Mono actually is dangerous
I posted several times that I have fears surrounding the use of Mono on Linux and each and every time the mono camp has responded with screaming and insults that I was spreading FUD and doing a disservice to users, pretty much the response they had about Gnote...
In a recent iTWire article titled "The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono", Sam Varghese contacts Ecmea for the patent terms surrounding Mono. Remember that the mono camp always throws the argument at people that mono follows an Ecma standard and as such is free to implement?
Sam asked Ecma this simple question: "I also understand that the terms of use of these patents are royalty-free, reasonable and non-discriminatory. I would be grateful if you could send me the details of the terms of the licence."
And gets a response: "Ecma does not have anything to do with possible licensing of .NET. But Microsoft is one of our members, so I have asked them whom to contact there – if anything is needed, what I just do not know."
Hey, that's not what the pro-mono guys are shouting!
So, Sam moves on to contact the beast of Redmond to ask them the same thing and throws in a question about moonlight's licensing too. His question was sent on April 28 and as the article states, he has not received any reply.
He reaches a very simple conclusion:
"To me, it looks this licence is as real as the unicorn. Or maybe Santa Claus. I think Mono fans need to think of a fresh defence when people talk about the dangers of patent suits arising over this technology. The licence talk has worn more than a little thin."
Thanks for a great piece of investigation to Sam.
Now, can we please take a real look into this before we rip out Rhythmbox in favour of Banshee in Ubuntu and can we please reinvestigate making Gnome depend on mono (currently by virtue of Tomboy)?
Comments
59 comments posted... just what patents do you think exist on that which Mono implements itself? Feel free to find one that the USPTO has approved; all the ones that I can find that could potentially cover the specifications (and all that's ever been cited to me in the past) were never approved by the USPTO.
Roy S. has managed to make a very interesting movement all centered around an ad hominem argument. I don't know what's more sad -- the fact that he has managed to convince people of his position based on loud trolling and ad hominem attacks, or the fact that people manage to buy it and become absolute hypocrites.
Consider, for a moment, what free software is. Look at patents that cover other aspects of software. You can probably find patents that are not royalty-free and are probably owned by Microsoft or a real patent troll or some idle company somewhere that affect the Linux kernel, or maybe the GNU coreutils, or something in GNOME or KDE, or maybe even recent developments in the X.org sources. Does that mean that we should stop using those pieces of software? Are you going to implement the alternative?
The same can be said with Mono. First, there is the fact that I have to date yet to actually get links to a valid patent (and I have been unable to find any myself) that covers the EMCA and ISO standards that are used to create .NET (note: they are *not* .NET, which is an implementation and extension of the standards) and Mono. Everyone that claims that Mono is patent encumbered seems to get real quiet -- or start venting more FUD and changing the topic -- when asked to show something that substantiates their claims and has a basis in reality. Instead, I wind up getting pointed back to Roy S.'s site, because he must be some sort of God and every word that falls from his lips is just divine.
Sorry, but I don't buy it. I'd very much like ignorance to stay out of the processes that go into the operating system that I've chosen to use because I like it. There is still some ignorance in the community, and there will be for any community. But the level of ignorance which surrounds Mono is both astonishing and extremely frightening. What does this extreme propagation of FUD say for our community, you know, the ones that have for years called out proprietary software houses such as Microsoft for doing the very same thing? We call it evil when they do it. We call it necessary when we do it. That isn't right, it's not fair, and it's actually pretty scary that so many people can be convinced of the truth of something with very little to no evidence to back the claim. It's as if the community went from demanding evidence back in the good old days to being very much American in their ways of thinking, "no, I trust you, please don't bother me with evidence. It must be right. It makes sense. Let's be lazy and not think about it anymore."
You've the right to not like Mono, and you've the right to remove it from your system if you don't like it. You've even got the right to spread as much FUD as you like, even though it makes you look like an idiot. But meaningful conversations and FUD do not go together in the same sentence or even paragraph. If you've good, sound reasons that Mono should be removed, I'd love to hear them. If you think that some invisible patent is a good reason, then let's see the patent number so that it can be looked at.
