07.19.09
Posted in Java, Microsoft, SUN at 4:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft speaks about “killing Sun’s Java.”
WE ARE STARTING to cover Java territories from the Comes vs Microsoft case, which Microsoft paid to settle, apparently with the condition that all this evidence will disappear. Today we offer the text version of Exhibit px_2768 (1997) [PDF], which shows Microsoft’s treatment of cross-platform, Java, and competition in general. The full exhibit can be seen at the bottom (or the original PDF), but to give some pointers and highlights, see the following message from Prashant Sridharan, Microsoft’s Visual J++ Product Manager:
If we, as a company, are interested in promoting Windows, why bother with AFC? In my own opinion (apart from Ironwood, J/Direct, or any of the other politically-charged topics now), we are horribly inconsistent in this regard.
Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let’s move on and steal the Java language.
That said, have we ever taken a look at how long it would take Microsoft to build a cross-platform Java that did work? Naturally, we would never do it, but it would give us some idea of how much time we have to work with in killing Sun’s Java.
For readers’ convenience, the context too is displayed in the full exhibit. This fits our analysis that Microsoft et al (and now Novell [1, 2, 3]) are essentially fighting against Java with their .NET infatuation (or Visual J++ prior to that). This is done unethically in Microsoft’s case. It it also important to remind people how Microsoft really feels about Java now that Microsoft is invading Java conferences, pretending nothing negative was ever intended by Microsoft. █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px_2768, as text
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07.16.09
Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Java, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Search at 4:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight”
–Miguel de Icaza
Summary: Another new roundup of Mono news
YESTERDAY we wrote about Moonlight and Mono-based applications getting more tightly integrated. We now see it confirmed by Novell employees Miguel de Icaza and Jonathan Pobst [1 2], so our suspicions were correct from the very start. This is all part of Microsoft’s ambition to fill the Web with Silver Lie content and the desktop with .NET/WPF, which in turn imposes a patent tax on GNU/Linux and makes a poorer experience for GNU/Linux users. From ITPro news:
The first version of Silverlight was launched in April 2007, while version 2 arrived in 2008. It runs on Windows and Mac – and even Linux. The latter is developed by Novell in conjunction with Microsoft, a project known as Moonlight.
“[I]n conjunction with Microsoft,” says this article, but the Microsoft/Novell Web site calls it “Microsoft Moonlight”. It serves Microsoft’s interests.
Microsoft’s Anti-Java
In the blog post where Mini Microsoft suggests laying off 15k employees we also find this comment which reminds us why it’s good that Bing is dying. Microsoft uses Bing to smear .NET’s (and Mono’s) main competitor, Java. From the commenter:
“Regarding Bing, I believe there are untrustworthy behaviours under the hood, specifically black list result filters. Try this searching for “transferhandler.export to clipboard swing”. Google finds about 100 results all related to Java. Bing finds exactly two results. One is my comment on this subject elsewhere and the other is in French. How can it be possible without deletion of “things Java” ?”
This is not surprising because Microsoft applies the same type of treatment to all major competitors of Microsoft, GNU/Linux included. See our previous posts on the subject, e.g.:
Attacks on Stallman
For the past fortnight or so (shortly after Stallman’s official statement on Mono and C#), Stallman has come under attack from many directions, usually from defenders of Mono or users of Mono (including Canonical employees). He is still not impressed by Microsoft’s “Community Promise” (CP) [1, 2, 3] and this makes him no friends. Stefano Forenza wrote about these attacks on Stallman only to be called “misguided” by Caonical’s CTO.
The first meme being directed to Richard Stallman for citing ‘eMacs virgins’ in a speech and the other one only gods knows whom.
While the latter is just is yet another generalist campaign (like the infamous “hey, even double click is patented!”) the first is a frontal attack to Richard Stallman as a person: knives coming out all of a sudden.
Even the Canonical CTO blogged about it.
While the video isn’t available yet, I have big doubts there is something even remotely offensive in such Stallman talk. It’s very easy to take feminism as an excuse, as many people (not just girls) will jump in no-matter-what without even knowing what it’s being talked about.
