The Simple Truth About What Xamarin Was All Along to Microsoft, Just Like Ximian and Novell (Post-Patent Deal)

Without de Icaza, Midnight Commander, GNOME and Gnumeric wouldn't exist. He was an early Wine contributor and helped with the Linux kernel itself. He's to partially thank for the original RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers for Linux. To say that he never truly worked for FOSS does come off as a personal attack imho.

I can't help wonder if its with Icaza as it is with Poettering. Yes they start stuff, but what they start only seems to become "sane" once they move on to something else (though Gnome may well have lost it again since going 3.x).

To put it simply Miguel always liked open source software, but at the same time he always admired Bill Gates. That is an odd combination, I'll grant you. At first, most of his work was basically unrelated to his admiration for Bill Gates, and he made some valuable contributions to open source software. For something like the last ten years or so, though, he's had the opportunity to make deals with Microsoft while still writing or contributing toward open source software. During that time, his open source software contributions haven't been as clearly advantageous to the open source world. It's not that he didn't try to make good open source software; it's just that when Microsoft becomes involved with any open source project, they will always put their needs ahead of the principles of open source, and they've been involved during that time.

I'm sure he was swayed by the MS checks in the mailbox. and that was before he finally sold his company to MS.

What springs to my mind is the enormous number of "discussions" that took place over Mono. I recall thread after thread and considerable acrimony over that software.

And Mono turned out not to be the subversive attack that was theorized... (MS had other subversive attacks in mind,... Like UEFI Secure Boot).

@750,

>> I can't help wonder if its with Icaza as it is with Poettering. Yes they start stuff, but what they start only seems to become "sane" once they move on to something else (though Gnome may well have lost it again since going 3.x).

Hmmm, interesting. Seems to me that de Icaza's work starting Mono followed by M$'s absorption of it, PERFECTLY jives with what Schestowitz says is M$'s strategy of E.E.E. (embrace, extend, extinguish) of ALL things Open Source!

2c