Oh, and let's not forget: One cannot patent an API. One cannot patent a very generic action, such as "I hereby patent SPELL CHECK, and declare that nobody can use it." For that matter, at least until the SCOTUS issues a ruling sometime next year on the current active patent case (at least here in the States), all pure-software patents are useless and do not have the backing of the legal system in the United States. At best, it can be considered to be in limbo, but until such time as the SCOTUS rules, the now-current ruling stands, which is that only processes can be patented that involve some sort of hardware invention and transform a real, tangible object. Software running on general-purpose computing machines is specifically excluded. With any luck, the SCOTUS will rule on the case favorably when it rules.
Oh, and also invalid are patents that are covered by prior art. The patent applications that people have pointed me to (and have been denied by the USPTO) all involved claims that were pretty well already implemented in Java. My guess is that Sun or someone else spoke up and the patent was never granted on the basis of prior art, though that's pretty much irrelevant. Fact is, a rejected patent application is not a patent, and yet many people who cite patents against Mono are in fact referring to patent applications when asked to cite a source of information.
Posted by Michael B. Trausch:
> And the question of the day is...
>
> ... just what patents do you think exist on that which Mono implements itself?
How about the ones whose existence the Mono Project asserts?
"The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission." -- http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing
Perhaps you should pose the day's question to the Mono Project.
And if you are to compare the potentiality of patents covering other Free Software projects against the patents covering Mono, perhaps you could point out which other project relies upon the licensing of a non-contributing patent holder as defense for the project implementing those patents -- and where the actual terms of that licensing are not made public (nor private, based on Mr Varghese's unavailing efforts).
MONO IS NOT INDISPENSABLE, JUST USEFUL LIKE JAVA AND SAMBA AND WINE AND FAT32 AND ......
To the Jackass here talking about getting rid of GNOME and using KDE this call is as fruitless or as stupid as asking everyone to use only one Operating System, say Mac OSX or whichever you prefer.
It must be borne in mind that while there are uncertainties with regards to Patents concerning MONO it is a useful platform for development, not much different from Java in this regard, I can understand one saying we should not depend on it, the same way we should not depend on Java and to my knowledge GNOME does not depend on MONO. I have heard no one saying it will become dependent on it either.
Some applications that depend on MONO may become the default on many GNOME based Linux Operating Systems but since when does a Linux user become stuck with defaults? You can purge Mono from your system if you so desire and GNOME will still chug along just fine.
Most of the applications depending on MONO are not key Applications even if MONO takes on a more important role in Ubuntu and other Linux distros I doubt it will be such that if you remove it the Desktop will not work, I do not think the author of this blog wants a retarded GNOME vs KDE argument but a discussion about a platform called MONO and whether it is dangerous on Linux, I think not, based on the fact that it can be discarded and applications depending on it removed without grave consequences.
Banshee replaced with -----> Quod Libet
Tomboy replaced with--------> Gnote or Notecase or a TiddlyWiki variant
Fspot replaced with -----------> Gthumb or DigiKam(KDE Libs) or Picasa(Wine embedded)
Good grief what is wrong with some of you here?
I'm very concerned because Tomboy was accepted into Gnome, opening the door to building more and more non-optional blocks of the desktop in mono. I am equally concerned with the move by Ubuntu to include more and more mono apps in the standard installs.
These two factors increase the damage MS can do to our community and I doubt these attacks can be as easy to defend against as the FAT patents are.
In what way can they damage the community?
a) Nothing happens. Mono carries on as it has been doing, and some good applications get made.
b) Microsoft raise some sort of lawsuit. Can they actually stop Mono though? I doubt it. Mono goes underground, still gets worked on, apps still get made, people still use it. Just look at XBMC and how compiled versions of it are readily available and always have been.
And as stated, it's currently just a user dependency not a system dependency. I agree I wouldn't want Mono to be part of any of the core parts of a Linux distro (I doubt it ever will). But with regards to apps, it's down to users becoming dependent and used to them, not the system.
The good news is, there's a plethora of alternate apps to choose from.
And the even better news is that Mono apps are helping/forcing them to develop. It's competitive. Just look at Banshee, pushing new ideas and giving the Rhythmbox project a few things to think about.
In order to get people not only to choose a distro, but to adopt Linux in general, the best apps have to be included. If that means including Mono apps then I think we should. People can choose to remove it, or find a distribution that doesn't include it. We can't force people not to develop in Mono. And it's naive to ignore good apps out there even if they are written using Mono.
