02.09.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, SLES/SLED, Ubuntu at 6:40 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Pinta” comes from Novell staff and software patents tax (on SLE*) comes from Microsoft in the form of vouchers
YESTERDAY’S LONG post about Ubuntu has led to some reactions that include this rant about “Microsoft, Ubuntu, Canonical, Novell, and Mono”:
I was reading Goblin’s 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. Goblin’s 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.
Goblin’s is right – Canonical seems to be moving closer to Microsoft, both in supplying a Windows version of Ubuntu One, and because of Canonical’s 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 it’s monopoly to force everyone else out of the market. They’ve bought several companies recently who produced products for multiple operating systems, and then proceeded to make them Windows only. So sorry, we don’t make a Unix version anymore… 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 aren’t going to buy more Microsoft product. There’s 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 Microsoft’s bad reputation has affected Novell’s 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 Yahoo’s pending deal with Microsoft.
[...]
But Gnome may no longer matter. There are rumours around the net about a ‘New Desktop Foundation.’ 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 ‘New’ was deliberate, since in English the pronunciation is the same as the pronunciation of ‘Gnu’.
OpenBytes has meanwhile done some digging into the project called “Pinta” (it was also mentioned yesterday). Guess what? This Mono project is developed by a Novell employee. Here are the details:
I’ve 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:
…I’m 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 “great” 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?…..moving swiftly on….
[...]
If I had seen a mass of Mono apps being released to “hungry” 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 can’t see the point of this “gift to the world”.
In the case of Mono and its associated “wares” the most important person is not the coder(s) behind the projects, but the end-user – YOU. The success or failure of such projects will solely depend on if they are taken up by the “average desktop user” who outnumber enterprise/advocates/coders many times over. Ask yourself did you move to Linux for a “FOSS” 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 “everything has a price” or the takeaway menu style purchasing of Microsoft products? – I’ll let you decide.
We didn’t know that Novell staff had made this Mono program. It’s tempting to say that “Embrace and Extend” with Mono would potentially work here. If there was enough of Microsoft inside GNU/Linux, then maybe it would be ripe for adoption by Microsoft. It’s almost as though Microsoft is brewing and fortifying a GNU/Linux is can recommend, with software patents tax, .NET, and all the rest of the stuff.
As our reader Goblin put it last night, “It seems if people won’t use Mono to make apps, Novell will have to do it for them……so much for this “gift to the world”… I think its a “gift to the world” in the same way the atom bomb was.”
To another reader he said: “I’d like to give it back….Marty do you have the receipt? we can get a refund! 
… Stand by for the “Mono hater” or “Killing the FOSS” comments because I dare to give MY opinion on Mono.”
The Mono team often bullies those who disagree.
In other news, an article which was mentioned in last week's post (and some prior posts [1, 2]) is attempting to portray Microsoft as a GNU/Linux vendor. This portrayal is accentuated by this article, which is just a lot of spin. The comments in Linux Today complement it.
Rainer Weikusat writes: “According the article, Microsoft is the third-largest Linux vendor in the USA. That’s something to remember for the next round of ‘”Linux” is low-quality hobbyist’s software’ …”
Jose X is being more realistic and Bernard Swiss says: “Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I have grave doubts that in this case, the word “sold” means what I would usually take it to mean.”
A lot of people miss the point that what Microsoft sells here is not GNU/Linux, let alone support. It sells licences to software patents it would not disclose. Matt Asay has connections with his former employer Novell and based on his conversations with old colleagues he said that he had “heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”,” so it means that they are selling patents, and mostly profiting at the expense of Red Hat. Another comment says that “What Microsoft has done here is keep Windows on all those computers by selling a support license for Linux installed in a virtual machine on a Windows host computer.
“Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I have grave doubts that in this case, the word “sold” means what I would usually take it to mean.”
–Bernard Swiss“So where companies where going to put Linux on the hardware, Microsoft keeps selling another copy of Windows and they still rule the system.
“Why else would they pay so much for so little? Just more protectionism and keeping keeping customers from really knowing what they are missing staying on Windows.”
It’s the same with Mono and the CodePlex Foundation. It’s about putting Microsoft in charge. Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza will soon be joined by Hunter [1, 2, 3], a Microsoft employee [1, 2] whose role is to help Microsoft fight against Free software and GNU/Linux for the sake of Windows, DRM, software patent racketeering and the usual criminal activities that Microsoft still specialises in. eWEEK has an unintentionally deceiving headline that says: “Canonical, CodePlex Foundation Announce New Leadership” █
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02.08.10
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, GPL, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenOffice, Ubuntu, Windows at 9:26 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Analysis of Canonical’s latest moves, which are being defended by some and severely criticised by others
UBUNTU is an important part of the GNU/Linux family and we defend it at every chance, always giving it the benefit of the doubt. Some readers pressure us to change the tune, which would be hard and counter-productive. I have personally used Ubuntu at some capacity since its very first release (which I was using at work).
In the interest of presenting perspectives of other people and showing Canonical where it can improve, this post accumulates mostly criticisms of the company’s latest moves.
“Canonical has already employed other ex-Novell employees and some might attribute Mono affinity to this.”“PyCon sprint for Windows support” is the title of a post right here at Canonical.com. It made Pamela Jones (over at Groklaw) write “Blech.”
