PlexNex

Interpreting Microsoft's Apache POI Move

The following is Gary Edwards' response to the Microsoft Apache POI news. Verbose, but nonetheless interesting.

*************************************************************************** Rather than providing a generic application-neutral format for MSOffice documents and business process information workflows, Microsoft is providing a universal reader for their application specific format. 

They need to own the interoperability factor.  And if it means distributing the reader to other platforms and the web app services developers working those platforms, so be it.  They key is in owning the interop.

I continue to believe that the only way anyone can understand what Microsoft is doing is to imagine that the choice for Microsoft is that of provisioning MSOffice with W3C compliant XHTML-CSS  capabilities OR, following the ODF path and creating a standardized format out of an application specific XML encoding of MSOffice in-memory-binary-representation. 

Clearly they chose the later. 

At this point, the most important thing for Microsoft is to get ISO approval of OOXML without having to comply with ISO Interoperability Requirements.  For this, they need to keep ISO on the ODF path!  The beauty of a non compliant but approved format is that MS can exert tremendous application-marketshare-interop influence on a continuing basis by simply taking advantage of the fact that they can infinitely eXtend OOXML and not have to ever document these features.  The most that is required of them is to document the legacy XML encoded "extensions". And for that they pretty much got away with the minimal amount of semantic documentation. 

The key is that going forward, they won't have to document or define eXtensions that connect MSOffice information to MS Server Stack business processes.  With ISO approval, MSOffice becomes a standards compliant "editor" for the MS Cloud and ecosystem of web application - web services developers.  Expanding this ecosystem to capture the Apache developer community, so that they too are bound into the MSOffice editor - MS Server Stack, is probably the fruit of their surprising support for Apache POI.

Let's go back to 1998, when the order was given.  Play the tape. In fact, we have this statement from Chairman Bill himself in a December 1998 a memo to the Office product group, Bob Muglia, Jon DeVaan, Steven Sinofsky, cc Paul Maritz [Comes v Microsoft EXHIBIT 2991] ...

"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities."

Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.

I would be glad to explain at greater length.

Likewise, this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well."

 

Okay.  Let's build a list of achievement points needed to fulfill this directive:

• Do not support XHTML - CSS.   This includes MSOffice, IE, and the MS Server Stack.

• Replace XHTML with a MSOffice-IE-MS Stack web ready format.

• W3C XML allows for application specific XML languages.  XML encode the binaries, submit the syntax to a vendor friendly standards consortia, drag feet on semantic documentation, make certain there is no interop framework - especially one with a compliance clause insisting that all eXtensions be fully documented.

• Standardize an MSOffice specific format, but control the conversion points:
  • Conversion of legacy binary documents <> OOXML
  • Conversion of OOXML <> XAML (fixed/flow)

• Standardize the innovation layer (otherwise known as the vendor rights clause)
  
  • limit the interop layer and allow for unlimited vendor specific innovation
  • This is critical because Web business process management systems are based on portable documents that will often include data and media bindings. These accelerator channels must be kept proprietary, with access only through vendor controlled API's.

• Keep the Web ready versions of the billions of MSOffice business process bound documents proprietary.
  • ISO approval of OOXML protects the proprietary nature of XAML, Silverlight, Smart Tags and other WPF technologies.  (Winforms, XPS)
    
  • This replaces W3C XHTML-CSS, CDF, SVG, XForms and RDF!

• Find a useful cover strategy that will mask the illegal anti trust aspects of this great transition leveraging the desktop monopoly into the fifth wave. 
  • Thank you ODF!  Thank you IBM!
  • XML and the success of OpenOffice ODF will allow Microsoft to break the Web
  • IE-8 demonstrates support for limited "browser bound" documents based on HTML-5 bits, and CSS 2.1.  Notably missing is support for the W3C CDF family of XHTML-2, CSS-3, SVG, XForms and RDF; all of which are needed for web ready "complex" portable documents.  The kind produced by MSOffice businenss processes.  This will break the web between consumer services (Google), and, Web business processes (Microsoft)
    
  • The acquisition of Yahoo! provides Microsoft with a consumer layer that will buffer the business process management monopoly.  Think of it as creating a consumer-business cloud where every user is a aggregate of consumer and business oriented interests and information flows.
  • The acquisition of Yahoo! provides cover for the embarrassing situation that Windows can't do Cloud Computing!  It will take time to get Viridian hyper-V "high volume" applications running on a Solaris grid.

• The Fifth Wave:
  • In 1998 the Economist Magazine published a graphic chart called "The Fourth Wave".  It featured the four great waves of computing: Mainframe, PC, Network and Internet Consumer.  The waves were measured in volume of users and time.  The interesting part was where they intersected, with the decline of the previous wave as the rise of the next wave took precedence.
  • The Fifth Wave is that of Internet Business Process Management; The Business Wave.
    • Google owns the consumer wave, but it is noticeably a HTML 2.0  - HTTP dominant phenom.
    • The Business Wave will be owned by Microsoft if they can control the transition of existing client/server business processes to a new model; client/WEB-Stack/server.
    • Establishing MSOffice as the dominant "editor" on the client side of this equation is beyond important. Of course, this would be meaningless unless and until Microsoft had their Web-Stack ready. Now is the time! The pieces are in place to make a controlled transition, effectively leveraging an existing monopoly into an emerging new market.
      
    • MS needs to keep Google trapped inside the browser.  IE-8 demonstrates exactly how they intend on pulling this off.  ISO approval of OOXML enables MS to compete against the hapless browser bound - business process barred Google. A web ready MSOffice will crush Google Docs wherever the issue is that of business documents and the transition of business processes to client/WEB-Stack/server business process management systems.
    • Apache POI establishes a MSOffice OOXML<>XAML divide of the previously HTML-XHTML-CSS specific Apache Community. Nicely done if you ask me.
    • The fifth wave will be huge.  Establishing MSOffice as the "editor" of the MS Cloud is the key.  We'll know next week whether they pulled off the first challenge; ISO approval of MSOffice!

Hope this helps.

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Microsoft Concedes They've Been Cheeting All Along

Joe Wilcox hits it hard -- all good wood -- in his spot on assessment of the shadow interoperability measures just announced which were supposed to rock our world ...

Ozzie said that the information disclosure demonstrates "our commitment to an open and level playing field." I find the statement hugely perplexing. How is that commitment defined? Microsoft will disclose Office and Windows information that is available to the company's other product groups. So, interoperability—a "level playing field"—means that third-party developers will get the same information access that Microsoft developers already have.

What the hell? Ozzie's statement means one of two things, and neither reflects well on Microsoft's interoperability commitment. Either the information was already available or it wasn't. If it already was available, then there is nothing new here and Microsoft is blowing PR smoke. If the information wasn't already available, then Microsoft is conceding that US and European trustbusters were right all along—that the playing field wasn't level, that Microsoft developers had access to information not available to third parties.

Microsoft: still a bunch of gangsters.

Did somebody grant Microsoft immunity for releasing these APIs? Do I smell the Mother of all Class-Action suits?

Remedies for Microsoft's Non-Compliant Browser Habit

Microsoft are still trying to break the Web.

Håkon Wium Lie -- Opera's CTO and a co-creator of CSS -- speaks for me when he lists five clear remedies the EU competition authorities can use to force Microsoft to better respect Web & browser standards in its forthcoming version of its Web browser, Internet Explorer 8 (beta upcoming).

1. Support Acid2 and Acid3, by default;
2. Support the underlying Acid specifications;
3. Provide documentation;
4. Drop mode switching;
5. Commit to interoperability;

I would add that the EU should immediately force, once and for all, the unbundling of IE from Windows. Although a browser is the new programming platform; it is not a natural part of an operating system. Only sophistry can be used to pursue that point.

