Let me state up front one of the reasons I hate Twitter is because it is so ill-suited for any real communication. There are a very limited number of things Twitter works well for, but explaining an idea with any nuance is certainly not among them.

I hate to read too much into a tweet because everyone is trying to make a point in so few characters that I’m not sure if the person is aware of problemd and is just ignoring them  out of space considerations, or if they are ignorant of the problems, or they have proposed solutions, or what.

Joe Hewitt Speaks – People Listen

Joe Hewitt – of Firefox and Facebook fame – went on a Twitter rampage, summarized in this TechCrunch story if you want to read more. Here I’ll just focus on a few representative tweets:

Redirect your hatred of Flash to the W3C, whose embarrassingly slow pace forced devs to use a plugin because the standards were so weak.

Also, I am looking at you, developers who bitch whenever a browser offers “non-standard” but innovative APIs.

Browser makers need to go nuts with non-standard APIs and let the W3C standardize later. Waiting for the committee to innovate is suicide.

We’ve already been down this road once. It lead us to websites that wouldn’t work across browsers. I led to those little “Best viewed in:” buttons. It lead to faking user-agent strings. It lead to dozens of plugins to view a single site as designed.

We are still suffering under the fall-out of this approach, albeit to a much lesser degree every year.

I can’t imagine anyone – save proprietary software houses who want to try to take over the web again – advocating a return to this environment.

I want to stress that Mr. Hewitt is not advocating moving forward, he is advocating a return to how we did it in the past.

We begin to see the core of Mr. Hewitt’s thinking:

@ppk Yes, exactly. I’d rather developers had forced users to launch different browsers instead of making watered down x-browser sites.

Basically boils down to “put the burden on the user”. I couldn’t disagree more strongly with this way of thinking. As a Linux user, I know that the odds are “launch a different browser” will turn into ”just run IE in Windows”, and – poof – we are back in 1998.

Even if you accept that Mr. Hewitt has identified a real problem (“Standardization moves so slow it hinders innovation”), I do not think he has identified a real solution (“Let’s go back to how we used to do it.”)

There may indeed be problems with the W3C et al. and how long it takes to get standards out – no small amount of which is due to corporations gaming the standardization process by the way - but I can not accept that the proper answer is to abolish or ignore standards.

A better solution might be for standards bodies to speed up delivery of standard. Or, for corporations to quit hamstringing the decision making process. Or, for corporations to stop trying to inject proprietary technology all over a standard. Or, for standards to be released incrementally. Or, a combination of the above and probably a dozen other things I haven’t even thought of.

I hope though, that a careful consideration of Mr. Hewitt’s tweets reveals a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” mentality that would nullify all progress we have made for standards acceptance on the web and return us to the dark days of the Browser Wars.

It is in this context that Mr. Hewitt made one additional tweet:

If CLI was the ECMA standard baked into browsers instead of ECMAScript we’d have a much more flexible web: http://bit.ly/sLILI

Miguel de Icaza Speaks – Microsoft Smiles

You don’t even have to read his blog entry to know how Mr. de Icaza reacted.

Recall Mr. de Icaza’s earlier lament:

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.

Well, dry your tears for Ballmer, Miguel, because here’s a way you can give Microsoft back a “great opportunity”: stick Microsoft .NET inside Firefox!

I am absolutely fascinated by the idea and I only regret not having come up with it. We have been too focused on the Moonlight-as-a-plugin to take a step back and think in more general terms: how can we use the ECMA CIL engine for *all* applications without a browser plugin.

[...]

The only question is what browser to target first Firefox or Chrome.

(Just in case you didn’t know, “ECMA CIL” is originally “MSIL” as in “Microsoft Intermediate Language”, terminology still in quite popular use.)

Seeing the future

This entire situation is quite illustrative in one sense, because it yet another example of Team Apologista’s modus operandi:

Ignore any existing similar technology in favor of the Microsoft offering. Just like Mono rejects efforts like Vala and Java in favor of implementing patent encumbered Microsoft technology, CIL-in-a-browser rejects Google’s NaCl and Mozilla’s XUL.

People are certainly free to reinvent the wheel, it’s just laughable that Team Apologista insists on always doing it, and always doing it with Microsoft technology.

Expand Microsoft lock-in. This is part of the “lock-in” problem: generally speaking, Microsoft technology is designed to work as smooth as possible with other Microsoft technology, and as difficult as possible with non-Microsoft technology. This means that once you start down the road of using Microsoft technology it becomes ever more difficult to step outside of that ecosystem.

Thus, Team Apologista must constantly replace other parts of the development ecosystem with the Microsoft solution. If you learn a Microsoft language (C#), you can’t be using a non-Microsoft language in your browser – have to get C# in there. And that means implementing .NET in your browser. So it goes.

Move from Opt-in to Opt-out to No-opt. Everyone in the world who deals with telemarker calls or shovelware on new (Windows) computers (or uses Facebook and cares about privacy) knows that “Opt-In” is far more preferrable to the user than “Opt Out”.

So, the defense that “if the user doesn’t want Mono they can just remove it” is bogus from the start – “Opt Out” is always the defense offered by those peddling things no one wants. It becomes more bogus when non-Mono apps are replaced by Mono apps, and it explodes in a mushroom cloud of nuclear bogosity when you start sticking it in their browser.

