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Banshee, Mono May Be Dropped From Ubuntu Default
itwbennett writes "The Banshee music application, and Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework, on which Banshee is dependent, may be excluded from the next release of Ubuntu. In 'a blog entry titled Bansheegeddon,' Banshee and Mono developer Joseph Michael Shields says the reasons given for the change are that Banshee is 'not well maintained' and 'porting music store to GTK3 is blocked on banshee ported to GTK3.' Other reasons mentioned but not in the session logs are complaints that it doesn't work on ARM. Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon pointed out in a blog post that the decision to drop Banshee, Mono or other apps that are dependent on Mono has not been finalized. But the blogosphere is lit up with speculation that this is a deliberate move to exclude Mono because of its emulation of Microsoft .NET."
I have Rhythmbox as default on 10.04 (Ubuntu and Lubuntu), and see no need for Mono. Is this an outbreak of uncharacteristic good sense in Ubuntu (but only a partial atonement for their Unity sins)?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It is awesome and much better than Java! Think of the great note taking and music apps you can write! Don't worry, Microsoft will never block its development because they said so. You can always trust a large company when they say something in a non-binding manner.
looks like ubuntu finally dropped off the #1 spot in the rankings on the right hand column
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Having a language ratified as an ECMA standard is fairly binding I find. You might want to update your trolling.
Mono has always been substandard and playing feature catch-up compared to the actual .Net runtimes available only for Windows.
.Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released? Answer: they could if they wanted to.
.Net with no "yeah but ..." differences would make it easier for popular applications to not *require* and *depend on* Windows. That would not serve Microsoft's interests. Letting other people do the Linux work for them in a way that will never be complete serves two goals: 1) costs them nothing and 2) makes people like you feel a baseless goodwill towards a monopolistic corporate giant that plays to win.
This is what was intended. Even if you can't admit it. Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made
Obvious conclusion: they don't want to because a truly cross-platform
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
I can get not installing it based on the fact that it targets libraries that drive for-profit philosophy, but at least call it that. Of course, then why is there still wine? samba? tsclient? All of these support and encourage Windows use.
It's minor, but I disagree with this notion.
Interoperability and compatibility are good things. There are situations where your end-users must run software available only for Windows. Wine is constantly improving. Still, not all things fitting this description run well in Wine, and many production environments don't want to struggle with getting them to work based on forum posts etc. when it is known that simply running Windows avoids all of this. Remember that to a Fortune 500 corporation, the cost of a Windows license is less than marginal but the cost of downtime can be significant.
I don't like this and I don't like Windows and I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this is a reality. Things like Samba open up new options that may not have been available before. So you're stuck with Windows for your end-user workstations? At least now your servers can be Linux. That's one more Linux system than you would have been able to use if you had no Samba (et al) equivalent.
Interoperability means you can pick the best system for the particular job knowing it will work with the rest of your systems. There's a freedom in this that you just don't get without it. Without interoperability you're much more at the mercy of vendorlock. The only thing that's a shame is that interoperability is always a one-way street when you deal with a monopolist. Interoperability today means it is always Linux's job to accommodate Windows protocols and filesystems. Microsoft is terrified of merit-based competition on an open playing field with no vendorlock, proprietary protocols, or other cheap tricks designed to prevent evaluation of merit.
When that changes, everyone will benefit. There is no concern about "encouraging Windows use" for those cases where it really is the best tool for the job; nor are there such concerns when it isn't and you can easily replace it with something more suitable.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you are going to go down that road, then theres pretty much no one you can trust.
How do you figure? He's simply judging them by their reputation and past actions. Why would you not do that for any person? Don't tell me Microsoft isn't a person either, because that's not really true. For instance, judging IBM by their past actions (WWII, PS/2 computers, etc.) would be pretty silly, because for their WWII sins, everyone involved is long-since dead now, and for their lame actions in the 90s with trying to push proprietary junk on everyone when clones were taking over, again, the people in charge are long-since gone (probably not dead though, but not with the company either). Most corporations change leadership periodically, so it's not sensible to hold grudges against them indefinitely. This isn't true of Microsoft: that company has been run by the same two guys ever since it started: Bill and Steve. Bill's not even gone; when Steve was too dumb to make his own decision about Courier, he called in Bill to make the decision for him. So any past bad actions that MS has done are fair game for criticizing it now, and this will remain true until they finally get some new leadership, which doesn't look like it's going to be any time soon.
Mono has its uses - it could help people remove .Net dependencies from their software packages.
But for new software packages, choosing a Microsoft technology is a mistake. Microsoft calls free software an enemy - "cancer" to be "extinguished", so building on their technologies is folly, especially when there are lots of non-Microsoft languages and frameworks that we can use. The problems of software patents are only getting worse, so we need to prepare for the future by applying some caution today.
I hope this is indeed the real reason for taking Mono-dependent software out of Ubuntu.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Mono
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
It runs on ARM with caveats and bugs. In particular, apparently it only supports single-core ARM systems - if you try and use Mono on a dual-core ARM, it will crash because the code it generates is SMP-unsafe. It also sounds like it's incredibly buggy even without this problem.