WinDroid announced!

In news just out today: Microsoft will be selling phones based on merging the best features of Windows Phone 7 with the Android Honeycomb, these phones will be produced by Nokia and sold under the moniker 'WinDroid'. Expect to see these phones ready for Christmas. Microsoft refused to be drawn on the rumours of a tablet version being readied.

They plan to use the marketing slogan: 'Powerful Action Is Now For Universal Locations'. The marketing slogan in part derives from the fact that Microsoft will be releasing the phone with multiple carriers in the United States, and also that the phone will be available world wide. However, it will be released in the USA a few months before Europe. The reaction of many industry observers was to wince, and say "Oh no, not again!".

Microsoft and Nokia must have listened to what Google had to say!

Why Google is dropping support for H.264

Google is dropping support for H.264 in its Chrome browser, preferring to put more effort in free codecs like WebM, as Google sees that H.264 is licenced in a way that stifles innovation.

YouTube (owned by Google) is in the process of converting its contents to use WebM. If you want to access it now, you can join the testing phase. Firefox 4, due out in February, will fully support WebM as part of its HTML5 upgrade. There are a number of browsers already supporting WebM, and Google is planning to add WebM functionality to Safari and IE9. Note that Android, the operating system widely used in mobile phones, supports WebM from version 2.3 (Gingerbread) onwards - so Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) destined for tablets will also provide WebM functionality.

See also my more recent posting about for how the codecs vary in their 'openness'.

Problems with H.264/AVC/MPEG-4
While the MPEG LA announced that H.264 encoded internet video is free for end users to watch, people still have to pay large fees to create software that either encodes or decodes using the H.264 family of codecs. So the H.264 is not appropriate to be used in software under the General Public Licence (GPLv2 & GPLv3 – note that the Linux kernel uses the GPLv2 Licence), nor is it suitable for any software developed by people with limited budgets.

WebM advantages
Mainly that WebM is a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone – not just to use, but also to people writing software that either encodes or decodes using WebM codecs. So the WebM codec is fully compatible with both the spirit and technicalities of open source software licensing. Soon lots of hardware will support WebM natively, which will further reduce the initial advantages of H.264.

OpenOffice.org being replaced by LibreOffice

The arrogance of Oracle has more than just annoyed people.

The actions of Oracle: in ignoring their responsibilities to OpenSolaris, and casually shutting down the SPARC servers used for testing PostgreSQL without prior warning - sent a clear message that Oracle was not to be trusted to be in charge of any Open Source project.

Not to mention Oracle suing Google over their alleged misuse of Oracle's Java patents (I think Oracle is legally justified, but an action that will backfire, as it has done tremendous damage to people's willingness to use Java for future developments).

So a large number of companies, including Red Hat (who sponsor the free Fedora Linux distribution) and Google, have bandied together to set up a foundation to support the independent development of the 'OpenOffice.org' code base under the banner 'LibreOffice'.

While Oracle has been invited to join the new foundation, I suspect that Larry's ego is too big to allow it (I hope I am wrong!).

Note that LibreOffice is for all the main operating systems, not just for Linux distributions.

OpenOffice.org Community announces The Document Foundation
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Oracle, who acquired OpenOffice.org assets as a result of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has been invited to become a member of the new Foundation, and donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years. Pending this decision, the brand "LibreOffice" has been chosen for the software going forward.

The Document Foundation is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the former OpenOffice.org community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council. It will be led initially by a Steering Committee of developers and national language projects managers. The Foundation aims to lower the barrier of adoption for both users and developers, to make LibreOffice the most accessible office suite ever.

The Foundation will coordinate and oversee the development of LibreOffice, which is available in beta version at the placeholder site: http://www.libreoffice.org. Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software.
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Charles-H. Schultz of The Document Foundation Answers my Questions About LibreOffice
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Update: H Online is reporting that "The major distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and SUSE, will ship with LibreOffice in preference to OpenOffice."
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JavaOne was fun...
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One of the more entertaining lines I heard was at a cocktail party held by some 3rd party partners. "We love the Oracle sales force!" (what?? surprised look on my face) "They're so nasty, their prices are so high, and their tactics so obnoxious that all we have to do is be credible and treat the customer with respect - then the deal is ours!". Yow.
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