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Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation
pallmall1 writes "OS News reports that Debian developer Josselin Mouette got Tomboy accepted as a dependency for gnome in the next release of Debian (codenamed Squeeze). While that may seem like nothing big (except for the 50 MByte size of the Tomboy package), Tomboy requires Mono — meaning that Mono will now be installed by default. Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms that Red Hat does. Perhaps Debian doesn't believe that Microsoft might do something like Rambus did."
Perhaps Debian doesn't believe that Microsoft might do something like Rambus did.
Rambus was chastised for their actions (like the linked article states). And I propose Debian approach this the same way someone would approach the Rambus situation from the beginning had they an inkling of Rambus' true intent.
.NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent on the .NET infrastructure. So far, Microsoft has agred to offer these under a "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms of use" and they are currently royalty free. No one seems to be clear on how you get this into writing but it's allegedly the way things are.
.NET. Should they fail to comply with this request in a timely manner, I would submit all communications with Microsoft to ECMA in a motion to dismiss the aforementioned "standards" and remove Mono--and unfortunately Tomboy--from the Debian default package. I'd beef up the Debian wiki with details on how to get these two packages to fix this bug and focus on the bug for a near future release after Squeeze.
Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free to interact with
At that point, sit back and let ECMA and the community at large hash it out with Microsoft. Better now than later when other things may depend on this package and Microsoft has you right where Rambus has every memory maker on the planet.
My work here is dung.
tomboy package "Description: desktop note taking program using Wiki style links"
"..except for the 50 MByte size of the Tomboy package..."
What's wrong with this picture?
we discovered a new way to think.
Not really being much of a Linux person myself yet, I was curious about the negative feelings I've read about for Mono, ranging from general dislike to outright hate, as I've had several people tell me that Mono is actually really cool and easy to use if you're used to doing .Net programing in general. Malevolentjelly posted this link a few days back in the Silverlight 3 post and I found it very informative:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/
PS: From TFA (I confess not having read it in full before typing the above rant ... I did read TFA.... just not in detail ;-p)
The news got out via a blog post by Debian maintainer Robert Millan, who maintains the Gnote package for Debian - Gnote is a non-Mono replacement for Tomboy written in C++.
In other words, it's a non-story about two maintainers trying to get their packages accepted into the "default" installation (from TFA it sounds like it's an issue of what to include in the first CD). Yeah, raise patent concerns, size concerns, blah blah blah blah, but it all boils down to ego stroking and comparing dick sizes.
Duh.
Don't quote me on this.
Proven? Really? What's the proof? That Microsoft hasn't sued yet? That doesn't stop them from suing in the future. I'm not aware of any 'proof' that the Mono fear is stupid. If anything, I used to not be too worried about Mono, until Microsoft sued TomTom for their use of Linux. That was NOT a lawsuit over Mono, but rather over VFAT and some other stuff. But, it proved that Microsoft is willing to use stupid patents to sue Linux users. So, now I'm worried that in the future, they will decide to sue over Mono. What would stop them if they should decide to sue?
As a .NET developer (at work), and a Linux user (at home), I don't like this idea. I'm sure you are going to label me "a big rabid stallmanist troll" for pointing this out, but those patents are real, at least if you ask Microsoft. And so is the agreement that gives Novell permission to distribute Mono.
Now, why would Novell sign such an agreement? Easy: Because their legal department advised them to do so. From this we can conclude that Novells legal department has knowledge of legal risks concerning Mono.
Microsoft has already shown that their patents are not for self defence only, when they sued Tomtom over several patents related to the FAT filesystem. Not only is FAT old, there is also nothing about FAT, that isn't obvious to someone writing filesystem. In other words: FAT is not even patent worthy. The .NET framework, however, represents a great value for Microsoft (for one thing, it's the first Windows API that doesn't suck big time), and it's got to have several patent worthy ideas in it.
So, why would Microsoft want to protect something worthless like FAT, but not real value like the .NET framework?
As I see it, it's not a question about if they are going to sue someone over the .NET patents. It's a question of WHEN and WHOM.
