Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell/Microsoft and the Funding of Pinta's (Mono) Developer

"Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand."

--Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO



Summary: Novell has a Mono-based replacement for the GIMP and some of the most expected sources are covering it

THREE months ago, one of our readers hypothesised that the GIMP would be replaced by Paint.NET, at least in Ubuntu. The man who ported Paint.NET (for GNU/Linux) is working to receive a paycheck from Novell, which is in turn funded by Microsoft. He says that he "work[s] on Mono, specifically on Mono Tools for Visual Studio." It's about assimilating to Microsoft rather than the other way around.



Earlier this week we mentioned this article from The H. It is about a Mono project named Pinta, developed alone by that Novell employee who had previously ported Paint.NET. Thom Holwerda, who is quite often seen as hostile towards GNU/Linux (he loves Windows Vista 7 and he loves Mono), promoted this application, calling it "a Gtk+ Clone of Paint.NET." DownloadSquad did the same thing and in Heise/The H we found the sole comment which says: "I read an article earlier on today that stated Novell were trying to get over the problem of mono being so unpopular with everyone by writing all the programmes themselves. Is this true? Just who else is writing programmes in mono?"

“Mark Shuttleworth once said that if the Windows API becomes the default on GNU/Linux, then there is no point to GNU/Linux.”Pinta is just more trouble, very much like Moonlight. Mark Shuttleworth once said that if the Windows API becomes the default on GNU/Linux, then there is no point to GNU/Linux. He was right, but he ignored his own intuition and embraced the Trojan horses from Microsoft and Novell (there is another side to this story). Those who are always defending and promoting Mono applications are those who offer complimentary coverage to Pinta. One of them is Ryan Paul and among the comments he received there is this one: "Great, yet another Microsoft .NET application to be included in Ubuntu. Before long, they will just switch to a licensed Windows kernel and nobody would see the difference."

Here is new coverage from FOSDEM 2010:

Last weekend, during the tenth edition of FOSDEM, we had the joy of organizing the first ever Mono developer room. While there had been talks about Mono before (including Miguel's great presentation at FOSDEM 2007), it was still a rather underrepresented topic. For that reason, Stephane and I requested a developer room and gladly we got it.


So those who asked for the room are contributing not just to F-Spot but to Novell's very own Banshee too (which only Novell customers can use [1, 2, 3, 4]).

Gates on SUSE



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
 
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025