12.22.08
Gemini version available ♊︎Mono Fans Owe an Apology: The Evolution of Mono Continues
Evolution, the mono (monkey) way
Our usual critics insisted this did not happen and would not happen, but they were wrong. [Credit: Tony Manco for the pointer]
OpenSUSE 11.1: Evolution dependent on Mono
[...]
The cancerous Mono has spread its tentacles further into the GNOME Desktop environment which is present on the GNOME live CD, to the extent that removing mono-core results in the removal of Evolution as well, the default mail program.
Of course, this fact was not among those which Novell released to the public in its announcement about the release.
Mono is problematic for reasons that we mentioned before. It does not become a part of GNU/Linux merely as an addon because increasingly it becomes more of a requirement or an essential part of basic applications/functionality. Thus, it’s routinely installed by default and those who don’t know better will keep it there are get habitually dependent on applications that demand it, over time. This monkey business needs to stop because of the existing ramifications. █
MONOME: one application at a time
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aeshna23 said,
December 22, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I don’t understand. Is this just for Evolution on openSuse? Or do other distros get infected also? KDE users like me need a little more info to access the threat.
Diamond Wakizashi said,
December 22, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Mono was created by Microsoft’s bitch Novell for the purpose of making Linux users Microsoft slaves. Novell should apologize for their horrid betrayal of open source.
Shane Coyle said,
December 22, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Mandriva also has apparently experienced this phenomenon of evolution-mono dependency in the past, it looks like a bug related to enabling mono plugins but some reason everything gets linked, or the package maintainer may have flubbed the dependencies… unsure if this opensuse 11.1 issue is the same/similar since I don’t run opensuse, but it’s possible it’s just an error…
Or, an insidious plot. ;^ )
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:34 am
Shane has it basically right: Evolution has the ability to use Mono plugins in the same way it uses plugins from different languages. The packagers have incorrectly made that a package dependency.
GNOME policy doesn’t allow it to simply grow a Mono dependency. So, no apology needed. It is a bit disappointing to see another demand for restitution where none is deserved, though.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:31 am
I pointed this out earlier in IRC. Even plugins create an issue, though. See the bit about “functionality”.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:35 am
Not necessarily an error – but certainly a consequence of braindead RPM packaging. RPM systems tend to use enormous, monolithic, kitchen-sink packages, which have all dependencies for all components as a result. So if you’re building one minor plugin feature, that bridge library is included in the main package, and dependencies grow from there. The Mandriva OOo case is another example of this issue – Ubuntu and Debian also enable all OOo/Mono bridges, but they are shoved into entirely optional packages – if you don’t install libuno-cli-*1.0-cil, you don’t get that functionality OR that dependency. See also: kde4bindings
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:38 am
Bottom line: it’s getting harder to get rid of Mono.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:05 am
On distros with monolithic packages for the most bloated of apps? Yeah. But that’s a failure of the distro and its packages.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:07 am
Blame the distro, don’t blame the Mono?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:13 am
Yes. Definitely. If someone puts a Depends: wine into a kernel package, it’d be that packager’s failing. Bad dependencies are one of the main reasons I avoid RPM distros.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:15 am
Well, the applications space is being tempered with. It would be easier had Poisonware been kept out.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:30 am
Whatever you say, Roy.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, we assign blame where it’s due – and in this case, an unnecessary bundling of a binding with its parent app is the fault of lazy packagers
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:56 am
It remains to be seen if SUSE developers will address this issue. It’s in Novell’s interests to spread its poison as widely as possible because only Novell is ‘licensed’ to use Mono.
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 8:11 am
All major distros disagree with that statement.
vincent said,
December 23, 2008 at 8:34 am
Maybe Evolution 3.0 will use C# and Mono 2.0 ?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 8:50 am
The unmaintainable bloated mess of C that forms Evolution was the main reason Mono was started in the first place
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:13 am
So you don’t even refute this.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:18 am
Not my decision – it’s a decision for Evolution’s primary developers (and their decision as to whether rewriting hundreds of thousands of lines of source in a different language is worth the effort)
You understand how Free Software works, right?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:28 am
Yes, it’s Microsoft’s partner poisoning GNOME.
http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
“Copyright © 2004-2008 Novell Inc.”
