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GNOME GUI

Could Mono Kill Gnome? 337

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
Jrbl writes "NewsForge is running This editorial by Tina Gasperson about the possible implications for GNOME if it gets Mono (which allows patented components.) There's also a reference to this article at The Register in which Miguel de Icaza raves about Microsoft."
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Could Mono Kill Gnome? More

Could Mono Kill Gnome?

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  • But Mono would probably keep one sick for quite a while...

  • Sure Intel could! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NWT ( 540003 )
    You say Intel wouldn't do that to Mono, one of the Open Source answers to Microsoft's .NET technology.
    Intel could do it ... they're fine with MS, and I'm sure MS puts Intel under a lot of pressure. Intel won't resist because it's (again) all about the money ...

    Just a opinion among others.

  • I predict... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hatter ( 3985 )
    some forty jokes about mononucleosis and how it will just make you sick, probably not kill you. Yada, yada, yada.

  • Gnome can't die (Score:5, Informative)

    by jdavidb ( 449077 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:44PM (#3047680) Homepage Journal

    We saw those comments from Miguel a long time ago. He's not raving about Microsoft. He just likes .NET. So do a lot of us, and I'm a free software raving lunatic. Some of us even like Java. :) Representing those comments as "raving about Microsoft" is a deliberate misrepresentation.

    If you don't want Gnome to be .NET, then fine. Stay with what you've got, and if it ever moves toward .NET, fork. No one will blame you, but you may find that Gnome/.NET outperforms what you've got.

    • Re:Gnome can't die (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JordoCrouse ( 178999 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:57PM (#3047767) Homepage Journal
      If you get a map showing you how to get to Grandma's house faster (but it happens to go by the wolf's den), do you follow it without caution, or do you grab a shotgun first?

      I don't think that the question here is if the .NET architecture is a good idea (it is), and if we should implement it (we should).

      The point of the editorial (and of the /. post), is to wonder if we are setting ourselves up to be eaten by Microsoft (or indeed, anyone who may lay claim to the Mono libraries). It has become clear that Gnome could be effectively taken out through the current licencing. Microsoft would love to beat us at our own game - and use its influence on other companies to pull rank on Gnome and kill it, especially if Gnome/Mono does becomes a huge success.

      Too much money is at stake in the next round of operating systems to leave anything to chance. Microsoft (and Intel for that matter) is setting themselves up for a free shot at Gnome if it ever starts threating the status quo. Thats scary to me.

      • Ok, Mark me, I am nto totally sure of what the author was tryignt o get at, but it seems liek they are saying, The community releases software, intel changes a line of code, all of a sudden they patent the libraries and their process, so that the open source development community cannot use the libraries.

        Am I missing something here? The open source library is still fully usable, and the patent void, because of prior art, I mean it was released to them through that avenue ;-) Or, if they extend a particular feature of the library, and patent that part of the library, well yeah, they have fair use rights to do what they want with it, and block the community from using whatever process that entails, but that is how iot always has been witrh software, so why are they crying now that .NET is in the equation? I mean, they are cloning the JDK libraries right now. Are you saying we should revolt against the GNU classpath group?

        • Re:Gnome can't die (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Rupert ( 28001 )
          Intel sends you a cease & desist. They also tell your ISP that you're violating their patents, and your ISP pulls the plug. So yes, there's prior art, but until your case gets to court (k$s and years later) Intel still has a patent. FSF may be able to fight that, but I can't.

          That's why this is a bad scenario.
        • Let me tell you of a little "problem". I am writing a shareware application. And in this shareware application I am saving data to the users directory. Since this application is going to be cross-platform I decided to write it in wxWindows. All is ok.

          But then I saw that the wxWindows call to get the users home directory was not working. So I investigated. It turned out that Microsoft "added" a new call to get the users home directory. Only this shell call will get the right directory. So I had to #ifdef WIN32 to get the right directory.

          What is the moral of the story? Without this shell call I cannot write a good app. Since Windows XP requires that I save my data in the user directory. I do not want Win32 approved, I just want my app to work properly. Now imagine this one call was patented or hidden or whatever. At that point mono is left without a single call. What does Mono do? Invent a new call? What happens then? I am back to C++ programming with #ifdef's. To be frank I would rather go back to C++ then start anew to be confronted with that problem yet again.

          Sorry folks Miguel has not learned from history and he is doomed to repeat it. Except he may pull down the entire GNOME project. Oh well c'est la vie that is why we have KDE!!!
          • Well, when you submit standards, you generally don't leave out a single system call to screw people over. The one way that I could see CLI screwing people over is the same way that java can, by tieing through the VM into the OS, making specific calls that are runtime determined, and cannot be pre-determined. So, yeah, it -is- possible to to screw over the 100% platform compatibility issue, but even without it, you still have a cross platform language to develop software from in an open source environment if you want to. Whatever Microsoft changes down the road could hurt portability, but it can never break GNOME as they have said here.

            As long as the currently submitted spec of CLI is patent free, there is no fear of loss, death, destriction, or the rule of microsoft.

            CLI will make it to Linux from Microsoft if you like it or not, but the question reamins, would you rather have it open or closed.
            • Standards have never stopped MS before. If their monopoly was threatened they would break the standard in the windows implementation of the CLI. Code then would not be compatible with the unix version and voila they steer the ship back to monopoly land.

              • Re:Miguel DOES NOT GET IT!!! So young and naive (Score:4, Insightful)

                by SerpentMage ( 13390 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @07:46PM (#3048391)
                That is the point exactly. MS is playing the standard supporters like a fiddle. They understand what is required to compete against Open Source. And sadly people like Miguel fall into it.

                I look at Apache and PERL and LINUX... What do they do? They make sure they build the best applications there are.

                Take Apache as an example. To be compatible Apache could have said, wow ISAPI is really cool lets build that and do a good job... What did Apache do? They did a rudimentary ISAPI, but kept focus on their API.

