4 ms·

It's a good article though I'd go so far as to say the piece it responds to isn't worthy of a response. Take this quote... "Nothing that comes from Microsoft

It's a good article though I'd go so far as to say the piece it responds to isn't worthy of a response. Take this quote... "Nothing that comes from Microsoft can be for our good and benefit. They are dedicated to our destruction and downfall. Mono has infected Gnome. Ubuntu uses Gnome. I switched to Kubuntu and am happy with it. Now Moonlight is infecting Linux." There are two parts to the Linux community. One part sees Linux as a legitimate tool they can use to bring down costs while maintaining stability. The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens. The link here is a good defense of Mono but the people he's trying to defend it to are never going to listen.

mishmash 17y ago
"The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens." No need to deride an entire class of your peers simply because their ideals are different than yours.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  It's not their ideals it's that they express them in a way that's counterproductive and designed to draw attention to themselves and not participate in a discussion. Let me give you another example of this type of behavior. I personally disagreed with many of the decisions the Bush Administration made in the U.S. I have had many thoughtful discussions with people who thought differently and have, in some cases, changed their minds ever so slightly. The guy down the road from me shares my ideals but he expressed it by hanging a life sized doll of George Bush by a noose outside his garage and then eventually lighting it on fire. I assure you he convinced no one who didn't already agree with him and his actions were really just a thinly veiled cry for attention.
  - mishmash 17y ago
    Great story. Just remember, it is their ideals that give the "other half" linux to begin with. :)
  - anshul 17y ago
    The guy down the road might not have convinced anyone directly but he did contribute to your cause by making the need for discussing GWB ever so slightly stronger in your community enabling you to do what you did.
cortesi 17y ago
"There are two parts to the Linux community. One part sees Linux as a legitimate tool they can use to bring down costs while maintaining stability. The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens." Do you really think that the stability, low cost and quality of Open Source software is independent of the Free Software ideology? If I was being as derisive as you are above, I'd say that I hear this argument mostly from ignorant youngsters who have been lucky enough to inherit something marvellous that their elders fought hard for, but are now in danger of squandering everything through a moronic and self-centered lack of insight. The truth is that the two things go hand in hand. Without a Richard Stallman who is idealistic and paranoid enough to worry about things like patents and personal freedom, Open Source would be in much worse shape than it is now. Without a Linus Torvalds to pragmatically build excellent software within the framework put together by the community, we would be much diminished. We need both. Open Source software is often the "best tool for the job" in a technical sense precisely because it is Free, with all that implies. I personally think that we are right to be worried about Mono. We don't need to be alarmist, but we need to be wary. It's up to the Mono community to convince people that there is no licensing danger - the best way to do this is to lobby Novell and Microsoft to officially clarify the situation.
- gaius 17y ago
  There's an old saying, "BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft".
  - cortesi 17y ago
    I've heard it, and I personally use OpenBSD much more than I use Linux. There's a whole different discussion to be had about the differences between the BSD and Linux models, and why Linux has soared and the BSDs have not. At any rate, I suspect that, despite recent fireworks on the OpenBSD mailing lists, Stallman and Theo de Raadt agree much more fundamentally about the threat posed by patents and licensing than, say, Stallman and Torvalds.
    - uriel 17y ago
didroe 17y ago
I thought this was the best bit: >Mono implements an international standard albeit one from a convicted monopolist. If this is a problem, why do people use C, the standard from convicted monopolist AT&T? Mono implements an improved, Free replacement for a proprietary offering. If this is a problem, why do people use GNU (which provided an improved, Free replacement for proprietary UNIX)?
- rbanffy 17y ago
  I never realized AT&T was in a smear campaign against the use of competing C implementations. Mono implements a _subset_ of a proprietary offering that is Free (as in speech and beer). GNU is pretty much a greatly enhanced superset of AT&T UNIX.
  - nkassis 17y ago
    at&t did at one time try to paint BSD as illegal. They also sued which Microsoft has not done yet.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      That was a funny one. In the end AT&T was suing the BSD folks for using the technology the BSD folks developed and that AT&T was using without proper acknowledgement. I can only imagine what happened at the board meeting when this was disclosed. But I get your point. Since then, AT&T got a lot more civilized. Microsoft never was.
  - uriel 17y ago
    > GNU is pretty much a greatly enhanced superset of AT&T UNIX. I know many people that would question your claim that GNU 'enhanced' the work of Bell Labs, more like the opposite, but then they were certainly not alone in that.
- bitwize 17y ago
  Mono implements a standard from a convicted monopolist who has a stake in dominating the market the standard affects. AT&T was barred by consent decree from entering the computer industry. Unix and C were, by the standards of the day, practically given away, and AT&T couldn't use the control over these they had to unfairly outcompete other companies.

mishmash 17y ago

"The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens." No need to deride an entire class of your peers simply because their ideals are different than yours.