The new method in place seems to be that if you support Stallman and support his stance on Mono, then you’re also a chauvinist. It’s not said explicitly, but it is being implied that to be associated with Stallman is also to accept his sometimes-tactless humour/modest proposals.
Sam Varghese correctly points out that Mono’s most vocal defender inside Debian is himself quite chauvinistic. That person is Josselin Mouette.
Mouette, it may be recalled, is the developer who had posted what were considered sexist posts to the Debian project mailing list meant for important announcements for developers.
(Mono is an open source implementation of parts of Microsoft’s .NET development environment; many sections of the FOSS community fear that Mono may prove to be a patent trap down the line as .NET is totally Microsoft technology. Recent statements have done little to dispel this impression.)
I asked the Debian leader Steve McIntyre a few queries about the Mono change and he, as always, sent back straightforward replies. McIntyre, I may add, has always been open and upfront in dealing with iTWire.
But after Free Software Foundation chief Richard Stallman called the Debian move risky – he based the statement on the inference that a decision on including Mono in the Debian default install had already been taken – Debian spokesman Alexander Reichle-Schmehl decided that the project had to speak up and did so by trying to explain things through a post on his blog.
For those who have not been following the whole Mono kerkuffle (a lot has happened recently), here is an excellent summary, which concludes thusly:
Well there are issues around Mono, including patents. This means that some people, myself included now refuse to use it. Those that are pro-mono don’t seem to understand exactly why everyone isn’t shouting hosannas over their projects. Indeed one of them classified Tomboy as ‘An Exciting Program’, which stunned me. Tomboy? Exciting? I didn’t think so.
It is “exciting” for Microsoft, that’s for sure. Its APIs spread to the competitors’ platforms, which makes Microsoft more powerful. It does not bother Novell. █
“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”
–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO
“[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
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07.11.09
Posted in Debian, FUD, GNU/Linux, Java, Law, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Ubuntu at 7:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Nothing of practical use has really changed for Mono, but its connection to Microsoft was made a lot clearer
DURING many people’s summer absence, the news came out about Microsoft’s “community promise” (CP), to which we responded only succinctly [1, 2]. Here is a longer analysis, which comprises events preceding this promise as well.
Debian
eWeek (Ziff Davis) adds to the many reports about Debian’s disagreement with Richard Stallman regarding Mono. The Inquirer covered this as well.
As the Debian project releases a second update of its Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (“Lenny”) distribution, a controversy has broken out over the next version, “Squeeze.” GNU guru Richard Stallman has warned that by including a Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy, Debian runs the risk of Microsoft litigation over C# patents.
Nothing has changed since Microsoft and Mono came out all jubilant. Stallman does not like Microsoft’s CP, either.
Debian is meanwhile getting Gnote, a replacement for Tomboy.
Well, it seems that since last saturday, Gnote is now the default option in Debian for those platforms where Mono unportability prevents Tomboy from being used, namely: alpha, hppa, m68k, mipsel, mips, hurd-i386 and kopensolaris-i386.
Gnote 0.5.2 is out.
I just released gnote 0.5.2. It is a bug fix release.
Ubuntu
62% of the surveyed people did not trust Microsoft on Mono prior to the CP. We wrote about this over a week ago and also explained where Canonical stood on the subject. Heise later chimed in to say that “Ubuntu [is] to continue using Mono.”
On behalf of the Ubuntu Technical Board, Ubuntu Development Manager and board member Scott James Remnant has clarified that the use of C#, specifically the Mono implementation, is not considered to be a problem and that it, and applications based on it, will continue to be included with the Ubuntu default installation set.
One reader wrote to remind us that “Solang, a photo manager, is now part of Ubuntu.”
Microsoft
It is true that some people are in favour of Mono, but as we shall show in a moment, a lot of Mono proponents are also Microsoft proponents, but Microsoft is no proponent of GNU/Linux.
“Notice the fact that Microsoft and its friends in the IT industry absolutely love Mono and hate GNU/Linux.”First, look at this. Nice attitude there from a Microsoft intern (also noted last week, but this intern regrets his remarks and wanted to remove them from other people’s Web sites too). Notice the fact that Microsoft and its friends in the IT industry absolutely love Mono and hate GNU/Linux. Is it not telling? There is no contradiction here.
