Summary: Advice to those wishing to free Linux and remove all Microsoft tax from it (hint: avoid vendors that pay Microsoft for Linux)

THE PROGRAMS known as Mono and Moonlight are malicious in the sense that they enable Microsoft to control Linux, partly with the help of software patents. A few days ago we also warned about SparkleShare, which is Mono based (and proud of it) but nonetheless receives some coverage. Juliet Kemp is promoting Gnome-don't right now; it is also Mono based.

3 years ago we hypothesised that Mono was the reason Samsung paid Microsoft for Linux (Samsung put Mono on phones at the time, but it no longer does). Here is another Samsung smartphone to avoid because it's a Microsoft cash cow:

The Samsung i9000 Galaxy S was just crowned as the fastest smartphone by GLBenchmark, with a performance of 1834 frames, ahead of the iPhone 3GS with 1077 frames and the iPhone 4 with 1039 frames.

Well, too bad it's being taxed by Microsoft, right? Anyway, this whole plot with Mono should be familiar because SCO tried to do with UNIX what Novell is now doing with .NET. As Groklaw explains this week, the SCO-Novell trial carries on, forever keeping that uncertainty about the freedom of Linux (although everyone knows that SCO has no case).

Novell has responded to SCO's Objections to Novell's Bill of Costs for the two trials. Novell did not fail to notice and point out to the court SCO's cheeky move, asking that the court deny the entire bill, when some of it was costs from the first Utah trial that had already been authorized by the court...

As always, we advise people to simply steer away from Samsung and Novell, just as many technology-savvy individuals avoided anything from SCO. OpenSUSE, despite looking nice and all, is also helping Novell (OpenSUSE is 100% property of Novell), so it too should be avoided. There are many GNU/Linux-based alternatives out there. ⬆