For example ,nathive developer does not like mono because of lack of ethics.

Gnome was accompanied with rude negative evangelism against KDE.

?? What does this have to do with anything ?? Even if true, who cares in 2009?

The classical policy of “Ximian” is that they show a proof of concept, inspire the community, and then walk away.

…and that seems like a perfectly sensible and normal approach to me. Have you seen Google Wave, or Facebook, or Enlightenment, or libpng? Exposing a developmental block of reusable functionality, inspiring people to use it, accepting fixes and making changes, and letting people generally do what they want with it is a good thing.

Library infection is the way to guarantee that others have to fix your immature software because they depend on it. Gnome is a dependency hell.

…”library infection”?? Did you not know that this is how open-source works? You develop something, and then you release it, and then Joe from Nebraska emails you to say “Hey it doesn’t process this file correctly”, and you ask Joe if he could supply a patch ‘cos you’re busy, and he does, and everyone benefits. And what does “Gnome is a dependency hell” have to do with anything? Even if it was true (which I have many doubts about), what bearing does that have on anything we’re discussing?

Novell bought Ximian, put their management in charge and then bought the KDE reference distribution SuSe and standardised it on Gnome regardless of what the customers wanted. Also think of the RedCarpet debacle.

Are you a customer of theirs? If so, why didn’t you switch if you felt so strongly? If not, why do you care? What is the “RedCarpet debacle”?

When you play “evil” or simply “against the rules” of community conduct people will freak and prepare their knives. Intercultural problems are at the core of so many conflict lines. The “flow” is acceptable behaviour. If you distort it and manipulate people, there will be a slashback for you, a slashback that may even appear absolutely unreasonable.

Yes, I agree with you, but I really fail to see the relevance of this point. What, exactly, has Novell done? Signed a few deals with Microsoft? Settled on a desktop system that you don’t like? Pimped a framework that you don’t like? In all cases — so what? Don’t go on about it, just switch to another distro. Simple solution.

As of Mono it was clear to us that we have to take care of the patents but Novell denied the problem. [...]
We need these committments to protect the developer community.

Back it up a few steps. “clear to us“? “we have to take care of”? Who is this “we”? And this “us”?

As a member of “the developer community”, I have a request: please stop trying to “protect” us. We’re fully potty-trained, and we can speak for ourselves. Most of the “issues” that you have raised have precisely nothing to do with anything under discussion. You strike me as a person who is stuck in the past. Please, please, don’t put yourself forward as though you represent the average developer in the “developer community” that you are so intent on protecting.

makomk :

Really, a total rewrite? No code reused at all? That’s… odd. Was it really so bad that it needed scrapping totally?

“Total rewrite” referring to significant changes to the platform. My mistake for using the wrong words. Was just trying to make an emphasis.

Well, as of a couple of weeks ago there possibly is, anyway. Apparently, until the start of July the patch rescanned your entire library every time a file changed, which was less than ideal – and until the 18th it definitely had a bug that made it unsuitable for merging.
Remember, though – when Banshee was initially being considered for merging into Ubuntu, that patch didn’t exist, and the fact the users would riot didn’t stop them seriously considering it. Also, there have been a fair number of past attempts that also didn’t get merged and suffered from code rot.

Banshee was proposed for default and was given a set of problems Ubuntu developers would want fixed before doing so. Thinking that “Banshee is being shoved Ubuntu no matter what” is a mistaken belief. It looks like Banshee won’t make it in Karmic since one of those problems is a larger issues that can’t be easily fixed (or fixed in a hackish way).

So it would seem. Linux users have reason to expect more than just an iTunes clone these days, though.

And it’s being delivered.

I’m sure they do (after all, the iTunes application is very metadata-oriented) – but since they’re copy-protected and can’t be played with other applications… While there is metadata in other video files, it’s not reliably useful for indexing purposes. I’m not sure even MythTV’s video library support bothers reading it.
The hard part of adding video playback probably wouldn’t be the playback itself – both Banshee and Rhythmbox use gstreamer internally, and that makes playing videos quite easy – but doing something sane with the files.

mp3’s were also copy protected in iTunes. And there is still much that can be done with video files. Just because the situation isn’t favorable now shouldn’t mean that one should just give up.

