Miguel de Icaza's blog - Latest Comments in CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

David "Lefty" Schlesinger — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:21:50 -0000

I'm pleased to hear about this, Miguel, and I agree: greater levels of engagement are a good thing, not a bad one. No amount of wishing on the part of the Microsoft-haters is going to make them go away in any sort of a hurry, and if you make up your mind to be a paranoid, the world at large might as well be out to get you, from your point of view.

I don't like living that way, myself.

I've always thought that the "naming wars" were inane and self-serving: language has a life of its own, and trying to bully people into calling "Linux" "GNU/Linux" is as doomed to failure as l'Académie Française's attempts to insist that the French populace all call their Walkmans "balladeurs" and their emails "courriels"...

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

David "Lefty" Schlesinger — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:53:33 -0000

Sad but true.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Jo Shields — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:41:43 -0000

http://www.hotflick.net/fli...

I loved that movie!

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Sandy — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:13:54 -0000

You're wrong. There are a ton of useful open source projects on Codeplex, especially for .NET (or Mono) developers.

Microsoft encouraging open source > Microsoft discouraging open source

Yes, it would be nice if they freed their own software, and it's good to encourage them to do so, but that doesn't make the big step they're making with the Codeplex Foundation somehow insignificant.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

gromble — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:08:49 -0000

So, what does Microsoft really control in this foundation? It's rather pointless unless Windows or MS Office is made open source... If THAT happens then we're talking and people in the community might think better of Microsoft.
But currently the info page is full of pretty words trying to make Microsoft look good to the community but lacks any kind of commitment and substance. Codeplex as is is just a bunch of small java script proof-of-concept projects for Internet Explorer.. What will change this time around?

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

migueldeicaza — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:22:55 -0000

Not any different than running a Windows system every day. Every time you install a third party program, it comes with its own EULA. Not a big deal.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

migueldeicaza — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:18:43 -0000

I can only be "creating fissures" in the community if the community has prejudged that bridging the Microsoft world and the open source world is somehow against its interests.

The following is a repost from a discussion earlier this year, I am pasting it because it describes my position:
-----------------------------------------
[...]
What I believe is happening is that at the core, you are anti-
Microsoft and you do want to fight anything that comes from them.
[...]
I read this story on Ben's book. A shoe company sends two salesmen
to a rural area in Africa, and after a couple of weeks, he receives a
telegram from one of his sales people, it reads "ABORT MISSION, NOBODY
HERE WEARS SHOES, GOING BACK HOME". Then he receives a message from
the other sales man and it reads "GREAT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, NOBODY
HERE HAS SHOES. SIGNED LEASE FOR STORE".

I like the second world, the world of possibility. A world where we
can help Microsoft become a better open source citizen. I see a world
where we can grow the pie, instead of a world where we have to divide
the pie, where hackers at every company share knowledge and code.

When your world is a world of hate, fear and impossibilities you give
up early.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Kamujin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:27:10 -0000

You claim "I am disassociating from Opensuse GNOME and Novell forever." No wonder you are a small fry. I suspect with a "take my ball and go home" attitude like this, you will be a small fry "forever".

Honestly, it's this kind or blind hate and infighting that makes me think Linux has no chance at being more than a minor platform. How can humanity trust Linux with a significant market share, if you guy act like 2 year olds every time you don't like something. Grow the hell up.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

mythz — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:34:01 -0000

By protesting/boycotting anyone you are effectively making technology decisions based on something other than merit, which you're fine to do as it is your opinion and you should be happy with your decisions at the end of the day.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, I'm only stating my opinions as well that *I* chose the 'best tools for the job for me' based on the best technology available. Other people may not come to the same conclusion and prefer 'Java / python / C' which is totally fine as well.

I also believe that open-source is the best model for software development as well and that Mono is a valuable contribution to Linux/OSS as it allows for software that previously would only run on Windows/.NET to run on Linux/Mono. As a prime example applications based on my open-source webservices stack (http://www.servicestack.net/) now have the opportunity (and do) run on Linux.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Anshul — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:05:33 -0000

My customers do not depend on Mono. I am not a Mono/.NET programmer. None of my products belong to Mono/.NET. My aim in boycotting Novell/Opensuse is to protest against their actions and deeds. FWIW, my products are manufacturing test systems.

I am not a fundamentalist. Its funny how easy it is to label someone as that, even when I'd agree to disagree with Miguel on his choices. Neither you nor Miguel can convince me otherwise. Heck, if you did try to (and you're trying to), it makes you a fundamentalist too.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

mythz — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:59:54 -0000

It's unfortunate that some people can't see past their own prejudices. By taking a fundamentalist view you're really only hurting yourself as you will exclude 'best-of-class' software (since your available software set will be smaller) when you make technology decisions.

I think you'll find that most of your customers (that you influence with your technology decisions) will not share your fundamentalist view as they normally only care about using the best-technology for the job that provides the most value with the lowest cost, so in this regard you are doing them a disservice.

I personally choose to use C#/VS.NET+ReSharper for most of my server-side development because after evaluating a lot of languages and frameworks in the past (C++ / PHP / Python / Java) it is the one that makes me the most productive and by extension gives my employer the most value.

