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.

Comments

News?

[.sig]

Miguel makes a comment about a linux project being based on microsoft technology

RMS takes offense.

OK, who was suprised???

Re:News?

[GreyPoopon]

I'm fairly suprised. If the free version of .NET is licensed as free software, who gives a damn?

Yes, but he didn't say that GNOME would be based on MONO technology. He said it would be based on ".NET" technology. While we all know that it would have to be MONO to run on Linux, his statement becomes an extremely powerful marketing tool for Microsoft. As such, RMS would rightly be opposed to such a statement.

Re:News?

[Znork]

It depends on what your definition of tool is. For RMS, any proprietary software is comparable to a tool with a small nuclear charge that will explode one time out of 5 and which he isnt allowed to disarm.

If you have such a viewpoint, then yes, the MS Nuclear Hammer (tm) may be better than someone elses Free Rock (tm) for hitting nails, but RMS is more concerned with not getting blown to his consistuent atoms than using the absolutely best tool.

You will find people in the Opensource camp who are concerned with opensources ability to create better software, and who will agree that the best tool is the best to use. You wont find RMS in that camp however. He is more concerned with the long term consequences of free vs proprietary software.

Personally I'm inclined to agree with RMS, up to a point. No company can be trusted with the basic infrastructure of information technology, because they will all abuse the power it gives them. If I could see a way where we could have a competetive and vibrant industry based around standards, I would be far more lenient, but I dont see that happening; companies are afraid to the death of competing on equal terms. The only solution to that problem remains Free software, which makes RMS a good person to listen to.

Reality check for RMS

[MSBob]

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 mean for crying out loud the Ximian team is not even suggesting using non free code. They just want to base the next version on a spec that also has a nonfree implementation. There is no reason why there needs to be even a single line of non-free code in the Ximian implementation of dotNET.

The man is getting old and it shows.

Re:Reality check for RMS

[Alan]

Well, I've never spoken to RMS directly, but I have seen him speak, and it really sounds like he's got a few things that are always pissing him off. The linux vs gnu/linux thing for example, is all I've ever heard him talk about, be it overhearing him on the show floor of linuxworld or accepting an award (at the same linuxworld), he did nothing but rant (and I do mean rant) about how linux should be called gnu/linux. I was wanting to go and talk to him and say how much I admired him and how I was privileged to meet him (yes, suck up to The RMS), but after hearing him go off on some kid who was talking to him at the GNU booth I decided to just stay away.

Don't get me wrong, I admire the man, especially for keeping his principles in the midst of all the opposition (like a christian girl staying a virgin when "everyone else is doing it"), but that doesn't mean I don't think he can be a bit off the edge sometimes.

-- ajb

Re:Reality check for RMS

[jmccay]

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.
First I think his statement was more political than technical. I think he see the money that is possible through the .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.
I don't see how buying into Microsoft's vision of .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".
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 .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.

Re:Reality check for RMS

[SirSlud]

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.

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 .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?

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 .. in which people only make, distribute, fix, document software for the sole purpose of bettering their society or community).

Re:Reality check for RMS

[HanzoSan]

Fine but Ximian didnt say Ximian Gnome.
They said GNOME.

Ximian is not Gnome, Migel may be founder but hes not Gnome.

He cant say Gnome 4 is going to be Gnome . Net

He can say Ximian Gnome 4 is going to be Gnomee . Net and perhaps thats what he should have said.

While people can use .Net, why clone .Net? Why not make something better than .Net?

The fact that they are cloning it is suspicious because it makes me think they want it to be 100 percent compatible with Microsoft.Net.

Linux users dont care about compatibility, in fact having our own .net would help us more than having Microsoft compatible .Net

It would be fine if we just took the technology and made our own better version, but we arent taking the technology, it looks like Migel wants to copy .Net bug for bug, mistsake for mistake.

Re:Reality check for RMS

[k2x]

The ability of all the compilers in Visual Studio to compile/translated down to a common language before compiling

umm...i believe gcc does this already. gcc internally takes all types of code asm, c, objc, c++ and compiles to common bytecode. from their it optimizes the code and produces common machine language code.

Nothing special about microshit's "technology".

It's amazing they say COM-now-.NET is the wave of the future, when really if u open it up, its nothing more than RPC(remote procedure calling). Many of u guyz need to understand between *technology* and *standardization*. M$ just standardizes API interfaces, that's all. Nothing new.

Re:Reality check for RMS

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"He may club baby seals for all I know."

Well if those baby seals are writing proprietary software, what choice does he have? ;)

graspee

Re:Reality check for RMS

[SirSlud]

> even before the 16th century, people made stuff because they wanted to sell it for money

The market was imposed by the feudal rule in the 16th and 17th century. Previously, people did not work to gain in wealth, but to provide for a living. It is a common misconception that people 'worked' before the imposition of Adam Smiths theologies for wealth. People 'worked' in order to provide things that others could not make, and were repaid by getting things they themselves could not make. But the 'cost/gain' measures were not nearly as qunatitative, and the exchange of goods and services was entwined inseperably with social and communal function. The pursuit of wealth was seen as a blight on one's character (I'm not making this stuff up), and thus people did not work 'for money', but rather 'to provide'.

It is obvious that the exchange of goods and services has been a part of virtually every society humans have ever participated in, but it is very important to understand that the commoditization of labour, land, and services as being 'on the market' was new as of those centuries. Imposed by the ruling elite, and enforced by the state, people's livelihoods were taken away by the introduction of scarcity, and a new order in which one had to participate in the market in order to earn a living. And thus the value of creating wealth was truely articulated in a way that seperated it's role in society from the social interaction of the community. Incidentally, the word 'economy', as we use it today, did not exist up until the 17th century or so ...

makes you wonder...

[bbh]

KDE probably isn't looking so bad to RMS right now.....

Re:makes you wonder...

[craw]

Yeah, and vi isn't looking so bad to Miguel right now...

Re:I'd love...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I'm not sure Miguel *CAN* tell RMS to fuck off. Doesn't RMS hold the trademark on "GNU"?

Improving usablility

[nixadmin]

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! ; )

Re:Improving usablility

[geekoid]

In throy, you're right, but history shows that MS's only goal is complete domination, and to get a monthy payment from people.
I usually hate to use terms like "complete domination" but, in this case, i gelive that is true. That is why this will be a bad move for GNOME

Re:Improving usablility

[Ryan Amos]

Yes, but if other parties can dilute .NET with non-Microsoft content, then MS loses its stranglehold. This is actually not a bad idea, by embracing Microsoft technology, we can dilute the market and make it ubiquitous, thus reducing MS' claim to a copyright or control of the network. They've probably been counting on non-MS flunkies totally boycotting .NET so they can gain complete control over it. It'll be interesting to watch..

Re:Improving usablility

[ahde]

Miguel's decision to embrace technology that exists as only a fraction of an IEEE spec, a few "Dummies" books, and a beta SDK shows his lack of judgement, nomatter how you feel about it. He may turn out to be right, but not because of any great wisdom or foresight on his part. He's gambling on something that's only been *vaporware* for a year and a half, and is just now being implemented.

Re:Improving usablility

[pmz]

dilute .NET with non-Microsoft content

Or, at least, make .NET into the hellish quagmire that HTML is (W3C vs. M$ vs. Netscape ...). Then, .NET will stagnate into something few people enjoy using for development and something that works well nowhere.

Microsoft and Netscape undermined the potential of HTML, why not have Microsoft, Ximian, and the GNOME Foundation undermine the potential of .NET?

This might be better than Microsoft having .NET all to themselves, so they can make it work well enough for the same old marketing spin to clinch the deal. On the other hand, I'm not sure it is worth sacrificing GNOME in the process.

Re:Improving usablility

[flacco]

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.

Then you're a useless applauding moron. There are more than "political fallout" issues at stake here. It's senseless to "applaud" one dimension of a decision that can have such multi-dimensional consequences.

I agree with RMS - Miguel, you got some 'splainin' to do.

Re:Improving usablility

[KjetilK]

I'm just wondering why should we always be running after M$?

I'm all for free software and everything, and I actually think that a world without proprietary software would be a better world.

But, What Has Microsoft Done For Us? OK, they have spread computing out to the masses, but you bet that if M$ hadn't somebody else would.

If you asked billg around 1994 what he thought would have been great, he'd say "Interactive TV". Well, I for one am quite happy the little, narrow world of billg didn't become reality.

Really, what MS does is mostly ask their users "what do you want?" but when you ask a typewriter user what he wants, he says "I want a key to erase my mistakes", he doesn't say "I want a personal computer with advanced typesetting software". That user has no idea what that can be about.

OK, I guess I should give them a bit more credit, but not much... :-) OK, .NET may be better than anything we've ever seen, I have no idea.

I really don't see why we should be running after MS at all times. What they are making isn't that good. Unless we start focusing on building on our own ideas, all we will ever do for the future is saying "come over to Linux. It is just like Windows, but it is free! Yeah, it is free like in speech and in beer! Oh, you only care about the beer? Well, yeah, we haven't been able to implement all that MS has, because the bastards keep their APIs closed... But, I swear, Linux is sooo cool!"

So, yeah, it might be that MS has come up with the best thing to date, but unless we can come up with something even better, we might as well ly down and die.

Or emphasize the politics of software freedom.

Unix walking into MS steps ?!

[Delirium Tremens]

As someone previously said, why should a proud and experienced community of Unix architects blindly follow the lead of some newcomers in the platform and components business? That's ridiculous.
Cloning and reimplementing .Net behavior on a non Windows platform is an interesting academical exercice. Nothing more.

Poor Miguel

[Malcontent]

I think people have misunderstood Miguel. What he has done here is to use MS as an R&D dept. MS spent millions researching .NET and built a comprehensive set of tools. GNU (and the rest of us) can benefit from this research, they can take the best ideas from .NET and implement them in MONO. This is a GoodThing.

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.

I think Miguel knows what he is doing. I say give him a chance if history is any indicator he will kick ass.

In essence .NET and C# are full of ideas borrowed from JAVA, DELPHI, DCOM etc. Why not pull an MS here and embrace your enemies. Take their ideas and run with them!

Re:Poor Miguel

[maddman75]

There could be a problem if MS shifts the spec or extends the spec

What do you mean "if"?

Is there really any doubt that embrace and extend is next on MS's to-do list with the .net spec?

Re:Poor Miguel

[spongman]

Of course they will extend it. I'm sure they're not presumptuous enough to thing that it's 'finished' after the first release.

On the other hand it would be short-sighted of them to make v2 incompatible with v1 for no other reason than it would piss off their loyal developer following immensely. They'll add new features, but I'm pretty sure that old .NET assemblies will still run on the new system. Microsoft has been very careful to continue their binary compatibility up the operating system line (DOS apps ran on win31/win9x, most dos/win31 apps run on NT/2K/XP, etc...) They would lose far more than they could possibly gain by changing this.

Re:Poor Miguel

[Paul Komarek]

Very few DOS apps ran correctly on win95. Many win95 apps didn't run on Win98. Microsoft changed their Word format between Office 95 and Office 98 (or 2000, whatever) in a gratuitous manner which prevented old office from reading new office documents. Microsoft repeatedly changed the Win32 spec in trivial ways to introduce incompatibilities with OS/2's Win32 implementation. Visual basic programmers have face repeated forward and backward compatibility problems (some noted VB book authors even quit recommending VB because of this).

Microsoft has no qualms about pissing off their (locked-in) developer community. They've repeatedly broke compatibility in every possible way. Why anyone trusts Microsoft, I'll never know. Microsoft's history (the real history, not Bill Gate's rewritten version) should scare anyone away. I'm guessing that you're either extremely young, extrememly naive, extremely forgetful, or paid by Microsoft (the last one was a joke).

-Paul Komarek

Re:Poor Miguel

[ahde]

what you describe is "forward" compatibility, not backward compatibility. Frontpage 2000 pages wont work on IE 4, But Frontpage 98 pages (to the extent that it can be said) work on IE 5, 5.5, and 6. The same is even more true with Word, Excel, and other document formats. It's not just a matter of expansion, because even a subset of the protocols don't work. It's called planned obsolescence, and its *not* a feature.

Re:Poor Miguel

[praedor]

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.

Re:Poor Miguel

[DerFeuervogel]

Microsoft has no qualms about pissing off their (locked-in) developer community.

Couldn't agree more.

Just a while back I found some STL code to be broken in VC++ 6.0 that worked fine in VC++5.0 - Funny how the MFC stuff still works though. It seems that they target what to break. Breaking STL code is a no-brainer because that fosters apps that are more portable and from the MS standpoint that is bad.

So what does the average developer do? Avoid code rewrite and code to MFC - they (Microsoft) win.

Regarding Miguel's Actions:

I also believe Miguel is not thinking this through. But as has been said often here: Once the code GNU'd it can't be undone. Also if the Gnome project adopts .NET as the underlying technology, KDE wins (If it hasn't already).

Re:Poor Miguel

[spongman]

well I was paid by Microsoft. I worked in the Visual C++ & Visual J++ teams for some time. I know 1st hand the length that the libraries and SDK teams went to to balance updates to the API and compatibility with existing code.

Very few DOS apps ran correctly? Bullshit. Before win95 shipped, the win95 QA team went to Egghead and bought a copy of every title on the shelves and either made sure that they ran or informed the authors of the bad assumptions they had made in their code and how to patch them. Sometimes the application was directly patched at runtime by the OS. For example some applications would make use of undocumented behavior (like the burgermaster table in win13) that wasn't available on the new system.

Re:Poor Miguel

[Paul Komarek]

IBM had a subset of Win32, not the whole thing. They pretty much gave up on it when Microsoft kept fiddling with the subset which Open32 implemented. I believe that project Odin, a more ambitious Win32 cloning effort on OS/2, built on top of Open32.

It's interesting how many volunteer efforts there were in the OS/2 world, and how important they were. You could run pretty much the usual GNU environment natively or near-natively, as well as XFree86. In fact, I used gcc and gdb first on OS/2. gdb on os/2 had the nicest frontend (part of the EMX package) I've ever used.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Poor Miguel

[Paul Komarek]

I'll back down on the DOS on Win95 point. Evidently it was just my experience, and (as one poster suspected) probably mostly involved games. Do I remember correctly that Win95 made some special run-time patch or similar for one of ID's games, something to do with sound?

I used to live in Washington state, and never ran into any MS developers. Now I live in Pittsburgh, and you're the second Visual C++ developer I've run into (the other is at CMU, which is why I'm in Pittsburgh). At any rate, I'm glad these teams worked hard for backwards compatibility. However, these products aren't the whole story. It seems there are a lot of good efforts inside Microsoft, which are countered by David "We should surely crash the system" Cole, Jim "make sure it has problems in the future" Alchin, and other jerks among Microsoft's senior executives.

I can't believe I had to accept my BS diploma from Cole. I guess that means I ran into one MS developer after all. =-)

-Paul Komarek

Re:Poor Miguel

[Kerg]

In essence .NET and C# are full of ideas borrowed from JAVA, DELPHI, DCOM etc. Why not pull an MS here and embrace your enemies.

Why not use Java and J2EE instead? There's already several years of Open Source development effort done for the platform and .NET is not bringing that much new to the table.

