Summary: Mono lock-in potentially increased due to Novell's Banshee in Ubuntu GNU/Linux

OUR reader Ryan has shown us this new page, which according to him, brings Ubuntu One closer to Mono (there is also the increased dependency due to gbrainy [1, 2]). The page says:

libubuntuone (0.2.100-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

* New upstream release. - Added mono bindings * debian/control - added build depends needed for the mono bindings - added mono bindings [Jo Shields] * debian/patches/use_debian_cli_policy_0.7_dir.patch - Follow debian CLI policy * debian/rules - Added libubuntuone1.0-cil -- Ken VanDine <email address hidden> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:07:59 -0500

Jono Bacon from Canonical explains to us that "they are just mono bindings - so it works in Banshee, but we don't ship the mono bindings on the disc." Ryan replies with: "So Banshee brings in the offending bindings for Ubuntu One? Or will or something?"

Bacon explains that "there has been some work upstream to have support for U1 [Ubuntu One] in Banshee, but not sure if it will be in the upstream build... as we ship RB [RhythmBox], we don't ship the bindings on the disc... as we don't need to."

The main issue that we have with Banshee is that only Novell customers can use it safely because of the limitations in Microsoft's "Community Promise" (MCP). ⬆