Miguel de Icaza and the Linux Hater blog

Tough love

Summary: A quick look at an unhealthy infatuation and its effects on GNU/Linux

AN ANONYMOUS READER has just expressed his concerns about Miguel de Icaza, whose fascination with everything Microsoft may be just the tip of the iceberg. Does he also have a sadistic relationship with GNU/Linux? Some people think so and our reader sent over some reasonable evidence.

“...almost everything in de Icaza's blog nowadays is about Mono/.NET or other Microsoft software.”Now that Gnote is entering Fedora and probably other distributions also, it becomes clearer that Mono is no necessity. There is nothing that can be achieved in C# that cannot be achieved in other programming languages which also offer vastly superior performance. As Seth put it in 2004, Mono is an unacceptable risk. But almost everything in de Icaza's blog nowadays is about Mono/.NET or other Microsoft software. It would be amazing for an outsider to think or be told that such a person is even associated with GNU/Linux, which is constantly attacked by the very same company that he (de Icaza) admires and wanted to work for directly.

We were once told that Miguel de Icaza personally knows "Linux Hater" (he knows the real identity). For those who don't know, it's an obscene anti-Linux blogger who flames GNU/Linux developers as well as recites and thus propagates old injurious myths. Some say it's a Microsoft front and our reader -- independently -- thinks so too. We keep hearing it from different people.

Our reader sent us this pointer to de Icaza's blog:

Lets please avoid inflicting in GNOME a KDE 4.0 (yes, I know its not the exact same scenario; and yes, I know those clock applets are cute).

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Update: As usual, the Linux Hater Blog has some great commentary. Some of his feedback on KDE 4.0 applies to our own decision making. Worth a read.

"I haven't been paying close attention, but anyone who recommends Linux Hater is either a useful idiot (in the Stalinist meaning) or is himself taking the piss," says our reader. "Whichever, the man has put himself beyond the pale. Regardless of his programming abilities, is there any way of having him removed to where he can't do any more damage?

"That previous blog entry of his has him trashing a fellow Gnome developer (Emmanuele Bassi) while referencing a blog that uses the term 'feces' in regards to the KDE developers. This is the kind of commentator he recommends people read:"

"I was getting a little worried that I wouldn't have something appropriate to close of K-pride week with, but then sweet feces rained down from heaven"

To quote another set of examples:

"the mindset is dangerously close to the rationalization used recently by a KDE spokesperson and lampooned by the Linux Hater Blog" -- Miguel de Icaza on 15 Jul 2008

"As usual, the Linux Hater Blog has some great commentary. Some of his feedback on KDE 4.0 applies to our own decision making. Worth a read" -- Miguel de Icaza on 14 Jul 2008

As a side note and a change of subject, the reader asked us to see this quote from the man's Wiki entry:

"Miguel de Icaza [..] tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did with their own browser"

"This is total news to me," says the reader, "and I do try and keep up. How could Microsoft free up the IE code when they didn't own it and why would they be contemporaneously trying to BUY Netscape if they had any code to free up?

"Has this man been drinking from the Microsoft well of forgetfulness, you know, the one where people can change the past buy remembering if different from the rest of us?"

Here is a classic blog post from de Icaza: LinuxHater's blog, I am a fan

I love the LinuxHater's Blog. This is a must-read RSS feed.

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A first class grilling/roasting of Linux and the Linux community. It should help keep things in perspective.

Epic. What more can be said? ⬆