Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell and Freedom Are Incompatible

Ballmer with Ximian hat



Summary: Novell's obsession with Microsoft (and even Apple) is highlighted using the latest evidence

Last week we wrote about Novell promoting Apple with .NET [1, 2]. Mono is quite naturally a tool that favours proprietary software stacks. Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza created it after he had created GNOME and like many people at Novell, he is fixated on Apple too (in the sense that he likes it), not just Microsoft/Windows. Previously, he complained about Mac OS X people taking more control, but later he drifted away from Freedom and went further into Microsoft's arms. He even got himself appointed and admitted into the board of Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation. Being a Microsoft celebrity might help him in some communities other than the Free software one/s.



Here is Charlotte Betterley from Novell's PR department promoting de Icaza's work on Apple iPad and .NET. It's like company policy, not just the infatuations of one man:

Enter MonoTouch. MonoTouch is a software development kit that will enable iPad developers to utilize code and libraries written for the .NET development framework and easier-to-use programming languages such as C#. Microsoft .NET developers will be able to use MonoTouch while fully complying with Apple’s license terms.


We have already written 3 separate posts about why iPad is an enemy of one's freedom [1, 2, 3]. Nat Friedman, who left Novell some weeks ago, is apparently buying one. Friedman is probably Miguel's closest colleague and friend (they both founded Ximian) and he also uses an iPhone based on his latest blog post where he makes a reference to "toys" (reminiscent of notorious remarks made about Mono+Windows a few years ago):

Sleep Cycles. This is an iPhone app that uses the iPhone accelerometer to track your sleep. You put it near your pillow and when you toss and turn at night it knows. You set a wake-up time and it rings an alarm to wake you up before your deadline when you’re in a period of light sleep, and will wake up more easily.


This is the type of management overseeing FOSS development at Novell. They are preoccupied with proprietary software and there is a lot of .NET content in SUSE Planet, for example these two posts from Jonathan Pryor's blog. It's like this every week.

Gabriel Burt's blog (he works for Novell) gives this release schedule and announcement of the release of Banshee 1.5.3. So does Aaron Bockover, who raves about "the return of OS X support". Need it be added that Banshee is a Novell-developed and Novell-only Mono program because of the limits in Microsoft's community promise?

Sandy from Novell has just released this new version of Tomboy, adding Windows-only features to Tomboy (for Vista 7 even, despite the fact that it is scarcely used).

Probably the coolest new feature in this release, courtesy of Stefan Cosma, is support for Windows 7 Jump Lists, which are totally awesome and should be added to GNOME.


Yay. Windows. Gotta love Mono.

So for those Tomboy users who prefer the better/full "Mono experience", Tomboy is there with more features but only on Windows. We have always said that Mono is helping Windows, not GNU/Linux [1, 2, 3]. It promotes the notion of GNU/Linux as a second-class platform.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025