
RMS: De Icaza Traitor to Free Software Community - billpg
http://www.osnews.com/story/22225/RMS_De_Icaza_Traitor_to_Free_Software_Community
======
zecg
One has to admire rms for sticking to his guns and living up to his ideals. He
is a bit brash, true, but a) he has been proven right many times before when
it comes to software and b) he is consistently being himself and doing his
thing. See him eat a piece of his foot on camera while giving a lecture (it's
on youtube) and you'll perhaps have a Zen moment. He is a walking, talking
media antidote.

~~~
drats
To extend your a) a little, Stallman has every right to be suspicious of a
company which has; deliberately targeted GNU/Linux in the past and said it's
coming after it, said GNU/Linux infringes patents, is a convicted monopolist
in the USA and the EU, deliberately uses its power over system-builders to
shove GNU/Linux out (desktops options and netbooks), used its market power to
make ACPI/power management difficult for other operating systems and much
more. People seem to forget these things all the time when discussions come
up. IBM used to be the big bad guy at one point too, but they now have a track
record of community contributions to point to and say "we are different".
There is no such thing with MS, and the top management went from Gates to
Ballmer who sees rivals commercial or otherwise in a very combative way (going
to "kill Google", GNU/Linux a "cancer"). When someone who was/is considered to
be part of your community works with, helps and defends an entity which has
tried to attack you and desires to do so in the future then "traitor" isn't a
bad name for them. There's plenty of money to be made with GNU/Linux without
doing any of the MS stuff he does.

Miguel de Icaza never got over his incapacity to land a job at MS (it was no
visa because he didn't have a degree it wasn't because he was stupid) and has
always sought to emulate them and defend them from that point onwards in some
weird psychological relationship. Novell is suspicious in its intentions and
it seems they'd gladly see others get sued if they had a waiver. They are not
a community player at all.

Miguel putting "God" and "Love" in his post he doesn't clear up any of the
issues while he sits there trying to evoke an open source hero mystique while
working on a Microsoft platform clone... for the iPhone.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_is a convicted monopolist_

What the hell does this mean? It's not a crime to be a monopoly!

~~~
jerf
Expanding on allenbrunson's point, that's _why_ it's correct to refer to them
as a _convicted_ monopolist. The word is indeed there precisely _because_
"monopolist" does not carry the meaning of "convicted".... to be honest I'm
not actually sure what your problem with the phrase is.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
My problem with the phrase is unless I'm missing something, Microsoft was not
found guilty of a crime (as sid_0 pointed out, _U.S. vs Microsoft_ was a civil
matter) and therefore the word "convicted" is meaningless. Actually, it could
be considered slanderous.

This so far has been a community that prides itself on accuracy. If you're
going to accuse someone of criminal acts, they should at least have been tried
and found guilty in criminal court.

------
Raphael_Amiard
I would like to outline the basic "traitor" scenario, tell me if i got things
right :

1\. Miguel de Icaza, after a secret deal with microsoft and novell, starts an
OSS implementation of the dot net platform. It has been his goal from the
beginning. In fact he always wanted to work at Microsoft, and he decided to
become their infiltrated spy, to stop the worst threat Microsoft has ever seen
: Linux (ahem, sorry ,i mean GNU/Linux). Some say that's even why he started
GNOME in the first place.

2\. He gets a lot of contributors, but that's mainly because they're too dumb
to see the secret plan he has from the beginning.

3\. The mono platform enters a stage in wich it becomes usable, and
applications begin to appear and after some time, begin to become integrated
into common linux distributions. The fact that Novell is actually developping
a major linux distro is a big factor in this.

4\. Some very clever OSS users / programmers / developpers, led by their
enlightened guru Richard Stallman, finally discover that this is a secret plan
to make the whole GNU/Linux stumble. They decide to put aside the quarell
about the Linux name, because duty is calling them. They consequently put
tremendous effort into alerting people about the menace

5\. The evil duo (Microsoft / Novell) and Miguel the menial, are in a very bad
position. They never expected anybody to actually SEE through their evil plan.
Microsoft then decides to publish a 'promise' not to sue anybody about an
implementation of the CLR. The plan is very clever, because mono implements
not only the CLR, but other parts of the Microsoft stack. When things will be
calmer again, then will be the moment to sue !

... are you guys serious ?

Now i know there are some real risks, some real stakes, maybe even some part
of that is true. But common, when i read some contributions, i just wonder how
much hollywood movies has affected our brains.

~~~
drats
You could have saved yourself a load of typing just by looking up the
definition of "traitor" in the dictionary. By the way, while you are at it,
look up "strawman" also.

To Stallman he is a traitor to the ideals and helping the enemy (see my other
post on this page). This does not mean it's a conspiracy.

"i just wonder how much hollywood movies has affected our brains". Indeed.

------
icey
This is why we don't see more Microsoft developers coming to open source.
There are quite a few out there who are interested in it, but their skillset
leads them to Mono. Why would anyone want to help out in a way that would get
them treated as a pariah?

I appreciate all the things that rms has done, but he's gone off his rocker;
why people still pay any attention to him is baffling to me (other than the
tabloid qualities of paying attention to him, I suppose).

~~~
nathanwdavis

       There are quite a few out there who are interested in it, but their skillset leads them to Mono
    

Mono is an open source-licensed project, so if a MS developer starts working
in Mono, aren't they effectively working with Open source??

~~~
icey
Yes, and then they hear about how Mono is a terrible abomination according to
rms. That's the crux of my point.

