Old mono rants [Archive]

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Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 10:33 AM

This is the old ranting thread, if you wish to discuss mono , use the new thread Monolith (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1202591)

I see that the ubuntu-desktop package depends on mono now. I'm investing heavily in Ubuntu and I think this is a bad decision, moreover when there are other alternatives.

Microsoft has already begin to threaten with lawsuits anyone not using their "Microsoft approved" Linux distribution, and it seems that in this new situation Novell is the new SCO. Microsoft's threats are unfounded but they have a lot of resource to invest in court, their objective is create fear uncertainty and doubt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2C_uncertainty_and_doubt) (FUD) about Linux.

Microsoft is already claiming that Linux distributions are infringing on their "intellectual property" (whatever that may be), but as with the previous SCO case they won't let anyone know what exactly that is. Their objective is to create doubt and fear, and there are hints that mono will play a big part in the future FUD strategy of Microsoft.

I think that people using Ubuntu has the right to choose whether they trust Microsoft and Novell not using mono to strong-arm Linux, or not. Now you can't use Ubuntu without using mono.

In this situation I do not want anything related to Microsoft or Novell in my systems because I do not trust Microsoft nor Novell.

I don't know if someone is working on this already but we need to get rid of the mono dependency in Ubuntu. Maybe include mono in an external repository.

cmost

November 5th, 2006, 11:07 AM

Agreed! By using Linux and open source, i've bid adieu to Microsoft for good! I don't want anything to do with Microsoft, but now Mono now has a dotted line straight to Microsoft. If supporting Ubuntu means indirectly supporting Microsoft-Novell, then I want no part of it. Let users choose.

gummibaerchen

November 5th, 2006, 12:08 PM

Why do you support MS when using Mono?

Try KDE, which does atm not use mono.

Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 02:28 PM

This thread comes from a "Help Forum", I think this topic is more appropriate here. (See my original post here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1717673#post1717673)

Why do you support MS when using Mono?

Try KDE, which does atm not use mono.

By using mono you support Microsoft because there is not a document where Microsoft explicitly says that holds no rights to any implementation of the .Net platform (which in essences is what mono is).

If we start using mono in Linux distributions, and Ubuntu in particular, to the point that it is an essential component then Microsoft could claim that all Linux distributions use "Microsoft intellectual property" and will begin to demand that enterprises and governments must pay a license to Microsoft to use Linux.

I have searched the forums but I have not found it being discussed. Maybe it was discussed in the mailing lists? Could anyone point me where to look at the discussion to include mono in Ubuntu (which are the advantages and disadvantages that mono brings)?

John.Michael.Kane

November 5th, 2006, 02:41 PM

Theads merged...

kc8hr

November 5th, 2006, 02:57 PM

Mono?

I am using Dapper, and there is no Mono on my system.

If it were, I would reformat and find a distro that does not use it. I haven't touched a M$ product in 8 years!

Tim

Kindred

November 5th, 2006, 03:01 PM

I think it's in Edgy by default? I haven't used any Mono apps and certainly wouldn't now, will be interesting to see what happens though.

Polygon

November 5th, 2006, 03:02 PM

in dapper it doesnt appear to be installed by default, as i just reinstalled last-exit and i think it required mono so i had to go in synaptic and install it... so that only makes one program that uses mono on my system.

Wolki

November 5th, 2006, 03:03 PM

ComplexNumber

November 5th, 2006, 03:33 PM

some default gnome apps use mono, so mono must be included. for example, tomboy is now part of gnome.

mostwanted

November 5th, 2006, 03:49 PM

If it were, I would reformat and find a distro that does not use it. I haven't touched a M$ product in 8 years!

Mono is not a Microsoft product, it's an open source project primarily funded by Novell. The most useful parts of Mono (C# and the spec for the runtime) are ECMA standards which Microsoft officially has no control over; .NET is simply an implementation of said standards (even though Microsoft did invent the thing).

It's the same ordeal with JavaScript (Netscape's and now Mozilla's original implementation) and JScript (Microsoft's implementation). Both are implementations of an ECMA standard called ECMAScript.

The parts that are in the actual danger zone are the implementation of the non-ECMA parts of .NET (Windows-specific APIs like Windows Forms). Mono is basically in the same legal grey area as WINE here: it's an OSS implementation of a closed source, patented Microsoft API. The thing is, though, that those Windows-specific APIs are not used by Linux developers, but rather by Windows developers who want to easily port their applications to Linux. Removing these APIs from Mono would be no serious blow to adoption in the Linux world, it would just be a blow to attracting Windows developers.

Sushi

November 5th, 2006, 03:57 PM

Off-topic, but... Miguel De Icaza is the #1 Microsoft-fanboy in the Linux-community. And no, it's not a case of him disliking MS less than most people do, he seems to be real fanboy.

Marthinus

November 5th, 2006, 04:01 PM

I agree, Mono with the standard GTK# widgets is in no danger from M$. The Linux world should just stick to the ECMA .NET with added Gnome libs and it should be fine.

Dismmissing Mono because it is .NET is a mistake, and the panic relating to it is already the start of FUD but from the Linux community instead of the M$ community.

Synikk

November 5th, 2006, 04:06 PM

I see problems ahead for Mono developers not under the protection of Novell/Microsoft, as well as distros shipping with Mono. I mean, Novell is now paying royalties to MS, as I understand it. What will this mean for other distros?

I don't have the best grasp on this situation, and I'm no patent lawyer, but the whole situation already stinks of deceit and ulterior motives. Balmer himself stated that MS was "open to talking with other distros," or something to that effect. To me, that smacks of "You either get approved by us or you get slapped with a lawsuit. Take your pick."

MS is not known for being very nice to its "partners."

Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 04:23 PM

The thing is do we really NEED to use mono? Do we really NEED to risk it? Microsoft is not only threatening with patents but with so called "intellectual property".

What makes mono so attractive for Linux? IMHO it makes sense in a Microsoft only environment to standardize all the pieces of the system. But I just don't see the benefits developing applications in a freedom of choice environment such as Linux.

If I have the freedom I choose not to use mono nor any product related to Microsoft or its ally Novell.

Synikk

November 5th, 2006, 04:31 PM

If I have the freedom I choose not to use mono nor any product related to Microsoft or its ally Novell.

Exactly. The problem is, Ubuntu now ships with some Mono apps by default. Tomboy and F-Spot come to mind. I don't use either of those though. The only Mono app I currently use is Muine, which I use for throwing a quick playlist together.

Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 04:47 PM

mostwanted

November 5th, 2006, 04:51 PM

Off-topic, but... Miguel De Icaza is the #1 Microsoft-fanboy in the Linux-community. And no, it's not a case of him disliking MS less than most people do, he seems to be real fanboy.

Yet, he is also the founder of Gnome which was originally created as a GNU-endorsed alternative to then semi-proprietary KDE...

There's a difference between not hating someone uncontrollably and being a fanboy. Miguel likes C# and the CRL because it's good technology, not because he's a Microsoft fanboy.

ComplexNumber

November 5th, 2006, 05:03 PM

There's a difference between not hating someone uncontrollably and being a fanboy.its doubtful if sushi is ever likely to see the difference. in his eyes, anyone who doesn't hate something that he despises is a total fanboy. and of course, it applies to everyone else except him.

I see problems ahead for Mono developers not under the protection of Novell/Microsoft, as well as distros shipping with Mono. I mean, Novell is now paying royalties to MS, as I understand it. What will this mean for other distros?

I don't have the best grasp on this situation, and I'm no patent lawyer, but the whole situation already stinks of deceit and ulterior motives. Balmer himself stated that MS was "open to talking with other distros," or something to that effect. To me, that smacks of "You either get approved by us or you get slapped with a lawsuit. Take your pick."

MS is not known for being very nice to its "partners."
actually, MS may have an ulterior motive. before novell signed the agreement with MS, MS couldn't have sued ALL linux distros using mono because, no matter how big MS is, it would have bitten off more than it can chew. and it would be seen as the bad guys, which, considering how hated MS are already seen by the public, they wouldn't have done themselves any favours.
but now that they've signed the agreement with novell and have welcomed other distros to do the same, they can now sue without being seen as being all that bad because they can turn around and say: "we actively encouraged other distros to do the same, but they metaphorically stuck 2 fingers up at us, so its not as if we are being unfair".

banjobacon

November 5th, 2006, 05:23 PM

Saying Mono should be removed because it is "Microsoft-related" is a poor argument. If it's true that Mono does not infringe on patents, then there is no reason to remove Mono.

Wolki

November 5th, 2006, 07:05 PM

The thing is, as I said do we really need to get entangled in a "patent war"?

And another interesting thing is, why are patents relevant for mono? Why do I need "insurance" from the OIN? I was led to believe that as mono only is an implementation of the ECMA/ISO specification it was alright.

No, we don't need to be entangled in a patent war. I personally think that software patents are a horrible idea, and think they shouldn't be done. But as we can't directly have abolish them ourselves, it's better to have some for protection.Even if Mono is just an implementation of a specification, there could still be some patents involved - if just for the fact that the patents are a mess and a lot of people got away with completely ridiculous patents. OIN serves as a deterrent here, in a similar way to how large patent portfolios work for large corporations.

DoctorMO

November 5th, 2006, 07:32 PM

Tomboy and F-Spot are open source right? if you hate it that much fork them and rewrite them as C++ progs.

etelerro

November 5th, 2006, 07:54 PM

I think it isn't a good idea to dump Mono in one day, but I think it is smart to slowly move away to other alternatives.

Of course the C# language is quite well, and together with GTK# it is a good platform to develop applications. But I think that when a company like Novell says that using Mono does no harm, and after that signing a devils-pact with Microsoft, it isn't a very good idea to trust Novell on their word, after all most Mono programmers work for Novell and creating new code under new licenses isn't so hard to do.

Though there are good alternatives, which aren't used enough I think. Next to PyGTK there are is also the wonderful Java GTK bindings.

I think that this "move away from Mono" doesn't have to come from the Ubuntu community, but more from the Gnome community.

pmj

November 5th, 2006, 08:01 PM

Regardless of whether or not Microsoft will, or even can, sue makers of Linux distributions over mono, just the fact that we're having this argument is already hurting us. For that reason, I'm all in favor of getting rid of it. And it's better to do it now before too many applications depend on it.

And if someone could explain how to remove mono and all applications that depend on it without at the same time uninstalling most of my system, I'd be very grateful.

KaeseEs

November 5th, 2006, 08:09 PM

One of the problems here is that unnecessary dependencies are taking away users' freedom. It was a poor decision to make the ubuntu-desktop packages depend on Tomboy and FSpot. If Gnome were installed on a clean system, for instance a fresh Slackware install, it would be perfectly possible to build Gnome from source without either program. Thus, programs that are not necessary for another program to run (such as Tomboy and FSpot vis-a-vis Gnome & ubuntu-desktop) should be listed in the package as 'recommended' rather than required, so they can be uninstalled without hosing the 'main' program.

By the way, if there is a way to toss Fspot and Tomboy (which I have no use for) without waxing ubuntu-desktop, I'm all ears.

darkhatter

November 5th, 2006, 08:29 PM

Microsoft could Sue every single Linux Developer on the face of the planet, and nothing would happen. Red Hat doesn't appear to be freaking out, why is everyone else doing it.

ago

November 5th, 2006, 08:45 PM

I am in favor of getting rid of it. For one thing, it brings in quite a bit of dependencies. Moreover IF MS is going to sue, Novell will not be able to move a finger. And remember that MS does not need to sue, some FUD is enough to discourage several users. The fact that Novell is paying royalties corroborates such claims. And if we need to switch, the sooner the better. I look with great interest to XUL/XPCOM, it is a nice framework for several reasons (overlays, integration of remote and local apps, cross platform...). If we really need a new framework we should look more at Mozilla and possibly integrate it with python/parrot (pyxpcom is proceding slowly)...

Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 08:48 PM

Tomboy and F-Spot are open source right? if you hate it that much fork them and rewrite them as C++ progs.

We are talking here about freedom of choice here, it's not about hate. I do not even know or care what Tomboy and F-Spot do, but I'm sure that there are other existing open source alternatives without the need to "rewrite them as C++ progs."

Xace123

November 5th, 2006, 09:01 PM

... there could still be some patents involved - if just for the fact that the patents are a mess and a lot of people got away with completely ridiculous patents....

You are right there Wolki, and that is the uncertainty in the Microsoft FUD against Linux.

My thinking is that it is a big mistake to embrace and make mono a cornerstone of Linux on the desktop, because it is uncertain whether Microsoft and Novell will claim ownership over it (or parts of it) later. Mono is "tainted".

JayTee

November 5th, 2006, 09:06 PM

First they subtley infiltrate the OS of the opposition and then wait to strike when the timing is right. Sounds like plans for a coup 'd etat. I tried installing Mono on Dapper but it ran like crap and borked my keyboard settings so bad I had to remove it.

slimdog360

November 5th, 2006, 09:13 PM

mono - isnt that the kissing disease?

edit: yay 1000 posts. I must spend more time on these forums then I thought.

Synikk

November 5th, 2006, 10:56 PM

mono - isnt that the kissing disease?

Yeah, and now that Novell and MS are making out, Novell is going to end up spreading its disease all over the Linux community. Novell has its hands in Mono, and Mono has found its way into Gnome. We have a potential epidemic on our hands, to continue the analogy.

I'll bet you anything that within the next month or two we'll be seeing non-Mono clones of popular Mono apps popping up (Tomboy, F-Spot, Beagle).

Mr. Picklesworth

November 5th, 2006, 11:14 PM

Yah, how about a .Net-inspired thing that is tailored toward Linux? (Not for running .Net applications and bothering me with the presence of .exes).
Besides, it's not like Tomboy runs on Windows...

It would be a much better use of resources, in my opinion, to build something fresh.

What is the point of it all anyway?
I know that Mono lets me run a "Hello World" program compiled on Windows via DSLinux... so I can understand its usefulness on a bigger computer as a more specific and detailed Wine sort of thing.
...But how is a .Net emulator (not really an emulator, I guess, but I can't quite put my finger on the right word) considered a viable platform to specifically develop for, contrast to regular code with a few helpful libraries?!

I also do not get it, and I want it to stop. Mono angers me; I have enough development libraries as it is (and even so, I am still unable to compile Tomboy stuff), and unless it replaces Java (which has been hideously misused to make ugly GUIs for ages) I see no point.

I think I've repeated myself 3 times now, so I should stop...

John.Michael.Kane

November 5th, 2006, 11:54 PM

Has anyone been able to remove mono with out breaking the ubuntu install?

bikeboy

November 6th, 2006, 12:15 AM

I think people are making a huge fuss about nothing. As has been stated, mono is not a microsoft thing, it's the Linux implementation of a standard, .Net is the Windows version. Whatever api's might be in there can be removed, so who cares if we're using something similar to .Net. There's a reason it's similar, they're based off the same thing.

Judging by the reaction in this thread it seems as though MS my be winning by the spread of FUD from within they Linux community. For once, they didn't even need to start the spread themselves. The best way to show MS that we have nothing to fear and that we're here to stay is to keep using whatever we want. Ditching mono means we have had some of our freedoms taken away from us. Is that not what Linux is about, freedom?

banjobacon

November 6th, 2006, 12:23 AM

I also do not get it, and I want it to stop. Mono angers me

Finally a good argument for the removal of Mono!

Mr. Picklesworth

November 6th, 2006, 12:26 AM

Finally a good argument for the removal of Mono!Hehe :b

Well, as I wrote, better that as a standard platform for everything than Java (which is, contrary to popular belief, very specialized).
I just think it works a bit weirdly, and the fact that Mono apps use .exes and .dlls kind of hurts the whole "Mono is not .Net" thing, even though it probably is completely true.

NoTiG

November 6th, 2006, 12:44 AM

loell

November 6th, 2006, 12:54 AM

i like c# and vb.net but my loyalty is to python, ruby and other gpl languages

i agree of getting rid of mono.

gnomeuser

November 6th, 2006, 01:26 AM

The argument that we have protection under the OIN is flawed since that protection comes from Novells membership, they will however with this new deal not be able to enforce their obligations in the OIN to counter sue Microsoft if they attack vendors shipping Mono.

We simply can't afford to ship Mono anymore, it's sad since I've grown to love Banshee, Tomboy and Beagle (and no Tracker doesn't come close to Beagle... yet) but in the interest of protecting Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation it would be the only sane option.

Sushi

November 6th, 2006, 03:50 AM

its doubtful if sushi is ever likely to see the difference. in his eyes, anyone who doesn't hate something that he despises is a total fanboy. and of course, it applies to everyone else except him.

Dude, you are having some issues. Seriously. This is not the first time you have made your "comments" about me, so what exactly is your problem with me? Let's hear them. Do I need to take this up with the mods, because honestly, I'm getting sick and tired of this.

DoctorMO

November 6th, 2006, 03:56 AM

Mono is an interesting platform but to be honest I don't care.

Novell has several things on Microsoft, and Microsoft has a number of thing on the entire comunity. it's a seperate thread about how much money it will cost MS to sue the entire world; I'm sure it'll make sense when the time comes.

But since I'm in Europe, software patents don't effect us here; you guys in the USA should really campain against them.

Shin_Gouki2501

November 6th, 2006, 04:07 AM

In my opinion Mono is very important for Linux/OS further Software developement.
Maybe things will change when Java will go OS. But the concepts and benefits of VM based system is evident, especially under Linux..
wbr Shin Gouki

marcusdean.adams

November 6th, 2006, 04:53 AM

I've got a bunch of the libmono packages installed, but Mono itself is not installed on my system, and I'm running Edgy.

ago

November 6th, 2006, 05:09 AM

I like many of you also felt that mono was just an implementation of a standard. But if thats the case, then why would novell even accept something like this in agreement with microsoft to "not be sued" ? if there was no question about it whatsoever, then it would have been unnecessary and even unwanted IMO to "agree" to not be sued.

That is MS strategy, they make bilateral agreements "not to sue", the curious part is that NONE of the Linux companies/users can use ANY of those patents against MS, while MS can use ALL its patents against ALL of the linux companies/users/voluntaries except the people who signed agreements. In particular, any voluntary work (i.e. the heart of OSS) is fully exposed. So in practice, with each agreement the Linux community is giving up some retaliation weapon, while MS keeps its arsenal intact. Think of a country where individual divisions of the army make bilateral agreements with a not-so-nice neighbour and you get the idea... Dividi et impera...

ago

November 6th, 2006, 05:28 AM

mono is not a microsoft thing, it's the Linux implementation of a standard

Yes it is. The standard was based on a Microsoft idea, other parties took part in the standardization process, but it is their baby, they have IP on it (whether they can enforce it or not).

