[ale] ximian and mono

[Wandered Inn]

Regardless of whether it's a good thing or not, I don't want passport or
anything like it if M$ is the keeper of the data. Once more, they want
to keep your credit card information in something they refer to as
'wallet.'  Just what we all need, M$ holding your wallet.

This company that proliferates viri, doesn't know how to properly setup
DNS servers, is going to keep my personal and financial data?  I think
not.

Now I've not even touched on the fact that M$ can't be trusted to do
anything fairly with any company, why in the hell does Icaza think
they'll work with him in any other way.  Makes you wonder if he's
getting some of that M$ stock.  It's been getting quite a bit cheaper as
of late...


Mel Burslan wrote:
> 
> Wondering if Miguel de Icaza has an under-the-covers deal from
> Microsoft. Otherwise, he may not have overlooked such an obvious threat
> to the project/community he is spearheading. Please read the article
> below if you have not already.
> 
> ========================================================
> NICHOLAS PETRELEY:   "The Open Source"    InfoWorld.com
> ========================================================
> 
> MICROSOFT'S BAIT AND SWITCH
> 
> AS I SAID last week, I believe that Miguel de Icaza's
> enthusiasm for porting the Microsoft .NET development
> environment to open source as a project called Mono to
> be naive and potentially dangerous to the open-source
> movement. (De Icaza is the leader of Ximian Gnome, an
> open-source desktop environment for Linux and other
> versions of Unix.) I consider it even more dangerous
> now that Microsoft has decided to work with Ximian to
> create the open-source port of .NET. This leads me to
> suspect that Microsoft is engaged in a bait-and-switch
> scheme to finally wipe out the threat of open source.
> 
> There are two elements of Microsoft .NET crucial to
> Ximian and Mono's success: .NET, the e-commerce
> development environment; and .NET, the infrastructure
> to manage Internet e-commerce security. At issue is
> the latter portion of .NET, which is part of Microsoft
> HailStorm. HailStorm includes an e-commerce
> authentication service called Passport.
> 
> Ximian's effort reproduces only the development
> environment in open source. It does nothing to
> reproduce or replace Passport. The FAQ published by
> Ximian underlines the significance of Passport, even
> if it understates the consequences (see
> www.go-mono.com/faq.html). Because the Mono
> development environment has hooks for using Passport,
> people wonder whether their e-commerce applications
> will depend on Passport. The appalling answer winds up
> being, "We do not know at this time whether the
> Passport protocol is documented and whether we will be
> able to talk to passport.com."
> 
> Microsoft is already promoting Passport aggressively by
> making deals with the likes of American Express, eBay,
> and VeriSign, among dozens of other popular e-commerce
> sites. So for Mono to be of any use in developing
> open-source e-commerce applications, Mono will have to
> support Passport.
> 
> There's talk about alternative technologies to
> Passport, but technology is not the issue. Unless some
> entrepreneur creates a company to kill off Passport
> with a cheaper, better service, Mono will be a
> covenant with death. If Ximian encourages open-source
> developers to write e-commerce applications that
> access Passport, it actually hands Microsoft the key
> to killing off open-source e-commerce once and for
> all. Once Passport has a foothold, Microsoft can
> update Passport and the .NET run-time environment to
> break all those e-commerce applications built with Mono.
> 
> Businesses that saved money by building their sites on
> Mono would suddenly lose money waiting for a solution.
> Most likely they would fire the open-source developers
> and switch everything back to Windows. And Ximian can
> do exactly squat to prevent this future. Ximian may
> re-create an open-source version of the first
> iteration of the .NET run time, but Ximian cannot make
> .NET itself open source. So as long as Passport
> succeeds, the future of Mono rests with Microsoft, not
> Ximian.
> 
> Nick is the founding editor of VarLinux.org
> (www.varlinux.org). Reach him at nicholas at petreley.com.
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--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
intelligence." - Albert Einstein
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