We previously defended this strategy, which we believe to be a case of Canonical reaching out to Windows users. In relation to the Yahoo! deal signed by Canonical [1, 2], Jones wrote: “And if Microsoft offers you money, will you change it to Bing? Wait. Is Yahoo not Bing, if you stop and think about it a little? Microsoft has plenty of money, so if money is all it takes to undermine and corrupt what I used to think of as a FOSS project, it will happen.”
This is why we prefer not to openly criticise (or “attack”) Ubuntu; it would only serve Microsoft if unnecessary infighting was to occur. Novell is a different case because it uses its beloved software patents to directly discriminate against other GNU/Linux vendors and it publicly aligns itself with the monopolist. Microsoft is not completely external here; we have already shown how at least one former Microsoft employee entered Ubuntu, which probably means that Canonical HR did a poor job.
“Shouldn’t we leave the [Microsoft] elephant alone and stop poking it with sticks? Well, the problem is they aren’t going to leave us alone,” said Jeremy Allison some weeks ago. We wrote about these remarks in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. He also warned about Mono in Ubuntu [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla wrote some more things about Allison’s public appearance at LCA 2010:
Jeremy Allison’s talk about Microsoft was good. We’ve feared Microsoft for so long it’s become almost unfashionable, but I think Jeremy is right to keep reminding the free software community of the danger there. He talked about Microsoft’s attempts to take over the Web, and kindly mentioned Firefox’s role in pulling us back from that brink. He made the point (which I think is too often overlooked) that which company one works for is almost always an individual moral choice and we should hold people accountable for it … we can’t let people off the hook by saying “oh, the company I work for is just evil and I can’t do anything about it”. The focus of his talk was the suggestion that Microsoft is gearing up for an all-out patent war on free software. I don’t know if this is true — honestly, I expected them to do it long ago and I’m not sure what’s been holding them back — but we certainly do need to keep aware of the possibility. Jeremy suggested that Microsoft will promote “RAND” standards — standards covered by patents whose licenses would require a “Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory” fee, which sound good except that for free software, any non-zero fee is a show-stopper. In fact, as I discussed later in my talk, RAND-encumbered standards won’t fly in the traditional Web standards world — e.g. CSS and HTML5. We have a very good situation there, where everyone understands that any suggestion that can’t be implemented in Gecko (MPL/LGPL/GPL) or Webkit (LGPL) is simply a non-starter. However, we do face a very serious situation in video, where the licensing isn’t even RAND, and possibly in other technologies such as touch interfaces. It was good to be able to use some of these issues that Jeremy raised as launching points for my talk.
“How will Ubuntu’s move to proprietary software affect the free world?” is the title of this post that Groklaw pointed to last week, adding: “Some of the responses are downright worrisome.” Yes, Jones too is concerned that Ubuntu neglects the “Free” in FOSS.
This brings us to the next subject, which is Matt Asay. We have written about his appointment twice already [1, 2] but what we have not yet mentioned is that Matt Asay almost went working for Microsoft some years ago. He wrote about it, but a lot of people do know this. Also, we have not yet mentioned the timing of his departure from Alfresco, which intersects Alfresco’s departure from the GPL. Novell used to pay Matt Asay’s wage, which is another important fact that Ghabuntu mentions:
A founding member of Novell’s Linux Business Office and an early influencer and participant in the company’s move to Open Source, Matt Assay will bring to Canonical and the Ubuntu project an in depth knowledge of commercial marketing of open source
Canonical has already employed other ex-Novell employees and some might attribute Mono affinity to this. Several months ago, when a former Microsoft employee who now leads Ubuntu’s desktop endeavours called for the removal of the GIMP, we immediately responded and later pointed out a reader's opinion that Paint.NET might be added next. Now, watch this new Mono project called Pinta, which strives to mimic Paint.NET.
Anyway, going back to Asay, here is what he wrote in his personal blog:
All day Friday, congratulations hit my Twitter account (mjasay). I got dozens of emails, too, and 50+ comments on my CNET blog where I announced the change. It was overwhelming, because I (perhaps like you) normally assume that no one is that interested in me.
Hopefully none of those messages were from Microsoft, which used to take him out to lunch and other places in attempt to acquire his love. Microsoft calls this "schmoozing". At least he did not end up working for Microsoft; in fact, he went the other way to become a big fan of Apple and their products, which he is miserably trying to characterise as open source (they are just about as closed as something can get, as iPad shows perfectly well [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). Matt Asay will also need a new E-mail address. mjasay@mac.com does not work well for a Canonical employee.
The founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe writes in reply to Jan (from Red Hat): “RT @jwildeboer: @mjasay making Ubuntu OpenCore now? > He But seriously: Congratulations, @mjasay!”
This notion of “Open Core” (like Mono) for a project such as Ubuntu would not so far fetched. The Source wrote about reasons why Matt Asay joining Canonical is mostly bad news:
Good Thing
For Mr. Asay, this is a good thing: he will greatly expand his influence, and be able to impose his philosophy on what is arguably the most popular distro.
