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De Icaza Regrets Novell/Microsoft Pact
Ian Lamont writes "Novell Vice President and GNOME architect Miguel de Icaza sounded off at a MIX 08 panel on a number of topics. First, he claimed that he was 'not happy' with Novell's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, saying that if he had his way, the company would have stayed with the open-source community. He also said that neither Windows nor Linux are relevant in the long term, thanks to Web 2.0 business models: 'They might be fantastic products ... but Google has shown itself to be a cash cow. There is a feature beyond selling corporate [software] and patents ... it's going to be owning end users.' He also tangled with Mike Schroepfer, a Mozilla engineering executive, about extending patent protection for Moonlight to third parties. However, de Icaza did say that Novell has 'done the best it could to balance open-source interests with patent indemnification.' We discussed the beginnings of the deal between Microsoft and Novell back in 2006."
Oh, well, that just makes it all better now, doesn't it? Miguel says he's sorry, guys. Will you forgive him?
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deal with the devil, and you'll be rich-- but you'll lose your soul. Tell Robert Johnson hello, Miguel.
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Not sure what he's trying to achieve by saying this.
To people in the OSS camp, this will seem like too little, too late. That ship has already sailed.
To people in Redmond, this isn't exactly inspiring confidence in the reliability of Novell as a partner, and he's bashing their partnership at their own conference, no less.
And the people "above his paygrade" are probably not going to be too happy with him either.
First .NET, now Web 2.0 (I hate that phrase). He knows a bandwagon when he sees one.
But I still fail to see how Web 2.0 will make an operating system irrelevant. The browser has to run on something. The server has to run on something too. And with the talk about "local web 2.0 apps", they might even be the same machine. Then you'll really need a good OS to schedule and mediate the needless and vast layers of extra complexity.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Let he who has never used proprietary software cast the first stone.
To me de Icaza was always the leading technologist of GNOME. Sadly he went into a direction that contributed to the loss of focus of what GNOME is. With indemnification or not, many of the main contributors to GNOME will not include anything that uses Mono.
.02$
Sun for certain will not work with a direct competitor to Java. Red Hat will rightfully avoid including something that requires them to go in bed with Microsoft over patents.
Linux kernel development shows that big free software projects need both enthusiast but also corporate contributors. So GNOME, not unlike the kernel, garnered support by companies like Sun, but also countless small guy contributors. With Mono de Icaza put powerful centrifugal forces that work against GNOME.
just my
Miguel "OOXML is a great standard" De Icaza
Oh dear - permit me to laugh at Miguel for having the last laugh on him and his 'company'.
Yes Gnome is ok, the ooxml feature in the pipe line well thats a mistake but you got to keep Ron (thats his ceo) sweet don't you
Google is open source. If google had to pay microsoft licensing ms would not sell them to Google. So I submit that Novell isn't relevant and if we take his word that the patent fud has not improved that much Novells prospects then the problem lies in the boardroom at Novell.
Miguel please do look forward to becoming a microsoft employee.
I will assume that Microsoft told Miguel once and for all that they weren't going to hire him, so he decided to quit sucking up to them.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This isn't about someone who's neutral to the whole Microsoft/Linux thing. This is about a guy who has consistently attempted to push Microsoft-controlled technologies into the core of the Linux desktop. Anyone who's been around for the past 10-20 years knows that Microsoft has a really bad habit of perverting standards to screw competitors in the most unethical way imaginable. Miguel's insistence on pushing .NET and OOXML has been at best confusing, and at worst damn suspicious.
And now, after years of being abused for this, he's putting the icing on the cake of making an ass of himself by finally admitting that, yes, it really is a damn stupid idea.
What, exactly, would a Web 2.0 3D solid-modeling CAD program be? Or Web 2.0 3D games? Web 2.0 Medical imaging systems?
People who say operating systems are irrelevant because of the web immediately go into the "non-credible tech pundit" bin for me, because they've already shown, by that statement, that they *don't get it*. There are *many* applications we use computers for, which would not be good fits for the "Web 2.0" model. Sure, basic data storage and retrieval apps (documents, databases) can be made "Web 2.0" applications. But what is a Web 2.0 media player (the closest you get is something like Flash or Silverlight/Moonlight, and those are basically native Apps that display their output embedded in the browser window).
Linux matters, because if Microsoft had succeeded in taking over the server market, all those startups wouldn't have happened. Google wouldn't have happened.
And the reason why people are moving to Web 2.0 is not because the technology is necessarily better than doing stuff on the desktop, it's because Microsoft's desktop dominance has caused the desktop to stagnate and their monopolistic practices have kept innovators out of the market (it's also because Sun screwed up the one promising alternative model).
We still need Linux to run all those servers. We need Linux to run handheld devices. We need Linux for scientific workstations. And we need Linux for Web 2.0 desktops, desktops that provide standards compliant browsers, RSS software, HTML editors, E-mail clients, backup, P2P, etc. at a combined hardware+software cost lower than a Microsoft Vista license.
Actually Microsoft paid Novell the $350 million dollars. Which is why Novell isn't interested in backing out of the deal.
In other words, Microsoft was willing to pay Novell $350 million dollars to put a cloud over Linux and Free Software. Novell, in return has to pay a token amount for each commercial distribution sold. Novell is as happy as can be with the situation. After all, Novell can tell its customers that it has taken care of the Microsoft patent issue. So when Microsoft starts talking trash about Free Software and patents Novell can say that it has the solution.
