12.29.09
DRI CEO: “The Biggest Risk Was That Microsoft Would Come Hell-Bent to Destroy Us… Not Necessarily by Competing”
Summary: Testimony with Richard Williams and what Novell could learn from him
ONE of our readers has suggested that we keep record of the following Richard Williams (DRI) testimony, which may come handy in the future. He speaks about Microsoft’s demeaning and disrespectful approach. Later on he worked for Novell, for obvious reasons.
Williams explains that Microsoft tried to buy out the product and make it seem like a licensing deal (i.e. pretending), then implicitly telling DRI to turn to another market. It’s basically the paying for a competitor to leave the market and assessing/accesssing all the source code first (shades of i4i). Williams never had such experiences when he worked for IBM, he argues.
Unintentionally, he may also include a little piece of advice there for Novell, and particularly the Mono folks. He says: “I wasn’t interested in doing clone. The risk I saw in doing a clone was that all you’ve really done is you reproduced something good or bad… and you take all risks inherent then with reproducing that other people’s product.”
Speaking of Mono, “Justin” from Linux Today argues that Microsoft’s Muglia silences de Icaza:
There was an recent article on Software Development Times (Dec 15, 2009), that reported on the last Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. It says that Ozzie and Muglia “were insistent that Silverlight was part of the open Web. They pointed to Mono Moonlight as an example”.
Yup, as Mono oposers have said from day 1, Mono, and now Silverlight, server MS as a way to validate their offerings. They give credence to their claims that they are now being “open” and that their proprietary offerings should be given equal consideration by governments seeking to standardize on open solutions.
Interestingly, Miguel de Icaza was there and raised his head to chime in saying that “he wanted Microsoft to go a step further by contributing technology to ECMA International”. Wow, either he is very naive or he really does not get it. Any way, Muglia quickly quieted him down by saying that “Microsoft was trying to balance standards with its ability to rapidly innovate the Silverlight platform”. That was all it took. Go on dreaming Miguel.
Thanks to Novell (especially Moonlight), Microsoft is willing to describe Silver Lie as “open” [1, 2] (and the same with .NET, because of Mono). █
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Chips B. Malroy said,
December 29, 2009 at 4:57 pm
A bit off topic, but a short comment on the elephant in the room for Mono.
Mono has no killer application for it. Not even close to one. The closest thing to that killer app, would be Moonlight. But Moonlight is another clone of a MS clone (read Embace Extend Extinguish Adobe Flash/Sun Java) that really does not have traction or works well. In fact, Silverlight’s big claim to fame with most users, is they can play Netflix vids with it. Never mind that the Netflix video’s were backroom deals between the CEO of Netflix and MS, involving a great deal of money and stock transferrs, and a board of director appointment to MS’s board.
One of the big problems (the elephant) of Moonlight, is that it cannot play Netflix Silverlight streaming Video’s, because the Moonlight/Mono developers have no control over the Microsoft’s proprietary DRM incorporated in Silverlight. And MS is not giving that away either, which makes Mono/Moonlight a worthless product just from an working product by itself. Not to mention all the other problems.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Spotted this one some minutes ago:
“I hope everyone who has voiced concern over patent issues with Mono will read this article. It does an excellent job of explaining why the danger to Free software in Microsoft’s control of .Net technology is far more than just the patent threat. It is about who is in the driver’s seat of the technology – who is calling the shots. They can dictate the standards and the direction of the technology – all to the benefit of Microsoft and to the detriment of their competition (including FOSS). “