Well, this is interesting. We already have a Mono item ruffling some feathers on OSNews today, but here we have the apparent news that Tomboy has become a default part of GNOME on Squeeze, the next release of Debian. Wait, what now? Update: I’ve updated the article with Fedora’s position in all this. Read on! Update II: Josselin Mouette replies.
The matter is all a bit confusing, but from what I understand now, Josselin Mouette has made Tomboy a dependency for GNOME on Debian Squeeze, which means that Mono is now part of GNOME for Debian Squeeze as well. This seems rather odd, because Debian never seemed to be too keen on including Mono.
The news got out via a blog post by Debian maintainer Robert Millan, who maintains the Gnote package for Debian – Gnote is a non-Mono replacement for Tomboy written in C++. He writes that he is not particularly happy with this move, because he believes that a note taking application shouldn’t be part of the default selection anyway, especially not one which drags 50MB of dependencies onto the first CD.
What makes this story so confusing is that Josselin Mouette points to bug #532355 as rationale for the inclusion of Tomboy. This bug advocates Gnote as an alternative for Tomboy; Tomboy was, up until now, a “recommended”, but optional, package. Gnote was promoted as an alternative since Tomboy’s architecture support is limited, a problem Gnote doesn’t have.
And here comes what confuses me: Mouette claims that because we have Gnote now as an alternative to Tomboy, Tomboy can become a dependency because Gnote can come into play on architectures Mono doesn’t support. In addition, Gnote can serve as an alternative for people who don’t want Tomboy because of the 50MB issue. Which makes me wonder: why not just go for Gnote altogether?
I’m sure this won’t be the last time we hear of this.
Update
Indeed, this wasn’t the last we heard from this. Fedora Project leader Paul W. Frields expressed his concern over Mono. “We do have some serious concerns about Mono and we’ll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part,” Frields said. It could be the case that Mono will be excluded from the repositories for Fedora 12. The reason for this is that Gnote will replace Tomboy in Fedora 12.
Why not have Mono per default installing on Debian?
Mono is OpenSource and so I don’t see any problem.
What warries me a lot more is, that gnuplot is in the Debian main-tree.
And gnuplot http://www.gnuplot.info/ is neither GNU nor OpenSource:
Look at
http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright?view=m…
Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code. Modifications are to be distributed as patches to the released version.
Did you even read the article? Mono does not work on all platforms supported by Debian
you dont see any problem with Mono? read this http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/06/02/redhatfedora-drops-mono/ and http://boycottnovell.com/2009/06/02/mono-an-infectious-disease/ you might think differently
The only problem with Mono is Red Hat’s large investment in Java technology and dropping market share vs. Novell.
Red Hat should market their product based on the features and advantages rather than underhanded character assassinations. It didn’t work for Microsoft and it wont work for Red Hat.
Novell could have negotiated a patent peace concerning Mono between the whole of the community and Microsoft, instead they chose to just protect themselves.
Additionally Microsoft is no company you like to hand something which even allows them to FUD you out of the market.
And having all free Linux distros depending on Mono would allow Microsoft to FUD them.
Trying to keep Mono out of your core dependencies makes sense, because in the world of “big company vs. small company” lawsuits, having to enter the struggle usually is a defeat for the small company.
They could have but it makes no business sense to protect competing companies. We have to remember that we’re talking about companies out to make a profit. Trusting them to protect anyone’s interest but their own is naive.
How so? I think Mono only lends more credibility to .NET.
If we always thought like that we would have ceded the entire software market to Microsoft a long time ago.
Luckily (in the big picture), Mono still wouldn’t be a core dependency for all of Linux desktop – just Gnome. We’ll always have KDE. And it’s mostly a dependency in name only, it could currently be fixed by just stripping a few apps and removing the dependency line from the metapackage.
I don’t think the core Gnome devs would allow making it a dependency without which Gnome wouldn’t run.
I too have a HUGE problem with gnuplot. It has some very useful plotting features, but because of their license, I can not modify or use any portion of it in my open source apps. Sure, I can use it as it is, and call it from the command line, but that is about it.
I think the name is extremely misleading, I wish the FSF would do something about a blatant use of the GNU name. Say I wrote some application, called “Fred”, and I decided to call it “Microsoft Fred” you bet MS Layers would be all over me.
I think it is probably fair for any app released under GPL, or LGPL to call itself gnu****, but something that is for all intents and purposes closed source like gnuplot, certainly not.
Checked out matplotlib already?
The whole blog post is more anti-Mono nonsense. Utter, utter rubbish.
tomboy was _already_ a Recommends:. What happened was that Joss moved it to Depends: but _added_ gnote as an alternative:
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-gnome/desktop/unstable/meta-gnome…
But I bet this doesn’t stop people bashing another free software developer…
…which is exactly what the OSNews item carefully explains.
that’s not quite true.
Disclaimer: I’m a tomboy user and (very, very tiny) contributer. Let me just summarize your post from my pov:
You link to yet another “50MB too much” blog post that shows the pixel by pixel “ripoff” (Actually I don’t have anything against GNote).