The SFLC’s Kuhn replies to these remark from the Microsoft intern with: “we should forgive him for statements (but not for still working at MSFT) Sometimes early-20s == saying stupid stuff.” For those who did not follow this, the intern cursed me, linked to libel about me, and told Richard Stallman to “F*ck off” due to a technical/legal stance on Mono.
One reader suggested that we take a look what what this guy is up to. His profile says:
* Name Nikhil Kothari
* Location Sammamish, WA
* Web http://www.nikhil…
* Bio Software Architect at Microsoft, working on .NET, ASP.NET and Silverlight…
Watch some of the older Tweets in there. He corresponds with C.J. Adams-Collier, who works on Mono and also worked for Microsoft. How about this:
“@cjadamscollier Thanks for the pointers – will keep them in mind as I look into things.”
According to the Mono Web site, he is a Mono developer or generally a contributor. He was paid by Microsoft too, by his own admission. He tried to discredit Boycott Novell and he lurks in our IRC channel. One suspicion is that Microsoft is spreading (or simply exploiting) “Linux developers” whose role is to spread Moonlight and Mono, making Silver Lie and .NET a lot more prevalent.
Here is Microsoft’s Nikhil Kothari chatting quite a lot with Miguel de Icaza:
“What is the recommended IDE/setup to use for Mono development on the mac? @migueldeicaza any suggestions?”
Here is another Twit which once again shows Microsoft’s involvement in MonoDevelop, which ultimately strengthens Windows [1, 2, 3]:
“@migueldeicaza If things pan out with MonoDevelop and I get a few cycles, I will have something interesting to share … fingers crossed.”
It is worth remembering that Miguel de Icaza literally spends time at Microsoft. He goes on campus, too, having gone there for a job interview 10+ years ago. Nat Friedman was working for Microsoft.
Watch how the pro-Microsoft Gavin Clarke is giving de Icaza exposure, as usual. Together they defend the spreading of Mono, using The Register. They are working to spread .NET everywhere (Mary Jo Foley too, as always). Oh, how Microsoft loves Mono! If Microsoft likes it, then it’s usually bad for its #1 competitor, GNU/Linux.
Why Mono is Still Dangerous
One visitor has just raised the following important point:
“By the way, what nobody here seems to be mentioning, I guess because they’re pretty ignorant about .NET in general, is that the ECMA specs only cover versions 1 and 2 of the C# language, and neither version 3 which Mono already implements or version 4 of which MSFT’s implementation is currently in beta have been submitted to any standards body. I think this is a bigger issue than support for some Windows libraries.”
More holes/loopholes are identified:
Carlo Daffara, an open-source consultant, rightly notes that Microsoft’s patent promise is not directly on Mono, but rather on these ECMA standards, which leaves “most of Mono…encumbered as before (WinForms, ADO.NET, …).”
What are the CPs good for then? Even the use of language is laughable and reminiscent of surrogate terms. “Community promise” is a case of pretending that Microsoft is pro-”community”. It’s as Orwellian as the “Community” patent, which is a loophole for bringing software patents into Europe and thus harming the Free software community — the real community.
So what it is with CPs then? Were they even tested in any court? It is a rhetorical question.
“Promises, promises,” calls them Alan Lord. They are not legally binding.
The reason I won’t be using Mono is that the .Net framework is already embraced by Microsoft, it is already extended by Microsoft. It was from the beginning and will probably always remain so.
For a detailed analysis of the CP, see this from The Mad Hatter.
So why didn’t Microsoft’s lawyers include this in the main body? Microsoft’s lawyers aren’t stupid (I know one of them, she’s a really smart lady). So why did they write it in this confused way?
I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.
The Mad Hatter told us that “from ITWire, several people have noticed that pro-mono people tend to duck having an independent evaluation done of Mono for patent issues.”
Last year Groklaw wrote the article “What is Wrong with RAND?”
We now have this article whose headline is “What does RAND mean?” What it means to Free software is that it is a term to avoid, according to the GNU doctrine.
Apparently, it must mean something, because I find it being referenced in (supposedly serious) discussions about .NET licensing.
