Bonum Certa Men Certa

Monoment [sic] of Novell's Demise

Monument
Living and dying with Mono



A FREQUENTLY-ASKED question is, "what distinguishes between the FSF's approach to .NET and that of Novell?"



Aside from the fact that the FSF seems to have lost interest in .NET cloning, the key difference between dotgnu and Mono is that the former is intended to bring legacy applications over to GNU/Linux (much like Wine), whereas the latter -- Mono -- is somehow making its way into GNOME/GTK applications. Ximian/Novell are the cause for this and Novell encourages use of MonoDevelop.

A reader brought to our attention this video from a year and a half ago where Richard Stallman answers a question about Mono.

Ogg Theora





Direct link



Mr. Stallman says people "shouldn't implement in .NET." It is important to use our own tools. For example, it would be impossible to find GNU/Linux developers selecting Microsoft DirectX just because Wine can sort of handle it. Unsurprisingly, one of the most vocal boosters of Mono goes by the name directhex.

Novell is actively developing its desktop with Mono, so it's not just a matter of bringing applications to GNU/Linux; it's also about making applications in GNU/Linux using Microsoft technologies and therefore enriching Windows as well. Here is a brand-new reminder that comes with Novell's release of Banshee 1.4:



Developers should use GPL-licensed tools like net2java (there are also non-Free ones) to escape the .NET trap as soon as possible.

Even Miguel seems to be having regrets. An older article is summarised thusly:

Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza criticizes choice of Microsoft technology over open-source options.



To quote further from this article:

Speaking on a panel at the MIX 08 conference in Las Vegas, de Icaza said that Novell has done the best it could to balance open-source interests with patent indemnification. However, if he had his way, the company would have remained strictly open source and not gotten into bed with Microsoft. Novell entered into a controversial multimillion dollar cross-patent licensing and interoperability deal with Microsoft in November 2006.


Despite all of this, Novell's new leadership is looking into further development of Microsoft technologies with Moonlight. Yes, it even "calls for [Moonlight] 2.0 contributors."

Moonlight 1.0 Beta 1 Nears Rollout, Calls for 2.0 Contributors



The Moonlight team has announced that the first beta release of Moonlight 1.0 is nearly ready for testing. Moonlight is an open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight product.


"Come and volunteer to help the poisoning of GNU/Linux..."

Who are they kidding? Novell should fight XAML, not support it. Fedora knows better.

Truthfully, .NET is Microsoft's imitation of Java, but the patent office does not recognise the fact that all ideas (or so-called 'inventions') are merely aggregations of existing knowledge. This is why we push so hard for a reform and so should everybody else (shall time permit).

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

--Albert Einstein

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