That’s not the part of the news item that bugs me though. It’s more that your personal opinion resonates very strongly in every line – and that’s just a bad idea for several reasons.
a) I perceive this as a news site, not a personal blog.
b) The topic is already a sensitive one, you just add to the flames without more careful placed words.
Regards,
Ben
Well, I’m not even against Mono. I just don’t care about it, have no feelings either way. The patent situation is worrying, but that’s it. Kind of like Austria. I know it’s there, but it just doesn’t evoke any strong feelings.
The thing is, though, that Mono is an important topic among many of our readers, and as such, it is very much news when Debian includes it.
Actually, Thom’s argument is pretty simple. Let me remove Tomboy and Gnote from the argument and just use the letters X and Y to avoid the emotions associated with Mono.
Suggestion: It is suggested that X should be replaced by Y as an option for GNOME, since Y has clear advantages, namely Y is available on more platforms than X and Y is smaller than X.
Actual Response: Make X required by GNOME unless you care enough to replace it with Y and know Y exists. On other platforms were X doesn’t run, make Y required.
What the response should have been is one of the following:
Option 1) Replace Y with X as an *option* for GNOME
Option 2) Leave X as an *option* for GNOME on supported platforms. Make Y an option for GNOME on other platforms.
Both of these options would have been acceptable, but the actual response demonstrates that the suggestion was just an excuse to push X forward.
Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want to use either Tomboy or GNote and I have no idea why either would be a recommended dependency, so I’d likely want to just remove both from the default if I were the maintainer….but I’d be guilty of the same bias of Debian maintainer, which is something that a strong meritocracy like Debian cannot tolerate if it wishes to remain as relevant as it is.
GNote is not a Tomboy ripoff. It’s a port to a less demanding framework.
Red Hat did a similar thing with OpenOffice years ago (porting its Java bits to GCJ and compile it natively) and nobody cried. The result is faster startup time and less RAM is required. These are benefits on all platforms, not just the ones that don’t have a Java VM.
often using gcj reduce performance… just check bench… or test it…
Dear pro-mono zealot,
What the hell are you talking about? There is nothing anti-mono in the blog post at all. That it was moved to depends is exactly the point everyone is unhappy about. You make it sound as if that is meaningless and as if no one understood that. I am totally amazed by your post.
it wasn’t even blatantly anti-mono. the overarching point was: tomboy and its dependencies take up a hell of a lot more room than gnote… so why is tomboy being included as part of a default install?
and furthermore, it’s debatable whether or not a note taking app really needs to be in a default install anyway.
it’s hardly justification for including mono, which is so hotly debated, as part of a default install, even if there IS a suggested alternative.
i’ve been a debian user for six years. this is extremely aggravating.
and other distributions like Fedora are replacing Tomboy for Gnote as default (Fedora 12) because it will be nice to have a note taking application on the LiveCD and Tomboy dependencies are too much for a CD
I’m but a humble Deb user slowly learning the deeper political details of the distro; late Etch and Lenny since so my experience is limited.
For me, two things keep it from being my desktop OS along side my server OS. Wifi NIC support and dependencies. What can you do, I accept that source availability is a goal of the distro. But, I come from Mandriva where I can “urpmi konsole” and get only what is needed for KDE to push Konsole. The everything KDE (or Gnome) as a dependency of KDE (or Gnome) really turns me off as a result. I don’t want all of KDE but only specific core components. Dropping 50 meg on my system to push a glorified notepad is just not going to happen. The one bit of luck in my case is that it’s Gnome specific but that doesn’t mean similar unnecessary dependencies are not dumping in along side my KDE desktop. Hard drive space is cheap but that doesn’t justify wasting it.
This is meant to be somewhat aside the specifics of Tomboy. Crippling hardware support (my Lenny dumps support for my HP server’s NIC also.. booo!) and making extraneous crap a dependency just sucks. Great distro where applicable and I’m thankful for finally taking the time to explore and now use it but these things limit where it is the applicable correct choice for me.
I do admit that there may be reasons I’m not aware of though as I’m new to the Debian world.
What?
Debian has always be the distro that split the KDE packages. Mandriva might have started to do the same, but to claim that installing Konsole install all of KDE is silly. Are you sure you are using Debian?
I just checked the dependencies of konsole is:
kdelibs, kdebase-runtime and Qt.
So you need the core KDE libraries, the core KDE runtime requirements and Qt to install konsole. You don’t get any other KDE applications besides konsole.
With Mandriva, I urpmi in konsole specifically to inspire the minimum to run it and the drake tools. With Debian, it appeared that things like Konsole pulled in the KDE metapackage which included the entire KDE desktop. I’ll toss up a few VMs later today and have a go at it though. I really would like to be using Debian as my desktop as it does other things far better than my current desktop distro; netdiscover consistently crashes out on Mandriva but works perfectly with Debian and similar things that make me run a Debian VM under Mandriva.
aptitude install KDE
772 packages totalling 1285 MB installed
aptitude install konsole
115 packages totalling 0186 MB installed
that’s a drastic difference. I like when I’m wrong and learn stuff. Happy dance.. happy dance..
Now to confirm the wifi card support for my notebook assuming it’s like the HP DL360’s NIC; include firmware on flashdrive and let it get sucked in during install.
