02.20.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Novell Promotes ASP.NET, Demotes OpenSUSE
ABOUT a year and a half ago, Novell told the press that it would increase the hiring of .NET developers. The company seems to have kept its promise because as time goes by, Novell becomes more and more like a reflection of Microsoft, especially in the technical sense. As Microsoft’s Sam Ramji recently admitted, Novell is pretty much Microsoft’s department for GPL material (and other licences that Microsoft does not want to get in direct contact with).
The news is not particularly shocking and two readers sent us some pointers that are worth sharing.
Less than a year ago we saw Novell Web pages requiring the use of Internet Explorer, but to make matters worse, Novell is now investing resources in promoting and spreading ASP.NET. Well done, Miguel, well done.
Improved ASP.NET support
Our ASP.NET story is getting better. web projects are now compatible with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1.
Our ASP.NET text editor now offers code completion of tag, attributes, attribute values and event handlers is now supported for ASP.NET and various HTML DTDs.
Novell et al are already cheering the insertion of the Microsoft/Novell project called Moonlight into Ubuntu 9.04. What was not known yesterday is that early remarks about it had come from a Novell employee.
As the title says, I have a wonderful new job, working full time at Novell on my favourite open source project, Mono. What more can I say?
*happy little coder does happy little jiggly dance*
This came just shortly after some massive layoffs at Novell (gist below). What is their strategy then? They hire Mono developers to assist .NET promotion/proliferation.
The layoffs of up to 1,000 people are expected to hit the SUSE Linux and consulting groups particularly hard, both in the U.S. and in Europe.
Over the past week we’ve written quite extensively about all the Moonlight/Moonshine hype that Novell had generated in the press despite the fact that there was no news at all (other than compatibility milestone) [1, 2]. In fact, even Moonshine was not a new release, but its buzz was timed so as to serve as a sidekick with the Moonlight press release, which was followed blindly by reporters who failed to realise that it was very old news.
Sadly, the hype prevails as Mono continues to be covered, having been initially injected into the Microsoft-sponsored Slashdot. Paul Krill’s article for InfoWorld later reached IDG’s MacWorld and David Meyer’s article (also noted before) reached Silicon.com. They are trying to moon everyone, leading to the perception that Moonlight is wonderful and that Silverlight is cross-platform, which it is not. As a result, some additional Web sites unknowingly shut GNU/Linux users out, the latest example being CBSSports. Microsoft uses Novell to pretend that GNU/Linux users are not being excluded (see the comments).
There is a coordinated campaign, as noted before, to hype up Silver Lie using lies, so even Free software initiatives get a slap in the face. The (very old) news about Moonlight 1.0 also sneaked its way into Asian publications.
The Novell-backed Mono project has released its widely anticipated Moonlight 1.0, a plug-in based on Microsoft’s Silverlight 1.0 rich interactive application (RIA) runtime.
Last but not least, from this new TuxRader audiocast it become obvious that Moonlight would make an elegant Trojan horse for bringing Mono into all GNU/Linux desktops, not just GNOME. Big distributions have already become unsuspecting victims.
So why is Novell doing all this?
Looking ahead into the future, is Novell dedicated to technologies other than Microsoft’s?
Is this what Novell’s CEO meant when he said that the partnership with Microsoft was “going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on”?
What is a GNU/Linux developer under Novell’s wing/umbrella supposed to deduce when this company, which employed .NET developers, is shafting its GNU/Linux developers and paid workforce (with more likely to come next week after a strong start)? Is this what Novell acquired S.u.S.E. for? A brand and a userbase, not to mention loyal volunteers?
Novell is at the moment contaminating not only SUSE but it’s doing the same thing to other distributions which share the same codebase. The community is built upon trust, which Novell cannot offer and in the coming fortnight we’ll be posting many videos of Gabriella Coleman, a researcher who explains this point very clearly.
According to a new post, there is already unrest in the OpenSUSE community.
The whole story started by a flame on a mailing list why some of us are not happy with the current state of openSUSE. It turned out there is a lot of different issues. So, we’ve met on a raining winter Friday 3 weeks ago to collect those issues as well as things that people consider to be good about openSUSE
More importantly, a widely-circulated open letter to the openSUSE Community has just been published. Pascal, one of the key people in the OpenSUSE community [1, 2] since the last elections [1, 2] and even beforehand [1, 2, 3] (he also boasts responsibilities in FOSDEM) implicitly endorses the concerns raised within the letter by echoing these words in his personal blog. It reads as follows (fragment only):
As you may know, recently Novell made the decision to reduce the workforce in their organization in the wake of our current economic outlook which is affecting everyone globally in all sectors of life. Unfortunately, this has also impacted some members of the openSUSE Community who were employed by Novell when, earlier this week, they were laid off.
We hear about layoffs every day now. Most of us have been hit by layoffs in recent times, if not personally then friends and family. The sadness we feel for our fellow community members is just as strong and our hearts go out to them in this time.
Some people have approached us publicly and privately and asked us what this means for the future of openSUSE. In fact, openSUSE is a community project driven both by Novell and the Community at large. Within this project, we make no distinction between Novell and non-Novell employees.
A headline found in another very recent article is extremely telling because it states that Novell is “Pushing Beyond SUSE Linux On Feb. 26.” This comes from an author who is in regular touch with John Dragoon (Novell marketing), so he should know. He does not even contradict persistent claims that predictions of gloom are true.
“Novell hardly cares about what used to be in 2004 when SUSE was a new asset.”The actual article that’s going under this headline is promotional and it welcomes Novell’s financial results that are certain to involve some layoffs.
Novell hardly cares about what used to be in 2004 when SUSE was a new asset. Novell’s managers work for their shareholders, to whom they are obliged.