Re:Has this guy been living under a rock?

[Silver222]

Yeah, it's kinda funny how everyone else knew about this a before he did. It was on Slashdot, right? That's like God not knowing what's in his Bible, no?

Oi the irony...

[sterno]

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.

he ALREADY explained himself - RTF article, RMS!

[abde]

quote:

"What's important to keep in mind is that you do not actually use the Windows API in .NET - you use the .NET API - the classes [sic.] they have defined."

hello, what exactly needs further explanation? its brilliant.

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[OSgod]

So the question is -- who owns the project? RMS who contributes nothing or Miguel who manages it?

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[Jeremi]

Okay, for the sake of the arguement, suppose that .NET's architecture is the technically the best way for Gnome to go. There is still the 'poison pill' issue to think about. Will using Microsoft's technology this way give Microsoft any kind of legal, technical, or competitive power of the Gnome project? Will it allow Microsoft to shut down the Gnome project or marginalize/cripple Gnome in some other sneaky way if they decide Gnome is a problem for them?

Keep in mind that Microsoft has unheard-of amounts of money and lawyers to throw at the problem, and that they have demonstrated time and again that they have no scruples about doing whatever it takes to eliminate their competition.

If I was Miguel, I would tread very, very carefully when considering the adoption of Microsoft's "Open" APIs...

Go RMS go!

[Archie Steel]

Although I'm ready to give Miguel de Icaza the benefit of the doubt, I have to admit that his words were quite surprising - possibly ill-chosen...In any case, he really should explain exactly what he means.

The most likely short-term effect of this declaration is that some people are going to migrate from GNOME to KDE...perhaps, in his way, de Icaza has succeeded in solving the so-called "Desktop Manager Wars"! (Personally, I use GNOME, but KDE is okay...)

Re:Go RMS go!

[spongman]

and why would you switch?

slashdotted... and my opinion

[XRayX]

Eventhough it is already slashdotted, here is opinion on mono and its integration into gnome:
I think Gnome is a really nice desktop and today as good as KDE, but if it wants to keep up with the really impressive KDE progress, the Gnome-developers have to concentrate on Gnome Development, not on reverse engineering a MS technology! Linux doesn't need .NET!

Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[alext]

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.

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 /. - 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!

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[ivan256]

Normal users jump through all kinds of installer hoops. There is no reason an installer cannot build the software as it installs. There is also no reason that the CD can't contain encrypted source that only the installer can read so that it would be distributed in "binary" form. The cross platform nature is not an "architecture" issue for linux, but a lack of imagination on your, and Miguel's part.

With all the crap that windows users deal with when they install software (multiple reboots, the disk spending more time loading splash screens than copying software, registry corruption, icons all over the place) why do you think they won't wait through a compile?

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[ajm]

Without a VM? An interesting statement. I presume you don't think that Java provides a VM? At the moment you could use a Java VM, where there are several implementations already, some libre, or you could wait for Microsoft to provide one for you, on windows only. I just don't get your point. Seriously, I'm not flaming, I just don't understand, perhaps you would restate?

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[alext]

(Hmmm, don't think I could have wished for a better response!)

1) Windows is moving to something called Dotnet precisely because of cross-platform installation issues. The comparison to make is with Dotnet apps, not with current Win32 apps.

2) You're quite right that there's no reason that installers can't build software. This doesn't mean that this is a simple thing to do for typical Linux apps - I can't run a big build process on my palmtop, not have dependency, signing and other aspects been solved in the Linux world as they have in Dotnet. If MS thought that 'imagination' was the only thing lacking in Win32, presumably they wouldn't have bothered developing Dotnet.

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[leandrod]

The VM is only important if platform diversity gets back to the end user environment -- today it is absent except for the IA-32 on the desktop / StrongARM at the PDA division -- *and* if users have nothing like dpkg to help them install already compiled packages.

Also, RMS ultimate plan is the resurgence of Lisp and Scheme running over the Hurd... that would also preclude the need for much compilation, and would be a helluva development and user-extension environment.

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[dimator]

far more attuned to current trends than anything RMS, ER or LT

OK, RMS, I can understand, but tv shows and retired football linebackers have _never_ been "attuned" to technology trends!

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[ivan256]

"Windows is moving to something called Dotnet precisely because of cross-platform installation issues."

Windows, at present, only supports a single platform. Because of this they have no cross platform instalation issues. You must be thinking of some other operating system.

"not have dependency, signing and other aspects been solved in the Linux world as they have in Dotnet."

Actually, dependancy and signing issues have been solved flawlessly in debian which now runs on 11 architectures with two different kernel platforms. The instalation system supports effortless instalation from source; all that's needed is a little time while the compilation occurs. They have solved the problem for over 3500 applications ranging in complexity from "hello world" type apps to advanced clustering systems and complete office suites. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Also, while you may not be able to compile a large application on your palmtop, nor may you be able to download components of it, or wish to run a power hungry virtual machine. In either case you will be tied to a more powerful system for instalation.

I do not deny that there may be some novel technology in .NET, but you are looking in the wrong place for it.

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[BlowCat]

The key word is "C compiler", not just "compiler". It's hard to write a portable program in C (that the reason of Autoconf's existance), yet it's almost impossible to write software in C that will compile out-of-box on a future OS. Take any source from 1992 and try compiling it on a modern OS of your choice.

Whether C# is going to change this situation is debatable, but unlike C it's designed to be a language for one platform, not for many platforms, so this issue should be addressed as long as the backward compatibility of the virtual machine is preserved.

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[Paul Komarek]

I'd gotten the idea that RMS had pretty much given up on LISP ever succeeding.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[CaseyB]

Windows, at present, only supports a single platform.

Nope. They support two fundamentally different platforms -- PC and embedded systems. And if you argue that "Windows" means only Windows XP and not Windows CE, then you're missing a big part of the .NET strategy.

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[leandrod]

My point about ARM is that it is part of consolidation, not diversification -- at a time you could have workstations with so many processors, now only Intel, PowerPC and UltraSPARC have future, only Intel is really safe in numbers and UltraSPARC seems to be forever confined at the Sun solar system. Once you had so many processors for PDAs, now only StrongARM has mindshare.

As for LISP, unfortunately it is not so advanced in definition of services -- for RMS and others LISP is the right foundation, but hasn't got so sophisticated envelopes yet. But LISP with Gnome, yum yum...

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[dublin]

for RMS and others LISP is the right foundation, but hasn't got so sophisticated envelopes yet. But LISP with Gnome, yum yum...

I can only assume you have never tried to actually *do* anything with LISP. I have (robotics code, in the late '80s), and I am firmly convinced that LISP is nothing but a gigantic academic sham intended to keep perpetual CS grad students in school forever. It is impossible to significant build real-world applications in a language that has little more than if-thens and a grotesque, error-prone syntax to boot.

I do agree with RMS on one thing (so for all you doubters, see, I can agree with him): Interpreted languages will eventually win out, but the ones that do will be far more like (and maybe even) Python than LISP. I think Java has indelibly altered the landscape too, since it blends (or at least attempts to) the advantages of interpretation with the IP protection of compilation. RMS hates the latter, but it's the basis of the 21st century economy, so it will not go away any time soon. (Nor should it, lest we kill the economic incentive that drives the huge investments required for technological progress - such progress cannot exist apart from a live and functioning technology-based market economy.)

Re:Miguel's vision is better than RMS's

[leandrod]

> IP protection of compilation. RMS hates the latter, but it's the basis of the 21st century economy

Based on what you can affirm that? For what I see IP protection is a stumbling block to Economy and Liberty alike. I would rather say information sharing is the basis of both Economy and Society itself.

Anyway it's bad practice trying to predict what will come, and even less the whys and hows of it.

Not just RMS but Sun as well

[teambpsi]

Given that Sun has publically stated they are going to move to using Gnome as their desktop (not that i believe it given their last support of the OpenStep UI) -- I believe they would have some serious issues with this as well

Its no secret the position Sun takes as it relates to Microsoft

Re:Not just RMS but Sun as well

[leandrod]

Since when OpenStep was an UI? It was a development and deployment Objective C framework. Kinda Java but closer to C and without the VM.

BTW, OpenStep still lives -- now it's called Mac OS X and GNUStep.

Re:A Conversation between RMS and Human Resources

[leandrod]

1) You need more people to take care of Microsoft boxen than with free software;

2) Microsoft security updates are usually late, and they can break even programs running from IIS itself, like Mercury Interactive's TestDirector;

3) You need many more Microsoft boxen than free software ones;

4) It's easier to learn with free software, and no you don't need to know how to compile kernels. Editing conf files is trivial, and is also necessary in the Microsoft world. In fact easier and safer than editing the Windows Registry.

This may be hard to take...

[trcooper]

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.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[geekoid]

Except that it proprietarey, and will be change at the whim of microsoft. You can not compete with MS by playing catch-up.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[spongman]

Microsoft's .NET Framework SDK documentation answers this question very well.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[Auckerman]

"If you take off the blinders and look at it, .NET really makes sense. "

This is only partially true. From a home user perspective .NET is little more than useless garbage. Renting software and "services" (I point to the blackcomb demo movie that floated around a while back) is just something users don't want to do. It violates perceived ideas of "owership". I remeber a long time ago, I worked in a lab that had VAX stations, which had to have their licenses "renewed" every year. It just boggled my mind that someone would have to pay, on a regular basis, just to keep using their computer. They were replaced with Linux boxes. This is not a world Mom and Dad want, much less even know its going to happen shortly.

From a the perspective of a business it makes perfect sense. .NET allows the ability to distribute new software (an hence always be up-to-date) across an entire Windows network in a manageable way. (other vendors have more elgant ways, but i digress) So I guess over time, business will move to a .NET "platform".

Now. Personally, I think a .NET for other OS's is a total waste of time. .NET is little more than a way to keep making money after the sale. What other vendors should be doing is designing BETTER ways to distribute applications, so that Windows .NET will look like a toy. Apple is going down a Network road that is totally different from Microsoft (iTools, iApps, Netinfo, Netbooting), and I wouldn't doubt for a second that in OS 11 or 12 you won't be able to differentiate iTools from the rest of the OS.

But I digress...

Re:This may be hard to take...

[sheldon]

"This is only partially true. From a home user perspective .NET is little more than useless garbage. Renting software"

Uhh, he said to look at it with your blinders off.

Since we're into car analogies, let me explain in simpler terms...

Miguel is saying the new Ford Mustang is pretty cool.

You are complaining because Hertz rents Ford Mustangs.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[NonSequor]

Maybe you should read this

Re:This may be hard to take...

[cruelworld]

Renting makes a lot of sense.

What if I need to translate a document to Italian? I can buy a software package for 1 document and hope that down the line I need to do some conversions, Or I could rent the software for cheaper, one-time use.

Say I want to play a video game. Some games, like Counterstrike and Q3, I could play online for years. Some games I finish in a week or two and then un-install. Those games I would rent.

What if I'm doing a VHDL design and I want to try doing some custom synthesis on it? If this is my only design with that particular type of FPGA then it doesn't make sense to buy an 50,000$ design package. But to rent for a week? That I could take to the bean counters.

ASP and renting could be huge. It could make a market for a lot of software that today is either very very expensive or all custom jobs. It could also cut down on piracy, just because it might be easier and cheap-enough for people to rent software that they could use but would never buy.

I don't do photo manipulations everyday. Why should I spend $600 on photoshop? But $5 a day? Yeah, I could use that.

Just my take on things.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[_Sprocket_]

Linux biggots are always the first to spout RTFM when someone asks them a question... But for some reason they don't take their own advice

There's a bit of truth in that. But the statement would have a lot more relevance if the origional question was HOW to implement .Net.

The actual question involves some analysis of the technology. We all know this will have to traverse business / politics to get down to actual technical issues - good and bad. One can hardly expect MSDN to be a good source of this kind of analysis (to be fair, I would expect it of... say... SUN or RedHat either).

As an aside... RTFM isn't just a knee-jerk reaction for technical elitists. It gains valitidy when the task is simple and a reference (ie: a URL) is provided.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[flacco]

What should open source do? Should it push forward a political agenda, or strive to provide people with the best possible products?

It should provide people the best products possible WITHIN the open source, free software agenda. Stop making it a binary decision.

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.

For one thing, people like you will be remembered for their slothful, lacksadaisical know-nothingness after it's an all-Microsoft world.

For another, there's WAY TOO MUCH "applauding" of Miguel going on around here. He's made what appears to many to be a stunningly naive and reckless decision, giving virtually no explanation for the obvious risks he's taking. People should stop "applauding" and sit this guy on a stool in the middle of a small room with a bare lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling, surround him with goons, and ask him to kindly explain himself.

Re:This may be hard to take...

[Arandir]

Yeah, a standard API that all applications will use is a good idea. Toss out all your crossplatform libraries, Win32 and POSIX books, CORBA and COM+ guides, C, C++, Java and VB manuals, and just use one common standard.

Two problems with it though. First, it's been tried. Java. Promoted as "write once run anywhere". Didn't work as hyped. Java did find its own niche, and fills it well, but it hasn't even come close to promises made. I don't expect .NET to deliver on a tenth of the promises made about it, but it will find some niche somewhere.

Second, the corporation promoting .NET the hardest and doing most of the work on it is the same corporation that subverts standards with an almost religous fervor. If .NET becomes any sort of a standard used on non-Microsoft platforms, there will be a not-quite-compatible .NET++ they'll promote instead.

(Microsoft can't even deliver a ISO Standard C++ compiler, what makes you think they'll deliver something that will run Miguel's code?)

Re:This may be hard to take...

[bockman]

He's made what appears to many to be a stunninglyn naive and reckless decision, giving virtually no explanation for the obvious risks he's taking.

I don't know if choosing .NET is technically sound (don't have enough data). But, apart from wasting work on a unsuitable technical goal, what would be the other 'obvious risks?'.
Let's say that some open source software is based on an open source implementation of .NET, because it solves some of the problems. Then what? Microsoft changing their standard? Well, the open source .NET based software will still run, the problems that .NET solved will still be solved. People not running Micro$oft OS will not be forced to switch to the new incompatible .NET. Ok, they will loose the compatibility with M$oft platform, but it is not that right now there _is_ any compatibility.

So, I believe that .NET adoption in open-source should be discussed technically, not politically.

You tell 'im, RMS!

[dave-fu]

I mean, how dare the guy develop useful open-source products and tools using a modern, cohesive framework that's en route to becoming an ECMA standard? All open-source programmers should stick to cryptic/buggy libraries or stop making open source projects. Because just because you're open source doesn't mean you can do whatever you want, right?
Microsoft, after all, was the one who designed their own implementation of this framework and they're a big monopoly that makes products that people want and use so no one in the open source world should work with them.
Also, Bill Gates has a nose so Miguel should cut his off right now to spite him. That'll show 'em all!

Re:You tell 'im, RMS!

[spongman]

En route??

ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 were approved by the ECMA General Assembly on 13th December 2001.

X11 License?!?!?

