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De Icaza Responds To Stallman
ndogg writes "It's no secret that Stallman doesn't like Mono. Miguel, however, has been pretty quiet about those criticisms, until now. It seems he'll no longer be quiet. He's responded strongly to an article by Stallman that criticizes Codeplex about its aims due to its origin at Microsoft. Miguel says Stallman is fearmongering, and is missing an opportunity by his criticism."
Microsoft should ask for its money back. de Icaza is a terrible troll.
Stallman is of course right to point out that he is a Microsoft apologist - he is a notorious one. It is beyond argument that Microsoft spends significant dollars in direct and "personal" attempts to crush free software development projects such as Linux through the most indefensible barratry. It's also widely known that this is only one of a multi-prong strategy that includes coopting competing projects, through many means, including hiring key team members, and PR efforts, including hiring astroturfing firms - some of which patronize this very site, and you will meet some of their employees (or contractors) today. :)
Miguel must chuckle at himself when he writes things like "Fear mongering is a vibrant industry." It is too rich in irony for him not to know it. Yes, he suggests Microsoft is our "ally." A hilarious notion that, when he writes it, makes it clear what contempt he has for you, the reader.
If you judge someone by their actions, then there is no need to discuss how we judge Microsoft and their relationship to free software. It is easy to understand the lense through which we see codeplex even if they were to say nothing controversial. But apparently one of their goals is already clear - to throw another line of men at the front of the rhetorical "war" between free as in beer and free as in speech.
Just keep in mind that this is pure wasted time. RMS correctly points out that the war was won long ago - by a recognition of the value of the GPL and of free software. It's quite easy to understand - most people, when they give away their work, have a common moral compass, and they share certain values about how they would like to see that work go out into the world. i.e. They would rather some 3rd party not get paid for what they did for free. And they would rather others have the freedom to tinker, just as they did. Most ("important, widely used, active") open source software is free software for this reason. Of course, the "debate" will never end, either. But let's just keep it in perspective.
Ah Miguel. His rant may have virtually zero actual content, but at least he gets points for plugging "The Power of Nightmares." Just a few years too late, alas. From that and his Bush-based name calling, he may lose the conservative portion of the audience he is supposed to be reaching, but as I said, MS should get a refund.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
I agree wholeheartedly that it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will seize any opportunity it gets to do annoying things specially to break open projects. Again.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Richard - "The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of "free software"."
Miguel - "The creation of the CodePlex foundation was an internal effort of people that believe in open source at Microsoft. "
Open source on whose terms?
He and others written a useful, complex and (hopefully) well implemented set of software components through much in the way of blood, seat and tears.
So of course he's not going to agree that what he did was either a waste of time or evil. I'm not exactly sure which side of this debate I fall on. Doesn't affect me too much as a C programmer...
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090927151401988
Here is an article that goes in-depth about the entire situation
Microsoft is pushing software patents and DRM around the world. These are the two main things blocking free software from being compatible, so this is holding back the technical progress and the spread of free software.
MS's policies are getting worse and worse, so I can't see why helping them is in our interest.
I've been documenting Microsoft's patent activity, and I fail to see any change for the better.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
It's GNU/Fearmongering. Let's at least give credit where credit is due ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A lot of people dislike Stallman and his positions, but even his biggest detractors have to admit that he's a principled man. You know where RMS stands on issues before he even comments on them because he's had a consistent message for a few decades now.
De Icaza's position seems to be that short-term convenience wins. Period. I just can't credit him with the same credibility or integrity as RMS. I mean, I guess he's at least consistent with his position, but I'm also consistent in liking the taste of peanut butter, and that doesn't win me any points.
If I had to pick a side - and I think it's becoming apparent that we do - then I'd have to go with RMS. Some of his conclusions are a bit... out there... but he solidly argues them from solid principles and it's kind of hard to disagree with him. Finally, he has a track record of making some pretty bold predictions that turn out to be dead on many years later. The Right to Read, anyone? When de Icaza has a couple of decades of predictive accuracy behind him, I'll start paying more attention to his words.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
According to my doctor I had mono at some point in my life, and I didn't even know it. He asked me if there was ever point that I was tired for an extended period of time, and I said "Uh, college?"
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Stallman does seem to only see the world in black and white (or not-free and free in this case). That's why I tend to dismiss most of what I hear from him. His fear mongering is no better that the stuff people complain about companies like Microsoft doing. Microsoft is just a company. They may have many business practices I disagree with. They may even have leadership I more consistently disagree with, but that doesn't mean everything they do is wrong. Just like De Icaza says, "there are great people working for the company, and I know many people inside Microsoft that are steering the company towards being a community citizen." Now I don't personally know people inside Microsoft as De Icaza does, but it's not a stretch to believe that out of those thousands of employees, at least some of them would rather play nice and put out great products. You can't just dismiss everything based on past behavior. Especially for a corporate entity which changes directions more frequently than people do.
Yet silence abounds about it.
RMS's work on GPL is being touted by others (including Miguel) as a waste of time.
Silence.
Eh ? I agree wholeheartedly that your comment doesn't even begin to make sense.
Squirrel!
RMS is a lot of things his critics accuse him off: he's a radical hippy type who pisses people off and makes the most outlandish predictions. He's also one of the most principled people I know. You can pretty much tell where Stallman will fall on an issue before anyone thinks to ask him - he'll be on whichever side means the most freedom for users. Yeah, a lot of his conclusions initially sound crazy, but he starts with solid principles and makes logical arguments from there. If he follow is reasoning from start to end, it's kind of hard do disagree with him.
Contrast with de Icaza, whose main principle seems to be "short term convenience wins". Well, by that standard, I have a principled position on liking the taste of peanut butter.
When de Icaza has a couple of decades of predictive accuracy rivaling RMS's under his belt, I'll start to listen to what he says. Until then, he has no more credibility with me than any other random programmer.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
De Icaza doesn't raise many points in his defence.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
When Stallman started the GNU project, the software he was cloning had been created by a big, litigious, evil monopoly called "AT&T". There was a good chance that they were going to shut him down for copyright and patent infringement. He took that risk, and the rest is history.
The situation surrounding Mono is actually far less serious. Yes, Microsoft is a big, litigious, evil monopoly, but they actually have made a pretty watertight commitment to keeping those portions of .NET that Mono relies on open and free.
Or any exec?
No.
So when it comes down to "strategic" planning to maintain monopoly or playing nice with GPL, which way will the ***company*** go?
The way these few people want or the way that screws up GPL?
I mean it's just as valid to say out of all those thousands, there are probably many who believe that the GPL is the spawn of satan and will kill all projects even thought of touching it and therefore RMS is right and Miguel wrong.
Stallman's a fanatic, but on the other hand, Microsoft is Microsoft. Which is to say, it's probably difficult to be too paranoid about their intentions with respect to competition. Stallman's article isn't even particularly paranoid; it boils down to "we've seen similar groups do bad things before, so we should watch this group. Also, we disagree with some of their goals".
BTW, Miguel, George Bush did not invent "Good vs Evil". And while I've never seen anything that approaches pure Good, there's no shortage of "sufficiently evil".
Today we can only try to anticipate what it will do, based on its statements and Microsoft's statements.
It's all conjecture, the entire basis of his attack is that it could be bad because it's heavily influenced by microsoft. I don't trust microsoft as much as the next person, but get them for what they DO do (while safeguarding yourself from harm), as opposed to what they could potentially do, with their own platform.
The people that are making this initiative have every right to do what they want with their own code.
Stallman and de Icaza have completely different goals, as do the larger Free Software and Open Source movements they are part of. There is unfortunately a tendency on the Open Source side to obscure this difference by claiming that Free Software is a subset of Open Source, often through the use of equivocation with the ambiguous English word "free", but Free Software is not a subset of Open Source.
The Free Software movement's position is essentially ideological, based on the philosophy that closed source is ethically and morally wrong. The Open Source position is essentially pragmatic, based on the theory that closed source (the cathedral) is less efficient than open source (the bazaar). Free Software is an ethical stance; Open Source is a high-level development methodology. The two sides end up shouting over each other's heads more often than not, as they are today, because they are using much of the same terminology to describe completely different things.
