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

"M$"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what are you, four years old? Is it really that hard to just use Microsoft?

Where is the editor to edit this graffiti out? This crap does not belong on the front page of news site at all.

Re:"M$"

[ColdWetDog]

Well, it is from Twitter. So you're close. Hi twit! Glad to see you back with you're insightful erudite expositions.

Re:"M$"

[siyavash]

Sir, I fully agree with you. Slashdot's quality is getting lower and lower each week it seems. :(

Re:"M$"

[miknix]

I $trongly di$courage the u$e of '$' when writing Micro$oft. A$ parent $ay$, it
i$ a childi$h behavior which make$ look like that Micro$oft unique purpo$e i$
to make $. Thi$ i$ totally fal$e becau$e we all know Micro$oft want$ to build
a better digital world where maliciou$ $oftware doe$ not exi$t.

Plea$e $top u$ing '$',
thank you.

Re:"M$"

[CarpetShark]

Ahh :) Thanks for clarifying. Now I don't have to wonder how he missed that MS is bad :)

Re:"M$"

[jedidiah]

No. I am not "four years old". Are you?

I've been around long enough to remember MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, the original Windows NT and all of the
application associated malware that Microsoft has subjected us to over the years. I have also been around long
enough to be aware of the whole OEM strongarm thing, the shenanigan with DR-DOS,the back stabbing of IBM over
OS/2, Microsoft "cutting off Netscape's air supply", Linux being a cancer and TomTom being sued over VFAT.

Been around longer than 4 years.

Used their stuff. Found it lacking.

So yes it is too much to ask to "just use Microsoft".

The same goes for McDonalds, Campbells and Ford.

Re:"M$"

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 90s, Microsoft was CAUGHT paying university administrators $10,000 to standardize their schools on Microsoft Office and Windows NT. Office for the Mac was written in a emulator designed to DELIBERATELY slow performance until users said "What's up with this slow Office on the Macs" with the idea being people would say "Just use Windows. Office 97 on Windows is better and faster." These are basic anti-trust violations.

This is America. It's A-OK (at least in this country) to criticize and mock public companies who are caught doing shenanigans not in the public interest. M$ makes some really nice software (NT 4 was a wicked desktop OS) and their development tools are really sweet. But that doesn't make them above criticism.

Re:"M$"

[hairyfeet]

There is a simple way to solve this. If you think Microsoft is to long then just use MSFT. Since that is their stock ticker and lately they've seemed to care more about their stock price than what many customers wanted it is still snarky and you don't look like a tool for using it like you do with that lame M$ shit. The M$ bit was old during the days of Win9X, and now many don't even know what the hell you are talking about.

So stick with MSFT. It makes your posts readable and doesn't make you sound like a tool. Thanks.

Re:"M$"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

As someone else has already remarked, he meant the word, not the thing it names. For lispers, he meant (use 'microsoft) and not (use microsoft). ;-)

Re:"M$"

[node 3]

Wrong. It's was childish of him to undermine his own point with that "M$" bullshit. You lose.

Too bad I stated that using 'M$' is childish.

Just as it was childish of me to mod your post down and bookmark your user page for the next batch of mod points.

Knock yourself out. You aren't the first, and you won't be the last. Just remember, each time you do it, that it demonstrates your insecurity and is a reminder of the impotence of your passive aggresive existence.

As for myself, it won't bother me in the slightest. Unlike a lot of folks here (judging from the 'don't mod me down just because you disagree' sigs), I'm perfectly fine with the fact that idiots are granted mod points. It's kind of sad that you'd rather waste them than use them to make things better for the rest of us, but whatever, they're your points.

No need to reply, as I have no interest, nor feel any compulsion, to carry on a tiresome argument with you.

Re:"M$"

[Jugalator]

So you're unable to get your point across by spelling words properly?

That part would be the childish thing about this, anyway.

Re:"M$"

[TarrVetus]

It pisses off Microsofties, who, being narcissistic freaks, can't stand being reminded that millions of intelligent people hate them, their software and their company with a passion.

I think it has more to do with wanting to see article descriptions that make an attempt at remaining neutral. Using "M$" is as charged and biased as saying "Linsux" or "crApple," and undermines the article post, making what would normally be a news post into an opinion editorial.

Many people want to make their own decisions, and not be told what to think of things before even investigating them. Isn't that kind of spirit how things like the OSS movement started, anyway--not being told what or how to do things, but doing them for themselves?

Re:"M$"

[hairyfeet]

I notice the Linux zealots modded me troll, that's funny as hell. I have karma to last until Judgment day so have fun.

If you would have read my post I said there was a REASON that you should use MSFT, and that is because as of late they seemed more concerned with the stock price that with their core business. Just look at Vista, which was rushed out way too early with serious bugs to keep the stock price from dropping further, or Zune(doesn't "playforsure" now, huh?) which was spit out to try to give them an Apple style buzz, the X360 which was rushed out with a serious flaw(RROD) to give them a head start on PS3, etc.

Meanwhile their core markets, the ones that cut them the big fat checks for software assurance and buy desktops by the thousands have been given the finger yet again. Why? Because Steve Ballmer wants the stock to be as high as Apple Inc and have the kind of buzz that Steve Jobs has. I can just imagine what it must be like in Steve Ballmer's office "And with Win7 we'll finally be as hip and as cool as Apple! We really will! Yes we will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!!!"

So say what you want about Bill Gates but that ruthless bastard could put out a good business OS. Ever since he left the company has bounced from one idea to another like all of Redmond has ADHD. I'm sure the Linux and Apple guys are laughing their asses off because we MSFT users are getting the same treatment Apple did under the Pepsi guy.

But anyone who has followed the comings and goings of MSFT(and I have since the days of Win3.xx) can say that they have lost their focus and seem more concerned about image and stock price than in putting out a good product. So that is why I think MSFT is a perfect shortcut for Microsoft and better than that tired old M$ line. MSFT points out that they care more about stock price than product, M$ makes you sound like a 14 year old asshat or Twitter. And is there anybody here BESIDES Twitter that wants to sound like him? Besides his sockpuppets of course.

Re:"M$"

[Mr2001]

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.

The standardized version of the C# language is not controlled by Microsoft. It's, you know, standardized. If you're paranoid about MS pulling the rug out from under you in the future, then stick to the ECMA standard, and don't use the latest whiz-bang C# 4.0 features until and unless those become standardized too.

Re:"M$"

[Kjella]

The standardized version of the C# language is not controlled by Microsoft. It's, you know, standardized. If you're paranoid about MS pulling the rug out from under you in the future, then stick to the ECMA standard, and don't use the latest whiz-bang C# 4.0 features until and unless those become standardized too.

Spoken like a developer. And if I'm a user of some software? Everything is nice and crossplatform, but the primary platform is Windows. They go C# 4.0 and either Linux does too or it gets left in the cold. I get left in the cold. The whole concept is just as stupid as if Linux were to give up on OpenGL and try chasing DirectX instead, or abandon ODF and try chasing OOXML. It's the good old fashioned embrace, extend, extinguish again except Microsoft got us adopting their standards instead of the other way around. That they've managed to fool part of the community only means the community is being naive.

Re:"M$"

[Culture20]

For lispers, he meant (use 'microsoft) and not (use microsoft). ;-)

Your parenthesthisth are misthmatched.

Re:"M$"

[Mr2001]

And if I'm a user of some software? Everything is nice and crossplatform, but the primary platform is Windows. They go C# 4.0 and either Linux does too or it gets left in the cold. I get left in the cold.

Er... how is that Mono's fault, or Ubuntu's fault for including Mono?

An application that depends on .NET features that are only available on Windows is not a cross-platform application, it's a Windows application. The existence of more Windows applications doesn't harm you.

Mono doesn't make your life any harder as a user. It makes your life easier, by giving developers who want to make cross-platform applications an easy way to do it (by sticking to the common features that Mono and .NET both support).

Re:"M$"

[hairyfeet]

This will get me modded down, but who cares I have karma. You want to know why "M$" comes off as a giant douche to me and just about everybody else? Lets be honest here folks, that is the "LOL Windblowz!" speak of the asshats you find on any forum, ala Twitter. You could have the best argument in the entire world against MSFT but when you use that "LOL Windblowz" style speech, of which M$ belongs, most folks instantly think douche and tune you out.

So I am not saying this for me, as i am more than capable of thinking douche and bypassing anyone whose post has the M$ crap. I am saying this for those that may have a legitimate point to make that don't know this is classic lamer speak, like you'd see the 14 year old Halo players using. So don't be a douche. Use MS, use MSFT hell use Msoft, whatever. But be aware that when you use that tired old M$ crap you have just cut a significant portion of those that would read your post out, because the first thing they think when they see that is douche and troll and move on.