What also caught my attention in the article was howcome's subtle point that Microsoft's rigidity in not bowing to firestorms of customer & developer pressure to a) kill IE8's mode switching (a Microsoft excuse for non-compliance with Web programming standards); and b) continue selling Windows XP are prima facie evidence of monopoly.

In other words, if Microsoft had to compete, the company would have rapidly changed tack to eliminate mode switching and keep XP available on the market. They do what they want & don't have to compete, ergo they are a monopoly.

If it walks, talks, balks & stalks like a monopoly ...

In the US, having a monopoly is not the punishable offense but using it to accrue unjust profit is. Accordingly, website owners should be enabled to charge Microsoft for the extra Web programming time|expense it takes to make their sites work on IE as well as Firefox or Opera (for example).

Perhaps President, Barak Obama, with the help of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer and Congressman Larry Lessig, can help us up the pressure on the recalcitrant software abuser.

Is 2008 Already the "Year of MS Office | OOXML"?

It's official! Recovering from hangovers, people are yawning back to work or just returning from their two-week holiday breaks and before the year 2008 has begun we can safely put it to bed as "The Year of Microsoft Office & OOXML".

Not two days into the new year and Microsoft's indefatigable marketing machine has ticked over twice -- through the rote, pre-set drills of service pack and new product roll-outs from the Office department.

On January 2nd we were accosted by the news that ...

"Microsoft Office Drops Support for Older File Formats" | Scott Gilbertson | (Wired News, January 2nd, 2008)

And just this morning we find out that ...

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will be available to bricks-and-mortar on January 15th for just under $400!

... [the] service pack 3 release for Microsoft Office 2003 contains a hidden "feature" — it disables support for older Microsoft Office formats. If you've got any old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents hanging around your hard drive you'll need to delve into the Windows Registry to open them.

Even though the lingua franca, the fuel of Microsoft's whole new software stack -- that format called OOXML -- is struggling to gain approval at ISO, they are selling it through as a hidden component within that famous Trojan Horse called Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac. (Yes, I said hidden because despite the very public blogging about it and the efforts within the trade to counter the format phenomenon the general buying public are blissfully ignorant of the toxicity embedded within this software.)

What do these marketing events mean? Why are they doing this?

OOXML is being reviewed in an ISO process called the BRM (Ballot Resolution Meeting) that's scheduled for a week in February. The OOXML format specification is so bad that it failed an ISO voting round back in September 2007. And when the howling died down and the fruits & vegetables were cleared from the stage Microsoft immediately proceeded to set up a website and process to start dealing with feedback on comments so numerous (over 1,000 unique comments) and objections so material that they could not be dealt with in the few hours allotted to the BRM meeting in February. Consequently, ECMA (the OOXML format's responsible development body) is announcing the changes or feature deprecations planned for the OOXML specification.

Trouble is these changes to the format will never make it into the Office 2007 software products -- which are shipping as we speak. And Microsoft has never intended for the new XML formats (with file extensions .docx, .xlsx, .pptx) implemented in Office 2007|8 to fully reflect the OOXML specification.

Along with disabling the legacy document formats in Office 2003 through service pack 3, these measures together represent on their face Microsoft's "Customer Pull-Up" strategy designed to coerce customers to move into the company's next-generation lock-in tank. The Pull-Up is insidious because customers, under what appears to them to be their own free will, purchase new Microsoft software fearing that to be without access to Microsoft's newest document formats they will not be able to do work.

Apart from OpenOffice.org & ODF and a few almost-finished "Office 2.0" Web applications (Gdocs, Buzzword, Zoho, et al.), the only thing we have to stop this is the quixotic & flaccid "Just Say No" campaign.

Even if Microsoft's efforts to get OOXML passed at ISO fail this coming February, Microsoft will keep trying. This will add to indefinite uncertainty ahead for IT decision-makers. A better outcome might even be to have OOXML succeed in February! Such an outcome would probably create such a frenzy of standards reform that all existing ISO standards would be put under question.

Our only practical hope for finality is to put a bullet in the temple of OOXML.

The Imposition of .docx

Joe Wilcox made an aside in a recent post on Microsoft Watch ...

Today, an editor called to say that he couldn't open a story that I e-mailed to him. He asked if I had saved it in an Office 2007 format. I used Word 2007 to write and save the document, but distinctly recalled using the standard .doc format. Turns out, that Word's auto-recover feature led to a format change. While working on the document, Windows Vista mysteriously shut down. When Vista restarted, I opened Word, which provided a recovered version of the document. I worked in that version and saved it, without realizing that Word 2007 reverted to the default behavior of the new .docx format. Please insert your favorite curse word here: _______. Microsoft is way too heavy-handed about the new file formats. The default setting should be to the older formats, which everybody uses.

If you can't open a Word document, look for the filename.extension and ask the sender for an appropriate format -- .doc (or .pdf) -- if you get one of these unopenable .docx documents.

It's not your fault. You're not a bad person. Don't blame yourself. It's unfair, I know.

It's broken okay? The system. We're doing our best to make it right. A lot of people want it to stay broken. We're working on it as hard a person can.

Whatever you do, do not react by purchasing a new version of Microsoft Office (that's 2007) for $700 or $300 or whatever. That doesn't help the problem. Go and get OpenOffice.org for free (for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux).

Microsoft Modus Gets Smoked in Nigeria

Microsoft bribery gets reversed in Nigeria ...

ComputerWorldUK | "Linux wins Nigerian school desktops back from Microsoft" | Jeremy Kirk for the IDG News Service (9 Nov 2007)

Bunch o' criminals!

OPEN SOCIAL: In Your Facebook

Better than de-listing your Facebook account, squash Facebook like a bug...

Marc Andreesen | "Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web"

Dare Obasanjo | "Google proposes..."

"We Will Win the Web"...

...one acquisition at a time.

The Facebook investment is clever. Little bit of ad revenues to churn.

And then add OOXML as the lingua franca via which the social butterflies will pass documents to and fro and you have a terrific and cheap way to introduce all your alternative protocols to your half-billion-odd installed base.

This ... all while making HTML and XHTML redundant.

Flight to the GPL(v3)

It's an astute assessment by Pieter at FFII, in the aftermath of Neelie Kroes' capitulation to Microsoft ...

So, Microsoft has decided to bleed the GPL economy dry by:

1. Fragmenting the Linux economy by making patent deals with Linux vendors - TurboLinux, Xandros, and of course, Novell.
2. Starting a proxy-troll patent attack on Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor (it has also attacked Novell but that is probably so that it can ride to Novell's defense). Red Hat refused to make a deal, now it will pay the price.
3. Splitting the open source community away from the free software community, by re-branding itself as an "open source" firm.
4. Announcing that it wants to buy open source firms. Money is the greatest divider ever.
5. Bringing open source projects into its franchise, where they will get protection from Microsoft's patents, in return for using Microsoft's open source licenses.

It's a desperate scheme, because it's guaranteed to backfire in the worst possible way, and surely Microsoft cannot be naive enough to think it'll work.

Here is how Microsoft's plan to kill the GPLv3 is going to backfire.

1. It's going to bring large numbers of people into the "no software patents" camp. Up to now, it's not been clear to most people just how damaging the EPO's practice of allowing software patents has been. The FFII has been saying for a while, "software patents trump anti-trust" but few have understood, until now.
2. It's going to end the license wars. Microsoft have set the stage for a mass migration to, not away from, the GPLv3. Why? Because open source projects that get too close to the beast will shrivel and die like grapes on hot coals.
3. It's going to focus the wrath of an entire community against Microsoft. For the last decade or so, Redmond have not really messed with the FOSS world and the FOSS world has mostly ignored Redmond, apart from a lot of taunting and name-calling. Now, that has changed.

