Miguel... [LWN.net]

Miguel...

Posted Nov 7, 2006 23:35 UTC (Tue) by atai (subscriber, #10977)
Parent article: On Novell and Microsoft

There have been numerous flame wars in the past regarding Mono over its attempt to clone Microsoft technology. Nevertheless, these were just technology issues and it is hard to justify that Miguel "loves" Microsoft as it was sometimes claimed.

But this time, Miguel played a major role in Novell's cooperation with Microsoft. After this MS/Novell deal people's view of Miguel de Icaza would be hard to change...

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Miguel...

Posted Nov 7, 2006 23:58 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]

It seems that these days Miguel just wants to code. He wants to do the best programming possible, using the best tools possible, and leave the lawyering to someone else.

Many would consider this a laudable sentiment. Indeed, I think Linus indulges in this too, and lots of programmers would rather that the world outside of their cubicles would not intrude on their programming.

But there is a world out there, and refusal to confront it means that you will eventually paint your users and your community into a corner through your own refusal to strategize around real problems.

The ironic thing is that Miguel came to notoriety in our community for leading the technical project that was created to replace the (then) non-Open-Source Qt GUI toolkit in the Linux desktop.

On the other hand, I don't believe that either Miguel or Nat would have been successful in getting Novell to refrain from entering into this quarter-Billion-dollar deal, given that Novell Linux hasn't ever really gained any traction.

Bruce

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 2:43 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Miguel said himself in his blog that he had absolutely no dealings with this at all. They didn't tell him what was going on anymore then they told any of the other Linux developers. I don't know about all of them, but the linux developers working for Novell that commented about this on their blogs stated the same thing and it was that they weren't told about the deal until a few days before Novell was planning on announcing it.

I am pretty sure that this is purely upper management move and didn't involve any Linux developers.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 6:22 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Aren't both Nat and Miguel vice presidents now? That makes them upper management! I believe them if they say they didn't know ahead of time but why wouldn't they be consulted before making this high-profile deal?

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 9:15 UTC (Wed) by jhellan (subscriber, #17103) [Link]

> Aren't both Nat and Miguel vice presidents now? That makes them upper
> management!

Not at all. I mean, they very well could be, but you can't tell from the title. You put 'vice president' on people's business cards to impress and get access to people outside your company.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 6:56 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]

Miguel said himself in his blog that he had absolutely no dealings with this at all.

Yes. But there was no time at which Miguel should ever have thought that deriving substantially from a Microsoft design in a product which he intended to integrate into GNOME was a good idea. Fortunately, most GNOME developers were smarter than Miguel about this, and stayed away from Mono.

At least this has finally driven Sun to GPL Java as a play against C# and Mono.

Bruce

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 10:18 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]

I don't believe that either Miguel or Nat would have been successful in getting Novell to refrain from entering into this quarter-Billion-dollar deal, given that Novell Linux hasn't ever really gained any traction.

Bruce, you are being too kind to Miguel, who has already acted as a public apologist for this baldfaced sellout. Compliments for the restraint.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 18:18 UTC (Wed) by N0NB (subscriber, #3407) [Link]

Imagine if RMS had opted to do programming and left the lawyering to someone else? Or, worse, had not bothered to act on his principles at all?

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 19:04 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]

Now, if we could only get Linus to show some backbone.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 10, 2006 21:38 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

"""Imagine if RMS had opted to do programming and left the lawyering to someone else? Or, worse, had not bothered to act on his principles at all?"""

We might have been in a better position today.

Open collaboration is a phenomenon of an easily accessible internet, not of Richard. It would have happened with or without him.

Why do some people fail to see that?

GPL has been a helpful license. However, many projects have prospered with other licensing. (Apache, et. al.)

When technical things are done with goals in mind which are primarily political, there is a price to pay.

Compare HURD to Linux, for example.

Stallmans's best avenue for the success of his movement would be to simply finish up HURD and upstage "Linux" with the benefits of GNU/OS. After all, the kernel is the only bit of software that FSF lacks, right?

Instead, since he doesn't seem to see HURD as a credible contender, he resorts to insisting that his project's name be tacked onto the names of relatively successful Linux distros. If his movement were really a success, he would not have to resort to such embarrassing tactics.

So, if Stallman had stuck to the technical and left the lawyering to someone else, we might or might not have some good software that we don't have today. Stallman would not have become so well known within the community. (Don't discount this as a major motivation.) And we really don't know where we would be today if Stallman had not developed such a taste for the limelight.

Overall, I'd say we've done pretty well as thing are. But please don't overemphasize the role of Stallman in the history of open collaboration on the internet.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 17, 2006 0:35 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]

You do realize that Linux is GPL as well, don't you? And that you're
taking one "failed" example out of many successful GNU projects.

But anyway, what I think we owe Stallman for is that fact that he
actually made us THINK about the licenses we use. So yes, there's more
than just the GPL around, but they are there exactly because people saw
the success of GPL projects and the benefits of a GPL license, but they
just didn't agree with the ideas behind it so they made their own.

Sometimes making people stop and think is the only thing that is
necessary.

Is he the only one to do that? Of course not. Was he the first? Very
likely not. But as with many things in history sometimes the acts of
others are forgotten because one comes along that embodies everything
that they stand for.

You say that we might have been in a better position today, by the same
reasoning (which is none, because I don't seen anything to support what
you say) we could have been in a much worse position.

Because I have no idea how old you are, but I can tell you that people
where collaborating quite nicely even before existence of (or easy access
to) the Internet. Before that, you either just kept your code to
yourself, sold it or made it freeware or shareware.

The Internet has of course made collaborating with a large number of
people on large projects a lot easier but don't think it didn't happen
before.

But the whole licensing thing was just plain chaos in the free/shareware
scene, basically everybody just made up his own and there was not much
thought put into it. No direction, no ideals.

So in that aspect I think RMS (and some others like him) woke us up and
made us THINK about our licenses. And if that includes people thinking
that RMS stinks and that they'd rather sell their mother than ever use a
GPL license for their code, well more power to them.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 8, 2006 8:38 UTC (Wed) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

Are you sure that Miguel had anything to do with this? It read that as an accusation, and it would be unfortunate if you just made it up.

Miguel...

Posted Nov 14, 2006 9:16 UTC (Tue) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

Don't assume things you don't know.

Specifically, how do you know that Miguel played a major role in this deal?
Not that this matters much, anyway he is happy for the deal... but it is higly likely that he would have pushed for broader coverage of the "covenant" (I mean, not just Novell's customers).

Also, Miguel never said "now Mono is safe to use": he explicitly said that we still commit to shipping code that does not infringe patents, because Mono is a community project, and this policy is not changed by the Novell-Microsoft deal.
IMHO, this deal was meant to remove some FUD around Linux... and now, can you imagine Microsoft on one hand distributing Novell coupons for Suse support, and on the other hand saying that "Linux is a cancer"?
It is sad that now it is the "community" itself that is feeding the FUD...

BTW, I said "we" because I work on Mono, but of course this post represents my personal opinions and not Novell'd ones.