Boycott Novell Bleats AnythingButMicrosoft(TM) and MicrosoftIsEvil(TM)... Repeatedly

Today’s FUD from Boycott Novell will be a little bit different. It is directed against people within the OSS community and its supporters and the target audience, instead of proprietary software users, is their own zealous support base base. So, what follows is an examination of how Boycott Novell tries to keep the fringe element whipped into a frenzy about supposed incursions of evil into the land of Freedom (and Beer). Before moving on, I’m sure everyone has seen the Free as in Beer comparison. Does anyone know where I actually get this mythical Free Beer?

So, in the grand BN tradition of starting with irrelevant quotes, we get to read one from Be’s CEO (the OS recently resurrected as a new implementation called Haiku) about how cooperation with Microsoft is impossible. Disingenuous much? You tried to beat your way into their core market and then lost. Of course you are bitter. As a side note, Haiku is a neat and technologically advanced system.

However, to move on to the ranting Yahoo is dying, which of course means that Microsoft is also dying, because this clearly follows from Microsoft’s recently recent search deal with Yahoo. Never mind that at one point Yahoo had the single largest known installed base of FreeBSD systems. At least now we know that the priority of AnythingButMicrosoft™ is greater than that of TheEnemyOfMyEnemyIsMyFriend™. I wonder if Yahoo’s downfall could be attributed to their inability to compete in the search space which ultimately necessitated the deal with Microsoft instead of Microsoft itself. Its important to remember the search isn’t a core competency of Microsoft. Bing has some interesting features, but everyone they’ve managed to utterly crush has been in a very specific, limited set of markets.

Another spear point jabs at Ubuntu, because, well, Boycott Novell has a really love/hate relationship with Ubuntu. They love it because it has managed to raise some awareness about Linux, they hate them because the ship Mono. But, they also apparently need to take the mickey out for Ubuntu One the program that is similar to Windows Live/MobileMe.

Apparently, Ubuntu One is closed source. And, it commits the unforgivable sine of having a client port to Windows planned. Oh wait, the backend is closed source, because someone, somewhere in Ubuntu’s management staff actually has a shred of intelligence and that is the part important to how the application functions. On the other hand, the client is clearly open source, but, I had to read half a page. That is clearly to much to expect from Boycott Novell; otherwise they wouldn’t refute their own arguments with links they post.

But, the most fascinating part is the Boycott Novell uses FUD against its own support base. GIMP was removed from the default install since how many users actually use a graphic editing program beyond corrections for photos. Since F-Spot already does that, GIMP is redundant. Since Boycott Novell recently learned of a project called Pinta, which is a mono based image editor, and then proceed to bash on its MIT license and the fact it is Mono. Only to later say there is no indication that it will replace the GIMP in Ubuntu.

This is the most devious sort of manipulation. By bringing it up at all in the context of the GIMP being removed there is a strong implication that it is a direct competitor to the GIMPs position in Ubuntu despite the fact that Pinta, while having a not retarded UI, has almost no features even in comparison to the GIMP. Then, of course, Roy moves on to note there are no plans to replace the GIMP with Pinta. Thus, having lodged the idea of Pinta replacing the GIMP in the minds of his fanatical readers, I’m sure the poor author of Pinta will now get bombarded with hate mail.