With Red hat/Fedora dropping Mono out of the gnome dependencies, and ubuntu and it seems even debian stick to their Mono ways. And ubuntu even threatening their users to install a lower quality Mono-dependent music player to replace Rhythmbox just because the Mono zealots are very, very loud about how they want to push this MS technology on everybody using free software. I guess I will have to change my current ways and just move to .rpm based Fedora. It's been a long time without red hat, shall be fun. "Let's all make gnome depend on MS technology just so we have a desktop widget that has already been ported to native code!" That's great...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Legal departments are mostly "I'm scared Dave, will I dream?" They do anything that won't put them in an obviously worse position, just in case. Basically they're for negotiation and diplomacy; if Novell thinks Microsoft's claims on Mono are bullshit, they can call it, but Microsoft may raise something else real on them for happening to be uncooperative. If you are a ridiculous joke demanding money, they squash you; look at SCOX vs IBM vs Novell, with everyone else in the business world shelling cash to SCOX because they may have some legitimate claims, while IBM and Novell decided they were full of shit and not a real threat. You're too annoying and full of shit, IBM's going to stamp you into the ground.
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Excuse me while I roffle a bit.
Did you just compare tomboy + all dependencies + an additional 11MB made up from nowhere[0] to *just* the gnote binary? If you're going to spread misinformation, at least make it something that's not trivial to disprove.
[0] http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/#comment-921
If it runs faster and takes up less space*, who cares what the Tomboy developers think? May the better app win, I say.
*disclaimer: I have no proof that either of these are true, but it seems likely. If not, then Tomboy ought to thrive and Gnote will probably not gain many users anyway.
This is literally true, but very misleading. Microsoft has ECMA bless .NET from time to time. Java has the Java Community Process. Yeah, sure, ECMA calls itself a standards organization, and the Java Community Process doesn't. If you look back at the history of Java, its big selling point from the beginning was that it was cross-platform, Sun fought intensely to make sure that it didn't get turned into a nonstandardized mess by MS, and Oracle's reference implementation is GPL'd. Microsoft, on the other hand, has demonstrated with OOXML that they see standards bodies as things that they can cynically manipulate.
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Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation
If it runs faster and takes up less space*, who cares what the Tomboy developers think? May the better app win, I say.
*disclaimer: I have no proof that either of these are true, but it seems likely. If not, then Tomboy ought to thrive and Gnote will probably not gain many users anyway.
You are being too simplistic. Forks are more complicated than 'if Y is better than X then people will use Y and the world will be better'.
Consider this, what's the sole motivation behind the development of Gnote? It is to remove the Mono dependency, that's all, there's nothing more to it. And the work is relatively easy because all the heavy lifting has already been done by the Tomboy developers.
Say Gnote takes off and Tomboy dies, the motivation to improve Gnote is gone because the single goal of Gnote(i.e to kill Tomboy) has been achieved, and anyway, there is no more Tomboy to ripoff new ideas, code and GUI design from. Tomboy's developers are not happy with gnote now, so there's little chance they will jump ship to gnote.
So there's more to this than survival of the fastest and slimmest.
This space for rent.
This particular outburst of concern is FUD. Debian already has Mono in the "main" repository (as opposed to "contrib" or "non-free"). That alone is a statement that they are not worried about the "free-ness" of the package. Even if it will now be installed by default, it was already made available by default to every Debian installation. The difference is very superficial.
If MS was going to go after them, they could have already. This changes nothing. (although this spat on /. might bring it to MS attention.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Using GPL code on another GPL ported program (to another programming language) is a ripoff? and I am using Gnote 0.3.1 and it has Applet support, Gnote is being converted from C# to C++, and features and plugins are being ported one by one
A line by line clone and completely identical GUI design to the pixel level and not respecting the developers wish can be called unethical even if it's legal under the GPL/LGPL. Most OSS developers won't mind some credit for their hard work. If Tomboy's developers do all the heavy lifting and Gnote just takes all of that and ports it line by line without adding any value except not having mono, that can be called a ripoff. Once Tomboy dies, Gnote might stagnate, because there is nothing more to ripoff and the single goal of Gnote(to remove Mono) has been achieved.
This space for rent.
