One thing I really like about this article is they hit one of the mono apologists’ favorite distortions right out of the gate:

It’s true that all software patents are a threat to developers—but that doesn’t mean that all software patents are equally threatening. Different companies might have patents that could be used to attack other languages, but if we worried about every patent that could be used against us, we wouldn’t get anything done. Microsoft’s patents are much more dangerous: it’s the only major software company that has declared itself the enemy of GNU/Linux and stated its intention to attack our community with patents.

Now I’ve been preaching this gospel since Day 1. It is pure dishonesty to pretend like every company present the same risk and hostility to Linux, Free Software, or Open Source that Microsoft does. Microsoft’s hostility and desire to destroy Linux is not the fevered imaginations of wild-eyed zealots. It is documented. It is proven. It is inarguable.

Now, you may want to advance the idea that Microsoft has changed. That is a possibility, sure – but it is not documented, proven or inarguable. The safe and sane position towards Microsoft is suspicion and wariness. Microsoft made it so, not wild-eyed zealots. It also becomes on open question on what type of change it is.

You may also want to advance the idea that Microsoft’s hostility is overstated. That is a possibility, as well – but you run into a real problem with objectivity there. That is, there is no way for us to know the limits or true intention of Microsoft’s hostility. We can only know that we have more proof and evidence for Microsoft’s hostility to Linux, Free Software and Open Source than any other other entity in existence – with the arguable exception of SCO – and that we have evidence they systematically lie and disguise their intent.

What you can not honestly do, though, is to pretend like Microsoft does not have a long and documented history of unfair, illegal, and highly questionable tactics against Linux, Free Software, Open Source and even commercial competitors. You can also not pretend like it is “ancient history” or that the very same people that participated in such tactics are not still active within Microsoft.

Nonetheless, it seems if you find any discussion of Mono you will eventually run into some Mono/Microsoft apologists pretending like doubting Microsoft is irrational, if not downright cheese-eating surrender monkey cowardice. You know those hillbillies that handle snakes because they think Jesus will protect them? They aren’t brave, they are deluded. You know those guys that don’t handle snakes? They aren’t cowards, they are rational.

Offering solutions

Another nice thing that the FSF has done is to offer up an acceptable solution, as well as an invitation to Microsoft to work together to reach a real and inarguable solution.

There is an interesting point within: just as “Only Nixon could go to China”, only the FSF has the credibility to assure people that Microsoft’s offerings are valid. Novell does not have that credibility. Team Mono does not have that credibility.

When you mock the core principles of Free Software, embrace “pragmatism”, and compromise your ethics a little bit here and a little bit there, you might profit in the short term; but long term, when you go to make a stand and ask people to trust you, things are different then. In one light that is unfair, but the reality is that is what happens when you enter into anti-community and secretive deal and take $400+ million dollars from Microsoft.

Oh, and continuing to fight the FSF or rms with whatever flavor of scandal or slander you can grab doesn’t add to your credibility either. Just in case you thought it did. No, it only spreads the taint of your lack of credibility. Like a single rotten apple spoiling the barrel, so does one dishonest hateful apologist spoil a “movement”.

Sadly, this works on both sides. Which is why my arguments are always only the Purest of Logic and Reason, and I constantly refrain from personally attacking The Lying Slanderous Bastards in the Opposition.

More to come

I encourage everyone to read and think on the FSF statement. There are some interesting arguments in there, and I would like to see a much longer and detailed essay forthcoming.

I have never understood why mono apologists take so many talking points from Jo Shields. The gentleman may be a great packager and contributor, I don’t know,  but his arguments are terrible and credibility is poor. Let’s take a look at why I say that:

Consider that we know for a fact that F-Spot and Banshee, at least, use non-ECMA covered parts of mono. Maybe they will be re-written soon. That’s great. But at the time of the announcement and currently, they were and are not covered by the standard, and so not covered by the agreement.

Right, then. So we have Mr. Shields gleeful announcement on the Ubuntu Forums:

Re: Monolith

Quote:
>Originally Posted by zekopeko
>hahahahaha!!!! well it looks like sane people will stop bitching about ECMA standards at least.
>does this cover the ASP.NET , ADO.NET, System.Windows.Forms?

No. But nobody cares about those – they aren’t used for the apps people moan about

This is blatantly false, but I guarantee you the mono-men on the Ubuntu Forum that parrot Mr. Shields will not soon tire of repeating it.

We have his careless “glossing over” the distinction on his own blog’s announcement:

If the anti-Mono crowd were provided with their GPL-compatible patent grant for Mono, which they spend so much time talking about the absence of, how would they react?

