Microsoft/Novell Partnership

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: CLIFFORD ILKAY <clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>

| On Thursday 02 November 2006 22:20, ted leslie wrote:

| > I see Mono (and this SUSE deal), and the trojan horse we are
| > pushing into the Microsoft fortess, and in time we are going to
| > jump out and do some serious head kicking :)
| 
| It remains to be seen who has pushed a trojan horse into whose 
| fortress. I'll bet the folks at MS believe they have pushed one into 
| the Linux camp. Given Microsoft's successful track record at gaining 
| the upper hand against "partners" (and Novell's lack of same), it 
| would be foolish to bet against Microsoft.

I cannot make sense of the deal.  Perhaps because all I know is from
this mailing list and a couple of articles.

Nothing MS does is good for Linux except accidentally.  They are
intentionally fighting Linux (who could blame them).

Here's the clearest threat that I can see.

Mono has been very controversial in the FLOSS world.  The Ximians
(since bought by SuSE) honestly thought they could ride that tiger.  I
(and RedHat) have been very scared that the tiger would eat us.

It could be that SuSE's license lets it dig us deeper into the Mono
trap before it is sprung:

- SuSE, for a few years, is safe.  But then what?

- the rest of us may well be lulled into following them.  Tomboy etc.
  are trojans that have gotten mono into Fedora.

- MS can change its terms any time it wants to (except for SuSE which
  has a guaranteed few years of safety).

Don't think that terms don't change.  Here are some examples that come
to mind:

- Fraunhoffer Gessellshaft owns MP3 patents.  They said that no fees
  were required for decoders.  Then in 2002 they decided that the fee
  would be US$0.75 per decoder.  After the format was widely adopted.

- MS convinced some of us that Windows NT would be a decent UNIX
  (POSIX) platform in the early days (before there were any free
  UNIXes).  They had a POSIX "personality" that looked like it might
  be good.  Good enough to win US government procurements.

  Then it turned out that the POSIX was neutered.  It could not share
  anything with the rest of the system.  Eventually, (NT4.0, I think)
  they dropped it.  Anyone who bought into their original promise was
  effectively shepherded away from UNIX and into NT.

- MS distributed free fonts to encourage web designers to use them.
  After all they were universally free.  They have since been
  withdrawn.  They continue to get passed on user to user, but that is
  a messy process and I'm not sure of the legality

- the design of HDCP is such that DRMed stuff can be restricted from
  use on a system without end-to-end approval by the rights holder.
  Apparently they restriction will be waived for a few years until
  enough consumers have transitioned to hardware/software that will
  accomplish that.  If it were implemented immediately, the consumers
  might wake up and rebel.  In particular, Vista make this
  restriction possible but the movie publishers have agreed to a
  delay (probably until DVDs are replaced by HD equivalents).

My current belief is that we should strongly resist Mono.

Java seems to be a bit safer.  Sun is loosening up a bit on Java.
Perhaps some of the credit needs to be given to C# et al since it has
put competitive pressure on Sun.  Besides, Sun does not have
interlocking monopolies.  And Java's problems are visible -- it is not
a trojan.
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