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

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$

[timothy]

You're right.

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

timothy

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$

[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.

Stallmans just mad because

[doas777]

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

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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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

[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".

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!

[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!

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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:"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: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.

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: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:"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:.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.

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?

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: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:"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.

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

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".

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: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.

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?

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:"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: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.