Hub explains in more detail why he wrote Gnote.


In which the truth shall set you free

I wrote Gnote to answer two questions:

  • How can I have Tomboy functionality on my custom openSUSE image I made for my EEE PC, that will fit the 2GB? I don’t have room for Mono on this. For what is worth, back when I tried to put a distro on it, the only distro that would fit out of the box on this EEE PC was Eeedora, a Fedora based image for the EEE PC, but that only did provide XFCE. Since I wanted GNOME, it ended up not being that useful as I didn’t have a the Fedora tools to actually regenerated a custom one. None of the other did fit on 2GB, including the Mandriva Flash I had from GUADEC, Ubuntu’s own, etc.
  • Is it easy to port a C# application to C++?

This is perfectly harmonious with his original announcement:

In my attempts to fight my own boredom, as an unemployed hacker[1], I took on myself to do something: porting Tomboy to C++. It is actually not that hard, just a lot of work to do manually because there is over a dozen of thousands of lines of code. This show me that the door is open to reimplementing Gtk# software (or parts) in C++ with not too many problems, making it easy to have them available for C applications.

He also explicity states he is not “anti-Mono”, and refutes that Gnote is some sort of anti-Mono statement (while acknowledging some have taken it that way):

For the rest, you all know what happened: the anti-Mono crowd took it as their victory, started FUDing, etc. Barely nobody asked me why I had written that code, compared to the many that actually thought I was supporting their cause. But that’s how the internet work.

[...]

And if you still think I hate Mono think again. I worked for the company that pushes Mono (and still wish I was), and I was using Tomboy on all the Linux machines I had[...]

In which the horse is led, but he does not drink

I wonder which will come first:

  1. Apologies and retractions of the vicious slander against Mr. CrazyFrench
  2. Attempts to pretend I ever portrayed Gnote an “anti-Mono statement”.

Let me save you time: you won’t find the latter – because I never took that position -  and I doubt you’ll find the former, either, because those attacks never came from an honest position orginally.

In truth, I do not ever recall any Mono critic asserting the motivations behind Gnote were ideological, only illustrating that the rejection and attacks most certainly were. There may be someone who did this, but it doesn’t spring to mind, and I certainly never did.

I realize the distinction may be difficult for poop-flingers to grasp. Please be sure you do before arming yourselves, I just got the place cleaned up after all.

In which Your Humble Host channels The Great Karnak

I always chuckle at little bit at just how closely my words are parsed and attacked, with excruciating demands for corrections, updates, research, giving the benefit of the doubt, and so on; while pure vileness and lies from the other side is either tolerated or, even more often, enthusiastically joined and agreed upon.

That is why I fully expect to see all those old libelous posts about Gnote’s motivations quickly corrected, retracted and apologized for.

Heh. No no. I don’t expect that all. It’s nice to pretend, though, isn’t it? Here’s what I do expect:

  1. Someone (or ones) will come along to try to parse out a sentence with some sort of ambiguity that when interpretated in some strained fashion, might possibly contridict something I said here.
  2. Someone (or ones) will refuse to accept Mr. CrazyFrench’s explanation, and continue to assert Gnote is some nefarious anti-Mono project.
  3. No one (or ones) will go back in time and update / correct / ammend anything they wrote negative or attacking about Gnote. This will not stop them from demanding others should do the same for things they disagree with, of course.

The reason why I (and I suspect others) took such a keen interest in Gnote was specifically because it was not an anti-Mono project. By all informed accounts, it was simply a hacker scratching an itch – why all the haterade? Why the violent rejection? Gnote has (or had) the potential to be smaller, faster, lighter and less controversial – why would it not be embraced by those who pretend they are arguing from non-ideological or pragmatic grounds?

That’s what is called a “rhetorical question”, by the way. It means everyone already knows the answer.

A final gnote of comparison

Not for nothing, but calling Free and Open Software projects “harmful to the community” or suggesting they have “hurt, rather than helped, the free software community” might get one in right hot water by The Most High and (Self-)Righteous Community Gatekeepers.

In fact, you might not believe this, but I hear tell of a gentleman who thinks Mono is “harmful to the community”, and might possibly “hurt, rather than help, the free software community” and – surprise, surprise – he has come under a considerable amount of fire for such a radical opinion. Some even say the attacks have gotten personal!

Scandalous! Why, a Lesser Mind might call such double-standards hypocritical.