11.05.07
GNOME-Mono Dependency Revisited (Updated)
Here is an interesting nugget of information. Slated, a reader of this Web site, wishes to share his new discovery with us.
I was horrified to discover the following, just moments ago:
~]# yum update
[snip]
--> Processing Dependency: libbeagle.so.0 for package: yelp
”Therefore the core of Gnome is now Mono dependent, just as I predicted it would eventually become.“As you may or may not know, Novell’s Beagle search tool is built on Mono technology, and Yelp is Gnome’s built-in help system (i.e. a core part of Gnome). Therefore the core of Gnome is now Mono dependent, just as I predicted it would eventually become.
It’s hardly surprising that this infestation comes to us via Novell, since Miguel de Icaza is deeply connected to all three entities; Novell, Gnome and Mono. And again as you may or may not know, Icaza is a hair’s breadth away from being a Microsoft MVP in his activities, regularly attending Microsoft developer conferences and private meetings. Indeed, it would not at all surprise me if de Icaza had MSCE certification by now.
I’m going to blog this, but before I do, I’ll need some confirmation. Specifically: Every build is unique to the build host, and this version of Yelp is built by a third party who maintains recent versions of Firefox for Fedora Core 6 (Fedora’s /official/ Firefox release on FC6 is stuck on the 1.x branch. They only maintain Firefox 2.x for Fedora 7 and above).
Since Yelp is also dependent on Firefox (it uses Gecko) then a Firefox update pulls in a Yelp update by dependency, and the version of Yelp required to utilise Firefox 2.x support libraries is different from the official 1.x release for FC6. Thus the maintainer must also rebuild and release newer versions of Yelp on his repo, to satisfy that dependency.
The only Fedora 7 system that I have is a headless server, and thus devoid of many things like Firefox and Yelp, but I might easily assume that the official Fedora 7 builds of Firefox and Yelp do also pull in libbeagle as a dependency. I’ll have to verify.
It is possible that this third party has enabled a configure option that is not the default. Even so, I am deeply troubled by this discovery, since it is at least suggestive of the future direction that Gnome intends to follow – just as I suspected – with Mono fully integrated into Gnome. The mere fact that such a configure option is even there at all, would suggest that there is a concerted effort to poison Gnome with Mono at the core developer level.
FYI: The third party repo is here:
I’ll be contacting the repo maintainer today, to ask him what’s going on, but I suspect he’ll be blissfully ignorant of the problem, if he’s running an automated buildsystem. I’ll also check the SRPM; the spec file may have comments that reveal the truth.
As a side note; I would just add that this repo maintainer is also in violation of Mozilla Corporation’s trademark policy, since he is distributing a modified build of Firefox that retains the Firefox® trademarked name and logo. Between encumbered components like Mozilla products and Mono, the so-called Free Software tree is being slowly poisoned, and there doesn’t seem to be many who care this is happening.
My instincts tell me that this is a very sad day for the Gnome project; the turning point at which Gnome essentially became Microsoft property.
This seems to shatter Jeff’s argument, after he requested a correction. For all it seems, GNOME is indeed becoming dependent on Mono.
Update: mind the following ongoing discussion (ignore the trolls too)
It seems like it’s getting harder and harder to avoid Microsoft IP, thanks to people like you and de Icaza. Thankfully there are those who are prepared to do the work to undo the damage you’re doing.
And even if Gnome /does/ become infested with Mono, that’s no big deal, right? After all, Mono /is/ “Free Software”, isn’t it? And it has /nothing/ whatever to do with Microsoft, and I’m sure Microsoft /will/ keep their non-legally binding “Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory” “promise”, right Jeff. Microsoft would /never/ dream of using their IP claims to undermine Free Software, now would they? Nor would they ever make exclusionary deals to “protect” /one/ GNU/Linux vendor from .NET patent litigation, but not others … right?
Oh wait…
So once you’ve finished poisoning the Free Software tree with encumbered Microsoft technology, just make sure to send me the invoice, so I know who to write the cheque out to. I wouldn’t want to be caught running an “illegal” GNU/Linux distribution without paying Microsoft the correct “protection” fee, now would I?