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:33 am
Nobody is forcing distribution maintainers to include it should things go that way, nobody is precluding the idea of a fork should anyone feel one is required.
You understand how Free Software works, right?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:36 am
Novell has some sort of preferential hiring of .NET (Mono) developers. It’s “direction by design”, from above.
Shane Coyle said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:41 am
You understand how Free Software works, right?
Yup, DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:43 am
WOO?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:43 am
Video here.
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 9:58 am
Evolution isn’t “poison”, Mono plugins or not.
FWIW, Miguel has been asked about Evo specifically a number of times and he’s always stated that it wouldn’t be useful to rewrite it.
Of course, at some point, someone likely will write a major application in Mono because it’s an extremely comfortable development environment, and at some point the anti-Mono boys will just have to deal with not using it.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:02 am
With Miguel ‘in charge’ of Evolution, one can surely be relieved.
Do you know something that we don’t know? Who is it that facilitates development in Mono again?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:03 am
I was exceedingly amused by an Ubuntu Forums post by someone saying they’d drunk Roy’s Kool-Aid, but for some reason Gnome-Do wasn’t working for them anymore
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:10 am
That’s hardly relevant.
I’m still catching up…
“So the Mono dependency can’t be restricted to an evolution-mono subpackage; as soon as you build Evolution with Mono support, the main package itself will always depend on libmono, even though it really doesn’t use it for anything.
“Would it be possible to improve this, so that Mono plugin support does not require the main executable to be dynamically linked against libmono, and we could ship an evolution package which does *not* depend on libmono and an evolution-mono package which does? Thanks.”
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549025
“The rest of the so-called improvements can be seen in this Novell release. But bear in mind that several of these “delights” cannot be experienced unless you are willing to risk patent problems and leave Mono on your system.
“Here’s a quote that says it much better than I ever could: “Mono is all about getting existing Windows applications, and their Microsoft-proprietary dependencies, installed on to your Linux system, so that you will in the near future require a paid-for license from Microsoft to run programs on your Linux system.””
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22434/1090/1/1/
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:15 am
This is “just a bug” coming from just the Novell-controlled distro, which casually has added a false Mono dependency to evolution because Mono plugins are so important and needed in evolution.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:19 am
One day, Roy, you might actually read what you link to. Until then, you’ll continue to make a total fool of yourself, and further screw with whatever passes for a reputation around here.
Status: RESOLVED
Resolution: FIXED
Comment #7 from Matthew Barnes (Evolution developer, points: 21)
2008-10-22 13:06 UTC
Committed to trunk (revision 36675).
Non-issue. Distortion. Blah blah blah, you get the idea.
Conspiracy theorist rambling, with zero basis in reality. Aligning yourself to that kind of nonsense is somewhere lower than UFO cultists.
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:22 am
Evil conspiracy theorists are behind all of this, they made the Novell-MS pact up and it is because of conspiracy theorists that the world is convinced that .net is heavy on software patents, in true, software patents don’t exist, it is all a plan from conspiracy theorists to take over the world.
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:26 am
The push to make the whole desktop dependent on Mono is so strong lately that they will keep making up apps like this in Mono. AlexH’s plan of making those who don’t like running Mono just not use the desktop is just going to work. A desktop without Mono is becoming more and more of a myth, we can thank Novell for this since thanks to then, we need MS technology to run so-called Linux apps.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:26 am
Having fun?
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:30 am
@Victor: please don’t put words in my mouth; I have no interest in people using Mono or not – that’s up to them. I support people being able to avoid Mono, however I also support people developing in Mono.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:30 am
That was satire. Don’t be foolish by discrediting the state of those who explain a side-effect of your work (jo Shields is one of the key people behind Mono for those who don’t know).
