07.02.10
Is Miguel de Icaza Preparing for a Career at Microsoft?
Summary: The Microsoft MVP who is also a vice president at Novell says what he would do if he was in charge of Vista 8
WE rarely use question marks in headlines, but this one almost begs for it. In fact, the news came to our attention by this good blog whose headline asks, “Miguel de Icaza: Secret Desire To Head Windows 8?” To quote the crux of the argument regarding this ego trip:
Miguel De Icaza is a known Microsoft supporter. He is often criticized for his endorsement of Microsoft product — he was heavily criticized for endorsing Microsoft’s controversial OOXML standarad.
Many call him a traitor as he leads the Mono project to implement Microsoft’s new .NET development platform on Linux and Unix-like platforms. Now, Icaza returns, suggesting what Microsoft should do to improve the next version of Windows, rumored as Windows 8.
He goes at length taking pains and suggesting what Microsoft should do to improve. Wow! No wonder its coming from Icaza, the long time supporter of Microsoft.
This whole vapourware routine around Vista 8 is a subject we wrote about twice at the beginning of this week [1, 2]. It’s funny that after all those years, Microsoft MVP de Icaza is still fascinated with everything from Microsoft. “At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic],” he wrote about a decade ago and nowadays he drools over Silverlight (de Icaza is also pushing some more Apple stuff this week). Several days ago IDG published this article:
Novell’s de Icaza: ‘People are scared of installing software on Windows’
[...]
While de Icaza may be right that developers and users harbor concerns about Windows, it’s unlikely the developer community would reject the App Store concept entirely. Microsoft’s .NET Framework is popular with developers, and Windows’ mammoth market share will likely lure in developers, even those concerned about making applications run properly on Windows.
Why is he so concerned about Microsoft’s monopoly prevailing (his work on Mono and Moonlight contributes to that)? Why is he still trying to help Microsoft? We don’t wish to end with a question, so instead we’ll suggest that de Icaza views Microsoft as an ally, not a competitor, despite all that we know. █
“I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”
Needs Sunlight said,
July 2, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Miguel’s been working for Microsoft, at as far as furthering Microsoft’s agendas and hurting FOSS, since the 1990′s.
How about a re-run of that nice quote of his where he openly makes a threat against people with families considering FOSS? There are a lot of people around the world who have been pulled aside privately, either online or offline, by their management and told that no criticism of Microsoft is allowed nor is use or encouragement of use of non-Microsoft products allowed. It is through that kind of racketeering that the security and safety problems have dragged on and on, instead of letting M$ die the death it was on the way to in the 1990′s.