01.24.09
Guest Post: Adventures in Novell’s Moonlight
I installed the 64-bit version of the Moonlight plugin for Firefox, and tested it on the following listed test site:
http://www.mason-zimbler.com/festivegreetings/
I was subsequently greeted by a dialogue box entitled “Moonlight Codecs Installer”:
Would you like to install the required add-on to play the content of this page?
This page requires the Microsoft Media Pack to be installed to play multimedia content.
If you choose, the software will be automatically downloaded and installed from Microsoft’s web site.
[] Do not ask me to install this add-on again
[Cancel] [Install Codecs]
Clicking on “Install Codecs” results in this the following message being displayed:
End User License Agreement
Before the required software can be installed, you must first agree to
the End User License Agreement below.
MICROSOFT PRE-RELEASE SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS
MICROSOFT MEDIA PACK 1.0
ONLY FOR USE WITH NOVELL'S MOONLIGHT 1.0 RUNNING IN AN INTERNET BROWSER
These license terms are an agreement between Microsoft Corporation (or
based on where you live, one of its affiliates) and you. Please read
them. They apply to the software named above, which includes the media
on which you received it, if any. The terms also apply to any Microsoft
- Updates (including but not limited to bug fixes, patches,
updates, upgrades, enhancements, new versions, and successors
to the software, collectively called "Updates"),
- supplements,
- Internet-based services, and
- support services
for this software, unless other terms accompany those items. If so,
those terms apply.
By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept
them, do not use the software.
If you comply with these license terms, you have the rights below.
1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. You may install and use any number of
copies of the software only with the software identified above running
in an Internet browser on a personal computer.
2. TERM. The term of this agreement is until the commercial release of
Novell’s Moonlight 1.0 but in no event later than June 1, 2009.
3. PRE-RELEASE SOFTWARE. This software is a pre-release version. It
may not work the way a final version of the software will. We may
change it for the final, commercial version. We also may not release a
commercial version.
4. FEEDBACK. If you give feedback about the software to Microsoft, you
give to Microsoft, without charge, the right to use, share and
commercialize your feedback in any way and for any purpose. You also
give to third parties, without charge, any patent rights needed for
their products, technologies and services to use or interface with any
specific parts of a Microsoft software or service that includes the
feedback. You will not give feedback that is subject to a license that
requires Microsoft to license its software or documentation to third
parties because we include your feedback in them. These rights survive
this agreement.
5. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement
only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all
other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this
limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this
agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations
in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. You
also may not
- work around any technical limitations in the software;
- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software,
except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly
permits, despite this limitation;
- publish the software for others to copy;
- rent, lease or lend the software; or
- transfer the software or this agreement to any third party.
6. NOTICE ABOUT VC-1 VISUAL STANDARDS. This software may include VC-1
visual decoding technology. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:
THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE VC-1 PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSES FOR
THE PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (A) ENCODE VIDEO IN
COMPLIANCE WITH THE VC-1 STANDARD ("VC-1 VIDEO") OR (B) DECODE VC-1
VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND
NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER
LICENSED TO PROVIDE VC-1 VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE
IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE.
If you have questions about the VC-1 visual standard, please contact
MPEG LA, L.L.C., 250 Steele Street, Suite 300, Denver Colorado 80206;
http://www.mpegla.com
7. EXPORT RESTRICTIONS. The software is subject to United States export
laws and regulations. You must comply with all domestic and
international export laws and regulations that apply to the software.
These laws include restrictions on destinations, end users and end use.
For additional information, see www.microsoft.com/exporting
8. SUPPORT SERVICES. Because this software is "as is," we may not
provide support services for it.
9. ENTIRE AGREEMENT. This agreement, and the terms for supplements,
Updates, Internet-based services and support services that you use, are
the entire agreement for the software and support services.
10. APPLICABLE LAW.
a. United States. If you acquired the software in the United States,
Washington state law governs the interpretation of this agreement and
applies to claims for breach of it, regardless of conflict of laws
principles. The laws of the state where you live govern all other
claims, including claims under state consumer protection laws, unfair
competition laws, and in tort.
b. Outside the United States. If you acquired the software in any
other country, the laws of that country apply.
11. LEGAL EFFECT. This agreement describes certain legal rights. You
may have other rights under the laws of your country. You may also have
rights with respect to the party from whom you acquired the software.
This agreement does not change your rights under the laws of your
country if the laws of your country do not permit it to do so.
12. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. The software is licensed "as-is." You
bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express warranties,
guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under
your local laws which this agreement cannot change. To the extent
permitted under your local laws, Microsoft excludes the implied
warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and
non-infringement.
13. LIMITATION ON AND EXCLUSION OF REMEDIES AND DAMAGES. You can
recover from Microsoft and its suppliers only direct damages up to U.S.
$5.00. You cannot recover any other damages, including consequential,
lost profits, special, indirect or incidental damages.
This limitation applies to
- anything related to the software, services, content (including
code) on third party Internet sites, or third party programs;
and
- claims for breach of contract, breach of warranty, guarantee
or condition, strict liability, negligence, or other tort to
the extent permitted by applicable law.
It also applies even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the
possibility of the damages. The above limitation or exclusion may not
apply to you because your country may not allow the exclusion or
limitation of incidental, consequential or other damages.
I don’t agree with this EULA, therefore I can’t install this software.
To resolve this problem, I downloaded the sources for Moonlight:
svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/moon
The license for this software is as follows (from moon/LICENSE):
* Moonlight source code (src/, plugin/)
Unless explicitly stated, this code is licensed under the
terms of the GNU LGPL 2 license only (no “later versions”).
Why isn’t Moonlight licensed under GPLv3?
In addition to the GNU LGPL, this code is available for
relicensing for non-LGPL use, contact Novell for details
(mono@novell.com).We consider non-LGPL use instances where you use this on an
embedded system where the end user is not able to upgrade the
Moonlight installation or distribution that is part of your
product (Section 6 and 7), you would have to obtain a
commercial license from Novell (consider software burned into
a ROM, systems where end users would not be able to upgrade,
an embedded console, a game console that imposes limitations
on the distribution and access to the code, a phone platform
that prevents end users from upgrading Moonlight).
This seems to preclude distributing Moonlight on a LiveCD or other
immutable medium, which seems like a rather odd restriction.
I then tried to build Moonlight by following the instructions given in
the link you provided:
Download and install the moon tarball or moon SVN module from SVN:
* configure like this: ./configure
* Build and install, run: make && make install
* To install the plugin in your home: make test-plugin
moon]$ ./configure bash: ./configure: No such file or directory
I notice you now use an autogen script, so I assume the above information is now out of date. Perhaps you could update that page to reflect this change.
After manually resolving difficulties with missing build dependencies (expat-devel, firefox-devel), I then proceeded with the build, but encountered this error:
"application.cpp:18:37: mono/metadata/appdomain.h: No such file or directory"
And the build failed.
So I installed the following to meet this missing dependency (including sub-dependants):
mono-core, mono-devel, mono-data, mono-winforms, mono-web
And tried again, but encountered yet another error:
checking for MONO... configure: error: Package requirements (mono >= 2.2) were not met: Requested 'mono >= 2.2' but version of Mono is 1.2.5.1
After checking “./configure –help” for clues, I discovered that I needed to disable managed code to remove this dependency, so I tried again with the “–with-managed=no” flag set, but I still received exactly the same error.
application.cpp:18:37: error: mono/metadata/appdomain.h: No such file or directory
Even though this file does exist:
/usr/include/mono-1.0/mono/metadata/appdomain.h
At this point, I’m basically stuck.
So the question is, how do I, or anyone else who wishes to only use Free Software, view the contents of that Web page?
Also, when can I expect to see a prebuilt package of Moonlight, built against Free Software codecs rather than Microsoft’s proprietary software, in my distro’s repo? █
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:40 am
Good to see that your “guest” is incompetant. He checked out the trunk version of Moonlight which obviously requires Mono because it’s in 2.0 development (which is .NET based).
Had he actually read the instructions on the Moonlight download page (http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/), he would have seen this:
The ‘here’ link pointing to:
http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources/moon/moon-1.0.tar.bz2
Why did he grab the 2.0 development branch if he wanted the 1.0 source code? Duh.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:42 am
You and your friends are always purposely sabotaging your experiences with Novell products so that you can write “fake” negative reviews and thus badmouth Novell some more.
No one is fooled by your trolling, however.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:43 am
How is that trolling? The only one trolling is you, by posting hundreds of hostile comments in a Web site you dislike.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:49 am
How is what you did trolling? Well, let’s see. First, you fabricate an honest effort to try and use Moonlight by purposely sabotaging your experience so that it will not work so that you can complain about it.
That’s trolling.
I’m not trolling, I’m pointing out your pathetic attempts at trying to make people believe that Moonlight is fundamentally broken when it isn’t.
Had this “guest” (which you fail to mention who it is, btw, likely because it’s one of your friends who you worked with to plot this sabotage) actually followed instructions and grabbed the 1.0 tarball and read the README/INSTALL files that come with it, he would have succeeded in getting a working Moonlight. But no, instead, he /pretends/ to try (but purposely failing) so that you have one more thing to badmouth Novell about.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:53 am
Expressing an opinion or outlining experience in one’s own space is not trolling. Check your dictionary. It be might outdated (referring to mythical creatures and such).
