WorksWithU, an Ubuntu-focused blog, weighs in on the latest developments with a fair overview of things.
The comments are actually worth reading.
Allow me to digress
There is a comment from Mr. de Icaza – parts of which you know I must take issue with:
People like to point out to Microsoft’s actions in 1998, a decade letter the company is a different entity, all you have to see are all the specs that they have granted patent-free access (like the binary file formats and the XML file formats for Office, the crown jewel of the company).
I’m not sure why people undermine thier own arguments. Implying that 1998 is the year Microsoft got religion only hurts the argument. Microsoft has done plenty of evil since 1998 – a nice long overview of it is in Microsoft: A History of Anticompetitive Behavior (PDF).
Here’s just a taste of well-past-1998 stuff:
In 2003, the DOJ discovered that Microsoft had built a feature into Windows that invoked Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, rather than the user’s chosen default browser, contrary to the clear obligations of the Final Judgment.
Similarly, in 2004, Microsoft attempted to require licensees of its middleware offering, the .NET Framework, to obtain Microsoft’s prior consent before publishing any benchmark testing results for the software.
In 2005, Microsoft demanded that manufacturers of portable music players sign exclusive deals if they wanted integration with Microsoft’s Windows Media Player.
And in 2007, Microsoft made changes to allow consumers limited choice of desktop search products in Windows Vista only following an extensive government investigation and pressure from a number of U.S. States. While Microsoft eventually made changes to its conduct in each of these instances, these incidents all demonstrate Microsoft’s willingness to use its monopoly products aggressively first and make changes later only when confronted about its behavior. This is particularly striking coming, as it does, within the very limited range of issues covered by the Final Judgment.
In fact, the district court overseeing the Final Judgment extended the decree for two more years, to November 12, 2009, because Microsoft still has not come into compliance with its obligations regarding communications protocols.
There’s a lot more than that, in the report and even more not in the report. So yeah. You can make the arguments that “Microsoft is a big company” or “That’s business” or “Microsoft is changing, things take time”, “There are decent people in there” and so on. But don’t pretend like Microsoft stopped being a big ball of evil-ness 10 years ago, or pretend like people don’t have very good reasons even today to treat Microsoft with extreme distrust. We all know that is not true, and it weakens your position to assert it.
Just like it would weaken my position if I asserted everything Microsoft does is evil. But I don’t. I think Microsoft does do some non-evil stuff.
By accident. /rimshot
Microsoft earned every bit of disdain, trust and wariness they recieved. And they will have to earn trust – they don’t just get to say it’s a new day, they have to prove it. It’s sad for them that it takes much longer to earn trust as it does distrust, but they thought it was worth the tradeoff.
In which I continue to digress because I am waiting on Dave to freakin’ show up
In another place, de Icaza says “working with Microsoft has been an absolute pleasure”. I’m sure it has been. For you. Microsoft must positively love the mono project. It’s the absolute single best thing that could happen to Microsoft in relation to Open Source, short of Linus killing Stallman and then going to work for SCO.
Of course those other Open Source projects that don’t line up quite so nicely with Microsoft’s interests might have a different take on the “working with Microsoft” experience.
In which I summarize because Dave is finally here
Anyway, all that is a little off-topic, but I can’t help but to address it, because it always seems so odd to me that de Icaza would even want to bring that stuff up. It’s not really germane to the debate, and seriously dude no one cares that Microsoft is “nice” to the mono project, because everyone sees it as a catspaw anyway (speaking in general terms of the criticism of mono).
