yet another tribune for this Microsoft mole.

Story: Miguel de Icaza: "We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight"Total Replies: 8
Author Content
shmget

Aug 06, 2008
4:09 AM EDT
This article is a lexicon of Microsoft marketing buzzwords...
Sander_Marechal

Aug 06, 2008
4:36 AM EDT
I'm surprised that after all this brouhaha (this isn't the first time Miguel stated things like this) there is little to no reaction from the Gnome guys about this. Just silence.

I worry deeply about the direction that Gnome is going in. I like Gnome. A lot. Even KDE 4.1 can't entice me (see my post in http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/27610/) but stuff like this, the empty Gnome roadmap and vapourware status of Gnome 3.x worry me about Gnome's future.

Luckily Miguel isn't a Gnome developer anymore so he has little say in which direction Gnome will actually go.
flufferbeer

Aug 06, 2008
5:16 AM EDT
The word out on the street is that de Miguel, programmer par excellence that he was (and may still be), has been royally duped by the M$ frontline. I've also heard the same idea expressed that Miguel figuratively has had "the wool pulled over his eyes" and is apt to do the same for his programmer colleagues. Just the word on this that already spread around....
softwarejanitor

Aug 06, 2008
7:44 AM EDT
I kind of avoid Gnome in general these days because it seems tainted by association with Miguel... I absolutely want nothing to do with Mono or Moonlight...
dinotrac

Aug 06, 2008
9:13 AM EDT
flufferbeer -

Duped how?

He is an accomplished programmer, so I would expect that he is fully capable of examining languages and APIs, and competent to pronounce them "Wow" or "Whoa".
dumper4311

Aug 06, 2008
12:58 PM EDT
@flufferbeer:

>"royally duped by the M$ frontline."

Like dino, I'm curious about that assertion. Don't anybody get all wound up, I'm not looking for an argument or anything. Putting aside the great unprovable assumptions of the "evil empire's taint", is there anything solid you've heard that would support that statement?

I don't trust MS anymore than I could collectively throw them, so it's of some interest to me to keep an eye on their business model and strategy. I just don't see "MS is evil, so I won't touch anything that smells like them" as a rational argument. If however, there is something concrete to the "wool pulled over his eyes" idea, I'd be very keen on understanding it.
tuxchick

Aug 06, 2008
1:10 PM EDT
Maybe it's nothing more than his open admiration of Microsoft. If he were like the Samba team and said things like "they suck, but we're going to hold our noses and build this very useful interoperability tool anyway" then perhaps he would not get criticized so much.
tracyanne

Aug 06, 2008
1:34 PM EDT
Well, at the risk of being attacked, I'd like to point out that C#/CLI etc is a very nice technology, it's what Java should be, as it's really Java done better. Silverlight is what Adobe should have done for Flash, it's Flash done better.

Anyone who can program in C#, or VB.Net, for that matter, or any other language that supports the .NET/CLI infrastructure (including, probably COBOL.Net which Fujitsu created), can easily program Silverlight applications. There's very little difference between programming for Silverlight and any other .NET based programming activity, like the web for example. It really is that easy.

JavaFX, may provide this sort of development model for Java, but as many have pointed out here, Java has it's problems, one of those, in my opinion is easy to use and configure development tools, the same applies across the board in Linux and FOSS devlopment tools. There's and article here that bears reading http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/106447/index.html.

I think most people miss the point, in the Microsoft vs Linux/FOSS debate.
dumper4311

Aug 06, 2008
2:19 PM EDT
>"Maybe it's nothing more than his open admiration of Microsoft."

Could be. But whether you admire them or not, there's a great deal to learn from Microsoft's business model. Setting aside the fundamental question of who owns your data, MS has done a lot of things right (for themselves, anyway).

As tracyanne points out, one of those things is braindead easy development. Now, this creates problems of it's own (poor general skill level, insecure & sloppy code, etc.), but they make things REALLY easy. It's all part of their drug dealer business model - get people hooked with cheap and easy solutions, and after you have control, then squeeze the new addicts - er, customers.

Take out the self serving focus of the above and what do you have left? A potentially useful model for open success. A broad, capable, unified infrastructure (cross platform and open standards) with a friendly and stupid easy interface would attract a lot of the crowd that flocks to C# or VB.net.

Yes, I know, the argument can be made that such resources already exist. So what else contributes? We're still left fighting the inertia of a software giant, and their marketing machine. In that light, the idea of a "very useful interoperability tool" makes a lot more sense - leverage the strengths of your opponent against them.

Suddenly it doesn't make much sense to constantly disparage the tool whose function you're working to replicate. Do I care much for MS or their tools? Not particularly. I see plenty of problems with their business model and the quality of their tools and platforms that make them distasteful - that's why I use open software and save my data in open standards (mostly).

But I don't have any problems at all with using their strengths to advance my own goals.

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