"Often cast as the peacemaker in free software disputes, Bruce Perens is on the warpath. When we caught up with him, he wasn't in a mood to be charitable to Novell. On Friday the Utah company, which markets the SuSE Linux distribution, revealed that it was entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Redmond would pay Novell an undisclosed sum in return for Novell recognizing Microsoft's intellectual property claims. Novell received a 'Covenant' promising that it wouldn't be sued by Microsoft."It's a case of 'Damn the people who write the software'", he told us. "Novell is in a desperate position - it has a smaller share of the market than Debian,"" he told The Register. Update: Novell responds to community's questions: here, here and here. Update 2: Havoc Pennington's take.
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Member since:2006-06-01
Microsoft has spent 20+ years employing various anti-competitive tactics.
Of course you would say that. You think all closed source software is unethical. But in fact, Microsoft has spent 20 years competing. And manyof their competitors shot themselves in the foot.
The classic anti-Microsoft lie is that poor old Netscape was wiped out because Microsft gave away IE ... when the truth is, Netscape stole Mosaic from the University of Illinois and gave it away for free to destroy all the companies that legally licensed the code from Spyglass (the designated company). And Microsoft won the browser war because IE 4 was better than Netscape 4 and Netscape 5 imploded and IE 5 was fantastic.
Member since:2005-11-11
//You think all closed source software is unethical.//
Not at all. There is a vast selection of ethical, quality closed-source software available on the market.
There is just one attribute common to all closed-source software ... and that is that as an end user you have no reliable way to evaluate what is in any given piece of closed-source software, no way to ascertain if it is in fact ethical and quality and value-for-money.
One is forced to look at peripheral attributes of the software to try to evaluate closed-source software. One has try to ascertain if:
(1) the software has good functionality,
(2) the software is good value for its price,
(3) the software competes on its merits with other products and performs well in comparison, and
(4) the software supports documented, open standards so that in using it I can viably move to a competing product if circumstances warrant it, and I can interchange my data with other colleagues who may use a competing product.
Most Microsoft software is characterised by being closed source, by "scoring" relatively well in considerations (1) and (2) above, but failing utterly in considerations (3) and (4) above.
Member since:2006-04-21
Plenty companies make closed-source software, and yes, I do think that is unethical. But I don't badmouth them the way I badmouth Microsoft. Why? Because not all of them make abominable software at high prices, lie to their customers, and crush all opposition. Then again, it's blindly obvious nothing at all is ever going to change your mind, so keep on lying to yourself.
It's really quite pathetic.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-04-21
Microsoft has spent 20+ years employing various anti-competitive tactics. This supposed "new face" of Microsoft is months old at best, so the jury's still out. And the FUDMeister still spinneth.