Bad Thing
For everyone else, this is a bad thing: he will greatly expand his influence, and be able to impose his philosophy on what is arguably the most popular distro.
Ubuntu is already under too much influence from anti-Free Software, pro-Commercialization / pro-Fauxpen Source thinkers. They hire ex-Microsoft and ex-Novell employees, brook virtually no discussion on fundamentally divisive technologies like Mono and Moonlight, and put profits ahead of both user experience and ethics by making Microsoft the “opt-out” default search provider. At best, this mindset considers the Free Software foundation of GNU/Linux an inconvenience or distraction.
Our reader Goblin wrote the following post regarding Canonical’s decision to drop OpenOffice.org from a minimal version of Ubuntu. He is going further than that:
Ubuntu has been receiving quite a bit of attention on Openbytes. I was (and still am) optimistic regarding possible native Linux proprietary software being offered to users, but what with Gnome being the flagship DE for Ubuntu (led up by Microsoft MVP Mr De Icaza and the “gift to the world” Mono), Ubuntu having the “good ship Yahoo” (bound for Microsoft) as its default search engine, I can’t help feeling that as it stands now Ubuntu 10.04 is far from “Lucid”.
And what of Gimp? Reports from Alpha’s of 10.04 state that the package is still present. Are Canonical going to remove it and if they do is that for the opportunity of a proprietary option or are they going to try it on with a Mono app?
Canonical has, in my opinion a rather large responsibility and a great opportunity. There can be little doubt that Ubuntu is one of the most, if not the most popular Linux distro’s and is many users first experience of the Linux platform. If Canonical decisions and actions are seen as a poorer cousin of Microsoft then I would predict its user base would decline. As Ive said before I believe had Novell not signed “the deal” with Microsoft, it would be Novell in the position that Canonical is now.
Yesterday we showed that Microsoft takes over companies from which it is removing the GNU/Linux focus. We used FAST as an example. Richard Rasker wrote: “Hm, haven’t we seen this before — Microsoft buying a mixed OS outfit, then dropping the non-Windows part, even if it doesn’t make sense? The names Hotmail and GeCAD come to mind …”
“It looks like a divide and conqueror plan to me,” says Locutus in his latest headline:
Being a large and world wide company with deep pockets and short arms they can afford to take the long term view of something. They seem to be relying on the fact that peoples memories can be short sighted. So they buy a company which supports operating systems other than windows and then over time they reduce the support for the other operating systems.
We also saw that happening to Novell, Xandros, Corel, and others. We hope that it is not happening to Ubuntu. Later on we will write about what Microsoft is doing to Facebook, which runs on the LAMP stack. █
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02.07.10
Posted in Africa, Apple, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 7:14 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A complete list of news articles about Moonlight 3.0 preview shows that its biggest fans are Microsoft fans
WE ARE never surprised to rediscover that those who defend a multiple offender and law-breaking beast are also promoting Microsoft Trojans like Mono and Moonlight. They offer wooden horses as gifts.
Today we look at Moonlight 3.0 preview. We have taken stock of anyone who covered it, based on Google News. All that we found was coverage from Microsoft booster Gavin Clarke, his colleague Mary Jo Foley (“Look! I’m writing about Linux too… [but only when it's good for Microsoft]“), and longtime Microsoft booster Marius Oiaga. They are continuing a trend we that noted and highlighted many times before, namely that Moonlight is being promoted heavily by fans and defenders of Microsoft’s illegal monopoly. Joining those 3 we have part-time Microsoft booster Darryl Taft. The only exception we could find came from The Inquirer, but that writer too had come from IDG, which has a financial relationship with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and covered this Moonlight 3.0 preview as well. It’s hardly even news, which is why GNU/Linux sites hardly mentioned it at all.
We are quite concerned about Ubuntu's attitude towards Mono. Yesterday we learned about a fascinating rumour that Mark Shuttleworth resigned from Canonical’s top spot so that Google can take over Canonical. The rumour comes from Africa.
“Yesterday we learned about a fascinating rumour that Mark Shuttleworth resigned from Canonical’s top spot so that Google can take over Canonical.”One reader urged us to comment about Canonical’s addition of an Apple enthusiast to its staff (he is also a former Novell employee). We wrote about it yesterday while still trying to figure out whether it’s an identity crisis for Canonical. There is a lot of discussion about this in our IRC channel.
Pamela Jones from Groklaw wrote: “On a personal note, while I like Matt personally, he wrote to me not long ago that he couldn’t see why people were so negative about Microsoft, so this is the end for Ubuntu being truly FOSS, as far as I’m concerned, and the beginning of it becoming fused mystery meat, if I may put it that way. They can be whatever they want, of course, but I think it would be foolish to expect anything now but a loss of the F in FOSS at Canonical now.”
Canonical has already hired a man from Microsoft to lead its desktop efforts and a couple of weeks ago he announced Canonical’s decision [1, 2] to send search requests to Microsoft’s Bong [sic] (Canonical left users out of this decision). Then there’s the issue of Mono, which is interesting because the same guy from Microsoft suggested removing the GIMP (a decision that most users oppose, based on a poll, so the will of the majority was eventually ignored).
