Slashdot Mirror
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).'"
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?
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.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
It looks like MonoDevelop finally gets a debugger. That was really the last thing tying me to Visual Studio for .net development.
People who want to work for/shill for/suck up to Microsoft directly or indirectly should do that.
Those who don't support that sort of thing should work to cut them off at the knees by not using their software and discouraging others from doing so.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
This is my sig.
maybe next they'll remove all the non-GPL code as well.
Businesses really don't like the GPL. I'm not allowed to use any GPL stuff anywhere unless it absolutely, positively will never leave the intranet. However, many businesses love the LGPL. It doesn't restrict them. So, it still stays open source, and businesses will create plugins. I write open source software on my own time, so I appreciate open source, but if I was a manager, I wouldn't touch any of the GPLv2/3 programs/code ever.
Does this sign the closing of the Mono project? And can anyone tell me, since this fundamentalist stance against the GPL and the alleged impending patent sword hovering over the Mono users' heads, what exactly is there to attract people to adopt it as their developing platform?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
My blog
Reading all of these comments and then seeing them modded as Troll or as Flamebait. When actually the comments are pretty much correct. Who really uses Mono? After all, isn't it loosely based on .NET version 1.1 still? What's the point?
For Windows-based development you can fire up Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Express edition without paying a dime and those are based on .NET 2.0 or 3.x, correct?
Unless Mono has upped the ante and has actually moved beyond 2003-era frameworks I don't see its relevance...
To be fair, OpenOffice.org isn't GPL, yet that's the text editor / presentation software I use. .NET. That said, I've never heard of anyone using it with Mono.
.NET and C# are pretty amazing technologies, especially with LINQ and Lambda expresssions, couple that with IronPython and you have a cool system.
Are you going to stop that as well?
You'd be surprised at how many corporations are going with Sharepoint, it's the silent Apache HTTPD killer and yes, it uses
By removing GPL code, the Mono team has laid the groundwork for a closed source, commercial implementation. You watch. Mono is going to become a product, something that will be an instant-cripple for any Linux distribution that comes to rely on it.
This is my sig.
The GPL is great for standalone applications but if you want to allow developers to make addons you really have to rethink it. Yes, it ensures that any addon made for the application will be free software however you have to consider the tradeoff; GPL it: everything is GLP'd, some companies/people won't develop or release addons; Other license: non-freesoftware addons may be developed, companies/people will have no reason now to release their software but it may not be open.
So it depends on what you value more; having the software but maybe not the freedom, or not having the software.
Obviously Stallman would rather the software was never created if it wasn't open, so the GPL wins for him there.
Personally I prefer the Artistic License 2.0; all the freedom and protection of the GPL without the virality.
Bill's still happily married. I really don't think this is working.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
OpenOffice.org is your TEXT EDITOR? Oh boy.
wake me up when mono is ms-patent-free
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
LGPL *is* free software.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
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.
OpenOffice.org is your TEXT EDITOR? Oh boy.
Well at least he can do his own custom syntax highlighting without messing around in the "Preferences".
We removed the GPL code in MonoDevelop for a couple of reasons:
(a) to allow it to become a platform that third-party plugin and add-in developers can target.
(b) to allow us to consume open source code that would otherwise conflict with the GPL (MS-PL licensed code, Apache licensed code, and original BSD licensed code).
Notice that (a) is the norm for Eclipse and Visual Studio, and that the ecosystem of third party plugins relies on this, both Eclipse and Visual Studio would be severely limited if they limited the plugins to be all GPL licensed. As I explained on the blog post, there are current users that need to run their non-GPL code inside the IDE.
We want more third party developers to target MonoDevelop, and we want these third parties to consider MonoDevelop a platform that they can target without forcing a license on them. Similar to how the Linux operating system can run code licensed under any license.
The second reason is just a practical one. In the .NET open source ecosystem there are plenty of libraries and tools available under the MS-PL, Old and New BSD and Apache 2 licenses and we want to be in a position to use those libraries without rewriting it. We already do, and it has saved us a lot of time.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah, that's a pretty decent text editor. I prefer MS Paint.
I keep hearing these kind of arguments but reality shows us that contrary to these claims that use of GPL code is growing. The fact is that companies are used to licensing code and complying with the GPL is trivial compared with many of the other licensing steps that the average company has to comply with.
