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I know he can tell you why Brazil is so great for FOSS Projects and developers

I know he can tell you why Brazil is so great for FOSS Projects and developers

> The list is barely active

I was thinking of this one; almost a megabyte of messages each day.

> Evolution 2.0.1

Yup, and Fedora Core 3 shipped with 2.0.2. Hopefully FC4 will have something newer, because lots has changed.

> fails to upgrade older message stores

Hm, I don't deny your experience with 2.0.1, but 2.0.2 upgraded my 1.4 store just fine....

Microsoft has granted RAND+Royalty Free licenses to any patents they might own that are required to implement the ECMA 334/335 standards. So at least our core VM, classes and compilers are safe from any litigation from *Microsoft*.

For Java at least the spec is open: anyone may make an alternative implementation. For .NET there is no open formal spec at all, and alternative implementations have an unclear legal status.

While I do not disagree with your argument on why Java needs to be protected, your statement that there is no formal spec for .Net is just ignorance. The specification for .Net and CLR is probably more formal (ECMA standards).

From the microsoft site:
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is Microsoft's commercial implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. The CLI specification is an international standard (read ECMA) for creating development and execution environments in which languages & libraries work together seamlessly.

Read More

The C# language is also an ECMA formal spec.

For a serious alternative implementation, Go-Mono. As to its unclear legal status, we have our own Miguel De Icaza discussing these issues, Here.

I guess he is tired people are raising the same issues everytime. Its been done to death. And Miguel is quite liked inside Microsoft too.

Look at Open Carpet as well as the Open Source ZLM (formerly Red Carpet)client

For small shops it should be enough. For hackers and developers - it's free (see above)

ZENworks 7 Linux Management can trace its roots back to Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise.

What we* have done with this project is extended the really strong RPM delivery and dependancy resolution (messaged as software and patch management for Linux) and added much of the traditional ZENworks functionality.

What ZENworks 7 Linux Management aims to do is really change the story for managing Linux in the Enterprise; we're not targetting the hacker community here really (take a look at projects like OpenCarpet).

Novell will be including OS deployment via imaging as well policy-enabled AutoYaST and Kickstart (yes - it's cross distro!)

There will also be inventory and asset management, remote control and support, strong auditing and logging and the ZENworks one-to-many policy management.

Novell BrainShare is next week - we will be showcasing this and have live demo systems. There is also a 'Sneak Peek' online [registration required].

Personally I'm really excited that this will change the perceptions of Linux in the Enterprise - it certainly helps with customer migrations from Windows to Linux.

It's taken a large, distributed, cross discipline team to get this far - I'll ruin my Karma by thanking them all publicly.

* the Novell ZENworks business unit - which includes the Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise engineering and QA team.

Go on - mod me down for not being objective ;)

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome [gnome.org] community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat [redhat.com], ximian [ximian.com] and sun [sun.com] decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf [gnome.org], an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated [osnews.com] because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more [gnome.org], more [gnome.org] and more [gnome.org] emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla [gnome.org] or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback [gnome.org] isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this

As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office...I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers.

Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app".

How does this relate to Ximianized Openoffice that I've been using all the time?

The reason I prefer ooo-ximian are the native widgets (KDE/Gnome), including stuff like file selection boxes. I'm noting that OOO 2.0 includes them too - and however, OOO-Ximians news file indicates ongoing development...

How do these two relate in 2.0? Are the "new widgets" in 2.0 merged from ooo-ximian, and in effect, which version should I choose once the 2.0 is released?

How does this relate to Ximianized Openoffice that I've been using all the time?

The reason I prefer ooo-ximian are the native widgets (KDE/Gnome), including stuff like file selection boxes. I'm noting that OOO 2.0 includes them too - and however, OOO-Ximians news file indicates ongoing development...

How do these two relate in 2.0? Are the "new widgets" in 2.0 merged from ooo-ximian, and in effect, which version should I choose once the 2.0 is released?

We have had some efforts in Mexico to bring computing rooms to every school, and a lot has been done by the government and universities. The project eMexico http://www.emexico.gob.mx/ states as its mission providing technological infrastructure and digital services to the whole population, and ITESM university is doing an important education effort on poor societies also.

