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All GPLed Code Removed From MonoDevelop

rysiek writes "A few days ago, Miguel de Icaza wrote on his blog that the whole of MonoDevelop is now 'free' of GPL-licensed code. 'MonoDevelop code is now LGPLv2 and MIT X11 licensed. We have removed all of the GPL code, allowing addins to use Apache, MS-PL code as well as allowing proprietary add-ins to be used with MonoDevelop (like RemObject's Oxygene).'"

17 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone really use it? by Nursie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know I'm an old fashioned luddite (I code with nedit, gcc and Makefiles), but does anyone use MonoDevelop?

    MS does free (but not open) versions of its dev tools already, and frankly if you're using Mono you're probably an MS guy who wants his stuff to work on linux rather than a *nix dev anyway. Aren't you?

    1. Re:Does anyone really use it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If Qt used real C++ instead of its own language variant, it would probably be one of the top on my list. But until then, I just can't stomach it, even though part of me wants to use it.

      gtkmm can do it. wxWidgets can do it. Why does Qt need to pervert the language?

  2. Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsoft. by kurt555gs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No GPL? Actually is Mono really that important any more? Most new software development is going to be on iPhone BSD, Android, and Maemo Linux. Needing legacy .net is nothing anyone cares about.

    I think this shows Miguell's true pawn colors.

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    * Carthago Delenda Est *
  3. Mono Blows (hint, where's FW 3.5) by tjstork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know, if you are going to devote your life to making a C# clone on Linux, then at least quit screwing around with applications and focus on the language. I mean, come on, where's WPF? Where's WCF? Where's LINQ to SQL?

    Mono, you suck.

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    1. Re:Mono Blows (hint, where's FW 3.5) by tjstork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow. Imagine, an open source project cloning the functionality of a commercial product that doesn't support the latest features of the commercial product.

      Yes, but the commercial product is free as in beer, and the open source product is moving to be free as in beer only, so what's really the point, except to get locked into a clone of another technology?

      I mean, if you are that into .NET, why not just use Windows?

      --
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  4. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So you're saying you think that most new software development will be for mobile-only OSes? Mobile apps may be okay for lots and lots of things, but I don't think that mobile apps will ever completely replace the traditional desktop applications. If anything, I see home-based computing moving in the direction of more and more LAN integration and more and better multimedia capability, with the hottest toys these days being media servers, wireless networking, faster broadband connectivity and more and more personal communications, including voice, video, IM, teleconferencing, etc.

    The corporate network as it stands today will remain mostly the same, but with everything converging more towards service-oriented architectures, virtualization and cloud computing with dynamic, demand sensitive services and networks.

  5. Re:A Prelude to Charges... by codewarren · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That makes sense only if the next step in this plan is to make it work, add the features people want, and get people to actually use it.

  6. Re:Is this the closing of Mono? by AntiDragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, this.

    LGPL is not "closed" - you still have to release the source code if you distribute software containing LGPL components. But what version of the LGPL are we taking about here? Since it's very easy to combine or cripple the LGPL'd parts so that they either rely on propritary or patent encumbered components in a way that can't be acheived with a full GPL product. Does the LGPL v3 protect against Tivoisation in the same manner intended by the GPL3? (Yes, I could go read the license but...it's long...and I'm tired..and others already have done so!).

    By the way, I'm not commenting about the suitability or preference of a particular licence - I'd just like to know what the implications are in this case.

    --
    "...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."
  7. Eternal game of catch-up by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By the time Mono finishes compatibility with .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft will have finished Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. Likewise, Moonlight is perpetually a version behind Silverlight, rendering it unable to view actual web sites that use Silverlight.

  8. Re:Good. by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right, because Microsoft is making a profit off licensing the .NET framework. Wait, you mean they don't charge a cent for it? And C# is a better language than Java, with the Mono project providing cross-platform compatibility, so Windows users have an easier time migrating to Linux if they so choose? Clearly I should listen to random /.er and forswear all use of anything that "supports" "Microsoft products" in any way, including the OpenOffice; after all, it lets people read and write Office documents, and by doing so, indirectly enables the Microsoft hegemony.

    P.S. Yes, C# being better than Java is personal opinion. I've used both, Java for two years in school and one and a half years in the workforce, C# for a little under a year in school and half a year in the workforce (plus a few years of various other languages, mostly C/C++ and, yes, Perl). For developers, the lack of rigid ideological adherence to OO dogma is quite helpful; delegates for callbacks and "pass-by-reference" for arguments instead of inane wrapper classes for both (yes, pedantic types, I know it's all pass by reference, but you know what I mean), not needing to think about auto-boxing as much (since .NET collections of primitives really are primitives, not boxed primitives), operator overloading and structs to enable the creation of relatively efficient and easy to use numeric types, etc. I think both languages have merit, and I think both languages are improved by the competition (e.g. without C#, I'm not sure Java would ever have introduced generics, since it violated the spirit of OO). But I'm not going to reject C# just because MS made it.

