03.20.10
Posted in Java, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OIN, Oracle, Patents, Windows at 4:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“In the last several days Microsoft has shown that despite claims of acquiring a newly found respect for open principles and technology, developers should be cautious in believing promises made by this “new” Microsoft. [...] There is one other fact clear from this case. Microsoft does not appear to be a leopard capable of changing its spots. Maybe it’s time developers go on a diet from Microsoft and get the FAT out of their products.”
–Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation Executive Director
Summary: Despite awakening and realisation of the obvious, Novell carries on promoting and spreading .NET, knowing damn well the consequences for others
Microsoft’s MVP Miguel de Icaza occasionally throws a fit at the company’s hardball patent policy, even when it comes to Mono or Moonlight. He is not giving up on Mono, but it failed to gain a foothold and David Worthington, who is close to Microsoft and Novell [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], writes the following article:
Among the critics is Novell vice president Miguel de Icaza, who said .NET’s focus on Windows has come at the expense of opportunities for Microsoft, and its desire to guard its intellectual property is an impediment on the platform.
“Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem,” he said. “Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java Virtual Machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by [Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] that they would come after people that do not license patents from them.”
Java — unlike .NET — is actually Free software. Java patents are owned by Oracle, which is in OIN. What justification can Novell give for its support of .NET? The fact that Microsoft is paying Novell? Selling one’s soul is not an action worth commending.
Novell is still creating even more Mono applications and Pinta is one of the latest examples (previously covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). There are already quite a few image editors for GNU/Linux, so aren’t the priorities set improperly here? From The H:
Novell open source programmer Jonathan Pobst has announced the release of version 0.2 of his simple Pinta painting application for Gtk modelled after Paint.NET. The first Pinta update includes a number of updates and new features over the initial 0.2 release from last month.
Going back to Worthington, some days ago he seemingly broke the news about another .NET-boosting project from Novell (one that’s still being covered [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). In a newer article about .NET, here is how he describes Novell’s role:
Novell, a Microsoft partner, is creating a Visual Studio add-on to target Android, along with another tool for translating .NET applications to native code to execute on the iPhone.
Novell is creating plug-ins for Visual Studio. Who is Novell kidding? In this case, it’s helping Windows and not any other desktop platform/IDE (there are other examples where Novell elevates Windows and Visual Studio [1, 2, 3]). It helps promote proprietary software, yet one of our readers from India says that “FSMK & CPIM didn’t study anything from the FOSS community Response against Novell in Kochi Conference. Novell is in the sponsors list of National Free Software Conference.”
Will they promote .NET/Mono this time around? Either way, having what Worthington called “a Microsoft partner” at the Free Software Conference (not “Open Source”) is not a healthy recipe. █
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03.05.10
Posted in FOSS, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, SUN, VMware, Virtualisation, Xen at 9:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft has issues evolving, its brand is falling down the ranks, its attempts to mimic open source mostly fail (despite media blitz), and Red Hat copes with Microsoft’s attempt to swallow virtualisation
MICROSOFT’S exacerbating financial performance (see analysis of the latest results in [1, 2, 3, 4]) may explain its increased racketeering (last example from yesterday). With ever-decreasing margins, Microsoft must find an alternative business model. So far, Microsoft has failed to mimic Google’s model (Microsoft loses over $2,000,000,000 per year in this area), so it decided to use regulators and lawsuits by proxy to hurt Google. Microsoft did the same thing to GNU/Linux by funding SCO, for example.
Microsoft’s control of the mainstream media usually prevents access to simple facts that are not hard to show and to defend. When some single firm from the UK hailed the Microsoft brand last month, nobody dares to question the data, the methods, and the population questioned. In fact, that single source was quoted extensively outside the UK in order to sell the impression that the Microsoft brand has power.
“When some single firm from the UK hailed the Microsoft brand last month, nobody dares to question the data, the methods, and the population questioned.”CNN/Fortune has just released a list of “The Most Admired Companies in the World”. Apple and Google top the list and Microsoft is not even in it (it is not among the worst brands, either). In any case, it is clear that Microsoft dropped sharply and this agrees with 3-4 similar surveys from 2008. They have all shown that Microsoft’s reputation was declining rapidly.
