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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.
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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?
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.
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?
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.
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".
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?
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.
"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!
"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."
Sorry, but after years of trying to undermine and bring an end to the free software and open source software movements, Microsoft needs to make the first move. Thus far, all they have done is contributed some drivers to Linux that make it easier to run Windows in a VM, and made it slightly easier for open source developers to develop software for Windows. Note their emphasis on running Windows. Note that Windows is more proprietary, more shackled than ever before.
Call me when Windows and/or MS Office have been GPLv3'ed.
Palm trees and 8
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 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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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Thanks Dr. Godwin.
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?
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.
Wow, this is what I love to watch, a biatch fight between 2 geeks
Yeah, and in 1970 there was no iPod.
What exactly is your point? That at some point in time, businesses didn't fear digital copies and now they do? What was M$ supposed to do? Say 'no, we refuse to implement anything to legally cover our ass when we get sued for facilitating piracy'?
Yeah, Windows now has drm. That has a lot more to do with media companies demanding it in order to allow their product to work in Windows than M$ inventing it and forcing the masses to its will.
I won't claim M$ isn't and hasn't been shady as hell, but to blame them for closed source drm evil is as insane as the people that listen to RMS whine about it being 'GNU/Linux' They seem to miss the point that after DECADES, RMS can't get his damn kernel to a point where Linux isn't a better product.
Blame M$ for the things they have done, not for the things you imagine they will do. In the end, it is just F-ing software, use what you like and get on with your life... nothing to see here.
What a load of baloney:
MS grudgingly gave the Samba people a pile of incomplete documentation, after it was forced to do so by the EU
MS desperately attacked ODF, came up with its pile of crap MS-OOXML, which it specifically named such that it was easily confused with ODF, and then when they managed to force it through the ISO organization, in the process pretty much destroying that organization, they abandoned the standard because even their own Office program didn't implement it.
Firefox? You're full of it.
Apache, they gave money to the Apache foundation. We don't know why yet, maybe to make apache run better on Windows.
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?
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.
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.
Heh. Did you notice that you're quoting boycottnovell.com above? You know they're a bunch of loons, right? :)
http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=237
moo.
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
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
Took me probably fifteen minutes to walk around the whole thing. Infinite, my foot!
But without boycottnovell, where would we learn such interesting facts as Apple switched from PPC to Intel because Jobs wanted to support Vista, or that Slashdot always takes the Microsoft party line.
Without BN, I could have scoured every reliable source in the world, and never have learned those obscure facts.
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.