Listening to user feedback hardly makes up a democracy. It’s user feedback. In some cases it might be a case of “nice customer service”. But it does not help that much. I’ll explain myself.

Let me describe to you what I called limited democracy here and how “power” and influence are distributed in FOSS projects.

A FOSS project mainly produces code. Its sole reason, in fact, is to produce code; whether someone pays for it or manages to be a guru at product strategy and marketing so well he can even entrance hackers in its “Reality Distortion Field” is another question. FOSS projects produce code. Then, around that rough code you have another categories of contributors: the QA testers, the localizers, the documentation writers, the marketers (no particular order here); sometimes you have the extension developers as well. All these people do something very specific: they contribute to the project. Granted it might not only be code, but that’s beside the point. They contribute and they make the project. The reason they contribute might be completely unknown to you, or there might be as many reasons as there are contributors. It’s good sometimes to question or to know what’s the “general reason” to contribute from one or two active contributors, but it’s not always necessary. Back to our contributors; they form the active people who push the project forward, heck, they are the project themselves. But because each of them might contribute for various and sometimes opposite reasons, any of them, sometimes even all of them or a good majority of them, will stop contributing; conversely, they might even increase their contribution. If you stick to the original line from Eric Raymond (the Cathedral and the Bazaar, a must read), the reason any developer would contribute is because he/she’d like to “scratch an itch”. Granted that scratch might be for hire or is already funded, but that’s besides the point.

In the end, it’s the people who make the software (and distribute it, promote it) who call the shots. They call the shots because they get to “make” the software at various levels. So it’s a meritocracy because it’s a “do-ocracy” in a sense. The good news here is that it makes up for quite a lot of people. The not so good news in a sense, is that “mere” users, by which I mean “passive” users, who do not contribute anything in terms of code, tests, localization, documentation, dictionaries, pamphlets, designs, etc. are only left with one choice: to use the software if they like it, or to stop using it. The only reason is not that it’s not a democracy, it’s just that they don’t have the power to act on the software project unless they adopt or reject it.

There is also a more subtle good part in this: no user is barred to join the contributors’ ranks; and when this user actually does, he’ll have a say as long as he remains a contributor.

There are projects who do not formally formalize too much who specifically are their contributors. Some others do. The Document Foundation does formalize it to the extent that it is our contributors who “own the foundation” and nobody else does. It’s not just in our social contract or an unwritten assumption, it’s legal . There are rather broad criteria to define what a contributor is and does (our bylaws and statutes define them) and anyone who qualifies become thus a member of the foundation with rather large ” political” rights. In this sense we have democracy. But FOSS projects do not run on open and democratic structure; they run on transparent and agreed processes, with a free and open source code at their core.

I had several colleagues, friends and people asking me whether they should run Arch Linux on their desktops or laptops. I even read someone’s blog today on his impression on Arch Linux and Ubuntu. It’s time for me to jump in and clarify what you should expect with Arch Linux as a desktop on a daily basis.

Arch Linux is a rolling release system. What this means is that you do not get releases at specific intervals in time, like you do with Ubuntu, OpenSuse or Fedora. Instead there is a constant stream of updates that are uploaded on the distribution servers and that you can pull almost everyday. These updates are uploaded after a testing period by the Arch Linux  testing community (you can switch to the testing mirrors if you wish) and it is up to you to choose if you want to install them or not.

Such a rolling release process eliminates the need to accomplish major upgrade and makes you gain time, as you typically end up installing your Arch Linux system once, or twice if you really screwed up something. Also, Arch Linux does not come with very specific tools (aside the pacman package manager) and therefore you do not end up with Unity vs. Gnome Shell or YAST and PUP, or whatever control center. You get the latest KDE version, the latest Gnome 3 version, the latest Unity and the latest Xfce (these are examples). Pretty much everything is configurable as the distribution gets to make choices on core components versions (glibc, python, etc.) and exercises its value and role on testing and QA (what happens after each kernel upgrade, etc.)

Yet all this does not mean the distribution is hard to use. Not at all. The installation process may take a while (several hours.. or less) and I would be tempted to claim that what takes time is to transfer your own content and granular application settings to the new system, such as themes, pictures, etc.