“Windows breeds fear and ignorance,” said this one blogger a couple of days ago. “And I put the blame squarely on Windows,” he added after explaining an experience with an indoctrinated individual. A few days ago we also cited a post from Jeremy Allison — one where he speaks about his days in Sun Microsystems. Here is an example of a company that was once so gigantic and formidable. Where is it today? It is in Oracle, which some notable people whom we cannot name just yet are about to leave (we received private communication about it).
“Sun Fell Prey to Open-Washing,” says BNET in the headline that continues: “Who’s Next? Microsoft?”
Here is a key part of the argument:
Openwashing is similar to greenwashing, in which a company markets itself as environmentally friendly but is actually faking it. A high tech firm openwashes itself when it makes noises about open software but is really interested in preserving its proprietary offerings and hampering free open systems practices.
So basically, BNET explains that excessive desire for control over developers cost Sun its existence. This agrees with what Jeremy Allison wrote and Bradley Kuhn wrote about that too.
Meanwhile, I’m less optimistic than Jeremy on the future of Oracle. I have paid attention to Oracle’s contributions to btrfs in light of recent events. Amusingly, btfs exists in no small part because ZFS was never licensed correctly and never turned into a truly community-oriented project. While the two projects don’t have identical goals, they are similar enough that it seems unlikely btrfs would exist if Sun had endeavored to become a real FLOSS contributor and shepherd ZFS into Linux upstream using normal Linux community processes. It’s thus strange to think that Oracle controls ZFS, even while it continues to contribute to btrfs, in a normal, upstream way (i.e., collaborating under the terms of GPLv2 with community developers and employees of other companies such as Red Hat, HP, Intel, Novell, and Fujitsu).
The moral of this story is that control over what developers could and could not do is what drove many people away and made Sun history. Microsoft is facing similar problems right now and it tries to ‘embrace’ (in “EEE” sense) the Free/open source arena in order to recapture developers. It’s not quite working.
A reader sent us this pointer to a Microsoft project yesterday. “Pay Microsoft more money to secure insecure Microsoft software” is how our reader described it. He said that “it’s released under an ‘open-source license’, except it only runs on Windows, the monoculture.” To quote from the project’s page: “U-Prove is an innovative cryptographic technology that enables the issuance and presentation of cryptographically protected claims in a manner that provides multi-party security: issuing organizations, users, and relying parties can protect themselves not just against outsider attacks but also against attacks originating from each other…”
If this is an example of “open source” at Microsoft, then it’s more or less a farce. Microsoft’s own ‘news’ site, MSN, has just published some promotion of the “Microsoft-seeded foundation”.
A Microsoft-seeded, open-source organizer picked a Headspring Systems project for its first non-Microsoft sponsored effort.
Yes, Microsoft is organising a bit of a press tour [1, 2] to promote the CodePlex Foundation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], where Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is on the board. Here is the ‘Microsoft press’ promoting a .NET obfuscator. That’s the type of stuff Microsoft calls “open source”. It’s all about Windows, .NET, Silver Lie, etc. And how typical it is for CIOL to be pimping (with links) Microsoft’s smears of Free software, under the confusing headline “Open source slowly gaining momentum in India”. Are they trying to pretend that Silver Lie is “open source” or just lump Microsoft in? Here is part of it:
Developers in India are not much aware about open source technologies and there aren’t much good development tools and support for them, says Joydip Kanjilal, ASP.NET professional at Microsoft, in conversation with CIOL.
In another new article, CIOL promotes a form of EDGI that goes under the *Spark banner [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. CIOL is rewriting many press releases, as we pointed out before, but its shallow promotion of Microsoft requires some criticism too.
Another branch of the ‘Microsoft press’, namely the Microsoft Subnet at IDG, is doing some PR for Microsoft by saying that there is “much fanfare” over Red Hat support in Hyper-V (whose fanfare? Microsoft’s?).
With much fanfare, Microsoft first submitted said drivers to the Linux kernel way back in July (its first, and so far only, contribution to Linux, for obvious reason). Those drivers were already tested to work with Red Hat and, of course, SUSE. And in October, Red Hat and Microsoft announced that they were joining each other’s virtualization partnership programs, and validated that their products worked on each other’s virtual machines. So what took Microsoft so long to release these Red Hat drivers to the public?
People have other virtualisation options, they don’t need Microsoft’s proprietary one. Let’s not forget the GPL violation that’s associated with Microsoft’s offering [1, 2, 3].
Regarding the virtualisation arrangement Microsoft has with Red Hat, it is a subject that we summarised a year ago. Red Hat is now backing virtualisation research (yes, Free software conducts research too, contrary to myths).