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Béranger said,
November 5, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Roy, I know Beagle unwanted dependencies and “semi-dependencies” are horrific.
However, no matter how much this is pissing me too, libbeagle.so.0 is a C library.
So it’s still harmless… so to speak.
TaQ said,
November 5, 2007 at 5:49 pm
As far I know, we can (thanks God) safely remove mono from Ubuntu:
http://eustaquiorangel.com/blog/show/466
Need to check if libbeagle.so.0 has some issues …
aw shit said,
November 5, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I was checking around Icaza’s blog and it looks like they also want to “extend” evolution with MONO.
This is the reason I am thinking of moving to Kubuntu once KDE 4.0 comes out…
Béranger said,
November 5, 2007 at 5:54 pm
> they also want to “extend” evolution with MONO.
This way of sabotaging Linux seems more effective than whatever else is Micro$$$oft doing…
Icaza, the new Judas!
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 5, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Béranger, tone down the language, please.
See the following new comment. The issue is not GNOME is isolation, but what is made of it in individual GNU/Linux distributions.
Another new comment arrives from Alberto Barrionuevo (FFII) who says:
aw shit said,
November 5, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I figured out a link was in order.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Oct-04-1.html
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 5, 2007 at 10:09 pm
He’s missing the ‘scare quotes’ around the word “extending”.
Béranger said,
November 6, 2007 at 1:59 am
> Fedora is indeed deeply infested with Mono components
Indeed. And so is Mandriva, etc.
To my knowledge, from the mainsteam distros only RHEL is “Mono-free”, so people should probably use CentOS or another clone of it. But can we be sure that RHEL6 will keep being Mono-free?
(My language? The Judas part? BTW, is this more offensive for Christians, or for Jewish people? It’s just a “cultural simile”, nothing more.)
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 6, 2007 at 2:18 am
There are many distributions that are affected. Here is the latest message, which was posted in reply to one of Miguel’s colleagues, who defends their stance in USENET (Miguel used to come to USENET himself, but Windows trolls probably drove him away). Anyway:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/b56c7598a6fdaca5
About the “Judas” part, I heard it before in the very same context and it annoyed not me, but several other people, who were furious. By putting these words in this Web site, you put us in an uncomfortable position (comments liability and all that).
Slated said,
November 6, 2007 at 3:11 am
Ref: libbeagle is written in C, not C#.
Yes indeed, but what is libbeagle (C) without Beagle (Mono)?
One can almost feel the vultures circling, landing, taking one or two pecks, then being scared off by a slight movement, and circling again, waiting for an opportunity.
Mono is circling Gnome.
The fact is, that regardless of whether or not one supports Mono, or rejects it, it is slowly penetrating Gnome. For those who reject it, it is getting harder and harder to extract from most distributions.
So let me spell it out for de Icaza, the Gnome developers, and Novell: I do not want Mono.
I am not alone.
It matters not a whit that those embroiled in it’s development think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, or that there’s “nothing wrong with it”, or that it’s “safe”. My arguments; their arguments – irrelevant.
I don’t want it. Period.
I’ve never liked KDE, but if something is not done to reverse the current Mono infiltration in Gnome, then I will dump it like a diseased rat, despite being a loyal Gnome user for many, many years.
And again, I will not be alone.
And to think, I used to criticise Torvalds for his (what I thought at the time) overly harsh criticism of Gnome, and his encouragement for people to use KDE. I used to think that.
No more.
Torvalds was right. Not for the reasons he gave at the time, IMHO, but he was right nonetheless.
So de Icaza and Co. want Mono?
Let them have it, and good luck to them.
They’ll need it.
Béranger said,
November 6, 2007 at 4:22 am
Ref: “So let me spell it out for de Icaza, the Gnome developers, and Novell: I do not want Mono. I am not alone.”
The question is: why doesn’t Red Hat fork a “clean” branch of GNOME?