A line by line clone and completely identical GUI design to the pixel level and not respecting the developers wish can be called unethical even if it's legal under the GPL/LGPL. Most OSS developers won't mind some credit for their hard work. If Tomboy's developers do all the heavy lifting and Gnote just takes all of that and ports it line by line without adding any value except not having mono, that can be called a ripoff. Once Tomboy dies, Gnote might stagnate, because there is nothing more to ripoff and the single goal of Gnote(to remove Mono) has been achieved.
You and the authors may not like it, but that is the power of free software, I wanted to remove Mono from my system, Gnote is the response from someone that just wanted it too, they took the code and ported it, it could be a port to Java to run on Android, or to Javascript to be run on a palm Pre, it is a port, that not only allows me to run it the way I want, but give the opportunity to use that software on more architectures than Mono currently runs.
I have seen the same kind of ports many times, for example porting Hibernate and Ant from Java to .Net and nobody called those ripoffs, someone needed the port, someone did it. get over it
I know it is a bit old but, we'll file one once they publish which part they're going to patent
The patent system doesn't work that way. Anything that they could possibly patent would have had to have been filed years ago and is publicly available now.
Is it because .NET is a standard through an organized body? [ecma-international.org] Whereas, Java is basically a community process with Sun at the head of the community? [jcp.org]
Yes. Sun, in fact, promised ISO, ANSI, and then ECMA standardization. They reneged on those promises because it forced them to open up the language too much, which tells you that the JCP is not a standards process. From a practical point of view, I think the JCP has pretty much destroyed Java.
If this is your beef with Java then what exactly is different between how Java is made versus something like, Linux [lkml.org] or GNU HURD? [gnu.org]
Linux and the Hurd are not standards, they are open source projects. Sun Java, likewise, isn't a standard, it's a dual-licensed project.
Besides, what is all this seemingly bad blood between .NET and Java?
I don't know about .NET, since I don't use it. I do use Mono. In any case, I really don't care whether people use Java, but Java is a good example to contrast with Mono because many people regard it as "open", yet it is far more encumbered than ECMA C# or Mono: Sun owns key parts of the Java specifications and they have numerous patents on core Java and the libraries. If that doesn't bother open source developers, why should using Mono bother any open source developer?
What the hell is tomboy doing as a dependency in the first place? It's a totally unnecessary package which I have absolutely zero use for.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Consider this, what's the sole motivation behind the development of Gnote? It is to remove the Mono dependency, that's all, there's nothing more to it.
Well, and what is wrong with that? If there is a demand to remove Mono dependency (and apparently there is), then the fork serves a useful purpose.
*On another note: What's the point of Gnome again, now that Qt/KDE is open sourced?*
To not be a cluttered piece of crap, which is KDE's job. See on UNIX, every program should do one thing and do it well.
I've always thought KDE's applications were much better than OpenOffice - and Gnome doesn't seem to have any productivity applications at all...
(I've run mostly KDE for a long time, though I have been running Gnome of late, on my new laptop - and I'm quite enjoying it...)
I really strongly feel that Unix lacks the coherent infrastructure needed for this "each tool does one thing well" philosophy... If each tool does just one thing, then your ability to accomplish things strongly depends on how effectively and easily you can link multiple tools together... I feel like the old Unix tools philosophy has gone AWOL of late, and it's pretty much absent from the GUI space, where an individual application is usually written to handle all possible actions for an individual problem domain, and there's very little consideration made to linking these applications together...
Bow-ties are cool.
Samba and Mono are the only technologies you listed that are an exact protocol/format/etc. clone of Microsoft's technology. Samba doesn't provide the strategic usefulness that Mono could if used widely in OSS.
There's a better alternative anyway: Java. Of which the official implementation is open source and the IP/Patents involved are legal for general use.
Whereas Microsoft's last words on the subject of Mono were that it's "an unauthorized reverse engineering of Microsoft intellectual property."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
True, but lots of clones and forks do hurt a project.
Too bad. Don't do things with your project that make too many people want to fork it, and you'll be fine. If a lot of forks appear, it just means you aren't fulfilling your users' needs. Which isn't even a bad thing! Forks are generally good, not bad.
And in this case, your comment is a bit of a straw man -- as far as I can tell, Tomboy has one single fork/clone. Unless you're going to argue that *one* is "too many," I don't see how it's a problem...
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.