As such, de Icaza is wrong when he says that Stallman is missing an opportunity here. From the perspective of Free Software, especially given Microsoft's well-documented past behavior, cooperation with Microsoft is not an opportunity, it's a trap with a flashing neon TRAP sign above it. Conversely, it might well be an opportunity for Open Source, at least insofar as the literal issue of "open source" is concerned, though probably only in the short term.
Closed source software vendors ultimately make their money from artificial scarcity. Yes, it is possible to make money with open source, but the kind of money that Microsoft and most of its peers rake in comes only from closed source. To the extent that they are publicly-owned businesses, and therefore exist to make as much money as possible, they will only expend their assets -- including opening some of their source -- if they believe that it will lead to greater profits. Stallman is entirely correct to be wary of Microsoft here. Microsoft views the Free Software and Open Source movements as competitors, just as they view other conventional closed source companies as competitors. To expect them to behave in a genuinely cooperative fashion with groups that are, in an increasing number of areas, eating into their profits is to live in a utopian fantasy world.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Stallman has never programmed in either Mono or .NET.
Neither have I, but I know what they are.
He has no idea what the relationship between C#, CLR, .NET, and Mono is.
So you disagree with RMS: fine. But you're doing yourself a grave disservice by dismissing him as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Love him or hate him, he's a sharp guy who knows his stuff.
And he has no idea of what the legal situation is.
I'm sure the founder of the FSF and the author of the first GPL is wholly ignorant of legal issues in software development.
Don't be stupid. Again, it's OK to disagree with the man. Just don't do it on the grounds of "he's old and doesn't know anything", because it's possible (in fact, certain) that he knows more about it than you do.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I always thought it was hilarious that Senor Miguel's motive for starting GNOME was that the then non-free QT wasnt 'free enough' to his tastes
and that now that he is on the other side of the equation, he has utter contempt for the people have the same opiinions of him.
We all become our fathers eventually. Soon Miguel will tell us to get off his lawn.
Im still waiting to see if .NET will become the framework for GNOME 3 or version 4 like he has promised us.
Microsoft controlled free software: like a warm bowl of leftover barf.
Hmm....
I'm sick and tired of the attacks on everyone who might go against the juvenile group-think on this website and actually feel some of the things microsoft produce have something to offer the world and would like to extend it.
"Ah Miguel. His rant may have virtually zero actual content,"
Blah blah.
Give it a rest you tedious FSF troll.
As most of the above posters mention, like him or not, RMS has been pretty constant in his beliefs.
One person mentioned that you know where he stands on a question before he even answers it.
So constance is a given with him.
Your 2nd paragraph seems like straight out of the Mono-lovers handbook.
No, the GNU project isnt the same as mono so dont even try it.
As for Redmond's commitment.
Please read a bit of tech history if youre too young to remember the last 20, 10 or 5 years....
The only group that gets screwed more than MS competitors are its partners. Eventually somewhere down the partnership, they will take you for a car ride and the big beefy guy seated behind you will slip a wire around your neck.
RMS states, "Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#...". Memo to RMS, 'dottie-NET' doesn't natively run on Linux, or Mac. As for me, listening to pundits of m$ is like watching Darth Vader participating at a Cheer Leading Summer Camp.
Stallman has never programmed in either Mono or .NET. He has no idea what the relationship between C#, CLR, .NET, and Mono is...
That's preposterous -- it's like saying someone is in no position to judge whether or not the Nazis were evil... unless he speaks German.
Stallman's position is that anything built on Mono is built on a foundation of trust in Microsoft, which means a foundation made of sand.
You don't need to write any Mono code to judge whether or not his contention is true. All you need to know is that, time after time after time, Microsoft have demonstrated that they are not to be trusted.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
All shall bow down before him.
"Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness"
.. er covenant, I would suspect this as yet another attempt to co-opt and control a technology they don't own. Why not contribute to SourceForge instead of creating and stacking their own organization. Same with the numerous Microsoft 'open source' licenses. It's very telling that GPL 3 is not one of the supported licenses on CodePlex.
Which begs the question as to why expend so much energy in duplicating dotNET onto the Linux platform. Isn't whole the MONO effort diverting developers from developing native Linux applications?
"The creation of the CodePlex foundation was an internal effort of people that believe in open source at Microsoft. They have been working from within the company to change it. Working at CodePlex is a great way of helping steer Microsoft in the right direction"
What was wrong with SourceForge. If I was cynical and recalling Microsoft's past behaviour, including tthe NovoSOFT trojan
And as an 'open source' supporter I fail to understand how you would recommend something called the LinuxHater's Blog
'If you're a freetard, but you need to run Windows at work or something, I've got an idea for a utility that will keep you true to the cause'
'How many hours do I have to waste wading through the monument of shit known as the debian package repository?'
but was/is there a real need for Mono? Anyone actually using it in a production environment? If so, why?
body massage!
... for their side of the story.
The only thing we can do is joining one or the other. I join RMS as I do want to make business with Microsoft and not Microsoft to make business on me.
cb
I'm sure the founder of the FSF and the author of the first GPL is wholly ignorant of legal issues in software development.
His argument is that "Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents". Which specific patents would Microsoft use to do that? How could they do that given their public, legally binding commitments not to do this? What reason is there to believe that applications written in C# are at a bigger risk of that than applications written in Python?
Just don't do it on the grounds of "he's old and doesn't know anything",
He is about the same age as I am.
Don't be stupid.
Take your own advice. Instead of going all starry eyed because you recognize someone's name, use your own head and ask the right questions.
I My boss forces me to work with .Net but thanks to Mono
Astroturfer, you are now obligated by the FTC to disclose payment for trolling.
Your kind doesn't belong here. Get out.
The Free Software movement's position is essentially ideological, based on the philosophy that closed source is ethically and morally wrong
When Stallman objects to things based on ethics, morality, or legality, I often agree with him. But Stallman's objection to C# is not based on ethics, morality, or legality; the Mono license and the ECMA C# standard are completely above board in those regards. Stallman's objection to C# is based on his fear of hidden legal dangers. But Stallman has been unable to translate his fear into specific legal scenarios.
As such, de Icaza is wrong when he says that Stallman is missing an opportunity here.
But Stallman has already proven that his judgment in areas of technology is weak. It was people like Linus, Icaza, and the founders of the various Linux distributions that really made free software happen. If it had been up to Stallman and his plodding approach, we'd probably still be running GNU Emacs on Solaris.
Icaza has far more credibility and a much better track record in picking a winner for writing end user applications than Stallman.
I've long since come to the conclusion that Richard Stallman and Darl McBride share the same crazy belief. Both are convinced that free software is an anti-capitalist plot. The difference between the two is that for RMS this is a good thing.
A consequence of this is that RMS sees anyone who supports capitalists as the enemy. I really don't know enough about the case with Mono, and I am certainly skeptical of any dealings with Microsoft, but I am also highly suspicious of RMS's judgement in these matters.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
It's the mono people trying to push the platform, something many in the F/OSS community see as a trojan with the potential to usurp years of hard work. I for one do not trust Microsoft and it matters not what assurances they give. Given the opportunity to ignore the Mono people completely many of us would.
Miguel is left arguing from the position of a scumware pusher. If enough folk were foolish enough to side with Miguel, there'd be a split in the free software community. At that point, Mono would have fulfilled it's strategic goal and it's users can look forward to paying-off the monopoly.
Anyone got an alternate link? My corporate overlords won't let me hit that site, so I'm just getting Stallman's side of things.
A cathedral - A generally beautiful building where people gather together to be filled with hope, listen to the Good Word with their families, give some money to the collection plate to help with expenses so that the cathedral can continue to operate and be a special place for future generations. It is a generally solemn place that people from all over visit because of the beauty and complexity of the architecture, as well as to simply join together in a shared set of beliefs that deal with hope and life.
A bazaar - A generally chaotic area, filled with men and women all around you shouting at you, trying to get business for mostly shoddy goods, that the merchants try to overcharge for. The goods generally fall apart after basic usage after a month, at which point, if you wish to continue using the goods, you must go back and hope for a better product if you can find the merchant again. The merchants generally care only about your business, and will hope to extort as much as they can from their customers before the customers figure out that the goods are generally crap. Granted, though, if a customer realizes that the goods are not going to be store-bought quality, and will not have many of the features that comes from more expensive product, they won't be as disappointed, but on the whole, if someone doesn't go to the bazaar, and goes to the store instead, they can get a better quality product with half the annoyance of going to the bazaar and checking out a dozen different merchants with marginally different products in order to the find the 'one' that most closely resembles what they want(though it is generally never 'quite' the same).
