What was it, you ask, that finally drew me back to my blog (well, one of them, anyway)? Has my muse compelled me to write on matters of National importance? Have I been moved to the pen by some bowel-clenching happenstance?
No.
By smugness.
Tawdry my motives may be, but they are real, at least. And so, to the tale:
A smattering of interesting news for the IT bods out there (and for my reference too):
I recently had an unsurprizingly disappointing experience with the Government’s e-Petitions; specifically, the one concerning ID cards. The petition was summarily closed and a ‘personal’ reply from Tony was posted, and e-mailed to signatories. The reply makes it clear that ID cards will be going ahead, because they can catch some criminals and won’t cost much (honest). Nowhere does it address concerns that the police are to be given free reign to rummage through the biometrics to find criminals, that your details will forcibly be added to the National Register when you get a passport whether or not you object, that there are no provisions yet advanced to govern the future use or ‘sale’ of your data by other ‘approved’ groups (‘remember the selling of the Electoral Register data?) or worst of all, that no large-scale project has proven that it can keep detailed personal information secure for any sensible timescale. For all these reasons, and more, the PM’s reply was simply fobbing off the signatories with the same-old same-old.
Here are a couple of lists of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open-Source Software) that are decent (in most cases) replacements for other proprietary software that you may use. The review at Simple Dollar lists 30 essential applications that you really should be using; OS-Alt has a more extensive list that you can search for software that serves a precise need. Bear in mind that although it may not be as fully featured as something you pay for from a big corporation, you’re getting it for free, it’s likely to be less invasive and more secure than more heavily integrated software, and that if you want to contribute an improvement or a bug, the whole community of users will benefit.
There’s much discussion about whether the Novell-Microsoft deal is a good thing or a bad thing, and besides the obvious leverage it gives Monkeyboy Ballmer to spout FUD about patents in Linux, there are other aspects to the deal too. One of these is the interoperability agreement whereby Novell will help to put converters for Microsoft’s OpenXML format into the SUSe Linux versions of OpenOffice. On the face of it this is both fair and useful. After all, it’s desirable to be able to read Word2007 documents in OpenOffice. Isn’t it?
It turns out that as a die-hard Linux user, there’s little more irritating than having to buy a new PC and a pre-installed Windows operating system when all you want is the computer to install Linux on. Why should one pay for a Microsoft operating system when you’re not going to use it?
It turns out that there is a clause in the Windows license [sic] that allows you to claim a refund on a pre-install provided that you can prove that you have wiped it from your sustem and that you return the install disks unused. That was quite hard to do, but nevertheless, some enterprising folk set up Windows Refund Day to encourage this to be done.
In rather short shrift, we can now plainly see the trap laid for Novell to walk into. In response to Balmer’s statement that Linux is contaminated with M$ patents, Novell’s CEO has replied that that was not what the agreement was about. Oh yes it was, Mr. Hovsepian. Oh yes it was. And M$ have replied saying that they “respectfully take a different view” to Novell on the matter. No shit, Sherlock.
After all, what moron would agree to putting a patent agreement in place if it knew that there were no patents to sue over? Novell say that on top of the interoperability agreement, M$ specifically asked for a patent agreement. If Novell knew or believed that there was nothing that infringed, didn’t they even stop to wonder why M$ might want such an agreement? Why, to sully by implication, of course; and Novell took the bait. Assholes.
In a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s a transcript of an interview with Steve “Monkey Boy” Balmer (CEO of M$) where he makes an oblique reference thus: “that product [Linux] uses our patented intellectual property”. Really? It does? If M$ could sue any distributer of Linux for patent violations, don’t you think they would have by now? After all, Linux is a cancer according to him. No, there are three reasons why M$ keeps spouting this rubbish: firstly, merely implying it keeps people uncertain and nervous, and stops them examining the reality of the situation; secondly, it provides deniability, being so vague; and thirdly, even if there were violations, as soon as M$ declared them, the Linux community would remove them – that’s the beauty of Open Source s/w, you can get at the code. I can’t decide whether to feel sorry for M$ as their strategy is so unfair, or angry for their repeated attempts to discredit others.
For many of us wondering about the recent Microsoft-Novell ‘patent’ deal and why M$ is so keen to suddenly get in bed with Free (FLOSS) Software, the sowing of FUD about the number of patent violations in Linux would seem to be enough. There is also the discord that Novell has wrought by joining with M$; they couldn’t possibly have thought the Open Source community would be pleased. The newswire today has reminded me that there’s a third reason that Steve Balmer might want to look as though he’s cosying up and being interoperable: €777.5M of them.
A recent agreement between Linux proponent Novell and Microsoft covering interoperability and cross-patenting, has got some open-source folk worried. Any kind of deal with M$, given it’s history, is naturally cause for concern, but the bottom line is that M$ can’t close off any code without violating the General Public License.