But let’s focus a bit on the installation process: that’s where things tend to get rougher. Arch Linux uses a command line installer. It does not make things very difficult to understand – besides, you can always refer to some very good documentation – but it definitely makes the process more intimidating and any issue or inconvenience tends to be perceived as a bigger annoyance than what it really is. Of course, such a comment has to be put in context of other Linux flavors where you insert a DVD and don’t do much aside choosing your keyboard and entering your name. Not so long away you still had to be careful when partitioning your hard disk even with an user-friendly interface. In any case, the installation process is what will make you reach a working, fully graphical and modern system or a glowing command-line mess. There’s nothing specific to avoid here, only know that your patience and work will be rewarded and that in a sense, such an installation is not that hard to perform.

Once your system is up and running, everything tends to run smoothly and you end up with a nice, fully customizable desktop. You can use  “community contributed packages” from the Arch Linux User Repository to complement your software tools, themes, fonts, games and utilities.

As a conclusion, I would say that while Arch is not as easy to install as, say, Ubuntu, once you’ve gone past it, you will be surprized how easy it is to use it, almost as easy than Ubuntu or any other distribution. Arch Linux is a very fun and stable distribution that successfully blends the bleeding edge, stability and hackability of Linux. Don’t be fooled by the rumours saying it’s for the elite. It is made for you, if you can give it 3 hours maximum of your time to install it, and it is likely you will never switch back.

I’m a rather outspoken user of Arch Linux after having used and tried many other distributions (MandrakeSoft/Mandriva, Suse, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, SLAX, Chakra and even a few others) and I think I got to like the rolling release concept quite a lot. The rolling release concept essentially takes away the notion of milestone release for a Linux distribution and replaces it by incremental and almost continuous updates. Which means that everyday I can update my system and it’s thus almost always running the most recent stable software versions. Note that the upgrade is my choice only, I could stop doing this for 3 weeks instance and that would be fine. Using Arch Linux does not only mean embracing the rolling release distribution model. It also  means being ready to install your system from the command line (granted, you only do that once in theory) which can be tedious but not reall difficult. Another “side effect” of using Arch Linux is that the distribution’s package management is done entirely through the command line and with the help of the excellent package manager pacman. Pacman is however not a graphical package manager, or rather, it does not come with a default, out of the box graphical front-end. Several of them do exist but it does not seem to be in the culture of Arch Linux to use one on a regular basis. Enter AppSet. AppSet is a very nice graphical package manager written in Qt; it even got me use KDE again on par with Gnome. AppSet does not only run on Arch Linux, it also supports Chakra (a very close fork of Arch Linux) and works in theory with any other packaging system.

In the times of ubiquitous App Stores, even the ones that actually values and promotes Free Software such as the Ubuntu App Store, it’s good to hear you still have innovation happening in this field, with tools being developed that let users be in total control of their system. I’m sure that the AppSet team would welcome more contributors and more distributions!

First I would like to thank everyone for their interest in LibreOffice! Second, I think it’s very important to understand that there’s a difference between PPAs and the default version shipped by Ubuntu. Just like any other distribution, Ubuntu releases a full GNU/Linux system that comes with a set of fully defined and qualified packages. Unless Ubuntu chooses to upgrade these packages themselves, they won’t move or change until the next version of the distribution is released.  PPAs are a community based and convenient way to use more up-to-date version of software packages, but do not expect the same quality or to have a fault-proof software running; it’s an upgrade for the users who wish to enjoy their system with more spice and not run a stable and fixed system with little or no change from the original release.

In the case of LibreOffice, it is very important to realize that THE  DOCUMENT FOUNDATION DOES NOT RELEASE ITS OWN PPAs. Please don’t ask us to release a PPA. Inside the LibreOffice, each GNU/Linux distribution is responsible for its own packaging. We do however release .debs and .rpms but these are our very own. The packages you will find in many distributions tend to be optimized or repackaged by the distribution developers themselves.  So if you look at Launchpad, you will see that the LibreOffice PPAs are there and are mostly done by the official Canonical LibreOffice team. They’re members of the Document Foundation themselves, but do not expect the Document Foundation to release PPAs, as it is this team’s sole choice (mostly based on their own remaining available time, I would imagine).

If you really want to help, I would suggest you join the Ubuntu team, or start packaging your own PPA. And you will always have the possibility to install the .debs by yourself by downloading them directly on the LibreOffice website.  Also please check our general release plan for an overview of our general release timing in 2011 and 2012.

