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[News] How Miguel de Icaza Ruins Linux, Contiminates Code with Microsoft Licences

  • Subject: [News] How Miguel de Icaza Ruins Linux, Contiminates Code with Microsoft Licences
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:18:46 +0000
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Freelance
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Oh Miguel...

,----[ Quote ]
| I just hope it's a better kind of help than C#, OOXML, and a barely-working 
| Silverlight clone. Unless you have some grand scheme for making software 
| patents go away?  
| 
| Miguel, you're a smart person and I respect what you've done. But your 
| current infatuation with All Things Microsoft is, frankly, scaring me and a 
| lot of other people. I didn't switch to Linux so I could have Microsoft 
| technologies in my face.   
`----

http://ventnorsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/oh-miguel.html

And here come the /real/ issue:

Don't Work Downstream from Redmond

,----[ Quote ]
| This is my problem with Microsoft’s patent pledge, with the Microsoft-Novell 
| deal over codecs for Monopolight, and just about everything coming out of 
| Redmond except for the pretty words of the open source interoperability lab.  
| 
| Discriminatory distribution clauses are contrary to the four freedoms of 
| software. Couching that discrimination in the language of business ($40 
| billion in annual revenue seems like a pretty fair return for $7 billion in 
| annual research to me) and waving the tired old tatters of the flag of 
| innovation doesn’t make that discrimination right, and it doesn’t hide it 
| very  well.
`----

http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2008/03/dont_work_downstream_from_redm.html


Recent:

Above my Pay Grade: Miguel de Icaza and the Novell-Microsoft Agreement

,----[ Quote ]
| What's this about pay-grade? It's a military term, often misappropriated by 
| civilians who are avoiding an ethical decision. It's a good excuse in the 
| military: politicians are accountable for the decision to enter a war, while 
| the military are oath-bound to follow orders at pain of court-martial and 
| possibly execution, and are only accountable for the conduct of the war. But 
| Miguel is no soldier. He's the founder of a company previously merged into 
| Novell, and would not be subject to treason charges or capital punishment 
| over this issue. Others, like Jeremy Allison, chose to leave the company 
| while Miguel stayed.        
`----

http://technocrat.net/d/2008/3/10/37412


The unholy quad: Miguel, Mono, Moonlight and Microsoft

,----[ Quote ]
| Nevertheless, this Usenet conversation has some points of interest. It 
| illustrates again the way in which de Icaza, who by all accounts is a man 
| with a very high IQ, refuses to look down the line and draw reasonable 
| conclusions.   
| 
| When asked "To what degree do you trust Microsoft, either in terms of their 
| promises; their motivations; or their commitment to a competing platform like 
| Linux?" he chooses to trivialise the question by responding "This is a 
| question that is suitable for Teen magazine or Cosmo."   
`----

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17069/1090/1/0/


Miguel does a backflip on patent licensing deal

,----[ Quote ]
| I haven't laughed as loud and as long as I did this morning when I read that 
| Miguel de Icaza has now started criticising the patent licensing deal which 
| his employer Novell signed with Microsoft in November 2006.  
| 
| he Pope has turned Anglican. John McCain has become a Democrat. Fidel Castro 
| has sworn off Communism. 
| 
| Whenever de Icaza does something, there is always a good reason. But like all 
| people who flip through 180 degrees, de Icaza generally does not reveal such 
| reasons.  
`----

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17036/1148/


,----[ Quote ] 
| However, De Icaza is being disengenious. Consider this remark of his just 15 
| months ago: 
| http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Nov-04.html
| 
| "Why did you guys work this deal with Microsoft?
| Although I did not take part of the actual negotiations, and was only told 
| about this deal less than a week before the announcement, I had been calling 
| for a long time for a collaboration between Microsoft and Open Source and 
| Microsoft and Novell.   
| There are numerous interviews that touch on this topic and most recently my 
| interview in Microsoft's Port25 
| In the past I had called for this same kind of cooperation with other 
| companies. "  
| 
| [...]
| 
| So, the question arises: Why is De Icaza criticizing the "deal" now? What's 
| changed? The terms of Icaza's employment? His salary? His VP status? His 
| duties? GNOME's GPL status?  
| 
| It's time De Icaza comes clean.
`----

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-03-07-011-26-NW-BZ-NV-0004


,----[ Quote ]
| Scoble: "I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to
| stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue."
`----

http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/statuses/764673949


MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal

,----[ Quote ]
| Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for 
| the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing 
| agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent 
| protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project, 
| which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux.    
| 
| Speaking on a panel at the MIX 08 conference in Las Vegas, de Icaza said that 
| Novell has done the best it could to balance open-source interests with 
| patent indemnification. However, if he had his way, the company would have 
| remained strictly open source and not gotten into bed with Microsoft. Novell 
| entered into a controversial multimillion dollar cross-patent licensing and 
| interoperability deal with Microsoft in November 2006.     
| 
| "I'm not happy about the fact that such an agreement was made, but [the 
| decision] was above my pay grade; I think we should have stayed with the 
| open-source community," de Icaza said. He was speaking on a panel that also 
| included representatives from Microsoft and open-source companies Mozilla and 
| Zend.    
| 
| [...]
| 
| De Icaza shot back that it was "unfair" of Schroepfer to paint Novell as the 
| only company protected by patent covenants, as many companies have signed 
| licensing agreements not only with Microsoft, but also with other companies 
| such as IBM that have a large patent portfolio.   
| 
| [...]
| 
| The choice has drawn ire from open-source diehards who were displeased with 
| Novell’s decision to sign a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft in the 
| first place. A Web site called “Boycott Novell” decried Moonlight as a 
| Microsoft “pet project” and criticized the company’s decision not to port 
| Silverlight to Linux itself.    
`----

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/06/mix-novells-de-icaza-criticizes-microsoft-patent-deal

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