Miguel de Icaza has proven over the past decade from day one that he intends to make .NET ubiquitious – if he gets his way it will be a crucial component of your desktop, your application choices, and even your web browsing experience.

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.

Could Google be the company they are today if they were written on [Microsoft's] .NET? Could Facebook? The answer is no, you need an open platform that you can own yourself, modify, customize and scale.

Miguel de Icaza, on his blog, 25 Mar, 2010:

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

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.

http://twitter.com/tuhl/status/10690157612

Short meeting with Jeremy Allison was cool – #osbc #samba #google

http://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/10691469526

@tuhl Shame that he has turned into a fear monger, hating, conspiracy theorist

Stay classy, San Diego.

The Treasure

I ran across some interesting quotes allegedly from Miguel de Icaza:

Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem [...] 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 [Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] that they would come after people that do not license patents from them.

You don’t say?

And there’s this too, on the subject of how limited Microsoft’s actual standardization efforts are:

It never went into other areas like server APIs, GUI APIs, or even updating some of the core to include LINQ, the DLR and many others.

Good stuff, right? It’s Microsoft MVP but MDNAA¹ Miguel de Icaza acknowledging and perhaps – if you squint just a bit – agreeing with a couple of the concerns that us wacky zealots are always rudely mentioning.

There’s some more interesting quotes, too – but I don’t want to get into those just yet.

The Hunt

I know this will startle the Gentle Reader, but I actually try to check and verify stuff. It’s how I pretend I have integrity.

So I plugged the quote into Google and found a few references, all of which linked the SD Times article “Does Windows cost Microsoft opportunites?” allegedly by David Worthington.

Oh – don’t bother with that last link. It’s a 404. The article isn’t in the list of articles by the author David Worthington as listed on the SD Times site either.

Google cache has it though. It certainly appears like the story was out there, and was on SD Times, and contained the alleged quotes from Mr. de Icaza.

The Question(s)

Why is this article no longer up on SD Times?

Are all the quotes attributed to Mr. de Icaza in the article genuine? (If they are I have more to say about some of them!)

3-26 Updates:

Miguel de Icaza on his blog.

David Worthington on his twitter.

Slashdot story.

ItWire story. (Which mentions me! Huzzah!)

3-27 Updates:

Bruce Byfield on the whole sordid affair, in which I am awarded the title “free software advocate”. I shall have business cards annotated forthwith!

Slashdot on the Bruce Byfield piece

It’s getting all terribly self-referential, so here’s my own follow-up to this in which I finally get to do what I originally wanted (address Mr. de Icaza’s statements).

¹ Most Definitely Not An Apologist

There’s a few interesting tidbits in this totally unshocking development:

I know what I like, and I’m sticking to it

Mr. de Icaza continues to fawn over / promote Microsoft technologies. I find it amusing and revealing at the same time that his infatuation isn’t simply with COM or C# or .NET or Silverlight, but has over time come to be more and more fanboy-like.

I don’t recall any big blogs or tweets from Mr. de Icaza about gData – but I’m sure I just missed them. But when it comes to Microsoft’s .NET-based knock-off, well then boy howdy that’s an exciting topic for Team Mono!

I love this bit from Mr. de Icaza’s post:

Microsoft is taking a very Google-y approach with oData.

Yes, in the same sense that Bush was taking a very Nirvana-y approach with Sixteen Stone. Heey-yoooo! Remember them?

If by “Google-y approach” you mean they basically cloned gData (including the name) and changed it just enough to be incompatible, then I agree it is quite the “Google-y approach” indeed. And nothing like we’ve ever seen Microsoft do before.

We’ve got to play defense here

A common defense of Mr. de Icaza is that he is just technology-infatuated – and it doesn’t matter if that tech comes from Microsoft or not. Personally, I think examples like this put that to lie; if presented with two virtually identical choices, Mr. de Icaza will talk up the Microsoft solution 10 times out of 10.

Part of this is no doubt the none-too-subtle lock-in effect that even so-called “open” Microsoft technologies promote: once you buy-in to one Microsoft technology, you find it ever more convenient to use the next building block Microsoft provides, and just a little more inconvenient to use a non-Microsoft component.

Keeping a low profile

Check out that oData home page. I think it’s quite funny that the proud Microsoft brand is nowhere to be found. An uninformed visitor might actually think this is not a single-vendor solution created as an attempt to (once again)replace a pre-existing solution. You have to get into the FAQ to see the (fully spin controlled) revelation:

Q: Isn’t this a Microsoft thing? Why do you call it the Open Data Protocol?

A: The name Open Data Protocol was chosen to make it clear that the protocol is intended to align with the Open Data movement and that we are fully committed to ensuring that the protocol remains as open as possible. We would love to hear your feedback if you have thoughts on how the protocol could be made to be more open.

This is illustrative. Remember how Microsoft used to stick “Microsoft” in front of everything they produced? Now that they have decimated the brand value of Microsoft, we will be seeing a lot more of naming like this; downplay the relationship to Microsoft and up-play the word “Open”.

Of course the vast majority of the examples, blog postings and news for this “open” technology on this “open” site will refer to Microsoft’s other products, but I’m sure that’s the purest of all innocent coincidences.