Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell's Moonlight: Crippled and Defective by Design™

...Unless you're a paying customer of Novell (and Microsoft)

Our recent writings about Mono ought to have convincingly shown (well, hopefully they have) why it's a risk we mustn't accept. We dealt with Mono, Moonlight and GNOME separately over the past 3 days. Descending to a level that involves more pertinent details might be helpful but not a necessity.



As we stressed about a year ago, Microsoft's .NET on the Net is intended to turn GNU/Linux into second-class citizens even on the World Wide Web. It can easily make all users of all platforms technically dependent on Microsoft (documentation, distribution, licences, legal threats, etc.) and again... all just as we warned approximately a year ago, so there's no late realisation. Novell could and should have seen this too (Miguel de Icaza already has). It just probably didn't mind because it serves its investors well. Never mind if it harms its suppliers (programmers)...

“Adopting Moonlight and Mono is accepting dominance of the Microsoft API. ”Adopting Moonlight and Mono is accepting dominance of the Microsoft API. That's a helluva lot of power to give Microsoft over its #1 rival, which it is unable to compete against using conventional subversive tactics. It has tried many things to no avail (see the Halloween Documents).

The following short piece from Linux.com contains some interesting and lesser-known bits of information. It shows you just what type of treatment you'll most likely receive for being independent from Novell (and from Microsoft, by association).

The binary version of Moonlight does not have audio and video support built-in. If you want the audio and video features you have to build Moonlight from source using the instructions on the Mono wiki.


Let us say that you, an experienced 1337 hack3r, managed to properly compile the shebang and have it work the way you like it. Does that make you 'covered'? No? Can you recall what Groklaw shared the other day, regarding the legal conditions that come with use of Moonlight?

Not afraid yet? "Microsoft will never sue," you say? What about its patent trolls, such as its buddy from Intellectual Ventures? Watch the pompous man as he speaks at All Things D.

Calacanis had an interesting question: Is IV making an unethical land grab for patents? His answer was that he didn't know how to answer that question, except that people might complain if he has a lot of success, but no one was going to give him back his money. (Fair enough—B.L.)

Guy from Intel asks if an unintended consequence of IV's patent action and speculation is that big companies would keep extending patents to protect them. Nathan says it's BS. Most companies are doing R&D with a little R and a BIG D. They need to put more into the research. If people know they can spin out inventions, like they do divisions, they'll be more likely to do more research.

"If you're not doing something that is somewhat threatening to the apple cart, you're not doing something interesting."


In other coverages of this session, Nathan Myhrvold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] made it more clear that he prefers to 'license' (nice word for "extortion") rather than sue. Remember that similar rules apply to OOXML. ⬆

Recent Techrights' Posts

NVIDIA's Crisis Has Only Just began
NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) is set to open in the red tomorrow
IBM Has Destroyed Red Hat and Hashicorp, Insiders Say It's the Usual From IBM:
Bluewashing is a death wave
Techrights Was Right About Slop Destroying Development Communities and Projects
Slop does not improve your project. It kills the community. Without community, what is left? A 'botfarm'?
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXXI - Harassment Law and "Things Are Unfairly Asymmetric" (Exploring the Boundaries of Death Threats and Various Threats From America)
the sort of "technofascism" that our country must learn to confront rather than facilitate
 
