S02E07 – The Crusaders

Thanks for the discussion regarding Trademarks, glad my email was useful.

Guys, thanks for mentioning Atlanta Linux Fest!

I find your recent mono crusade both irritating and negative. I also do not get the the in house joke where you all laugh when mono is mentioned.

This has now been happening for the last 2 or 3 episodes and I found myself pushing the delete key on my phone half way through this episode.

You will be glad to know that Linux using MSN/Mono fan boy will not be looking to download future episodes

I think you’re mis-reading the situation. Although there have been a few Mono articles in the last couple of episodes, this has only reflected the recent increase in debate around Mono in the wider FLOSS community. Debian, Ubuntu and the Free Software Foundation have all put out statements about Mono recently, and I think it’s reasonable to mention that sort of thing in the show. In our interview with the Open Learning Centre guys we also talked about Mono amongst other topics, but it gave use the opportunity to talk about why some people dislike Mono. Admittedly we’ve never interviewed someone from the pro-Mono camp, but maybe we’ll try to rectify that in future.

Generally the team are ambivalent about the Mono debate. We’re certainly not on a crusade against Mono and most of us use Mono applications.

The only reason that anyone chuckles when Mono comes up is precisely because Mono causes feelings to run high on both sides – and generates some extreme responses! Talking about Mono seems guaranteed to annoy a lot of people, whether pro- or anti-Mono.

Thanks for the reply. I think the discussion on mono has lacked balance. I am sure if you do search on Mono and Ubuntu will find several blogs that sing the praises of being able to use Mono on Linux Distributions. Where the only decision involved is that of the individual to run what they want.

One of the big issues I have had getting Linux adopted where I work, is that that Linux has negative press amongst many Windows admins as being elitist and difficult to learn. Given that I started as a Unix admin, one of the reasons that Windows NT seemed to grew so quickly in my opinion is that it lowered the entry level to running networks and network applications. Which for my career at the time was a bad thing, so I had to retrain in NT!

I remain pragmatic about the whole Unix/Windows/Linux debate. Unlike some in the FLOSS community, who seem to get overly political about issues like mono, binary drivers etc. I even stopped going to my Linux LUG for similar issues that are coming up with FLOSS/Microsoft bashing on this show.

I would suggest that your recent shows while reflecting FLOSS/Linux discussions on Mono and Microsoft, are representing the views of a small minority within the wider IT community.

You may just want to write this off as me being the a solo minority. But we have implemented some major Linux(Ubuntu/Debian) projects where I work, and we implemented them all in house. I also have no problem with continuing my MSN training and was driving to a training course to upgrade my MSCE to 2008, at the point where the Microsoft/Mono reporting just felt like too much.

Good luck for future, hopefully some of my diatribe maybe of relevance to maybe not alienating people that are more interested in the technology than the politics