This is not to say that I am opposed to open source. But use a better analogy. Really.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
From a interview with Torvalds many years ago:
"I think a lot of the extreme people are much too extreme, like Richard Stallman; He's a very extreme person, and while I admire a lot of his ideals, I don't admire him because he is so extreme that he can't relate to other people; and that's a limitation."
No taking sides for me, just pointing out that RMS has his own issues.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I think that this has less to do with De Icaza and RMS than it does with the split that's been brewing since around the Bubble days between the "Free Software" people and the "Open Source" people. For the "Free Software" people, nothing less than everything is ever going to be enough. I don't mean this is a troll, but just a simple observation. For them its a political crusade mixed with a sort of religion -- especially for RMS. That much is obvious.
On the other side of this divide are the more practically-minded Open Source people. Open Source is seen every bit as much as a tactical, if not a strategic, business move as it is a social experiment. It helps level the playing field, reduces barriers to entry, and prevents the establishment of monopolies. It allows users to build communities, but doesn't really seek to impart its view of the world onto users actively.
De Icaza has moved more towards the Practical Open Source camp over time. Let's not forget that he started GNOME -- the G of which means GNU -- because KDE wasn't really "free software" -- it was merely, more or less, open source. He then went on to found Helix, which was a company based around providing commercial support and integration for GNOME. The Mono project, I do believe, was started to aid in their plans on integrating into the already established corporate environment and easing the ability to port applications off the MS platform and onto a more open one, such as Linux.
Now, I've never been the world's biggest MS fan, but it really seems to me that hating a company to such personal levels as many people hate MS is really just sort of off base. I know I used to partake of the MS bashing myself as well when I was younger, and maybe its just that now that I'm older and have more experience in life I can see what a waste of effort it is. It's also been because Microsoft has really made visible strides towards openness.
Microsoft has been for the last several years a co-sponsor of the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, put in a lot of money to fund the event and sending some really amazing speakers to give presentations. I have yet to get to go to one of these things live, but I do watch the videos and I saw some really bang-up speeches from Microsoft employees on everything from functional programming, to open-source plugin extensions for Office and other tools to aid the work flow for scientists (who are very practically minded when it comes to picking tools).
They are releasing code, they are joining in on community projects, they are funding conventions and projects (Apache anyone?). They aren't the same company they were 10 years ago, but they are still a company and it would be unreasonable to expect them to give away the major bacon. Does it really matter if they were to open up Windows? Office? No, not really.
Frankly, I think that getting Microsoft to just stick to open standards for information exchange -- document formats, protocols, etc -- would be more than enough. Anything else they want to do would be icing on the cake, but in the mean time we may as well take what we can get and encourage them with good will rather than shifty-eyed suspicion, because like it or not, they are THE major player in the industry and it's better to peacefully co-exist than to try and bash each other's brains out. I think Microsoft has started to figure this out and we, as a community, really ought to let them have a shot and proving it.
If slashdot crowd clearly identified Mr. Miguel as MS lover, why the most of you are still using the most damaging piece of free software ever written - yes, I'm talking about Gnome. Please take a look where MS Windows is, where Gnome is and where XFCE and KDE are (even XFCE is using the same library as Gnome!). Every time I look at the Gnome, I think by myself: this man (Miguel) is payed to keep Gnome in such poor state, there is no other explanation...
I didn't think it affected me either until I put a new copy of debian on a machine and did an "apt-get install gnome" and found a copy of mono being installed on my machine. What I want to know is WTF was debian even thinking when they did that?
As a fellow Debian user, I too am incensed that Debian developers, without consulting the user base have taken a monumental leap away from the projects original stated goals and ideals. You now have a team of cockroaches inside the bread box: Eduard Bloch (Zomb), Mirco Bauer (meebey), Mirco Bauer (meebey), Sebastian Dröge (slomo), Jo Shields (directhex), and David Paleino (hanska) somehow got into Debian and are spending their time to inject contaminate it with Microsoft imitations of legitimate technologies.
Again, if Miguel's time on earth is so precious short, WTF is he spending it encouraging people to reinvent the wheel using failed products? Mono needs to be removed from Debian. The mono team needs to be removed from Debian.
The whole fiasco also speaks volumes to how the trade journals have been whittled down, removed and controlled. Debian was high-tech, ethical when it came out. Now gNewSense fills that role. However, there's no reason to cede Debian to Microsoft, especially not since important distros are built from Debian. But that would be the main reason Microsoft activist have it as a target to ruin.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
just would out of principle never do a deal with Microsoft. And I'll explain why:
The whole openness debate is a straw man. The thing is not openness. It's that giant elephant in the room that nobody speaks about. Because it has to do with having emotions.
They are the reason that I think anyone who can just work with MS as if nothing happened, either forgot what they did, or just simply has no soul.
We that we watched the whole life of Microsoft... The whole state of the industry is damaged and partially stalled because of them. All because they wanted to make loads of money with other people's ideas, and buying or simply extinguishing them when they complained. All the good things they destroyed and progress they blocked. (Example: For web development IE was practically the dark ages. I did AJAX-like webapps in 1999. Look at when Web 2.0 started. It's when Firefox got strong enough to push even IE out of its sleep.)
We've got burned. Simple as that.
So we would turn down even the "best" offer. No matter what its "openness" would be. Because we have principles, and a spine to hold them up.
Stallman, being a bit of an extremist, of course goes to the outer extreme of this view. But he's not there to have the average view. He's there to show us the boundary of where it would be too much. And I respect him for doing that.
Microsoft's actions are unforgivable for at least one or two decades (IF they don't do anything stupid in that time).
In that time, you won't see people like us accept Microsoft. Ever. And you will wonder what all the hate and fuss is about. Because you missed or forgot these actions.
(Although asking me what those actions were is a good thing, I won't repeat them, as there are thousands of sources out there to read about them. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
From de Icaza's article: 'To him, ridiculous statements like Linus "does not believe in Freedom" are somewhat normal [1].'
Isn't that true, though? I always thought Linus came down heavily on the side of open source as an engineering philosophy and against the ideological side of software freedom? I'd have expected Linus to agree with the sentiment RMS is expressing, to be honest, as I believe it matches his real world stance.
RMS is obnoxious in the things he says or the way he says them sometimes. He also frequently comes across as patronizing in the way he states his beliefs as if they are Truth. But at least the guy is pretty consistent. I'm not sure having a hardliner such as him is as helpful now as it was was but you can at least rely on him to take a fairly consistent take and articulate his principles well, even if you don't believe in them. I respect him, even though he's maddening sometimes.
apologist: a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.
That's not a personal attack.
Regards.
I think the SCO saga shows well how you can invite trouble just by being "close" to someone, without any basis in fact or anything.
It should also be noted, that to my knowledge the Mono project is still working on separating out the things covered by the patent promise, so until they are finished there is no "public, legally binding commitments not to do this".
If it gives me a significant advantage I'd still use Mono/.Net, but I still take the freedom to consider someone who does this without thinking about the issues it might have beyond other languages and considering if they are relevant to them rather stupid.
The 'embrace' part? Its going to feel lovely, fluffy and warm.
MS is going to be your best friend forever.
Then comes the extend part. A few changes, nothing bad.
The end is like having a few years of your life taken to the mine waste heap and dumped.
If your such a fan of African history may I suggest the book "King Leopold's Ghost" and understand the true meaning of "Business opportunity" in Africa.
Empty ships arrive, full ships leave.
Just like Bill Gates it was all done under the cover of ""philanthropic" care.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I have never killed a human but I have a strong attitude against killing one. So am I spreading FUD if I call killing a human wrong?
You might not agree with RMS but that doesn't make him a FUD spreading imbecile.
cb
Is there some 'sane' reason to include languages like C# for purpose of installing GNOME and other vital parts of the system ? I could not agree more with RMS here.
Imagine the impact on this whole debate should the Supreme Court of the US use Bilski to kill or limit software patents (don't hold your breath), as Red Hat and the FSF are now arguing in their amicus briefs. First of all, will we be free then to embrace Mono and Moonlight without fear of reprisals from Redmond? Will Microsoft make changes to both specs to make them very difficult, if not impossible, to implement properly without Windows running?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
There are people who sit by the side and whinge about how things should be, and there are people who actually go out and do stuff.
