29 Aug 2012 yeupou   » (Master)

The GNU/Linux desktop wasn’t killed by MDI’s failure with GNOME/Mono/HelixCode/Ximian/…

How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop titles ./ today. And it discuss Miguel De Icaza (MDI) latest thoughts.

Flashback: That was the guy promoting to-be-coded Evolution and Nautilus versus actually-running Balsa and many others decent GNOME 1.x apps. Eazel, some kind of company created by guys mainly from the proprietary software world, was alone in charge of Nautilus and this file manager was set to be GNOME 2.x file manager without even one frickin pre-release. Proprietary development model all along: release (too) late, release rarely (never?). Aside from Eazel, GNOME was in the hands of Helix Code, MDI’s own company, renamed later Ximian. Nice icons, nice website, yeah. Aside from that, it’s funny enough to picture the GNU desktop project being in the hands of the same people that created and promoted Mono, considering FSF (I think correct) opinion on Mono. The Wikipedia page don’t mention it, but Ximian authored some proprietary software also.

So, now, we should care about MDI’s latest thoughts of GNU/Linux and desktop? If GNOME is failure, it all started when he really tooks charge. If GNOME is failure, it does not mean that KDE and others are, and while he may be entitled to concede defeat for GNOME, he’s definitely not entitled to do so in the name of GNU/Linux (or Linux as he calls it, even if a kernel have really little to do with the desktop). This guy invented thousand of ways to fail, to show considerable lack of oversight and very low attachement to the idea of libre software. Now he feels entitled, one more time, to say what we should care about, that is not freedom apparently? Please, give us a break


Syndicated 2012-08-29 14:08:44 from # cd /scratch

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