The acronym literally translates as “Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory”. So far so good. Except I don’t have a clue what it means. What does “reasonable” mean when applied to a patent licensing policy? Well, according to my own interpretation of this word, a licensing policy is reasonable when it prevents the patent from being used to impose a tax on any users of any program. But this is just my point of view on what is reasonable. Can you expect patent holders to agree with your point of view on what “reasonable” means when interpreting their own promises?
All in all, as we have said from the very start, the whole Mono story does not deserve this level of coverage. The editor of Linux Today (Carla) agrees that Mono and Google Chrome OS have been blown out of proportion, as we emphasised a day or so ago.
Just when I was getting thoroughly bored with Mono news, which is the same arguments recycled over and over, and little of anything more definitive from the Mono camp than “Same to you!”, along came a tidal wave of Google Chrome OS news. The Chrome OS story is truly frightening, far more terrifying than Mono gaining a solid foothold in Linux distributions— because the news is simply an announcement that the Chrome OS project has been officially launched. There is no OS yet. What levels of hysteria are going to be reached when the actual code is released? Rioting? Suicides? Looting?
Carla is also the editor of Linux Planet where she has published this article from SJVN about Mono. We too are quoted.
Peter Brown, the Free Software Foundation’s executive director, though still isn’t impressed. Brown said, “It’s my understanding that Microsoft has not yet announced anything officially, but assuming it follows up on this blog post and covers ECMA 334 and 335 under the Community Promise, it will not protect free software from the threats we have been discussing That’s because Mono implements, and Tomboy depends upon, a number of libraries which are ‘standard’ in the sense that they’re under C#’s “System” namespace (indicating that they’re part of the standard library) and provided in Microsoft’s implementation, but somewhat pointedly excluded from the ECMA specifications.”
So, Brown continued, “If the question is, should GNU/Linux distributions include Mono? Then the community promise from Microsoft covering these two specifications clearly isn’t sufficient. That they won’t sue us for infringement of some of their Mono patents is useless if they reserve the right to sue us over other Mono patents. If Microsoft really wants to assure the free software community that it does not intend to attack applications based on Mono in the future, it should issue a patent license to everyone for all the patents that are necessarily infringed by the complete implementation of Mono, that allows users to use, share, and modify the software as they see fit.”
[...]
But, Roy Schestowitz, editor of Boycott Novell thinks that focusing on the patent issue alone is a mistake. Schestowitz said, “Patents were never the sole issue when it comes to Mono.” Microsoft doesn’t allow deviation from the .NET core. “This ensures that Microsoft stays in control. This leads to no independence, which Microsoft may describe as ‘fragmentation.’”
Over a year ago, Beranger explained to us why Mono is more than just a patent trap; it is an habitual problem and he has just given a good theoretical example which concurs with real examples that we know of.
I am already laughing sarcastically when I imagine the faces of those Linux developers who, after having told their boss that they know C# and Mono, will be assigned to an ASP.NET project… on a Microsoft platform that uses the genuine .NET! Because this is what will happen!
And when you think that, after the initial unknown motivation to start developing Mono, the whole thing took exposure after some moron wrote Tomboy!
Therefore, believe me or not, my twisted radar tells me that in the long run, Tomboy and F-Spot are going to boost the sales of Microsoft Dynamics, which is a .NET range of products. Good work, Steve, and good work, Miguel.
Charles opines that Mono does not even matter these days.
Anyway, who should care about this? Gnome developers mostly. The rest of us have gone out of the .Net and Java wars after around 2004 or 2005, and have realized that there other realities such as Qt and Python (to name just a few), and most of all, there is the Internet, and the POSH (Plain Old Simple Html), and that new little Linux distributions launched by Google… And so much more.
Mono and .Net is one of the last schemes from an outdated behemoth; both the scheme and its inventor will soon fade in blissful irrelevance. It does not mean it cannot sting back though….
On the other hand, a journalist whom Microsoft bought lunch about 2 weeks ago (and later hooked up with Laura DiDio) has just bent backwards to find some criteria by which Mono seems better than Java. He published this in SD Times and saw all the Mono proponents citing him immediately. Novell is on the same boat [1, 2, 3, 4].
In addition, one reader warned us about what he calls “Major [Java] FUD campaign against Oracle and Sun via Deborah Gage.”