After that, it’s just finding something close to the drake tools network connections manager and get my head around partitions.
Is there a prefered graphic wifi connection manager? The one’s I’ve tried have been very esoteric; actually, the only way I’ve been successful is to hit wpa_supplicant.conf directly but that starts to suck when your regularily switching between AP.
Also, by partitions I mean that I’ve been spoiled by the drake tools graphic partition manager and am not yet comfortable enough with the Deb partition manager to cut disks up like I do for Mandriva. Probably just a matter of breaking a few VM installs until the fog clears though.
Unrelated; has anyone mounted Truecrypt partitions from a Linux liveCD? While it mitigates data loss from direct access to a machine, it also means decrypting the drive if something can’t be fixed from within the Windows boot (work notebooks, no choice of regular staff OS).
So
apt-get install konsole
instead of
apt-get install kde
problem solved. kde is a metapackage. If you don’t want the whole thing, don’t install the metapackage. Install the parts you want.
Although I’ll aptitude it in, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do and was sure that last time I had a go at a desktop install the metapackage got pulled as a dependency of the single package I’d asked for. My notebook is coming up for rebuild now that Lenny and 2009.1 are both out though so it’s time to test again and see; be nice to run the same distro on the admin workstation as on the servers.
This will not stand.
Adding 50mb to the default install for a note taking app is just insane and the Debian people will know better and include the much smaller alternative (if a note app is really needed.)
How small does it need to be? How about 11mb?
That’s how much Tomboy (and all its required Mono dependencies) actually bring in:
http://pastebin.ca/1458155
Of course, one can argue that that is too much, but at least we’re arguing about the actual numbers and not some made-up ones.
On Debian Squeeze Tomboy’s package[1] alone is over 13Mb not counting dependencies.
[1] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/tomboy
Interesting. Looks like it includes all debugging symbols (*.mdb), translations for about 50 different languages, and a help guide for 15 languages. The help guides includes the same 17 .png’s for each of the 15 different languages.
I assume it could probably be packaged a bit more efficiently.
File list:
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/amd64/tomboy/filelist
Shipping a whole framework stack in the default installation for a single piece of software is pretty stupid, IMHO.
10+ megs for a note-taking app, plus dependencies? Let me say, there were times not too long ago, when every living coder would’ve slapped the coder of that one in the face, and hard. But times, they are a’changing, now all I can do is choose not to use it, which is fine with me.
This whole thing smells like a hack to sneak mono into a default mono install with gnome, which – knowing we’re talking about Debian here, my favourite from potato on – is quite peculiar. But then again, I use kde, so my only interest is because my Debian preference and my strong anti-mono feelings
Since when is GNOME a default install on Debian? I’m pretty sure you have to select it yourself to have it installed.
Or did you mean the default GNOME install? In that case 5Mb isn’t a huge deal.
No, but 50MB is a bigger deal than 5MB.
Flame flame flame. Rabble rabble. Mono Bad. Napster Bad. Rabble rabble rabble.
The mono project is three feet wide and has razor sharp teeth, you really expect me to distribute that?!?!?
Flame.
Rabble.
Lame.
Sigh
🙁
Welcome to geeks-on-the-internet.
I swear people like you are just sitting in a call center in india getting paid by microsoft to post lame anti-anti-mono crap.
You know, the blog post and everyone in this thread (and in the last mono thread) have been making good reasonable points except for the mono supporters. Only people like you are calling names (without argument) and dismissing the other side without any argument.
So no matter how much you try and paint them as anti-ms zealots, the reality is it isn’t the anti-mono group that is acting like irrational zealots, it is the mono fans like you.
Seriously your post is so a-s-s hole-ish and off base. Did you actually read the blog post or any of the comments?? DO YOU EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH?? Or are you just copying and pasting rebuttals from a spreadsheet put together by MS’s marketing/psychology department?
I’ll repost an excerpt from my comment in the last thread because it seems even more appropriate here:
Why is it that most “mono haters” present reasoned arguments but mono supporters always reply with personal attacks and condescending dismissals? Not liking what you like doesn’t make someone a zealot or a hater. Calling someone that when they’ve tried to engage in reasonable debate *does* make *you* a zealot and a hater however.
1) Mono “haters” *never* say mono sucks (although they do sometimes say it is slow which is true). They do sometimes ask the question, why do we need mono? For some reason though the reasonable and objective mono fans love to bring this up as if anyone was debating that anyway (this is known as a straw man argument, commonly used by irrational zealots to win arguments when they have no logical basis for their position)
2) Mono “haters” always bring up the fact that MS has patents on large portions of mono that have are *not* under ecma standardization. Reasonable mono fans always reply by saying that that mono is covered by ecma standardization and calling you a zealot (this is known as redirecting the question and not answering the question, also a favorite of zealots with no logical basis for their position)
3) Mono “haters” always bring up the fact that ecma standardization does not preclude MS from chargin RAND fees or requiring licensing. See 2) for response from fans.
I’ll add for this particular case:
4) Mono “haters” ask why we need Tomboy when we have gnote that takes almost no space and is not controversial in any way? Mono “fans” reply with “rabble, flame, troll, hate, fud”. (This again is known as not answering the question and redirecting the question in the form of character assassination).