[swngnmonk]

Ok, so RMS isn't happy with Miguel supporting a technology developed by Microsoft. But the issue isn't that the technology comes out of MSFT - the bigger issue is that in the .NET infrastructure, don't all requests/authentication/charges end up going through MS? Is Miguel essentially porting .NET to Linux by doing this? Or does Mono provide a means for bypassing the central MSFT authentication?

Beyond that, I'm surprised RMS didn't make more of an issue of Miguel changing the licensing on Mono to X11 from GPL. Lord knows that it's causing a ton of controversy among Gnome developers, and I can't imaging a bigger finger in the direction of RMS myself.

It's too bad, really - I've been using Ximian/Gnome for over a year now, and parts of it are pretty darn cool. But I'm starting to think that Miguel's getting off course - perhaps it's time to re-evaluate KDE.

.NET: The power of Java, and Free Speech too

[AirLace]

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 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 .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.
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 .NET bytecode that allows the code, once compiled, to be run at almost native speeds.
Finally, .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.
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 .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.

Re:.NET: The power of Java, and Free Speech too

[DGolden]

If you don't like the proprietary java runtimes, there's nothing stopping you using an open-source one (kaffe), or coding another one yourself. You just won't be allowed use the Java trademark if you don't pass a load of strict compliance tests. Hint: This is very similar to the situation with Mesa/OpenGL or Linux/POSIX...

Java is a standard, and it is pretty much as open as postscript or pdf. The standards publishing body for Java is Sun, and for ps/pdf, Adobe. Note the presence of an open-source implementation of postscript, cunningly called "ghostscript"...

You can download extensive java specifications from Sun - and not just a nearly-useless core yet-another-c-family-language and some system libraries specification like MS's for-show C#/CLR ECMA submission, with java, in addition to the VM and language, there's full and voluminous specifications for all those add-on java packages like Java3D, JAXP and whatnot - MS makes a point of NOT standardising the .net equivalents.

They are all downloadable documents. Sun can't reach onto your harddrive and mutate them once you've downloaded them. Sure, they could release a new version of the spec, but the hypothetical version you coded could still be fully compliant with the old spec.

This is in marked contrast to MS, which doesn't even bother fully specifying most of it's APIs, in fact, is reknowned for such behaviour.

There are multiple independent implementations of Java and its very extensive addon libraries (like the J2EE environment).

So, which would you prefer - a mature de-facto standard with multiple competing, yet interoperable, implementations, or an "official" standard with no finished implementations from a company that's well known for breaking compatibility whenever it suits? Given that MS will still contorl the only full implementation of .net for the near term, I predict a situation similar to Netscape and the HTML spec, back when Netscape was the only major web browser - they'll just embrace/extend it whenever they want...

Sure the standard has ECMA's rubber stamp on it - but what matters for implementation is freely available specifications, not the rubber stamp... Witness the popularity of R5RS scheme, or internet RFCs or I'm-not-officialy-opengl-but-who-cares Mesa.

Anyway, when I last checked, C# didn't even have mandatory-checked exceptions. That alone is enough to reomve it from consideration for a large swathe of corporate development mixed-ability team projects....

The permssions security model of any modern JVM is pretty damn fine-grained, more than enough for my needs. Don't confuse it with the primitive sandbox of early java.

What I really hate (and this is a general remark, not accusing the parent post or anything), is people who judge Java by Microsoft's antiquated and incomplete implementation of it. For god's sake, install the Sun Java2 1.3.1 or 1.4 JRE, don't judge Java's by MS's (presumably deliberately) shitty implementation.

Personally, I'll just keep on using Lisp for my development work, but there's millions of corporate drones who'll be told to use either Java/JVM or C#/CLR.

Re:.NET: The power of Java, and Free Speech too

[spongman]

I believe that Sun retains the right to sue kaffe for breach of license. not exactly open.

Re:.NET: The power of Java, and Free Speech too

[cgleba]

"Sure Sun insists on maintaining control of the standard. At least they are being honest."

Most companies are only honest when it suits them. Sun has been very nice to the software crowd, however I have no doubt that if someone implemented a "java workalike" and started beating Sun at their own game they would start doing funky stuff to Java [thus breaking compatability] since they have power over the spec (assuming, of course, that they have no legal ground to sue them).

Just look at the way that Sun handles hardware. They're as bad with hardware as MS is with software. Changing DIMMS ever-so-slightly so that non-Sun DIMMS won't work in UltraSPARCs, 'unpublished' UltraSPARC registers so that Sun compilers always perform the best, 'slightly' different Adaptec 2940b so that you can't use a non-Sun SCSI Adaptec card (that costs 5x as much).

The point to all this is the danger of vendor-specific programming languages. If it came down to going bankrupt or changing the Java spec, I'm sure that Sun would throw all their niceness out the window to save themselves.

All this is what Orwell called "NewSpeak" in 1984. If you can manipulate the language people speak in you can indirectly control them. What scares me is all these new vendor-specific languages that change the language programmers speak in. Sure, C# is a 'EMCA' standard but MS has tried many times to *look like* they're playing ball but in fact they find a new loophole every time to cheat with.

Remember that in 1984 the people of Oceania loved NewSpeak for it's simplicity, it's easier syntax and the 'portability' of being able to learn it quickly. Sound familair? What the people of Oceania did not realize is that as the language changed their ability to communicate ideas that did not lign up with the government was eroded.

Re:.NET: The power of Java, and Free Speech too

[dublin]

I believe that Sun retains the right to sue kaffe for breach of license. not exactly open.

At the time Java came out, the world had never seen anything from any corporation that was as open as Sun made Java. From Day 1, the Java specification has been freely available for anyone to implement (the SPARC specification is, too - anyone can build SPARC chips.) The only thing you can't do once that's done is call it Java without Sun's permission, since they own the trademark. However, Sun generously allows others to use the Java trademark if a) they license Sun's own Java, or b) their implementation of the public spec is certified as meeting Sun's quality and functionality requirements (not hard, if it's built right.) That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Sun, like the rest of us, always has the right to sue anyone for any reason - they can sue you for sitting in a chair, if they want to. They won't win, and they'll tick off the judge, but they can...

Quite right too

[DrSkwid]

Pinning GNOME to .NET sounds like a braindead idea to me anyway. Perpetually playing catch-up and being involved in an arms race with MS. If you have any knowledge of the history of computing then you'll know the sands of .NET will continually shift.

Just look at the lineage :

dde, ole, ole2, com, dcom, dcom + mts, soap, .NET

J++ & Active Directory probably fit in there somewhere too.

Pinning your business model to any of these technological donkeys is an expensive move.

to paraphrase :
The MSDN treadmill moves pretty fast, if you don't look around once in a while, you might just miss out!

Everybody has a duty to question, I'm glad RMS has done it so publicly because if it was me that asked then I doubt we'd see any discussion on /. about it!

Re:Quite right too

[jafac]

Not ActiveDirectory, but ActiveX. You forgot about ActiveX.

Re:Quite right too

[spongman]

not that you have the faintest clue fo which you speak, but answer this: can you point out one single significant backwards-compatible issue in any one of the technologies that you mentioned?

Re:Quite right too

[Jason Earl]

It's funny you should ask that question, as it is one that Miguel has answered over and over again:

Later on we decided to use better methods for encapsulating our APIs, and we started to use CORBA to define interfaces to components. We complemented it with policy and a set of standard GNOME interfaces for easily creating reusable, language independent components, controls and compound documents. This technology is known as Bonobo. Interfaces to Bonobo exist for C, Perl, Python, and Java.

CORBA is good when you define coarse interfaces, and most Bonobo interfaces are coarse. The only problem is that Bonobo/CORBA interfaces are not good for small interfaces. For example, an XML parsing Bonobo/CORBA component would be inefficient compared to a C API.

The beauty of Mono is that it would allow you to call the Perl module that you really like from Python (and vice versa). You could write an XML parser (for example) in C# (or Python or Perl or C, etc.) and call it from whatever language you like because all of these languages would rely on the CLR (common language runtime).

More importantly Miguel knows that the client calls the shots. That's why you see far more Unix boxes running Samba than Windows PCs running an nfs client. As crappy as SMB is, you are at least guaranteed that it is available on every Windows PC. Even the folks at Novell are finally giving up on trying to maintain their own protocol. Nowadays they serve up files using SMB just like the rest of us.

Mono allows Free Software folks to leverage millions of installed clients. Sure, Microsoft will try and break compatibility, but if they try too hard they are likely to upset their customers.

Re:Quite right too

[praedor]

Mono allows Free Software folks to leverage millions of installed clients. Sure, Microsoft will try and break compatibility, but if they try too hard they are likely to upset their customers.

What planet are you writing in from? As if M$ doesn't CONSTANTLY break SMB! As if it means diddle that they upset anyone. They break SMB to make their ever-moving target. M$ users are cool because as they break it for everyone else, the supply a "fix" for doze users. Isn't that magical how that works?

Why in the WORLD would you think that Gates has suddenly found Buddha and decided to play nice with everyone? Why would you think that in the case of .NET there would be ANY difference between ALL of M$'s past behaviors and now? There is no change. M$ is the same old M$. They don't even admit to wrongdoing when they are inarguably GUILTY of anti-trust violations. You don't get to do that, the COURTS say you are guilty and you ARE, period. But here we have Gates and Co accepting no such thing, and while the whole court case plays out, they CONTINUE their illegal, same-old M$ crap.

You DO realise that .NET is now also under the guns and will likely have the FTC glowering over it, if not the states.

If you climb in bed with the .NET whore, you give up all your user's privacy, you help your users pay the M$ tax that ALL .NET transactions will have tied to them. .NET is a big privacy violation - and that's just the beginning.

Gates doesn't do ANYTHING that doesn't feed the monopoly. He sure as hell isn't interested in upsetting linux customers. He can shit in your cocoa and not bat an eye and all you can do is cry.

Re:Quite right too

[Jason Earl]

Yes, Microsoft constantly breaks SMB, but they can't break it too badly, otherwise their own products can't talk to each other. That makes their customers angry.

Which is why SAMBA mostly works, and it is also why Novell gave up trying to write their own Windows client and now uses SMB. I remember using Novell's client (when they used to have one) and Microsoft broke nearly every time you installed a piece of MS Software.

In other words while SMB is bad, the fact of the matter is that it is ubiquitous. That's why you see lots of Unix servers with Samba installed and almost no Windows PCs with an NFS client installed. NFS may be better, stronger, and faster, but it is not available on the client PCs.

The choice is simple. Free Software hackers can create software that speaks .NET (and gives them access to the millions of Windows clients with .NET installed) or we can go home and cry. Even now most Linux servers spend all of their time serving up content to Windows clients. We can pretend that we are following "standards" but if our pages don't render correctly in IE, then they get changed.

For now, Microsoft controls the client, and the client speaks .NET.

Re:Quite right too

[Jason Earl]

The virtual machine should be much faster than CORBA, after all, your code will be compiled down to bytecodes. My guess is that it will be slower than C, probably considerably slower, in much the same way that Java (even with the best JIT) is slower for most real-life problems. It will almost certainly be slower than the wealth of well-worn C that makes up the bulk of free software.

The problem with Mono is that when folks think of .NET they immediately think of the negative bits like Passport and Hailstorm. Mono isn't even concerned with those bits. I personally am pretty happy with a combination of Python and C (with XML-RPC for remote procedure calls and Zope as an application server), but I can at least see the potential of Mono.

Re:Quite right too

[Jordy]

The beauty of Mono is that it would allow you to call the Perl module that you really like from Python (and vice versa). You could write an XML parser (for example) in C# (or Python or Perl or C, etc.) and call it from whatever language you like because all of these languages would rely on the CLR (common language runtime).

You do realize that CORBA not only allows you to do the same thing, but is significantly more efficient at doing it?

CORBA ORBs exist for Perl, Python, Smalltalk, LISP, C, C++, Objective-C, etc and they all communicate with eachother.

I am completely dumbfounded by the argument that CORBA, COM/DCOM, RPC and even RMI are somehow less efficient than SOAP when the exact opposite is true. A wonderful article on SOAP vs CORBA is available at the CUJ.

Re:Quite right too

[DrSkwid]

that's not a lineage

I use unix all day every day and I don't use any of those application frameworks.

I wasn't talking about compatibility.

Besides *I* don't know if it's a good idea or not, from personal experience with NT I got fed up of the paradigm shifts. I think it's a BIG decision and one not to be taken lightly or with "wow, that's neat, let's do that". I think it's great that RMS publicly questioned the idea.

What I DO know is that even MS's strategic partners get bitten. The Borg icon is rightfully earned not just some flippancy.

/me remembers the days of "Incorrect DOS version"

Re:Quite right too

[Jason Earl]

Yes, SOAP is slower than Corba. However, we aren't talking about RPC. Or at least I wasn't. I certainly wasn't talking about SOAP vs. Corba. The beauty of Mono is that it will allow you to import packages written in another language but compiled to run on the same virtual machine. It's sort of like compiling Class files written in Jython, except it's available to a host of different languages. No RPC required. I hope that clears things up.

Re:Why must Miguel explain himself to RMS?

[geomon]

Ximian is Miguel's, but Gnome belongs to the Gnome Foundation.

Mono, however, is something entirely in Miguel's hands. Whether or not the Foundation accepts his vision for making Gnome 4.0 a .NET system is another matter.

I hope they consider it carefully and don't dismiss it out of hand.

Why is this a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we hate MS. We really hate MS. MS is bad, mmkay? Now that that's out of the way...

.NET is new, its untested, its unproven, but the simple fact is, it's a very promising platform. Yes, MS built it, because they have the resources to. Why not use it? .NET is coming, lets not dilute ourselves about that. MS owns the desktop, and if they want .NET, odds are, good or bad, .NET is making it into peoples homes. So our choices are simple, we can ignore .NET, do our own thing (bonobo, watever) and stay a fringe group (dont kid yourselves, were a fringe group) of radical non-windows folks. Or, we can do the smart thing, offer full .NET compatibility. If we do that, and manage to keep up with MS's API changes and whatnot, when MS phases in .NET as the only type of app out there, we're ready, and we've got a real shot at the desktop. Want to run office? Go ahead, we can install it from your MS CD with no problems (no WINE, no emu, native). I, for one, can't wait for .NET on linux. I'll be coding my web services in VS.NET while still hacking perl in my bash console.

Slashdot keeps talking about how we need to make linux so easy that my grandma can use it, here's our chance. We copy .NET, and let MS develop the software. Seems very logical to me, I dont understand what the problem is. Yeah, we're imitating 'the beast'. So what? Immitate now, dominate later. If linux is to make it to the desktop, it needs to catch up to windows, and this is the quickest, most painless way I see of doing this.

Yes, I'm biased, I contribute ALOT to the Mono project, but I honestly believe that without something that gives native compatibility with windows apps, linux will stay on the server, and my grandma will keep shelling out for new versions of windows.

And one more thought, MS isn't trying to kill mono. Has it crossed anyones mind that this is our chance to get MS to help kill themselves? They want .NET on linux, it gives .NET more market penetration, but then again, once .NET is on linux, who needs windows?

Yes, this is a rant, and I'm sorry for any grammar/spelling errors. But, before you mod me down into oblivion, seriously think about this. This really is a good thing(tm), and is the best bet of linux getting into mainstream desktop land.