In the article you linked to, the author explicitly asked ECMA about the license for .NET. Well, everyone knows or should know that ECMA has nothing to do with .NET. ECMA has standardized C#, the programming language, and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).
Microsoft .NET is a totally different beast and includes stuff like System.Windows.Forms, ADO.NET, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows CardSpace etc. While Mono does provide implementations of some of these MS APIs (for compatibility reason, just like WINE implements Win32 APIs), I don't know about any Linux App that uses them - certainly not Banshee, Tomboy, F-Spot, Gnome Do and the like.
So that's the one bit of substance Varghese mentions - ECMA says "We have nothing to do with .NET", which is both obvious and meaningless. There was not one sentence about the replies he got from MS, particularly to questions about Silverlight/Moonlight.
Frankly, I found that the article was extraordinarily sparse on facts, sloppily researched and didn't offer any new information at all.
(That being said, if I had to choose between C# and D or Vala, I would choose D or Vala any day. But C# is a nice programming language anyway, and has an active and innovative developer community. And It really isn't fair to compare it to C++, that's like comparing Ruby and Common Lisp.)
You've forgotten to note that I asked the question of ECMA based on what Miguel de Icaza had recommended. My article clearly pointed out that when Jo Shields had asked de Icaza about the 'royalty free, reasonable & non discriminatory' license' his replies had been as under:
[miguel_] Direct, anyone can request it from ECMA
[miguel_] Well, you can request the docs from ECMA
[miguel_] The Gnome Foundation is a member, and whoever is the member can request the docs
[miguel_] It might be possible also for the public to get them but I dont know what you have to do
So that's what I did. I made a request to ECMA. I followed de Icaza's advice. Which means that he is lying.
But you, in your eagerness to shoot down what you find inconvenient to believe, left out that bit of the link
so you could substantiate your preconceived argument.
If you have the guts to do so, give your name when you post. There are lots of gutless people who try to
defend the indefensible.
"So that's the one bit of substance Varghese mentions - ECMA says "We have nothing to do with .NET", which is both obvious and meaningless. There was not one sentence about the replies he got from MS, particularly to questions about Silverlight/Moonlight."
He did not receive any reply from MS. The article clearly says so.
I would have liked to see clarifications on Moonlight's licensing terms, but the article didn't provide any. Granted, he got no reply from Microsoft, but that's not exactly newsworthy. And the ECMA not having anything to do with .NET - not news either. I'm sorry if my tone was too sharp, but I really don't see any interesting information there.
What is the use of having these "promises" if you can't even get an answer if they are even true? That is the point of the article, and as such, *very* informative.
Oh please. How am I to believe that you have any understanding of the matter if you can't even get the organization's name right?
It's ECMA - the European Computer Manufacturers Association. Not Ecmea; ECMEA is the Erie County Music Educators Association.
Anonymous posted:
> Oh please. How am I to believe that you have any understanding
> of the matter if you can't even get the organization's name right?
>
> It's ECMA - the European Computer Manufacturers Association.
> Not Ecmea; ECMEA is the Erie County Music Educators Association."
If you intend to nitpick the spelling of others, you should first verify your own corrections.
It is not ECMA, and it is not the European Computer Manufacturers Association. It is Ecma International (the European association for standardizing information and communication systems) -- has been since 1994. Nonetheless, I wouldn't discount your understanding of any matter based on your lack of diligence in proofreading your post.
Ok, I made a mistake in spelling (corrected), so my point is moot?
If that's all the reasons you can come up with in defence of mono then we are in deeper trouble than I anticipated...
Hey nice one. This is turning into a good and considered debate.
My personal opinion is I do not like Mono or what it represents or stands for.
I do not have a problem with others using it but I really don't think it should be in the main repo or in the default install, it really should belong in Multiverse now.
fedora are removing it from the default F12 and gnote is now in the Karmic repo: http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/gnote
Hoorah!
I got mono once. It took 6 weeks to get rid of the virus. And 6 more months to fully recover. But now i hear that you have to get MS too. But that's a genetic disease. What if i don't have the right genes?
Never again. No viruses. None of that stuff. I'll run straight Debian first. I'll even go with Centos.
I agree with your thoughts. The pro-mono guys are louder, but I feel there are more open source people who are wary of the dangers that it presents. I don't want to attack their work, but the intellectual property behind it is obviously mired in controversy.