When Short is Way Too Short (Superficiality, Lowering of Entropy)
Demonstrating how truly worthless social control media was all along
Techrights Hates Slop Bots
They benefit nobody
The Economy is Fine! (If Only for China!)
The future is slop! If not, then it's China's fault! It's "sabotaging" the "Western hey hi" in this "hey hi arms race!"
"IT" as "Musical Chairs" (on the Deck of The Titanic)
Each generation will get worse for "IT"
Salesforce in Trouble, Debt Nearly Quadrupled in 9 Months
Salesforce is perishing in a deep pool of debt
"Microsoft is Next IBM"
The words of a Microsoft insider and responses to that
IRC is Decentralised
Bye, Microsoft Teams/Skype
Links 15/11/2026: Murdoch's "WSJ Buries Stephen Miller's Racism" and "America Has Entered a New Age of Propaganda"
Links for the day
In the UK, GNU/Linux Usage Soared During Microsoft Downtime
since the massive outage GNU/Linux usage soared to over 10%
Google Slop About Richard Stallman Shows Stallman Was Right, LLMs are BS Generators
Google slop is the "new Google"
Spouse of Garrett Needs to Get "Several Firearms" to Feel Safe Amid Divorce (Garrett Has a "Girlfriend" Now)
Seems like Isis and my wife have a lot in common when it comes to Garrett
Vista 11 is Small
Can Microsoft survive the fall of Windows?
Six Richard Stallman and FSF Talks This Month (FSF Staff at Ohio State University)
Dr. Stallman's talks in Ecuador are well timed because of the collapse of the LLMs (slop) pyramid scheme
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, November 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/11/2026: "The Bastards Can Never Win" and "The Last Low-Tech Generation"
Links for the day
Links 14/11/2026: Wuhan Corruption and "Aid Isn’t Reaching Ebola’s Epicenter"
Links for the day
Rahul Kumar Has Turned tecadmin.net Into a Slopfarm That Promotes Slop and Microsoft (as Usual)
Slop promoting slop - a death knell of once-active "Linux" sites
Large-Scale Layoffs - Not Just PIPs - at Red Hat and IBM This Month
Mainstream media has quit covering mass layoffs
Links 14/11/2026: "The Claude Delusion" and "The Microsoft Outage is a Warning for the World"
Links for the day
Ethics in Perspective, Free Software and Morality
top clients of Jeffrey Epstein are one happy family
Richard Stallman (RMS) at Universidad Central del Ecuador (Guayaquil), Cuenca, Campus Sur Universidad Politecnica Salesiana (Quito), and Ohio State University
Long live the message and mission of RMS
They Paid Workers in 'Shares' (That Lost Almost Half Their Value in One Month)
Welcome back 1999 or 2007
The Register MS Made Millions of Pounds by Participating in the Slop Hype Campaign (It's Still Doing It), Now It Admits That It's Just a Bubble
the slop frenzy played a role in the Microsoft meltdown
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXX - Pyramid Schemes (Planned Plunder) and Canceled/Botched Surgeries Aren't "Funny", They Cause Serious Harm and Distress
We were right about Microsoft
Links 14/11/2026: "OpenAI Is Sustaining Enormous Losses" and Slop "Loses the Popular Vote"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, November 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, November 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/11/2026: Code of Conduct, Back to Gemini, and Gemlog to Inbox
Links for the day
Slop Promotion, Including Paid-for Slop Promotion for So-called 'Linux' Foundation (Its Clients Are Slop Companies)
We've noticed a lot of this lately in "It's FOSS" and to a lesser degree in "FOSS Force"
Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Productivity Metrics and Antenna Outage
Links for the day
The Real Issue With The Register MS is Not the Politics of Some Staff's "Tweets", It's That The Register MS Publishes Fake Articles for Sponsors (50,000 Pounds Minimum)
AWS and Google each pay millions for fake articles which beget journalistic bias too (they literally pay the salaries of the 'reporters')
Microsoft Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): We Need Accountability Because Many People Die and It's Because of Microsoft Diehards or People Bribed by Microsoft to Deploy Microsoft Where Lives Are at Risk
They're trying to save face right now
What the Media Misses: It's Not an NVIDIA Issue, Super Micro Computer Inc Also Fell From $45 to $26 in the Period NVIDIA Lost 33% of Its Faked 'Value', NVIDIA is Collapsing Like Intel
History goes in circles
It's Not About China or Sex, It's About Corruption at NVIDIA and a Pyramid Scheme Perpetrated Under the Guise of "Hey Hi Revolution" (That Wasn't, It's Manufactured and Hyped by Bribes, Subsidised by Multi-Trillion-Dollar Loans, People's Pension Funds and More)
What's at stake here is a lot bigger than the "Ponzi hub" of Jensen Huang
No, You're Not a "Most Valuable Company" When Everything is Down for Half a Day in the Entire Planet
Still down, still no explanation (maybe they too aren't sure)
Waste of Money: Giving More Money to Toothless Regulators That Don't Even Examine Evidence
Shame in SRA
"Techrights Statement on Phoronix" Still Valid Five Years Later
Our position as stated in early 2022 has not changed
Vista 11's 'Growth' Has Stalled, It's Measured at Only 17.9% in the US This Year
That helps put in perspective Microsoft's attempt to discard almost 30% of its remaining workforce
"NVIDIA is Enron" (Subsidising the Pyramid Scheme That It Profited From), Microsoft is Next to be Down for the Count
Microsoft increasingly looks like the "next NVIDIA"
Richard Stallman Travels to South America to Give Talks About Free Software in Spanish, FSF Raises Money
The FSF is raising money (goal is $400,000) and the FSF has just mentioned the upcoming talks by the FSF's founder
United States Adding ~300 Billion in Government Debt Per Month, Wall Street Shaves Off Trillions in 'Value' in Less Than One Week
cushioning "assets" by helping them fake "value"
Microsoft: Pay Us for the Stuff That's Offline and We Cannot Fix
Learn to take control of the technology that you rely on
Links 13/11/2026: "Copyright-Strike-for-Hire" and "Stevie Wonder Photo Lawsuit"
Links for the day
The Slop Bubble (or Pyramid Scheme) Relied on Trust and Patience (Being Patient as Losses Grow and Debt Explodes, Trusting the Roadmap of Cheaters and Frauds)
Remember that it all began with trust
Anthropic's IPO Depends on $895.4 Billion in Debt (Money It Doesn't Have, It Loses Over 100 Billion Dollars Per Reporting Period), NVIDIA Has Just Lost Almost 2 Trillion Dollars In Value and Its Debt Trebled in Three Months
This coming week will be very, very entertaining for slop critics/sceptics to watch
At Microsoft, "Buyouts" or "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" (GVSA) Not Much Different From Layoffs (Severance Shockingly Low)
From what we are able to gather, many people are leaving Microsoft 'voluntarily'
Is Microsoft the Next Fake-Valued Corporation to Lose 35% in "Market Value"? Is Slop Bringing Microsoft Down?
Will NDAs prevent people talking or journalists finding out the true cause?
Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) the Latest of Many to Quit Linux Development Over Linus Torvalds' Obsession With Slop (Linus Wants to Work With Bots, Not Humans Who Understand Whatever Code They Write)
Linus caught the 'brain virus'
Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Continue in November 2026
IBM's CEO is "a Palliative Care Doctor Who Slides [IBM] Gently Into the Night"
Microsoft Asks 60,000 Workers to Leave, Some Leave, Services Go Down
Microsoft laid off about 40,000-50,000 people in past years
Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Roku Exits the Smart Home Market and Poor Reporting/Journalism Regarding Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 13/11/2026: "Apple Support Community Forums to Permanently Close" and "The Slop Market is Getting Nervous"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 12, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, November 12, 2026