Miguel - dont waste your time engaging in this conversation. You clearly have more important goals to achieve.
I think your work is great, and I wish you the best of luck.
For most drivers, the ability to go 3 miles with a month's shopping is probably 90% of the benefits of people who drive cars.
But do we make cars with a 6 mile limit?
Such words might be effective against someone who doesn't read both articles, but it seems fairly clear RMS has important content, namely that codeplex's positioning seems designed to add confusion on software freedom issues, which is both dangerous and consistent with Microsoft's notorious predatory policies towards free software and its developers.
Only those without principles or with friends in perfect agreement all the time have the benefit of never "attacking their friends." Perhaps you are more concerned with relationships than principles.
If in your own post you pointed out all of the places where codeplex and Microsoft clearly do understand the open source and free software distinction, and make a clear effort to avoid confusion... If you had some possible explanation for Microsoft's massively ugly behavior towards linux, or open document standards bodies, etc...
But you have none. You seem to find the incidental, but correct observation of your widely-known status as a Microsoft apologist to be the greater issue, and you devote most of your words to denying that, along with some vague name calling, a few appeals to emotion by metaphor, and (probably ill-advised) political sniping.
It is your own writing that is quite clearly without content, and it's my professional opinion that you know it. Thus, the term "cynical hypocrisy."
I find your suggestion that Microsoft could be an ally (however much you deny you've made it, or if you even choose to) to be laughable.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Hey, Miguel, just to balance things out, how about you discuss a few Microsoft products/technologies/protocols that you think are utter crap, that you'd never touch with a 1000-foot pole, and that you think the Open Source community would be crazy create an open source implementation of.
Thanks Dr. Godwin.
Interesting. Granted, the original use of these terms were based on a slightly different premise, but you've managed to word things in a way that flips the meanings. The bazaar sounds very much like the conventional business environment full of advertisers, hucksters, fly-by-night companies out to get a buck and all the negative things people tend to associate with modern business. The cathedral resembles the metaphorical edifice the "free software movement" has constructed. Interesting indeed.
Stallman, for his part, is one of the most extreme hardliners ever, and so self-absorbed that he actually believes it's a *good* thing if his software license is mutually incompatible with more than half of the (otherwise just as good) free software licenses in existence. Not that he hasn't contributed some really useful stuff; he has (not least Emacs, which is eleven different kinds of awesome). But you can't take all of his political views entirely seriously. That way lies madness.
.NET framework for *nix systems. It is difficult to think of a free-software programming project that would be more counterproductive, and I *sincerely* hope Mono never gains any significant traction or becomes widely deployed. The whole concept vibrantly illustrates the meaning of the phrase "Do Not Want".
Then there's De Icaza, who actually believes that it would be useful and worthwhile to implement Microsoft's
And what the $@#! is up with that whole "Moonlight" thing? Do the cretinous rapscallions involved with the Mono project actually think it would be an okay thing for web developers to feel like they can use that Silverlight junk on websites, without alienating non-Windows users? Gah! Java was bad enough, and Flash is worse. We ABSOLUTELY do **NOT** want Yet Another Gratuitous Plugin to become ubiquitous on the web. Die, Moonlight, die, Die, DIE!
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Those who are able can do this mentally. The hard core geeks and Perl hackers can save a copy of this page and do a global replacement, or run it through sed or something.
The exercise: Replace every instance of "Microsoft" with "The Devil". Read everything again.
If you're having trouble deciding where you stand in the debate or why people seem so worked up over mere software, this might help clear things up. The imaginative amongst you can pretend you're a scholar studying a recently unearthed transcript of an ancient religious debate and marvel at the quaintness of it all.
Many moons ago there was a true story about some group of people that used short brooms to sweep. These brooms forced them to stoop and thus caused numerous health problems. Some humanitarian type from the west saw a solution and got them to use longer brooms.
So instead, imagine our two salesmen entering this situation, trying to sell long brooms. One sees no opportunity as "They don't use long brooms". The other sees nothing but opportunity as "They don't use long brooms!"
I come here for the love
Miguel
This is off topic but speaks to your integrity. You claim OOXML is a "superb standard". Can you explain how this is anything but the comments of some sycophant that has been bought off by Microsoft?
In a nutshell.
I didn't have any mod points, but this is EXACTLY what I wanted to say.
Despite MANY good standards in the open document arena, De Icaza was supporting OOXML, which is an obvious trap by MS to make all other office products incompatible with the "standard" they are trying to ram through.
No matter WHAT De Icaza has done, this alone cements him as a scum bag. A corporate whore, a liar, and a charlatan. Even if you hate RMS's vitriol, as usual, he is right, and everyone against him is clearly, and most solidly in the wrong.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Microsoft should ask for its money back. de Icaza is a terrible troll.
de Icaza doesn't have to be good, he just has to make noise. That's the role of a troll. M$ only trots him out and yanks his leash when a distraction is needed. His bag of tricks consists of name calling, which works for press dependent Microsoft partner advertising money.
Or to distract from technical issues like quality and performance. Mono is very poor copy of Java and there are many other tools much further along that Mono can never catch up with including Ruby, Python, and Perl.
Maybe a distraction from Lisbon and Software Patents up Europe's backdoor? It's only Europe that is holding out still. Anything to distract from the freedom to use software.
Technological independence is a pillar in modern democracy and of national independence. That's been dependent on both open source (inlcuding Free Software) and on open standards. Miguel is actively fighting against both and encouraging people to move away from both. There are some very nasty legal names for what Miguel is doing to your country.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
That's a weak rebuttal from De Icaza to Stallman. Though Stallman is hardcore when it comes to Microsoft, he at least analyzes them with a fine tooth comb. I personally think Mono is a waste of time since it will never be 100% compatible with .Net nor will be a fix the cross-platform problems (because of the lack of seamless solutions) that plague the software industry even today.
I wonder what proportion of the "RMS followers" actually writes GPL software, as opposed to just uses them. Maybe this says something about their view point.
Stallman is a sharp guy who knows lots of stuff. But that doesn't mean he knows this stuff. RMS has a proud history of running on about things he disagrees with on principle without taking the time to fully understand them.
No one can be expected to understand everything about everything, and restricting someone with views as strong as RMS to only talking about things he fully understands would be an unacceptable handicap.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
You can charge anything you like.
Someone buying your work for $1m won't give it away free because they just spent $1m on it and so why give their competitors a $1m handout?
But what you get for your $1m is the certain knowledge that your supplier can't just pull the plug and leave you fucked.
Who modded this sucker insightful?
I mean, yes, it is insightful, but given that you've got a pick-just-one situation when moderating /. comments, I think that the humor mod would have been a bit more appropriate.
When writing a comment that uses subtle humor, perhaps authors should add an "X-Moderator-Aid: Humor" line.
coding is life
What, does the neq operator have higher precedence than whitespace?
Okay, fixed that for you:
Also, (open source) != (free software)
coding is life
Stallman has never programmed in either Mono or .NET.
No, surely not. Nor have I.
He has no idea what the relationship between C#, CLR, .NET, and Mono is.
[citation needed]
And he has no idea of what the legal situation is.
Yeah, the guy who has Eben Moglen as chief legal counsel obviously knows nothing about technology law. Don't be fucking dense.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
argument is that "Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents". Which specific patents would Microsoft use to do that?
See, you don't know. That's the funny thing about software patents, innit?
How could they do that given their public, legally binding commitments not to do this?
How could Microsoft break their word and their contract and the law and get away with it? The same way they've been doing it for decades. With money.
What reason is there to believe that applications written in C# are at a bigger risk of that than applications written in Python?
If you don't know the answer to this question without having to ask, you probably just shouldn't be making a fool of yourself by trying to participate in this discussion.
Now shh, the grownups are talking.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
You know, I think the Catholic Church had similar ideas back in the 15th century. I hear the Comfy Chairs at Microsoft are quite nice.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Microsoft threatens Linux with hundreds of imaginary patent violations, but we're going to welcome a bunch of actual MS-patented tech into Linux on purpose and under MS' watchful eye? If you're going to tell me that isn't insanely stupid, you better at least be willing to be an apologist for Microsoft.
Agreed. It's not *quite* putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, but it's at least letting the fox in.