Re:"M$"

[hairyfeet]

Uuhhhhh....how many times have you heard the expression "first impressions count"? Do you think I made that expression up? And I never used that "LOL" BS. I said that the Kubuntu theme is quite nice and pleasing to the eye, the Win7 and OSX themes are quite pleasing and eye catching, and the default Ubuntu theme looks like....well either dirt or poo, your call on that one.

You can't honestly tell me that with all the talented graphic artists that use FLOSS that is the best they could come up with. Look at screenshots of Kubuntu VS Win7 VS OSX VS Ubuntu and I'm sorry, but I seriously doubt you would find any average Joe that would pick Ubuntu as the best looking, or even give it a second glance.

Remember, we are talking about a product you need to sell to the masses here. They don't give a flying fart about your security model, just ask MSFT about trying to sell Vista on security. They care about looks and performance. You already have the performance down, why would you want to hamstring yourself with the looks? That just doesn't make any sense, and I have even seen developers from Canonical saying that the human theme is "an acquired taste" which of course we all know is a nice way of saying "it's kind of ugly but you get used to it". And don't forget the average Joe sticks with the defaults, so if your default is ugly he will just move on, as he has NO desire to tweak. Just look at how many themes and hacked MSStyles there are for WinXP, and I don't remember seeing a single one in the wild. Folks just stick with whatever it comes with by default and the default Ubuntu theme just isn't as nice as the competition.

It also doesn't change the fact that "LOL" speak instantly has you labeled a douche no matter how good a point you have. I think I have just demonstrated that I do have a point on the human theme, and I did so without having to resort to "LOL Unbongo" crap. See how easy that was?

Re:"M$"

[Kalriath]

Actually, meta-mod doesn't work like that any more. It just picks random posts and goes "mod this up for the hell of it, or mod this down?"

It's basically just an extra set of mod points with no accountability now.

easy solution

[ionix5891]

rename it to GNU/Mono

Re:easy solution

[clintp]

RMS has always had a case of monomania.

MS not M$

[basementman]

WTF is up with these editorialized summaries. The abbreviation is MS, or Microsoft if you prefer the long hand. Let people form their own opinion without stupid name calling.

Re:MS not M$

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... There used to be much less M$ and Apple fanboys. And all in all much less lamers. Sigh...

Re:MS not M$

[timothy]

You're right.

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

timothy

Re:MS not M$

[Anonymous Coward]

You come here to watch guys jerk each other off?

Perhaps they should be laughing at you.....

Re:MS not M$

[osu-neko]

Technically, it's MSFT. MS is Morgan Stanley.

So, Morgan Stanley was behind MS-DOS?

Re:MS not M$

[Sir_Lewk]

Since I seem to have been unjustly voted overrated I'll back up my assertion with a quote from CmdrTaco himself:

Ravn: Slashdot is well known for its bias (if you'll forgive the term) towards Open Source Software. Slashcode itself is Open Source. Why is this? What was involved with the decision to make Slashcode OSS? Why do you think it is important? What, in your opinion, makes Open Source Software so great?

CmdrTaco: I'm a very biased person. And I bring many of my biases with me to Slashdot. No apologies are necessary ;) Slashcode is open source because my readers clammored for it in the late 90's. Today thousands of websites use the code. That's very cool. Unfortunately almost none of them contribute anything back, so while it was great for them, it continues to be a burden for us. Not every open source project is the kernel ;)

http://www.cyberarmy.net/library/article/994

Ok, perhaps that quote doesn't perfectly illustrate a pro linux and anti microsoft bias. If you need anymore comfirmation though I suggest you look no farther than slashdot's "borg Gates" image they use for any microsoft related story. For better or worse, slashdot does have a bias and anyone thinking otherwise is quite foolish.

Re:MS not M$

[westlake]

I suggest you look no farther than slashdot's "borg Gates" image they use for any microsoft related story. For better or worse, slashdot does have a bias and anyone thinking otherwise is quite foolish.

Bias I can live with.

But the Borg icon and the stained glass Window are simply flamebait from the nineties - and by now looking rather gray around the temples.

If Star Trek can reboot the franchise to restore some of it's integrity, perhaps it's time for Slashot to do the same.

Re:MS not M$

[shaitand]

I am biased toward gravity as well. I probably have more support for my negative bias toward Microsoft than I have support for my belief in gravity.

Re:MS not M$

[RedWizzard]

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.

Re:MS not M$

[TheRaven64]

And for those eight years, twitter (the article submitter) has been a troll, operating dozens of sock-puppet accounts, with such a strong anti-MS bias that even most Linux-using FSF members find faintly embarrassing. I'm not sure what the relevance of twitter.com is to this article, but thanks for mentioning it...

Stallmans just mad because

[doas777]

he can't make us call it "gnu-mono", so it must be bad.

Yup

[MightyMartian]

I tend to think of Stallman as a bit of a nut, but I pretty much hold the same view of Mono. It's a trojan horse.

Re:Yup

[kestasjk]

But the weird thing is that in the article he's not only against Mono, but against C# itself, which is as much of a standardized language as JavaScript. MS couldn't whip out any patents against C#, and as Stallman points out the FSF has its own C# implementation. So why is he speaking out against C#, a standardized language?

For once RMS has actually been too brief, and has left reasoning totally out of this brief memo.

Re:Yup

[Vahokif]

Mono already supports the most widely-used parts of .NET and even some stuff .NET doesn't have, like SIMD.

Microsoft, I said NO!

[eyepeepackets]

It's absurd that Stallman has to actually issue this warning considering Microsoft's history of behavior not only with competition but with their business associates as well. Anyone who has been both alive and conscious these past twenty-five years knows forming any sort of relationship with Microsoft, either directly or indirectly, customer or partner, is just asking for a raping.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[saleenS281]

Funny, we've been a customer of Microsoft's for 20 years and have yet to experience this "raping" you speak of. I know it's all sorts of fun and games to bash MS on slashdot, but seriously? Comparing them to rape? Grow up.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[weav]

Ask Spyglass, the company from which MS "licensed" what became MSIE, whether they felt raped when MS started giving away MSIE thus rendering the royalties to Spyglass $0.00 (plus the minumum quarterly fee)...

Maybe as a customer you haven't had anything to rape you for aside from license fees for products. If you were a developer / business partner, I suspect you would say differently.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[aztektum]

Rape doesn't simply mean forced sexual intercourse. As a verb... well...

Verb

Infinitive
to rape

Third person singular
rapes

Simple past
raped

Past participle
raped

Present participle
raping

to rape (third-person singular simple present rapes, present participle raping, simple past and past participle raped)

      1. To force sexual intercourse or other sexual activity upon another person, without their consent.
      2. To abuse an object in an extreme manner.

                    The loggers raped the virgin forest

      3. (slang) To dominate in a contest.

                    My experienced opponent will rape me at chess.

I'd say they have abused their dominance in the tech world to the extreme more than once.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's the point. He doesn't "have to." Every techie (possibly except him, though I doubt it) understood this years ago. By saying this now, though, he gets attention.

Apparently not EVERY techie else it wouldn't have been included into Debian in the first place.

He's saying it now because they are doing it NOW. Not because he is an attention whore.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Zaphod The 42nd]

I disagree. Its both business and personal. You have to succeed, but as Google (at least originally) noted, you have to do it while 'not being evil'. Ballmer and co. are hurting the industry.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Blakey Rat]

They signed a bad business deal, and that's somehow Microsoft's fault?

Look, I'm sorry that the business world isn't all soft and cuddly, sometimes people who aren't careful (like Spyglass wasn't) get hurt. Tough shit.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Directrix1]

That is a very shallow analysis. If I recall correctly Microsoft successfully sued TomTom for violating FAT patents in the Linux kernel on their devices. Furthermore, yes, if Microsoft took a litigious stance on .Net, then Mono would just get rid of the offending code. Thereby, breaking every single program written that depends on that feature. And M$ (yes M$) could do that over and over again, effectively killing the ecosystem on anything besides Linux. Stallman is 100% correct in his opinion here. Mono is good to run shit written in .Net. But don't rely on it as a platform in a free ecosystem. It is unadvisable in the long run.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[myxiplx]

20 years? How many examples do you want:

- illegally burying Lotus 123, and replacing it with an inferior product
- illegally killing stacker, and replacing it with the inferior doublespace
- buying winternals, and burying one of the most promising security tools for XP I'd ever seen
- illegally forcing their browser onto the market, creating some of the biggest security headaches IT admins have ever seen
- changing file formats with every release for no reason other than to force companies to upgrade Office

I'm a big user of Microsoft software, but I'm under no illusions as to their business practices, motivations, or horrendous track record when it comes to security and interoperability.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[lostmongoose]

Because they don't answer to RMS, and neither does anyone else. Open source is supposed to be abotu freedom and choice, not asking how high when people like him say jump.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[tukang]

Funny, we've been a customer of Microsoft's for 20 years and have yet to experience this "raping" you speak of

Are you sure you're not suffering from stockholm syndrome?

