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A New Rant â Microsoft, Ubuntu, Canonical, Novell, and Mono
,----[ Quote ]
| I was reading Goblinâs latest post at
| OpenBytes. He had some interesting points,
| but I thought he was missing a few things. At
| point I hit four paragraphs in response, I
| decided to answer him here instead, because I
| kept on thinking of more things to say.
| Goblinâs concern is that Canonical, the
| company behind the Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux
| operating systems, is bringing out a new
| product called Ubuntu One, and they are going
| to make a Windows version as well as a Linux
| version.
|
| Goblinâs is right â Canonical seems to be
| moving closer to Microsoft, both in supplying
| a Windows version of Ubuntu One, and because
| of Canonicalâs new search deal with Yahoo.
| Since Yahoo has a search deal with
| Microsoft, Canonical is in effect delivering
| Microsoft Bing search results to GNU/Linux
| users.
|
| [...]
|
| Yes, Microsoft is trying to use itâs monopoly
| to force everyone else out of the market.
| Theyâve bought several companies recently who
| produced products for multiple operating
| systems, and then proceeded to make them
| Windows only. So sorry, we donât make a Unix
| version anymoreâ The only problem with this
| sort of action, is that those customers who
| used the Unix version now know what Microsoft
| thinks of their business. Nothing. So they
| arenât going to buy more Microsoft product.
| Thereâs no gain for Microsoft. Oh, strictly
| Microsoft shops might buy a bit more, but
| they are becoming rarer, as the advantages of
| GNU/Linux servers become more evident.
|
| [...]
|
| Microsoft can limit competition in the
| marketplace for a short period of time only.
| This combined with the damage that Microsoft
| has done to their brand by releasing failures
| like Windows Vista, which limits the amount
| of money they can spend on monopolistic
| practises means that we are probably only
| five-ten years from seeing a collapse of the
| company, driven partly by their own
| incompetence, and partly by the negative
| image that the Microsoft brand has gained
| over the last five years. For example Novell
| made a deal with Microsoft, and Microsoftâs
| bad reputation has affected Novellâs
| reputation, to the point where a lot of
| techs, even those who had used a lot of
| Novell in the past, will not recommend Novell
| products anymore. Another example is the
| migration under way from Yahoo to Google,
| because of Yahooâs pending deal with
| Microsoft.
|
| [...]
|
| But Gnome may no longer matter. There are
| rumours around the net about a âNew Desktop
| Foundation.â The rumour I heard was that this
| would be a fork of the Gnome desktop,
| removing all Mono and C# packages. There are
| enough people who are upset at Ubuntu, Gnome,
| and Miguel de Icaza (one of the founders of
| Gnome, and founder of the Mono project, and a
| Microsoft MVP) that it could possibly be
| true. I was also told that the use of âNewâ
| was deliberate, since in English the
| pronunciation is the same as the
| pronunciation of âGnuâ.
`----
http://madhatter.ca/?p=241
A GIMP replacement? â Popping down the pub for a âPintaâ with Novell?
,----[ Quote ]
| Iâve often made the point that if Mono is so
| great, where is the killer app for it? Where
| is the app that everyone MUST have? Whatever
| coders think about Mono and whatever they
| create, its the end-user who will decide on
| its future and I challenge anyone to show me
| a FOSS project that continues to run when
| nobody wants to use it.
|
| Over at
| http://jpobst.blogspot.com/2010/02/over-
| holiday-break-i-stumbled-upon-this.html where
| the Pinta project has a blog, the authors
| description says:
|
| âIâm Jonathan Pobst and I am a full-time
| open source hacker for Novell. I work on
| Mono, specifically on Mono Tools for
| Visual Studio.
|
| and he certainly has âgreatâ aspirations for
| this software. Full time open source hacker?
| You mean employee then? Implying that he is
| inspired by Paint.net. Inspired by Paint.net
| eh?â..moving swiftly onâ.
|
| [...]
|
| If I had seen a mass of Mono apps being
| released to âhungryâ end users I may have
| seen the need, but when Novell is seemingly
| trying to create its own killer apps to
| promote its own implementation of a Microsoft
| framework then I really canât see the point
| of this âgift to the worldâ.
|
| In the case of Mono and its associated
| âwaresâ the most important person is not the
| coder(s) behind the projects, but the end-
| user â YOU. The success or failure of such
| projects will solely depend on if they are
| taken up by the âaverage desktop userâ who
| outnumber enterprise/advocates/coders many
| times over. Ask yourself did you move to
| Linux for a âFOSSâ implementation of a
| Microsoft technology which is headed up by
| Microsoft MVP Mr De Icazza or did you (like
| me) move because you were tired of inhibiting
| licenses, crashes, bloated software and the
| blame being placed at the feet of anyone but
| Microsoft? Were you fed up of the ethos of
| âeverything has a priceâ or the takeaway menu
| style purchasing of Microsoft products? -
| Iâll let you decide.
`----
http://news.brunei.fm/2010/02/06/u-s-prevents-cuba-from-accessing-open-source-projects/
Recent:
LCA 2010: Allison warns of patent traps in Mono
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| Patents are the only threat that Microsoft
| can brandish against free and open source
| software and that is exactly why people
| should be wary of the Mono project, free
| software advocate and Samba hacker Jeremy
| Allison told a packed auditorium at the
| 11th LCA today.
|
| Allison's presentation, titled "Microsoft
| and free software: the elephant in the
| room" was held in the second largest
| auditorium but it was difficult to find
| standing room once he got going.
|
| Sporting a T-shirt with the Samba logo on
| the front, and "opening windows to a wider
| world" on the rear, Allison presented a
| meticulously prepared set of arguments to
| show that patents were the only way which
| the word's largest software company had
| left to attack FOSS.
|
| Mono is an attempt to create an open source
| clone of Microsoft's .NET development
| environment; the project was begun by
| Novell vice-president Miguel de Icaza who
| claims this will pull Windows developers
| over to GNU/Linux.
|
| Allison said the patent war would be a
| never-ending conflict. "All the patent
| promises about Mono count for nothing," he
| said. Other methods of harming FOSS had not
| borne the expected fruit.
`----
http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/?2010/01/20/694-public-service-announcement
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