Nobody denies it is a valid framework (they basically copied Java's framework and improved on it, which is not so tough after 5-10 years of experience and being able to afford a blank sheet with no issues about backward compatibility). But the point is that Microsoft is in the driving seat, they invented .Net, they decide about its development, they can push as many proprietary addons as they wish. Without those bits, you will be able to port some Mono apps to Windows, but not the other way around. Guess who gains from it. And please do not tell me that Mono is ever going to break away, because, particularly today, that is not going to happen. The best they can do is playing catch-up. Do you really want to build Linux Desktops on that?

Moreover, Mono will help .Net become the dominant enterprise platform, adding "portability" and lowering geek resistance, but if .Net becomes the dominant enterprise platform do you think Linux is going to benefit from it? Will most companies be running .Net components on a Linux server using a crippled .Net implementation via Mono or on a Windows server using the "official" .Net framework? And if they use .Net what webserver do you think they will be running? What DB? You get the picture...

Unfortunately IMO we are in this situation because Java was not opensourced, which was a major mistake by Sun (and now they are paying the consequences...). But if we really have to pick a new framework, at the very least, we should get one where the community is in charge. And since we are moving toward a desktop which requires better integration of remote and local apps, web and desktop, we should look for a framework that is designed to do that. My best bet is a mix of XUL/XPCOM and a VM for language neutrality.

racoq

November 6th, 2006, 07:43 AM

If u don't wan't to use mono, or feel unconfortable, u don't have to, unistall tomboy and f-spot, and mono, think its possible since only two applications in Ubuntu use them, and install replacements like for instance the gedit (available in the repos) in place of tomboy.

A great alternative is to switch either to Kubuntu, or Xubuntu (my favorite option), since none of them use Mono, and They're latest releases are very stable (specially Xubuntu that i can say from my personal experience, besides u can gain a performance increase.

I think that Xubuntu and Kubuntu respect better the linux principles and licensing that the default Ubuntu distribution.

shining

November 6th, 2006, 08:13 AM

Dude, you are having some issues. Seriously. This is not the first time you have made your "comments" about me, so what exactly is your problem with me? Let's hear them. Do I need to take this up with the mods, because honestly, I'm getting sick and tired of this.

What about answering mostwanted comment ( #18 ) instead, and just ignoring ComplexNumber one?
That would be much more interesting.

Sushi

November 6th, 2006, 08:40 AM

Yet, he is also the founder of Gnome which was originally created as a GNU-endorsed alternative to then semi-proprietary KDE...

He is, and I commend him for that. But that does not change the fact that he seems to be a MS-fanboy. Luckily GNOME has grown beyond De Icaza. Hell, De Icaza applied for a job at Microsoft in the past! Just because De Icaza started GNOME back then, does not mean that I should agree with him on everything.

There's a difference between not hating someone uncontrollably and being a fanboy. Miguel likes C# and the CRL because it's good technology, not because he's a Microsoft fanboy.

Microsoft has betrayed clients and partners. Repeatedly. Microsoft has a long trail of blood behind them. They supported SCO, they have done just about everything in their power to kill Linux. And now that they made a deal with Novell, De Icaza is bursting with joy. Has he forgotten history? Or is this a case of "THIS TIME it's going to be different! Honest!". De Icaza tells how good this is for Novell and Mono. Well, whooppee. But is this good for Linux as a whole? To me, this seems like a case of divide and conquer. I haven't seen any indication that MS has changed their ways, I haven't seen any indication that should make us trust Microsoft. Not one.

The SCO-case is not even over yet, and we are already making pacts with the "man behind the curtain". Is our memory REALLY that short? I wonder how the negotiations with MS went. Did MS say something like "um, sorry about that thing that happened short while ago. You remember? When we spead FUD about Linux, backed SCO so they could harm Linux as much as possible. When we did everything possible to harm Linux. Oh, sorry about Netware as well. But lets just forget all that. Here, sign this document. With your blood".

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Sushi

November 6th, 2006, 08:41 AM

What about answering mostwanted comment ( #18 ) instead, and just ignoring ComplexNumber one?
That would be much more interesting.

done

forrestcupp

November 6th, 2006, 10:11 AM

After all of the ideas that Microsoft stole, you all should be glad that someone is finally getting away with stealing a Microsoft idea. If Mono is an opensource implementation of .NET, and all of the patented possibilities for trouble can be easily removed, I think we should embrace it. Whether you like it or not, .NET is the way the world is going.

DoctorMO

November 6th, 2006, 10:21 AM

C# was based on Java2, Microsoft just 'half inched' all the sun developers.

ago

November 6th, 2006, 10:23 AM

The world will go where the most/best developers decide it to go. I am a developer and if I do not like it, I will not use it. It is as simple as that. I was in doubt until recently whether to move to Mono, now I have no doubt whatsoever.

Not that the current tools are inadequate by any means, but I do not think that a full OSS framework is that far. Nice work is going on in the VM arena from LLVM to PyPy to Parrot, we have XUL, XPCOM and all sorts of libraries to cherrypick from. The only good thing about all this is that people will put more effort in our own garden...

boban

November 6th, 2006, 11:18 AM

The world will go where the most/best developers decide it to go. I am a developer and if I do not like it, I will not use it.

That is not precisely true... If you mean OSS, then yes - its true... But when working for a company most of the time you spend coding in language that company has chosen, not you... :(

Btw. Do you know where can I find list of Novell's "products"? I want to get rid of everything that has to do with that company...

darkhatter

November 6th, 2006, 12:12 PM

That is not precisely true... If you mean OSS, then yes - its true... But when working for a company most of the time you spend coding in language that company has chosen, not you... :(

Btw. Do you know where can I find list of Novell's "products"? I want to get rid of everything that has to do with that company...

Novell works on too many projects, Gnome, KDE, mono....
if they double cross us with Microsoft its going to hurt bad.

boban

November 6th, 2006, 12:20 PM

Novell works on too many projects, Gnome, KDE, mono....
if they double cross us with Microsoft its going to hurt bad.

I already installed XFce... List of Novell's software would be helpful - it's not that easy to find all "Novell dependencies" ;)

(and your warning should sound like this: "when they double cross us with Microsoft its going to hurt bad."... Microsoft have long history of betrayals)

DoctorMO

November 6th, 2006, 12:33 PM

if they double cross us with Microsoft its going to hurt bad.

The thing is, thanks to the GPL it's not going to hurt us, it's more likly going to hurt them badly.

Imagen if an EU judge or the US courts turn round as say that Novell can't distrobute Linux at all until they nullify their agreement with Microsoft because of the GPL. that would hurt a lot. although my bet is that it's either 1) completly ineffectual liceiencing or 2) expands to the entire community by proxy.

pitkali

November 6th, 2006, 12:47 PM

Do you really think that not using mono will make you patent safe? Come on - even double click is patented.

darkhatter

November 6th, 2006, 01:05 PM

Do you really think that not using mono will make you patent safe? Come on - even double click is patented.

:confused: :confused: :confused: how can you patent that. I'm going to patent going to the bathroom using 2 hands :grin: .

luca.b

November 6th, 2006, 01:20 PM

Mono was a bad idea from the start, because it's evident they would have ended up infringing patents (as mono doesn't implement only the ECMA standard). I strongly suspect the agreement was also partially due to the Ximian guys inside Novell (De Icaza in primis).

skymt

November 6th, 2006, 01:33 PM

I support getting rid of mono, because I have an irrational fear of lawsuits. Despite the fact that it's simply an implementation of a standard, and Microsoft wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they decide to sue, I still think it's worse than, say, binary hardware drivers that violate the Linux kernel GPL.

Of course, Evolution is a Novell project, and connects to Microsoft Exchange servers, so we'll have to move to Thunderbird. Samba reverse-engineered Microsoft's SMB protocol, so it's obviously out.

Compiz is developed by Novell, so say goodbye to that, and Beryl along with it. XGL is obviously out, and AIGLX too, since it's often associated with XGL.

Firefox looks a lot like Internet Explorer, so they could probably hit us with a "look-and-feel" lawsuit there. So, elinks by default? Ditto Gnome and KDE. Did somebody say "taskbar"?

Let's not just worry about Microsoft. Apple is evil too, right? I mean, they make closed-source software, so they must be. Rhythmbox uses a library metaphor, which iTunes popularized. So, we should obviously bundle XMMS by default.

Let's all let fanaticism keep us from using useful technology. Great idea. Death to Microsoft!

ago

November 6th, 2006, 02:23 PM

Do you really think that not using mono will make you patent safe? Come on - even double click is patented.

Nope, I think that by not using mono I will not help MS expand its stronghold.

pitkali

November 6th, 2006, 03:04 PM

Personally I think you're overreacting.

Regards,

darkhatter

November 6th, 2006, 03:28 PM

ago

November 6th, 2006, 03:40 PM

Personally I think you're overreacting.

Maybe, but I prefer to be cautious today, rather than find out I was wrong tomorrow. And the more threats and FUD come out of ballmer mouth the more I am going to be determined to stay well away from anything he touches. Particularly since there are quite a few "safer" choices, that are no less promising or less effective, and differently from Mono, cannot possibly be piggy backed for other aims. Do I really NEED to use Mono (as a developer and as a user)? No I don't. Do I want to improve and foster Mono (and therefore .Net), or do I want to improve and foster one of the truly FREE and OPEN Source Software alternatives? It is a no brainer at this point for me, but feel free to make a different choice.

T_W

November 6th, 2006, 03:49 PM

Microsoft has broad-based patent applications in for Mono.

See:

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-984052.html

Microsoft is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging patent that covers a variety of functions related to its .Net initiative.

If approved as is, the patent would cover application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow actions related to accessing the network, handling Extensible Markup Language (XML), and managing data from multiple sources. APIs are the hooks in software that allow applications to work with another system.

The only thing that made Mono even a remotely mangeable risk was the OIN and supposedly the "CommerceOne patents" were the tactical Nukes of the OIN.

See:

http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html

One of the biggest weapons in OIN is the set of Commerce One patents. Basically, Commerce One got lots of potentially scary patents on e-commerce stuff, and then they went bankrupt -- and the question "who's going to buy the Commerce One patents" was hot for a while. When a mystery buyer scooped them up, it was big news in certain circles.

Turned out that the buyer was Novell. And they turned around and contributed them to the OIN pool. Well-deserved kudos to Novell.

For those who prefer the "nuclear patent war" analogy: OIN is the NATO of software patents -- and the Commerce One patents are ICBMs.

The CommerceOne patents are owned by Novell. Novell now has a covenant not to sue Microsoft. Is the OIN worth anything anymore?

LOSE MONO!!! Its not worth the risk for what ultimately amounts to: yet another photo app, yet another jukebox, yet another yellow stickies app and a port of Apache Lucene.

dca

November 6th, 2006, 03:53 PM

Mono is just one facet. M$ is going to go after the whole show... They now have their in w/ Novell. The sad news, software patents will never go away in the US. It's considered as to copyrighting 'War And Peace', copyrighting the next 'White Album', and copyrighting 'Star Wars'. It's all intellectual property and if you had help writing it, it's intellectual property of the consortium or company who wrote it... You can sell it, make money from it, the same way you make money from royalties, residuals, or just selling it in a boutique. Protecting that is important. You can't quash software patents because lines are blurred. I mean, I know most people are bringing up the whole George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' being a rip-off of 'He's So Fine' would be a ridiculous contrast as to what M$ would do to the Linux community (Novell excluded, of course)...

ago

November 6th, 2006, 03:58 PM

You can be wrong by not trusting Novell (and Mono) when they should be trusted, or you can be wrong by trusting them when they should not be trusted. The two errors are not symmetrical...

DoctorMO

November 6th, 2006, 03:59 PM

bring it on I say.

bikeboy

November 6th, 2006, 06:07 PM

Let's all let fanaticism keep us from using useful technology. Great idea. Death to Microsoft!

Personally I think you're overreacting.

amen

bring it on I say.

I absolutely agree with all of you. If worst comes to worst and MS sues, we simply remove the applications that are "offending". But it's hardly likely that if they finally decide to sue, they're going to get upset about mono and sue us all over that. They'll go after everything they can, by which time the mono issue will be a moot point. If that happens we'll get another sco, the Linux community will band together and hold firm, probably bringing down windows. The guys who are panicking over mono now will switch back to windows or go to mac and we won't have to listen to them again.

Meanwhile, I'll keep enjoying my Ubuntu the way I like it, F-Spot included.

ago

November 6th, 2006, 07:09 PM

You only see Mono as a legal risk, but that is only part of the problem. Other aspects that you seem to ignore are:

By fostering mono you help to spread .Net in the enterprise market, since you give .Net the "portability" seal. Do we really need another monopoly in the enterprise app market?

Enterprise apps easily leak to several server segments. Do we really need other monopolies in those segments?

Unfortunately "portability" is unidirectional. Mono will help to port Linux apps TO windows, but windows will make sure that it is NOT possible to port apps FROM windows. And that can easily be done by adding all those nice proprietary add-ons that are NOT part of the standard, starting with windows forms... This will help reinforce the MS stronghold ALSO on the desktop market.

The community has ZERO control over Mono direction, Microsoft sets the path, and Mono follows. That's it. The chances of Mono diverging are zero. Sure you can add one or two specific libraries, like GTK#, so what? They will simply be ported to windows... But you can bet that .Net3 features will be implemented, then .Net4, then whatever else MS decides. Not all of them, mind you, better to keep mono slightly crippled so that CIOs will have no doubt what server to install... Sure you can fork or go for gnu .net version, but we are talking about Mono in this thread...

Novell has entered into a bilateral patent agreement, and that is bad in itself, since all other Linux parties will not be able to take advantage either directly or indirectly of Novell patents in eventual litigations. Ballmer is giving the usual "with us or against us" speech. How can Novell expect to make the "with us" agreement pass as a progress for Linux is beyond me. Does that mean we have to boycott mono. YES.

To all of the above you have to add that you are using a product which involves a higher risk of IP litigations. IF you are lucky, it makes "only" a good argument for FUD. Why should you do so when there are several alternatives that avoid that problem at the root?

ANY of those by itself is a good enough reason to ditch mono...

KaeseEs

November 6th, 2006, 07:16 PM

It seems to have been lost in the thread, but I and several others are still looking for a way to uninstall Tomboy, FSpot and the Mono libs without hosing other packages ( namely ubuntu-desktop ). If anyone knows of a method to do this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if anyone knows of a way to set dist-upgrade to not install new apps, but just function as a - wait for it - distro upgrade, I'd much appreciate that as well. Successive releases should get smaller on disk, not larger, dangit!

darkhatter

November 6th, 2006, 07:16 PM

we could always push QT4...

pitkali

November 6th, 2006, 07:21 PM

we could always push QT4...
Not until there's haskell support for it :P

It seems to have been lost in the thread, but I and several others are still looking for a way to uninstall Tomboy, FSpot and the Mono libs without hosing other packages ( namely ubuntu-desktop ). If anyone knows of a method to do this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Ubuntu desktop is just a meta-package. It contains only dependencies. Why object removing it?

Also, if anyone knows of a way to set dist-upgrade to not install new apps, but just function as a - wait for it - distro upgrade, I'd much appreciate that as well. Successive releases should get smaller on disk, not larger, dangit!
Remove packages such as ubuntu-desktop. I suppose the new apps you're writing about are new dependencies of that and other meta-packages.

BTW: I don't understand why should they be smaller. (And yet I do understand why do you object to them being larger.)

KaeseEs

November 6th, 2006, 07:38 PM

I initially didn't want to wax ubuntu-desktop because there are some packages (ie ubuntu-usplash-artwork) that depend only on the meta-package, and thus get removed with it. I solved this by making a list of everything aptitude wanted to kill and reinstalling those things that I wanted on their own.

As for why packages should get smaller over time: that was partly tongue-in-cheek. I should've used xml <curmudgeon> tags and made it explicit. <dev> Honestly though, if your package gets much bigger with time, it's probably a symptom of featuritis.</dev> Or, you can be cool like the GNOMe folks and remove features and still make bigger packages](*,)

PS - you were right about the new apps being mostly new dependencies of metapackages.

pitkali

November 6th, 2006, 07:56 PM

<dev> Honestly though, if your package gets much bigger with time, it's probably a symptom of featuritis.</dev>
Tell me about it ;) I agree they should not get bigger.

Or, you can be cool like the GNOMe folks and remove features and still make bigger packages](*,)
Good one :)

Regards,

forrestcupp

November 7th, 2006, 04:03 PM

Give me a break, people. An end-user's chance of getting sued for having mono on his computer is about the same as you getting sued for having downloaded mp3's on your computer. They're not going to go after the end-user; they will go after the creators of mono. MS won't do that anyway, they want to spread .NET anyway they can. The argument against this is as bad as the argument against Adobe Flash. Just because you don't like it doesn't change the fact that most websites out there use it. Just because you don't like .NET doesn't change the fact that most businesses are going to .NET. It's a waste of time to try to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.

I wonder if the Mono bashers have ever actually tried to program in C#. It's a great language.

ago

November 7th, 2006, 04:12 PM

They're not going to go after the end-user; they will go after the creators of mono.

You got it all wrong. The creator of mono is Novell and MS cannot go against Novell according to their agreement. They will go against USERS and OTHER DISTRIBUTIONS that use Mono... Plus, as mentioned, the legal risks are only a part of the problem...

The argument against this is as bad as the argument against Adobe Flash.
The difference is that by using Mono we help spread .Net. It is equivalent to complain about Flash and create Flash websites. That is not going to solve the problem, is it?

I wonder if the Mono bashers have ever actually tried to program in C#. It's a great language.
Nobody denies that.

boban

November 7th, 2006, 04:33 PM

Give me a break, people. An end-user's chance of getting sued for having mono on his computer is about the same as you getting sued for having downloaded mp3's on your computer.

RIAA... Does that name means anything too you? I don't mean to spread FUD - but think about it. A few sues against "normal" users can have impact on linux popularity...
IMO one of big reasons for small popularity of linux is fear - fear of unknown (and whispers that linux is for geeks only). But every day new users are switching... And with every new user this fear is slowly fading away ("If he can install linux, I surly can too!").

On the other hand - all of this can have positive impact on linux and Microsoft this time won't play dirty... We can just hope for that...

T_W

November 7th, 2006, 05:09 PM

I wonder if the Mono bashers have ever actually tried to program in C#. It's a great language.

Largely irrelevent to the discussion at hand, but yes I have programmed in C#. A Java fork with operator overloading hardly justifies the risk involved.

boban

November 7th, 2006, 06:08 PM

Largely irrelevent to the discussion at hand, but yes I have programmed in C#. A Java fork with operator overloading hardly justifies the risk involved.

+1, but I would say that C# = Java + Visual Basic ;-) ... But IMO it has some great features (f.e. build in events and delegates).

DoctorMO

November 7th, 2006, 06:11 PM

Bah you can do overloading in perl and events in python :twisted:

But I agree with the consesus. the dangers outweigh the gains even though I don't think Microsoft will sue down this way.

darrenm

November 7th, 2006, 07:00 PM

bring it on I say.