                Or take PERL. Sure there are PERL extensions specific to Windows. But the mother ship PERL (Larry Wall) is more concerned about making sure that PERL solves the needs of all its users.

                Maybe GNOME will continue since Ximian != GNOME. But with people like Miguel talking the way he does does not bode well. I am curious to see what Sun will say...

                And remember track record of anyone building a symbiotic relationship with Microsoft is 0!!! Microsoft is a dictator (their right) and there is no way you can change that.
            • Two points...

              First MS did not leave out that single function call. It was added at a later iteration and hence changed the entire programming model.

              Second MS can and may introduce stuff that works best on their platform. And lets say that Mono does not implement those things. We would then have to write applications like in C++. There would be defines specific to the implementation. To be very frank I thought the point of .NET and this easier programming model was to avoid that in the first place? If I do not have it then why bother going to .NET in the first place? Better to stick to something like C++ and Java.

          • Except he may pull down the entire GNOME project.

            How? Didn't you read the license?

        • Re:Gnome can't die (Score:2, Interesting)

          by lak3rs ( 515363 )
          The GPL and LGPL contain language with the goal that "any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all", while the MIT license does not contain similar language.

          Consider the following scenario. Intel (they asked for the license change so they get to be the bad guys in this hypothetical example) extends the Mono framework to support a new image compression algorithm and releases their code under the MIT license. GNOME uses this new compression algorithm in their next release. Intel then discloses that they have a patent on the compression method and demands royalty payments. What happens to GNOME?
        • The open source library is still fully usable, and the patent void, because of prior art, I mean it was released to them through that avenue ;-)

          The prior art provision won't help you if the paent filing was made before the release of the library as OSS. It would depend on the license as to whether undeclared patents may later be exercised, and I'm unaware whether the strength of any anti-patent provisions in the (L)GPL have yet been tested in court.

    • Re:Gnome can't die (Score:3, Informative)

      by Steveftoth ( 78419 )
      If Mono/.NET actually proves to be a viable technology that speeds up the development of code for GNOME, then we will all be singing the praise of .NET. Otherwise I'll stick with Java/C/C++ for my development.

      C# is an interisting language, I've read parts of the spec, and it seems to not totatly contridict itself.
      In the CLR I'm not too sure how they can trust code, and then not trust code. It seems like the security model is not as strong as everyone seems to say it is. If you compile code to a native level then it seems to be much more dificult to check for security. One advantage doing all interpreted code is that the runtime knows what is being executed better. We'll see how they tackle security. I think that'll be one of the last features to work correctly, on any platform. The only people who seem at all truely concerned with security are Java and Web browser people.
      it is amazing to me how many security flaws have been programmed into Mozilla, Netscape and IE over the years. Compare that to the number of security flaws that other 'file browsers' have had.

    • Managed software (Score:5, Informative)

      by Latent Heat ( 558884 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:09PM (#3047866)
      Having tried C#/.NET at the command line, the performance hit over C++ is maybe 2-3 (18 months of Moore) instead of 5-10 (about 5 years).

      Given that performance is not a show-stopper anymore and given that Managed Software (class library at OS level, GC, runtime checks) is the Next Thing (hey, there was a time when we though C was too much a layer over assembly language), your choices are Java or CLI/CLR.

      Java has some nice stuff to it -- friendly documentation at the Sun site compared to that gibberish that passes for documentation at MS, a nice software-engineered feel instead of that steaming pile of stuff that makes up an MS API (I develop for MS API's). But Java is Java and Sun is Sun, and you have to take the whole thing or leave it.

      Since MS has flopped this "CLR/CLI/.NET" standard out there, it really there for the implementing. Oh, the Borg we hear, we are about to get assimilated into the Collective.

      My understanding is that the effort is not simply to try to clone .NET but to implement an Open Source managed software thingy, and if it forks from MS, who cares. MS can have all the proprietary extensions it wants and we can have our own extensions. Why not clone Java? Sun won't let you. Why not invent our own managed software thingy? We could, but there is one already out there.


    • [Let me preface this by saying I don't know the difference between .NET and AVaporWareMarketingPloy.]

      But it seems like there really are some good ideas in .NET somewhere, my free software zealotry notwithstanding.

      Can .NET provide the kind of common platform that is needed for a good interobject bridge between the current Gtk and Qt widgets?
    • We saw those comments from Miguel a long time ago. He's not raving about Microsoft. He just likes .NET.

      Right.

      And pre-GNOME, when he was grabbing the torch, he wasn't raving about Microsoft either. No, he sure wasn't. He was just caught up in how cool DCOM was, and was all fired up on how to implement it appropriately in GNOME.

      AFAIKT, it is still pretty useless. But it is conceptually "the Microsoft way".

      Then there was email. Miguel cloned Outlook in Evolution. Microsoft KNEW how to make a good email app, so Miguel was going to make one too, "the Microsoft way".

      There is no person I can think of in Free Software development that likes "the Microsoft way" more than Miguel. No one. In fact, at this point I am beginning to wonder if he is on their payroll. First he was fired up to replicate DCOM under GNOME, then he was fired up to replicate Outlook, and now it is .NET.

      GNOME should support .NET. .NET apps should run by mapping function calls onto GNOME. Just like SAMBA should run on linux. But it has to end there.

      • Maybe you're right. But I often think about what would happen if there were a concerted effort to render Microsoft irrelevant -- by producing 100% compatible free-software clones of everything they do. Yeah, I wouldn't want to use it (I was a Mac user before I came to Linux. Still am, a little, since my email is all trapped in, you guessed it, Outlook Express for Mac.), but plenty of people would look at "Hmmm... MS's products, or something identical to MS's products for free," and make a decision that didn't include MS.