~~~
thwarted
This is why we don't see more open source developers developers migrating to
develop on Windows. They are curious but then they hear how open source is a
terrible abomination according to Microsoft. (Admittedly, not the exactly the
same, in one case rms is attacking your new choice, and in the other Microsoft
is attacking your old choice, but it doesn't make either side attractive to
the other).

~~~
icey
I don't think we've really heard much about Microsoft needing more developers
though. Certainly not in the sense that open source needs more developers.

------
rfreytag
Miguel de Icaze has been an asset to open source as both a vocal critic
(<http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/bongo-bong.html>) and a significant
contributor (see OP citations).

------
doki_pen
I believe this article is more balanced:
<http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/>

------
patrickgzill
I don't blame de Icaza for being hired by MS; I blame him for all the bloat to
be found in each of his projects. He could be pure as whitest snow and MS
would still be happy with how what he puts out slows down the Linux desktop
experience.

~~~
mahmud
Miguel gave his life to free software. He gave GNU its first desktop
environment. If it wasn't for Miguel and his work there wouldn't be Redhat,
Suse, Caldera, Mandarake, or any of the major corporate linux distros. Sun
would never have bowed to Open Source, in fact, Sun would still be an
independent entity in business. Novel would be in a different line of
business.

GNOME breathed fresh air into the Unix workstation and made it truly a
commodity.

Even Motif would have still been closed if it wasn't for the high quality code
that Miguel et al where churning out both in GNOME and also in Gtk and its
associated technologies.

In 2001, Ximian was the hottest thing to run on a PC. If they put a price tag
on it they could have sold it in custom boxes at $5k and would have had
buyers, but it was free, and it was a Unix desktop you could install and
upgrade by double clicking on an icon. Fucking gorgeous too.

~~~
bokchoi
> If it wasn't for Miguel and his work there wouldn't be Redhat, Suse,
> Caldera, Mandarake, or any of the major corporate linux distros.

Bullshit. As if no one else could have created a linux desktop? There were
already plenty of window managers at the time. The distance between a window
manager and a "linux desktop" is pretty slim.

> In 2001, Ximian was the hottest thing to run on a PC. If they put a price
> tag on it they could have sold it in custom boxes at $5k and would have had
> buyers, but it was free...

And then Ximian died. Perhaps they should have sold it for $5k a box instead,
hm?

~~~
mahmud
_Bullshit. As if no one else could have created a linux desktop? There were
already plenty of window managers at the time. The distance between a window
manager and a "linux desktop" is pretty slim._

There were plenty of Linux WMs but they didn't aspire to do anything more than
what (fv)wm was doing and it was considered fancy to support ICCCM. X was big
and bulky and it had to be accepted for what it was. Actually, most Linux
users were happy with FWVM2 and other stuff, OpenLook and CDE were frowned
upon as a corporate kludge, perhaps in sour grapes.

The genius of GNOME was not just the delivery of a full Free desktop, _first_
, but also the ballsy withdrawal from everything X. GNOME said we're gonna
bring our own libraries and we're gonna supplant and supersede X. They brought
in a display manager, session manager, input translator, etc. They didn't stop
there but they also brought unorthodox, at least to unix, computing models:
they brought a component object model with CORBA/Orbit. GNOME kept pushing the
boundaries and for once defining what Linux should look like, not a poor man's
SysV-clone, but a new desktop OS to be judged on its own. So much so that an
early port to Solaris was the hottest thing on Sunfreeware.

~~~
freetard
You forgot about KDE, it was there before GNOME. And even when Qt was not GPL
yet, there was a project to clone Qt.

------
systems
RMS basically invented Open Source, and I believe he is allowed to say
whatever he wants!

So what is he think that Miguel De Icaza is a traitor to HIS ideals! It's his
opinion!

And, when you speak with friends, don't you ever accuse and attack anyone for
something he did or said! Why isn't RMS allowed to speak his mind, and speak
freely!

I believe people are too harsh on RMS and love to portrait him as psycho,
weird and eccentric to the level that allow them to discredit him.

RMS is a guy of principles, let him be!

~~~
aw3c2
We badly need someone like Stallman to stay true to _free and open-source_
principles. Without someone radically keeping to his visions, everything blurs
to mediocrity.

~~~
davidw
Agree completely. But there are ways and ways of going about that. He should
stick to talking about software though, ("don't use Mono") rather than
attacking people ("guy who wrote zillions of lines of free code is a
'traitor'").

------
viggity
"Microsoft apologist", wtf? Microsoft != Nazis

~~~
m0nty
FWIW, "Apologist" is perhaps not quite so strong a word as you think:

"a person who argues to defend or justify some policy or institution"

"Apologists are authors, writers, editors of scientific logs or academic
journals, and leaders known for taking on the points in arguments, conflicts
or positions that are either placed under popular scrutinies or viewed under
persecutory examinations."

"One who makes an apology; One who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a
cause, or an institution."

It doesn't imply that there's anything to "apologise" for in the usual sense:
it means "to defend" or "argue for".

~~~
viggity
That may be the definition of the word, but look how it is used in mainstream
usage. It is typically used to describe someone who is defending something
that is not usually defended. Such as Nazi Apologist, Hamas Apologist, Stalin
Apologist, etc. You don't hear anyone using the phrase "Clean Air Apologist",
do you?

~~~
10ren
<http://news.google.com/news?q=Apologist>

Of the first 10, most are as you say, 2 are about actual apologies, and 1 is a
"CIA apologist", which is in line with the above dictionary meaning.

It does tend to have the connotation you mention, but that isn't its only use
in the mainstream press.