Exactly. Microsoft could not risk any lawsuits against Linux for a number of reasons

1. Europe really hates Microsoft. The European courts are looking for anything anti-competitive to get Microsoft with. Microsoft slapping IP lawsuits against anything Linux would be like making a big line in the middle of the Atlantic. The patents wouldn't really work in Europe but would in the U.S.

2. It's far too risky for them to do. All they have to do is lose 1 case in 1 country (and there are loads with relaxed rules and laws on this kind of thing) and it sets a precedent they couldn't hope to come back from. There are no such things as laws to a court, only precendents.

The best hope Microsoft have to stop the Linux "cancer" is to spread the FUD and the deal with Novell is purely to be able to spread some FUD by saying we won't sue Novell for any possible IP trespasses. In reality that has just as much weight as me asking Microsoft for £10,000 and then I won't sue them for any possible IP infringements of mine. SCO's gone, they got laughed out of court and now this is round 2.

Amon_Re

November 7th, 2006, 07:37 PM

I fail to see the problem, if Novell is protected by this deal with M$, and they bring out new versions of eg. Mono that are still covered by the GPL, then basicly, there's not much M$ can do about it.

If they start bringing out code that's incompatable with the GPL, then don't use it.

Relax & enjoy the ride, looks like it'll get bumpy the coming months :mrgreen:

darkhatter

November 7th, 2006, 08:00 PM

Q8. What does this mean for Mono and its inclusion in non-SUSE distributions? Does Mono infringe Microsoft patents?

We maintain that Mono does not infringe any Microsoft patents. This agreement does not impact the rights and abilities of other distributions to bundle and ship Mono.

Novell is the leading contributor to Mono and we remain committed to the Mono project. Mono is a community project with many constituents and collaborators from companies, universities, governments and individuals.

The Mono project has a set of rules it uses to handle patents that might read on its implementation. The general policy is to work around, remove, or find prior technology on any patents that might read on any implementations in Mono. We continue to support this policy.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html

we can open f-spot now, its safe to come back.

sethmahoney

November 7th, 2006, 08:03 PM

DoctorMO

November 7th, 2006, 08:11 PM

Clause 7 of the GPL does seem to prohibit Novels arangements some what.

darkhatter

November 7th, 2006, 08:27 PM

Clause 7 of the GPL does seem to prohibit Novels arangements some what.

Q1. How is this agreement compatible with Novell's obligations under Section 7 of the GPL?
Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft to Novell (or, for that matter, from Novell to Microsoft). Novell's customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft. We have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL and we are in full compliance.
Novell's end user customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft for their use of Novell products and services, but these activities are outside the scope of the GPL.

Novell is for open source, lets stop the FUD

ago

November 7th, 2006, 08:44 PM

Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft

If they wanted to protect their customers, they could have done like red hat: if anybody sues their customers because of IP reasons, RH drops in their shoes and takes care of any legal issue directly on behalf of their customers. No such thing as covenants not sue, but eye for eye. And by refusing bilateral agreements with a single company, they avoid supporting the IP claims of that particular company. Well done RH!

Novell's end user customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft for their use of Novell products and services, but these activities are outside the scope of the GPL.
Yes the covenants not sue from Miscrosoft is outside of the GPL, the problem is that Microsoft can sue ALL OTHER customers, and if that happens, can Novell help? No it can't, because it is giving something in return in order to protect ITS OWN customers... The fact itself that Novell is protecting their clients (and ONLY their clients) against lawsuits for their use of LINUX GPL PRODUCTS, implies that lawsuits are possible and that by itself is spreading FUD. The fact that this protection is sought via a covenant (and royalties) with a single company, reinforces the view that MS is THE company with the licenses on technologies used by LINUX...

Have you noticed that MS has just started telling us which version of Linux is 'licensed'? I mean MS is behaving as THE authority for Linux! Do you think it is normal? And no, it is not a joke. Novell gave them such authority with their stupid covenants and royalties.

DoctorMO

November 7th, 2006, 09:14 PM

Thats a dangerous trick to pull. it validates Microsofts IP while claiming to be doing something positive. no wonder Microsoft payed so much for this agreement.

Novel may be for Open source but it doesn't look like their for Free Software. I'll be watching with interest because all I see currently are a rather large amount of companies that are trying to aquire control over the open source and free software worlds; either because of fear or because of money and it's a dangerous precident.

darkninja

November 8th, 2006, 03:23 AM

Though I am no fan of the way Novell has gone about striking a deal between themselves and Microsoft at the detriment of the other Linux distributions, I think Mono is too valuable to simply throw away.

Mono is a useful tool because it allows .NET applications (which are very common in business environments) to be ported to Linux easily without having to do a total rewrite, which will help Linux gain the corporate desktop.

I would think of the purpose of Mono for Linux would similar to that of WINE, that is better interoperability.

However given that .NET is still controlled by Microsoft and the risk of patent wars remain I do not think that the development of new apps under .NET should be encouraged, much like how Java development is not encouraged.

I'd advocate Python (w/GTK and QT bindings) as the best high level language for applications, due to the fact that it is controlled by the community, included in every major Linux distribution, easy to develop for and free of patent/freedom issues.

Of course, C/C++ is still fine too.

boban

November 8th, 2006, 03:50 AM

Yes the covenants not sue from Miscrosoft is outside of the GPL, the problem is that Microsoft can sue ALL OTHER customers, and if that happens, can Novell help? No it can't, because it is giving something in return in order to protect ITS OWN customers... The fact itself that Novell is protecting their clients (and ONLY their clients) against lawsuits for their use of LINUX GPL PRODUCTS, implies that lawsuits are possible and that by itself is spreading FUD. The fact that this protection is sought via a covenant (and royalties) with a single company, reinforces the view that MS is THE company with the licenses on technologies used by LINUX...

You have some very good points here...And Microsoft has all the means to make this view a "common knowledge"..

There are lots of people that don't know Linux. They would have eventually... But now - m$ will introduce linux to them - "licensed linux". And they will ask - "Hey! Why should I even bother to use this Linux thing? It isn't free, I have to pay Microsoft or their partners for it, I will have to learn hard (...). So I'll better stick with windows".

Have you noticed that MS has just started telling us which version of Linux is 'licensed'? I mean MS is behaving as THE authority for Linux! Do you think it is normal? And no, it is not a joke. Novell gave them such authority with their stupid covenants and royalties.

I respected Novell... But now - I hate them... It is a betrayal. It's selling your soul for the money. And in the short run it will help Novell... But trust is easy to fail and very hard to build up... I don't think that I will be able to trust Novell with anything now...

After thinking for a while - I really don't know if getting rid of mono is a good or bed thing. But I know - that making mono (and other stuff made by novell) "default" and depending on it is potentially very dangerous. It all should be optional but easy accessible - like closed source drivers...

ago

November 8th, 2006, 05:28 AM

Mono is a useful tool because it allows .NET applications (which are very common in business environments) to be ported to Linux easily

I disagree on this. Mono makes it easy to port Linux applications to Windows, not the other way around. There is much more in .Net than just the ECMA spec and most windows applications do implement those "extra bits". Those parts are patented, which means you cannot use them in Linux unless you pay royalties. Take for in instance system.WINDOWS.forms, is that part of the standard? Does the name of the library suggest anything to you? Mono (and dotgnu) are reimplementing them, but whether it is legal to use them is very arguable (if you are not a Novell customer that is). Without those libraries forget about porting GUI applications from windows, and the same goes for many other parts of .Net. Only applications that were designed strictly on safer mono libraries since day 0 can be ported, but chances are that not many windows apps fall in this category. On the other hand, particularly after the agreement, Mono will make sure that it is easy to port applications to windows.

So you have framework A that can run apps from framework A and apps from framework B, and you have framework B that can only run apps from framework B (unless you use a Microsoft licensed version for Linux...). If you are a CIO, which one are you going to use?

forrestcupp

November 8th, 2006, 10:19 AM

So you have framework A that can run apps from framework A and apps from framework B, and you have framework B that can only run apps from framework B (unless you use a Microsoft licensed version for Linux...). If you are a CIO, which one are you going to use?

If I were a CIO, I would either use Windows or a Microsoft licensed version of Linux. All of this doesn't change the fact that Linux is excellent for servers/networks.

With how Oracle is screwing over Red Hat, can you really blame Novell for trying to get some kind of protection? Think about it. These are huge companies that have to pay a lot of workers' salaries. These aren't just end-users with a Linux box in their bedroom where it ultimately doesn't matter what happens. And now because of Oracle's dirty move it's possible that they could run a Linux giant out of business.

It is possible for the deal with Novell/Microsoft to not violate the GPL. Have you ever heard of shimms?

ago

November 8th, 2006, 10:40 AM

With how Oracle is screwing over Red Hat, can you really blame Novell for trying to get some kind of protection?
Oracle is screwing up RH, Novell is screwing up Linux...

And there are various ways to protect your customers... See RH for a good example of customer protection from IP litigation which is beneficial to the Linux community at large... On the other hand, the way chosen by Novell is a disgrace for the rest of the Linux community. From now on we will have to live with "Microsoft licensed Linux"...

Thanks a lot for the "protection"!

PS I would not be too surprised if Oracle was planning to purchase RH...

T_W

November 8th, 2006, 12:52 PM

All this worry doesn't really matter much. Unless someone wants to port tomboy, banshee, etc. over to python or whatever, its not likely that the mono dependencies are going to go away. On the other hand, you probably can uninstall mono packages without seriously damaging your system - it will just make upgrading a pain in the ***.

Tomboy is a glorified yellow stickies app. We already had one of those written in C.

Banshee is a jukebox. We already have Rhythmbox (also in C).

No porting required.

Beagle is the only remotely interesting thing, and its basis is just a C# port of the (Java) Apache Lucene engine.

Other than the fact that Miguel has convinced a handful of developers to use it, what exactly does Mono bring to the table?

Put Mono and its apps in a repository holding packages with a questionable IP basis and treat it as another Wine. Don't force it onto my hardware in the base install.

darkhatter

November 8th, 2006, 01:02 PM

Tomboy is a glorified yellow stickies app. We already had one of those written in C.

Banshee is a jukebox. We already have Rhythmbox (also in C).

No porting required.

Beagle is the only remotely interesting thing, and its basis is just a C# port of the (Java) Apache Lucene engine.

Other than the fact that Miguel has convinced a handful of developers to use it, what exactly does Mono bring to the table?

Put Mono and its apps in a repository holding packages with a questionable IP basis and treat it as another Wine. Don't force it onto my hardware in the base install.

if you don't like the product shop somewhere else

skymt

November 8th, 2006, 01:12 PM

Other than the fact that Miguel has convinced a handful of developers to use it, what exactly does Mono bring to the table?

C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, IronPython, Boo, and others. All of which share a common set of object-oriented libraries, something no other technology has provided.

T_W

November 8th, 2006, 02:18 PM

if you don't like the product shop somewhere else

Oh pardon me, I thought this was a community-based distribution.

I also though this was a discussion board for this community-based distribution.

T_W

November 8th, 2006, 02:21 PM

C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, IronPython, Boo, and others. All of which share a common set of object-oriented libraries, something no other technology has provided.

Untrue.

http://www.robert-tolksdorf.de/vmlanguages.html

http://www.parrotcode.org/languages/

darkhatter

November 8th, 2006, 03:25 PM

Oh pardon me, I thought this was a community-based distribution.

I also though this was a discussion board for this community-based distribution.

Ubuntu is a company owned distribution that is very friendly to the community. Ubuntu is also moving into the server market aka want a piece of Red Hat's share. If Mono is a problem they'll remove it, there is nothing to worry about.

skymt

November 8th, 2006, 03:26 PM

Untrue.

http://www.robert-tolksdorf.de/vmlanguages.html

The following is a list of programming languages for the Java virtual machine aside of Java itself. Currently (spring 2005), it comprises close to 200 different systems. It is a mix of experimental, research oriented implementations and of commercial ones.

Emphasis mine. ;)

http://www.parrotcode.org/languages/

Parrot is in the early phases of its implementation.

I didn't mean .NET/mono is the only technology that's trying to do this. I just meant it's the only one that really has. .NET/mono is the only technology that can do the job well right now, and isn't that what's important?

DoctorMO

November 9th, 2006, 06:39 AM

Ubuntu is a company owned distribution that is very friendly to the community. Ubuntu is also moving into the server market aka want a piece of Red Hat's share. If Mono is a problem they'll remove it, there is nothing to worry about

Erm, no it's not Conical have their own Linux Distro; Ubuntu is a community distro that Conical helps support and organise. not even close to the same thing.

3rdalbum

November 9th, 2006, 08:40 AM

I don't think that Mono is in any way an infringement on anyone's IP or code. Sun couldn't go after the unofficial Java implementations. IBM couldn't go after Qemu for their PowerPC emulation.

Having said that, I think Python is a more appropriate language for the desktop. Mono should really just be for porting existing .NET applications to other platforms.

Choad

November 9th, 2006, 10:30 AM

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html

More importantly, Microsoft announced today that it will not assert its patents against individual, non-commercial developers. Novell has secured an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to allow individual and non-commercial contributors the freedom to continue open source development, free from any concern of Microsoft patent lawsuits. That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking.

ago

November 9th, 2006, 10:58 AM

And where exactly is the clause that says they cannot sue the USERS of such distros, i.e. us?

Not to mention that COMMERCIAL developers/companies can be sued and possibly even NON-COMMERCIAL organizations. I.E. they can sue Red Hat, Canonical, and all their developers, and even Debian is not safe...

So basically, according to MS, you can develop for FOSS provided you make no money out of it (unless you work for Suse), and you distribute your software via Suse ( because the users of such software can be sued)...

So MS is telling us how to write LINUX software and how to distribute it!

How kind!

T_W

November 9th, 2006, 10:59 AM

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents.

More importantly, Microsoft announced today that it will not assert its patents against individual, non-commercial developers. Novell has secured an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to allow individual and non-commercial contributors the freedom to continue open source development, free from any concern of Microsoft patent lawsuits. That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking.

Good lord, the arrogance of that statement. As if we need Microsoft's pemission to "keep hacking".

1) The text you linked to says "individual, non-commercial developers". I don't see anything about distributions. The Ubuntu community is hardly an individual developer. Canonical is clearly not non-commercial.

2) "That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking".. as long as its in your parent's basement, not in any way organized, and certainly not used in any commercial setting... ever.

Many thanks to Novell/Microsoft for granting me these rights. Will they be "granting" me the right to vote or trial by jury any time soon?

T_W

November 10th, 2006, 03:41 PM

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html

Groklaw on Microsoft's "Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers":

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061109111321376

The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built...

It's worse than useless, as this empty promise can create a false sense of security. Don't be confused by the illusion of a truce; developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before. Instead, Microsoft has used this patent pledge to indicate that, in their view, the only good Free Software developer is an isolated, uncompensated, unimportant Free Software developer.

warfly

November 17th, 2006, 02:42 PM

Personally, I agree with many other posters who support getting rid of Mono.

But if that is too extreme a move, I'm all for just removing dependency of it from the ubuntu-desktop package and let the users choose.

That way I can happily enjoy using Ubuntu without having to install something I think really objectionable, and others who think otherwise still use their favorite apps built on it.

jhenager

November 17th, 2006, 03:20 PM

After reading the actual "Non-Assertion of Patents Pledge", it appears that if you develop something yourself, you are in the clear, unless you file for patent protection against Microsoft, at which point you lose your protection, backdated to the original grant date. Anyone else that uses it is not ever protected.
One area in which Microsoft excels in is legal doublespeak, and that's what this is.

angrykeyboarder

November 18th, 2006, 02:37 AM

darrenm

November 18th, 2006, 04:11 AM

warfly

November 18th, 2006, 04:17 AM

darkninja

November 18th, 2006, 09:41 AM

http://ometer.com/desktop-language.html

2 years ago the GNOME devs decided that between Java and C#, C# was the best option for a high level language in GNOME.

I wonder now that both Java having gone GPL and MS/Novell spreading patent FUD if it will force the GNOME developers to reconsider their position. Python has come a long way too.

I have nothing against Mono for Linux existing for interoperability purposes however I think it would be foolish to make it an integral part of the GNOME desktop. Python and now Java are much more attractive options.

3rdalbum

November 18th, 2006, 10:23 AM

Python has always been a more attractive option. I hope to god's green earth that Gnome developers don't try to use Java for anything. Java is notorious for its applications not working correctly when there are slight variations in the computers. If Gnome incorporated Java applications or applets, the desktop would break for millions of users.

darkhatter

November 18th, 2006, 02:15 PM

no one knows what their talking about, lets keep quiet. If (or when ) Microsoft says that Mono is a IP infringement, everyone including Novell will remove it, or change whatever as a problem, lock this thread then open it when someone actually releases information.

ago

November 18th, 2006, 05:18 PM

This vehement Anti-Microsoft attitude of so many Linux users just gives the community a bad name.

You got it the other way around, or maybe you just do not read the news... Mr ballmer just stated that if we want Linux we should only use MSuse or else... And for those of us who are FOoliSSh developers, we'd better keep the software for ourselves or else... i.e. he intends to squish the kernel, gnu, debian, ubuntu... i.e. us...

Talk to me about anti-attitude...

Since WE have contributed millions of man hours to get where we are, many here feel that the only thing we owe to Mr ballmer is the finger, and we want to keep it that way, therefore we simply want to move into the stratosphere anything he touches... Which is a far shot from threatening users who make different choices, as MS does...

ComplexNumber

November 18th, 2006, 05:49 PM

darkninja

November 18th, 2006, 09:39 PM

personally, i prefer C# over java. java applications always seem to be sluggish (its not just the slow start up times because that is to be expected with java due to the way it works with the JIT) and look ugly (swing is THEE ugliest and SWT which is meant to match the native toolkit still looks ugly and clunky). i used to like java a lot and found it very 'pure' when i first started programming in it in 1997, but its jsut too big and inefficient now IMO. hopefully they start streamlining it from now on instead of adding new features. because of its cross platform nature, i can't help but visualise java as being a man with his own house on his back (ie because its got to carry its own libraries and toolkit around with it everywhere it goes) :D.
as for microsoft threats, to hell with them. they wouldn't dare sue, so i'm more than happy to use and (eventually) develop using mono.

While I do agree that Java's current cross-platform graphical toolkits are ugly as hell, I don't think that would be an issue once proper GTK bindings have been made and Java can interface with GTK just like other programming languages.

Memory usage is a bit of an issue yes, however once a program is adequately tweaked Java can run a lot nicer. Mono and Python aren't exactly lean either.

I also think Microsoft is full of hot air, however though this may sound somewhat emotive and illogical, if they're out to destroy Linux then why on earth are we helping them and relying on them?

The reasons why I'd prefer to see Java over Mono in GNOME include:

We're not "pushing" Microsoft's standard for them. Sun have probably realised that they depend on Linux, they're not out to destroy us anymore.
Java (or a free variant) is already included by default in most distros due to Java web content.
Developers are still working on most of the classes for Mono, we don't have anything near full support for .NET. Java on the other hand is complete and now free.
Java has been around a lot longer.
Java is still THE language for huge commercial projects.
Plenty of good Java apps already exist for Linux (Azureus/Eclipse/etc)
Java is one of the most common languages taught to programmers in college.