Of course, there is no such GPL-compatible patent grant for Mono, and such promises have already been called into question last year by the Software Freedom Law Center. I will freely admit that I consider the Community Promise a positive development in the context of making Mono safer – but over-selling it doesn’t bolster your position, it hurts it.

We have him attacking Stallman’s incorrect assessment of Tomboy using non-ECMA parts, conveniently not mentioning many important mono apps which do indeed use non-ECMA parts. If Stallman gets a point like that wrong in a project he is not personally involved in, that is an honest error. If you get a point like that wrong in a project you are personally involved in, well, let’s just say it doesn’t look like an honest error.

We have this strange assertion on his own blog :

So is Mono “always playing catch-up”? Not on anything anyone who isn’t porting from Windows cares about. And Mono wasn’t created with that goal in mind. For making apps which look and feel at home on Linux, we’ve had what we need for years.

Yet, the Mono General FAQ suggests otherwise:

Why is Novell working on .NET?

There are two reasons:

• Increase developer productivity.
• Assist Windows .NET developers to deploy their applications on Linux.

These are admittedly small things in the overall picture, but I do think they speak to a general dearth of reliable pro-mono arguments from Mr. Shields.

Part of the problem is the the large portion of the debate is over opinions – it takes disproportionately strong arguments to change someone’s opinion. You aren’t going to get very far calling people’s opinions “idiotic”, “paranoid”, “religious”, etc. etc. If you want to continue to attack people’s opinions, well good luck with that.

Mono apologists never learn this, especially when they portray people’s distrust of Microsoft as paranoid or irrational. Any sane man on the face of the earth will freely admit some distrust of Microsoft is perfectly rational, justified, and even required. Reasonable people can disagree on exactly how much distrust is warranted.

That leaves a smaller portion to factual debate. And so, when mono apologists get the facts wrong, or gloss over inconvenient facts, even when they are small facts – it greatly damages credibility.

It also notes that a FSF statement will be forthcoming.

If rms and the FSF won’t get behind – or at least won’t withdraw opposition to – mono, then the community will remain divided. The level of flat distrust for Microsoft and the level of flat trust for rms are obstacles to big to overcome by any argument I’ve ever heard Team Mono make.

If I were on Team Mono or Novell and wanted to put things to bed, I would try to get an statement from the FSF on what they want to see that would be satisfactory, instead of straight negative criticism on how the Community Promise is unsatisfactory. A rejection without suggestions is hard to overcome; but a “checklist” of things that need to happen provides an opportunity to at least do something constructive with.

I doubt this is going to happen, though. I think we had a chance here to move this thing closer to a resolution, but it seems like it is slipping away.

Team Mono + Novell + Microsoft simply do not have the credibility to overcome a rejection by rms + FSF.

Also: watch the knives come out for rms big time after the statement. I am predicting a blind rage from mono apologists attacking rms every way possible – and a ratio of 1 valid address of his points :  250 personal attacks.

A lot of people have been playing fast and loose with the details of the latest Microsoft Community Promise announcement. Here’s a perfect example from Reddit: “Miguel de Icaza: Microsoft promises to never sue anyone regarding Mono.”

The very first response is from Miguel:

Respect for not taking the easy way out and letting fanbois spread misinformation. I’m going to keep hitting the point that mono advocacy has always bothered me a lot – but if key mono people are going to be out there putting out the truth they deserve credit for that.Especially because it would be much easier to just turn those ignorant fanbois loose.

I would like to see the “database access” question resolved for Banshee and F-Spot. I’m seeing a lot of people saying all those mono apps are safe, and I’m not sure that’s true.

Also, you should stop reading after the first post – because it pretty much turns into a tard fight after that.

When we last left “As the .Net Turns,” Richard Stallman was promising that Microsoft would never, ever marry his open source daughter.

Now Microsoft has raised the tension in the room by giving that daughter a ring, to the cheers of the rest of her family.

We join our show already in progress.

Cute. 

The truth of the matter is that – to the extent that it could ever have been accused of unification before – mono+Novell+Microsoft have already split the “movement”.

The more accurate question is how much of the damage will the Community Promise undo? A brief stroll through the intellectual void that is ZDNet comments depressingly shows it seems to be having little effect.

The Problem

It seems the Software Freedom Law Center didn’t like what it saw when it looked at the Open Specification Promise last year. Combine this with the question that the Community Promise is more restrictive than the Open Specfication Promise, and things are looking a little less rosy.