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 9:57 am
LOL, yea, keep trying to evade the gist of my comment.
Your “guest” is not posting his true experiences, he PURPOSELY FAILED so that he could complain.
What kind of moron checks out a development svn branch to test how well the 1.0 release works? Anyone with more than a single brain cell would have grabbed the 1.0 release if he wanted to review the 1.0 product, he wouldn’t grab the 2.0 development branch to review the 1.0 product.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:09 am
A lot of sites require Silver Lie 2.0.
saulgoode said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:20 am
The necessity of using ‘autogen’ instead of ‘configure’ is standard for repository checkouts (CVS, SVN, GIT, etc) versus packaged tarballs. This fact is rarely documented as those making use of repositories are generally expected to have a higher level of familiarity with the (autotools-based) build process.
Nonetheless, thanks for the writeup. If I were an advocate of Mono/Moonlight, I would consider it a shame that Moonlight does not support OGG/Theora/Vorbis directly. Being as I am not, the project’s focus on supporting MS media types is probably for the best.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:28 am
saulgoode: excellent point about the autogen.sh thing. I really have to wonder about the linux competency of Roy and his friends who he’s always quoting experiences from
The ./autogen.sh vs ./configure thing and the svn vs tarball thing are all pretty common knowledge for even half-way competent linux users, so the fact that these weren’t known by Roy astounds me.
As far as the ogg/vorbis and ogg/theora codecs, it would be a waste for Moonlight to support them directly if Silverlight doesn’t, because no website is going to be providing ogg content via Silverlight because 99% of their visitors wouldn’t be able to view it if they did.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:35 am
That may be so, but the site listed in this “review” was not a 2.0 site, it was a 1.0 site.
It also works fine for me and I was able to build Moonlight against ffmpeg without any problems. I guess I’m just a more competent Linux user than you and your other anti-Novell friends though.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:41 am
Great, I’ll try to explain this to my grandpa.
It’s clear what is going on.
saulgoode said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:46 am
I don’t know if the ‘autogen’ vs ‘configure’ distinction is common knowledge amongst developers; I found out about it through an IRC channel for a project’s development team. I have never seen it documented, though I haven’t really perused the autotools documentation to the extent I should (I’m one of those who only reads the directions as a last resort.
).
I don’t think the article’s author deserves berating over his suggestion. It probably would be a good idea for the compilation instructions to properly mention when ‘autogen.sh’ should be used; it is just that the Moonlight project is not unique in failing to do this.
It my opinion that this a good reason why Free Software and Open Formats supporters should not — and will not — be enthused by the prospect of Silverlight/Moonlight dominating the Web.
ricardo nunes said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:46 am
“As far as the ogg/vorbis and ogg/theora codecs, it would be a waste for Moonlight to support them directly if Silverlight doesn’t, because no website is going to be providing ogg content via Silverlight because 99% of their visitors wouldn’t be able to view it if they did. ”
with this sentence the mask fall from your face, novell and microsoft, and of course the ms-agent provocateur Icaza.
can you explain how come 99% of the users won’t be able to view content in ogg since Firefox will suport it natively?
and what about a simple codec download?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:54 am
Content suppliers won’t use Ogg. Microsoft won’t allow this. It would even provide incentives to pollute the Web with its proprietary ‘standards’.
Watch some Comes vs Microsoft exhibits and it will become evident to you.
seller_liar said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:57 am
But is possible to use moonblight to create content using ogg/theora if user wants.
Using silverldarkness is not possible, but using moon is possible!
But novell insists to promove the cancerigenous m$ package.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:04 am
We’re talking about viewing it via Silverlight. Obviously if content providers used the <video> tag to deliver theora streams and the user is using Firefox (or any other browser which supports the HTML5 video tag), then they’d be able to view it.
As of Silverlight 2.0, it doesn’t support codec downloads afaik. Maybe 3.0 or some future version will, I don’t know (and I don’t have the connections to find out).
Uh, Silverlight was only released a little over a year ago. Media content providers have been avoiding Ogg for much longer than that. How can you argue that it’s Microsoft that won’t let them? That’s utter nonsense.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:06 am
Show me an example of Siverlight with Ogg.
Just one example.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:15 am
Uh, huh? I already said Silverlight doesn’t support Ogg, but that doesn’t stop content providers from delivering Ogg streams via other means. It’s not like Silverlight is the only media delivery method in existence.
saulgoode said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:16 am
The specifications for Theora and Vorbis are in the public domain; the libraries and development tools are released under a 3-clause BSD license. There is no need for Moonlight (or Silverlight, for that matter) to resort to downloading codecs; they could be included directly in the executables.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:22 am
Now even Windows Media Player supports Ogg.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:24 am
It is common knowledge for anyone who checks out source code from svn, cvs, or git repositories that he’ll need to autogen.sh before he can ./configure. Nearly every FLOSS project does this. This is not new. It’s been the case for over a decade.
The documentation need not explain things which normal (non-developer) users should not have to know. Had this “guest” done what any normal user would have done (e.g. download the tarball), he would have been fine.
No normal user grabs svn trunk source code. Give me a break.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:30 am
Your Grandpa wouldn’t have been a moron and try to compile it himself from svn trunk. He would have just clicked on the download link and installed it like any other Firefox plugin. And it would have worked flawlessly, just like it worked flawlessly for your “guest” until he decided he needed an excuse to fail to compile it himself, because clearly his experiences with Moonlight up until he decided he didn’t want video codecs was too pleasant and he needed an excuse to attack it.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:38 am
If you have to jump through these EULA hoops, then Moonlight is just a proprietary software enabler.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Out of instinct, I figured this “guest” likely posted on COLA since you like to grab quotes from there all the time. Sure enough, it was. You got this article from a guy named [H]omer, who, as some of us have figured out, is aka Slated aka Keith G. Robertson-Turner, who used to be a Fedora packager, so it’s pretty clear that this guy knows full-well how to use autogen.sh and he certainly must know the difference between svn trunk and that most projects branch for releases (moonlight’s 1.0 branch is called moon-1-0 which can be obtained with a few simple svn list command).
So now that we know more facts about this anonymous coward, we can see full well that it is exactly as I suspected: he sabotaged his experiences on purpose, while trying to cleverly disguise his purposeful failure to be a fault of Novell’s.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Oh, and this Keith G. Robertson-Turner guy is also a close personal friend of yours, who we all know hates Novell and badmouths them at every opportunity, so we can hardly take his word as being honest.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Go ahead and label everyone who criticises Novell a “Novell hater”.
I guess that only makes Novell more like Microsoft.
Shane Coyle said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:46 pm
OK, I have to ask – who wrote this?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Slated did (reproduced with permission).
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:52 pm
After reading the thread some more, it becomes obvious that Keith G. Robertson-Turner’s (aka Homer aka Slated) goal was to prove how difficult it was to install Moonlight. That was his goal.
When he failed to prove that it was difficult by following Miguel de Icaza’s instructions for installing Moonlight, your friend decided to intentionally make it difficult for himself so that he could have an excuse for failing.
Shane: Slated wrote it. The same guy goes by Homer on comp.os.linux.advocacy and the same guy that makes numerous personal attacks against Mono and GNOME developers on this website.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Roy: I don’t label everyone who criticizes Novell as a Novell-hater, but your friend Keith G. Robertson-Turner is so obviously a Novell-hater it’s not even possible for anyone who reads his attacks to think otherwise.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:55 pm
That’s not the point. Did you ask why people resent Novell’s action?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Roy: yes, it is the point because it exposes your friend’s dishonesty and inability to make an objective post about the difficulties in installing Moonlight.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Roy: would you not criticize someone who attacks Linux for being difficult to use if they purposely sabotage things to make them not work or not easy to install?
e.g. if some anti-Linux journalist posts an article claiming that Linux is crap because he or she couldn’t get it to work and claims that it’s “too hard to install software” because he or she couldn’t figure out how to compile source code (as opposed to doing it the normal way by installing packages via the GUI tools which make it trivial), wouldn’t you point out the dishonesty?
Shane Coyle said,
January 24, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Dan’s exactly right, in my opinion. And, as I’ve said before, let Slated have a byline here.
If commenters are to be investigated and identified, then posters almost must necessarily be.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Thanks Shane, it’s always nice to deal with a reasonable person.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Hey there Roy,
take a look at autogen.sh. the instructions are for the user-facing dist (the tarbll), and not the svn. to create the configure script, you can just run autoeconf or sh autogen.sh. I wrote some articles about it here:
http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/writing-free-software
Cheers,
C.J.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 2:40 pm
if you’re running a debian-based distro, there are some docs here:
http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianMonoGroup/Moonlight
we’re happy to help on irc.gimp.net #mono – look for cj, meebey or directhex
it’s good to see you getting involved beyond hurling insults.
Cheeers,
C.J.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 2:42 pm
looks like you need to build mono from svn as well
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 2:46 pm
As RMS likes to say: Faster if you help.