        RMS set out to duplicate UNIX, even though it wasn't his favorite system. He knew technical improvements to the platform would happen along the way, and it wouldn't be exactly the same when he finished. Sure enough, it's not. And we're starting to see the final effects, as one commercial UNIX after another starts selling Linux (IBM, and now Sun!).

        One thing to remember is that Microsoft is the enemy because they are a proprietary company. If (impossible though it may be) Microsoft jumped up tomorrow and released all their code under the GPL and started making their money like RedHat, they wouldn't be the enemy any more. Some of us might even like (parts) of their system and bring it into Linux and/or vice versa.

        • One thing to remember is that Microsoft is the enemy because they are a proprietary company.

          I would have ZERO problems with a proprietary company that ATTEMPTED to use well-featured standard formats for exchanging DATA. Data can be interpreted as any format that is displayable only. Like, sound, video, streaming versions, documents, text email, PDF...

          I use linux. Other companies will make and sell software, and I just want to be able to interact with them reasonably.

          When a proprietary company makes data available to me only in formats for which they control the displayers, I don't like it so much anymore. When they additionally make NO effort to use interchangeable formats that are well-featured, I recognize that company doesn't care if its users can interact with any users of other software. There is no excuse for that - it is plain anti-competitive for ANY software maker not to make his data displayable using anyone else's software.

          This becomes really clear in Microsoft's case, because other people's formats are so widely read in the rest of the world. No one in the linux world has a horrible time reading pdfs (acroread, xpdf, ghostscript), or email, or word processing documents that are not in a Microsoft format.

          However, try to read a WMV/ASF file, or a WMA file, or a DOC file, or read a web page served by IIS, and there are LOTS of problems with accurate reading.

  • Sick of this topic already ..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:46PM (#3047691) Homepage
    /me thinks we've spent too much effort arguing about this.

    Ximian is going to develop Mono - that much is clear. It doesn't matter what anyone says, they're going to use it.

    Wether 'official' Gnome uses it or not doesn't matter. Enough people hate the idea that that probably won't happen. And if it does happen, they'll either be a fork, or massive exodus away from Gnome.

    Let Ximian do what they want to do. Gnome is GPL - what's everyone so scared about? We've got bigger fish to fry.

    All this does is provide - "Linux Community divided over .NET/Mono", "Linux desktop struggles" and "GNOME in Trouble" sensationalism for ZDNet headlines, and that's not going to help our cause one bit.
    • Wether 'official' Gnome uses it or not doesn't matter.

      wether Pronunciation Key (wthr)
      n.
      A castrated ram.

      Wether [dictionary.com]

      Boy, I was suprised when I heard they were going to use .net, but involving castrated rams is just going way too far!

    • Ximian is going to develop Mono - that much is clear. It doesn't matter what anyone says, they're going to use it.

      The second part of that is wrong - they're a company, and they don't have the luxury like non-paid independent free software hackers of not caring what other people think of their project. Since they're going to be using it eventually to either drive revenue, or support something that will drive revenue, they do care what other people think.

      It seems that you're saying that they're going to do what they're going to do, so there's no sense complaining about it. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with everything in this article that was posted, but if there are dangers, it DEFINATELY makes sense to complain about it, because ximian CAN be swayed. (They're a company - companies tend to listen to large portions of their customer bases when they have to)

      Gnome is GPL - what's everyone so scared about?

      Aggregation of software! Your package foo might be GPL'd, and might be a part of GNOME, but if you base it on Mono and components written by Intel that have patent problems, you could quickly find yourself unable to distribute your application depending on what Intel wants to do with their patents.

      If a GPL'd application links to a library, or in some other way uses software that's encumbered, problems can spill over. So it's not necessarily safe to say that since Gnome is GPL'd, we'll never have any problems.

      The perfect way to avoid problems is to link GPL'd software only with GPL'd software that isn't covered by patents. That's *not* what Ximian is doing, and not what they have in mind for GNOME.

      • You write as though Mono were the only software component that could be threatened by patent problems. Any piece of Gnome, or KDE, or whatever, can be so threatened, forcing you to stop distributing code.

        If Microsoft asserts a patent covering part of .Net, that may or may not affect Mono. Mono might have to rip out a piece of functionality, but it would not kill the project as a whole, because there is nothing patentable about the basic concept .

    • yes, but we should keep the discussion alive so people, and other companies, know that mono is not free, and may have strings attached.
      anytime anything has a negative impact in free software, it will reflect back to Linux bacause people don't understand that Linux is not the desk top. Like it or not,but Linux has become the Free software/ Open Source flagship.

  • SlashFUD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Apostata ( 390629 ) <apostataNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:47PM (#3047704) Homepage Journal
    I'm getting pretty tired of the trend of Slashdot to post stories that are not only based on very shaky and highly-speculative evidence, but are backed-up by old articles that have since been refuted/proven dead-wrong.

    It's one thing to accuse Microsoft of FUD, it's another to do their job for them by fragmenting the open-source/FSF/Linux community by posting this type of crap.

  • Somewhat Reactionary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Outlyer ( 1767 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:48PM (#3047707) Homepage
    Based on the text of the MIT X11 License, I think Tina's conclusions are a little off. Remember, that the license applies to all of the code.

    The license here, would override the patent claims: "to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions"

    It could be argued, that contributing code to MONO implies acceptance of the license. There is prior knowledge of the licensing terms. In fact, if someone contributed patented code to MONO, they would likely be relinquishing certain rights they would have been granted by the PTO.

    I'm not a lawyer, but if, say, Intel contributes code here, they are entering a contract between the end user and themselves, which guarantees those rights. Since the license is the "last" contract between them and the user, it would hence, override any prior agreements.

  • All about Mono (Score:5, Informative)

    by arnoroefs2000 ( 122990 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:48PM (#3047711) Homepage

    All about this interesting project at the official Mono Project website [go-mono.com].

