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It looks like Microsoft hasn't reformed as some would like to think, but has moved its embrace, extend, extinguish policy to the mobile platform. In this article from techrights.org , we see a company (responsible for Mono) with strong MS connections take over an open source project and close it.
LAST WEEK we wrote about Xamarin's disturbing takeover of RoboVM [1, 2], which was a threat to Microsoft's monopoly and domination of APIs (especially on the desktop). Xamarin, for the uninitiated, creates proprietary software that strives to spread Microsoft's .NET to mobile (including Android) devices.
It has only been less than a week and now we learn from Abel Avram that "RoboVM Is No Longer Open Source".
"Following RoboVM's acquisition by Xamarin," explains Avram, "the company has raised the price of their offering and has closed the source code."
Discussion of a fork is in the works:
It has gotten so bad that RoboVM might be forked. To quote Avram, "some developers consider that closing down the source code has to do with Xamarin's acquisition. And some are discussing forking the project, perhaps starting with the sources v. 1.8 which will be pushed to GitHub this week, according to Zechner. It remains to see how successful they are in their endeavor considering that RoboVM is not a trivial piece of software."
(Score: 1, Troll) by opinionated_science on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:33AM
I sometimes wonder if the systemd encroachment is nothing more than the systemd guys doing a "because we can".
On the other hand, some folks just don't like change such as init scripts - sorry to offend anyone, but the flexibility of scripts is not something you want in a system directory. And I have written many for my systems!!!
Lennard Poettering may not have the charm to wash over the community, but he is no fool - his blog makes a great deal of sense , where internet postings simply rant.
Read about the BTRFS/systemd deployment model being developed - this would allow linux to reflect any combination of distribution applications natively.
And ultimately, if Linux is to survive, having it hide under Android skins is not the way. It is critical that is makes inroads onto the desktop, otherwise we will have future generations lost to proprietary lockin-gloss....