

On Mono, Miguel, Stallman and Fusion with Microsoft - keyist
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090927151401988

======
jacquesm
People that write dumb stuff are best ignored, the more you pay attention the
more of a platform they'll have.

It's a pity for Miguel deIcaza that it has to be Jason Perlow that comes to
his defence, he's about as tainted as it gets.

As for Miguel himself, most of the people that are jumping up and down to be
able to throw their rocks are in their lifetimes not going to achieve one 10th
of a percent of the contribution to FOSS that deIcaza has already made.

For Stallman to criticize him in this way wasn't very classy, but at least
he's earned the right.

Edit: Perlow just basically sees a chance to pull himself out of irrelevancy
by attaching his name to a 'hot' subject in the eternal soap that the IT world
seems to be turning in to, and groklaw plays right into his cards.

This whole cult of personality is at some level deeply uncomfortable, but I
can't put my finger on why.

edit2: groklaw probably should put a nofollow in the link to the Perlow
article, it's one thing to link it for illustrative purposes, but to give it
more status on the net is a net loss, especially from groklaw.

~~~
wglb
The thing I learned from this is that Stallman did _not_ call Miguel a
traitor.

~~~
jacquesm
I believe this is where it all started:

[http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/software-freedom-
da...](http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/software-freedom-day-in-
boston/)

The quote seems to be pretty direct and has not been retracted, in fact the
groklaw article has it verbatim in the second gray text block.

He didn't call him a traitor, he called him "basically a traitor to the free
software community".

I'm sure there is a difference in there, but I'm not a lawyer, the people at
groklaw obviously are.

Personally I think that this could have been communicated less harsh, it would
have been better for the image of the FOSS community.

Calling ex-Foss contributors basically traitors to the free software community
smacks way too much of axis-of-evil and other extreme positions.

If Miguel deIcaza wants to work on mono that's fine with me, I'll never use
it. If he wants to work on Microsoft stuff that's fine with me, I'll never use
it. If he wants to go and work on closed source for Larry Ellison next week
that's fine with me too, I will most likely never use it.

But I wouldn't call him a traitor for any of that, I'd simply let him go his
way, and I'd thank him for the contributions he made up to the point where his
goals deviated from mine.

But then again, I'm clearly not Richard Stallman, so I'm probably not
qualified to have much of an opinion on this.

Also, I really dislike witch-hunts, live and let live.

~~~
bad_user
> _But then again, I'm clearly not Richard Stallman, so I'm probably not
> qualified to have much of an opinion on this._

Richard Stallman has earned the right to have an opinion, yes, but I see a
huge problem in the people that take his lead.

This whole "Freedom is more important" and "lets protect the users" sounds a
lot like the US propaganda whenever a country is going to be invaded ... i.e.
the people there don't know any better, lets send them a couple of bombs in
the name of democracy and human rights. It's self-righteous, cocky and plain
insensitive to those people, because maybe they like their life just the way
it is.

If the authors of a Free Sofware project wanted other people to not build upon
their software without subscribing to their ideology, they should've put that
in the license instead of the perpetual harassment going on.

~~~
bad_user
If my opinion is stupid, short-sighted or just wrong, I would like to know
why.

Maybe my opinion about the US propaganda is too harsh, but I've earned that
right considering that I live in a third-world ex-communist country.

Thanks,

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I didn't downvote you because I never downvote, but I do think your opinion is
confused and off topic. You seem to think that the occurrance of the word
"freedom" in both US foreign policy and the FOSS soap opera makes this a good
enough reason to plug your political opinion. It's not.

~~~
bad_user
It's not my political opinion that I tried to express. I just tried making an
analogy, and most analogies are bad if taken literally.

I'll try to give you some context. The other day I read a comment on Miguel's
blog, signed A.J. Venter (Founder, Kongoni GNU/Linux) ...

> _I don't think Richard has any interest in improving the pool of open-source
> software, nor of free software. His interest is simple: protecting the
> users, and that means zero tolerance for non-free software_

It's this attitude I was referring to, and can also be seen in Groklaw's
article.

And regardless of what Richard truly wants, many people have taken upon
themselves the responsibility of fighting a war against companies that release
proprietary software.

Not only many of those people haven't contributed anything like what people
like Miguel or RMS did (with meritocracy going out the window), but those same
people are using the same tactics of companies we despise ... like FUD and
harassment, in the name of saving the world from proprietary software.

The end justifies the means after all, but maybe the world doesn't want to be
saved and that's something to consider whenever you insult someone for their
choices (and this goes on both sides of the barricade).

------
alecco
It's out of the box now. I doubt the rebuke will reach critical mass like the
attack.

Will ZDnet.com fire this blogger or enjoy the gazillion clicks on a fake
bashing story? What will be the message to their other bloggers?

