Miguel de Icaza & Nat Friedman On Mono

cg writes "LinuxWorld has an article based on quotes from Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman about Ximian's motives, plans and ambitions for Mono. If you read yesterday's story about "Bad Ximian", you should also read Miguel's opinion on Passport."

Comments

Ongoing missing of the point

[Duncan Cragg]

I believe that Microsoft has behaved criminally, has stifled competition." Friedman said, "I think we are calling Microsoft's bluff here. They are saying that .NET is an open system... We're going to implement an open version of it, and see how they react.

With rubbing of the hands and insanely glaring eyes, is how.

So this is about:

.NET technologies including C#

Passport and Hailstorm

Mono is saying .NET/C# technologies are great for us hackers to copy. We can even get MS to agree and help us!

Mono is saying, we don't care about the second bit: Passport and Hailstorm. We can even do our own, super-groovy, hacker's version!

The problem that I and many others have been trying to point out to people is that MS' strategy is indeed to 'open up' the technologies and platforms - because, like in the case of Windows, it buys leverage and dominance on the layer above.

With the Windows platform, that layer above was Office and everyone developing software for their OS. With .NET, that's... Hailstorm and Passport.

As more and more CTOs and dull technical managers buy into the rapidly-spreading .NET platform (whether MS or open source), and more and more CEOs and dull government departments buy into the easy-easy Hailstorm community, it will be as impossible to do anything in your daily personal life without Passport/Hailstorm as it is now impossible to do anything in daily business life without Office.

So now do you get it??? It's your bluff that's being called, pal! And it's considerably more scary to have MS own your identity than simply owning your business desktop!!

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Right on!

[baptiste]

I'm a happy Ximian user and OSS advocate - there aren't any conflicts for me and I chuckle at the ire that Ximian can sometimes cause.

This is great stuff and I think it really puts Miguel's motives down in a clear manner. I think we should all thank them for even trying - I was amazed after all the anti Hailstorm and .NET stuff that's been posted, how folks reacted negatively to Ximian tryin gto start MOno because they were working with Microsoft.

Yes, they might get crushed, but again, they might just glean enough info that they can develop a working alternative without being sucked in. Lets give Ximian credit - they are OSS developers after all and I expect any 'agreement' Microsoft tried to get them sucked into would be picked apart with a fine tooth comb before it was signed to be sure they didn't back themselves into a corner.

Sure, right now Mono is only the .NET side of things - it doesn't deal with Passport. But you can bet that other folks are already working on it - Seems like a sweet deal to me. With Ximian working to develop Mono, more resources are available to work on Passport alternatives - seems like a good thing to me.

So lets not trash Ximian and Miguel for trying - at least they are - more power to them!