On Monday, 10 Oct 2005 7:39 pm, Sriram N wrote:
I'd say there's nothing wrong with developing Gnome using Mono, which is based upon some standards - ECMA standards. There was a lot of hue and cry over the patents issue, but this seems to have largely settled down. One can use name spaces and packages that are non-MS - GTK#, for e.g.
Being a standard is not good enough. What is a standard anyway? It is just an endorsement by a well known, supposedly vendor neutral organization. OSI is one, it certifies various FLOSS licenses as being OSI compliant or not. But this "standard" is not considered good enough for FSF, isn't it?
Similarly, you need to understand the conditions under which the C#, CLI stuff is "standardized". Check out:
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Standardization_and_Licensing [2]: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/03/11/mono.html
Here is an excerpt from [1]: """ While Microsoft and their partners hold patents for CLI and C#, ECMA and ISO requires that all patents essential to implementation be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms." The companies have agreed, instead, to make the patents available under "royalty-free and otherwise RAND terms." """
BTW, Aren't ISO and ITU the same organizations which doesnt provide freely available standard documents (like IETF or W3C)?
Here is an excerpt from [2]: """ The licensing status of Mono is of immediate concern to most would-be adopters. Isn't Mono at risk of being wiped out by Microsoft patents? De Icaza explained the situation. The Mono runtime is an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure standardized via ECMA. Microsoft has granted a license to use this technology under so-called "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.
On top of the core system sits two stacks of APIs. One of these is an implementation of Microsoft's APIs for user interfaces, web services, and database access. The other stack is entirely unique to the Mono project and includes things like bindings to the GTK user interface toolkit, the Cairo graphics system, and Mono's own database layer.
It is conceivable that Microsoft would enforce licensing terms on the implementation of the APIs that it hasn't submitted to ECMA. In the worst case, says de Icaza, distributors of those APIs would need to pay fees to Microsoft. None of this would touch the other, Mono-specific, APIs. The two different stacks of APIs are being kept separate to account for this possibility and to ensure that Mono is distributed by vendors such as Red Hat, who are reluctant to take on an unknown patent situation. """
While there is no immediate danger, and there has been real good that has come out of the mono project (some of the apps like Beagle have been really good!), the fact is that the project will forever be under the shadow of M$.
I have been enamoured with the Mono project till some time back(check some of my enthusiastic posts of mine on this list some months back). But the more I think of it, the more I am uncomfortable with the idea of one of the two major desktops of Linux moving on to such a wobbly scenario. As [3] points out:
[3]: http://www.osviews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article...
""" We can only trust Mono if we are convinced Microsoft doesn't have weasel room. The current situation appears, to me, to have lots of weasel room. The technical merits of Mono are basically irrelevant if its a trojan horse in the long term. """
Do note that I am *not* questioning Mono, or asking people to drop it totally. The OP on this list talked about KDE and Gnome, and the argument against KDE was that it was initially based on a non-free toolkit, and people (here?) will never forget it. But things have changed for the better - Qt is Free now, and will always be.
But Gnome on the other hand is moving to a non-Free platform(.Net is supposed to be a platform)!
Which situation would you be more confortable with?
- Sandip
P.S. Mandatory disclosure: I have been a long time KDE user. Some months back when I tried to move on to Ubuntu 5.04, I used Gnome for a while. It has come pretty much a long way. But then I took a look at the latest KDE, and was blown away. Now I am back to KDE. While Gnome has gone forward quite some way. KDE *seems* has gone even further ahead in both UI and stability.
P.S.2. I feel like being in a catch-22 situation. I like KDE but would not like to develop on QT, as it is too costly for professional development. I find Gtk+ to be affordable and Free, but dislike its decision to look the same on different platforms. I would prefer Wxwindows (which is a wrapper over Gtk on Linux, and win32 API on Windows) but is one of the worst documented development SDKs. :(((