Reply to That ||
So you disagree with RMS: fine. But you're doing yourself a grave disservice by dismissing him as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Love him or hate him, he's a sharp guy who knows his stuff.
Might have been true in the past, but his own principles is disconnecting him with fast evolving field we work in.
I might be wrong, RMS seems like a guy that will have a hard time handing over the torch to younger people with a fresh perspective on the issue.
I'm sure the founder of the FSF and the author of the first GPL is wholly ignorant of legal issues in software development.
what does the FSF or the GPL have to do with the software licenses and patents surrounding .NET? I wasn't aware that authorship of GPL made anyone instantly an expert on everything.... my appendix has been bothering me lately. Do you think RMS takes appointments?
Wow, this is what I love to watch, a biatch fight between 2 geeks
It seems to me you have a deep psychological drive to be in abusive relationships. You have engaged the one of the worst actors in the software business and then defend them. Did you have an abusive parent? Because that's what Microsoft is in this situation.
A reasonable person NOT in your situation would see that Microsoft is hostile to all other software alternatives. You have taken the slightest appearances of 'good' and defend them to the point you look like a fool because a reasonable person sees the obvious, consistently hostile, abuse Microsoft heaps on all other software alternatives. Nowhere is this more evident in the patent minefield Microsoft has laid out around your Mono project.
This isn't healthy for you. I know it may seem perfectly normal, because it is if you are used to abusive relationships. There's a reason you get flamed every single time you try to add anything to defend your position. It's because all of those people see what Microsoft is and you are replying using the crazy-think of someone who is in an abusive, neglectful relationship.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
that is, if I translate what is in the article to a telegraph:
"business opportunity stop stop stop they have no shoes stop"
thank you stop
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Is Miguel a Microsoft apologist? he is a notorious one: .Net clone, Mono. The world is saying "no, it can be a patent risk" but he insist it is not (at least, not for himself). ;-)
- In the past he tried to work for MS and Bill, but miserably fails.
- He talked "OOXML are a good things", while the world (including IBM) say no to it.
- He started a
- Now he is part of that codeplex foundation, as a director. Looks like he finally enter for MS (ironically passed through the "window"
Just the facts.
I'll comment it in a similar tone: Miguel seems to have nothing better to do than writing childish rants. Why does slashdot even link to such crap?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
So I'm going to trot out a different perspective; enough others will thrash through the personalities under discussion here. In my view, Mono is essentially irrelevant. Some folks will use it to bridge apps around platforms, instead of Qt or a handful of other approaches. Yawn. Internally, Microsoft has done some pretty neat things with their various implementations of the CLR (the VM underlying C#). This is unsurprising, as they're well capable of hiring some pretty bright folks. But I doubt that any of that will ever really inform the broader computing community.
In contrast, the JVM seems to be undergoing a renaissance. There's tons of programming language work on the JVM these days: Scala, JRuby, Clojure, Jython, etc. Each of these are bringing their own communities and problem domains to the JVM, and have already broken new ground in language implementation and design. As for new frameworks, there's scalable computing work going on under the Hadoop project (Google filesystem, Bigtable, and map-reduce for-the-rest-of-us) and the really interesting related framework Cascading. With the JVM as an interoperability platform, these languages and various new frameworks all get to be combined together in fascinating new ways.
Miguel and "open source" advocates have the first perspective. People who have been burned, see from the 3rd perspective (and possibly just out of fear, as Miguel suggests). RMS sees that 3rd perspective too, but also sees the 2nd, and that 2nd perspective is what I think -- when he's in a good mood -- he really wants to get across: support Free Software before blowing your time and money on Open Source.
Miguel and RMS just might both be right; it all depends on where you stand. I'm not interested in Mono but I don't feel threatened by it either, and I can surely understand why people who are into it, are happy to distract Microsoft with it. The worst I can say about it, is that it might be a gateway drug to .Net, and I never bought into gateway drug arguments anyway. Programmers are capable of knowing when they're crossing the line into irresponsible dependencies. Don't complain about the ones who, in the end, really just don't care, because that's their problem. Your problem is to just not do it.
BTW (almost a totally different topic), the patent fears about Mono don't make sense. It's not that patents aren't a threat, but they're a threat to everyone. If you work 8 hours in this business, then you probably unwittingly infringed someone's patent. Mono could get a C&D from Microsoft some day, making all investment into that platform retroactively a waste of time. But the same damned letter the Mono teams gets, can also be sent to the CPython or Java guys. The return address on the letter might not even be One Microsoft Way. Patents fuck up everyone, so I don't see them as a major factor in comparing projects that aren't yet known to infringe. If we were talking about, say, code that implements Theora vs h264, it would be different, because the specific problems would be known. But Mono-vs-Java? Equal risks until someone can put up or shut up by mentioning a specific patent.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...and that's what has brought both his genius, and his impractical arrogance. He sees the world as a series of yes/no, black/white,1/0 events.
He doesn't compromise, he detests those who disagree with him. while he has brought the gnu license, emacs, and assorted gnu utilities..
- He never finished hurd. ::sigh::
- Constantly criticizes Linus as basically a heretic.
- Doesn't believe in the use of cell phones.
- Doesn't believe in personal hygiene.
- Thinks Bill gates is geniunely evil ( as a person, not the MS guy ), to the point of criticizing the charity work of his foundation.. in his view, who the fuck cares about aids research and feeding the poor, he didnt give us the source code
- Among may other things that would brand the common man an insane diagnosis.
He probably suffers from some form of Asberger, or at least has some other mental illness.
Which has again, brought us free software users many goods... but you have to always be awared of the bad.
Richard Stallman, right or wrong, makes as much sense as "my mom, drunk or sober" ( yes, i stole that remark :-P)
As usual when I hear a debate like this (debate about activities in the middle east being another good example), I believe both sides to be wrong. Or I agree (at least partially) with the accusations made by each side against the other. The problem becomes trying to sort out the mess and figure out who the greater offender might be.
If I understand correctly, RMS claims that Miguel is willing to overlook the fact that Microsoft may have devious and evil intent behind C# (and Silverlight) and in their general relationship with the open source community. In particular, Microsoft has been made it clear that they have in no way released any patent claims on the technologies underlying C# and all the libraries built on top of it. Proof to the contrary is welcome. In fact, they have made it clear that there may be patentable material by giving Novell a special "free-usage-of-patents" dispensation to allow the shipping of Microsoft technologies without being particularly clear about what that exactly means. Both Novell and Microsoft are being disingenuously ambiguous on this point (in a way that reminds me of how some politicians talk about what they would do to balance the budget).
Miguel's claim is that RMS has a "no compromise" position towards open source. RMS would prefer a clear firewall between the non commercial "free" software and the "commercial" for sale software. RMS has attacked software developers (or more precisely the things that they do) who take a more pragmatic approach to the usage of open source code (which means he is attacking a large part of the open source community). RMS is right that breaching this firewall can compromise the future of some open source projects, but he is unwilling to balance that against the potential virtues that such "breaches" might give you.
I agree with both of the above claims, but only up to a certain point. In a better world, I would have Miguel admit that some of the practices of Microsoft and Novell are highly suspect and threaten to quit if some of the ambiguity about patent usage are not made clearer. Miguel has said that there are no known "patent" infringements and that all software can have unknown patent infringements. This is a misleading statement, because he is cooperating with a very large Monopolistic company with a vested interest in the software he is developing that is known to sue for patent infringement. The risks of using some of the libraries built on C# is much greater than software that was not written to the specification outlined in a commercial software package. Both Microsoft and Novell need to make clearer (that passes muster with lawyers) statements about patent risks of using C# libraries (note the focus on libraries and not C# language syntax -- this is deliberate -- usually trouble comes from the things built on top of a technology not the underlying root technology itself).
Also in a better world, I would have RMS be more accepting of Linux and the general compromise that it has taken between commercial interests and non commercial interests. Programmers want to make money, but some would like to do it in a way that allows them to contribute something (but not all) back to the community at large. RMS has limited utility for such people in his vision of the future of software.
As to who is the greater offender. I would say Miguel. RMS is a known entity with a public position and nothing in his writing suggests a particular antipathy towards Miguel in particular (counter examples of unproductive inflammatory rhetoric are welcome). I may disagree with RMS, but I have never felt that he was trying to fool or mislead me. I am not so sure about Miguel.
