OVER the past few weeks we've come across all sorts of unsubstantiated claims that Gnote would not carry on being developed and maintained. To those who say it, this is a prophecy they wish to fulfill using smears. Microsoft calls the broader scheme of this strategy "the Slog" [PDF] and there are recent examples of another strategy called "whisper campaign" -- damaging and false rumours being disseminated [1, 2]. Boycott Novell too has totally false accusations brought against it in an attempt to shoot the messenger because of the message which cannot be refuted (regarding Mono). Needless to say, these injurious false accusations and smears come from proponents of Mono who carefully cherry-pick things and take them out of context.
In a thread on the ubuntu-devel mailing list, where Danny Picirillo asked to consider replacing Tomboy with Gnote, a long discussion followed. Ultimately Mackenzie brought up some points that the Gnote developer, Hubert Figuiere felt needed to be answered.
One of my principal concerns would that Gnote is simply a code port of Tomboy from Mono to C++, with little development of its own. This means that should the maintainer tire of converting C# to C++, the project could quite quickly die.
“This type of logic can be applied to any project, even Microsoft Money.”As for Tomboy, it is merely "the hobby" of a Novell employee (to use the wording of those close to the project), so the same logic could be applied to it. Figuiere, on the other hand, appears to be working on Gnote full time and it will be included in Fedora by default this December. Perhaps Red Hat should hire him.
Scott Grizzard wrote to explain the point of view of Mono skeptics ("anti-Mono" is too strong a phrase because we believe that Mono can have a place in the repositories, just not included by default and thus imposed despite risk).
The basic conclusion the anti-Mono crowd reaches (and if I am wrong, please let me know) is this: you shouldn’t use Mono, because Microsoft could come back later (after it has gained wide acceptance) and claim patent violations, gaining control (or at least significant influence) over open source software that uses it. They are especially vehemently opposed to using Mono for any core packages (or packages that gain widespread use), because that places Linux at considerable risk from Microsoft.
[...]
As the anti-mono people are right to point out, you shouldn’t use Mono for new Open Source projects, especially core projects – the potential threat from Microsoft is just too large. But, remember that Microsoft’s power is market power first, and its political power is derived from that. Anything that reduces that market power should be seen as a “good thing”. Mono in the core of Linux distributions has the potential to endanger Linux, but used properly, Mono makes Linux viable for many more people, giving them more choice, and more choice is “good”.
So why can't Mono just be moved to the repositories? Why is Ubuntu remaining silent on this issue? How come other Linux distributions don't have to use Mono?
Comments
Dylan McCall
2009-06-20 15:47:44
I find it really annoying that you are, again, grabbing minor chunks of what people say on Ubuntu's devel-discuss mailing list and spinning it as some kind of malicious act. Here's the plain and simple answer: It isn't. Nobody there cares about your little war on Mono; they just care about finding and using the best software they can. Stop trying to spin it as such, or people there WILL start to combat you. Inventing enemies will not win you any friends.
GNote is cool, but it has not proven itself as the best choice so far. It is just barely at a feature-complete stage, and at this point it presents some minor regressions over Tomboy. (A sane distro does not ship regressions, and from time to time Ubuntu makes sane choices). Also, being just barely feature complete, it has yet to prove itself as having a responsive upstream or being thoroughly tested for bugs, as was discussed there and you thoroughly ignored.
I, for one, completely agree with the fear that development could cease within a few months, and it strikes me as extremely unlikely that any significant community would grow around it because Tomboy is Sandy Armstrong's project, so sane developers would just look at that, not reviving some dead alternative.
Now, six months from now, if GNote is still alive and maybe moving in a new direction where it isn't just a clone of another active project, that may be worth revisiting.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-06-20 18:22:51
Far from it. I found it in Stefano's blog and decided to rebut some claims. There is nothing nefarious here.
Sabayon User
2009-06-20 18:43:28
Roy Schestowitz
2009-06-20 19:32:23
lalala
2009-06-20 20:26:07
You're not going to do anything about it because you can't, it's not libel, it's true.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger
2009-06-20 20:33:17
Maybe you should either sue me, or just stop mouthing off.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-06-20 20:34:38
You are wrong, but you don't want to know it.
Sabayon User
2009-06-20 20:54:37
Ha, ha.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger
2009-06-22 05:37:00
rasta
2009-06-20 21:17:04
lalala
2009-06-20 22:08:20
eet
2009-06-21 08:36:59
BTW, pcolon, at the moment Hubert Figuiere IS the gnote-project... That's what would make it a non-sane choice as a Tomboy-replacement.
Roy, you are trying to seed unrest within the Ubuntu-community - stop it! Your anti-social behavior is not something that will gain you friendly feelings from the broader GNU/Linux community. You and your fans are embarassing for all of us.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger
2009-06-23 05:14:08
pcolon
2009-06-21 02:59:54
eet
2009-06-21 08:37:54
BTW, pcolon, at the moment Hubert Figuiere IS the gnote-project… That’s what would make it a non-sane choice as a Tomboy-replacement.
Roy, you are trying to seed unrest within the Ubuntu-community - stop it! Your anti-social behavior is not something that will gain you friendly feelings from the broader GNU/Linux community. You and your fans are embarassing for all of us.