The 3 points the SFLC raises with the OSP all exist in the CP:

1. Irrevocable but Only for Now
2. Covers Specifications, Not Code
3. No Consistency with the GPL

The author also warns: “It is true that a broad audience of developers could implement the specifications, but they would be unable to be certain that implementations based on the latest versions of the specifications would be safe from attack. They would also be unable to distribute their code for any type of use, as is integral to the GPL and to all free software.” The whole thing ends with the SFLC cautioning “GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.”

It reads to me like the SFLC is saying the OSP is not GPL-safe, even though Microsoft suggests it is. Microsoft does use a bit of strange language on that point:

Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can’t give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s).

The Twist

I can’t believe I’m about to argue in favor of Microsoft, but consider this: Microsoft is explicitly saying right there they believe the OSP (and CP) can be used with the GPL. It seems to me then, that would prevent Microsoft from coming in later and saying it doesn’t! It only seems to open up some strange situation like the original GPL project attacking a GPL fork and arguing that the OSP attached to the original doesn’t confer to the fork or something. My head hurts even thinking about how it could be twisted into an attack.

And believe me, I think about how Microsoft could attack Open Source all day long. If I worked for Microsoft all you hippies would be running Vista.

Seriously though, Red Hat’s General Counsel has said the OSP is “sufficient”. I don’t trust Microsoft and I don’t trust Novell but I do trust Red Hat’s lawyers to get it right.

Summary

I’m not seeing this as a valid attack. Right now if there is a problem with the promise it is in the difference between the OSP and the CP.

1. Be sure the standard bits of mono are safe.

The Community Promise looks pretty good here. I would be very interested to hear any reasonable attack that could be brought to bear against the standard bits of mono by Microsoft.

No concern here.

2. Make sure non-standard and standard bits are clearly separate.

Based on the comments and reading I have done, the mono team is already on top of this, or in some cases already done.

No concern here.

3. Do not get into a situation where the non-standard bits are required.

Team mono obviously wants to see mono as an important and wide-spread platform. That’s great. Is mono without the non-standard bits good enough to do that? Or will it be one of those things where to really get any use out of it, you need those special bits? Microsoft talked about this in internal emails specifically.

Can we get an honest mono proponent to talk about how vital non-standardized features (AppDomain, WinForms, ADO.NET, etc.  are for “real” developers)?

For example, say someone wanted GNOME 4.0 built in mono. Can you do everything you need and stay within the standard? If not, start working on Microsoft to get those bits standardized and under the Community Promise.

This could turn into an issue, but I don’t think there is enough concern here to get all up in arms about. I would just keep an eye on future mono projects and see if there is a big use of the non-standard bits.

4. Get those non-standard bits safe.

Novell absolutely needs to be taking the lead on getting Microsoft to apply the Community Promise on other interesting bits of .NET. I know that’s going to be a tough road, but that’s part of the responsibility you took on.

Slight concern here, going back to point 3. Plus, the more stuff you can set free the better, right?

5. Get honest in your promotion of mono.

If people are demanding better protection and assurances, then deliver them.  From day one – when I was considering implementing a project using C# – all the mono apologetics struck me as hinky. As time went on, I moved from apathy to activity against mono.

I understand you may feel sick and tired of dealing with criticism, but you have to know that dealing closely with Microsoft you are going to face extraordinary distrust. So, you must provide extraordinary assurances. Fair or not, that’s the reality.

No real concern here, things get nasty because the internet is serious business – gloat for a while and then get on with things. If some new controversy breaks out, handle it better.

6. Get control of C#.

Mono likes to play up that it has a few namespaces that .NET doesn’t, like Mono.Simd. Does it make sense to get those in the standard?

One of the fears people have is that Microsoft could somehow change the standard so that no one could implement it properly. Another is a distaste for using a company-specific language – it just “feels” proprietary.

The more C# / CLI are perceived as being “real” independent standards, and not just rubber stamps for Microsoft, the better mono looks. It also assures those who think mono’s life is tied to Microsoft’s support of C#/CLI. Microsoft has been known to crazy promote a technology and then abandon it, where would that leave mono’s long term prospects?

Slight concern here, but again nothing to get up in arms about.

7. Moonlight

You have to get that garbage safe. The so-called covenant is downright anti-community – you know it, I know it, and the American people know it.

All sorts of concern here, but offset by the fact that I doubt Silverlight has more than 29 users worldwide, and I would guess moonlight has about 7, including Miguel. Also, every other 3rd post on the internet isn’t about how moonlight is awesome rocks and better than any other application ever and needs to be on the desktop of every distro.

Closing up shop?

No, not yet – I’ll be sticking around a bit to see how things develop. I won’t be searching out old arguments or points, because there is no denying that things are changed.