Checking them logs

For a long time, I would get a bit of traffic now and again from the Wikipedia page on Moonlight, as someone had placed my exceedingly brilliant analysis of 10 Problems with the New Moonlight Covenant.

Today I was looking through the logs and it struck me I haven’t seen any Wikipedia traffic of late, so on a lark I went to the site and saw someone had (anonymously of course), removed the link to my site, with the following “explanation”:

The Source and BoycottNovell are not trustworthy “news” sites and are known to be anti-Mono/anti-Novell propagandists.)

Note that same users edit history; every edit (excluding a handful back in 2008) is a .NET/Mono-related topic and in every case that I bothered to look at are all non-factual and (in wiki-speak) non-NPOV edits.

Especially devious is how this individual edits articles to downplay patent concerns for Mono, while emphasizing the issue of patents for Portable.NET.

Gotta let people know where they can get that “IP peace of mind” I guess.

umad?

This is just more of the same from Team Apologista. I’ve said multiple times that the number one thing that soured me personally on Mono was the dishonesty of its promoters – the more I learned about Mono and Moonlight the more offensive I found their arguments and actions.

It’s one thing to betray the community and work up an end-run around the GPL. It’s one thing to turn on Free Software and carry Microsoft’s water. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to be devious and deceitful about it. (Although I’d argue you need the qualities in the last bit to do the actions in the first two bits.)

Lying, personally attacking  and attempting to simply silence critics are both so rampant among Mono Apologists – and so rarely condemned or even corrected – it’s easy to think such behavior is not only approved but encouraged.

An interesting note

As an aside, this is another nice example of the favorite standby of Team Apologista: the ad hominem. Some people absolutely adore trying to discredit the message by attacking the messenger. It’s a tactic with a long and proud history, so I guess they are just going with what they feel has the best chance of success.

Because I guarantee you that addressing the argument is scary as hell to them.

Awhile back I saw this sort of thing play out much more candidly than usual on Reddit: read if you want to see someone lead off the attack ad hominem, when corrected (by directhex!) shrug it off by asserting “they are all the same as far as I am concerned”, and then finally admitting that the exact same information from someone else would be acceptable.

It doesn’t work like that people. Facts are facts, regardless of where they come from. And if you reject facts simply because you don’t like who is delivering them that is a personal failing on your part.

For the record

I’ve never edited any Wikipedia article related to Mono or Moonlight. I didn’t reference my site from the article, have no idea who did, don’t care to know who did, and don’t care if the reference is restored or not.

Here is my favorite bit from RMS:

RMS: You shouldn’t write software to use .NET. No exceptions.

The basic point is that Microsoft has patents over features in .NET, and its patent promise regarding free software implementations of those is inadequate. It may someday attack the free implementations of these features.

This is no reason not to write and distribute free implementations such as Mono and DotGNU. But we have to keep in mind that using and distributing these programs might become dangerous in certain countries. Therefore, we should minimize our dependence on them – we should not write programs that use those features.

Mono implements them, so if you develop software on Mono, you are liable to use those features without thinking about the issue. It is probably the same with DotGNU, except that I don’t know whether DotGNU has these features yet.

The way to avoid this danger is not to write programs in C#. If you already have a program in C#, by all means use a free platform to run it. But don’t increase your exposure to the danger – don’t write additional code in C#, and don’t encourage people to make more use of C# programs. We need to guide our community away from dependence on an interface we know Microsoft is in a position to attack.

This perfectly illustrates the difference in approach from Team Apologista.

Consider:

Promises Promises

Team Apologista refuses to honestly acknowledge that the patent promise covering .NET is insufficient. In fact, a favorite tactic of Mono Apologists is to mention some other technology (usually AJAX or FTP) and then pretend the Mono situation is similar to AJAX, and so if one is opposed to the former, they must also oppose the latter, or are ignorant/hypocritical/whatever.

The truth of the matter is that .NET is NOT under the same “promise” that these other technologies are, so this ruse is dishonest inaccurate. Shockingly, Mono apologists continue to use this faulty “defense”.