The real problem is that Novell relies on a lot of hackers that aren't part of Novell, and that, in many cases, actually compete against Novell. Now Novell has a deal with Microsoft that makes it look dangerous to purchase your Free Software from anyone but Novell, and that doesn't make these third party hackers happy.
Make no mistake, Novell made out like a bandit. It received well over a quarter of a billion dollars in cash, it became the "preferred Linux vendor" for Microsoft's sales associates, and SuSE Linux is now differentiated from all of the other Linux vendors because Novell has a patent deal with Microsoft. This differentiation has allowed Novell to snag some big clients that almost certainly would have gone with Red Hat otherwise. Novell doesn't have even a tiny bit of buyer's remorse. Novell just wants to be able to keep the Microsoft deal and not lose the trust of the Free Software community that it relies on for more Free Software.
And Miguel De Icaza hasn't been relevant for __DIETY__ knows how long. The original microsoftie wannabe shill-boy.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Novell can say that it has the solution.
It can say it but it'd be lying; with GPLv3 the pact becomes worthless.
This differentiation has allowed Novell to snag some big clients that almost certainly would have gone with Red Hat otherwise.
It probably lost them quite a few too. And those who'd been dubious about SuSE's not-quite-free history but warmed up to Novell most likely placed SuSE straight back in the don't-touch-with-a-ten-feet-pole pile.
I'd say the deal has lost them any trust the free software community had. Any code coming out of Novell is now suspect; potentially patent encumbered and possibly intended as a trap. Novell now has a monetary interest in poisoning the community software pool; thats reason enough to distrust anything they say or do.
It can say it but it'd be lying; with GPLv3 the pact becomes worthless. You may want to check the facts again. The GPLv3 explicitly didn't include provisions that apply retroactively, as would be the case in the Novell patent agreement. The GPLv3 authors did so because of this agreement.
Do you realize that you just stated a polarized viewpoint of a polarized viewpoint? You took a web site full of participants of every background and perspective, and reduced them to a single characteristic -- that of bipolarity.
[ponders carefully with an analytic memory, having been a long time slashdotter] ...Seriously, everyone does that. :/
Don't play stupid, Twitter -- you damn well know I'm talking about the Linux kernel (along with other, less important, projects that are still licensed under GPLv2 without the "or later" clause -- which do exist, I'm sure). And you also damn well know that the GNU toolchain can perfectly well be used to build non-GPLv3 (and even proprietary) applications. Output isn't covered by the GPL unless the program puts it's own code into it (and Bison has an exception for that), glibc is LGPL rather than GPL, etc. Speaking of which, gnu.org's glibc manual still even lists LGPLv2 (not v3) as the license! (I realize it's the COPYING file in the actual source that matters, but I don't have current glibc source available right now and don't feel like bothering to download it to check.)
In other words, I've been around here on Slashdot long enough to know how you can be rather zealous (to put it politely) in your Free Software advocacy, and that means that I can see through your bullshit. But don't misunderstand me: I'm just as big an advocate as you are, and I understand these licensing issues at least as well as you do. I just realize that spreading FUD isn't helpful to the cause, and I look forward to the day that you realize it too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Seems to me his comments relate specifically to Novell's patent deal with Microsoft, not his efforts to produce free software implementations of Microsoft's stuff.
.NET and Silverlight regardless of whether they are available for Linux or not. If they're not available then it is Linux that will suffer, as it will not be able to offer as rich a user experience as Windows. So he has undertaken the job of helping produce compatible open source implementations for Linux (and other OS's). I don't imagine many people have a problem with this in concept. It's no different from what the Wine project is doing, and they don't seem to get keelhauled for being Microsoft shills every time they are mentioned on Slashdot.
.NET, Silverlight and OOXML are actually quite good, and that free software developers should make use of them to develop software, instead of just seeing them as a way to help migration away from Windows. This I have difficulty with. I support open standards, and while parts .NET are standardised, their development is hardly open in the way say HTML or C++ is open. But in truth, the free software community has failed to provide a real alternative to technologies like .NET or Silverlight. For example, where is the open standard alternative to Flash and Silverlight? Sure, a combination of SVG, JavaScript and a few other things might get you a similar level of functionality, but the end-to-end ecosystem of a coalesced product, browser plug-ins, developer tools, examples and learning material just isn't there, despite the community having had years to produce it.
I'm always disappointed when I see the abuse heaped on de Icaza by the Slashdot crowd, simply because he doesn't quite hate Microsoft enough. The guy has spent years developing free applications, and has likely written ten times more open source code than his detractors will ever produce. If you actually read his opinions or listen to him speak, it's clear that he is committed to the ideals of free software, he just doesn't buy into the whole partisan "micro$oft sux!" attitude. I wish people would get some perspective on this issue and learn that you can disagree with someone in an informed manner without resorting to childish name-calling. That kind of behavior reflects far worse on the abusers, and confirms the wider perception of Slashdot geeks as childish and belligerent fundamentalists.
Microsoft's dominance is a fact, we (e.g. the free software community) may not like it, but we have to deal with it. De Icaza's stance is that people will use
His more controversial stance is that suggesting that the Microsoft technologies like
Ultimately, it isn't good enough to say to users and developers, you can choose between great proprietary solutions and mediocre open ones. Free software needs to be as good as or better than non-free software if it is to succeed. If it isn't, then most people will inevitably choose the proprietary solutions and free software developers will have to clone them to keep up. So if people don't agree with Miguel de Icaza, then maybe they should concentrate less on attacking him and more on producing great open solutions that will blow Microsoft and everyone else's out of the water.