He explains that “this follows the classic MSFT tactic of a positive headline covering absolutely disparaging content.”
Microsoft still hates Java. It wants to replace it with .NET by all means available. █
“Moonlight is usable for anyone on any distribution of Linux (redhat, ubuntu, etc.) — it is not limited just to Novell as Mono is.”
–Brian Goldfarb, Microsoft
[note: Moonlight depends on Mono, emphasis is ours]
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06.26.09
Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux, Java, Microsoft, OpenDocument, SUN at 2:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft talks about harming competition by embracing and extending
WHEN IT comes to Comes vs Microsoft, we have only just begun. So if you enjoy ‘smoking guns’ that were hardly/never seen before, be sure to subscribe.
This next exhibit, Exhibit plex_5803 (1996) [PDF], is an excellent sequel to the one where Microsoft describes “Embrace and Extend” and the Windows API franchise.
Herein we find Nathan Myhrvold, the world's largest patent troll at present, seemingly passing a long message from Bill Gates, although it is not perfectly clear whether the message came from him or from Gates. The message paints a rather vivid picture of the company’s fear and predatory responses to competition.
For instance, how about this gem at the start?
I am worry a lot about how great Java/Javabeans and all the runtime work they are doing is and how much excitement this is generating. I am literally losing sleep over this issue since together with a move to more server based applications it seems like it could make it easy for people to do competitive operating systems.
The next paragraph is curious too.
I am very interested to get your thoughts on this. Prior to the advanced work you are driving what kind of defenses do we have against this? I certainly havent’ come up with enough to relax about the situation and it is undermining my creativity.
Microsoft fears fair competition where platforms can interoperate:
I think that the risk of Sun really taking the OS franchise away from us is much lower than the risk that they cheapen the entire business. They are so hell bent to give things away, and there is so much cross platform ferver that it will be hard for them or others to harness this energy toward a single platform. In the limit, they can make the web totally OS agnostic but there will still be other things that motivate one platform versus another.
Gates (or Myhrvold) then proposes a malicious “embrace and extend” in order to extinguish Java. Think about MSODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
The obvious things to do are:
Provide our own means of dramatically improving web pages.
- Continue to “embrace and extend” both at the level of new Java tools (like J++), and our broader browser strategy.
- Create some radical new approaches to improving web pages, or building web applications. I think that it is a big mistake to put all of our eggs in the “embrace and extend” basket. This thinking will lead us down the path to renounce any really interesting edge we could have. Over reliance on “embrace and extend” can lead to what I sometimes call the relentless drive to come in second, which does not help much in a winner take all world.
Here is an embrace (like Microsoft ‘joining’ ODF):
2. Pioneer other means to participate in the new market. It is very rare that there is only one asset that matters. Hell, look at Netscape and Sun – each have an interesting asset, and this is still the EARLY stages of the net. There will be other technologies which matter and we should try to own one of them, even if it is in a totally different direction.
Another last mention of “embrace and extend” (all very explicitly):
We need Windows to be the most compelling platform for users to choose Ideally this means that we win in every category. You are worried that we will only tie in the Java category because Javabeans and other runtime work will make cross platform really work well. I say we should try to tie (or win) with embrace and extend in the Java world.
For naysayings who speak about the age of these exhibits, the important points to be made is that these are new to the public eye and they help educate about Microsoft’s practices, which have never changed since. █
“This anti-trust thing will blow over. We haven’t changed our business practices at all.”
–Bill Gates, 1995
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit plex_5803, as text
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06.25.09
Posted in Bill Gates, Java, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 2:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: To Bill Gates, “security” is means of advancing Windows and they “need to make this an explicit goal of [their] security strategy”
THE following exhibit, Exhibit px06105 (1997) [PDF], is a real ‘smoking gun’. People often complain about how TPM [1, 2], DRM and the likes of these technologies stifle interoperability and leave some platforms out in the cold.
This may be no accidental side-effect but an actual strategy that comes from the very top of a convicted monopolist. Today’s exhibit very clearly shows what subject Bill Gates has chosen to bring up. The phrase “Security as a lock in” is right there in the subject line:
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 1997 2:53 PM
To: Nathan Myhrvold
Cc: Paul Maritz
Subject: Security as a lock in
I believe as we evolve our security capabilities there must be some way to set this up so that our operating systems have shared secrets with each other that make them work better with each other than with other operating systems – whether it’s JAVAOS layered on top of us or clones or anything else.