    From the FAQ:

    "The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Ximian that is working to develop an open source, Linux-based version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Its objective is to enable Linux developers to build and deploy cross-platform .NET Applications. The project will implement various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now been submitted to the ECMA for standardization."

  • Totally lacking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:50PM (#3047723)
    Hello? Does anyone remember GPL v3 which was supposed to include CORBA parts because it allows Proprietary developers too much access to components?

    Well, has anyone seen the sweeping immersion of CORBA based proprietary software on Linux?

    I haven't. In fact, there has been little if anything along those lines. The whole thing was a story of the death of open source Linux, but not enough depth to realize how empty the threat was.

    I would say that I wouldn't use a proprietary tool on linux that used such techniques as CORBA wrappers, unless there was 100% chance that I couldn't find an aternative in a reasonable timeframe.

    The same thing is happening with CLI, and the Mono front, just the same sheep in different clothes.

    So, what does this tell me about the Slashdot editorial process? They choose their articles to get a rise out of their audience? They are not informed enough to see the hollowness of the threat? They think it is up to the reader to tell the validity? I am not sure, but I would say there are much too many Linux-is-dead or Open-source-is-dead articles floating through the cracks, os please, take a breather.

    PS: CORBA has been a vital part of GNOME for a long time now. How could they survive? ;-)

  • Tina is Karma Whoring (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tempest303 ( 259600 ) <jensknutson@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:53PM (#3047740) Homepage
    THis article is scare-mongering bullshit, IMHO. Only certain classes in Mono are X11 licensed, and if Intel starts playing patent hardball, we can just NOT USE their classes. Where's the problem here?

    I also love the way she's trying to implicate Microsoft as "pulling Intel's strings". I don't doubt that they'd love to do such a thing, but I honestly don't believe this is the real reason behind Intel's request to use an X11 license. Besides, XFree86 (y'know, that software we all have that uses the X11 license?) doesn't seem to have any trouble of this sort. If M$ was going to exploit the "weaknesses" in the BSD/X11 license, why not start with trying to "knock out" (as Tina puts it) XFree? This would be a MUCH bigger blow to Free software. Once again, I think this is all just scare mongering to drive hits to NewsForge. Shame on you, Tina.
  • Can someone please tell me what MIT licensing is? It seems that every day I read about some type of new software licensing scheme...GPLv3, MIT, etc. I think that a good post for this article would be a listing of several of the most common software licenses, where they came from, and what advantages/disadvantages they have over the other schemes so that uninformed, yet interested people that are relatively new to free software can get up to speed.
  • Yes, the BSD license allows people to extend and close off open-source tools. That doesn't mean the whole thing is shot!! You can always continue working with what you had before the extensions which are patent encumbered. This whole article seems to be a little over-excited and prejudiced. Open-Source under the BSD license has been around for YEARS. and this has not been a problem before. Solaris is based on BSD, but BSD is still doing quite well. Stronghold and various other servers are based on Apache, and Apache is thriving. The shock value of this article is going to get a lot of people into a frenzy over something I feell is a non-issue.

  • dotGNU? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:56PM (#3047765) Homepage
    What about the dotGNU project? Isn't it the same thing than Mono? If it is, maybe it could be a nice free alternative for Gnome.

    • Re:dotGNU? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by talonyx ( 125221 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:58PM (#3048130)
      This reduplication of effort is the very reason why 99% of the desktop machines in the world still run Windows.

      I'm sure the free software community could produce far better software (feature, stability, usability, and security-wise) than Microsoft... IF YOU ALL WORKED ON THE SAME DAMN THING.

      Why is there both Gnome and KDE? They look virtually the same, try to do the same stuff, and have similar failures. Hell, both of them are (mostly) GPL now, so why keep duplicating work?

      "A nice free alternative for Gnome"

      Gnome is the "nice free alternative" for KDE, which is a "nice free alternative" for Windows. How many nice free alternatives do we need before we realize that we're not getting ahead, only sideways?

      At least a managed company like Microsoft or Ximian or others are capable of fast, co-ordinated moves in a specific direction. Look at how fast Microsoft moved into the Internet market.... embrace and extend it may be, but why can't Free Software move this fast? Oh that's right, because free software likes to endlessly do the same thing over and over, like a GOTO with no exit point.

      In fact, this site seems to be more and more about software licensing dilemmas every day. We should call it "LicenseDot" or something...
      • Said it once and will say it again. So why do we not all drive Ford's? Or drive GM's? Why do some people like Red wine and other's like White...

        Because we like choice and choice is GOOD... Lack of choice is bad!!!
  • I hope Mono doesn't kill Gnome, as I'm fond of both Gnome and KDE really. My concern is for the Linux community following a Microsoft "standard" perhaps too quickly given the rate that Microsoft "standards" have changed in the past.

    OTOH, I'm not opposed to fighting fire with fire. I certainly don't think Microsoft can complain much if, say, the Mono folks end up providing extensions to the standard in *their* implementation that won't necessarily work on Microsoft products. After all, how long do you expect it will take Microsoft to do the same to Mono?

    (Okay, the last bit really wouldn't be a good thing, but after MS's constant misapplication of the term "standard" I had to vent).
  • If someone turned out to have a patent stopping development and distribution of Gnumeric, or Galeon, or the gcc Objective C frontend, would that shut Gnome down? Of course not.

    Mono is using gnome - the same way any other app does - as its infrastructure. It's not going to become the foundation of Gnome. Yes, you will be able to implement applications for gnome using Mono. You can already do that with other tools like C/C++, Perl, Python etc. If Perl (say) suddenly was no longer available for some reason, would that impact Gnome? No.

    In fact, nothing would stop anybody from reimplementing the relevant mono libs using KDE instead - and we'd have a desktop-agnostic development environment as well.