That's preposterous -- it's like saying someone is in no position to judge whether or not the Nazis were evil... unless he speaks German.
Because no one who speaks German could be an evil man!
I liked Stallman's complaint that CodePlex would encourage people to write free software for Windows and free add-ons for proprietary programs. Does this mean that if we want to make Stallman happy, when we write software for Windows (and Mac), and when we write plug-ins for non-free programs like Photoshop, we need to make them non-free???
As in, we could argue about it until eternity and never come to a resolution, and . I refuse to be dragged into religious arguments.
If I had mod points today, I'd spend them here. It isn't possible to explain away or excuse Miguel's gushing support of the OOXML spec. He's either completely clueless or "what you said"...
From: "Miguel de Icaza"
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 01:37:44 -0400
Local: Thurs, Sep 6 2007 1:37 am
Subject: Re: I tell you how does this look
Hello,
* I think we'll all agree that this collaboration can be seen as part
> of an strategy to gain acceptance in a flash dominated world. I've got
> no problem with that if this kind of competition benefits the users..
> but why didn't Microsoft standarize Silverlight like they did with CLR
> and C#? This make me think that all this collaboration is temporal.
I do not blame them. OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that space.
Besides, it is always better to have two implementations and then standardize than trying to standardize a single implementation.
Regardless of how you feel about "free" software or open source or Microsoft, Stallman's article is very definition of FUD. He speculates about what Codeplex might do, then attacks them as though they had already done it.
Miguel de Icaza is indeed a Microsoft apologist. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself, but as far as it goes, Stallman has him pegged.
As to the article itself, the reasons for the open-source community not to trust Microsoft are many and varied. The attacks they have repeatedly launched on the community are well-documented, with many more that were not actually launched but were known planned. They continue to espouse models which are antithetical to the OSS mindset, often with an eye toward undermining important infrastructure on which the community is built. Their actions speak a lot louder than their words.
Perhaps someday, Microsoft will prove to my satisfaction (and that of many others in the community) that they can be trusted. It could happen; the small overtures they have made are indeed steps in the right direction, and should be encouraged. But they have a very long way to go, and if de Icaza wants to gain any more traction in the community he is first going to have to accept that Microsoft is not in the position of an accused on trial; it is in the position of an ex-con trying to reintegrate. If de Icaza can start arguing from that position, he might find that he begins to hold more traction.
As a possible suggestion for a place to start, perhaps he could tell us of his own experiences with beginning to trust Microsoft. How did MS manage to win de Icaza's trust back in 2004?
Why are we still worried about mono? If Microsoft does anything shifty couldn't we sue them for breaking their oath/contract/thing?
Please don't use anonymity as an excuse for being a butt head >:(
"Even if you hate RMS's vitriol, as usual, he is right, and everyone against him is clearly, and most solidly in the wrong."
There, that's a nice rational, not at all smacking-of-religious-zealotry, position.
You already need a C compiler to install -anything- in Linux, why would you have a problem with including C#?
I'm not sure I see what is insane about it, since you need to do the exact same thing with another language already. In fact a great many Linux programs also require Python and other languages to be installed. Given the modular nature of Linux, I don't see why doing something like that with a program like Gnome would be a concern.
What is the reasoning behind the objection, other than "Oh noes! C# means Micro$oft!"? If the license is compatible (from what I understand, it is, it's .NET that isn't atm), what is the problem?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I didn't think it affected me either until I put a new copy of debian on a machine and did an "apt-get install gnome" and found a copy of mono being installed on my machine. What I want to know is WTF was debian even thinking when they did that? It's obvious they weren't thinking very well since they back-pedaled and claimed that mono wasn't in the default install, by which they mean that it's only in the gnome metapackage and not the gnome-core or gnome-desktop. It's also equally obvious that anyone who wants to install gnome will first try apt-get install gnome rather than the non-intuitive gnome-core. The point is that Mono is creeping into distributions ...
As a fellow Debian user, I too am incensed that Debian developers, without consulting the user base have taken a monumental leap away from the projects original stated goals and ideals. You now have a team of cockroaches inside the bread box: Eduard Bloch (Zomb), Mirco Bauer (meebey), Mirco Bauer (meebey), Sebastian Dröge (slomo), Jo Shields (directhex), and David Paleino (hanska) somehow got into Debian and are spending their time to inject contaminate it with Microsoft imitations of legitimate technologies.
Again, if Miguel's time on earth is so precious short, WTF is he spending it encouraging people to reinvent the wheel using failed products? Mono needs to be removed from Debian. The mono team needs to be removed from Debian. If they want to continue their work, fine, but do it in Redmond far away from the from any Open Source or Free Software projects.
The whole fiasco also speaks volumes to how the trade journals have been whittled down, removed and controlled. Debian was high-tech, ethical when it came out. Now gNewSense fills that role. However, there's no reason to cede Debian to Microsoft, especially not since important distros are built from Debian. But that would be the main reason Microsoft activist have it as a target to ruin.
With the back-pedalling, Debian leadership shows it is aware of the problem. Next step is to do something. Right now it looks like a personnel problem with a small clique pushing their personal agenda where the monomaniacal goal is to shove M$ technology in every project in existence. It doesn't seem to matter to them if something is good quality or bad, efficient or inefficient, appropriate or not licensed with a clear safe license or not.
Mono is start to end a Microsoft technology. Those few individuals writing to defend mono must cease astroturfing and offer full disclosure as to their employment. M$ astroturfing is not tolerated.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Zealots can be right. Again and again, in this case. Don't deny the message because the messenger is a zealot. Show me an example of RMS having been wrong AND not having retracted or modified his original statement. I think like any good scientist, he has shown a remarkable degree of modesty and retraction when needed. That doesn't seem like zealotry.
Of course, I'm totally open to being proven wrong (so long as we rely on facts!)!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Miguel: Oh! The world is ruled by an evil organization! Let's get inside and subvert it until it becomes a beacon of peace and freedom for all!
Richard: Oh! The world is ruled by an evil organization! Let's kill whoever gets inside it! They must be the evilest of all!
Miguel: Oh! Richard attacked me! I must kill him in self-defense!
Steve: Oh! They killed each other! Let's make Vista mandatory by law!
Good. Hit a nerve there. de Icaza's behavior and statements leave no doubt that he acts and talks like a Microsoft shill. It's been obvious for a decade. It's been undeniable by even the most obtuse for years, especially since his anti-open standards statement to hinder ODF.
Microsoft should ask for its money back. de Icaza is a terrible troll.
de Icaza doesn't have to be good, he just has to make noise. That's the role of a troll. M$ only trots him out and yanks his leash when a distraction is needed. His bag of tricks consists of name calling, which works for press dependent Microsoft partner advertising money.
Or to distract from technical issues like quality and performance. Mono is very poor copy of Java and there are many other tools much further along that Mono can never catch up with including Ruby, Python, and Perl.
Maybe a distraction from Lisbon and Software Patents up Europe's backdoor? It's only Europe that is holding out still. Anything to distract from the freedom to use software. Technological independence is a pillar in modern democracy and of national independence. That's been dependent on both open source (inlcuding Free Software) and on open standards.
Richard Stallman from the USA, Edgar Villanueva from Peru, and many others have made the incontrovertable point that Miguel is actively fighting against. There are some very nasty legal names for what Miguel is doing to your country.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I certainly do believe that people and the organizations they control can change. I believe that MS can change.
I also believe that Charles Manson can change. I really do believe it is possible.
But I wouldn't petition the parole board to have Charles released under my supervision and have him live in my spare bedroom.
Let me make a little different point a little less drastically.
My spouse an I have children we care very much about. Like most parents, we occassionally leave our children with a baby-siiter. That may be a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or a teenager down the street.
If we have a bad experience with a baby-sitter, or a series of small issues with a baby-sitter, we avoid that baby-sitter.
If we have built up a pool of half a dozen baby-sitter candidates, it is natural to rank them according to the experiences we have had with them as baby-sitters. There is no reason to make an offer to our least-favorite baby-sitter unless all the others are unavailable.
If we have some horrible experience, like a hospital visit, with a baby-sitter, they would obviously be promptly removed from the list of candidates. We would never invite them again.
Unless... the only alternatives were worse than our children being hospitalized.
