Summary: A reader believes that an application which promotes .NET/Mono might be marketed to GNU/Linux-using public some time in the future now that the GIMP is removed from Ubuntu, due to another Mono application

BACK in June we warned that a Canonical employee who had come from Microsoft wanted to remove the GIMP. Reason? Because a simplistic Mono application was seen as a "good enough" replacement. Let's not forget where GTK came from.

It turns out that our concerns were justifiable because despite opposition, the GIMP is to be removed from Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). What will be used instead? F-Spot, which helps Microsoft [1, 2]. Is Novell's Banshee next [1, 2, 3, 4]?

Over in Slashdot, people complain about the Mono part of it, but some agree that the GIMP is too much, despite the separation into plugins which simplify everything.

It's not just GIMP either. In the FOSS world, there are scores of apps that can do some very impressive things, if you understand the technical areas they appeal to.

If Canonical thinks of disk space as an issue, then why not remove Tomboy (or replace it), then remove Mono altogether? It would also be legally safer [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

We have attempted to find out why Fedora 12 made a similar mistake. Our reader Brandon quotes Kevin Kofler (Fedora) as saying: "At the point where some of the Fedora GNOME users complained about no F-Spot on the live images, I actually made a serious proposal to ship Digikam on the GNOME spin. I even offered to help making it use QGtkStyle when running under GNOME and this kind of stuff. They rejected it anyway."

“I actually made a serious proposal to ship Digikam on the GNOME spin. I even offered to help making it use QGtkStyle when running under GNOME and this kind of stuff. They rejected it anyway.”
      --Kevin Kofler (Fedora)"The removal of GIMP is an attack on free software," argues Brandon, "Guess who invented gtk? GNU Image Manipulation Program. I see this as nothing but forced advertising. You don't need gimp, try f-spot w/ mono."

"GIMP isn't that hard," says cubezzz. Brandon argues that "it's about replacing gimp with paint.mono without a public backlash. I'm going to be looking into it." It was argued by someone that this application was ported by Miguel de Icaza himself.

So what does Miguel do these days? He is hanging out with his colleagues at Microsoft (he's in the board of Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation now). It's their annual development event and one of our readers writes to say: "Miguel does not get computers. And Microsoft is now threating families.

"Here it is:

someone with a family and tuition to pay has to tread carefully when taking a technology to the open source route.

"The real core of the article is that it comes during a Microsoft media and astroturfing blitz. Miguel is part of it here. And after all these years he shows that he has absolutely zero understanding of computers: you don't sell software, you *use* it.

“Miguel does not get computers. And Microsoft is now threating families.”
      --Anonymous"That is also the fundamental problem with software patents and the two events, the media blitz and the attack on European legislation, are probably related in more than timing."

It ought to be added that PDC was used last year in order to bribe influential bloggers with laptops and exclusive access to Vista 7; this way, Microsoft set the tone for future coverage of Vista 7.

Regarding Miguel's role at PDC, the quote above is not so shocking. Novell is selling some Mono products as proprietary (Novell claims to be a "mixed source" company [1, 2, 3, 4]).

Who needs Steve Ballmer for FUD when people have Novell and Miguel doing all the FUD? It gives the FUD more credibility. And while Silverlight is failing Miguel is helping it, trying to save it and assist its adoption (versus web standards). Have people not realised that there is a conflict of interests here because of his position that he serves for Microsoft? ⬆

via Wikipedia