I believe that mplayer & ffmpeg will do most of the work. look for docs on that. baby in arms. can’t help much more right now
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Dan: I laugh at you for misspelling incompetent
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:05 pm
your grandpa isn’t going to build from svn.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:05 pm
C.J. Yea, that was a typo
You’ll notice I spelled it correctly in later posts.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Dan,
I’ve just gotten back. The reason for omission of introduction to the poster is that no background was needed to seam bits together in this case. It’s nothing to do with denial of disclosure.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:11 pm
saulgoode:
As a rule, devs who build from svn learn this “the hard way” once
all gnome packages use autogen.sh. I agree that he shouldn’t be berated. I’m a fan of educating rather than insulting. It *does* seem as if he wasn’t trying very hard to get it built, though. we *do* have mailing lists and an IRC channel that he could have visited to get the answers to his question.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Considering that your source is obviously well-versed in autogen.sh and other build tools based on his past experience making rpms for Fedora, I find it extremely telling that suddenly, when trying to compile Moonlight, he’s unable to figure out the standard GNU build system.
Like I said above, it’s obvious that he purposely sabotaged his experience. He knew that building from svn trunk was likely to have problems because it was under heavy development (most projects use svn trunk for unstable development), and so he was hoping that he’d encounter problems (be it crashes because current trunk was broken or build problems).
An honest reviewer would have at least tried the 1.0 tarball, he wouldn’t have tried svn trunk, that was a dead giveaway that he was trying to find problems.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:16 pm
patches welcome
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:17 pm
C.J. Do a google search on Keith G. Robertson-Turner, this guy is not a newbie to autogen.sh or the GNU build system.
He pretended to be for the purpose of this review so that he would be able to pretend that it was hard.
Like I said, sabotage.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Where is a Silver Lie-compatible software for GNU/Linux? Microsoft said there is no such thing because of Novell.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Let’s don’t forget violator of the freenode network channel guidelines and censor of rational discussion.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:32 pm
er, “channel guidelines” should go to
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Yes, probably a temper thing.
Jose_X said,
January 24, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Slated/Homer, I’m sure you are a great person, but if you are fabricating material instead of making honest mistakes (eg, this and also the Jimmi thing), then it might be best Roy give us some advanced warning from now on.
I hope you aren’t feeding off the Microsoft money supply.
If there was an honest mistake, then just say so. No foolishness that you or anyone else can do will change what is and had been going on with Microsoft and/or Novell, but it doesn’t help to be foolish.
Apologies if you made an honest mistake. Mistakes happen all of the time, even when you are dealing in areas where you have had exposure in the past.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Roy,
Would you like us to put together some docs on how to build moonlight from svn so that you and Homer can get some patches for the vorbis codecs in? I’d like to see that happen as well, but I don’t have the time to do so right now.
I’m happy to enable you if you’re serious. If you’re serious about making the mono project better and enabling your readers to make use of the Silverlight technology using Free Software, I think you can do a lot. If you’re not serious, I stand by my prior statement that boycottnovell exists only to sew misinformation and benefit from the historical hard feelings of disenfranchised F/L/OSS community members.
I don’t have a lot of time to put in to this, since I have my own projects to attend to, but I can answer questions and give advice.
Cheers,
C.J.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Criticism of Moonlight is beyond the technical aspects, however. We made it very clear in the past why Moonlight helps Microsoft more than anyone else.
Here is a newer remark suggesting that Moonlight — in its complete form — is not even Free software.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Roy: It would seem to me that the Moonlight developers found a way around that by making it such that Moonlight would auto-download/install the Microsoft codecs by downloading them from Microsoft’s website, and thus making sure that no matter where the suer got Moonlight itself, they’d be covered by the codecs covenant.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:08 pm
s/suer/user/
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Criticizing Moonlight for the binary codecs might be valid, but until software patents are rendered null and void, there’s nothing the Moonlight developers can do to provide free codecs to their users because distributing Moonlight linked against ffmpeg is illegal (due to unlicensed MPEG-LA patents) in the US and some other countries.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Correction: by “provide free codecs” in the above comment, I meant “free/open source codecs”.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:31 pm
One of the ubuntu packagers offered me this tidbit. Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/directhex/ubuntu intrepid main
and then run something like this to get the source and patches from the package maintainer:
$ sudo apt-get build-dep moonlight-plugin-mozilla
$ apt-get source moonlight-plugin-mozilla
$ cd moonlight*
$ debuild -uc -us
Note that this is untested, and YMMV, as they say
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Dan, the covenant was analysed and it’s no good.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Eep. I made an error. The lines added to /etc/apt/sources.list are both of the following:
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/directhex/ubuntu intrepid main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/directhex/ubuntu intrepid main
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Roy, that’s incorrect. It’s the codecs that can’t be distributed, not the engine. Free codecs can be used. Please get the facts right.
Shane Coyle said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:52 pm
CJ: I laugh at you for using the wrong word. (I don’t really, but you were quick to laugh at Dan earlier.)
Here at BoycottNovell, we "sow misinformation and benefit from the historical hard feelings of disenfranchised F/L/OSS community members."
That actually came in second to "Exploring the reality behind exclusionary deals…" when we had a poll for the site slogan, way back when the deal was announced.
;^ )
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Someone has just told me: “See what KDE developers tell about FreeDesktop.org: http://dot.kde.org/1232669203/ Freedesktop was abused as a means to politically push Ximian/Novell technologies. With Mono and the like it even gets more dangerous.”
Sabas@kde.org writes:
“Akonadi was rejected by FDO because there was no Qt implementation. A fact which apparently matters less when the proposed implementation is based on another toolkit. I personally feel that this is a lost opportunity for FDO from getting less and less relevant due to being a politicial instrument for others in the market, rather than serving useful value for us as a desktop project.”
By the way, can anyone tell me, what’s the deal with “go-mono”?
go-mono.com ?
Is this in any way related to the choice of the name Go-OO?
What’s the “go” for?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I was unaware that freedesktop.org had anything to do with Novell, looks more like Red Hat developers are in control more than anyone else.
Can he back up his statement with any proof?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Yep, just as I suspected: more anti-Novell FUD. Started by a Red Hat, not Ximian nor Novell.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Haha. Indeed!
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Also, no mention of Mono anywhere on freedesktop.org. Are you sure this “source” is legit?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Also, what Ximian or Novell technologies is freedesktop.org pushing? Inquiring minds want to know
AFAICT, there aren’t any Ximian nor Novell technologies anywhere on freedesktop.org.
How many of your sources do we need to expose as frauds before you’ll start fact-checking before making these accusations, Roy?
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Because it sounds good or positive? I assume it has something to do with the go-oo thing. Both Novell sites, no? Sounds like a public-facing web page promoting community involvement?
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Oh, I just realized that you mean “engine + codec” eh? Talk to Jo about getting an implementation with ffmpeg. He’s in the uk, so he can prolly do it.
Cheers,
C.J.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:01 pm
The source that brought this up is not Linux savvy, so I already wrote back several hours ago asking for proof, which was not convincing enough.
That’s why I brought this up here with questions.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:10 pm
If it wasn’t convincing enough, why did you state it as fact?
Regardless, now you know that statement is bogus.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I wrote:
That’s not me stating it as fact. It’s me presenting somebody else’s opinion. I asked you for opinions on it.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Fair enough.
C.J. said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Dan,
Started by hp (formerly a redhat employee), not redhat. fdo is pretty independent and doesn’t get grants or donations from large corporations, AFAIK. They operate off of servers that their contributors happen to have laying around. IIRC, they were instrumental in re-tooling the X11 build system and re-branding it as “X.org”. They are also heavily involved in things like dbus, cairo, avahi and pkg-config. They know a lot more about X than I do
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software
The folks I’ve interacted with at fdo are hp (formerly of redhat now running his own company), kieth packard (formerly of SuSE & HP, now at Intel), and Chris Hammond (contributor to GAIM/Pidgin, employed by VMWare).
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:18 pm
It sounded dubious that Novell would have influence there.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:21 pm
C.J: Ah, thanks for the correction.
From what I can tell, freedesktop.org has resulted in a lot of positive collaboration between all of the core desktop components and GNOME/KDE.
I’m personally very thankful for their efforts regardless of who founded it.
saulgoode said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Yet linking against — nay, incorporating — libtheora and libvorbis into Moonlight would not be “illegal”. Why doesn’t the Moonlight project do this? Aren’t there 30 full-time Novell employees working on Mono/Moonlight? Wouldn’t the propaganda value alone justify delivering an unencumbered, Open Source implementation of Moonlight and hosting a website sample media?
The Moonlight project’s focus on facilitating Microsoft’s media stack while ignoring less proprietary solutions sends a strong message as to where their priorities lie. Does Novell really expect the Free Software community, or even just the Open Web advocates, to welcome Microsoft’s proprietary offerings as a standard for Internet media sharing?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:52 pm
saulgoode: You need to convince the mass of content providers to use ogg/theora first, otherwise having support for it in Moonlight is a waste of effort.
As far as Novell pushing Microsoft’s media stack, that’s a clear misunderstanding on your part.
Moonlight isn’t the dominant player and so cannot push alternative media codecs. Novell is implementing Moonlight for compatibility, so that Linux users aren’t left out in the cold when they encounter Silverlight-based sites.
I don’t see Novell pushing Moonlight as some sort of preferred media player.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 7:54 pm
saulgoode: btw, as C.J. mentioned above, I’m sure the Moonlight developers would happily accept patches to make it support ogg/theora. Why don’t you contribute such a feature if it is really that important to you?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 8:04 pm
That makes Microsoft stronger. Then again, Novell doesn’t mind it. Microsoft pays it.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 8:07 pm
So… he wants the feature because it would weaken Microsoft, but doesn’t want the feature because then it makes Microsoft stronger?