GNOME Journal is promoting a Novell-sponsored and Novell-run project that uses Mono and only Novell customers can use. GNOME has a conflict of interests because it is headed by a Novell employee.
Novell is still busy selling “protection coupons” against Microsoft’s software patents, but Novell is not doing as well as it claims.
The SD Times reports that Microsoft has sold nearly all of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) support coupons. Microsoft purchased the $240 million worth of coupons from Novell as part of patent indemnification deal. According to Microsoft, a total of 475 customers have used an undisclosed number of the coupons. Based on those figures, each of these customers has bought, on average, just over half a million dollars worth of coupons.
We wrote about this before. █
“I’ve heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”…”
–Matt Asay, April 21st, 2008
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02.06.10
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, GPL, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 6:09 am by Roy Schestowitz
“But rather than a search engine or even a “decision engine”, Bing also appears to be a spin engine, in that it provides partisan answers to controversial topics, such as Steve Ballmer’s propensity to throw chairs to blow off stress.”
–Christian Einfeldt
Summary: Shortly after deciding to send users’ search queries to Microsoft datacentres, Canonical hires a man who defends Microsoft for “options and competition”
THE chief operating officer (COO) of Canonical, Jane Silber, recently became the company’s CEO, replacing Mark Shuttleworth. Coming in to fill Silber’s COO gap is Matt Asay, as announced by Canonical and by Asay himself.
After more than four years at Alfresco, I have joined Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, as its chief operating officer.
It is worth understanding Asay’s background. He is an Apple enthusiast (Apple proponents are a subject we’ll address in the next post on DRM and Apple’s role in it) who also defended the GPL for a long time (these days he is promoting Apache and sometimes joining the the anti-GPL noise). He does not like Richard Stallman’s philosophy, he insisted that Microsoft should be allowed the enter the OSI (he was on its board at the time), and he also used to work for Novell (in addition to Alfresco and Lineo). He has a background in law, but on the technical side he understands matters as a computer user. This is hopefully an accurate representation of his views and background. Others wrote about that from a different perspective. Last night Asay told me that he would move to GNU/Linux on the desktop (he tried SUSE when he worked at Novell, but eventually ended up moving from Windows to Mac OS X, sometimes experimenting with Ubuntu afterwards).
“I’d estimate that the Yahell deal nets them at least a few hundred thousand dollars over the course of a year.”
–RyanUbuntu had a relatively weak last release (Fedora, for an opposite example, did well in the sense that reviews got better, not worse). Even this detailed review from a couple of days ago confirmed this. More recently, Canonical’s decision to send search requests to Microsoft’s Bong [sic] led to some controversy that we covered in [1, 2].
Well, we are somewhat saddened to see that Asay is perhaps trying to justify the company’s new policy by making a new post about “the importance of Bing”. Therein he writes: “It’s not about loving Microsoft. It’s about preserving options…and competition.”
This does not defend competition because it promotes a serial offender — a company that we already know manipulates its search results to advance its lies and business interests (and put competitors in positions of disadvantage). Asay will hopefully not defend Mono (.NET), which is about making Microsoft stronger (and making Novell, his former employer, stronger). It’s not “about preserving options…and competition.”
Microsoft is the antithesis of options and competition. Everyone knows that.
Jokingly, our reader Ryan twisted the above quote to say: “It’s not about loving Microsoft, it’s about loving their money and selling out our users.” He went on to describe it as “Inferior search engine but it makes Canonical some $$$’s. Ubuntu probably has several million users. I’d estimate that the Yahell deal nets them at least a few hundred thousand dollars over the course of a year. That money comes at the direct cost to Mozilla and detracts from Firefox development, so now Ubuntu is worse than a passive consumer of FOSS, they are another parasite. Well, Mandriva defaults to Ask, but I seriously doubt anyone keeps that. Yahoo might be passable enough to keep users content with it.”
MinceR called it “ridiculous” and stated: “apparently Canonical’s leaders have decided it would be fun for them to turn into another Novell”
That’s just too big a leap, which I disagree with. Novell is very different because it directly harms its competitors by legitimising software patents and using them to trash other vendors.
By the way, Asay comes from Alfresco, which is competing against Google, not just Microsoft SharePoint that Novell helps promote under the guise of “interoperability”.
According to the Var Guy (from last week), Google is trying to win disgruntled SharePoint users at the expense of Alfresco. Might this also explain Asay’s fear of Google?
No doubt, Microsoft and Google are waging a software as a service (SaaS) war. But the latest shot fired comes from a surprising source: LTech, an enterprise cloud service provider, is helping customers automate document migrations from Microsoft SharePoint to Google Apps. Here’s how.
