Here's the latest from Roy Schestowitz of BoycottNovell.com:
Novell’s de Icaza: The Man Who Gives GNU/Linux to Microsoft
I've been following this story for a while now. I'm not the first to compare Novell to SCO. It seems fair to compare them without being hyperbolic.
In a nutshell, Novell is the new SCO and Miguel de Icaza is the new Darl McBride.
Microsoft has invested in the parent company which steers another venerable GNU/Linux distro. A new spokesman is willing to be very unpopular with other FOSS developers he will become wealthy as a result.
What makes this time different is that the focus has shifted from copyright law to patent law.
This premeditated attack by Microsoft and the betrayal of the free software community are the same.
Another venerable GNU/Linux distribution has become a torpedo launched against the whole community.
Microsoft's method of engaging the FOSS community can be described as the "embrace and taint strategy". Imagine a dirty fat man who wants to sit on your face. We must resist.
Balzac
16 years 8 weeks 3 days 21 hours ago
I meant to explicitly bring up one question but I forgot...
It's already implicit in what I wrote, but I want to bring up this question explicitly in this comment:
Is SUSE going the way of Caldera as a GNU/Linux distro? Will this venerable distro become so unpopular as a result of being used as a vehicle for Microsoft's strategy that the SUSE community falls apart?
lozz
16 years 8 weeks 3 days 16 hours ago
Already gone
SUSE isn't just *going* the way of Caldera - it's already gone. It has no further place in the Free Software Community.
Balzac
16 years 8 weeks 3 days 14 hours ago
It's a shame because the SUSE chameleon logo is very cute.
It's like the Geico Gecko. People really like that lizard. Too bad though, because Microsoft has caused the SUSE chameleon to develop an outbreak of mono.
spartan2276
16 years 8 weeks 3 days 1 hour ago
One has to wonder
If this distro is going the way of caldera, why are so many people still using it, I don't think it will go away because this time they have the GUY who help create GNOME Desktop and he has a lot of followers. Not just that but they are working on making Gnome .NET dependent, now I don't know about you guys but I see myself using KDE if this happens and by the looks of it is coming pretty soon starting with GNOME 3.0 at least that is what Miguel wants.
Spartan2276
Finish The Fight Against MS!
Balzac
16 years 8 weeks 3 days 52 min ago
I really hope the Gnome project will curtail Miguel's influence.
He's been taking Gnome in a bad direction.
If Miguel gets what he wants with Gnome, I'll have to switch to KDE or Xfce.
I just want the most essential functionality and a commitment to keep the weasels out.
I don't want it commercialized to the degree that user freedom is compromised by patent trolling, closed formats and codecs.
lozz
16 years 8 weeks 2 days 16 hours ago
Good question sparten2276
What should have happened, when Hovesepian first started snuggling under the sheets with Ballmer, was that every single member of the Free Software Community should have immediately walked out on Novell and never returned.
Sadly, some didn't; they stuck around and tried to make excuses for Hovesepian's traitorous conduct, playing straight into Ballmer's hands. Of these, Miguel is by far the most dangerous. He had a solid reputation with the Free Software Community through his work on Gnome.
Now, we have the unedifying spectacle of Miguel vainly inspecting the auguries, seeking some sign that Microsoft is becoming "more open source", that M$ has now changed its spots.
This will never happen and Miguel has become a false prophet who is as big a danger to the Free Software Community as Steve Ballmer and Ron Hovesepian.
There can never be any peace between M$ and us! Never!
Their aims are diametrically opposed to ours.
They wish to *take* from the entire community and become obscenely wealthy by locking out the poorest elements of world society.
We wish to *give* to the entire community and to include the poorest elements of world society so that they might have equal opportunities with everyone.
The "creation" of obscene profits was never part of our agenda and this makes us an anathema to the Ballmers, the Gates, and the Hovesepians of this world.
Sadly, Miguel is now throwing his hat in with them, not with us.
We must walk away from Miguel and his Mono/Moonlight infected Gnome as surely as we all should have walked away from Hovesepian's M$-infected Novell.
Anything less will spell disaster for us and victory for Steve Ballmer.
TtfnJohn
16 years 8 weeks 2 days 9 hours ago
Takes a deep breath and then writes
The entire situation surrounding Mono and GNOME, not to mention Moonlight does seem to be an arrow aimed at the heart of FOSS.
I do need to ask where they people are who are saying they'll ditch GNOME for KDE or XFCE are going to do it.
Take a peek at how much of GNOME is infested with Mono already, fer goodness sake!
Oh, and don't forget GNOME's active involvement in aiding and abetting OOXML at ISO. A standard so bad that not even Microsoft can figure out how to make things work so they'll just use ODF for now, thank you very much.
OK, so KDE 4.0.x as a daily desktop was a disaster. Of course it was never meant to be a daily desktop but I'm so sick of that argument I won't go into it further other than to point it out.
One thing that KDE 4.1.x does prove is that you don't need freaking Mono to build a fast and reliable GUI that allows you to do things in different ways if you want.
Not to mention without the runtime weight of .NET and Mono. So it flies on even a relatively underpowered machine.
And should the GTK toolkit actually get updated, which it's seriously in need of, without undue influence from GNOME or Miguel XFCE will improve drastically in looks and to some degree usability. (I don't believe that will happen, mind you.)
The sad truth is that many free software people did stay on board at Novell when the deal got signed and are still there. So did a significant number of others in the broader open source side of the house.
Nor does wishful thinking mean that SUSE isn't a widely used distro in all kinds of different environments and likely isn't going anywhere.
Railing and screaming about it isn't going to change that.
First off, don't threaten to ditch GNOME, do it!
Second off get on Mark Shuttleworth's rear end about using GNOME as default on Ubuntu and stay on it.
Until you're prepared to do some of that you're preaching to the choir and the choir already knows the lyrics and music by heart.
And remember that while paranoia is a good thing to have when dealing with Microsoft it's not going to convince too many people to switch or to flat out tell RH, Fedora, Mandriva and most importantly SUSE and Ubuntu to stop shipping GNOME till Mono is ripped out of it and Novell stops funding it. Not because it's all you say it is (it is) but because it's straight out bad technology.
So when talking to those who aren't in the choir it's not the paranoia that will convince people it's the fact that it's bad technology, poorly built and executed whether it's called .NET or Mono.
No matter what else you may think of KDE 4.1 they just proved you don't need it at all.
ttfn
John