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RMS Asks Miguel to Explain Himself
phaze3000 writes "RMS, responding to questions from the audience at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil last week, has asked Miguel de Icaza to explain himself to the Free software community about comments made last week that Gnome should be based on .NET in the future. More details at Brazillian site Hotbits and in The Register." I find this amusing.
Miguel makes a comment about a linux project being based on microsoft technology
RMS takes offense.
OK, who was suprised???
-Space for rent
This is a *little* disconcerting for some, but I applaud Miguel's willingness to embrace the technologies he feels are best, regardless of the political fallout. Given the amount of XML stuff in Ximian Gnome / Nautilus etc, it only seems natural to move towards more RPC based standards. The fact that one of them is being developed by Microsoft should not IMHO be an obstacle to progress. Now if they would just fix the fonts! ; )
Now wouldn't it be funny if GNOME started basing itself heavily on Microsoft's architecture? I mean if I recall my history, KDE came into existence but it was based on the closed QT libraries. So then the GNOME project was founded to be a more free software purist environment. Now it seems that things are getting reversed now that you can get an open version of QT.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It would be very, very unfortunate if this debate just focused on the politics of Mono following Microsoft Dotnet. Miguel might be misguided in this aspect, but his strategic vision of what is critical for the future growth of Linux-the-platform is far more attuned to current trends than anything RMS, ER or LT have articulated.
/. - of 27 postings on this topic (see my user info), only one was ever moderated up, and that was promptly moderated down again ('overrated'). Draw your own conclusions!
He realizes that without a VM and the cross-(hardware)-platform capabilities it gives, Linux apps are going to be very hard to distribute in future. Normal consumers simply aren't going to run C compilers, yet the Linux "architecture" takes absolutely no account of this.
By the way, it is customary for the 'strategic VM' debate to be ignored in
But .NET is actually a pretty well thought out and designed plan. If you take off the blinders and look at it, .NET really makes sense.
What should open source do? Should it push forward a political agenda, or strive to provide people with the best possible products? Personally I could care less about RMS' agenda. To me open source is about options, and I applaud Miguel for working to provide people another option.
Yesterday, I was sitting at a Microsoft Windows workstation researching something on physics, when I came accross a Webpage with an embedded Java applet. I was dumbstruck; what a fabulous idea! From what I can gather, Java applets are quite prevalent in education circles and other applications where user input can be taken to produce a visual representation of the result. .NET is the best thing for GNOME? It's really very simple: The Java runtime environment is non-free. Certainly, Free Software Java interpreters like Kaffee came a long way when they were actively under development, but what was really missing was a complete set of class libraries.
.NET bytecode that allows the code, once compiled, to be run at almost native speeds.
.NET is an open standard; Java is not. It's been submitted to the ECMA which means that you, I and Miguel are free to make an open implementation of it, explicitly. Sure, some may worry that Microsoft have subversive motives in doing so, but the fact remains that they've released a technology that's at least as good as, if not better than Java.
.NET and I can view it in Mozilla, or in Konqueror, without having to install Sun or IBM's proprietary Java runtime. It's all about the technology, only in this case it makes sense not only to pragmatists but Free Software enthusiasts too. In fact I bet that most of the anti-Mono trolls are the very ones that have those proprietary Java runtimes installed on their systems.
.NET and C# are basically a reimplementation of Java. Sure, they add new features like cross-language support, and finer grained security context. These mean respectively that I could call a perl function from a python script inline. The latter means I could create software that has extensible input and output filters for program data, where the filters are trusted to convert data but never write it to disk.
So, why then do I think
Ximian Mono is writing a complete cross platform development and code exceution platform which includes a complete set of class libraries, and a JIT (Just in Time) interpeter for
Finally,
I don't know about you, but I want to see the day when I'm doing research and I hit a page with an interactive demonstration written in
Ximian is Miguel's, but Gnome belongs to the Gnome Foundation.
.NET system is another matter.
