Showing headlines posted by schestowitz

Stallman was proven to be right on the issues of privacy and freedom as more information was being shown for everyone to see how surveillance is used to control users’ behaviour and distort/impede communications in some cases

Canonical’s founder is making controversial moves which are helping Microsoft’s PR. The Shuttleworth position can be summarised as follows: 2004: come join me, we’ll beat an illegal monopoly together. 2013: I’m friends with Microsoft now, never mind that monopoly.

Short synopsis of a long discussion with the UEFI Forum regarding ‘secure’ boot

That person, who came from Microsoft, became VP of Ubuntu some months ago.

About a year ago we wrote about lawyer who was spreading Android FUD after he had removed evidence (from his CV) of former Microsoft employment. He just sort of airbrushed it out of his career history, and just in time for an attack on Android. He then collaborated with a Microsoft lobbyist (who routinely pushes journalists to publish Android/Linux horror stories) in spreading his FUD. This is not a coincidence. It’s a pattern we learned to recognise.

I first [cref 4704 interviewed Richard Stallman about 5 years ago]. Yesterday I spoke to him about the subject of much debate in the Free software world right now. Here is a transcript of our conversation.

Sun explains the importance of quality assurance in OpenOffice.org

There are several Web sites which seek to bring out the truth other than ourselves. There are other domains like slated.org, edge-op.org and even this Russian site, gotthefacts.org, which all expose the same type of illegal Microsoft tactics. Most of them just provide Web hosting (mirrors) for the evidence stamped by a United States court.

This whole charade is geared towards one single goal: To sell more Microsoft Office based on some label that says “ODF” and helps the Microsoft lobbyists/boosters pressure governments against/away from Free software

Microsoft never utters the phrase “ Free Software”. Microsoft tries to obliterate the meaning of “ Free Software” as in fighting-for-freedom- and-against-monopolisation- of-knowledge-software (remember the distasteful comments of Bill Hilf, one of Microsoft executives, saying “ Free Software doesn’ t exist in 2007″ , there is no such thing as a free lunch, and etc ad nauseam) and instead substitute it by the much-easier-to-tame “ Open Source” phrase, which they promote for everyone to embrace, without any ethical implication whatsoever which must represent just a way of developing software and monetizing it.

To address the Big Issues, one needs to spend less time pushing papers and more effort fighting Microsoft’s (and others’) expansion of software patent laws — or alternatively back doors — into more countries. The suppressors want universal consent that Microsoft owns all sorts of algorithms and that Free software therefore becomes illegitimate or “not free”.

Could it be a coincidence that he has “strong ties to Democrats”? Until recently, Microsoft, Gates and even Ballmer (at a personal capacity) invested heavily in some Republicans.

Microsoft is paying companies — in the form of discounts — in order to give the illusion that everyone respects Microsoft’s argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft IPR and that software patents are universally scary. This payment is akin to those OOXML briberies where Microsoft offered money to partners in return for support. Novell was paid as well, for a variety of things, including IPR FUD and OOXML support.

Microsoft informs computer shops that if they put some Vista advertising in their newspaper advertisements (or other forms of ads), there will be money in the bank for them, paid in the form of marketing money from Microsoft.

Novell wants to eliminate Red Hat competition with full battle guns, again, helping to give a very significant strategic gain to Microsoft. They also want to weaken the strategic advantages Sun gains from Java and OO.org, thereby making Microsoft’s path to holding and growing the lock-in that much more secure.

If Microsoft would pursue one of their own MVPs so viciously and tenaciously, over nothing more than a damned plugin, what do you suppose they’ll start doing once their “IP” has well and truly infested Free Software?

Here is blow by blow account of trouble that brewed up on the second day of National Conference on Free Software 2008 in Cochin university. The activists put up posters against the Novell Corp (the main sponsor of this event) at the Free Software exhibition complex.

Aside from the fact that the FSF seems to have lost interest in .NET cloning, the key difference between dotgnu and Mono is that the former is intended to bring legacy applications over to GNU/Linux (much like Wine), whereas the latter — Mono — is somehow making its way into GNOME/GTK applications.

All of these developments are merely things to keep an eye on because Microsoft is gradually falling, and being the vicious company which it is,

Developers would have no access to source code that they depend upon. Not only would they be subjected to risk from unnamed software patents Microsoft holds and might actually use shall a particular project become a threat to its crown jewels; But moreover, all developers would have is some belated and incomplete documentation which is vital.