The future of open source and free software will look like this: first, Microsoft will pump money into its franchiseware economy and get very little back. Second, IBM will do the same with its own franchiseware economy (the Apache Foundation) and get a lot more back, because IBM actually understand how this works. Last, all remaining projects will move to the GPL, with a few exceptions. And it's that economy, the one based on formal copyleft licenses, and backed by increasing determination to litigate and defend against litigation, that will prevail.

It felt...

...rather futile this afternoon when I deactivated my Facebook account.

But I will enjoy reading next week about Facebook's lameness and about how many millions of my "friends" did the very same thing.

Nice platform though.

MS Accepts EU

AP gives the news.

MS says they will comply. I want to see the goods.

Dunk This!

Ballmer flatters himself that his company is in the same league as Google.

Embedded in the "dunk" bluster is the not so subtle message that Microsoft admits that Google is nine-odd years ahead of Microsoft in search and other things...

I would say 'Hey, you're just 3 years old and we've got you in there playing basketball with the 12-year-olds.'

Google's acquisition of Jaiku -- for one thing -- indicates how far ahead Google is...and pulling away.

Steve. How you gonna dunk when Google just moved the hoop, the boards & the paint into another county?

Microsoft's American Proxy Patent War Continues

A made-up thing, a company called "IP Innovation LLC", is suing Red Hat & Novell for something which sounds like the virtual desktop implementation in Linux (which I personally treasure as a productivity godsend -- and which is enabled by Linux's true multi-threading, multi-tasking might...Windows can't implement virtual desktop because, underneath, Windows code is a complex tangle of spaghetti lacking in Linux's Unix-provenance as a real OS).

PJ & Company astutely make the connection that behind "IP Innovation LLC" is a group called Acacia which is staffed by senior Microsoft agents, including Jonathan Taub, a Microsoft Hero & Key Achiever.

The Microsoft Cross-Marketing & Interoperability Pact with Novell says that Microsoft and Novell pledge not to sue each other or each other's customers for ostensible patent infringements. "IP Innovation LLC" is a shadow Microsoft hitsquad. Therefore, Novell is aware now that Microsoft is in breach of their deal.

The drama continues and Linux keeps getting more important and easier to implement -- outside the USA.

CIOs -- this has become too transparent. Aren't you fed up yet?

ceteris parabis, this patent trolling by Microsoft is immoral, unethical and hypocritical. It will surely cause Asians, Europeans, Oceanians, Antarcticans, Africans & S. Americans to laugh at the self-defeating innovation-constipation in North America.

Shuttleworth & Co. on OpenSeason

Ashlee Vance hosts a fun & informative chat with Mark Shuttleworth on OpenSeason. Also attending: Matt Asay & Dave Rosenberg.

Audio (MP3) over an hour. Run in the background while you waste time on Facebook.

THE ECONOMIST: "Stay Vigilant"

The Economist re-caps Microsoft's bad week with lucid insight...copping my entire shtick...

But does the Microsoft case really still matter?

Many of those who called for action a decade ago no longer seem to care. Competitors have cut their own deals with Microsoft, extracting nearly $5 billion from the firm, rather than wait for this week's ruling. Microsoft's evil empire has been overshadowed by a newer, and therefore more exciting, threat in the shape of Google. And, geeks point out, the computing world has now become so interconnected that it will be hard for a single company to control it.

There's much in this argument. When Microsoft emerged as the world's most powerful software company, most computers were still stand-alone devices. Now that almost everything is wired and all kinds of services are offered online, machines and software need to be able to interconnect. There is thus a natural tendency towards common technical standards that are not controlled by one company: the internet and its open protocols are the prime example.

It's a sign that it's time for PlexNex to move on from guerrilla Microsoft crit.

A Week in the Life...

...of a racketeering software corporation.

Plusses
********
None that I can think of.

Minuses
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- ISO rejects for now the OOXML standards bid (despite a widespread corruption of the voting process).

- EU Court of First Instance upholds its assertion of monopoly abuses in product tying and hiding of competitively sensitive programming information; fines payable to Europe of about $600 million affirmed; costs to Microsoft to feign interoperability across the industry and to persuade competitors to leave the case: about $3.6 Billion.

- IBM announces its pledge of 35 full-time software programmers to accelerate the modernisation of OpenOffice.org.

- IBM announces its new free office suite product, Lotus Symphony, based upon the OpenOffice.org code.

- The Netherlands announces ODF policy for the government.

- Russia announces ODF policy for the government.

SAMBA's value to Microsoft: $3.6 Billion...

So, here's to the Little Guy...

The look on Brad Smith's face said it all: Our legal strategies against Free Software need a fundamental re-think because a major battle front just caved in.

To understand the significance of the EU ruling this week is to know that the issue euphemistically called "server protocols" in the case refers to SAMBA -- the open source & Free Software code project that permits non-Microsoft machines to function in Microsoft Windows & Windows Server environments as if it is a Microsoft being. Microsoft is always changing its interfaces and the SAMBA project has been put in the perennial disadvantage of playing Wack-a-Mole to keep SAMBA working. SAMBA is not a "clone", as Microsoft wants you to believe; it is a distinct & lawful implementation of the Microsoft APIs.

So the Free Software Foundation Europe & the SAMBA Team founders should be permitted a moment of celebration. This was a momentous win for Free Software -- the first legal victory against Microsoft -- and there is all the more to relish given that Microsoft succeeded in buying out almost every competitor on the opposite side of the High Court...except SAMBA. 

Sean Daly caught them on the day with a microphone and Ciaran O'Riordan & Sean provided the transcript to PJ at Groklaw, from which long post we copy the below excerpts and gratefully acknowledge the kind effort...

dramatis personae

Jeremy Allison is a co-founder and dominant contributor (next to Australian Andrew Tridgell) to SAMBA. Having quit Novell in opposition to that company's ill-advised and damaging merger with Microsoft, he now works for Google.

Georg Greve is the President and Founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Volker Lendecke is a senior SAMBA developer and the author of the SMB file system for Linux; he is based in Germany.

Carlo Piana is a lawyer representing the Free Software Foundation in the case; he is based in Italy.

Sean Daly is a committed Free Software advocate and systems expert who contributes to Groklaw and other outlets; he is based in France.

This segment highlights that SAMBA is the only remaining competitor to Microsoft that requires equal programmatic access to the Microsoft hidden server protocols and, being Free Software, it is the code used by all vendors today to connect to Microsoft systems...

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Jeremy Allison: So the very interesting thing about the term "clone projects" is that if you look at the agreement that Microsoft had done with companies like Novell, and probably Xandros and Linspire -- I've only seen the Novell agreement, I haven't seen the Xandros or Linspire ones, the Novell ones are public by the way -- you will find that they specifically exclude what Microsoft call in their legal documents "clone products", which I think they include Samba among. So yeah, there's this whole theory that they're trying to set up that Samba is a clone of Windows and therefore is not available for protection. The interesting thing about the licensing is that I think what Microsoft will try and do... I believe this might have been what some of the discussions with the Commission have already been about is that they're trying to say "look, we have a licensing programme already that we implemented in the US for the Department of Justice case" and that's the MCPP, Microsoft Communications Protocol Program licensing program, and what they were trying to do is to say "Well, why don't we just extend that to cover the server-to-server stuff and then we'll adopt that in the EU and let's settle the case. The problem with the MCPP is that it's an abject failure in that if you look at the companies that are licensed under that program, and the license terms are explicitly designed to exclude free software, so they're designed so there's a per-royalty basis, there's a time limit on the implementation's validity - I think it's about five years - there's royalties, there's all sorts of....

Volker Lendecke: There's per-seat licenses.

Jeremy Allison: Yeah, there's per-seat licenses, thanks Volker. There's all sorts of methods to make this unusable in a free software implementation.