Additionally, much of .NET (and corresponding portions of Mono) are NOT covered by any promise whatsoever – and despite Team Apologista’s occasional concession on this point (often with vague promises to “split” Mono into “covered”/non-”covered” portions), I feel it is not unfair to say Team Apologista downplays this distinction.

Furthermore, the covenant covering Moonlight is even more troublesome than that covering the ECMA-approved bits of .NET, yet I do not see a clear difference in promotion or eduction on these issues from Team Apologista. Again, to be polite, “downplaying the problems” is a fair characterization.

RMS points out that “if you develop software on Mono, you are liable to use those features without thinking about the issue.” But I think it’s more than that – I think Team Mono has intentionally obscured the facts to make it more difficult to think about the issue. It goes beyond counting on people being too lazy/uninterested to examine things right into deliberate misinformation.

Dependency Hell

Team Apologista actively promotes Mono/Moonlight for Mono/Moonlight sake, increasing dependence on Mono (and by extension, Microsoft’s goodwill).

The entire path into GNOME for Mono is entirely based around a simple note-taking application! Pure insanity! Even if one accepts the argument that a note-taking application is so important that a desktop suite simply can not do without one, the answer is not to roll up one that requires an otherwise useless and seperate framework to support it, and further not to do away with it immediately once an acceptable replacement exists.

The foolishness, technical idiocy, and blatant transparency of the Tomboy debacle in GNOME combined with the latter retarded arguments that “oh well, now that Mono is in there, might as well bring in even more Mono apps” is clear evidence that something’s rotten in the State of the Art over at Team Apologista HQ, and immediately and conclusively puts to the lie any technical-based argument in support of Mono.

There are many more (thankfully, less sucessful) attempts to increase Mono dependency in GNOME and in major distros. Usually taking the form of simply rolling out yet another implementation of existing application functionality – but this time written in awesome Mono – most of these projects have failed to gain footholds. It doesn’t stop Team Apologista from trying, though. Desktop Search? Need it in Mono! Torrent client? Need it in Mono! Photo editor? Need it in Mono! Media Player? Need it in Mono!

Why the need to re-create everything in Mono?

To go back to RMS’ point: “Don’t increase your exposure to the danger.”

Right, so, Novell is up for sale and there’s a couple dozen potential buyers.

First, let me tell you what is not going to happen:

Microsoft is not going to buy Novell.

Novell has served their purpose to Microsoft, which is basically acting as a lap-dog and providing Microsoft with good PR while simultaneously dividing and hurting the FLOSS community.

Microsoft could not have hoped for a better partner in the Open Source space, but Novell is of ever-diminishing use to their Redmond masters: anyone naïve enough to accept Microsoft’s “golly-gee-we’ve-changed” overtures has done so and Microsoft is now backing off “interoperability” talk and going back to the “customers just want one solution from one provider” strategy in public (which they never changed in private, mind you.)

Furthermore, Microsoft wants nothing to do directly with selling Linux. Novell served as a DMZ between the GPL and Microsoft, and staring across a DMZ is about as close to Linux as Microsoft wants to get. Microsoft is not about to get into the business of directly distributing/selling/supporting Linux.

What I suspect will happen

Novell will be bought up by some investment fund with the sole purpose of dismantling it. This “first buyer” won’t be a name anyone in the tech community is familiar with, and won’t really matter. The only thing this first buyer wants to do is get the cash reserve Novell has and then sell off the rest.

The first buyer in turn will consult with potential secondary buyers – buyers who, if they don’t already have an agreement with are very close to one – on exactly how to divide up Novell. Whoever is going to buy Novell isn’t doing so hoping they will make money – they are going in knowing they are going to make money, because they have the secondary buyers already lined up.

This is the more interesting  part, since Novell holds patents (and possibly copyrights and trademarks) that impact the wider community.