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.
Thus begins the Free-Free Software movement.
Begins? BSD guys have been trying to get rid of all GPL (including LGPL) in the base distro for a looong time - hence the planned migration to Clang (I believe GCC was the last remaining bit).
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.
It's not a rumor.
Sharepoint is an application that runs on IIS. IIS is what is replacing Apache here. Sharepoint replaces some of the content management systems you might run on Apache, whatever they might be.
I don't buy that. One of the biggest gripes that I have with the GPL (and I have released a fair amount of code under it) is that it promotes compliance through ignorance. Let me explain:
So long as whatever you do is released GPL, you're fine (well, under 99% of the cases anyway). If you want to release under any other license, determining if it's allowable is a nightmare. Try to interface a non-gpl plugin with an application. There's no "easy" answer as to if you can do that. Every lawyer will say something different. There's no legal precedent with regards to how non-gpl code can interact with gpl code. So the "easy" way to comply is to just license your code GPL... Sure, there are black and white compliance cases, but the vast majority that I've looked at are well in the gray area. Can you dynamically link a non-GPL lib into a GPL program? Can you dynamically link a GPL lib into a non-GPL program? What about statically? More importantly, WHY? Now, explain that to a judge who has no technical background.
Again, I'm not arguing with the ideals of the GPL, I'm arguing the ambiguity when it comes to interfacing with non-GPL code (At least from discussions and conversations I've had with lawyers and other prominent developers)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Yes, I am surprised at how many corporations are going with Sharepoint, yet its such a pile of w*** almost *everyone* at our corp thinks its pants (there are a few corporate yes-men lackeys who 'think' its good). Nobody can find anything on it, even adding search simply means we get thousands of hits for simple terms.
I can't understand why its spreading like an unfortunate rash at a sex party. Maybe the bosses will realise how bad it is and can it after it stops being used for a few months, but its always hanging in there, someone will post a document to it and suddenly its back to being a essential tool in everyday use.
How do you know he isn't working for them already? Maybe this event is just the first step towards using the Microsoft license. It would make sense, because I'm sure Microsoft would like to get a working version of .NET to compete with everyone else.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
So, at last Novel achieved the real objective of .NET? - to be a complete replacement of the Java technology! - even Microsoft could not do that! bah!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The internet was basically built on the GPL, and most of the code that makes it go was built using the GPL.
eh?
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
You mean built on things like TCP/IP (BSD 4-clause) and Unix (ATT License) that enabled communication between networks?
Or like sendmail (BSD Licensed) that facilitated adoption of user@example.com email addresses, instead of the dominant mixed!bang!and!right%associative!email addresses and the X.400 C=US;A=IBMX400;P=EMAIL;G=firstname;S=lastname;O=engineering;OU=email;OU=internet-connectivity style of addresses?
Or like Usenet (various parts under various BSD licenses) that facilitated the exchange of information, software, and porn before the web even existed? The one that Linus posted his early Linux sources to?
Or like FTP (BSD license, and/or ATT License) that allowed archiving and known-distribution-points of software way before google made it easy to find things?
Or like web browsers (all derived, more or less from NCSA Mosaic) which was never open-source, but required paying license fees?
Or like web servers, like Apache, which had (has) a license that isn't GPL compatable?
Can you even name any important GPL software (other than emacs) that is in wide use, is important, and is non-derivitive of something already existing under a BSD or proprietatry license?
gcc: derivitive. Every company around provided c compilers.
linux: derivitive. Ever hear of Unix?
*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.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Exactly which planet are you referring to, because it isn't this one. GPL v1 is from 1989. Depending on exactly what you want to count as "The Internet" you can put the start date as early as 1969 or as late as 1983. Commercialization and ISPs arrived in 1988 in the US. Cisco provided many of the routers used (started 1984). BSD was the main OS used for TCP/IP development and research. BBN had the "reference implementation". Every single one of these things predates the GPL. The BSD TCP/IP stack was ported to many other platforms, including Windows. One thing is categorically certain - the Internet was not built on the GPL. If anything it was built on BSD licensed software.
The GPL is not and has never been about price. It is about freedom to share, modify and use. You can charge whatever you want. You can even charge people a small reasonable fee to get the source code. It also depends on copyright law. Someone "secretly using" anyone's code without permission is violating copyright.