Red Hat is funding a new research centre at Newcastle University that is looking into areas such as grid and cloud computing, virtualisation and middleware.
Among Red Hat’s competitors in this area there’s Microsoft, its ally Novell, and VMware, which is run by former Microsoft executives [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is a new article on the subject:
Red Hat sees the virtualisation market developing into a three-way fight between itself, Microsoft and VMWare as the technology is increasingly taken up in the business space, Red Hat’s senior director of virtualisation, Navin Thadani, said today.
However, he said, the advantage would lie with the two operating system companies, adding that although Novell and Citrix had teamed up to contest the same space, they stood more of a chance in the desktop virtualisation arena.
A year ago we explained how Microsoft distorted the Linux and virtualisation markets. With former Microsoft employees running VMware, a Microsoft ally running Xen (Citrix), and another Microsoft ally seemingly trying to conquer KVM (that would be Novell), the pressure is on Red Hat, which arguably bought KVM’s parent company because of Microsoft’s disruptive moves. █
“Microsoft is unique among proprietary software companies: they are the only ones who have actively tried to kill Open Source and Free Software. It’s not often someone wants to be your friend after trying to kill you for ten years, but such change is cause for suspicion.”
–Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC)
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03.03.10
Posted in Bill Gates, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Google, Oracle, Patents, SUN at 7:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: This post presents a roundup of patent news (mostly software); it is intended to show the lesser-known truths about patents — the ones which lawyers do not want people to know
Ghabuntu has just done some exploration around Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America.
It turns out that, just like Thomas Jefferson, Franklin would have rejected patents and advocated Free software. It is often being argued that software patents are unconstitutional, but that’s another matter that won’t be discussed today.
Here is what Ghabuntu found:
This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
An ironmonger in London however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, and making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it.
Here is an older link on the subject (from one year ago). It’s titled “Ben Franklin, the first Open Source advocate” and it says:
Benjamin Franklin is known in American history as a founding father and a inventor. One interesting fact is that he did not approve of patents. Martin Streicher of IBM points out in his article of 10 tips for sensible systems administration that Benjamin Franklin would more than likely approve of Open Source software.
One of our favourite entrepreneurs is Tim Bray, who had the guts to complain about Microsoft’s corruption [1, 2, 3]. After his recent rants about patents, Bray decides to leave Sun/Oracle.
“Just resigned from Sun/Oracle,” he wrote a few days ago. “Not currently looking for another job.”
Patents are not only harming software by the way. Glyn Moody, who wrote a book about the dangers of genome patents, shows this new report about removal of generics using patent provisions.
Aside from pharmaceutical patents, the other key IP provision in the free trade agreement relates to geographical indications (GIs). These allow certain regions to claim an effective monopoly right on delicacies such as Champagne or Parma ham that are synonymous with them. According to Brussels sources, over 200 GIs will be covered by the agreement with Peru and Colombia.
In previous posts we explained why this is the death knell to a lot of people [1, 2]. This is genocide by patents. Speaking of which, the effect of the Gates-funded Monsanto is similar. It causes deaths rather than save lives and we wrote about the subject in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Monsanto is a company whose business model depends on patents relating to life (biology as a private property of a person). GM Watch asks, “Have we seen Peak Monsanto?”
Is it possible that we’ve reached Peak Monsanto?:
Low commodity soybean prices, attractive premiums, and rising prices for genetically modified soybean seed are leading American farmers to plant more acres of non-GMO soybeans this year.
Representatives with soybean associations, universities, and grain buyers all say that demand for non-GMO soybeans is growing, leading to more non-GMO acres.
Genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans have taken an increasingly larger percentage of U.S. soybean acreage each year since their introduction in 1996, reaching 92 percent in 2008.
Bill Gates supports this colonisation of land and food. It’s about creating a crops monopoly, using intellectual monopolies (patents).
TechDirt has this new item which says that “It’s The Execution That Matters, Not The Idea” and the item happens to cite a former (but famous) Microsoft employee who seemingly argues against patents.
There have been lots of players who have come and gone, and there are at least a dozen players in the space today. And it’s not because they all “took” the idea from this guy, but because lots of people recognized that it’s an idea that makes sense. Kickstarter is certainly getting a ton of press these days, but that’s mostly because of some top notch execution on its part.