Georg Greve: Which is the same trick they're trying permanently. I mean, ultimately, the good part about... the reason why I think that is no longer a feasible option, even to suggest, is the fact that we have by now the conclusion that the remedies in the US were entirely ineffective. Just recently, someone investigated this and found out that the remedies had no effect whatsoever; therefore I think we can safely say that those licensing terms don't help at all. But they've tried it also, by modifying those kind of concepts in the same way, because when you think about it, they should have published those protocols long ago. After the interim measures case, ultimately, they were obliged to publish, but they didn't. They always tried to come up with new ways to delay, to obfuscate, and to make it legally impossible to implement. They realize that Samba is the only competitor left. So, in a way what they're now trying to do is to say "Oh no, we will give our permission to competitors, but only those who don't actually compete with us". (laughter)

Jeremy Allison: So the interesting thing... Brad Smith gave a statement just after the judgement was announced, where he talked about how the industry had changed and Microsoft was doing deals with Sun. Sun had now become a Windows OEM. They had the Novell deal, et cetera. What he didn't say was that both Sun and Novell, their workgroup server implementation is Samba (laughter) which is being explicitly excluded from the agreements that they've done with Novell. (laughter) And IBM's workgroup server implementation is Samba, and Apple's workgroup server implementation is Samba, and... y'know. You go into Fry's Electronics in the US and any sub-$5,000 NAS box you will find in the place is Samba. So essentially, anyone who actually really competes with them has been excluded from these agreements.

Sean Daly: So, if I can ask a silly question, Microsoft usually gets their way by showing up with their suitcase full of cash and making a deal. I mean, they offered how many millions of dollars to RealNetworks to leave the case.  Haven't they ever talked to you?

Jeremy Allison: They obviously didn't offer us enough. (laughter)
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Casual onlookers may be unaware that Microsoft paid all the corporations on the opposing side of this action to walk away. There is no way to do this with a Free Software project...

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Georg Greve: Plus, I mean, on an organizational level, yes, they did try to buy everyone out of the case that they could.  They spent...

Volker Lendecke: And they were pretty successful.

Georg Greve: They spent remarkable money on this, I mean more than...

Jeremy Allison: Billions.

Georg Greve: 3.6 billion, I think, is the final count at some point. For Sun, for Novell, for Real, for the CCIA. I mean, they were all bought out of the case.

Jeremy Allison: A billion here, a billion there, soon you're talking about real money.

Carlo Piana: And much of the evidence was taken out of the case because RealNetworks, which was one of the initial complainants, withdrew. So their submission, the submission we relied upon all along the case, was withdrawn just before the case came to an end. So, the case was lame at some point, just because one of the parties was bought out.

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The DoJ result was a "bought" and ineffectual decision and all other cases against Microsoft were always settled by Microsoft through payments to the complainants.

It is the nature of the Free Software to resist this kind of control. There is no organized entity to bribe; and if all the many distributed copyright holders were to together agree on a sum, there is no way to get the source code back or keep it from continuing to be re-distributed...

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Georg Greve: Yeah, I mean, it was -- you had this mental image of Brad Smith hitting this brick wall, you know? It was just -- this was the very first time that Microsoft has actually been stopped. The first time that the law has persevered over Microsoft.

Jeremy Allison: Yeah.

Georg Greve: This is the very first time that actually a competition authority has seen this through to the end and prevailed in court against Microsoft. This is unique. It's absolutely historic in that sense, so I think we do deserve a little bit of celebration.

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The Microsoft behavior which caused the fines in this case extends to many other areas of the software industry...

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Sean Daly: Well, you know, speaking about some of the new frontiers, we all saw what happened with the ISO process for MS-OOXML. Do you guys think there is any plan, or any interest in the European Commission in going after Microsoft on this? I know that they were waiting for the results of this decision before going further with some complaints.

Georg Greve: There is a complaint by the ECIS, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, of November, I believe, last year, about Office and also Internet issues. And the Commission, to my knowledge, has not yet made a decision whether or not it will investigate that case. We, as FSFE, Samba, and OpenOffice.org have already offered our technical expertise and input as we've done for the previous case, to support that case. And we do hope they will start that investigation. We definitely hope they will do it. And we will stand by them as we've stood by them on this case as well. We think that it's absolutely necessary to end this sort of behavior in all areas. It's very important to understand that, I mean, we've been talking here about interoperability, the workgroup server market, the bundling for the Real Player, but that wasn't really our main concern. These are just two areas of many areas in which Microsoft exhibits the exact same behavior. Now, you know, the court has today said, "This is unacceptable". But this is not only unacceptable in these two areas, it's unacceptable in all areas.

Jeremy Allison: Because what they do is very, very effective. I mean, the thing to remember is, yes, we won in court, but essentially we're losing in the marketplace. Between the beginning of the case and now, I think the desktop monopoly went down from, I think it was, 97% to 92% -- and these are figures from the seven states, the California Group who filed with the DOJ --

Sean Daly: Right, the "rogue states."

Jeremy Allison: Yeah, the "rogue states", as it were. But the workgroup server market has gone from, I think it was either 40% or 45% -- I'd have to look -- it's now 70% Microsoft. So if you look at things like Active Directory, Exchange servers, they are steamrolling in that market. It's at the tipping point, where if something isn't done, if this information isn't released and competitive products can be created, they will own that market with a monopoly the same as the desktops. Completely.

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Laissez-Faire Redux

Right in line with my assertion ("Once Upon a Time...)" that Americans will be all wet in criticizing the Microsoft ruling by the EU...

Thomas Barnett, the head of the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, said: “We are concerned that the standard applied to unilateral conduct by the CFI, rather than helping consumers, may have the unfortunate consequence of harming consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition.”

In light of the behavior by Microsoft that the ruling seeks to correct, the comment is a meaningless, rote, American laissez-faire assertion of non-sense. Worse, the US Justice Department seems to be reading cue-cards written by the Microsoft PR Department.

At this today, the EU competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, went ballistic (FT | Tobias Buck in Brussels)...

In an unusually harsh response, Ms Kroes said: “It is totally unacceptable that a representative of the US administration criticised an independent court of law outside its jurisdiction. The European Commission does not pass judgment on rulings by US courts and we expect the same degree of respect.”

My point: the ruling will be incorrectly perceived in the US as an assault on American culture.

I would merely add that it's about time our worst face is put back in alignment.

Once Upon a Time in America

Laissez-Faire versus Activist Government

It is a moment of singular hypocrisy for an American to say that he loves open competitive markets while criticizing the EU for this corrective & balancing measure against Microsoft, for this company has been a singular anti-competitive force in the history of American business.

The EU upholds its ruling (see the document dated 2007-09-17) against Microsoft: this reflects more than just a government's assertion of fairness upon technology markets; it manifests core differences of culture between the United States and the nations of the European Union and marks an eastward shift of power as the EU gathers into its early maturity.

Americans, take note. Mark the date.

Having lived during childhood in England, I am more aware than the proverbial Ugly American of the similarities and differences between ourselves and our European friends -- both English- and non English-speaking.

Let me say also as a once-Republican MBA investor who cherishes the pro-business atmosphere in the US, and also as a biased Microsoft-watcher, that the EU ruling makes common sense for Europe and shows an admirable willingness among EU government officials to cope with complexity and actively correct the markets when clear imbalances have been obtained. This is more important to try to do in the technology sphere than in most other markets, as I will touch upon below.

Microsoft is an organism which has grown out of, and so embodies, the American competitive spirit, the freedom companies enjoy here to function above governmental control, and the American meritocratic work ethic. And Microsoft is an organism which perfectly illustrates these qualities when they are taken too far. (A book on this subject would deserve its place, just for posterity.)

