Christopher Smith wrote:
However, in this instance, the ad hominem has merit. Microsoft is a
convicted monopolist and has engaged in huge amounts of dirty tricks
to force their will upon a sometimes unwilling market.
So... we're justifying an ad hominem with an ad hominem?
In this instance, you betcha. Given that Microsoft tried *very*
recently to use the Novell "indemnification" to spread lots of FUD about
open source Linux, no, I don't trust them. *At all*.
Maybe the C# and CLR folks are good and wonderful and really mean
everything they say. Suck to be them and stuck in a company that isn't
above any dirty trick in the book. Perhaps they should ask Microsoft to
spin them off so that people might believe them more.
I don't use C# or the CLR because it gives support to a company which
is out to extract maximal money from us without regard to our wishes.
Oddly, by doing so, ensuring that both remain strictly under their
control to use to their own ends....
The only reason C# and the CLR aren't completely closed is that it
serves Microsoft's current purposes to not have them completely closed.
AT&T is also a convicted monopolist that has engaged in huge amounts of
dirty tricks to force their will upon an often unwilling market
And, unlike Microsoft, they got *broken up for it*. They didn't just
get a slap on the wrist.
they invented C++ and Unix. At various points it served their purpose to
close Unix. They were unable to. In the case of C++ it was inevitably
*counter* to their purposes to close it. There are lessons to be learned
there.
Yes. And you seem to have forgotten them. AT&T was called "Ma Bell"
before they got broken up. They spawned an entire Saturday Night Live
skit about "We're the phone company! We don't have to care!"
Unix wasn't invented and given away. It escaped. And AT&T tried to
stomp the users of it flat in court when they realized it was worth
money. And they only "lost" because Berkeley rewrote a metric boatload
of UNIX of the years *before* the courts got involved. So, when the
case went through, BSD-derived *nixen only had to excise relatively
small portions of AT&T code.
They have no copyright,
trademark or trade secret claims that apply to Mono or DotGNU.
And on whose word does that statement depend? I haven't seen anybody I
trust assert that.
So, what specific claims do they have to control over C# and the CLR?
If they want to convince people, open source it. If Sun can pull it off
with Java, why can't Microsoft? Once it is truly out of Microsoft's
hands, then we can talk.
-a
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