It seems rather likely that Novell’s future direction will incorporate more surrogate Microsoft technologies like Mono and disruption of existing, well-established projects like OpenOffice.org using a Novell/Microsoft-controlled fork, Go-OO [1, 2].
Our private sources indicate with great certainty that Novell is set to announce layoffs next week and that the layoffs will be focused on Germany (but not only Germany). The executives have meanwhile enjoyed their vacation in a prestigious Mexican resort like a bunch of drunken gamblers in some bachelor’s party.
How did Novell end up this way and why does it take pleasure in ruining GNU/Linux in exchange for cash infusions from Microsoft? Well, perhaps it’s because — as one person put it a couple of days ago — “Novell is bleeding to Death”. People are advised to learn about Novell’s finances just before the Microsoft deal [1, 2]. Novell was apparently going out of business prior to the deal with Microsoft and there were problems with the NASDAQ too. The answers are all out there, but people tend to forget or ignore.
Novell’s stock fell sharply today (even tanked) to just $3.25. The latest financial results are only days away. █
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anonymous said,
February 20, 2009 at 4:45 pm
“This came just shortly after some massive layoffs at Novell”
Amazing how you can twist facts for your own amusement, Roy. So a blog entry from 2006 about someone getting hired by Novell is related to layoffs from 2009? What are you, suffering from Alzheimer’s or something, that you can’t tell 2006 and 2009 apart? I know 6 and 9 look similar, but really? You know, this might be a symptom of brain damage, you should have it checked out, could be serious.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 4:49 pm
See the link which appears there. You obviously didn’t follow it because it connects October 2005 layoffs to hiring in November 2006.
Novell rarely expands any workforce or division, except Mono. Novell has been shrinking for many years.
anonymous said,
February 20, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Wow, november 2006 is “shortly after” october 2005 in your eyes. Really, are you serious? Get a life, troling the net is starting to wear on you.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Care to address the subject of this post? Your nitpicking indicates that you escape the main points.
anonymous said,
February 20, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Truth is in the details, Roy. I did address the subject of this post, by addressing a detail which you find so small that you call me out on “nitpicking”, but which is actually the basis for a little conspiracy theory you got going there. If you don’t care about the accurateness of the facts I pointed out to you, that means you couldn’t care less about any other facts on your post. There’s no need for me to address any other points when all of them are so obviously twisted, misleading and badly reported as that one.
Was the research you published at school so badly done as this stuff? Or were people just nitpicking a little too much for your taste? That might explain why you stopped publishing…
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Nothing that I published was incorrect and you were unable to prove otherwise. All I see is someone called “anonymous” tossing around daemonisation terms like “conspiracy theory” to distract from the message and messenger.
Dan O'Brian said,
February 20, 2009 at 8:25 pm
There’s a few places you’re full of shit:
1. Miguel said he’d be hiring a few more developers to hack on the Mono JIT, compiler, etc. Those are not “.NET developers”. The term “.NET developer” insinuates that they only write C# code (or code in other .NET languages like VB.NET). Mono developers are C programmers because the JIT is written in C. Moonlight is also written in C and C++ (look at the source sometime, you might learn something).
2. Your claim that Sam Ramji “admitted that Novell is pretty much Microsoft’s department for GPL material” is a figment of your imagination (aka lies). The article you link to as proof doesn’t even mention his name.
3. I don’t see where Novell is promoting the use of ASP.NET, all I see is them providing a means for companies already using ASP.NET to use Mono on Linux instead of being locked-in to Windows Server. I would have thought you would have liked that Novell is providing a means for people to get off Windows and onto Linux. Apparently you are a hypocrite (no surprise there).
4. As anonymous already stated, it’s irrelevant that someone got hired to work on Mono 13 months after a bunch of people got laid off. I’m sure people got hired in other areas too (in fact I’m pretty sure that’s the case because I recall reading announcements of people being hired in the SUSE group).
5. While Moonlight 1.0 was silently released for the Obama Inauguration, it was never formally announced. Last week they formally announced it. Big deal. I’m pretty amused that it got your panties in a twist, though.
6. Moonshine really was brand new, there was no Moonshine before it was announced last week.
7. You insinuate that Novell pushed Moonlight into Ubuntu – where is your evidence they had anything to do with it? A quick Google search reveals that the Ubuntu community requested it and an Ubuntu packager made the packages. Novell wasn’t involved in the process at all as far as I can tell.
8. Where is Pascal endorsing any concerns over the future of openSUSE? Looks to me like he’s just saying he wishes the people who got laid off well and that openSUSE will continue. He also notes that Novell’s openSUSE engineers are still dedicated to developing openSUSE.
As is typical with Roy Sleez-o-witz, he spreads nothing but FUD – something he claims to be against. Hah. Yeah, right. He’s only against FUD when it’s against him, otherwise he’s all about throwing as much FUD as humanly possible.
Keep showing your true colors, Roy.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Well, Mr. Waltham/MA,
Not the point _at all_. The point is that Novell is investing in developing Mono. Novell bets on Mono. To quote:
You must have missed the article’s text then. Let me help:
“While Microsoft can support GPL-based code through its partners, as it does with Novell, the company can’t contribute directly to projects due to the GPL’s license terms and requirements, he [Ramji] explained.”
http://www.sdtimes.com/SAM_RAMJI_GPL_IS_CHALLENGING_FOR_MICROSOFT/About_GPL_and_MICROSOFT_and_OPENSOURCE/33224
Same thing. They enable people to run ASP.NET and put it in MonoDevelop.
Personal attacks noted.
It sure is relevant. Novell is shrinking over time. When it inflates one area of business, it must have a reason. See Miguel’s interview at point (1).
May 2008: “Novell Ships Moonlight 1.0″
“Novell releases Moonlight 1.0, an implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight for Linux.”
