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Richard Stallman Says No To Mono

Posted by timothy on from the therefore-not-a-monomaniac dept.

twitter writes "There's been a lot of fuss about mono lately. After SCO and MS suing over FAT patents, you would think avoiding anything MS would be a matter of common sense. RMS now steps into the fray to warn against a serious mistake: 'Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use. .... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.'" Update: 06/27 20:22 GMT by T : Read on below for one Mono-eschewing attempt at getting the (excellent) Tomboy's functionality, via a similar program called Gnote. Update: 06/27 21:07 GMT by T: On the other side of the coin, reader im_thatoneguy writes "Jo Shields, a Mono Developer, has published an article on 'Why Mono Doesn't Suck,' why it is not a threat to FOSS, why it is desirable to developers and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default." LastGuyonEarth writes "Gnote was started on April 2009 by Gnome developer Hubert Figuiere, known also for his work on Abiword. The goal of Gnote is to provide a Free Software implementation of Tomboy that doesn't rely on Mono. The ultimate goal is to replace Tomboy in an effort to make Gnome and GNU/Linux distributions non-dependant on Novell's implementation of Microsoft's .NET platform. For our testing purposes, I installed Gnote 0.5.1 on Ubuntu Jaunty through a personal PPA, but I would love to see it officially packaged in the near future."

5 of 1,008 comments (clear)

  1. Stallman also says no to web browsing by langelgjm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Stallman also says no to web browsing.

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
  2. Re:Java? by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Licensing wise, Mono and Java are fine. However, the patent arsenal for Java has been approved for use by anyone. Microsoft has not done the same with .NET.

    Thus, using Mono you are in a very real situation involving IP litigation. With Java, Sun has publicly pledged anyone can use Java, so they'd be hard pressed to sue you for using it.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  3. Re:easy solution by clintp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    RMS has always had a case of monomania.

    --
    Get off my lawn.
  4. Hey Miguel by bmo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm calling you out. Right now.

    We know you're on Slashdot, so don't be a coward.

    Tell us how you know that Mono doesn't infringe on Microsoft's patents. Tell us how Moonlight doesn't infringe on Microsoft patents. Clear this stuff up.

    Unless you and Novell answer this, without weasel words Mono and Moonlight and everything else you contribute to GNU/Linux based on Microsoft tech will be suspect.

    Thanks.

    --
    BMO

  5. Re:MS not M$ by RedWizzard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I didn't catch that in the original submission; thanks for seeing it.

    Good job. The word "Twitter" should have been a sign to look for trouble. You've been here how long?

    You might have had a point if twitter hadn't created that username about eight years before Twitter appeared.