I think we need to make this an explicit goal of our security strategy.
Remember Bill Gates' early writings on DRM. It may be the genesis (at least in part) of that whole mess. The memo above gets a nod from Nathan Myhrvold, currently the company's patent troll. Yasov Yacobi passes it to Paul Maritz, who passes it to Jim Allchin. There is no objection to this objectionable suggestion from Bill Gates. It is anti-competitive.
Take-home message: Bill Gates views “security” as a modality for “lock-in”. █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit px06105, as text
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Posted in FUD, Java, Microsoft, Mono, Open XML, OpenDocument, Oracle, Patents, SUN at 12:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Old lessons about Microsoft’s intentional sabotage through “embrace and extend”; use of the Windows API with software patents (like Mono’s problem)
T
ODAY’S INTERESTING exhibit arrives after a lot of work on the Wiki. We have hundreds more coming. We will summarise key observations drawn from Exhibit plex_5906 (1997) [PDF], which contains an E-mail from Aaron Contorer to Bill Gates. The full exhibit is available as plain text at the bottom, but here are the bits worth paying attention to, as well as corresponding background.
We start with the realisation — as Microsoft confesses to it — that Windows is at great risk.
Today we face the largest threat Microsoft has faced since the success of Windows For the first time, there is a really credible threat to our position as the leading platform for ISVs to write to.
Fear of Java comes into play:
There are three possible ways to address the threat of the Java platform. One is to do nothing and gradually die as others innovate around us. The second is to join the parade of people who are saying “let’s kill Microsoft and share their market among us” – good for everyone else, but reducing us to the much smaller role of a common software company like Lotus or Borland or even Symantec. Thats a great way to make all our stock options worth zero, even If we would not technically be out of business. The third choice is to make major innovations to our platform so people still prefer to write to us instead of some tepid cross-platform Java layer. This is our only real option.
We have already revealed the gory details about Microsoft’s attack on NetPC (sometimes referred to as “NC”). The Gartner Group helped Microsoft's attack, as always. Here is some more information from Microsoft:
Our competitors are not stupid, so they are pushing the Java platform as the solution for programs that really need to run closer to the user. Sure, its a half-assed solution and isn’t compatible with anything and in fact scarcely exists, but hey, at least it’s not Windows. With Oracle and HTML-generating code on the server and a browser with Java on the client, you have a very crude, complicated, but functional platform for developing line-of-business applications more specifically distributed applications which take advantage of all the interactivity and media-richness that purely centralized mainframe apps never had
Microsoft is then defining “Embrace and Extend”:
In economics there is a well-understood concept called switching costs – how much it costs for a trading partner to change partners. Our philosophy on switching costs is very clear: we want low switching costs for customers who want to start using our platform, and we want to provide so much unique value that there are in effect high costs of deciding to move to a different platform. There is a name for this: it is called Embrace and Extend.
Embrace means we are compatible with what’s out there, so you can switch to our platform without a lot of obstacles and rework. You can switch from someone else’s Java compiler to ours; from someone else’s Web server to ours; etc. Customers love when we do this (as long as we don’t spend our energy embracing extra standards no one really cares about); our competitors are not so sure they like It because they prefer us to screw up.
Extend means we provide tremendous value that nobody else does, so (A) you really want to switch to our software, and (B) once you try our software you would never want to go back to some inferior junk from our competitors. Customers usually like when we do this, since by definition it’s only an extension if it adds value. Competitors hate when we do this, because by adding new value we make our products much harder to clone – this is the difference between innovation and just being a commodity like corn where suppliers compete on price alone. Nobody builds or sustains a business as successful as Microsoft by producing trivial products that are easy to clone – that would be a strategy for failure.
If we fail to embrace, we can lose because there are big barriers to buying our products. But if we Fail to extend, or do only humble work that is easy to clone or to surpass, we automatically lose because our competitors will spend literally billions of dollars to clone our work and replace us.