That said, I am also a big fan of Python and I think that it would be the best choice due to its awesome flexibility, easy syntax and strong integration into Ubuntu and other distros. No "freedom" issues with Python either.

T_W

November 18th, 2006, 11:23 PM

If we got rid of mono we'd lose several apps I like. I have no problem with mono. Just because it's based on Microsoft's .net doesn't make it a bad thing. It is open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29) you know.

This vehement Anti-Microsoft attitude of so many Linux users just gives the community a bad name.

It's just childish.

Dude, if you're comfortable with having to pay Microsoft a royalty for using your Linux distribution, by all means send them a check.

Personally, I think they make enough money. The thought of them imposing a Microsoft tax on software that they played no role in developing and made what results to negative contributions to sickens me.

And before you accuse me of being childish:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;839593139;fp;16;fpid;1

In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.
...
Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux "uses our intellectual property" and Microsoft wanted to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation."

Microsoft wanted to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation".

As per Mono, its an incomplete clone of .Net. .Net is an incomplete single-platform clone of Java, which is owned lock stock and barrel by Microsoft. Mono's contributions to desktop Linux amount to "yet another Jukebox program", "yet another Photo management program", "yet another yellow stickies program" and a desktop search engine based on an automated port of Apache Lucene.

Big hairy deal.

darkhatter

November 18th, 2006, 11:30 PM

Mono really isn't important, but we should keep it. Red Hat has said that they will rewrite anything that Microsoft "claims" is their intellectual property.

loell

November 18th, 2006, 11:45 PM

Mono really isn't important, but we should keep it. Red Hat has said that they will rewrite anything that Microsoft "claims" is their intellectual property.

ok? so that would be like, writing from scratch? ;)

autoexec

November 19th, 2006, 12:35 AM

im ok with mono, as long as its MONO, and not a .NET emu
if they get rid of winforms and related then i see no issue, MONO is following an open standard otherwise

any 'IP' that microsoft has on .NET that is used in MONO doesn't apply in most countrys

although anyone who doesn't live in a 'software patents' country can copy microsoft software patents all they like and they are immune

martinstevens

November 23rd, 2006, 04:37 AM

Looks like there are some people here that have the same feelings I have on the matter. I am disgusted with Microsoft's actions. As for Novel fat chance that I’ll ever be touching Novel products, Suse no more on my PC!

Does anyone have any thought on what will happen? Won’t the Linux community just change the code so Linux does not infringe on MS intellectual property? Wouldn’t it just come back to haunt Microsoft like a zombie, kill one and ten more of the living dead crawl out of the grave and come at them? A fight they will inevitably loose?

I understand that the inter operability aspect has IP issues but is there something I may be missing? Please enlighten me.

imagine

November 23rd, 2006, 04:18 PM

I agree with the thread starter.
My thoughts: Novell only recently started their business as a GNU/Linux-distributor by buying SUSE, a widespread, KDE based distribution. Then some Ximian people (including Friedman and de Icaza), whose company was also bought by Novell, first tried to set up Gnome as the default desktop in SUSE. As this plan to bring Mono applications into main part of the distribution didn't work out, the next approach was to replace the package manager in SUSE with Mono software. Apart from the fact that this new package manager written in Mono was slow to unusable, and for some users simply completely broken, I have to ask what the hell came over Novell to replace a working package manager - basically the core of a distribution - with a Mono application. Even Microsoft wasn't so insane to develop core parts of Windows Vista in C#/.NET (and the problems with the Mono package manager show that they were right doing so).

The only reason I can think of why Novell introduced a Mono based package manager in SUSE is that they want to push Mono into the Linux market by using all possible means. Not to forget, that the Ximian developers at Novell were also among the people who lobbied for the inclusion of Mono software in Gnome. And Novell, that is the same company, that now hops into the bed with Microsoft! A company which stated that all Linux users infringe their "intellectual property", except they are using products of Novell.
For me this is way too much coincidence.
Maybe I'm paranoid but in my impression Novell and Mono here play the role of a trojan horse in the free software world.

Besides there's another point against Mono, which was already brought up in this thread: The programming language market is a key market, controlling it is almost as important as dominating the market of operating systems. Everybody knows what happened to the less important markets of browsers, email clients, video players, etc after Microsoft managed to quickly gain big parts of them ("This site is optimised for IE"/"uses embedded WMVs", anyone?).
Now, one reason you often see in favour of .NET is is that it's cross platform. The reason for this is exactly Mono, which thereby helps spreading .NET. However Microsoft repeatedly stated that they do not support Mono (because "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate. .NET is the intellectual property of Microsoft"), there's no official approval of Mono. So as long as Mono is an useful idiot for Microsoft nothing will happen, but if it becomes a treat, then they will certainly take action.

I can't share the hope that Mono will allow more Windows desktop applications to run on Linux either. Whereas most applications developed with Mono also run on Windows, the opposite isn't true because Mono is always running behind .NET and important parts of .NET are proprietary. Also the most common IDE for .NET, Visual Studio, isn't available for Linux (and won't be), so Mono doesn't offer companies an easier transition from Windows to Linux than other languages would do.

So in the end I'm not saying that Mono or Mono based applications should be banned, maybe everything I wrote above and all the reasons against Mono given by others are wrong. But for all these reasons, and every single one of them, Mono shouldn't be part of the Ubuntu default install. Whoever needs it can find it in the repositories, the same way as eg Wine.

And btw, Red Hat already did what is proposed in this thread, namely getting rid of Mono: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3644981

ComplexNumber

November 23rd, 2006, 04:28 PM

And btw, Red Hat already did what is proposed in this thread, namely getting rid of Monoi think red hat/fedora are the true heart and soul of linux. they always have been and continue to be so.

darkhatter

November 23rd, 2006, 05:44 PM

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/community_open_letter.html

Even Novell says there nothing wrong with Mono, just move on

T_W

November 28th, 2006, 02:54 AM

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/community_open_letter.html

Even Novell says there nothing wrong with Mono, just move on

And why should anyone trust what Novell has to say on this or any other matter?

kaylus

November 28th, 2006, 04:40 PM

And why should anyone trust what Novell has to say on this or any other matter?

Because if we don't the [thwup thwup thwup] big, black [thwup thwup thwup] helicopters with microsoft agents [thwup thwup thwup] are going to carry us away!

Seriously, people. Quit the fear mongering and senseless statements. If you are hardcore and want to remove anything related to Novell or Mono, or whatever else you toss in tomorrow, why not go try Slackware.

Let's not pull a disintegration factor on Ubuntu - What's next: Mubuntu (Minus Ubuntu, Ubuntu without any apps that may infringe on others intellectual property!!). Oh, then of course you'd have to toss out the Ubuntu concept -- Silly!

Most of the fear that has been shown hear is highly irrational and not based in much logic. It is understandable considering the anti-microsoft sentiments abundant in Linux, but baseless prejudice does nothing for the furthering of the community.

+ Kudos to the poster on (page 4?) for his wonderful sarcasm. If we apply the same logic (the risk might outweigh the benefit!) to everything we use on the operating system then we might be left with a software that can't compete, that isn't as usable and throws us back to the days of Slackware on floppy with a 600 page manual.

Regards

ago

November 28th, 2006, 05:25 PM

BIf you are hardcore and want to remove anything related to Novell or Mono, or whatever else you toss in tomorrow, why not go try Slackware.

Why don't you use slackware? Ubuntu is about the community and the idea is that community shapes Ubuntu, it does not just take it as it is. If several members have reservations vs Novell at the very least they should be allowed to voice their concerns and the devs should seriously consider whether it is appropriate to move mono away from main. You will still be able to install any mono app in 1 click, that does not mean that Ubuntu should be tainted by default. And as for the "mongering and senseless statements" here are some statements from Mark Shuttleworth's on the topic...

Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

...I know that posting this message to an OpenSUSE list will be controversial. I'm greatly respectful of the long tradition of excellence in the SuSE product and community and have no desire to undermine that with this post. That said, I think the position taken by Novell leadership in their contract with Microsoft is hugely disrespectful of the contributions of thousands of GPL programmers and contributors to SuSE, and I know that many are looking for a new place to get involved that is not subject to the same arbitrary executive intervention. Ubuntu is one option, as are Gentoo, Debian and other communities. Please accept this mail in that spirit.

It would be quite ridiculous to slap Novell and then push their arguable technology in by default.

JeffS

November 28th, 2006, 05:31 PM

Using Mono in Gnome/Ubuntu should not be a big deal. C# and the CLI are ECMA standards, and Mono is an implementation of those standards. Then GTK# is entirely an open source creation, providing C# wrappers around GTK+.

Really, patents or no, MS can't touch that stuff with lawsuits. And they wouldn't even try, for reasons already stated in this thread.

I don't care if F-spot and Tomboy are present. They are using GTK# and ECMA standard C#/CLI. No big deal.

I also keep MonoDevelop on my Edgy install, mostly for the purpose of being somewhat familiar with C# and VB.Net. My day job is mostly a MS house (we write the bulk of our stuff in VC++, with a smattering of VB). I also do a lot of Java. And because my day job requires .Net familiarity, it makes sense to be able to get comfortable with .Net stuff. It's also useful for future job opportunities, even though with those I'll focus on Java and LAMP - it helps to also be competent with .Net. Recruiters love programmers that are comfortable with multiple platforms/languages, because their clients typically have a mix a match of technologies.

Finally, the fact that Sun released Java under the GPL is huge. For one, .Net is essentially a re-implementation of Java, with some extra bells and whistles (and syntatic sugar). And guess what? - Sun owns a number patents on Java. And now that Java is GPL, those patents become safe for all users. This spreads to .Net as well. Sun could very easily slap a patent/GPL violation lawsuit on MS, if MS ever decides to be big bully with their .Net patents. And I'm sure Sun would love to do that.

Also, GPL'd Java will give it a huge leg up on .Net. It will get more adoption, more developer momentum, more uptake in businesses that are increasingly interested in open standards and open source (and avoiding vendor lock-in). The market momentum behind Java will reduce .Net, and by extension Mono, to lower relevance.

All that said, I do wish F-spot or Tomboy or libMono were not part of the Ubuntu-desktop meta package. All things Mono should be separate and independent, not affecting standard Gnome or Ubuntu.

ButteBlues

November 28th, 2006, 05:52 PM

The posters at this forum are ridiculous. This forum hosts probably the single-most paranoid army of users I've ever laid eyes on.

Fact of the matter is, Mono is safe from lawsuits and it's a very good set of libraries that belong in the GNOME desktop with Tomboy.

ago

November 28th, 2006, 05:53 PM

All that said, I do wish F-spot or Tomboy or libMono were not part of the Ubuntu-desktop meta package. All things Mono should be separate and independent, not affecting standard Gnome or Ubuntu.

This, and only this, is the issue of this thread. Whether or not individual users or developers decide to use mono is a personal choice. Whether or not Mono is used by default in Ubuntu is a statement and an encouragement.

Mono apps should certainly be easy to install (G-A-I), but they should not be pre-installed, and possibly should be in multiverse.

ButteBlues

November 28th, 2006, 05:55 PM

ago - Tomboy and Mono should be in Ubuntu for the same reason Epiphany should be: it's part of the official GNOME desktop.

As it is, I've totally dumped Firefox and honestly dislike its inclusion in Ubuntu over the GNOME web browser (even though I understand why Firefox is still here).

loell

November 28th, 2006, 06:02 PM

fact of the matter is, many said gpl version 3 is ridiculous , but with the recent move of microsoft and novel , now majaority have positive views of gpl version 3 , if you think anti-mono is being ridiculous , well, think again ;)

JeffS

November 28th, 2006, 06:05 PM

This, and only this, is the issue of this thread. Whether or not individual users or developers decide to use mono is a personal choice. Whether or not Mono is used by default in Ubuntu is a statement and an encouragement.

Mono apps should certainly be easy to install (G-A-I), but they should not be pre-installed, and possibly should be in multiverse.

My reasons for not wanting to include Mono as standard Ubuntu-desktop or in Gnome are more technical and freedom of choice oriented, rather than fear of MS lawsuits oriented.

On the technical side, including Mono as standard just introduces more dependencies, and makes gnome bigger, have more potential bugs, and makes it more difficult to manage.

On the freedom of choice side, many users don't want Mono on their machines/desktops, for various reasons. But some do want it. And since Mono is not essential for any functionality other than F-spot and Tomboy (both completely non-essential apps), it makes sense to me to just have Mono, and apps that run on or depend on Mono, as completely separate downloads either in the Universe or Multiverse repos. Better still, put it in Multiverse, and users can either use Synaptic to get the stuff, or they can use Automatix.

Actually, I look at the Mono situation as being similar to stuff like Flash, MP3 codecs, and libdvdcss2. Those have legal grayness to them, at least in the USA, and having them as separate (but easy) downloads makes sense. I'm guessing that the vast majority of Ubuntu users have used Automatix or EasyUbuntu to download Flash, MP3, libdvdcss2, and the like, despite legal warnings. I'm guessing that Mono would be the same.

ago

November 28th, 2006, 06:22 PM

ago - Tomboy and Mono should be in Ubuntu for the same reason Epiphany should be: it's part of the official GNOME desktop.

Ubuntu is not Gnome.

In fact I remember reading some mono fan arguing for the inclusion of Mono within Gnome on the ground that distros where free to include it or not. Now we see people pushing Mono inside distros on the ground that Mono is in Gnome...

ago

November 28th, 2006, 06:30 PM

Actually, I look at the Mono situation as being similar to stuff like Flash, MP3 codecs, and libdvdcss2.
So do I

Xace123

November 28th, 2006, 08:18 PM

As ago says the whole point is about freedom and choice.

My original post was a question about the process that resulted in mono being an integral part of Ubuntu. Was it because it was part of Gnome and introduced by default? Were the implications, benefits and drawbacks of using mono considered? Do we really need it?

And it seems that not only the parts of mono that implement the Microsoft proposed Ecma-334 and Ecma-335 standards have made the way into the heart of Ubuntu. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

* Why is there an .aspx file in a default Ubuntu installation?
/etc/mono/2.0/DefaultWsdlHelpGenerator.aspx
I was under the impression that ASP.NET was not covered by the ECMA standards.

* Why do I have a package in my machine named libmono-winforms2.0-cil? I thought that Windows.Forms was not part of the ECMA standards either.

tageiru

November 28th, 2006, 08:22 PM

On the technical side, including Mono as standard just introduces more dependencies, and makes gnome bigger, have more potential bugs, and makes it more difficult to manage.

How about less potential bugs? Protection from stack overflows, memory leaks and memory corruption are great when you want to reduce the amount of bugs.

On the freedom of choice side, many users don't want Mono on their machines/desktops, for various reasons. But some do want it. And since Mono is not essential for any functionality other than F-spot and Tomboy (both completely non-essential apps), it makes sense to me to just have Mono, and apps that run on or depend on Mono, as completely separate downloads either in the Universe or Multiverse repos. Better still, put it in Multiverse, and users can either use Synaptic to get the stuff, or they can use Automatix.

Actually, I look at the Mono situation as being similar to stuff like Flash, MP3 codecs, and libdvdcss2. Those have legal grayness to them, at least in the USA, and having them as separate (but easy) downloads makes sense. I'm guessing that the vast majority of Ubuntu users have used Automatix or EasyUbuntu to download Flash, MP3, libdvdcss2, and the like, despite legal warnings. I'm guessing that Mono would be the same.

That does not make any sense. By that logic we should put Linux in multiverse too since SCO have legal issues with it. Linux is in fact more dangerous as there is an ongoing trial. You can't say that about Mono.

ago

November 28th, 2006, 09:27 PM

By that logic we should put Linux in multiverse too since SCO have legal issues with it.
Last time I checked it was not SCO to decide about Linux kernel development, while it is MS to decide about .Net development and therefore about Mono development (do not even try to say that Mono is independent to any degree). Which also means that MS do have IP rights in .Net (and several patents), since they did invent .Net and they lead development, something that SCO cannot claim. And the ECMA is not protection at all, since only a small part of Mono is covered by the ECMA, all the rest has MS written all over it, and quite literally... Does "system.WINDOWS.forms" mean anything to you? Do you think it is wise to include something called "system.WINDOWS.forms" inside a LINUX distro?

Even assuming that Mono only implemented the ECMA standard (which is bulloks), you should know that according to ECMA, you can attach a patent to a standard (as MS did) and ECMA allows to license the product on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (known as RAND licensing). So ECMA does NOT guarantee that people implementing the standard can walk away without paying royalties. What is worse is that there’s no definition for "reasonable", so patent holders (MS in this case) can charge anything.

Not least, Novell, as Mark says, has circumvented the GPL, and that should not be allowed to happen.

kaylus

November 28th, 2006, 11:36 PM

Why don't you use slackware? Ubuntu is about the community and the idea is that community shapes Ubuntu, it does not just take it as it is. If several members have reservations vs Novell at the very least they should be allowed to voice their concerns and the devs should seriously consider whether it is appropriate to move mono away from main.

I am quite aware of the idea and ideal, though twisted logic and attempts to point out that I am saying you have no right to an opinion is not part of that ideal. If several members of the community have reservations about your (and the few others) paranoia concerning Mono at the very least they should be able to voice their concerns so that any decision made reflects the full will of the community, right?

And as for the "mongering and senseless statements"

And? Your point? Stating something that WAS NOT said in this forum, or on this topic, does not demonstrate clearly that alot of the statements made over the last 11 pages were not "Fear mongering" or "senseless". Sorry. Misdirections work in politics better.

By all means, express your opinion, but do realize that opinions that don't appear well-educated or just seem paranoid are less likely to be looked at with concern.

<snip rest...>

I snipped the rest after reading the last few posts in this forum, it's hard to take seriously the claims laid by people who are so fanatical about opposing any they deem fit to oppose. I will concede that the issue is good to discuss, but I have seen little to show why it should be removed (from a technical standpoint, or a community standpoint) other than the fact that a few want it removed from (mainly) anti-ms/anti-novell sentiments/fear.

So, fine -- I saw a reason why someone doesn't really care for it to be there, how about a good technical reason that shows why it should be removed?

ButteBlues

November 29th, 2006, 12:36 AM

Ubuntu is not Gnome.

Yeah - you're right. GNOME is a Desktop Environment; Ubuntu isn't. Ubuntu shouldn't be removing random applications and libraries from their DEFAULT DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT for the sake of an ignorant and arrogant approach concerning Mono.

The only possible case for having non-GNOME applications in the Default Ubuntu is in the instance of Firefox, which is default simply because it's an insanely popular web browser that is cross-platform.

In fact I remember reading some mono fan arguing for the inclusion of Mono within Gnome on the ground that distros where free to include it or not. Now we see people pushing Mono inside distros on the ground that Mono is in Gnome...

