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Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gonna-need-a-better-girdle dept.

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."

55 of 503 comments (clear)

  1. Frist by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    TFA: "However, Microsoft says clearly that only Novell can supply Moonlight to end-users:".

    Rolling Mono (note: Mono != Moonlight) into Debian would be beneficial for both Debian and Microsoft. I don't believe that Microsoft will take legal action against Debian or Miguel, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least considering Microsoft's recent suicidal business divisions.

    1. Re:Frist by maxume · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It seems to me that, even if Microsoft threw a fit, the worst case scenario would be that they have to pull the package out of the releases.

      I suppose it might be a bigger deal for Canonical, but even the craziest judge isn't going to impose some ridiculous punishment for actions they take on good faith.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  2. Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of .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.

    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 .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.

    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.
    1. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft may just have .NET patents and contracts for their own sake, as SOP. Pragmatically, it would be a mistake for them to sue Debian or Miguel. I think they realize that because they haven't yet gone after Miguel.

    2. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by Aphoxema · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft may just have .NET patents and contracts for their own sake, as SOP. Pragmatically, it would be a mistake for them to sue Debian or Miguel. I think they realize that because they haven't yet gone after Miguel.

      Or they've already gotten him.

      --
      "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    3. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Did you read their patent claim? If you closed your eyes, had someone else read it to you, and you had no idea the company of which it came from, you would swear it was a Sun patent on Java/SOAP.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    4. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by EvilIdler · · Score: 5, Informative

      I guess Tomboy is a nice test-case. But all that junk to install just for a note-taking program? Also, wouldn't it be nice if the Slashdot summary told me what Tomboy does?

      The project page is a little more informative:
      http://freshmeat.net/projects/tomboy

    5. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by ketilwaa · · Score: 3, Funny

      I just did an apt-get update on my Ubuntu install. Right before, I checked my e-mail. Does any other slashdotters have nice anecdotes from their computing day? Has anyone opened a document or did a uname or anything that will interest us? I'll be waiting!

    6. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds to me like the "no bugs have popped up yet, so there are no bugs in the program" logic fallacy.

      If one company of all has proven to follow the rule, that if they have some strange clause in the contract, and on asking about it, they say that it's just for safety and will never be used in reality, they intend to use it as early and as often as possible, then it's with no doubt Microsoft. (Health insurance companies would come to mind too.)

      I think, given the happenings of the past, it is far more likely, that as soon as Mono became an essential part of Gnome, so that to remove it, you would have to kill Gnome entierly, Microsoft will load its weapons. ;)

      Which means that soon, the argument of both troll teams (the pro-mono and the contra-mono side act very trollish, I must say), will be settley, and we can go back to VI vs Emacs. ;)

      On another note: What's the point of Gnome again, now that Qt/KDE is open sourced? (Remember how Gnome started because it was not.) ;)
      Oh well, I am always for more freedom (and more choice, if it helps freedom), so why not? :)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    7. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by Hatta · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tomboy is not 50MB, the whole Mono framework is that much, Tomboy is relatively small. If you use F-Spot or Beagle, Mono runtime is installed anyway.

      And if you dont(most people), it's not installed. It's available in the repositories if you want it, why crap it into the base install?

      Debian had reason to include Tomboy instead of Gnote. Also Tomboy does not have Applet support, which is why Debian wants it in the Gnome install instead of Gnote

      Gnote 0.3.0 released 2009-04-29 adds applet support. Why use Tomboy at all now?

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    8. Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thing is, though, those nice UNIXy console programs often have a lot of optional parameters, because there are subtle details in doing something well. They are defaulted to sane values, because you don't usually need them, but when you do need them, it wouldn't be trivial to work around not having them.

      What you call clutter on KDE is what an advanced user can use to optimize their workflow. The problem with Gnome apps is that they toss all those advanced options away. Not just hide them in a "Here be dragons" advanced options menu with sane defaults, but totally removed. And that cuts badly into their usability relative to KDE apps once you're past the training wheels level of skill.

  3. Default installation? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Informative

    Last I checked, the "default installation" of Debian didn't even include X. So I'm guessing what they really mean is that they've included it in the default repositories, and if you apt-get gnome you'll get tomboy and mono too.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Default installation? by Norsefire · · Score: 4, Funny
      Did you figure that out all by yourself, or did you do something as unslashdot-like as read the summary?

      OS News reports that Debian developer Josselin Mouette got Tomboy accepted as a dependency for gnome

    2. Re:Default installation? by Maxwell42 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Did you read the title the gp was referring to ?

      Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation

  4. Incredible horrifying bloat by k-zed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by vintagepc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      People on Dial-up cringing as they read that?

      --
      Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
    2. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by Freetardo+Jones · · Score: 4, Informative

      What's wrong with this picture?

      You mean other than the fact that the statement is bullshit? I have a compiled version of Tomboy and it only comes out to around 5-6 megs. The 50MB size is them including all of it's secondary dependencies (which are used by other programs as well) to create a completely misleading picture.

    3. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by suffix+tree+monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed, that is my problem with Mono (or C#, for that matter) as well. We can't expect small, lean applications written in C# because of the language's design. C# is only good for writing code blazingly fast. Which is kind of silly to me, because as a semi-experienced programmer, I know that writing code is the easier part of software development.

      So yeah, the more Mono/C# apps we get into Debian, the slower and memory-hungry (and disk-hungry, but I find that a non-issue in general) it gets. However, most people with enough RAM just 'meh' it out, after all, there is no such thing as Page's Law, right?

      But it's not just Microsoft's products that bloat Debian. My personal windmills are applications like HAL, D-BUS, any gnome-*-daemon, any {Policy,Device,Console}Kit and so on. By the way, a useful hint - when a developer can't think of an original name and prefers to rip-off a name trendy at that time, expect the code to be as well thought-out as Nuka Cola Cherry.

      (I get agitated when software bloat is discussed, I know.)

    4. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "bloat" - I do not think that word means what you think it means.

      .NET is an ENTIRE platform. You likely could have a whole system where this is the only accessible API. Just like Java. Would you fault, say uTorrent, for having 40 megs of win32 dependencies?

      This is the unfortunate case of a .NET application being apparently the only one in the core system, so it gets all of the weight of the dependency on Mono. However, when a few thousand applications in the system are .NET, that kind of a dependency is not even a second thought.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    5. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by Bob54321 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Look for GNotes. It is Tomboy ported to C++. That has annoyed to Tomboy developers....

      --
      :(){ :|:& };:
    6. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have a compiled version of Tomboy and it only comes out to around 5-6 megs.

      A 20 minute download for a note-taking app?

      The 50MB size is them including all of it's secondary dependencies (which are used by other programs as well)

      Used by other programs, true, but not necessarily those included as a dependency for the "typical" Debian desktop install.

    7. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by Vexorian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      (which are used by other programs as well)

      Except these other programs are not included as a gnome dependency...

      --

      Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
    8. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by hattig · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Cheers. I see no reason therefore to include Tomboy + Mono by default with Gnome on Debian - or do other parts of Gnome depend upon Mono now?

    9. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by recoiledsnake · · Score: 4, Informative

      Gnote is a line by line clone of Tomboy from C# to C++. Even the GUI is exactly the same. Don't believe me? See the screenshots at http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/mono-in-the-default-install/ So his complaints would all be still valid, unless he's biased against mono.

      --
      This space for rent.
    10. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by ubersoldat2k7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You see, Linux/Unix/BSD don't need Mono! What can you achieve using Mono which you wouldn't achieve with Perl, Python, C++ or Java? Name one, please, only one. Linux already have great software tools, great programming languages and great graphical libraries. Why are this guys, which I believe have their best of interests, trying to shove up our asses a lame excuse of a programming language that basically doesn't bring anything new but license agreements, EULAs, patents to a perfectly, usable environment? I see why Microsoft needs .Net and C#, they have nothing better to offer to their clients, but come on. And yes, only the mono-runtime package consumes 27MB of space. For what? For Tomboy? I can code a Tomboy like app in Python in three days... come on!!!

    11. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by Tom9729 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You never see anyone include the sizes of dependencies like glibc, alsa, etc because they are pretty common across all applications. I mean honestly, find me a application that doesn't in some way depend on libc and I will be impressed.

      The reason the size of all of a Mono app's dependencies are included is because they are only useful for running Mono apps.

      In this case it is reasonable to include the size of Tomboy's dependencies because (so far) it is the only Debian-Gnome-required app that needs them.

    12. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by StrawberryFrog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We can't expect small, lean applications written in C# because of the language's design.

      Why not? What design feature stops this?

      C# is only good for writing code blazingly fast. Which is kind of silly to me, because as a semi-experienced programmer, I know that writing code is the easier part of software development.

      Indeed, you need readable, maintainable, performant code. Which is why I use C#. You were expecting perl maybe?