What?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 8:08 pm
“Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory [...] is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.””
–Microsoft, internal document
[PDF]saulgoode said,
January 24, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I will repeat what I stated in my first post of the discussion:
If I were an advocate of Mono/Moonlight, I would consider it a shame that Moonlight does not support OGG/Theora/Vorbis directly. Being as I am not, the project’s focus on supporting MS media types is probably for the best.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:34 pm
saulgoode: in other words, you are criticizing for the sake of criticizing.
Slated said,
January 24, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Well, well … my little adventure seems to have caused quite a stir, hasn’t it?
Considering that this was merely a reply to a Usenet post, asking some perfectly reasonable questions in an entirely civil manner, I’m utterly appalled by some of the unreasonable and vicious replies in this thread.
And the entire basis for this viciousness, seems to be that certain people think every point in that post is rendered moot, simply because I didn’t download on specific version of Moonlight, supposedly making it deliberately difficult. This conveniently ignores the other, far more important questions relating to licensing and other restrictions.
As to exactly why I downloaded from SVN instead of the tarball, the answer is that when I view this page I see the following instruction:
“You can download a tarball of the source or you can check it out from svn.”
The word (and thus the link) “here” is missing.
It turns out that the explanation for this is because that page does not, for some strange reason, simply provide a URL link to the download, but instead uses Javascript to create that link, and since I use the NoScript plugin with Firefox, it had disabled Javascript on that page, and so that link was completely missing. Under the circumstances, I followed the only available lead I could see, to obtain the sources, and made a bast-effort attempt to compile them.
Having now downloaded the illusive tarball, I tried building it, but now I encounter this error:
utils.h:60: error: ‘ssize_t’ does not name a type
And the build fails.
So now I’m back at square one.
I suppose I will now be flamed for failing to build from the tarball too, unless someone wishes to actually discuss the important licensing issues, instead of attacking me for simply reporting a build failure.
BTW, the only clue I found to this error on Fedora is here, but that’s a different version of Fedora, and the poster is using the SVN version rather than the release tarball.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 1:36 am
Homer:
Can you post your full build log to pastebin so we can try to debug it for you?
http://pastebin.com/
Cheers,
C.J.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:36 am
Homer: you could try adding ‘#include ‘ to the top of utils.h
It seemed pretty clear to me from the COLA thread as well as this post individually (considering you wrote so little pertaining to your objects to any licensing – not to mention that you knew full-well that you’d have to agree to a EULA to use the MS codecs from the start) that Roy posted (without context) that it was about the difficulty in installing Moonlight (the thread on COLA was even named “moonlight not so easy to install”).
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:38 am
that should read #include <sys/types.h>
What I find shocking is that I’m a newbie at building Linux software compared to your long history of building various packages for Fedora, that I’m surprised something this trivial was able to derail you so easily.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:42 am
Do you expect rookies to start programming now in order to install software?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:43 am
Since when is a guy who has packaged software for years for Fedora a “rookie”?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:48 am
He could have also tried replacing ssize_t with long, like the link he provided suggested as a fix (which should work, since ssize_t is the same as a long).
Shane Coyle said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:52 am
Did you think it would be licensed differently in SVN? The EULA seems to be specifically for Microsoft’s "media pack" (codecs) and, as I’ve said before – that’s MS’ code, and they can license it as they wish.
If we want MS to respect our license, we should also respect the terms of theirs. Now, if we were talking about Freely written code that implemented something like MS’ code, that’s different, but these codecs are MS’ code, no?
(and, I probably wouldn’t agree nor download their code as well)
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:55 am
Keith is no “first timer” with building software and debugging build problems. I’m sure he’s likely run into this sort of problem before.
Like I’ve said before, HE WANTS TO FAIL.
I’ll agree that there looks like there may be actual bugs in Moonlight’s build, but they are trivially overcome – especially by someone such as Keith who has years of experience with this sort of thing.
His antics are no more believable than a linux kernel developer pretending he doesn’t know how to compile a simple helloWorld.c with gcc.
If this was some anonymous joe, I might believe that he actually doesn’t know – but I know you and your friends way too well, you’ll sabotage things to prove that you are “right”.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:58 am
Shane: to be fair, I think what Homer was trying to do is to compile Moonlight with the ffmpeg codecs instead of the Microsoft codecs. I’m willing to at least give him the benefit of the doubt there, at least.
However, there are likely legal issues with doing so as MPEG-LA has patents that ffmpeg does not license.
Shane Coyle said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:01 am
I think what Homer was trying to do is to compile Moonlight with the ffmpeg codecs instead of the Microsoft codecs.
Ah, that makes a bit more sense to me, I couldn’t for the life of me understand that leap…
Thanks.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:06 am
For a little background into why I don’t trust Homer, here are some past examples of him feigning ignorance:
1. a year or so ago he claimed that GNOME was being rewritten in Mono. His proof? He pointed at libgnome-cil packages in Fedora.
Had he bothered to read the package description (which he’d obviously knew how to do, being that he was a Fedora packager), he would have discovered that this was nothing more than a simple .NET binding so that Mono apps could use libgnome, and were not, as he suggested, a replacement for the libgnome c libraries.
2. Later, after being proven wrong about the above, he claimed that GNOME’s C DBus implementation was being replaced by NDesk.DBus which was written fully in C#. The truth was that NDesk.DBus was meant to replace DBus-Sharp (which were simple bindings to the C library). He used his own “confusion” to suggest that core components of GNOME were being rewritten in Mono and used that as excuse to attack GNOME / Novell / Mono.
3. Then, as Jose pointed out above, he “mistakenly” attacked Jimmi Hughs claiming censorship and astroturfing which was later proven to be false.
I’m sure there are many more examples in the archives of this site alone if one cared to bother looking.
saulgoode said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:15 am
You criticized the article’s author alleging he made the compilation unnecessarily difficult. Was that just for “the sake of criticizing”? I don’t see much difference between it and my criticizing the Moonlight Project for making direct support of Theora/Vorbis “unnecessarily impossible”.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:19 am
I take back #2, turns out that was Roy’s other dubious source, Beranger.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:24 am
saulegood: how do you know that it’s “unnecessarily impossible”? Have you examined the source code?
Who knows, maybe we’d even get ogg/theora support for free if we compile with ffmpeg right now. Have you tried?
What’s your real motivation for making them do extra work to add a feature that you yourself would never use (you’ve already stated you aren’t interested in using Moonlight, even if they added ogg support)? And it’s obvious content providers interested in using Silverlight wouldn’t use theora. So why? It would be a waste of effort.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:27 am
XAML and Microsoft codecs make Microsoft stronger. Call the whole thing off.
Needless to say, Novell marketed this thing for Microsoft.
ricardo nunes said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:39 am
i believe it’s true that Miguel said “I’d like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 – no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET,” he told us. ”
if this is really true the real objective of GNOME the reason GNOME was born is completely destroyed.
this why i always recommend KDE, E17 etc instead of GNOME.
that is why when someone asks me to install Ubuntu i recommend Kubuntu or remove ms-novell-mono packages completely.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:45 am
Ricardo: you need to learn to recognize joking around when you see it.
Miguel has not pushed for GNOME to be rewritten in Mono. All of the GNOME mailing-lists are public, you can check for yourselves. He was obviously joking.
saulgoode said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:46 am
Dan O’Brian stated:
YOU are the one who claimed it was impossible:
I am the one saying that it is NOT impossible: Theora/Vorbis has nothing to do with MPEG-LA. FFMPEG is not necessary to handle Theora/Vorbis content. Why is this being made so intentionally difficult?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:52 am
That quote says nothing about ogg. I simply meant they could not distribute Moonlight linked against ffmpeg.
Sorry for the confusion.
And indeed, Moonlight could implement ogg via libogg/libtheora/libvorbis, etc – but for what purpose? Just to say they can? It’d never get used.
ricardo nunes said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:53 am
a joke?
this was an interview to theregister, let me quote some more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/01/gnome_to_be_based/
“That’s what Gnome leader Miguel de Icaza, believes should happen. Miguel calls .NET the “natural upgrade” for the Gnome platform, and enthused about the technology in an interview with us at LinuxWorld this week. Basing Gnome on the .NET APIs will cut development time significantly,”
i do sincerely believe that is not joking!
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:59 am
Ricardo: you realize that you are linking to The Register, right?
ricardo nunes said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:02 am
and?
it’s an interview, right?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:03 am
Homer:
You realize that Silverlight 1.0 is scripted with javascript, right? So what did you really hope to achieve trying to visit a Silverlight website with disabled javascript?
I just keep catching you in more and more self-sabotage!
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:20 am
He never said he was joking. Maybe Dan knows better… maybe he’s an unofficial spokesman for Senor de Icaza.
If he was joking, where would be the joke? I don’t find it amusing at all.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:32 am
You’ve obviously never been to one of Miguel’s talks. He’s a very excited individual who jokingly says all sorts of crazy things like he said in the article.