    /Janne

  • Could it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:01PM (#3047806) Journal
    Could Mono kill Gnome

    I sure as hell don't know but I'm pretty sick of watching the redundancy in Linux. Sure, most of it has a purpose but I might be able to use the damn software if people made sacrifices for the sake of getting a desktop product out. I'm not trying to start a flame war about whether it is good enough for *your* desktop or not so please don't start.

    What I would love to see is everyone who is working on anything remotely redundant to drop what they are doing, put their collective heads together and come up with a real competitor for Microsoft in something *other* than the server market. I don't care if it is a desktop product or an TV/entertainment product.

    There are too many unfinished products and not enough of One Good Thing.

    BTW - I mentioned the TV thing because I am currently building a home theater PC that has caused me much grief. I see that both Microsoft [microsoft.com] and the Linux community [linuxtv.org] are addressing the market.

    10 to 1 odds that Microsoft finishes a product that everyone buys and bitches about while the Linux product stays in beta stage for years to come.

    Sigh...

    This message has been brought to you by the department of the redundancy department.
    • What I would love to see is everyone who is working on anything remotely redundant to drop what they are doing, put their collective heads together and come up with a real competitor for Microsoft

      To some extent, redundant projects are a good thing. If two projects are competing, they can spur each other on to better results. Look at GNOME and KDE, for example.

      Also, when there are two projects, the potential downside is reduced for trying something new. If GNOME bets on Mono, and KDE steers clear of it, then if Mono turns out to be a bad idea, we can all switch to KDE. (But note that it might be easier just to fork GNOME and switch to the non-mono fork, especially for those of us already using GNOME.)

      But it's moot anyway. People work on whatever they want to work on. I think the world has enough text editors, but no one cares what I think; if some guy wants to write a text editor, he's going to do it. Free software, freedom. Nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it?

      steveha
      • Not so much on the side of redundancy, since redundancy -can- be a good thing, but what is really important here is that everyone and their dog work on their own projects, and if all being the same are not nearly as good as they could be if they had a consolidated market, one being theoretically the best.

        If I, and everyone else wasted thier time making their own text editors just to use my new keyboard layout, or variable color scheme, or minimal memory requirement, or whatever, you overlap in projects by 90% of the work. That work could have come together to make a truly innovative project instead of just a half assed attempt to clone the existing norm.

        We need something like SourceForge on steroids, which seriously needs enhanced collaboration tools which will encourage outsider lone codes to work together. One of the things I hate the most about sourceforge is the lack of collaboration tools, which I think in Open source, that is one of the most important tools, that, direction, and standards.
        • That's the MS mantra and just look at the devastation that any muppet who knows 10 lines of VB can unleash on *everyone* who buys into the Windows + Outlook + IIS + IE + Office monoculture that they sell.

          Monocultures *do* have lower costs, they can reproduce with less effort, but WTF do you think that sexual reproduction evolved? It happened because species without diversity get *wiped out* very easily. You show me an environment where all the code is the same and I'll show you an environment that can be taken out in one fell swoop.

          Just look at the world around you, all the interesting life forms use sexual reproduction to increase diversity. Life tells me that monocultures are the wrong way to go.

          Got it?

    • Utter rubbish (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Colin Smith ( 2679 )
      Redundancy is good. Having diversity is a good thing, it's the sign of a thriving community.

      What will you be suggesting next? That humanity should take up wholesale cloning?

      Monocultures are evolutionary dead ends. Inevitably something comes along that devastates everything in the monoculture because it's all based on the same code. If you want to be taken down when that devastation is unleashed, be my guest. I'll take the other path.

    • What I would love to see is everyone who is working on anything remotely redundant to drop what they are doing, put their collective heads together and come up with a real competitor for Microsoft in something *other* than the server market.

      You know, RedHat 7.1 converted me away from Mac OS. And that was before Sun's Gnome usability study. I'm looking forward to reaping the benefits of the work that's happened since then.

      If they're winning Mac users, how long do you think it'll be before the Microsoft exodus begins? (Hint, consider software license fee structures in your answer. :) )

      I'm optimistic. It's coming.

      I know the redundancy pains a lot of people, but it has given us competition that enables us to pick the best solutions. Sometimes there's more than one best and we hit a stable point with multiple alternatives instead of a monopoly. And that's (mostly) a good thing.

    • If that's what you want, feel free to work on it, or to pay someone to work on it. Don't feel free to tell volunteers where they can and cannot put their time and effort. It's rude and stupid.


      Don't like a product? Don't use it. Simple as that.


      Trying to tell someone that doesn't give a crap about "Desktops" that they must work on one only works when you are willing to pay them a salary.


  • MS advertising on ./ (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RampagingSimian ( 449870 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:02PM (#3047811) Homepage
    Hrmm...(offtopic?)

    There's a Visual Studio .Net banner ad atop the front page at 4:59 pm Eastern.

    Shall we expect more open and Slashdot now? :D

    [Granted, it is served through Double-Click. Does MS outsource advertising?]

  • Most people are scared that if GNOME adopts the .NET framework, Microsoft will change and break things and general anarchy will ensue. I ask you this: how does this differ from the WINE project? Why do people seem to care so much about the .NET Framework?

    And it's been said a million times, but GNOME has not decided to incorporate Mono. Mono could very well stand on its own legs in any "desktop environment". It could fail miserably (doubtful). Why do people care about it suceeding? Because the Open Source and Free Software communities will be pawns to big business? But I thought we couldn't be controlled or coerced ....? Can someone set the extreme-pessimistic record straight, because I can't see any other reason to hate the .NET framework besides the fact that Microsoft is behind it. But even that reason seems a little petty to me - if you don't like the technology, just ignore it.
    • Most people are scared that if GNOME adopts the .NET framework, Microsoft will change and break things and general anarchy will ensue. I ask you this: how does this differ from the WINE project?

      In that respect it's not. I've long considered WINE a non-starter for that reason.