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Ilgaz]

Try to switch from MS to anything else. Open source, half open source, closed source. That will be the time when you understand what ''rape'' is.

You know, mafia types are cool and friendly people until you do something bothering their business.

My attitude against Mono is something really different. If you want to use MS technology, fine, use it... Just don't fool yourself with half ass clones of it. What is the latest and greatest server from MS? Windows Server 2008? OK, buy it, install .NET 3.5, Visual Studio and have fun. Just don't be fooled by MS or their trojans since the open source planet who actually knows what open source philosophy about it laughs at you.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Ilgaz]

So, can you remember the leaked documents named ''Halloween'' something?

Remember the weak point of Linux as reported? Easy to divide politically. Icaza and gang really serves this purpose well.

I wonder if there will be one heroic developer with time to waste in hand will convert Tom Tom whatever that trojan is to GTK (remember GTK Icaza?) and Qt. In fact, while wasting time, I would use GNUStep and release same code on Windows, OS X and Linux. That would show what multi platform and open means to people spending time at Redmond while Open Suse releases a major version.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[StormReaver]

> Funny, we've been a customer of Microsoft's for 20 years and have yet to experience this "raping" you speak of.

Everything is fine if you're in lock-step with Microsoft's business plans. But try getting out from underneath Microsoft's thumb, and you'll start to understand.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Ilgaz]

No matter how you like to soften, it is the view of freedom, open source and it has been for ages.

It is anarchy, anti big corporation, some sense of communism, fanaticism. Don't let corporate monkeys like Icaza or Novell fool you.

A half ass fake C application and a clone of a clone of a framework has no place in Debian. It is not what Debian is. In fact, if this is the new policy of Debian, they should change the distro's name and allow people who understands what GNU/Linux is use the name.

If it was any other distro, it wouldn't bother people that much. We speak about benchmark of free software. Debian is actually used as reference when people get confused about some weird license developer uses. ''Does Debian have it?'' is a very common question in scene.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of those are bogus:

Microsoft didn't bury Lotus 123, Lotus shot themselves in the foot, then the head, and then the foot again. They then proceeded to walk off a cliff. They bet on OS/2 (which failed), and delivered a product for windows extremely late, that was buggy and not even close to what excel was delivering. They then attempted to do a rewrite for years that they never delivered, and then finally produced lotus symphony which was crap. Not until 1998 when they released SmartSuite 9.0 did they have anything that came close to competing with Excel. To say Microsoft killed lotus 1-2-3 is a joke. They killed themselves -- repeatedly.

Stacker? Stacker was simply a one trick pony that couldn't deliver a second product, and unfortunately their first product only had a short lifetime. Developing a product that only worked on MS-DOS 6.0 when windows was just taking off only left them a very short window. Their second product ReachOut wasn't accepted very well, especially when there were other products already on the market that did that, and more (pcAnywhere, etc). In the end, they walked away with both a good chunk of money, their own software sales, AND $5.50 for each and every copy of MS-DOS 6.0 that was sold. That's a pretty sweet deal considering it was also $25 million PER EMPLOYEE.

Winternals is still updated regularly.

The rest is your opinion, which I don't share. I appreciate my HTTP explorer built into my OS, just like I appreciate my FTP explorer, FAT/NTFS explorer, network exporer, picture viewer, sound/music player, calculator, and simplistic notepad, paint, and a graphical UI. Only those people with an axe to grind or a software suite to push think otherwise. These things are in almost every OS built today, and have been for a very long time (before Microsoft).

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[hey!]

Well, if you've ever had to make a business decision (as opposed to armchair quarterback), you'd know that "bad" is sometimes a relative term.

If the choice is (a) sign a deal or (b) compete against the company that owns the platform your software have to work on, the scales are tilted towards signing the deal.

Now you can argue it's Microsoft's right to use its platform control this way. It's a position worth discussing. But you shouldn't sneak that position under the "bad business deal" banner.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If I recall correctly Microsoft successfully sued TomTom for violating FAT patents in the Linux kernel on their devices.

Actually, Microsoft did NOT successfully sue TomTom for violating FAT patents on their devices.

Microsoft threatened to sue TomTom, and TomTom decided to settle out of court.

This was after TomTom threaten Microsoft with patent infringements on Microsoft Streets. Microsoft even said that they usually don't enforce the FAT patents, but felt compelled to do so in this case as a defensive measure.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[Mr2001]

Windows developers are at 3.5 SP! level, beta people are already checking version 4. What is Mono at? 2? Without very important windows forms right?

Wrong: "Support for Windows Forms 2.0 is complete. At this point, we are largely just fixing bugs and polishing our code."

I've written WinForms apps in Visual Studio that ran on Mono with no changes, and that was over a year ago. This month I've been doing command-line apps, and of course they work just fine on Mono as well.

Mono also supports many individual features of C# 3 and .NET 3.

Re:Microsoft, I said NO!

[man_of_mr_e]

That's a ridiculous claim. I've seen Apple's source code for earlier versions of MacOS. It was written in Pascal. Windows was written in C. There's no way they could have used it. They could have based Windows on it, but then Windows would be substantially similar to MacOS at a low level... it's not. It's not even close. They both suck, but they suck in totally different ways.

Stallman also says no to web browsing

[langelgjm]

Stallman also says no to web browsing.

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Stallman also says no to web browsing.

No he doesn't. As the linked post says, he doesn't browse the web for PERSONAL REASONS. That's a completely different thing than advocating against using software that is patent bait.

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[bonch]

"Personal reasons" = he's a kook.

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[osu-neko]

Daemon simply means demon in mythology so I would bet in his eyes the term is interchangeable, it is in mine.

Um, no, this is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth. In modern usage they've become nearly synonymous, but in mythology "daemon" refers to the ancient Greek beings that are really more closely analogous with "angels" in modern usage. Daemons are intermediaries between men and the gods, including everything from minor divinities down to ghosts of dead heroes. Of particular interest was the "agathos daemon", which is rather like a Greek "guardian angel".

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[DerPflanz]

Stallman also says no to web browsing.

No he doesn't. As the linked post says, he doesn't browse the web for PERSONAL REASONS. That's a completely different thing than advocating against using software that is patent bait.

Should the entire open source community follow a guy that does not use the web for personal reasons? Should we take him seriously still?

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[gyrogeerloose]

Actually, it appears that you're both right to a certain extent. From the Oxford American Dictionary:

daemon (also daimon)
noun
1 (in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.
an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force.
2 archaic spelling of demon.

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[hairyfeet]

No Shit. And the guy just gets fricking weirder and weirder as the years roll on. By now I'm sure everyone has seen him eating toe cheese on stage, and THIS is the guy you want to listen to on the direction of Linux? Really?

If there has to be a guy at the head, like Bill or Jobs, then let it be Linus. He always seems to have a smart answer and a good head on his shoulders. With RMS, hell MSFT couldn't ask for a better spokesman. If I worked marketing in MSFT I would just make a clip showing Gates or Ballmer talking about some complex PC interaction and compare it to RMS eating toe cheese on stage and say "Which guy do YOU want directing where the OS you are using is headed?". Lets be honest here, the guy is a nut.

And I agree with the other poster that taking advice on an OS who biggest selling point is how well it works with the web from a guy that doesn't surf is just nuts. It would be like Apple taking direction from John McCain. But what do we expect from Twitter, "King of the sockpuppets"? I'm sure anybody that dares to say something bad about RMS will be modded down by his sockpuppet legions.

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[belmolis]

"da(e)mon" is a Greek word, which was spelled delta-alpha-iota-mu-omega-nu. It was borrowed into Latin with the spelling "daemon". Around 200 B.C.E. the diphthong spelled "ae" came to be pronounced as [e:], both in native Latin words and in loans from Greek. This change in pronunciation was only gradually reflected in Latin spelling, which was conservative (just like English still spells "knight" with the no-longer pronounced "k".) The result is that when borrowed into English you can get spellings both with and without the "a". The same is true of words like "arch(a)eology".

Re:Stallman also says no to web browsing

[hairyfeet]

I'll start at the back and work my way up. To answer your question what is toe cheese, it is that funky shit that builds up between your toes, usually made of lint, old skin cells, and other funk. The fact that RMS thought it was okay to pull off his socks on stage and eat that shit should be a pretty good indicator of how batshit the guy is. This is also the guy that uses a Loongson ARM Netbook because the OLPC wasn't "open" enough because the BIOS and wifi chips weren't GPL'd. Which puts him at a fringe of less than 0.0001% of PC users, if that. so his opinion on anything other than GPL is automatically suspect to me.

And I personally think the "cult of RMS" and the going overboard with GPL is what is hurting Linux adoption more than anything else. With Windows a hardware manufacturer can write just 4 drivers and have the entire Windows ecosystem covered for a 14 YEAR stretch. There is no reason why Linux couldn't have the same functionality, which would make it easy for every device manufacturer to put a "Linux 32/64" folder on every CD and give MSFT a real run for their money, but RMS and his GPL hoarde would never allow it. Even Linus won't use GPL3 for the kernel! That should tell you something about how far GPL has gone from mainstream. And according to Wikipedia you aren't allowed to even interview him unless you agree to use "his words" for everything, and according to him "He is a "squatter" on campus at MIT". And THAT is the guy they want to listen to? Really?