This leads us to the next area, which is software patents. No less than twice in recent days we wrote about Facebook’s controversial software patent [1, 2], as well as the company’s relationship with Microsoft and apparently the company’s patent troll too (Nathan Myhrvold). Here is another good analysis of why Facebook’s behaviour should be seen as hostile.
I wonder what is Facebook’s strategy here. They could simply be looking to stifle competitors. The obvious result of this is that they will probably attempt to get licences from some prominent social networks and the aforementioned open source projects. In the longer run, this could be used to become the only name in social networking. Not good news at all.
Google is also a foe when it comes to software patents. Mashable covers Google’s new software patent on location-based advertising. This is ridiculous, but it is not truly a farce like today’s USPTO.
That patent itself focuses on making sure businesses can better target their ads based on location information so that they can do things such as price arbitration (e.g. figuring out prices for items near you and getting the best deal). It also deals with the user interface and defining geographic areas.
Will Google obey or least consider the suggestions from many people who want Google to set its new codec free? Or use Ogg Theora in YouTube? As this new post emphasises, this is a top issue when it comes to Free software and patents. GNU/Linux depends on it.
Patented multimedia codecs, however, are a little different from proprietary drivers and firmware, for reasons discussed in my first post on the topic. There are people–for example, a commenter on a previous post named markit–who remain passionately opposed to the use of restrictively licensed codecs and can make well reasoned arguments to support their stance, particularly since fully functional GPL-friendly equivalents are available for multimedia codecs.
The arguments against the use of patented codecs are not without merit. By using formats like MP3 and MPEG-2 rather than GPL’d alternatives, users perpetuate dependence on proprietary software, which is antithetical to the Ubuntu philosophy.
The obvious response to such arguments, of course, is that while it would be nice to use only patent-free codecs, that’s not a realistic goal for most people. You can’t send .ogg files to Windows users and expect them to know how to open them, and you won’t have many friends if you refuse to accept data in non-free formats.
Google’s harmful policy on patents withstanding, can the company prove to be helpful to Free software by weakening or gradually eliminating H.264? Let’s hope so. █
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03.02.10
Posted in FOSS, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenOffice, Oracle, Servers, Windows at 8:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Microsoft allowed us to [remove Internet Explorer from Windows] but we don’t think we should have to ask permission every time we want to make some minor software modification. Windows is an operating system, not a religion.”
–Gateway Computer Chairman Ted Waitt
Summary: Tough words about Microsoft’s fight against anything other than its own software that it controls entirely
THE previous post was evidence of the fact that Microsoft not only sues rivals for competing; it also uses extortion to prevent Amazon.com from offering GNU/Linux servers at a reasonable price. In a meeting that took place last week, the CEO of Salesforce.com called Microsoft names for its removal of all platforms other than Windows.
Marc Benioff, chief executive of cloud-computing company Salesforce.com, called Microsoft “somewhat disgusting” for its fixation with the Windows operating system, and went on to spread around disdain for SAP and IBM.
A hopeful pacifist might suggest that Microsoft is fine with Free software — or any software for that matter — as long as it runs on Windows, but that’s not true (ask Netscape or Mozilla, for example). Jason from The Source has just done an excellent job finding and dissecting Microsoft’s OpenOffice.org FUD material that everyone can view:
Back in the dark ages of the early 2000s, Microsoft ran a misleading FUD campaign against Linux under the “Get the Facts” banner.
It looks like “Why Microsoft” is the not-much-anticipated sequel, where – in concert with a blog running cutting edge 3.5-year old software – Microsoft will again FUD, mislead and distort as it attacks alternatives to its proprietary lock-in-rich offerings – including some Open Source contenders like Open Office.org.
The Present
As the Gentle and Return Reader knows, one of my favorite past times is pointing out fallicies, distortions or downright lies. The entire “Why Microsoft” site is chock-full, but let’s just look at a few from the “So, You’re Considering OpenOffice.org” PDF Microsoft offers.
[...]
More of the same, of course. Present tactics are the same as the past tactics, save that Microsoft has gotten a little bit more clever in concealing its intentions.
This is just another example of Microsoft FUDing an Open Source competitor. I guess that’s alright if you are involved in a bit of FUD against OpenOffice.org yourself, but personally I don’t approve.