Now, maybe that one incident was a horrible accident. Or maybe that baby-sitter has changed their ways. Maybe things are better now, and that problem would never happen again.
It doesn't matter. I still won't invite that baby-sitter back ever as long as their is a better alternative. And missing out on a date with my spouse is a better alternative than that baby-sitter. Taking the children along on the date is a better alternative. Ordering food in an a Redbox rental is a better alternative. Trying out the new teenager that moved in last month is a better alternative.
That isn't to say that I hate the unfortunate baby-sitter. I just won't ever use them again. And if anyone asks a reference of them, mine will not be an endorsement.
Go read the ODF spec, and then read the OOXML spec. You will find that almost every criticism that was leveled against OOXML applies equally or more to ODF. It is virtually undisputed among technical people who have actually tried to implement both specs that OOXML is the better spec.
C (or C++ if you want something more advanced) are ISO/IEEE standard languages, not burdened with patents, trademarks or other agendas -- industry standards if you will.
The requirement of these Java, C#, Python, Perl etc. secondary languages should not burden core and vital system components as these have to run on many platforms and we do not have time in our lives to manage them all.
Just from your snippets, a couple of phrases stand out as being dangerously subject to interpretation: to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant and required elements that are described in detail. Seems to me this means any portions of software which accompany the required elements are subject to claims, at Microsoft's whim. Where does your project stray too far from the covered details into one of Microsoft's patents which is related to but not in the Covered Specs? Better open your wallet and ask your attorney.
Well crap, PJ has already covered this in 2 escape hatches, and said it much better than I.
He's just a plain troll.
I get the impression most of the Mono devs are immature little shitheads, too.
The first two sentences were my favorite, in which he called RMS' referral to him as a "Microsoft apologist" a "personal attack," then proceeded to launch into his apology for Microsoft.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
N/T
Stallman and the FSF have a history of just making shit up when they decide they don't like something. Look at some of the stuff they've written about trusted computing for examples of this. Miguel is right - the guy plays fast and loose with the facts repeatedly. I see lots of people praising his consistency in this discussion. Well guess what - it's easy to have a consistent position over a long period of time when you flatly refuse to accept factual reality.
RMS makes a lot of statements such as "software should be Free. Anything else is immoral." That's an opinion. His article here is also filled with opinions. He's also made factually incorrect statements in the past. Yes, he generally admits it when confronted with the evidence, but that doesn't mean he's right all the time.
Which is all irrelevant. I was making fun of the latter part of your statement: "and everyone against him is clearly, and most solidly in the wrong."
As I said, RMS states a lot of opinions. Disagreeing with him does not put one "clearly, and most solidly in the wrong." Well, not unless you're a zealot, of course.
Which Miguel has none, and which Stallman has in bucketloads.
Since ODF was correctly implemented by several independent sources and MS got wrong the one bit that said "Do like Excel".
Which Microsoft make.
How many implementations of MSOOXML ISO spec are there?
None.
Including MS.
How could they do that given their public, legally binding commitments not to do this?
Would somebody out there PLEASE explain to me how the community promise is even SLIGHTLY legally binding? I keep asking and nobody can adequately explain it to me.
Actually, Stallman likes Mono. As a free software implementation of C#, that is. He sees Mono as a tool for letting old apps run in free software. What RMS opposes to (and many of us do) is about the usage of Mono to replace completely working, free software apps, and to add the burden of dependency to free software. And not just dependency, but dependency to some run time that is patented by MS - a company that does not hide their desire to destroy "Linux" using patents - many parts of which are NOT covered by any sort of "promise" from MS.
I read Stallman's article about the codeplex 'foundation' and the criticism is not due just to its origin at Microsoft. The criticism in RMS' article is based solely on statements made about the foundation's intents. In fact, it almost looks like that the origin at Microsoft is merely the reason Miguel Icaza is defending this so passionately...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
That's preposterous -- it's like saying someone is in no position to judge whether or not the Nazis were evil... unless he speaks German.
That's a very poorly chosen analogy. I don't think comparing the murder of 6 million people has any relevance to the software world.
I won't forgive:
1) Deliberately trying to destroy the GNOME desktop project by taking key developers out of the project to work on MONO, specifically at Microsoft's request. Next time GNOME sucks, thank Miguel for it.
2) The introduction of MONO into distributions, technology everyone knows is patent encumbered, and serves no use, except to provide Microsoft with a stick one day to whack distros over the head with it, once it "infects" everything it touches.
3) His attacks on Richard Stallman for simply being upfront and truthful by declaring the emperor HAS NO CLOTHES.
MONO is so naked, I can see the pimples on its ass from here.
4) Accepting money from Microsoft, which has made no secret it wants open source destroyed of any kind, GPL or otherwise and being a mouth piece to stir up trouble in the open source community.
Those are my top 4 reasons, which I have a list as long as my left arm about this guys private and public antics behind the scenes, which is two faced to be kind.
Microsoft is not to be permitted into the Open Source community until its board is destroyed, its holdings are destroyed and the company is on its knees, suitable for purchase at pennies on the dollar by Redhat.
At which point, I would like to see Ballmer enshrined along with the other list of "so greasy you can't light a match near'em" CEO's like Darling Mcbride.
(McBride, if you ever get a job working for any other company besides McDonalds, I will insure they don't get a red cent, penny!)
Or......some other suitable company.....Ubuntosoft? :-)
Microsoft is more than welcome to join the open source community, as a pleb where it belongs.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Ah, mods... this is a factual and informative post about Debian policy.
The controversy over Mono in Debian is hardly offtopic and the viewpoint expressed here is quite rational, given that we are still in the midst of a massive Microsoft-backed anti-free-software lawsuit and FUD campaign (SCO, tomtom, etc).
References:
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
I suppose I disagree with classifying GNOME as a vital system component, and I am pretty sure nobody is talking about using C# for writing core OS components either. That would be foolish for a lot more reasons than patent confusion.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Mr. Stallman deserves the utmost respect from all developers because he truly wishes to protect the right of all users/developers alike by ensuring we have the freedom to tinker with whatever we buy and by ensuring we have the freedom to adapting whatever we buy to our on-going requirements without having to pay surprise unexpected fees on an ongoing basis.
Mr. Icaza has his point of view to make some MS stuff work in Linux. The effort he has placed deserves respect also I give him that.
The problem is that developers need to remember the kind of under-handed tactics MS has done to developers and to users as a whole to make money. :). This is not to mention the prices for the developer kits entry level MSDN 99$(TECHNET/DEVNET Knowledge BASE), Professional over 500$, and Enterprise over $1500 on a yearly basis. Mind you the value as respectable for the number of CDs/DVD's they send you. The problem is we have only so much time in the day to learn all the api's they created or unveiled to us. DOS, MFC, DIRECTX, DDK, DirectMedia, ODBC, DAO, ODB, VBA, OLE, ACTIVEX, COM, ATL to mention a few. Depending on what level of MSDN subscription you had, the more information they unveiled to you about each of these apis. Sometimes, you wouldn't know an api existed because you didn't have the Enterprise level subscription. The entry-level and Pro level would make no mention of the DirectMedia SDK, Enterprise DATABASE API/Enterprise DATABASE tools available through DevStudio GUI for example. By purchasing the Enterprise level MSDN, you had THE EDGE if you discovered its MSDN's existence. The internet was still in its infancy and not everyone knew what was going on or had money to access Special-Interest-Groups Bulletin-Board-Systems through a modem. Even if you did, the data you received would take forever to get because the average modem then was 56Kbps and the average user/wannabe developer couldn't afford to get the T1 1Mbps connection which was over 500$ a month.
My favourites are:
1)When Windows NT Workstation was discovered to be LIMITED with 64 TCP/IP connections, while Linux had no such limitations and the source and binaries were freely available for your perusal. One needs to recall the prices for Windows 95/NT Workstation/NT Server. Both NT Workstation and NT were starting to become highly exclusive(1000$+) while the Win95 was around 99$. Linux 0$-20$
2)The UNDOCUMENTED DOS/WINDOWS book describing all the different API calls discovered being used by MS software products that no other company previously knew existed. The fact is the undocumented apis gave MS an edge of the competition. Once this was discovered, this created a market for non-microsoft debuggers. The sanctioned MS debugger Nu-Mega Softice was respected, but IDA pro came to fill a necessary void to ensure the developers were getting the whole picture when debugging their software or when trying to understand how other software worked in order to gain inspiration.