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Novell-Ships-Moonlight-10/
Nope. It was a month old, unless my sources were erroneous.
Let me simplify it for you:
1. Novell develops Mono
2. Novell sponsors Mono
3. Novell owns Mono
4. Novell develops Moonlight
5. Novell sponsors Moonlight
6. Novell owns Moonlight
7. Microsoft helps Moonlight because it helps Microsoft
Now that members of this Novell project push it into Ubuntu you pretend it has nothing at all to do with Novell? By the way, do you work for Novell? You live nearly.
I suppose you did not see who was pushing this letter. Or maybe you too are in denial.
Take care.
Myfraudsoft said,
February 20, 2009 at 9:14 pm
What can we (K)ubuntu users do to stop mono bloat in that distro?
Dan O'Brian said,
February 20, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Wow, you really don’t know how to read IPs, do you? Comcast’s headquarters is in Waltham, MA, not me. Nice try, though. (Hint: I’m over an hour south of Waltham, in light traffic).
Moonlight 1.0 wasn’t released in May 2008 – they didn’t even release 0.8 until August (a quick Google shows: http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2008/08/moonlight-08-released.html). Clearly your sources if information are incorrect. About 30 seconds worth of researching would have debunked that. You might try it sometime (I know, I know, if you bothered to research, you might actually sound intelligent instead of like a retard foaming at the mouth like you typically do).
Seeing as how you fail to produce any sources, I suspect your non-existent sources were indeed wrong. First mention of any Moonshine release was February 11th according to Google.
As far as your 7-point list goes, not a single one of those shows Novell pushing Moonlight into Ubuntu, so I don’t think it proves what you want it to prove.
As far as me working for Novell, nope. Just because I work in a state that is the second biggest Technology Centers of America doesn’t limit me to working for Novell. You know that, unlike Novell who’s main force is out west, Red Hat’s main force of developers are right here in MA, don’t you? Google has offices here too. So do many other tech companies. I know you are trying to shoot the messenger rather than the message (because you can’t argue with facts), but this constant suggestion is beyond pathetic.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 9:26 pm
If the roadmap gets captured/hijacked by Microsoft boosters, then it becomes difficult to change. Projects can lose control to new entrants just as companies can (Xen, VMware, etc).
Dan O'Brian said,
February 20, 2009 at 9:39 pm
You guys could switch to another Free Software focused distro like GNewSense which is blessed by Richard Stallman…
Oh wait, that also has Mono
I guess you guys are screwed then. Too bad no one listens to your retarded foaming-at-the-mouth antics.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 20, 2009 at 9:43 pm
BLAG is throwing away Mono.
anonymous said,
February 20, 2009 at 10:44 pm
[list of completely redundant points, but kudos for stretching them out to a grand total of 7]
“Now that members of this Novell project push it into Ubuntu you pretend it has nothing at all to do with Novell?”
I would just love to see how do you infer from your (brilliant I would say) list of 7 points the conclusion that anyone from Novell pushed anything into Ubuntu. It’s very obvious from your silly conclusion that you have never worked on open source, *ever*, nor do you know *anything* about how things work in it, on distros and on projects.
You see, there’s these really awesome guys called “packagers”, and they make “packages” for the distributions. Now they do this because they want to. Because they want to help the distros, they like the projects, they think it’s cool, they want to learn, bottom line, they want to be
useful and contribute (two important words you should get to know, really). They do this on their own time, from their homes or schools or wherever they want, and they are a part of this big community of people contributing on their own time to make things better every single day.
If you want to help out the community so much, why not try and do something useful for a change? Maybe start packaging the software you like for the distros you like? Then maybe you’d understand how the system works and stop spouting nonsense all over the place.
Dan O'Brian said,
February 20, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Roy and his trolls don’t want to contribute to Free Software, that would actually be productive. They just want to badmouth all the people they are jealous of.
You see, Roy and his friends are incompetent, compiling things is *too hard* for them, so they resort to badmouthing the people who *do* contribute their time to the betterment of Free Software.
anonymous said,
February 21, 2009 at 4:16 am
Dan, that’s so true. Still, since this comment thread has been surprisingly productive at showing just how many little details are wrong on this post, I’m in the mood to point out a few more, just for the sake of completeness (if not for the sake of Roy or his followers learning, because they never do, but maybe someone else will read this).
First of all, your statement about the launch of Moonlight on May 2008, where you actually *link* to Miguel’s post, just shouts “I can’t read!” to the world. It’s amazing that Miguel has a huge UPDATE line saying “this is not the final release, it’s just a source release that’s not even complete” and you failed miserably to assimilate that. -1 for sheer blindness.
“According to a new post, there is already unrest in the OpenSUSE community.”
Another life lesson for you: there’s always unrest in all communities. If there wasn’t, the project would be dead. People complaining just shows how much they care, and people actually having meetings and posting about what’s wrong shows you they care *a lot*. If you’re wishing it would just die so you could make the case for Novell having killed it, you should be praying that no one complains, not the other way around. -1 for not knowing left from right, sorry.
“A headline found in another very recent article is extremely telling because it states that Novell is “Pushing Beyond SUSE Linux On Feb. 26.” This comes from an author who is in regular touch with John Dragoon (Novell marketing), so he should know. He does not even contradict persistent claims that predictions of gloom are true”
Since it’s so hard for you to list actual sources, I’ll do it for you here, shall I? You’re quoting from http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/02/18/novell-five-goals-for-feb-26-earnings-announcement/ . And that article says, and I quote: “But how is Novell extending SUSE into the world of cloud computing?” This is implying that Novell needs to go beyond traditional deployment scenarios and into cloud computing. The other points note how Novell should clarify it’s strategy now to get even more market. How you can take this and make it into a doom scenario is beyond me, but maybe the financial and corporate aspects are too much for you. -1 for poor reading comprehension.