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:31 am
That last comment was aimed at Jo.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:34 am
“Key people”? I’ve moved up in the world!
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:39 am
You put it inside the most widely used GNU/Linux distribution.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:41 am
I didn’t put it anywhere. I help maintain what was already there to the highest standards, in the interest of enabling developers and users access to the highest quality foundations possible.
You DO know how Free Software works, right?
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:44 am
AlexH. I was annoyed by this:
It is currently easy not to use Mono, I mean, tomboy is about the least useful thing to ever come in a default setup, F-spot and chesse are almost equals and some things that are mostly just eye candy for things that are already possible, like gnome-do or beagle are not necessary.
But as time passes, since we choose to just look around, do you know what’s happening? More money will be put on apps that use Mono, or that’s already happening, while the alternatives will remain ignored by Novell’s people, eventually filling the Mono apps with features so people begin to push for them to be included in the defaults, try a look at brainstorm, some beings are already pushing banshee instead of rythmbox…
Eventually not using Mono will make you a second-class citizen. Just not using Mono is not going to work. I sure hope people understand this is going to happen. Cause every year it is closer to that, this bug just says something about it… Someone pushed for evolution mono plugins, effectively evolution will begin to have more features if mono is enabled…
What I don’t want is to lose my right not to choose technology that was designed, patented and in part coded, by Microsoft, unfortunately, I am seeing how things are evolving towards the lost of this right. “Every computer running Microsoft software” that’s their dream.
Of course, the evil conspiracy theory begins when we say that MS will eventually pull the plug out of Mono, users will have to decide whether to move back to the abandoned non-Mono desktop or to just begin paying for Mono licensing. This is a conspiracy theory, but just because it is a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I would surely trust this thing a lot more if it wasn’t for Novell’s deal, I still don’t get why would they sign it if they didn’t think MS couldn’t do this, and the fact that in the deal, Mono protection is exclusive to Novell, is something I don’t like too much…
Of course, this is the part in which the whole post is ridiculed, because Mono is so awesome and it is so impossible to code in other languages, that everyone should be accepting of it, developers should pick tools based on their commodity rather than the long term, I get it…
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:48 am
Don’t underestimate the role of Moonlight in this.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:48 am
Back-seat developers are beginning to drive me up the wall. If you want something a particular way, DO IT AND SUBMIT PATCHES
You DO know how Free Software works, right?
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:48 am
Of course, I would be happy if not using mono remained a possible option, it should be possible to port apps or at least from Mono to other platforms, as a matter of fact, I plan to try it once I get more into GTK dev. Maybe some boycott Novell regulars could put their money where they put their mouth and help me.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:49 am
DO feel free to explain what Moonlight has to do with Evolution, Roy.
I’m waiting
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:50 am
That would be WONDERFUL. Please, do.
Whatever next? Enhancing non-Mono apps to be technically better, removing the need for things like F-Spot or Tomboy?
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:50 am
That previous post was a response to my other post.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:51 am
I was referring to this comment about Mono, not Evolution.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:51 am
Yes, Victor has just beaten me to it.
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:51 am
At least the second part is already done.
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:55 am
That comment about F-spot and cheese was non-sense , what’s supposedly F-spot’s alternative? I am not used to that photo stuff.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:56 am
My understanding is GThumb is the preferred alternative. I don’t use either, or have any interest in photo organizing apps.
Victor Soliz said,
December 23, 2008 at 10:58 am
Not really, I was just saying my “Of course, I would be happy …” post was a continuation to the previous one, I wrote it before the other replies.
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 12:29 pm
@Victor: the thing is, you can’t tell other people what to do. If you don’t want to use PHP, for example, you could moan about not being able to use WordPress but realistically that’s your choice.
If you feel Mono is too big a patent threat, that again is your choice. However, other people (and distributions) can make a different choice.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 12:56 pm
@AlexH:
“The thing is, you can’t tell other people what to do.”
