Yes. That’s right. According to the GCDS 2009 presentation notes on the Banshee site, we learn lots of nice stuff about Banshee:
“It’s not just an app, it’s a platform”.
- Long term goal is to write the UI in Moonlight
- Declarative UI, canvas, scene graph, and toolkit
- Moonlight is an Open Source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology … and it is awesome
“Banshee is going to do photos”
“We are re-basing the F-Spot core on top of Banshee”
And it ends with GNOME, Mono and Banshee logos.
Moonlight is of course, absolutely toxic unless you get it directly from Novell, as the so-called “covenant” specifically prohibits non-Novell distributions from distributing Moonlight. It also specifically prohibits distribution on non-PC platforms (like PDAs and so forth). The agreement – which is only with Novell anyway – also terminates on Sep. 1, 2011. And, of course it only covers Silverlight 1 and 2, both of which are already obsolete, as Microsoft has already released Silverlight 3.
In fact the Moonlight agreement is so offensive, even some high ups in Team Mono agree it is anti-community.
You want to get rid of Rhythmbox for what, now?
So there you have it – that’s what Team Mono wants in Ubuntu, by default, replacing Rhythmbox. An audio / video / picture “platform” with a built in web-browser and multiple GUIs.
This is the future of GNOME and of distributions that rely on GNOME, so don’t get all snooty just because you aren’t using Ubuntu. Layer upon layer of frameworks, Moonlight on top of Mono. One Microsoft technology stacked upon another; Microsoft development tools used in that good old fashioned Microsoft development model. Miguel told you he wanted to see GNOME 4.0 built on .NET and by god they are going to make it happen. There will be no innovation, no difference, no freedom – just slavishly copying Microsoft.
KDE peeps you are targeted in those slides too – so don’t get too comfortable pointing fingers and laughing. You can bet your bottom dollar Team Mono will be knocking on your door ever louder, ever persistant, just like they have been doing in the GNOME world.
#1 by Dan Serban on July 15th, 2009
The day Gnome does anything nasty to its users I can see one of a couple of things happening:
- Someone forks Gnome 2, removes from it any traces of Mono, keeps developing it and makes a killer distro with it. Two thirds of the Linux community switches to this new hot distro, Ubuntu and openSUSE survive as niche distros for retro buffs. That new hot distro could even be Google Chrome OS, who knows.
- Disgruntled independent Gnome contributors join the XFCE team en-masse, where they cherry-pick the sexiest parts of Gnome 2 and integrate them into XFCE. XFCE becomes the new Gnome. Novell then hires the lead developer for XFCE and the cycle begins again, with LXDE waiting in the wings to cherry-pick the sexiest, Mono-free parts of XFCE etc etc etc
I have a couple more scenarios, but those are really out there in lala-land, so I’ll stop here.
#2 by David Gerard on July 15th, 2009
If Miguel really wants the whole environment written in a managed language, there’s one that’s actually free software. It’s called Java. It’s the one .NET and Mono are cheap rips of!
Suggestion: a line-for-line C# to Java convertor with stuff to convert the whole project as well. Rescue your Mono apps!
#3 by Your name here on July 16th, 2009
@David
AFAIK .NET/Mono is a better Java.
Just like C++ is a better C.
Just an evolution of a language path.
#4 by makomk on July 16th, 2009
I’m pretty sure that the covenant covering Moonlight also only applies to use as a browser plugin. Developing desktop applications using Moonlight is not covered, even if you do get it from Novell and install it on a PC.
#5 by Miguel de Icaza on July 17th, 2009
The quote that you pulled about Gnome and .NET 4.0 was an article from the Register from 2002, more than seven years old today.
The article misrepresented what I actually said on the interview, and I posted a correction at the time:
http://lwn.net/2002/0207/a/long-reply.php3
Which has an actual nuanced explanation. But I guess nuance and facts get in the way of a sensationalist headline.
As for Banshee and Moonlight, I am not sure why you even care, from your comments on this web site, it is clear that you do not want to run Banshee or any Mono applications in the first place.
#6 by Jason on July 17th, 2009
@Miguel
I’ve read that long explanation several times. I don’t think it changes the impression that you personally would like to see GNOME built on .NET/Mono.
In fact, it basically opens up with “I can’t change GNOME alone”, and then goes on to explain why .NET is so awesome everyone should join you to change GNOME. (An admittedly cynical reading).
#7 by Yaro on July 17th, 2009
Miguel, you’re such a Microsoft shill I think your credibility when you defend yourself that way is shot.
Let me put it outright to you, Miguel, the SECOND you turn GNOME into a platform for the patent deathtrap you brought to Linux is the MOMENT I go KDE or Xfce and not look back.
Stop being a veritable traitor to everything Linux stands for simply because your dream in life is to work for Microsoft (Assuming you don’t already.)
Too bad I don’t have all the skills to fork GNOME into a clearly non-de Icaza-poisoned version. I’d ditch pieces of shit like Tomboy and F-spot, too. And Banshee, holy hell.
#8 by Jason on July 17th, 2009
@Yaro,
Let’s tone the personal attacks down one notch, please. This one is getting just a bit beyond my comfort level. We try to have a one personal attack or less per post policy.
I don’t like what the man is doing either, but he has came here several times to give his side of things. I’d rather interact and err on the side of restraint than establish an echo chamber of rage. If it helps, think of it as taking the moral high ground!
Thanks and thanks much for the comments!