  • So don't use it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:06PM (#3047843) Homepage Journal
    The article is very hard to read, as it seems to confuse patents and copyright in ways that are imiscable. I will try to lay out the timeline that I think she's assuming when she says "Intel, having gleefully taken advantage of the MIT licensing on Mono's class libraries, enforces its patents against every entity making use of its modifications, including the Gnome project, effectively shutting it down."

    1 Mono exists
    2 Gnome adopts Mono (a reach, but ok)
    3 Intel writes proprietary (non-MIT-licensed) components for Mono
    4 Intel enforces patentson those components and shuts down Gnome!

    Ok... so we come to the obvious solution. Assuming that #2 happens (no pun intended), #4 can only happen if #3 is followed by:

    3.4 Gnome adopts Intel proprietary components via Mono

    Um... *WHY*?!

    Of course, if Gnome implements these features using Bonobo and Orbit guess what Intel can do? That's right... enforce their patents!

    This is, AFAIKT, junk reporting. If I'm wrong, please show me specifically what timeline you see occuring.

    • Re:So don't use it (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:46PM (#3048074) Journal

      I think what she's trying to say, in a rather roundabout, "let me adjust my tin foil hat" sort of way, is that there's no legal precedent for this situation. Is there an implicit patent license when patented material is contributed to an Open Source project by the patent holder? Look at it this way:

      1. Ximian adopts X11 license for parts of Mono
      2. Intel contributes to X11-licensed parts, including Intel-patented code
      3. Gnome 4.0 is converted completely to Mono
      4. Gnome acheives World Domination
      5. Intel calls in its marker on Ximian and Gnome, demanding royalties for that Intel-patented code
      6. Everyone gets dragged into court
      7. Miguel stands up in court and says, "Of course, there's Intel-patented code in Mono. Intel put it there in the first place!"
      8. Intel responds, "Yep. We did."
      So what happens now? Will the judge have a sudden flash of common sense and tell Intel where to stick it's legal briefs? Or will Intel's high-priced landsharks invoke some strange combination of DMCA, SSSCA, the Patriot Act, and a rider on some farm subsidy legislation to swing the case their way?

      It is a valid concern, and I would hate to see projects as significant as Mono and Gnome be taken down by it. But I think Tina is being a bit too alarmist.

      OT: This is what Slashdot's email auto-obfuscator generated for my email address:

      krussell@
      mEEEsa.com minus threevowels
      Hey, Taco! I do not work for Jar-Jar Binks! :-)
      • Intel calls in its marker on Ximian and Gnome, demanding royalties for that Intel-patented code

        Sure thing Intel, will give you 99% royalties on all the profits we get from these gnome binaries we sell. Here you go, here's your 99% of nothing... Aw what the heck, we'll even double that since we like you so much.
      • Your concern is valid, but ill placed.

        1. If Intel writes code for Mono that infringes on a patent or Richard Stallman writes the code for CORBA that infringes on a patent, it's still patent infringing.

        2. Once Intel notifies you that you're infringing, if you strip that functionality, you're not infringing. If you can't strip it, and have Mono still work, then I suggest to you that CORBA won't work either. In that case, the idea of an open source component model is pretty much dead until the patent expires or is contributed to the public.

        3. When you own a patent, you can license it any way you wish. If you choose to write reference code and distribute it under the GPL, that's a very valid option. Intel would be free to change the license, but anyone with their hands on previous, GPL-licensed code would... well, have a license. It really is that simple (IANAL). Could this be a test for the GPL? Sure, and that's a seperate topic, but one I'm not too concerned about. Why? Because it's in the direction that the GPL is strongest. The GPL is weakest in defending the code owner (potentially) not the user.

        4. I think she was not so much concerned about Intel contributing code as writing components that were proprietary and patented. Again, if they did this, we should all carefully avoid using Intel's proprietary components. Again, this comes down to sloppy reporting.

        I think this whole thing is a no-brainer.

  • Rather paranoid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:07PM (#3047845) Homepage Journal
    Personally, I'd say this is a pretty paranoid article. Sure, M$ must have some sway with Intel, but Intel has been pretty active in the open source world themselves, going so far as to invest in RedHat and VA even. Linux on the server is big, and so is the money. Nothing Microsoft could do to Intel (rather then OEMs who license their software) could cause them to kill GNOME.

    Also, sun is never going to develop software that requres .net. It's just not going to happen.

    Other then that, what exactly about the MIT license makes it more prone to patent problems? Is it that MIT'd code can be patented or what? How is it that an official GNU project (as GNOME is) not use the GPL or LGPL?
  • Haven't we already seen enough on this drama by now? I mean, sometimes it's like a damn soap opera around here with the "he said/she said".. Let's see, Miguel makes some statements about the idea of .Net and Mono, RMS is taken out of context and made to look confrontational (OK! *More* confrontational) about it. Both of them bend over backwards to explain themselves and repair the appearance of any breach, Miguel comes back with a *very* lengthy explanation about what he meant and what 'The Register' had taken out of context for whatever reason, and yet we find ourselves looking at the same tired issues, yet again..

    Hrmmm.. I wonder what's on Jerry Springer...

  • Why can't people see what MS is really up to? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Reylas ( 556731 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:12PM (#3047885)
    Maybe I am missing something, but I don't think that MS cares whether or not there is an Open Source version of dotNet.

    Follow me on this.

    Operating System wars are over. Linux is making headway, and the courts are ruling that you have to open the source code. Microsoft has seen that revenue is not going to increase with the rapid OS upgrades. They want a month to month revenue stream. So they *invent* software renting. But this is not 'hey I am going to check out MS Office for a couple hours at 19.95 an hour', it is more like this as I read it. I need a new resume, so I start a wizard in Windows 2002 that helps me write one. So while the wizard is going through each part (like spellcheck, cover letter) the wizard automagically downloads the proper .Net pieces to handle each. All the while, your passport account is getting billed a small amout for each use of each different function. So instead of paying $200 for Office, you pay a small amount (say .10) for each use of the spell checker. So maybe this month, your passport bill is 19.00 for use of .Net services. Instant revenue stream.

