That never bothered me much because I figure that mobile users aren’t very likely to want to mimic their mobile experience on their laptops or desktops anyway. I can also understand why Google doesn’t do handstands to associate their OS with Tux, since Linux has an outdated reputation as a hard to use operating system that’s best left in the hands of geeks. The average shopper at the Verizon store is just looking for an easy to use phone with lots of useful apps available. Besides, Android doesn’t look or act like any other flavor of Linux, since there’s nothing GNU there (pun intended).

On Wednesday Dissociated Press reported that the most popular Linux distro ever is distancing itself from Tux. That would be Ubuntu, of course. The release notes for their latest beta release state that ““Beta-1 includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the v3.2.6 upstream stable kernel.”

The Ubuntu kernel? Really?

According to the article, there’s more to this than a mere re-branding of the kernel:

“Lest you wonder whether this was an intentional naming decision, it does seem to be that Canonical is deliberately avoiding using the L word. The release notes were imported by Canonical’s Kate Stewart (release manager) with the ‘Ubuntu kernel’ language. From skimming the rest of the release notes brings up only one mention of ‘Linux.’ This is to mention that on PowerPC if Ubuntu is installed ‘along side linux, the system does not automatically boot into the newly installed system.’ So Canonical clearly seems to be trying to distance itself from Linux, here.”

Note that Ubuntu wants you to know that it can be installed alongside Linus – not alongside another Linux distro. Sweet, eh?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this doesn’t mean a thing. That Ubuntu users are just as likely as the user of any distro to try another Linux flavor on for size, right?

If that’s what you think, then you would evidently be wrong. According to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet, the folks at Canonical have surveyed 17,000 of their users. Most interesting was the results to the question, “What other operating system do you use?”

“Beyond Ubuntu, Canonical found that the most popular other operating system Ubuntu fans used was, wait for it, Windows, with 76.9%. Even in hardcore Linux circles it’s hard to get away from Windows. …”

Image courtesy Canonical

I’m reasonably certain that the folks at Canonical are distancing themselves from the L-word because they figure the general public is more afraid of Linux than they are of trying a new “easy-to-use” operating system – again, because they perceive Linux to be something that can only be used by rocket scientists.

It seems obvious that Shuttleworth’s game plan with Ubuntu for Android is less about bringing Ubuntu to Android devices and more about bringing Android users to desktop Ubuntu. That won’t happen, he figures, if people find out that Ubuntu has penguin blood. It appears as if people are afraid of penguins.

                          

The trouble is, in the last few decades, the wannabe rich folks have decided the whole planet should be nothing but a platform for making money, and they’ve somehow convinced a majority of us that this is sensible. So now we have baseball and football stadiums, once named named after teams or the cities where theses teams played, named after respected corporate entities such as Enron and Bear Stearns. Heck, I expect that soon the Metropolitan Opera House will be known as Sony Music Theater and Lincoln Center will be renamed Lincoln Financial Group Center.

As the money accumulators have amassed more and more wads of money, they’ve also decided that the only rules we need on this planet are rules designed to make it easier and easier for those who already have wads and wads of money to rake in more wads.

They are like cockroaches. Worse, they are like bedbugs. They can hide anywhere. There is not a nook or cranny where they cannot thrive. And they are devious, disseminating their propaganda through organizations with misleading names like The-Scientific-Study-of-What-Americans-Need-Foundation, which concludes we need nothing so much as we need more commerce.

So I was not very surprised the other day when I ran across an article on PCWorld in which Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank in Washington, DC, says we’ve got it all wrong with our concerns about privacy on the Internet. What we really need, it appears, is less privacy, not more, so that 21st century ad men can amass wads and wads of money on clicks. Without highly targeted advertising, how will we ever pay for the Internet? he asks.

Lest you think I’m joking, let me quote what he says about suggestions by the FTC that we may need to come up with some kind of “do not track” list for folks who’d like to protect their privacy while surfing:

“With less-targeted advertising, some websites can’t deliver ads very well. It limits innovation by restricting what ISPs can do with customer data. That limits the market for online advertising and innovative business models. That ultimately hurts consumer choice.”