“Novell’s stock fell sharply today”
No, really?! And all other stocks in the stock market are just soaring, right? Wait, my news ticker says we’re in the middle of a recession and the markets are crashing left and right! My word, so Novell stock going down like *every single other stock out there* is a special sign, is it? -1 for poor global financial context. My my, aren’t we racking up (err, down) points today.
Roy, your post is a massive FAIL, from top to bottom. You have more mistatements in this thing than a Bush speech. He must be your hero.
RyanT said,
February 21, 2009 at 5:01 am
None of you have much of a leg to stand on. You’re all as bad as each other.
Dan O'Brian said,
February 21, 2009 at 7:26 am
Roy: we both seem to have 2 legs to stand on, you’re the one without a single leg.
I agree that this post is an EPIC FAIL. The more posts you make like this one, the more people realize just how far removed from reality you are (either that or you’re just an idiot).
I think you are just trying to ride the community’s “hate” to “fame”. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the easiest meal ticket to fame in the Freetard community (I say Freetard rather than Linux, because there are a lot (most?) of Linux community members who are not Freetards) is to badmouth Microsoft and anything else even remotely related to them. You don’t even have to be factually accurate to appease them, you just have to go on and on about how much you hate Microsoft and they will worship you.
Freetards have a few traits in common:
1. They don’t contribute to the Linux community (just like Roy!)
2. They badmouth anyone who has any criticism of any FLOSS software that they like (just like Roy!)
3. They love to badmouth Microsoft w/o caring about being factually accurate (just like Roy!)
4. They love to make claims that Microsoft is out to get them (just like Roy!)
Has anyone else noticed that Roy, Jose_X, twitter, etc don’t contribute to Free Software, even though they are supposedly programmers? Why is that?
Yep, you guessed it, they are Freetards. They write proprietary software for the companies they work for and “never have time” to contribute to Free Software. Yet they have plenty of time to badmouth Free Software developers for working on projects that Roy/etc want to fail.
I found it extremely amusing that AlexH contributes more to Free Software than all of the BoycottNovell losers combined. Same with all of the Novell people he criticizes, they all contribute far more to the improvement of FLOSS than Roy and his friends do. And I don’t even necessarily mean just code-wise, I mean in all aspects.
Jose_X said,
February 21, 2009 at 10:24 am
I just dropped by the house for a moment but I have to leave. I won’t have time to write a full reply now.
Dan, you should not downplay the many types of contributions people make to FOSS.
Anonymous, not all package managers, or for that matter FOSS developers, code on their spare time.
If you guys had not noticed, FOSS is H-O-T nowadays. Every company, even Monopolysoft, wants a piece of the action. FOSS that helps strengthen Monopolysoft or preserve their control is not that good of FOSS. It’s so easy to fork mono, but apparently those that like the technology don’t seem to want to swim by themselves and don’t mind swimming in the wake of a huge patent aggressor.
Myself, I don’t code proprietary. For the last few years, I’ve almost had no time at all to code. The time I have had for myself, I have mostly used on posting boards like this one as well as some other things. I don’t work in the software industry.
Got to run.
Dan O'Brian said,
February 21, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I’m not, I’m criticizing you for not contributing via any way to Free Software.
Badmouthing Microsoft, Novell, and Mono does nothing to improve Linux. It is not a contribution.
All it does is make you guys look like assholes (which, afaict, is really all that you guys are).
Get out there and make some positive contributions to Linux and other FLOSS projects – help make them so good that people switch to them because they are so obviously better than the proprietary software that it’s not even a choice for them.
You know how you guys attack Mono apps because people are becoming addicted to them? Well, that’s because those developers write the best software that they can and users are switching to their software in droves because it’s so good.
Go help your favorite projects that compete with those Mono projects and make them better than the Mono projects and people will switch to those projects instead.
That’s the only way to defeat Mono. Badmouthing them just sends the signal that you guys compete with them on a technical level, so you have to resort to throwing mud and hoping it sticks.
The vast majority of users see this and it only makes them go and try out the Mono software (like Banshee, GNOME-Do, etc) and discover how good it is.
It’s not better because Novell have an army of developers working on those projects, they’re better because they spend less time badmouthing the competition and more time making their software better. Banshee and GNOME-Do are written by like 2 guys each.
According to your IRC logs, Mono developers are inferior to C programmers because Mono developers rely on point&click/drag&drop. If that’s true, then Mono must really be an awesome development platform because they are kicking your asses so bad it’s making your heads spin.
On the other hand, you guys claim that Mono is crap – if that’s the case, then those Banshee and GNOME-Do programmers must be top-notch because they are kicking your asses so hard it’s making your heads spin.
Or maybe neither of the things you bash Mono about are true and so Mono is both a great platform to develop on AND the developers are top-notch.
I mean, there must be SOME reason they are kicking your asses so hard that you have to badmouth them in your best attempts to scare users off those apps, right?
Dan O'Brian said,
February 21, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Correction:
should read:
seller_liar said,
February 21, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Criticize ,inform and explain ethical problems is a good thing.
We can not live only thinking about programming.We cannot live the opensource way (more and more programs ).We must live the ethical way (more information ,more ethics, programs for more ethics)
Information about ethics is very important. And , because this I like boycottnovell.
seller_liar said,
February 21, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Thanks roy for all work.Please continue and don t hear attacks.
Dan , don t attack people using offensive terms.
The thing which does matter is a production of information .Even a opinion reflect good ideas about.There ‘s no need to use only facts to inform people.
Opinions are relevant too.
Jose_X said,
February 22, 2009 at 4:54 pm
>> Badmouthing Microsoft, Novell, and Mono does nothing to improve Linux. It is not a contribution.