A quick google search revealed this:
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:33 am
As you can clearly see, he did not mean that GNOME should be rewritten in C#. That would be pure lunacy, seconded only to the antics on this site.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:43 am
This contradicts what the interview said.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 10:46 am
Exactly, because he was joking.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:01 am
How do you know? I ask for proof.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:02 am
To clarify, what I need is a statement from Miguel saying that he was joking in this interview with The Register.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:03 am
Can you provide proof that he wasn’t joking? I just gave you proof that he meant something other than what you guys claimed he meant.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:08 am
I guess I should also seek proof that Obama’s vows and inauguration speech were not just a joke to him. Otherwise, I should assume he was only joking, right?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:15 am
Obama’s speech was broadcast in audio (and video).
This interview with Miguel was translated to text. When speech is translated into text, it is not lossless. You obviously lose things like tone of voice which are a big hint to when someone is being sarcastic or jovial.
Remember when Shane noted that his humor in a post earlier this month probably didn’t translate well to text? Same thing.
So comparing Obama’s inauguration speech with an interview with Miguel that was flattened into text is so nothing alike.
You know this, you are just being stubborn.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:17 am
The burden of proof is on you to show that he was joking. Miguel reads this site. Why has he not remarked on it?
Shane Coyle said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:25 am
Yeah, this has gotten silly. Miguel is quite known for saying crazy-sounding things, especially in regards to the evil plot and subversion allegations that often fly his way, I actually find him quite funny usually…
This interview was 2002, looks like he’s got quite a lot of work to do on his plan… and, it was with El Reg.
Nothing to see here.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:29 am
Thanks again Shane
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:30 am
I gave you proof, Roy. And even Shane agrees with me. The burden of proof is on you.
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 1:55 pm
@C.J.
http://slated.org/files/buildlog.txt
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 2:16 pm
@Dan O’Brian
You do realise what NoScript is, right?
NoScript disables scripts on a case-by-case basis, rather than wholesale like the built in function in Firefox. 99% of the scripts I encounter on Web pages serve no useful function other than to spam or invade my privacy. Where I need access to a Web page, and it obviously doesn’t function correctly without scripts, then I will enable them for that page by adding an exception to NoScript.
There was nothing obviously broken about the aforementioned go-mono page, and so I had no idea a link was being suppressed by a blocked script. The first I knew of this link was when I read your earlier comment, which quoted something different to what I had read.
Anyway, I really don’t see why I should have to justify myself to an astroturfer like you, who dedicates his free time to attacking those who defend Free Software against Microsoft’s menacing advances.
Shane Coyle said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Yeah, I’d agree that any page that handles noscript that ungracefully is poorly designed.
<h1>Source<⁄h1>
You can download a tarball of the source
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var html = “<a href=’” + data.tarball + “‘>here<⁄a> “;
document.write(html);
<⁄script>
or you can check it out from svn.
<pre> svn co svn:⁄⁄anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/tags/moon/1.0rc1 <⁄pre>
As always, you can get the development source from trunk:
<pre> svn co svn:⁄⁄anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/moon <⁄pre>
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:22 pm
saulgoode:
I talked to the moon devs last night and this morning, and they’re willing to help you do it. They can’t put energy into doing it themselves, since they’ve got lots of other tasks on their plate, but we’re all on irc.gimp.net’s #mono waiting for contributors to show up and offer their time.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:30 pm
@Homer:
http://rafb.net/p/jSQuYr38.html
Looks like you might be using some old headers. When you build from svn, you often need to build all of the deps from svn as well. I like garnome, since it builds from stable release tarballs, but jhbuild is the tool that most of the GNOME folks use to get all the deps matched up.
http://live.gnome.org/Jhbuild
http://www.gnome.org/~jamesh/jhbuild.html
Cheers,
C.J.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:38 pm
ricardo:
You and I agree here. I think backward-compatibility is more important. There are some folks at Ximian who think that everything should be managed. That would reduce interop with perl and c++ among other languages. I think the core should stay C and bindings to other platforms should continue to be the norm. There’s a little less efficiency that way, since translation has to occur during runtime, but as I said, interop is more important to me, personally.
If the cil backend for gcc takes off and produces good IL, I’d re-consider, but since C is the lingua franca, I prefer not to break all past code just to make it easier to produce new code
Blah blah blah.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Dan,
I think more independent producers would use OGG/Theora. I like small media producers, and I think it’d be worth the effort. IMHO. IANAL. BYOB.
C.J.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I’ll speak for Miguel here. I wrote a wrapper around gtkglarea once, and Alp Toker re-wrote it to be nearly fully managed (skipping over gtkglarea). Alp recommended that I use his code and get rid of the gapi wrapper. I noted that doing so would break api compatibility with perl code that wrapped gtkglarea. Miguel chimed in noting that “perl is important” (can’t find the exact quote in my irc logs).
I’ll let you folks interpret it for what it’s worth.
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:29 pm
@Dan O’Brian
Oh and BTW, while you’re in the mood for publicly “exposing” people, I think it’s about time that you declared exactly what your interests are in this, and the other affairs, here at BN.
I mean, after all, you know who I am (easily deduced by reading the headers in the above-linked Usenet post, since I deliberately add my real name and gpg public key to the headers), and you know my previous involvement in Red Hat and Fedora (and presumably goBuntu, and dozens of other projects, if you have a look), so I think it’s only fair that you should reveal your undisclosed interests and affiliations, so those who read your posts can determine your bias, if any.
FYI I use the name Homer, because in real life that is my nickname, and indeed it is very rarely that anyone calls me by my Christian name. Since the days of BBS in the 80s, I have always used a “handle” online – it’s a matter of habit, not some kind of “Fake Steve Jobs” cover-up. I’m not the CEO of some international corporation, I’m not a politician, in fact I’m nobody of much note at all, so why you presume my nickname is an attempt to supposedly cover up a dark secret, and therefore I must be “exposed”, I have no idea.
What exactly is it you think you have “exposed”?
And as for your list of three points which you claim I am “feigning ignorance”:
I posted several articles, Usenet posts and comments expressing my concerns that Free Software might slowly be becoming infected with Microsoft’s “IP”, and that part of that infestation was/is the Mono-isation of Gnome. Gnome bindings to Mono, be they written in C, C# or Hungarian, are just as much a part of that infestation. At no time did I claim that those bindings were, themselves, written in any particular language, C# or otherwise. The point is what they bind to (i.e. Mono).
As you later admit, point 2 had nothing whatsoever to do with me. You’re lashing out irrationally. I did, however, post a brief article commenting on this development, and I agreed with the assertion that this (just like point 1 above) was still nonetheless symptomatic of the Mono-isation of Gnome
I stand by my assertions WRT the Jimmi Hugh incident, since there was (and still is) nothing inaccurate about the stated claim. The claim was incomplete due to my own lack of diligence fully researching the issue, since it failed to indict another equally guilty party, but the exact claim was still correct. Jimmi Hugh did remove the “Criticisms” section of the ACPI article at least once (even if he wasn’t the first to do so) replacing it with platitudes, and that IMHO is censorship.
From your presence here, your vicious diatribes against Roy; BN and it’s supporters, I’m guessing you have close ties to Novell and/or the SUSE community, Gnome or the Mono project. As I suggested above, it’s time you “came clean”, and elucidated exactly where your loyalties lie. You’ve become a BN “hater”, and have decided to lump me in with that hate. What you fail to realise, Dan, is that I am not a “Novell hater”. I strongly oppose Microsoft, and all it’s supporters, be they individuals or other companies. Novell is simply coincidental to that position. Something else you don’t seem to realise, is that your frothing; belligerent and vicious attacks on all who dissent against Microsoft & friends, only serves to present yourself as sympathetic to Microsoft’s cause.
So let me ask you quite bluntly: Are you?
If you want to know what my affiliations and motives are, then just ask me. I have nothing to hide. How about you?
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Roy, can you please correct the close-link tag in the above comment?
Thx.
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Roy, can ypu please also correct the link immediately after that one, which accidentally points back to here, but should link to this instead: http://slated.org/gnome_accelerates_poisoning_of_free_software
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Homer:
How do you mean “bind to mono”? I’m not familiar with this term…
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I’ve just corrected this.
Good luck finding out who/what “Dan O’Brian” works for. I asked about half a dozen times and he vigorously insists on not telling.
We also have Novell employees posting here (from Novell IPs).
saulgoode said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I am not personally interested in contributing to the Moonlight/Mono Project; however, I would point out that Maik Merk had previously made an offer to help Silverlight incorporate Theora/Vorbis and might be willing to work with you on Moonlight.
The best way to pursue this, in my opinion, would be for a member of the Moonlight Project to post on the Theora mailing list.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Homer:
That’s a lot of opposition. Microsoft’s a large corporation. Do you oppose large corporations? The history of taking advantage of patents? Misusing its monopoly status? Its outsourcing of American jobs? The fact that it competes with other software vendors? Its recent contributions to the Free Software world? Its market dominance? Its choice of logo colors? The poor support for CSS 2 in IE 6?
It seems, from my perspective, that you are frothing a bit yourself. There are folks contributing to this discussion and honestly interested in helping to address your concerns with the Novell/Microsoft deal. Your knee-jerk response is to bad-mouth and insult these folks rather than taking advantage of their offers.
*sigh*
saulgoode said,
January 25, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The name of the Theora developer is “Maik Merten“. In my concern of getting the HTML links coded correctly, I misspelled his name (any chance of adding Preview capability to this forum?
).
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:03 pm
You forget to ask so many things. How about:
I could go on forever…
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:25 pm
@Shane Coyle
You’re confusing two different things.
