HackFUD

I smiled when I read the title of this item in InterOp News, written by Jeff Gould.

There are a number of things I find wrong with this particular article, lets go through it, starting with the title:

Linux needs to try harder if it wants to catch Vista

Nice one! In one fell swoop the title alone makes some assertions:

1) That “Linux” is “behind” Vista.

The implication is that desktop use of Linux distros is behind Vista. How does he know this? Does he have concrete evidence to back this assertion up? Are there comparison figures which have definite Linux distro desktop use and the actual amount of desktops running Vista? I sure can’t find any definite numbers, therefore I am not prepared to make any assertions one way or the other. But I do suspect there is much greater use of Linux on desktop systems than is implied in that title.

2) The connotation in the title is that “Vista is superior to Linux”.

Perhaps I read too much into titles. Perhaps I’m paranoid. Perhaps I am merely suspicious when I see titles like that, but if you’re going to create a certain amount of doubt then your skill and use of language in your article title is important, and this one is very sly because of its wording. If the author meant to write it this way then that was quite clever. Perhaps I’m giving him more credit than he deserves.

Lastly, I was going to make this as point 3 - but it’s really just an amusing observation - well it amused me anyway. The title to me makes Vista look like some of disease to catch. I sure as heck don’t wish the Linux distro I use on my desktop to catch Vista! Sounds positively fatal!

Let’s get to the article itself; Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, lets get one thing straight…

Repeat after me :

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format” Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed a Technet Blog mentioning that OpenOffice is being made available free via the latest Sun Java update.

Reading further into the blog entry and the following fun and games begin:

Before you’re tempted to install this, maybe consider the following…

Read this for a business perspective which can help understand the “productivity software” claims, for sure a contradiction in terms!!!

Microsoft Office Word 2007 and OpenOffice.org 2.2.0 Mail Merge Comparison

“I was recently employed part time by a charity which uses OpenOffice. A longtime Microsoft Word, etc., user…Mailmerge!! It only took you fifty minutes! Congratulations. It’s taken me hours and hours of puzzling to the point of neurosis and I’m no nearer success.”

And thus begin the attempts at inserting Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Note that the Mail Merge Comparison was performed by the same blog author on Tuesday, May 08, 2007. Also note that the comparison was between OpenOffice 2.2.0 and Word 2007… Read the rest of this entry »

Heh, see what happens when I go away to visit my folks for a few days…

OK, so a company by the name of IP Innovation has basically sued Red Hat and Novell over a patent they own which they say something in those companies’ Linux distributions infringes.

The patent in question is : “User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects“, patent #5,072,412 .

PJ at Groklaw once again has written a great entry on her website about this.

She’s also since then written up a Call To Arms, for looking for Prior Art against the patent lawsuit, so anyone reading this and can help, please do so!

Yes. For this to occur almost right after Steve Ballmer’s FUD-ridden talk, of which I opined about earlier on this site, strikes me as an astounding coincidence. No doubt certain people and companies will make a meal of this situation in the coming weeks and months. I’m hoping the FOSS community will - once again - pool together and destroy these claims. And I’ll be keeping a look out for the ensuing FUD attacks that are surely to come.

Over the last few years, with the SCO lawsuits, and also with Microsoft’s spokespersons, there has been an attempt at inserting a catchphrase into business and internet nomenclature;

Intellectual Property

People like Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Darl McBride of SCO, for example, have been repeatedly pushing this catchphrase at the world for a long time now, usually within the context that there are patents, copyrights, ideas, and innovations which they own, and usually implying that Linux and Open Source programs in general infringe on their “Intellectual Property rights”.

The most recent of these attempts at creating FUD was perpetrated by Steve Ballmer at a company event in the UK last week, in which he states

“People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us”

Other choice quotes from Mr Ballmer;

“There are plenty of other people who may also have intellectual property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says, “Pay us,” I suspect they also would like to eventually go to the open source world. So getting what I’ll call an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds I think is important.”

Two mentions of “intellectual property” in that one quote!

So, what does this catchphrase actually mean, and why are these companies pushing it so strongly, with threats of lawsuits, enforcement of their “rights”, and the rest?

Read the rest of this entry »