Nice.
Do you really want to post that on your own post in which you said this:
Perhaps you would also like to post it on your above post where you opened with:
pot kettle, kettle pot. Glad you know each other now.
Omg that is so racist. I’m actually a game developer and long time linux user who is incredibly sick of pointless anti mono rubbish. But bringing ethnicity into this is really below the belt! I’ve made my pro mono arguements several times, and I’m over caring. But this kind of flame mongering should be above osnews
Racist? You really are insane. What percentage of the world speaks English? Saying someone doesn’t appear to understand anything that is being said is not racist it is very possible in general based on language barriers. Just making a snide point that you may or may not speak english based on your previous post is not racist, it is just pointing out that you obviously didn’t absorb one word of the blog post or anyone else’s points.
Wow.
P.S.
5) Mono “haters” point out that mono fans don’t appear to be listening or playing nice at all. Reasonable and calm mono fans accuse “haters” of being racist because the “hater” uses a random example of a country where some people may not speak English.
Funny.
Edited 2009-06-12 20:27 UTC
That’s the racist part, when you make the inference that because his english might not be good that he works in a call center in India. Does that mean that anyone in India that doesn’t speak proper English works in a call center? It couldn’t possibly be a multi phd holding engineer. Its the equivalent of a non-english speaker assuming you must be a red neck moonshiner from Appalachia because your french sucks.
Apparently you did not understand that his post was not anti-, or pro-mono but anti-whining. Your English skills seems a bit lacking, maybe you should go to India and improve them?
Edited 2009-06-12 21:40 UTC
Only people like you are calling names
but mono supporters always reply with personal attacks
* swear people like you are just sitting in a call center in india
* it is the mono fans like you.
* Seriously your post is so a-s-s hole-ish
* DO YOU EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH??
Personal attacks: check.
Missing the whole point of the original post: check.
Not a single snide towards anyone in the original post: check.
Make yourself look like a jerk on the internet: check.
I hope you’re satisfied with your performance so far
PS. I am against mono and I still think you are the one acting really bad here, not the pro-mono people.
Not amused by tech folk discussing teck. No worries, what are the links to your topics of interest so we can all come over there and express not caring about what gets you thinking.
Well, if Tomboy is worth over 50Mb in the first cd then i want emacs there too, at around 70Mb the gtk version packs several mail and news readers, chat clients, file manager, image and document viewers, media players not to mention the editing and programming facilities, oh and it also has org-mode that beats the willies out of Tomboy, not to mention that it integrates with everything from calendar and address managers to web pages and files on disk. I don’t mind a small app that i don’t use like Gnote to be dragged in by Gnome automatically but I’ll change to XFCE before i let some useless gadget install a complete virtual machine i don’t like and don’t use on my machines. What’s next? Auto install a Fortran compiler so the calculator will work?
I think the most telling quote is this, by Josselin Mouette:
Brilliant. The attitude appears to be “We’ll just package any old crap and it’s dependency tree, no matter how big, how much duplication it may cause, the space it may take up and the added complexity it will bring.”
Amazing. It’s like watching someone build a bookcase out of mashed potatoes.
Obviously they don’t think Tomboy is just “any old crap”.
Which is even more mind-boggling. Tomboy is a note-taking application. Including that in the default install is not going to set the world alight.
Mono is a nice development environment which I used successfully for some projects.
Being afraid of patents isn’t an argument in my opinion. There are patents everywhere, and in the case of mono the biggest part is even kinda protected because it is a part of the ecma standard. (And as a developer I have to say, that the non ecma part like System.Windows.Forms aren’t attractive on linux anyway so you don’t use them).
Edited 2009-06-12 21:06 UTC
Dear MatzeB,
Better double check on that ECMA standard claims.
Refering to http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/1/0/
In a recent iTWire article titled “The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono”, Sam Varghese contacts Ecmea for the patent terms surrounding Mono. Remember that the mono camp always throws the argument at people that mono follows an Ecma standard and as such is free to implement?
Sam asked ECMA this simple question: “I also understand that the terms of use of these patents are royalty-free, reasonable and non-discriminatory. I would be grateful if you could send me the details of the terms of the licence.”
And gets a response: “ECMA does _NOT_ have anything to do with possible licensing of .NET. But Microsoft is one of our members, so I have asked them whom to contact there – if anything is needed, what I just do not know.”
So, Sam moves on to contact Microsoft to ask them the same thing and throws in a question about moonlight’s licensing too. His question was sent on April 28 and as the article states, he has not received any reply.
He reaches a very simple conclusion:
“To me, it looks this licence is as real as the unicorn. Or maybe Santa Claus. I think Mono fans need to think of a fresh defence when people talk about the dangers of patent suits arising over this technology. The licence talk has worn more than a little thin.”