If there HAS to be a figurehead then let it be Linus. He always comes off as intelligent,intellectual, and has a smart answer for just about any question you can throw at him, and most importantly seems to have a grasp on reality. The entire world is NEVER gonna embrace GPL for all their code, no matter how much toe cheese RMS eats. in real life there is always room for compromises. In the world of RMS it is "GPL or nothing". Which is fine if you only want to use a Loongson ARM Netbook and "surf" by using email daemons, but the rest of the world doesn't work like that. If Linux would gain a stable ABI so device drivers could be "write once, use forever" like they are with Windows then there would be no reason why shops couldn't put Linux boxes right next to Windows and let the public decide, because everything would "just work".

But by insisting that the only way to play in Linux is "GPL or nothing" you have guaranteed that Linux will stay a tiny niche. Because all these home consumer manufacturers just don't want to play your GPL game. I wrote an article for Linux Insider pointing out ways that the problem can be partially negated, but in the end a stable ABI and "write once use forever" must be deployed. Because there simply isn't enough GPL coders out there to reverse engineer the millions of device coming to market, and if the only way to support Linux is to embrace GPL than those companies simply won't support you. In the end it is simple as that, no matter what RMS says.

Manged Code

[digitalunity]

Just say no.

I've been writing some winforms applications and all I've got to say is "no". As a long time Qt programmer, I found winforms initially familiar, but it's got a lot of quirks that drive me nuts.

I'll stick with Qt on C++ thank you very much.

Yes to Mono!

[burisch_research]

I'm a C# [doze] developer, but I'm with the Linux/GNU crowd when it comes to FOSS ideologies. Installing mono by default on all Linuxes I think is a great idea, because it gives me the opportunity to port my apps painlessly to the widest possible audience! This includes mac.

Re:Yes to Mono!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hook. Line. and Sinker.

Re:Yes to Mono!

[IRWolfie-]

but as stallman was saying: there is still the risk if people starting writing new apps in C# that there will be a big dependency on it which could be crippling if removed a time later

Re:Yes to Mono!

[iggymanz]

but recent gcc can't be removed with future patent or other legal claims restricting use or rights that exist now. GPL 3 license forbids it

Re:Yes to Mono!

[Erikderzweite]

Do you remember WISE? Windows Interface Source Environment. A program that purportedly allowed developers to write software to Windows APIs and run the resulting programs on Macintosh and UNIX systems. It was issued in 1994. By 1996 Microsoft had captured a large share of the corporate market and has proceeded to the next step: Microsoft has extended the Windows API without copying its changes to the WISE program. This meant that developers could no longer smoothly port applications to UNIX and
Macintosh. In public, however, Microsoft continued to lead developers into believing that this software was still fully cross-platform. In 1997, Bill Gates noted in an internal email that those developers who wrote applications for the then-available software without realizing that it would not port all APIs to UNIX and Macintosh were "just fucked."

MS is smart enough not to do this

[nateman1352]

Microsoft sueing the mono project and forcing it underground through software patents would be an enormous shoot to the foot. Mono does nothing more and proliferate the .NET platform, often at the expense of Java. The thing that Microsoft likes so much about .NET is that while mono and Portable.NET provide a way to make true cross platform apps, there are many, many Microsoft specific extensions to the core, which makes it very easy to make a .NET app that is not portable. In the late 90s Java was the same way thanks to Microsoft's JVM with builtin COM support, and various other Microsoft technologies. The Java of today however is designed in such a way that it is difficult to make a Java app that is not cross platform, which is why that hate it so much. Mono makes .NET exactly what Microsoft wants it to be, technically open yet easily locked to thier platform.

Re:MS is smart enough not to do this

[satch89450]

Add to that the fact the M$ published the spec under a recognized standards body and that was the point at which the zealot's heads began to swell until the point of explosion.

That "publishing under a recognized standards body" didn't stop RAMBUS from trying to pull a fast one. It all depends how Microsoft presented the specification that determines what they can and cannot do in court to cripple use of Mono. Most of the recognized standards bodies have required that the contributor(s) grant licenses to use the ideas described by the standard. The licenses do not have to be royalty-free, just "reasonable" and uniform. Most licenses have a fixed payment per use, which means that "free" is not an option.

Re:MS is smart enough not to do this

[shutdown -p now]

Could you come up with real specific examples? Because all I see, year after year, is Mono progressing.

Mono still has no WPF, and no present plans to implement it in foreseeable future.

Re:MS is smart enough not to do this

[nateman1352]

First of all, between COM Interop and P/Invoke, it is very easy to inter operate with native code from managed. This can be very handy, it enabled easy ports of GTK, Win32 (via Windows.Forms), Qt, WxWidgets, SQLite and many others to .NET. But the biggest use for P/Invoke in typical .NET applications is to make calls to the Win32 API directly, because the framework doesn't have managed libraries for every Windows API. This of course creates applications that can only run under Windows. A lot of times .NET apps will run under Mono for Windows, but not Mono for Linux because of this.

Even of course there the fact that MS drives the direction of .NET, and the Microsoft implementation will always be ahead of the game because of that. Mono is missing most of the new features in .NET 3.5 WPF, WCF, etc. The main exception being an almost complete LINQ implementation. Moreover the DLR stuff will be coming with .NET 4.0 very soon, which will just put them even further behind. And Mono is likely to never have support for XNA applications.

In summary the total common feature set between both implementations is less than the total feature set, and a lot of what is missing is cool new stuff. So apps that only work on the MS implementation are common. This is exactly what they want, its technically an open platform, but not really in practice.

Re:MS is smart enough not to do this

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft goes out of their way to make their .NET libraries skip 10% of what a typical developer actually requires.

To my eyes, there are deliberate looking 'holes' in the API. If you Google for a solution, lots of helpful web pages explain how to do native Win32 interop. Some of these come from Microsoft themselves. Seems helpful, right? Except that if they know that there's a problem, and they know that enough developers are experiencing it that they need to put up a technet article about it, then why isn't it already solved in the standard library? It's up to version 3.5 now, surely, they've had the time!

For the most part, I've had the experiences that you describe when using Windows Forms. That API is fairly clearly Win32-centric, and always had been (heck, its Control class has a WndProc method!) - which isn't surprising to anyone who has seen J++ and Windows Foundation Classes before, since WinForms is really in many ways WFC ported to C#.

However, it's a very different story for WPF. WPF doesn't deal in, or leak, Win32 abstractions - it's a much higher level framework, which does all rendering, layout etc itself - like Qt - so it is much less likely that you're ever going to need Win32 interop in a WPF app.

Well, not quite - you may still need it, but only if you want to do deep OS integration - i.e., if you want to deal with concepts that are OS-specific (like, say, the new Win7 taskbar). Even then, it's the same scenarios that you typically cannot do in Java+Swing at all, or can only do using JNI.

So WPF, in theory, is very much a cross-platform toolkit by design. If Mono would implement it, it would make writing cross-platform CLR applications so much easier. Which is why I'm surprised there are no plans to support it. Yes, it is large and fairly complicated to implement, compared to most .NET APIs - but it would be well worth it...

what part of mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of mono is he saying is dangerous?

the language c#?

the class library (API)?

the intermediate byte code spec?

All of the above? C'mon now. The pragmatic approach is to identify what parts of the mono project are supposedly at risk and figure out how to get around them. There are many languages that target mono. Not just C#. What about them? One could branch mono into a version that uses a completely different class lib (API) if that's the issue. One could rebuild the back end intermediate byte codes it uses to stay clear of patents if it were really necessary. All would cause pain, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Summary for those who didn't read it

[coryking]

In short:

Microsoft is evil and is "probably" planning to kill every independent implementation of C#. We have no proof of this, but you have to trust us.

Also... use our C# implementation "DotGNU Portable.NET" instead. We are immune to everything I just said in the article and I won't bother you with why.

In otherwords, I'm confused. Does he like C# or not? If he doesn't, why does the FSF have their own .NET implementation? What makes theirs so special?

Re:Summary for those who didn't read it

[kripkenstein]

As he explained, a C# implementation is useful in that it lets you run C# code that already exists, on non-Windows OSes. That is a good thing, and that is why he says he has no problem with the implementations. But, he says, writing our own apps in C# is a bad idea.

Feel free to disagree with him, but I thought the distinction between the C# implementation and the act of writing apps in C# makes a lot of sense.

Re:Summary for those who didn't read it

[IBBoard]

Given that Stallman recommends using the GPL rather than the LGPL to force people to open source their code rather than make use of a good library, that doesn't make much sense.