Well, explain that to Microsoft, who is telling everyone “pay us for our patents”, with the help of Novell (the Novell deal legitimises Microsoft claim)
The problem is that Novell and Microsoft have already taken that decision for all of us.
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 1:03 pm
@SubSonica: if any payment was needed, now or in the future, it wouldn’t be included in distributions as free software. Software patent problems are not new and are relatively well understood.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 1:44 pm
@AlexH:
At least mono, moonlight and any software using msooxml was released under the GPLv3.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Sorry; I meant:
@AlexH:
At least mono, moonlight and any software using msooxml SHOULD BE released under the GPLv3.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Why?
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 1:50 pm
@SubSonica: the copyright license isn’t that relevant really, I don’t think.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:03 pm
@JoShields: To protect the software against de-facto proprietarization through patent threats and in order to guarantee the freedoms and rights are inheritable by the contributors, and that inheritance is not impeded by patent claims/threats/rackets:
Section 10 prohibits people who convey the software from filing patent suits against other licensees. If someone did so anyway, section 8 explains how they would lose their license and any patent licenses that accompanied it.
@AlexH, Then you wouldn’t mind if it was released under the GPLv3, wouldn’t you?
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm
@SubSonica: no, I don’t care either way – the GPLv3 is a fine license.
But I don’t understand why you think that would be an improvement. For example, Microsoft are highly unlikely to be Mono users, so the license of Mono is basically irrelevant to them.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Only works if the people pressing patent claims are also the authors of the software – it would prevent, say, Sun from filing patent suits to users of GPLv3 software they release, but not Microsoft. If that is the desired effect, then a number of other GPLv3-compatible licenses with similar patent retaliation clauses could also be used (e.g. Ms-PL)
Generally speaking though, I’m all for people releasing software under whichever license they feel most comfortable with. If you’re concerned about OOXML, then Sun are the ones you need to convince to switch to GPLv3, since Sun’s OOo3 is the most widely circulated Free OOXML-compatible software out there
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:15 pm
@JoShields and @AlexH:
Also because of this:
—
Why does Novell require a copyright assignment?
When a developer contributes code to the C# compiler or the Mono runtime engine, we require that the author grants Novell the right to relicense his/her contribution under other licensing terms.
This allows Novell to re-distribute the Mono source code to parties that might not want to use the GPL or LGPL versions of the code.
Particularly embedded system vendors obtain grants to the Mono runtime engine and modify it for their own purposes without having to release those changes back.
—
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:24 pm
@SubSonica: copyright assignment is a different issue to the license it’s using.
Generally I dislike them, but having the code under GPLv3 doesn’t get rid of it.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:26 pm
@JoShields:
“Only works if the people pressing patent claims are also the authors of the software”
Ok then. That’s better than nothing.
And c’mon, don´t make me laugh. Want to start me? Once again you make another (lame) attempt at deviating the attention to Sun without any reason whatsoever.
I feel much more at ease with Sun than with Novell (let alone Microsoft) thank you very much. Sun has not helped Microsoft threatening me with undisclosed liability sheets for not using their MS-endorsed distro, whereas Novell has.
Moreover, the only ones to blame for OOXML are MICROSOFT CORPORATION and about OpenOffice.org, it is Novell’s fork “GOO” the one incoroporating Microsoft technologies. So its all about Novell and Microsoft once and again.
It is Microsoft the ones who infiltrated and corrupted the ISO in order to see the -standard-seal-of-approval-. ¿Did Novell oppose and protest that corruption?
It is Novell the ones proposing mono and incorporating copycat Microsoft patented technologies into the free software stream, not Sun, so it is Novell the ones we should DEMAND to change the licence if we perceive a threat and to respect and protect the intention and spirit of Free Software.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Copyright assignment is a fairly common thing with corporate-backed projects – Sun require the same for OOo (in order to relicense as proprietary for StarOffice)
I don’t see any massive reason not to move any *GPL-2* sections to their 3 equivalents, though I prefer the moves they’ve been making towards BSD (with Apache 2.0/Ms-PL as BSD-with-patent-relatiation options)
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 2:36 pm
You can say you feel more at ease, but historically? Sun HAVE made somewhat negaive moves, such as funding SCO and signing a patent covenant with MS. Have they changed? Maybe.