      --

      My Karma: ran over your Dogma
      StrawberryFrog

    13. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by jmorris42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > Actually, all of those are very useful,....

      No, they might be useful someday. Today they are all semi-stable and almost totally undocumented black boxes that upend forty years of UNIX/POSIX tradition yet were pushed into production in this insane quest to be a better Windows than Windows and thus somehow bring about the Year of Linux on the Desktop.

      So while all of the old understood ways of configuring a system have been tossed into the trash, the new replacements aren't ready for prime time. By ready I mean 'just works' at least 99% of the time and has clear documentation to permit a skilled UNIX admin to fix that last 1%.

      Example: The hpt_37x driver has been broken[1] (massive data corruption) in Fedora's kernels since at least F8 and probably earlier. With a few tweaks the open source driver at Highpoint's website can be built and works. Your mission, get F11 to use it. I finally this did it this morning by editing /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd and having it force the driver to load in the initrd phase before the *Kit bullcrap gets a chance to start.

      [1] It isn't Fedora's fault. Kernel mailing list traffic shows a problem that has been fixed, regressed and fixed yet again, rinse and repeat a time or two. From what I can tell 2.6.30 may finally have it fixed but F11 shipped with 2.6.29.

      --
      Democrat delenda est
    14. Re:Incredible horrifying bloat by suffix+tree+monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What design feature stops that?

      Code size: Well, C# is a pretty verbose language, much like Java. Usually you need to write a lot of "wrapping-paper" code to do what you need the program to do. That helps when you prefer a lot of subprojects that should behave alike, but that's not what we like to do in UNIX (We like to stitch our system together with small applications that do their tasks and only their tasks well.).

      Application speed: Well, as far as I had the privilege of testing Mono/C#, it may perform as well as C in number-crunching, but its garbage collector slows things down sometimes (which is a design decision, and you can write code faster, I know, I know) and the I/O is also pretty slow compared to C/C++ (this I measured myself). By the way, parsing files (UNIX always was a text-processing OS) is a PITA to write in C# (unless you're using XML, but that's not how we roll in UNIX-land, most of the time).

      Indeed, you need readable, maintainable, performant code. Which is why I use C#. You were expecting perl maybe?

      I prefer readable, well-thought-out code. You get performance for free if you thought about it at the drawing board. Maintainability is hardly measurable. (I don't consider code bad if you need a "suffix tree monkey" to maintain it, cause the "code monkeys" are unable to.)

      PS: I'm sorry I haven't brought any verifiable data to the table, but I'm currently far too into theory to care about any of those :o) Everything above is my experience, YMMV.

  5. Looks more like Sid by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 3, Informative

    The commit was done on Debian unstable, which is Sid, not Squeeze.

  6. What the F... by sydneyfong · · Score: 5, Informative

    Am I missing something?

    I've been using Debian for ..... 8+ years, since 2001, and I've NEVER heard anything about "GNOME" being in the "default" install. Anything resembling a "default" install would be the the Debian base system, which includes things like basic system files, core-utils, bash, pam, etc. Anything else is installed explicitly by the user (yes, installers make it easier, but still you need to choose the option). There are thousands of Debian desktop users who have no GNOME installed, and are either using KDE, or some other desktop environment.

    Besides, isn't "tomboy" already included in the GNOME of Debian Lenny (the current stable release)? At least when I did an "apt-get install gnome" yesterday (source list pointing to lenny), it installed tomboy for me, together with the EVIL EVIL mono etc. And Debian has included mono as part of its repository for years. If it had licensing/patent concerns, there wouldn't be any difference whether it was in the "default GNOME" installation or not.

    Argh.

    --
    Don't quote me on this.
    1. Re:What the F... by sydneyfong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:What the F... by Fallingcow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course, it's under GPL so Gnote is within it's rights, but there's a thing called professional courtesy and respecting a developer's wishes.

      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.

    3. Re:What the F... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course, it's under GPL so Gnote is within it's rights, but there's a thing called professional courtesy and respecting a developer's wishes.

      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.
    4. Re:What the F... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  7. An interesting read on the subject by Dotren · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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/

    1. Re:An interesting read on the subject by Freetardo+Jones · · Score: 3, Insightful

      C# is very good language, though not perfect, which builds on many of the good innovations of Java while eliminating many of the issues that I've always had with Java. The reason why there are so many negative feelings is because this is a Microsoft technology and nothing more. If Microsoft had originated the specification of ANSI C exactly as it is today, for example, you would hear constantly all the same outcries about how crappy it was, etc etc.