TomOfTTB 17y ago
It's not their ideals it's that they express them in a way that's counterproductive and designed to draw attention to themselves and not participate in a discussion. Let me give you another example of this type of behavior. I personally disagreed with many of the decisions the Bush Administration made in the U.S. I have had many thoughtful discussions with people who thought differently and have, in some cases, changed their minds ever so slightly. The guy down the road from me shares my ideals but he expressed it by hanging a life sized doll of George Bush by a noose outside his garage and then eventually lighting it on fire. I assure you he convinced no one who didn't already agree with him and his actions were really just a thinly veiled cry for attention.
- mishmash 17y ago
  Great story. Just remember, it is their ideals that give the "other half" linux to begin with. :)
- anshul 17y ago
  The guy down the road might not have convinced anyone directly but he did contribute to your cause by making the need for discussing GWB ever so slightly stronger in your community enabling you to do what you did.

cortesi 17y ago

"There are two parts to the Linux community. One part sees Linux as a legitimate tool they can use to bring down costs while maintaining stability. The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens." Do you really think that the stability, low cost and quality of Open Source software is independent of the Free Software ideology? If I was being as derisive as you are above, I'd say that I hear this argument mostly from ignorant youngsters who have been lucky enough to inherit something marvellous that their elders fought hard for, but are now in danger of squandering everything through a moronic and self-centered lack of insight. The truth is that the two things go hand in hand. Without a Richard Stallman who is idealistic and paranoid enough to worry about things like patents and personal freedom, Open Source would be in much worse shape than it is now. Without a Linus Torvalds to pragmatically build excellent software within the framework put together by the community, we would be much diminished. We need both. Open Source software is often the "best tool for the job" in a technical sense precisely because it is Free, with all that implies. I personally think that we are right to be worried about Mono. We don't need to be alarmist, but we need to be wary. It's up to the Mono community to convince people that there is no licensing danger - the best way to do this is to lobby Novell and Microsoft to officially clarify the situation.

gaius 17y ago
There's an old saying, "BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft".
- cortesi 17y ago
  I've heard it, and I personally use OpenBSD much more than I use Linux. There's a whole different discussion to be had about the differences between the BSD and Linux models, and why Linux has soared and the BSDs have not. At any rate, I suspect that, despite recent fireworks on the OpenBSD mailing lists, Stallman and Theo de Raadt agree much more fundamentally about the threat posed by patents and licensing than, say, Stallman and Torvalds.
  - uriel 17y ago

didroe 17y ago

I thought this was the best bit: >Mono implements an international standard albeit one from a convicted monopolist. If this is a problem, why do people use C, the standard from convicted monopolist AT&T? Mono implements an improved, Free replacement for a proprietary offering. If this is a problem, why do people use GNU (which provided an improved, Free replacement for proprietary UNIX)?

rbanffy 17y ago
I never realized AT&T was in a smear campaign against the use of competing C implementations. Mono implements a _subset_ of a proprietary offering that is Free (as in speech and beer). GNU is pretty much a greatly enhanced superset of AT&T UNIX.
- nkassis 17y ago
  at&t did at one time try to paint BSD as illegal. They also sued which Microsoft has not done yet.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    That was a funny one. In the end AT&T was suing the BSD folks for using the technology the BSD folks developed and that AT&T was using without proper acknowledgement. I can only imagine what happened at the board meeting when this was disclosed. But I get your point. Since then, AT&T got a lot more civilized. Microsoft never was.
- uriel 17y ago
  > GNU is pretty much a greatly enhanced superset of AT&T UNIX. I know many people that would question your claim that GNU 'enhanced' the work of Bell Labs, more like the opposite, but then they were certainly not alone in that.
bitwize 17y ago
Mono implements a standard from a convicted monopolist who has a stake in dominating the market the standard affects. AT&T was barred by consent decree from entering the computer industry. Unix and C were, by the standards of the day, practically given away, and AT&T couldn't use the control over these they had to unfairly outcompete other companies.