● 06.05.09

●● Microsoft is Using Mono and MonoDevelop to Leverage Windows and .NET

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu, Windows at 9:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What Microsoft has

What Microsoft wants

Summary: Shades of an embrace & extend routine found in Novell’s labour

IS Mono Microsoft’s tool for “embrace, extend, and extinguish” of Free software developers? Our contributor Fewa sure thinks so. This is not to say that some nefarious thing is happening here or that a plan is executed by Novell at the behest of Microsoft. But it happens to be a side-effect and it mustn’t be overlooked.

“…it happens to be a side-effect and it mustn’t be overlooked.”The previous post spoke about how Novell projects began latching onto Microsoft’s. Specifically, as Miguel de Icaza puts it, “MonoDevelop runs on top of the .NET Framework and uses the .NET managed debugger instead of using Mono’s runtime and Mono’s debugger, so there is no dependency on Mono to be installed on the system.“

In other words, Novell programs help developers work directly with (and for) Microsoft .NET, under the illusion that what they do is “Free software”. Does that sound familiar?

Microsoft is trying very hard to get Free software developers to use Visual Studio, which is proprietary. Last year Microsoft paid SourceForge a lot of money to even recommend Visual Studio. It was a sham and more background from that time can be found in [1, 2, 3].

Another developer is realising that the whole thing smells funny and serves as a potential trap. From his very latest essay: [hat tip: tacone]

Mono actually is dangerous[...]In a recent iTWire article titled “The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono”, Sam Varghese contacts Ecmea for the patent terms surrounding Mono. Remember that the mono camp always throws the argument at people that mono follows an Ecmea standard and as such is free to implement? [....]He reaches a very simple conclusion: “To me, it looks this licence is as real as the unicorn. Or maybe Santa Claus. I think Mono fans need to think of a fresh defence when people talk about the dangers of patent suits arising over this technology. The licence talk has worn more than a little thin.”Thanks for a great piece of investigation to Sam. Now, can we please take a real look into this before we rip out Rhythmbox in favour of Banshee in Ubuntu and can we please reinvestigate making Gnome depend on mono (currently by virtue of Tomboy)?

The opposition to Mono in Ubuntu keeps growing [1, 2] because of new evidence, not to mention Microsoft lawsuits against Linux. Will Canonical pay attention? █

“I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

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