It's fine to take a standard, make an open source implementation and then use it to run existing (generally proprietary if he had his way) apps in Linux (or GNU/Linux, or whatever), but writing open source apps that will run on that open source implementation is bad? What kind of logic is that?

Being a 25 year old software developer/coder, I agree with the "why Mono isn't bad" post. Most people's concerns could be worked around, and as long as you stick to the standardised stuff and treat it first and foremost as "an implementation of a language" rather than "a port of Microsoft's technologies" then you should be fine. I use Mono because it's flexible, powerful, easy to distribute, easy to work cross-platform, and I can concentrate on the important things (functionality and design rather than malloc() calls). The fact that my app will generally work in MS's .Net framework and not just the Mono one is a bonus.

Confused

[wampus]

Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and .Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?

Re:Confused

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and .Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?

Submarine patents for one. Investment of effort into technologies where MS can break compatibility for two. Buying into standards MS has too much influence on is simply asking for them to use that influence to hurt you at a later date. After the 20th or 30th such instance you'd think people would learn to be a little less shortsighted.

Re:Confused

[binarylarry]

Being owned in court by Microsoft due to patent infringement.

Or more likely, losing customers because mid development cycle Microsoft starts threatening to sue companies using Mono, as it infringes their patents.

They've rattled this sabre before.

Re:Confused

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

As non-american (your senseless patents don't apply), I'll re-ask the question again.

Don't be absurd. Just because software patents don't apply in a given country doesn't mean they can't cripple Linux development in that country. Do you really think forking Linux and having all the countries that currently enforce software patents and all the companies that do business in that country developing one fork and the rest developing a different fork would not be a crippling blow to Linux? I don't care where you live, if all the Linux developers in the US are stopped from using the Linux after it started to include Mono and have to go back and rewrite all the subsequent application built upon it in 5 years time, that will hurt all Linux users around the world and significantly slow progress.

You also failed to address my point about intentionally incompatible versions of standards. Since you're posting AC you're probably a troll. Get an account or make less trollish posts if you want further replies from me.

Re:Confused

[peppepz]

No, you’re talking about cynicism, which you’re trying to sell as pragmatism.
If you do not understand the motivations behind free software you’re more than welcome to keep using closed software, but you cannot criticize the free software community for trying to survive.
Microsoft has already applied for patents on the .NET framework, and when they will start suing all the companies who distribute free software based on it - just like they have already done with tomtom - all free software based on .NET will be *gone*.
So avoiding .NET from a free software point of view is not “religion” - it is basic, concrete, rational strategy. There are plenty of alternatives to .NET available to free software developers.

Re:Did RMS get back on his meds?

[Yvan256]

You mean like APPL€?

C# / .NET is a standard

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not going to be revoked, it cannot be revoked.

Although initially this seems to give support to the MS platform, IMHO this is a move that will start to break the idea that to use C# one must have windows and say that you can write the same applications on linux.

Once people can write an application and deploy it anywhere, users will have real choice, even if C# isn't the best basis to stay on for life. Worry about getting users to the platform and then worry about putting the code in C/C++.

Re:C# / .NET is a standard

[peppepz]

I wish some knowledgeable folks would weigh in how possible it would actually be for MS to do this for C# in particular. (Do they already hold relevant patents?)

I do not know about C# in particular, but about .NET, yes, they hold relevant patents.

fatwa issued against Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Check. We'll see what the other FOSS clerics say.

Isn't this antithetical to GNU in general?

[jjb3rd]

Mono is a free (GPL) reimplementation of commercial software. Isn't that how GNU got started in the first place? Didn't Stallman and friends reimplement the commercial Unix libraries as free (GPL) software? Wasn't he potentially violating patents? Why was it okay then when it's Unix, but not okay now when the technology came from Microsoft? Do the commercial Unix vendors holding those patents behave any differently than Microsoft (ahem SCO)? Mono is 2 generations behind Microsoft, yet has a pretty good stable offering and makes a very nice easy path for the majority of all developers in the world (WINDOWS Developers) to make the transition to Linux and GNU...this isn't something Stallman should be against, IMHO.

Re:Isn't this antithetical to GNU in general?

[Sique]

No, Richard Stallman was always very concerned with NOT violating patents. For instance gzip was developed especially to avoid a patent clash over compress, the commercial compression utility shipped with UNIX.

Re:Isn't this antithetical to GNU in general?

[Schnoodledorfer]

Do the commercial Unix vendors holding those patents behave any differently than Microsoft (ahem SCO)?

At and before the time Linux was developed, yes, they behaved very differently. As a matter of fact, the real owners of the patents have always behaved differently. SCO never actually owned the patents, after all.

Re:Isn't this antithetical to GNU in general?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is a free (GPL) reimplementation of commercial software. Isn't that how GNU got started in the first place? Didn't Stallman and friends reimplement the commercial Unix libraries as free (GPL) software? Wasn't he potentially violating patents?

No.

Software was not considered patentable back then.

Re:Isn't this antithetical to GNU in general?

[Abcd1234]

No, Richard Stallman was always very concerned with NOT violating patents

And that's a good idea. Luckily, as far as I can tell, there aren't any patents filed against .NET (if there were, I'm sure someone in this debate would've posted links... in this case, I'd say absence of evidence is evidence of absence), and given large portions of .NET are now published as standards, there *can't be*.

Pot calling the kettle black

[Vahokif]

GNU and GCC are just as much open source implementations of proprietary technology from convicted monopolists as Mono is. QFT

Re:Pot calling the kettle black

[wampus]

How is this a troll? C and UNIX were both developed by an even bigger, eviler company than MS could ever hope to be.

Re:Pot calling the kettle black

[jmorris42]

> GNU and GCC are just as much open source implementations of proprietary technology...

A couple of important differences.

1. The patents have long since expired on the core ideas in UNIX. we are rapidly approaching the point where Linux has existed longer than a US patent is allowed to exist and BSD embodies almost all of the user visible APIs and goes back even longer.

2. C is an ANSI Standard that again is older than any patent could threaten from. C++ is more recent but was developed by real standards bodies vs ECMA, thus any IP issues would be out in the open.

3. C#, the CLR and the rest of Mono/.Net/etc are the sole creation of Microsoft Corp. Any changes can only originate from them, the tech is new enough to have patents pretty much anywhere and by their sole control of the language the can introduce whatever they want and we get to chase their tail lights because they won't have to disclose any of the new bits until they ship production code.

So yes, had the GNU Project been operating in the toxic software patent environment we now have it is doubtful they would have been able to release GCC when they did, instead being forced to wait out the patents, but history is what it is.

Re:contradiction

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

what amazes me is that RMS is saying at the same time that it is good to have a C# implementation, but warns against writing apps in it...

Except that's not what he said. He said it's good to have an implementation but bad to include that implementation and applications that reply upon it in GnuLinux distros and components. It's akin to saying that it is good to have support for FAT filesystems in Linux, but stupid to include a FAT partition by default when installing Linux along with applications that only work on FAT.

... if not outright imbecile, that's at least a very stupid position

Not everything you don't comprehend is stupid. Sometimes, you're just a little bit stupid instead, and so misinterpret the words of others in stupid ways.

Re:Sorry RMS: Linux != GNU...

[PPH]

IS the goal to create a useful system or a pure system?

I define useful as something that doesn't contain legal entanglements.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

[ketilwaa]

Interesting, compared to this which has been his comment earlier. Nice to see RMS give the Mono haters more fuel to their flame wars, so that developers can get tangled up in endless discussions about this in stead of actually hacking away. Again, this is one of the reasons GNU/Linux is not gaining more than it does. All MS needs to do in order to keep hackers busy not making great software (and cloning already great C# apps instead), is issue some kind of new vague statement on the nature of .NET. Then, we all lose. Like we've been doing since day 1. Nice. Thanks. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Re:Java?

[binarylarry]

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.

He also doesn't belive in "root"

[coryking]

Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)

Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keep- ing it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.

su manpage - GNU Shell Utilities

People don't seem to be "getting" his point...

[davide marney]

Love him or hate him, but at least listen to what he is actually saying.

1. He isn't saying that he doesn't "like" C#
2. He isn't saying that he is "against" C#
3. He isn't saying that Portable.NET is "better" than Mono
4. He isn't saying that "just because" it's .NET, it must be teh 3vil

All he is saying is that Microsoft has already publicly claimed that Linux violates a couple hundred MS patents. Recently, Microsoft invoked the Linux angle in a patent suit it filed against Tom Tom.

Therefore, he says, it should be obvious to all that MS intends to enforce its patents. So, the more one uses software based on MS technologies, the more likely it is that you may be impacted by a suit in the future. He calls this a "gratuitous" risk.

Or, in his words:

The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn't make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.

Not true.

[John Hasler]

> "Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation..."

Mono is not included in the Debian "default installation". It is merely pulled in by one of the several "tasks" that the user may (or may not) choose to select. The Debian "default installation" -- all pacakges of "standard" or higher priority -- does not even include X.