    When upgrades happen, then you automagically download the latest version of the .Net function.

    Everything I have read is that Microsoft want to push this everywhere. They want this on every computer, every PDA, even right down to your cell phone. So I do not believe that they care that it is on Gnome. If the passport stuff is in there, then it just adds to the revenue stream. That is what they are really after.

    Plus, I see Gnome trying to implement the .Net Development part, not the .Net Framework. And, why would MS be porting it to FreeBSD if they did not want Linux to have it as well.

    The only interesting thing is if MS wants the passport/hailstorm added in. Then things could get interesting.

    Mono only wants to do the software development side, and there are a lot of nice things in there. It is the passport side that makes us cringe.
    • Interesting point, but where in the hell do you see courts ordering open source code? Yes, they order it in drastic cases and the party reviewiong the code is really constrained in what they are allowed to do, you make it sound like courts are mandating Open Source projects for companies.

      Secondly, as far as OS Wars being over, nothing has really changed that much. The market changes the same way it did a few years ago. Systems come and go, just because MS is dominant on the desktop doesn't mean there is little change in the market. If you would qualify the market before as a war, it still is, but I would say any supposed OS "war" is a misnomer in any time..
  • My co-worker once told me, that OS/2 died because its windows emulation was too good.
    I think something like this might happen to every Linux Software. Therefore it is unwise to support closed standarts.

  • The real danger (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ogerman ( 136333 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:37PM (#3048030)
    OK, my turn to play pundit. (-;

    It's one thing to support what could eventually be a necessary "embrace and extend" standard, but to focus everything on .Net seems dangerous for GNOME. Imagine that Microsoft really does let other people play in the .Net game. Consider the ramifications to the Open Source movement if proprietary software like MS Office or Photoshop could be used more-or-less 'natively' in Linux using the .Net API provided by Mono. Would laziness set in, slowing projects like OpenOffice and Gimp? Would people still use the free software or would they just give in and use what is more familiar? Without .Net support, people will continue to be forced to use Free Software in many areas, thereby causing them to learn new tools and break ties with proprietary ones.

    So it seems to me that supporting .NET is supporting the future of proprietary software simply by enabling it. Another sign of this would be GNOME/Mono moving away from GPL to a "less defensive" license. Microsoft knows that Windows could be doomed in the near future. They also know the power of the Open Source movement and that it has the power to obsolete their entire proprietary business model. IMO, they're using .NET to try to hook people into hybrid free/non-free software so that they'll still have a strong foothold no matter where the market evolves. And if the patent issues get ugly, we could end up paying Microsoft for software that *we* wrote. Sure, GNOME itself could still be free, but if half the Open Source software for it requires .NET modules from Microsoft, licensed at a cost, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. A similar analogy would be the DVD crypto mess. You can buy the media, you can write the free software to play it, but you can't legally use them together in the US.

    Let me re-emphasize: We do NOT need ANY proprietary software. We do NOT need Microsoft or ANY of their products. All we need is a stable user-developer community. In a word: consultants. That is the future of Open Source in the business world. And it is a good future both for business and free software developers.

  • /. pattern (Score:3, Informative)

    by ambrosius27 ( 251484 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:49PM (#3048089)
    GNOME has become a lovely *political* (rather than technical) topic for slashdot during the past few months. See below:

    The Mono controversy (with some RMS thrown in): RMS controversy (apart from Mono): GNOME is behind or dying or a slave of corporate masters (see also Mono controversy):

    Etc. Almost half of the past 30 news posts on GNOME involve a political controversy. Is this news-site bias or simply GNOME's ability to stir controversy?

    • Re:/. pattern (Score:4, Insightful)

      by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @07:03PM (#3048159) Homepage
      Are you kidding? GNOME is the most controversial project in the history of Linux because it was basically launched, at least at first, to kill KDE (which is the second most controversial project in the history of Linux).

      GNOME's GPL-ness and RMS-ness have been the subject of attacks and discussion and "I'm taking my ball and going home" for years now. Only KDE, with its former questionable-GPL-ness and non-RMS-ness comes close in terms of controversy.

      I would suggest that there has never been either a GNOME or KDE story on Slashdot or most any other site that did not start a flame war on the related forum. It's the nature of GNOME and KDE... because they are the "desktops of Linux" people have the perception that whichever eventually becomes more popular will essentially be Linux (for the average user) for the rest of time... that kind of perception of finality brings out all the GPL-crazies, anti-GPL-crazies, make-Linux-like-Windows-for-the-user crazies and I-am-anti-Windows-don't-do-it crazies.

      (Meanwhile, WindowMaker on the desktop has been silently winning in terms of actual usability almost since its inception.)

  • ...even Jar-Jar could kill a Gnome.
  • Mono isnt even released yet, patents are bad, i hope that isnt supported, but if it is, what stops you from taking it out of mono and making a truely open source mono.

    My point is this, just because mono the source is being made, doesnt tell you how the community will use the code once its written.

    Ximian does not have the authority to ruin Gnome, if people dont like Mono Gnome will fork or Mono wont be implenmented at all.

  • Can the patents really be used in this way? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wateshay ( 122749 ) <bill@nagel.gmail@com> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @07:20PM (#3048267) Homepage Journal
    The biggest argument I've seen here is that Mono could contain code which was written by Intel (and possibly others), which is covered by certain patents. The reasoning follows, then, that at some indeterminant point in the future Intel (or whoever actually owns the patent) could yank the software out from under everyone by recalling the patent.

    I seriously doubt this could actually happen, though. As I see it, there are four possible scenarios:

    1) Intel unknowingly places patented code into the Mono source tree.
    This, of course, could happen at just about any time to any open source project in existence, so I don't see any reason to worry more that Intel would do it. In fact, it's less likely, since Intel has a lot of lawyers who will work very hard to make sure this doesn't happen.