Microsoft has also been scheming to use software patents against OpenOffice.org. So for those who think that Microsoft is tolerant of competition, it’s time to wake up. █
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02.23.10
Posted in Bill Gates, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents, SUN at 2:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Criticism of the patent system is increasing and abolishment too is being considered for what became a hindrance — not a facilitator — to science
Filed under post slug “Patent Fail”, the following new post from Tim Bray is an expression of hatred of patents (Bray works for Oracle, but opinions in his blog are personal). He titled it “Giving Up On Patents”:
Not so many years ago, even as I was filled with fear and loathing of the hideous misconduct of the US Patent & Trademark Office, I retained some respect for the notion of patents. I even wrote what I think is an unusually easy-to-read introduction to Patent Theory. But no more. The whole thing is too broken to be fixed. Maybe it worked once, but it doesn’t any more. The patent system needs to be torn down and thrown out.
[...]
And here are a few words for the huge community of legal professionals who make their living pursuing patent law: You’re actively damaging society. Look in the mirror and find something better to do.
Maybe Bray can confront his employer over this*. Among those new articles that he cites is this excellent Mises analysis which uses the confusing term “IP”:
How should the IP system be reformed? For those with a principled, libertarian view of property rights, it is obvious that patent and copyright laws are unjust and should be completely abolished.[2] Total abolition is, however, exceedingly unlikely at present. Further, most people favor IP for less principled, utilitarian reasons. They take a wealth-maximization approach to policy making. They favor patent and copyright law because they believe that it generates net wealth — that the value of the innovation stimulated by IP law is significantly greater than the costs of these laws.[3]
What is striking is that this myth is widely believed even though the IP proponents can adduce no evidence in favor of this hypothesis. There are literally no studies clearly showing any net gains from IP.[4] If anything, it appears that the patent system, for example, imposes a gigantic net cost on the economy (approximately $31 billion a year, in my estimate).[5] In any case, even those who support IP on cost-benefit grounds have to acknowledge the costs of the system, and they should not oppose changes to IP law that significantly reduce these costs, so long as the change does not drastically reduce the innovation gains that IP purportedly stimulates. In other words, according to the reasoning of IP advocates, if weakening patent strength reduces costs more than it reduces gains, this results in a net gain.
Economists recognise the fact that patents are harmful and so do engineers. But as long as lawyers run our governments and collude with other lawyers [1, 2], rules will be established by the wrong people. It’s a battle between creators and leeches of these creators. A lot of people may not remember this, but Bill Gates was bound to be a lawyer, raised by a prominent (and apparently corrupt) lawyer, so he is not an engineer. Tim Berners-Lee, a true innovator, says that “software patents are a terrible thing”, but Microsoft still uses these for racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], even this week. █
_____
* I had arguments with Sun about the subject (but a lot of employees suppress their own opinion because of a paycheck).
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02.15.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, Kernel, Law, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents, SUN at 7:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A defender of (sometimes lobbyist for) software patents gets itself in trouble after Microsoft settles; company that sues Microsoft for software patent violations sidles with LiMo
GUESS WHICH company helps harm the software industry in India using software patents? It is the same company which is doing it in the United States and in Europe. “Indian Patent Office granted on “System for Creating an Application Program Package’” to IBM,” says the president of the FFII (in reference to patent number 176178). Here is the source of the claim, a post titled “Leveraging Through Software Patents” (an ignorant piece that wrongly attributes growth of patents to developments, without evidence).
India is emerging as a world leader in the field of software technology. The IT software and services industry in India grossed an annual revenue of Rs. 37,760 crore (US$ 8.26 billion) during 2000-01, according to the annual industry survey released by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the apex body of software, e-commerce and IT services industry in India.
[...]
Contrary to popularly held belief that software related patents are not permitted by Indian Patent Office; there are several instances where software related patents have been granted by the Indian Patent Office. One example is the Software related patent no 176178 granted to IBM, USA for “System for Creating an Application Program Package’” by the Indian Patent Office.
Well, thank you, IBM. Thanks for nothing. The system which IBM helped create and sustain is now accommodating patent trolls too. Their impact is definitely subversive:
“Patent trolling” has its rewards.
Tech-sector executives and lawyers say privately—and an informed review of court dockets confirms—that so-called trolls aren’t just surviving, they’re thriving. The essential NPE tactic—suing a broad swath of companies for patent infringement, then settling with each defendant for less than the cost of fighting such a suit—is now an established business model. It’s so solid, in fact, that patent-holders are starting to delve into previously untouched economic sectors, suing small retailers and even photographers.
