In a comment on another post, Chris Halse Rogers raised an interesting and challenging question: “What evidence is there that Novell, the company, is promoting adoption of Mono into GNOME?”

Here’s where I attempt to answer that question!
The easy part

It’s always more effective to knock out the easy stuff first. So let’s establish that the premise is at least reasonable. Here are some facts. Facts are a nice way to start:

  1. Mono is a Novell project.
  2. Novell is on the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board.
  3. Mono is lead at Novell by the founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza.
  4. Mr. de Icaza has said in the past, “Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET“
  5. Mr. de Icaza claims to be “in charge of Novell’s Linux Desktop Strategy” along with Nat Friedman.

These are facts:  immutable, inarguable, and tasty with honey mustard. Almost as tasty are these chips of paranoid ravings we’ve fried up in the mono-nono.com kitchen:

  1. Companies generally promote their products.
  2. Mr. de Icaza is quite enthusiastic about Mono.
  3. Mr. de Icaza knows his way around the Mono and GNOME projects.
  4. The more GNOME adopts Mono, the greater the “success” of the Mono project (by its own lights)
  5. People in charge of projects generally want them to be successful.

Now I know those may seem absolutely crazy, but perhaps you’ll indulge us?

Now, it is true that none of this is proof Novell is specifically promoting Mono in GNOME. But, I hope we can at least agree that it is reasonable to suggest that Novell is promoting the adoption of Mono in GNOME.

Let me further stress that I don’t think there is anything surprising about this claim – I was actually quite surprised that it was questioned! I do not think that Novell thinks there is anything wrong with promoting Mono – quite the contrary, I suspect many people think they are doing good by promoting Mono.

The difficult part

So, there you have it. I have proved my case! You can stop reading now.

Alright, I see you are distrustful of your Humble Host, and my rhetoric fails to convince? Allow me then, to submit evidence! (Picture a dapper bespoke-suited gentlemanly lawyer waving a manilla envelope to help set the tone.)

Actually, I don’t think this will be too hard, because I don’t think Novell or Team Mono think there is anything wrong with promoting Mono in GNOME. (or KDE or XFCE or TWM or MS-DOS or USPS).

GNOME Desktop Development

One good place to look might be the GNOME Desktop Development mailing list. Can we find anyone from Novell promoting Mono there? Like Obama said: “Yes we can”.

Here is a gentleman from Novell formally proposing GTK# for inclusion.

Here is a gentleman from Novell announcing his new position as maintainer of Evolution, and listing mono as 2 of the 5 things the core team will focus on.

Here is a gentleman trying to get his technology in, noting that it supports Mono, which “is magic buzzword for some (especially at Novell)” I think posts like this are informative because they show the group recognizes and accepts (to some degree) what is going on.

Here is a gentleman from Novell arguing that integration with mono apps is necessary for a “cohesive” GNOME experience.

And of course, with few exceptions, any post to the list by Mr. de Icaza is either defending or promoting Mono.  But here is an especially interesting one:

[A RedHat dude]
> So I think we should go farther than “GNOME does not support using the
> extended .NET APIs” and say “we will oppose implementing those APIs on
> Linux at all” – unless Microsoft releases the patents, it’s impossible
> for those APIs to contribute to the success of Linux, all they can do is
> encourage people to get locked in to Microsoft from a legal point of
> view. And Microsoft has said they will _not_ release these APIs.

[Miguel]
We can certainly promote the use of ECMA only, we will take the first
steps on our next release, splitting the rpms.

Splitting the source will take me a few more weeks, to do all the cvs
surgery and build system.

But the non-ECMA parts have already been written, so its too late to
avoid implementing them :-)

Hmm.  Now this was back in 2004. I surely don’t recall Team Mono ever promoting ECMA-only use - in fact, I dare say the ECMA/non-ECMA distinction within Mono was usually glossed over -  and we are now being told that Mono will be split more formally into ECMA and non-ECMA portions. Well, I’m sure we will get things right this time around.

GNOME Foundation

Here is a gentleman suggesting that “Novell has also been very sensitive to the Mono issue in the past.  They still champion it but have done things like create C glue libraries and refrain from making their apps like Evolution depend
on Mono.”

Much like the “magic buzzword” post earlier, we see that there is an in-group understanding that Novell is promoting Mono. This quote shows the Novell is aware of the sensitivity of the issue.

Some random ones

Here is a gentleman from Novell expounding the virtues of Beagle over Tracker.

