Can an 800 lb. Gorilla coexist with little Mono?
HEISE has just published a piece which insinuates that Mono is "monkey business". The FSF too addressed the issue about a month ago. "More indication of course that Microsoft has everyone's best interest at heart," sarcastically claims Neighborlee, quoting the following text: "...[Microsoft] released an 'extended' version of the JVM for Windows, which resulted in the writing of Java apps that would work on Windows but not on other platforms, in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape..."
This stance has been countered to some degree by Microsoft's Community Promise, but doubts remain as to what is actually covered, and de Icaza concedes as much. "In the next few months," he wrote, "we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others." In theory, the core components of Mono and the Mono development stack for Gnome are covered by the Community Promise. The elements that provide compatibility with Windows are not.
From the beginning Mono has been beset by misunderstandings, misconceptions and political ineptitude, not least by Novell, de Icaza's employer, which allowed Microsoft to insert patent indemnification into its commercial agreement of 2006, souring its relationship with the free software community and giving Microsoft grounds for suggesting, without substantiation, that GNU/Linux and other free software infringed Microsoft patents - and by Microsoft's ongoing ambivalence towards free and open source software within its own halls.
Zemlin, though, thinks Microsoft can and should go further by ending any claim to patents in Windows that may or may not be present in Linux.
"They should take a patent license out with the OIN - put their money where their mouth is to make sure patents don't get in the way of operating systems, make operating systems a no fly zone when it comes to patents," Zemlin said. "That sends a clear message Linux is solid, and we validate this collective development model and we want to interoperate."
In this case, Dell: Linux v Windows Netbook Returns a “Non-issue,” a report from OpenSource World reported Dell exec Todd Finch refuting Microsoft's Kevin Turner's lies that Linux netbook returns were “four or five times higher” than Windows netbook return stats.
You'd think Microsoft would treat Dell with a little more decency, since Dell is either number one or number two in PC and server sales depending on sales results in a particular quarter. But no, Microsoft spokespeople keep slamming Linux and netbooks at every opportunity.
--Brad Silverberg, Microsoft
Comments
aeshna23
2009-08-21 12:55:15
What an utterly nonsensical thing to say! First, major newspapers went on and on about the evil of the invasion while the left claimed that their voices were paid no attention. Second, the invasion of Iraq is considered a success now by even the left in America. We know that the left thinks it a success since they have keep amazingly quiet about it since the success of the surge. Before the surge, the left couldn't shut up about the Iraq and did all they could to help the terrorists in Iraq be successful in returning Iraq to its Saddam Hussein era hell.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-08-21 14:10:07
Show data, please.
"For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060700296.html
twitter
2009-08-21 14:25:53
Roy Schestowitz
2009-08-21 14:57:06
This one came up some weeks ago:
Bush Invaded Iraq on a Mission from God http://www.allgov.com/viewnews/bush_invaded_iraq_on_a_mission_from_god_90809
"Apparently, while trying to drum up international support for the invasion of Iraq, Bush placed a phone call to the president of France, Jacques Chirac, and presented a series of arguments to convince the French president to join Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.” In the course of the conversation, according to an English-language translation, Bush told Chirac, “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.
"Chirac, a Catholic, didn’t understand what Bush, an Evangelical Christian, was talking about, and asked his staff to find out who Gog and Magog were and what they meant to the U.S. president. Chirac’s staff contacted the Biblical Service of the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn called Thomas Römer, a Professor of Theology at the University of Lausanne and a specialist in the Old Testament. Römer was asked to prepare a one-page report on the subject of Gog and Magog to be shown to the president of France."
NotZed
2009-08-21 20:51:37
One wonders if he used the same argument with Blair or Jonny Howard. They're a bit religious-nut too.
twitter
2009-08-21 14:17:30