50 MB for a note taking app? I don’t care if it’s written in Fortran, that is way, way too much.
It’s not 50MB. It’s 5MB. Mono is much larger but it is an entire language and set of class libraries. Glibc is like 17MB so do you include that 17MB in the calculation of the size of every C application? I don’t think so. The Boost libraries are 24MB but I have never heard anyone complain about their size. People making this argument have a hidden anti-Mono agenda. Every argument that seems to come out of the anti-Mono camp isn’t an issue exclusive to Mono which makes me believe it is more of an anti-Microsoft viewpoint than any valid complaint about Mono specifically.
glibc is (in practice) always there.
Of course it is. I don’t think anyone tries to hide the fact that they are concerned about possible future popularity of Mono – i.e., people don’t want to give the signal that it’s now ok (or even recommended) to develop on Mono, because as it increases in popularity, the potential devastation caused by Microsoft pressing the “kill switch” (or, more probably, “quiet strangulation” switch) will be much larger.
I don’t think we should be that badly concerned about this, though. As gnote proves, Mono apps that become successful can be ported to C++ with relative ease, and if C# environment can be used to attract developers to OSS development, so much the better. Think of it as a gateway drug ;-).
I understand this is one of the stated reasons but it doesn’t make sense. Microsoft has as much power to “pull the plug” on any piece of FLOSS software as it does Mono.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Tomboy is relatively simple as far as Mono applications go.
I don’t see that. Mono is an implementation of “their” technology, while must of the other OSS stuff isn’t.
I don’t see where the secret sauce with Mono apps is. They may be faster to develop, but in the end they are just Gtk apps, with no access to any magical libs that would not be available for C++.
That’s a very shallow understanding of what is going on. The issue is patents. A re-implementation isn’t subject to legal issues unless patents or copyright are involved. Microsoft has claimed patent rights on several pieces of software in the FLOSS world including the kernel itself. This isn’t limited to Mono.
The argument you made is that it would be easy to just port Mono apps. While it is possible it’s not something that can be done overnight. Tomboy is relatively simple compared to apps like MonoDevelop and F-Spot. There are libraries that are not available in C++ because Mono has its own class libraries (although there are generally equivalent libraries available). You would probably have to inlcude some outside libraries in C++ implementations of more sophisticated Mono apps.
Perhaps it’s just easier to “call bullshit” on the other claims of Microsoft, when they refer to technology not developed by them.
MonoDevelop is of course a redundant app for non-mono world.
Here’s an interesting relevant link:
http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/?2009/04/01/656-porting-to-cpluspl…
It mentions:
So, I figure the porting will only get easier in the future. We might not hear of “line-by-line” port success stories of gnote, but the porting effort in itself doesn’t seem insurmountable.
In any case, even if we were dealing with a reimplementation instead of port, it’s still easier because you can copy architecture (class structure) and algorithms directly.
What I’m saying is – it’s not necessary to be terribly worried about Mono, as long as we have a good backup strategy.
Perhaps it is in a discussion forum but not in a court of law. This is why I am re-iterating that this is a software patent issue in general not a Mono specific issue.
I wouldn’t agree. MonoDevelop is a very good IDE and supports many languages other than Mono.
A big benefit to Mono over C++ is platform independence. Applications should be relatively simple to port to alternative architectures and operating systems as long as Mono itself is available for the platform. C++ is a built more complicated in that regard.
The original point I was trying to make is that just because a simple app like Tomboy was ported doesn’t mean that it’s going to be as easy to port more complicated programs.
It’s a waste of breath to talk about software patents, generally.
We have those already, so this is not a “critical” app in any sense.
This is why I’d advocate people use C++ & Qt instead, if they insist on a “static” language. C++ with Qt is really not harder than Java / C#, and probably as/more portable.
Probably true. But it’s doable in reasonable time. What’s important is who is willing to put in the resources, and where. Currently, some developers want to develop in Mono, and that’s all fine and dandy. If some app becomes “problematic”, it can be ported to C++ or Python (probably C++ – you’ll want some significant runtime performance/footprint benefits if you are doing the porting in the first place); if nobody is willing to put in the time, then the app isn’t/wasn’t that important in the first place.
After all this verbiage, summary of my stance:
– Do not use Mono for your own apps
– Do not attack people who still want to use Mono for *their* apps. It’s their problem, not of community in general.
Then it is also a waste of time to be critical of Mono.
It’s not a critical app for you or me (I prefer gvim) but for many it is critical. A well thought out and simple IDE is something people have been clamouring for on Linux. There are a few others out there but none seem to be as slick as MonoDevelop and it is much newer than most other comprable IDEs. This says a lot about the speed of Mono development itself.
Now that’s a huge undertaking. You can’t just drop in Qt where GTK+ is now. It’s definitely not worth the effort to port to Qt, at least not for GNOME writ large.
Agreed. Mono apps are still open source so if necessary they can be ported. Despite the fact that considerable time may be required to completely port all Mono apps it’s not the disaster some people make it out to be.
Redesign will be necessary for anything that makes use of reflection.
Also, wouldn’t it be easier to write a compiler backend for Mono that outputs simple, portable C code? This fixes the portability issue, but not the size issue (CIL is smaller than the equivalent machine code in many cases); but if you have a framework that you expect people to use, you may as well bite the bullet.
Luckily, there may be a way out of this problem. The Free Software Foundation is sponsoring the development of a .NET implementation called “DotGNU”.