Here’s a couple of links before an even more active month of May:

• Ars Aperta has contributed to a pretty interesting project, dubbed ODFgr and hosted by the OpenDoc Society. The goal of this website is to provide any developer with even a limited knowledge of ODF with resources and tools to manipulated ODF documents. We tried to design a pedagogical platform that the largest number will understand. Most of the examples are listed by languages (we mostly have Python and Perl) and you can study both the explanation and learn how to reproduce and implement it. We hope it will be the right spot for anyone willing to get started on OpenDocument hacking and development.
• Events-wise the month of May will be busy. I will attend the OASIS Board of Directors’ meetingin Berlin and meet with the Bitkom. The week after that Ars Aperta will join a session on the political and legal issues pertaining to Free Software development during the Linux Solutions 2011 event in Paris. I will also give another talk during the same event as part of the Document Foundation and our experience with forks. Spoons shall come next year.

In a nutshell, OpenSuse has been breaking away very slowly from its main sponsor, Novell, for about 2 and a half years. The first visible sign of this -which really was a weak signal nonetheless- was the decision taken by the community to switch back to KDE as their preferred desktop instead of Gnome. Of course, just like Mandriva/Mandrakesoft, Suse had always been more KDE oriented than  Gnome. Yet Gnome is where the business, the stability, and theenterprise applications are supposed to be found, and on Gnome lied Ximian, the Groupwise integration etc. Then the OpenSuse folks started to open a brainstorming plan in order to define a new strategy for OpenSuse, apparently independent of what Novell was planning to do or sell with respect to that. This strategy brainstorming session ultimately reached its conclusion a few days ago:

https://lite.co-ment.com/text/lNPCgzeGHdV/history-version/RE3kSeg3LGI/

As you will see, what OpenSuse intends to be is a general-purpose, desktop oriented distribution; which means at the same time that nothing will change in its actual orientations and that it even departs from its usual enterprise polish it always had had. But what this also means is that we will not see OpenSuse or Suse on handhelds or tablets or any other new markets. This is a significant information, especially if you see that whoever will buy the Suse part of Novell in early 2011 might not be able to have its own way if  it does not take the time to engage with the community: The OpenSuse project seems to be very autonomous and not at all ready to fall into whatever new goals any future sponsor might want to achieve. And if it takes a fork to dot it, there’s the Mandriva case.  But always remember that OpenSuse has a very strong userbase and market share, although it’s been declining ever since 2009. What will be interesting nonetheless will be what the future owner of the Suse brand will want to do and how it plans to innovate. OpenSuse can be a general-purpose distribution; the user base is there, but the value might be hard to create if there’s no real business story to tell behind it.

Back to Mandriva / Mageia now. It’s perhaps to early to say anything about Mageia, except they seem to be made of some pretty skilled  people; and that’s usually not the kind of engineers you find easily on the market. They claim to continue what Mandriva as a distro was good at, only in a better way, and without the perceived historical failures of the past management teams.

Interestingly enough, I think Mageia is bad news for Mandriva, and it means that Mandriva should find an innovative business model and acquire/change to a new focus. Let me explain. Reading the Mageia website and going around the Internet, here’s what I understand:
- Mageia realizes the need to be a linux distro for other kinds of
terminals (tablets, handhelds, etc.)
- Mageia has crafted two strong bulletpoints in its storytelling that DOES hurt Mandriva starting today: Mageia “is” Mandriva, since it is
made of the engineers who have coded Mandriva ever since a few years; second, Mageia is “better” since they understood what “is wrong”: the management of Mandriva. (Nobody ever found anything to complain about Mandriva as a distro, it’s still one of the best on the market).
- Mageia is soon to “take over” the market: everyone on the forums  seem to dig Mageia; and in a sense, it’s what the Mandriva community and the French FOSS community was expecting.

If the last claim sounds bold, think again: what is the value of having a Mandriva desktop outside of a corporate support contract (same goes for a server) now that there’s Mageia? The way to create value for Mandriva is to depart from the traditional all-purposes distribution model (which still does not mean they would have to “cut” the actual distribution) and innovate first at the distribution level, and then, if possible, go up the ladder by growing a very skilled technical team able to innovate as an operating system, either by contributing upstream again, which it hardly does anymore these days, or innovating on the user experience just like Ubuntu does and is now clearly intensifying as a strategy.

In the case of Mandriva and Mageia, what might become interesting to watch is the potential race between the two twin-distributions; one is now almost an empty shell, deprived of its developers, and the other one has developers but no resources. In any case, it’s time these two get a real shot at innovating, for the sake of the entire Free and Open Source Software ecosystem.