As we stressed before, Google can help Free software by weakening or eliminating the industry's bully. Canonical should stand behind Google, not Microsoft. Google already collaborates with Canonical on Chrome OS, doesn’t it? █
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02.04.10
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 11:37 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Assorted items about Mono and Moonlight
NOVELL is promoting Microsoft through GNU/Linux (and Microsoft on Apple devices [1, 2]). The obsession with Mono and Moonlight is about making Microsoft (not necessarily the same as Windows) stronger and this new article from Dr. Dobbs shows what Novell does for proprietary software, leading to unrest. More in IRC (starts here):
| Chips_B_Malroy |
you might enjoy this thread: http://mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24925 |
Feb 03 22:31 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Titled: Resolved – need moonlight in 8.5 |
Feb 03 22:32 |
| phIRCe-BNc |
Title: Error processing the URL: .::. Size~: 0 KB |
Feb 03 22:33 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
comment number 10 says it all, as to why Moonlight in addition to the patents/legal/etc problems, is just no good |
Feb 03 22:33 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
and why M$ with Miguel’s (Novell) help, makes mono-moonlight a 2nd rate platform |
Feb 03 22:34 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
or should I say, a M$ trojan |
Feb 03 22:34 |
| balzac |
Well, I suppose I don’t need to worry about brand loyalty with asus |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| balzac |
do we have any favored PC manufacturer’s left? |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| balzac |
who sells notebooks without an OS? |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
MS and Miguel know full well that mono-moonlight is incapable of playing Silverlight content from Netflix because of the ms drm there |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| balzac |
I may go for a lenovo for my next notebook |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| oiaohm |
Intel proved it possible to force MS to give over silverlight for Linux. |
Feb 03 22:36 |
| oiaohm |
So really why bother with moonlight |
Feb 03 22:37 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
oiaohm> yes, right as almost always |
Feb 03 22:37 |
| oiaohm |
I am supprised people are not more up in arms that intel can get real silverlight for Linux yet most others cannot. |
Feb 03 22:38 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
<oiaohm> So really why bother with moonlight?” For me, never, I was just passing on the post, as I thought it might be of interest here. The point I like to make is how useless moonlight is |
Feb 03 22:38 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Oiaohm> if Intel can get it, at some point someone well get the flash dump of it, and hack it. And it will end up in a repo in some part of the world they cannot sue. |
Feb 03 22:39 |
| oiaohm |
If MS is truly wanting to make it a platform should they not be releasing it to all directly? |
Feb 03 22:40 |
| oiaohm |
Ie not giving different parties specal treatment. |
Feb 03 22:40 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
If moonlight is useless, and it is, then Mono is too. As Moonlight is supposedly the killer app. |
Feb 03 22:40 |
| oiaohm |
Problem for Moonlight and Flash is more and more html5 is picking up what they are aimed at doing. |
Feb 03 22:41 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Oiaohm> the point that is made here that MS does not release Silverlight for Linux directly because they want Mono-Moonlight so as to be substandard. |
Feb 03 22:41 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
which is a true statement |
Feb 03 22:42 |
| oiaohm |
For what reason. |
Feb 03 22:42 |
| oiaohm |
Either to destory Linux or to be able to destory Novell after it built the market. Or both |
Feb 03 22:42 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
So Windows will do everything silverlight that Linux-mono-moonlight cannot, like play netflix |
Feb 03 22:42 |
| oiaohm |
I more take the line of both. |
Feb 03 22:43 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
yes, both probably |
Feb 03 22:43 |
| oiaohm |
I know of very few companies that have made deals with MS and walked away in good condition. |
Feb 03 22:43 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
but the fact that moonlight cannot, and most likely never will be able to legally play the MS DRM licencing in the Netflix Silverlight videos, means something. And it should be taken to the front of the debate. |
Feb 03 22:44 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Moonlight is useless |
Feb 03 22:45 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
therefore mono is too |
Feb 03 22:45 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
the one thing users want it to do it cannot |
Feb 03 22:45 |
| oiaohm |
If you really understand how the Linux kernel works you can see major problems with all JIT language designs. |
Feb 03 22:45 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
which is beyond me most likely |
Feb 03 22:46 |
| oiaohm |
People forget that Linux kernel does GC on a process by process base. |
Feb 03 22:46 |
| oiaohm |
So all the talk about GC giving safety is mostly crap. |
Feb 03 22:47 |
| oiaohm |
Ie since mono containes a GC it safe…. |
Feb 03 22:47 |
| oiaohm |
Multi process application that in a lot of cases runs faster than mono is also as safe. |
Feb 03 22:47 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Well, I am not a fan of Netflix or Blockbuster. |
Feb 03 22:47 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
But I expect that Silverlight for Linux on Intel will get pawned. |
Feb 03 22:48 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Because MS has basically paid off both Netflix and Blockbuster to use their patented Silverlight tech |
Feb 03 22:49 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Will it be legal? no |
Feb 03 22:51 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
maybe in some parts of the world, maybe |
Feb 03 22:51 |
| oiaohm |
Really hope MS does. |
Feb 03 22:52 |
| oiaohm |
Intel is not past sueing MS ass off. |
Feb 03 22:52 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
myself I don’t want Silverlight |
Feb 03 22:52 |
| oiaohm |
Neither do I |
Feb 03 22:52 |
| oiaohm |
But I would like an another interesting court case against MS. |
Feb 03 22:53 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
I can find what I want with other means |
Feb 03 22:53 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
But I do believe that M$ is trying to drive demand for Silverlight with Netflix and Blockbuster. Using both of these two, is creating another monopoly in the USA, as they are the biggest two in this market for most users here. |