    2. Re:An interesting read on the subject by Freetardo+Jones · · Score: 3, Informative

      They originated because of the way mono is conceived to lure Linux developers into using software whose api is completely controlled by Microsoft but without its blessing.

      Yeah, so much of a lack of a blessing that it's provided the Mono developers with specifications for .NET/C#/Silverlight and its engineers have directly collaborated with the Mono developers. I'm pretty sure if you weren't giving your blessing that you wouldn't allow your engineers to collaborate with the project.

      Once too many Linux packages depend on mono, I'm sure we'll get some patent/copyright saber-rattling from Microsoft.

      So you claim, but we've been hearing that for 5 years now and the sky hasn't fallen yet Chicken Little.

      Then there's the technical aspect that mono will always be running behing the microsoft C#/CLI version, and so your Linux mono application will generally not even run on Windows or if it's running will be unappealing because it feels old to the MS user.

      This is bullshit. Every app I've written against Mono that doesn't use any of their extensions has run perfectly on .NET on Windows. Just so you know, Mono supports pretty much all of the important parts of .NET 3.5 so I don't know where you are pulling this shit from.

    3. Re:An interesting read on the subject by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is that Microsoft has an extremely bad reputation. We expect them to do absolutely everything they think could be to their advantage because, well, that's how they behaved in the past - even going as far as subverting ISO to get their document format declared a standard.

      As long as Microsoft retains any control over .NET I won't feel safe around the platform simply because they could decide to screw over everyone at any time and given their past behavior I expect them to.

      Whatever Microsoft comes up with, it's either a fully integrated part of their software stack or too hot to get involved with. I don't want to get caught in the fallout of a patent lawsuit. That sounds paranoid but, well, Microsoft's actions so far have been fairly consistent.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    4. Re:An interesting read on the subject by Kz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For me at least, the problem is not that it's an MS-originated tech; but the fact that it's an MS-controlled tech.

      A small counterpoint: XMLHttpRequest, the base call behind al things AJAX, is MS-originated; but it has evolved from that, and it's a widely complied de-facto standard. In fact, IE8 accepts the non-MS variant.

      Mono, OTOH, is a great reimplementation of .NET/C#; but is in most aspects following the obvious leader, which is MS. Just read some of Miguel's blogs. He's perennially awed of each microsoft improvement, and rushes to copy it. He does it brilliantly, and I wouldn't be surprised if he does it better than MS; but he still follows, not leads.

      Recently, thought, Mono has gained a few improvements over .NET, such as static compiling (compile to static machine code that can run without the VM), and SIMD optimizations (to transparently use SSEx, big performance improvements on some kind of media-heavy loads). Let's hope him and his team well, so that Mono could start to erode .NETs dominance on windows too.

      Personally, not holding my breath, and I don't want Mono on my machines.

      --
      -Kz-
  8. Re:Yessss by recoiledsnake · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here ---> http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/

    --
    This space for rent.
  9. Re:Slow news day by JSBiff · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  10. Another good reason to use KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    GNOME folks are really pushing the adoption of KDE 4 nowadays.
    It is great to see so much friendship between open-source projects :)

  11. Re:Yessss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. what a troll by jipn4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms

    Microsoft has filed a patent on the .NET APIs, but Tomboy (and most Mono applications) don't use the .NET APIs, they use the ECMA APIs and standard Linux APIs. Mono is no different in that way from Python, Ruby, Perl, or many other languages people commonly use on Linux: it uses proprietary APIs on Windows, and open source APIs on Linux.

    Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.

    If anybody can point to an actual patent that Mono or Tomboy violate, please file an issue report against the Mono project; if it is credible, the infringing functionality will be removed from Mono. So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything.

    1. Re:what a troll by 0xABADC0DA · · Score: 4, Informative

      Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.

      Java is based on an open standard... the fully open-source reference JDK.

      The reference JVM is also significantly faster than mono and somewhat faster than Microsoft CLR and has loads of somewhat useful other languages implementations that compile to it (Ruby, Python, Scala, Groovy, etc). So I'm not sure where you're pulling "way ahead" from.

  13. Try Gnote instead of Tomboy by Laven · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you tried gnote yet? It is a C++ reimplementation of tomboy. gnote's binary package itself is less than 4MB with only a few standard dependencies that you might already have on a GNOME desktop, significantly smaller than Mono. I made the switch fully from tomboy to gnote a few months ago and things are working very nicely.

