What is Miguel de Icaza's latest game? His obsession with tailgating everything that Microsoft develops - and trying to impress the company by producing Linux equivalents - now seems to be spreading to others as well.

Does GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's backflip over the Novell-Microsoft deal a few days ago mean that he has finally been convinced that he is on a one-way path to nowhere?

Miguel de Icaza's path from programmer to free software evangelist to Novell Inc. vice president has unfolded like the lives of many luminaries -- he fell into it by chance and seized the opportunities.

Dear Miguel,
Read your post. One question immediately springs to mind.Why?
Looking forward to Microsoft subverting an International Standards Organizations submission process, and beginning a new era of vendor lock-in and monopolistic office suites seems to be antithetical to Free and Open Source philosophy.
What happened to you Miguel, you used to be cool?

"Without «pushing the boat out», the gradual introduction of free software in Cuba becomes significant to go ahead in the process of incorporating informatics into society. [...] For Free software to be truly free, it has to have an open code, but not necessarily the other way around. To use open code technology does not mean we collaborate with the ideals of technological justice. Open code use can make people become more dependent. Microsoft, just to mention a name, presents the world two very clear licences that meet the requirements of the Open Source Initiative..."

Miguel de Icaza: "We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight"

Translation: We'll try to make the whole desktop dependent on a MS standard.

So, what do you do if there's no distro which meets your specific needs? Or, what if you want a distro that doesn't bother you with any pesky prompting but just sets itself up exactly how you like it? In these cases - or even just for the fun of it - you can always make your own distro. And here's how.

The title basically says it all. I'm posting this because it shows how people should be using phones that don't contain DRM and proprietary code and don't allow vendor lock-in.

I've just installed Mandriva One 2008 on my kid's computer. Ordinarily, I'd be reviewing that first. But the first thing I do with a distro review is pop open Gimp to take screenshots. And Mandriva's using the release candidate Gimp 2.4. And I opened it and with a tortured shriek that sent birds flying from every tree on the block, uttered the line which makes the title of this post.