I fully expect a front company or two funded by Microsoft to poke around and pick up bits that they feel will be useful in the future against Linux. Less likely is Microsoft directly buying the same bits out in the open under their own name – expect a Baystar-like beard instead. There will be no big announcements of these sells, by the way.

OpenSUSE is greatly diminished under this scenario: as a community-only distro and without corporate backing, it’s looking at the bottom end of the Top 10 List. With Novell’s stained name out of the picture, OpenSUSE may become acceptable to people who actually care about FLOSS, so I won’t count it out of the picture.

Team Apologista takes a major hit, but sadly probably not a finishing blow. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Mono-based spinoff. There’s money to be made there and Lord knows Team Apologista has some players with personal, professional and emotional investment in Mono that guarantees they won’t be giving up that fight.

And there’s an interesting issue there too – say you are a Team Apologista Superstar and now Novell is gone. You’ve spent the last 5 to 8 years focusing on nothing but C# and .NET. I’m not sure what Linux-centered companies are looking to hire that particular skill set? Oh well, the world always needs more Windows developers.

What might happen

A big buyer that is FLOSS-friendly (say IBM, though I don’t think they will) comes in and scoops everything up. The good in this scenario is that:

Almost anyone who takes over will be a better Novell than Novell was. A chimp could manage Novell better by throwing darts at a craps table, so it would be hard for a more incompetent hand to get behind the wheel there.

The FLOSS community dodges a bullet. Again, Novell was just about as anti-FLOSS and damaging to the community as possible while still pretending to be a member. To do more damage, you’d have to come right out and say that was your intention.

I’m hoping for this outcome, but I’m expecting the vulture funds.

From a FLOSS-friendly corporate standpoint, Novell has 2 major products of interest: OpenSUSE and Mono. So the hypothetical FLOSS-friendly buyer has to meet two important criteria:

1. They want an existing distro (which has plusses and minuses). 
2. They don’t mind taking on the whole Mono controversy.

I can tell you that if I had money to match my stunning good looks and devastating wit and was in charge of a FLOSS-Friendly company, I wouldn’t be buying Novell.

For one thing, I’d rather start up my own distro so I can manage expectations, shape the community and make sure I’m in control of those fanboys (Hello, Mark!).

For another thing, I wouldn’t want to enter the Mono stink – it’s one think to keep fighting a fight and a whole ‘nother thing to enter a fight you can avoid.

We Will See What We Will See

Novell’s done for no matter what happens, and I think that’s a long-term positive for the community.  

The fallout will be very interesting, but I can’t speculate farther ahead until the buying’s done.

Theory 1: The Business Case

Here, Mr. de Icaza argues that Flash’s “killer feature” is that the same code that ran on the iPhone could run on other devices, and therefore hurt Apple’s dominant position in the market.

Under this theory, Apple will permit Flash when other platforms catch up with the iPhone.

Theory 2: The UI

Here the reasoning is that Apple does not want non-native or “alien” looking applications.

Under this theory, Apple should not concern itself with how applications look or even offer any guidelines on application quality, as the market suffices to weed out undesirable applications.

My Theory: What you don’t say says a lot

Notably missing from Mr. de Icaza’s theories is this one: Apple wants to retain control over the iPhone.

What Mr. de Icaza does not – indeed can not – acknowledge is that if, say, Flash became the preferred development tool chain for the iPhone, then it would be Adobe and not Apple dictating when features were made available to developers and users.

That is clearly not a position Apple wants to be in, having been burned by Adobe in the past in just such a situation!

Furthermore, this is a theory in fact explicitly laid on in the very Daring Fireball post that Steve Jobs himself referred to (and which Mr. de Icaza in turn links to).

The Lesson

And there is the lesson: whoever controls the development toolchain controls the platform. This is exactly why Microsoft chants “Developers, developers, developers” and why Microsoft’s Mantra is:

Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory, for DRG, is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.”

Microsoft knows it. Apple knows it. Adobe knows it. You know it, I know it and the American People know it.

