A Timeline of Microsoft Hurt

I've often written about particular instances where Microsoft has bullied competitors; it's a pretty sorry tale. But that story becomes extraordinary when told in detail, and as a sequence of actions whose sole purpose was to drive off competition by any means.

If you're interested in how Microsoft sought to undermine DR-DOS, WordPerfect, Netscape and Java - to say nothing of GNU/Linux - you can find out here in this document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). As you might guess from the subject matter of the report, this is a bunch of companies who are not overly enamoured of Microsoft:

ECIS has acted as an advocate of interoperability since its inception in 1989. The association believes strongly in the benefits of a competitive and innovative ICT sector, and seeks to support such an environment by actively participating in the promotion of any initiative aimed at favoring interoperability, competition on the merits, innovation, and consumers' interests in the area of information and communication technology.

ECIS’ members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers Adobe Systems, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.

Leaving aside the sad fact that a European organisation can't spell "favouring", it's pretty clear that this is not an objective, balanced picture. But as far as I can tell, it's not untruthful, and its statements are butteressed with references to relevant documents and news items that make it useful for further exploration.

Brazil, Free Software and "Castrated Windows"

Like many, I've been keeping my eye on the Brazilian computer market, since there seems to be a lot happening there in terms of free software. Details have been dribbling out here and there, but this is by far the best summary of the situation there:

Brazil imported the anti-Microsoft stance common in American geeks, but on top of the usual arguments Microsoft is foreign. This adds fuel to the flame. To the Brazilian Microsoft hater, not only there is an “evil monopoly”, but its profits are repatriated and its jobs are elsewhere. Practices like the 3-program limitation on Vista Starter further erode good will (Brazilians call it the “castrated Windows” among other colorful names). Add a dash of anti-American sentiment and you’ve got some serious resistance. This fiery mood has a strong influence, from the teenager hanging out in #hackers on Brasnet to IT departments to the federal government. Even in a rational self-interest analysis, one might rightly point out that if free/open source software (FOSS) were to wipe out Windows, negative effects on Brazil’s economy are likely minimal. The wealth, jobs, and opportunity created by Microsoft aren’t in Brazil (productivity gains might be, but that’s a whole different argument). The trade offs of a potential Linux/Google take over are different when there’s no national off-the-shelf software industry, plus Google’s revenue model works beautifully in a developing country. This mix of ideological and rational arguments torpedoes Microsoft’s support.

...

Now people in Brazil can actually develop interesting and widely used programs. We’ve got kernel hackers like Marcelo Tosatti, who maintained the 2.4 Linux kernel series, and Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, who co-founded the Conectiva distribution. There are RedHat employees, Debian contributors, committers on various projects, and so on. Lua, the programming language, comes from Brazil. There’s a practical advantage in being able to, say, tune a distribution for a particular purpose (e.g., the distribution being delivered to public schools). But beyond that it’s inspiring to finally be able to work with talented people in cool projects and have a chance to participate, rather than be handed down a proprietary product built abroad over which you have zero control. People are excited about and grateful for this. By the time you mix up these elements nearly all talented CS students and alpha geeks are well into the Linux camp. Unlike the US, the dynamic economy isn’t there to add some fragmentation. When these people go on to make technology choices in government or industry, guess what they’ll pick?

Reminds me, I must brush up my Portuguese.

What Can You Protect in Open Source?

Marc Fleury is a Frenchman who famously made lots of dosh when he sold his open source company JBoss to Red Hat. That puts him in a strong permission to pontificate about what does and what doesn't work in the world of businesses based around free software. Try this wit and wisdom, for example:

B.D asks: "marcf, my open source project is starting to enjoy a measure of success, I am thinking of going professional with it, I am thinking about business models. How much thought should I put in protecting my Intellectual Property?"

Answer: B.D. protecting IP in OSS is extremelly important. The only "private" property that exists in OSS are 1- brand 2- URL. Both are obviously related but really you need to protect your brand name, in other words REGISTER your trademarks, use them, declare they are yours and enforce the trademark, meaning protect against infringement. Other products, specifically based on your product should not include your name. Consultancies will be able to say they know and work with your "product name" but they cannot ship products using your trademark. Educate yourselves on brand IP, that is a big asset in OSS.