Simply put, distros should NOT be removing core elements of their default Desktop Environment except in very rare or extreme cases which warrant this. Firefox over Epiphany warrants this (though, ideally Epiphany should be used; but let's be realistic here) due to the browser's popularity and its Free and free status. Removing Mono is NOT WARRANTED. Neither Ubuntu or its users will face a lawsuit over Mono. Removing it serves no purpose other than to satisfy the endlessly angsty "OMG I HATEZ THE MICROSOFT"-spouting kiddies.

warfly

November 29th, 2006, 12:56 AM

Yeah - you're right. GNOME is a Desktop Environment; Ubuntu isn't. Ubuntu shouldn't be removing random applications and libraries from their DEFAULT DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT for the sake of an ignorant and arrogant approach concerning Mono.
So if you think all those concerns posted here regarding the risk of patent infringement and more importantly IMHO of giving away control of an open source platform to MS as 'ignorant and arrogant approach', then could you share your wisdom why it is so?

Removing Mono is NOT WARRANTED. Neither Ubuntu or its users will face a lawsuit over Mono.
And where's the reason behind this claim? Are you insisting Ubuntu should just ignore any possibility of legal trouble regarding Mono because you guarantee it will never happen?

I've read all of the posts in this thread, but still couldn't find any convincing, rational arguments against those concerns.

ButteBlues

November 29th, 2006, 12:58 AM

So if you think all those concerns posted here regarding the risk of patent infringement and more importantly IMHO of giving away control of an open source platform to MS as 'ignorant and arrogant approach', then could you share your wisdom why it is so?

I've read all of the posts in this thread, but still couldn't find any convincing, rational arguments against those concerns.
Mono is an implementation of an OPEN standard. .NET is an implementation of the standard. Mono, however, does not equate to .NET.

What we're talking about is essentially the difference between MySQL and the Microsoft equivalent - two ways of doing the same open standard.

Microsoft has about as much legal ground to sue anyone over Mono as I have legal ground to dub myself the Queen of England.

Senori

November 29th, 2006, 01:09 AM

Okay.

I'm going to be responding to the original premise of the thread--that Mono should be removed from Ubuntu, because it's an evil Microsoft product and because Novell is the devil. Reading the last page suggests that the argument has not changed significantly in the intervening 200 posts, and I doubt anyone will mind.

I don't believe that Mono should be removed from the basic Ubuntu installation, and I don't believe that the current demonization of Novell by the members of this forum is at all fair or accurate. Further, I would argue that several members of this forum have been spreading significant fear, uncertainty, and doubt (henceforth referred to as "FUD") about the products and players in question.

At its heart, Mono is simply a software implementation of certain standards and libraries. Most of these libraries were, admittedly, originally created by Microsoft and then published as ECMA standards, while a few remain non-standardized and a few are purely Mono creations. In this respect it is very similar to non-Sun open-source Java projects; both aim to create free software implementations of proprietary technologies (.NET and Java, respectively.)

So far as I can tell, however, there has not been any significant backlash toward the idea of using open-source Java in the Ubuntu desktop; indeed, I would not be surprised if at least a few of those involved with protesting the inclusion of Mono are using Azureus compiled with GCJ. This implies that the reason for distrust toward Mono is less on technical grounds, and more on distrust toward Microsoft, Windows, Novell, et al.

Now, I can certainly understand distrust toward Microsoft; they have not proven themselves to be terribly trustworthy players in the past, often suing companies over patented technologies or using anti-competitive tactics to force smaller vendors out of the market. I would even go so far as to say that Microsoft is not trustworthy, and that it's products should not be used. But we should be clear; Mono is not a Microsoft product.

The few aspects of Mono over which Microsoft could assert any control, however illusory or flimsy, are the reimplementations of certain non-standardized libraries such as Windows.Forms. These, because they are not part of the ECMA standards defining .NET, could theoretically be used for a patent infringement lawsuit against any company that sought to reimplement or redistribute them.

And yet Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and the other distributions freely including Mono do not seem to be significantly worried. This is because, well, "they can play that game too." See, Mono (along with such potentially infringing technologies as "GNOME" and "KDE," if you've heard of them) are covered by a project of Novell, IBM, Red Hat, Philips, and Sony; the Open Invention Network (OIN.) The OIN holds a portfolio of patents, most notably the Commerce One patents on web services, which would be an enormous problem to Microsoft or virtually any other company. In this case, Microsoft would have significantly more to lose than Novell would by losing Mono, as their server products are reasonably successful. Add to this the problems Microsoft has with anti-monopoly organizations, and you have a situation where it would not be at all advantageous for Microsoft to sue.

With the legal problems sorted out, this comes down essentially to whether you want products with "Microsoft's hands in them." At this point, however, you're fighting a losing battle; concepts from Microsoft range across the entirety of Linux. It's impossible to find a computer today that doesn't have some debt toward Microsoft's innovations--one of the reasons they have so many patents to worry about.

And as for Novell, they have developers working full time on everything from the Linux kernel on up. You are very much using the wrong operating system if you want to abandon "all things Novell;" half of GNOME's developers probably work in the Ximian department, and significant numbers of KDE developers work in the SUSE areas.

So, really guys. Not to mention the many wonders Mono has to offer, I've just nullified the significant objections to it. Now can we please move on to more important things?

warfly

November 29th, 2006, 01:13 AM

Mono is an implementation of an OPEN standard. .NET is an implementation of the standard. Mono, however, does not equate to .NET.
In fact, Mono is not just an implementation of an open standard but also an effort to copy major part of .NET platform which of course includes lot of entirely proprietary APIs from MS (i.e. WinForms, ASP.NET, ADO.NET).

And as you might know already if you have carefully read the previous posts, being an ECMA standard by no means protects it from being a target of IP lawsuit.

Moreover, it's obvious it's MS not Mono people who control the future of .NET platform. And I don't think it a good idea to build an open source OS over such a platform over which a big proprietary corporation has firm control.

warfly

November 29th, 2006, 01:34 AM

I'm going to be responding to the original premise of the thread--that Mono should be removed from Ubuntu, because it's an evil Microsoft product and because Novell is the devil.
I'm sorry but I fail to see that many people from this thread who supports getting rid of Mono dependency base their arguments simply on 'MS is evil and so is Novell' premise - it's a straw man argument.

In this respect it is very similar to non-Sun open-source Java projects; both aim to create free software implementations of proprietary technologies (.NET and Java, respectively.)
It's similar but not quite the same I presume. First, ALL of the standard Java specifications come from JCP which is fairly open committee while many of the specs which Mono implements is entirely proprietary product from MS.

And as for Java, we now even have an open source version of the official RI but for .NET we only have one open source implementation which is incomplete and not entirely compatible with the 'official' .NET specification.

But even when we set aside those facts, the real problem is that Java is NOT part of the default installation of Ubuntu while now using Mono is FORCED for everyone who chooses to install the Ubuntu desktop.

Senori

November 29th, 2006, 01:45 AM

I'm sorry but I fail to see that many people from this thread who supports getting rid of Mono dependency base their arguments simply on 'MS is evil and so is Novell' premise - it's a straw man argument.
The point of the first post of this thread was "In this situation I do not want anything related to Microsoft or Novell in my systems because I do not trust Microsoft nor Novell."

The point of the last post before I started considering mine was "It would be quite ridiculous to slap Novell and then push their arguable technology in by default."

Considering that my response was specifically targeted to the original post of this thread, and considering that I addressed other arguments than the "Microsoft is teh evilzors" anyway, I really fail to see why you're so indignant here.

It's similar but not quite the same I presume. First, ALL of the standard Java specifications come from JCP which is fairly open committee while many of the specs which Mono implements is entirely proprietary product from MS.
I fail to see why the drafting process of certain specifications is relevant to this argument; an open standard is an open standard, in terms of whether it is accessible to implementation.

And as for Java, we now even have an open source version of the official RI but for .NET we only have one open source implementation which is incomplete and not entirely compatible with the 'official' .NET specification.
Yes, now we do, hence the "non-Sun" part of my statement. But open-source Java efforts far predate this, such as GCJ, which I specifically used as an example.

But even when we set aside those facts, the real problem is that Java is NOT part of the default installation of Ubuntu while now using Mono is FORCED for everyone who chooses to install the Ubuntu desktop.
No, but many people have requested Java in the desktop. Really, the only reason such efforts haven't had more effort behind them is because none of the open source implementations are as feature-complete as Mono is, and there aren't any "killer applications" in the vein of Tomboy, F-Spot, or Beagle.

o_fortuna

November 29th, 2006, 01:45 AM

Things like C# and GTK# are implementations of standards and protected from patent problems by the OIN. And there isn't anything wrong with them. They are not evil. C# is a perfectly good programming language. Something invented by Microsoft is not automatically bad. GNOME programs like F-Spot, Banshee, and Tomboy do not use Microsoft-controlled portions of Mono. Mono's future is not controlled by Microsoft. C# is a language like C++. It is a standard. It's not constantly changing at the whim of a Microsoft executive.

Senori's post says everything else I wanted to say. Well said ;)

edit: Oh, and OpenOffice is written partially in Java, so an open-source java implementation is included (gij).

ago

November 29th, 2006, 05:20 AM

Sayng that Mono is simply implementing a standard is complete bulloks, there are huge chunks of Mono that are not covered by the standard.

Saying that implementing the standard covers you from IP litigation is bulloks, because the ECMA explicitly allows to have a patent attached to the standard and to enforce royalties on anyone implementing the standard. Which means that you are free to implement the standard but you MUST pay whatever MS asks (which now happens to be zero, but that can be changed). And if you do not, you will be infringing IP, ACCORDING TO ECMA.

Saying that .NET is like Java is bulloks. With .Net you cannot trust the company with the IP rights (which happens to be MS, which happens to be threatening to sue us), neither the company which reimplemented .Net (which happens to be Novell, which happens to have circumvented the GPL). Do not tell me that Novell are victimized. They used to be the good guys, but that was one CEO ago...

greggh

November 29th, 2006, 06:03 AM

Mark Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu will be keeping Mono...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2728972720932273543&q=Linux

At 42:47 of the video Mark is asked about whether Ubuntu will keep Mono in Ubuntu. He responds...

On Mono? Careful who you kiss? Maybe Novell should have thought of that. So we don't know the terms of the deal yet. It's unclear. I understand that Microsoft and Novell are frantically rewriting the terms of the deal as they figure out what a minefield they walked into. I hope somebody loses a foot. But until we actually fully know the terms of the deal we can't really comment. I will say that I think this is probably only the first move by Microsoft to really start actively countering what they see as an emerging threat. Free software has had a huge impact on the software industry if you look below the sort of first five companies. Most of the news, most of the headlines, are taken up by the top five software companies globally, and now we are seeing free software really starting to impact. Oracle, Microsoft, both making major announcements in the last two weeks. On Mono? We're gonna ship it. So it's in Edgy. It will be in Feisty.

ago

November 29th, 2006, 06:06 AM

Well, you have to match it with that:

Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

...I know that posting this message to an OpenSUSE list will be controversial. I'm greatly respectful of the long tradition of excellence in the SuSE product and community and have no desire to undermine that with this post. That said, I think the position taken by Novell leadership in their contract with Microsoft is hugely disrespectful of the contributions of thousands of GPL programmers and contributors to SuSE, and I know that many are looking for a new place to get involved that is not subject to the same arbitrary executive intervention. Ubuntu is one option, as are Gentoo, Debian and other communities. Please accept this mail in that spirit.

Senori

November 29th, 2006, 11:31 AM

Sayng that Mono is simply implementing a standard is complete bulloks, there are huge chunks of Mono that are not covered by the standard.
Yes, and I admitted as much. So was Java.

Saying that implementing the standard covers you from IP litigation is bulloks, because the ECMA explicitly allows to have a patent attached to the standard and to enforce royalties on anyone implementing the standard. Which means that you are free to implement the standard but you MUST pay whatever MS asks (which now happens to be zero, but that can be changed). And if you do not, you will be infringing IP, ACCORDING TO ECMA
Yes. Which is where the OIN comes in.

Saying that .NET is like Java is bulloks. With .Net you cannot trust the company with the IP rights (which happens to be MS, which happens to be threatening to sue us), neither the company which reimplemented .Net (which happens to be Novell, which happens to have circumvented the GPL). Do not tell me that Novell are victimized. They used to be the good guys, but that was one CEO ago...
Because Sun has always been an awesome-happy-flower-power company, right?

Senori

November 29th, 2006, 11:33 AM

Well, you have to match it with that:
His discontent with the practices of Novell does not mean that everything with Novell's hands in it is subject to suspicion.

tageiru

November 29th, 2006, 12:23 PM

Last time I checked it was not SCO to decide about Linux kernel development, while it is MS to decide about .Net development and therefore about Mono development

Well, the trial is not over yet...

(do not even try to say that Mono is independent to any degree).

It is indepentent. Miguel and the team could choose to ignore compatability with .NET. There is no obligation to follow .NET, i.e. the Mono developers have never signed a deal with Microsoft that restricts what they should do.

As an example, Gtk# is included in Mono, but not in .NET.

Which also means that MS do have IP rights in .Net (and several patents), since they did invent .Net and they lead development, something that SCO cannot claim. And the ECMA is not protection at all, since only a small part of Mono is covered by the ECMA, all the rest has MS written all over it, and quite literally... Does "system.WINDOWS.forms" mean anything to you? Do you think it is wise to include something called "system.WINDOWS.forms" inside a LINUX distro?

Even assuming that Mono only implemented the ECMA standard (which is bulloks), you should know that according to ECMA, you can attach a patent to a standard (as MS did) and ECMA allows to license the product on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (known as RAND licensing). So ECMA does NOT guarantee that people implementing the standard can walk away without paying royalties. What is worse is that theree’s no definition for "reasonable", so patent holders (MS in this case) can charge anything.

We have plenty of software that is based on software that originated within Microsoft in Linux. Samba is not even a standard, just a reverse implementation. Why should we be more scared of Mono than Samba?

Not least, Novell, as Mark says, has circumvented the GPL, and that should not be allowed to happen.

Mark is on shaky legal grounds these days too. Including binary drivers by default may be in violation of the GPL. Novell ironically chose not to include binary drivers by default since they may be illegal and by the request of several kernel developers.

In any event binary drivers "circumwent" the GPL as much as the Novell/Microsoft deal.

ButteBlues

November 29th, 2006, 04:34 PM

And as you might know already if you have carefully read the previous posts, being an ECMA standard by no means protects it from being a target of IP lawsuit.

And as you might know already if you have carefully read the thread, Microsoft stands to lose millions of dollars should they push OIN to the point of OIN putting out suits against Microsoft.

Moreover, it's obvious it's MS not Mono people who control the future of .NET platform. And I don't think it a good idea to build an open source OS over such a platform over which a big proprietary corporation has firm control.

Proprietary products aren't the devil. In a better world, proprietary wouldn't matter. It's just that for the most part, the proprietary software world is filled with pseudo-monopolies rather than solid competition.

ago

November 29th, 2006, 04:56 PM

Well, the trial is not over yet...
Yes, so why rush to start another one...

Miguel and the team could choose to ignore compatability with .NET.
Which will never happen... Particularly now.

As an example, Gtk# is included in Mono, but not in .NET.
They _will_ follow .Net2 then .Net3 then .Net4 then whatever else MS decides... As for the extra Mono-only libraries, thanks to the agreement, it is quite likely that such libraries will be ported to .Net. This will help use Linux apps on Windows (even without Mono), while the reverse will not be possible because of patent issues on huge parts of the libraries used by almost any .Net application.

Why should we be more scared of Mono than Samba?
Because Samba is a reimplementation of a PROTOCOL and it was done over wire in a clean-room environment. This is explicitly allowed by patent regulations. While patent regulation say that patents can be enforced on ECMA standard implementations. Not to mention on implementations that are not even part of the ECMA standard and covered by patents. Mentioning the OIN after having signed a bilateral agreement not to sue is pure blasphemy.

Including binary drivers by default may be in violation of the GPL.
In fact I am against that too, at least for the drivers/firmware which are not strictly necessary.

In any event binary drivers "circumwent" the GPL as much as the Novell/Microsoft deal.
In a very different way. Novell is circumventing the GPL in order to distribute the products only to a section of the users (the ones who pay MS). To be more precise they distribute to everybody under GPL terms but then, via a second company, they threaten a subset of the users, thus segregating the user base. Ubuntu (and Debian and almost all distros to some degree, including Suse) are circumventing the GPL by bundling drivers (or firmware), which are arguably necessary to make the machine work at all, and make them available to EVERY user. If you think it is the same thing, you are on crack.

Senori

November 29th, 2006, 08:49 PM

Yes, so why rush to start another one...
There's no rush. It can happen any time, or more likely never.

Which will never happen... Particularly now.
Oh, they certainly could. It's not a terribly important point, but they "have the technology."

They _will_ follow .Net2 then .Net3 then .Net4 then whatever else MS decides... As for the extra Mono-only libraries, thanks to the agreement, it is quite likely that such libraries will be ported to .Net. This will help use Linux apps on Windows (even without Mono), while the reverse will not be possible because of patent issues on huge parts of the libraries used by almost any .Net application.
I haven't heard of any significant efforts to point Gtk# to .NET on Windows, and I really doubt that anyone will.

Further; having applications run on as many operating systems as possible is a good thing. Interoperability allows for products to be used more widely, and for people to become acquainted. How many people here used the port of the GIMP to Windows before using Linux?

Because Samba is a reimplementation of a PROTOCOL and it was done over wire in a clean-room environment. This is explicitly allowed by patent regulations.
No; cleanroom development protects you from copyright and trade secret lawsuits. It does *absolutely nothing* for patents, because patents are not on the code, but on the principle and the implementation. This is why a cleanroom implementation of FAT would not be immune to a patent lawsuit by Microsoft (which hasn't hindered adoption of FAT, by the way.)

While patent regulation say that patents can be enforced on ECMA standard implementations. Not to mention on implementations that are not even part of the ECMA standard and covered by patents. Mentioning the OIN after having signed a bilateral agreement not to sue is pure blasphemy.
The agreement applies exclusively to customers of Novell and Microsoft. Richard Stallman, who you'd expect to be against this sort of thing as much as anyone, has said among other things that the deal does not violate the GPLv2.

In fact I am against that too, at least for the drivers/firmware which are not strictly necessary.
Why are you making an exception for "strictly necessary" drivers and firmware? Don't those constitute the same ethical and legal challenges?

In a very different way. Novell is circumventing the GPL in order to distribute the products only to a section of the users (the ones who pay MS). To be more precise they distribute to everybody under GPL terms but then, via a second company, they threaten a subset of the users, thus segregating the user base. Ubuntu (and Debian and almost all distros to some degree, including Suse) are circumventing the GPL by bundling drivers (or firmware), which are arguably necessary to make the machine work at all, and make them available to EVERY user. If you think it is the same thing, you are on crack.
Okay, first of all, this "you are on crack" thing is really tiresome. Grow up.

