UT: Richard M. Stallman had criticized Miguel de Icaza for his participation to Open Source Lab which has been founded by Microsoft. What do you think about that? And in the context of this subject how do you evaluate Mono Project.

MZ: Miguel and I have met, but I don’t know him well enough to comment on his motivation for doing this work. I don’t know that Richard does either. I will say that I think it’s shameful when members of our community are publicly attacked in this way, rather than opening a dialog to discuss the problem and its resolution.

With regard to Mono, I think it is a valuable piece of free software for us to have. However, there are risks involved in choosing the .NET platform to develop free software, because it is under the ultimate control of Microsoft. Microsoft could take advantage of this to attack free software in various ways. This would be a logical act of self-preservation, and consistent with their previous actions and statements of intent.

Paragraph the First

I’ll overlook the first paragraph, mainly because I don’t feel like opening that can of wormy bullshit again.

Paragraph the Second

I am quite surprised to see that - excepting the first sentence - Mr. Zimmerman and I are in perfect agreement here.

There are risks in choosing the .NET platform to develop free software. And I am pleased that Mr. Zimmerman realizes that is exactly what Mono is: the .NET platform (albeit a gimped and tail-lights chasing stepchild implementation).

I also greatly appreciate Mr. Zimmerman’s points :

• Microsoft is in “ultimate control” (despite Team Apologista’s desperate protestations)
• Microsoft has multiple ways to wield .NET offensively
• It would be logical for them to do so
• they have acted similarly in the past
• they have said they would act similarly the future.

Raising questions

All of which raises some interesting questions … which only a preternaturally insightful commentator such as myself could dare answer:

Q: Will Team Apologista now attack Mr. Zimmerman for being a “zealot”?

A: No. They may say more context is needed, though.

Q: Will Team Apologista acknowledge any of Mr. Zimmerman’s points as being valid?

A. No. Again, more context is a good go-to here.

Q: Will Team Apologista call the exact same points made by someone else “hate-filled”, “paranoid”, “zealotry”, or “poo-poo-doo-doo head-y”?

A: Yes, yes they will. Surprisingly, there will be no requests for more context at this juncture.

And of course there’s one major question:

Q: If Microsoft is in ultimate control of a platform that presents risks and is recognized as a logical vector for them to attack as they have in the past and said they will in the future, why the hell are you promoting it ?

A: …

Sorry, folks, even Your Trusted Author can’t come up with a good answer for that last one.