In rational and self-searching company, it goes without saying that the abuses of market influence on Microsoft's record are extensive & well understood, although denial runs thick during Capitalist Tool cocktail hour. I assert that the litany of Microsoft's abuses is so complete that it could expose that corporation to racketeering charges (RICO) in a willing domestic political environment. From notorious & continuing application programming interface (API) manipulation (creating a favorable playing-field for its own applications), to Netscape ("air supply"), to illegal contractual control of PC OEMs, to unethical public relations and lobbying methods and payola, Microsoft is a gemstone example of "the American way" -- that business is a war-game and that the ends justify the means, as long as you don't get caught. Being in software, it has been all the more expedient for a group so motivated to hide within the complexity of code the nefarious activities of a very well-organized gaggle of common purse-snatchers. This -- the paradoxical rise of a most-respected-corporation with criminal attributes -- could only come about in an environment where government is tasked to leave business alone, to habitually look the other way.

Knowing where we differ, it is no surprise to me that the EU has the will to end Microsoft's market abuses (to the extent possible) and to re-level the playing field. It is also no surprise to me that the EU has the intelligence, the patience and the long-term perspective in government to coordinate & impose acceptable behavior upon an American technology corporation where the American system itself has failed to do so.

It's different in America, where the personnel in government turn over frequently, where the high pay and the honorable career is in what we call -- with a meaningful fillip -- "the private sector". In America, government bureaucrats are not looked upon with the same respect as so-called "professionals" (doctors, lawyers, bankers); they are viewed in the American social sub-conscious as approximately one notch above "blue-collar" (laborers, factory-workers, waiters, garbage-collectors). (Notwithstanding this stereotype, I have worked with some American bureaucrats in some places where their backgrounds and attitudes are more complete, more professional than the "professionals".)

As the stereotype goes, EU bureaucrats tend to be among the highest academic achievers, competitive, cultured & diplomatic individuals who identify closely with their meaningful roles in the life of a government which has a higher purpose, greater social import and more influence on the lives of people. EU bureaucrats have higher status than their American counterparts. (And European government costs more, too.)

Along with the Microsoft-is-not-European factor, this explains the EU officials' willingness to understand in depth the Microsoft business practices, which requires a bit of patience for non-engineers to take on board the technical information necessary to distinguish, say, the role of a server in a system architecture, to understand what is a protocol, what is a standard; to understand by what process did Microsoft achieve its 95% market share of the desktop, what is a network-effect, how is that achieved, what's a document format versus an application? These are difficult questions -- unless you are motivated to deal with them.

American bureaucrats by and large have not shown the patience nor demonstrated any ability to cope with technological material or with market dynamics, or relevant matter on the history of computing. In fact, American legislators and bureaucrats believe it is not their job to understand these complex things and it is not their job to tell corporations what to do. Don't argue: this was demonstrated to perfection in the resolution to the DoJ case by a conservative, laissez-faire judge who was put in place with the assistance of the President of the United States under the influence of the friendly cultivation of the Chairman of the Microsoft Corporation. Not only has Microsoft purchased influence but its extensive "food-chain" of dependent software developers creates a significant population in the United States that will not tolerate truth-telling or realism on the subject of Microsoft. For largely social reasons, the US environment does not tolerate criticism of Microsoft.

Here, it is not quite so simple to say there is corruption. The common people quite literally buy into this status quo. Through our retirement accounts, Americans are almost all investors -- punters. We are therefore keen that government stay away from the businesses that propel our portfolio.

There was a period from 1995 to 2000 when Microsoft was the bellwether of the NASDAQ over-the-counter stock market. The indexed performance of MSFT was definitional, tick for tick, with the "NAZ". MrSoFTy was our buddy. During that period we became trained to associate Microsoft with THE FUTURE, with OUR OPTIMISM. Microsoft came to define our aspirations as affluent, invincible & innovative Americans.

This is partly why Microsoft's defensive arguments against oppositional forces -- such as Free Software, for one; the Internet, for another -- have developed a patriotic, even McCarthyite, tone. This was engineered with some cunning as a confident response to our emotional connection to Microsoft's example of pugnacious American-style success. The language: the 'GPL is un-American,' 'open source is a cancer', 'they do not respect our "intellectual property"'. The wording reflects Microsoft's self-awareness, its sensitivity to the special place it had carved in American life, history & corporate culture (one more monopoly after the pattern of Standard Oil and IBM); and its self-riteousness reflects the confidence of immunity from control by the government and the laws of the land.

These are carefully-chosen messages which amplify a feeling of paranoia, as though there is an invasion under weigh by forces against Microsoft -- against your personal interests -- against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ironically, Microsoft was the one guilty of assault against open & free competition, so effectively had new investment dried up, scurried away, in competitive ideas that might have developed in Microsoft's core spaces. Microsoft had succeeded in equating its brand with our feelings of American-ness while having undermined those principles. Strictly speaking, that is a clever achievement. It is beyond ironic; it is a dark, Dreiserian American Tragedy.

There is a great deal of material in the record of the numerous lawsuits against Microsoft (including the current Comes v Microsoft proceeding in Iowa) indicating that senior Microsoft officials see themselves as superior men to the bureaucrats around whom they construct elaborate mechanisms to defy authority -- to give the appearance of accommodation while proceeding according to plan.

Now, the Europeans have made a farce of Microsoft's dim view of bureaucracy. 

They have smoked out Microsoft's modus operandi and organized a template for new boundaries against technological abuses of market influence (not only applicable to Microsoft).

We Americans are very distrustful of what we call "Activist Government". We thought we liked "Small Government" -- though you'll be hard-pressed to find a single American who can define what that means (Ronald Reagan, the great proponent of "Small Government", presided over greater spending and more rule-writing than any President in history). We glory in open competition and regard government as an interfering force in the mysterious balancing influence of the markets' Invisible Hand. We believe in Jesus Christ, leprechauns, Santa Clause and fairies just as emphatically.

This is nothing if not ironic. Microsoft, and many Americans, will argue by rote that government should stay out of this; that government is incapable of making smart, correct decisions for the market-place. The gargantuan failure of the Soviet Union's command & control economy still hovers like a spectre for us. Governments only screw things up, we say.

We disdain Europe's involved government as if it is against everything we know. But an activist government -- capable of enforcing an even playing field for unfettered, open competition -- now that's desirable. (The astute reader will observe the obvious parallel here with the Net-Neutrality cause, in which case aggressive governmental "observation" and even regulation is probably necessary to return & preserve an open Internet environment. Yet the knee-jerk American "conservative" anti-regulatory belief-system will be prodded awake to defend greedy corporate maneuvering in both cases.)

A Harvard Business School professor said something ridiculous in The New York Times today. Surely David Yoffie said something useful at some point in his phone conversation with a Times journalist, either Kevin O'Brien or Steve Lohr, but this statement strains for relevance...

"If you end up handicapping a major player in new markets, you may not enhance competition but hinder it, and help create new monopolies. The obvious example is Google in Internet search and Apple in digital music."

This is as indicative of the American laissez-faire philosophy toward government and business as it is revealing of Microsoft boosterism from a professor who would lose his job if he said anything truthful in the matter -- so deeply is Harvard University morally gutted through obeiscence to Microsoft for research grants and other funding.

As a general statement the first half is true; applied to the EU ruling today, it is at best a non-sequitur.

The EU action is not a handicapping but an evening-out; Google's dominance of search is not a factor of anything related to Microsoft (and Microsoft is so inept at search that neither Google nor the government can be blamed for Google's overwhelming success); equally, Apple's success with the iPod/iTunes juggernaut is not a product of some exogenous force holding Microsoft back. (If Zune is the litmus test, it's fair to say Microsoft has trouble competing in any case where it lacks the advantages of a rigged platform.)

To characterize the EU action as a "handicapping" is typical Microsoftian psychological transference; it is to ignore the way Microsoft itself has tactically handicapped its competitors in illegal and unethical ways throughout its rise to prominence. Harvard Business School -- a symbol of American business culture showing its own symptoms of American hypocrisy here -- needs to do better.