The EULA that I disagree with is for Microsoft’s Codec Pack. The sources I downloaded were for Moonlight, so I could rebuild them linked against Free Software instead of that proprietary codec pack. That was the whole point of me downloading them. I thought this was clear.
However, the main point of my reply to Miguel was licensing. The fact that the build also failed, compounded the issue, but was not central to it, other than the fact that it seems obtaining Moonlight linked to Free Software, like ffmpeg, is far more difficult than using it linked with Microsoft’s proprietary software.
As Dan pointed out, I’m an experienced packager, and even I am having difficulty with it – indeed I still haven’t managed to build it from source yet. That isn’t “feigning”, it’s a simple fact. I can imagine that most Free Software users obtaining Moonlight would, under the circumstances, be forced to default to also infecting their systems with Microsoft’s proprietary codec pack, and that possibility concerns me greatly – hence my involvement.
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:29 pm
@C.J.
No, only criminal ones.
I take it then that you don’t oppose criminals?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:35 pm
You’ve got to love it!
Inside Microsoft (and C.J. does/did a contract job for Microsoft), it’s being said that Microsoft is just a poor victim because it’s “big” and “successful”.
I am bemused by the words of intellectuals who say that Americans believe Iraqis dislike the United States “because it has McDonalds”; no, not because it slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi kids and loots them for energy resources.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Slated: I am nothing more than a mere mortal and I was able to build Moonlight with ffmpeg without any problem on Ubuntu.
I don’t know why you had that ssize_t issue on your Fedora install, but I can assure you that there is no such problem on Ubuntu 8.10, which is what I built it on.
The link you provided as a fix for Fedora 9 seemed to have a workaround which you refused to even try. The fix in that forum thread was reported as having worked and he was able to build it just fine.
You seem to want someone to spoon feed you, because even though the spoon and the baby food were right there in front of you, you refused to do it yourself, instead crying that it didn’t work for you.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 5:57 pm
You are still dodging the question and you seem intimately familiar with everything Mono. Why?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I’m an interested follower of Mono’s progress. I only installed Moonlight a few months ago to check your FUD about it (which I proved incorrect). Since then I’ve kept updating it.
I also happen to be an active blog reader, subscribed to various blog planet feeds including Mono’s.
You might try reading sometime, Roy, you might find that it opens up a whole new world where you can actually collect solid information/facts that simply reading headlines doesn’t do for you.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I should actually thank you, Roy, because without you spreading FUD about a number of FLOSS projects, I’d have never seriously looked into them.
In a way, you introduced me to Mono (as well as Moonlight), so thanks
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:18 pm
@Shane Coyle
Dan is a vicious and prolific troll who attacks any dissent against those who help Microsoft.
I’m more than happy to contribute, but please note that I write these articles and posts elsewhere (e.g. on Usenet), not for BN’s benefit per se, and Roy merely asks my permission to reprint them here.
Of course, he doesn’t actually need my permission, since I post in public forums, but he asks anyway out of politeness.
Material from Slated is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, which basically means it must be prominently attributed to Slated.org if reprinted elsewhere, but that’s all.
OTOH I do not ask Roy to post here on my behalf, although I do sometimes express my concerns about issues troubling me to him. If he then chooses to reprint that on BN, that that’s his concern – I have no objections. Most of my “contributions” here are just reprints like those.
If I actually want to write an article on something, then I already have my own site at Slated to do that. I’m not being ungrateful, you understand, I’m simply pointing out that there is nothing untoward going on here. If you actually want me to write articles for you, then I’m more than happy to oblige.
Why do you want to “investigate and identify” me? Am I being charged with some crime?
Note also that you need to be very careful what data you hold about your contributors, since (depending on legal jurisdiction) you might find yourself falling foul of Data Protection laws, e.g. in the UK these would be the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the UK Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 417: The Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) Order 2000, and the UK Statutory Instrument 2003 No. 2426: The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
Other countries undoubtedly have their own laws pertaining to the retention and processing of personal data, and there are various international treaties and conventions binding these countries to respect the laws of foreign countries for foreign nationals.
This is why I have an official privacy policy on Slated. I recommend you do likewise.
Slated said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:47 pm
@C.J.
I’m not building from SVN any more, I get that error from building these sources from the tarball:
sha1sum moon-1.0.tar.bz2
ff37aadf57e2c471608f5d7c6481d27e77e8241a moon-1.0.tar.bz2
utils.h:60: error: ‘ssize_t’ does not name a type
@Dan O’Brian
The link you provided as a fix for Fedora 9 seemed to have a workaround which you refused to even try.
Try what exactly?
The advice given in that thread is:
I have no idea what that means, where to look, what to “modify”, nor even how to modify it.
I’m a packager, not a programmer. You do know the difference, right?
Give me an actual patch, and I’ll apply it. I’ll even build an RPM spec file to apply it automatically. I’ll build it, test it, verify, sign and publish it, but what I won’t be doing any time soon, Dan, is writing it, because I’m not a programmer, I’m a packager.
Now certainly, I consider myself an experienced GNU/Linux user, and I was previously a professional consultant, but I am not, nor have I ever been a programmer, and I’ve never pretended to be. Computing is a vast field, Dan, encompassing many professions. You presume too much.
Now if I, with all my experience, can not get this to work, then I hold little hope of the average noob (predominantly Ubuntu users) getting it to work either. Obviously you’re atypical, so I bow to your superior knowledge of long sized t’s, whatever they are.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Try writing a sed script that replaces the token “ssize_t” with “long”, or perhaps you could have asked on the forum or at the very least asked earlier.
sed -e “s/ssize_t/long/g” src/utils.h > src/utils.h.new; mv src/utils.h.new src/utils.h
you’ll likely have to do the same to at least src/utils.cpp
or you could try my earlier suggestion about adding a line:
#include <sys/types.h>
to src/utils.h along with the other #include statements
Dan O'Brian said,
January 25, 2009 at 6:58 pm
I took my first programming class as a night course at a local community college this past fall, I am by no means an expert either.
Total course expenses: $372 USD
The look on your face: PRICELESS
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 25, 2009 at 7:27 pm
This drips vanity.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Roy/Homer:
Excellent. That list is exactly what I was looking for. Yes, I am doing a contract at Microsoft. Yes, I oppose the same things as you do, but if I’m interested in correcting issues, I’ve got to get involved. Sitting on the sidelines and talking about how it all sucks doesn’t do any good. We need to convince MS it’s in their best interest to be good global citizens.
You are addressing the issues in your way, and I am in mine. Let’s don’t treat each other like enemies. We have the same end goal, let’s work together to achieve it.
Cheers,
C.J.
0xBA27A83C
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Homer:
Get filenames this way:
$ grep -rsi ssize_t *
When you get the files, replace all instances of ssize_t with long
I would use emacs. Some prefer vi, gedit or notepad.
save the file and run ‘make’ from the dist root.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 8:43 pm
looks like ssize_t is part of a somewhat newish. What version of the libc6 headers are you using, Homer?
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ grep __ssize_t /usr/include/bits/types.h
__STD_TYPE __SSIZE_T_TYPE __ssize_t; /* Type of a byte count, or error. */
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ dpkg -S /usr/include/unistd.h
libc6-dev: /usr/include/unistd.h
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ grep ‘typedef.*ssize_t’ /usr/include/unistd.h
typedef __ssize_t ssize_t;
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ grep __ssize_t /usr/include/bits/types.h __STD_TYPE __SSIZE_T_TYPE __ssize_t; /* Type of a byte count, or error. */
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ dpkg -S /usr/include/unistd.h libc6-dev: /usr/include/unistd.h
cjac@dlrci:/usr/src/tar/moon-1.0$ dpkg -l | grep libc6-dev
ii libc6-dev 2.3.6.ds1-13etch7 GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
Shane Coyle said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Slated, I haven’t any desire to identify you, Roy has a tendency to try and root out the identities of people who comment here, and that in my mind means that there shouldn’t be any ‘anonymous’ guest posts, either.
Basically, I was talking to Roy, not you. We do all of our site admin and discussion in the comments here, nothing behind the scenes. Also, I don’t really run the site, so my opinion is not the final arbiter, but I’ve always held an open invite out to anyone who wants to contribute, there is no formal request, per se.
And, we should have a privacy policy, does anyone know of a boilerplate to start with…?
Roy Bixler said,
January 25, 2009 at 9:24 pm
@C.J.: You certainly seem to be a refreshing voice here from the normal detractors of this site, who normally pick points they think they can refute and assume bad faith. The problem with the latter is that they don’t say what they are for and so it is harder to sympathise with their position.
As for Roy S.’s and Homer’s list of points against Microsoft, I wish you well in your quest to make Microsoft see the light. You would be fighting against long established and well-entrenched corporate culture. As an example, consider Bill Gates’ “open letter to hobbyists” from 1976, which shows that he believes that, without the profit motive, good software can’t be written. Other examples can be found in the Comes vs. Microsoft exhibits on this Web site which show that Microsoft competes in a very cut-throat way and doesn’t hesitate to use every advantage, including their operating system monopoly, at their disposal. Frankly, their reputation in this regard is so bad that it would take a long period of fair competition before I and many others could trust them again. Microsoft has had a long period of success. It’s a shame that they see it as their duty not to allow others in the software world a chance at having the same success.