There you have it

I think those posts are sufficient to show that Novell is promoting Mono in GNOME. There are many more similar ones in various GNOME mailing lists, but even I have limits of time and patience searching things out.

Again, I’m not saying this is surprising or malicious, it’s just clear from reason and evidence. But it was surprising to me that someone actually questioned this, so I thought it might be worthwhile to try to answer a question.

The alternative of course, is that Novell is not promoting Mono in GNOME, which would be a very foolish thing to do if you were Novell. Novell’s entire future is pinned upon the good graces of Microsoft, so you can bet they will be keeping Redmond happy spreading that old fashioned Mono love.

Additional questions

There were a couple of additional questions that Mr. Rogers brought up:

“Is the fact that Novell employees are writing software that is good enough to displace the current GNOME software for inclusion, or fills some lack in GNOME evidence for this premise? ”

This is not so interesting. First of it pre-supposes the quality of the software. Secondly, either Novell is promoting Mono or it isn’t. I’m not at this juncture asserting the morality or ethics of the promotion, just that it exists.

“How would you distinguish this from individual Novell employees determining that C# is the most appropriate language for a new project?”

In one way this is an interesting question: do we think individual employees are free to choose languages? Possibly, that is probably complex, depending on the project and needs of the company and so forth.

It raises the side questions of how much internal pressure there is in Novell to get on board the Mono train, and what would happen if someone decided to implement stuff not in C#. I can’t speak to that, as I am not privvy to the internal politics of Novell – nor do I care to be. From outside, it seems clear to me that Novell has an enourmous investment in Mono, and those dudes are quite enthusiatic about using Mono. I image if you strolled into Cubicle 12 and suggested your new killer Novell app be written in C++/QT, it would be an interesting reaction.

I like to picture it something like this

New Guy: “Man, I can’t wait to get started on this killer BaconMeter app. A little C++ and QT and I can have a prototype within the week”.

Silence falls in the cubicle farm. Several smiling people slide out of the closer cubicles, move to encircle New Guy and begin speaking in soft measured tones.

“No dude. Mono is awesome rocks brilliant” Everyone in the room nods in unison.

“Yes, he’s right – look at this framework.” A hand on the shoulder now, comforting, as he gestures to a large poster on the wall. ”Isn’t it magnificant lovely elegant?”

A third man holds out a color diagram: “Just take a look at the stack. It’s clean simple complete”. A bead of sweat rolls off his forehead and drops onto the paper, smearing the fresh ink. The man dies a small death inside and backs away shamefully as another near-identical man moves in to take his place. No one has blinked yet.

New Guy is now uncertain: “I don’t know, fellas, I’m really more of a C++ guy and the QT toolkit is pretty sweet. Plus, performance is going to be an issue with all this tasty bacon.”

There is a sharp intake of breath from everyone in the room. Several of the sitting men stand up, visibly shocked. In a corner cubicle there is the sound of weeping.

The hand on the shoulder tightens, as the grin widens. “Oh no, friend. We have GTK sharp. That is what we use.”  The voice is strained, and it seems as if the man might stutter, were it not for force of will. “That is the proper, the best choice. I’m sure you agree.”

Everyone is nodding madly now, murmuring agreement. Outside, a bird sings in the distance.

New Guy shuffles uncomfortably. “I..I guess so. I mean I used Java on a project once, Mono is like that right?”

The two men in front of New Guy exchange glances. The men standing in their cubicles look around, as if to check if they are being observed. One man begins scratching his neck viciously, another stares out the window head down and bites the back of his hand. The weeping grows louder in the corner, but no one ever looks in that direction.

The hand comes off the shoulder and waves in the air awkwardly, like a flying fish suspended between the two men. He gestures as he speaks, but it seems uncoordinated with the words. “Oh no, friend. Mono is state-of-the-art improved hotness number one. It is the way. Do you see? We have so many features. Do you see? This is not Java. Do you see?” He is shaking New Guy, but doesn’t seem aware of it.

The other men look between each other, asking themselves the same question. “Does he see? Does he see?”

New Guy realizes he could be very much in danger soon. Raising his hands, he adopts a soothing tone. “Ah, yes, I do see. Mono is alright.”

A pause.

“I mean Good.”

The men lean in, eager for more.

“Ah, I mean Mono is the awesome rocks.”

The men smile and clap and all nod to one another. The relief in the room is palpable.

BaconMeter will be a mono app.