Mono, however, is something entirely in Miguel's hands. Whether or not the Foundation accepts his vision for making Gnome 4.0 a
I hope they consider it carefully and don't dismiss it out of hand.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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RMS is a person; try to avoid ad-hominem attacks and instead focus on his acts & ideas
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Miguel de Icaza also deserves the same respect
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MS is a business - it is not inherently evil nor has Bill Gates been conclusively identified as Cthulu-Jr
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MS puts out lots of ideas & products. Just like with any other ideas they can be used for good or ill, or as intended by MS or not
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RMS through the GNU licenses does have an interest in how & where they are applied (to ensure compliance.) It is reasonable to anticipate possible conflicts and resolve them early
Or this can all degenerate into a bunch of folks screaming how they don't like whateverI don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
What is in my best interests is to have multiple, robust, "genetically isolated" choices for the critical technology my business needs to use. "Cross-pollinating" two of those choices so that they are no longer separate is not a good idea.
And have we already forgotten Microsoft's attempt to ban non-IE browsers from "their" web? Although I often do not agree with RMS' more extreme positions, I think he understands quite well that you can't be a little bit pregnant, nor can you sell a fraction of your soul to the devil.
sPh
Given this plethora of PRE-EXISTING software that is open, mature (or at least written by people who know the problem-space damn well), and standard, WHY would anyone want to port GNOME to
Whether you like RMS or not, the point is that he is very right to question the validity of using
But whether it's possible or not doesn't matter. Miguel's complaint was there was no realistic alternative. I've listed several. Now, I expect (as a GNOME user) a damn good reason why I shouldn't just pick up the GNOME sources and fork the hell out of the tree, to make them OPENLY networkable.
I don't like code-forks, when they're not necessary. It's a lot of hastle to maintain them, keep things in sync, etc, but I don't cater to fools, either.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I stuck to Gnome initially, coz KDE was based on closed source QT. Then QT opens itself, and Gnome moved to Bono and eventually to .Net. And I switched to KDE, so that I won't get myself stuck in some proprietory architecture.
/. posted here that MS might be on something really good (if .Net is that good). If that's the case, good for them. But it's a proprietory architecture. And I think it's a lost cause to base a whole entire open source platform on some proprietory architecture which you have to play catch-up all the time, and which you have to reverse engineer to know how it works (correct me if I'm wrong here). How many companies have been trying to make their apps work with the proprietory format of MS Word and get burned?
Some
You may not like RMS, but as far as I know, he is one of the few who stick to his lines over the years.
MS must be laughing really hard now for causing a little political turmoil among OSSers. At the end of the day, MS is still the winner.
How is this situation any different from free software projects using Sun's Java technologies? Isn't this just two sides of the same coin?
On one side you have Gnome intending to use Mono, a cross-platform language and runtime environment based on open standards,
and on the other you have projects such as Apache's Jakarta using Java, a cross-platform language and runtime envionment based on almost open standards.
I don't recall seeing RMS bitching too heavily about Sun's absolute control of the Java language and runtime.what it was that RMS didn't like about it. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just being reactionary for the sake of it.
Go RMS. He goes too far sometimes, but this time he's spot-on.
Miguel... Geeze, did he sign some sort of secret deal with microsoft? It's -insane- to become dependent on them. Look at the huge trail of partners microsoft has destroyed ("innovated").
I like gnome. I've invested time in learning gnome programming. But this has got me having second thoughts about maybe switching to KDE. I believe in gnome because it's more open. A gnome that requires
If microsoft is onto something with
Does anyone know the most effective places to send letters to make sure gnome doesn't become dependent on
I was sorta confused when reading about GNOME using .NET. Now, I read an excerpt from the article:
.NET framework - into Gnome as "the natural technology upgrade" when asked by the audience."
.NET, right? So how well will Mono do if nobody is using it?! That's why GNOME _should_ go with Mono. The more applications will use Mono, the sooner headlines will be "Use Mono, it's even better than .NET!"
"Stallman only learned of de Icaza's intentions to slip the Mono project - based on Microsoft's
when I read the comment someone made about RMS living under a rock. And to be honest, I think this is one of the best moves GNOME could make:
Mono was created as an open-source answer to Microsoft's
MS has already submitted parts of the .Net API to the EMCA. They have also said that the entire spec will be submitted before it reaches 1.0. As long as Mono stays compatible with the EMCA standard of .Net, then everything would be fine.
This doesn?t mean that MS won?t extend. This is sort of a new method they are trying out. Instead of embracing a good standard they are creating one. MS/Windows-only extensions may occur but I doubt it. These extensions will be the part that MS might not let the dotGnu and Mono projects touch. At least there will be a 1.0 standard that will still be completely cross platform and independent of any org or biz.