3)Internet Explorer and Netscape web page HTML/javascript code incompatibilities.
4)Microsoft Java JVM and Sun Java JVM incompatibilities.
Simply by the existence of incompatibilities, the user didn't know so they would just opt with what was installed by MS, because that was the easy route to take and especially for updates. This in turn greatly hurt Netscape and Sun until they brought Microsoft to court, but the damage was done.
5)Doublespace. Here's a company that created a disk compression technology that doubled the amount of data your hard drive could hold, but MS put them out of business by adding in a tool to their windows offering that did exactly the same thing. If you bought MS-Dos 6, you would get this disk compression tool from MS. The disk compression product competitor went out of business because MS squeezed them out of the market niche. Note this is similar to what happened to Netscape. Originally Netscape sold their web browser product, but then MS added in their Internet Explorer tool as part of the Windows O
More like saying someone is in no position to judge whether the Nazis were evil unless he has played Castle Wolfenstein. The ethical issues are clear even without delving into a vitual model of them.
Where's Silverlight for Linux?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Here is why de Icaza goes wrong:
Stallman's blog post was incredibly direct, and was very soft for a personal attack. In fact, RMS went out of the way to make clear that this was not personal:
This is classic RMS: he's serving warning to the community and is calling out a pattern of behavior that is perplexing and someone dangerous if you value free software and later:
RMS is inconvenient. He's a curmudgeon. But he's also the kind of curmudgeon you want on your side. I'm glad he's on the side of freedom. As for de Icaza - he's done some great things and should be commended, but RMS is right to sound the warning. It's up to de Icaza and the CodePlex foundation to prove RMS wrong.
-- $G
Every accusation made in your post likely applies to you too.
Took me probably fifteen minutes to walk around the whole thing. Infinite, my foot!
If you want to restrict the use of your program, I don't want to use it, so I guess we're even.
Twinstiq, game news
All these Free Software vs. open source software tiffs can be summed up by:
People's Front of Judea Member: "Listen... the only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean Peoples Front!"
_ The bureaucracy is expanding to meet
the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
What reason is there to believe that applications written in C# are at a bigger risk of that than applications written in Python?
If you don't know the answer to this question without having to ask, you probably just shouldn't be making a fool of yourself by trying to participate in this discussion.
Now shh, the grownups are talking.
no please tell, as i see this everywhere here. people seem to think c# is at bigger risk than any other language. nothing I've seen in c# itself is in anyway unique to the language, it's rather more like MS picke their favourite features from other language, no patnets there, so the patents are in the libs, most likely, but not only, in the win related libs, these doesn't really affect mono apps designed to run on linux.
The rest of linux is just as likely to infringe on patents as mono libs, the devil is in the code written, not in the actual langage used
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Hey Mr. Allison, I am a bit surprised to see somebody of your stature here. I just wanted to use the opportunity to thank you for work, notably Samba.
Surely a gratuitous Nazi reference only feeds the flame?
Do you really think it's that good to never change your mind anyway? Don't you think we learn from experience enough to change our minds a bit in time?
When it comes to your core principles, I think it's perfectly fine to stick with them. RMS's judgement criterion is always: "does this action increase or decrease a user's freedom?" If it increases it, he's vocally for it. If it takes something away, then he's vocally against it.
No, I don't want him to change his mind on something that fundamental. The day I hear him explaining why something freedom-limiting is OK because it's convenient is the day I stop considering his opinion. I can make my own prediction here: that day will never come.
Here's the question nobody seems to be asking RMS. Why is mono evil and dotGNU, officially part of the GNU Project, OK?
...lest some freetard surreptitiously (and remorsefully) gulps it while noone's watching.
Does this help?
The relevant portion of the promise would be:
Emphasis mine.
It it possible that the "confabulated" names which you say you argued against (and I have no reason to doubt your word) are indicative of Microsoft's attitude towards you? Looks like contempt to me. Your mileage obviously varies.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
You develop some software.
You make it proprietary.
Many of us wont like you, many of us will not pay you for your software, but please tell us at which point do the FSF police comes and beats you into submission to release your software under the GPL.
GPL is not about forced sharing, if you don't want to share then simply develop your own software. But if you take somebody else's software under the GPL, then sorry mate, but the price for that is to make your modifications public.
Don't like it? Don't use GPLed software. Nobody is forcing you, even if Stallman gives you nightmares.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you don't like GPLed software, then don't use it and develop your own or licence it from developers of proprietary, closed source solutions.
People like you are pissed for having to pay a price for the work of others. You are cheapskates and hypocrites.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I was wearing sports shoes (trainers as are called in the UK).
The thorn of a plant cut through the sole like if it was a hot knife through butter and , well, lets say it was quite bloody.
The locals, mostly San people, all wear sandals of very hard leather, and most recently, they make sandals with discarded tires.
If people that have walked on that terrain for 40000 years use shoes, you know what, I think I will continue to wear mine too, but not trainers, those are for, er, training.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I take marching orders from nobody, but I know who I agree or disagree with, as I am sure people of real relevance in the FOSS movement do.
You are the first person I know that describes agreement as subservience. Quite amusing actually.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And for many of us it represents the way in which culture between people is shared, transferred to the software arena.
if you can't see why this is really important (at least for some people) then I can't really help you .
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But it is not like the FSF police is going to get you.
You will be punished by
- Not benefiting from the common wisdom of other programmers.
- Lots of people may not buy your software, many of us dislike the idea of depend on external entities for access to our own data.
That is it. Or what do you think Stallman is referring to? I hope now you can have a sound sleep.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You can bill for your work and still release your software using the GPL, or service GPL software for your clients (i have seen modifications of Perl and OpenSSH in the field).
Since most development is made in house (that is, software does not need to be released to the community) this question remains as meaningless as always.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Which is why his short lived empire collapsed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You see? There are things that are black and white.
The issue regarding software is very simple: you either provide the source code of software or not, you either grant other the ability to inspect it and modify as they see fit or you don't.
Black and white.
Pretty simple.
Access to software code is not an intricate issue, it is a panda issue in the vein explained above.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Stallman and the FSF have a history of just making shit up when they decide they don't like something.
[citation needed]
The sad thing is that you are moded Insightful.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Will you leave a known burglar on his own on your house?
What are the reasonable "conjectures" you would make?
Look buddy, once beaten twice shy, even the most ardent MS apologist (that word again) should be able to understand this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You are not considering that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When Linus has strayed from the Open Source path (the software control debacle) he has been burned and had to come back to his senses.
It is only the ideological consistency of people promoting the GPL what has kept Linux viable, and by extension, Linus employable.
I think one should know better than to throw sand in the eyes of the giants whose shoulders you are using as a comfy platform for your endeavours.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mate, buy yourself a couple of Carl Sagan's books, then you will know that what you just wrote contradicts some very basic principles of logic (ignoring the message because who the messenger is).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You just need to know how to use Google, but Bing may be more useful in this particular case :-)
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Miguel seems to think that there are people within Microsoft who are steering the company towards better relationships with free software. Irrelevant, I say. The corporation, Microsoft, is, like any other corporation, interested in one thing. Profit, and shareholders. There may very well be many people within Microsoft who like open source and even free software, but they will always be overriden by what the legal entity that is Microsoft, wants. Period. Mono is the perfect example of how a corporate entity will behave in a market where profit cannot be made. The corporation will try its absolute best to figure out a way to make profit from the situation. It is after all in the interest of its own survival.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
Can you give examples about the FSF "making shit up" about "trusted computing" please... so we can explain you why they didnt happen because of technical aspects or the people awareness (i am sure to have read lots of tryings from microsoft side, but would be easier if you provide some "bullshit" list) Who knows, maybe you can articulate with facts your opinion instead of resort to emotional name calling.
Surely a gratuitous Nazi reference only feeds the flame?
It's a tough job, sure, but someone has to do it!
i always thought it was a bad analogy, for a different reason:
A cathedral - an old place, parts of which are probably falling apart, where people looking for meaning in their lives come to hear a bearded chap rattle on endlessly about some made up crap. most of them have no idea why they're there, but somehow they feel compelled to stay.
A bazaar - a market where ideas and products are exchanged. the value of the products is important: nobody is forced to give their wares away for free.