Wowie-zowie! Now I get it! We need to design the Internet solely for those who want to use it to rake in the big bucks. And obviously, advertising just won’t work unless it’s been highly targeted by watching our browsing habits. It’s going to do them no good whatsoever to show me an ad for food if I’m a person who doesn’t eat, or an ad for a Ford if I never leave my house, eh?

Of course, it would never do to target an ad campaign the old fashioned way like they do in print and over the airwaves – by the content. You wanna sell soap? I can tell you without tracking anybody, and I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts, that a site like FOSS Force probably isn’t going to reach a lot of folks obsessed with whether they should use Tide or Purex. However, if you’ve got a really hot desktop or server you want to sell, or maybe some new gee-whiz must-have software, we might be able to help you connect with some interested people here.

But this would be too, too easy an answer, especially when the whole future of the digital age depends on making sure that a businesses’ ads reach the right eyeballs and only the right eyeballs. But don’t take my word for it. Read what Dr. Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute has to say:

“There’s a big difference between a do-not-call list and a do-not-track list. People understand that getting a call at dinnertime from a telemarketer is annoying. But marketing rules and funds the Internet. If you strip out marketing and advertising from the Internet, nothing would be left.”

To think how stupid I was, back in the last decade of the last century, when I thought the Internet would be about disseminating information, not about making billions and billions of dollars for corporations (who are people too, you know). Of course, I’m in good company. Think how stupid our founding fathers were, believing they were forging a nation where people could live freely and safely. How could they have been so dumb as to not know they were merely laying the foundation for Walmart, McDonalds and Apple.

                          

Sweet. Cool. If true, they maybe need to be taken down. It’s a good thing we have the Constitution, which guarantees due process, so we can assume that these claims were proved in a court of law, eh? It’s a good thing we blocked PIPA and SOPA, keeping Justice from taking down sites willy-nilly whenever their suspicions are lit.

Ooops… It seems as if nothing has been proved. No court has ruled; no verdict has been rendered. Some Feds have decided that Megaupload is breaking the law and that’s all they need to put them out of business and seize every penny they own. How’s that for a deficit reduction plan?

Yesterday I pointed-out that the record companies and movie folks have been getting laws like SOPA passed for decades? Here’s Glen Greenwald writing today in Salon on the same subject:

“…many SOPA opponents were confused and even shocked when they learned that the very power they feared the most in that bill — the power of the U.S. Government to seize and shut down websites based solely on accusations, with no trial — is a power the U.S. Government already possesses and, obviously, is willing and able to exercise even against the world’s largest sites (they have this power thanks to the the 2008 PRO-IP Act pushed by the same industry servants in Congress behind SOPA as well as by forfeiture laws used to seize the property of accused-but-not-convicted drug dealers). …”

Before PRO-IP, of course, there was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), still in effect, that also allows government and copyright holders to take drastic action against web publishers without the need to bother with chores like proving a case or convincing a jury.

You see, while we’ve been busy not paying attention to our rights, our feudal lords have been busy taking them away from us. We keep forgetting that our rights aren’t something we can just take for granted; we have to fight to keep them each and every day. The loss of our precious freedoms goes far beyond IP. Since the end of the 1960s we have lost rights in every aspect of our lives.

Today would be as good a day as any to begin working towards regaining those rights and these dangerous IP laws would be as good a place as any to start. Indeed, this might be the perfect place to start, for if our ability to communicate with one another is strangled we will have no chance of changing anything at all.

This might be a good time for each of us to sit down and write letters our representatives in Congress – old fashioned letters with pen and ink that require an envelope and stamp for delivery. This isn’t a time for convenience, dashing off emails or making a quick phone call won’t do. A snail mail letter sends the message that you’ve thought this out, that this is important, and that your vote might be determined by the answer you receive.

For starters, we can suggest they might consider repealing any and all Internet or IP laws that deny constitutional guarantees of due process. That would just be a start, however. As I said, we have many lost rights to regain, but we can work on other needed changes after this is accomplished.

One step at a time is a good way to go.