I suspect Mr. de Icaza knows it as well, though he dare not beathe a word on the matter for it would be tantamount to admitting he is working directly to put Microsoft in control of every platform.

Breaking it down a little further

Indulge me and consider the following hypothetical:

If Flash was the vastly dominant development platform for the iPhone, Adobe could hinder iPhone development as desired. It might eventually get displaced if it over-played its hand, but if say Adobe was a player in the smartphone market with its own phone offering it would surely be tempting to leverage that developer control.

Likewise, say that .NET became the dominant development platform for Linux – a more difficult proposition to be sure, but one that Mr. de Icaza has repeatedly expressed enthusiasm for.

Now, try this on for size:

If Flash .NET was the vastly dominant development platform for the iPhone Linux Desktop, Adobe Microsoft could hinder iPhone Linux application development as desired. It might eventually get displaced if it over-played its hand, but if say Adobe Microsoft were a player in the  smartphone operating system market with its own phone offering desktop and application suites it would surely be tempting to leverage that developer control.

Oh. Oh, my.

Predicting the future

Now, I’m not saying that if Flash was the choice of 99% of iPhone developers that Adobe would ever use that as leverage against Apple. I’m sure Adobe would be 100% dedicated to transparently delivering every feature Apple provided to Flash developers promptly and completely, would always maintain the same level of backwards and forwards compatibility that Apple offered, would never introduce any bugs, and never ever favor a non-Apple platform.

In the same vein, I am not saying that Microsoft will for sure use Mono against Linux. I’m just saying it is:

• Possible – there is nothing unrealistic about the scenario nor do any laws prevent it.
• Logical – Apple isn’t scared of a boogeyman here. It’s real-world strategic thinking.
• Under Consideration – we have numerous documented sources of Microsoft planning how standardizing portions of .NET could be used to “keep network effect” and ”gather IP advantage” for Microsoft.
• Historical – Microsoft has a proud history of half-standardized standards used to its own advantage, but deliberately crippled for others

Being crazy

Consider this posting about the Apple enforcement and how some people are hoping Apple tacitly turns a blind eye to products like MonoTouch and Lua and only locks out Flash:

And don’t give me that shit about Apple being selective in enforcing this clause, so don’t worry they won’t enforce it on you. It doesn’t matter. You have to be insane to risks large amounts of capital (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of developer salaries to write the app, if nothing else) that Apple won’t choose to enforce this clause. No sane business manager would voluntarily add risk to an already risky proposition (most software projects fail) if they can at all avoid it.

That’s how I feel about Mono: don’t give me that shit about Microsoft being selective in enforcing ECMA or non-ECMA coverved parts. Or that as long I get the software from a pre-approved source I’m covered by a “covenant”, as long as I am careful to stay within the lines of the covenant of course.

The bottom line is you have to be insane to risk large amounts of time and effort that Microsoft won’t choose to enforce its “IP” if your project competes with them. No sane developer would voluntarily add risk to an already risky proposition if they can at all avoid it.

Mono: you can avoid it.

After the whole Apple 3.3.1 “Can’t develop with non-approved toolchains” debacle a lot of people set up a Google Docs spreadsheet to list the tons of amazing apps that would be impacted by this rule change.

There were calls for help all over twitter and the web in general. You’ll note that most of the calls are overly broad – for example, calling for an app to be listed even if it was not created with XCode, even though that is not a requirement of 3.3.1.

The Denominator

How many apps are there in the Apple app store? Wikipedia says 185,000+ this April. Let’s be conservative and roll that back to the last milestone (March’s numbers):

150,000

The Numerator

And, with all that solicitation and the not-strict guidelines, how many apps made it on the spreadsheet?

137

I’m sure they missed some, so let’s double treble quadruple quintuple add a zero and round up:

1500

The Percentage

Let’s see that’s uh … 1500/150,000. Math is hard.

1%

So under extremely generous estimates we can say 99% of the apps in the App Store will not be affected by the change.

If only I could get 1¢ for every time I’ve heard 1% thrown around in an argument against Linux.

