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Could Mono Kill Gnome?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-think-about dept.

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."

5 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Gnome can't die by jdavidb · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
    1. Re:Gnome can't die by JordoCrouse · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you get a map showing you how to get to Grandma's house faster (but it happens to go by the wolf's den), do you follow it without caution, or do you grab a shotgun first?

      I don't think that the question here is if the .NET architecture is a good idea (it is), and if we should implement it (we should).

      The point of the editorial (and of the /. post), is to wonder if we are setting ourselves up to be eaten by Microsoft (or indeed, anyone who may lay claim to the Mono libraries). It has become clear that Gnome could be effectively taken out through the current licencing. Microsoft would love to beat us at our own game - and use its influence on other companies to pull rank on Gnome and kill it, especially if Gnome/Mono does becomes a huge success.

      Too much money is at stake in the next round of operating systems to leave anything to chance. Microsoft (and Intel for that matter) is setting themselves up for a free shot at Gnome if it ever starts threating the status quo. Thats scary to me.

      --
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  2. Sick of this topic already ..... by reaper20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    /me thinks we've spent too much effort arguing about this.

    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 .NET/Mono", "Linux desktop struggles" and "GNOME in Trouble" sensationalism for ZDNet headlines, and that's not going to help our cause one bit.

  3. SlashFUD by Apostata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. Managed software by Latent+Heat · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.