#9 by zekopeko on July 17th, 2009
What can one say about such ad hominem attacks? It is people like you Yaro that damage the community. You are the poison on the community no Miguel. He, at least brought us Gnome and Mono. What is your accomplishment?
And what do you know what Linux stands for? The only thing you have is your hate and rage. And this is something the FLOSS community doesn’t need nor want.
#10 by neo on July 18th, 2009
Mono is in Fedora due to OIN and the recent Microsoft “community promise” is partially helpful but Moonlight is specifically excluded due to the reasons explained in
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#Moonlight
This effort will exclude future versions of Banshee and F-Spot from being in Fedora. Maybe that is what Novell wants.
#11 by Anshul on July 18th, 2009
I don’t think the KDE guys have anything too much to worry about Mono being at their door step. Kyoto and Qimono (Mono bindings for KDE) have existed for a long time, but nothing else has been heard after that.
Secondly, KDE relies on a far superior Qt framework, which has a technological edge over the GTK/C combo by GNOME. This is one of the main reasons on why GNOME/GTK developers want to use Mono/Python/Vala etc. With Qt/C++ as the established base for KDE, why bother about Mono/C#?
Miguel, you’re one class act…in your blog after you stopped jumping with joy regarding the recent M$ Community Promise stuff…you, yourself decided to fork Mono into ECMA and non-ECMA compliant versions. This has been conveniently ignored by everyone, since it was the last entry in your blog.
You knew all along that you were violating some patents, yet you went on crowing around saying that nothing’s gonna happen. Sure, nothing’s gonna happen to your employer- Novell as they went to bed with M$, but your gonna leave everyone else exposed. Thank God for RedHat/Fedora who’ve chosen to play it ultra-safe. The rest of the distros, and in particular Ubuntu is clearly in the firing line.
-Anshul
PS: Miguel, I really like Opensuse (my second choice after Mandriva)…not the GNOME part that you’re associated with.
#12 by Christian on August 3rd, 2009
I don’t know.
Qt is a very good toolkit, but here (in the postings) the language is important. And as Qt is C++, that’s not much better as C from my point. You have OO, but not completed like in C#/Java/Python.
I’m a beginner in C++ and am thinking of early-switching to C# because I don’t want to mess around with pointers any more (I had that in Delphi as well – you can compare C++ and Delphi in this point).
So IMHO KDE has this problems: large applications are not that good to maintain (compared to C#), mem leaks etc.
#13 by zekopeko on July 18th, 2009
@Anshul
or perhaps he did it so that it’s easier for distros to ship parts they want, and easier to decide if you want the non-ECMA part in your distro or not.
#14 by Anshul on July 18th, 2009
Type your comment here
Yeah, he did that only *after* MS came out with their statement. He *knew* that he was playing with questionable material. Yet he chose to say the opposite.
#15 by zekopeko on July 18th, 2009
@Anshul
nope. it’s been happening long before the MS CP. Ubuntu/Debian have split mono long before the CP. I’m sure of Jaunty and perhaps even Intrepid (btw this was done so that apps don’t need to drag more dependencies then needed, which freed some space on the Ubuntu CD, not because of some alleged patents) .
What Miguel is doing is splinting this in the main mono source trunk so that it’s easier for people to package mono for their distro of choice. Since now we know which parts are a-ok and which might have a undisclosed patent.
#16 by Anshul on July 20th, 2009
zekopeko,
I don’t know *all* that much about Ubuntu, but a cursory search on Mono pulled up this information:-
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+search?text=libmono-winforms2.0-cil
mono (The binary ‘libmono-winforms2.0-cil’ is part of the mono package)
The Mono .NET development environment
Available in: dapper, hardy, intrepid, jaunty, karmic
Mono is available in the “main” repository, so I’m assuming that this is the officially supported repository and not a multiverse/universe “iffy-kinda” repository. Now Winforms is *not* covered under the CP, only C# is. Then how is Ubuntu splitting winforms, ado.net from the base Mono package?
Fedora is probably gonna do the right thing and throw out the infringing stuff out of their repos and place it in rpmfusion. I’ve started a similar discussion in Mandriva as well and want to see the infringing stuff under the non-free or better outside of the repos in PLF.
#17 by Jo Shields on July 20th, 2009
Assuming you want the answer to this, and aren’t just fishing…
Ubuntu supports source packages in “main” (the largely-commercially-supported Free section) building binary components which are then moved to “universe” (the Free but community-maintained section). The “mono” source package is one of these examples – a large percentage of the binary packages produced by the “mono” source package (from about 94 total binary packages produced) are moved to Universe.
As it stands today, WinForms is in Main, although never installed at runtime. This is due to a messy chain of dependencies (the “antlr” source package provides some java libraries used by Ubuntuish things such as the Eucalyptus EC2 support – antlr also provides and builds Mono bindings, which use the Ant-like “nant” build system; The “nant” build system depends on “ndoc” in order to support building documentation in a given format at compile time; “ndoc” depends on WinForms as it uses a component of it to render one of its five or so supported output documentation formats). This is NOT a desirable situation, politically, which is why I’ve patched “nant” to remove support for “ndoc”. The patched package is waiting for sponsorship in pkg-cli-apps SVN. Once it gets sponsored, I can request a sync to Karmic – and once it gets synced, ndoc (and with it WinForms) will automatically be relegated to Universe as there will no longer be anything keeping them in.