Second, I have no idea where you're getting that on the Microsoft-Novell deal. The substance of the deal is on two things; interoperability pledges between the two vendors, and a weak covenant not to sue the customers of either company. The only sense in which they might even possibly be construed to be doing something like what you're saying is that the deal does not cover customers and developers of Linux software outside Novell, but this is by no means "paying someone else to threaten them."

Finally, Debian plans to remove non-free firmware from its kernel, as soon as is expedient (meaning after etch.)

tageiru

November 29th, 2006, 09:18 PM

Because Samba is a reimplementation of a PROTOCOL and it was done over wire in a clean-room environment. This is explicitly allowed by patent regulations. While patent regulation say that patents can be enforced on ECMA standard implementations. Not to mention on implementations that are not even part of the ECMA standard and covered by patents. Mentioning the OIN after having signed a bilateral agreement not to sue is pure blasphemy.

Even though re-implementation is allowed it does not save you from patent infringement.

warfly

November 29th, 2006, 10:49 PM

Proprietary products aren't the devil. In a better world, proprietary wouldn't matter. It's just that for the most part, the proprietary software world is filled with pseudo-monopolies rather than solid competition.
I myself don't think proprietary software itself is evil, in that account I don't quite agree with RMS or FSF. But developing and using proprietary softwares is one thing and build an open source OS on top of a platform of which a big proprietary SW company has firm control is a whole different story IMO, especially when the company has been known to be hostile to the OSS community.

ButteBlues

November 29th, 2006, 11:37 PM

I myself don't think proprietary software itself is evil, in that account I don't quite agree with RMS or FSF. But developing and using proprietary softwares is one thing and build an open source OS on top of a platform of which a big proprietary SW company has firm control is a whole different story IMO, especially when the company has been known to be hostile to the OSS community.
Then you're using the wrong distribution. Ubuntu has included proprietary items for this and that since Warty, by default.

warfly

November 29th, 2006, 11:43 PM

Then you're using the wrong distribution. Ubuntu has included proprietary items for this and that since Breezy, by default.
Which default application is 'built on top of' a proprietary platform or a framework then?

ago

November 30th, 2006, 04:48 AM

Further; having applications run on as many operating systems as possible is a good thing. Interoperability allows for products to be used more widely, and for people to become acquainted.
Interoperability in my mind is a 2-way concept. Being able to port Linux apps to windows but not windows app to Linux does not classify as interoperability IMO.

It does *absolutely nothing* for patents, because patents are not on the code, but on the principle and the implementation.
It does when the object is a PROTOCOL. As for FAT, MS patent was rejected... http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2004/09/30/microsoft_fat_patent_rejected/

Richard Stallman, who you'd expect to be against this sort of thing as much as anyone, has said among other things that the deal does not violate the GPLv2.
They said that it CIRCUMVENTS the GPL. I.E. it does not violate it formally but it violates it in practice. And in fact they are changing the GPLv3 to explicitly avoid it being circumvented with agreements such as the Novell ones.

Why are you making an exception for "strictly necessary" drivers and firmware? Don't those constitute the same ethical and legal challenges?
Because there is little point to allow free (as in freedom) distribution of code if you cannot turn on your computer...

the deal does not cover customers and developers of Linux software outside Novell, but this is by no means "paying someone else to threaten them."
You have 2 companies in an agreement, company A distributes under GPL, company B sues or threatens part of the users (the ones that do not pay company A), thus discriminating the user base. This is clearly against the spirit of GPL. Why is it different from providing firmware? Because in the Novell case they are circumventing the GPL in order to RESTRICT the user base, allowing the same freedom only to their customers, while in the Ubuntu/Debian/XYZ case they are circumventing the GPL in order to EXPAND the user base allowing the same freedom to as many people as possible. They have diametrically opposite aims.

ago

November 30th, 2006, 05:14 AM

Then you're using the wrong distribution. Ubuntu has included proprietary items for this and that since Breezy, by default.

Or maybe Ubuntu made the wrong choice and that should be rectified by the community...

Terracotta

November 30th, 2006, 07:32 AM

Or maybe Ubuntu made the wrong choice and that should be rectified by the community...

Or maybe GNOME made the wrong decision (which is the real reason ubuntu installs mono by default), by using kubuntu you can be quite sure you don't have any mono stuff installed (except the icons).

ButteBlues

November 30th, 2006, 08:05 AM

Which default application is 'built on top of' a proprietary platform or a framework then?
While I do not have the specific citation, I can refer you to this post for further clarification: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1820818&postcount=27.

warfly

November 30th, 2006, 09:19 AM

While I do not have the specific citation, I can refer you to this post for further clarification: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1820818&postcount=27.

Thanks for the clarification. However I think applications that are built on top of a problematic or proprietary platform pose far greater threat than proprietary drivers to which the above post refers. Since it's quite easy to replace proprietary drivers once the open source alternatives become available while there's no easy way to port applications built on a certain platform to another.

Aleksandersen

November 30th, 2006, 02:40 PM

Some of the best desktop applications, like Banshee, requires mono.

I guess that is why it is included...

Senori

November 30th, 2006, 07:53 PM

Interoperability in my mind is a 2-way concept. Being able to port Linux apps to windows but not windows app to Linux does not classify as interoperability IMO.
Which is the entire point of Mono support for Windows.Forms. And which is why you can get Paint.NET working on Mono in Linux now with some very preliminary porting.

It does when the object is a PROTOCOL. As for FAT, MS patent was rejected... http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2004/09/30/microsoft_fat_patent_rejected/
No; protocols are covered by patents. And yes, the patent was rejected on a preliminary basis, but the final decision made in January overturned that and upheld the FAT patent.

They said that it CIRCUMVENTS the GPL. I.E. it does not violate it formally but it violates it in practice. And in fact they are changing the GPLv3 to explicitly avoid it being circumvented with agreements such as the Novell ones.
Yes; many things circumvent the GPL, and a lot of things are against the GPL v3. But neither of those are dreadful things in themselves.

Because there is little point to allow free (as in freedom) distribution of code if you cannot turn on your computer...
Since when has practicality been part of whether something is intellectually wrong?

You have 2 companies in an agreement, company A distributes under GPL, company B sues or threatens part of the users (the ones that do not pay company A), thus discriminating the user base. This is clearly against the spirit of GPL.
"I won't sue your customers" does not mean "I will sue everyone who is not your customer."

Why is it different from providing firmware? Because in the Novell case they are circumventing the GPL in order to RESTRICT the user base, allowing the same freedom only to their customers, while in the Ubuntu/Debian/XYZ case they are circumventing the GPL in order to EXPAND the user base allowing the same freedom to as many people as possible. They have diametrically opposite aims.
Who's to say that SUSE selling better wouldn't expand the user base?

Both are idealogically wrong under a free software philosophy. There isn't a gray area here simply because you like your computer to work.

ago

November 30th, 2006, 08:44 PM

Which is the entire point of Mono support for Windows.Forms. And would you mind explaining us how exactly system.WINDOWS.forms is supposed to be patent-free?

protocols are covered by patents.
Not directly. http://www.freeprotocols.org/freeProtocolProcess/split/node2.html

but the final decision made in January overturned that and upheld the FAT patent.
I stand corrected, and yes in that case FAT will need to be moved as a restricted module. That said FAT is used only for interoperability, no Linux distro is installed on top of FAT, so the situation is quite different from building a desktop on top of a risky technology such as Mono. The equivalent would be to use FAT as the default filesystem of Ubuntu...

Since when has practicality been part of whether something is intellectually wrong?
Intellectually wrong? No Novell is MORALLY wrong. They are restricting the user base trying to extract royalties from GPL work. I.E. they are exploiting the contributions of millions of man-hours that were donated with the sole condition NOT to be exploited the way Novell and MS are doing... Not formally, but in practice they are stealing.

"I won't sue your customers" does not mean "I will sue everyone who is not your customer."
Unfortunately MS (the other part of the agreement) did already threaten to sue "everyone who is not your customer" so there is little scope for interpretation.

Who's to say that SUSE selling better wouldn't expand the user base?
They would expand THEIR user base of paying customers, which is quite a different concept from the user base intended in the GPL...

Both are idealogically wrong under a free software philosophy.
You are raising smoke screens. As explained above the 2 actions are only formally similar but are completely different in substance, and MORALLY. Giving ANYONE the SAME right to use the software is what the GPL stands for. And If you wanted to give ANYONE the same right, including people that unknowingly bought hardware that requires proprietary firmware, you would need to distribute such firmware. Which is quite different from threatening half of the users in order to piggyback other people's work against their will...

KaeseEs

November 30th, 2006, 09:12 PM

I've been inactive in this discussion since I took all the mono packages off my system, but the main reason I did so has been oddly unmentioned here: it takes up a lot of space. By removing Mono and the apps that depended on it, I freed 120+ MB from my system. Even if we went with a 'minimal' Mono setup, consisting of the libs, tomboy, f-spot and beagle, that's still something like 50 MB. Now, this may not seem like a lot, as most folks have 100GB+ hard disks, but we have to remember something:

The way most folks are introduced to Ubuntu nowadays is by LiveCD.

50-120 MB is a LOT of space on a 695MB CD. The ISO was at 693MB or thereabouts before the mono stuff got added. What'd we take out to put it in? Is this really the best use of space?

Besides this, whose idea was it to put any new application in an upgrade path? Doing so for trivial reasons shows a lack of basic respect for end users' sovreignty over their own machines.

ButteBlues

December 1st, 2006, 12:02 AM

Beagle is not insalled by default. ;)

sloggerkhan

December 1st, 2006, 12:24 AM

I like beagle because the regular search tool rather sucks. But I must agree that it is too big, especially for live CD. It also has on occasion used too many system resources.

I suppose I don't mean that it's too big, but that it GROWS and gets big, and uses more CPU time than any other process on my comp.

nzjrs

December 1st, 2006, 04:48 AM

Puh-leeze

This is the biggest POS thread on ubuntuforumns.org. It is this seperatist attitude that leads to the real workers, those valuable to the community, leaving.

Quote: "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes"

Deal with it everyone. There is a world of distance between shipping Mono and Microsoft sueing linux out of existance.

Farewell Jorge (http://www.whiprush.org/2006/12/its_time_to_ele.html), Bow your head in shame everyone, because you caused it (http://www.bigmaninjapan.com/2006/11/29/stfu-already/)

ago

December 1st, 2006, 05:48 AM

Bow your head in shame everyone, because you caused it

I hope by "you", you also mean Mark Shuttleworth, because he happens to share the view of many here that Novell has circumvented the GPL, segregated the community, and exploited GPL work by bundling it with a royalty-paying scheme. Not to mention that it is quite awkward accusing us of FUD, when Novell has helped MS spread FUD about the need to get a "MS licensed Linux version".

ago

December 1st, 2006, 06:14 AM

In response to http://www.bigmaninjapan.com/2006/11/29/stfu-already/

Why Microsoft won’t sue anyone
Whether suing or not is only part of the problem. The main issue is that they are trying to split the community between "licensed" parties (=commercial companies that can be purchased) and "non licensed" parties (volunteers and non profit organizations and community efforts such as Debian or Ubuntu and big chunks of the FOSS world and the KML, the very heart of Linux).

First, its just bad business sense to sue your (potential) customers.
Not if they can provide an equivalent "licensed" product to their customers. In particular they are not going to sue Novell customers and they claimed they may unilaterally spare RH customers, which accounts for the vast majority of their customers. So no, they would not sue their (potential) customers.

From a business standpoint Microsoft stands nothing to gain from doing this.
Yes they do. Undeniably Linux is one of their biggest threats. They cannot stop Linux with their usual techniques, they need to "transform" it first into a more traditional target and then go for the triple-E.

Second, its bad legal sense to try and seek a legal relief.
You completely missed the point. They are not threatening or suing in order to extract some revenues, but in order to kill a rival and thus secure their current revenue stream. Which is worth several dozens of billions of dollars. And if they can box-in enough bilateral "agreements" they can create a "licensed" linux version. If that "brand" succeeds it will marginalize the "non licensed" part both from a techical and a legal point of view and that is enough to transform Linux back into Unix and kill the beast. All without any need to sue anybody. The threat to sue is enough to push clients to ask for "licensed version" and vendors to adhere to the scheme (+ a spare hundred millions).

On top of it, a "licensed version" is a royalty scheme, which in itself is perfectly ok, provided you do not bundle it with GPL work. Unfortunately they ARE bundling it with GPL work, thus STEALING GPL work, and they managed to do so using a loophole in the GPL license. Most devs out there did not contribute millions of man hours so that MS could ask users to pay a fee in order to use their work. It is quite sad to see companies like Novell exploiting such loopholes to circumvent the license. That is exactly why the GPLv3 is being modified.

The defendant is going to present a case as to why the patent isn’t valid
MS does not have just 1 patent, but several hundreds. Now, it is true that it is difficult today to do anything at all without violating a patent. But there are patents and patents. Violating a very generic patent may well be a good thing, because:

1) you expose weaknesses in the patent logic,
2) you drag in several other parties (from Sun, to IBM) that might retaliate,
3) you have good chances of winning the litigation.

What you want to avoid at all costs is to have a patent infringment for issues which are limited in scope and fairly specific, particularly if they regards you and only you, because in this case you cannot take advantage of either 1 or 2 and the chances of loosing are far greater. Mono happens to fit the bill quite well...

Some may argue that the dangers above may be overblown, and they might even be right. In fact I do hope they are right. But is it worth the risk? What if they are wrong?

Finally, nobody here is claiming that Mono must be killed, only that it should not be in by default, which does not seem such an unreasonable proposition. If people get upset about that suggestion to the point of leaving, or worse, if they get upset about others voicing different opinions, then they will not be missed.

ButteBlues

December 1st, 2006, 07:28 AM

ago - It should be that rather if a mere handful of Ubuntu users are so caught up in their agenda that using synaptic or the CLI to simply remove the mono packages, then they won't be missed. Because, you know, 3 seconds of the minority's time in this matter isn't that much to ask.

ago

December 1st, 2006, 07:30 AM

Why not do the reverse? Use synaptic to install Mono... That too is not such a big deal, isn't it?

ButteBlues

December 1st, 2006, 04:43 PM

Why not do the reverse? Use synaptic to install Mono... That too is not such a big deal, isn't it?
This goes right back to the same inherent issue with the binary drivers: the vast majority is being forced to install them manually at the moment. It makes no sense to force the vast majority to do x rather than simply have the minority do -x.

dca

December 1st, 2006, 05:20 PM

I dunno', I commented in another post about this... We might be reading too much into this whole Novell/M$ cockamamie... Sure, there's Ballmer and FUD, there's the whole threat of lawsuits against GNU/Linux distro(s) which would result in suit(s) against companies that support Linux (Fedora to Redhat, SuSE to Novell - woops, bad example, or Canonical to Ubuntu). It all boils down to 'virtualization'. It's the future in enterprise server management. 'Xen' (mostly on Fedora, not so much SuSE) is pretty powerful. On the Fedora end there's a nice GUI and everything. This pact is supposed to solve the issue that if you're going to install or virtualizzzze (that's nice) M$ inside a Linux server, you don't have to worry about the EULA. Now I know Ballmer wanted it the other way around... Linux inside M$, but that's just silly...

...oh wait a minute, maybe I commented in this same thread... :-k

dca

December 1st, 2006, 05:21 PM

oh, oh.... and it better be SuSE that you're using... :-D

Senori

December 1st, 2006, 08:56 PM

And would you mind explaining us how exactly system.WINDOWS.forms is supposed to be patent-free?
It isn't. Neither is FAT support in the kernel. But since by far the majority of things are covered under *some* patent, it's an entirely pointless discussion to say "this could theoretically be covered by patents!" because you would end up without a functional operating system.

Not directly. http://www.freeprotocols.org/freeProtocolProcess/split/node2.html
"In either case, the protocol can then be held hostage by the patent-holder, to the enormous detriment of anyone else who may wish to use it."

*yawn*

I stand corrected, and yes in that case FAT will need to be moved as a restricted module. That said FAT is used only for interoperability, no Linux distro is installed on top of FAT, so the situation is quite different from building a desktop on top of a risky technology such as Mono. The equivalent would be to use FAT as the default filesystem of Ubuntu...
To be honest, most things are covered under patents. See, for example, patent 5596347 (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5596347.html) on cursors for computer screens, or (until recently) the set of patents on JPEGs.

If everything covered under a patent was moved to restricted, we would have very few things in the main repositories.

Intellectually wrong? No Novell is MORALLY wrong. They are restricting the user base trying to extract royalties from GPL work. I.E. they are exploiting the contributions of millions of man-hours that were donated with the sole condition NOT to be exploited the way Novell and MS are doing... Not formally, but in practice they are stealing.
I'm not going to bother with the whole "they're stealing!!!" argument, but quibbling over "intellectually" versus "morally" is incredibly pointless, considering that the two are often used synonymously.

Unfortunately MS (the other part of the agreement) did already threaten to sue "everyone who is not your customer" so there is little scope for interpretation.
Show me the statement where Steve Ballmer says "if you don't do this sort of agreement, we'll sue you and your customers."

They would expand THEIR user base of paying customers, which is quite a different concept from the user base intended in the GPL...
I don't care about the user base intended in the GPL; I'm talking about the term defined as "user base"--that is, the number of people using a particular piece of software.

You are raising smoke screens. As explained above the 2 actions are only formally similar but are completely different in substance, and MORALLY. Giving ANYONE the SAME right to use the software is what the GPL stands for. And If you wanted to give ANYONE the same right, including people that unknowingly bought hardware that requires proprietary firmware, you would need to distribute such firmware. Which is quite different from threatening half of the users in order to piggyback other people's work against their will...
No, they aren't! They are both, under the free software argument, completely morally wrong! Whether it's enabling a bunch of people to use Ubuntu, or enabling a bunch of people to use SUSE without feeling that they will be sued (and inadvertently making everyone else feel nervous) they are both in violation of the GPL. The only reason you're defending one and not the other is because you like your hardware working, which is under the free software argument simply indefensible.

I've been inactive in this discussion since I took all the mono packages off my system, but the main reason I did so has been oddly unmentioned here: it takes up a lot of space. By removing Mono and the apps that depended on it, I freed 120+ MB from my system. Even if we went with a 'minimal' Mono setup, consisting of the libs, tomboy, f-spot and beagle, that's still something like 50 MB. Now, this may not seem like a lot, as most folks have 100GB+ hard disks, but we have to remember something:

The way most folks are introduced to Ubuntu nowadays is by LiveCD.

50-120 MB is a LOT of space on a 695MB CD. The ISO was at 693MB or thereabouts before the mono stuff got added. What'd we take out to put it in? Is this really the best use of space?
Realistically, a working desktop system is going to require more than 700 megabytes sooner or later. During the Edgy cycle someone (I believe it was Scott Remnant) proposed moving Ubuntu onto a Live DVD, to assuage space concerns for the forseeable future; this was eventually shot down, but it'll come up again.