Which will probably be available at about the same time as GNU/Hurd
I think Parrot is a better alternative to Mono.
Mono is patent encumbered software and Microsoft sooner or later will react against it, they don’t like Open Source to build outside Windows, if you think they do you are just being too naive. I’m sure they are just waiting for Mono to grow more so they can attack it on the right time to produce massive loses.
Parrot is a much better alternative and much better technology anyway.
http://www.parrot.org/
Edited 2009-06-13 02:37 UTC
Parrot is a much better alternative and much better technology anyway.
You should explain WHY it is oh-so-much better. Just claiming it is better won’t convince people.
I don’t expect people to switch to Parrot, but to me personally Parrot sounds more interesting than Mono.
Mono seems to be patent encumbered but other than that. Java and Mono seems to be stack-based, Parrot is register-based.
Parrot also supports many languages already.
http://www.parrot.org/languages
Parrot also has a FAQ where you can see how it compares against Java or Mono etc.
How exactly is Mono patent encumbered? It is based on ECMA standards.
How on earth do you know that Parrot doesn’t violate any software patents. Given the state of US software patent law it would be highly unlikely that is doesn’t.
And Ecma’s “patent-free” requirements are satisfied with the OSP, which just means nothing:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454
Furthermore, if you ask Ecma itself, or even Mono’s authors, you get nothing:
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/1/0/
Parts of Mono, such as C# and CLI, are ECMA standards.
Other parts of Mono, such as Windows.forms, ASP.NET and ADO.NET are based on Microsoft proprietary technologies which are NOT any kind of standard at all, and which have NO Open Specification Promise, and which AFAIK are patented technologies.
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
PS: Having gone off Ubuntu and now Debian, I have just installed Fedora 11 KDE version. Very nice indeed. Ultra speedy. GTK applications look OK with no extra tweaking. Firefox 3.5 beta 4. I have even installed gnash 0.85 instead of Adobe’s flash plugin, and it works a treat.
It seems to be a lot better better KDE4 implementation than Kubuntu.
Mono free.
Edited 2009-06-14 15:47 UTC
Well you’re just rehashing old ground and spreading FUD. Mono is no more patent encumbered than Parrot. 8 years of being around without even a vague hint that Microsoft considers Mono to encroach on its patents (and Microsoft needs Mono) is a record that speaks for itself – and Mono may encroach on patents from another firm, as may any product or library you rely on.
Novell and Microsoft made a deal worth many millions on the basis that “we won’t sue your customers as long as you won’t sue ours”.
Novell Netware was “the original” LAN networking product. Novell must have many very valuable-to-Microsoft patents in that arena alone.
So what was it on Microsoft’s side of this deal, that Novell are visibly working on now, that Novell felt that Microsoft could possibly have sued Novell’s customers over (before the deal)?
As for the other libraries and possible patent infringements … name some. Linux design is based heavily on POSIX standards and being a work-alike for Unix. The ideas within Linux internals are quite a bit older than the duration of patents … and most of the technology was owned by the likes of IBM and Novell anyway.
PS: Besides, my claims on parts of the .NET technologies (namely Windows.forms, ASP.NET and ADO.NET) was that these parts of .NET are:
(a) implemented within current versions of Mono,
(b) are not ECMA standards, and
(c) are not covered by Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (unlike, say, C#).
What part of those claims are incorrect in any way?
Edited 2009-06-15 00:29 UTC
This is what I believe:
1) There are other things in linux ecosystem that are derived from patent incumbered things.
2) But none of those comes from company that is so openly against Free & Open Source Software.
But I have no ill feelings towards Mono developers and users. Just like I have no ill feelings towards WINE developers and users.
I only request that Mono is treated like WINE where:
1) it is _NOT_ installed by _DEFAULT_
2) important package/metapackage, such as ubuntu-desktop metapackage, does not depend on it
3) still give option to people to use it by including it in multiverse/non-free
So far I am quite happy with Ubuntu because it lets me uninstall f-spot, tomboy and mono without removing other non-mono stuff (ubuntu-desktop)
Am I being unreasonable?
With that last point I would say so.
Mono is, after all, Free Software. Their authors grant you all the rights^W freedoms that the FSF require for software to bear the title. That there is the nebulous threat of lawsuits from third parties towards the users or implementors of Mono is another thing, but Linux itself was under threat and its status as Free software was never questioned.
I don’t know, but if I were one of the authors I would be pissed if someone excluded me from the community and called my hard, GPL’d work ‘proprietary’ on a whim.
Well said, I agree entirely. And I would be especially and seriously pissed off, if the guys attempting to redefine what is Free Software and what tools developers should use weren’t even developers themselves. It’s a bit like some people who are illiterate telling authors what sort of books they should be writing. Outrageous, and not any more acceptable just because a large and vocal minority behave like that.
Luckily, at this stage of the FOSS and OSS development community, there is no single entity that can control the field, neither politically nor technically.
I am happy to see the relative decline of the political side of the movement and organizations that push their political agendas to the technical development community, who most of the time couldn’t care less about ideology.
Without the philosophical and political movement, would we have the freedom to start all this at the first place?