• The Hungarian President ruling over France -I guess it is now a correct qualification of Nicolas Sarkozy based on the distinctions between French citizens he would like to make- has managed to stir quite a bit of outrage these days. The problem is that the case is a bit more complex than  what it seems. For several years now, taking the metro in Paris or walking on frequented streets, you couldn’t have missed the presence of Roma begging or playing music. Earlier this summer though, an incident between cops and a few Gypsies (not to be mixed with Roma, as they have been French centuries ago) prompted our beloved Hungarian President to demand laws that could lead a fresh French citizen to have his/her nationality withdrawn.  The absurdity and dangerousness of such measures set aside, the whole move was, according to some presidential majority representatives, an electoral maneuver designed to lure extreme-right voters back to the President’s camp. I predict this strategy is doomed to fail, as 30 years of recent French political History have shown.  On top of that, the methods of the French police to arrest the Roma and shove them in an airplane are not just outrightly scandalous, they are also useless: not only are Roma European citizens, they’re also migrant, poor, and many of them are locked inside mafious organizations that will put them back on the same streets they just left. But no attempt to fight this sort of crime ever emerged from the brain of our genius -and Hungarian (& partly Greek)- President. In fact, many people were wondering why the police was not doing anything to stop some of these Roma and take them away from the streets. When metros and public spaces are filled with CCCTVs you have to wonder what was going on… and in fact, their sudden arrest and expulsion of 100 people was a sheer act of disingenuity from a government that acted as if it had just discovered the issue one week before. That’s what I call a lie, as these Roma were literally kept on the back burner in case their public arrest might serve for political purposes. How convenient.
• How convenient here again: Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, gets charged with rape accusations, arrested by police and … the police withdraws the charge. “Strong social pressure” is the way a lobbyist once described these sorts of interesting events to me. If you thought the CIA could do something more effective than that, think again: they could not even predict 9/11.
• On a different level, but very much disingenuous: Oracle sues Google over alleged patent infringements on Java. This does not just highlight the absurdity of software patents once again, it shows an incredible lack of understanding on how ecosystems and FOSS work. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m confident that Google has money to pay its lawyers, and so does Oracle, but why wasting so much money? Time to land back on earth, Iron Man…

• Join us at the OOoCON 2010 in Budapest, we’ll be happy to meet you, the city is beautiful, the conference topics quite interesting (as far as the ones I reviewed)… And don’t forget to register before the 27th of August! More details here.
• Just alongside the OOoCON in Budapest, there will be an unique event: the OASIS Interop Demo on ODF. This will be the opportunity for ODF implementations to compete and stress test both the different applications and libraries, but also the standard itself. Ars Aperta will represent lpOD there.
• Mark your calendar for the OpenWorld Forum in Paris and attend Ars Aperta’s conferences there. We have quite exciting news coming up for you.
• Last but not least, I have to share something that may interest a relatively minor portion of the readers of this blog, nonetheless I won’t refrain from letting you know that upon installing the latest OpenSuse 11.3 on my father’s laptop, I noticed a notable performance improvement of the Evolution Email and groupware suite. However, I still do not understand why for the love of G*d Evolution cannot use multiple inboxes…

Time for vacations!!!

In previous posts, I had mentioned that I’m using KDE more and more. This is very much true today, but somehow I haven’t entirely migrated to KDE yet. I’m of course talking about the KDE 4 branch. I thought it would be interesting to share my reasons why my primary desktop on GNU/Linux is still Gnome.

Before the release of the KDE 4 and its subsequent versions, I was only seldomly using KDE. For some reason it felt odd to me; I never quite got used to its looks and style. Things changed a lot with KDE 4. I have been testing KDE ever since the 4.0 release and have been using it regularly in a “production-mode” ever since. By production mode I mean that I’m using it at work over extended periods of time (one full day of work or one half-day). Yet I never fully transitioned fully to KDE, using instead Gnome as my main and stable desktop. I evaluate the usage ratio in the following way: Gnome is around 60% of times, KDE 40%. There are some reasons for this that I would like to share here. They fall into two broad categories: Things KDE could improve and things Gnome still has the upper hand on. For what it’s worth, I’m using Arch Linux, which means the KDE and Gnome versions are the latest stable and pristine versions released straight out of their respective projects (no distribution specific tweaks).

