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● 07.15.09

●● Mono Applications Get Integrated with Microsoft Moonlight

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 4:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“I’d like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 – no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET.”

–“Gnome to be based on .NET – de Icaza”

Don’t let Mono and Moonlight tarnish GNOME

Summary: Novell-sponsored Mono software gets extended so as to make it interconnected with Microsoft Moonlight, a “forbidden” component by Red Hat’s assessment

Novell’s Mono projects are starting to take problematic shape. As Jason puts it after some research, Banshee begins to overlap Microsoft Moonlight, which is Mono-dependent. And as we already know, the Novell-sponsored Banshee uses parts of .NET which are not covered by Microsoft’s “community promise”. The word “Trojan” comes to mind and Red Hat should pay careful attention again.

=> ↺ puts it | Microsoft Moonlight | should pay careful attention

Yes. That’s right. According to the GCDS 2009 presentation notes on the Banshee site, we learn lots of nice stuff about Banshee:“It’s not just an app, it’s a platform”. * Long term goal is to write the UI in Moonlight o Declarative UI, canvas, scene graph, and toolkit o Moonlight is an Open Source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology … and it is awesome“Banshee is going to do photos”“We are re-basing the F-Spot core on top of Banshee”And it ends with GNOME, Mono and Banshee logos.Moonlight is of course, absolutely toxic unless you get it directly from Novell, as the so-called “covenant” specifically prohibits non-Novell distributions from distributing Moonlight

We have had a long-standing suspicion that Banshee will be used for video and maybe even Windows DRM. According to sources, Novell already takes the lead in building GNOME 3.0, which Miguel de Icaza wanted to make Mono oriented. Tony Manco argues that “they should really start a desktop environment based on mono. I suggest MonoDrop [...] to stop the gnome poisoning [...] and future kde too.” Forenza calls it “very scary”. Here is another new analysis of ongoing attempts to put Banshee inside Ubuntu despite the patent issues, Novell’s control of it, and extreme bloat.

=> ↺ another new analysis | ongoing attempts to put Banshee inside Ubuntu | patent issues | extreme bloat

It seems we are settling on the “best-of-breed” as the ultimate justification. This is a good stop if you are on Team Mono, because you can call any application the “best-of-breed” so long as you are the one that gets to decide what factors make it the “best-of-breed”.I always chuckle around #4; Team Mono is forever chanting “pragmatism” and how “the user doesn’t care about freedom or principles”. Yet it’s quite clear that the overwhelming majority of users do not want Banshee. So, do the users matter or not? It seems to me that how much they matter is in direct proportion to how much they support you on any specific issue.

●●● Mono Dangers Revisited

This month’s posts about Mono (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]) hopefully showed that Microsoft’s “community promise” is worthless because it changes nothing of substance. Sam Varghese goes further and suggests that it may do more harm than good because it’s intended to fragment the Free software community.

=> 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ↺ fragment the Free software community

When Britain was the superpower of the world, there was one tactic which its officials used, with great success, to manage its colonies – divide and rule.

As Jason puts it, the differences between Google’s and Microsoft’s promises to Free software developers are truly telling. The SFLC has just used its excellent audiocast to address the subject too [via]. It still insists that depending on Mono is a bad idea.

=> ↺ the differences between Google’s and Microsoft’s promises to Free software developers | ↺ to address the subject too | ↺ via

Bradley and Karen discuss the community debate regarding C# and Mono, and its inclusion in GNU/Linux distributions.

The verdict remains negative. Richard Stallman too, on behalf of the FSF, says that Microsoft’s “community promise” is inadequate, only to find himself smeared as a result of such statements.

=> find himself smeared

Alan Lord wrote on this matter as well.

=> ↺ wrote on this matter

How on earth could a 19th century detective know about the long running saga of a rather large and bloated software stack designed, it seems, simply to drive a wedge into the FOSS community and act as a trojan horse for our most [ahem] loved convicted monopolist?

●●● Remedy

A new version of Gnote has just been released.

=> ↺ has just been released

I just released gnote 0.5.3. It is a bug fix release.

The lead developer of Gnote responds to Mono’s meme (banners with “I am not afraid”) by saying: “I write code”

=> banners | ↺ “I write code”

I don’t know what the meme is about but:I WRITE CODE

The update pace of Gnote seems quite rapid. Releases are frequent. It is ironic that Gnote’s developer originally came from Novell because Novell promotes Mono inside GNOME and Tomboy has served Novell well (it even employs Tomboy’s developer).

=> ↺ Novell promotes Mono inside GNOME

In a comment on another post, Chris Halse Rogers raised an interesting and challenging question: “What evidence is there that Novell, the company, is promoting adoption of Mono into GNOME?”Here’s where I attempt to answer that question! The easy partIt’s always more effective to knock out the easy stuff first. So let’s establish that the premise is at least reasonable. Here are some facts. Facts are a nice way to start: 1. Mono is a Novell project. 2. Novell is on the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board. 3. Mono is lead at Novell by the founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza. 4. Mr. de Icaza has said in the past, “Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET“ 5. Mr. de Icaza claims to be “in charge of Novell’s Linux Desktop Strategy” along with Nat Friedman.[...]

It can be added that Nat Friedman came from Microsoft. Many people do not know this. █

‘We had some painful experiences with C and C++, and when Microsoft came out with .NET, we said, “Yes! That is what we want.”‘

–Miguel de Icaza

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