Mono has basically given the software I produce 'extra value' because now the software I write can be deployed on a host of Operating Systems, which is fantastic as I believe that Linux is the best deployment platform taking into consideration 'cost / remote administration / etc'.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Anshul — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:58:10 -0000

Miguel,
You are entitled to your own views...and so am I entitled to mine. Your intentions seem to be more at creating fissures than uniting any community. In your position, you are able to make crucial decisions regarding technology and thus have chosen Microsoft's .NET for Mono. I too, in my area (yes I am a corporate Opensuse user)...I am disassociating from Opensuse GNOME and Novell forever.

I may be a small fry compared to a heavy hitter like you who has done a lot of work...but I will influence decisions that I can take.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Roebot — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:55:26 -0000

@Sandy,

All great points. I'm amazed by the inability of some in the open source community to understand the simple and obvious fact that everyone benefits from more contributions to open source regardless of the technology or platform the open source code is being developed with and on. I write about this at the MindTouch blog: http://www.mindtouch.com/bl...

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

marthinus — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:56:31 -0000

My opinion is if Linux can not stand on its own feet then maybe it should not stand at all. OSS on the other hand has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with freedom of choice.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:03:01 -0000

"They used GNU code, BSD code, public domain code, Usenet code, MIT code, CMU code, anything they could get their hands on." wow Linux must be a license hell!

what are "Usenet code" and "CMU code" ?

"I am all for giving credit to RMS for his work, but I do not see myself calling Linux a GNU/BSD/CMU/X11/GNOME/KDE/Xfce/Blender/Apache/Linux system."

I wonder why they start calling it Linux in the 1st place...

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

fodev — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:43:55 -0000

You must be young.

GNU was a famous project back in the early 90's and so was Minix and so was Linux and so was BSD.

The GNU community was building their operating system (Hurd). Minix had one, but was not licensed for commercial use and the BSD folks were initially not set for running on low-end 386 machines.

Mind you, the GNU Hurd was built on top of the joint BSD + CMU Mach kernel. And you have never seen Richard Stallman refer to Hurd as a "BSD/CMU/GNU/Hurd system". Or call the Hurd a "CMU/Hurd" operating system or the "Mach/Hurd" operating system. He never thought about crediting others that were not part of his own movement (GNU).

Linux appeared in this environment, it was a toy operating system, and the community that was formed around Linux put together the operating system from the kernel, and anything they could get their hands on. They built a car out of scrap metal essentially.

They used GNU code, BSD code, public domain code, Usenet code, MIT code, CMU code, anything they could get their hands on.

This was a community that was born *out of the Linux kernel* and that happened to use scrap tools from anywhere they could. Just like RMS was building his Hurd out of anything he could (BSD/CMU code that he does not credit) the Linux community did not credit every possible source in the name of the project.

I am all for giving credit to RMS for his work, but I do not see myself calling Linux a GNU/BSD/CMU/X11/GNOME/KDE/Xfce/Blender/Apache/Linux system.

In the same way that I do not say Mozilla/Firefox, Mozilla/Thunderbird, Sun/MySQL, Apache/Hadoop, Guido/Python. I say Firefox, Thunderbird, MySQL, Hadoop, Python.

And there is a lot of story behind each name, but being a prick about "Mozilla/Thunderbird" is not going to matter a bit, other than confuse people.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

joe — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:20:52 -0000

It seems like Richard Stallman is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the greater FOSS community.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:46:10 -0000

But it seems these days, Microsoft is doing more good for open source than the FSF

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:43:03 -0000

"founding fathers" yeah right, more like the guy who scared away everybody from open source....

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:41:49 -0000

what were you thinking when you joined something that RMS was a part of?

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:39:47 -0000

or calling "Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 3" just "Service Pack 3" :-D

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:36:06 -0000

"...trying to bridge the open source world..." If you can do this it would be the greatest thing since Linux for the open source community.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:21:09 -0000

People know about the OS as Linux. no body, at least new users know or care about GNU. Why do you want to confuse end-users. It seems most of the "Free Software" people just want to confuse new users. The whole GNU project, which is fsf.org's project went nowhere. They should just shut up and let the people actually do some work, do their work....

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

Anachron — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:02:06 -0000

"funny stuff, to get Linux you can go to kernel.org, where do you go to get "GNU/Linux" ? (Free Software idiots)"

Well, there's a difference in naming schemes here. We name the operating systems from MS for Windows. They run the ntoskrnl.exe kernel. There's no colloquial name for the windows kernel AFAIK.
The free operating systems however have richer naming schemes. Take for instance Ubuntu (quote from ubuntu.com):
"Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system ..."
It is based on Linux, meaning Linux is the kernel.
The Linux kernel is what you get from kernel.org. In addition to the kernel you will need a range of tools, applications and so on to build an Operating System.
Those tools and applications often originate from the GNU project.
Which is why RMS urges us to use the denomination GNU/Linux when talking about OS's based upon Linux and GNU tools.

When we use only the name Linux for the whole operating system, it's because it is shorter and a widely known term. In the strictest sense it is erroneous.
Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

And to answer your question: You go to anyplace on the internet that can supply you with a distro to get GNU/Linux.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

rajdeva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:17:53 -0000

Great news, thank you and especially Microsoft for making .Net and Silverlight (Mono+Moonlight) happen on Linux.

"...campaign to rename Linux as GNU/Linux." funny stuff, to get Linux you can go to kernel.org, where do you go to get "GNU/Linux" ? (Free Software idiots)