Yes.
Umm, you’re suggesting the Richard Stallman wasn’t a programmer when he started the Free Software GNU project? And that the Free Software movement, given its name, isn’t mainly about writing software based on the four kinds of freedom outlined in the Free Software definition?
Richard Stallman had practical problems to solve, caused by not having access to the source code of a printer driver or a Lisp development system for instance, and decided it was a major problem in general. He didn’t get philosophical first.
I still maintain the very same position:
I don’t care about patent threats like being sued for using Mono or Moonlight. That would trigger the “patent world war” and yadda yadda, blah blah…
Seriously, that is NOT the point. I fear the scenario where Microsoft decides to license it much more than I fear the one where they decide to sue us.
If Microsoft were to start charging, say, US$ 0.10 for each installed instance of software that uses concepts patented by them, that would most likely not hurt the proprietary world who use .Net at all, but it would screw any Open Source System based on it.
I don’t care if Tomboy uses Mono, I just won’t use it. F-Spot? To hell with it, not going to worry. I start to worry about things like Gnome-Do.
Great Technology! The features are quite nice, and there seems to be some ideas forming about having it becoming the default interface for Gnome in a not-so-near-future (or did I get that wrong from possible Gnome 3.0 roadmaps?)
Because, the day a major Desktop like GNOME start having a core dependency on software that relies on a patent Microsoft controls, I’d bet they’d, not pull the plug, but simply regularize the situation and charge a symbolic fee on the patent licensing.
Hell, either that or they’re angels. Because I’m sure as hell I would do it. If my competitor{,s} base{s,} a major part of {it’s,their} product on technology I control and they can’t afford to pay *any* licensing fee, I’d charge the smallest possible to make sure my partners are not screwed, and just watch the chaos, because if Gnome-related companies pay, MS wins, if they don’t pay, MS wins too.
Edit to add a little bit more clarity to the post. And please excuse possible mistakes. My Spellchecker is not working and English is definitely not a native language for me. And the grammar errors? Well, I just have to learn more
Edited 2009-06-13 05:57 UTC
You did get that wrong. The GNOME 3.0 Shell is based on JavaScript and GObjectIntrospection.
Hey, thanks for the information! I’m actually very relieved now. I’m not a GNOME User, but I use Gtk+ as my widget set of choice and I’m sure it would take a severe blow if the GNOME Community went through turbulent times because, having to rewrite major portions of it’s desktop.
I wish I could mod you informative.
Anywyas, now I just hope they’ll end up throwing a good FAST Javascript engine to the game, and I’ll be just happy.
Although I would prefer if someone simply wrote a front end to CSharp’s Standardized language to, say, parrot, just so we could port C#+Gtk# apps without relying on any piece of .Net technology other than the language grammar.
Can language grammars be patented?
C# without the libraries is nothing. is like Java language without the java core libraries.
Perhaps, but I believe it’d be fine with libraries such as those in Java’s class library. And those are now open source, too.
The APIs would have to be changed to fit the preferred style for C#, but I think it could be an interesting project.
And those are, of course, for the non-gui stuff. Couple that with the existing Gtk# scene and you’d have a pretty good platform, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Good lord, if people are not bitching, moaning, and fighting about Linux vs Microsoft vs OSX vs BSD vs etc, now there is Mono vs anti-Mono?
Don’t like Mono? Don’t install it
Like Mono? Install it
Like developing with Mono? Use it
Don’t like developing with Mono? Don’t use it.
It really is that simple, yet it seems people would rather mindlessly get worked up about something so trivial and meaningless as this. If you really do not like something, then just use something else. I really do not understand this fanboyism that causes people to get so emotional about something so utterly stupid.
You forgot at least
* Emacs vs. vi
* GPL vs. BSD
* GPL vs. rest
* KDE vs. Gnome
* Unix vs. Linux
* free vs. open
* open vs. proprietary
* Ubuntu vs. Fedora
* Original vs. fork
* Linux vs. OpenSolaris
* MySQL vs. PostgreSQL
* ….
This kind of banality, social skills of teenager, lack of vision and highly dialectic view of world are all very typical characteristics of the FOSS world, fostered by anonymity and public forums of the internet.
Personally I think this is especially evident among the Linux evangelists. For so many of these believers, who typically are not developers nor stake holders, Linux is something abstract; something that needs to “win” at the cost of some other abstraction that needs to “lose”. The history of GNU is one big “us vs. them”. Reminds of Bush or the great ideological blocks during the cold war era.
Now, go ahead and mod me down; I smile nevertheless,
Edited 2009-06-13 11:12 UTC
All that is fine and I would agree, but that is NOTwhat this is about. The article is about mono being included by DEFAULT. Problem is that you can’t just remove mono and the associated apps as this will cause problems when doing updates due to a meta package being missing.
It is pretty much a given that there is some question as to Mono and patents, at least in the US. MS seems to suggest that it has some “IP” associated with it as it entered into a patent sharing contract with Novel. MS won’t clarify the issue. Based on that alone it seems foolish to include this software by default.
