11.19.09
Can’t Trust Microsoft with Code, So Why is Fedora 12 Mono and Winforms Dependent?
Summary: Fedora 12 includes Microsoft/Novell software that falls outside the ECMA standard, despite the fact that such code is problematic
MICROSOFT APOLOGISM is a subject that we wrote about yesterday and will revisit later today. Regarding Matt Asay’s “Apache: ‘No jerks allowed’,” a reader tells us: “Matt seems to have a self-contradictory summary. Which is it? Microsoft is part of Apache or no jerks allowed in Apache?“
As a reminder about Microsoft and Apache, see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18].
“The tail bit of the article seems to neglect the Apache perspective. It is, or at least was, about the Apache Foundation and its projects. What about the quality of Apache? What about the sustainability of Apache? Those are important.
“Microsoft’s Novell’s Greg Kroah-Hartman works with the Linux kernel and got caught with his mouth open. Microsoft did a hit and run on him, with his own help.”
–Anonymous“To look to another project, the Linux kernel, we see what can go wrong if a project lets naive people let jerks walk all over them. Microsoft’s Novell’s Greg Kroah-Hartman works with the Linux kernel and got caught with his mouth open.”
“Microsoft did a hit and run on him,” argues our reader, “with his own help.” We wrote about this right here.
Our anonymous reader concludes as follows: “The assertion that code should matter, if taken at face value, should also then take into consideration the history of coding and engineering quality coming out of Redmond. Or should it? Maybe there is only One Microsoft Way for all projects and code quality should be a thing of the past.”
The bottom line is that Microsoft code cannot be trusted because it only serves Microsoft shareholders, to whom GNU/Linux and Free software are not acceptable, as they are antithetical. Red Hat is making a mistake right now because it follows the footsteps of OpenSUSE 11.2 by becoming dependent on Winforms. As the following new post emphasises:
The Fedora 12 Constantine GNOME Live CD is Mono free, but installing GNOME from the DVD pulls in not only Mono itself, but also support for Windows.Forms (mono-winforms), which is outside the ECMA standard (and not covered under Microsoft’s horribly inadequate Community Promise).
While Constantine no longer includes Tomboy, it does still include F-Spot which is a .NET application.
Mono was removed from the Live CD of Cambridge, but is it not time to apply the same policy to a full install? F-Spot can be replaced by Solang, for example. █
Needs Sunlight said,
November 19, 2009 at 9:29 am
Microsoft code does not serve Microsoft share holders. Microsoft code servers Microsoft’s management, who follow the industry practice of blaming the share holders.
Shareholder meetings are orchestrated by the board and the company. Agendas are sculpted to achieve a desired outcome and procedures choreographed to ensure that everyone toes the line. After a short session of deafening music to stun them, the mob is exposed to a three ring circus of buzzword salad presentations until powerpoint poisoning brings even the strongest of them into a right proper state of tonic immobility in time for the vote.
Granted anyone dumb enough or fanatical enough, outside of M$, to own M$ stock already has a few screws loose. But don’t blame these gobshites entirely for M$ management.
In theory a board of directors could shape up a company, but that would require a lot of time money and effort to get a near unanimous majority working towards that goal. Look at how much damage three microsofters, about 15%, were able to do to Yahoo’s large board.
Needs Sunlight said,
November 19, 2009 at 9:39 am
… Look at how much damage three microsofters, about 15%, were able to do to Yahoo’s large board. It’s much easier to tear down than build up, so clearing house at Microsoft via the board would have to have a way for the cleaners to gain far more than 85%.
Even if you could gain the board and clear the management? Where will they end up? Where ever it is, they’ll bring their One Microsoft Way with them.
Even if you could gain the board and clear the management, there would still be the issue of the Microsoft employees. it’s a self-selecting lot. Anyone with any technical skills or knowledge steers clear of M$. Anyone with any ethics steers clear of M$. So what you have is an enormous steaming herd of individuals that would be best off far away from any technology.
Look what happened to Red Hat which has now added Windows-like features to Fedora 12:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047
What place can society find for these Microsofters where they can contribute instead of harm? Can they be divested from their ideology and become assets or is a neutral, inert lump the best we can hope for from that lot.
finalzone Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
“Look what happened to Red Hat which has now added Windows-like features to Fedora 12:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047”
From what I understand, it is a policy rules from PackageKit for a single user that can be modifed through polkit command (unfortunately, frontend Authorization is no longer available and has to be done on terminal). The arguments are about multiple unprivileged users scenarii where that policy should be modified in that consequence.
What I think triggered those multiple comments are the lack of clarification related to that policy on release note.
finalzone Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Here is a clarification about policy:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f12/en-US/html/sect-Release_Notes-Security.html
Hope it helps.
finalzone Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Testing the scenario from Fedora 12 laptop. As single user, I can only install signed package from official repository but needs to use root password for unsigned packages especially third-party. It looks like Microsoft Windows behavior but it is not because Policykit ability to fine-graining rules. Remote user are not allowed to install, remove package by default.
your_friend said,
November 19, 2009 at 10:37 am
Is it true that Ubuntu is replacing Gimp with Fspot? Unbelievably stupid reasons of saved space and ease of use have been trotted out as excuses to eliminate one of the most successful free software projects from the CD and default install. More space is saved by eliminating mono and there are plenty of simple photo editors that don’t depend on mono. It is a good idea to have two photo editors just as it is a good idea to have four or five text editors. Each has a strength and can be called when appropriate. As a person who does not edit photos often, I only use GIMP. A simple application to remove red eyes, like digikam has, is nice but I generally don’t bother. The inclusion of mono was stupid, the removal of Gimp is too stupid to believe. Someone tell me it’s not so.
Needs Sunlight Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Using F-Spot wastes space. Blaming gimp is just a way of kicking the ant-hill. Digikam and Solang are nice.
Microsoft marketers have almost as good a mastery of the Big Lie as the press team for the Great Prevaricator, Ronald Reagan.
Mark and Jono need to clean house before it is all over for Canonical.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Disk space is hardly the problem of course. Mono puts Microsoft in control.
finalzone said,
November 19, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The title is incorrect because DVD version of Fedora 12 has ability to customize installation from the beginning. You can simply disable F-Spot or any mono based packages by choosing “Customize Now” option. That is way better than not having to choice.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
What I wonder is, why is there so much focus on comparing it to another operating system? This behaviour is worth treating as what it is, unless the one responsible was hired from Microsoft or something.
finalzone Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Because Fedora has more new technologies that are/will be adopted by other distributions. I think nobody did not bother to remove F-Spot as default because most users will choose to customize their Fedora system during installation.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
In IRC today we got:
<Kevin_Kofler> At the point where some of the Fedora GNOME users complained about no F-Spot on the live images, I actually made a serious proposal to ship Digikam on the GNOME spin.
I even offered to help making it use QGtkStyle when running under GNOME and this kind of stuff. They rejected it anyway. 
finalzone said,
November 19, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Hard to please some people these days. At least solang is available on repository.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
McDonald’s has salad on the menu, too.