Bonum Certa Men Certa

Banshee (MCP-Excluded Mono Trap) is Not Yet in Next Ubuntu, There is Still Time to Stop It

Amazed at Mono



Summary: Clarifications about Novell's Banshee, which is a uniquely problematic Mono application that OMG!Ubuntu gives an unnecessary boost to

THIS Web site has already covered and addressed promotion or disinformation about Banshee in OMG!Ubuntu, which highlights numerous Mono-based applications (and sometimes Mono itself) on a routine basis [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is the latest example of this. The Source responds to this site's alleged deception regarding Banshee:



Ubuntu has a totally un-biased poll asking their readers “If the decision was up to you which media player would you choose as a default?”

The only choices in this pool are Banshee and Rhythmbox, and the numbers are very close (even considering the poll is being flogged by Team Apologista on Twitter) but the point I’d like to make here isn’t really about the poll itself, but about what the comments reveal.


As we pointed out some days ago, OMG!Ubuntu claims that Banshee will be in the next release of Ubuntu even though this is not certain. Sam Varghese writes about this subject as follows:

Much has been written about the fact that the next version of Ubuntu, Natty Narwhal, will switch its interface from GNOME to Canonical's own Unity interface.

Little has been said about the plan to introduce a Mono-dependent application, Banshee, as the default music player.

This is yet to be finalised; it is dependent on the application fitting into a single CD, along with the rest of the distribution.

Mono is an attempt to reproduce some parts of Microsoft's .NET development environment as an open source offering. It has been said more than once, and by more than one authority, that it may could well pose patent dangers to developers as it is core technology from Microsoft.

The man behind it, Miguel de Icaza, a co-founder of the GNOME desktop project and a vice-president of Novell, has been trying very hard for the last nine years to make it an acceptable alternative. Yet it has won few followers.

Last year, de Icaza admitted to having developed portions of .NET, which were not submitted to ECMA by Microsoft, as part of his open source project.


As Microsoft's Community Promise helps prove (the terms show it clearly), Mono (not ECMA-adherent) and Moonlight are patent traps. The latter has just been rendered quite obsolete, so we are unlikely to hear about it in the future. It is developed by Novell staff, just like the Mono-based Pinta for example. We have written about Pinta many times before, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] and Webupd8 wrote about it some days ago. Why promote Mono applications? They do not advance the cause of GNU/Linux.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day