Summary: Another look at the OpenStack situation, why Microsoft should not be allowed to enter, and more about patent and copyright complications

SOME days ago we wrote about OpenStack's situation when it comes to Microsoft. Later we showed what Microsoft boosters were doing to spin it as good news. Well, according to this new article:

OpenStack is supposed to be a vendor agnostic open community for building an open source cloud stack. And it is, unless you don’t pull your own weight- or if you’re Microsoft.

I know there is plenty of vitriol in the open source world towards Microsoft and certainly some of that has now surfaced in the OpenStack community.

OpenStack is now removing the Hyper-V capabilities from its stack, after Microsoft didn’t maintain the code. That happens in projects all the time, just think about the Linux kernel where Microsoft has had similar challenges and hey for that matter so has Google.

The hostility towards Microsoft has a lot to do with this monopolist’s continued attacks on Open Source projects. We need not whitewash Microsoft here or claim the above to be an irrational move of irrational hatred. Never mind the fact that Hyper-V is proprietary and not open. Microsoft continues to attack Linux with all sorts of proxies like SCO as well as patent trolls. There are those who wish to just abolish it all, especially patents. Realising the idiocy of many patents, there are some who speak about the harms of patents as a whole, not just software patents. To quote:

“Is this Patent full of crap?”

[...]

The ideas are those of patent lawyer Andrew Schulman, but the story is full of insight on a patent lawyer’s thinking and offers real clues into why the patent system is such a mess–complexity compounded, full of precedents that ordinary humans will find puzzling at best.

Earlier we wrote about many patents becoming just junk. Even Oracle seems to be moving further away from patents and is now trying to use copyrights against Android. Quoting Groklaw:

Today is the due date for Dr. Cockburn’s third attempt at a damages report on behalf of Oracle, and just to make sure Oracle knows what needs to be submitted, Judge Alsup has issue a reminder order. (709 [PDF; Text]) The judge wants to see not only the report but also all of the related reports and studies that support it.

Let’s remember that Microsoft has put code with its copyrights inside Linux and the same goes for Mono. They try to make those things more adaptable to Microsoft’s proprietary software. In the case of Mono, there is lawsuit risk too. Anything with Microsoft in it tends to be tainted. Just see what happened with FAT. █

Summary: Xamarin and Mono lack presence in the press and lack any notable activity too

A

few years back we wrote a great deal about Mono. But Mono has hardly been visible since Attachmate trashed it and according to this new article:

Since Novell was acquired by Attachmate last year, the Mono project is being backed by a new company called Xamarin, which was founded by Mono founder Miquel de Icaza, who was previously working at Novell. So the Mono project is alive and well, and it is not too late to add it to IBM i. (It has been rumored that IBM ported Mono to run inside PASE, the AIX runtime environment embedded in IBM i operating system. That idea was bottled up and kept in a darkroom never to see the light of day.)

Xamarin is almost nowhere to be seen. Here is a quick roundup of what happened in recent months:

# July – SUSE signs an agreement with Xamarin giving a perpetual license to all Mono related Intellectual property and stewardship of the open source mono project. Xamarin takes over support for existing Enterprise Mono customers and starts selling Mono-based products, including the popular MonoTouch for iOS and Mono for Android.
# Aug – Mono 2.10.3, Xamarin’s first Mono release, comes out with support for Mac OSX Lion, some WCF improvements and GC fixes.
# Oct – Microsoft takes a dip into Mono by building Kinectimals for iOS
# Nov – Sony announces Play Station Suite built on top of Mono. Phalanger 3.0 gets released with support for Mono instead of needing a C++/CLI compiler
# Dec – CXXI brings advanced C++ interoperability to Mono

That is not much for one to have achieved in half a year. We suppose Mono will just die out on its own. █

Summary: Reflection Suite reflects on Attachmate commitment only to itself

NOW that Mono is being dropped from Ubuntu (after Attachmate too dumped it) we are somewhat gratified to see the boycott of Novell succeeding.

Attachmate itself is not totally without products. It just doesn’t have many of them and those which it has make headlines for all the wrong reasons:

The case centres around Defence’s use of five pieces of Attachmate software in the “Extra!” product family of emulation software. Attachmate sold Defence 8000 licences for a package of software, including Extra! Personal Client 6.5, Extra! for Windows 5.20 and Extra! TCP Bundle Version, as well as Reflection for HP version 4.2, enterprise Access Object Software and KEA! 420.