Postumscriptum

The numbers are even less impressive if you wished to focus on a single toolchain of interest, like say – oh I don’t know – MonoTouch, which can boast almost a whole dozen entries on the spreadsheet.

From the Apple 4.0 SDK (beta):

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

I continue to be pleased with the iPad, and I don’t even own – or plan to buy – one!

Be warned: this will be long and ranty.

Aspect the First: The Disappearance

The “disappearance” is explained by Mr. Worthington (the article author) on Twitter as so:

on my recent .net evolution stories – nothing was pulled. they were just merged into one. http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34183

Mr. Alan Zeichick, the editorial director of BZ Media explains it here on this blog in a comment as so:

My apologies — the story is not “taken down” from sdtimes.com, and there’s nothing nefarious going on.
The story had been erroneously posted in several small pieces. When we saw the error, we reassembled it on Mar. 23. The entire piece, including that complete section (about hallway down), is at http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34183

I don’t know the workings of a media empire. I only know when I tried to verify the quotes, they were not to be found in any article.

There’s some strange things to me about the SD Times article:

• It’s strange timing that the article “disappeared”, a lot of people noticed, and then it “re-appeared”.
• It’s strange the article dates are 7 days apart and the Mar. 17 article was “rolled back” into the Mar. 10 article.
• It’s strange that the “entire piece” is the longest thing by far Mr. Worthington has ever written for SD Times.[1]
• It’s strange that the whole “out of context” defense popped up – more on that in a bit.

But strange things do happen sometimes – so let’s move on.

Aspect the Second: The Quotes

Since Mr. de Icaza has claimed ownership of the quotes, we can dig into the juicy stuff! That’s all I wanted to do anyway!

In his blog, Mr. de Icaza starts off his explanation:

It seems that David’s article on Windows strategy tax on .NET lacked enough context for my actual quotes in there.

But on Twitter, Mr. de Icaza seems to think the article was excellent:

@dcworthington I am in whole agreement with you there; Btw I loved the article, good balance.

So did the article lack enough context or was it a good balance? That’s what’s funny to me about Mr. de Icaza, he always seems to assume that if you find what he says objectionable you must either need more context, or you are a “hater”.

Let’s look at what Mr. de Icaza deems “not major issues”:

The most important part is that Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant thread of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem.

Mr. de Icaza admits that Microsoft has constantly waved patent infringement around; exactly what Mono critics have been saying too – yet Mr. de Icaza has been quick to paint critics as “haters” or “fear mongers” when they mention patents.

Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java virtual machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by Ballmer that they would come after people that do not license patents from them.

Point of fact: it is not just Ballmer. There are lots and lots of people at Microsoft spreading (or spread when they worked there) that meme – like Bill Gates, Jim Allchin, Craig Mundie, Bill Hilf, Sam Ramji, Brad Smith, Horatio Guiterrez, and many more. These are/were top people at Microsoft.

Here’s a partial list of current Microsoft executives that have disparaged Linux and/or Open Source:

• Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer
• Brad Smith, General Counsel and Senior VP
• Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer
• Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer
• Eric Rudder, Senior VP
• Bob Muglia, President

If only someone kept a record of Microsoft’s comments on Linux and Open Source! What a help that would be!

Google could have used .NET, Rails could have been built on .NET, the Wikipedia and Facebook could have been built using ASP.NET.

To be honest, when I first read this I thought that someone was pulling a prank on SD Times and pretending to be Mr. de Icaza, and that’s why the article was pulled.

Mr. de Icaza honestly wants to see every bit of software development done on top of .NET.  Don’t think so? Here, read this from his blog:

I still believe that Microsoft lost a great opportunity of having .NET become the universal runtime of the net, and they could still have the best implementation.

Notice the lamentation that Microsoft lost a great opportunity? Personally, I think it’s a fantastic thing that Microsoft lost out — if Mr. de Icaza had said that users or developers lost a “great opportunity” that would be different – but he regrets Microsoft‘s loss!