Re:Why is this a bad idea?

[praedor]

Pipe-frickin'-dream. You are NEVER going to provide 100% compatibility with .NET. M$ will NOT permit it. They will not release all the classes, APIs, whatever (they NEVER do with ANYTHING) and anything that they will release will come with a pricetag that you will not be able to pay.

Fortunately, Sun is a big player on the Gnome development board (or whatever it's called). They will NOT support .NET crap. They will NOT try to crawl in bed with a proven illegal, unethical crook like Gates and Co. You lose. You lose users and you lose on the compatibility front and you lose Gnome because it WILL fork and go the right way. You will be all alone in your deluded "We love M$ and all they do world".

Re:Why is this a bad idea?

[flacco]

Has it crossed anyones mind that this is our chance to get MS to help kill themselves? They want .NET on linux, it gives .NET more market penetration, but then again, once .NET is on linux, who needs windows?

Once everything is on .NET, Microsoft won't need Windows. They'll have .NET. Isn't that self-fucking-evident?

Is everyone around here on Crazy Pills today?

Hot Buttons and Productive Discourse

[maggard]

Oh great, RMS, MS, .NET, Gnome, can we get more /. hot-button things into there?

1. RMS is a person; try to avoid ad-hominem attacks and instead focus on his acts & ideas
2. Miguel de Icaza also deserves the same respect
3. MS is a business - it is not inherently evil nor has Bill Gates been conclusively identified as Cthulu-Jr
4. 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
5. 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 whatever

Re:Hot Buttons and Productive Discourse

[bmajik]

Yeah, that Gates is a real monster alright.

Im sure you've donated way more money to various charities than he has. Why don't you add up all the charitible contributions of pure outright cash you've made in your lifetime. Why don't you then add in the market price of the goods and services you or your business create, that you've donated to similar charities.

Why don't you add in all of the infrastructure investments you've made in various emerging technologies (take a peek at how many dsl/cable providers MS has dumped money into and lost big time) to try and further the state of consumer electronics and software.

Add up all the good you've ever done for anybody, in your whole life.

Now put that number against what Gates has done in year, or even a month. My suspicion is you don't even come close.

In listening to Gates speeches, I've never gotten the impression that hes a megalomaniac. If anything, he's a remarkably normal person,( in spite of being the worlds richest man and all. )He drives himself to work, has a roughly normal sized office, etc etc.

Despite being worth more than any musician or movie star, and depite having more fanatical critics and detractors (just look at the comments here..) than just about anybody, he doesn't have some huge staff of leather jacketed thugs that follow him around protecting his "security zone" or any other such nonsense. (contrast this with some of the glam MTV stars).

Nobody is faultless. There's that hillarious photo of gates in a police lineup, after all. (I'd love to know the story behind that, btw).
There are probably plenty of things he's done that piss you off or are downright illegal.
But if you're looking for the worlds ultimate most evil hated criminal, there are probably better choices than gates.

So he happens to make a lot of money, and is at the helm of a very successful company.

Get a fucking grip. It's not like he killed 6 million jews or 40 million russians, or 90% of the native americans with his evil-gates-smallpox.

Incidentally, If you want a better example of a rich megalomaniac, cast your scrutiny on Larry Ellison.
Not only is he one of those "its important you know how rich i am" types, but hes constantly eating his own foot. It's hillarious.

But like Gates, Ellison's not anybody deserving of the sophomoric hatred that you (and others, and me, once upon a time) seem to send his way.

Re:Hot Buttons and Productive Discourse

[praedor]

And yet, even with Cthulhu sleeping in Rl'yeh, his minions and he STILL manage to generate mischief...else, what were all the stories about? Nothing happening because the old boy is safely sleeping?

Re:Has this guy been living under a rock?

[bbh]

According to the Register article, this exchange occurred last week, so he probably heard about the same time we did.

"I can't believe it's Gnome you're talking about but if it is, I wouldn't like that," Stallman told an audience at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil last week."

Mono

[Majix]

Read Miguel's clarification of what he meant by GNOME taking advantage of Mono.

Mono has a lot of technical merit, don't shoot it down only because it's based on .net. It just might deliver what CORBA only promised, language independent component reuse. I know I wouldn't mind mixing for example Kylix generated GUI frontends with Java/C# running the logic in the background, transparently (and natively!). I surely hope that by the time we reach GNOME 4 (and we're talking 2-4 years from now here) we're not still writing GUI applications in C, as is the state with most GNOME apps now.

Remeber that Mono isn't .net, it's not controlled by Microsoft, it's a reimplementation of the .net class libraries while also bringing in a C# compiler as a bonus (Believe me, there are plenty of worse languages to code in). The Mono libraries are Open Source (Same license as Xfree86, and I don't hear anyone bitching about the license of that particular piece of software) and will probably help bring a lot of new neat Open Source applications, giving especially GUI programs a boost.

Re:Mono

[brunes69]

Totally agree, except I hope you aren't serious about the Kylix GUI. Kylix is slow as hell, mainly because most of its GUI components are driven through Wine.

Re:Mono

[Majix]

While the Kylix IDE environment itself is driven with the Wine libs the applications it produces are compiled natively for Linux, currently using Qt as the toolkit. Try out the open edition for yourself and see.

Re:Mono

[uradu]

> Kylix is slow as hell, mainly because most of
> its GUI components are driven through Wine.

<sigh> Wrong. The Kylix IDE uses WINE and is slow as molasses, the compiled executables only use Qt and are much less so. Still, the compiled GUI code is slower than it could be for various reasons, probably also because of the necessary OP to C++ binding. There's something to be said for plain C environments.

-

Can't sell part of your soul to the devil

[sphealey]

I am sorry, but I must respecfully disagree. I am not a "Microsoft hater" - I have been using their products for 18 years, and I continue to use them when to do so makes busines sense. But neither am I blind to Microsoft's actions. Nor do I think Microsoft's actions are in my best interests. Nor can Microsoft's actions be in my best interests as long as Microsoft is a joint stock corporation.

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

Re:Can't sell part of your soul to the devil

[sphealey]

Nor can Microsoft's actions be in my best interests as long as Microsoft is a joint stock corporation.

I don't know how MSFT's ownership situation affects whether their actions are in your direct interest.

Microsoft's managers have a legally binding, fiduciary duty to maximize the wealth of the company they manage. Which generally means maximizing the profits they earn on the products they sell. This is in direct conflict with my responsibility to maximize the profits of the organization for which I work (or minimize the outgo of a non-profit). That doesn't mean we can't do business, or that we can't find common ground to our mutual advantage. But it does mean that our interests are in conflict.

Or as Dogbert said, "Your boss said we are forming a partnership. I will hold on to our money."

I don't believe in parnerships, nor that vendors have my best interest at heart. Cruel, but that's the way of a competitive market.

sPh

Re:Can't sell part of your soul to the devil

[flacco]

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.

Hear, hear - exactly! I wouldn't have so much of a problem if Miguel said "we're going to support .NET on GNOME, so that .NET applications are technically capable of running on Linux" instead of "the next GNOME will be BASED on .NET". It's just insane.

Explain to me...

[jd]

...why RMS is as mistaken as a lot of posters here claim.

• MPI and PVM are already open, accepted standards, and virtually all distributed architectures use one of these. They already exist, there are already applications there, and they've had a good time to mature.
  
• COSM is an open standard by which distributed applications can be developed. It exists, it's developing at a decent pace, and although it's not "mature", the development team are very familiar with this problem. (It's an off-shoot of distributed.net! How much experience do you need!)
  
• MOSIX is an open standard, and now exists in both kernel and user-land versions. The UL-version would allow MOSIX to be ported to virtually any OS, with minimal fuss, I suspect. MOSIX pre-dates .NET, and is already in the field. .NET is only barely out of the vaporware stage.
  
• SE-Linux is an open standard, uses the existing LSM (Linux Security Mechanism?) patch and offers far greater security for distributed applications than .NET ever will.
  

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 .NET?????

Whether you like RMS or not, the point is that he is very right to question the validity of using .NET technology in GNOME. You don't imagine MS would actually LET Linux systems communicate with Windows systems, via .NET, do you??? The day they don't rig their own protocols, to deny service to "the unwashed masses", is the day I might believe Bil Gates got a humanity transfusion.

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.

Re:Explain to me...

[I_redwolf]

EXACTLY..There is no good reason that I could think of for Gnome to use .NET in future versions. I just don't understand it, it'll always, always be a catch up game. ALWAYS, everyone around here is ranting about yeah, it's cool, I'll love to work with it.. Then work with it on windows because that's where it will always work, you'll be behind using MONO and not only that but should Microsoft decide that it's time to do their own thing interoperability is lost and then someone with vision is going to have to reverse engineer or come up with their own stuff for the MONO project. All this is, is a waste of time and code.

Re:Explain to me...

[praedor]

Pa-leeze. For him it is ONLY a tax write-off. There is no humanity involved in his endeavors... Kinda like his "generous" offer to give a bunch of schools computers (running his windows, of course, as one possible "remedy" for M$'s illegal monopoly practices.

He's a big poo-head, through and through, and poo has no humanity, just a bad smell.

Re:Explain to me...

[Yokaze]

Let's see

MPI

int blocklength[4] = {1, 1, 1, 1};
MPI_Datatype types[4] = {MPI_INT, MPI_CHAR, MPI_DOUBLE, MPI_INT};

displacements[0] = 0;
displacements[1] = displacements[0]+blocklength[0]*sizeof(int);
displacements[2] = displacements[1]+blocklength[1]*sizeof(char);
displacements[3] = displacements[2]+blocklength[2]*sizeof(double);

MPI_Type_struct(4, blocklength, displacements, types, &myDatatype);

Yes, now I have registered a simple

struct myDatatype {
int a;
char b;
double c;
int d;
}

to the Message Passing Interface.

Very comfortable, I can't hardly wait to program a distributed destop enviroment in it.
Why don't we go back to punchcards?

PVM will certainly provide a similar comfort and is for a set of heterogeneous computers only.

Well, certainly for number crunching the architecture is very practicable (MPI_Gather...), but for (desktop)applications, hardly?

COSM
To quote from Cosm Project introduction:

Phase 1 Design Goals
The goal of Cosm is to build a stable, reliable, and secure system for largescale distributed processing

Problem Space
The system is not designed to tackle all problems, no system can. The most suitable tasks are those with a large demand for computational resources and low communications overhead.

Number crunching again. Certainly the perfect enviroment to base a desktop enviroment on.

MOSIX
Mosix seams to me another number-crunching enviroment. (cluster-computing) I do not see any support for inter-language operability, versioning, security.

SE-Linux
How does SE-Linux solves the authentication of code? Sandboxing untrusted or partially trusted code? Especially, dynamically loaded code from a webservice?

All those projects you've mentioned have a totally different objective than .NET (or Corba for that matter)

Of course, you might use them to achieve your goal.
You can also try to ride a cat, but a horse may be more appropriate, as a cat is more appropriate for catching mice.

CORBA is an open standard which exists, is tried and tested and free implementations exist and can be used for this problem space.
And Gnome and KDE are currently using it.
Nonetheless, its not very comfortable to program with.
(IDL, POA... getNameService, register your
Object...), but still far better for distributed (desktop) applications than MPI, PVM and the like.
Nonetheless, some might think there is still room for improvement.
E.g Java RMI is slightly more comfortable (partly based on CORBA), but still Java only.
.Net tries to be language independend (which is not quite as easy as one might think) and machine independent.

Re:Explain to me...

[jd]

All but MOSIX are cross-platoform as-is, supporting most flavours of UNIX, plus Windows.

Userland MOSIX should be portable to the same range of environmnets.

And Microsoft must be laughing really hard...

[2Bits]

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.

Some /. 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?

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.

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[GreyPoopon]

So the question is -- who owns the project? RMS who contributes nothing or Miguel who manages it?

Take a look at www.gnome.org. It says, "GNOME is part of the GNU project...". I would say this substantially complicates who owns the project.

double standards

[spongman]

If anyone's smoking crack here, it's RMS.

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.

Re:double standards

[dvdeug]

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?

Yes and no. Yes, and RMS has never encouraged the use of proprietary Java technology. No, because Apache and Jakarta aren't GNU, where as Gnome is; also nobody has suggested rewriting a major part of the GNU system so that it depends on Java, which is what this suggestion is. Also, Microsoft has proven itself openly hostile to the open source world, where as Sun hasn't.

Something being based on open standards doesn't always mean much. Take a look at the BASIC and Pascal code on the net, and see how much of it runs on ANSI Basic and ISO Pascal. No one forces people or Microsoft to use open standards when they don't want to.

Re:double standards

[spongman]

Microsoft has proven itself openly hostile to the open source world

Yes and no. Microsoft has used the 'Open Source' term in its 'propaganda' (mainly because that's the most commonly used and appropriate term for press releases intended for the layman) but if you read the essence of what they say, their real beef is with the GPL - which makes sense for a company that attaches monetary value to intellectual property.

Re:double standards

[spongman]

i was going to come us with some informed rely, but seeing as I'm a moron, I'm just going to offer this.

Simple explanation

[GCP]

Miguel is thinking in terms of technology, of usefulness, of practical value to users. .Net is a great platform, and Microsoft's dominance of the client is going to guarantee its widespread use. If you want the great features of the platform, and want to interact with .Net systems created by others, but you hate the thought of being forced to use Microsoft Windows, Miguel is your friend.

RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service. They would prefer to fight valiantly against the Enemies of the People, and heaven help any people who don't demonstrate political correctness.

I've been playing with .Net, and I love it. I'd love to have the advantages of .Net and Linux without it implying two different operating systems. Go Miguel!

And RMS, you don't represent me, buddy. I don't see my needs high on your list of priorities.

Re:Simple explanation

[cgleba]

"RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service."

Although I don't always agree with RMS, his stance is excellent for the OpenSource community.

Think about it. . .if you have heavy-hitting right-wing politicians singing their creed, you have to have heavy left-wing to balance them. If you have a heavy right and a weak left, the policies will tend to go right. If the two are balanced then you get somthing in the middle, which is great for everyone.

When I live in liberal areas, I tend to be more conserviative to balance it out and likewise when I live in conservative areas I tend to be more liberal. Honestly, I'm right in the middle but you need that balance to achive the middle.

Now if both the left and right wings are weak, then you have both sides that tend to be in the middle. In this case the right wing is VERY strong [MS] so we need a way-off leftie to balance it out [RMS]. Kudos to RMS for taking this dauting position.

If the right were not so strong [MS], then we would have no need for RMS because general ideologies would be in the middle.

SAMBA, Wine, Reality Check

[GroundBounce]

The article points out that it should be OK for the free software community to implement MS API's like SMB (SAMBA) and Windows itself (Wine) because they are already established standards, but it should not be alright to implement .NET because it is only an emerging standard not yet heavily adopted by many.

I disagree with this conclusion. Why wait. If you wait until .NET is popular and widespread before starting a compatable project, then it will already be too late and you will be eternally playing catch-up. Think how much more accepted Linux might have been if it was also able run Windows applications well from the get-go.