In the licensing agreement, Defence agreed to use each copy on one computer at a time, transfer software between computers no more than once every 30 days and to not copy the software.

Attachmate had independent auditors from KPMG prepare a report in November 2009, which revealed that Defence was using tens of thousands of copies of the software that it had no licences for.

Now, watch this new press release from Attachmate. This is very rare as the company seems to be low profile of of very low impact. It does not spend time promoting Novell products, which says a lot really. “I Remember IRMA: Reflections on Terminal Emulation Through the Ages,” writes David Strom, who explains that:

The memories were trigged by a press release from Attachmate, which is now probably the largest software vendor of things that you don’t really care to try or buy, including probably the leading commercial vendor of Reflection, a terminal emulator. For those of you that are still reading, this is a product that allows you to connect to a command-line console (such as Terminal in Mac OS or Windows HyperTerminal).

This was hardly mentioned in the press, except for few examples. Attachmate does almost nothing for Novell’s portfolio. █

LAST night I found out that Mono would be removed from Ubuntu (that’s me last night at around that same time). Sebastian found this out live and a Canonical employee confirmed this to me later. Now there are articles about it.

This marks a victory of sorts to a push we’ve put a lot of effort into, along with Boycott Novell. A lot of personal compromise was involved as I was on the receiving end of persistent bullying and smears. Thanks to all those who help share information about the problems with Mono. GNU/Linux is a lot safer (and better) now. █

Summary: Microsoft dependency is being removed from Ubuntu GNU/Linux, based on UDS

Based on a video which is airing right night, Sebastian tells us (in IRC) that “Mono won’t be in the default install of 12.04 [but] still in repos [...] and they will switch back to Rhythmbox as well, so bye bye Mono [...] it was in the UDS video from Orlando at the moment [...] and they were just talking about it in the channel for that as well [...] I think it’s to save space really on the CD [...] and since Rythombox is good enough again now [...] they said it a little while ago in the UDS wrap up [..] and they said how they will get a certain amount of space back [...] and in the UDS channel someone was saying how that means: Tomboy won’t be there as well anymore.” █

Source: “Mono, the Trojan” (reused with permission)

Summary: The long term support release of Ubuntu (next release) may come with almost no Mono applications (or none) and there is discussion about getting rid of Mono altogether

Banshee coverage at Phoronix was mentioned here the other day, but we now see some reports that almost contradict it. “Apparently,” tells us Viper550, “Ubuntu devs are proposing a switch back to Rhythmbox”

Ryan insists that he “said that last night, EST… (to the tune of that Get a Mac ad) Problems? Too darned many. Patches? Not enough. Banshee has issues, it’s so glitchy, they’re leaving it, for Rhythmbox… ”

Viper550 explains the reasons as: “Banshee = not GTK3, glitchy on ARM, removing it could allow the removal of Mono from the main repository, etc.”

“I doubt Mono will be removed from the repository,” Ryan adds, “getting it removed from the supported system and into Universe would be good though… they wasted time and effort coding all their Ubuntu One crap in C# for a dead end (Mono), while complaining Rhythmbox isn’t up to their standards, instead of improving Rhythmbox”

“[T]hey said it could also save some space on the ISOs,” replies Viper550, but Ryan insists that “Red Hat has ported Rhythmbox to GTK+ 3 and gotten it in good shape, they’re thinking about doubling back and using it in Ubuntu again which means rewriting all their Ubuntu One crap that they spent man hours writing for Banshee… Ubuntu just takes leftovers… once some other outfit gets something working, Ubuntu swipes it and takes credit for installing it in the default system, which they call “integration work”…”

Having searching for some references on this matter, we got this (Viper550 says it “was discussed at UDS”).

- Rhythmbox / Banshee :
This subject was a bit of surprise for me, I didn’t expect such discussion will happen. However, the 2 applications have problems :
- Banshee : Problem on ARM (doesn’t work), no GTK3 support, and removing Banshee will remove Mono from the CD (good for the space) and probably from main (which make Security team happy, not having to maintain Mono stack for 5 years)
- RB : U1 store need to be updated, Music lense needs to be updated, it needs a release from upstream.
A quick vote on usage of both applications in the room makes approximately a 50 / 50 result (maybe a bit more for RB).
Conclusion, RB will probably be back on the CD, if no problem is raised by the other teams not present during the session. The decision was not easy, but IMO it makes sense in the context of an LTS. And, well, Banshee will still be available in the archive, will at least the same level of integration than in 11.10.