With that in sight, think about MSODF and how Microsoft broke interoperability in other malicious ways [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
The “Windows API” is then described as “Embrace and Extend” against NC specifically:
Windows was a very successful embrace-and-extend move. People already had DOS machines and DOS apps, and we were able to go in and say “add this to your machine and it wLll just get better.” Wow! What a deal! It seems to have worked out all right so far. NT is a very similar move; although It’s not trivial to upgrade from Win95 to NT. in general you can use the same computer, same apps. and same APIs as before, plus more.
The really big win in Windows is the API. An app that calls the Windows API is effectively calling upon thousands of person-years of engineering work to help their app get its job done in a very specific way. You could argue !hat the API is too hard to use, that not every library is as fast as it should be, or other serious imperfections, but the fact remains: if you took away Windows, that apphcation would no longer work.
The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cast to using a different operating system Instead. You can’t just take a Windows app and stick it on some weird Java NC from Oracle, for example, and expect it to work – the guts just are not there. For many customers, the cast of reworking all their apps would be huge.
Watch this:
In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.
Think about the role of Mono and why it helps Microsoft. Remember that this whole memo is about fighting Sun’s NC and Java, which is cross-platform. Oracle, which now owns/buys Sun, was part of this programme at the time.
Watch how Microsoft intends to use software patents to shield its territory (it is just as though Mono is history repeating itself):
We are doing all of this. We are fixing TCO and further improving our dev tools. We are providing new value such as Viper and great multimedia and unified storage. We are making sure that Windows, not some new platform, is the most attractive place to run apps written in this now programming language. We are building the best virtual machine in the world, and optimizing it to run on Windows. We are even making sure you can run your Windows apps remotely on an NT server if all you have on your desk is a GUI terminal. As if all this work were not already hard to copy, we are also getting a bunch of patents to further protect It against cloning.
On the role of ActiveX and DirectX in merely preventing platforms from becoming a commodity, to use Bill Gates' explanation:
Let me be dear we have no problem with the Java language or with running Java apps really really well on our platform. But we are explicitly not in the business of making it easy for people to write apps that get all the features of Windows on a non-Windows platform. “Pure cross-platform portability” is another way of saying “commoditize the OS.” In this vision, every OS is just an engine for running this layer called Java as fast as possible, and adding any value below the Java layer Is explicitly against the rules.
Sun has already figured this out and has launched its 100% pure Java” marketing program, which literally certifies apps as running the same on any client OS. Programs that call a Windows API or use ActiveX or DirectX, or any platform-specific feature, are by definition not 100% Pure Java, and are therefore evil. Hey, If you were Sun, you would say this too!
As usual, there is a lot to be learned from this. Although it is over a decade old, this was not seen before in the public arena, just in courts for the most part. Microsoft settled to keep it away from the public eye. █
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
– George Santayana
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit plex_5906, as text
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06.15.09
Posted in Java, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu at 2:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“The patent danger to Mono comes from patents we know Microsoft has, on libraries which are outside the C# spec and thus not covered by any promise not to sue. In effect, Microsoft has designed in boobytraps for us.
“Indeed, every large program implements lots of ideas that are patented. Indeed, there’s no way to avoid this danger. But that’s no reason to put our head inside Microsoft’s jaws.”
–Richard Stallman
Summary: The Mono discussion awakens, Mono-hostile assessments outweigh the rest
THE matter broke loose a couple of days after Fedora had said that it was concerned about Mono. More and more bloggers are starting to write about the subject. Béranger, for example, argues that he is fed up with Mono. He writes:
Of course I’m fed with Mono. I am so annoyed by the public passion for this technology that I won’t bother anymore to blog against it. A tiny mention though, in this short post.
First of all, I was exceedingly pissed off by a long pro-Mono plea by Jo Shields, which I have read as posted by Carla Schroder. I can’t comment on it, as I don’t want to read it again. It hurts my guts.
The only thing I can say: we don’t need Mono, the same way we don’t need Java. It’s not just about Microsoft. It’s about stupid people who try to force some technologies there where they’re not needed.
Other sources of opposition suggest that defense of Mono proponents is very weak and a detailed breakdown is offered to explain why Mono critics are right.