Here are the two possibilities:

1 - .NET becomes very popular and widely deployed as Microsoft wishes it to be. In this case Linux and other OSS will benefit from already having a .NET implementation (Mono) in place. No need to spend two or three years to play catch-up while OSS loses market share to MS.

2. - .NET is a bust and never becomes popular or widely deployed. Microsoft loses big time (since they are hanging their future on it), and OSS (mainly just Ximian) loses a gamble by having wasted some development resources. Big deal. And mainly just Ximian would have lost anything, the rest of the OSS community will have lost very little.

These two alternatives seem better than the third possibility, which is that .NET and C# become widely deployed and OSS operating systems are caught with their pants down, not being able to host any .NET related services or applications.

Re:SAMBA, Wine, Reality Check

[ainsoph]

Here is my paranoid conspiracy theory:

Gnome adopts the "open API" of .NET blah blah and becomes completely based on it (like in version 3.0)

Microsoft changes the legal status of these Open API's, thus miring the gnome project into legal limbo and DMCA type hell.

Hence no Gnome.

Technically MS has some cool ideas. I would venture to say, that if MS played ball like a nice company, MS could be beneificial to the entire computer world.

But MS does not played this way in the past. Why would they start now?

Re:SAMBA, Wine, Reality Check

[MenTaLguY]

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.

Re:SAMBA, Wine, Reality Check

[cgleba]

Offtopic; no one here is arguing the validity nor the reasoning of the Mono project.

What this topic is about is re-writing GNOME for .NET.

Wine and Samba are equivalent to Mono -- implementing a MS protocol / standard in linux.

Re-writing GNOME for .NET would be analogous to re-writing KDE with Win32 APIs or ditching kernel NFS for SMB. Different topic.

Re:SAMBA, Wine, Reality Check

[dublin]

I disagree with this conclusion. Why wait. If you wait until .NET is popular and widespread before starting a compatable project, then it will already be too late and you will be eternally playing catch-up. Think how much more accepted Linux might have been if it was also able run Windows applications well from the get-go.

This may be the most intelligent thing posted in this thread. It's both funny and very sad to watch Miguel de Icaza get gutted by the open source community, when it's clear he's the one thinking about the future. Miguel realizes (quite correctly) that 1) the GPL is totally unacceptable to many people because of its viral nature - in particular, it is completely incompatible with commercial adoption (by design), and 2) that Stallman's shrill position that "nothing is compatible with the GPL but the GPL" drives off a great many that might have considered the GPL.

While I disagree with the idea of Mono, Miguel is absolutely right in selecting the X11 license for Mono for the reasons stated above, and since CORBA never made sense for a desktop environment, it makes sense to leverage this work for GNOME. (I think instead of Mono, the open source community should embrace Java standards instead, which already do what .NET plans to do, and are set through an open process that cannot be easily poisoned like MS can, and likely will, do with .NET.)

Miguel is making a bold move here to ensure that the open source community is not once again forced into irrelevancy by playing catch-up. He should be applauded and supported in this effort. This sort of enlightenment (groan) could cause me to reevaluate my opposition to Gnome...

Miguel: Marketing Genius!

[bryanbrunton]

Perhaps Miguel should inform his investors that he is spending a large part of their money on an effort (Mono) that very few of the consumers in Ximian's current marketplace are actually interested in. In fact, most of his current customers are dead set against the product that Ximian intends to push out the door.

Miguel's amazing lack of business sense is simply stupifying. Is there no accountability at Ximian? All of its employees and investors are willing to just march right off the end of a bridge if told to by Miguel?

Perhaps Miguel is attempting to top the blind-sighted, who-cares-about-a-business-plan failure of Eazel?

Miguel is well known for his efforts in emulating Microsoft technology. What he failed to do while training at the knee of the beast was to visit the Microsoft marketing department.

I think it's funny too!

[Medievalist]

Because it's part of the GNU (or was) Gee, here and I thought GNU was about freedom, not an RMS autocracy? Silly me. I guess it was that attempt to clone Unix that distracted me...

Seriously, folks. RMS gets blindsided in a Q&A and makes the best of the situation "Uh, I hope what you are saying is not true, if it is, I'd like Miguel to explain rather than listen to your hearsay". Yawn Yawn, wait for the 11:00 roundup.

--Charlie

Re:I think it's funny too!

[Paul Komarek]

I don't at all understand why you write "an RMS autocracy." RMS is not a dictator. He is, however, a very careful and concerned member of the community. He's the sole parent of the Free Software movement, which explains why he's concerened about what happens in all the projects.

GNU is about certain types of freedom, as carefully laid out in the various manifestos and licenses. I believe your are grossly, erringly oversimplifying the meaning of freedom. The GNU project is not about anarchy, which is what I think you're suggesting.

-Paul Komarek

very bad idea

[strombrg]

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 .net isn't.

If microsoft is onto something with .net, there's no good reason why we can't clone the ideas and ignore their API's - As long as they haven't patented something, in which case we shouldn't be using it anyway.

Does anyone know the most effective places to send letters to make sure gnome doesn't become dependent on .net? Like Miguel himself, the Gnome Foundation (I don't have addresses for either), and maybe anything else that might be a help?

Re:Has this guy been living under a rock?

[spongman]

Anyone know why he "wouldn't like that"?

Sounds great!

[sysrequest]

I was sorta confused when reading about GNOME using .NET. Now, I read an excerpt from the article:

"Stallman only learned of de Icaza's intentions to slip the Mono project - based on Microsoft's .NET framework - into Gnome as "the natural technology upgrade" when asked by the audience."

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 .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!"

Ximian is Miguel's; GNOME is GNU's

[Trepidity]

As you may know, the "G" in GNOME stands for "GNU." And RMS is in charge of the GNU project.

Re:Ximian is Miguel's; GNOME is GNU's

[Ars-Fartsica]

And why cannot Miguel branch off of GNOME and simply release it as the Ximian desktop environment???

Re:Ximian is Miguel's; GNOME is GNU's

[Paul Komarek]

He can. But it would be misleading to call it GNOME. Miguel doesn't suggest branching, he's suggesting a direction for GNOME itself.

-Paul Komarek

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[spoon00]

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

Re:Why must Miguel explain himself to RMS?

[geekoid]

Did you read the article? RMS was asked about how he felt about Miguel's moving Gnome to .NET, he reponding saying he(RMS) found that hard to belive, anf if it was true he asked Migual to explain the move to the free software community. Thats all.
And gnome is not Miguels.

disclaimer-- I have recieved a very nasty email from Ximian basically telling me where to put, afer I emailed them looking for how I could contribute to the project, so I pretty much hate those guys. Ilike Gnome, I just think they're assholes.

oh come on

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:oh come on

[Majix]

You're forgetting that there are a lot of people that for one reason or another do not want to code in C++. Exactly because GTK+ was written in plain C there now exist a multitude of language bindings, far more than Qt offers at last count (PHP-GTK anyone :) I'm, actually writing a small GUI for log parsing and I like it!). The bindings haven't been perfect in the past, but they are becoming pretty mature now and a lot of applications are being written against the GTK-- C++ bindings for example. I also expect the GTK+ libraries to adapt far better to languages not even on the horizon yet, while I expect most Qt developers to stick with C++.

In the end, score one for choice, because at the end of the day we've got two excellent toolkits to choose from. I'm looking forward to learning and programing more with Qt.

Actually, the opposite is true

[wrinkledshirt]

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.

Only one Solution

[Greyfox]

Open source developers tend to be headstrong. I can see only one solution to this conflict; Give Miguel and RMS each a brick and lock them in a room until only one is left standing.

de Icaza is wrong.

[Glock27]

Like I said before Mono is totally blowing it by endorsing .Net and C#.

Good luck to them when the try to clone WinForms (or whatever the correct marketspeak is for the C# GUI stuff). Microsoft will sue in a heartbeat.

I hope the Gnome steering committee sees the light and slaps some sense into de Icaza. He's a threat to the success of Gnome in particular and Open Source in general. If he's so enamored of language independence, he should just stick with gcc. It supports plenty of languages, including a rapidly improving native Java compiler.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

MS is planning on losing the desktop.

[Zapdos]

MS knows that they can not make money off of selling the various windows platforms, and if this was their sole product they would be in deep red.

They haven't made a profit from their OS division in over 7 years.
Faced with this and other facts you will find out that .NET has a few main objectives

#1 is cash flow, this will be accomplished through various licensing schemes and levels of use with the Passport Portal system and with monthly services such as .NET Office. Vendors will pay for levels of use like the 3% on credit cards. There will be various levels such as bronze, silver, gold and platinum

#2 To rid themselves of the need to make a OS. Why do you think they are lobbing for laws that require digital content management, If all OSs had DCM then it would work with #1 This is just trying to make the point the only reason they make windows and it's aborted registry is for DCM.

#3 Microsoft will not care what OS you use as long as you use .NET applications and services. Big Picture may form here. They are probably funding XIMIAN. I do not know any one paying for redcarpet or purchasing Ximian Gnome Box sets.

This may also explain why they are sensitive to the names of various Linux Distributions.

Before everybody freaks ..

[AftanGustur]

Too late ...

But people, get a grip !! Seriously !!

Ever heard of occam's razor ?
RMS is simply asking Miguel what he ment by :

"I'd like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 - no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET,"

Nothing more.

Re:Before everybody freaks ..

[AftanGustur]

These developments exist because they address real requirements for portability, ease-of-use etc. - "Mono" doesn't need to justify itself in principle.

Who is talking about justification ??? Gee, why is everybody *assuming* so much ??

Repeat after me: "Justification is not the same as explanation"

I can't believe I'm going to defend...

[Anthony Boyd]

...something so Microsoft-ian. Much fear & trembling here. But I have to defend Miguel's right to program whatever he wants to program. If he wants to embrace & extend a Microsoft product/API/whatever, then he should do exactly that. I do not at all believe in RPC based standards, so I will never, never use Miguel's product. But it's his code and he can do stupid things with it if he wants.

One of the reasons why I soooo hate Microsoft is their use of scare tactics and implied audits to squeeze cash out of companies, and basically interfere uninvited and without proof. I came to Open Source to be free of these self-appointed watchdogs, yet here we are, handling RMS with kid-gloves. But I just don't feel that extending him more grace is justified. I don't believe he is good for the community.

WTF is .NET anyway?

[jmu1]

All I have understood is that it is _something_ that uses XML(which I still don't think is the big thing that everyone thought it was going to be) and it is going to have on one great big server: all the data about me that the CIA(or any advertising agency) could ever want. How does GNOME, Mono and .NET got to do with eachother... aside from Mono being noninovative? I'm not trying to troll, nor am I trying to start a flame war. I just want to understand what this really is. I have read white papers, I have looked at all of this stuff and I just don't understand what the hell it is. Is it a programming API? Is it a network? I don't get it and I am sick and damned tired of hearing about how great everyone thinks it is.

Re:WTF is .NET anyway?

[WildBeast]

.NET is a framework. In short, it simplifies development. It makes programming with SOAP, COM+, etc. a lot easier. You're not limited to one language, you can use Python or Perl or C# or VB and plenty more languages to create .NET applications.

"and it is going to have on one great big server: all the data about me that the CIA(or any advertising agency) could ever want"

That's passport, it's a .NET service but I don't think it'll take off because it's kinda complicated for administrators to set it up, you have to get permission to use it, etc.

That's MS marketing at work, .NET is not that amazing. Well actually it can be amazing if Broadband and Wireless internet connection became mainstream but that's not gonna happen soon.

Re:WTF is .NET anyway?

[spongman]

you're confusing .NET and Passport. .NET is an execution runtime environment and a set of class libraries. Passport is an authentication service. .NET supports integrating Passport authentication, but apart from that they're not linked. The idea that all .NET applications require some central information broker is FUD, sorry. RTFM

Re:WTF is .NET anyway?

[praedor]

No. To put is simply and purely, .NET is a means for M$ to expand it coffers, make money off everything you do on the network by either RENTING you what you should by rights and logic OWN, collecting and selling user information, and collecting fees/taxes on all internet purchases made via .NET.

.NET is a means to expand the monopoly and power of M$. Nothing more, nothing less. It is NOT a gift, it is not planned, nor accidently, a blessing for the masses. It is a scheme to make more money in ways you don't even understand yet. It is a way to increase the influence of M$ even further than it is. It is an attempt to hijack the internet and make it the domain of the One True M$.

Some people think it is better than food - a gift from the gods for the betterment of Mankind (NOT!)

Re:WTF is .NET anyway?

[scrytch]

.NET is the big umbrella marketing term of Microsoft's to describe their systems integration framework. Not necessarily with foreign OS's (though it should be easier to do so), but with MS's own tools. By itself, it's kind of meaningless except to say that it's Microsoft and it's new, so if you're "doing something with .NET", chances are you're not fiddling with DDE for example, but otherwise it could be a lot of things.

So what .NET covers is mostly two things: first, a common language runtime. This is that "clone of java" everyone goes ape over, as if Java invented bytecode compilation and virtual machines. This means Visual Basic, Visual C++, and their sorta-objective-C language C# will compile down to the same bytecodes, so they can call each other's routines, use each other's objects, and so forth.

That takes care of integration on one machine, so the next step is to resurrect remote procedure calls with an OO flavor, and that's what SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is (the OO is actually an extension called, no kidding, ROPE). It's basically RPC over XML (the main creator of XML RPC helped design SOAP), which MS figures, probably rightly so, will be a hell of a lot easier to work with than DCE RPC, the hugely arcane protocol that all of NT's current network services as well as DCOM are based on. SOAP is already enjoying some success in existing products, and since it's so easy to implement, has rather complete implementations in languages like perl and python already.

So boiled down, it's a bytecode VM and a kindler gentler RPC. Not hugely exciting but for the fact that it makes working with MS tech a whole lot simpler, and MS is really putting a lot more effort into it than it did with its half-hearted push of DCOM and COM+ (aka DNA).

Re:WTF is .NET anyway?

[nagora]

I was beginning to think I was the only person here that had noticed that. It is bizzare how easily MS have managed to get people to swallow yet another of their crappy "technologies". How many times do they have to be hit before they stop getting into the ring???

why GNOME shouldn't use .NET tech

[e40]

The thing that MS is very good at is hooking the developer. Start using their API and in no time you will feel the pain. That is the pain of upgrades. Remember OLE, then COM, then ActiveX, etc, etc?

Everyone has to realize that following MS is just that. You will burn massive resources the rest of your like FOLLOWING. You will not do anything new, but you will put massive effort into staying compatible with them.

Do NOT forget than when MS wants to, they can hurt you. Remember the Win32s compatibility that IBM did? Remember what MS did to IBM? They released a gratuitously different Win32s just to break IBM's translator (that ran on OS/2).

The same thing could happen with .NET. If MS wants to put the followers at a disadvantage, they will do so. Period.

That is the reason .NET should be ignored by the opensource community. Go out and invent something just as good or better, that stands on its own. That way, MS can't mess with it.

This says it all...

[jdavidb]

So if you didn't see this one coming, you simply haven't been paying attention.

It looks like Stallman just didn't realize this was the plan. Perhaps he also doesn't realize .NET refers more to the Java-like language and runtime being implemented by the mono project than the privacy-trashing hailstorm system Microsoft is trying to wed it to.