Dan, you can try, but you can’t downplay there is value in, eg, watch guards. Microsoft and many companies have plenty of them. There is clear economic value in watch guards of many sorts. BN gathers and organizes information. It’s not a professional site in many ways, but it is useful to many others. In particular, I have found it useful and is one reason I keep coming back.
Either you also find the information here useful or you are a watch guard. In either of those cases, you appear to be (if I judge by your standards) just as worthless as I am.
Besides watch guard, there are various other services BN provides. There is news content and original analysis. All the analysis doesn’t have to be worthy of Sherlock Holmes for it to be useful. It serves as a meeting point for discussing various ideas important to Linux.
Most forum sites do little but repeat things that you can find elsewhere but do so in a way where the participants can more easily acquire the information.
>> Get out there and make some positive contributions to Linux and other FLOSS projects – help make them so good that people switch to them because they are so obviously better than the proprietary software that it’s not even a choice for them.
I would love to see Microsoft fire each and every employee that doesn’t directly contribute to writing code (and only keep them to the extent they write code).
It’s not just about “so good”. It’s about safe. It’s about marketing. It’s about anticipating problems. It’s about helping to show a way of distributing contributions that might be better for the whole system. It’s about bringing attention to problems. It’s about doing things a little different (mono has numerous alternatives) Etc.
>> You know how you guys attack Mono apps because people are becoming addicted to them? Well, that’s because those developers write the best software that they can and users are switching to their software in droves because it’s so good.
I’m not addicted, but it’s understood that if you put a lot of money towards any endeavor, you will get some sort of results (look all around you). The developers don’t have to be outstanding or even average.
Dan, you seem to fail to realize the value in being pro-active. If so, am I to believe your presence on these boards is merely reactive because of problems Novell and or Microsoft are having?
>> Go help your favorite projects that compete with those Mono projects and make them better than the Mono projects and people will switch to those projects instead.
That is good advice, but everyone can’t and won’t fill those roles. You still need other issues dealt with. Just look at any successful organization.
BTW, I intend personally to move more towards development. BN, for example, might even play host to more such positive endeavors over time. I have shared in various places (eg, thetuxproject.com) some ideas I have since sharing of this nature may get a larger number of people working on such projects.
In my case, personally, I have limited resources to spend on what I consider important contributions within my means. I don’t expect you to agree or for that matter understand how some of us aren’t exactly flush with money or want to sell out as a way to move in that direction. There is value in coordinating at the high level rather than diving into coding details.
And we all start in different places and have to move towards our goals.
I would ask for advice on how BN could continue to do its positives while improving, but you and I seem to have unresolvable disagreements over Monopolysoft.
>> Badmouthing them just sends the signal that you guys compete with them on a technical level, so you have to resort to throwing mud and hoping it sticks.
I take technical issues very seriously, but that has nothing to do with mono. Mono insists on attempting to clone all the arbitrary and completely ordinary features of MSdotnet. There are problems in doing that, and it’s completely unnecessary from a technical pov.
They aren’t going to be successful enough to solve the interop problem so long as Monopolysoft is in control and relies on closed source, but you will be successful enough to hurt FOSS through patent problems and by maximizing Monopolysoft’s other levers.
The main goal of BN is to fend off against Monopolysoft embrace, extend, and extinguish. Are you aware of that Dan?
>> The vast majority of users see this and it only makes them go and try out the Mono software (like Banshee, GNOME-Do, etc) and discover how good it is.
Or isn’t.
We are falling short in marketing the products that mono developers are trying to partly reproduce. I hope BN puts more focus on real projects. Of course, Dan and others can always come on here and claim mono is manna ™.
>> If that’s true, then Mono must really be an awesome development platform because they are kicking your asses so bad it’s making your heads spin.
Dreaming as always.
>> According to your IRC logs, Mono developers are inferior to C programmers because Mono developers rely on point&click/drag&drop.
Dan, wake up. You’re telling me that Microsoft and Novell are writing their OS and low level apps with “dotnet”? MS Office was written predominantly (or at all) in dotnet?
Of course any high level language allows you to accomplish “more” in shorter time.. It won’t likely be better in many ways, but you can accomplish “more” generally speaking. FOSS leverages a lot though and that ability (“more”) is not nearly so important. Do it right and well. There are many ways to accomplish more through ad hoc ways specific to and tuned to each project in fact. There is a place for Java and there is a place for C, for example. C is augmented by many other tools.
A person walking out of the blue would prefer the highest level possible to get most bang for buck in short time, but someone dedicated to a project will choose many times to pick many different tools for various reasons.
Java is great, but not for everything. Same applies to all environments, in particular, to all similar enough to Java.
>> I mean, there must be SOME reason they are kicking your asses so hard that you have to badmouth them in your best attempts to scare users off those apps, right?
>> Or maybe neither of the things you bash Mono about are true and so Mono is both a great platform to develop on AND the developers are top-notch.
>> blah blah blah.
Dan, tell me when you are ready to wake up. Apparently, you have little clue about what this site is about, about technological aspects/decisions of a technology vs. political ones (or driven by other goals), or about what might motivate any number of individuals to use X or Y technology (hint, the paycheck oftentimes has something to do with this; another important factor is habit).
You also seem confused over how much leveraging software developers do when they write applications. So should we believe that Knopper or texstar single-handedly wrote up influential and quality distros “all by themselves”? They can be very competent at their chosen project and still not be that spectacular or not nearly so as might be implied when you take such a coarse view of what they have accomplished. Same applies to every human on the planet.
Also, don’t underestimate the ability and willingness of commentators on forums to trash talk.
On the whole, mono could be another option, but this site is about helping people realize that investing in alternatives will be greater for the FOSS community’s future ability to share and compete in a healthy fashion.