So “basically,” explains Viper550, “cliffsnotes version: Banshee may be dropped because its not a native GTK 3 application, doesn’t work well on ARM, and dropping that and Mono could save some disk space (which make Security team happy, not having to maintain Mono stack for 5 years)”

Other sites appear to have already reported about this too, so we’ll quote:

Rhythmbox Might Replace Banshee In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, More News

[...]

As for the second session, most people who have attended the default applications session today at UDS-P have agreed to replace Banshee with Rhythmbox by default. However, decision is not final as there are a few things that need to be checked first (like Unity Music Lens integration, etc.).

This is great news and a step in the right direction. █

Summary: Microsoft is drilling a legal loophole into Ubuntu GNU/Linux and apathy still serves Microsoft’s plan

ONE important bug that Canonical no longer tries to squash is the Mono bug. It adds a liability which everyone is well aware of, including the company's outgoing CTO (Canonical reorganised following some important departures at the top)..

The host of TechBytes, Tim, is usually very moderate, but he too is still concerned about Mono inside Ubuntu. The other day he wrote in Diaspora: “I’ve much love for Ubuntu and whilst it’s not my desktop choice now, it’s certainly the one I will recommend to others. The community is great, the distro is great.

“It does though always sadden me when we see Canonical’s insistence to stick with Banshee and ergo Mono. Why?

“Of course removing Mono is not the problem, I just merely wish they would get over this particular dependency that I cannot see has any benefits (even if you don’t buy into a patent trap scenario)”

One of our contributors has already added a wiki page about removing Mono from the latest Ubuntu and Phoronix writes about Mono and Banshee in a new article which Tim called “a rather interesting read.”

Later he wrote: “I commented on TechBytes some time ago about its sluggishness and it’s interesting to see that its still being commented on now. Patent trap or not, we have already seen how aggressively Microsoft is hitting Android with “licenses” and I’d say it would be wise to minimize as much risk as possible and remove Mono completely, for me and what I’ve seen of it, it offers no advantages that even come close to risking another avenue of attack for Microsoft on non-MS products.”

Exactly. And Phoronix ignores the main problem people are having with Mono and Banshee which Microsoft says it reserves the right to sue over. It’s not just about performance and technical merit (or lack thereof). We increasingly hear about Mono in the context of Wine, too. Here is the article in question. It says:

Concerns over this Mono and GTK#-using application were raised since Banshee has had some problems on ARM (the application freezing with a white screen) and Mono issues on ARM in general.

But why not mention the other issues? We have a wiki page dedicated to these. █

Summary: Monsieur de Icaza and his followers help ensure that .NET does not go away just yet

IN SOME ways, Microsoft is abandoning .NET, which not only pisses off many developers but also causes many other problems.

It was only months ago that Attachmate threw Mono out to the street. There is not much going on at Attachmate (the former vice president at Attachmate Corporation is seen moving now) and after it had laid off Mono developers it hardly was willing to give some so-called 'IP' (eventually it did), which does not mean that it’s okay because Microsoft is the party to approach. The remnants of the Mono team were afloat in Xamarin, which hardly does anything based on the news, with the following exception:

The MonoDevelop team has released version 2.8 of its open source IDE (integrated development environment) for programming in C# and other .NET languages. Other than changes to the source code editor and new functions for project management, MonoDevelop 2.8 mainly provides changes for Mac developers.

Mac, eh? What about GNU/Linux? Well, Mono was never about free platforms, it was about Microsoft .NET. █

Summary: In light of more FUD from Miguel de Icaza, a reminder of who or what he is serving and why we oughtn’t pay attention to him

SEVERAL people have asked us to cover the unsurprising story of a Microsoft MVP praising Microsoft and trashing Linux. The only noteworthy gem is that this Microsoft MVP is called Miguel de Icaza, the man who technically leads a startup striving to spread .NET. He also works (or worked) for a Microsoft foundation that facilitates self-serving intrusion into FOSS. We’ll expand a bit just in case someone still does not know Miguel de Icaza, whom Microsoft conveniently characterises as opposition because he is controlled opposition.