As for myself, I'm a "free as in speech," copyleft, "do what's best for the free software community" kind of guy, and I don't see a problem with moving Mono to .NET, if it works. (AWT and Swing gave me a bad taste with Java, so I'm a little suspicious of .NET, but still optimistic.) Of course, I've known since the beginning of the mono project that this was the plan. Because that's been said openly at every opportunity.

I do wish Ximian could find it in their hearts to copyleft everything, though. (No library licenses, proprietary Outlook extenders, etc.) And I know, that makes me evil and heartless.

RMS hating or MS hating? Tough choice.

[Dr. Awktagon]

I think a lot of /. folks are letting their RMS disillusionments take control. I personally would definitely NOT like to see the Free software world start using Microsoft-invented, Microsoft-owned, Microsoft-patented technology if it can be helped.

This is like turning Gnome into a Windows app. Sure, .NET sounds cool from a technology point of view but you should know by now that technology doesn't live in a vacuum. As soon as anything based on .NET becomes a threat to Microsoft, they will cripple it, through technological or legal means.

The Free software community should stand firm and develop and use open technologies, and not even pay lip service to .NET.

I agree with the view taken by Nick Peterly (or whatever his name, I can't remember right now) that Miguel has been baited by Microsoft .NET and this will just give Microsoft a way to try and subvert Free software. Maybe that's not what MS was thinking at the outset, and not what Miguel is thinking, but it will be possible and we shouldn't allow MS that kind of power.

I for one will lump anything that uses .NET in with Microsoft products, even if it's "open source". Why take the chance? I'm surprised that so many /. folks are calling .NET "progress" or "a standard". It's just a Microsoft technology.

Re:RMS hating or MS hating? Tough choice.

[scrytch]

I for one will lump anything that uses .NET in with Microsoft products, even if it's "open source". Why take the chance? I'm surprised that so many /. folks are calling .NET "progress" or "a standard". It's just a Microsoft technology

Score 5.

There you have it, the intellectual honesty of slashdot.

Miguel should just ignore RMS

[fishbowl]

I mean, the idea that RMS thinks he speaks for
the open source community to the extent that he
can ask someone to explain their decisions on
matters that have NOTHING AT ALL to do with RMS
or the so-called community, and that he actually
expects and answer, seems fairly arrogant on Stallman's part. Best thing Miguel could do at
this point is to ignore Stallman, maybe wait
for him to ASK POLITELY, or maybe respond to the
effect of "I don't have to explain myself to you, and the idea that you expect me to offends me."

Something like that.

Maybe I've misunderstood something, but I don't believe that Miguel works for Stallman, uses any of Stallman's intellecutal or physical assets, or has any real obligation to him. So why does Stallman think Miguel owes anything to him or to anyone else?

Re:Miguel should just ignore RMS

[dvdeug]

Maybe I've misunderstood something, but I don't believe that Miguel works for Stallman, uses any of Stallman's intellecutal or physical assets, or has any real obligation to him.

If you're the project manager for Microsoft John, then you're going to have to listen to Bill Gates. If you're the project manager for GNU Network Object Model Environment, you're going to have to listen to Richard Stallman. It's as simple as that.

Re:Miguel should just ignore RMS

[fishbowl]

>Now, tell us who founded that "G" organization.

It doesn't entitle him to calling out Miguel like he has.

Re:Miguel should just ignore RMS

[fishbowl]

>It's as simple as that.

Comparing an employee::employer relationship
in a bureaucratic organization, even a public corporation, to the relationship of a volunteer
developer to the contact person for a project,
just isn't fair. It's not the same thing. Miguel should ignore Stallman's immature, unprofessional antics and get on with his work.

Letter G or no letter G.

Re:Miguel should just ignore RMS

[dvdeug]

Comparing an employee::employer relationship
in a bureaucratic organization, even a public corporation, to the relationship of a volunteer
developer to the contact person for a project, just isn't fair.

Why? You work on someone's project and want to continue working on that project, you need to respond to the leader. Why does that change? If I started translating part of GNOME I was responsible for into Ada, and Miguel demanded why, and I didn't answer, likely I would have CVS access revoked and basically be kicked out of the project. Same thing.

No "if" about it

[drew_kime]

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.

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, .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.

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 .NET what exactly would be the incentive to stick with his version? Forks are always resolved by market share. Guess who's got it.

Re:No "if" about it

[dSV3Hl]

Actually, .NET is just a collection of APIs. Well, it's a vision too :P

People seem to want to make .NET out to be more then it is...

What you are saying makes it sound like J2EE would have to connect to Sun to do anything...

Re:No "if" about it

[scrytch]

> Remember, .NET requires interaction with a server somewhere

Do tell me which parts of the Common Language Runtime require connectivity to a remote host? Did the fact that you haven't the remotest clue what .NET is even dissuade you for a moment from opening your mouth and opining about the wisdom of adopting the technology? Miguel has actually used .NET -- have you even looked at it?

Re:No "if" about it

[Elwood P Dowd]

Uh, basic flaw with argument. "Forks are always resolved by market share."

No, most of the forks that I can think of are either never resolved, or involve the GPL with no patents. If Microsoft can kill Mono dead with their patents, then Miguel is insane. If he thinks mono can be reworked in the event that MS uses their patents, then forking is not a concern at all. So what if his .NET has a smaller market share? I don't think the objective was cross-platform compatibility with Windows or with Microsoft's .NET. The motivation is that Miguel thinks .NET is a good technology and would add to the capabilities of Gnome.

Forking doesn't have to be resolved at all. The required contact with a microsoft server could also be easily dealt with by using other servers for authentication.

And Gnome needs a compelling reason for people to switch from _what_ at microsoft? Switch to *nix? I just thought that Gnome needed good GPL apps. If a .NET framework knockoff helps them do that, great.

It won't work anyway...

[ChaoticCoyote]

Consider several things...

• Microsoft has not submitted the entire CLR class library to ECMA -- and the monster in Redmond has made it clear that they want to license the non-ECMA classes commercially.
• Most Windows applications (even those for .NET) rely on API calls. Perhaps MonoGnome can incorporate Wine?
• Microsoft does nothing that is not in its own best interests -- rather typical, really, of monopolistic entities. Miguel is likely to end up in the belly of the beast, like so many "partners" of the past.
• Assuming MONO supports Visual Basic.NET, will it also include the "compability layer" required for legacy VB code?
• If Miguel philosophically violates the spirit of GNU and Gnome, developers will flee his ship. One of the great glories of free software is the ability to rebel without bloodshed. If you don't like the way Miguel is running things, create a new desktop or work on a different project. Free software may not be timely, but it sure is liberating.

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.

Re:Anti-Microsoft Fanaticism

[I_redwolf]

Actually it shows how little you know about the industry; no offense. Unix people would love to coexist with whatever possible, unix programmers write programs that are portable across many platforms, many of the projects on sourceforge originally written for unix have windows counterparts etc etc. Microsoft on the other hand doesn't like Unix people, they don't like anyone except their investors and bottom line. They'll jump through hoops to lock out anything. NTFS, Certain internal windows-only calls.. etc etc. This has absolutely nothing with being fanatical but the industry.. mainly open-source only people are TIRED of having to fight to co-exist with windows. We are fed up of trying to co-exist.. This will just be more of the same and I'm tired tired tired of it.

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[crush]

It's time that Linux people realize that hating MS

Ummmm, who's hating them? Sure there's a lot of posting from people on /. 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.

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 .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.

"Freedom"

[jxqvg]

You're Free to do whatever you want in GNU land, as long as it's exactly what RMS wants you to do.

Re:Why must Miguel explain himself to RMS?

[maggard]

Its Miguel's company, and in the free market he's free to make whatever strategic decisions he likes.

Ximian is Miguel's company - Gnome is not.

If RMS doesn't like it, he can either make an equity investment in Ximian, or he can shut his cake hole.

1. One need not have an investment to comment or have an opinion on a subject.
2. The "G" in Gnome stands for GNU, which RMS very much does have a legitimate interest in.

This man is becoming increasingly irritating, a modern day Rasputin (in looks as well as deeds).

I'm sorry - when did a dresscode get implimented? Please submit an 8x10 glossy of yourself for us to comment upon before you make another such clueless posting.

bah

[nomadic]

Give me a break.

The posts here just tell me one thing; most of you despise RMS so much that you'll take any opportunity to criticize him.

If ANYONE else criticized Miguel's intention to integrate .NET into GNOME, you'd immediately rally to his side. But since it's RMS you just can't help trying to find some sort of way to justify how trusting Microsoft to keep .NET open is a good idea.

I was wondering why nobody posted anything yet

[Nelson]

I read this the other day and I was wondering why it wasn't an issue. It doesn't feel right for some reason, especially with the MS .NET license issues and the bitterness that was between the GNU people and KDE/QT people.

I think the only thing that I really take exception to is the choice of wording. I'm assuming that GNOME will incorporate .NET but not be a direct clone of it and completely based off of it. I might be wrong about Miguel's intent, I do question the wisdom of building on an unproven (relatively speaking) architecture while the idea of embracing common APIs to the Windows world is exciting though. My doubts will fall away more when I see a Linux hosted .net compiler and as mono and .gnu get further along.

I also think there are some mistakes about Java in there. There are GTK+ and GNOME bindings for java and gcj. Java doesn't force you into a platform, it's very powerful to go there but you don't have to. We could very well design a new class framework and use java for this, there isn't any real reason why it couldn't be done, I just think that he thinks .NET and C# are where everything is really heading and he wants to be there.

If it really takes off and flies then maybe we should "base GNOME" on .NET but it just seems too early for that right now.

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[AchilleTalon]

Well, you are taking short cuts. RMS has contributed since 1985 to the open software community like not much people here had. If RMS hasn't done his job since 1985, there is chances Linux would not be alive. And without Linux, XFree, etc, Gnome wouldn't exist at all.

So, step back and remove your dark sunglasses and may be you will see the light!

Gnome is owned by the community, including users.

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[ahde]

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.

Maintainers.

[broody]

It's interesting how someone can post a link to Miguel's clarification but it gets lost in the shuffle.

Beyond that it amazes me how everyone seems to be overlooking the maintainers of the various Gnome applications. Just look at the shear size of the Gnome Software Map. If anybody is going to be making the call of using Mono, Bonoboo, or whatever when adding features to Gnome applications it will be maintainer(s) and contributors.

Hell even in Miguel's example of Gnumeric, I would suspect that Jody Goldburg as the maintainer would be making the final choice rather than Miguel. I'll grant you I don't follow Gnumeric development and Jody might love Mono but it seems everyone is looking in the wrong place to discern the future trends of Mono & it's integration with Gnome.

And yes, I do realize that Miguel was the creator but he seems to have his hands full with other things like Mono and Ximian. As I recall his stated motivation for creating Gnumeric was not even an interest in a spreadsheet but annoyance with the lack of one in Gnome.

One API to rule them all

[Snafoo]

"Lo, I am Miguel the many-coloured!"
To which RMS the grey replied,
"You have been staring into the Lidless API for too long. You tried to wrestle control of the Dot away from Him, but the Dot still points to Redmond."
"To oppose Bill is impossible! If you are not with us, then... Die!"
</rough_paraphrasing>

Did you start computing in 1999?

[alexhmit01]

Windows, at present, only supports a single platform. Because of this they have no cross platform instalation issues. You must be thinking of some other operating system.

Rewind the clock. The AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) are cranking out faster PPC chips, the Alpha research project is bearing fruit, and Intel can't get the Pentium to move. They start playing tricks like they did at the end of the 486 era with faster processors then busses, but they can't really get the speed up.

Intel looks like a dead end.

Microsoft's NT project looks like it will divorce them from Intel. Their NTVDM, based on an old OS/2 VDM (IBM's later version was better) can emulate the entire 286 instruction set, so you can run DOS apps inside of it. They develop NT on a non-Intel architecture (rumored to be MIPS) to avoid any Intel specific shortcuts.

NT 3.51 supports the MIPS (there was a project with several companies to build a desktop PC on the MIPS line, NT was the OS, and Intel pulled tech specs for their stuff from everyone involved ).

NT 3.51 supports the PPC. They are scared of Taligent Pink, the Apple/IBM project to build two OSes on the same core system. PC Users would run OS/2, Apple users their Macs, run the same applications with the different environments.

NT 3.51 supports the Alpha. The Alpha looks like it is going to be awesome and could carry Microsoft into the server rooms. It looks like a screamer. The AlphaPC, the cheap version of the chip, looks like a great processor. NT 3.51 and the AlphaPC could turn Microsoft into a workstation player and compete in the engineering space.

Intel is still moving chips cheaply (in the $400-$1000 range) so they are involved.

Microsoft has another project, Chicago AKA Windows 4.0 AKA Windows 93, released as Windows 95. It brings the Win32 API to the lowend world. Get your apps moved to Win32 from Win16, and you can move to Windows NT (but not OS/2). Stick to Win32s and IBM can still fight on with OS/2.

At that point in history, there was no Microsoft monopoly.

What happened?

Intel gets the Pentium Pro to perform well on 32-bit operations (though the 16-bit code in Win95 made it a dog there) and announces the Pentium II, a PPro without the expensive on-chip cache. Quad-PPros do okay as workgroup servers. The MIPS PC initiative dies out (taking one of the top graphics card makers with it, who couldn't compete without Intel's PCI specs early... and Vesa Local Bus wasn't keeping up).

IBM refuses to ship PPC computers (to run Windows NT) until they have OS/2 running there. Well, the OS/2 port couldn't make it. Sure their were dozens of machines build in Boca Raton, FL, they rocked. The PPC 620 was promissed with the 486 core integrated. Wow, OS/2 on a PPC with your old DOS/Win apps running on the 486 core? Never shipped...

NT drops to just the Alpha and x86. With no support for the other ports, Microsoft lets the development tools for non-x86 lapse. Visual Studio RISC was usually at least 1 rev back.

Alpha support drops out later.

Microsoft is now stuck with x86.

Itanium/IA-64 is on the way. Microsoft needs a 64-bit system to carry them up the food chain, and the Alpha is dead.

AMD's x86-64 is on the way, and while there is no official plans for Microsoft to support it, I'm sure that they will.

Microsoft is back to pushing cross platform.

J++ didn't get them there. The CLR may.

The CLR is part of .NET. The XML services are another part. The tech is separate (though plays nicely together), but all part of .NET.

Microsoft HATES sharing their monopoly with Intel. Intel may be the junior partner, but they are there. Microsoft needs to increase its leverage. The CLR makes Intel a junior partner... VERY junior.

They can talk to IBM about PPCs, or AMD about x86-64.

Microsoft certainly has cross-hardware issues. Because of them, they are only on 1 platform.

NT is extremely portable.

x86 assembly code is not.

Alex

Re:Did you start computing in 1999?

[MrBlack]

Don't forget the browser wars and Java. Microsoft saw (in Netscape and the JVM) how someone could take away their OS monopoly by creating a layer ON TOP of the operating system that people could develop for. A couple of years later the DOJ are threatening to split MS into an OS and Applications division. They think to themselves "Why don't we create this 'new layer' ourselves, lock people in to this 'new layer that sits on top of the OS' negate any possible problems a split might create?"