If there are good arguments so that the small independent developer or end user need not worry if every mono app violates Microsoft patents, then let’s help bring those issues forward in a clear fashion. If mono infestation truly would not hurt FOSS (share/compete balance I so like), then let’s argue that. Every developer and user contributing to some application should be aware of risks and potential to help/hinder by contributing. This way we can all make better decisions.
Obviously, we don’t all have the same goals. No amount of arguing will convince everyone.
BN has it’s pov and tries to make its case. I don’t agree with everything, but I agree more with BN’s pov than with say Dan O’Brian’s pov, at least in terms of what matters most.
Well, Dan, what role are you filling by spending so much time here reading and writing? What FOSS project are you helping? What kind of software are you writing (open/closed). We’d all like to make sure you are also holding yourself to your own standard.
Dan O'Brian said,
February 23, 2009 at 8:15 am
Jose_X: If the Mono apps aren’t as popular as I claim them to be, then why do you spend so much time attacking them? If hardly anyone uses Mono or apps built on Mono, then you wouldn’t feel as threated as you so obviously do, which means that you KNOW you are full of shit.
I’m not talking about distros which, no matter how you slice it, are developed by huge numbers of people (even if the distro itself was put together by 1 person).
I’m talking about applications, specifically Banshee and GNOME-Do – each of which were mostly written by 1-2 people. Yet the C alternatives are written by much larger groups of developers. Rhythmbox, for example, has two-or-more times as many full-time paid developers as Banshee. GNOME-Do doesn’t have *any* paid developers.
You’re disingenuous tactics are not going to fool anyone.
Again with the disingenuousness. You guys live in an upside-down world where people and projects are guilty until proven innocent. You don’t need to prove innocence in the real world, you need to prove guilt. You guys obviously can’t prove guilt, so you resort to twisting this site into insinuating guilt and anyone who argues with you, you tell them they have to prove innocence.
That is not very Freedom-Loving behavior.
If everyone played “guilty until proven innocent”, then Linux would be doomed. You can’t prove that Linux is innocent of infringing mythical patents either, so therefor it is not safe, and, by your logic and reasoning, we should all avoid (and badmouth!) Linux.
Proving innocence of something wildly speculative is impossible. You cannot prove that Linux is innocent. It’s impossible to prove that any piece of software is innocent of infringing patents, even if you just limit it to Microsoft’s patents.
Danny said,
February 23, 2009 at 11:37 am
I’ve been a Microsoft and Novell partner for a decade. This site is a sad place indeed. Fud, fud, and more fud. I’ve stopped all my feeds to linux today because of this pathetic site.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 23, 2009 at 11:44 am
Danny,
Care to be specific? You call out “FUD”, but I fail to see factual inaccuracies in the post, despite the nitpicking from Novell neighbours whom we rebutted successfully.
This escape to personal attacks is in fact an indicator that the facts are difficult to counter otherwise.
Please show what was incorrect in your opinion.
Jose_X said,
February 23, 2009 at 11:46 am
>> If the Mono apps aren’t as popular as I claim them to be, then why do you spend so much time attacking them?
I answered this, at least indirectly, where I spoke about watch guards and being pro-active.
It’s no secret that I (or most people supporting BN, I think) take Monopolysoft very seriously. Mono has been looked at seriously from the inception (when portable.net was conceived on the … can’t remember mailing list), and that was many years ago when zero FOSS apps existed.
>> I’m talking about applications, specifically Banshee and GNOME-Do – each of which were mostly written by 1-2 people. Yet the C alternatives are written by much larger groups of developers. Rhythmbox, for example, has two-or-more times as many full-time paid developers as Banshee. GNOME-Do doesn’t have *any* paid developers.
First thing to point out (in general) is that you can always find examples to show something, but averages are a better indicator. Where are all the other mono apps, for example? [This is a general statement not trying to prove or disprove anything about a platform but to show that you didn't prove anything in your earlier marketing show.]
Second, I admitted already that C apps will usually take longer to reach a particular level of “feature completeness”. C has other benefits (in general) over languages that have “higher-level” features.
Third, I don’t track mono apps except bits I come across in the news. My point isn’t to say whether this particular project or some other has some good or bad developers. It’s to say that you can’t judge just by looking at how many coders something presumably has. [All I'm attempting to argue here is that you haven't proven anything about the general coding capabilities or judgment of those that would use mono or use anything else.]
Forth, these coders you mention, they are leveraging all the man years of work put into mono, plus design work that was done even before mono, etc. People in 2009 leverage a ton of work that came ahead of them (both in terms of libraries/tools and in terms of design). This applies to any app or software product. [Yes, the distro case is an extreme version of this though I was thinking about the packaging and design of the whole; I used the analogy because I wasn't considering actually writing up all the "apps" since that would be extreme indeed.]
Fifth, I’ve already said that “dotnet’s” design has positives as do virtually all other designs. A major problem I have with mono is that it attempts to track MSdotnet (a Novell decision related to their partnership with Microsoft). You can use things you like and still have the platform look very different. After all, we are talking about technologies that evolve and clone parts of each other already (going back decades). This quote captures a little bit of why I don’t like mono: http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/22/mono-simply-ratifies-dotnet/#comment-59890 .
>> You guys obviously can’t prove guilt, so you resort to twisting this site into insinuating guilt and anyone who argues with you, you tell them they have to prove innocence.
You need to be more specific here. I don’t even know if you are talking about me or generalizing to more people. In any case, spreading Microsoft created technologies and many other things that I don’t think Novell denies help Microsoft over many other FOSS groups.
Again, please be more specific if you want a better reply from me.