Deservedly perhaps, IBM has just been hit by a lawsuit from the same company that Microsoft had paid to settle (shades of Eolas [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]). Oracle is sued too and it’s a software patent.
IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp. are among a slew of major technology companies that have been hit with a patent infringement suit by encryption technology company TecSec Inc.
In a suit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, TecSec claims that nearly a dozen companies have infringed 11 of its patents for technology used to encrypt commercial data, including credit card and health care information.
[...]
In April, TecSec filed suit against Microsoft Corp. in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging that components of Windows Vista and other Microsoft products infringed five of the same patents. The suit was dismissed in July after Microsoft agreed to an undisclosed settlement.
In other news, the company which sued Microsoft and Apple for software patent infringement last week has just joined the LiMo Foundation. It is a patent pool amongst other things. Talk about timing.
ELSE – a design house for state-of-the-art mobile technologies and a member of the Emblaze Group – has joined the LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile industry leaders.
Reuters has a series of articles about the mobile software market. One part speaks about LIMO:
LIMO
Linux consortium LiMo hopes to benefit from its focus on giving greater say over software development to telecoms operators.
LiMo Foundation was set up in 2007 by Samsung, NTT DoCoMo (9437.T), France Telecom’s Orange (FTE.PA), and NEC Corp (6701.T), Panasonic Corp (6752.T), Vodafone (VOD.L).
These are some large companies and it’s a shame that they associate themselves with morally corrupt individuals who work for ACCESS, including pornographers. LiMo would be better off without them. █
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02.14.10
Posted in GNOME, Java, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenOffice, OpenSUSE, Oracle, RHX, Red Hat, SUN at 5:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A bunch of bad news for Novell, brought together under one roof
Market Start Ending
Sean Michael Kerner seemingly declares death for Novell Market Start in this new article about a particular business model which failed not only in Red Hat’s case; Novell too never saw it taking off.
In 2007, Red Hat launched an effort called the Red Hat Exchange (RHX), a marketplace for selling open source solutions from Red Hat’s partners. RHX was in part Red Hat’s response to competitive pressure from the Novell Market Start program.
Now in 2010, neither of those sales programs is still operational.
This is okay. Free software is operational and obtainable even without centralisation under another umbrella which is a company. We wrote about Novell Market Start in [1, 2, 3].
Adding Insult to Injury
Novell has already injured Sun’s/Oracle’s OpenOffice.org and now there’s this in the news:
Michael Meeks, the Novell Inc. developer who launched the Go-OO branch of OpenOffice.org, is pessimistic about JavaFX, saying its semi-proprietary licensing is an obstacle for the open-source app, and it poses other technical problems.
That sounds like a better description for Mono and Moonlight.
Meeks puts the demands of his employer before personal responsibility as a GNOME hacker and he is responsible for forking OpenOffice.org, a move which was unhelpful [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. In the next post we will show that Novell aggressively promotes .NET, which competes against Java. We will also show that Novell is a big fan of Silverlight developers, to whom JavaFX is a direct threat.
Locked In
According to this report from Heise/The H, screen lock functionality in OpenSUSE/GNOME is inherently broken and the problem gets confirmed.
The screen lock of openSUSE 11.2 can be bypassed by the simplest of means. A reader’s report prompted The H’s associates at heise Security to investigate. Tests confirmed that a locked desktop session can be unlocked without password by holding down the return key. This causes the GNOME screen saver to crash and unlock the desktop after only a few seconds.
The problem may reside upstream, but this report names OpenSUSE as the problem. Maybe it’s because only tests on this one distribution could be established to confirm the troubling behaviour. █
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02.13.10
Posted in Europe, FOSS, IBM, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, Oracle at 5:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A potpourri of news from the past week or so, starting with success stories and proceeding to releases of new software that supports OpenDocument Format (ODF)
ODF is facing resistance from Microsoft and its extended family that includes Alex Brown and Miguel de Icaza, as we showed last night. Despite this opposition, ODF keeps winning in more nations and corporations that help dispell the myth of ODF as a “poor man’s standard”. Some of the world’s most civilised nations are embracing ODF. A few days ago we wrote about Norway and now is the time to add some more references, such as:
A week before that we wrote about Denmark, with additional coverage including:
This is a key milestone that can quickly spread to neighbouring countries. Here is the official word from The ODF Alliance, which is appended at the bottom in full.
