"And the truth is I felt used and abused. How could Novell enter into such a deal? Then top it off with selling 882 patents to a Microsoft-organized consortium?"

Companies with inferior products are often tempted to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Paul Rubens wonder if Novell's FUD campaign a sign of a company that is afraid of the truth.

Dealing with rumors and gossip is like nailing jelly to the wall. The right (wrong?) ones take on a patina of truth they don't deserve, just because they sound right or we feel they should be right.

To understand the markets you have to know something about magicians, and how they work.

When Pamela Jones, better known as PJ, started Groklaw, a Web site devoted to covering and explaining legal cases of interest to the Free Software and Open Source communities, she preferred to remain anonymous and showed no desire to become well-known.

Am I asking for too much here to want an equally easy install experience on Linux for FOSS software as I enjoy on Windows? If Linux is ever to gain any sort of real market share in the desktop market I feel this is some thing that must happen. But maybe I am wrong.

The truth being they are more trouble than they are worth. Ever since the State Street case set off a gold rush to patent software, and software concepts, Microsoft has been tieing itself in knots. (Here is a fun game. Invite your favorite Microsoft employee to lunch and then show up in this snazzy t-shirt from Zazzle.com. Inspiration for Insanity indeed.)

Had Microsoft played by the rules like a gentleman, then we would only say that OOXML is deeply flawed (which it is), not a deeply-rooted fraud. Some folks are determined to bring justice, but in a world of intellectual insanity and lawyers, justice is expensive whereas corruption comes cheap.

Last night I received a google alert about a new blog posting with a most misleading title. The title read "OSI Approves Microsoft's 'Shared Software' Licenses". This half-truth was paired with another half-truth: that I was President of the Portland-based Open Source Initiative. (The OSI is incorporated in California.)