The-Source.com

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 earlier, Mr. de Icaza has abandonded even the pretense of promoting an Open Source development platform and seems perfectly content to promote Microsoft Silverlight as the new desktop “revolution”.

Like the proverbial frog, the temperature has been steadily rising as Mr. de Icaza embraced and praised ever more Microsoft technology, events and business practices. Now the water is beginning to boil as so many observers have predicted, and Mr. de Icaza simply ”drools” over a Closed Source, Proprietary Microsoft platform.

Silverlight is not Free Software. Silverlight is not Open Source. Silverlight is not standardized. It is a pure, old-fashioned closed and proprietary Microsoft platform. There is no way it can be responsibly recommended as the cross-platform development platform of choice, yet Mr. de Icaza is sure it will be:

[In response to the question, "Are you saying that Silverlight could be the primary UI Toolkit to develop x-platform apps with? that is are you expecting it to be replacement toolkit for all GTK# applications in the future? or just cross-platform ones??"]

In the long term, it will.

[...]
Although it would be best if Microsoft added things directly to silverlight that we all need, there are ways to support this without their help.

Please read the entire thread and especially this response in context. You will see that beyond the absurdity of recommending a closed and proprietary platform, the idea that we need Microsoft to provide us with “help” to have a full-feature cross-platform toolkit is near-insanity.

But here’s a funny thing: One commentator takes Mr. de Icaza to task for “yet another post” heavy on Microsoft and light on Linux, which of course Mr. de Icaza sees as prime opportunity to play the Hate Card:

I understand that as a commissar you feel that your job is to make sure that every post uses the words “Gnome” and “Linux” somewhere in the post. You could have read my post and noticed that I spoke explicitly about MonoTorrent, a Gnome/Gtk# based application.

Yves, I worry about you. In fact, I worry about all of you Linux users that do not use Linux because of what it offers, but because you hate Microsoft.

Yves, it is only software, it is not worth hating over it.

Let’s not dwell on the foolish and transparent attempt to deflect valid criticism as hate, but instead let’s look closer at his specific defense. Mr. de Icaza says he brought up  about MonoTorrent, a GTK#-based application, but he also says he wants Silverlight to replace GTK#, and that he simply wants to re-implement MonoTorrent in Silverlight.

That’s a major problem with Mr. de Icaza. He doesn’t just want to build on top of what exists, he wants to replace what exists; replace with closed-source, proprietary, non-standard technology!