I am being defensive here, but I still think that you’ve failed to answer a question (here and in E-mail too) about the differences between GNOME’s core and GNOME as it stands when deployed (it ‘real life’, so to speak).

Some folks on the Web (I can think of several) systematically remove Mono whenever they install GNU/Linux, but how long for can they do this (Mono expands in terms of its role)? What about the vast majority of people who do not do this and just blindly accept software like Beagle? They become dependent on what Microsoft considers its ‘IP’. I don’t have to serve you my opinion, but I can give you references to journalists like SJVN, who consider this a timebomb.

I’ve asked you to get in contact if you want to better research your stories and claims. I don’t regard the comments section of your website as the right venue for that.

I believe this has a little to do with semantics. When I refer to GNOME, perhaps I should clarify that it does not refer to standalone GNOME (to be compiled from source code, for example), but to GNOME when it’s packages in pretty much every major distro. In each such distro, it appears not to be trivial to remove Mono, and it’s becoming harder and harder all the time.

Is that an incorrect statement to make? I’m not playing foolish here and I understand how frustrating this can be to you and to others. Should I ignore known problems (not necessarily with Mono/GNOME) just because speaking about it is damaging? Turning a blind eye to these issue can be equally (if not more) damaging in the long term.

Saying bad things about Xandros (even the Eee) can be damaging to Linux, in the short-term.

Wishing that Linspire will have its talented developers defect to other distributions is bad to Linspire and many of its customers, but it helps keep Free software free (and Free). Without it being free, it cannot compete. It’s enslaved.

There many more such examples. Infighting is very hurtful and it usually begins when someone accepts money to ignite it all. Shall we avoid controversial at all cost, the side which burps out money will get its way. Information can help here, and that’s the least many of us can do.

I never liked Novell’s deal and the implications brought by Mono. It still took me a week to decide whether it’s worth fighting against it or pretend the scale of the problem would never balloon (I was among the first to say that Microsoft’s deal with Novell is an acknowledgment of Linux winning, but it was wishful thinking). Later came the FUD and that “Microsoft takes on the Free World” Fortune article (with many other to follow). That’s when many of us got our answers and realised what Novell and Mono meant. I cannot believe that some people still refuse to see what’s happening. Maybe they are simply selective with their readings, or misinformed.

I am not the only person who has come up with this assessment. Others have independently reached the same conclusions.

I’ve offered to help. Numerous times. You need only mail or call me.

I do by all means want to clarify that I’m not against GNOME, but I’m worried about certain things which the project does to itself (or a subset of which imposes upon the others). This is very, very similar to my emotional relationship with Novell, which I do not hate (I actually dislike Linspire a lot more for the anti-Linux FUD they tactlessly spread). It just hurts me to see the route GNOME has taken (or is taking as we speak) and I hope that things can be brought back to the way they used to be before it’s too late.

Let me be a little more specific. In the most recent post on Mono we’re beginning to find strong ties between packaged GNOME and Mono. With Evolution, which is bound to have Mono extensions, it’s becoming hard to avoid Mono. These ties are becoming harder to break and a friend of mine now is considering starting a whole new GNU/Linux distribution that is intended to be GNOME-based and 100% Mono-free, for legal reason.

Back to Novell, people don’t believe me when I say this, but I still like Novell. I just don’t like parts of the management (I won’t name names here) which are responsible for the colossal mistakes that hurt not only Novell, but also the rest of the Free open source software world. I investigate these issues, I write about them quickly (apologies for the many typos), and I firmly believe that understand where it’s going a few years down the line. As Jeremy Allison said last years, “we [Novell] were WINNING,” but then came this horrible deal with Microsoft, which Microsoft even paid a lot of money just to have. I don’t know who gets paid by whom, but I believe there’s something very complex going on here and as Sam from ITWire said very recently, someone is not telling us the whole story.

You have an even easier time than most: You’re writing about Open Source, so you have amazingly open access to the communities involved!

Every now and then I come back to this site to find another article making accusations about GNOME, but no record of any contact between you and the stakeholders. I’ve offered so many times to answer your questions. You have full, up-front, declared access to me at any time.

As it stands, I’m less inclined to take the rest of the site seriously because I know how you approach GNOME stories… and it greatly disappoints me that you’d take such a combative and divisive approach to community issues. By just asking questions of the relevant communities, you’d be avoiding a whole class of issues related to that.

You don’t have to agree with the subjects of your articles, but you really need to have a more solid footing for the claims you make.

- suport Microsoft Office XML formats at the application level

is either stupid, or plain paid Microsoft work. [emphasis mine]

http://boycottnovell.com/2006/11/17/i-thought-novell-said-there-were-no-infractions/

“The relative sizes of the payments should tell you who had to be convinced.”

This is an old tactic. Use an excuse to make a payment, be it an exchange of things, or taxation, or “charities”. It’s a diversion strategy.

Additionally,recall the possibilities of paying intermediate (middleman) parties, such as BayStar (SCO), acquiring by proxy (Microsoft-Citrix-XenSource), or controlling by proxy (Microsoft-Novell-GPL(v3)).

Gnome is supposed to be an open source non-profit org, right? How come they join ECMA, an org which does not disclose the meeting minutes? How is that open source compatible?

Here is an interesting bit about Jody Goldberg/Novell/Gnome/ECMA. He managed to get Microsoft to add Excel formulas in ECMA 376. 300 pages. In fact those pages are not actual formula specifications, that’s just Excel’s user online help. Great achievement!

(to be accurate, Microsoft has not done just a copy/paste of their online help, they had to remove some references to American centric stuff so that it smelled better, but it’s still irrelevant stuff for ISO purposes).

I think people confuse two things when it comes to support Microsoft Office XML formats. (I don’t use “OOXML” as an acronym because there is no Microsoft suggested in the acronym, even though those formats are actually brought by and for Microsoft, therefore it’s 100% Microsoft stuff period).

There is no way people implementing Office stuff can afford not implement Microsoft formats. Due to their market forces, those file formats are appearing on clients, and are being used.

But the big difference is that a vendor can implement this format (part of it only by the way, because there’s plenty of undocumented tricks, plus all the stuff not in ECMA 376 that is not covered by the royalty-free right to implement) just as an import format. Doing so in the engine, you have hopes for interoperating with other stuff.

But going as far as :
- helping Microsoft resolve ISO comments (which is what a ton of non-Microsoft people seem to be doing right now…)
- mimic Office 2007
- suport Microsoft Office XML formats at the application level

is either stupid, or plain paid Microsoft work.