Besides this, whose idea was it to put any new application in an upgrade path? Doing so for trivial reasons shows a lack of basic respect for end users' sovreignty over their own machines.
You're still perfectly free to remove anything you want from Ubuntu; all it will mean is that the ubuntu-desktop metapackage, which does absolutely nothing except pull in new packages included in the desktop, will be removed. This argument is like saying "who's idea was it to put gnome-terminal in an upgrade path? Doing so shows a lack of respect for end users' sovereignty over their machines." The fact is that it makes the desktop better for the vast majority of people, and allows for a better system overall.

I suppose I don't mean that it's too big, but that it GROWS and gets big, and uses more CPU time than any other process on my comp.
This is a problem that has been identified and is being worked on significantly right now; several things in Beagle CVS (and things coming up in the next month or two) will improve this dramatically.

Whether suing or not is only part of the problem. The main issue is that they are trying to split the community between "licensed" parties (=commercial companies that can be purchased) and "non licensed" parties (volunteers and non profit organizations and community efforts such as Debian or Ubuntu and big chunks of the FOSS world and the KML, the very heart of Linux).
I really don't think that Novell is operating in a vast conspiracy with Microsoft to make the Linux desktop under them bigger, do you?

Not if they can provide an equivalent "licensed" product to their customers. In particular they are not going to sue Novell customers and they claimed they may unilaterally spare RH customers, which accounts for the vast majority of their customers. So no, they would not sue their (potential) customers.
Ubuntu users would be considered potential customers in every sense that Red Hat customers would be.

Yes they do. Undeniably Linux is one of their biggest threats. They cannot stop Linux with their usual techniques, they need to "transform" it first into a more traditional target and then go for the triple-E.
If they're going to agree not to sue any number of groups, i really fail to see how they would be transforming it into a traditional target. The perceived benefits of Linux (free, open source, technically better) would still in every sense be there; the only difference would be that a few companies have signed agreements regarding patents.

You completely missed the point. They are not threatening or suing in order to extract some revenues, but in order to kill a rival and thus secure their current revenue stream. Which is worth several dozens of billions of dollars. And if they can box-in enough bilateral "agreements" they can create a "licensed" linux version. If that "brand" succeeds it will marginalize the "non licensed" part both from a techical and a legal point of view and that is enough to transform Linux back into Unix and kill the beast. All without any need to sue anybody. The threat to sue is enough to push clients to ask for "licensed version" and vendors to adhere to the scheme (+ a spare hundred millions).
See, the problem with this grand conspiracy is that the "licensed users only" thing only works if "non-licensed users" are threatened with lawsuits. As the guy you're responding to rather succinctly put, non-licensed users have no realistic fear of being sued here, making the agreements less than moot in this sense.

On top of it, a "licensed version" is a royalty scheme, which in itself is perfectly ok, provided you do not bundle it with GPL work. Unfortunately they ARE bundling it with GPL work, thus STEALING GPL work, and they managed to do so using a loophole in the GPL license. Most devs out there did not contribute millions of man hours so that MS could ask users to pay a fee in order to use their work. It is quite sad to see companies like Novell exploiting such loopholes to circumvent the license. That is exactly why the GPLv3 is being modified.
I'm quite certain that most devs out there don't particularly care if Novell is paying some money so that their customers aren't sued.

MS does not have just 1 patent, but several hundreds. Now, it is true that it is difficult today to do anything at all without violating a patent. But there are patents and patents. Violating a very generic patent may well be a good thing, because:

1) you expose weaknesses in the patent logic,
2) you drag in several other parties (from Sun, to IBM) that might retaliate,
3) you have good chances of winning the litigation.
This is dependent on any number of factors, notably the judge involved, the parties involved in the lawsuit, and the content of the patent.

What you want to avoid at all costs is to have a patent infringment for issues which are limited in scope and fairly specific, particularly if they regards you and only you, because in this case you cannot take advantage of either 1 or 2 and the chances of loosing are far greater. Mono happens to fit the bill quite well...
So do a lot of very important things. This is why you have the OIN.

Some may argue that the dangers above may be overblown, and they might even be right. In fact I do hope they are right. But is it worth the risk? What if they are wrong?
If they are wrong, then we have been in trouble for any number of years, and we will not be until software patents are repealed wholesale. It's a simple fact that there are few pieces of any software on the market today not covered by some patent somewhere, which is what has caused the numerous lawsuits against Microsoft on trivial patents. Simply put; removing Mono won't make patent danger from Microsoft or anyone else any less potent; it will just remove an important piece of the operating system.

Finally, nobody here is claiming that Mono must be killed, only that it should not be in by default, which does not seem such an unreasonable proposition. If people get upset about that suggestion to the point of leaving, or worse, if they get upset about others voicing different opinions, then they will not be missed.
Having the right to do a thing, such as speech, is not at all the same thing as that being the right thing to do. One should not say "all Catholics should be burned at the stake," even though it is perfectly within your rights to do so, because reasonable people would become offended by it.

Now, "moving Mono to non-default status" limits the potential of the Ubuntu desktop in key areas. It *is* an issue, because there are many people who want their default installation to "just work." And it has been the pronounced trend of distributions in the last few years to oblige them.

ago

December 6th, 2006, 03:56 AM

Interesting Groklaw article:

...

The Novell-Microsoft agreement also, as Richard Stallman put it, cunningly tries to sidestep GPLv2. So we have an attack from within. A serious one, because everything SCO and its backers wanted from this litigation, but failed to achieve, Novell just handed to Microsoft on a silver platter by signing that patent agreement. Let me explain why I see it that way.

...

But here's the sad part. As victory [over SCO] is in sight, Novell signs a patent agreement with Microsoft that does the following:

1. Novell agrees to violate the clear intent and spirit of the GPL in an attempt to comply literally with the words but not with the actual known purpose of the license to make money off of code Novell didn't write and doesn't own. So instead of trying to prove the GPL isn't binding, they just kick it to the curb and step over it and dare the community to do something about it?

2. puts a FUD legal cloud over Linux (this time a patent cloud) or in any case an "IP" cloud, as per Steve Ballmer's vague wording -- and was Darl McBride's less vague?;

3. makes Novell's Linux cost more, because it has agreed to pay Microsoft royalties, whereas SCO asked for money for its license;

What is the cotton pickin' difference? Other than being worse? Novell, I'd like you to answer that question. From Microsoft's point of view, I see no difference. What SCO could not win, Novell has handed Microsoft without a fight. The community didn't fight this hard and this long for such a result.

So there you have it, as I see it: two companies claiming to be Linux companies that turned on the GPL and the rest of the community for money, and the beneficiary is Microsoft. What a coincidence.

Does it matter that one did it maliciously and the other was merely a dope? I don't know for sure which is which or even if either is properly described since I can't read hearts, but my answer to the hypothetical question is: no. The effect is the same. It matters only in that one makes you mad and the second makes you sad and mad. That's why I call it SCO2 Deja Vu, with Novell playing the part of EV1. Only this is far worse than SCO.

And that is precisely what is wrong with what Novell did in signing that patent agreement, and that may help to explain the deep, deep anger that the community, which has worked night and day to defend and protect Linux and the GPL, now feels. I feel it too. We worked hard, were victorious, and now are denied the reward. And until Novell fixes that agreement or pulls out, it will never be accepted by the FOSS community again, in my view. I certainly think I have enough input to form an educated opinion. So I hope they come to their senses. If not, GPLv3 will deal with it. But if it goes that far, then Novell's reputation will never be made whole. For that, it must act.

... More ... (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061203015212989)

ago

December 6th, 2006, 05:00 AM

Having the right to do a thing, such as speech, is not at all the same thing as that being the right thing to do. One should not say "all Catholics should be burned at the stake," even though it is perfectly within your rights to do so, because reasonable people would become offended by it.

Reasonable people do not compare reasoned arguments made by big chunks of the community (including Stallman, Shuttleworth, the Samba team, Groaklaw and several others) to a claim that "all Catholics should be burned at the stake"...

ButteBlues

December 6th, 2006, 07:44 AM

Reasonable people do not compare reasoned arguments made by big chunks of the community (including Stallman, Shuttleworth, the Samba team, Groaklaw and several others) to a claim that "all Catholics should be burned at the stake"...
It's an applicable comparison and you know it. Stop trying to straw-man.

ago

December 6th, 2006, 07:56 AM

It's only a pathetic attempt to godwinize the discussion...

darkhatter

December 6th, 2006, 01:12 PM

Groklaw spreads nothing but B.S. don't quote him

Senori

December 7th, 2006, 12:14 AM

Reasonable people do not compare reasoned arguments made by big chunks of the community (including Stallman, Shuttleworth, the Samba team, Groaklaw and several others) to a claim that "all Catholics should be burned at the stake"...
I'm not comparing the two on any grounds; I'm using them both as statements on which reasonable people disagree. "All puppies are cute" would be equally valid here.

Senori

December 7th, 2006, 12:17 AM

Interesting Groklaw article:
I like Groklaw, and I have it in Liferea, but it's an opinion blog as much as anything else (in fact, recent posts have been decried as nothing less than FUD by such people as Jono Bacon and Luis Villa.)

neighborlee

September 5th, 2007, 07:17 PM

Mono is protected by the Open Invention Network, so a patent suit would likely lead to the equivalent of a patent nuclear war - no one wants to do that. (see the discussion when Fedora started shipping mono, for example here: http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html)

Mono is also largely based on open, standardized specifications. Parts of Windows.Forms (or somthing like that, the Windows GUI stuff) and other high-level stuff are patented, and mono implements them anyway, but they are done in a way so they can be very easily removed should the need arise. The stuff included with Ubuntu all use GTK# as their widget library, so it wouldn't affect them at all.

See also the Mono FAQ about licensing and Patents for more information. http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing

I am sorry for last post, and if some post went unread by me and this is irrelvant but I wanted to get t his out there in case it is and appreciate any comments:

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html

would seem to indicate the situation with mono is anything but credible..is this a 'old' 2006 story and facts have outgrown it or is it stilll relevant I wonder meaning mono has no business in linux..?

I expect zero flames as Im earnestly concerned..only serious takers need apply.

cheers
nl

from here you willl see on this page this comment from

bruce89

September 5th, 2007, 08:16 PM

C# is evil and slow. The sooner people use Vala (http://live.gnome.org/Vala) instead, the better.

This doesn't mention the space requirements of yet-another-gnome-binding.

neighborlee

September 5th, 2007, 08:30 PM

C# is evil and slow. The sooner people use Vala (http://live.gnome.org/Vala) instead, the better.

It would seem gnome is advocating this so I hope mono is on its way out unless the claims made by that url I posted are invalid.

thank you
nl

bruce89

September 5th, 2007, 08:35 PM

Here is a list of programs that use mono:

F-spot by Novell
Banshee by Novell
Beagle by guess who

Anthem

September 5th, 2007, 10:48 PM

Great gravy, are we going to argue about this again?

starcraft.man

September 5th, 2007, 11:12 PM

Here is a list of programs that use mono:

F-spot by Novell
Banshee by Novell
Beagle by guess who

That's it? Geez, I thought it was more than that. Especially the way some people said it was the end of the world after all ...

loell

September 5th, 2007, 11:23 PM

the most effective way to show that you don't like mono base apps is to make none mono base apps, say a combination of c and python?

butt o be just vocal about it, is just nuisance.

tiger74

September 6th, 2007, 12:03 AM

Don't forget Evolution.
:lolflag:

tbroderick

September 6th, 2007, 12:21 AM

F-spot by Novell
Banshee by Novell
Beagle by guess who

Should be:
Banshee by Aaron Bockover
Beagle by Joe Shaw

I think both are employed by Novell, but Novell maintains neither project.

triptoe

September 6th, 2007, 03:42 AM

Okay.
146
I'm going to be responding to the original premise of the thread--that Mono should be removed from Ubuntu, because it's an evil Microsoft product and because Novell is the devil. Reading the last page suggests that the argument has not changed significantly in the intervening 200 posts, and I doubt anyone will mind.

I don't believe that Mono should be removed from the basic Ubuntu installation, and I don't believe that the current demonization of Novell by the members of this forum is at all fair or accurate. Further, I would argue that several members of this forum have been spreading significant fear, uncertainty, and doubt (henceforth referred to as "FUD") about the products and players in question.

At its heart, Mono is simply a software implementation of certain standards and libraries. Most of these libraries were, admittedly, originally created by Microsoft and then published as ECMA standards, while a few remain non-standardized and a few are purely Mono creations. In this respect it is very similar to non-Sun open-source Java projects; both aim to create free software implementations of proprietary technologies (.NET and Java, respectively.)

So far as I can tell, however, there has not been any significant backlash toward the idea of using open-source Java in the Ubuntu desktop; indeed, I would not be surprised if at least a few of those involved with protesting the inclusion of Mono are using Azureus compiled with GCJ. This implies that the reason for distrust toward Mono is less on technical grounds, and more on distrust toward Microsoft, Windows, Novell, et al.

Now, I can certainly understand distrust toward Microsoft; they have not proven themselves to be terribly trustworthy players in the past, often suing companies over patented technologies or using anti-competitive tactics to force smaller vendors out of the market. I would even go so far as to say that Microsoft is not trustworthy, and that it's products should not be used. But we should be clear; Mono is not a Microsoft product.

The few aspects of Mono over which Microsoft could assert any control, however illusory or flimsy, are the reimplementations of certain non-standardized libraries such as Windows.Forms. These, because they are not part of the ECMA standards defining .NET, could theoretically be used for a patent infringement lawsuit against any company that sought to reimplement or redistribute them.

And yet Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and the other distributions freely including Mono do not seem to be significantly worried. This is because, well, "they can play that game too." See, Mono (along with such potentially infringing technologies as "GNOME" and "KDE," if you've heard of them) are covered by a project of Novell, IBM, Red Hat, Philips, and Sony; the Open Invention Network (OIN.) The OIN holds a portfolio of patents, most notably the Commerce One patents on web services, which would be an enormous problem to Microsoft or virtually any other company. In this case, Microsoft would have significantly more to lose than Novell would by losing Mono, as their server products are reasonably successful. Add to this the problems Microsoft has with anti-monopoly organizations, and you have a situation where it would not be at all advantageous for Microsoft to sue.

With the legal problems sorted out, this comes down essentially to whether you want products with "Microsoft's hands in them." At this point, however, you're fighting a losing battle; concepts from Microsoft range across the entirety of Linux. It's impossible to find a computer today that doesn't have some debt toward Microsoft's innovations--one of the reasons they have so many patents to worry about.

And as for Novell, they have developers working full time on everything from the Linux kernel on up. You are very much using the wrong operating system if you want to abandon "all things Novell;" half of GNOME's developers probably work in the Ximian department, and significant numbers of KDE developers work in the SUSE areas.

So, really guys. Not to mention the many wonders Mono has to offer, I've just nullified the significant objections to it. Now can we please move on to more important things?

Sticky this please?

loell

September 6th, 2007, 04:05 AM

C# is evil and slow. The sooner people use Vala (http://live.gnome.org/Vala) instead, the better.

This doesn't mention the space requirements of yet-another-gnome-binding.

thanks for the tip ;) , very promising language :)

igknighted

September 6th, 2007, 09:35 AM

Sticky this please?

+1...

I swear, there's more FUD coming from the linux camps on this issue (still). Lets grow up people. Novell's business is linux. They cannot create it on their own, they need the community. If they piss off the community, they lose. Plain and simple. So deep down, they have to have our back, because it is their own back too.

igknighted

September 6th, 2007, 09:38 AM

Anthem

September 6th, 2007, 09:59 AM

Is this Gnome only, or will there be qt bindings? Man, the absolute last thing we need to use OSS tools to lock people into either gtk or qt.
Yeah, Mono has QT bindings.

igknighted

September 6th, 2007, 10:16 AM

Yeah, Mono has QT bindings.

Sorry, I should have been more specific... I was asking about Vala.

neighborlee

September 6th, 2007, 11:17 AM

+1...

I swear, there's more FUD coming from the linux camps on this issue (still). Lets grow up people. Novell's business is linux. They cannot create it on their own, they need the community. If they piss off the community, they lose. Plain and simple. So deep down, they have to have our back, because it is their own back too.

+2 but -mono...isn't it interesting how those that acuse others of spreading FUD,-- they themselves are involved in spreading it thick. I linked a website that makes it perfectly clear that the OIN contains no patent protections for .NET which mono is based on and Ill offer it again:

http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html < original link and below is the link where the OIN lists its protected patents for linux:

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_owned.php

You can scream foul all you wish but the facts are clear unless someone has more info on this.

Fedora is removing mono and they are backed by Redhat whom does NOT include mono anywhere ( nor ever will ) in RHEE.

cheers
nl

FuturePilot

September 6th, 2007, 01:06 PM

Yes, get rid on Mono and then Linux will really be in a hole when it comes to photo management.:shock:

neighborlee

September 6th, 2007, 01:21 PM

Yes, get rid on Mono and then Linux will really be in a hole when it comes to photo management.:shock:

I'm on top of this not to worry ;)

http://www.linux.com/articles/58887

cheers
nl

Andrewie

September 6th, 2007, 02:37 PM

I can see why Novell is pushing Mono, right now the industry is really is making a shift to Java, and C#. Supporting this is what Novell's customers want. Is this hate fueled by Microsoft or is there some other reason. Has anyone used C#? I'm going to be learning it, next week so any feed back would be nice.

aks44

September 6th, 2007, 02:47 PM

Is this hate fueled by Microsoft or is there some other reason. Has anyone used C#?

"Thanks" to Java, JIT compiling has already proved its inefficiency, performance-wise.

It is OK for end-user applications (where the computer spends most of the time waiting for the user) but IMHO as soon as you're entering the back-office field the only sane thing to do is to ditch it.

From my POV, it's not a matter of companies (who cares, if the result is good), but of technology (and raw performance).

Oh well, call me old-school, I still prefer writing CGIs rather than PHP, they scale better... ;)

Andrewie

September 6th, 2007, 02:49 PM

"Thanks" to Java, JIT compiling has already proved its inefficiency, performance-wise.

It is OK for end-user applications (where the computer spends most of the time waiting for the user) but IMHO as soon as you're entering the back-office field the only sane thing to do is to ditch it.

From my POV, it's not a matter of companies (who cares, if the result is good), but of technology (and raw performance).

Oh well, call me old-school, I still prefer writing CGIs rather than PHP, they scale better... ;)

I would rather learn c/c++ but what can you do. So C# is just as slow as Java?

aks44

September 6th, 2007, 03:04 PM

I would rather learn c/c++ but what can you do. So C# is just as slow as Java?

C#, just like Java, is "compiled" to bytecode (the (in)famous CLI, Common Language Infrastructure), and compiled JIT (Just In Time). I don't know any comparative benchmarks but the technology is the same.