                          

Here we go, Friday FOSS Week in Review, Special Tuesday Edition. I’ve got to find a way to schedule my time better so I can stay on deadline. This coming Friday’s going to be difficult, as I have a dentist appointment and FWIR can’t really be written in advance, so expect it to be published on Saturday – but I’m still hoping for Friday. In the meantime, I’m working on adjusting my schedule so this column will be published in a more timely fashion in the future. Like on Fridays, when its supposed to be.

That’s the bad news. The good news, at least for us news hounds, is that last week there were quite a few items of interest for the FOSS community. At least I found them to be items of interest. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

UEFI Secure Boot Gets Complicated

There were a ton of articles written about UEFI and Secure Boot last week, and the more I read about possible workarounds to allow the average Linux distro to boot on Windows 8 certified machines, the more confused I get. This bothers me, because if I’m confused what does that mean about the person who’s never dealt with anything other than Windows, DOS or one of the Apple OSes, who might be getting ready to make that first leap into the Linux world?

At least I know how to go to the forums to get help, but the newbie getting ready for a first install very probably doesn’t even know the forums exist. Oh, I’m sure that Canonical will spend some bucks to make sure a downloaded Ubuntu will easily install, but what about smaller distros? After all, one of the more important benefits of Linux is choice.

Let’s look at the solution being suggested by the Linux Foundation, which was spelled out last Monday by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on ZDNet:

• All platforms that enable UEFI secure boot should ship in setup mode where the owner has control over which platform key (PK) is installed. It should also be possible for the owner to return a system to setup mode in the future if needed.
• The initial bootstrap of an operating system should detect a platform in the setup mode, install its own key-exchange key (KEK), and install a platform key to enable secure boot.
• A firmware-based mechanism should be established to allow a platform owner to add new key-exchange keys to a system running in secure mode so that dual-boot systems can be set up.
• A firmware-based mechanism for easy booting of removable media.
• At some future time, an operating-system- and vendor-neutral certificate authority should be established to issue KEKs for third-party hardware and software vendors.

That doesn’t sound too bad, especially since the system can be returned to setup mode whenever a do-over becomes necessary. I do wonder how the keys will be inputted, however. If the person doing the installation has to look up the keys and input them manually, that might be a deal breaker for a person doing their first install. Also, a “vendor-neutral certificate authority” is a horrid idea. In my not-so-humble opinion, the last thing this world needs is yet another “authority” with which to contend.

Red Hat has teamed-up with Canonical to also deal with this issue, and they’ve derived a somewhat simpler scheme:

In addition to recommending hardware be shipped in setup mode, they recommend that:

• All OEMs allow secure boot to be easily disabled and enabled through a firmware configuration interface.
• All OEMs (with assistance from BIOS vendors) provide a standardized mechanism for configuring keys in system firmware.

I prefer this plan, because its simplicity pretty much guarantees a more newbie friendly installation. However, I’m not being entirely altruistic. The next time I install Linux on an old Windows box I find at a flea market, I don’t want to get started, then find I have to scramble to find a working computer so I can go online and attempt to discover how to work around some unforeseen UEFI problem.

By the way, last week Free Software Magazine posted an excellent overview on UEFI written for nontechnical FOSSers. I recommend it to anyone who’s still trying to get their head around this issue.

Skype Goes After Reverse Engineers

If you’re a developer, you might want to think twice before doing any reverse engineering work with Skype. That’s the impression I get after reading an article by Michael Larabel on Phoronix. It appears that this summer a developer reverse engineered the Skype protocol and wrote an open source demo program, the details of which he published on his blog. The folks at Skype then went after him using the DMCA as a weapon. Not only did the Skype folks have pages referring to this project removed from his web site, they claimed copyright to the code he wrote for this project as well:

“The day of publishing his initial details, Google’s Blogger (where his blog is hosted) received a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notice that two of his blog entries had to be removed: the post about his success in reverse-engineering the Skype protocol and then a second post about more technical details.

“The complainant issuing the DMCA notice was in fact ‘Skype Inc’ and the basis for the complaint is “Source code. The publication of this code, in addition to infringing Skype’s intellectual property rights, may encourage improper spamming activities.” (Google publishes DMCA complaints to ChillingEffects.org.)

