02.21.11
One Last Sellout From Novell (MPEG-LA, Microsoft Patent Traps)
Summary: Weeks before its death (as a public company), Novell announces continued plans that favour MPEG-LA and Microsoft, not software freedom
THE DIMINISHING presence of Novell does not prevent the company from promoting Microsoft, which funnelled perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars into Novell in order to receive this kind of treatment. It’s a bit like a bribe — somewhat like the money Microsoft gave to Nokia, which then decided sell out without being acquired [1, 2, 3, 4].
The usual suspect is making some noise about Moonlight, which brings Mono and proprietary codecs with it (hello, MPEG-LA). The FSF’s new call for a boycott against MPEG-LA supporters is another subject we’ll deal with shortly. Moonlight is just a surrogate of Silver Lie, which would never support WebM. Microsoft is in complete control.
“Moonlight is just a surrogate of Silver Lie, which would never support WebM.”The ‘Microsoft press’ is of course promoting this, but it’s not alone [1, 2]. An entity called Telerik, which we mentioned in [1, 2, 3], is also helping this promotion, which is of course invaluable to the monopolist. Some Linux sites fail to highlight the drawbacks [1, 2] and also give coverage to future releases of Mono, which include Microsoft code and patent traps. Novell has been actively trying to pollute Android with Mono, using a product called MonoDroid [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. It is speculated that Moonlight too will try to pollute Android, not just with Microsoft patents but also with MPEG-LA patents (Google is currently the main opponent of MPEG-LA and Microsoft is trying to increase the cost of Android, using lawsuits and extortion a la MPEG-LA).
Based on comments that we found in Identi.ca over the weekend, the Mono bullies or Mono lobby continue to act like Scientology. The usual suspects are harassing anyone who dare to say a negative thing about Mono and/or Moonlight, as always. Among the bullies in these discussions we find some Novell employees like this gentleman (who also hangs out in Reddit, smearing Techrights). Hypocritically enough, Mono bullies like to say that they are the victims; they should take a look at their own behaviour. Mono boosters must come grips with the fact that merely naming those who do the pro-Microsoft coding is reasonable for the same reason an attacked party often blames the attacking troop if not the general (people like Microsoft MVP de Icaza) who start this attack, sometimes embodied by a project with the funding of the ‘state’ (Novell or Microsoft in this case). To quote the Novell/Ximian trooper:
Attacking someone’s project often results in that person feeling personally attacked. I should know this as well or better than anyone because I’m one of the authors of the most widely attacked projects in the Free Software community: Evolution, Mono, and Moonlight.
Mono and Moonlight are ‘attacked’ because they are harmful. They help Microsoft, not Free software. The ‘attacks’ on them are not personal attacks, unless Mono and Moonlight are two people with feelings to be hurt. Trying to personify them is missing the point. █
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