But I encourage everyone to go "mainstream" (ie. not C or C++). C and C++ will always be needed, and the less competent C++ programmers out there, the better my salary. ;)

fwilliams

September 9th, 2007, 09:20 PM

Polygon

September 9th, 2007, 09:23 PM

Anthem

September 9th, 2007, 09:29 PM

seems like a petty reason to stop using a distro because of two applications which you can easily uninstall if you dont want them on your system.
No doubt.

markba

September 10th, 2007, 07:08 AM

Please stop supporting and using mono. I like Ubuntu a lot, but will change to another distribution. Get rid of tomboy and fspot and any other mono application from Ubuntu. Let some else create a distribution based on Ubuntu that adds those applications if they want. At least let people choose what they want during install.

AFAIK there are only three standard applications which make use of mono: f-spot, tomboy and beagle.

For f-spot: strange is though that there's another photo-administrator, gthumb, also part of the standard install. Apart from the fact that this is confusing for users (why include two?), it indicates that these two are at least on par. If f-spot is removed from the standard install, because there's already gthumb, that leaves us tomboy.

For tpmboy: many alternatives exist (zim is my favourite), so it should be possible for ubuntu to start completely without mono-based apps.

For beagle: tracker is already included in gutsy, thus beagle is already history there.

bruce89

September 10th, 2007, 09:47 AM

AFAIK there are only three standard applications which make use of mono: f-spot, tomboy and beagle.

Beagle is and has never been default in Ubuntu.

Is this Gnome only, or will there be qt bindings? Man, the absolute last thing we need to use OSS tools to lock people into either gtk or qt.

Vala is a new programming language that aims to bring modern programming language features to GNOME developers without imposing any additional runtime requirements and without using a different ABI compared to applications and libraries written in C.

In other words, likely to be GNOME only. It is C# modified to fit GObject, which makes it a GNOME thing.

neighborlee

September 10th, 2007, 11:28 PM

No doubt.

It is not the idea of only two apps or whatever that bother him/me, its the inclusion beyond reason of mono when all signs point to doing it being a OSS debocle ( like poor nvidia getting blamed for 'tainting ' things well hmmmm )..fedora is removing it so...anyway if the other poster is correct that certainly is good news and I hope the gthumb is chosen as default if indeed it comes close'ish to what fspot can do...

cheers
nl

Frak

September 23rd, 2007, 04:25 PM

Blue Sky

September 23rd, 2007, 06:57 PM

Mono is inherently evil. The F-Spot and Beagle developers should be ashamed they are using it.

Awalton

September 29th, 2007, 08:56 AM

This thread is as much a debate of technicalities as it is of religion. Should those who are righteous under Lord RMS, his nobelness of all things GNU and holy, accept an invitation from the Devil of Redmond, God of Flying Chairs?

Anyways, removing it isn't hard: "sudo apt-get remove mono-common". I will never used it, and I highly doubt anybody will ever make an application that will convince me to use it, so I'm not worried.

I really don't know how Tomboy got its way into Gnome in the first place (a Note taking application that requires a 20MB runtime, are you kidding me), it seems like a few guys with Python could have coded up the same exact thing in less time using less code. If someone decides to take this seriously, more power to them, I just hope it's called "Prep" for the giggle factor, "Prep is a refined Tomboy".

F-Spot? Well we've got a dozen photo-managers, and my favorite will pretty much always be Nautilus/Thunar and EoG ;) (in other words, I don't care for fancy apps when a nice, concise, simple one will do).

For the record, I don't touch Java either. Maybe I'm just a virtual-machine-phobe (or a bloataphobe, take your pick).

Wolki

September 29th, 2007, 10:02 AM

This thread is as much a debate of technicalities as it is of religion. Should those who are righteous under Lord RMS, his nobelness of all things GNU and holy, accept an invitation from the Devil of Redmond, God of Flying Chairs?

RMS actually seems to be not that fanatical about it - He thinks it might be dangerous because of potential patents and that we shouldn't depend on it too much, but that it's great that we have a free implementation of an often-used language, because all languages should have free implementations. See http://www.germany.fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#q1

And I assume even Mono supporters occasinally worry about patents, and think about strategies around them - I'm a mild supporter and I definitely have some worries about that.

The conflict as I see it is more about people who care about free software vs. people who hate microsoft.

I really don't know how Tomboy got its way into Gnome in the first place (a Note taking application that requires a 20MB runtime, are you kidding me),

Its actual memory use seems to be quite low, it uses 19,1 MB of RSS, 3,1 MB of which are writable when in use, even less when it's not used for some time. It's almost never among the top 10 memory hogs on my computer, and I actually use it; plus it has lots of cool featuress and develops quickly - every release since it got added to GNOME has brought major new features.

Compared to that, Deskbar e.g. uses 36,1 MB RSS with 23,6 MB writable, even after not using it for quite some time.

F-Spot? Well we've got a dozen photo-managers, and my favorite will pretty much always be Nautilus/Thunar and EoG ;) (in other words, I don't care for fancy apps when a nice, concise, simple one will do).

I'm similar in that regard (Nautilus/EoG is a nice combo), but f-spot is a very nice application for what it does. I rarely use it because I don't do a lot of photography, but if I would it'd be my choice.

For the record, I don't touch Java either. Maybe I'm just a virtual-machine-phobe (or a bloataphobe, take your pick).

Python VM is ok though?

tageiru

September 29th, 2007, 10:08 AM

This thread is as much a debate of technicalities as it is of religion. Should those who are righteous under Lord RMS, his nobelness of all things GNU and holy, accept an invitation from the Devil of Redmond, God of Flying Chairs?

I think most GNU people welcome the contribution of GPL software. It's mainly the new people coming from Windows that, for various weird reasons, oppose the inclusion of Mono.

kirios

September 30th, 2007, 03:37 AM

..fedora is removing it so...
The Fedora people don't seem to have heard about that yet. :)
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=165708

Joh_

October 25th, 2007, 07:39 PM

I can't believe this discussion is still (albeit half-actively) going on. :S

The thing is, Mono isn't the only CIL runtime for linux. There's also one being developed by Gnu (http://www.gnu.org/software/dotgnu/) which seems to be relatively close to Mono's implementation (corlib, XML and WinForms). Mono is just way more complete.

Basically, my point is that whatever Gnu has no problem programming, I have no problem having on my system. In this case it just happens to be a CIL runtime.

pkid

December 3rd, 2007, 01:07 PM

Okay I am putting on my flame proof suite before giving my two cents worth. I think that .net is pretty cool. I have used PHP, Java and C#. We use .net at work. It is easy to use and I find myself very productive when using it. I find it a bonus to be able to use a language that I know and have to use often at work at home in Linux. Makes life so much easier. And no I don't want to learn Python. I am sure that it is great but it is just one more skill to learn and maintain and I am already struggling to juggle the .net and Java stuff.

I am guessing that if Microsoft really wanted to they could launch thousands of lawsuits at Linux. They have thousands of patents and there is an incredibly good chance that Linux violates some of them.

This is my first post on the forums and I am looking forward to a good flaming by the Microsoft haters :)

Andrewie

December 3rd, 2007, 01:27 PM

qt 4 and kdevelop 4 already have their own c# bindings. Mono, and there is a new one from the gnu club. Just get your panties out of a bunch C# and Java aren't going anywhere.

fwilliams

December 10th, 2007, 11:01 PM

jordilin

December 24th, 2007, 12:23 PM

Leave mono where it is.

Avoid making Gnome or KDE dependent on it

Jeff Waugh said Gnome is not currently dependent on it.

Pretty simple, the people who want to use it can use it.

The people who do not, can "sudo apt-get remove mono-common" and safely clean there system.

The last version of Gnome has Tomboy by default, which it is a Mono C# based application. I do not know if in the future there will be such dependency. Anyone knows?. I would like to remember that C# is an ECMA standard and Mono is opensource, free software and Java is just beginning to be opensource. If you install sun-java, which is in the Ubuntu repositories, is worse than having mono by default. If you want to run Azureus, it will be highly recommended to use sun-java.

happysmileman

December 24th, 2007, 02:04 PM

Mono is a free implementation of Microsoft's language C#. Microsoft has declared itself our enemy and we know that Microsoft is getting patents on some features of C#. So I think it's dangerous to use C#, and it may be dangerous to use Mono. There’s nothing wrong with Mono. Mono is a free implementation of a language that users use. It's good to provide free implementations. We should have free implementations of every language. But, depending on it is dangerous, and we better not do that.

From RMS.

On 2 November 2006, Microsoft and Novell announced a joint agreement whereby Microsoft agreed to not sue Novell’s customers for patent infringement.[9] According to Mono project leader Miguel de Icaza,[10] this agreement extends to Mono but only for Novell developers and customers. It was criticized by the free software community because it violates the principles of giving equal rights to all users of a particular program

So unless you work for, or pay Novell, it is not at all Free software. All it does to everyone else is introduce patent concerns and I'm not going to use it, hopefully others won't either

neighborlee

March 4th, 2008, 04:56 PM

Leave mono where it is.

Avoid making Gnome or KDE dependent on it

Jeff Waugh said Gnome is not currently dependent on it.

Pretty simple, the people who want to use it can use it.

The people who do not, can "sudo apt-get remove mono-common" and safely clean there system.

Having to remove it in the first place is in the category of having it forced on me whether I want it or not. I dont like things forced on me, nor do many people , especially when its as clearly non gpl as stated above.

I guess some people think they have the right to force people to do things because they are in the majority. Linux is about choice last time I checked, or is that a common fallacy...I realize of course I have the ability, given the source to spin my own version, I just never wanted to be part of fracturing the base and I still dont think I want to :)

cheers
nl

Sp4cedOut

March 4th, 2008, 06:24 PM

Having to remove it in the first place is in the category of having it forced on me whether I want it or not. I dont like things forced on me, nor do many people , especially when its as clearly non gpl as stated above.

I guess some people think they have the right to force people to do things because they are in the majority. Linux is about choice last time I checked, or is that a common fallacy...I realize of course I have the ability, given the source to spin my own version, I just never wanted to be part of fracturing the base and I still dont think I want to :)

cheers
nl

They also "force" GTK, GNU compilers, X11 libraries, Open Office Suite, Firefox, Metacity, and numerous other programs and libraries. You can't possibly expect them to make different versions of Gnome or Ubuntu without Firefox for the people who don't want Firefox "forced" on them, and another without GNU compilers for those who don't want to have GNU "forced" on them, etc... You really shouldn't install large pre-compiled operating systems and WMs if you don't want things forced on you, or start building your own distro with only the packages you want.

Which comes back to the original point: why does it matter? It's not like Mono's not working and causing problems with your computer. It's not like you can't remove it, I'm sure when you install a new OS you do a lot of customizing and tweaking to fit your needs, think of removing Mono as tweaking. Then again, let's say there's a Mono program you need, it might be nice to have those 2MB library files. Are you worried MS is going to sue you?

bruce89

March 4th, 2008, 07:57 PM

You can't possibly expect them to make different versions of Gnome or Ubuntu without Firefox for the people who don't want Firefox "forced" on them[...]

Interesting when you look at the least popular Ubuntu brainstorm ("http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/229/) idea. It is interesting to see the reaction of Firefox fans saying "I don't want Epiphany forced on me".

DoctorMO

March 4th, 2008, 08:25 PM

Then again, let's say there's a Mono program you need, it might be nice to have those 2MB library files. Are you worried MS is going to sue you?

Er 25MB I think you mean; besides I'm not worried about Microsoft, I'm worried that it's a pile of dingoes kidneys and poor unsuspecting programmers are wasting their time writing programs in it. If it wasn't installed by default perhaps they wouldn't be tempted to use it.

bruce89

March 4th, 2008, 08:28 PM

igknighted

March 4th, 2008, 08:52 PM

Er 25MB I think you mean; besides I'm not worried about Microsoft, I'm worried that it's a pile of dingoes kidneys and poor unsuspecting programmers are wasting their time writing programs in it. If it wasn't installed by default perhaps they wouldn't be tempted to use it.

Then what languages, pray tell, does Dr Mo approve for Ubuntu/Linux programming? Is it the fastest language available? No, probably not. But the cross platform ability (which is very real when done properly) allows distribution to various systems easily, and does so better than Java (at least this is a common sentiment I get from programmers, no real data to back it up though).

Forget all merits of the language... many people only learn to program in C# or vb.net. Do we want to alienate these people from using linux and developing for linux? I'm willing to be there are some pretty good C# programmers out there, and I'd like their expertise to be relevant to linux. Not to mention all those poor college kids in CS programs who have to use C#/.NET or all those who have to use it at work. Why limit their choice of operating systems by stifling the development of their platform.

As for including it as default... I will stand by my viewpoint of the best tools should be included. If someone can create a better gtk-based photo manager than f-spot (and I am sure it can be done), then I would support its inclusion. Same with tomboy. And my choice of Banshee as a music library/player has nothing to do with it being mono... I just like the application. If it was python or C I would still like it just as much... I frankly don't care about the language if the application works. So if you really want mono gone... go write applications in a language you prefer that can rival and/or surpass the current mono ones. But until you can provide suitable alternatives, mono will stay.

bruce89

March 4th, 2008, 08:53 PM

But the cross platform ability (which is very real when done properly) allows distribution to various systems easily, and does so better than Java (at least this is a common sentiment I get from programmers, no real data to back it up though).

Saying as .NET's only complete implementation is on Windows, I find this hard to believe; doubly so since Java's GPL these days meaning new ports are pretty easy.

khensucat

March 5th, 2008, 05:37 AM

I don't understand this.

Java is more of a danger to Linux than Mono. Why do people have a problem with Mono, but not with Java, Flash, blobs in the kernel, proprietary drivers so they can spin thier absurd little "cubes" for hours on end, etc... but get riled up over mono? Is it *just* because of MS? This seems a little tin-foil hattish :-(

Methuselah

March 5th, 2008, 07:03 AM

neighborlee

March 5th, 2008, 08:06 PM

Java has been open source.
Check the OpenJDK.

In any event, Mono isn't so bad.
We have Wine right?
Compatibility is good.
Being able to run .NET programs is advantageous.

However, I agree that it probably shouldn't be relied on for new open source software development when there are alternatives unecumbered in any way by Microsoft.

Depends who you ask, what about it, depends who you ask, and I dont need it , all in that order ;)

Considering ( assuming website is correct) tomboy isnt even stable yet I dont really see the logic in including even it, and the same rationale goes for f-spot for which exists a current bug that hasnt been addressed for about a year.

And what about RMS comments here:

Quote:
Mono is a free implementation of Microsoft's language C#. Microsoft has declared itself our enemy and we know that Microsoft is getting patents on some features of C#. So I think it's dangerous to use C#, and it may be dangerous to use Mono. There’s nothing wrong with Mono. Mono is a free implementation of a language that users use. It's good to provide free implementations. We should have free implementations of every language. But, depending on it is dangerous, and we better not do that.

**From RMS. ^^

or is this a current standing comment from him...if so its rather telling isn't it if you also consider that M$ doesn't even like MONO to get airtime for its meetings here:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2005/Sep-06.html < and to think anyone trusts M$ intentions is kinda at question .

http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/08/11/Let_2700_s-talk-Mono_3A00_--Sam-interviews-Miguel-de-Icaza.aspx < and this is also interesting as noted by:

http://boycottnovell.com/2007/07/23/gnome-mono-dep/

Never hurts to keep up with current news ;)

I also find it odd that gnome would add MONO just for one tiny note taking app, and I wonder how many actually use it...

cheers
nl

loell

March 5th, 2008, 08:34 PM

is it just me? or i'm just getting tired of reading an old controversial thread.

there is nothing left to be said here, maybe its time to get rid of the thread? (aka close it)?

khensucat

March 6th, 2008, 02:16 AM

Would it help to point out the unreliability of boycottnovell, and the long-debunked "it rips out half your system" myth?

tbroderick

March 6th, 2008, 02:47 AM

Would it help to point out the unreliability of boycottnovell, and the long-debunked "it rips out half your system" myth?

Facts have no place in this discussion.

neighborlee

March 6th, 2008, 01:15 PM

Facts have no place in this discussion.

I fail to see why facts have no place in this discussion ;)

Your are free to offer proof of boycotnovell myths if you wish, but I didn't see any; but I did see RMS making a good solid point that MONO is not a good idea to 'rely on', which says to me its prob. not a great idea to have other apps 'depend' on it, and of course there are countless other URL's showcasing similar 'doubts' to going the MONO route including the link by SETH, so its not like there isn't anyone out there with reasonable credentials doubting very m uch MONO.

Redhat used to be THE defacto standard for linux, and for many it still is, yet it is defininitely not going to endorse MONO ever faik, so I think thats another indication of the fruitless labor involved here. I Gotta wonder how many that are for it, are for it for shall we say speicific reasons. Just MO and I've a right to it, and I wonder does anyone have any debate on the URL's I posted or is everyone going to just let them stand as is therefore insinuating they are correct and that MONO should be removed at once .

cheers
nl

khensucat

March 7th, 2008, 06:45 PM

If by "if nobody replies to this then I win by default" you mean "everyone is pretty much tired of this argument, nothing new has been added, Redhat still packages Mono, Microsoft hasn't sued anyone, removing it doesn't harm anyone's system, and boycotnovells FUD/deadwrong vs. accidentally correct factor is about 2,000 to 1, being the "loose change" of the linux world, and most people are just sick to death of this tinfoil hat argument", then yes, you win ):P

Andrewie

March 7th, 2008, 06:48 PM

When Microsoft starts suing then I'm all for removing it. I'm no expert and I'm not going to pretend to be one, but as long as Red Hat continues to ship it then I feel nothing is wrong.

neighborlee

March 7th, 2008, 09:04 PM

When Microsoft starts suing then I'm all for removing it. I'm no expert and I'm not going to pretend to be one, but as long as Red Hat continues to ship it then I feel nothing is wrong.

helllo..redhat is not shipping MONO ;)..only fedora..there is a HUGE differecne ;)

cheers
nl

neighborlee

March 7th, 2008, 09:35 PM

PmDematagoda

March 7th, 2008, 11:10 PM

is it just me? or i'm just getting tired of reading an old controversial thread.

there is nothing left to be said here, maybe its time to get rid of the thread? (aka close it)?

Good point raised by loell, this thread has been moved to the Recurring Discussions section as this was already discussed at length in the Development section.

neighborlee

March 8th, 2008, 02:15 PM

Good point raised by loell, this thread has been moved to the Recurring Discussions section as this was already discussed at length in the Development section.

Im not sure how saying you agree with someone saying something is 'controversial' when clearly its a reasonable debate raised not just by me, but many people with solid credentials, including a major distro REdhat that atm isn't going anywhere near MONO, so I think one must be careful what one agrees with in its entirety ;)

I stilll dont see any comments on why Redhat wont enforse MONO yet ubuntu is happy to do so, but now that this thead has been moved, maybe that threat wont exist for you anymore, and maybe that should tell me something about the freedom that ubuntu ( or lack thereof) really represents ;)

cheers
nl