Weekly news wrap-up: Microsoft threatens to scrap Windows, KDE programming spat

The Open Source community was engaged in two huge flaps this week, one concerning threats by a major Linux competitor to discontinue its products and one concerning accusations that development on KDE, a major Open Source desktop project, is broken.

That major Linux competitor is Microsoft, and CEO Steve Ballmer suggested in a deposition recently released that the only way to comply with some demands in its antitrust negotiations was to pull Windows completely off the shelves. Does anyone find it slightly ironic that a company busted for its monopolistic practices is now threatening the ultimate monopolistic action: Take its toys and go home? I can see a new Windows ad campaign: “If where you want to go today isn’t where we want to go, then screw ya!”

Our own Robin Miller asks Windows users how many more reasons they need to stop buying Microsoft products. Linux is cheaper, crashes less and has programs that will open and create all those documents created with proprietary programs that run on Windows, which are soon-to-be legacy programs if Ballmer’s serious about his threats.

osOpinion also says it’s “time to call Microsoft’s bluff.”

While we’re on the subject of Microsoft ironies, a company exec says it “loves” Open Source, just not the GNU General Public License. Remember, this is the company that, in the last 14 months, called Open Source un-American, Linux a “cancer,” and Linux the top threat to Microsoft. Are we witnessing a total conversion? If that’s love, I wonder what Microsoft says about something it hates.

KDE flame war

An argument about the KDE 3 development process erupted this weekend, with one observer alleging all kinds of project mismanagement. “The future, though uncertain, is likely to bring the conclusion that KDE 3.0 was the highest profile KDE failure to date,” wrote Neil Stevens to the kde-devel list. His complaints include packages missing from the release entirely;
rampant compile problems; and many outstanding bugs.

But the KDE development team issuing a point-by-point rebuttal, saying things aren’t as bad as all that.

Other rebuttals, of sorts

Fox News is one of the first mainstream media outlets to call the proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act a bad idea. The legislation, pushed by the movie and music industries, would mandate proprietary copy-protection in every digital device and every computer operating system sold in the United States. The first Senate committee hearing on the SSSCA was earlier this month, but there are lots more to go.

NewsForge broke the SSSCA story last September. It’s nice to see that Fox News and all the rest are finally getting around to covering it.

Alexander Tormasov, SWsoft’s chief scientist, responds to a Sun Microsystems allegation that Linux isn’t right for mainframes. He writes: “Sun claims that Linux is ‘designed for Intel’ and that ‘Linux on the mainframe is complicated.’ This obviously shows a lack of understanding of Linux since Linux is widely available in Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, and Sparc systems.”

Other news …