Re:Did you start computing in 1999?

[jsse]

Thank you for such a detail chroncle but since I worked for IBM I've heard a different version than yours. (and since I worked for IBM I may be biased, be warned. ^_^)

It was not IBM refused to ship PPC with NT, it's Microsoft who refused to developed NT on PPC. In fact DOS/Win32 running on 486 core wasn't so bad at that time, may be due to some architectural difficulties Microsoft did not port their NT to PPC.(you are right NT is portable and asm is not, but PPC's asm is open enough for them, at least as far as I know)

NT can run on Alpha. I'm not sure whether NT5(aka W2K) can run on Alpha, but previous versions can. It's Microsoft who left Alpha, not vice versa. :)

OS/2 lost to Windows mainly due to the fact that Windows do not allow OS/2 ship with many Win32 components - that almost drove OS/2 out of Win-compatibility business. In fact IBM did strike back by releasing 'OS/2 for Windows' version, but lost is lost.

Microsoft then further extended their monopolization by penalizing PC vendors if their line of products ship with OS other than Windows. That's what you've been hearing in the trial.

We, at that time, always wondered "Can they do that?", but hell, IBM did that during 70's(in other market) so why couldn't they! Now we know it's illegal, heh, oh well. :)

but it's too late.

In conclusion, Microsoft chose the path of monopolization. Your post sounds like Microsoft was forced to do so, may be I'm wrong. :)

Re:Did you start computing in 1999?

[foonf]

Microsoft did not port their NT to PPC.(you are right NT is portable and asm is not, but PPC's asm is open enough for them, at least as far as I know)

It was ported, IIRC it was even released. You can find a "ppc" directory on NT 3.51 and 4.0 CDs. IBM has been balking on open PPC hardware for almost 10 years.

NT can run on Alpha. I'm not sure whether NT5(aka W2K) can run on Alpha, but previous versions can. It's Microsoft who left Alpha, not vice versa. :)

Hard to say. NT on Alpha development was always funded by DEC, then Compaq, to a certain extent. Compaq pulled funding and support for it, and Microsoft stopped development (they actually kept using it to develop the 64-bit version until Itanium hardware became available). There are beta versions of Win2k for alpha, but the final version didn't support it.

Re:Did you start computing in 1999?

[jsse]

Hi TummyX, since you asked, I continue my trolling... :)

As I said I'm biased. :) Also, I've left IBM long time ago so the piece of history I quote might not be very accurate. My apology.

But what've heard from my former co-workers that, you are right, DEC then Compaq are responsible for the development of NT on their Alpha, and Microsoft has granted their access to the codebase of NT(well, part of). However, this partnership ended(sort of) for some reason. We've two rumors(yes, rumors):

1) Compaq dropped the Alpha line. They dropped a lot of promising projects in DEC, so we wondered exactly why they bought DEC at the first place. :D

2) Microsoft, having seen Alpha business didn't work so well, gradually withdraw granting and supporting Compaqin the NT development.

Since we were compulsory MS-hater, we tend to believe number 2. Heh just kidding. Actually another beer friend who was a developer in Compaq told me they did't have access to newer codebase since...(don't reall when), and he was liquidated soon after. He might lie to me and bad-mouth Compaq because in my opinion he's a rather disgruntle empolyee ^_^, any Compaq guy can confirm this?

What a shame! You know Alpha servers even have better sales than our PPC! XD

One of us doesn't understand how this works

[drew_kime]

I'm willing to accept it might be me who's wrong, but my understanding of .NET, according to the way Microsoft themselves have sold it, is that trust of foreign code will be established by reference to a central verifying authority. For example, the way they use Passport to authenticate within Hotmail.

But to me the big issue is more the way MS will use .NET in practice. While the .NET specification could indeed be submitted in its entirety to some standards body, what would prevent Microsoft from adding an additional API into all the services that they actually build off of .NET?

Any ".NET compliant" third-party implementation that is not interoperable with Microsoft's version will be dead in the water.

Re:he ALREADY explained himself - RTF article, RMS

[steve_l]

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

Re:Why must Miguel explain himself to RMS?

[SubtleNuance]

Its Miguel's company, and in the free market he's free

Ummmm - what part of the idea behind GNU dont you understand? Shared, Co-Operative, Democratic (like) development.

Since when did "free markets" mean fucking anything in GNU? This is not about corporate profit friend. Its kind of fitting that RMS was at the World Social Forum, GNU is *exactly* about removing top-down, corporate domination.

RMS, being a (more) equal member of the GNU Community, has every right to ask Miguel what he's up to...

Ximian's plan to make money off GNOME

[carlfish]

Point 1. Mono was recently relicensed from LGPL to the MIT X11 License. This means that it is possible to sell proprietary forks of Mono without the permission of the contributing developers.

Point 2. Only small parts of the .NET libraries are standards, and available to be cloned by the free Mono. The remainder are technologies that must be licensed from Microsoft.

Point 3. Ximian need a long-term way to make money.

Conclusion. When GNOME is based on Mono, Ximian will start licensing the additional libraries from Microsoft, and incorporating them into a proprietary "Mono-Enhanced" (Duo?). Mono-Enhanced will be binary compatible with Mono, so you can plug it directly into your GNOME desktop. Users will need Mono-Enhanced in order to interoperate with most .NET services, since they're all running on Windows boxes that have the full Microsoft .NET implementation.

Microsoft will have pulled a massive embrace and extend on GNOME, through Ximian. Way to go, Miguel. :)

Charles Miller

Re:he ALREADY explained himself - RTF article, RMS

[ahde]

yeah, you use the defined classes to make RPC called to the undefined ones. So even though you implement the whole spec (which is less than 1/4 of the classes), it doesn't work with some, and others, it works just fine with -- but you get a big pop-up on your screen from verisign that says

"You are using an unsecure application that does not have a guaranteed Microsoft checksum. Are you really stupid enough to trust anyone but Microsoft-Verisign?"

it's not so bad

[matman]

Many people are going off on rants detailing why Mono is a bad idea.

Who says that Mono will try to chase Microsoft? Maybe a Wine like project will try to implement all of the new proprietary MS .NET classes for use with Mono, but will Mono do that? Why can't mono create new GNOME classes that run ontop of .NET? This would allow GNOME and its applications to run on Windows. This is a good thing. GNOME is trying to build a free software desktop - not only the environment, but also the applications. GNOME is not going to try to chase MS so that GNOME can give up and only use proprietary Windows apps.

Remember, using the .NET framework does not mean total compatability with MS, and it does not mean a new WINE .NET implementation of all of the MS classes (although someone could make such an effort). Think of the Mono .NET more as the basic C libraries as opposed to all of the proprietary libraries that vendors may come up with to do more advanced things.

Or am I missing something?

Re:it's not so bad

[cgleba]

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 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 ./ RMS-haters went nuts and 'interpreted' his words, too.

Let's all sit back and listen carefully and only start the flame wars AFTER we get the whole story from both sides.

Jihad!!

[Tom7]

Well said.

But -- typical slashdot folks respond really well to this kind of button pushing. I'm thinking that there must be some way to channel all of this energy into something good.....

.NET, we'll own you

[Com2Kid]

Great, great, great, bleh.

Server orintated, lead way to pay for use software subscription programs.

Where will users run from Microsoft if even the free software is under MS's rule?

Do we REALLY want EVERYTHING to be server orintated? I mean sure it is a good geek dream, but shoot folks, WHO IN THE WORLD do YOU *trust* with your data?

If MS has its way (another generation or so past .NET) we will all be storing our data on MS servers, and you just /know/ how secure those are. Hell even Microsoft has to admit that they have 'security vulnerabilities'.

Do you really want your SS#, CC#s, address, telephone number, and all of your other personal information stored on one centeral server? Think about it folks, first damn exploit that comes along and some damn script kiddie ends up richer then Bill Gates.

Yah, great plan, those applications servers are. Now excuse me while my eyes roll out of the back of my head.

(Who the hell thought up of this? Centeralized servers for LANs, sure. Heck even WANS, but shit, one GIANT centeralized server? Ohh maaan, somebody was smoking the baaad dope that day!)

MONO is not .NET

[jcc]

Mono is a clone of C# (c-hash) and the Common Language Interpreter (CLI). The clone of .NET (and Hailstorm) is DotGNU, which Miguel has nothing to do with.

There is a clear advantage of using the .NET CLI framework. Insead of write once in Java and run anywhere, it is write once an any language, and run anywhere. This is very well suited to free software development, since it is much easier to reuse code, and allow more people to collaborate.

More than a Technical Question

[_Sprocket_]

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.


The Evil that Microsoft does is not technical. While it may involve technical trickery... at its heart is marketing. Microsoft is a technical company who excels at marketing.

To understand the "evil" we're looking at, one has to realized what (subset of?) moral code is being used. Its not neccisarily the morality that condems murder. It is not the ultra-aggressive business morality that accepts any action that turns a profit. It is a techie morality - one of making things work. Functionality. And ultimately, interoperability. If something interferes with functionality and/or interoperability, its evil. If this interference is artificially induced, it is exceptionally evil.

Microsoft has often interfered with interoperability as a marketing tactic. It is such a strong part of their business, that they have not only worked it in to their products but they have used it as a reason for aquiring other technologies and changing open systems (embrace and extend).

This should be old news if you're reading this. Even if you don't subscribe to that moral code.

So how does all this apply to .Net? The question of using .Net is not entirely a technical one. It is very possible that Microsoft has created a good technology (they do that from time to time). But because of Microsoft's previous "evil", one can not leave it entirely up to technical concerns. Microsoft's actions MUST be concidered before touching anything that has origionated within the Microsoft camp.

That certainly doesn't mean one should automatically discount Microsoft's offerings. To be sure... the moral code I mentioned all but demands looking at any new technology. And hacking it. But one would be foolish to limit this issue to technology alone. Anybody involved with .Net (for good or bad) MUST enter in to it with open eyes... and a few cautious looks in Microsoft's direction.

Fork Gnome

[HanzoSan]

Ximian Gnome based on .Net
and GNU Gnome.

Gnome is slowly selling out, we need a fork right about now.

Big mistake

[HanzoSan]

This is a big mistake

Why does migel want to copy .Net for windows line for line, bug for bug???????????

Why isnt he focused on making something better than .net?

Perhaps next we will hear, "Microsoft backs Gnome" or "Microsoft buys Ximian"

I bet thats his goal.

.NET

[mindstrm]

Well...

Firstly, 99.9% of the people arguing about .NET don't actually know what .NET is.

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 .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.

In other words, regardless of MS history, if the .NET specification fits the needs we have, why on earth not use it?

Sun has dropped the ball a few times.

[cgleba]

Sun has dropped the ball a few times in the past in regards to window managers / desktop envornments. I won't hold my breath.

I hope that they still follow through with Gnome and not repeat their past.

* Remember that funky entirely postscrpit-based desktop that Sun was supposed to come out with some years ago? I can't remember the name of it. . .that never came through.

* At some point there was a project at Sun to re-write all their GUI apps in Java starting with that odd Java web browser. . .that got dropped with the Sun-Netscape-AOL alliance.

* OpenWindows, obviosly, got supplanted by CDE.

* CDE was a very odd beast based on the failed HP Windows 3.1 Program Manager called "Dashboard". Obviosly now that looks like it will probably be dropped.

* Like you said Sun has been doing some funky stuff with OpenStep that contradicts their GNOME 'vision'. That and StarOffice, their 'pearl of the desktop' is not a gnome app (I now that OpenOffice is adopting it to some Gnomish things such as bonobo, but it is still not a gnome app).

If the heat gets too hot with GNOME I can forsee them dropping that, too. I hope that they won't because it's the most promising desktop venture that they have made so far. . .

GNUStep is a possible escape pod from this madness

[andrewski]

I have been using GNUStep and WindowMaker for a while now. API-wise, it beats the crap out of either Gnome or KDE, despite it being less mature than either. Other benefits include compatability with Mac OSX (of a fashion) and much, much more rapid application development. I also think objective-c is a cleaner language than C++. Anyway, people wishing to avoid the BEAST may want to consider GNUStep as a viable alternative to all of the other nonsense.

Heretic!

[Squeeze Truck]

So what is the point of our organization? Endorsement of free software, or hatred of Microsoft?

Usually these interests coincide, but what if on occasion they don't? If Microsoft ever releases something that is GPL-compliant, this community is in big trouble.

Will the group implode on itself, each side calling the other "heretic"?
Will Pope Stallman and Pope De Icaza excommunicate each other and cause a split in the Empire?

Patents, patents, patents

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

I've said it before (elsewhere), and I'll say it again here:

Patents are going to screw any free software/OSS implementation of .NET, and anyone (i.e. GNOME) depending on it is going to be f**ked.

Microsoft has flat out said that it will use patents to defend it's .NET investment. Miguel claims that lawyer(s) have told him that the patent issue can be avoided.

DON'T BELIEVE IT (I don't; here's why):

ECMA rules stipulate RAND licensing of member's patents, and don't require disclosure of pending patents. Remember Miguel's quote about those, spiffy -- novel -- assemblies? What if MS has a broad patent filed to cover those? What if MS has a bunch of other overly broad patents in the pipeline to stuff that may seem non-novel, obvious, or based on prior art to you and I, but which a judge or patent examiner will give the benefit of the doubt?

Microsoft will use patents for things like this to force all implementers of the standard beside themselves to pay, OSS/Free Software or not.

And that's the good scenario! Suppose MS does a RAMBUS and says that they aren't LEGALLY bound by ECMA RAND policies? Then they could refuse to allow an OSS/FS implementation at all, and even if it wouldn't ultimately stand up in court, what free software company, developer or user can afford to fight one of the most deep-pocketed companies in existence in court on this one?

Abandon hope all ye who enter here...

Re:Why must Miguel explain himself to RMS?

[Enigma2175]

Please submit an 8x10 glossy of yourself for us to comment upon before you make another such clueless posting.

Here it is :)

Re:who cares?

[11thangel]

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.

RMS, I demand...

[pclminion]

I demand you explain why you believe you can demand people to explain why they do things the way they do. Is your dad's name Yahweh?

F*ck you, RMS.

Re:Moderation is a weak argument...

[seebs]

Wow! And once again, the Slashdot groupthink crowd moderates any criticism as a "troll". This is insane.

Go, RMS! GO!!!

[small_dick]

Frankly, I'm frustrated at the free software community's willingness to hail Microsoft's latest technologies as a great gift of some kind.

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 .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.

Miguel you traitor...

[coupland]

You poor, ignorant fools... (Miguel included!) Haven't you learned that adopting Microsoft technology, no matter how good, is a death sentence? Do you think the Windows 3.0 APIs weren't better than DOS when they came out?? But Microsoft used their headstart on the Win3 APIs to make inferior products leap-frog superior products by WordPerfect, Borland, Lotus, et-al. Microsoft has always known that by playing the "standards advocate" (particularly when they write the standard) they can always throw 10x more programmers at the problem until the only way to use the standard to its fullest is to use the Microsoft product. Miguel is short-sighted enough to see a good standard here but doesn't realize that Microsoft will stay so far ahead of him in the race that free software will come out looking like a joke. THIS IS WHAT MICROSOFT WANTS! To use the coolest new features we'll need to use Microsoft and Miguel will look like an idiot for always being a year behind. A situation that Microsoft will ENGINEER...