Re:Not true.

[grege1]

However there is a proposal to make mono part of the default installation of both Debian and Ubuntu in their next releases. Debian's next stable release will be a lot further into the future than Ubuntu's next release, at least allowing Debian time to have a serious debate on the matter.

For *Tomboy*?

[Grendel Drago]

Oh, hell. Isn't anyone concerned that this is all for Tomboy, an app which is frequently so sluggish as to be completely unusable? Remind me why we're not all simply using Gnote?

Re:So? Why is he still trying to influence things?

[doshell]

Read the OP. The words are his; I adapted them to point out his dubious stance of criticizing Stallman for calling mono evil and pushing an agenda, while he himself calls the GPL evil and even says that more software should be in the public domain.

I'm not "for the GPL" or "against the GPL"; if I ever release source code it will probably be GPL'd (or BSD'd if I deem more appropriate), but I'm not denying anybody the choice. The OP on the other hand seems to think that developers shouldn't have the right to choose the license for the code they write (or I got him wrong).

Open Office? Wine? Drivers?

[Trerro]

Is Stallman also saying Open Office should be discontinued because it can read a Word document? The .doc standard is closed, heavily patented, rigidly controlled, and arbitrarily changed... yet I think we all agree an office suite that wants to be relevant better be able to save files in that format. So sure, use .odf as your default... but if you can't convert to .doc, you pretty much can't use it in the business world.

What about Wine? That implements the entire freaking Win32 API. If Mono, which implements a single language and a single programming technology for using multiple languages (.net) scares him, Wine must have him jumping at shadows.

Hell, even drivers could fall into this category. If you allow an MS mouse to function in Linux, are you afraid of patent suits there too? I certainly hope not, as mice are something you very much expect to work with zero effort.

C# may have been developed by a big bloated corporation that many consider evil (or at least unethical), but so was C! (AT&T - anyone boycotting C/C++ over warrantless wiretapping? Didn't think so.) Does anyone coding in C or C++ (or making a compiler or IDE for it) seriously fear a patent lawsuit from AT&T?

.net was clearly built as a Windows technology, but that's simply because MS made it. MS pretty much CAN'T claim patents on it, because .net itself implements so many languages that MS had nothing to do with developing, that I think it's safe to say any .net-based patent suit would die in seconds.

I'm no fan of MS, but I really don't see a problem with Mono unless you have Stallmanian paranoia.

Stallman's incongruent position.

[xoluxo]

Richard Stallman over the years has made it his goal to encourage and promote the creation of free software alternatives of commercial products, patented or not.

RMS decided to clone Unix when he started his GNU project. This was at a time when ATT might have hold patents on the technology:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

Microsoft has been vocal about their patent portfolio, but the danger of patents extends beyond anyone that is vocal.

As we saw with SCO, a company that is desperate for revenue will start taping into whatever they have at their disposal. SCO lost market share and tried to capitalize on the Unix IP.

The same can easily happen to any software company today that owns patents and finds itself in financial trouble. They will either try to license their patents or sell the patents for a third party to buy.

SGI was in such situation in 2002/2003 when they sold their OpenGL patent portfolio to Microsoft which now owns the OpenGL patents.

Smaller companies go out of business constantly and sell their patents as a last resort or as part of the bankruptcy proceedings (Chapter 12) that force a company to sell their assets to pay their debt.

Today the FSF is requesting clones for a number of technologies as can be seen here:

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html

As the FSF becomes more irrelevant, their list of tasks becomes more irrelevant as well. Most of the work is now driven by external communities and there has not been a need for RMS to push for free implementations of key pieces of software as he did in the past.

Or they sponsor projects like GNUstep that would violate Apple/Nextstep patents as much as Mono would violate Microsoft patents. The only difference being that Apple is more litigious than Microsoft. It is part of their culture.

Re:but it does point to a mind out of touch

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Your analogy fails.

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

The equivalent of what RMS said would be: "I don't take blood transfusions for personal reasons"
- maybe he doesn't take them because he's concerned about getting a blood born disease (virus), maybe he's got allergies that most doctors aren't even aware of (celebrity status), etc.

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

Honest? Just because the guy doesn't take the well-worn path he's out of touch? You always have been an intellectual conformist.

In fact, as he wrote, he does use the web, his browser just has a mail interface instead of a a GUI interface.

Re:The submarine patents aren't submarined

[Anonymous Coward]

When Microsoft submitted C# to the ECMA standards body they specified which parts are patented. They further did NOT give any guarantee that they would not sue anyone who implemented C# at a later date. There was an article about this some months ago in which Miguel de Icaza himself was asked what the status was on Mono vs. the patents and he DOES NOT KNOW. Microsoft was asked for a clarification and none was given.

citation: http://www.osnews.com/story/21586

He also says no to...

[actionbastard]

Haircuts, shaving, dieting, and exercise.

What's In A Name

[deanston]

MS or M$ - Who cares? If people use M$ you can see their bias right away, which may be a good thing to help you evaluate their position. Should a website thriving on user comments start implementing strict spelling rules? MS also stands for a disease, which I find kind of ironic. So does mono.

Re:but it does point to a mind out of touch

[tomhudson]

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

He still browses the web - he just does it via a method that works:

1. even if he doesn't have a net connection when he wants to actually view the page (which might be later on in the day at a conference, or in a cafeteria) - the page is in his email, so he can download it now, and then view it later offline with his email program
2. without downloading all the associated crap that most pages are infested with
3. while providing him with a permanent copy of the stuff he's interested in

Other people also use other means to "browse" the web that don't involve conventional interactions with a web browser. Programs like JAWS (a screen reader for the blind) and blinux don't meet your metaphor for accesing the web - BFD, get over it.

Also, computing is much more than just the web. For many researchers, email is a LOT more convenient, and more important, than the web ever will be.

Re:Sorry RMS: Linux != GNU...

[jmorris42]

> IS the goal to create a useful system or a pure system?

Until now Debian has been clearly in the pure camp. Debian, moe RMS Pure than RMS over the GNU FDL. Debian, endless wanking over whether firmware blobs have to get yanked for two major releases. And so on. Now suddenly they are taking the Novell "Mono is just another managed code environment licensed under the GPL, nothing to fear here" position. when everyone else DOES see something to fear even if they ship Mono/Tomboy. Fedora is planning on tossing Mono out of the standard install and RH has never shipped it in RHEL because their lawyers are uneasy.

In the end, if the system isn't fairly Pure it isn't ultimately going to be useful. Patents exist, FUD attacks work.

Basically the only sensible way to treat C# is like Win32. It is OK to import Windows applications using Mono or Wine but basing core parts of the Free World on such apps is unwise. If for no other reason than basing our application stack on APIs controlled by people who want to destroy us is about as wise as the Western world basing our economy on oil imported from the Middle East. An argument can be made that we have little choice regarding oil but we most certainly do regarding Mono as we didn't creep into a dependency over decades we are being asked to walk into this trap with our eyes wide open.

the amish use a horse and buggy

[circletimessquare]

so would the amish be a good group of people to consult on mono?

i'm sorry, if the guy doesn't partake of contemporary technological reality, he's just a bizarre fossil, and his opinion loses validity

i'm sure the man is a genius, but if he consciously curtails his involvement in how the rest world interacts with the web and adapts some alien SMTP modus operandi, i'm not going to take his opinion on web-related technologies seriously. you really think there's no basis for me doing that?

now give me my troll mod for not kowtowing to the apparent sainthood of RMS in your eyes

Re:the amish use a horse and buggy

[tomhudson]

i'm not going to take his opinion on web-related technologies seriously.

Tomboy has nothing to do with web-related technologies. Now that we've cleared THAT up, will you take him seriously?

He's not a saint, but sometimes he gets it right. Mono is one of those times - a lot of us have been saying it's a mistake - even those of us who use the web via multiple browsers!

Mono is still irrelevant

[Ilgaz]

Thank God since nobody except some little fan gang of that guy cares about Mono enough to rely on it.

Of course, if the real evil plan of getting it included like a trojan on a respected, definition of open source Linux distro like Debian works, things may change...

Funny is, people not caring enough to figure Mono is nowhere near to be replacement/alternative to real Microsoft .NET. There isn't a single important application which exists both on Windows and Linux thanks to Mono. Oh some music player maybe? Well, for me, download.com top 10 matters. I always see Limewire, Vuze in top 10 lists since they are written in true multiplatform language which has feature and major version parity between all major operating systems one way or another.

Mono is more like gcj I would say but gcj can actually run pretty modern Java code with all the GUI tricks if needed and it runs even faster. Can you picture MS allowing their multi billion dollar clone framework to perform better on a free operating system? I wished MS really changed their attitude and for example, release IE for Linux which would exist thanks to Mono and save millions of people from virtual machines. If this sounds funny to you, tens of nerds trying to catch a moving multi billion dollar target from a convicted monopolist looks funnier to me.

