03.19.10
Novell Hires More Mono People (Despite Sacking SUSE Developers) and Microsoft Buys an OSBC Spot/Seat
“I’d like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 – no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET.”
–“Gnome to be based on .NET – de Icaza”
Summary: Novell and Microsoft continue to fund development with the desired bias of using Microsoft APIs; Microsoft pays for its share of OSBC (again) and gets to set the tone with a keynote speech
THE correction we made the other day was perhaps premature because Paul Cutler, whom we quoted as being a Novell employee, is indeed becoming a Novell employee (and has probably had that planned for a while). “So technically I was wrong,” said our reader, “he’s not at Novell *yet*, but obviously he will be.” Here is what he wrote a short while ago: “Wrapping up my last day at Webroot today (packing boxes!) and then off until 4/1 when I start at Novell!”
It may be April 1st, but it doesn’t seem like much of a joke.
For over a year we have shown that while Novell reduces GNU/Linux focus (and lays off SUSE employees) it is increasing its focus on Microsoft with software like Mono and Moonlight. “That GNOME guy that said Mr. Cutler didn’t work for Novell was clearly disingenuous (I assume he was a GNOME guy anyway),” said our reader. “GNOME is such a joke, they are giving power to Novell so Novell can rape them and force Mono down their throats and thereby force it down everyone else’s throats. Such a joke.”
“There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.”
–Bob Muglia, Microsoft President
We hope that even with excessive Novell power in the GNOME Foundation (including the Director) GNOME 3.0 can stay free of Mono at the core.
“Microsoft is trying to redefine “open source” and associate it with Microsoft and Windows.”We are seeing similar trends over at OSBC, which Matt Asay allowed Microsoft to join [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (he also let Microsoft enter the OSI). They are still paying a lot of money to control the agenda at the event (Novell and Microsoft up at the top, only second to Red Hat; “Where’s Canonical?” asks us a reader). Microsoft’s investment in this event is paying off. “MS presents keynote speech at the OSBC,” tells us a reader in private and points to this article which says: “The presentation by Microsoft’s Stuart McKee, who holds the title of national technology officer for the United States, continued a pattern in recent years that has seen Microsoft publicly embracing the open source movement and even funding it.”
It’s not funding it. It pays money for developers to move over to Windows. That’s different. It’s like saying that Microsoft is funding the elections (in exchange for favours that it receives later, ones that are incompatible with citizens’ interests, such as tax breaks that cronyism enables [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]).
We notice that Geeknet, which got filled with some former Microsoft employees [1, 2], is there as well. It’s all just slush funds for Microsoft if it wants to coerce its competition, which is precisely what it’s trying to do here. The Novell deal was an inexpensive one and it turned Novell into an extension of Microsoft.
Microsoft is trying to redefine “open source” and associate it with Microsoft and Windows. It’s an old strategy. Last year we showed how Microsoft tried to paint ARM devices (they won’t run Windows) as incapable of handling normal computing tasks by calling them “smartbooks” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and comparing them to phones rather than small “PCs”. There is also the “industry standard” FUD from Gartner (where “standard” means Windows on x86) and now there is “PC”, which they try to equate to just “Windows”. Below we add some logs of a conversation from several hours ago; it’s about the term “PC”, which quite frankly, Apple too played a role in establishing as synonymous with “Windows” because of its many adverts. █
IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: March 19th, 2010
| cubezzz | the mac vs pc ads are specious | Mar 19 10:19 |
|---|---|---|
| cubezzz | pc is a generic term | Mar 19 10:19 |
| cubezzz | really they are comparing operating systems, not hardware | Mar 19 10:19 |
| schestowitz | Yeah | Mar 19 10:21 |
| cubezzz | they compare the merits of one closed OS with another | Mar 19 10:21 |
| schestowitz | But Apple came up with it | Mar 19 10:21 |
| schestowitz | Not Microsoft | Mar 19 10:21 |
| schestowitz | Microsoft sort of plays along with “PC” | Mar 19 10:21 |
| oiaohm | MS does not want people to think the generic term PC is generic | Mar 19 10:22 |
| cubezzz | microcomputer was the old term | Mar 19 10:22 |
| *amarsh04 should have made comments about no Free software from Redmond in our state election campaign (the opposition candidate is Isobel Redmond) | Mar 19 10:22 | |
| cubezzz | I never really called anything a “PC” | Mar 19 10:22 |
| oiaohm | Personal Computer | Mar 19 10:22 |
| oiaohm | microcomputer is really a different term. | Mar 19 10:22 |
| cubezzz | I prefer it though  |
Mar 19 10:23 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[schestowitz] RT @daemonfc Checking out Opera 10.5….Chrome and Firefox could have a real fight on their hands here! IE 9 preview sucks | Mar 19 10:23 | |
| cubezzz | more historically expressive | Mar 19 10:23 |
| *amarsh04 remembers those 8080 based boards from 1974 (and programming same in first year electrical engineering in 1981) | Mar 19 10:24 | |
| oiaohm | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer Some of the arm devices appearing now would fit into the microcomputer class. | Mar 19 10:25 |
| phIRCe-BNc | Title: Microcomputer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .::. Size~: 64.19 KB | Mar 19 10:25 |
