Mono

To make sure nobody misses it, but Novell and Linux Format magazine is hosting a competition to have your dream application written for you. The competition is called Make it with Mono. To enter you just register on their site and submit a description of your dream application. The proposal with the most votes after the voting period is over (voting starts in April) will be attempted implemented with Mono. The FAQ do mention that you should try to submit something that can be created by a few good developers within a few weeks, so dont propose a linux version of AutoCAD or similar, you just get disapointed :)

The first release of DIVA is available. DIVA is a mono based video editing tool.
This is the initial, ALPHA release of Diva. Please do bear in mind it contains bugs and is not meant for general usage (yet). In particular, this software has received very little testing with NTSC video. Although theoretically things should work fine, they might not and be prepared for that. File the bug reports!

Release Notes | Diva Homepage | Screenshots

Worried about Mono and patents? Heard of the OIN?

OIN is the Open Invention Network. Prominent members include Red Hat, Sony, Novell, IBM, and Philips, etc. The idea behind OIN: throw a bunch of patents in a pool. Make those patents available to open source developers, and to companies who support open source developers.

More importantly: pool those patents to counterattack companies who might accuse us of infringing *their* patents.

Read the rest.

A new edition of the Beagle newsletter is covering the new interface, new api's and more.

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Red Hat was the main opponent against the inclusion of Mono on their products or Gnome's core for the past few years. This situation was creating tention within the Gnome community. But this is all past now and Fedora Core 5 will include Mono, and some of its front row applications like Beagle, Tomboy and F-Spot will be too.

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
We just released Mono 1.1.10, our best release so far. The major feature missing from this release to call it Mono 1.2 is the completion of our Windows.Forms implementation.

I also present how our team's priorities are shifting in response to Novell's own internal use of Mono and external factors like the final release of .NET 2.0.

Linux Magazine have an article talking about the F-Spot Image management application. The story gives a brief overview of other popular programs available in the field before talking about the specifics of F-spot.

The LUGRadio team is out with a new fun and exciting show. Of special interest for GNOME people is an interview with Joe Shaw about Beagle, the desktop search tool. The show is available from the lugradio website and also features discussion about the glory of podcasting, interview on openSuse and a musical extravagance from drummer Jono Bacon and Adam Sweet on the bass guitar. Its Jono's first public musical appearance since he toured under the stagename Glenn Medeiros in the eighties :)

I've taken the last month off from fiddling with new distros, and have instead just spent time enjoying the Ubuntu experience. It's amazing what you find time for when you're not fiddling with the command line to troubleshoot some obscure problem with your latest Linux testbed. One thing I've gotten around to is exploring the collection of Free Software available via the Ubuntu package repositories. I've fallen in love with two apps in particular: Muine is my new music player of choice, and F-Spot is without a doubt the neatest digital photo organizer I've ever used.

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OSNews posted an article accounting the applications created for GTK# the past 8 months, since the release of Mono 1.0. While many of them are still in their infancy, it's clear that the platform had a healthy progress, with... super-hits like Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam! and other, less known gems, like SportsTracker, PolarViewer, MooTag, GFax, GIB, Sonance and Bluefunk.

mCatalog is an application to catalogue films and books. It's dessigned for working in the GNOME desktop, though its interface is based on a OSX application: Delicious Library.

mCatalog 0.1 is out. After six release in the 0.0.x series, I think mCatalog is ready for being considered as Beta.

Announcing release 1.9.0 of Gtk#. This is an unstable development
release for the GNOME 2.6 bindings. It is parallel installable with the
latest stable release, 1.0.4.

VB News has posed the Mono question to Microsoft and gotten an answer. Microsoft's position appears to be that Mono is an unlicensed attempt to reverse-engineer .NET but otherwise remains noncommittal. In the meanwhile, Novell is conducting a formal patent review of Mono to settle the question once and for all.

The Mono development environment allows programmers to be more productive than they would be with conventional C programming. The C# language and the Mono APIs together provide a great platform to build applications on.
Read the rest

In light of the recent Mono 1.0 release there is a lot of coverage on Novell and Mono lately. NewsForge recently talked with Erik Dasque, the senior project leader for Mono, about the release of 1.0, the controversy and criticisms encountered along the way, and the plans for the future, while Miguel de Icaza spoke to CNET News.com shortly before the company began shipping Mono version 1.0. Elsewhere, InfoWorld posted an article about the "new face" of Novell.