“Skype issued a second DMCA copyright notice after this researcher published more Skype related code. Those files have since moved to being hosted elsewhere. Skype is claiming copyright on the code even though the open-source code was written by the researcher. Another DMCA takedown attempt regarding the same work was issued again in early August when the researcher tried doing a DMCA counter-notice, and he ended up putting up links again to this ‘copyrighted’ work.”

Since Skype is now owned by Microsoft, I can’t fathom that any FOSSer would even using the product except when it can’t be helped. Anyway, these actions are what we’ve come to expect from the folks in Redmond.

Samba Receives Open-Source Code from Microsoft

Sometimes the evil empire does good. Last week we learned, again from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, that Microsoft has contributed code, licensed under the GPLv3, to Samba, the project that enables Unix/Linux machines to work and play with Windows. This is notable not because Microsoft is making a contribution to an open-source project, they’ve done a bit of that in recent years, but because it’s Samba.

I don’t know if Microsoft ever kept an enemies list, but if they did, at one time Samba would’ve been right up there near the top. The last thing Redmond wanted was for free and open-source Linux to be able to integrate with Windows, for the two operating systems to find a common language.

Times have changed:

Since Samba began in 1992, Microsoft has been well, less than happy, with its server rival. But, every since Microsoft lost an anti-trust case in the European Union and was forced to open its network protocols to Samba in 2007, Microsoft has ever so slowly been getting along better with Samba.

But, even so it came as a surprise when on October 10th, when Stephen A. Zarko of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center, gave Samba some proof of concept code for extended protection (channel and service binding) for Firefox and Samba for NT LAN Manager (NTLM) authentication. That’s one small step for open source, one giant leap for Samba/Windows interoperability.

As Chris Hertel of the Samba Team wrote, “A few years back, a patch submission from coders at Microsoft would have been amazing to the point of unthinkable, but the battles are mostly over and times have changed. We still disagree on some things such as the role of software patents in preventing the creation of innovative software; but Microsoft is now at the forefront of efforts to build a stronger community and improve interoperability in the SMB world.”

Hertel continued, “Most people didn’t even notice the source of the contribution. That’s how far things have come in the past four-ish years. …but some of us saw this as a milestone, and wanted to make a point of expressing our appreciation for the patch and the changes we have seen.”

It would be too easy, at this point, to deride Microsoft for their efforts. Certainly, there will be some who will scoff and point to the fact that Redmond is only acting to serve their own interests. However, there’s nothing wrong with serving one’s own interest. The way I figure it, we can’t call Microsoft to task when they do things such as stealing copyrighted code and invoking the DMCA over reverse engineering Skype, then not give them a pat on the head and a “good boy” when they make a valuable contribution to a free software project.

Deriding Redmond here would only give them the opportunity to spew more FUD along the lines of “you can’t win with those fanatics.” It would also do nothing to encourage them to move in a direction that would be beneficial to all of us. When a dog is good, you throw him a bone, even if he’s usually a mean and vicious junkyard dog.

More Opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act

Last Monday, PCWorld reported the Consumer Electronics Association, the Computers and Communications Industry Association and NetCoalition got together to send a letter to members of Congress opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced about two weeks ago in the House.

Indeed, the bill is quite draconian in its approach to stemming online sales of counterfeit goods and copyright theft:

The most controversial portion of the bill would allow copyright holders to ask ISPs and search engine companies to block U.S. access to any site officials say are participating in, enabling or contributing to copyright theft and the sale of counterfeit goods.

The law would allow copyright holders and IP owners to ask payment processing companies such as MasterCard and PayPal, as well as advertising networks, to terminate their services to any site that is they deem is in violation of SOPA.

ISPs and other service providers would be obligated to comply within five days of notification by copyright holders of violators.

Those that comply with the requests would receive full immunity under SOPA. Companies that don’t comply with such requests could face legal action from copyright and IP holders.

The proposed law would allow copyright and IP owners to issue requests for service termination if just one page on a site containing thousands of pages is deemed to violate the provisions of the law.

According to Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, an association representing major ISPs, service providers would be required to take a site offline based only on the allegations of a rights holder, without a court order. It seems that more and more, our lawmakers are willing to write due process out of the law books.