Also, sharing pearls for wisdom such as “Double click is patented”, “They’re just doing FUD” does not really help people think you’re serious. DOSsing BoycottNovell also doesn’t help (nor to claim they did it to themselves), nor helps claiming that Fedora included Gnote just for space saving (weird how what make Fedora lose space apparently makes Ubuntu save it, uh ?): I’ve got a nice news for you:
“We do have some serious concerns about Mono and we’ll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part,” Frields said.
“We haven’t come to a legal conclusion that is pat enough for us to make the decision to take mono out,” Frields said. “Right now we’re in a status quo. Gnote is a relatively recent development and unfortunately was too late in the Fedora 11 development cycle to include by default.”
That conclusion was probably drew after some consulting with RedHat’s “oh-so-sophisticated anti-Mono lawyers”.
It’s not that Mono is that bad. Let’s move it to Medibuntu and everyone is fine.
Whether Ubuntu likes it or not, Mononono is now on Launchpad. It is an entry which someone describes as what “seems like a collection of legal issues related to Mono & Moonlight, each well documented.”
For practical reasons too, Mono is not suitable for users (developers aside). Tony Manco has obtained proof that Gnote, for example, can take up less than one megabyte of RAM. See the screenshot below. Compare that to Tomboy, which is a lot heavier.
Other than Microsoft and Novell, who does Mono actually serve? And if OOP is a must, why not Java? █
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06.12.09
Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Java, KDE, Kernel, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, SUN, Videos at 7:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Update (21/09/09): Huey adds that his criticism of Mono is purely technical and that he never met de Icaza.
Summary: Better to use closed-source Java than to be a prisoner of Redmond; ongoing dialogues about Mono
WHILE LOOKING for some daily videos we found the following gem.
Huey calls Miguel “misguided” (maybe guided by Microsoft), having personally met him already [see update at the top]. He also adds that Java is a lot better than .NET and Mono. That was in 2004, a couple of years before Java was on route to becoming Free software (GPLv2).
Check out this new massive thread which mostly voices opposition to Mono (amongst Linux Today’s readership). In one comment, however, Richard Dale states:
Well Arno Rehn and myself have been quietly working on Qt/KDE Qyoto and Kimono C# bindings for some time and they work pretty well, although I don’t think we done enough to publicize them yet. If someone comes along and writes apps in C# which happen to be as good as Tomboy and F-Spot, and they get included in distributions like Kubuntu, then maybe you’ll have to move somewhere other than KDE.
As far as I know in Gnome there are only applications written using Mono/GTK#. That is very different to writing parts of the infrastructure of Gnome using Mono. It isn’t up to me to decide about what Gnome does, but as far as KDE is concerned there is absolutely zero chance of us basing any infrastructure on Mono. We’re only interested in allowing people to write Qt and KDE applications, plugins and Plasma applets in what some people might think is a tidier language than C++.
Dale is one among those who put Mono bindings in KDE [1, 2, 3, 4]. Arno Rehn is the other [1, 2].
Carla Schroder, the managing editor of Linux Today, has invited more feedback regarding Mono and she personally adds:
The issue is not whether Mono should be available at all, but included in the default Ubuntu image. The pro-Mono comments here are completely ignoring that and instead launching into rah-rah reasons why nobody should object to Mono. (Lotsa luck.) Removing it from the default Ubuntu image and keeping it easily available in the repos is a sensible and simple solution. Thousands of packages do not make it into the default Ubuntu image; it’s not a badge of shame, and I don’t see the sense in including the fat Mono runtime in the scarce real estate of a CD image just to support a few small specialty apps.
One of our readers will explore this issue in more details as well.
I’m planning to do another (different) attempt to get the conversation right in the next weeks, either.
There are patterns of FUD that are used to actually defend Mono. How about this one for a familiar pattern?
DotGNU? They suffer from the same problem. DotGNU only gets mentioned by Mono people, apart from when they’re FUDing them, when they want to deflect some attention away from Mono.
Bernard Swiss argues:
There seems to be some real major, FUD-laced campaigns under way, lately, pushing Mono and denigrating ODF. To to be fair, many participants appear to be absolutely genuine, but there also seems to be some significant upper-tier instigation/coordination “fanning the flames”, so to speak.
Luckily, Mononono is making its entry into Ubuntu. █
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