When it comes down to it, the mono environment is _slower_ than C/C++, and presents a potential threat to the open source endeavor. Its just safer to stick with languages that are not dominated by an aggressive company that is known for backhanded tactics.
We encourage Ubuntu default apps to be written in Mono so that when the patent bomb hits, everybody will have to switch to Kubuntu. All your desktops are belong to us!
I really like Kubuntu, nice artwork, close to kde, ubuntu repository, deb, packakit... i sure hope that's the case, i want gnome/gtk+ to fucking disappear with time and so Kubuntu to become popular, the next best thing, the way to go.
It doesn't even have bloat-ware in it like all other KDE distros out there.
As a user, I shouldn't have to *care* if an app is Qt or GTK, or GNOME or KDE - if I have memory/disk for the libraries, stuff should just work and interoperate and not look horrible and I shouldn't have to think about this stuff.
KDE and GNOME will never merge, as the projects have very different aims and personalities - but they're (a) source-code compatible (b) doing a commendable job of abstracting their commonalities into freedesktop.org, where other desktops such as XFCE can also use their work and make sure everything plays nicely with everything else.
KDE and GNOME both need the other to be strong, because that increases software quality for everyone. We're all doing all this for the users, after all.
Want a clean DE? Fuck gnome and fuck GTK+.
Use Kde, a distro like Kubuntu. No mono in there. KDE4 is way better by design than Gnome 3 (gnome-shell). It allows freedom, customization, sort of like a toolkit for building your own DE as you like, it's going to get better with time, needs more love; while gnome 3 is plain dumb and stiff, bad designed, not allowing much customization.
Stop duplicating effort. Linux market share for desktop sucks, we don't need atm a ton of file managers or desktop environments. Gnome distros are so retarded, always flame wars about mono; when a great app it's created in mono, it only makes more bad since somebody else starts to develop a similar application, but not using mono. Fuck that shit. And again, we have gtk vs qt. I'm getting tired of this. Kill gtk+ and gnome in order for linux to survive. I'm a troll, you're right. But just think about it... freedom of choice should mean an alternative to closed source and commercial stuff, not shitty average applications trying to copy each other just for the sake of having a 'fake' choice.
Get rid of mono by ignoring gtk and gnome!
I disagree strongly with you. We actually need the competing desktops, the internal competition increases innovation for one, choice within limits is good and both KDE and Gnome have different goals.
I'm a fulltime Gnome user, but I would hate to see KDE go and the same should go for KDE users.
Gnome and KDE different goals? Competition good? What the fuck are you talking about?
This is not windows or mac, we need to work together on something fast, stable, secure, customizable and with loads of features. Linux DE's are not products for sale, they work in a different manner.
You clearly don't see the bigger picture; sorry to say but i think you're infected with typical 'freetard' mentality.
Think about bug reports, contributed patches, themes and other artwork stuff and adoption!
For new developers or companies that want to support linux there shouldn't have to be a hard decision to consider for picking a toolkit or which DE to support. Or even for users. They should just have a DE that's awesome and they should be able to customize the crap out of it. Market share, that's the damn goal.
And we need this DE now! Not in 10 years from today.
When linux is going (if ever) have 75% market share by only using qt and kde, nobody will care about 'freedom of choice' because ditching windows or mac is more than enough.
Stop living in a bubble, because time flies and things won't improve if we're not on the same team, working together but instead fighting each other. Get that bullshit mentality out of your head if you really care about linux.
Ok, you are one of these guys who thinks there's only one possible viewpoint and yours is the correct one?
KDE and Gnome work and behave quite differently. This is not about being a product, rather than having different design goals. If you take the time to read the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines you will notice that consitency is very important to the Gnome project while KDE emphasizes features and customizations. Both have benefits and drawbacks and a Gnome developers is not going to feel at home in KDE or vice versa because of this.
I strongly disagree that we need one DE and as long as you can run KDE programs under Gnome and the other way arround, I actually fail to see the problem.
How would you feel if we unified the Linux desktop by ditching KDE and concentrating all efforts on Gnome instead?
I would feel great about it! But Gnome-shell is epic fail so far and way behind KDE4.
:)
I know about the HIGs. KDE has more consistency anyway. Compare Koffice with OO and gimp and inkscape stuff (i know this is a bit beyong the gnome DE, but those are gtk+ apps... and we're talking about useless code duplication again because people like you don't get it gnome/gtk+ should be left alone with it's mono :P
Good blender wasn't made with qt or gtk+because it would have been reproduced in a lame manner.