| cubezzz | well maybe you could use the term nanocomputer now | Mar 19 10:25 |
| oiaohm | netbook /nettop cubezzz | Mar 19 10:26 |
| oiaohm | smartbook | Mar 19 10:26 |
| cubezzz | the form factor is relevent | Mar 19 10:26 |
| oiaohm | We have got a whole new stack of terms defining them. | Mar 19 10:26 |
| cubezzz | er, relevant | Mar 19 10:26 |
| cubezzz | nettop sounds extraneous to me | Mar 19 10:27 |
| oiaohm | Lot of what would be called microcomputers now hides in different form factor name.s | Mar 19 10:27 |
| cubezzz | PC isn’t any better though | Mar 19 10:28 |
| cubezzz | it’s just as non-specific | Mar 19 10:28 |
| cubezzz | a zaurus is a PC | Mar 19 10:28 |
| cubezzz | a zaurus is a microcomputer | Mar 19 10:28 |
| oiaohm | Personal Computer techically could be a apple machine. | Mar 19 10:29 |
| oiaohm | Yes shock horror to lot of MS fans and Apple fans. | Mar 19 10:29 |
| oiaohm | Personal Computer in its true meaning is a machine you have at home for personal use. | Mar 19 10:29 |
| cubezzz | that’s why the ads are stupid, yes |
Mar 19 10:29 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[daemonfc] Two gay soldiers arrested in White House protest. http://rep.ly/1MyfU | Mar 19 10:30 | |
| phIRCe-BNc | Title: Two gay soldiers arrested in White House protest. .::. Size~: 32.16 KB | Mar 19 10:30 |
| oiaohm | MS pushed the PC idea to being them to stop people thinking about the other microcomputer and the like as PC’s. | Mar 19 10:30 |
| cubezzz | the other main tyranny is Intel | Mar 19 10:30 |
| oiaohm | Like the C64 it was techincally a PC. | Mar 19 10:30 |
| cubezzz | was the Kim-1 a PC? |
Mar 19 10:31 |
| cubezzz | it’s a personal computer too | Mar 19 10:31 |
| oiaohm | Really I don’t think schestowitz has ever covered that the. Artifical narrowing of terms. | Mar 19 10:32 |
| *Thrae (~ircuser@generalmx-1-pt.tunnel.tserv13.ash1.ipv6.he.net) has joined #boycottnovell | Mar 19 10:32 | |
| cubezzz | put it all under the heading of “Microsoft bullshit” | Mar 19 10:33 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[_goblin] Got a full day….Sky person coming to install HD, new mobile phone arriving and builder dropping off materials for work to start monday. | Mar 19 10:33 | |
| oiaohm | Sad part is lot of young people are shocked when they ask for a PC and they end up with something like a old but working c64 | Mar 19 10:34 |
| oiaohm | I gave them what they asked for. | Mar 19 10:34 |
| cubezzz | they could have made the c64 into a nice PDA | Mar 19 10:34 |
| cubezzz | but no, the c64′s time is done | Mar 19 10:35 |
| cubezzz | unless you are uber-hardcore |
Mar 19 10:35 |
| amarsh04 | there was a local who had a scsi disk attached to his c64 | Mar 19 10:35 |
| amarsh04 | one of my associates even had a c65 | Mar 19 10:35 |
| cubezzz | oiaohm, I’d say the real narrowing was when the distinction between home computers and personal computers | Mar 19 10:36 |
| oiaohm | There are still some c64 clones being made today. | Mar 19 10:36 |
| cubezzz | really? | Mar 19 10:36 |
| amarsh04 | I’d like to see something that is relatively low power, can do full motion video playback with open hardware and code, and internally can take decent amounts of ram and externally have plenty of interfaces including esata | Mar 19 10:37 |
| DaemonFC | they still sell the Sega Genesis too | Mar 19 10:37 |
| oiaohm | Yes really. there bugger all ciruit to a c64 | Mar 19 10:37 |
| DaemonFC | self contained version of it | Mar 19 10:37 |
| cubezzz | like C64 direct-to-tv? | Mar 19 10:37 |
| cubezzz | or a full sized clone? | Mar 19 10:37 |
| oiaohm | There are still full sized clones cubezzz | Mar 19 10:38 |
| cubezzz | ok, that is news to me | Mar 19 10:38 |
| oiaohm | Some things are very resistant to dieing. Run quite well on less that 1 watt of power. | Mar 19 10:38 |
| oiaohm | Yes modern day power effectiveness crossed with c64 light power software you end up with something insanely power effective. | Mar 19 10:39 |
| cubezzz | it would be fun to program in 6502 again |
Mar 19 10:39 |
| cubezzz | but i’ll probably get a “smartbook” next | Mar 19 10:40 |
| cubezzz | maybe you meant the C-One oiaohm? | Mar 19 10:43 |
| oiaohm | C-One is one of them. | Mar 19 10:49 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[popey] Liking the new automatic sync feature in the latest Tomboy http://bit.ly/1bNieK | Mar 19 10:59 | |
| phIRCe-BNc | Title: Tomboy : Simple note taking .::. Size~: 6.69 KB | Mar 19 10:59 |
| DaemonFC | there you go, schestowitz | Mar 19 11:01 |
| cubezzz | probably netwalker actually | Mar 19 11:07 |
| cubezzz | that seems to be the best of the bunch so far | Mar 19 11:08 |
your_friend said,
March 21, 2010 at 12:39 am
Apple is forced to associate “PC” with Windows because Apple has abandoned innovative hardware design for the most part. Software is now the only difference between a Mac and the “PC” Apple long ridiculed.
It hardly needs to be said that neither Microsoft nor Apple are offering Personal Computers anymore. Both have put obnoxious restrictions into the core of their operating systems that deny users more than petty changes to the appearance of their interfaces. A real personal computer is one which a user can modify to meet their needs. Non free software has always been user hostile. Digital Restrictions Management makes that hostility clear.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 3:04 am
Both “Macs” and “PCs” are made in the same factories in Asia, sometimes by children on the production line. The casing is different.
uberVU - social comments said,
March 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm
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This post was mentioned on Identica by schestowitz: #Novell Hires More #Mono People (Despite Sacking #SUSE Developers) http://ur1.ca/qktu #microsoft #swpat…