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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."
/me thinks we've spent too much effort arguing about this.
.NET/Mono", "Linux desktop struggles" and "GNOME in Trouble" sensationalism for ZDNet headlines, and that's not going to help our cause one bit.
Ximian is going to develop Mono - that much is clear. It doesn't matter what anyone says, they're going to use it.
Wether 'official' Gnome uses it or not doesn't matter. Enough people hate the idea that that probably won't happen. And if it does happen, they'll either be a fork, or massive exodus away from Gnome.
Let Ximian do what they want to do. Gnome is GPL - what's everyone so scared about? We've got bigger fish to fry.
All this does is provide - "Linux Community divided over
I'm getting pretty tired of the trend of Slashdot to post stories that are not only based on very shaky and highly-speculative evidence, but are backed-up by old articles that have since been refuted/proven dead-wrong.
It's one thing to accuse Microsoft of FUD, it's another to do their job for them by fragmenting the open-source/FSF/Linux community by posting this type of crap.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
The article is very hard to read, as it seems to confuse patents and copyright in ways that are imiscable. I will try to lay out the timeline that I think she's assuming when she says "Intel, having gleefully taken advantage of the MIT licensing on Mono's class libraries, enforces its patents against every entity making use of its modifications, including the Gnome project, effectively shutting it down."
1 Mono exists
2 Gnome adopts Mono (a reach, but ok)
3 Intel writes proprietary (non-MIT-licensed) components for Mono
4 Intel enforces patentson those components and shuts down Gnome!
Ok... so we come to the obvious solution. Assuming that #2 happens (no pun intended), #4 can only happen if #3 is followed by:
3.4 Gnome adopts Intel proprietary components via Mono
Um... *WHY*?!
Of course, if Gnome implements these features using Bonobo and Orbit guess what Intel can do? That's right... enforce their patents!
This is, AFAIKT, junk reporting. If I'm wrong, please show me specifically what timeline you see occuring.
OK, my turn to play pundit. (-;
.Net seems dangerous for GNOME. Imagine that Microsoft really does let other people play in the .Net game. Consider the ramifications to the Open Source movement if proprietary software like MS Office or Photoshop could be used more-or-less 'natively' in Linux using the .Net API provided by Mono. Would laziness set in, slowing projects like OpenOffice and Gimp? Would people still use the free software or would they just give in and use what is more familiar? Without .Net support, people will continue to be forced to use Free Software in many areas, thereby causing them to learn new tools and break ties with proprietary ones.
.NET is supporting the future of proprietary software simply by enabling it. Another sign of this would be GNOME/Mono moving away from GPL to a "less defensive" license. Microsoft knows that Windows could be doomed in the near future. They also know the power of the Open Source movement and that it has the power to obsolete their entire proprietary business model. IMO, they're using .NET to try to hook people into hybrid free/non-free software so that they'll still have a strong foothold no matter where the market evolves. And if the patent issues get ugly, we could end up paying Microsoft for software that *we* wrote. Sure, GNOME itself could still be free, but if half the Open Source software for it requires .NET modules from Microsoft, licensed at a cost, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. A similar analogy would be the DVD crypto mess. You can buy the media, you can write the free software to play it, but you can't legally use them together in the US.
It's one thing to support what could eventually be a necessary "embrace and extend" standard, but to focus everything on
So it seems to me that supporting
Let me re-emphasize: We do NOT need ANY proprietary software. We do NOT need Microsoft or ANY of their products. All we need is a stable user-developer community. In a word: consultants. That is the future of Open Source in the business world. And it is a good future both for business and free software developers.
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Are you kidding? GNOME is the most controversial project in the history of Linux because it was basically launched, at least at first, to kill KDE (which is the second most controversial project in the history of Linux).
GNOME's GPL-ness and RMS-ness have been the subject of attacks and discussion and "I'm taking my ball and going home" for years now. Only KDE, with its former questionable-GPL-ness and non-RMS-ness comes close in terms of controversy.
I would suggest that there has never been either a GNOME or KDE story on Slashdot or most any other site that did not start a flame war on the related forum. It's the nature of GNOME and KDE... because they are the "desktops of Linux" people have the perception that whichever eventually becomes more popular will essentially be Linux (for the average user) for the rest of time... that kind of perception of finality brings out all the GPL-crazies, anti-GPL-crazies, make-Linux-like-Windows-for-the-user crazies and I-am-anti-Windows-don't-do-it crazies.
(Meanwhile, WindowMaker on the desktop has been silently winning in terms of actual usability almost since its inception.)
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That is the point exactly. MS is playing the standard supporters like a fiddle. They understand what is required to compete against Open Source. And sadly people like Miguel fall into it.
I look at Apache and PERL and LINUX... What do they do? They make sure they build the best applications there are.
Take Apache as an example. To be compatible Apache could have said, wow ISAPI is really cool lets build that and do a good job... What did Apache do? They did a rudimentary ISAPI, but kept focus on their API.
Or take PERL. Sure there are PERL extensions specific to Windows. But the mother ship PERL (Larry Wall) is more concerned about making sure that PERL solves the needs of all its users.
Maybe GNOME will continue since Ximian != GNOME. But with people like Miguel talking the way he does does not bode well. I am curious to see what Sun will say...
And remember track record of anyone building a symbiotic relationship with Microsoft is 0!!! Microsoft is a dictator (their right) and there is no way you can change that.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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