-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
____/ Homer on Tuesday 08 Sep 2009 01:11 : \____
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>
> [quote: anonymous E-mail correspondent]
>
>> "My suspicions are that the next step would be to either replace the
>> GTK API with MONO's and create Ubuntu's desktop ENTIRELY out of
>> MONO, using the gui parts of MONO"
>
> Note that this is actually an upstream call at Gnome, and has nothing to
> do with Ubuntu per se, although Ubuntu developers might invariably also
> be involved with Gnome and/or create their own patchsets.
>
> Also note that Icaza has already explicitly stated he aspires to
> rewriting Gnome entirely in Mono:
>
> [quoted in full, for posterity]
> Explain yourself Miguel, demands RMS
>
> .NETification of GNOME - latest
>
> By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
> 5th February 2002 09:32 GMT
>
> A surprised and dismayed Richard M Stallman says Gnome project founder
> Miguel de Icaza owes the community an explanation for comments made to
> The Register, last week, in which de Icaza advocated basing the project
> on Microsoft.NET APIs.
>
> "I can't believe it's Gnome you're talking about but if it is, I
> wouldn't like that," Stallman told an audience at the World Social Forum
> in Porto Alegre, Brazil last week.
>
> Stallman only learned of de Icaza's intentions to slip the Mono project
> - based on Microsoft's .NET framework - into Gnome as "the natural
> technology upgrade" when asked by the audience.
>
> Gnome - the GNU Object Model - is the part of the GNU Project, started
> by Stallman in 1985.
>
> "I didn't know he was doing that, I find that very hard to believe," he
> said.
>
> "We would like him to come to the free software community and explain
> himself to us about it."
>
> Brazilian tech site HotBits has more details here, with a number of
> other snippets of RMS on globalization, and GNU matters, accessible from
> the current edition's front page. We're grateful to Renata Aquino for
> providing us with a translation.
>
> Outraged Gnome users were mailing us over the weekend vowing to abandon
> the platform, and GnomeVFS maintainer Ian McKellar (who we inexplicably
> missed when we called in on Danger the other week) took a swipe at
> Miguel on the Gnome hackers mailing list: "You don't speak for me and
> you don't speak for most of the Gnome developers I know". (He also takes
> a sideswipe at us - we're "usually full of FUD and lies," apparently).
>
> However, Miguel has been entirely consistent. From our own interview at
> the time of the Mono announcement, to this recent Q&A, he's justified
> Mono primarily is a better technology infrastructure for Gnome.
>
> So if you didn't see this one coming, you simply haven't been paying
> attention.
>
> Nor has Miguel made any secret of his ambitions to enrich the software
> libre desktop with more sophisticated infrastructure, using Microsoft
> Windows as the model. The Bonobo technology was designed to provide a
> lightweight compound architecture inspired by The Beast's COM, and there
> was even a Gnome Basic scripting language mooted at one point.
>
> Miguel has told reporters that only an immigration technicality
> prevented him from becoming a Microsoft employee four years ago - the
> small print of the H1-B Visa process disqualifies students who haven't
> completed their degree course.
>
> Sheep in wolf's cloning
>
> With the community gathering at LinuxToday, to discuss the wisdom of the
> suggestion, a couple of interesting areas have emerged.
>
> One of the justifications offered for Mono cloning the .NET APIs is that
> other open source projects do too. Don't WINE and Samba clone the
> Microsoft protocols or interfaces? Isn't it really all OK? The
> difference, however, is that Win32 and SMB are dominant standards, and
> producing a workalike, particularly in the case of Samba, provides an
> interoperability *technology that doesn't entrench the monopoly*; Samba
> is in effect a great big device driver that lets a non-Windows machine
> access Windows network hardware. .NET is different, in that it the .NET
> framework has precisely zero users right now, if you discount the more
> nebulous services such as Hotmail, which have been dragooned into the
> markitecture.
>
> More worrying for any open source project - particularly one as broad
> and pervasive as Gnome - is the wisdom of committing to a single
> vendor's semi-open specifications.
>
> As de Icaza acknowledged last week, "few, very few" of the .NET classes
> have been submitted to ECMA. And Microsoft has hinted that it would make
> sure .NET clones pay for using Microsoft technology. How, we'll have to
> see. It may be worth noting that The Beast typically doesn't view patent
> infringements in the simple, hand-over-the-money style of a Qualcomm or
> a Rambus, and is actually more frequently the recipient rather than the
> initiator of patent infringement lawsuits. But rather, it looks for
> downstream opportunities it can leverage with business partners.
>
> And in any case, does de Icaza have the personal capital to influence
> such a decision? Well he might, but in theory it should only go so far.
> The industry-sponsored GNOME Foundation, has an elected board, which
> meets fortnightly, and where agenda items such as "8.b. Proposal to sell
> our souls to The Satan of Redmond in perpetuity" can be postponed until
> after tea and biscuits.
>
> One of the sponsors of the Foundation is Sun. As we pointed out on
> Friday, the prospect of selling boxes with the sticker "Solaris -
> Powered by .NET" might persuade Sun to start taking an active interest
> in the Foundation. Like, really, really active. Â
>
> Related Story
>
> Gnome to be based on .NET - de Icaza
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/01/gnome_to_be_based
> [/quote]
>
>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/05/explain_yourself_miguel_demands_rms
/
>
> [Emphasis indicated with "*" is mine]
>
>> "or to weave GTK and MONO together in such a way that MONO's
>> operation is not impaired but it cannot be removed without wiping out
>> GTK and the DE at the same time. Luckily, it was revealed in mid
>> July that contrary to the clams of MONO proponents, and Microsoft's
>> "Promise", the ECMA 334 & 335 standard applied ONLY to C# and the
>> CLI, but NOT to the GUI parts of MONO."
>
> Indeed "weaving GTK and MONO together" would breach Microsoft's
> "Community Promise", since they explicitly state it "applies only if the
> implementation conforms fully to required portions of the [ECMA]
> specification. Partial implementations are not covered."
>
> So from a licensing perspective, having Mono on one's system is not
> entirely different from having a binary blob from nVidia ... it is just
> as inflexible and encumbered (another similarity being that IIRC .Net
> technology is not licensed for use on architectures other than x86).
>
>> "As I said before, either de Icaza was caught in a lie or he was
>> caught with his pants down, because he and his MONO acolytes had been
>> assuring us that MONO was TOTALLY SAFE from MS IP contamination. I
>> cannot see him NOT knowing the difference, considering that he has
>> been working hand in hand with Microsoft developers and management
>> for nearly ten years as he recreated .NET in Linux."
>
> And COM, and God knows what other Windows-esque paradigms. This is no
> doubt assisted by his regular attendance at the Microsoft Developer
> Conference, and his equally regular contact with various departments
> within the Redmond HQ (e.g. Port25, Channel9, etc.). It's clear Icaza
> has more friends /inside/ the Vole than elsewhere.
>
> Gnome also has a Windows-style Registry, in the form of GConf, although
> we have Havoc Pennington of Red Hat to "thank" for that one.
To be fair, KDE pondered doing something similar last year. Liquidat
blogged about it.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Slashdot is standard-compliant... in Japan"
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Tasks: 140 total, 1 running, 139 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
http://iuron.com - knowledge engine, not a search engine
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAkqmOR8ACgkQU4xAY3RXLo7J8ACcCw2kyLEEtqdFrEOlyn0UHGCD
tDsAnAhMJrRKgXlRWYnPFC3/EybLl0+U
=7vnK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|
