Robert Pogson

The world is changing. It has changed. No longer can you keep up with the Jonses doing what you have been doing. You have to change too.

Dell will be pushing PCs to farmers in China, a huge emerging market. Dell will have to earn its keep selling low-cost PCs to people not locked-in to that other OS. I guess that means GNU/Linux will become more popular in a land where it is already popular. The government of China is subsidizing these purchases to boost the economy internally. The cities have been enjoying the fruits of the technology/manufacturing boom in China. Now the rural parts will join in.

This is a market of hundreds of millions of people now able to buy their first PC. The world will be tripping over themselves to sell and price/performance will matter and monopoly will have no place. Dell will likely be selling PCs made in China from Chinese parts with Chinese labour. Will Dell recommend Vista? I doubt it.

Psystar is counter-suing APPLE for the freedom to install MacOSX on non-Apple hardware. Whoops! If they win, everyone will be able to install MacOSX on PCs. That will take another bite out of the monopoly as huge numbers of PCs could go that way. Now MacOSX is restricted to APPLE’s machines. Opening that up will give consumers a straight-up choice of OS:

• that other OS
• MacOSX
• GNU/Linux

Whatever increase in choice there is will be a reduction in choice for that other OS and M$ will lose a bit more. It is hard to estimate the magnitude of this effect, but if Apple sells 3% of PCs and puts MacOSX on them then entrepreneurs trying anything to carve out more sales may easily flood the market with non-Apple PCs with MacOSX. Their prices will be lower and they should get more share. I imagine there could be a rapid 10% share drop for that other OS because many recognize MacOSX already but do not want to pay the Apple-tax. This will give them access to something they like at a reduced price. Psystar would not be doing this if they did not have buyers. The world of PC-makers is a lot bigger than Apple in potential volume.

Of course, the more people who see that there is an alternative to that other OS, the better and GNU/Linux will get some uptick, too. This compounding of effects will make 2009 a very good year of GNU/Linux. This matter could be settled as a matter of law, not requiring a trial as the judge can interpret the copyright laws for himself. I would not be surprised to get a ruling this year, perhaps not in time to accelerate the avalanche but that would surely come next year.

What of the merits of Psystar’s case? Copyright is supposed to be about allowing the creator of a work to profit by giving exclusive right to reproduce… Psystar can buy a copy to Apple’s benefit and install it on any machine they want. The copyright law does not permit a writer to dictate his book may only be laid on green felt tables. It permits him to receive a royalty, not obeisance.

This could be fun. This changes the whole universe as far as ultimate market share, post-monopoly. Assuming consumers are equally enamoured of similar products, one would expect a share of 1/N so we have 1/3 instead of 1/2, counting that other OS, MacOSX and GNU/Linux as the new three. When it was GNU/Linux and that other OS, 1/2 would have been about right. The difference between 1/2 and 1/3 is 1/6 of the universe of PCs, about 200 million machines. Multiplied by $100 or so and it is many billions of dollars. Real money and it flows out of M$’s clutches into Apple’s.

When OEMs see their share due to M$ fall, will they look elsewhere? You can bet on it. Some will switch to MacOSX or make it an option. Others will try to increase share by using lower prices for systems with GNU/Linux. Competion on price and performance. What a novel concept. One wonders why Apple does not embrace the future. I would bet they could sell enough copies of MacOSX to compensate for their loss of business on machines or they may actually be able to sell more Apple machines by cutting their prices… It is all good. Go Psystar.

Robe Enderle recently wrote, “If you drill down to the comment section of this earlier piece, you’ll see it filled up with folks arguing for and against software patents. While I’m in agreement that the U.S. patent system is currently far from perfect, I also agree with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Rehnquist” that software can be patented under current law. And I believe, based on the foundation for the law, that software would have intentionally been included had it existed when the law was written. That position appears to be currently backed by the U.S. Supreme Court, but only by a 5/4 majority, which is hardly a ringing endorsement. So things could change. I’m just not aware of anything near-term that’s likely to get to the Court that would force such change.”

Sure, you can get a patent on software if it is part of a machine of some kind, but that is not what FAT32 long filenames are about. They are an information storage system, an abstraction of bits, not a machine. You cannot obtain a patent on long titles for books. You get a copyright on a particular title. If M$ thought its IP was violated in 2009 by TomTom, why didn’t they think it was violated in circa 1998 when GNU/Linux first used a FAT32 driver? There is a principle in law that you cannot allow a violation of rights to continue until a convenient moment to maximize damage claims.

The patent will not stand a good counter-attack by TomTom and the allegation of violation of patent is pretty weak in view of M$’s lack of litigation.

see http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/consolidated_rules.pdf

see http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/

“Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title. “

That does not sound like FAT32.

“(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.”

TomTom did not sell FAT32. Why is M$ suing?

