After all the debate, gtk# will most likely find its way into GNOME. "The release team has completed its second meeting to try to finish the new module decisions. And, after all the long threads on d-d-l and the many discussions amongst ourselves trying to determine community consensus, we finally have the decisions. In summary: orca, alacarte, and gnome-power-manager are in; gtk# and tomboy are in, assuming the issues mentioned are resolved; sticky notes becomes deprecated, assuming tomboy issues are resolved and gets in." Update: Elijah Newren emailed me concerning an important aspect of the current decision, and asked me to highlight it. So, read more!
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Member since:2005-07-06
Seth wrote that blog post over two years ago, and a lot has happened since then. Most importantly, the Open Invention Network:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
OIN makes Mono (and many other Free software projects) untouchable by Microsoft.
The OIN is also what finally caused the Fedora Project to include Mono.
Edit: I don't speak for Seth of course. I don't know Seth, and I have no idea what his thoughts on Mono are nowadays.
Edited 2006-08-02 15:23
Member since:2005-07-13
OIN makes Mono (and many other Free software projects) untouchable by Microsoft.
It does no such thing. It's simply a deterrent to Microsoft by saying you sue us, we sue you for something completely unrelated.
Never underestimate a threatened Microsoft. Having said that, I doubt they would sue unless they had no other option.
But people miss the point that Microsoft doesn't have to sue. The mere threat that they can, the mere implication that there are patent issues, taints the project.
There are very serious implications for commercial and institutional customers with regards to IP. As someone who has worked on procurement contracts in the past for government and enterprise organizations, I know that IP indemnification is almost always a requirement.
Novell offers indemnification, although they're not clear on whether that extends to mono. Will IBM indemnify mono? Will Red Hat? Will HP? Will Sun? Are customers expected to use it at their own risk? Don't underestimate the convservative nature of business, we can scoff at the SCO lawsuit but it raised some very valid concerns that will not go away.
Or is mono really just a pseudo-community project that is owned and operated by Novell? How much support will other distributors really put into it? One of the biggest challenges and most frustrating obstacles to wider spread linux adoption seems to be the community's frequent obliviousness to the real world requirements of users. (And in fairness, I'm not singling out any particular group or project on that point, it's fairly widespread).
OIN doesn't protect mono from patent infringement. It's a deterrent. An effective one, but not an absolute one. That's the point people seem to overlook, but responsible organizations cannot.
In the end, I don't really care, I don't need mono right now so I'm mostly watching from the sidelines. But I guess what really gets my goat is the hypocrisy from many in the Gnome community, particularly many of those backing mono, that slag Qt's dual-licensing because of it's clear corporate ownership, and embrace mono despite it's questionable licensing issues and it's clear corporate ownership. Seems to me like it's really more of a pissing contest after all, rather than what's actually good for the Gnome or broader communities.
Bah.
Member since:2006-07-28
Member since:
2006-08-02
Please read this: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono
Kick off Novell and/or Gtk# or fork Gnome to stay FOSS. That's all.