How hard it is to install this mono encumber software after the base desktop is installed? It isn’t . . . so why would it be necessary to include it in the base. If it is so important put a big flag on the default desktop about how to install it, problem solved and I don’t have to worry about mono.
It seems like an easy answer to me.
BTW I don’t want mono installed by default, it just encourages the use of it for projects. IF MS comes out and puts it in writing that mono is not patent/IP encumbered I don’t have a problem using it. Although, it does seem rather bloated as is the usual with anything associated with MS. 8^)
Okay, have it installed by default, but don’t have the giant meta-package depend on it. That way, if the vast majority of people don’t care, they get the benefits, but if you care and want to get rid of the offending code, you can do that easily, without major breakage.
can be switched with tknotepad or gedit or affiche if they insist on GNU (I personally do)
I liked the post of Pietro Pesci Feltri at
http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/06/why-mono-is-des.html
“Your effort to defend mono is good, but not perfect.
Please, remove the remark about mono is hundreds times faster than Python. That is a false. Python is not the king of speed but no language I know is hundreds times faster than it. Believe me.
The C – ATT comment is erroneous too, but others has well explained that to you.
Think about that:
The problem is not only about MS. There are at least two other well known packages based in MS technologies:
wine and samba.
I read things about not to use them because is based is evil technology and blah blah blah. That is, in the Linux camp, there are anti-wine people and anti-samba people too. But as far as I know, the number of anti-mono people is much greater, and we are speaking here about the same people in al three cases.
Why mono has so bad reaction compared to the others?.
First, wine is about windows API replication and samba is a smb/cifs API to share files. Both of them, utilities of wide use in the computer world, and if Linux people want to get Windows people, almost everybody using that technology, that compatibility/replacement packages must exist in Linux too. wine will ever be behind Windows API, and samba will be behind cifs API, but that programs/utilities was widespread.
On the other side, how many users was using .NET technology when mono was announced?. Nobody was using that technology, and for me, that was a surprise. Mono is the first software that promise to be behind MS technology before that technology was created. Do not that tell something to you?. In that moment, a lot of Linux people told that was a non sense move, better was to try to replicate existing and emerging technologies like Java, but that was unacceptable because the mono proponents said Java was in Sun hands (BTW: Java is free now), and by my deduction, appear better to be in MS hands
. There is no common sense.
Second is the fact wine and samba are for user consumption, but .NET/mono are for developers too. I can understand to be behind in some utilities, but in development tools too?. If you think that, you are plain wrong from my point of view. I use Linux not because is free, is because is **better**, simple as that. I don’t want crap at any cost nor expensive nor free.
Third is patent appear not be problem for you, but is a big problem for me. I don’t want a company being sued because some MS patent problem, or the system crash because the new version is not API compatible. All because I don’t choose the correct tools. Okay, I can change the problematic part whatever that be but anyway, will be my fault and I will be responsible. Is bad idea to go in life finding problems, unfortunately problems comes to you without your help. Only sit and wait.
I am Fedora user, but from Fedora 11, mono is optional, that avoid to worry me removing it, that is the first thing I usually do after installation.”
My personal problem with Samba stems directly from CIFS; clear text protocol. Why does Windows still spray my user password hash across the network like this? While your grabbing your important document or sending your print job, anyone on the network can grab your login info and start working on it. Granted, complicated passwords make breaking the PreAth but the fact that I can get that information still already created security problems at home and work.
Thanks to a lack of support for ssh and sshfs on the Windows side (I think it’s the only OS that doesn’t offer support still), it’s not even a choice. All my other platforms integrate safely on the network but I have to jump through hoops to come close to that same security as soon as Windows is involved.
I think the difference between the three though is this; WINE and Samba provide a function. Mono is a .net clone. It’s a programming framework for the Studio.net folk.
Unlike Samba, I don’t have personal investment in Mono or Gnome so I’m a third party observer on this one.
The big problem I see here is that Mono for all intents and purposes is being pushed mostly by Novell.
Most of the major developers for the Gnome project also work for Novell.
Novell managed to get Tomboy to become a part of Gnome’s official application list, just as Epiphany is the official Web Browser of Gnome.
Personally, I find the sticky notes in Gnome-applets to be sufficient most of the time anyhow. So why this discussion between Gnote and Tomboy being included is even around is beyond me. I do agree though that it’s pretty stupid to have a framework installed for just ONE freaking app. It would be the same as if Ubuntu wanted to include Google Earth in their standard distribution, so they’d have to include all the QT libraries.
Or of Kubuntu wanted to have Brasero included in it. Forget the stupidity that k3b is still superior, but all the extra gnome-libs would be absolutely stupid to have along with it.
This is regardless of the whole ‘mono sucks’ and ‘mono doesn’t suck’ argument.
Case in point, WTF Debian? Not that I generally use Debian as a desktop OS, but STILL! Well, Squeeze is quite a ways off from being released, so I am sure this will be resolved once Gnote is properly finished and released.
You got that right.
The attacks are not directed against Microsoft but against Novell, and who might have an interest in attacking Novell? Could it be Red Hat?
There is no default install of Debian, or a default desktop. During the install there is a choice for tasks you wish to install. I guess what the article means is that Mono is now a dependency of the GNOME Destkop task.