“Patentees, and persons making, offering for sale, or selling within the United States any patented article for or under them, or importing any patented article into the United States, may give notice to the public that the same is patented, either by fixing thereon the word “patent” or the abbreviation “pat.”, together with the number of the patent, or when, from the character of the article, this can not be done, by fixing to it, or to the package wherein one or more of them is contained, a label containing a like notice. In the event of failure so to mark, no damages shall be recovered by the patentee in any action for infringement, except on proof that the infringer was notified of the infringement and continued to infringe thereafter, in which event damages may be recovered only for infringement occurring after such notice. Filing of an action for infringement shall constitute such notice.“

Where has M$ marked a FAT32 filesystem with its mark? Oops. FAT32 is a specification, not a machine, so it cannot be so marked. No damages.

“Except as otherwise provided by law, no recovery shall be had for any infringement committed more than six years prior to the filing of the complaint or counterclaim for infringement in the action.”

M$ let go a big pile of loot, I guess. No, wait. They knew there was no violation and took no action. A jury will love that…

Looks like M$ has a pretty shaky case. If they wanted to protect their rights they should have done so ten years ago. They did not because they had no rights and they knew it. This action is FUD to frighten businesses into paying homage to M$. They are a bully. Do not buy their stuff.

UPDATE: TomTom and M$ have settled. TomTom paid an undisclosed amount and plans to quit using FAT32. I hope they paid 1 cent.

SJVN has a good article analyzing this development. see “Analysis: Microsoft-TomTom settlement is end of a battle, not the war”

If everyone chucks FAT32 from GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux will no longer be able to shine with USB storage devices as it has. This is yet another means of M$ messing with the competition. I think we need to stand up to the bully and chuck the software patents. The SCOTUS should make some decision within the year.

USPTO:”However, based on Supreme Court precedent and recent Federal Circuit decisions, the Office’s guidance to examiners is that a § 101 process must (1) be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) transform a particular article to a different state or thing. This is called the “machine-or-transformation test”. If neither of these requirements is met by the body of the claim, the method is not a patent eligible process under § 101 and should be rejected as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. There are two corollaries to the machine-or-transformation test. A mere field-of-use limitation is generally insufficient to render an otherwise ineligible method claim patentable. This means the machine or transformation must impose meaningful limits on the method claim’s scope to pass this test. Also, insignificant extra-solution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process. This means reciting a specific machine or a particular transformation of a specific article in an insignificant step, such as data gathering or outputting, is not sufficient to pass the test.”

Reading that, one cannot be persuaded that an algorithm like long file names is patentable as it does not transform anything real and it is not tied to a particular machine like a widget-maker. There is a good discussion of the fallout of the Bilski case here. It is very clear that FAT32 is not about any physical thing and is not patentable.

Thanks to M$’s incredibly fragile OS, Conficker is set to detonate on April 1. 12 million machines times, say, 1 megabit/s, is … 12000 gigabit/s, perhaps a giga-email/s.

All the security-through-obscurity/auto-updates/patches in the world cannot protect that other OS from malware and still people buy it. Perhaps this one will be bad enough that people change.

The way to fight malware is to keep stuff simple and clean so that the vulnerable interfaces are humanly countable and can be re-enforced. Instead, M$ adds feature after feature telling customers that they must buy another licence to use the newest features. The world is so tired of spam and malware that many are turning to GNU/Linux in 2009 partly to escape this stuff and partly because there is good software with good features in GNU/Linux.

Just like M$’s feature-ridden OS, Conficker is featureful malware. It has armor, unpredictability, diversity, counter-measures and now it has untold thousands of PCs waiting for April 1. Perhaps we will get some early warning of what it plans when clocks set wrong start to go early. Perhaps nothing at all will happen. Perhaps we will be without e-mail for a week until every IP running Conficker is blocked. Perhaps levels of spam will reach new records.

When the stuff happens, do not scrap your PC to buy a newer, more secure one. Chuck that other OS, not your machine. M$ and its partners laugh all the way to the bank when your PC quits working. Many take it in for service, meaning a re-installation of the same garbage that allowed the infections to take over. Many buy a new PC. Either way, the evil empire profits and nothing will change. You have to decide to end life on the Wintel treadmill. Break free. Enjoy your PC. Have it work for you, not against you. Use Free Software. It is designed to work, not fail at the drop of a hat. It is not designed to make someone rich at your expense.

Instead of a nightmare, have a pleasant and efficient experience with GNU/Linux. This year I have introduced hundreds of students to GNU/Linux. Every one was impressed by the speed and simplicity of the software. They are even more impressed to learn that I have never seen malware take over a PC running GNU/Linux in eight years on hundreds of machines. In that same period I have seen dozens of instances of malware even on patched systems because the malware is out there and operating long before the patch can be created.