The URL deserves the same treatment. A successful website with traffic is a source of revenue in this day and age, either directly through ad placement or indirectly by lead generation.

It's interesting that Fleury concentrates on trademarks, rather than copyright or patents (of the latter he says: "you will have little protection against thieves that want to copy what you have done without letting you know and put it under different licenses, I have seen it done, such is the nature of the beast.") I think this indicates that trademarks can be useful, even with open source, just as copyright is necessary for licences to work. It's patents that remain the problem.

Job Title of the Week

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the appointment of Nick Van Wyk to the role of Senior Transformation Executive, in addition to his current role as Vice President, Global Operations.

Senior what?!?? If I had an shares in Red Hat, I'd probably sell them now - they're clearly out of their pram.

Exadel's Open Source Cornucopia

Now here's a real confluence:

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and Exadel, the leader in providing rich application components for creating a new generation of enterprise solutions, today announced a strategic partnership that will add mature, Eclipse-based developer tools for building service-oriented architecture (SOA) and rich, Web 2.0 applications to Red Hat's integrated platform, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. This move marks the first time that a high caliber set of Eclipse-based developer tools will be available in open source.

Exadel will open source all of its products, including Exadel Studio Pro and RichFaces, as well as consolidate its Ajax4jsf project under JBoss.org, the community behind open source projects that roll up into JBoss Enterprise Middleware. In turn, Red Hat will work jointly with Exadel to drive development of the projects and their integration with JBoss platform technologies such as JBoss Seam.

So, here we have a company open sourcing its products, through a collaboration with Red Hat. As well as confirming the latter's central position in the open source ecosystem, it also boost Eclipse and Java while it's at it.

That's a pretty powerful payload from one announcement, and testimony to the multiplicative effects of open source, which tends to empower everything within its range, unlike proprietary moves, which are generally subtractive, damaging other offerings.

Yoga, Ayurveda and Open Source

Knopper's comments, noted below, were made during a talk at the Open Source conference, LinuxAsia 2007, in New Delhi, where Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Open Source Affairs at RedHat, drew comparisons between open source and India's rich cultural heritage:

"Yoga and Ayurveda, which are perhaps the largest knowledge pools, have traditionally been 'open source'," he said, "and yet it is a US$30 billion industry in the US alone. Open source is not opposed to commercial gains, it is opposed to ownership and limiting of knowledge and resources."

GNU/Linux on the Desktop: Get the Facts

Some say that 2007 is the year GNU/Linux is going to make its breakthrough on the desktop - just like last year, and the year before that. So instead of looking forward at what might happen, why not look back at what did happen?

Linux on the desktop grew and matured in 2006. While some analysts reported a slowing of Linux penetration on the desktop in 2006, a number of significant milestones were reached that promise to continue to move the Linux desktop ahead in 2007. As Gerry Riveros, Red Hat product marketing manager for client solutions put it, "What I think was most important [in 2006] were all of the 'under the hood' incremental improvements that took place around printing, plug-and-play support, laptop enablement and the arrival of the compositing manager that allows for modern graphics."

These and other improvements are setting the next stage of growth for the Linux desktop. A number of projects and teams have moved beyond alpha positioning and ownership to focus on how their efforts contribute to overall desktop Linux objectives. "In 2006, it appeared that developers were aware of how each other's projects help to accomplish the shared goals of all the projects," said John Terpstra, Advanced Micro Devices Linux Evangelist. Over 70 of the key desktop architects have met three times this year to agree on focus areas that would make desktop Linux "just work."

Larry's Unbreakable Kite

What do you want if you are worth $18 billion and have the third-largest motor yacht in the world? Simple: revenge.

Oracle's Unbreakable Linux is about revenge - for the fact that Red Hat dared to snatch JBoss from under Larry Ellison's nose. It's a warning that you don't mess with lovely Larry. It's also a bit of kite-flying: maybe offering support for Red Hat is a viable business, though I can't see it myself. In any case, even if Unbreakable fails as a service, it's already succeeded as a punishment.

Update: Ha!

The Oracle Speaks

Oracle's announcement of its "unbreakable" GNU/Linux has provoked plenty of comment from around the blogosphere. I've not had a chance to mull it all over yet (not least because I've been up at the LinuxWorld show, where I spent some time talking to a man from Oracle....). In the meantime, you can find plenty of interesting analysis via Technorati.