Could Mono Kill Gnome?

Jrbl writes "NewsForge is running This editorial by Tina Gasperson about the possible implications for GNOME if it gets Mono (which allows patented components.) There's also a reference to this article at The Register in which Miguel de Icaza raves about Microsoft."

Comments

Gnome can't die

[jdavidb]

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

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

Re:Gnome can't die

[Steveftoth]

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

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

Managed software

[Latent Heat]

Having tried C#/.NET at the command line, the performance hit over C++ is maybe 2-3 (18 months of Moore) instead of 5-10 (about 5 years).

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

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

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

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

/. pattern

[ambrosius27]

GNOME has become a lovely *political* (rather than technical) topic for slashdot during the past few months. See below:

The Mono controversy (with some RMS thrown in):

• The present story
• RMS comment
• Miguel responds
• Miguel talks about Mono at *gasp* MSDN

RMS controversy (apart from Mono):

• RMS not elected
• RMS says why he should be elected
• RMS IS running for election
• Breaking News! RMS running for a seat on the GNOME foundation

GNOME is behind or dying or a slave of corporate masters (see also Mono controversy):

• No GNOME for Solaris
• GNOME has been taken over by Ximian!
• GNOME hackers killing each other in the streets!
• Eazel is dead; will GNOME follow?
• Eazel dying- bad tidings for GNOME?

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

Further Comments from Miguel

[erasmus_]

I hope I'm not being redundant, but I did not see anyone else link to further clarifications from Miguel, free from any editing done by The Register. The link is mentioned briefly at the end of the article.

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

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

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

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

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

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