• Things KDE could improve:

I see two main areas for improvements, which does not mean KDE fails in these two fields, but simply that I find things could just work better. The first one is stability, which really means quality and the second one is the applications. Don’t get me wrong: There has been a huge leap towards quality between the ill-fated 4.0 release and the 4.4.5 one. KDE is stable, very stable in fact, but some details just remain a bit clunky. The Plasma desktop could be more stable as it behaves sometimes in a funny way: Plasmoids would not show up after logging into the system for no clear reason. Talking about Plasmoids, these can be sometimes buggy and the Plasmoids Installation and selection interface could really be clearer (although it does look quite elegant).

On the side of applications, I am still looking for better replacements of some of the software I use everyday, namely: Claws-Mail, Rythmnbox, and Nautilus. I know I can use them on KDE (although it would not make sense for Nautilus) but obviously GTK+ software does not play that well on KDE even with Qt styles. I don’t think I would trade Claws-Mail for any other email apps (and no, I don’t like Thunderbird), while the Kontact suite that ships with Kmail does not seem to meet my expectations (handling tons of emails while using MH mailboxes). Rhythmnbox is somewhat of a question mark. I like this one, but believe it too could use some improvements, and Amarok is an obvious choice on the KDE platform. I have been using Amarok regularly but I find it quite difficult to configure and not really user-friendly, although I understand there are lots of fans of this media player out there who could help me…. The same line of thought goes for Nautilus vs. Dolphin. I am quite sure that Dolphin is very powerful but it lacks this sense of simplicity that Nautilus conveys. Perhaps toying around with its default settings could be the key. Nautilus obviously has its drawbacks too.

There is another type of applications KDE is lagging behind: Web browsers. I really like Firefox, which is cross-platform, but I have never used it exclusively. In fact I do like to use platform specific browsers as they are supposed to provide a more diverse and integrated experience. Unfortunately, Konqueror is really outdated, Arora (using the webkit) is way too unstable, which leaves me with reKonq. I think this last one still needs improvements (especially in the interface and bookmark management) but it is so far the most powerful browser for KDE.

• Things Gnome does better

Gnome does certain things better, some of which I already outlined above. I can add to this list a general feeling of stability and simplicity. Obviously, you don’t have to use Claws-Mail to stick to Gnome: but you could be using Evolution, or Thunderbird and still have a better experience on that one. Another advantage with Gnome is that it does convey this sense of complete control over the interface that KDE 4.0 traded away for a much more innovative -and beautiful- experience. A well-configured Gnome, as a result, will always feel faster and more effective than a well-configured KDE. Faster access to your data, to any of your applications, better sense of desktop room and predictability have so far kept me to fully leave Gnome.

Gnome, however, will very soon change its interface significantly: I have given a try to the Gnome-Shell interface, and I must say that while I find its concepts quite relevant and useful, I keep on having the feeling it’s a great interface for… Netbooks and small devices. I think I will in fact use KDE more.

Last but not least, I felt this post would not be complete if I wasn’t quickly highlighting the fact that Qt apps for the KDE platform tend to become more and more powerful and feature packed. I would not be using KDE so much if it weren’t for Okular and Gwenview. The document viewer is simply a swiss-army knife for documents reading and annotating, while Gwenview provides a much better experience than F-Spot will probably ever deliver.

As you can see, I’m still somewhat undecided on these matters, but can probably make up my mind quickly if any of the areas discussed above actually gets improved. Stay tuned!

]]> http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2010/07/25/why-im-not-moving-to-kde-yet/feed/ 3 http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2010/07/06/is-there-really-an-open-source-tea-party-movement/ http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2010/07/06/is-there-really-an-open-source-tea-party-movement/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:46:25 +0000 Charles http://standardsandfreedom.net/?p=197 A few days ago ZD Net’s anchor Dana Blankenhorn came up with an interesting theory. Because of the recent Bilski judgement by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, the Free & Open Source Software community seems to be divided and looking for scapegoats. One of his “leaders”, Florian Mueller, is actively pointing at IBM as being the source of all evil. By evil, he means software patents,  but perhaps also the latest iPhone blunder, the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and probably AIDS as well.