To me, that is very telling indeed.

Furthermore, you now how Team Mono is always arguing they aren’t “chasing taillights” and otherwise dismissing critics that accuse them of catch-up? Well, here is Mr. de Icaza on that:

I still believe that they should put the rest of .NET under the Community Promise or OSP and even with Mono as an open source implementation, they would retain their edge.

Ummm … if Microsoft “retains an edge” with respect to Mono – it means you are chasing taillights.

Read on for some Most Definitely Not Apologetics from Mr. de Icaza:

Had Microsoft been an open company in 2001 and had embraced diversity we would live in a different world. The awesome Mono team would probably be bigger, and the existing team members would have longer vacations.

But for everyone that missed the point, luckily, Microsoft has new management, new employees that know open source, fresh new ideas, is becoming more open and is working actively on interoperability with third parties. They even launched the CodePlex Foundation.

“Had Microsoft been an open company in 2001“? I adore the implication that Microsoft is an open company in 2010! Microsoft has no great new management – some people have retired and moved on (and still partner with Microsoft) and some have stayed.  Already listed a half-dozen examples earlier of those who have attacking Linux and Open Source and still proudly serve Microsoft.

Let’s move on to a few of Mr. de Icaza’s more casual comments:

But you are missing the point, as fascinating as the story of Lucene and Mono was at the time, the bigger issue was that Microsoft’s attacks on Linux in 2001 had a chilling effect on Mono’s use and Mono’s contributions.

What’s this? Microsoft attacked Linux and so Linux people didn’t want to use Microsoft technology? WHY THAT’S INSANE!!!!one!!!

Now, step away from the implication that Microsoft’s attacks on Linux stopped in 2001, acknowledge the reality that Microsoft has never stopped attacking Linux and perhaps you too can grok why lots of people still don’t want anything to do with Mono!

Look. We just don’t want the same things anymore…

…and I think it’s time we moved on:

I can quote cute uses of Mono all day long, but it wont make up for the fact that .NET-based technologies could have been the entire core that drove the internet.

I honestly have a very hard time keeping my bile down. Who on God’s Green Earth would want Microsoft at the “entire core that drove the internet”? Does no one remember the stagnation and retardation that IE6 wrought upon mankind? The very shackles of which we are only now starting to shed?

And yet, Mr. de Icaza laments another missed opportunity of Microsoft?

We dodge a bullet and he cries about Microsoft’s marksmanship!

Blaming the victim

Here’s a nice bit of the old Linux-was-asking-for-it:

I would only add that Microsoft’s 2001 animosity towards open source stemmed from the entire business press stating that Windows had only a few years of life left as this was “The year of the Linux desktop”.

What about Microsoft’s 2000 animosity? Its 1999 animosity? Its 2002 animosity? Its 2005 animosity? Its 2010 animosity?

Why must Team Apologista try so hard to pretend that there’s this one anomalous year, 2001, where Microsoft didn’t want to — oh no! — but was forced against its will to (for a limited time only) have the smallest bit of “animosity” towards Linux?

Cherry Picking

Let me just address one more comment from Mr. de Icaza in response to Mr. Worthington:

I had no issue with the article myself. I just woke up to another flame fest over someone that cherry picked some quote from your article and tried to make a scene.

Yeah, here’s the thing about that: I’ve addressed almost every bit of your words here and  this is very long and tedious even for a word-smith of my enormous girth talent.

And, even given that, your “context” changes nothing. You aren’t being “taken out of context”. No one needs to take you out of context. There is no need to mis-represent anything you say.

Understand this: the interesting part of this news is not the factual criticism of Microsoft and how it impacted .NET and Mono adoption — everyone paying attention already knew that — the interesting part is that it was Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, staunch not-Microsoft-Apologist, that leveled it.

[1] The “entire piece” is 2,494 words. Other pieces average ~165 words. I only went back about 20 articles or so, but it’s clear this is a magnum opus for Mr. Worthington.