I doubt that any of it will come to that. This thread goes well with the one about Bob Young. He states that the future focus of RedHat, and the rest of the Linux community, should be to work on Linux?s current strengths and get it into the embedded market. Tablets, PDA, and other networked portable devices is where the future of computing is going. Web services and apps that are compatible with multiple platforms will be the main reason these devices will work. I think it will be cool when a Palm device can use the same .Net program as the one on a PC, Mac or PocketPC and be able to send messages via the web seamlessly.
Anyways, that was way to long, and poorly written...
OUT
The GNOME project had the opportunity to go with a better toolkit than Gtk+ and they blew it. Everyone said writing a GUI in C with #defines to pretend you have object support was a lame attempt at a good C++ gui library. There are plenty of alternatives to Qt now and Qt is available under the GPL anyways, so if you dont like writing GUI applications in C and you're not fond of basing your future on a brand spanking new language and a completely unstarted class library toolkit, then there's plenty of space on the other team.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think this is the crucial moment for RMS where he either becomes more flexible or risk alienating the remaining few developers who still rally around him and his ideas.
I believe you've got it backwards.
Keep in mind the number of GPL evangelists in the world. Not many, hey? Certainly not enough, and definitely none with the power that Microsoft's PR department has.
We should be thankful that there's a guy out there who risks mockery on a regular basis in order to try to ensure some balance. His role isn't to represent the average coder, it's to give us an extreme point of view opposite of what's normally given out there in the world of software -- corporate corporate corporate.
The man is getting old and it shows.
Look, if you don't like him, tune him out. But don't underestimate his importance. He gives us balance where the Microsoft monopoly would like us to believe it's their right to bleed us dry of every penny we've got. You might as well criticize the Yin Yang symbol for not being all gray.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Actually in scenario 2 we'd still have the .NET tools and so forth. They're useful in their own right whether or not Microsoft continues support.
Between 1 and 2, anyway, it's more or less a win-win proposition.
DNA just wants to be free...
Great, except rotton DDE code from the 80s still runs on Windows XP.
Look at UNIX's lineage:
Athena, Motif, CDE, Java, Gnome, KDE, Mono.
Stick Open/GNUStep and Wine somewhere in there.
You'll note that unlike Microsoft, each one of these steps breaks compatibility with the last one.
There could be a problem if MS shifts the spec or extends the spec. At that point if Miguel decides to chase MS he loses. If he decides to "fork" .NET and stick with the standards he wins because .NET will become fragmented.
.NET requires interaction with a server somewhere. If the service you're trying to use is a Microsoft one, that server will be inside Microsoft. Now, if Gnome can't use that service, why would anyone choose to use it.
.NET what exactly would be the incentive to stick with his version? Forks are always resolved by market share. Guess who's got it.
No one who's been paying attention has any doubt whether MS will extend the standard. All they have to do is require a (patented) process to access a single part of the system.
Remember,
With Microsoft being the defacto standard, Gnome needs a compelling reason for people to switch. Aiming for where Microsoft was two months ago doesn't provide that. More importantly, if Miguel were to attempt to fork
Nope, no sig
Consider several things...
I'm not sure there's much here to worry about -- other than making damned sure that free code doesn't somehow become proprietary through various license follies. On that issue, people like RMS have my heartfelt thanks for their vigilance.
All about me
It's time that Linux people realize that hating MS
/. saying "I realize I'm in the minority that doesn't have MS" or "MS hating zealots have to realize", but I think that you'll find that anyone that actually does anything besides post to /. merely sees MS as an unreliable, irritating company that is great at making a profit. And there's the problem. It is, as is so boringly, and often pointed out on /. , a business and they exist for one purpose and one only: to make money.
.NET as opposed to it being based on Mono then there is nothing knee-jerk or reactionary about his query. He was delivered an incomplete and confusing quote/question and it is all being spun into a debate solely for the amusement of CmdrTaco and the /. trolls.
Ummmm, who's hating them? Sure there's a lot of posting from people on
Many of us prefer Free Software because it is made not to make money as a primary objective, but to perform a function. It is frequently more reliable and useful as a result of this different orientation.
is going no where and is completely unproductive
Even if "hate" were the prevalent motivating factor that you claim it hardly seems accurate to say that its supposed results are going nowhwere: I have a very functional desktop system and my servers are working just peachy thank you!
RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat
It all depends on what he actually means as opposed to the crazy, hate-filled, zealous caricature that you've made of him. If he is questioning what exactly Miguel means when he says Gnome4.0 should be based on
I hope they don't go the .NET direction. I haven't gotten to read the hotbits column yet because it's Slashdoted aleady, but I see several problems with his statement.
.NET framework. You can charge just about everybody to develop it. Microsoft is charging developers fees to develop on .NET. Why you Ximian be different? Look at the place Ximian will be in it GNome 4.0 does tie into .NET. They will be the ones that control code because they control the only NON-Microsoft version of .NET. The stand to make big bucks off this if they pull it off.
.NET as the future will help Linux on the Desktop. We will be playing even more of a catchup game. Look at the companies that have had to rely on Microsoft releasing key information for the products of these companies to work on Windows. Microsoft has a history of withholding key information until they have the edge by already having a product out that supports there "standard".
.NET framework. The ability of all the compilers in Visual Studio to compile/translated down to a common language before compiling. That could definately be use to build APIs for multiple languages at once! It would need to be well thought out, but I think that would be a good goal to aim for in the long run. If I remember correctly, Borland C++ Builder compiled into a Pascal derivative first. There are a lot of possibilities with this design of compilers.
First I think his statement was more political than technical. I think he see the money that is possible through the
I don't see how buying into Microsoft's vision of
I think Miguel has become a follower--especially of Microsoft. I think he has lost his forward vision. I think he should step back from all leadership positions he has on Gnome (if any) and let others take over. His statements in the interview smell of someone buying into marketing hype because they lost their independant thought and no longer truely see a goal.
With that said, the is one thing I like about the
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Whether or not 'a few developers still rally around him', he does stand for his principals over material gain, which is more than just about anyone can say these days.
.NET entrenching their monopoly. What do you think the chances are of proponants of .NET seeing as some sort of salvation for the human condition?
.. in which people only make, distribute, fix, document software for the sole purpose of bettering their society or community).
If RMS 'alienates' developers because he sees the 'killer app' that will put undoubtly make Microsoft's interests a more powerful force behind future technology and information legislation than social and governmental (although the Bush administration is less of a government, and more of a door greaser for the Microsofts of the world) interests, good for him. Developers that abandon his 'radical' prinicipals will undoubtly find themselves on the wrong side of a swing that history prooves has already swung to far. The guy spends his time looking furthur, knowing more, rather than protecting his own interests. Those developers who are 'alienated' by his views are only thinking about their own interests, given the Vegas numbers on MS's chances with
Incidentally, I'm of the opinion that in the past few years, this has become less about 'business' per se, and more of a religion. MS is a church for market pricing (a state enforced system, very evident under the Bush administration, natch). RMS is a church for decentralized social pricing (which is to say that nothing is 'free', but that the cost/worth of software simply gets entwined with social values under his system, as goods and services were before the 16th and 17th century
"Old man yells at systemd"
So, step back and remove your dark sunglasses and may be you will see the light!
Gnome is owned by the community, including users.
Achille Talon
Hop!
that's the point. Miguel can speak for Ximian and say "I plan to base Ximian Gnome 4.0 on .NET and hope other Gnome developers will follow suit) but he can't declare what path Gnome will take.
While its true that many key Gnome developers do happen to work for Ximian, not all do. Also, there has been financial support for the Gnome Foundation from other companies and individuals.
Also, by using the GPL on their code they relinquished the right to withdraw it. By accepting the contributions of others (not employed by Ximian) they have agreed to the terms of the GPL and can't just steal other people's code, however insignificant they feel those contributions to be. They can request permission from those other contributors or extract the "tainted" GPL code, or all Gnome developers may choose to develop on the Microsoft.NET framework, but it's not a pronouncement Miguel should make without even discussing it with the community.
The "Gnome" trademark may be owned by the FSF, as well, which complicates things.
half those class calls are thin wrappers around the OS. Example, .net drawing API is a wrapper to GDI+; all the file IO is modelled on NT objects, not the unix device model.
Even if you arent talking to the API, the package model assumes it is there. ASP.NET even assumes that COM+ is there for things like message queuing and transactions.
MONO could do their own package heirarchy for talking to the OS, and run on all platforms, mac, unix, windows, etc, instead of cloning the windows package heirarchy in one go.
But they'd be better of writing Gnome 4 in java
Riiiiight. Like they way they properly implemented kerberos so that it works properly one way: with windoze servers and windoze clients. The rest have a "broken" (read, correct and following the REAL standard implementation).