C.J. said,
January 25, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Roy B:
Yeah. I know. It’s not going to be easy. I’m tenacious, though. Sometimes I make mistakes and do silly things. Ask the GNOME devs about the exchange I had with them about getting an account on the cvs server if you want a good example of me embarrassing myself in public
http://mlblog.osdir.com/gnome.infrastructure/2006-02/msg00068.shtml
Let’s hope this attempt isn’t a repeat!
Slated said,
January 26, 2009 at 1:21 am
@Shane
Re: Privacy Policy.
Try this:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/privacypolicy
Slated said,
January 26, 2009 at 1:41 am
@C.J.
rpm -q glibc-headers
glibc-headers-2.7-2
The greps I performed matched yours exactly.
Slated said,
January 26, 2009 at 2:54 am
@C.J.
I don’t know you personally, but I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy.
Having said that, I have to say that we probably don’t have the same goal.
Let me explain:
I am not a Linux advocate.
Read that again.
Yes that’s right, I am not a Linux advocate, in fact I’m not an advocate of any software in particular.
Surprised?
Read on…
I have an interest in computers. It’s a pretty hardcore interest, and I do waste a disproportionate amount of my time on it. It’s a geek thing, pure and simple. I’m not a programmer, although I have dabbled in various languages – mostly 68k assembly when I was younger. My programming skills are, well … limited, to say the least, although I seem to have a particular talent for scripting (mainly bash) and packaging (RPM). My main field of expertise is security, and this is the area in which I have worked the most, although in recent years I worked mostly as a consultant on SoA integration of embedded systems in heavy industry – an unenviable task, given the age of some of the archaic systems I had to support. I have now been retired for about four years, and my interests have changed dramatically in that time.
So what are those interests?
Not computers, that’s for sure.
I use them, of course, just like everyone else in the 21st century. I use computers like I previously used a TV, as an idiot-box – an object to “veg-out” to. Sometimes I get a craving for something new, something interesting, something different – and I go looking for it. If I can’t find it, or what I find disappoints me, then poke and prod until I have something close enough to suit my purposes. Sometimes I poke and prod anyway, just for the hell of it – just to relieve the boredom. Sometimes my poking and prodding produces something that others find useful, and I share it with them. I don’t set out to, it just happens that way … sometimes. But these days, the technical aspects of computers holds no interest for me whatsoever. In fact, it bores me rigid. I’m burnt-out, kaput, I’ve had it, it’s over.
There’s only one aspect of computers which still interests me, and that’s Free Software. Not because it’s software, but because it’s Free. And yes, I’m talking about Freedom, not cost. My interests have shifted entirely from the technical to the political. The only thing which interests me today is the politics of Freedom, specifically personal Freedom in the modern, computer-bound age.
What I see concerns me greatly. I see civil rights violated in the name of Intellectual Monopoly, under the pretext of anti-terrorism. I see corporations ganging together to form quango organisations that supplant democratic authority with legalised bribery (a.k.a. lobbying), again – in the name of monopoly. In short, I see monopoly as a way of life, a creed adopted by modern society, and consumed like pigs at a trough. It’s the spread of a disease called corporatism, otherwise known as corporate fascism. It’s anti-democratic, it’s anti-Free Market, it’s anti-capitalist, and it’s anti-Freedom. It’s a form of communism, where the corporations become the state, and it’s taking over the world.
Microsoft is just one corporation at the leading edge of that movement. My one and only goal is to see Microsoft, and the evil movement they are part of, removed from the face of existence. I don’t care that they sell software, and I don’t care that they attack Linux … they attack Freedom – my Freedom, and they must be destroyed. They could be insurance salesmen, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me.
My biggest problem is making people see, understand, and care about the truth. I advocate that truth. I advocate Freedom. That’s all. Nothing else.
I view the technical details of this Moonlight issue with utter disdain. They are secondary and incidental to the main issue – the politics of Microsoft and all who support them. I’ll play, but only to be courteous. Meanwhile I’ll keep fighting to spread the truth about this evil corporation and it’s agenda. You need to bear that in mind, or you might end up taking my comments personally – perhaps like Dan does.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 3:20 am
I’m pretty much on the same boat. This is no “Mac vs. PC” popularity contest (two predatory companies banging heads).
GNU/Linux is an important enabler for change, for justice.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 8:18 am
If you’re interested in justice, don’t practice dishonesty.
Whether I’m right or not about Homer feigning ignorance is irrelevant to the larger dishonesty about how you tried to hide who wrote this guest post.
As a “journalist”, you have the responsibility to disclose who is writing these “reviews” and what your relationship with him is to your readership so that they can judge any bias (which in this case is a very strong anti-Mono/anti-Moonlight bias).
And then of course, if you’re actually going to publish “reviews”, it is best to get a review from a neutral party who is willing to be objective.
Homer is not objective nor unbiased in the least.
Thirdly, if Homer wants to write an article about how he disagrees with the license, that’s fine, but don’t hide it amongst a “I can’t make it compile” article because that’s another source of dishonesty (note that Homer didn’t even mention what his disagreements with the EULA were, he just c&p’d the EULA and then the rest of the article is him complaining about how hard it is for him to compile – so BS that this article was about his disagreements with the EULA, he didn’t even talk about it).
Roy Bixler said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:28 am
No he doesn’t. Traditionally, journalists have been able to “protect” their sources if they see fit. Personally, I don’t see any reason here for Homer to be anonymous.
This is an ad hominem argument.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:34 am
It may be ad hominem, but it’s also the truth.
It is well-known that he hates Mono and Moonlight. He’s said so on numerous occasions.
He’s called it a “poison”.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:36 am
According to these standards, unbiased/credible = “loves Mono/light”
This embraces the assumption that only lunatics can possibly dislike Microsoft technology inside their Linux box.
We shouldn’t listen to “lunatics”. We should happily embrace Microsoft technology inside Linux boxes.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:37 am
Yes, and…?
You’re blind to what you’re doing.
People who do not agree with you are now “biased” and therefore not worthy of publication.
Roy Bixler said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:43 am
By the same measure, you’ve shown yourself to be quite biased and, by your reasoning, it would be relevant to ask you about your affiliations and whether you have any emotional or financial ties to Novell. So far, you have consistently avoided answering that question. I notice your bias and yet I do not automatically discredit you for it because ad hominem arguments are invalid. Could you give the same courtesy to others?
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:45 am
No, not at all. You simply need to find someone who hasn’t made up their mind or at the very least can be trusted to give an honest effort to provide an fair and objective viewpoint.
If they dislike it because it’s Microsoft, then yes. If they dislike it for technical reasons or licensing reasons, then no.
Correct, we should not listen to lunatics.
We should embrace Microsoft technology in Linux if it is good and suitably licensed.
Mono and Moonlight are Free Software. Their technical “goodness” may be a matter of opinion, but they are licensed under Free Software licenses (except the Microsoft Codecs that are separate from the Moonlight xpi install, but which you can recompile Moonlight to use ffmpeg – clearly Homer’s Fedora 8 system is too old to compile it without some adjustments to the code, but that’s beside the point).
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:48 am
You’re only supporting his views and legitimacy of his views then.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:49 am
If he is so obviously anti-Mono that he calls it a poison, and then you publish a “review” article by him – how can anyone expect anything but negative feedback? It’s a waste of time to read such an article because he’s obviously not going to say anything nice about it.
You also failed to mention who wrote the article, so it is unclear to readers what the authors bias was to start off with, which is DISHONEST.
If you had mentioned who had written the article, at least the bias would have been clear to the readers.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:53 am
Roy B: You haven’t mentioned who you work for either. Nor do I know who Homer’s employer is. I do not care to ask.
As Shane has already stated, it is irrelevant who I or anyone else works for.
But yes, I think it fair to say I have a bias in favor of Mono/Moonlight. And by that, it would be unfair for someone to publish my review of Mono or Moonlight pretending I am some neutral party. ESPECIALLY if they hid my name making it impossible for people to find out my previous opinions.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:56 am
It’s not a review. This never claimed to be a review.
I’ve already explained to you why the source was not named. it has nothing to do with hiding anything.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:58 am
He has an objection to Free Software licenses?
Mono and Moonlight are both licensed under Free Software licenses supported by the FSF. Richard Stallman himself has stated that even Moonlight is Free Software.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:58 am
So what’s your stake in it?
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 10:00 am
He also encourages not to use .NET/Mono to develop.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 10:00 am
My stake is that I think they are cool technologies.
I make no money from them.
Dan O'Brian said,
January 26, 2009 at 10:01 am
Sure, but Richard Stallman does not deny that they are Free Software nor that they are useful technologies.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 10:16 am
Having legitimate, defensible convictions does not make one incapable of commenting.
Roy Bixler said,
January 26, 2009 at 10:36 am
As long as you don’t work for Microsoft, Novell, one of their public relations agencies,or partners then I would agree that it’s not relevant where you work. The only reason I make that distinction is that, if you do work at one of the mentioned places, then you have a conflict of interest and your comments take on the flavour of an official representative. For myself, I can say that I have no conflict of interest (i.e. I do not even work for or with a Microsoft or Novell competitor) and it is not relevant where I work.
Shane Coyle said,
January 26, 2009 at 6:14 pm
For myself, I can say that I have no conflict of interest (i.e. I do not even work for or with a Microsoft or Novell competitor) and it is not relevant where I work.