Students are shocked to see the difference in speed between GNU/Linux and XP running on identical hardware side by side. They see factors of 3 in speed in favour of GNU/Linux. They see more than that when the machine boots as a thin client, obtaining a minimal OS from the server over the LAN and showing the pictures and receiving clicks while the server does the heavy work. Some of that difference in performance is the pathetic need to check every file for malware before opening it. That makes the filesystem perform like the world’s worst. I continue to be amazed that people are not aware of what malware costs them every time they use their PC. Perhaps Conficker will educate some more.

Is your PC patched against Conficker? Did the patch go in before the machine was infected? Sleep well tonight.

I spend a lot of text on M$, but there is another part of the Wintel monopoly: Intel. Intel is the company that brought us inexpensive microprocessors in bulk. I remember the joy of reading about the 4004 chip in Electronics back in the 1970s. That was the beginning of Moore’s Law and the incredible process bringing powerful computers to the masses of humnanity not in the Fortune 500.

Unlike M$, Intel had to fight for its monopoly. It produced a great product in competition with others entitled to the technology Intel had developed to ensure multiple sources of CPUs according to the deal with IBM, the developer of the IBM-compatible PC. Along the way, they became greedy and tried to take it all, excluding other chip-makers from the market. They became able to charge large price differentials between their chips and those of the competition. About the time “Intel Inside” became a household word, I was building my own PCs. Unlike others, I looked at the specifications and could appreciate that by buying AMD, I could achieve what I wanted at a lower price, sometimes $100 or greater difference. That changed when AMD produced the AMD64 line. For a time, they could charge $1000 for a new chip because Intel was not in the ball-game.

Now, Intel is a step ahead in Moore’s Law and Intel has CPUs that will run Vista with huge caches, but AMD is still worth supporting if only to keep Intel honest.

There is news of the details of Intel’s technique for excluding competition from the market in a translation of a legal decision in Korea:

“As Samsung, the No.1 domestic PC maker and the 100% defendants-CPU using company at that time, had been starting to buy AMD CPUs and launched AMD CPUs- installed PCs from the first quarter of 2002, the defendants continuously requested Samsung to cease from buying AMD CPUs. As Samsung rejected these requests, the defendants significantly reduced the volume of rebates in the first quarter and second quarter of 2002. Since then, the defendants continuously had requested Samsung to cease from buying AMD CPUs, exploiting the provision of rebates as an instrument. In May 2002, the defendants suggested Samsung the “long term support plan” with promise to offer maximum-level rebates from the latter half of 2002 and afterwards, on the condition of Samsung’s suspending the purchase of AMD CPUs by the third quarter of 2002, and, consequently, Samsung accepted this proposal. Since then, from third quarter 2002 to second quarter 2005, the defendants established the quarterly support plans pursuant to the “long term support plan,” and provided rebates to Samsung during the period. In accordance with these rebates, Samsung stopped purchasing AMD CPUs in the third quarter of 2002, and from that time, Samsung maintained the Intel CPU Market Segment Share (henceforth, `MSS’) at 100% level until the second quarter of 2005.” (17p)

…

“Reviewing this argument, as the Table 31 illustrates, considering the amount of rebates actually provided to Samsung and Sambo, we could observe that the rebate rate was in the lowest level in first quarter 2002 when Samsung rejected the defendants’ request for abandonment of AMD’s products, despite Samsung’s purchase amount of the defendants’ products was in the highest level at the same period. On the contrary, we could observe that the rebate rate was at the highest level in third quarter 2002 when Samsung stopped purchasing the AMD’s products, despite Samsung’s purchased amount of the defendants’ products was at the lowest level during the same period. This fact resulted from the fact that the defendants’ rebates had not been provided in pursuant to the amount of partner’s purchased volume but pursuant to the purchased volume of competitor AMD’s products. Accordingly, it is appropriate to conclude that the defendants’ rebate program is totally different from the volume discount scheme which defendants are arguing.”

see the translation by The American Anti-Trust Institute.

The reasons Intel did these things was because AMD had superior chips for a time and AMD had better prices. Intel could have lowered prices to improve price/performance, but they chose to illegally exclude AMD from the market. AMD is still doing well on the low-end desktops but they have nothing in the netbook game and Intel clearly has a lead in power/price/performance at the high end. In my game, GNU/Linux terminal servers, those huge caches are just the ticket for a machine running 1000 or more processes and making many context switches per millisecond.

I can assume Intel carried out such tactics globally. It is unlikely a rogue element in Intel did it only in Korea. In that case AMD v Intel may have legs. Let us hope the consumer gets a break in this and not just corporations. Otherwise, they will take our money, with the only doubt being who gets what share.

Competition in hardware and software ensures constant improvement and efficiency. Wintel is coming to an end thanks to much effort globally. Wintel has ripped the world off for billions but we do not have to take it any longer. Buy AMD, Via, ARM etc. and use Free Software. It is in your best interests to do so, even if there are short-term costs. The alternative is long-term over-charging and lack of choice.