  14. that's irrelevant by jipn4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of .NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent on the .NET infrastructure.

    First of all, they "don't hold a patent", they have filed a patent application. Whether that application gets granted remains to be seen, and even if it does, it's unclear what such a patent actually would cover or whether it could be enforced.

    Furthermore, even if the patent were valid and enforceable, it is irrelevant as far as Tomboy is concerned, since Tomboy and most other Mono desktop applications don't use the ".NET infrastructure", they use ECMA C# libraries and standard Linux libraries.

    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

    What's there to put in writing? You might as well demand Microsoft to put in writing that GNU C++, the Linux kernel, and Python are forever free from Microsoft royalties.

  15. Re:Yessss by wisty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, Mono probably has "patents" against it.

    So does every fricking application on the planet. 3D graphics? Patented. One click to buy? Patented. What's the bet that Microsoft has patents on half the Linux kernal?

    Can't they just do what every other free software project does, and just ignore the bloody things?

    Microsoft might sue, but they will probably just laugh. Nobody is going to re-implement the entire .net framework (including all the quirks of Microsoft's database layer, file system behavior, etc). Just look at the difficulties in getting data out of MySQL and PostGres in a sane way! Once you target a specific platform (i.e. the entire Microsoft stack) it's very hard to replicate.

  16. Re:Yessss by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  17. awkward fact, may ruin exciting story by julian67 · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-gnome/desktop/unstable/meta-gnome2/debian/control?revision=20303&view=markup

    "Depends: gnome-desktop-environment (= ${source:Version}),
                      gdm-themes,
                      gnome-themes-extras,
                      gnome-games (>= 1:2.24.3),
                      libpam-gnome-keyring (>= 2.24.1),
                      gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (>= 0.10.10),
                      gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg (>= 0.10.6),
                      rhythmbox (>= 0.12),
                      synaptic (>= 0.62),
                      system-config-printer (>= 1.0.0),
                      totem-mozilla,
                      swfdec-mozilla,
                      epiphany-extensions,
                      gedit-plugins,
                      evolution-plugins (>= 2.24.3),
                      evolution-exchange (>= 2.24.3),
                      evolution-webcal (>= 2.24.0),
                      serpentine,
                      gnome-app-install,
                      transmission-gtk,
                      bluez-gnome,
                      arj,
                      avahi-daemon,
                      tomboy (>= 0.12.2) | gnote,"

    note: tomboy (>= 0.12.2) | gnote

    In plain English that means tomboy *or* gnote.

    It's Debian, you have a choice.

    Debian also offers an Xfce/LXDE version of CD1 and a KDE version of CD1, CD1 being the installer. Neither of these offer mono or Gnome (duh!). Debian also offers fine grained package selection in all the installers, and a netinstall and a tiny netinstall, the businesscard iso. There is also the DVD installer which offers a choice of desktop environments along with the usual options for fine grained selection of packages, the 'Expert Install' option.

    So *one* of the numerous ways of installing Debian *may* offer Tomboy to those who want it. Cue howls of intolerant, ill-informed, unsubstantiated quasi-religious outrage.....

    And anyway mono is accepted as free software by the two bodies which are best placed to determine its status, the FSF and the OSI (and Debian Legal as well). Their legal teams have somehow failed to persuaded by psychotic ravings and are obstinately insistent in assessing these things by means of reason, facts, law and other little know methods. How churlish.

    On the other hand it might be a far reaching conspiracy and have something to do with the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 and Roswell.

  18. Re:Yessss by ketilwaa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Stallman did comment on Mono, and it's not necessarily what one would expect: See?

  19. FUD by gd2shoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:FUD by Tom9729 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mono itself has been in the Debian repos for a pretty long time and really isn't the issue here.

      This particular "spat" is because Debian is making Mono a dependency of Gnome, with the only justification being that Tomboy (a post-it note application) requires it, which many people see as unnecessary.

  20. Re:Red hat/Fedora improve, Debian/deb-based regres by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just so everyone else isn't snowed by this post, Fedora has not dropped mono and currently has no plans to, they have only said "we'll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part". The recent push to include mono based Banshee by default instead of Rhythmbox in Fedora and Ubuntu was caused by the one of the main Rhythmbox developers saying that rhythmbox has "several limitations" and that he was going to "still fix (some) bugs and review patches, but it's too much of a dead end for me to do more than that", leading many to believe it is in maintenance only mode. Not, as the parent says "Mono zealots".