Same with .NET. M$ servers authenticating and serving and collecting user data, collecting transaction fees for every single purchase made over the net. Everyone not M$ have a "broken" implementation and only partially working...but well enough so M$ can still collect your personal data, collect fees for transactions, etc.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Well...
.NET don't actually know what .NET is.
.NET IS a publicly available standard, and is very well documented, the API, VM's, etc, are fully documented. We can concentrate on implementing those into the linux world, and give developers a very easy way to develop apps for our platform as well.
.NET specification fits the needs we have, why on earth not use it?
Firstly, 99.9% of the people arguing about
Secondly...we have 2 choices when it comes to making linux popular.
1) Not Invented Here - Do our own thing, ignore what everyone else is doing, and make an incompatable system yet try to make it superior. Developers will have to learn this system saparately than others.
2) As
In other words, regardless of MS history, if the
We're all jumping to conclusions trying to speculate what, exactly, did Miguel mean. There are SO MANY different paths that Mono / GNOME / .NET can take.
./ RMS-haters went nuts and 'interpreted' his words, too.
RMS simply asked the question, "please explain a little better, Miguel". He didn't flame him, and he didn't take an ideological stance, however the
Let's all sit back and listen carefully and only start the flame wars AFTER we get the whole story from both sides.
I fully agree. I don't entirely disagree with GNU, but last I checked, no one elected RMS as head of the free democratic open-source yadda yadda yadda movement.
I am !amused.
Frankly, I'm frustrated at the free software community's willingness to hail Microsoft's latest technologies as a great gift of some kind.
.NET effort...having a complete solution (from the highest level down) that is easy to port to would probably be a great stick to hold over Bill Gates's head.
More likely, a trojan horse.
My take on the entire brouhaha is that MS has simply cloned java...more or less.
Why doesn't some genious FSF type of guru take the BNF or design specs of both java and C# and create a totally free, yet easily cross compiled, language? Then let mono or dotGNU take over from there?
At some point, MS will drop the ball and try to put the squeeze on the
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
GNOME is the GNU NETWORK OBJECT MODEL ENVIRONMENT and "GNOME is part of the GNU project".
.NET - the Next Big Microsoft Plan to Take Over the Internet?
What is GNU? The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. The GNU system is licensed with the GPL and the LGPL for libraries.
Who heads GNU and founded GNU? Richard M. Stallman.
Now, I'd say that gives Richard M. Stallman all the right in the world to inquire of Miguel Icaza where he intends to go with GNOME. So enough with the inane RMS remarks - if you don't want freedom then go be a slave.
I have said before that I wasn't confident in the meandering course that GNOME was taking. Where is GNOME's basic THEME... what is it's guiding light? One minute GNOME is the White Knight of Freedom and then the next GNOME is going commercial with the Ximian moniker and talking about being based on
I dunno, I was initially and still am in support of GNOME pending further developments. I hope they do The Right Thing(tm).
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I mean, really, he wants to implement .NET on Linux? Great! He wants to build a whole GUI framework out of it? Knock yourself out! People are feeling threatened? Did Wine threaten them? No, let Miguel do his thing, more the merrier, yadda yadda.
.NET's technical "superiority." That's open for debate. I'd love to see how that one goes.
.NET that's not ECMA (and maybe some that are) is still Microsoft's house... and doesn't that detail about how little of .NET has actually gone to committee keep coming up?
On the other hand, he did make some statements about
I've been thinking a lot about Microsoft, though, and how they could ever hope to fight against free software in the long run... I mean in addition to marketing and sales efforts. They could try to influence key players and/or figureheads, but that's risky and unreliable... they could use lawsuits. Non-fantastically-wealthy individuals, after all, are nothing but roadkill in American civil court...
Hey... Hmm...
Wouldn't it be interesting, if Microsoft were to play a game with Miguel - to lure him, his co-developers, and his users, by following Microsoft's (often implicit) standards, into treading over a set of Microsoft patents, or a EULA/UCITA-backed reverse-engineering lawsuit? To wait say, 2 years, or 3, and then when Gnome is installed in millions of places and Sun and Dell are prepackaging it, etc., and there are a lot of juicy targets in the crosshairs, all of a sudden, bust down the door and start serving papers?
Please, reassure me. Tell me why I'm wrong about this. Any part of
We're on the road to Tycho.