Nothing to concentrate on gnome development on, it has a poor design from ground. People like my mom and dad don't give a fuck about virtual desktops for sure, while KDE allows you to decide what you care about and make it your own.
It's all about delivering a great product, adoption and market share. When QT/KDE become pupular and solid, Gnome's HIG won't matter. Or in 'worst case scenario', someone could make a remix of KDE, just like distros shape up linux in their own way. Than it will be less evil, only one toolkit to care about.
Sorry you fail. OpenOffice.org is NOT a gtk app. It uses some homegrown VCL crap and doesn't even have real layout support yet. It has some basic gtk support just like it has some basic qt/kde support.
I've been a KDE user since 2002, through KDE 3.0-3.5 and 4.1-4.2. I always hated GNOME whenever I tried it, it felt like using a straightjacket.
Then I started using an MSI Wind with Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix - it's GNOME, but somehow I don't feel ridiculously constrained by it. I was amazed.
You'll never get developers to agree not to develop whatever the heck they feel like working on. But this means ideas can compete.
KDE and GNOME will never merge, but you can be sure all the devs for both are highly aware of what the other is doing and how they can use that in their own DE. Like Linux distros happily taking ideas and ways of doing things from each other - and the users win with better software.
I agree with you, gvansanden.
For the first thing tons on applications and technologies are covered by software patents, without any promise of a royalty free license. Which in the case of mono should be the only thing you should be worried about and thats only if you live in a country where that's a problem. Currently I don't(The EU) with the most of the rest of the world, so to be a little selfish, stop making your broken laws other peoples problem.
And even if software patents where a problem you are petty much unsafe no matter what software you use, so why is mono special? Why not do some mp3 codec basing, go after the fat32 implementation in Linux or see if you can get wine booted out of Ubuntu.
Anyway I think you should see it as an advantage that it's Microsoft the holds most of the patents related to .net, as a monopoly they will have a lot harder time using them without being sued for abusing their monopoly. Also they have zero interest harming adoption of .net, they make money on it so why harm it?
But like most users and developers I really don't give a crap about patents, gps vs. bsd, java vs. mono, kde vs. gnome, etc. If it's Open Source and works well I'm happy. I can even survive with running close source application such as Skype and Flash when no other alternatives are available. So all your tinfoil hat arguments pretty much falls on death ears for the most of us.
If on the other hand they where technical, related to unresponsive community or bad code quality, it might be worth listening to.
You logic is twisted at the least. I agree that the patent system is broken and needs to be fixed or removed, but that is not going to happen any time soon.
Do you know that Ubuntu ships without MP3 support because of patent issues? Do you know wine is not a core component on Linux and is not installed by default either? I would complain about wine too if removing it pulls ubuntu-desktop with it and if killing it completely leaves the Gnome-project crippled.
Yes, a lot of developers don't care, and I only care in function of patents and/or copyrights being used to attack Free Software as happened with the TomTom case. The latter clearly shows the patent threat exists and MS is quite happy to leverage it's patents against Linux. Now, the FAT patents are particulary weak and will be overturned in time (the OIN is working on it), patents relating to .NET might not be as easy to show prior art for.
Stating that you don't care because it is not technical is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality. Which is fine if you don't care that Linux distros are exposed to litigation by MS and can potentially be extorted or destroyed by them.
Great idea! Let's do that! Let's send the platform back 15 years in time! That way MS will reach its goal without even having to spend one dollar on lawsuits!
You guys should be the new sabdfl!
No for real, you guys really don't get it do you? We use mono because it's a good platform that allows us to build great apps. We don't give a shit about legal speculations. So give us a better platform. Or go away...
The whole point of .NET and C# is to be a cheap Microsoft knockoff of Java.
The whole point of Mono is to be a cheap knockoff of .NET.
It's entirely unclear why, if you want an environment that is really easy to write for - at the cost of a fat runtime, which is arguably fine because Moore's Law is there to make life easier - you don't just use Java. IcedTea is actual genuinely completely free software with all required patents licensed.
Woah woah woah. Are you serious?