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[Melantha_Bacchae]

essdodson wrote:

> It's time that Linux people realize that hating MS is going no where
> and is completely unproductive.

MS has been convicted of crimes, and yet looks like it is going to get off scott free. MS has destroyed businesses unfairly, made their users miserable for years, stiffled an entire industry, and even engaged in terror marketing (last summer). I'm sorry, but I hate that. They have to be stopped and made to change their ways, before they do even more damage.

> All too often they fail to realize that MS is on to a good thing just for
> the sake of always putting down MS.

.Net is no good thing. .Net has one ultimate goal: a distributed computing system (worldwide super cluster), under Microsoft's total control, which will be used to constantly milk everyone who uses it of our hard earned money for every second we use it. .Net is based on Microsoft's Millenium research project. Do you think a thousand years of absolute rule by Microsoft over every computer on this planet is a "good thing"?

> I think it's a great move on behalf of GNOME.

I think it is an insane move on behalf of GNOME. If GNOME wanted to integrate application services, there are existing open source tools and a really nice language (Java) they could use. If they have to support some company, at least support Sun's Liberty Alliance.

BTW, publicly uttering the words ".Net" in conjunction with one's product without some prior agreement and license from Microsoft is just begging for a letter from Microsoft Legal.

What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" (released in Japan as "Godzilla 2000 Millenium") for details.

What does GNOME stand for?

[Codifex Maximus]

GNOME is the GNU NETWORK OBJECT MODEL ENVIRONMENT and "GNOME is part of the GNU project".

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 .NET - the Next Big Microsoft Plan to Take Over the Internet?

I dunno, I was initially and still am in support of GNOME pending further developments. I hope they do The Right Thing(tm).

Report to the Head office

[lanalyst]

Politics vs. technology. First, I'd like to point out that I'd like to totally get away from dual-booting... total waste of resources, IMO. I think Miguel and the corporate sponsors are hoping the same thing. I believe that Miguel's interest is holding together the intel's, suns and hp's by making concessions to satisfy their interests - maybe he could do a better job of persuasion... maybe RMS could give him some help.

I do quite a bit of cross platform work as a programmer. Frameworks and infrastructures are wonderful things. For those who say that .NET is untested and unproven, well it's been worked on since 1999 and the components have been in beta for the past year (it's at Beta 3 now). All M$ has to do is release it and turn on the marketing machine.

My confusion, I suppose, is how GNU/FSF/RMS have such a problem with all this. The Register articles point out that Miguel's position has remained consistant (they point to a 9/01 interview) and I'm reading currect events as an extension of what he's been saying all along. Anyway, isn't the FSF about bringing tools to the community without the commercial costs? .NET is unproven and spawn of the Beast so it can't be 'the best'? Is that one person's opinion (RMS)... dumb questions maybe that are steeped in confusing control issues, which I really don't care about.

What I do care about is that if Miguel or anyone has a concept and the where with all to bring it fruition, more power to him. If it's a 'bad' idea, it will fail. Integration and interoperability are not only buzzwords but they are key concepts in all sucessful implementations. Projects like this should, IMO, be encouraged and not horsewhipped.

As for RMS, I think his ego is really getting in the way. It may be me, but if someone demanded an explanation for something that I've been working twards for a year, I think I'd be looking to a new licensing model.

.NET and Mono: What is standard and what is not

[GrayArea]

Well, I decided that, instead of perpetuating the /. tradition of shooting out of my ass without doing my own research, I'd see for myself which parts of .NET API's were in the ECMA standard, which parts were not, and how much of it Mono is implementing. So, after downloading the ECMA documentation, I compared it to Microsoft's .NET Framework SDK docs and Mono Class Status page. Here is what I found:

1. The ECMA standard includes a total of 249 types (classes, interfaces, etc.) as the standard library. .NET Framework SDK has approximately 3500 classes defined according to Mono Project, and they claim they have implemented or currently implementing 900 of them. Their status page shows 540 classes as work-in-progress, though that might be out of date.
2. There are missing classes, interfaces and even methods and properties from the ECMA standard. For example, out of the 120+ types in the System namespace, only 100 of them makes it into the standard. Of the 100 or so methods in the String class, more than 20 of them are not in the standard, including a few constructors. This doesn't seem to be an exception, most (but not all) of the classes have missing members. The SDK documentation doesn't give any special notice about members or types missing from the ECMA standard. I am assuming Mono is implementing the full Framework SDK versions of these libraries.
3. The ECMA standard libraries define a feature set that is somewhat larger than the C runtime library, the most noticable additions being the network and XML processing libraries. There is a lot of stuff left out, both additional libraries and functionality inside existing libraries (as outlined above).

After this, it is kind of easy to reach to the conclusion that the ECMA standard has major deficiencies, that there is no way (apart from custom tool support) to tell if the code you are writing conforms to that standard and that Microsoft is most likely just paying lip service to the standards process, at least as far as the core .NET API's go. Java and Sun do a much more complete job of defining and sticking to specifications if the ECMA work is any sign.

Personally, I don't plan to touch .NET API's to develop open source software after this. My opinion is that Mono would be much better off if they develop their own cross-platform class libraries instead of using .NET API's. There is nothing preventing them from using CLI VM and multiple language support with their own class libraries. They are already writing everything from scratch, they might as well use their own design rather than playing catch-up to proprietary Microsoft API's.

This was predictable people!

[MattyT]

I think we can safely say that Microsoft's strategy outlined in the Halloween document's is coming into full effect.

Now it's no secret that Miguel and Nat met while Miguel was interviewing for a job at Microsoft (http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2001-01/l w-01-vcontrol_5.html).

What we never got told was that Miguel was selected as the perfect candidate for a new brainwashing experiment from Microsoft research. (C'mon, it's obvious that all that research money wasn't going on _software_ research.)

Miguel was implanted as a Microsoft sleeper agent in a large free software project. He doesn't even realise that's what he is.

So basically, the idea seems to be that he will subconsciously subvert GNOME towards Microsoft standards. Then, once this is complete, Microsoft will reveal its secret submarine patents on the standard and destroy GNOME through litigation.

We must not let this happen.

Miguel's response

[Arker]

Miguel has now responded. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/20 02-February/msg00042.html

I don't see why it should be upsetting, except...

[DaveWood]

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.

On the other hand, he did make some statements about .NET's technical "superiority." That's open for debate. I'd love to see how that one goes.

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 .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?

Re:RMS needs to be hit with a cluebat

[sg_oneill]

Introspection (self describing-ness) is a pretty usefull thing in RPC type thingies. That does not mean one has to trust it.

One may trust the RPC interface of a news grabbin webservice to describe it self, and it doesnt really matter if its a little goofy, because the client will just not work. No real harm, just like a dead web page.

As for financial (etc) stuff, presumably the usual hashin' and SSL'in and generalised encrypyin' is going on.

Re:RMS vs. Miguel

[BitwizeGHC]

RMS is actually a Harvard graduate. MIT was his place of employment when he started the GNU project. The man is smart, and knows his software; there is no denying that.

Re:he ALREADY explained himself - RTF article, RMS

[Gumshoe]

...and if you had read the article, you would know that RMS
didn't know of Miguel's intentions until he was asked a direct
question by a memeber of the audience.

Never mind though, eh? Any excuse for a bit of RMS bashing.

moving forward

[mydigitalself]

gee, how TERRIBLE of miguel to re-architect Gnome by embracing modern open standards like SOAP, XML and Web Services in place of an antiquated remote object interface like Corba.

people forget that .NET is just microsofts' packaging and marketing of OPEN STANDARDS.

Re:moving forward

[nagora]

people forget that .NET is just microsofts' packaging and marketing of OPEN STANDARD

Easy to forget things that aren't true. .NET is not an open standard, it is a partly open standard with most of the spec being controled and non-open. It's called "bait and switch"; the bait is the little bit of openess and the switch will come when enough idiots like Miguel have started using it and discover that MS can change the practical spec anytime they want.

TWW

Re:So tell me...

[praedor]

It is a tax writeoff that also give the illusion that he's some kind of "good guy".
He is not a good guy, he is a grteedy, megalomaniacal bastard. He ONLY gives to charity because George Sorros (sp?) shamed him into it. Sorros has a good deal less wealth than Gates but give BIG TIME to charities AND the gifts do not have tie-ins to his self-interest and self-aggrandizement. He doesn't give away computers running his OS on it and his office software - so that he can create more users for his shit.

Donating Windoze computers is NOT charitable when it comes from the Capo de Monopolista. It is self-serving pap. EVERYTHING he does is intended to feed M$ coffers. Period. He. Is. A. Nasty. Monster.

Re:Goodbye GNOME, Hello KDE

[I_redwolf]

You should support stuff you like with fucking money. I love free software but if some company decides that they'll wrap the shit up and add pretty icons or make it easier to use and I like it; I'll pay for it. Mostly to support said company in their effort in promoting free software, not only that but if whatever they are doing saves me some damn time so that I could go fuck my girl every now and then it's good for me (IE: whatever you do with your time is your business). Not only that but if they make it affordable and don't overly inflate the price it's a good deal all around. I sincerely disagree with Miguel's intention on adding or even suggesting .NET so I will now never support Ximian again. This is how you make a difference, put your money where your mouth is.

Re:A Conversation between RMS and Human Resources

[leandrod]

I have my own experience. With Microsoft you learn the interfaces, and never know what's really going on. With free software you have documentation in several levels, down to the source code, so you can always debug and troubleshoot to your heart's content.

Anyway, most computing books are trash anyway... exceptioned the usual Knuth, Djikstra, Date, Darwen, Pascal, Codd, and assorted others.

Reality Check for the above poster

[Dragoness Eclectic]

WTF are you smoking? Feudal rule was dead as Julius Caesar by the 16th & 17th centuries! You're talking post-Renaissance, and the rise of the modern nation-state.

People 'worked' in order to provide things that others could not make, and were repaid by getting things they themselves could not make. But the 'cost/gain' measures were not nearly as qunatitative, and the exchange of goods and services was entwined inseperably with social and communal function.

Uhh... that sounds like people worked (no quotes, they did actual work, you know!) for a living. Wasn't that what the guy you're responding to said? And when did exchange of goods and services ever stop being intertwined with social and communal function? If your goods and services aren't of some use to the rest of the community, no one will buy them from you.

And your view of working for wealth is a little skewed historically. Prior to the dominance of Christianity, mercantile wealth was respected in, for example, the civilized Roman Republic and Empire. Commoditization of labor, goods and services is not new; again, I refer you to the ancient Romans. It only seems new because to exist, it requires a populous, (relatively) wealthy society with a (relatively) free market.

In medieval Western society, the teachings of the Church were such that work was regarded as a necessary evil, the curse on Adam for original sin. Therefore, you only worked as much as necessary to get by, because work was a Bad Thing. Holidays were good; loafing around was good. Work was bad; greed was bad--one of the Seven Deadly Sins. As you say, pursuit of wealth for its own sake was considered immoral and looked down on--but only during a certain historical period and place, not everywhere and at all times before the 16th C. (Hypothetically looked down on, that is; the power that can be obtained by judicious use of wealth was always respected.)

The end of medieval society and the Renaissance came because of several things, but one of those was the Protestant Reformation. Protestant theology looked at the rest of the Bible beyond Genesis and said, "God blesses those who work well at what they are given the gift to be good at; we aren't all good at being priests and monks, and besides, someone has to weave and plant and forge things and so on. All honest work is GOOD." Thus, the Protestant work ethic.

After the Reformation, work was seen as a Good Thing, provided it was honest work, and wealth obtain from hard work as the just fruits of one's honorable labor--at least among Protestants. If you were wealthy from doing honest work, that meant you were using your talents wisely and were to be respected.

There's a reason most of the businesses and much of the commercial wealth of England was controlled by Puritans and Quakers during the 16th - 18th centuries, and it had nothing to do with the ruling elite imposing anything on anyone.
For a similar reason, the tiny, but Protestant, Dutch Republic became a major commercial power during that period, while Catholic, monarchic Spain utterly destroyed its own economy looting the New World.

Where did your view of history come from? It seems a bit odd, and definitely dogmatic. Marx? Or later writers?

Re:Reality Check for the above poster

[SirSlud]

> And when did exchange of goods and services ever stop being intertwined with social and communal function?

Well, I can vote with my wallet regardless of what my neighbours think of what I'm buying. I needn't take the social cost of my aquisitions and exchanges into account. Because I am participating in the quest for material gain, by and large, the laws are set up in order to allow me access to whatever I want, regardless of it's social cost (environmental, social, etc.) The quest for more stuff is deemed more important to the betterment of mankind than the quest to regulate exchanges of materials and services that are deemed by the majority of people as harmful to my community. A cursory glance reveals the alarming trend of governments retracting envionrmental bans for fear of foreign investor settlements. The legal and economic system, which should be in place to serve the social needs of a populous, currently favours the quest for material gain over the quest to reflect the demands of a social body. Surveys show people are becoming more concerned with respect to the environment, and yet, most of the activity with respect to international trade is being done to reduce these types of regulations, or at least place the policy setting in the hands of private interests (haha!). I find it confusing when other people get confused about this issue. It's not difficult to see that the demands of a market (ie, individual wallets) have /disempowered/ community action.

So, how is this different than before?

The Food Riots, for instance, had people who couldn't afford /food/, who were literally on the brink of starvation, still respected that the bread maker had to make a living and was a part of their society. Thus, we saw people demanding to purchase food at fair prices. People still considered the social costs (persecuting the food producer, creating social unrest) above that of personal gain, as opposed to the types of rioting we see these days .. an activity now synonymous with straight up looting. People feel completely within their rights to take whatever is not protected by property rights or is not sufficiently nailed to the ground.

> Marx? Or later writers?
Polyani. Communism is based on the same fundamental assumptions about the human condition as capitalism, which is why they are so at odds. One encourages greed as the primary motivator of working, while the other attempts to supress it by enforcement of the state. However, they both assume that it is your quest for wealth that will be the main deciding factor in your behaviour. A false assumption, in my opinion, but it exaplins why they are totally bipolar systems.

Re:Ok...

[sg_oneill]

Ughn.... That's got nothing to do with introspection, that's got to do with a fucked service.

Introspection is not reealy as usefull for hitting mysterio servers as figuring out how to talk to it, but really if your going to use it to say "What order are you structuring your struct_cluebats" then surely it's better than just guestimating. Not philisophically different then ack/nack on port 80 to see if it can http?(even tho 80 may be spambo-9000 protocol server)

And yeah goons do write stupid software. What's new? Introspection is a functional.... and well understood concept, get over it.

Re:Ok...

[sg_oneill]

Yeah but said program dont know what ['tip','handle','middle'] is then the program rolls over and says ['fuck','knows?'].

End of dialogue. Seriously , what is wrong with a computer admitting defeat? If it cant talk then it follows the entire history of modern computing and raises an error. It worked before, why is it now a problem?