Any way, Miguel de Icaza (surely the best mexican hacker) addressed last March the Mexican President and the Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transporte (FCC equivalent) and told them about the advantages of open source software http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/emexico2.html (in spanish). At the end, Bill Gates paid a visit to president Fox and the eMexico project was done on Windows machines.

I find it hard to really move the Linux initiative to Mexico. I told my film-mayoring roomate (I'm studying at the US) that I was installing another version of Linux and he told me "really, do you code and shit?", I told some bussiness-mayoring mexican friends who live here, and all I got was "what's that?". There's much more to be done than you think.

For what it's worth, I know of a elementary school that uses Linux on all it's computers. A friend of mine teaches there and says she likes it, "it's prettier".

On the other hand, if you consider Mono not as a .NET framework, but as a stand-alone environment for which .NET compatibility is merely an interesting side effect, then the whole point becomes moot. If interoperability isn't an issue for MS or Mono, then Java is back to standing on the other side of the street as an interoperable language, designed as such, with the clearly stated goal of cross-platform compatibility. There is some evidence that this is the attitude of the Mono developers. So, comparing Mono to Java becomes more academic. Yes, C# is different, maybe faster, maybe better. But it isn't cross-platform, and that's what I'm looking for. Is Java cross-platform? For a given value of "cross-platform," yes. Is Mono? Not even close to the same value.

On the Java side, yes, we don't know what Sun is building in to the JVMs, and OSS JVMs aren't available (though I hear rumors from time to time of a truly OSS JVM), but Java is supported by more than just Sun. IBM has a huge investment in Java technologies, as do Apple and Oracle, to name a couple. Support for different platforms is a well-known goal of Java technology. Until I can build the bytecode on my Mac and run it directly on a Linux, or Windows, or Solaris, or whatever, without recoding, recompiling, and so on, I'll be sticking with Java.

So, in summary, two points: (a) with Java, you're not as much at the mercy of Sun as you are if you think Mono and .NET will remain interoperable and (b) if Mono isn't actively trying to maintain interoperability with .NET, then you're not living under the mercy of MS anyway.

yeah I spotted this just today (and appreciated the significance). For example ecto (commercial blog client) which acts as a binary client supporting multiple blog api's. Thus theres a sort of binary revenge here because the web based systems have their minuses (until I tried out gmail) .

I must say though users are voting with their dollars - enough even to move binary boys such as Joel and Miguel rethink.

So your point is c# is better than java at desktop programming because .. it's not java?
No, because mono uses much less memory and C# has delegates and (in 2.0 or in the current mono compiler) anonymous code blocks, which allow for much better code than the ugly patterns you need to use in java (check the memory comparison fro Gtk+ apps for some numbers and any Gtk# and java-gnome program for the code cleanness issue).

There are plenty of RADs. But first you need to decide on a programming language.

Ada:
Glade

BASIC:
Gambas
Phoenix
Rapid-Q

C:
Glade

C++ (why?):
Glade
Kylix
QT Designer

Pascal:
Kylix
Lazarus

Python:
python-glade

Vectorized graphics are NOT always a good thing. See a great post by Jakub, the artist behind the Gnome industrial iconsets: http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Sc alableIcons/

GNOME is taking steps toward greater SVG usage, but SVG isn't a panacea...

Obviously you're using the standard version of OpenOffice. GNOME has their own GNOME-ized version, ximian-openoffice. I personally prefer it to standard OpenOffice, probably because I use GNOME and it all fits in well with the desktop.

At least one Evolution developer has said he would quit if Evolution was ported to Windows.

He's now in a the tough spot of deciding whether to eat his words or actually quit.

And they've brought back the weather in the latest Evolution! Something I really missed from 1.4.
http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/

If they get this Windows port right, it might be the "Killer app" we've (as in most but maybe not all) been waiting for.

so now we'll have avalon, xaml, royale, xul and perhaps a couple more. perhaps this could make cross platform development a little easier with perhaps just an XSLT?

Miguel had a couple of things to say about avalon.

http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Se p-01.html

Let's make UNIX not suck by Miguel de Icaza. Answers this exact question in quite a lot of detail! Try out the UNIX Haters handbook [warning: big PDF] for a more humourous take on things!

if someone could come up with a OSS version of Outlook

It's called Evolution and it's kicks Outlook's ass :-D

In the link provided, only KDE icons are provided, though GTK+ is used when run in GNOME, and you need the NLD version for the full GNOME look. So the best bet for GNOME-only using folk like me is still the build tool itself.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase.