But, of course, this is the internet, and at the end of the day, no one really knows who is whom and what their affiliations are – so, we’re back at square one and can only judge each other on the ‘content of our characters (and comments)’…
If I made all comments come up as ‘Anonymous’, I think it’d be interesting to see how they get ‘modded’ without everyone assuming their agenda first and using it as a reason to discount the argument…
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 6:54 pm
It would be close to impossible to have dialogues.
Shane Coyle said,
January 26, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Y’know what I mean.
Too much focus, in my opinion, is spent on the messenger (in both directions).
In many cases, these folks are just trying to help with corrections, further the discussion with questions, or are "just another websurfer pushing a point of view", so to speak.
Whatever their motivation, we can either out-debate them, or we can’t. May whomever is correct, win.
Slated said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Roy: “This embraces the assumption that only lunatics can possibly dislike Microsoft technology inside their Linux box.”
Dan: “If they dislike it because it’s Microsoft, then yes.”
IOW Dan O’Brian thinks it’s “lunacy” to dislike criminals.
Well, at least we now all clearly understand his position, which is intractably biased towards Microsoft – convicted criminals, and anyone who dares to dissent against these criminals, their business practises, and their technology, must therefore be a “lunatic”.
Personally, I’d lay odds that he is actually a Microsoft employee. It would certainly explain his utter indifference to Microsoft’s criminal behaviour.
Slated said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Ref: Stallman’s opinion of Mono/DotGNU:
http://slated.org/why_dotgnu_is_wrong
seller_liar said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I think it’s better to help dotgnu than mono.Dotgnu need more devs.Dotgnu follow fsf philosophy ( Mono follows novell).
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 26, 2009 at 9:26 pm
In turn, Novell is following Microsoft, increasingly so over time.
“[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”
–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO
Why are people who work for Microsoft also working on Mono? Does that not trigger anyone’s alarm?
Jose_X said,
January 27, 2009 at 7:38 am
Dan, I agree with the others (mainly Roy and Slated I think), that accepting a product and judging it unbiasedly need not be limited to technological or licensing issues. I agree with them that there are more important issues.
Slated wrote a piece linked earlier which mentions gangsters ( http://www.answers.com/gangster ). Doing business with gangsters is risky to say the least. For Microsoft’s case, it may even be illegal doing business with them if, for example, you’d be colluding with them in violation of anti-trust laws [a very relevant issue for many].
Mono has been criticized here repeatedly, over and over, etc etc, for reasons that have nothing to do with technological aspects or the current licensing. That you wish to continue to ignore that without convincing rebuttals hints you may be biased at least as concerns those issues.
I generally stay away from the tech issues because I don’t know enough. I don’t want to be biased if possible.
I also like the GPL, but have pointed out numerous times how that is not an elixir by any means. In fact, contributing and helping GPL code from an abusive company is not good. One of the safeties of the GPL and other free software is the ability to fork when you have bad/abusive leadership/ownership of the source. Having said that, I also don’t like dotgnu because they aren’t forking in their own direction but are following the same path still lead by Microsoft. So what good is free software if you don’t leverage it to fork and leave bad leadership alone to play by themselves?
Microsoft knows what really matters, and that is why they want to move the argument over to technical and licensing issues, just as Dan advocates. Those two issues are secondary. In particular, dotnet’s technical positives were largely inherited from elsewhere, and the GPL (because of copyright law) is actually quite an advantages license to those that own the code, putting that much more importance for the community not to contribute when the leadership is rotten. [Is the leadership rotten? Well, Novell's leadership is in bed with Microsoft's leadership it appears, and Microsoft is definitely rotten.]
As for “poison”. It would be dishonest not to call poison by its name. mono is poison in a number of ways (which have also been covered here repeatedly).
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 27, 2009 at 7:48 am
There is a more detailed explanation of these points.
In private, it was actually suggested to me that Dan might be AstroTurfing, but I choose not to believe this although he seems to be close to Novell’s headquarters? (Massachusetts?)
Jose_X said,
January 27, 2009 at 8:33 am
I would prefer we try to move along the lines Shane mentioned where we try to focus on the arguments and not on the people saying them.
Sometimes, “good” people make mistakes, and sometimes “good” people become “bad” people in order to leverage their past “good” name. And what about “bad” people becoming “good” people but not being heard?
It also seems that some of the firestorms here might have been more constructive engagements if there had been less attacking of people. After a while, the bystander can’t figure out who is defending primarily and who is attacking primarily because everyone always claims to be defending something.
Trying to identify the roles various people have played or play makes up a significant chunk of the postings here. The idea is to make it easier to trust or distrust messengers in the future (no matter the message). It’s an effort to battle marketing and to manage complexity. I can live with that focus, do participate to some extent, and can appreciate it to some extent, but it’s better whenever we can focus on the message ahead of the messenger. Sometimes the message is complex or there are missing pieces and trust becomes part of the equation. In these cases, humans look towards the messenger for clues; however, this weakness is exploitable. It gives power to those that try to buy people, quote them out of context, or trap them so that they can later point to support. Maybe I’m helping the wrong side and not even intentionally? The “messenger” can also be faked. At the end of the day, we’ll go farther if we can avoid having to fall back to evaluating the messenger because we failed to deal properly with the message; always let’s try message first, messenger second.
[Note, I admitted guilt to having succumbed to judging the messenger. Basically, some messages are complex, and the messenger can give a clue to how to attempt to digest some of the messages.]
Jose_X said,
January 27, 2009 at 8:40 am
BTW, one reason for wanting to attach identities to messages is to help remove some noise from the discussions and to press for some amount of accountability.
One reason to be anon is that you might fall on the “wrong” side of the fence (for that discussion), but you might feel you have legitimate reasons for being on that side and want to communicate these.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 27, 2009 at 10:49 am
@Jose_X:
Whenever I read articles, I judge greatly based on who writes the article and the publication (editorial board). I’m fortunate to be able to differentiate based on tens of thousands of articles/posts I’ve read. I happen to take notes.
Let’s not pretend that we live in a society where all mean well and no corporate role comes into play. Messengers do mean a lot to the message.
I can’t help being reminded of how presidential candidates get ‘advertised’ based on their obedience (i.e. how receptive they would be to those who would fund them). This shows you how great a role money plays and also the rule of “self censorship” (meaning things that people dare not say because of peer reaction).
For those who don’t know the opinions of Ralph Nader or Ron Paul, here’s a video.
Dave said,
January 28, 2009 at 11:07 am
I’m not supporting Mono / Moonlight here (it actually doesn’t even work with the web page I need to access, which is SonicFoundry’s MediaSite service…), but the Gentoo ebuild from http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234189 (moonlight-1.0.ebuild) builds and runs fine otherwise, with the ffmpeg use-flag set. Of course, the XPI plugin still has to be manually installed into Firefox.
The only reason I’d have Moonlight installed is to view already-created content. Though even this doesn’t work half the time.
Dave said,
January 28, 2009 at 11:14 am
Of course, the ebuild is for Gentoo only, but it may have some info on what needs to be done for everything to work. And my system is fully up-to-date (testing ‘branch’, aka ‘~x86′).
Zenitur said,
March 9, 2009 at 3:17 am
zenitur@ubuntu:~/moonlight/moon$ ln -s /usr/include/mono-1.0/mono mono
It works, but only 1 minute.
../doltcompile g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -I../cairo/src -I/usr/include/freetype2 -pthread -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12 -I/usr/include/alsa -Wall -DUSE_OPT_RGB24=1 -DG_LOG_DOMAIN=\”Moonlight\” -I./asf -fno-inline -g -fno-inline-functions -fstack-protector-all -g -DCOMPATIBILITY_BUGS=1 -MT deployment.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/deployment.Tpo -c -o deployment.lo deployment.cpp
deployment.cpp: In static member function ‘static bool Deployment::Initialize()’:
deployment.cpp:64: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_security_enable_core_clr’ в этой области видимости
deployment.cpp:69: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_jit_set_trace_options’ в этой области видимости
deployment.cpp:72: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_set_signal_chaining’ в этой области видимости
deployment.cpp: In constructor ‘Deployment::Deployment()’:
deployment.cpp:183: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_domain_create_appdomain’ в этой области видимости
deployment.cpp: In destructor ‘virtual Deployment::~Deployment()’:
deployment.cpp:236: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_domain_unload’ в этой области видимости
deployment.cpp: In member function ‘virtual void Deployment::Dispose()’:
deployment.cpp:302: ошибка: нет декларации ‘mono_gc_invoke_finalizers’ в этой области видимости
make[2]: *** [deployment.lo] Ошибка 1
make[2]: Выход из каталога `/home/zenitur/moonlight/moon/src’
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Ошибка 1
make[1]: Выход из каталога `/home/zenitur/moonlight/moon’
make: *** [all] Ошибка 2
zenitur@ubuntu:~/moonlight/moon$
Jon Galloway said,
March 26, 2009 at 12:46 am
“Show me an example of Siverlight with Ogg. Just one example.”
http://veritas-vos-liberabit.com/tmp/2009/MoonVorbisTest/Bin/Debug/index.html
(requires Silverlight 3, beta just rleased)
Some more info here:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-23-1.html
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-24-1.html
Silverlight 3 has a raw AV pipeline so you can write any codec you want.