The original article by de Icaza looks like a long excuse for "why every
project I was in charge of was a failure (or at least until I left and someone
else came along to fix it)".
His article starts with setting up a
straw man right in the title "what killed the Linux desktop". The Linux desktop
is dead? Says who? This is along the same lines as "have you stopped beating
your wife?"
He tries to kick off the discussion with the old troll of
"with Linux you have to hack your kernel to get sound to work". This is despite
the fact that very few people have problems with sound on Linux, probably no
more than people have with sound on MS Windows. In more than ten years of using
Linux, I've never had problems with sound, and I don't personally know of anyone
who has. I have had problems with sound on MS Windows, but I don't jump to the
conclusion that Windows sound problems are endemic.
As for "all open
source developers now use OS/X", he doesn't provide any facts to support that
contention, he just states it as a "fact" and then bases his argument off it.
The problem I have with accepting that is that for the major software projects
that I have some involvement with, the biggest problem is the lack of developers
using OS/X who could at least test the software. The developers mainly use
Linux, with some who have MS Windows (often as a secondary testing machine).
OS/X problems tend to get discovered after release when bug reports get filed by
users.
So what is de Icaza's actual problem here? And who is this "we"
he keeps referring to. He's had little to no involvement with the larger
Linux/Free Software community in years, other than to post the occasional flame
bait about them.
His current business involves selling proprietary
phone development software for iPhones and Android. Perhaps this is the root of
his complaint. If you go to his company's web site (Xamarin), you will find that
the documentation for his product assumes that you are using a Mac with OS/X. In
fact, there's no sign that you have any other option. There's no obvious sign of
any Linux support (as a development platform). In other words, when de Icaza
says "the Linux desktop is dead and everyone uses Macs" he means "my proprietary
product only runs on a Mac".
So, let me take a guess what really
happened here. I imagine that someone said "why can't I find any information on
how to run your software on Linux?" De Icaza then responded "Linux, oh yeh, well
uh, that's because nobody uses that thing anymore anyway, so uh, that's uh, the
reason".
De Icaza has a long history of jumping on bandwagons just
before the wheels fall off. I could list everything starting from his Norton
Commander clone to his Outlook clone and on to his DotNet clone, but that would
be pointless. I don't put Gnome in the category of a failed clone, but then
people spent years after de Icaza left ripping out his MS OLE clone. The problem
with just cloning ideas is that you have to know enough to not clone the
bad ones. De Icaza never saw a bad idea that he didn't
like.
Apple is worried about Samsung? Apple has bigger problems than
that. De Icaza thinks that Apple's stuff is "cool". If I was Apple, I would be
very worried about what was wrong with my software.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
| 