>> You can’t prove that Linux is innocent of infringing mythical patents either, so therefor it is not safe, and, by your logic and reasoning, we should all avoid (and badmouth!) Linux.
That’s not my logic. You misunderstood me, perhaps.
Try reading this http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/04/the-api-trap-part-1/ (eg, case 1/4 vs 2 vs 3) and then go read up on Microsoft’s antitrust and many other legal woes. Also, consider their monopoly status. You can find much of this information referenced from boycottnovell.com. There are many discussions that have been had, but you are being so general, I’m not sure what you are referring to.
The short of this is that cloning the API of a declared patent aggressor that has much to lose from Linux uptake is asking to be sued by patents and/or to be found in a very vulnerable position, the more so the cooler the app becomes.
Here is an analogy. An individual owns a vast property. It’s shown that this individual likes to and can legally shoot to kill those on their property. We show his demonstrated propensity to kill (legally or illegally) those that he views as being threats. He also declares very publicly many times officially and unofficially his intent to protect his land through any means necessary. And we show that it’s not too difficult for him to buy and/or create many powerful weapons legally. That individual then says ambiguously that there are some places you may be able to step on. He doesn’t clearly define these regions though. How smart is it to go set up camp on any part of his property and then start to walk around from there without asking for permission? [Read the link above (including the linked example).. it's an issue of cases 1 and 4 vs 2 or 3]
I don’t have to wait to see the person aiming at me or verify a death for me to believe that a bloodbath is likely. I mean, you go play there if you want. There are so many other places, private and public, where I can go play that I don’t see the reason to take these high risks. With so many other options, I don’t see it as smart (generally) to deal with this person at all, to attract others into his property, or to encourage those there to set up camp and expand or wander off. In fact, I think it’s smart to actively warn about the dangers.
The Linux case would be akin to you walking along the streets occasionally stepping on someone’s lawn or occasionally going through what might be private property.
Patents are really bad (at least as applied to software), and I want to have fully protected all the Linux cases; however, that hardly compares to the analogy of the known shoot-to-kill owner. We have to use some software. It’s about risk management. Most people can be killed almost any day of the year doing almost anything, yet there are clearly some things that are more or less likely to result in harm to the person. We can’t stop living just because some risks exist, but clearly some actions are more foolhardy than others.
BTW, you give the person leverage (power) even if he decides not to shoot here or there. It’s like walking around with a huge gun. That person gains tremendous leverage but only because you are on his property after his clear declaration followed by ambiguous statements of exceptions.
That is the patent analogy. Additionally, spreading dotnet mind share and applications is something that works to Microsoft’s favor in various ways. Some are covered here: http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/25/jose-on-mono/ .
Conclusion: Microsoft is an large obstacle to the spreading of Linux+FOSS. They are notorious partner with an insatiable appetite for growth and dominance. They have some of the strongest levers any company could have in the 21st century. They are versatile and have many skills in the art of control. Yes, I take them very seriously because of how much of a threat Linux poses to their levers. We also have a great opportunity not to play their games and hence accelerate their fall.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I’ve been lacking the time (ans desire) to make detailed responses to some of the personal insults, but in general, I see a lot of empty accusations and steering of the subject off course to other territories, which is a familiar pattern when the original evidence cannot be countered, unlike supposedly “gut-feely” debates that revolve around faith or trust in Microsoft.
@Dan O’Brian and “anonymous”:
May I suggest that you keep polite enough to deserve replies?
@Jose:
I agree fully. Some people just don’t want to see it. You must also wonder if they see history (a trail of dead
Microsoft partnerscorpses, to use that recent cave analogy from LinuxToday).Jose_X said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Let me add a few things to the prior long comment I wrote.
>> Second, I admitted already that C apps will usually take longer to reach a particular level of “feature completeness”. C has other benefits (in general) over languages that have “higher-level” features.
C also have negatives. [I mention this explicitly now so that no one thinks I was trying to elevate it above all other tools without concern to further details of the problem being worked on.]
>> [Yes, the distro case is an extreme version of this though I was thinking about the packaging and design of the whole; I used the analogy because I wasn't considering actually writing up all the "apps" since that would be extreme indeed.]
This part relates to what Dan wrote about my distro example. I should have quoted:
[Dan O'Brian] >> I’m not talking about distros which, no matter how you slice it, are developed by huge numbers of people (even if the distro itself was put together by 1 person).
>> Here is an analogy. An individual owns a vast property.
A better analogy would actually have him constantly growing his property around his core property. At some point, you might not even be able to step back out of his property the way you came in.
First, this was an analogy so won’t be perfect no matter what.
Second, a point is that it’s ambiguous where you are safe and where you aren’t.. once you have gone into his property. If you believe that mono core (based on dotnet 1.0 or whatever) is safe from patents, you face this ambiguity problem should you wander around (grow) even if you feel safe in some small section of his property. However, if you don’t trust Microsoft’s covenant or think that proxies could hold key dotnet/mono core patents, then you may be in trouble already just by putting one foot into the property at the beginning (ie, simply by using mono for anything). It’s your call based on what you think about Microsoft’s intentions.
As mentioned in this RMS patent talk http://boycottnovell.com/2008/03/10/rms-software-patents/ (can’t remember which part of the first 8 parts), you can’t find all patents that may apply to something even if you search. Some authors of patents don’t even recognize their own patents. The USPTO itself even repeats patented material (a clear mistake). You can’t find what you want by searching for “key” words. Courts are the ultimate judges on the scope boundaries, but this is done piece-wise when a specific case comes to trial. Finally, you would have to do all of this diligent work also with pending patent applications and do this thorough search right before every public version of your software (ie, the feature added tomorrow in a FOSS project might end up in violation).. if you wanted to try and escape any patent.