...I think he's serious. .Net was designed in similar fashion to Java, but is now far superior. So much so I can't stand working on Java projects. Ok so some bits are still quite cool in Java compared to .Net, but as a whole things like lambda functions, LINQ, better generics, serialization (to an extent) etc... make it so much nicer to work with. Plus better (arguably) implementations of things like Ant or Hibernate.
C# is probably the best thing Microsoft has going for it. And the community around it is very active and open. Microsoft are also starting to adopt open source implementations. Using jQuery by default for example. I just hope they work with NHibernate.
Unfortunately Mono doesn't have most of the above. It's always quite a few steps behind.
For luring people onto their platform, what better way than to allow Mono to continue going. Maybe not from a personal/home perspective, but certainly from a business/enterprise perspective. Mono isn't really their for building enterprise apps, or at least not when compared to .Net.
Also I know Microsoft can be aggressive, but to shut down Mono would damage their reputation considerably, and affect the community they've spent yours building for .Net.
"Also I know Microsoft can be aggressive, but to shut down Mono would damage their reputation considerably, and affect the community they've spent yours building for .Net."
Going after TomTom for the FAT patent also damaged their reputation, yet that didn't hold them back...
Seriously, if MS sees a chance to inflict serious damage on GNU/Linux, they will take it even if it means alienating one of their own developer communities...
Most .Net programs are the same quality as the old VB programs of old. Basically crap.
Yes .net does not generate buffer overflows but it does not detect memory bleeding either.
http://live.gnome.org/Vala/RoadMap Vala is progressing quite nicely. It does not have the .net hooks and has a syntax close to C#. Put a good ide on that and you basically have mono without the patent problems.
If you take a serous focus on porting mono tools to Vala there is most likely no reason why you could not be .net free in under 12 months. So its not back 15 years. Back 12 months max.
We have to give you nothing. Frankie. Lack of focus in the gnome world on a good ide caused this mess. It could take less than a year to port monodevelop as well to C++. Now its if you guys are willing to apply yourselves to the problems at hand.
Kdevelop 4 is also not bad to use if you want C++ syntax.
Wow, I hope you don't take that attitude into the real world.
"I don't give a shit about legal speculations. So, I'll just rob a bank."
Also, it is better to make "our" platform not implement "their" platform. You're looking at this in a very short term viewpoint.
Good or Bad the mono platform is trouble, the more GNOME depends on it the more likely it will get yanked. Either by the developers or by Microsoft. Either way, the desktop is going to be sent back 15 years like it or not.
Also, you want a better platform? Go use Qt or go away.
You don't give a shit about legal issues you mean. Ecmea just confirmed that the royalty-free use is not as straight-forward as the mono guys make it sound and MS (the actual patent holder) is refusing to answer.
My concern is not for individual mono-apps that we may loose when the putty hits the fan, my concern is that if Gnome grows dependent on mono, it would kill the desktop.
We should back out of that before it's too late
That will only work if you convince the programmers. And those aren't won by legal arguments.
So if you want to influence the GNOME project, start contributing. Screaming demands as a nobody will only get you labeled "troll" and subsequently ignored.
This freedom quest has caused more damage and fragmentation to the free desktop than good.
"This freedom quest has caused more damage and fragmentation to the free desktop than good."
You cannot have Freedom with the quest for Freedom. Gnome exists today because people took issue with the QT license, because it was non-free. Will we eventually need to back out of Gnome (in favour of KDE) for the exact same reason?
And I do develop Free Software, just not desktop software. I too have to pick and choose where I can contribute.
I think the halfassed Mono integration Ubuntu is doing sucks. Either go Tomboy, Banshee, Giver and Tasque or avoid Mono.
So be like Novell or like Red Hat. Don't be halfassed.
Although I can understand the problems posed and the risks involved I freely admit I am using Mono based applications. I am Linux user but I am also, primarily, a desktop user and certain applications developed using Mono are simply far better than any alternative present.
Until Linux desktop application developers create applications that do exactly what I and they don't look like GUI applications developed in 1987 I will be using Mono based applications. If we want more people to use the Linux desktop we will either have to adapt Mono, create similar applications or adapt the existing applications to do the same because that's what the average user really cares about: decent, good looking and easy applications for every day use.
Banshee is a joke compared to most the music players for Linux there are. Avoiding Rhythmbox and Amarok for a second, we have MPD and its billions of superior frontends, Dragon, countless CLI music players, mplayer, xmpp 1 & 2.
