Some time ago, Microsoft started a new campaign against open source. They claim that different open source projects violate 235 patents. Now anyone with more historical knowledge then a gold fish and more then half the brain of a monkey [1], knows this is just the marketing department talking nonsense. To scare corporations away from using anything that smells like Free Software. In other words, it is just the old FUD once again.

([1] there is a reason hard drugs are prohibited in the Netherlands)

Now "Microsoft details patent charges". Mind you, all they /had/ to do is say what software project is violating what patent. That wouldn't have cost anything, wouldn't give away any proprietary information since all patents are open for the public anyway. But then, all they could win was egg. On they face of Bill. Since doing this would start people to investigate if the patent was legal in the first place . The patent office is braindead and there are numerous patents out there that have "prior art", maybe even from an open source project. And if it would be true that an OSS projects violated a real patant, active open source projects would -if possible- make a patch and fix any issues that might have been there.

Note that "deatils" means nothing here. All its says is:

...that the Linux kernel violates 42 patents, and the Linux GUI violates an additional 65; email programs infringe on 15, and other open source apps violate an additional 68 Microsoft patents. OpenOffice – a direct competitor with cash cow Microsoft Office – violates 45 patents, Microsoft claims.

Note that OpenOffice.org (no, not OpenOffice Intranetjournal!) is the only other project besides the Linux kernel that has been named. Linux and OpenOffice.org are two projects that will be seen by the general public as direct competitors of the MSFT offering. Mozilla being a good candidate as well but less in the corporate world.

So what are the other open source projects? According Webpronews there are some options. They state:

How will this affect you? If a court finds that these programs do infringe upon MSFT’s patents, programs like Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Apache, Drupal, or Joomla will no longer be available.

Note that it is pure speculation, nobody knows what patent is violated by what open source project, even Microsoft doesn't until they start their randomizer. It might be Wine, close to Microsofts' business. But yes, It might also be Drupal. The journalist writing the article doesn't know more then we do. In fact she might know less even if she is writing on a Drupal site.

Drupal developers are not aware that it /might/ be the case and as Linus pointed out, that is a good thing! Yet, we -as a community but also the Drupal Association- must be aware that the ballgame will be harder. And playing against The Beast means there will be lot of mud throwing between the fastballs. Some think that "getting even" by countersuing is the solution, I am too European to think of that as a solution.

It also raises another question. Drupal owes much to the hosting party OSUSL. The quality of service we get, the bandwidth we use, it sums up to a couple of K's dollars per month if we would buy this commercially. However, they /are/ located in the United States and hence "spreading" Drupal is under American law where software patents are deeper embedded in the legal system then for example in the EU where they are still banned, despite Bolkestein's actions.

The rules are changing. We are no longer just a nice hobby project. We have top customers (including Sony and IBM to name a few) and hence we have entered the corporate arena where the bully is watching us. We are however amongst many friends.

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Vrijdagmiddag ten burele van de Computable afdeling:

Marketingmeneer: Onze oplage cijfers nemen af...!
Hoofdredacteur: Ummm, dan worden we toch een gratis krant? Dat is hip...
Marketingmeneer: Klaas, we /zijn/ al een gratis krantje, goedkoper kunnen we het niet maken!
Hoofdredacteur: Okay... Waarom nemen onze oplage cijfers af?
Marketingmeneer: Er is iets nieuws op het internet. Blogging of zo. Onze doelgroep schijnt zelf te schrijven en erger, blogs te lezen. In plaats van onze non-news krant te pakken
Hoofdredacteur: Tja... Weet je wat. We gaan adverteren...
in koor: ...op blogs! Geweldig idee
Hoofdredacteur: Je redt het verder wel he? Ik ga naar huis. Doe maar wat advertenties op die... "blogs".
Marketingmeneer: Klaas, welke woorden moet ik dan selecteren?
Hoofdredacteur: Iets hips... Iets nieuws. Doe maar ... "Linux"
Marketingmeneer: Okay, ik geef onze kundigge markteers wel de opdracht wat "blogs" te sponseren die over "Linuks" gaan.

En zo kwam het dat Computable deen advertentie plaatste op deze blog. Met de tekst "Freeware Linux". Ja. En dat voor een site/krantje dat over ICT gaat. Beste meneer (m/v) de hoofdredacteur en marketingmeneer (m/v). Leer aub even de GPL spellen, lees deze, begrijp deze. Linux is geen "freeware", Linux is open source, GPL(v2). De link van de ad ging naar de homepage van Computable. Even zoeken. En jawel, de marketeer in kwestie was lang geleden (16 oktober 1998) "journalist" en schreef: Oracle neemt freeware Linux eindelijk serieus

Slaap zacht Computable!

The best selling item on Amazon is... a Drupal book! I helped a bit as well.

UPDATE: if you do order this book, please do it via drupalbook.com since the Drupal Association will get some kickback fee from Amazon. Support yourself AND Drupal!)

I have been dealing with lots of outsourcing RFP's throughout my career and here are some statements on RFP's and why most of them suck and make the outsourcing unsuccessful.

1. Writing a good rfp is an art
2. Answering a RFP is martial art
3. Paying a specialized agency to help you write the RFP and help you in the process, pays of
4. RFP's are too narrow (i call it functionality 1.5 SP2). "vendor name must start with 'M' and and with 'oft'"
5. RFP's are to broad ("site must use AJAX")
6. RFP's are too technical ("all screws must be turned clockwise")
7. RFP's are oversized ("we foresee the site to be in the top100 ranking within 1 week")
8. RFP's budget is undersized ("we want Google search quality internal for a budget of 1/1.000.000.000.000 of Google")
9. RFP's are often RFI's, most RFI's are in fact RFP's
10. RFP's are too 127.0.0.1 ("hey this module looks nice and works on my laptop, lets ask that")
11. RFP's for outsouring are too "now minded". How innovation in time is brought in to the service is highly underrated
12. RFP's in The Netherlands (especially when dealing with European law, hence governments) will in the end make the branche less transparent and priceing agreements between agency's is bound to happen
13. (The cost of answering RFP * the probability of winning * 10% profit) will be paid by the customer in the end
14. The criteria for RFP's seldom take into account ordinal scale or interval scale but mostly use ratio scaling
15. The criteria of RFP's seldom do Multi Criteria Analytics
16. RFP's arent won with paper but by playing golf
17. RFP's arent lost by playing golf but with paper

Just something we have to deal with this I am afraid.

At CNET you can find an article on Alfresco moving towards GPL

Alfresco, a start-up that commercializes open-source software for helping customers keep track of their digital documents, has adopted the General Public License in an effort to attract outside programmers.

Alfresco, according to its own website, is "... the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management.". You can best compare it to a Java based version of sharepoint with lots of rich functionalities including "workflow" and for example using CIFS to upload/checkout documents. The recently moved towards the GPL version2, since they are not sure they like the GPLv3, hence the excluded the "any later version." text in teh GPLv2 as the bad Novell boys will do as well to bypass their Microsoft deal.

The good news is that according to the CNET article, Alfresco is looking towards working with Drupal as well "In addition, Alfresco will be able to easily integrate with other GPL projects, such as the Drupal content management software, Asay said. I dont know how and what Alfresco thinks to integrate these products, since both seem to have some overlap when it comes to the "community" and for example "taxonomy". I am not to fond on their marketing, with seems to folow the "whiter than white" credo:

* 5 Times Faster than Traditional Closed Systems
* 10 Times Cheaper than Traditional Closed Systems

What do you think where Drupal and Alfresco can combine forces?