TaQ said,
November 6, 2007 at 5:45 am
“There are many distributions that are affected.”
Slackware is 100% free of mono. And Patrick removed GNOME from the distro some months ago.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 6, 2007 at 6:34 am
Béranger, GNOME is vast and you know it. It’s not X.org and pruning entire components that are ‘tainted’ isn’t a matter of function alone
Isn’t branching, let alone forking, a huge overhead? Think about basic functionality in applications like Evolution, for example? Can Mono always be replaced with something more benign in GNOME? How long for? Is creating a wholly separate core applications base even feasible?
Béranger said,
November 6, 2007 at 6:45 am
Roy, but then, what is Red Hat going to do with Enterprise Linux 6.0, should they want to keep it “Mono-free”, as 5.0 still is?
Will they “clean” and rebuild GNOME (2.24, 2.26, whatever version will be used for RHEL6) so to keep it Mono-free?
And what if this will be too difficult?
Maintaining a “core GNOME” might be feasible for Red Hat. Note that RHEL doesn’t provide so many packages — only Fedora does. The same way KDE is *incomplete* in RHEL., they will be forced to provide an “incomplete GNOME” with RHEL6 — again, should they want to have it “untainted”.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 6, 2007 at 7:00 am
I know two companies that’ll make it difficult for Red Hat.
‘…the main takeaway, as they might put it, for me is that this is an anti-Red Hat deal, and Novell is thrilled about that. Justin Steinman reveals that to market their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server against Red Hat they ask, “Do you want the Linux that works with Windows? Or the one that doesn’t?” It’s just appalling’
Source: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20070930081040440
vexorian said,
November 6, 2007 at 8:10 am
you can get rid of mono in ubuntu, the problem is that there is a package called ubuntu-desktop that is a dummy one that installs all the packages used by the distro, so if you want to remove one of them , you have to remove ubuntu-desktop, hope they ever fix it or make it more friendly.
The nautilus requires beagle is yet another problem I guess someone tried to integrate nautilus with beagle.
With gnome including MONO applications in its default applications, things have gotten too hard. Fortunately it looks like the community is no longer sleeping about this.
These are comments I made once in slashdot:
[1] [2]
I don’t think Icaza is Judas, from what it looks like he was always the pro MS guy…
TaQ said,
November 6, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Was released the road map to GNOME 2.22 and seems that there is no mono on it:
http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 6, 2007 at 4:44 pm
vexorian,
It’s good to know that it’s not too late. Let it just be clarified that I like GNOME (I still use it sometimes) and the hope is that Mono will remain an option that can trivially be disabled shall the user require it. The worry is that businesses which move to Linux and become dependent on GNOME will have Microsoft knocking on their door for Mono Money. We’ve already seen evidence (Fortune article, among more) that Microsoft quietly ‘collects’ money for Linux, primarily from large companies.
GNOME developers must remember what Mono means in terms of FUD value to Microsoft. Choice is great, so let’s not force everyone to accept Mono, especially given its (arguably controversial) nature.
eet said,
November 7, 2007 at 10:20 am
God, I’ve just fallen into troll-country. People, g e t a l i f e !!
The world is not gonna end because Mono is becoming an integral part of GNOME. And that’s that.
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from an abusive Internet troll
TaQ said,
November 7, 2007 at 11:01 am
“God, I’ve just fallen into troll-country.”
You’re welcome to leave if you want, the door is open (that address bar above or the back button), please leave it this way when leaving, but beware of the dog.
” People, g e t a l i f e !! The world is not gonna end because Mono is becoming an integral part of GNOME. And that’s that.”
I have a life, a good one, that can became more complicated if we have the mono contamination on some of the good software we have today, imposed throat down by weird reasons. The world will not end but a good part of our freedom of use or not to use some software will.
eet said,
November 7, 2007 at 11:36 am
You are still free not to use GNOME. How about Mac OS X for you? A completely Mono-free environment; free of anything Microsoft-ish. You only have to pray to the master Steve. But it’s free of Mono; that’s the main thing, isn’t it?