The short story is, Miguel is being Miguel again. “Conveniently,” says one of our regulars in IRC, “he skips the OEM monopoly [..] and shilling for vista 8″

Miguel’s current fascination with Vista 8 can be seen in this post, but we must remember that Miguel also promoted .NET and Silverlight for Linux (even rewriting and writing applications for Linux in Moonlight) while Microsoft pretty much dumped both. This man is not credible and he is fuelling Linux FUD that quotes him as “Gnome creator”.

“Like everything in Microsoft’s culture, lying is OK as long as it’s useful to Microsoft.”This should not surprise anyone as we have seen him in newsgroups too playing along with Microsoft trolls and throwing FUD at Linux. One has to gasp at the sight of this person who openly bashes the Linux desktop, a part of which people sometimes wrongly attribute to him (mostly in the Microsoft camp, of which he is a loyal part).

It ought to be mentioned that the latest FUD from Miguel was generated in collaboration with Microsoft’s buddy Tim Anderson, whom Microsoft gives presents. It is helps validate what we have been saying for years about Miguel and other Microsoft lust which he takes pride in.

He will not be insulted by association with Microsoft. He loves Microsoft, he tried getting a job there as far back as 1998.

Like everything in Microsoft’s culture, lying is OK as long as it’s useful to Microsoft. The company even lied to the government recently — a serious breach of trust that does get scrutiny from the press but probably not enough scrutiny.

“Ask Miguel about Microsoft’s abuses and see him slinking away.”The bottom line is, Miguel will say the darnest things, he will get things wrong (as he did before), and we really must not take what he says seriously anymore. If FOSS developers took his advice, they would be swapping OOXML files, building GNOME 3 using Moonlight (XAML), and investing their effort in Xamarin, which fails to even be mentioned by the press after staff left, the software turned proprietary, the new CEO was appointed after an early Microsoft career, and the CTO is reduced to some kind of anti-Linux mouthpiece.

Miguel has been groomed by Microsoft boosters (some pretend to be objective journalists) for a good reason. He gives credibility to their FUD because they can try to label him “Gnome founder” and then magically speak ‘on behalf’ of the opposition. The grooming of the “de Icaza” brand is mostly done by Microsoft sites, as a news survey can easily help show (we performance several such surveys about Mono before). The goal is to weaken FOSS elements such as the FSF and give power to Microsoft boosters and apologists mostly through exposure and PR tactics. Another objective to be achieved is the marginalisation of elements in the community which are critical of Microsoft (and there is lots to be critical of, e.g. patent extortion and boot attack). The same strategy is used in politics. It is partisan and at times very malicious.

Ask Miguel about Microsoft’s abuses and see him slinking away. █

Summary: Banshee and Pinta rear their head again; no considerable changes in OpenSUSE

THE WORLD of Novell is a misty mixture of Microsoft and SUSE, .NET and Linux, even Microsoft tax on Free/libre software. The patent trap which is Banshee has a rather belated (and bloated) release (Banshee is a Novell project) and Pinta, a project conceived by a Novell developer, still helps spread Mono. After reports that it had died there was a call for volunteers to help save it and the program is said to have been resurrected. So there is still work to be done making Mono and Xamarin go away (back where they came from, Microsoft culture).

While things remain quiet in OpenSUSE (with few exceptions) and there are delays reported (as covered here twice before), it seems like the project opened up a bit to women:

At the openSUSE conference last week, Lydia Pintscher from the KDE Community Working Group led a BoF on “women in openSUSE”. This is what we (Stella, Bruno, Lydia, Pascal, Susanne, Greg) worked out…

This seems more like PR. OpenSUSE is most predominantly a male group and it is run almost exclusively by people who are employed by SUSE/Attachmate (formerly Novell) and partly funded by Microsoft. The community was not even part of the decision to bond with Microsoft. █

Summary: What Mono proponents are other closet Windows/.NET fans are up tp

A few hours ago Ryan asked, “did you see omgubuntu give Windows 8 a glowing review?”

He also showed Mono promotion (in the form of Banshee news) which ignores the known risks and development impediments. He claims that “they want to make a GTK 3-Sharp and a Gstreamer-Sharp,” later adding that “Rhythmbox isn’t exactly getting a lot of love lately.”