Feb 03 22:54 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
Blockbuster, correction, I know it uses Net and MS DRM, but it never says where I can see that it uses Silverlight, but I believe it does |
Feb 03 22:55 |
| *FurnaceBoy (~FurnaceBo@BAS1-TORONTO10-1279748207.dsl.bell.ca) has joined #boycottnovell |
Feb 03 22:56 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
comment number #10 from the link: ”No drm so it doesn’t work on something you would want it for like netflix.” |
Feb 03 22:57 |
| schestowitz |
Thanks |
Feb 03 22:57 |
| schestowitz |
I’ll mentioned this tomorrow |
Feb 03 22:57 |
| schestowitz |
There’s related news…. |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
The dirty little secret of Mono-Moonlight is, its never going do what you want it to really do. |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| schestowitz |
Linux Tablet from Google Coming BTW ……. \0/ |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| schestowitz |
Microsoft sill in the pits http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,1000001161,40018130-39001096c-20106869o,00.htm |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| phIRCe-BNc |
Title: How many more times? – Conficker worm disrupts Manchester police systems – Talkback at ZDNet UK .::. Size~: 86.38 KB |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| FurnaceBoy |
Chips_B_Malroy: one of the dirty secrets  |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| FurnaceBoy |
schestowitz: wow. when will they wake up.  |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| schestowitz |
Chips_B_Malroy: but Microsoft can tell regulators it plays “nice” with Linux |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| schestowitz |
That’s what the deal with Novell was partly about |
Feb 03 22:58 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
FurnaceBoy> yes, hehe |
Feb 03 22:59 |
| schestowitz |
Pretence of support and fair play… with SOFTWARE patents |
Feb 03 22:59 |
| FurnaceBoy |
schestowitz: did you see Bugliosi on YouTube calling for Bush prosecution? |
Feb 03 22:59 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
So, MS needs to come even more clean than just its community promise not to sue Linux. It needs to also open source its DRM, if users want to play Netflix Silverlight. |
Feb 03 23:00 |
| *gargoyle-grin has quit (Quit: Leaving.) |
Feb 03 23:00 |
| oiaohm |
Chips_B_Malroy: the community promise is time limited |
Feb 03 23:00 |
| MinceR |
actually they need to start providing proper patent licenses |
Feb 03 23:00 |
| oiaohm |
Or is complete crap. Chips_B_Malroy |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| oiaohm |
Ie only covering programmers who don’t get paid. |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| MinceR |
ones that apply to everyone, are free of charge, and don’t have a time limit |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
you right on both oiaohm |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| MinceR |
to the entirety of .net/mono |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| oiaohm |
that is a major problem in the Linux world on adverage over 75 percent of programers are paid to build stuff. |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| MinceR |
until they do that, they’re only screwing around, looking for gullible marks they can screw with |
Feb 03 23:01 |
| oiaohm |
If they want to keep the DRM closed source that is there business. |
Feb 03 23:02 |
| oiaohm |
But not being prepared to say we will not attack open source is not good. |
Feb 03 23:03 |
| Chips_B_Malroy |
they are trying to put out a product (moonlight) that is defective by design. Because Miguel and MS already know that the quality Silverlight videos from Netflix contain MS DRM that Moonlight cannot legally play. |
Feb 03 23:03 |
Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is referenced with glee by the ‘Microsoft press’, which was promoting Silver Lie on Monday:
The response in the developer community to the Silverlight release has been almost universally positive. Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and head of the open source Mono Project, called Silverlight 4 “a case of doing the right thing for users and developers” in a blog post soon after the release. “There are many other great features in Silverlight 4, but none as important as Silverlight becoming a universal runtime for the CLR. This is a revolution,” de Icaza wrote.
Why does he not simply join Microsoft? He already works for them part time and the creature he created (Mono) is entering the GNU/Linux desktop, ushered by articles like this new one from ECT. People don’t even realise that they are using Mono, so it’s like a diseases that’s growing quietly inside the body of the Free destkop. It is still being promoted by Ryan Paul, who is also promoting an FSF-hostile article from his new colleague, Zonker. This is not good. █
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02.03.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 8:09 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Google Books settlement and how it relates to Microsoft, its dirty tricks, and the gradual pollution of GNU/Linux code pool by Novell and others
CONVICTED MONOPOLIST Microsoft has tried almost everything against Google, without any success (Microsoft’s share in search is said to be further declining globally). Recently we’ve found reports about a lawsuit against Google’s book-scanning endeavours [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], which are exactly what Microsoft was doing until it lost the race and gave up scanning. Microsoft fuels this lawsuit, which shows its sheer hypocrisy. Microsoft even directly sued Google, but not for doing what Microsoft itself used to do, although it’s related.
Here is the FSF jumping to defend Google’s book-scanning (liberating information):
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) filed another objection in court to the proposed amended Google Book Search settlement (The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc.). The objection notes that proposed amendments which discuss works under free licenses unfairly burden their authors with ensuring license compliance, and urges the court to reject the proposed settlement unless it incorporates terms that better address the needs of authors using free licenses like the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
Groklaw agrees with the FSF and it brings together Comes vs Microsoft exhibits to show how it also relates to Novell’s Mono. It is a long analysis, so here are some portions:
That’s the dream of more than book publishers. Here’s an exhibit from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust case of a few years back, Exhibit 3590 [PDF]. It’s a discussion in 1994 with Bill Gates and his executives about the Internet, and it includes an email from Nathan Myhrvold on how Microsoft could in time take over control of the Internet.