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from an abusive Internet troll
TaQ said,
November 7, 2007 at 12:26 pm
No, I don’t need to use Mac OS X or pray to master Steve to do that. I use Slackware and thanks Patrick, a nice guy doing a nice job. Check this out:
cat /etc/slackware-version
Slackware 12.0.0
By the way, there is no official GNOME packages for Slackware anymore and seems that they will not return. Face this information just like just information and not criticism.
I use XFCE but think that GNOME is a very nice environment. That’s why I think it’s a good idea keep it good as it is without turning things complicated using complicated solutions and dependencies like mono. That’s the main thing for me, and seems that is for a lot of GNOME users.
Joe Shaw said,
November 7, 2007 at 12:46 pm
The whole of this entry is pretty presumptuous and ill-informed, but the thing that really brings it home for me is this:
My instincts tell me that this is a very sad day for the Gnome project; the turning point at which Gnome essentially became Microsoft property.
Of course, Yelp has had Beagle integration since 28 October 2005:
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/yelp/trunk/ChangeLog?revision=2970&view=markup
And Nautilus (the file manager) has been integrated into the mainline (after several months on its own branch) around December 2005:
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/nautilus/trunk/ChangeLog?revision=13406&view=markup
But, you know, who’s keeping track? Why fact-check when someone anonymous is the source?
Joe
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 7, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Joe,
We could be talking about Ximian here, not Novell. The age of yelp isn’t what you try to make of it.
Slated said,
November 8, 2007 at 4:25 am
@Joe
The point at which Yelp gained support for Beagle is not the issue; it is the point at which downstream distributions started pulling in Mono bindings as default dependencies, that is the immediate problem – as is my concern that Mono applications will follow soon after. It’s the next logical step in this seemingly unstoppable deterioration.
Right now, on this Fedora box, I am using Gnome and Yelp, which pulls in libbeagle as a dependency. There is nothing I can do about that, short of downloading the sources and trying to figure out how to rip out this dependency.
I do not, nor will I ever use Beagle, nor any other Mono application, so why the Hell should I be forced to install Mono bindings that I will never use, that were not previously required, but apparently are now mandatory in this distro? And from my research so far, Fedora is not alone. What do I do … dump Gnome, after all these years, for the sake of just one undesirable component? That is rapidly looking like the only option.
And making this distinction between an application and it’s framework or bindings, is just puerile and evasive, like making a distinction between a shotgun and its cartridges. One exists to serve the other, and only to serve the other. It’s Mono by the back door; an attempt to slowly squeeze it in, one inch at a time, and hope that nobody notices.
Well I noticed, and I would very much like to retain my previous option to not have those components, but sadly it looks like I have lost that particular Freedom.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 8, 2007 at 6:47 am
Why is Miguel so eerily quiet on this issue? A colleague of his does some legwork, but Miguel himself used to be more vocal. At the moment, Miguel presents almost jointly with Microsoft here. He has lost my trust completely!
Joe Shaw said,
November 8, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I do not, nor will I ever use Beagle, nor any other Mono application, so why the Hell should I be forced to install Mono bindings that I will never use, that were not previously required, but apparently are now mandatory in this distro?
It’s mainly a technical one. Yelp just isn’t written to be able to dynamically load these things at runtime (like a Firefox extension, for example). Or conversely, you could argue that RPM is deficient because there’s no way to decide what options you want or not (unlike Gentoo and its USE flags).
There’s nothing to keep Yelp from doing this, other than the fact that it’s quite a bit more work, harder to get right, and much more error prone. I expect that the Yelp maintainer (a GNOME volunteer with no ties to Novell) would be willing to consider a patch to do this.
My concern with this site and its comments is the unfortunate assumption that every action anyone at Novell makes — particularly engineers — is inherently sinister. An amount of skepticism is healthy, but it’s taken to an extreme here. I guess everybody needs an outlet though, and the Internet certainly provides that.
