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GNOME 2.30, End of the (2.x) Line
stovicek writes "GNOME 2.30 was originally intended to coincide with GNOME 3.0 — a massive cleanup and rethinking of the popular desktop. However, GNOME 3.0 is delayed for at least another release, which leaves GNOME 2.30 as most likely the last version in a series stretching back almost a decade. [...] 2.30 will probably be the final version of the 2.0 series. For those who were around for GNOME 2.0 back in 2000, the 2.30 release stands as evidence of how far GNOME in general and the free desktop in particular have come in the last decade in usability and design. If you do a search for images of early GNOME releases and compare the results with 2.30, you can have no doubt that, although GNOME sometimes tends to over-simplify, its improvements over the last decade remain unmistakable."
It's called the "Lesser" GPL for a reason.
Yes, it has less restrictions. (ie, more freedom to do different things)
Also, unless you get mono exclusively from Novell, you are (potentially) infringing on Microsoft intellectual property.
/me rolleyes
Remember a while back they were claiming to have some triple-digit number of patents that the Linux kernel infringes on? Remember IBM warning off that mainframe emulator a couple days ago? I'm not convinced that mono infringes significantly more or stronger potentially-hostile patents than any other similarly complex piece of software.
And Gnome has been adopting mono like it doesn't matter.
I thought they only used it for a couple of trivial/perhiperal things?
Yes, Gnome is less free now. Gnome fans totally miss the irony.
Yes, true freedom is an OS that will refuse to run anything except locally-compiled programs, with a compiler which will only compile code that has the GPL licensing headers.
It's interesting to me that my idea received one positive and one negative mod, but your negative, dismissive response quickly shot to +5 insightful. We could do with a little open-mindedness.
Depending on the implementation, my idea could result in a bloated mess. I readily admit that. But it's really easy to criticize an idea and call it impossible. When browsers were first released, it would have been thought impossible for them to do anything close to what they do today, and yet here we are. Javascript performance has made great leaps forward because Google was willing to question if those leaps were possible.
I can see two factors which could help my idea succeed. One is the continuing increase in computer power. The other is the chance to actually simplify and optimize the core windowing system code. For it to be sufficiently flexible, it would need to be carefully written. For example, when displaying a tree showing directory contents, the developers wouldn't be thinking about the specifics of the graphics, colors, and spacing. They'd be writing to a general case, which could be made very simple and efficient. Then another piece of code would apply a style to this element. CSS has already shown that styles can be applied with great efficiency.