widely considered to have significant economic and technological benefits. This has led many governments to consider mandating open standards for document formats. Document formats are how a computer stores memos or spreadsheets. Governments are moving away from Microsoft’s proprietary DOC format to open standard document formats, such as the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML). The belief is that by shifting to open standards, governments will benefit from choice, competition, and the ability to seamlessly substitute different vendor implementations.

Last but not least, success stories from the FSF:

I’ve just made a couple of updates to the OpenDocument Campaign — adding some perspective on OOXML in India and an announcement from the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) about their switch to OpenOffice.org.

Microsoft already knows about Malaysia and it appears to be responding to this ‘threat’ in the only way it truly understands: localised dumping. █

From the Campaign for Document Freedom

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08.09.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part IV: Minor OpenSUSE News

Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, KDE at 1:52 pm by Roy Schestowitz

More tutorials such as this one came from susegeek, AKA suseuser. They increase the presence of SUSE in some GNU/Linux sites, giving it more visibility. To many people, the “big match” is one that involves #1 and #2 ibased on Distrowatch. That would be Ubuntu and OpenSUSE.

OpenSUSE is a Novell based, Linux distrobution that focuses on user-interface, package-management, and user-friendliness. It gives you a decision between Gnome and KDE or you can download the dvd containing both.

Ubuntu is a linux distrobution based on Debian. It uses Gnome as its primary desktop enviroment and it has over 25,000 packages in its apt-get repository.

Another story about the muchly-hyped Ubuntu ends up with a victorious OpenSUSE.

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08.04.08

Novuel’s de Icaza: The Man Who Gives GNU/Linux to Microsoft

Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Mono, GNOME, KDE, Patents, FOSS, Interview at 8:41 am by Roy Schestowitz

“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.”

–Miguel de Icaza

If plans and predictions are any indication, Novell is getting out of hand. It virtually takes instructions from Microsoft and obeys Microsoft’s need to have its technologies penetrate the Web, the desktop, people’s files (formats), etc.

Fedora wants nothing to do with Moonlight, which is a patent trap from the company that rattles a saber.

In the previous post we showed how Novell uses Microsoft technologies to ‘punish’ other GNU/Linux distributions. Watch what it intends to do with Moonlight. [thanks to reader “bendie” for the pointer]

Miguel de Icaza: “We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight”

[…]

de Icaza: This is a new group inside of Novell. Basically my team grew from about 30 to 40 people over the last year and a half. Most of the hires went to Moonlight, so now with 15 people working on Moonlight, the biggest part are new hires.

[…]

derStandard.at: You talked about re-using Silverlight / Moonlight for the desktop, is there already some concrete work happening, or are those still just ideas for the future?

de Icaza: We are actually doing that right now, we have a couple of projects. Lunar Eclipse is our Silverlight designer for Linux and that is actually built entirely as a desktop Silverlight application. The idea is to have both a desktop and a web version. We also built Moonlight desklets, which is like Apples Dashboard.

I am also trying to convince people that we need to redo certain desktop components using Moonlight because we could get a flashier, nicer user interface with the designers actually prototyping this interface in Inkscape or blender.

No Mono infection, eh? What might Jeff Waugh and other Novell apologists have to say? Novell is, without a doubt, letting Microsoft control programmers, helping its attempts to dominate the Web [1, 2, 3], and putting Microsoft-patented junk everywhere it desires. With Plasma, KDE developers have shown that none of this is necessary. With KOffice, they showed that OOXML can (and should) be ignored.

While Novell is axing engineers, its number of .NET developers keeps increasing, as Novell insinuated in an interview over a year ago. It won’t be long before Novell is all about Microsoft, due to personnel. Just watch what happened to Corel.

Another trouble is that Novell tries to exploit ’special’ privileges on the desktop and it can then brag about (as it already does in virtualisation) about “peace of mind” in its products. As the interview above shows, and by the way it’s a very interesting read, Novell is also a bridge for Microsoft to befriend and influence FOSS projects to grab them away. █

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