Microsoft’s hollow blow to open source community.

“Microsoft claims that Linux and other open source products violate about 235 of its patents.” This news it been circulated around lately. Several questions come to mind when you read this caption. Is this Microsoft’s new corporate tactic to get even with the open source community? Do Open source products really violate Microsoft patents? If yes, then what was Microsoft doing all these years?

I think this is more of a corporate tactic and the accusation is baseless. The MNC has not yet come up with the list of patents which are violated as claimed. Linus Torvalds has come up with a retaliating response to the accusation. He says that Microsoft violates more patents than anyone does (I somehow feel that this accusation is true :) ) and has challenged the corporation to come up the list of patents which are violated.

These days many corporations are turning towards open source products. Use of such products do not require procuring of licenses, you need not pay any hefty amount as part of procurement. Last but not the least, the source code will be available (under GPL license of course :) ). Thus, the support extended to the open source products makes sense in this context :). IBM is a supporter of Linux. All these factors have proved as a threat to anti-open source organization like Microsoft.

Summarizing the entire issue, one could say that Microsoft is trying to create a storm out of nothing.

Ps: Microsoft has decided not to sue Linux users.

The following links will provide more info :

Microsoft’s claim

Linus Torvalds’s response

Nothing but abstract...

Nothing new is happening these days. It is the same old routine. Waking up early in the morning, going for a walk and doing bit of work out, getting ready to catch the company cab, work for 8.5 hrs, then back to the heavenly abode, read for a while, wash clothes, have dinner and hit bed. Sometimes life becomes too mechanical and monotonous. You wait and wait for something exciting to happen. It is not that there are no new events happening around you. You don’t see the newness in these events. Yet there are days when nothing is happening and you are excited about something unknown. You see freshness in every trivial thing. Anything that is least important, interests you. May be all these abstract feelings can be attributed to the age factor. When life comes across a plain phase with no ups and downs, it is better to change the perception of seeing things. It is better to make some effort to see freshness in every trivial thing we do. Then no matter what life becomes exciting.

Time for me to return to work. :)

By the way this entry is dedicated to Sadhana and Ankit. :)

Train musings and IT….

Train journeys have always fascinated me. The comfort and joy of the journey cannot be surpassed by anything else. It has been almost 8months since I shifted to Bangalore. Every weekend I travel by train to my hometown. (I do commute by buses owing to the circumstances.. that’s a different story altogether..). You come across many interesting/fascinating/idiotic things when you travel in train. Well, I would say that you should be lucky enough for these things to happen. The duration of the journey is around 3hrs. Many a time I have enjoyed joyous/funny moments in train.

Sometimes the Ticket Collector catches some people who are traveling without ticket. The victims usually pay fine and leave silently. There are others who are courageous and argue with TC (God knows what for…) and end in creating a scene in the compartment. (Anyways, it is sometimes good to have some entertainment ;)) There are other people who try to be too curious about their co-passengers. Most of the time my co-passenger starts the conversation like this…

Co-passenger: “Neevu yenu madthiddirra?kelasa na?” (What are you doing?working or studying?)
Me: “kelasa madtidini” (I am working)
Co-passenger: “Yelli? Bangalura?” (where? In Bangalore?)
Me: “Houdu” (Yes)

When you say that you work in Bangalore, the next question will be
“IT?”

(These days Bangalore has become synonymous with IT. You say that you work in Bangalore and it usually means that you work for some IT company. There is a joke which is been circulated since many days…

“In Bangalore, when you throw a stone it will either fall at a dog or at a software engineer” )

The next question will be about the company. And then your co-passenger will give the most awaited response…

“Oh! Howda?? Nanna tammana hedatiya bhavana maga #### companyli iddane… monne monne US ge hoda…blah.. blah.. blah…” (Oh! My brother’s wife’s brother-in-law’s son is in #### company. He went to US… blah… blah… blah...)

Your co-passenger may then spend his/her entire journey in describing the stay in US, though he/she might have never visited. If you are lucky then he/she may shut his/her mouth.

Uncle Sam’s country has influenced Indian economy a lot. If US sneezes, India catches cold (read this some magazine.. :D). If you are in some IT company people usually think that you would some day make it to US, the land of Nirvana…

I almost forgot to mention one important thing. The train from Bangalore to my hometown is always filled with people, most of them working in IT companies returning to their home during the weekend (Like me ;)). So the conversation described above somehow does makes sense…

Hmmm… as I said earlier there are many funny moments… will write about it some other time.. I could not go home this weekend. This blog entry is the result of that..

This is all for now…