And making this distinction between an application and it’s framework or bindings, is just puerile and evasive, like making a distinction between a shotgun and its cartridges. One exists to serve the other, and only to serve the other. It’s Mono by the back door; an attempt to slowly squeeze it in, one inch at a time, and hope that nobody notices.
Not exactly. If the code isn’t used, what harm does it really have sitting on your machine? I’m no fan of unnecessary libraries sitting on my machine, but it doesn’t mean the end of the world. libbeagle is no more enabling than, say, D-Bus is or NFS. Just because it has “beagle” in the name doesn’t mean that it’s Mono or what have you.
I notice that you’re considering switching to KDE. Why not switch off Fedora entirely, since they ship Mono components? What better way to vote than with your feet? As I mentioned in another comment, I would respect this site a lot more if it called for a boycott of Ubuntu and Fedora for just shipping Mono, let alone any sort of GNOME integration.
Joe
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 8, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Why is Novell using its ‘protection’ as a marketing tool? Why would it brag having Mono ‘protection’? Novell has an interest in filling a typical and complete GNOME build with Mono. This way, Novell is seen as possessing an advantage, however illusionary it may be.
TaQ said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:01 pm
As I said on the second comment, we can safely remove mono from Ubuntu. I’m downloading the Fedora 8 DVD and will install it later to check if this is possible there also. The problem is not to ship, is make it mandatory.
Joe Shaw said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:03 pm
As I mentioned in another comment, I’d like to see a citation on the Mono protection thing.
The broader “protection” thing, yeah, it’s a stupid move by Novell to try to use that as a positive thing in the community. On the other hand, it’s a reasonable business argument for those people who have been reluctant to adopt Linux because of perceived threats — and there have been many, unfortunately.
But I can tell you from an engineering standpoint that there’s absolutely no pressure on engineers to somehow taint GNOME in any way. Engineers are trusted to use whatever language and tools they feel will work for their job. Many of us used Mono because we liked the programming environment — that and the availability of software ported from Java (Java and C# are very similar) were the two main motivating factors in choosing C# for Beagle. Not scaring people.
There is a real disconnect in the company between the people selling stuff (and making public statements) and the people actually writing the code. That’s a good thing.
Joe
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:19 pm
One among several references I can hand over to you is this.
You then say:
Really? You mean like this?
Microsoft Hijacks the Voice of Novell Customers
The gist: Microsoft/Novell use FUD to market themselves and in the process they say on behalf of their customers (and wrongly so) that they care about patent protection. IOW, lies are used to argue that customers care about what you call “perceived threats”. This argument was reiterated last night by Matt Asay, who could only think of Wal-Mart as the exception (and on that too he had something to say). Wal-Mart executives and Microsoft changed teams so they could be doing each other favour by spreading FUD. I can find that reference from Asay if you pine for it.
Lots of people have been buying Red Hat. There’s indemnification as well. That ought to prove that the “perceived threats” is pretty much void and merely an excuse for Novell’s management. Had Novell acted properly to mitigate threats (either real or perceived), no tactless deal with Microsoft would be necessary and no FUD would hold water.
Joe Shaw said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:19 pm
@TaQ
But why support a distribution that ships Mono? Aren’t you compromising your principles in some way?
Especially in the libbeagle case, that code is nothing more than message passing, like D-Bus, and is totally inert if Beagle itself isn’t installed and running. Other than some wasted disk space, what’s the harm there?
Joe
TaQ said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:34 pm
If, as I told, it offers me a way to remove the packages, it don’t affects my freedom of not to use software I don’t want to. I don’t see a problem if it keeps this way.
Let’s think about proprietary drivers: on Ubuntu I can use them or not, and this is the main point to me, I can choose! Xorg will not say to me “looks, dude, I won’t start if you use nv, you’ll need nvidia on your xorg.conf”. Even if a distro comes with “official” microsoft programs ported to GNU/Linux on it and keep a way to remove them completly, I’ll not see a problem.
Btw, my “supported” distro is Slackware, but I like to play and know others also.