[...]
Old-fashioned copyright owners want the Internet to cut it out and be about them feeding us content and we sit back and just consume what they send us. After we pay. And agree to DRM.
Of course, it’s funny, what Myhrvold wrote, in that they totally missed the boat about the Internet, and about Linux, but that’s a good thing. They probably could have killed Linux early on, had they tried. Their arrogance has cost them. It’s too late now, hopefully, to just crush it, not that they haven’t been trying. They’ll have to buy community members to sell out and write their software to run on Windows instead of Linux now one by one, if they can find enough greedy types, and that takes longer even in Microsoft’s best case scenario.
[...]
I hope the EU Commission is reading Groklaw at moments like this. The email is from 1995, but didn’t they do what he suggested? I’m remembering the Microsoft extensions to HTML. I’m also thinking about OOXML. There’s lots more in the exhibit about their browser plans, but are you thinking Silverlight? I am. Here’s a snip from one last exhibit, Exhibit 3589 [PDF], an email thread with a memo shared with the top brass at Microsoft on how to get the Internet away from open standards bit by bit:
I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate.
Phase I (Embrace): all participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community – determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems.
Phase II (Extend): establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.
Phase 3 (Innovate): move into a leadership role with new Internet standards as appropriate, enable standard off-the-shelf titles with Internet awareness. Change the rules: Windows becomes the next-generation Internet tool of the future.
Are you reading this Apache guys? Ubuntu Mono freaks? In the “Potential Risks” section on page 15:
Microsoft/Internet Culture Clash. – One of the biggest challenges facing Microsoft’s success in the Internet community is acceptance and respect. Although we have an incredible amount of respect in the commercial software business, the Internet has been founded on public domain protocols and products which generally included source availability at no charge. It has been only recently that vendors have suggested profiting from the Internet by selling the browsing tools and technologies, and offering commercial services on the Internet itself. The information and software has been free for 15 years, we need to be careful to embrace the current technologies and community before we attempt to reshape it.
Put ‘Open Source’ everywhere in that snip where it says ‘Internet’ and you have the picture. They pretend to be with you, sharing goals, and then they win. If you are stupid enough to fall for the “let’s be friends” part of their scheme.
Their concept of the Internet is that it’s a strip mall. They want it to be *their* strip mall.
“Ubuntu Mono freaks” is what Pamela Jones calls those who divert Ubuntu users to Microsoft [1, 2]. Yes, it’s no secret that Groklaw too has realised that Mono is a trap (even before the FSF made official statements about it).
Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza has this new interview where he speaks about Microsoft software like Mono and Moonlight. GNU/Linux users reject these, so Windows and Mac OS X are increasingly targeted by Miguel and fellow Microsoft boosters. From the interview:
A couple of recent major milestones are:
• Mono for the iPhone: the MonoTouch products, a major effort to simplify iPhone development and bring garbage collection, type safety and all of the features from .NET to iPhone developers.
• We have also just released a plug-in to Visual Studio that allows developers to move their applications from Windows to Linux, create RPM packages from Visual Studio and even use our SUSEStudio.com website to create full appliances from their software projects.
Linux Today has some more comments about it.
A couple of months ago there was a big “copyright assignment” debate promoted by Novell’s Meeks and The Source explains how it may also relate to Mono:
Copyright Assignment is a tricky topic in the FLOSS world.
[...]
The first time copyright assignment drew my attention was in how Novell’s go-oo hypocritically uses it as FUD against Open Office, and – of course – how ignorant and/or malicious mono apologists used it as a talking point.
We wrote about Go-oo in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Oracle will hopefully keep Novell from ruining OpenOffice.org. Sun was certainly angry with Novell at times. █
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02.02.10
Posted in America, Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, HP, Microsoft, Mono, OLPC, SCO, Windows at 8:38 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More Microsoft dirty secrets (anti-GNU/Linux evidence), courtesy of Comes; book about Gates Watcher retrieved, for its scoops to be shared more widely
A YEAR and a half ago we wrote about an HP smoking gun or at least a deja vu that can help connect Microsoft and SCO. Groklaw has just found an interesting Comes vs Microsoft exhibit which shows how Microsoft responded to HP’s embrace of Linux. From the introduction:
I have another Comes v. Microsoft exhibit to share with you, Exhibit 9542 [PDF], a November 22, 2002 email to Jim Allchin and Orlando Ayala from Mike Oldham. It has to do with a planned meeting on the 25th between the two companies, on their “Better Together” theme. I think it will explain some things we’ve sometimes wondered about. One thing is clear. Microsoft was seriously concerned about Linux. And HP? Somewhat flexible, I’d say. Note the part about “the HP plan of record” to “bring a new Linux powered device into the mid-range marketplace” regarding NAS devices (network attached storage devices) and how Microsoft was able to convince them not to do that.
Microsoft and HP recently renewed their vows.
