Novell and LinuxFormat will write your dream application

DVB-T support is very high on the Elisa roadmap. So check out future releases for your dream application :)

I've been trying to follow Mono carefully for a long time, reading as much as I can. If you use the Mono/Gtk# stack, AFAIK, everything is completely kosher (core Mono is based on ISO standards and free from patent problems, and Gtk stack is fine, of course). I get really tired seeing vague innuendo about problems in Mono. Can you point to a specific concern?

The only (somewhat) specific concerns I've heard about are with the MS-compatibility stack, which I think are probably irrelevant to this post.

.Net is Microsoft's car and they will drive that car with everyone else as a passenger. Linux and Mac will have a constant game of catch-up to do.

Someone will make the association: if I want good compatibility, don't I want Microsoft's platform?

Who does .PDF better than Adobe? Who does DXF better than Autocad? Is anyone going to look at Mono as the one great C# .NET implementation, or will they say that it's "Just as good as Microsoft's implementation." would that ever be a worthy endorsement?

Let's look at parallels, who drives Java? OpenOffice has Word basic, but it endorses MS computability; it follows. DXF is pretty open, but which program would you think would most reliably open it's file in? If you could only choose one program to open a .doc, which would it be?

Using Mono will just help Microsoft's vision get a foothold. By using it, do you not endorse their vision? Of you follow Microsoft, do they not lead?

The time spent on Mono, have been spent on a truly open language, so open that you do not have to check the legalese, and relate the findings to me.

You seem to be confusing many things.

1. Yes, Adobe does PDF better than anyone else, does that mean that there is no room for alternate implementations? Should that mean that we should give up on Evince and KPDF?

Let me illustrate with other examples. Lets stretch things: the fact that TCP/IP was first implemented in BSD, does it mean that there is no point in implementing BSD in other systems, because "we would be following BSD"?

The fact that Sun controlled Java, did that stop folks from implementing open source Java? No, it did not. Were people limited to Sun's designs when they did Classpath? No, they were not.

2. Mono is not limited to be an implementation of the .NET APIs, it has a very large ecosystem of libraries that are Unix, Linux, Gnome, FreeDesktop specific.

The fact that we are compatible in some libraries (say "libc") does not mean that we cant implement "libgtk" or that we have to wait for Microsoft to implement everything we need.

It is amazing that people can not distinguish this.

Miguel.

Your comments are well placed and I think that the Mono team should turn some community focus towards addressing these questions more proactively in online forums if they are going to see Mono more widely adopted.

Microsoft has found it very profitable to embrace and extend. Why should the Linux and Open Source communities not be able to benefit from the same strategy based on Microsoft's work so long as it is unencumbered? Use the best of both communities to produce products that are better than either on its own. That is supposed to be the strength of openness in the technology community.

The primary caveat is that it must be unencumbered. I believe there is some FUD with regards to encumberances to Mono, as I have yet to hear any arguments that include specifics. Rather, it seems to be a (not undeserved) general distrust of Microsoft that is driving the arguments.

But I also have some lingering doubts because I have not yet heard any statements from the Mono community that their .NET implementation is positively, definitely unencumbered. If Novell's legal team believed they could make such a definitive statement, they doubtless would have by now. Certainly Microsoft's statements in this regard have not been encouraging.

Once Novell's patent review has been completed, should the results be positive, the Mono team needs to aggressively and proactively address the community concerns as Mono can be of great benefit to the OSS community; e.g., regardless of the merits of the language, anyone who doesn't see the value of Mono's announced Visual Basic compiler needs to have their vision checked.

Any idea when the patent review is expected to be completed?

You make some interesting points, although you conveniently forget to mention that Mono is and will always be doomed to play catch-up with .Net: this is the simple reason why its implementation won't ever be on par with Microsoft's one, just because it has to follow its trail. You also forget to mention that there is no clear pledge on Microsoft's part to not use IP weapons on specific (parts of) .Net alternative implementations, so there'll always be a dark cloud hovering over Mono software.

But all this, in the end, doesn't matter anymore, because no one is going to trust Novell and use Mono after the Microsoft-Novell deal. Mono's only chance would have been that 1) Novell continued play by the free software rules, and 2) eventually Microsoft would be force to grudgingly ackowledge that it had to give up on its FUD.

What happened is exactly the opposite: the MS-Novell deal seems conceived as to give more ammunition to the MS FUD Campaign, and Novell chose to do that for the doubtful priviledge of being "more equal" than other Linux distros.

So, remember what that other (now ex-) Novell employee said when leaving? We are pariahs in the eyes of the free software community. In truth you are.

rehdon

Hello rehdon,

Very good posting! I believe it exactly reflects, what a lot of people are thinking about! I've been using Mono too for some month. But since the Microsoft-Novell deal I've suddenly stopped it. Now I am using Java with the GNOME bindings. C# is nice, but Java is so too. Now I am converting all my applications too java and yeah it is fun :)

I don't like to see all the Mono software on the GNOME desktop since the MS-N-Deal. And maybe Mono should be more seperated from GNOME in the heads of the people. Don't understand me wrong: Mono is a great piece of software and it is really good work. But I don't wanna have software on my computer, which is based on Mono. I don't trust it anymore.