Download: Installation set for Linux i386 (~80MB).

Features:

• The current stable version of OpenOffice.org with many ooo-build patches and improvements
• KDE Native Widget Framework
• KDE (Crystal) icons
• KDE file dialog (Open, Save As)
• KDE splash screen by Dariusz Arciszewski
• Gtk+ NWF and file dialog when executed in Gnome

Known problems:

• You need libstartup-notification installed, otherwise it fails to run with "no suitable windowing system found, exiting."
• The KDE file dialog seems to hang OOo on Fedora Core 3 when it has Preview on (F11 in the dialog), but most probably it is a Fedora bug (treats unrecognized file types as sound).
• The new systems that build their packages from ooo-build (e.g. SUSE 9.2) do not need this package; check whether you have the KDE file dialog in your OOo before installing.

The project's homepage http://kde.openoffice.org is a bit outdated at the moment, but the work still continues. The main concern is OOo 2.0 now, see the ooo-build ChangeLog. Help of an artist is needed for OOo 2.0: It contains a lot of new icons, the default ones are not acceptable for modern KDE desktop. Please drop me a mail if you are able (and willing) to draw some of them. :-)

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase.

Download: Installation set for Linux i386 (~80MB).

Features:

• The current stable version of OpenOffice.org with many ooo-build patches and improvements
• KDE Native Widget Framework
• KDE (Crystal) icons
• KDE file dialog (Open, Save As)
• KDE splash screen by Dariusz Arciszewski
• Gtk+ NWF and file dialog when executed in Gnome

Known problems:

• You need libstartup-notification installed, otherwise it fails to run with "no suitable windowing system found, exiting."
• The KDE file dialog seems to hang OOo on Fedora Core 3 when it has Preview on (F11 in the dialog), but most probably it is a Fedora bug (treats unrecognized file types as sound).
• The new systems that build their packages from ooo-build (e.g. SUSE 9.2) do not need this package; check whether you have the KDE file dialog in your OOo before installing.

The project's homepage http://kde.openoffice.org is a bit outdated at the moment, but the work still continues. The main concern is OOo 2.0 now, see the ooo-build ChangeLog. Help of an artist is needed for OOo 2.0: It contains a lot of new icons, the default ones are not acceptable for modern KDE desktop. Please drop me a mail if you are able (and willing) to draw some of them. :-)

Might also want to follow this thread:
http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/archiv es/000243.html

2.0 as yet has not been released on the gnome cvs under "evolution/evolution-data-server/"
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/evolution-data-server /

try here:

http://ftp.ximian.com/pub/source/evolution/

ximian-connector-1.4.7.1.tar.gz 11-May-2004 16:02 878K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.2.tar.gz 21-Jul-2004 14:45 896K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.tar.gz 11-May-2004 11:03 881K

try here:

http://ftp.ximian.com/pub/source/evolution/

ximian-connector-1.4.7.1.tar.gz 11-May-2004 16:02 878K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.2.tar.gz 21-Jul-2004 14:45 896K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.tar.gz 11-May-2004 11:03 881K

try here:

http://ftp.ximian.com/pub/source/evolution/

ximian-connector-1.4.7.1.tar.gz 11-May-2004 16:02 878K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.2.tar.gz 21-Jul-2004 14:45 896K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.tar.gz 11-May-2004 11:03 881K

try here:

http://ftp.ximian.com/pub/source/evolution/

ximian-connector-1.4.7.1.tar.gz 11-May-2004 16:02 878K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.2.tar.gz 21-Jul-2004 14:45 896K
ximian-connector-1.4.7.tar.gz 11-May-2004 11:03 881K

But where the f**k is Connector? After trudging through their website and resorting to a google search, I find the connector page and this download directory. Bloody useless. The page has instructions on using Red Carpet (what about SuSE?) and on the FTP site all I can see is a bunch of binary RPM's but nothing else. The debian-woody-i386 directory is empty and all the */source directories are emtpy. HELLO? Where's the f**king source? Am I missing something or has Novell just forgotten about releasing the source code? Nothing seems to have happened since the big announcement in May.

Don't know about live CDs, maybe the folks at yellow dog have cooked one up, or LinuxPPC, but I can help you with making OS X look and feel a bit more like your linux stuff.