I mention how hard it is to find patent violations as a way to suggest that risk management is very important. If you have clear alternatives, avoid areas of high risk. For example, there are clear alternatives to Novell’s mono. In particular, even a fork of mono would likely be preferable in terms of risk management (it would have to fork “enough”).
Danny said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:11 pm
It’s not my place to try to interpret your babble.
Make whatever conclusions you like as you bounce from press releases to stock prices to technology. I said my peace- I consider this entire site nothing more than exactly that- Babble.
Jose_X said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:15 pm
>> May I suggest that you keep polite enough to deserve replies?
I think the issue Roy is talking about is that it takes time to reply.
I make my own decision as to whether or not to reply to someone. Yes, I don’t like the time that it takes. Sometimes I gain. Sometimes I could have gained more by having spent the time doing something else. I’m generally not insulted, however. I see the subthread with Dan as a back and forth volleying and indicative of some frustration on both our parts.
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:16 pm
@Danny:
Without specifics, you’re unable to contradict and therefore can’t label it “FUD”.
Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it “FUD”.
Victor Soliz said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Well, I don’t know too much about what is a contribution to FOSS or not but I am not sure if stalking a site making long posts about how they are freetards (or using that word at all) while defending Novell and Mono as the sacrosanct things they are really helps FOSS that much either. Personal attacks don’t really contribute that much as well…
The disappointing thing here is Dan, that regardless of your constant attacks and your attitude attempting to take the moral ground, you are not much different from Roy either. You spend tons of hours in your day just in your attempts to prove Roy and everyone in this site wrong. I do not think you contribute that much code either, as far as I know you have not contributed any code yet .
You also twist facts, statements and quotes just to push your own agenda which you think is the right agenda, not unlike Roy. And not unlike Roy you assume things are true even though they are probably not. For example when you say that Banshee and gnome-do are beating anybody’s asses. Well, I am talking as a user and I happen to prefer songbird and even Rythmbox to banshee , even when ignoring the little Mono fact. Gnome-do is one of those apps that don’t make a lot of sense, may look pretty but if I wanted pretty I would be using AWN … Hmnn well.
Some of us do contribute to OSS projects, unfortunately those are not desktop apps meant for mainstream use. Well, I also just spend a lot of my time and stamina while studying soft dev. I do wish to get into the backdoor of some project soon. But I have no rush for it, my code is still not too well organized and it is a little hacky, anyway… It is also strange to assume it is just boycottnovell or the usual commenters that are against Mono. Some true devs are.
Also, about Mono I think the whole majority of OSS is not written in Mono. I can only count a couple of small projects that did, and they aren’t really much better than the alternatives or better at all. Gnome-do is just an idea users like, and its popularity has nothing to do with quality of code or the programmers’ whatsoever it is just unfortunate the idea was implemented in Mono.
About legal aspects of Mono, I think you prefer to just ignore two freaking years of evidence about it. I just don’t think it would be worth it to advance this part of the discussion as you will just ignore it. It is a good strategy anyway, to just ignore all evidence against your point. You can convince yourself that you are winning.
As of lately, I don’t care about the legal threat of Mono. I think that regardless of Novell’s and MS’ plans it will not work out. As this push for Mono has not accomplished to make its supporters away from the concepts of free software. They in fact have been forced to use the free software flag as defense. It will be hard for the companies to move to step 2 now. Perhaps boycottnovell really did a good thing here. As there are more eyes looking at Mono and interested in it being a benign thing, it will just be harder for them to do what they planned.
I do worry about the practical effects of Mono, I don’t think it is a great idea to fall into the .NET stuff. It is as the IT world has not learned anything of win32… It is true that Mono simply is being used as a way to give legitimacy to .NET. I wish Mono would begin to be used as a way for FOSS to embrance and extend the .NET idea instead of just being a follower. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to be possible with Novell as lead there.
It is unfortunate that Novell has made clear that their priorities are on furthering this adoption of MS-based technologies and paying related developers instead of the contribution of other projects like openSUSE. As the economy keeps this bad, I guess they will even have to throw openSUSE out if they still want to be the ones controlling Mono.
We shouldn’t pretend to be fools here. Just like win32 and .doc and .xls and IE. Adoption of these MS techs like .NET, silverlight and OOXML, those things Novell is contributing so actively to advertise will be a problem for us all in the long term. But you may be right and we are already supposed to fall into all of it.
I don’t think guys in these sites (including you) are really getting paid to work on apps, proprietary or not. Well, prof. soft dev. is a job that really takes a lot of time. And there is not a lot of time to spend commenting giantic texts like yours or mine. So I take that your accusations were a little far-fetched. It is funny to see that you are becoming all you claim Roy to be.
Victor Soliz said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Moonlight is such an example of Novell just working on advertising MS tech… If like it was claimed Moonlight was supposed to give us interoperability, it does not seem to be working. We now have some few sites (of the few that use silverlight) that, for now, have a link for you to enable “Linux” support, so that they work on Moonlight. What is the point of moonlight if web page developers cannot just code in silverlight for moon to work in that page? Even flash’ Linux version works better than that.
Victor Soliz said,
February 23, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I really think just code is not a great measure of contribution. This is unrelated to whether boycotting novell or defending it helps to FOSS,. But there are many ways to contribute to FOSS that don’t involve coding.
Themes, ideas, criticism, voicing your opinion on how it should be. I think that some few users at brainstorm (that were able to get their ideas implemented) have contributed a lot more to FOSS than your median developer. They give a user’s perspective to the developer’s decision. The whole free software ideology is not a bunch of code, but we would suck. To tell you the truth the correctly written, critical post in your distro’s forum has really helped a lot .
The other day a Lawyer that was just intending to criticize Linux contributed to FOSS by making a KDE bug known. If you think about that, it is hard not to contribute to FOSS.