We Americans need to do better. The EU is right. With Microsoft, our faith in laisse-faire got out of hand. If we lack the frame, the mettle, to restrain our uncouth business leadership, then the Europeans will not be shy to do it for us.

The message to take here is quite simple: Europe is serious about standards, they are serious about fair trade, and they are serious about business. And they have zero tolerance for Colonial monkey-business.

The ruling is water-tight, and by the glum deer-in-the-headlights expression on Brad Smith's face (registering a negative-$600 million bonus) during the Court of First Instance's reading (see the listing at 9.30 am), it is devastating to the Microsoft Legal Department's ambition to continue to play bureaucrats for fools.

End of Era...Amen.

MICROSOFT: Strike Two!

The EU court decision to uphold the fines and un-bundle media player is a deep blow to Microsoft's credibility and creates friction against their Phase II Lex-Lutherian world domination plan.

It follows two weeks after ISO sent Microsoft's ignominious & fraudulent document format standard, OOXML, packing to a ballot-resolution process next Feb.

Among the more interesting details, EU officials had compared Microsoft's strategy of offering thousands of pages of "documentation" in both the ISO and anti-competition appeal instances to a "denial-of-service attack" (with the intent of paralyzing any authoritative attempts to advise adjustment or certify compliance)...basically gumming up the works while superficially satisfying the censure demanding the publication of application programming interfaces. Accordingly, the EU establishes herein its capacity to see through technical software gamesmanship -- a particularly bad habit of Microsoft's -- and there will be little patience for it going forward, not only in Microsoft's case.

Coverage today...

The New York Times | "European Court Rejects Microsoft's Antitrust Appeal" |  Kevin J. O'Brien

The Financial Times | "Microsoft loses EU antitrust appeal" | Tobias Buck

Microsoft Watch (eWeek) | "Microsoft's Stunning Court Defeat" | Joe Wilcox

The Economist | "A bittersweet win over Microsoft" | staff

The Economist in particular offers this balanced view...

But Microsoft's greater concern may well be the advance of open-source software and open standards. Linux, an open-source operating system, is widely used in servers and among the technically minded but €”for now constitutes no threat to Windows. Firefox, an open-source browser, is used by at least one in ten instead of Microsoft'€™s Internet Explorer. Windows and Office, the firm'€™s word-processing and other applications, are the backbone of Microsoft. But increasingly the rise of online applications [and virtualization] will lessen the importance of operating systems [insert & emph. mine -Ed.] and may eventually chip away at Microsoft'€™s dominance.

The Commission's tough line may at least offer some succour to Microsoft'€™s rivals. But Ms Kroes'€™s desire to see Microsoft suffer a significant drop in [market] share that Windows enjoys (95% of the world's one billion or so computers use the system) looks fanciful in the short term. Microsoft's pride may have been hurt by the court, but its dominance is hardly under immediate threat.

Begs the question: what will be Strike Three?

It won't be the ISO ballot-resolution process because I expect Microsoft's OOXML to pass there -- because the convener, Alex Brown, has stated his bias to produce a process which leans toward ACCEPTANCE, despite the fundamental problems with Microsoft owning a global document format standard.

As convenor, one of my responsibilities is to run the meeting in a such a way that it maximises the chances of approving a text.

The ODF v OOXML conflict is irrelevant anyway because neither one provides adequate technical interoperability and the conflict is a red herring (Microsoft is not gunning for ODF with OOXML, they seek to take out HTML with it).

No. Strike Three will come sooner than Feb '08 when we deliver an interoperability antidote and blow to all IT vendors seeking to constrain document interop; our solution is the key for all enterprise customers to end lock-in if they want to.

[Updated several times today...I can't say where as it will interrupt the Flow. -Ed.]

The OOXML Scandal

There's no way to tell which way the voting will end up on Monday (48 hrs from now), September 2, 2007.

Upon John Gotze's good news that Denmark is a "No", Roy calls it a "fiasco" while Eric S. Raymond calls it a "scandal".

"September Second: The OOXML Scandal"...that rather trips off the tongue...

Effective Evangelism & Disinformation

By the way, if you haven't read Microsoft's (James Plamondon's) whitepaper, "Effective Evangelism" (PDF), you should.

The activities around OOXML indicate that this is the playbook. I'm struck dumb by this part in the intro...

"It is our job to ensure that those choosing [software] are presented with an overwhelming abundance of evidence and reasoned argument in favor of our standards."

It's why the arguments used in the ISO Fast-Track and the ones repeated ad nauseam by Microsoft's Alan Yates, for one, in Massachusetts were so awkward: they didn't have to be logically correct, didn't even need to sound smart; just memorable, confusing (if possible), repeatable, overwhelming.

Try "25 Ways to Suppress the Truth: the Rules of Disinformation" also for some nice bed-side reading that will remind you of a moment here or there in the OOXML v ODF conflict.

Reverse-Halloween: The Marketing Checkbox Strategy

Glyn Moody is, of course, a quick-study. He's among the few who get it.

This post in Linux Journal ties Microsoft's new-found open source strategy and its document format strategy together to illuminate a major shift in Microsoft's tactical approach to defrauding the market.

We've been waving our arms up and down to draw attention in FLOSS circles to the idea that ODF v OOXML is vital to Software Freedom. Glyn tells more effectively why this is true.

Getting Microsoft software licenses OSI-approved and similarly getting Microsoft's proprietary document formats approved at ISO are like painting an old Chevrolet. But that's all they think they need in the enterprise...

This, I think, goes to the heart of Microsoft's open source strategy. As well as adopting those aspects of an alternative development model that it finds useful, Microsoft is aiming to blunt the undeniable power of openness by hollowing it out. If OOXML is an open standard, and some of its own software licences become OSI-approved, Microsoft will be able to claim that it, too, is an open standard, open source company. For many busy managers, subject to all kinds of demands – including increasing pressure to “go open source” - the difference between Microsoft's open source and real open source won't matter, in the same way that the difference between Microsoft's open file formats and those of the OpenDocument Format won't really matter. In terms of keeping people happy, what matters for many is the label – the appearance of going open – and Microsoft's moves aim to provide just that.

In many ways this new approach is exactly the reverse of that espoused in the famous first Halloween Document. There, the idea was to “de-commoditise” open protocols by adding proprietary elements. Today, the technique is to pseudo-commoditise proprietary standards by getting them defined as open.

This may be enough to satisfy the enterprise customer that he is achieving something different. Clearly, the substance is no different: it's a lock-in in sheep's clothing.

We are entering The Gray Period.

[According to this line of reasoning, the real failure in Massachsetts is that Microsoft gets to market OOXML's acceptance in ITD's policy as an "open" document format. The more desirable way forward would be to have Bethann Pepoli change the wording to "...open formats, such as ODF, and other proprietary formats we cannot refuse for practical reasons." ]

UPDATE 8/8/2007:

I just recalled that I made this very argument (together with Gary Edwards & marbux) back in December (2006) in the Novatica | UPGRADE article published in Spain...

"Interoperability: Will the Real Universal File Format please Stand Up?" (PDF, 9 pages,  123 KB)

Conclusion - The XML Cold War in a Changing Market for Software

    To fully grasp the vendor lock-in and legal bind Microsoft and Novell are devising, it is important to understand how ISO/IEC ("ISO") adoption of EOOXML one or two years from now would result in a legally sanctioned extension of Microsoft’s monopoly in office document formats. Through its technology-sharing arrangement with Novell and its elaborate messaging around "interoperability," Microsoft audaciously seeks to reassert the old lock-ins while draping its behavior in the "open" language that is today in vogue.