Again, you’re free to feel at ease with Sun, but not to rewrite history.
Go-OO added OOXML to OOo 2.x, Sun added OOXML to OOo 3.x. SUN, I repeat, wrote their own OOXML implementation from scratch for OOo3, nothing to do with Novell. See http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/the_new_microsoft_word_filter
Well, on the Mono case, that’s fair enough – file a sensible request with the Mono team. OOXML, however, you need to talk to Sun.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Novell was pretty much the only ‘open source’ company that didn’t denounce or attempt to stop OOXML. To make matters worse, Novell HELPED them. Microsoft listed Novell as a supporter of OOXML.
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/11/23/novell-helps-ooxml-2/
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Not sure Novell being the ‘only’ company is entirely true. Different companies supported it to greater/lesser extents; it’s not right to characterise it as “everyone else said no to OOXML in any form”.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:12 pm
“Sun voted No on Approval because it is our expert finding, based
on the analysis so far accomplished in V1, that DIS 29500 as
presently written is technically incapable of achieving those
goals, not because we disagree with the goals or are opposed to an
ISO Standard that would enable them.”
AlexH said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yeah, and they also said “We wish to make it completely clear that
we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete
agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability
among different implementations and providing interoperable access
to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents.”.
It’s not exactly vehement opposition.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:21 pm
No? Sounds like their “fighting it” to me, almost as hard as when they were paying people to add support for it to OOo
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Other statements from Sun were not quite as ‘diplomatic’ (or gentle). As zoobab might remind you, Tim Bray called this thing “corrupt”.
In E-mail I exchanges with Sutor I gained more insight into that ‘diplomatic’ bulls*. What they say if not always how they feel or think.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Companies are made of multiple people with differing opinions? Whatever next, Microsoft not being made from 90,000 Steve Ballmer clones?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Bray and Sutor are high seniors.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Where did I say they weren’t?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Nowhere, but that’s not the subject anyway.
Once again a post about Mono devolves into your attacks on Sun.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:51 pm
No, Roy, once again a post about Mono devolves into an attack on double standards. There’s a difference, even if you’re incapable of understanding that,
saulgoode said,
December 23, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Sun did not sign a “covenant” with Microsoft, they signed a cross-licensing patent contract not to sue each other. Sun couldn’t distribute GPLed software which included Microsoft-patented technology unless the licensing of that technology was passed on to all potential downstream recipients (Section 7 of GPL version 2). There was nothing about the Sun/Microsoft agreement which circumvented the spirit of the General Public License and only contravened the tenets of Free Software to the extent of its insidious effects in asserting the legitimacy of software patents.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Nearly – the contract says they can’t ask for cash IF they sue each other (should they opt to do so) – they can still C&D over patent violations
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:02 pm
saulgoode, it’s easy for them to defend the badness of Mono by attacking the superior alternative.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Superior on which specific grounds?
There are some, I just want to see whether you actually know the differences
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Don’t kid yourself. Java is mature technology and the #1 P/L. Mono is a toy mimicking another ripoff of Java.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Let’s assume for a second that I didn’t get my degree programming almost exclusively in Java for three years, and focus just on your statements. Piece by piece.
One of us knows about both technologies in reasonable detail. I’m not kidding myself over anything.
True.
Assuming you mean Java (the language) as compared to Java (the framework), then yes, it’s currently the most popular choice. Windows is the most popular choice of desktop OS, and is mature, does that also make it best, Roy?
If that were the case, why would you get so worked up over it? Mono was Free Software for 3-4 years before Java was. In 2005, would you have recommend building software on a proprietary platform like Java?
