Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Alert: Is GNOME Growing a .NET Dependency?

Please allow me to start off by stating that love GNOME. I use KDE most of the time (at work and at home), but I used to be using GNOME more regularly and I love it very much. The choice it offers berings benefit to everybody.

I am only posting this only because certain information needs to reach people's attention, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Many times in the past we repeated the alarming argument that Novell is turning its Linux desktop into a .NET-rich platform. It appears to be a matter of strategy, based on some recent interviews with Novell executives. Is it a good strategy? Probably not. The main issue is not the fact that Microsoft controls and extends .NET. The main issue is software patents, which bring monetisation (or "taxation") into the equation. Say No to Mono Amid a discussion (and purely by serendipity), something strange was realised. information that I received from someone who wishes to remain anonymous began with the sarcastic statement that "apparently there is considerable effort under way by the Gnome team, to poison Gnome by completely rewriting it in C#!!! Thank you Miguel de Icaza."

To paraphrase the person, "this turned out to be a tongue-in-cheek remark, but it isn't far from the truth". This person is a maintainer of a major Linux distribution. He has sufficient knowledge and credibility to be worth trusting, but please post a correction if we are wrong. I requested some references, which he kindly provided:

Here's some historical references:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/01/gnome_to_be_based/ http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6232/1/

As a test, install Fedora 7 using the defaults, then (post-install) try to remove the gtk-sharp and mono-core packages. Chaos ensues. It rips out half the system.

And this on a distro where the original maintainers *swore* they would never let mono enter the tree. Now it is poisoned beyond repair.

It's only a matter of time before the Gnome core libs will be mono dependant, I'd stake my life of that fact. I'm ready to ditch Gnome permanently.


I decided to make the person aware of Novell's big plans for .NET (Mono). To this, the reply was:

God help them.

I think one can safely assume that Novell are now working almost exclusively to Microsoft's agenda. If it comes from Novell, it is irreparably tainted.


I wish to believe that GNOME developers will not be persuaded or lured into more Mono dependencies. Other distributions use GNOME. KDE received some Mono bindings a couple of weeks ago, but there has never been any of this at the core, let alone in the build.

Surely, the patent system in the United States has gone completely out of hand. While centralization of .NET control remains an important factor, let the insane court battles teach you a lesson. At the end of last week we saw two important rulings. The first one was a dismissal of an appeal. It is a very serious case that involves a ban.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday dismissed Qualcomm's appeal of an order by a federal trade agency banning some cellular telephones containing Qualcomm chips.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it lacked jurisdiction over an order by the U.S. International Trade Commission because Qualcomm has a request pending before the Bush administration asking it to invalidate the decision.

"An ITC determination does not become final for purposes of judicial review until the president has either approved of the determination or failed to disapprove within 60 days," the court said.


The second case speaks about a defeat where obviousness could not be refuted.

In its third opinion of the day designated precedential, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences once again affirmed an examiner's obviousness rejections. Specifically, the Board found that Appellant's apparatus incorporating bioauthentication and a consumer electronics device was an obvious solution to a known problem, as all elements of the claims other than the bioauthentication device were found in one prior art reference, a second reference disclosed the bioauthentication devices in a related context, and a third disclosed that they could be substituted for each other. The BPAI appears to have fully embraced its new "flexibility" in determining obviousness in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in KSR.


At times when patent madness thrives in the United States, one must keep an eye open. GPLv3 is needed here, or at least eradication of absurdly-patented ideas. Please refrain from contaminating GNOME with Microsoft-patented technology.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
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
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
 
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
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.
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Motorcycling in Central Oregon, Protocol Styles and the Flag of Sark
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2025: Death Sentences, Internet Censorship, and Internet Shutdowns
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Social Control Media and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Richard Stallman About to Give More Talks in Europe, Some Confirmed Already
In Göteborg
Links 30/09/2025: CERN in "Have I Been Pwned" and More Windows TCO Blunders
Links for the day
Microsoft Canonical is Selling Mass Surveillance and Back Doors as "Security for Ubuntu"
If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro to use, just remember that Microsoft has Ubuntu in the bag
Justice for Wildlife
animals cannot speak to humans who hate animals
Cowboys Gonna Be Cowboys (on the Internet, They're Not a New Problem)
Boys will be boys
Cowboys of the "Left" and Cowboys of the "Right"
Don't believe the lie that this is some "leftist" thing
When Codes of Conduct Serve to Protect Criminals From Much-Deserved Scrutiny
CoCs are typically unfit for purpose because enforcement lacks context and suitable understanding of the full background (the "full story")
It Took the Open Source Initiative (OSI) 4+ Years to Address the 'Data Breach' or Data Protection Violation Reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) in March 2025
We may never know the dialogue or its nature
Even Microsoft's Biggest Boosters (and Media Operatives) Are Turning Against Microsoft
Expect many more layoffs before the fake "results" next month
GNU Was Right 42+ Years Ago
Since then the abusive, user-hostile technology has spread like mushrooms
Old Isn't Always Inadequate
How many gadgets manufactured today (in 2025) will still work in 2075?
The Monkey Business of Rust People
Compatibility won't matter
Almost Half of the FSFE's Money (the Fake 'FSF', Misusing the Brand) Comes From Vodafone
That money always comes with strings, even if they're invisible to most of us
Microsoft Lunduke Spreads Deliberate Lies to Incite Online Mobs
Has he lost his reading comprehension skills?
Our 19th Birthday (in Just Over 5 Weeks From Now)
We meanwhile have ongoing, solid plans to cover patent-related issues when the FSF turns 40
British GNU/Linux Distro FydeOS Tops DistroWatch
That seems like a decent site and decent effort to keep an eye on
We'll Soon Have 75,000 GemText Pages
avoid many perils of today's Web
Google Used Free Software to Build a Monopoly. Now Google Kicks Free Software to the Curb
The "G" in "Google" does not stand for GNU. It never did. It's just another greedy company.
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Retro Hardware, Federated Fragmentation, and Nex Server Written in C
Links for the day
4 More Days Till "4 decades, 4 freedoms, 4 all users"
We are now just 4 days away from the rare anniversary
Two Months After Merging to Hide GitHub Losses Microsoft is Doing It Again (This Time Windows)
Merging those two together is not a sign of strength but a tightening of budget
Speculations About the Next Large Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs
the mass layoffs are likely to happen on week 3 or 4 in October
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 29, 2025