The complete Special ODF Issue of Novatica | UPGRADE is here (PDF, 72 pages, 1.4 MB)

Shuttleworth Comments on Microsoft's Attempt to Split the Open Source Field

Peter Galli (eWeek) brings us Mark Shuttleworth's direct and non-inflammatory remarks about what Microsoft is doing invading the open source space, buying deals with the weak Linux players and extorting protection money.

Most encouraging is that Shuttleworth sees too how Microsoft buying its own business is a slippery slope & signal of the viscous spiral as the company tries to compete with better software.

Microsoft Breaks the Plugins

Tiffany Maleshefski at eWeek Labs is giving the Plugins the once-over-twice and she kindly put up the slides of her experience with Sun's faulty attempt.

Observe the trouble Sun Microsystems' engineers are having getting their ODF plugin to work in MS Office. See the presentations here...

Sun is having trouble because Microsoft is breaking interoperability deliberately through hi-jinks with the Dynamic-Link Libraries ("dll") in Windows.

From Sun's Malte Timmermann's blog...

Q: Why doesn't it support Office 2007?

A: Well, basically, it does, but there is an issue in Word's 2007 Filter API handling. You can save to ODF, but when you try to open ODF, Word ignores the installed filters and tries to open with it's own filters. Of course Word can't, so you get an error message "The Office Open XML file <name> cannot be opened because there are problems with the content". This even happens if you explicitly select the ODF filter! I hope Microsoft will fix this issue with the next service pack. If not, we will work around this bug by doing the same kind of integration like in PowerPoint and Excel.

As marbux says, "Welcome to dll Hell!"

Microsoft's Brian Jones innocently says 'Gee I can't imagine how that's happening?'

You're making me laugh, Microsoft.

You went to the DoJ for this behavior in Netscape. This is going to add to your fines in Europe. We know how you're doing it; we're going to tell on you.

If Brian Jones is obviously looking in the wrong place and can't grok what's happening it's because his head is buried in XML (within the files) and it's the Windows Department who are playing fast & loose with interoperability: the file-association behavior of Office 2007 was working for the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Plugin with Office 2007 Beta and broke in the Final version (yes, we've known about this for about 6 months).

Y'all are some dirty mutherfuckers.

Give me your markets, or I'll take them from you.

Novell's Lose-Lose Situation

GPL version 3 paints Novell into a corner in it's "patent & interoperability" deal with Microsoft. (I'm assuming the GNU tools are early to upgrade their license from GPLv2 to GPLv3 and that the Linux kernel will certainly upgrade in time.)

The effects upon Novell's position of the terms of GPLv3 are quite simple to understand: Novell can either 1) elect itself out of the Linux business to protect its deal with Microsoft (something of a non sequitur); or 2) stay in the Linux business and thereby spread immunity from potential patent infringements to any customer who uses Novell's or any new GPLv3 versions of Linux.

(Among the layered ironies here, is that it is more likely that Microsoft is the infringer upon others' patents which may be contained in Linux.)

Holding aside the (greater) problems for Microsoft, the problem for Novell arises from the free-SuSE Linux support vouchers which Microsoft has been spreading around to its customers, making Microsoft a distributor of GPL software. In particular, the problem arises because the vouchers have no expiry date. With no end-date, the vouchers exercised by customers after GPLv3 code comes into use means that Microsoft, as a distributor, becomes subject to the terms of the GPLv3 license and therefore its patent license to Novell gets applied to all users of relevant GPLv3 code, not just Novell's customers.

This, according to the provisions of Sections 10, 11 & 12 (parts given below) of GPLv3, means that after Novell has upgraded the Linux kernel and GNU tools on its own development tree to GPLv3 code, then the resulting product will cause the same patent protections granted to Novell by Microsoft in their deal to be distributed to any "downstream" user of this code and other works derived from it. Thus, all users of Novell's SuSE and other distros of Linux after a certain time will have the same protections & immunities Microsoft attempted to grant only to Novell.

Accordingly, Novell can do one of two things: lose or lose...

In the first scenario, Novell can simply stop distributing Linux (not likely) or elect not to use GPLv3 code in its GNU/Linux-based products. This would mean Novell would have to effectively fork itself away from the Community activities and Community code -- away from GNU/Linux -- to become isolated as a lone steward of, over time, obsolete GPLv2 code. Ostensibly they would choose to do this in order to continue to honor the Microsoft deal, justify the large (company-saving) payment from Microsoft, and continue to "benefit" by being among the few commercial Linux vendors offering patent "protection". This scenario sees Novell removing itself from the Linux business to protect its vig from Microsoft. Yet, in the end, such a move would make Novell an uncompetitive and unattractive Linux partner. (The scenario is unlikely because it doesn't make business sense from Novell's perspective.)

In the second scenario, Novell loses a new uniqueness among Linux distributors it thought it had forged with the desktop Monopolist. Here, the company continues as normal to take down and work on the new GPLv3 code from the Community development trees of GNU/Linux and when any end user installs the resulting Novell product, they are subject to the immunity of the "patent license" granted by Microsoft to Novell customers; this occurs whether the case is an installation of the free voucher versions or of versions purchased from Novell. And here's the rub: the patent protections get automatically extended to all recipients of GPLv3 GNU/Linux code (see Section 11); the new terms nullify the Microsoft-Novell patent detente by spreading the protection to all GNU/Linux users & purveyors.

For Novell, the second scenario looks like the present course (this Novell has confirmed): the company stays in the Linux business, it stays current on GNU/Linux code and the only thing it loses is the uniqueness among Linux vendors as a source of protection against Microsoft's threatened legal lashings-out.

It would be easy to say this was a set-up by the Linux and the Free Software Communities against Microsoft; but it's been clear from triangulation in parallel and orthogonal experiences over time that Novell's senior people did not (do not) understand the GPL much better than Microsoft's. This makes the truth seem stranger than the fiction. But in the end it will be difficult to conclude other than that knowledge will continue to insist upon its freedom (this video is a rousing bit of oratory on June 26, 2007, from the homeland of Adam Smith by the Lawyer of the FSF).

For the curious and the other lawyers, here are the relevant parts of GPLv3, Sections 10, 11 & 12, on which I base my assertions. In particular, note how the license does not permit different terms to be attached by different purveyors to different recipients of the work...

Section 10 - Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients (exerpt)

Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License.

Section 11 - Patents (exerpt)

If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it (emphasis added).

Section 12 - No Surrender of Others' Freedoms (exerpt)

If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.  If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not convey it at all.

Groklaw has an interpretation and discussion here, MS: Dancing as fast as it can to try to get away from GPLv3, which assumes some prior knowledge.

Microsoft can say it is not subject to the terms of the GPL, but one can say one is not subject to the forces of gravity...

This is likely to become a court case. If Microsoft can satisfy a court that it is not distributing Linux (via the support vouchers), then its present dissociation from Novell and GPLv3 might -- MIGHT -- hold up.

Say No More, Bluehost

Bluehost President, Matt Heaton, speaks out about values...

Microsoft's 6 Battle Fronts

2.    Google Apps
3.    Apple
4.    ODF
5.    Linux
6.    OLPC

These are the five main exogenous battle fronts where Microsoft is fighting for its commercial existence. (I've left out the primary front for now because it is internal and thus the most complicated and important front of all.) They are listed roughly in their order of importance in terms of how much they give Steve Ballmer a rash.

2.    Google Apps

At first it surprised me -- but should really surprise no one -- that the DOT, FAA, NIST & the GAO (all important agencies of the US Federal Government which are ICT consumers) mentioned Google Docs & Spreadsheets in their recent inquiries about desktop software alternatives to Microsoft products. This was in connection with their No-Vista policies announced in March.

What I've learned recently is that just about everybody is using Google Docs ("Gdocs") to collaborate on document authoring or just typing out simple notes, correspondences or papers. The strong collab features are proving a killer app -- one we've never had before. (I know this from our own internal work at the Foundation for the past 8-10 months and from informal -- read 'very non-scientific' -- surveys of folks around the world and in the local area.)

