Mono-nono is proud to present our first guest posting, from Dan Serban!
Dan proposes making the Chicken Little Respin a regular event.
I believe having a Mono-free respin of the desktop-i386 edition of Ubuntu released every 6 months is a very good idea for several reasons.
Having Jo Shields release the respin personally is an even better idea. Here’s why:
1. It’s a vehicle for informed choice
Those of us who don’t want Mono in the default Ubuntu desktop set for whatever reason now have a real choice. We don’t have to go explain to someone else why we don’t want Mono and have our reasons questioned.
2. It tones down the heated arguments between the two camps
It helps a lot to have a high-profile proponent of Mono personally release a Mono-free respin. It creates common ground between the two camps and encourages civil debate.
3. It’s a useful tool against the “boiling frog syndrome”
Over time, the Chicken Little Remix will serve as a benchmark for how much Mono is too much. If it becomes a tradition, we can – 1 year, 2 years down the line – begin to make comparative usability analyses. That is to say, Jaunty ex-Mono is still perfectly usable, but if the Gnome panel ever starts requiring a Mono library as a dependency (a theoretical scenario at this juncture), having an unusable Chicken Little release to make us all painfully aware of it will be a very useful tool against the “boiling frog syndrome”.
Super thanks to Dan for taking the time to prepare an article for us! If you are interested in presenting your idea, pro- or anti- or neutral, just drop me an email: jason [at] mono-nono [dot] com.
#1 by Dan Serban on July 30th, 2009
Thanks Jason for posting my article.
#2 by Jason on July 30th, 2009
I’ll add my comments here: this is a great idea, but I’m not sure Jo would really want to do it on a regular basis.
Perhaps this is something we could take care of on this site. Jo has offered his notes on how to prepare the re-spin, and maybe we could even work it up into a “regular” installer, vs. the alternate installer; include substitute applications for the removed Mono ones, and so forth.
If there can be a “Hannah Montana” re-spin, then perhaps we can drum up enough interest to prepare a decent mono-free Ubuntu re-spin.
#3 by bambambox on July 30th, 2009
It’s worth keeping an eye on the alternative applications coming up, particularly photo managers. There are a number of them in active development which all seem to have somewhat similar functionality to F-Stop. And, unlike Gnote, none of them appear to be direct clones. This is good, because it’ll encourage more of that best of breed stuff we hear so much about.
#4 by Jason on July 30th, 2009
A good point – while I don’t believe all the “best-of-breed” talk, I do think that all that talk could be realized. Chicken Little could be one positive way of providing a critique of the promotion of Mono.
It might give “up and coming” non-Mono apps a bit of a foothold too – because they wouldn’t have to “fight off” Mono contenders.
Just kicking around thoughts.
#5 by Jo Shields on July 30th, 2009
All a non-Mono app needs to be suitable for proposal as a replacement is data migration. That’s really it – the rest is just wrangling over feature sets. Gnote now has migration from Tomboy, which means someone could propose it at the next UDS (where the argument would be “are there enough developers”, “do we want X missing feature”, and so on). None of the photo managers can be presented as alternatives as they cannot replace F-Spot without throwing away all the user’s valuable metadata at this moment in time.
#6 by bambambox on July 31st, 2009
That’s a good point. F-spot uses a simple sqlite database in users’ home folders AFAIK. It shouldn’t be too difficult to at least implement an import metadata from F-Spot-type feature. I have around ten thousand photographs, and I’d hate to have to tag them twice. Users shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of thing. I’ll see what I can do about that.
#7 by vexorian on July 31st, 2009
I don’t know. Are users only worried about their data? There is a moment where users just stop caring about learning and feel the entitlement not to learn again… Well, maybe I am crazy but I see this pattern everywhere. AKA, it is easy to migrate the db from itunes to most of its competitors, yet users still are wary to learn about the competitors.
Aw well, maybe you are right…
#8 by Jason on July 30th, 2009
Let me add, I am most certainly not trying to exclude Jo – that would do wonders for the “toning down the differences” point; just saying perhaps those of us who are talking the critical talk should step up to the plate, that’s all.
#9 by Jo Shields on July 30th, 2009
Feature requests charged at my standard mono-nono rate.
#10 by vexorian on July 31st, 2009
Which is… free?
#11 by Jo Shields on July 31st, 2009
Ask Jason, he’s been my only patron so far. He paid for the i386 ISO
Pingback: A Mono proposal « Rarrrrrrrgh
#12 by vexorian on July 31st, 2009
Nevertheless, I think it is work for Jo Shields to do it and also seed it all the time. The remaining of the idea still shines though (2.) was desirable. If it is not ’someone’ from the pro-mono side then ’someone’ else should still do it…
#13 by seller_liar on August 13th, 2009
The interesting thing is some mono people is porting sqlite to C#.A fspot uses sqlite !
Result: More dependency of mono in ubuntu because f-spot.