“I think it’s only on life support because Fedora doesn’t want to use Banshee,” he added. When will Canonical get off the Mono dependency? It’s the gateway drug to Microsoft.

We ought to mention that one of the Mono boosters who attacked this site for a long time (trolling the IRC channel, smearing it from afar, etc.) turned out to have been a Microsoft intern. He pretended to be a Ubuntu member. Funny how many Mono people are close to Microsoft but still in disguise, eh? █

Summary: Another clueful reminder of who Xamarin associates itself with

WE are always amused to see how Miguel and his Xamarin minions no longer see the need to hide their ties with Microsoft. Miguel’s Microsoft MVP award aside, just watch where they present. “Continuing our tradition of getting together with Mono users at Microsoft conferences,” Miguel reassures us. Well, we appreciate the reminder. █

Summary: More Mono-based applications are alleged to have died and SUSE is looking for unpaid volunteers (through the OpenSUSE umbrella)

WITH THE demise of Mono inevitably comes a demise of Mono-based applications.

“In addition to Pinta,” writes to us a reader, “Beagle has bitten the dust .Notice that the domain is parked.

“That leaves the better products, namely Strigi, Tracker, Recoll, and
Pinot. Now will Ubuntu clean up their packages before 11.10 comes out?”

“One issue that Ubuntu is still facing is its note-taking application, which is not Gnote.”Yes, Pinta too has died (we wrote 2 posts about it) and claims that it might be resurrected are now circulating. It remain to be seen if this 180 is for real. Once something is declared dead by its developer, it is clear that the developer lacks interest.

One issue that Ubuntu is still facing is its note-taking application, which is not Gnote. Some sites might still be advertising Tomboy (latest example), but there is not much that it can do which its Free/libre counterparts cannot. It is just quite heavy (resource-hungry). The same can be said about SUSE and OpenSUSE, which help standardise Microsot’s “Linux tax” and also serve as a host to Mono. This new review(ish) of OpenSUSE says:

This week we scheduled, installed and rebooted OpenSuse 11.4 with the 3.0.4 kernel. We broke the infamous rule of technology and also changed from the kernel-desktop to desktop-default; which means now that it’s working beautifully we are not 100% sure which of the two issues resolved the problem. If one had more hours, we’d prove or disprove both theories but at this point we are going to enjoy the success and just move ahead. We’ve used both kernels on other servers and both have worked fine. Previously on this new server disk performance was terrible after user loads increased and now it’s absolutely blazing in speed. Even with 40+ users, avant-window-navigator is starting to open in about 3 seconds even over remote display. You can barely even notice that 40 concurrent people are working — in other words it’s working as I would expect from Linux. I have solicited our users for more beta testers and hope to get us in the 50-60 mark by next week.

But why help SUSE? Why help the company which helps Microsoft? We wrote about this subject earlier this month, reminding OpenSUSE volunteers that they are helping a Microsoft-funded entity. Their time would be better spent helping other Free/Open Source projects. █

Summary: Mono and projects that are built with Mono are hardly maintained anymore, and some officially die

THE cult of Mono lost much of its following when it lost its sugar daddy, Novell. Banshee has not been updated in ages (it was a Novell project) and its lead developer left Novell too. According to Joey Sneddon, the Novell employee who worked on Pinta has officially given up, so we are seeing a trend here. Mono and Mono-based project from Novell staff are dropping like flies and the sooner Ubuntu realises this, the better. No distribution of GNU/Linux has a compelling reason to still preinstall the bloat which is Mono. Well, no distribution except Microsoft-sponsored ones like SUSE. Several weeks ago SUSE announced special relationship with the Mono startup, Xamarin. OpenSUSE 12.1 is now reaching beta and obviously it will include Mono.