I can't find anything on getting auto raise windows. However, there are plenty of virtual desktop items, there are a couple here

You should also be able to install and run KDE and verious other window environments, here's some some information You can google for more. The downside to this is that while under KDE or other environments, you won't be able to run Aqua applications.

OpenOffice is availible for OS X in Fink (which I highly recomend you consider installing and using) and as NeoOfficeJ.

AbiWord is availible as either an X11 app or as a beta native app

The GIMP is availible as an X11 app via fink, but if you don't do a lot of heavy work, can I suggest looking into an application called PhotoLine

XMMS, well there's iTunes and various other players, unless XMMS does something in particular you need.

mplayer and vlc are both availible for OS X as native apps as is firefox.

As for GAIM, I hear a lot of recomendations for Adium.

Anyway, namesapce clashes between movies and FOSS projects is not new at all.

Doesn't anyone wonder if the folks at Ximian ever got harassed with C&D nastygrams over confusion between this project and this movie.

A similar argument was posted by Miguel over at Mono.

Back in Augist, Miguel's argument to the guru's at Microsoft was that Mono may not have all the old API's that .NET has, but Mono doesn't have all the heart burn that the old API's bring.

The guru's at Microsoft said in order to be backward compatible, the old API stuff had to be included also.

From my orientation, this is the point were Microsoft Ethics over powers common sense. I don't know how the Redmond crew can maintain known bad code and still proceed on. I can't help but think that I've just answered my own question.

Seems that was the way that Miguel used to see Avalon, and the almost-defunct WinFS (check out ReiserFS4 metadata, btw), but now, surprise, is not!

Check this out:

"They are all fine points of view, but what makes Longhorn dangerous for the viability of Linux on the desktop is that the combination of Microsoft deployment power, XAML, Avalon and .NET is killer. It is what Java wanted to do with the Web, but with the channel to deploy it and the lessons learned from Java mistakes."
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Ap r-24.html

"Avalon will be a lot easier to write than the previous ActiveX; it's a lot prettier, so when organizations are using Longhorn-based machines, which I assume will be sold everywhere by 2008, it's going to be increasingly hard for the rest of us to get there unless we have an implementation of an equivalent technology."
http://www.theserverside.net/common/printthread.ts s?thread_id=27453

"Longhorn has kind of a scary technology called Avalon, which when compounded with another technology called XAML, it's fairly dangerous. And the reason is that they've made it so it's basically an HTML replacement. The advantage is it's probably as easy as writing HTML, so that means that anybody can produce this content with a text editor."
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/04/28/inter view_with_miguel_de_icaza_cofounder_of_gnome_ximia n_and_mono.html

So, what was all that crap that he told us "fear Microsoft, you morons, we need something like they have to have more 'competition' there" about?

A big FUD? A way to try to implement and waste time with, all we know, some probabily vapourware or with a product that does not work well? Think about WinFS. He also used to say that it will be the doom for all the Linux users don't have a stuff like that, but even the Microsoft users will not have a stuff like that, at least the way all the utopic dudes wants to!

Now that the technology owner is in trouble with it, he says that it's a lot of shit? Oh, come on.

The big point here is that, with some effort, you don't need Microsoft programs anymore to do what your company needs to run your computers. And we don't need people trying to convince us that WE NEED THEM if we really don't need. Gimme a break.

When I first read this I said "huh" but then I see that Miquel De Icaza supports the Palestinean intifada, including all its violence. He has a link on his website to pro-intifada web sites.

Amiga? or the "dying" BSD?

From : Miguel de Icaza
Associated Press: Beating the last year record of 375 billion dollars, this year the projected deficit is going to be 422 billion.

Taylor just sent this note:

Budget Deficit $442,000,000,000
divided by
Workers 141,700,000 (Census Bureau)
----------------
Equals $3119 per worker

I hope you all are ready to work extra hard next year.
Flak Jackets don't grow on trees.

It is up to the hardware vendors to make sure their drivers are compatible with the linux kernel. If the vendors don't see a market need for Linux drivers, they wont spend the time & money to create them. Without drivers, the market stays small.

The easiest way for vendors to get and maintain Linux drivers is to release the specs or source code to the kernel developers and let them maintain it! But vendors are nervous about competitors learning secrets from the driver code about the internals of the hardware, so often they dont.