Actually, I *will* revisit Amarok... Amarok 1.4 which was the Linux had dot offer, and despite being older than Banshee, does way more with less.
Mono is, quite simply, a blatant patent trap. And all the mono defenders do is squawk the exact same nonsense over and over again:
1. .NET and C# are ECMA standards. - Guess what? Standardization does NOT mean indemnification. Microsoft is "helping" Mono because they see it as a straight shot to grinding open source projects to dust when the time is right. I promise, in ten years Banshee will either be forked into a C++ project or completely halted altogether because Microsoft sued over .NET and Mono. Another thing idiot Mono developers love to ignore is that Mono DOES actually have patented bits in it NOT covered by the standard. Oops, looks like Microsoft might have grounds after all.
2. It's free software! - So what? It's under the GPL. Guess what, even Richard Stallman, the guy who created the GPL, is warning us against using Mono despite it being so "free." Also note that since the GPL doesn't enforce using the latest version Mono is STILL not protected by the patent clauses of the GPLv3. Oops again. Being FOSS under the terms of the GPLv2 is grossly irrelevant and doesn't make Mono a wit safer.
3. Mono haters are blindly doing so because they hate Microsoft! - No, Mono haters hate it because they have an EDUCATED hatred of Microsoft. It seems the only people who defend Microsoft are the people who completely forgot Microsoft's entire 35-year history. I could go for pages about Microsoft's anti-competitive, slimy, underhanded tactics toward those they view as a threat. The people who hate Mono on legal grounds remember that not 5 years have passed since Microsoft steamrolled some competitors, got convicted AGAIN of being an illegal monopoly, and not once, not twice, but THREE times over the course of ONE YEAR spread lies about Linux in categories ranging from total cost of ownership to hardware support to available software. They even turned one of their FUD campaigns toward Best Buy employees, with lies so blatant one would have to be blind to miss the falsehood.
4. Let us choose! - Sure, we'll let you choose. But don't come crying to us when suddenly your ass is hauled into court for developing wiht Microsoft's patented technologies without a license. They *will* do this with developers, especially developers SELLING their works.
5. Microsoft's claims won't stand in court. - Microsoft has the money and better lawyers than any defendant in any case they could dredge up involving Mono. I promise you that if you're going to win, it'll still sting like a loss as they will bleed every shiny penny out of you during the proceedings, assuming their money doesn't buy a ruling for their complaint. IT will be a painful uphill battle that you'll ultimately lose, even if the ruling is in your favor.
Now, I hate Mono for legal, ethical, AND technical reasons. The legal issues are obvious. Mono is NOT free of patents. It's "protected" under a rather heavy extortion, and the only people who are truly protected under the patent agreement is Novell and its employees. Whoops.
Ethical reasons ARE because it's Microsoft and I know their histiry of pretending to be an ally, all the while sharpening their knife when they get what they want in the end. Be ready for Microsoft to plunge their favorite backstabbing knife in Mono/C# developers' backs thanks to Mono. They've done it before with other "safe" things they've let their enemies have.
Technical reasons are many. Mono is slow, bloated, memory-hungry, and frankly, in a context like Linux? Completely unnecessecary. C# as a language is junk, developed purely because Microsoft got legally barred from producing another Java implementation. That's right. C#/.NET are Java clones, plain and simple. There's good reasons why C# and .NET are NOT used in applications needing speed and power, such as kernels or game engines, because C# simply lacks both. Linux already has Java, Python, Perl, and the like without having to risk Linux developers with patents held by IP holders with a history of abusing their patents. If you want a nice cross-platform system to work with, Qt is the best. It may not be JIT/Microcode/Interpreted like C# with Mono, but true portability without bloating up a program involves using libraries available on all target platforms, not relying on grotesque runtime environments and virtual machines that offer no true native portability. As a developer for almost 20 years, I can promise you I'll never touch C# or any .NET implementation if I can help it.
gmusicbrowser does not support any media device such as an iPod, so for me that's a no-go.
I did not know about the existance of DigiKam. To be honest, I primarely search for Gnome applications so it skipped my radar.
Amarok 2.1 is indeed better than 2.0, the version that shipped with the latest Ubuntu release. But that's the version I tested and I did not like it. GUI-wise and feature-wise.
OK did not look to far on that music program
gmusicbrowser coded in perl of all things. fairly well out does Banshee in performance and does not leak memory. Yes a perl script the perl engine is more memory effective than the .net one.