In considering their Exodus from Microsoft products, it is merely logical to enterprise CIOs that a hosted Web 2.0 solution -- even one with very rudimentary functionality -- would top the list. The obvious alternative office suite for any enterprise account interested in XML formats is OpenOffice.org. In an enterprise shifting away from Microsoft now, the case for a hosted Web-based solution is persuasive because there is just so much you don't need to do anymore as a CIO. You don't need to roll out packages onto the old Windows XP machines; you don't need to clear the local hard drive space; you don't need to disable legacy applications; you don't need to host and run the application servers from the data center (if that's your bag); you don't need to people-manage a software transition (no one ever got training anyway); and you don't need to explain anything to your workforce (because they're using Gdocs already -- even if you've been trying to stop them up 'til now).

How is this hard on Microsoft? Well, it directly erodes and replaces upgrades to Office 2007 (cash-cow, majority Operating Profit-center, enough said). There are other things Google is doing to make it difficult for Microsoft to function (hiring talent away, dominating the Search field, etc.) but none are as direct an attack on Microsoft's key revenue streams; and none will sooner impact MSFTs financial statements.

3.    Apple

Apple systems -- the hardware in conjunction with OS X -- work so well and are such an appealing brand now that the idea of purchasing a PC feels like going from a hot new VW Rabbit (8-speaker sound and the tight German ride, standard) to a tinny Hyundai -- the analogy holds only if the latter were more expensive. (Is it obvious that this is an unattractive prospect?)

Holding iPod & iPhone -- the phenomena -- aside for present purposes, the Apple systems are replacing PC OEM sales at Dell, hp, Acer, Sony, Lenovo et al. and, more to the point, eroding sell-through in the channel of new MS Windows operating systems outside of the enterprise. This has already impacted Dell's numbers, for example, for over a year, and will begin this year to show up in MSFT financials when Vista sales fail to ignite (according to the normal pattern) later in the year.

4.    ODF

The OpenDocument Format movement is a bit of a sleeper, but I rate it highly because success for ODF means the global government accounts -- local, regional as well as national -- will simply be falling off Microsoft's Office customer-lists all in one moment. This represents approximately 10% of the desktop office market with good domino effects across the individual desktop market. If Microsoft fails to succeed in buying its ISO fast-track status this year (by stuffing the national boards who vote with Microsoft employees and well-prepped Microsoft customers), then the government market for document creation software falls off a cliff to ODF.

The most significant immediate effect of ODF success is its impact on Microsoft's sales of Office Upgrade software and thus MSFT financials; however, ODF's long-term effect on document archiving and on opening enterprise business processes is such a significant un-lock mechanism that Microsoft will never again re-establish its historical control of ICT budgets around the desktop and server. The value of this in particular is hard to estimate; it is certainly vast in terms of the new ideas and free flow of information it fosters which will end up in the hundreds of billions of dollars magnitude accruing to productivity and access by poor people to technology in emerging markets (see below).

5.    Linux

Linux speaks for itself as the alternative server and desktop operating system which will erode Microsoft's sales of Windows and prevent Microsoft from selling its Windows and Office software into new markets around the world.

Linux servers have done exceptionally well in the market, yet with no credible -share tracking; while the Linux desktop has been successfully held at bay by its own shortcomings and by Microsoft's unshakeable lock-ins of enterprise business processes. What perplexes and confounds Microsoft about Linux in particular and Free Software in general is that Microsoft software can't match it in quality and can't legally integrate with it by license. There is nothing Microsoft can do about Linux's uptake in the market except offer the tactical measures of lying about its features and performance and creating a patent tax on it by signing up weak competitors into illicit, illegal and impolite cross-patent agreements. 

6.    OLPC

The One Laptop Per Child project (based on Linux and a catalog of open source applications on a small & flexible student notebook form-factor) is even now preventing Microsoft from dominating in desktop software share of emerging markets. There are approaching one billion personal computers in the world today. That number will double, to about two billion, over the next ten years and no single basis point of that new market-share will be held by paid-for Microsoft software.

Next week, I'll talk about the number one set of internal factors creating frictions in Microsoft's existential crisis. They are all self-imposed forms of commercial aggression that are already proving repellent to Microsoft's erstwhile customers.    

Just Say No to Vouchers...

...for Microsoft Linux.

Government accounts are being offered a very attractive coupon right now for Microsoft/Novell SuSE Linux -- which we hereby dub, "Microsoft Linux".

This presents a few apparent advantages...

• low cost
• migrate to Linux
• migrate to a Linux which integrates with Microsoft applications and with the next-generation Microsoft stack

The trouble with this is that you will never get out from under the piano that fell on you 10 years ago and which has been on your back, slowing you down ever since.

Do not -- repeat NOT -- even think about acquiring Novell's Linux products. This is none other than Microsoft Linux and you will not achieve the independence originally promised by open source and open standards.

Where is Microsoft Search?

Nice piece by the technology group at BusinessWeek...

"Where is Microsoft Search?"

Microsoft's search problem reflects its approach to new markets in general. It spends little time focusing on tiny, emerging niches that generate little, if any, sales. But those are precisely the markets that can quickly blossom on the Net into meaningful businesses. "Bill [Gates] and Steve [Ballmer] and the leadership don't understand the value of small things," says Robert Scoble, a former Microsoftie whose blog recently took the company to task for its Web missteps. "That cripples their entire Internet strategy from the start."

Much at stake. Fast-following better get faster because the next-gen revenue platform is running away, which will erode their capacity to terrorize enterprises with lock-ins at every part of the stack.

Current CEO Steve Ballmer's job will hang on a turnaround in Search by cal year-end 2008.

Exchange IS the Control-Point

Mary Foley kindly breaks the news...

In her post, "Open source e-mail systems biggest threat to MS Exchange," Mary says...

Yankee will publish in April its "2007 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Survey." The survey of nearly 1,000 IT managers and C-level executives includes some "ominous" news for Microsoft, according to a copy of the executive summary of the study that I had a chance to see this week.

"In an ominous portent for Microsoft, 23% of the survey respondents indicated they intend to migrate away from Exchange Server and switch to an alternative Linux or open source Email and messaging distribution platform over the next 12 to 18 months. The users attributed their decision to their belief that Linux Email and messaging packages are cheaper and easier to manage than Exchange," according to study author and Yankee analyst Laura DiDio.

The reason given is management. That's not a reason; Exchange is easy to manage, that's one of its strong suits. The unspoken reason is to get away from Microsoft's lock-in on business processes routing via e-mail to and from the desktop. (And we've been hammering on this for years.)

This is good news for Zimbra, and Google Enterprise.

It implies CIOs are taking deliberate measures to escape Microsoft. A success-oriented ODF migration depends upon the replacement of MS Exchange.

Conference of Suckers...

The following list of conference attendees will be needing a lobotomy before they need any more startup capital...

Approver | Big Contacts |  Blogtronix | Brainkeeper | Cogenz | ConceptShare | ConnectBeam | Diigo | EditGrid | Firestoker | InvisibleCRM | Koral | Longjump | Mashery | My Payment Network | Proto Software | Scrybe |  Sitekreator | Slideaware | Smartsheet | Spresent | Stikkit | System One | Terapad | Teqlo | TimeSearch Inc. (Calgoo) | Tungle | Vyew | WorkLight | Wrike | Wufoo | Xcellery 

I should say the VC participating should also have their heads examined. Or they could use a history lesson.

Microsoft is hosting this little cocktail party for Office 2.0/3.0 players called "Under the Radar". That's right. Microsoft gets so vet your business plans, borrow a few novel ideas for their Groove or Office Live products, allow you to define the space and then in two or three years you will be frozen out of business by nothin