Richard Stallman Says No To Mono

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."

Comments

the dangers I see

[lorenlal]

I don't know if this is overreaction. But I can certainly agree with him under some circumstances.

1) Is there a licensing concern using the C# language, or any of the compiler technology? Specifically, are there any software patents that could be leveraged against the open source community for using the C# implementation that could result in a massive court action? I do not know the details of any agreements (if they exist) but knowing Microsoft's stance on OSS, there is certainly potential for future abuse. Something along the lines of "Use of C# on any non-Microsoft platform is henceforth prohibited."
2) Is C# considered an open standard? Secondly, is the specification controlled by Microsoft directly? Or, is it influenced by the communities? Java is a similar monster, but it's been my observation that Sun (Oracle) is a willing participant in the Linux/Unix space so it hasn't been such a problem. An Example here would be something like, "C# compilers and applications now depend on a library that is currently available on Windows platform, any reverse engineering or decompilation or efforts to replicate this library will result in criminal penalties."

I'm certainly hesitant to use C# in anything simply because I don't trust Microsoft. I admit it openly. It doesn't mean I won't use what they make, and I think a healthy distrust isn't always a bad thing. If I end up using anything based on C#, I'll keep it in the Windows space.

but it does point to a mind out of touch

[circletimessquare]

if i said i didn't believe in blood transfusions, would that color your impression of any medical ethics opinions i might have?

lets be intellectually honest here: anyone who doesn't browse the web is completely out of touch with the main thrust of anything and everything computer related in the last 15 years

you say its not related. i'm saying it is

Re:"M$"

[WaywardGeek]

So... Microsoft having potential patent claims against your free compiler doesn't bother you? How about even using a "portable" language defined and controlled by Microsoft? Sure, if you only care about Windows, use C#. But Microsoft has a long history of jerking around standards that it controls to make them impossible for competitors to adopt. Consider Internet Explorer, and all the pain we have to go through to be compatible with that beast. How about Microsoft's attack on Open Document Format, and it's insanely huge and complex competing standard which only Microsoft implements? I think RMS has a valid point, and deserves consideration. This is a good place to air such discussions.