Over at the ByteBaker, Shrutarshi Basu has an interesting commentary on the latest mono issue. Worth a read, and of course I’ll provide my commentary as well for you, Gentle Reader.

The entire piece by Mr. Basu is well worth reading; it is well-reasoned and thoughtful. Here are a few of the points I thought might be worth a little more thought:

I think that people who advocate open source often forget that a lot of people (including a lot of people working with computer technology) care less about the licensing of their software and more about whether or not it works well. The reason open source succeeded isn’t so much due to a religious zeal to use only Free products but rather due to the fact that it let people open up the innards of their software and make changes so that things worked better.

I agree this is true, but the whole point behind Open Source “working better” is precisely because of the licensing of the software that made it possible! I see this time and time again – it’s like the thinking is “well politics and zeal got us this far”, but now is the time for hard-nosed pragmaticism! If the advocates listened to the people, Open Source would have been abandoned long ago! If you think I exaggerate, read through any of the large distro message boards: a recurring theme you’ll see time and time again is: “I don’t care about  (or even understand) the philosophy that literally made this possible! I want to play a mp3!”

Which is fine – it is well true that the vast majority do not care about licensing issues. If they did, then Microsoft would have a market share of about 2%. That being said, it is the “religious zeal” (must you go there) that made everything possible, and will continue to do so. Yes, it may take time, and yes, there may be inconveniences – and yes it is frustrating to be so close, but that is the nature of things. In fact, I would argue that the closer we get, the more important it becomes to not compromise Free Software values.

If you read Jo Shields’reply, you’ll see that Microsoft had no hand in the development of Mono and the agreements with Novell do not cover it.

It’s not your fault for believing this, but this is simply a misrepresentation of the facts on Mr. Shields’ part. See, for example, the “Joint letter to the Open Source Community From Novell and Microsoft“:

  • Mono, OpenOffice and Samba
    • Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server.
    • All of these technologies will be improved upon during the 5 years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings.
    • The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
  • Novell customers can use these technologies, secure in the knowledge that Microsoft and Novell are working together to offer the best possible joint solution.

It’s also a bit sketchy to say Microsoft has “no hand in mono development”, considering the amount of cash they send to Novell, it is Microsoft’s submissions to ECMA that determine the vast majority of what mono is – Microsoft certainly supports and promotes mono to some degree. “No hand” is true in one limited sense, yes – but maybe not so much if you look at it a different way.

But it is not your right nor your duty to force other people to do the same. Choice is at the core of free software and if you are trying to tell people that they can’t use or distribute some piece of software, then you are no better than Microsoft or other commercial software makers pulling users into vendor lock in.

I agree. Yet, this is once of the major problems I have with the mono camp – they are “stacking the deck” in favor of mono, ignoring user wishes and “pushing” mono into distros. There is a lot of money behind mono, especially in the context of the FLOSS world. Pretending something like Banshee going into Ubuntu by default is the choice of the user is a perfect example.

Then you get to the “well if you don’t like it, just remove it” argument, right? Well, that’s Microsoft’s argument for why its media player and web browser should be allowed to be bundled with the OS. Because they know most people are going to keep the defaults. I think most people – and European courts – see right through that. I draw an analogy between that and the mono brigade trying to push mono apps into the Ubuntu default loadout. That mindshare is important. What goes on the default desktop is important. It’s disingenous to pretend like that doesn’t matter.

It’s an understandable sentiment, but what’s equally disturbing to me is that all these smart people (and some of them are really smart) can’t seem to be able to pull together and create something that can blow the socks of all the supposedely substandard solutions that people are using to get real work done right now.

I absolutely sympathize with this. In my view, it’s a tragedy of enourmous proportions that so many talented people are supporting Microsoft through the mono project, when there are so many other framework platforms that could benefit. Sigh. It’s an individual choice, though.