Well, I suppose Windows does (badly) and Apple do too (though that probably has more to do with leveraging the iTunes store – Quicktime is still their main video playback app). Not sure to what extent they actually support managing video collections, aside from ones bought from iTunes, mind.

Actually Windows does it rather nicely IMO. Apple’s iTunes is a gateway to their store and they are pushing it as such. “Get our media content from us”, but that’s their business prerogative.
Gnome and KDE have dedicated video player and media players.

Here we know that Microsoft defends their own definition of openness which includes patents on rand terms and they heavily invest in that kind of lobbying, apparently the feel is that obstruction of interoperability is critical for their platform.

Many companies say they had patents for sole defensive purposes. If so, they should sign an agreement that allows them to enforce their patents only in a defensive manner.

I am sceptical of OIN but it may be the NATO solution. In terms of risks the cheapest investments are interoperability and patent reform lobbying. And then we need a lot of defense alliances all parties are asked to sign when they contribute to free software.

The classical policy of “Ximian” is that they show a proof of concept, inspire the community, and then walk away. Library infection is the way to guarantee that others have to fix your immature software because they depend on it. Gnome is a dependency hell.

Novell bought Ximian, put their management in charge and then bought the KDE reference distribution SuSe and standardised it on Gnome regardless of what the customers wanted. Also think of the RedCarpet debacle.

When you play “evil” or simply “against the rules” of community conduct people will freak and prepare their knives. Intercultural problems are at the core of so many conflict lines. The “flow” is acceptable behaviour. If you distort it and manipulate people, there will be a slashback for you, a slashback that may even appear absolutely unreasonable.

As of Mono it was clear to us that we have to take care of the patents but Novell denied the problem. Suse always supported the fight against software patenting. What we need is to come up with are strategies to follow Ulyx when you cross the sirens. We need a rope and wax. No, the GPLv3 is not the solution. Maybe we need more of this http://www.patentcommons.org/
We need these committments to protect the developer community.

As of now, the move is non-sense. It is simply rushed. RB remains a lot more popular, and works better. Users don’t care about how “vibrant” a developer community is, they care about other things, maybe that’s the reason RB is the second most popular music player…

–
I have come to think this war is unproductive, but for reasons different to Jo’s (not his most coherent post, how odd).

Please assume I am prefixing all the following paragraphs with “in my opinion”, also that the guy making the opinions is just an amateur game developer whose FOSS projects are quite in the recreational/useless side of things. So people that think that only core developers should be heard and the remaining users’ opinions must be thrown to the trash should just ignore this post:

—
First of all, any sort of argument putting Mono’s legality on doubt, ultimately ends up helping only Novell . What that company sells since their deal is peace of mind and other sorts of Kool aids. If there are legal doubts about the legality of Mono, it becomes a selling point to Novell’s SUSE licenses, which have exclusive legal rights from MS according to their deals. So it is actually counter-productive.

Second, I am starting to think Mono is necessary, unfortunately I think that the current way the project is going is not optimal. Mono is necessary to fight .net, not to encourage it. And unfortunately, lack of information makes windows developers think that the windows.forms , activeX, SQL server apps they build on .net are cross platform, and Mono helps there, I don’t think it is intentional though. What Mono should imho do is compete with .net. Let GTK# be promoted as a true way to have cross platform apps, etc, etc, etc.

Regarding the CP, its terms are a joke. I think Mono devs could ask MS for better things, and I think MS would give them such thing, as it is in their interests…. Something like what’s offered by the FSF would be very nice. The CP is useless, and the other similar promise and Novell deal must stop getting used by people as a way to justify Mono’s legality. Their terms are awful. Specifically the alleged Novell exclusivity for mono and moonlight and things like the “Each developer should hire a team of lawyers before deciding to use the GPL”, plus the “cannot change the implementation” language from the promises are essentially bull.

If/when Mono does this, and becomes a good competitor to .net (which is perfectly possible as it is easier to make cross platform apps on it) while not relying legally on these “promises” or deals with Novell, then it will be a great thing for FOSS. As of now, it is even irrelevant (sorry) , the major .net apps (specifically my country’s mandatory tax software) still don’t work. And the mono project supports its claims of legality on the Novell deal and MS promises.

Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that in my ideal world. We have people making sure to state that Mono’s legality is in good shape and does not require any of these promises/deals, I guess it would be much easier without such non-sense as law supporting the idea of software patents.

Mono apps in the default? I really think it is not desirable. For practical purposes, I don’t think the pro-mono guys would love to have Java apps in the default either, and I wouldn’t. It should be a good option for people to be able to install these apps. But the default should try native apps, I mean, really… Call me a zealot or something. That things like banshee plan on actually becoming technology demos featuring a lot of MS technology for no reason makes me wish it was avoided altogether… Or at least, don’t push these apps just for the sole reason of them being written on Mono. The RB case is such an example, there is no reason to do any switch right now. If you want the best app to win, then wait till it is actually the best app…

And finally, stop treating users like crap. Just because someone isn’t a core developer, there is no reason to expel him from the community and begin calling him a faux community member. After all, if there is something this community needs, is users, we already have many developers… Oh, and Don’t forget that RMS, the mother of all ‘zealots’ and kids with a sense of entitlement has contributed much more code than most of you…

Anyway, I guess my point got lost somewhere, for as long as the anti-mono folks focus on looking for legal risks in Mono and as long as Mono guys keep relying on things like the CP and pretend that everything is all right. This debate is pointless.

Let me repeat again what I’ve said above. Banshee 1.x is a completely rewritten code base. I doubt that there is much to compare it to the old 0.x code base. And it was only introduced in June of 2008.

Really, a total rewrite? No code reused at all? That’s… odd. Was it really so bad that it needed scrapping totally?

Trust me when I say that I would also like library watching but I’m not going to nitpick when there is a patch that is just waiting to be merged.

Well, as of a couple of weeks ago there possibly is, anyway. Apparently, until the start of July the patch rescanned your entire library every time a file changed, which was less than ideal – and until the 18th it definitely had a bug that made it unsuitable for merging.

Remember, though – when Banshee was initially being considered for merging into Ubuntu, that patch didn’t exist, and the fact the users would riot didn’t stop them seriously considering it. Also, there have been a fair number of past attempts that also didn’t get merged and suffered from code rot.

And of interesting note is that iTunes still doesn’t have library watching

So it would seem. Linux users have reason to expect more than just an iTunes clone these days, though.

I’m assuming that in a few years when finally standalone players start to support other formats except avi that we will see metadata in video files in a widespread manner. iTunes already offers all of it’s video in mp4v format with correct metadata that is on par with imdb or any other information provider.

I’m sure they do (after all, the iTunes application is very metadata-oriented) – but since they’re copy-protected and can’t be played with other applications… While there is metadata in other video files, it’s not reliably useful for indexing purposes. I’m not sure even MythTV’s video library support bothers reading it.

The hard part of adding video playback probably wouldn’t be the playback itself – both Banshee and Rhythmbox use gstreamer internally, and that makes playing videos quite easy – but doing something sane with the files.

Banshee Media Player. Emphasis on media. The rest of the major OS’s don’t have a gazillion apps for managing various part of your media but one integrated solution.

Well, I suppose Windows does (badly) and Apple do too (though that probably has more to do with leveraging the iTunes store – Quicktime is still their main video playback app). Not sure to what extent they actually support managing video collections, aside from ones bought from iTunes, mind.

Dan Serban :

I’m going to read that as “Mono would never stand on its own feet were it not for Novell developing Banshee & co on top of it.”

Buahahahaha!!!!! Man, you are funny sometimes! So they should create a framework and then NOT use it?

“Dude let’s re-implement the whole .Net stack and then write our applications in Java.”

“That makes so much sense! It’s brilliant. Stallman will be proud of us. And our management. They just love to waste resources on something that is not going to be used.”

One would take it for granted that a company would like to use “it’s” framework for creating applications and services it sells. It’s great marketing all around.

I’m going to read that as “Mono would never stand on its own feet were it not for Novell developing Banshee & co on top of it.”