Bonum Certa Men Certa

New Opinions on Mono, Miguel de Icaza, and the “Windows Stratagem”

Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza, Microsoft MVP



Summary: More perspectives arrive in response to a technical/legal analysis of Moonlight and Miguel de Icaza's highly-deserved Microsoft MVP award

A DAY ago we wrote about Richard's analysis of Moonlight, which Jason from Mono-Nono responds to as follows:

Will we now hear The H’s author decried as a “zealot” or ”fearmongerer” for pointing out de Icaza’s obsession with emulating and promoting Microsoft technologies? Or, perhaps, a word of apology for painting RMS in such lights for his equivalent statement?

I suspect the latter shall not happen, though some may call me a cynic.
Moonlight can be used, at least in the short term, if you have obtained your software through Novell. Otherwise, you are cast adrift in a no man’s land where it is not always apparent what is permissible and what is not.
Even though I think the author is too kind here, I am also pleased that he is not merely parroting the (failed) attempt by Team Moonlight to pretend that the new “Covenant” is some sort of improvement over the old – which was downright offensive in the first place.

[...]

[T]he Mono developers have appeared to gain strength and unity from adversity and see themselves as united against the rest of the world.
This is the most brilliant insight of the article, and it articulates something I have long found fascinating. Team Mono has a core of supporters that are simply not interested in the truth or discussion. They will adopt (and endlessly repeat) any argument that they think supports their cause, and they will immediately dismiss any argument with any means that they think supports their opposition.


The Mono and Moonlight proponents/developers are acting like an extension of Microsoft, almost like a cult. Who would be this cult's leader? To quote a brand new comment from ZDNet:

Miguel de Icaza, Microsoft MVP?

Yep, it’s true. The open-source rabble-rouser who was prevented from hosting a session inside Microsoft’s 2005 Professional Developer Conference has been accepted into the ranks of the company’s “Most Valuable Professionals” less than five years later. He announced the news on his blog.

De Icaza is the leader of the open-source Mono project, sponsored by Novell, which previously set off alarm bells inside Microsoft for its ability to expand Microsoft .NET applications to other platforms, including Linux. Relations between de Icaza and Microsoft have warmed following the Redmond company’s partnership with Novell.

He’s also on the board of the Microsoft-supported CodePlex Foundation, Meanwhile, Mono spin-off project Moonlight, an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight interactive technology, has won the blessings of the Redmond company.


One of our regular readers has just caught up with the news about Miguel de Icaza's Microsoft MVP award [1, 2]. He asks us: "Please decode his reference to "ECMA CLI", and is the other end of the OS spectrum missing this and why would 'Windows developers' want to know about it?"

Any takers in the comments?

He concludes with: "I guess this is more of the let's get 'open source' onto Windows stratagem. What could be more open than that?"

"I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows."

--Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO



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