OSNews

Should they step further into that Microsoft shit - sorry, but that's what it is - I'll switch to KDE

The only connection between Gnome and mono is the GTK# bindings. mono is a cross language runtime and particular bindings for a GUI api are just a side show. You are only tied to Microsoft via mono if you use a Microsoft api such as Windows Forms or ASP.NET. If you use GTK#, Cocoa# or KDE's Qyoto/Kimono bindings (that I work on), you are only tied to the C# language and other CLR languages. The CLR is an ECMA standard, whereas Windows Forms isn't, so please separate issues about using Microsoft specific GUI's from using mono as a basis for implementing interesting non-Microsoft apis via bindings.

Yes, I know that.

But the point is that the lawyers in Redmond are already evaluating things. MS _will_ eventually stand up and sue OSS for patent violation. Ballmer has to act quite soon if he does not want to appear a total idiot to the Micrposoft shareholders. I bet he'll start with mono - well, ok, just a not so wild guess.

Sorry to say this, but mono was a waste of time from the start. It's too close to the devil, and Novell has seen what happens when you embrace the devil.

Now it's time to talk about Java. It's not too late - thank God ...

There are two sides of this issue.

Sure, if you don't use these bindings, you aren't affected at all.

The GNOME people seem to get fed up with C. So it is even evaluated to switch to Mono/GTK# as main development platform. This wouldn't be something done today or tomorrow. But GNOME already ships applications using GTK#.

Mate, don't worry about it; GNOME hasn't included anything relating to Mono within the standard distribution - what you see in distributions are merely the result of its users asking for a said application, which happen to be written using mono.

The debate is over which framework should be used as the default for future development if GNOME developers choose to go down the road of having a managed environment - Mono, as much as De Lcaza argued that the technological arguments were compelling vs. the obvious licencing issues back then in regards to Java, the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored; the underlying motivation for the creation was the restrictive and closed source nature of Java.

Flash forward to 2007; Java has been open sourced under GPL; Sun is now an active opensource development company, with Solaris Enterprise System (the old iPlanet stack) will be opensource soon as well - which brings forward the question; which one will be chosen? for me, the choice is obvious now - a couple of years ago, I would have said mono after weighing up the patent, licencing and technological issues, but today with Java being opensource, more mature technologically, a big community of developers overall, and the fact that the issue of patents don't hover over the neck of Java like a guillotine over the neck of a falsely accused person, as with the case of Mono.

With that being said, I do think, however, that GNOME need to think long and carefully about using Java - use it where it works well, but don't use it for the sake of simply being able to say, "look at us! we use Java!".

Edited 2007-03-25 23:44

If I'm not mistaken, Tomboy is in 2.18. Tomboy uses Mono and GTK#. You can take it out, but it is now part of mainline GNOME

The debate is over which framework should be used as the default for future development if GNOME developers choose to go down the road of having a managed environment

You're quite clueless regarding the antipathy towards Java, whether it's open source or not. You make the same bad logical analysis that developers are going to flock to Java just because it's almost open source.

The debate isn't over, because Gnome won't have an official runtime. Java is hated for various reasons, Mono is hated because it's MS, and other developers would rather stay away from both of them and use Python or Ruby. Gnome is a C platform - plain and simple, with various bindings that developers use for various applications that might or might not make it into the official Gnome applications releases.

With that being said, I do think, however, that GNOME need to think long and carefully about using Java - use it where it works well, but don't use it for the sake of simply being able to say, "look at us! we use Java!"

That's something you don't have to worry about. Java will be ignored only a little less than it is now.

Should they step further into that Microsoft shit - sorry, but that's what it is - I'll switch to KDE. De Icaza hasn't listened carefully to what the communitry has said about the Novell-MS deal. Tying GNOME even closer to .Net is even worse, because the day will come when Microsoft goes to court with that. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Mono they're after (well, to start with).

Ballmer has said it on and off that OSS is violating MS patents. So it's just a matter of time when he'll be the one to open the flood gates.

I don't really see how Miguel has anything to worry aouut. Mono was a Ximian project. Ximian was bought by Novell. Novell has a patent agreement with Microsoft. Novell has the copyright to Mono and many of the Mono projects which it licneses under the GPL. The only company that Microsoft could sue is Novell which according to their agreement they cannot do.

Sure, if all the Mono projects are tied only to Novell-created distros. But as soon as another distro, or the Gnome project itself, decides to include a Mono application, then they are in risky territory.

wrong thread again.

Edited 2007-03-28 05:24