The GPL is restrictive because you cannot change the terms under which the code can be redistributed. It also applies to the whole program. For example if you add one line of GPL code to a 20 million line program then the whole program has to become GPL compatible. Note I use the GPL for most of my stuff and consider that the cost if you want to use my code. But it certainly is more restrictive. There is the LGPL which mitigates this but its use is discouraged.
"Ripping people off" is usually a financial thing. Google have built a multi-billion dollar empire using lots of other people's GPL code (eg Linux kernel) and have not paid them. The GPL allows you to use GPL code within a company and providing you do not distribute outside of the company you can use code as you see fit, so the original author gets "ripped off".
Your view of the GPL is just plain wrong. It is about freedom and the restrictions are largely that you have to provide the same freedoms on the code you receive to others if you pass the code or derivatives on to others.
Unless we start getting governments to enforce some sort of standard which means customers can return software or sue companies for releasing shit then the best thing for software is for it to be open so anyone can see it and fix it.
Part of me thinks that computer languages are languages like no other and one should be able to see it and use other people's work, at the very least for inspiration. Like you can do with any other language.
Another part of me thinks that true freedom means having the choice to close your code if you want because seeing the code isn't required to use your product.
But again too often companies can effectively release beta shit and be paid hundreds per licence to use it. So what we really need, imo, is standards that stop that. You can argue that, unlike a car, you can't die from bad code but your life can effectively be ruined when your privacy is compromised.
So how about striving for openness and higher standards in quality? If we get at least one of those we should be fine.
The exception should be data. Your data should *never* be stored in a format that only one or two programs can read. It's your data and if the company goes under or just moves on to another product, you're fucked. That shouldn't be allowed.
Hmm...I tried to verify the statement about the 189 MB and failed, but maybe I'm just using the wrong method. I did a free -m, loaded tomboy, and then did another free -m. The result was only a 10 MB change in the amount of free memory.
It's true that tomboy is slow-loading on my (relatively fast) hardware. It's also true that it uses quite a bit of disk space. I did apt-get remove tomboy f-spot libmono* && apt-get autoremove && apt-get autoclean, and that freed up 64 Mb of disk space. If you're looking at, e.g., how much you can fit on a CD-based linux distro, 64 Mb is a heck of a lot to dedicate to something that's only needed for the sake of one applet.
Find free books.
Actually, Mono is completely different from Wine, and not even Wine is an emulator. It's a native implementation of the CLR and other .NET tools that run on Linux/BSD/etc. If you want to compare it to something, compare it to the JDK.
It's sad that the headline here is about removing GPL code. Got a grudge against it?
Why is it sad? The code isn't closing, it's just now licensed under different (arguably freer) licenses. Unless you're RMS or one of his disciples who believes that all code must be GPL or it's not truly free, I don't see why this should make anyone sad. Free code is free code, and contrary to somewhat popular belief, the GPL does not make free code more free than it is.
Secondly, there are several reasons why a project might want to migrate away from GPL code, and none of those reasons have to have anything to do with having a grudge against the GPL. From a practical standpoint, avoiding the GPL also avoids many headaches related to source code and license mixing; this is especially important for a product which implements plug-ins since the legality of plugging some differently-licensed extensions into a GPL product is still uncertain. The GPL itself causes incompatibilities with certain licenses, so an easy way to avoid those types of problems is to avoid the GPL entirely.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
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
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I would expect the pedantic police will be out in force to correct your usage of the word "derivitive" but otherwise your point is well made. Personnally, I don't think the problem with the GPL is the license itself. I use it occassionally even though I prefer the less complicated BSD-style licenses. My problem are the legions of Stalmanistas who attack anyone who criticizes the GPL. These same people like to point out how using software licensed any other way makes you a slave to the developer yet they drive cars made by someone else, wear clothes produced by someone else, and often eat food that is prepared by someone else. Using their arguments they are just as much of a slave to the manufacturing and service industries as computer users are to software companies. The fact of the matter is, we are all a "slave" to something. We all enjoy having our choice but some seem to forget one very important choice; if you don't like something, then don't use it. You have that choice too. And please don't argue with me because I didn't make the same choice as you. I realize that is part of human nature, but there are bigger and more important things in life.
"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...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.