IceWeasel vs Firefox, another non open source saga ?

[Triarius Fidelis]

MS-bashers...well, its not like MS has given the FOSS community a reason to love them...

Indeed. The enmity is really mostly their fault.

[easuter]

Just an interesting mailing list conversation where Miguel de Icaza is asked about possible patent problems with Moonlight (the mono implementation of Silverlight).
Two striking quotes:

> use a distro that is not mainstream or just doesn't have a deal with
> the daemon.. err Microsoft.. like Novell has.. Will I have to suffer
> the shadow of Microsoft patents  over Silverlight when using or
> developing Moonlight?

Not as long as you get/download Moonlight from Novell which will include
patent
coverage.

Miguel

and also...*gasp*

OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been
FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that
there is something fundamentally wrong with it.   This is at a time when
OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that
space.

Besides, it is always better to have two implementations and then
standardize

 

[Triarius Fidelis]

My opinion is no longer neutral, and I'm glad I don't use Gnome now.

[Joe1962]

Yes, I'd read that earlier. Pretty much puts a stamp on the de Icaza issue, I'm afraid...

[rbistolfi]

I really dont understand the miguel position. I dont understand Novell either. Miguel is almost saying Novell will support MS against FOSS, may be in order to be the unique linux surviver.
In the other hand mono produces nice open source apps, like f-spot.
A tech q for programmers: we should judge an API by the apps it produces or by the goodies it gives to programmers to making them?

[incognu]

wow, easuter;  that's pretty damning.

rbistolfi, from my perspective as someone who moved to GNU/Linux for the Freedom and then discovered the technical excellence, I believe that issues of software freedom are extremely important, and shouldn't be ignored or sidestepped just because something like mono has technical possibilities.

[Joe1962]

So... has the Mono trap been set?   

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2191754,00.asp

[finaldata]

...... "If you ever, and I mean ever, want to write open-source code, I recommend you not come within a mile of Microsoft's .NET Framework code or any other similar projects that the boys from Redmond "open" up.

If you do, you're nibbling on the cheese of a trap that will eventually snap shut on you and kill up your program and quite possibly your job and finances. "

so true.....