Robert Pogson

SJVN writes that M$ may have the most profitable operation based on Android/Linux thanks to its software patents but he also reminds us that Google is in the process of buying Motorola which is the only major Android/Linux player which has not agreed to pay M$.

It is possible that Motorola and M$ have already agreed to something but M$ states that Motorola does not have a licence. That leads to two possible outcomes:

• M$ leaves Motorola alone to divide the Android/Linux ecosystem, or
• M$ sues Motorola/Google sooner rather than later.

The first possibility is unlikely to fly as it deflates the FUD. The second possibility looms large as there’s no one left to sue in the big players. M$ is unlikely to bother with the small players.

That leaves a likely tangle between M$ and Google in court. Google/Motorola may have some patents to throw at M$ but M$ is the elephant in the room with many thousands of patents on the wheel, the mouse, the mouse click, etc. It could get very interesting before M$’s patented house of cards collapses. At the rate Oracle’s case v Google is collapsing, M$’s might be a huge embarassment. Oracle’s case is mostly about the Android part of Android/Linux and M$’s case would be mostly about the Linux part so together, everything would be covered. I can imagine some very interesting motions that Google might launch like getting M$ to actually list the patents it believe Linux infringes and how. Then the patents could be challenged publicly and shot to pieces. That would soon kill M$’s extortion racket.

Phoronix has annoyed me in the past with critiques of GNU/Linux so I rarely read anything on their site these days but I enjoyed reading a critique of Phoronix about power management. Phoronix had an article about a bug in Linux and how it caused a dreadful waste of power and was a step backwards. It was neither.

“Michael Larabel would be far more helpful to the community if he would learn how to properly identify and test for these sorts of problems and report them through the proper channels. He is more interested though in driving clicks to his website, and the best way to do that is through fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

If he cared about the community, you would see his participation about his fabled ASPM “regression” on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. If he were to post about the myth he created there though, he would probably be eaten alive .. and deservedly so.”

Amen.

There is a scandal of global proportions about M$ paying to have coverage in news programming on CNBC and BBC. Technological evangelism still lives.“Microsoft began its commercial relationship with media firm FBC in 2003. A nine-page strategy document written in 2004 obtained by The Independent contains excerpts which show that when the technology giant launched its European Microsoft Innovation Centre in Germany in 2004, FBC drew up a plan for Microsoft to target broadcasters with its “corporate messaging” and gave a guarantee to Microsoft that it would “place” coverage of the launch event on World Business, the weekly programme it made for the CNBC network. CNBC has suspended the show and is investigating FBC.”

This is what M$ considered technological evangelism in 2000:“Why not do it all ourselves?

…
Working behind the scene to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is an important part of the Slog.
…
Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the enemy’s technology part of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for the competitors’ technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time. ”

That looks a lot like this news story and what happens in the comments here almost daily. If M$’s technology were truly superior, none of this would be necessary.

The Kindle Fire Tablet was announced today. It runs Android/Linux and costs $199. With Amazon’s marketing resources it should sell well. This will take a big bite out of iPad’s lead. There is one downside to it. This tablet is 7 inches… Let’s hope they put out a larger model soon.

UPDATE
The Kindle Fire is not just a product but the tip of an iceberg in the Kindle series. There are 7 machines from a fairly simple e-book reader all the way up to the Kindle Fire which does most of the same things as the less expensive models but adds a custom web-browser. It’s all about making Amazon’s products easy to obtain and to use.

• Kindle – $79
• Kindle Touch – $99
• Kindle Touch 3G – $149
• Kindle Keyboard – $99
• Kindle Keyboard 3G – $139
• Kindle Fire – $199

It’s not about selling Kindles, although that is profitable. Amazon wants to sell 18 million movies and video on demand. It’s like the customer’s mailbox but a lot faster and the customer can reload sooner.

US only…

I cannot get my head around how anyone can run a business with tens of thousands of employees. Schools start to be difficult to run even at 500 students. However, as businesses go, M$, internally, is looking sick these days.

From the unofficial blog:

It’s interesting that while Apple is on the radar of the author, the steam-roller overtaking Apple, Android/Linux on diverse smart thingies, is not. Picture, in your mind, a pedestrian on the sidewalk trying to dodge an out-of-control fuel tanker. The front bumper is the least of his worries even if it is the immediate threat. Thus, it seems to me that M$ is in crisis, with rats trying to escape just before it sinks.

The blog does describe some upside like diverse segments with $billions in revenue. M$ can work like any other business. It is the core Wintel monopoly that is rotting. Eventually the OS segment will have to operate as a business rather than as a monopoly. Otherwise the low morale of the day will be just the beginning of a huge slide wherein everyone in the company will be negatively affected by the delirium of the sick old man running things. There is no right way to diversify a business if one unit is more blessed than all the others. No one likes to be a second-class citizen and no one likes the guy who gets paid for doing nothing.

In the TDF blog: ” we have 136 members who have been nominated for their contributions to the project; we have some 270 developers and 270 localizers (although we always want to attract more), many of whom are also members; we have over 100 mailing lists, with over 15,000 subscribers, half of whom receive all our announcements; and there have been thousands of articles in the media worldwide”

They estimate there are 15 million users running GNU/Linux and 10 million running that other OS and MacOS. The 15million numbers come from IDC’s estimate of new and updated installations of GNU/Linux with many distros using LibreOffice so the growth in users should be many millions per year for several years to come.