Red Hat Doesn't Want Mono, Nov 22, 2006

There are a lot of great new programs and innovations expected in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Novell-led Mono project isn't one of them.

Thanks to efforts of the Free Software Foundation, a Free Software Flash player called GNU Gnash is now in active development.

If Microsoft is the big cat prowling the Serengeti of software with its Windows operating system, companies that promote Linux are playing the part of elk, banding together in protective herds.

An old adage that governments would be well-served to heed is: You get what you pay for. When you rely on free or low-cost products, you often get the shaft, and that, in my opinion, is exactly what governments are on track to get. Perhaps not today, nor even tomorrow, and not because open source products are less capable or less efficient than commercial products, but because sooner or later, governments that rely on free open source software will put their country's and their citizens' data in harm's way. Eventually—and inevitably—an open source product will be found to contain a security breach—not one discovered by hackers, security personnel, or a CS student or professor. Instead, the security breach will be placed into the open source software from inside, by someone working on the project.