Yes... 40 years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Unix and C were developed by an eviler company than Microsoft... About 40 years ago. Any patents filed on the core of C or Unix have long since expired.

When the GNU project started there were virtually no software patents, and what existed were effectively non-enforceable. It wasn't until 1981 that anyone really believed a software patent could be enforced, and not until the creation of the federal circuit (which handed the patent attorneys complete control of the courts for patents) in 1982 did you have any chance of enforcing one.

The GNU project started at a unique moment in history when technology was cheap enough to make it possible but before the patenting of software could make it impossible.

Were it not for work sparked by the GNU project unix systems would likely have died out over a decade ago, and certainly would have missed all the user friendly enhancements built by the linux distributions in the intervening time. There would also be a lot less open development generating an undeniable wall of prior art, catching up using 20 year old technology would probably not be possible.

Because of the patent situation it seems pretty unlikely that the GNU project could be started today.

Re:that mail interface sounds pretty cool

[honkycat]

Using a web browser is not a prerequisite for being an authority on programming, let alone an authority on IP policy implications. What specific information is he missing out on by not using a web browser that gives you a reason to question his knowledge? Your little analogy about engines is laughably pathetic, unless you really mean to question the software experience of the guy who wrote emacs...

In my experience, the real experts frequently don't have time or interest in mucking around with the latest flavor of the month technology because they're too busy thinking about real issues.

Re:that mail interface sounds pretty cool

[arose]

Donald Knuth doesn't use email, what could he possibly know about computers?

Re:that's an opinion based on experience

[CarpetShark]

He does not personally partake of them because he doesn't have the time. He still participates in discussions about the technology, and was a visionary on the subject of standards (which greatly affect the web, in case you haven't noticed) probably since you were in diapers.

Re:.NET is an Open Standard

[VGPowerlord]

It's like saying Adobe can lash out a patent against all .pdf documents which is impossible since Adobe passed on the PDF as an open specification. Eventhough Adobe invented it, they have no legal control over it anymore.

Have you ever looked into why the Microsoft Office 2007 RTM had its PDF writer as an add-on rather than integrated into Word like it was in the Office 2007 betas?

"Microsoft's general counsel told the WSJ that Adobe has threatened legal action unless Microsoft agrees to charge for the PDF support patch, a step it refuses to take."

While Adobe can't lash out against PDF documents, it can against software that creates PDF documents!

Incidentally, the actual MS Office add-on is still free, but the above quote was from 2006.

Re:RMS == bonkers!?

[cheesybagel]

There are plenty of patent issues, and you cannot write desktop apps without using APIs outside the .NET ECMA specs.

C# is important to the discussion because Tomboy, the application Debian decided it must have, is written in C#.

GNU does not have to provide any alternative to .NET. Java is free software and Sun has released all necessary patents. .NET is a copycat of Java. It is better than Java at some things, worse at others, but both are evolving. Java is not encumbered, so why the hell should free software use patent encumbered .NET?

Stallman does not see free software implementations of .NET as a problem since they provide interoperability with non-free software written for other platforms. He just claims free software should not be constrained by such limitations, and I for one agree with him.

Re:Bilski case is near

[cheesybagel]

Tell that to TomTom. That "joke" cost them dearly.

Who owns which power?

[Billly Gates]

If you do not like the mean bad old boss or I.T. department mendling on the systems you use at work then buy your own computer.

Sorry RMS but work is not freedom. Its just a paycheck as you no longer own your time in exchange for money to live.

If you are in charge of a system where other people at work need access to it and you are *paid* to keep it up then what are you supposed to do? Restrictions at work make sense as they are not being paid to play with their computers but to work.

I think you can tell RMS is out of touch with reality. Administrators need complete control in order to lower TCO and keep productivity. I want the file server to just work in the office where is my power to enforce this?

Desktop yes ... server no

[Billly Gates]

Java has the problem of doing things its own way in its own environment. For example no cleartype fonts for X make netbeans painful and horrible looking running it on Linux. No integrated KDE or gnome support because of swing and other issues make it hard to write easy code. Also overiding objects with the super statement is difficult ... at least for me with doing g and paint.

Anyway database access, debuggers, and threading make it scale well on a server. It runs well from a 1 to a 32 cpu system.

Also google apis are written mostly in Java if you want to do things like add google map support for your website and other things. Hibernate and spring are java based too which is nice. I believe there is a .net port of hibernate coming into maturity but I do not know if its finished yet.

For these reasons Java is still ahead of .NET for web server development. .NET actually does not suck and you can make great win32 applications with it. Linq and other things being ported may make it better for server development. Like the other poster mentioned platform independence is nice as MS has been known to change licensing fees to loansharking levels for SQL Server and IIS if you add clustering and unlimited seats. With Java if Oracle does that garbage I can simply switch from solaris to Linux and use postgresql or sysbase. No platform entrapment.

Re:RMS == bonkers!?

[Wolfbone]

What an idiotic statement by RMS! Why should it be a danger? If there are any software patent issues, they are certainly not on C# which is an open standard

But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went
further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C#
and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis
for this purpose.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030424174805/http://mailserver.di.unipi.it/pipermail/dotnet-sscli/msg00218.html

RMS == bonkers!?

No - just well-informed and cautious. Some people seem to trust that patent holders won't in future want to leverage patents covering tech. that could, invitingly, become deeply embedded in competing products. Others are more cynical / have read the patent strategy manuals and think that that sort of trust is naïvely optimistic. :)

RMS is actually harming many F/OSS projects with these stupid comments. What a letdown.

Quite the reverse.

Re:that mail interface sounds pretty cool

[Ilgaz]

Does he even know who Knuth is? Or that entire generation is?

I am sure Steve Jobs and even retired Bill Gates doesn't have time to browse the junk he browses (and calls web) for hours.

The fantasist

[westlake]

Are you sure you're not suffering from stockholm syndrome?

Microsoft offers a bundle of products and services which have become the de facto global standard for office work.

That solves many problems for your employer.

He can open an office anywhere south of the Arctic Circle - an office of any size - with perfect confidence that an MS Office solution will scale to his needs and that local recruitment and training will present no particular difficulty.

It is rather typical of the geek to focus on something like the "openness" of a file format - and miss the significance of The Ribbon.

The Ribbon speaks directly to the productivity of the office worker - and nothing lies closer to the heart and wallet of the office manager.

Re:The fantasist

[schon]

Microsoft offers a bundle of products and services which have become the de facto global standard for office work.
That solves many problems for your employer.

No, it doesn't. It might, if the file formats weren't changed on each version solely to fuck all of their customers.

He can open an office anywhere south of the Arctic Circle - an office of any size - with perfect confidence that an MS Office solution will scale to his needs and that local recruitment and training will present no particular difficulty.

Only if the version he's using is the same as the version used in all of the other locations. Otherwise, he gets on the upgrade treadmill, and *everybody* gets fucked.

It is rather typical of the geek to focus on something like the "openness" of a file format - and miss the significance of The Ribbon.

Au contraire, it's rather typical of the MS shill/apologist to invent scenarios that don't actually happen in an attempt to claim that MS is a good solution.

Hey Miguel

[bmo]

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

Re:Hey Miguel

[tyler_larson]

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.

/sigh

I'm not sure you understand how patents work.

Mono is an implementation of the standards on which .NET is built. It shares absolutely nothing else in common with .NET. The Mono team can be absolutely certain that their product does not infringe on Microsoft's copyright on the code, but no one can ever be certain about whether or not their product infringes on anyone's patents. That's what makes patents so scary.

Likewise, Richard Stallman can never be certain that GCC doesn't infringe on Microsoft's patents regarding Microsoft's C compiler, or that Emacs doesn't infringe on any patents in Microsoft Word.

What's worse is that actually researching to see if there is any patent infringement opens you up to more danger, because if you looked, then you'd be subject to triple damages in any court case for knowingly infringing on a patent. This is why the Linux kernel team intentionally avoids researching Microsoft's patent claims regarding Linux.

Mono is neither more nor less susceptible to patent claims from Microsoft than any other project; be it Python, Ruby, Java, AbiWord, or Gnome-Terminal.

The real damage of Mono

[Phatmanotoo]

Any competent and well-informed programmer knows that the openness of C#/.NET is a total sham. Sure the core is open, but there's so many Windows-only extensions that it's virtually impossible to make cross-platform apps. Plus the fact that the Mono implementation is always waay behind Microsoft's.

But MS has been very clever. They know that it's only technical people who can see this; the rest will just get the subliminal message that ".NET is now also cross-platform, just as Java".

This is the real damage of Mono. Its existence provides the right excuse for PHB and clueless tech decision-makers to sway the decision towards .NET instead of Java, because, "hey, Microsoft is also cross-platform now".

The dotGNU strategy

[extrasolar]

For those of you saying that RMS is being hypocritical with the Portable.Net project, you should read this first:

Don't get caught in .NET

With all the RMS-bashing that slashdot has turned into lately, you'd wonder what the point is in providing arguments for your position.