The ODF Alliance today applauded the final decision of the Danish Parliament requiring the use of open standard document formats by all central government bodies.
There is even a page about it in Facebook and from Brazil come the cheers that accompany a formation of ODF Alliance América Latina. Rob Weir (IBM) wrote: “Time for ODF TC call. Members from US (east, west north and south), Brazil, China, Germany and Japan dialing in.”
Those who study ODF (e.g. most recently in Norway) reach the conclusion that ODF is simply the better option.
Moving on a little, Weir said he was “Discussing release plans for ODFDOM 0.8, our Java libary for ODF. Should be done next week.” This was done a little later and there is a new instructional page about it. Weir and Bob Sutor happen to announce the second beta of Lotus Symphony 3, which is based on OpenOffice.org. Here is an article about it:
IBM/Lotus took another stab at Microsoft Office, releasing a beta 2 version of Symphony 3.0, its free suite of productivity applications.
The much more important release was the release of OpenOffice.org 3.2. It’s an improvement in many ways.
The OpenOffice team have made version 3.2 of the open source office suite for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris available to download. It offers numerous enhancements over its predecessor which offer both stability and speed benefits. Writer and Calc, for example, should now start twice as fast as in version 3.1.1.
Improved Microsoft Office filters now make it possible to open protected Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (after entering the correct password). The project tem has also improved compatibility with the OpenDocument standard.
More at The Register:
Improvements in the latest release of the open source office suite include faster start-ups, improved compatibility with other office programs, and several new features (with special attention to the Calc spreadsheet program.)
Here is the press release from OpenOffice.org (not Oracle) and more coverage in many different languages [1, 2, 3, 4]. The Master Server is here.
According to this new survey, OpenOffice.org exceeds the market share of 20% in some countries.
Another noteworthy and active project that relates to ODF would be lpOD (previously mentioned in [1, 2, 3]). Git repository access to it is finally available:
Since its beginning the lpOD project has provided regular snapshots of important milestones. Today we are happy to open the access to our Git repository! It is now possible for anyone to check out our developments live.
According to this, Oracle is bringing ODF and databases closer together. These are signs of further commitment. Here is the page in question:
The Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) format defines an XML file format for office applications.
It is getting easier to open ODF files from more and more applications [1, 2], but Apple is lagging behind, as usual. Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat writes: “So I understand why apple doesn’t like flash on iPod, iPhone and iPay but why do they refuse open standards like ODF,ogg?”
Bart Hanssens says that “it’s raining #odf implementations: MS-Office 2010 RC, OOo 3.2 rc5, IBM Symphony 3 beta 2…”
Microsoft Office does not belong there until it implements ODF properly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
Denmark Opts for ODF
Washington, DC, January 29, 2010. The ODF Alliance today applauded the final decision of the Danish Parliament requiring the use of open standard document formats by all central government bodies.
“Today’s decision by Denmark reflects the growing specific demand and support for OpenDocument Format (ODF), especially among governments,” said ODF Alliance managing director Marino Marcich. “Open standards-based interoperability through ODF offers real value to governments in terms of choice of IT solutions, savings, and long-term access to data.”
“Eighteen national and eight provincial governments around the world have now officially endorsed ODF for document exchange.”According to the parliamentary decision, beginning 1 April 2011 governmental authorities in Denmark will be obligated to be able to send and receive documents in formats included in a reference list of open standard formats. ODF is unique as the only editable format listed that fully satisfies the five-part “openness” criteria for open standards for document formats whose use will be obligatory in the public sector. PDF/A-1 is listed for non-editable published documents. The action today was taken in accordance with Danish parliamentary decision B103 of 2006 requiring the government to ensure that the use of information technology by the public sector is based on open standards. The requirement applies to new IT and software purchases and major updates, which must be expense neutral.
“Today’s decision will serve as a model for the many governments planning to put their open standards policies into practice,” added Marcich. “The ability to implement support for the format fully on multiple platforms is an important criterion that the Danish Parliament has added. Vendors should take note of the open standards-based interoperability that their customers, particularly in the public sector, are demanding.”
Eighteen national and eight provincial governments around the world have now officially endorsed ODF for document exchange. For a comprehensive list and description of pro-ODF government policy initiatives, see: http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/Adoptions-ODF-2010-Feb.pdf.
About the ODF Alliance:
The OpenDocument Format Alliance is an organization of governments, academic institutions, non-government organizations and industry dedicated to informing policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF.
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