If you’re unable to comprehend the differences between Java and CLI, then that’s your failure. Think of CLI as “Java with hindsight”, if you want to draw parallels.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:23 pm
You missed that last point, which is a reference to MS .NET.
I too programmed in Java.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:30 pm
What makes you think I missed it? I replied to it, as with all other points. Perhaps you just don’t understand common terms relating to the technology?
Well it DOES integrate beautifully into MATLAB.
SubSonica said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Novell helps a convicted monopolist threaten Free Software users and set a protection-racket (extortionating) business against companies using Gnu/Linux.
Since when does Sun that?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Since 2003, if you look at the historic data. You’re welcome to forgive them, but the evidence is set in stone.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I know that both have it. And Mono is poor imitation of another poor imitation.
Nothing to do with MATLAB.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Sun signed a Linux protection deal??? The fiends!11
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Both have what?
And which specific points make MS.NET generally a “poor imitation”?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:41 pm
So funding SCO’s attacks on Linux is fine when Sun do it?
Don’t you moan about Baystar doing the same?
Do you even know what “double standards” means, Roy?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:41 pm
The paradigm, for starters. They did request a ‘ripoff permission’ from Sun, did they not?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Different thing. Both Microsoft and Sun bought licences from SCO. Baystar has nothing to do with it.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:46 pm
And which part of following similar paradigms makes it “poor”
Do you actually know anything whatsoever about .NET, Roy?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I know what I need to know and several years back I helped a friend with C#, which was enough of a Java knockoff to be understandable/readable.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:50 pm
C# is not .NET
That’s one of the key advantages compared to Java.
But I’m sure you knew that already, right?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Yes, of course I knew that.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 5:57 pm
And you know that Java’s Generics are garbage compared to C#, yes?
And that JNI is an absolute unusable mess compared to P/Invoke?
And that .NET is not tied to C# the way Java (framework) is tied to Java (language)?
And that unlike Java, enough framework to run a basic app fits into a few meg?
And that CIL apps tend to be significantly less RAM-hungry than their Java equivalents?
You know all these points, right?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Some of these are subjective and coming from a Mono booster, promotion of .NET is hardly surprising.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:15 pm
“Microsoft Has Been Rigging Votes/Polls for Ages”
So you’re asserting I work for Microsoft again?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:20 pm
No, but there’s a pro-.NET crowd out there ‘selling’ it to innocent lurkers.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:28 pm
So why link to an article entitled “Microsoft Has Been Rigging Votes/Polls for Ages”?
Any idea why some of us might accuse you of distortion?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:29 pm
The link’s anchor was “promotion of .NET is hardly surprising.”
saulgoode said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:31 pm
My point would be that regardless of what terms the Sun/MS patent deal entailed, since the Sun corporation was a direct beneficiary of the contract, they would be required to pass those terms on with any GPLed software they distributed (more than likely, they would not ship any such patent-encumbered software).
This is distinct from the Novell/MS deal which allows Novell to ship GPLed software encumbered by Microsoft patents and remain compliant with the terms of the GPL (v2).
I would agree that the Sun/MS deal may have had an incidental, “somewhat negative” effect on Free Software, but it is not as though terms in the agreement were targeted at circumventing the GPL. A typical patent cross-licensing contract between corporations is not nearly such an affront to Free Software as is the rather exceptional nature of the Novell/MS “covenant”.
Hephaistos said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:31 pm
That’s so boring; Roy has evaded to answer any direct questions AGAIN!
How can you folks let him get away with answering ‘well, yeah, that’s subjective, y’know…’?
Slimy like a greased otter, the fellow.
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:32 pm
So either you’re knowingly linking to irrelevant things in an attempt to fool your more gullible readers into thinking there’s a link, or saying its contents are valid, and therefore are accusing me.
Which is it?
Any idea why some of us might accuse you of distortion?
jo Shields said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Grease would be bad for otter fur, surely?
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 23, 2008 at 6:46 pm
G’day to you too, Sir.
This was not a distortion, but you chose to perceive it that way. I apologise if that’s how it seemed to you.