In other news about Novell/SUSE, there is an event coming next month. The now-acquired VAR Guy writes: “6. Novell BrainShare (Oct. 10-14, Salt Lake City, Utah): Now owned by Attachmate, Novell needs to clearly communicate its partner strategy to three communities: SUSE Linux resellers, traditional Novell partners, and NetIQ partners. Those three communities now manage various products that were previously under a single Novell umbrella.” Except for Microsoft, who are those SUSE Linux resellers? █

Summary: Small update on Novell, Attachmate, SUSE, and Xamarin

OUR “Boycott Novell” initiative was a true success and right now we are starting to track quite closely the actions of Attachmate, which officially bought Novell a few months ago. Amid the sale there was separation that put SUSE aside, later to become Microsoft sponsored. It also put Xamarin, which keeps pushing Microsoft development tools aside entirely. Attachmate later gave its blessings to Xamarin (along with so-called ‘IP’), but it still owns the “OpenSUSE” trademark and Microsoft has not promised not to sue Xamarin clients or Xamarin itself. The whole thing is a tad dodgy and Attachmate also owns UNIX, which can complicate things further. Here is a new report about Attachmate trying to approach Novell partners in Sydney. From SUSE we have a not-so-imminent release and a pizza party (Microsoft’a pizza? They help fund SUSE) preceding the conference.

,

Our position on the subject is still the same. Novell, Attachmate, SUSE and Xamarin are still more like tentacles of Microsoft. They ought to be avoided. █

Summary: Microsoft Linux (sometimes known as SUSE) still plays into the hands of Microsoft Corporation

OpenSUSE (the community/volunteer facet of SUSE) indirectly signed a deal with Microsoft and a sort of pact with Xamarin just over a month ago. Another release of OpenSUSE seems to be on its way (hardly any news from the project except for that) and despite the fact that Mono is a patent liability, OpenSUSE 12.1 removes Sun/Oracle Java but not Mono. This is consistent with everything we expect from a Microsoft-sponsored distribution and all the Novell videos in the world (here are some of the latest one [1, 2, 3] cannot hide the company’s close ties to Microsoft. In anything, those videos only validate Novell’s dependence on Windows and on Microsoft. █

Summary: Xamarin introduces “Enterprise products” (proprietary) that put Microsoft code inside Android and even Tomdroid does not depend on it

Earlier this year we were made aware of Tomdroid, which is a GPLv3-licensed complement (not derivative or fork) of the Mono-based Tomboy. Well, Xamarin is selling Mono for Android like it’s a proprietary software product (which it is, as Microsoft MVP de Icaza calls it Open Core), so it’s not hard to see why Tomdroid avoids it.

“It would be nice if there was a project of this kind that’s based on Gnote.”According to The H, “Tomdroid lead developer Olivier Bilodeau has released version 0.5.0 of his open source Tomboy client for note-taking. Tomdroid allows users running Google’s Android mobile operating system to synchronise notes from the Tomboy desktop application to their devices for viewing; the client is currently read-only.” Will it be Gnote-compatible? Or will it — just like Ubuntu One — be very silly? Google limits development possibilities on Android. It would be nice if there was a project of this kind that’s based on Gnote. However Bilodeau says that “gnote has the right to exist and succeed but I also agree with sandy’s arguments when he’s saying its counter-productive.” How about Ubuntu’s replacement of GIMP in favour of Mono-based software that still receives a little attention (even though it has been dropped from Ubuntu's default)? Do users ever need Mono? It’s not only very bloated but it’s also a patent risk. █

THE OPENSUSE project keeps going under the leadership of people like Andreas Jaeger with his Factory updates and Jos whom he instructs to help organise the community (volunteers) by attending conferences, blogging, etc. He has just returned from the Desktop Summit. It’s about networking.

Those who have kept track of OpenSUSE over the years will know that there has been a considerable decline. It also seems like several key members left silently or at least quietly. We just don’t hear anything from there or about them anymore. Given the recent SUSE-Microsoft deal, it is not likely that the project will manage to recruit many new members, either.

SUSE now depends on some funding from Microsoft, which is funny because Google et al. too spent money on this project (e.g. GSoC and SaX). From the latter link:

3. Tried porting to openSUSE 11.3 ( Testers Required)

They are looking for volunteers to do their SUSE testing. This is what would essentially help Microsoft sell SLE* at the expense of free GNU/Linux distributions. Why would anyone want to do that?

One volunteer has just written about adding the patent liability which is Banshee to OpenSUSE:

A few days ago the Banshee developers have released another unstable release of Banshee, 2.1…3. I’ve submitted this version already to the Banshee:Unstable repositories and to GNOME:Apps for update in openSUSE Factory.

Well, the truth is, as Ryan keeps reminding us, Banshee is hardly being developed anymore (it is like Mono in that sense) and its lead developer just blogs about cooking, not development. He left Novell some months ago.

