Archive for November, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Holidays! People like to reflect over the holidays, so I want to offer up some portions of some internal “Highly Confidental” Microsoft documents that I’m thankful for the US legal system for getting into the public record. I would like readers to keep one over-reaching points in mind when considering this material: It’s not [...]
The Future of Moonlight, II
It seems like just yesterday that Miguel de Icaza took such umbrage at being called a Microsoft apologist. Strange then, that he has now taken up the robes of a Microsoft evangelist, suggesting that it is at-long-last finally time to “start a movement to create a suite of Silverlight-based desktop applications” As I pointed out [...]
The Success of “Open Source”
Posted by Jason in Free Software on November 23, 2009
“Open” or “Free” You might not know it based on some current community commentary, but at its origin the term “Open Source” was intended to be a straight drop-in replacement for “Free Software”. There was no philosophical or conceptual difference; instead there was a linguistic concern (“free” has multiple meanings) and a marketing concern (“free” makes [...]
Convenient Fictions
Posted by Jason in Free Software, Microsoft, Propriatery Technology on November 18, 2009
It’s a convenient fiction that a vocal minority within the open-source community believes Microsoft is the source of all evil in the technology world. For “such people“, it is far easier to denounce an imaginary one-dimensional straw man directing irrational “hate” towards a single entity than a principled stand against anti-freedom activities, no matter the source. [...]
The Future of Moonlight
Miguel de Icaza has spoken on The Future of Moonlight, and it is revealing. We could use Silverlight to build the next wave of cross-platform desktop applications. Really? We can use closed-source Silverlight to build cross-platform desktop applications? I’ve often said that a significant side effect of all the Team Mono propaganda is promoting Microsoft, [...]
Microsoft embraces the GPL
Posted by Jason in Free Software, Microsoft on November 13, 2009
No, that’s not quite right. What it’s all about is the most recent example of Microsoft apparently violating the GPL; this time found out by a “Within Windows” blogger. This news is well covered in many blogs, but Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols comes the closest to touching on the point I find the most interesting. First, let’s [...]
Firefox on Freedom
Posted by Jason in Free Software on November 10, 2009
Tristan Nitot, President of Mozilla Europe, makes some interesting points in a recent story in SkyNews: They take for granted that the freedom they enjoy is forever. I don’t think it is like that. The internet is full of promise but the future is not bright unless we make sure it is. This rings true [...]
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