The rest of the problem is handled by Project Utopia

Project Utopia is really an umbrella project of a bunch of smaller open-source projects. Included are the 2.6 Linux kernel, udev, HAL, and other policy pieces like gnome-volume-manager. From the end-user perspective, the idea here is plug-and-play in the non-techinical sense. When you plug in a piece of hardware, it should Just Work.

I have to say, the country bias is not just an American thing. Every single event that has a Canadian participant is covered in some way. For example, the Men's Team Gymnastics Qualifiers were generally fairly well covered, but absolutely had a Canadian content edge to them. Break to the finals, with no Canadian team involved. You got to see one participant from each of the top 4 teams (US, China, Japan, and Romania) perform each event. Zoom over to the American networks, and you get to see *all* of the performances of those same top 4 teams. The same held true for the Women's competition.

It happens in every country

• 
  In software, assume that everything is already patented. You can't build anything, no matter how new it is, without infringing someone's patent. patents and linux, tim bray
  

The fact that Miguel is an excellent coder does not suddenly make him into someone who has good judgement. Check out the links on the bottom of his homepage .
I realize that this has nothing to do with his work or with the validity of Mono (which, as a .NET developer, I think is a cool project), but it's pretty sad that such a smart person could have such one-sided and ignorant political views. That film he links to at the bottom is even more of a propoganda film than Michael Moore's latest... The trailer with sad music and a billion shots of children made me want to throw up, and Miguel called it "must see".

Why not get behind an OSS implementation of the original ala kaffe or gcj, or push the OSS own Parrot?

Here's why.

"I do not like Parrot" (second paragraph after OSCON subtitle)
-Miguel

Why not get behind an OSS implementation of the original ala kaffe or gcj, or push the OSS own Parrot?

Here's why.

"I do not like Parrot" (second paragraph after OSCON subtitle)
-Miguel

I don't see how coming to Unix from the Windows world is a bad thing. At least not if you do want Linux to be viable on the desktop. Because that's where the Linux-on-the-desktop users are going to be coming from.

These are the same people who say that Linux/Unix will never be ready for the desktop.

That is so wrong, it's slanderous. Mono was started by Miguel de Icaza for pete's sake!!.
The guy started Gnome, Gnumeric, Midnight Commander, Ximian and Mono. I cannot name any single person who has done more for Linux on the desktop than that guy. And you say he says Linux will never be ready for the desktop??!

Well, jeez.. his actions sure had me fooled.

Question 132: Is Mono only an implementation of the .NET Framework?

Mono implements both the .NET Framework, as well as plenty of class libraries that are either UNIX specific, Gnome specific, or that are not part of the .NET Framework but people find useful.

Question 50: Can mono run the WebMatrix?

No. That requires System.Windows.Forms support which is not currently implemented.

Question 40: Do you fear that Microsoft will change the spec and render Mono useless?

No. Microsoft proved with the CLI and the C# language that it was possible to create a powerful foundation for many languages to inter-operate. We will always have that.

Even if changes happened in the platform which were undocumented, the existing platform would a value on its own.

• A lot of Mono software (most, in fact) already is completely incompatible with Microsoft .NET, since Mono doesn't even implement important parts of .NET, but does provide extensive non-.NET libraries that are being used by Mono applications. So, .NET compatibilty just doesn't matter to most Mono developers.
  
• People know that Microsoft could change .NET, and it generally doesn't matter to them.
  

> He doesn't even use Linux, he's a member of warez group, he runs a pirated copy of Windows XP and has never cared about open source at all.

Coming from an Anonymous Coward and Apple zealot, it must be true!

I wonder how he managed to develop DeDRMS with MonoDevelop when MonoDevelop doesn't run on Windows.

Heck I get at least 900 virus emails everyday sometimes over 2000 a day.

Thanks to the guys over at Clam Anti Virus and MailScanner most of these get caught at the mail server.

We have a daily humor mailing list with a few 100,000 subscribers and every time a new virus comes out we get blasted from all the unprotected windows/outlook express users.

To make sure we don't get infected and send out virus to all the users we use FreeBSD for our desktop OS and Evolution as our email client.

Oh and then there is all the spam we get sent, thanks to SpamAssassin for filtering most of this out.