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  9. Re:"Free" is relative. by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Frankly I could care less. The Mono guys can do anything they like. I wouldn't touch Mono with a ten foot pole, for two reasons. First of all, I see no point to using it. Second of all, I wouldn't trust Microsoft with a nickel, let alone anything I was developing.

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  10. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Alas, Mono is still a part of the default Gnome distribution, just so they can have a note taking applet which takes 189MB memory (counting libraries used by it and no other process) and takes several seconds to start on beefy hardware while the C++ port of that very same code uses 5MB and starts near-instantly.

    Even worse, there are folks pushing Banshee as the default music player so there's another dependency on Mono.

    The sooner we get rid of Mono installed by default, the safer we'll be from this trap.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  11. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    saying GPLV3 is too strict when we know the specific issue at hand here, means that it's just that proprietary things can still be embedded in GPLV2 and can't in GPLv3. So when "too strict" means "you can't shove proprietary shit into a free and open system", that tells me that MS and the lackeys are having quite a hard time dealing with open source.

  12. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by aztracker1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    *sigh* they moved to LGPL, which means you can distribute it with a better compatibility with other non-GPL plugins (those Apache, MPL, BSD or other licenses). If you modify the source, it still falls under GPL rules, it merely allows for bundled distribution with non-GPL code. It's all open-source and the main package is simply LGPL, or are you saying you don't use/reference any LGPL libraries in your code. Also, I'd presume that you don't use any Gnome or GTK libraries either.

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    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  13. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by steveha · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Alas, Mono is still a part of the default Gnome distribution, just so they can have a note taking applet

    Oh, "just" so they can have a single applet? It couldn't possibly be because they think it is a generally useful way to develop applications, such as F-Stop and Banshee?

    Mono may or may not be a good idea, but you are framing your argument in an intellectually dishonest way here. That note-taking applet ("Tomboy") may be the only thing in standard GNOME that needs Mono right now, but I'm pretty sure that there will be others.

    Even worse, there are folks pushing Banshee as the default music player so there's another dependency on Mono.

    See? Then it won't just be Tomboy, there will be other things using Mono.

    I haven't tried C#, but a lot of people seem to like it. If having C# means I get more free software to play with, I'm in favor of that.

    The major argument I have seen against Mono is "Microsoft is just waiting and they will assert patent claims!!" In that case, the only thing that they can do is force people to stop using C# and Mono. In which case, all the Mono apps will be pulled or re-written. And at that point, you would have what you seem to want: no more Mono in GNOME.

    That is the worst-case scenario. And I don't see it as being bad enough to try to keep people from using Mono. If people want to use Mono to write free software, that's fine with me.

    I'm curious: now that Java is becoming fully free, would you support re-writing Tomboy and F-Stop and the others in Java? That way, instead of being bloated and slow C# applications, they could be bloated and slow Java applications. Would you be happier?

    In my day job, I write wicked fast C code (small memory footprint, too). When I write software on my own for fun, it tends to be Python, which is even slower than C#. Do you have a problem with Python too?

    steveha

    --
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  14. Re:Why doesn't Miguel just go to work for Microsof by Arker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Only" 10 MB? How utterly absurd. And yes I get that in context to the claim made by the GP you have a point. (Possibly the GP has binaries compiled with debug symbols, or possibly *you* already have over a hundred megs of mono libraries loaded for something else and dont realise it.)

    But just wow, only 10MB for a silly little virtual notepad. That's 256 times the entire system memory on my first PC. Which was a much more accessible and "user-friendly" machine than you can buy today, with a good DE built right in. It appears computer science in the intervening time has been exclusively focused on driving hardware purchases...

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  15. Re:sigh by Abcd1234 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wake me up when you demonstrate it's not (I've issued this challenge many times, and no one's managed to achieve it).

    Hint: Patents are published 18 months after filing, and a patent must be filed on an invention within a year of publication, otherwise the inventor forfeits the right to patent the invention. Furthermore, patents can only be submarined if the inventor forfeits the right to file the patent overseas, something I highly doubt MS is willing to do. As such, if parts of Mono were covered by patent, we'd almost certainly know about it by now (certainly there are enough anti-Mono trolls that *someone* should've been able to come up with such a patent by now).