Given that some SUSE staff is leaving, Mono is virtually unheard of anymore, and OpenSUSE too is fading, why would anyone choose to join as a volunteer? There are communities like Fedora or Debian that are more deserving of outside contributors. █

Summary: SUSE the Attachmate-run company — just like Mono company Xamarin — is a liability to GNU/Linux and support of both should be questioned for the negative consequences associated with patents and dependence on Microsoft

CONSIDERING all the distributions people can choose to support, we are unable to understand why some folks choose to help Xamarin (still occupied with proprietary stuff) and SUSE, which recently hooked up with Xamarin and then with Microsoft (through a patent deal). SUSE has begun allocating slots for presentation where volunteers provide the content and SUSE reaps the benefits. Yes, that is right. SUSE, which helps Microsoft tax GNU/Linux, looks for free labour (e.g. people to help build the site, create artworks and graphics, and promote the distribution). Some people even prepare for benchmarks, which is a laborious process if a framework does not already exist. Quoting this one new example:

The sources for the benchmark are now on gitorious, and the Wiki entry describes its usage. It’s currently somewhat tailored to SLE11SP1, so you might run into minor issues when running it on a different OS version. And of course, it’s not very polished yet .

It makes no sense to support SUSE at this stage. It helps Microsoft. Google used to allocate some funds to SUSE projects, but should it still do this now that it is under patent attacks from Microsoft? Attacks which were legitimised by Novell and the deal it recently signed with SUSE? There is apparently Google-funded code in SUSE (Marcus’ definitely is [1, 2], as well as others’). There is no doubt that some people feel like part of the (Open)SUSE community, but the project is no longer the same. It is not even managed by the same people. Volunteers would be better off helping distributions not under Microsoft’s control and Google would be better off allocating funds to those distributions too.

“Volunteers would be better off helping distributions not under Microsoft’s control and Google would be better off allocating funds to those distributions too.”The only good thing that Novell still does is that it fights SCO in court, albeit for its own interests that may leave UNIX in the hands of Attachment, potentially to be passed on to hostile hands. Pamela Jones does not expect SCO to last for much longer. She writes:

This is the SCO carcass, and the buzzards are picking the bones.

It isn’t every day, though, that you hear a lawyer tell a court that it would be unquestionably illegal to approve a proposed deal, but that happened that day. And yet the judge approved it anyway.

To borrow Groklaw’s words, Novell too is a “carcass, and the buzzards are picking the bones.” SUSE does not deserve anyone’s support anymore, except Microsoft. █

“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”

–LinuxToday Managing Editor

Summary: Microsoft’s .NET is still promoted by Microsoft boosters from Novell, who helped Microsoft devour important scientific lectures under the pretence these would be available to all

MICROSOFT MVP Miguel de Icaza enthusiatically announces another release of a .NET clone which nobody truly needs. “Was .NET all a mistake?” That’s what some are willing to assert and as we showed last month, it increasingly seems to be the case. To quote:

It is time to reconsider the recent past and ask the question “was .NET just a forced detour on the road to another technology?”

Before anyone explodes I’d better say that I don’t have a definitive answer to the question that the title raises – how could anyone have such an answer. However the recent unsettling behavior at Microsoft has caused me to re-evaluate my .NET experiences and think hard about where it all came from and where it is all going. It is interesting and I promise not to be too provocative just for the sake of it…

.NET is just a lousy copy of Java, which matured over the years after Microsoft had been nailed for subverting Java, deliberetly fragmenting it (this was shown in internal documents we have in our wiki). The same goes for Silverlight, which is an imitation of Flash. It never really took off, so Microsoft resorted to exploiting dead scientists like Feynman (covered here before).

As one GNU/Linux advocate put it some days ago, Feynman’s videos “used to be on youtube but they were removed when Feynman’s heirs wanted to make some money from them (something Feynman I’m sure would have objected to).

“Bill Gates steps in and buys the rights to them and puts them on the Internet for free.”

The outcome: “Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not officially supported.”

In conclusion he writes: “So to view these videos I would have to infect my PC with Microsoft SW. That’s too high a price to pay.”

What about using Moonlight, which Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft used to pretend Silverlight was cross-platform (they help the same illusion for .NET, also pretending it’s “open”)? Does Xamarin maintain Moonlight? Of course not. Now it’s time to buy Windows for Silverlight, which they pretended was available to all platforms. █