Apple Sues Luxembourg Bistro Over Name

ITworld reports on a little bistro in Luxembourg called AppleADay who’s slogan is “Balanced Fast Food.” They have twenty seats and sell drinks, sandwiches, and desserts. Guess what? They’ve received a “cease and desist” letter from Apple’s legal eagles, claiming trademark infringement. The owners answered with a letter of their own, promising to continue making sandwiches and promising not to make computers.

Apple should pick on someone closer to their own size – like Applebees.

Spanish Court Wins Android Tablet Case Against Apple

In Spain, a local company has been able to convince the courts to lift an import ban on an Android tablet, according to The Wall Street Journal:

The case, which represents a rare defeat in Apple’s globe-spanning campaign to protect its leadership in the lucrative tablet market from alleged iPad copycats, was launched a year ago when Apple obtained an injunction from a local court to ban imports of the NT-K tablet computer into Spain.

The product is mainly manufactured in China and sold in Europe by Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala, based in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia.

But in a recent ruling, a Spanish court removed the injunction, arguing that there are no legal grounds to stop the sale of the NT-K, according to court documents.

Because of the ban, Nuevas Tecnologias sold fewer than 200 of the tablets this year, a far cry from the 15,000 units they’d been hoping to move. Now the company says they plan to sue Cupertino for the losses they incurred due to the injunction.

Good for them.

Well, that does it for this week…er, last week. I’ll see you Friday or Saturday, if not before. In the meantime, may the FOSS be with you…

                          

It’s been a busy week. So busy, in fact, I was unable to make my deadline for FWIR, so here I am with a special Saturday edition. Just so you know, there’s a precedent for this. Back in the days when ABC ran “Monday Night Football” they called any NFL game they ran “Monday Night Football,” no matter what the day of the week. Hence, we were often treated to “Monday Night Football, Special Thursday Edition” and such. In that spirit, I offer you “Friday FOSS Week in Review, Special Saturday Edition.”

Of course, if I’m going to get busy and miss deadline, it’ll happen on a busy week in FOSS news. The fates work that way, I’m convinced. Indeed, after a couple of ho-hum weeks, the news flew fast and furious this week. Hold on, it’ll be a hell of a ride!

More Apps Downloaded to Android than to iPhone

It was reported on Tuesday that ABI Research says Android now leads the pack in the number of apps downloaded. According to their figures, 44% of all mobile apps downloaded are headed for Android devices, with 31% going to the iOS platform. These figures are miles away from what the research firm predicted back in 2009 as the mobile wars were just getting heated up:

“Android has grown much faster than ABI’s earlier projections have suggested. In 2009, Google’s OS facilitated just 11 percent of total app downloads. At that time, the firm projected that figure might grow to 23 percent by 2014. Instead, 2011 seems to have been the year that Android made its move on iOS. As recently as August 2010, ABI reported that iOS still held a dominant 52 percent of the market for mobile app downloads.”

I’m certain many FOSSers will smile smugly and perhaps mutter “I told you so” at the reasons ABI gives for Android beating the oddmaker’s predictions:

“’Android’s open source strategy is the main factor for its success,’ says Lim Shiyang, an ABI research associate. ‘Being a free platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third party multiplatform and mobile operator app stores.’”

According to ABI’s figures, the Android’s installed base beats iOS by a margin of 2.4 to 1, and they predict by 2016 the margin will increase to 3 to 1. Anyone want to bet that guess will turn out to be low?

Android is winning on the advertising front too. Millennial Media has just released their quarterly report, TechCrunch informed us this week. According to this report, the mobile ad business is booming, with ad impressions on the iPad up 456% from year ago figures, and iOS up 60% during the same period.

FOSSers have no need to worry about Apple’s success, as they still have a long way to go to catch up with Tux based Android:

“…Android continued to dominate the mobile ad network, and led the Connected Device and Smartphone OS Mix on Millennial with 56% of the impressions. iOS was the second largest Connected Device and Smartphone OS in Q3 with 23 percent of impressions.”

If you’ve been looking for a reason why Google pays so much to keep its free mobile platform alive, you need look no more.