Joe Shaw said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:44 pm
@Roy,
Really? You mean like this? [link] The gist: Microsoft/Novell use FUD to market themselves and in the process they say on behalf of their customers (and wrongly so) that they care about patent protection.
Well, you’re using one case to back up your point. Not every company is buying Novell (or Red Hat) for the same reasons, and that includes patent protection or indemnification. As most business deals are done in private, neither you nor I are party to the reasons why in most of these cases. But I don’t think that the higher invoicing by Novell is a coincidence.
Anyway, I am not trying to defend Novell or Microsoft or their behavior. Microsoft has been sleazy about patents for years, and the HSBC thing is just more evidence of that.
But we’ve now strayed away from Mono and Beagle and GNOME, which is why I posted in the first place. The engineering decisions are largely separated from the business decisions.
Joe
Joe Shaw said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:47 pm
@TaQ
Let’s think about proprietary drivers: on Ubuntu I can use them or not, and this is the main point to me, I can choose! Xorg will not say to me “looks, dude, I won’t start if you use nv, you’ll need nvidia on your xorg.conf”.
As I mentioned, this is largely a technical thing, and could be fixed if people did the work. Most developers probably don’t feel it’s worth the work.
Joe
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 8, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Stay tuned because aside from some news, I’m seeking permission to post details from a leak. The short story is that FUD is still used for marketing; discounts also (heck, Microsoft would cover all expenses if it needs to, if only because hurting companies like Red Hat and Ubuntu is in Microsoft’s interest).
That’s reassuring to know. Thanks, Joe.
TaQ said,
November 8, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I don’t know if you got my point but, it’s not broken, no need to be fixed!
They did the work perfectly and we can use the proprietary drivers *only if we want to*. Seems that the most developers involved on Ubuntu thought that it would be a good thing, and wow, it is.
TaQ said,
November 11, 2007 at 9:57 am
Here’s the way to remove mono from Fedora 8:
http://eustaquiorangel.com/blog/show/474
Everything is running fine without it.
Slated said,
November 24, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Note: there will soon be an easier way to obtain a Mono-free Fedora, since I’m working on an unencumbered respin that has purged Mono (and I’m also working on replacing Firefox with Iceweasel and Thunderbird with Icedove).
In fact I’m considering making the distro an XFCE release and just purging Gnome entirely, since I foresee quite a battle ahead trying to keep Gnome “clean” in the future. Overall it’s probably just easier to depreciate it.
The “purge” won’t end there either. I’ll be doing a full audit on an ongoing basis, to see what other not-really-Free software is lurking in Fedora.
Stay tuned.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 24, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I’ll be happy to install it on my main PC at home when it’s ready.
trampster said,
July 14, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Hi,
I’m a .net developer who has started using linix in the last few months becuase of mono.
Mono for companies like the one I work for is an entry point into linix. Without mono we wouldnt even consider supporting it.
Linix current suffers from a lack of comerial companies being willing to produce their software for linix. Mono hugely reduces that barrier to entry for us.
I love linix and what it has to offer I would hate to see the attitudes being displayed above resign it to the history books.
TaQ said,
July 14, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Dude, first, it’s Linux, please. If you love it at least know its name.
Second, “resign it to the history books”? You really want to talk about “history books” when talking about this? Please, check the history books or the current newspaper for about what microsoft have to offer about all this stuff. Check the OOXML and the current Yahoo! news and you’ll see the kind of dirty game *always* played by them and on 10 years check the history books to see what they say about of all this shit.
If you love GNU/Linux so much, please gimme a break and try to program on a really free multiplatform language. There’s a lot out there without any kind of microsoft “poison”.
No, the world current suffers from a lack of developers resisting to go out the microsoft world because they don’t want to learn anything else. That’s the point.
Roberto said,
August 5, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Good article….
http://www.amanra.com
honta-honta said,
August 5, 2008 at 5:02 pm
That guy’s distro is seriously messed up; you can remove Mono without problems from openSUSE 11.0 as Beranger has done:
http://www.beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/07/31/07/26/31-a-very-few-notes-on-opensuse-upd