    2) Intel knowingly places patented code for which it doesn't have an explicit license into the Mono source tree.
    Again, this is unlikely, because Intel would be in a whole lot of trouble. At the very least, Intel would be required by the courts to pay the licensing fees for the patented code in Mono.

    3) Intel knowingly places patented code for which it owns the license into the Mono source tree without providing Mono with the proper licensing.
    This is also unlikely. Just because you own the patent on something doesn't mean that you can use it to subversively extort money (or code) from someone. Patents don't have to be actively protected in all cases in order for them to remain viable, but a company that provides someone else with a product patented by a patent they own is implicitly licensing it to them. IANAL, but I know enough to know that there is just no way the courts are going to allow Intel to knowingly place patented code they own into Mono and then try to use that to gain control over Mono at some point down the road.

    4) Intel places patented code into the Mono source tree, and explicitly provides a license for it.
    This is the most likely scenario. Since I doubt the Mono developers will accept code that is explicitly licensed with a license that does not last throughout the lifetime of the patent, this won't be a problem. If Intel signs an agreement, they are bound by it, patent or no patent. Just because they own a patent doesn't mean that they can renig on deals that they have signed. It is possible (likely?) that the patent license will apply only to Mono and its direct derivitives, but that only poses a risk to people who take the code from Mono and put it into another project.

    Personally, I don't think there is anything to worry about here. The Mono project should, of course, make sure all of their i's are dotted and all or their t's are crossed, but if that is the case nothing as devestating as what has been proposed could reasonably happen.

  • patents are unrelated to Mono/Gnome (Score:3, Interesting)

    by markj02 ( 544487 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @07:21PM (#3048269)
    Yes, software patents can kill free software. That's a real, dangerous, ever-present possibility. However, that has nothing to do with how Gnome or Mono are licensed. If Intel has patents that cover technology implemented in Gnome or Mono, they can threaten or possibly kill the projects with those patents.

    The only time anything changes with respect to Intel and patents is if Intel explicitly signs their rights away. I believe that if you distribute your software under a GNU license, that means you give others the right to use your patented invention. That's a nice safeguard, to be sure, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to protect Mono or Gnome from Intel.

    If Intel were duplicitous enough to contribute a patented invention under an X11-style copyright and then, two years later, turn around, mention that they have a patent, and sue for infringement, Mono and Gnome might have to stop using that part of the software, but I seriously doubt any judge would award damages. And the affected parts of the software could be easily replaced, since patents are not like copyrights or trade secrets--there is no risk of "contamination".

    Altogether, the article strikes me as being as the grumblings of someone who is just overly zealous about GNU-style licenses. Yes, GNU-style licenses are nice, but the sky isn't falling if something is distributed under some other license. The X11 license is perfectly fine for open source software and has been used for many projects (including X11 itself) that are a much more dangerous minefield of patents than a 1970's style object oriented language.

  • FUD (Score:2)

    by Z4rd0Z ( 211373 )
    God damn, that article was complete and total *FUD*. It's either a case of someone not understanding the MIT license or deliberately spreading misinformation. And look at you poor people eating it up...
  • I hope I'm not being redundant, but I did not see anyone else link to further clarifications from Miguel, free from any editing done by The Register. The link is mentioned briefly at the end of the article.

    http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002- February/msg00031.html [gnome.org]

    If you're a reasonable and logical person like I hope to be, you reserve judgement until you hear all sides of the case. So, instead of declaring that MS == Evil, perhaps there are reasons why someone who is clearly is an Open Source fan likes .NET Framework.

    I realize his post is long, so if you're not going to read it, I see his key points as being:

    1) Increased productivity for Gnome/Mono development.
    2) Language independence, allowing programmers to continue to use their favorite coding.
    3) Better portability for open-source applications.

    "My experience so far has been positive, and I have first hand experience on the productivity benefits that these technologies bring to the table. For instance, our C# compiler is written in C#. A beautiful piece of code."

    Hands on experience! I think that unless you have had this with this technology, you may not be qualified to judge this decision path. Let's give this a chance, and try to be both passionate and reasonable in creating Windows alternatives.
  • ...turned out I was just really bored.

    Schwing!
  • as long as the GNOME developers get plenty of fluids and avoid strenuous exercise, they will overcome Mono. Recovery may take anywhere from two weeks to 3 months, though.
    • Actually, mono never really goes away. Some believe it's one possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. Must be, I for one am really tired all the time of the trolls that masquerade as .NET articles on slashdot...
  • Could Mono Kill Gnome?

    Gnome should be safe so long as they don't go around kissing too many people. Of course, who has ever heard of somebody dying from Mono, anyway?

    *duck*
  • I'm sick of hearing about it.

    Miguel go join the other team so I don't have to read about you anymore!

  • Have respect for Miguel. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Otis_INF ( 130595 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @04:43AM (#3050149) Homepage
    I'm a developer on win32 platforms, so perhaps I shouldn't care, but I find it irritating at best that a person who put in so much effort to give the Open Source community the stuff they wanted, is critizised as if he's the lamest n00b in the world. And why is this? Because he's one of the very FEW on Linux platforms who has realized that today's way of computing is doomed and will be taken over by a new, more distributed way. Miguel took the brave stand to decide to implement a Microsoft based technique.

    Oh brother, now he's true evil...

    Get a life, zealots. If Mono kills Gnome (or better: makes Gnome obsolete), why would that be something bad? If Mono lets you run the applications you need, makes you use your Linuxbox the way you want and the way you need it, would you miss Gnome? I don't think so.

    Mono is a hell of a project to complete, a lot of subprojects of Mono still need completion. If you want Linux to survive in the new era of computing, stop whining and start coding.

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