From the exhibit we have : “Based on HP’s server shipments, HP reports Windows share is up one point to 73%, Linux is also up one to two points to 12-13%. This represents approx. 200K Linux servers in the next year. HP believes that a substantial part of the Linux growth is due to the declining share for Novell. However they believe there is a growing Linux threat in the enterprise space – especially financial accounts….”
“Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.”That was in 2002. Interesting. We have more Comes material queued for posting, but not enough time to work on it. One exhibit [PDF] (full text here) that was shown to us by a reader is what Groklaw describes as: “Letter from Bill Gates to Robert Carr, GO Corporation, December 4, 1987 (“It is too bad that you never got a chance to make Framework into the mainstream product it deserved to be. In the objects we are building for the object oriented versions of our languages we will have a concept very similar to your frame.”)”
It “looks like useful work,” said our reader, who helped us see a similarity to Mono, .NET, and Java (former Java developers sometimes join Microsoft). “My point is to update the blank files on GR with brief relevant quotes,” said our reader, “And, for instance in relation to GO, to create a narrative from the texts. In this case, billg [Bill Gates] gets a looksee at GO technology, then after sabotaging GO, incorporates it [into] Microsoft product and later on offers the GO CEO a job at Microsoft.”
We have already gathered “GO” + Microsoft references, extracted the relevant quotes, and put them in chronological order, then inserted links to relevant original Comes exhibits. It’s quite blatant. Microsoft recently used similar tactics against i4i and against OLPC.
Our reader also mentioned the movie “Inside Man”.
He wrote: “Near the end there is a voiceover quote referring to the villain (Arthur Case), something like “he sold his integrity for money and spend the rest of his life trying to get it back”. Just then the scene switches to a picture of a billboard, of Microsoft. Get the movie [trailer] and check it out.
“No shot in a movie is by accident, is this an accident or not?”
Another reader has sent us some articles on Microsoft — old articles taken from different Web sites. “I’m sure you already probably know all this information,” he said, but actually, no, there is a lot of material there which we will organise quite soon. “If Boycott Novell website could offer a download it all as archive version that is html based, it can be translated very eas[ily],” this reader added.
This reader also sent us parts of a book from a revealing account of the daughter of Pam Edstrom (of Waggener Edstrom). Steve Ballmer’s wife comes from there and a lot of dirty secrets about the inner culture at Microsoft are being told there. Expect some interesting posts soon. This book is titled “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates”. █
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01.31.10
Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Vista 7, Windows at 10:13 am by Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell’s obsession with Microsoft (and even Apple) is highlighted using the latest evidence
Last week we wrote about Novell promoting Apple with .NET [1, 2]. Mono is quite naturally a tool that favours proprietary software stacks. Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza created it after he had created GNOME and like many people at Novell, he is fixated on Apple too (in the sense that he likes it), not just Microsoft/Windows. Previously, he complained about Mac OS X people taking more control, but later he drifted away from Freedom and went further into Microsoft’s arms. He even got himself appointed and admitted into the board of Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation. Being a Microsoft celebrity might help him in some communities other than the Free software one/s.
Here is Charlotte Betterley from Novell’s PR department promoting de Icaza’s work on Apple iPad and .NET. It’s like company policy, not just the infatuations of one man:
Enter MonoTouch. MonoTouch is a software development kit that will enable iPad developers to utilize code and libraries written for the .NET development framework and easier-to-use programming languages such as C#. Microsoft .NET developers will be able to use MonoTouch while fully complying with Apple’s license terms.
We have already written 3 separate posts about why iPad is an enemy of one’s freedom [1, 2, 3]. Nat Friedman, who left Novell some weeks ago, is apparently buying one. Friedman is probably Miguel’s closest colleague and friend (they both founded Ximian) and he also uses an iPhone based on his latest blog post where he makes a reference to “toys” (reminiscent of notorious remarks made about Mono+Windows a few years ago):
Sleep Cycles. This is an iPhone app that uses the iPhone accelerometer to track your sleep. You put it near your pillow and when you toss and turn at night it knows. You set a wake-up time and it rings an alarm to wake you up before your deadline when you’re in a period of light sleep, and will wake up more easily.
This is the type of management overseeing FOSS development at Novell. They are preoccupied with proprietary software and there is a lot of .NET content in SUSE Planet, for example these two posts from Jonathan Pryor’s blog. It’s like this every week.
Gabriel Burt’s blog (he works for Novell) gives this release schedule and announcement of the release of Banshee 1.5.3. So does Aaron Bockover, who raves about “the return of OS X support”. Need it be added that Banshee is a Novell-developed and Novell-only Mono program because of the limits in Microsoft's community promise?
Sandy from Novell has just released this new version of Tomboy, adding Windows-only features to Tomboy (for Vista 7 even, despite the fact that it is scarcely used).
Probably the coolest new feature in this release, courtesy of Stefan Cosma, is support for Windows 7 Jump Lists, which are totally awesome and should be added to GNOME.
Yay. Windows. Gotta love Mono.
So for those Tomboy users who prefer the better/full “Mono experience”, Tomboy is there with more features but only on Windows. We have always said that Mono is helping Windows, not GNU/Linux [1, 2, 3]. It promotes the notion of GNU/Linux as a second-class platform. █
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