Re:that mail interface sounds pretty cool

[rliden]

Knuth doesn't use personal email. His secretary prints out email addressed to taocp@[university address] so he can reply in writing. He doesn't communicate via email because he doesn't want to be so in touch with the world, not because he thinks email is a bad thing. Hell he barely communicates via post. His point in restricting communication is a personal one because he seems to value his time for research and his interests.

Knuth versus Email [stanford.edu]

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.

I'm not sure why Stallman doesn't like to use the internet, but it seems like he is more interested in the moral use of software and doesn't use it because I think he personally sees server side code as muddled with regards to the GPL (just my conjecture there). Knuth just likes his privacy. The two are totally different even if they are both for personal reasons. Pretty much all of our reasons for doing things are personal.

Re:the dangers I see

[Mr2001]

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."

Since C# and CLI are ECMA standards, Microsoft is obligated to offer any such patents under reasonable and non-discriminatory licenses. That would rule out banning the use of C# on non-MS platforms. They've also gone further and said that any licensing would be royalty-free.

That said... the idea that patents covering these technologies even exist seems to be a myth. I've never seen any actual patents referenced in any of these Mono threads, only scary hype about the possibility that they might exist undetected.

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."

The C# language, the CLI (virtual machine) and core framework are ECMA standards. Microsoft could release C# 5.0 without submitting it to ECMA and impose draconian terms, but you could keep on using the older standardized version.

Re:With thanks to the Coen brothers

[retchdog]

Thanks to PCs, any slob in a smelly T-shirt can use linux.

No wait, reverse that; even the well-groomed can use linux.

FSF threatens corporate $$$? Cue the Ad Hominem...

[Concern]

The man basically made a lot of the internet and the modern computing experience possible. His foundation is responsible for some of the most vital, widely used, and essential software in use today.

And yet whenever he opens his mouth, cue the ad hominem attacks. They come hard and fast. Ignore what he said. Just question his character - change the subject, pick apart some wacky thing from his life. That should settle the matter.

Do you only converse with people who are absolutely normal, totally conventional, and who never make any mistakes in anything they have ever said? Because that's the only way you can bring this stuff up and be intellectually consistent.

And what's worse, this is not the ESPN forums. We're supposed to be nerds here. The man can't be weird and still be right?

Go with Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a big fan of RMS. He's a bit of a nutter. But in this instance (ok, not exactly the first), he is absolutely correct. Inside every large horse that you see camped outside your walled city, lies an army waiting to kill you while you sleep. In this case, the horse has a large emblem written on the side that says "MONO", and inside is a patent minefield which wants to punch big holes in your city walls and bring ruin upon you. Microsoft teamed up with Miguel de Icaza to destroy Linux. de Icaza is no mere pawn. He is in league with microsoft. There is without a doubt, a paid connection between the two. Anything relating to mono should be an 'add on after', and not part of the native distribution. I have never expected microsoft to do the right thing, and they have never failed to disappoint. "MONO NOT WELCOME HERE" should be the official Debian line. Likewise with Novell. They did the dishonorable act, and now must be treated as the vermin they are. I don't want my system tainted with anything microsoft (I've seen, administered, installed and cursed their systems). I know exactly how bad microsoft software is. The only thing lower than the low low quality of their software is the moral compass of the company. Stay away from mono, and remove it from my Debian (and Ubuntu). Don't ever include it again, don't even consider that.

Re:He doesn't really count for much

[Blakey Rat]

As for part one - yuk! You people in cold climates should wash more often and it won't happen.

Just FYI, I live in Washington State, and I don't have toe cheese, neither does anybody I know. The point that there's something *on* his foot to pull off in the first place is the opening act of the nasty; the part where he eats it is actually the encore performance.

I can understand that - he's "eating his own dogfood"

Eating dogfood would be substantially less disgusting. ;) (Yes, I know the phrase.)

Exchange is definitely the worst email server in production on any platform

I hope you're making use of hyperbole and don't genuinely believe that. Exchange is certainly not the best, but it's nowhere even close to the worst. Hell, it's arguably better than its direct competitor-- Lotus Domino-- and that's all that really matters. (It certainly uses less bandwidth than Domino.)

The real genius of Exchange isn't the server; the server's an implementation detail and nobody really cares, except hard-core geeks. The real genius is the client software, which is quite simply excellent. To the end-user, the UI of an application *is* the application. (Thus: Outlook *is* Exchange, Lotus Notes *is* Domino.) I think if more open source developers realized that simple rule, open source could be vastly more popular.

(although full backups are actually possible now so it has improved) so the email portion is easily replaced on the same or lesser hardware, but it's a matter of finding out what other portions the users require since it does a lot of other stuff.

That "lot of other stuff" is the reason it's deployed.

I disagree with the attitude to the CLI - that is the one thing that has made large linux deployments possible since you can run the same command or script on as many machines as you want.

You could do this on an older Mac using AppleScript, for example, and never leaving the GUI. Unless you find some weird way of defining AppleScript as a "CLI" (which would be a huge stretch), you can do this particular without ever leaving the GUI.

Also note that Windows designed the Registry specifically to address your problem... again without requiring a CLI. You can deploy a registry entry to thousands of machines, and they'll do your bidding.

It might make large Linux deployments more pleasant, but that's only because Linux has no other technology designed for that purpose. It's definitely "possible" to do, other OSes have already done it.

The main offender newbies hit is X windows configuration but there are now a few decent graphical ways to sort that out and you ALWAYS need a text based way to configure video so you can do something about it when the video settings are wrong.

Yah, but all you need is a "Safe Mode" (to copy a term from Windows) that boots the GUI into a resolution that's guaranteed to work on every piece of video hardware. You don't need to be able to set every single parameter from a CLI, and your OS should protect you from picking un-display-able settings in the first place. And, needless-to-say, it shouldn't crash so often as to make this a consideration.

Consider something like "powerdesk" or the multi-page nvidia or ati GUIs for video settings on MS Windows and you'll see how incredibly hard it is to have a GUI for something that only has a fraction of the options that X windows has

Yeah, but those are shitty GUIs. And even those shitty GUIs are better than a config file-- for example, they're vastly more discoverable. I can guarantee you that if those companies hired a GUI designer and made them non-shitty, it wouldn't demonstrate your point.

I frequently see this: "the CLI is good because [program with shitty GUI] sucks." No real surprise there, saying that a shitty GUI sucks.

Personally I just copy the working nvidia dual head file to a new machine each time instead of the hunting through a maze of twisty config options that you would hav

Re:FSF threatens corporate $$$? Cue the Ad Hominem

[man_of_mr_e]

Oh you lovable scamp. Indeed he did not invent the internet - which is why I did not say he did.

And I didn't say you said he did. See, that works both ways.

I was making a point, not claiming you made one.

You can't go 5 seconds on the net without hitting free software.

True, but irrelevant. BSD is also free, and they don't like the GPL much.

Emacs? Screw Emacs! What would the world be like with GCC? Without glibc? What about if Perl just disappeared?

What does RMS have to do with Perl?

Before GCC existed (or rather, before it became popular) there were other free compilers. There was a BSD C compiler also. Granted, GCC won out, but if it wasn't around, something else would have replaced it.

What would the world be like if we didn't have the collaboration that happens in free software projects?

Free software existed long before the GPL was created, and there's a ton of it that is not GPL'd.

But all this is beside the point. You made it out that RMS was basically responsible for the internet existing or functioning. The fact of the matter is that the internet doesn't run on Linux, it runs largely on BSD based products (Cisco, *BSD's, etc..) Most Web sites run on Linux, but that's not the internet itself.

Yes, RMS is responsible for a lot, but I don't for one second believe that it was impossible for that to happen without him.

It's very rare for me to agree with Stallman...

[petrus4]

but I do in this instance.

Linux IMHO should not be incorporating Microsoft's standards in any form. Doing so could lead to litigation, and eventually the death of the system.

Ballmer would probably love to see Linux implementations of a few bits of Microsoft's stuff, purely so that he would have the grounds to sue someone later. Integrating such material is therefore very dangerous.

Re:It's very rare for me to agree with Stallman...

[shish]

Linux IMHO should not be incorporating Microsoft's standards in any form. Doing so could lead to litigation, and eventually the death of the system.

Should we also shun the UNIX specification, and ANSI C? (Both from convicted monopolist and lawyer-happy AT&T)

Re:FSF threatens corporate $$$? Cue the Ad Hominem

[man_of_mr_e]

BSD is not free. It is merely open.

Gee. You might want to inform the FSF then. They say very clearly that *BSD's are Free Software.

You seem to think that only GPL software is Free software. This is not true. Not even the FSF believes or says that. Read their list of Free Software licenses.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses

Until you are cognizent of this item, we can't even have a discussion, because your entire belief system is a lie.