There are even options to F-Spot. Digikam ok its not gtk. But is faster and less resource hungry. It also can handle images F-Spot cannot. Has more features for image corrections that F-Spot does basically all round does a better job. Top it all off Digikam is cross platform runs on Linux Mac and Windows and most other platforms. F-Spot shock horror the .net application only runs on Linux.
For a image handling tool F-Spot is truly crap. Digikam is even not what you call top class.
I run a hybrid desktop using the best bits from KDE and Gnome. Ubuntu is bring back the GUI fight. Like I use openoffice. I use Digikam for my images. Firefox for webbrower.
Ubuntu is being stupid. Yes saves diskspace only having GTK or QT but users don't get the best quality application the Linux world has to offer.
Amarok might have rough edges and lacking some stuff same as the rest of the KDE, but give it love and it's going to become the next best thing!
"Amarok 2.0 is just a laugh"
Really? What makes it so? Have you tried 2.1? I don't think looking like iTunes is the way to go.
I loaded up Banshee and sat a couple (7) of non-Linux folks in front of Banshee and asked them to comment.** To them they felt that Banshee was indeed iTunes to the tee. In the end it caused more confusion as people tried to use Banshee like they would iTunes.
"Where's the music store?"
"Why doesn't my shortcut key work?"
"Where is such-such feature"
Were a couple of the issues I ran into with the test group. I think emulating the look and feel of iTunes actually confused more people because they thought it was iTunes.
I agree that Amarok 2 could be made better. For example, being able to rank songs from the playlist (which was added in 2.1.) Let me know because I'd like to get whatever magic is missing from 1.4 into 2.
Thanks for any constructive comments about Amarok ahead of time!
**It wasn't a controlled test, so the results are pretty much debatable. I would suggest anyone to take such results with whatever size of mineral compound you can find. I think making Banshee look like iTunes is misleading at worst but really someone should do a controlled test to see the results.
I must admit that I really like Mono and some of the applications that are written with it (like F-Spot). I am a .NET programmer and I can use Mono to try things on my Ubuntu machine. I never really looked into the patent and licensing issues that are surrounding Mono.
But now I begin to understand the implications of Mono and the issues around it, I do think that Ubuntu should not totally rely on it. But it is hard, because a C# is very easy for creating good applications, especially with those lambda expressions and Linq. But when people are going to focus on improving existing applications, they can be mad better as wel...
Amen to that, brother ;-) I'm glad that together with the Fedora community, the Ubuntu community too, is looking at Mono with a doubtful eye. Personally, I hope to see gnote in the official Ubuntu repositories soon. Let's not have Gnome depend on Mono. At all.
I have tried to discuss the Mono problem on several sites myself, but it's more common than exception to get attacked by Mono users for 'spreading FUD' (as you have been, obviously). Extremely annoying, because our - well founded - fears are not seriously discussed or even taken into account in most responses or , but are merely dismissed as FUD. Hopefully, the article your reference will change this.
I don't think mono and moonlight has a future. Politics legal issues aside, it is always going to be a step or more behind, an inferior product to the real products and crippled in functionality. What's the point of this? As Linux user at home I should expect the same functionality as Windows user. If people want Silverlight on Linux it should be the real deal, and the same with .net.
This is a misconception of the goals of mono from my point of view. Yes, mono will lag behind .NET, but who cares? The goal of mono is not the same as the goal of wine, to run windows applications without porting. Yes with mono implementing .NET it might be nice for some if apps can run unmodified.
Another goal of mono that you are missing here is to provide a high quality development platform. GTK# isn't chasing .NET for instance, so no matter what changes MS make an GTK# app developer doesn't need to care. How does MS adding new features affect banshee for instance? How does it affect Tomboy? If mono doesn't have the new additions, it doesn't break these apps at all.
Moonlight is a different beast, and here it does matter about playing catchup, but I hate all browser plugins so don't want Silverlight to catch on at all.
I really think Mono is bad for Ubuntu and to Linux. I've been reading lots of stuff from boycottnovell.com and I'm pretty sure in one way or another there is patent issue MS will use sooner or later.
At first I only remove mono-common and libmono0 but 2 nights ago I already remove my ubuntu-desktop and install kubuntu-desktop. Hope KDE and QT won't use mono.