API trap and dependency

Summary: Amid openwashing of .NET there are yet more attempts to make mobile Linux dependent on Microsoft's APIs

The peripheral Microsoft Corporation (allies/staff at companies such as Xamarin) continues to push Mono into all sorts of Linux-centric projects such as MeeGo (we covered this in prior years) and now its successor Tizen is at risk. "Kitsilano Software are bringing C# to Tizen, in the form of the MonoTizen project," says this article. This is part of the openwashing of .NET and also the intrusion of patented/copyrighted Microsoft APIs, not to mention code (Mono is partly written by Microsoft, with Microsoft copyrights and Microsoft licences). Serdar Yegulalp continues to contribute to this issue (lots of .NET openwashing this month [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]). Several expected sites aid a perception management campaign of Microsoft by painting .NET as "open", including folks over at IDG, whose bias is now further revealed because the 'former Computerworld editor" (top IDG site) calls FOSS vendors "losers".

Watch this other Microsoft-friendly (.NET-boosting) site openwashing .NET from another angle:

JetBrains recently open sourced Nitra, a set of tooling for working with programming languages on the CLR.

The CLR is proprietary; hence, this Nitra thing is incompatible with the promise of FOSS. But that is the type of nonsense promotes by CodePlex and other Microsoft openwashing proxies. It is not about FOSS; rather, it is about looking kind of like FOSS, deceiving people and luring them into lock-in or spyware.

.NET APIs are a dangerous threat especially after the CAFC's decision in Oracle vs. Google.

One story that we have ignored in recent days (it's not in daily links) is about Mono. There has been a lot of media coverage of Unity3D because of a new release (days ago). Almost nobody who reported on bother to say it was Mono-plagued. Some FOSS sites gave it positive coverage, making the risk more alluring. ⬆