To the credit of Florian Mueller, he’s been involved in the fight against software patents for over 10 years. He also seems to have worked for the Real Madrid Football Club before landing back in Brussels to defend the poor millionaire Monty Widenius against Oracle. Now Florian is all about IBM and claims that IBM essentially shot down the debate on software patents at the Supreme Court by addressing a “Friend of the Court Brief” in which IBM was essentially explaining the Court should not outlaw software patents right away, as these were valuable intangible assets that could badly hurt US companies. Florian Mueller has also been behind the infamous “Open Mainframe” initiative, targeted again at IBM and involving himself in an existing anti-trust case.

I disagree with Dana Blankenhorn on several points. First, Florian Mueller is by no means a leader of the Free & Open Source movement.  Florian had his shot several years ago when the debate on software patents in Europe emerged and was a defining moment for the European community of digital rights and innovation proponents. It was in a sense a “rite of passage” for many. Since that time, some went their own way, some others maintained the flame and vigilance that is tested again these days.  Florian was part of the former group. He went to work for the Real Madrid Football Club, and we somehow lost his track.  Sometimes after the OOXML standardization odyssey, Florian took several planes to Brussels. He went to see many people, including many of my own personal friends and colleagues. His big project was to crush IBM, and Oracle, and anyone who was benefiting from software patents. Well, not exactly anyone: Microsoft was thoroughly avoided each time, sliding through the raindrops, but leaving everyone with an odd taste in the mouth. Soon enough, Florian’s campaigns, backs and forths appeared to many as  they have always been since his come-back: an over-inflated bag of wind.

Let me explain: There is no division when it comes to software patents inside the Free Software & Open Source community. Software patents are evil. They stifle innovation. When used by patent trolls “non-practicing entities” they are at the core of a despicable racketeering system that can at times be seen as proxy war between some large software vendors. When piled up by software vendors, they are used as weapons of mutually assured destruction. That is, by the way, what the Open Invention Network is doing, piling up patents and neutralizing them, and it’s one of the reasons why Canonical recently joined it, as Ars Aperta has done a few years ago. Let there be no doubt: Software patents suck. We do not want them in Europe, no matter how high the pressures are. In this game, every major software vendors has patents on software: IBM, Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Computer Associates,  Novell… heck, I even think that Red Hat has some. Is this a situation we wish to solve? Certainly. Does the fact of owning software patents mean you stand against Free & Open Source Software? Hardly. Does IBM own Software patents? Yes it does. Does IBM help Free & Open Source Software? It did more than most of the others, Red Hat excepted. Does IBM benefit from Free & Open Source Software? It certainly does, it even makes billions of dollars out of it, and they’re not the only ones. But the question is perhaps asked the wrong way, so let me rephrase it: There is a project, there is a team, or only one person, there is code. And when the code is available online, in the form of source code and binary bits, that you can access, study, modify and redistribute the software under these two forms with no constraints attached on the code, then you have Free & Open Source Software. That’s where contributors or sponsors come in. IBM is no different than any contributor or sponsor. There is given project with available code. IBM decides to contribute to it (the same is true for anybody else), period. Free and Open Source Software does not have bow to anyone to strive, because it does not have to “join” one camp or another. It is its own camp, which IBM, Oracle, Google, Red Hat, Novell, etc. agree to join for contributions or not.

In this sense, Florian Mueller has been rattling his saber for almost a year now, launching “fatwas” and anathemas on selected vendors (IBM and to a lesser extent, Oracle) while refusing to address the very big elephant in the room: Microsoft. Now this is not a rant against Microsoft I’m engaging into, but truth be told, Ballmer must have a crack at watching its competitors diving into various anti-trust cases in which they’re involved. And he sure must be very grateful to Florian Mueller, although Florian’s actual impact is very much limited to his own buzz: There is a reality distortion field that seems to be on around Florian’s weblog. It does not go beyond it. Florian has no troops, no clout, no beef, no legitimacy, no credibility among the Free & Open Source Software community. The man seems to have enough money to drum along though and in this sense, he’s acting a bit like  the infamous “Tea Party Movement”: You create a pretendedly grassroots movement in the hope people will believe it’s real until some more people actually joins your cause. In this case, however, I’m afraid this “Tea Party Movement” is stuck at level 1: The Astroturfing stage.

Make no mistake though: we all stand against software patents. But Florian Mueller’s tactic is strange, extremely partial, and leaves some big questions unanswered: Who does benefit from an anti-IBM campaign? Who does benefit from Oracle not merging with a dying Sun? Who does benefit if everybody thinks Google infringes your privacy?