For what else could it be, if not pure-as-the-driven-snow coincidence?

Perhaps we will see some private correspondance revealed and some third-hand gossip in blog comments about RMS and college girls working on the GNU Project next? Perhaps someone might call RMS a “fascistic extremist“?

Now that’s The Spirit of Fauxpen Source™ in action!

It’s not what you think, baby.

In a numbers-heavy blog post, Bertrand Loretz tries to make the argument that “Banshee is a GNOME Project”  and not a ”Novell project”. While I understand why one might want to distance themselves from Novell, you’re going to have a rough time trying that with Banshee.

For starters Novell owns the Banshee name, logo and icon. One might think that pretty much seals the deal?

Another point of interest is that “one of the purposes building Banshee was to showcase building an application on Mono.”

There’s also this bit right there on the Banshee “About” Page:

Novell employs Aaron and Gabriel Burt to work on Banshee.

So, just going by Mr. Loretz’s own numbers, at least 70.4% of the code contributions came from the 2 developers Novell is paying to work on Banshee.

So, Novell owns the project name and likeness, and pays for the overwhelming majority of the actual code, but it’s not a “Novell project”?

I guess this is similar logic to how the CodePlex Foundation is not a Microsoft organization?

Here’s your fries, sir. By the way, I really like to think of myself as an actor.

As far as Banshee being a “GNOME project” – Mr. Loretz’s other prong of argument - Banshee is not on the list of GNOME projects, although I’m sure Team Mono is doing everything they can to get that damned Rhythmbox off the list and replace it with Banshee.

Two for one special

There’s another nice bit of irony I ran across while visiting the Banshee page. They link to the FSF’s essay, “The Free Software Definition“. I find this ironic because Team Mono has nearly surpassed Microsoft as the most vocal and vicious source of criticism against the FSF and “Free Software”.

Predictions

Behold my crystal ball: there will be an upsurge in talk of Banshee as a “GNOME project”, “part of GNOME” and so forth. Team Mono has expressed that GNOME should be built on Mono numerous times, and they will continue to push that effort from every angle. Banshee is just another vector – not only serving as displacing a non-Mono part of GNOME (rhythmbox), but also rolling Moonlight into GNOME.

So, Mono gets a health check and we get a nice de Icaza quote:

I think it’s going to be the next big thing, and I think the GNOME community is going to jump to it, if only because I’m going to make it really simple for them to do it. All of these people are extremely talented, they can see through the bullshit, and they’ll see that Mono is a good thing for them.

Say what you mean

I love it when people say what they mean. And Mr. de Icaza does just that, pulling back curtains and casting light on motivations and thought processes.

First it reinforces the point Mr. de Icaza intends to do everything he can to push Mono into GNOME. Everyone knows this anyway, so I don’t know why some people try to pretend otherwise. I guess they think using code phrases like “best-of-breed” or talking about how “Mono is just another choice” are not transparent euphemisms?

Next, it reinforces the point that Mr. de Icaza was totally serious back when he said that “Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET” – that’s exactly what he thought then, and exactly what he thinks now. It’s dressed up a bit in pseudo-technical rhetoric, but the underlying desire is the same.

(Yes, I’ve read his “long reply” several times, and I think if you bother to actually read it you’ll see he never once refutes or backs away from his desire to build GNOME in .NET. Rather, he plays a few semantic games about the Register’s headline and then basically goes on to argue ”I can’t change GNOME single-handedly, but I’m sure you’ll see that Mono is awesome rocks, so I’m going to need your support to make it happen.”)

I find it interesting that de Icaza thinks people “can see through the bullshit”. The bullshit, sir, is your company striking secretive patent deals with Microsoft. The bullshit, sir, is the demonization and disinformation you and your supporters gleefully engage in. You can bet that people can see right through that bullshit, which is exactly why you are fighting an uphill battle as Microsoft’s champion in FLOSS territory.

Finally it is all topped off with some amazingly arrogant nannying where Mr. de Icaza decides what is a “good thing” and for who. It never ceases to amaze me that Team Mono sees no problems at all in telling people to just shut up and take your medicine, it’s good for you.

Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before

I’d like to tie this article back into a few points I’ve made here in passing, but I haven’t covered in great depth:

Mono PR is Terrible

Not that I really want to see them improve it, of course. But the entire image and positioning of Mono has been bumbled right out of the starting gates. This isn’t because it’s evil – that’s really irrelevant – evil things are successfully promoted and good things fail in PR battles all the time.

The H article calls this “political ineptitude”, and it is probably too late in the game for Novell to change things up.

Textbook example of how not to manage the public image of a controversial project, though: “Here’s some crap I know about 90% of you are going to have at least some reservations about. Well, all the smart people agree with me and plus I know what’s good for you, so get on board already!”

Team Mono is not going to stop

Think back on some of the positions Team Mono took in the past: Winforms was the only non-ECMA bits of Mono, no non-ECMA bits are even needed, Mono isn’t going to be used for anything critical, no one is trying to build GNOME in Mono.

But, now we have people trying to get ever more Mono apps in distros by default. We have people wanting to rewrite parts of those apps, and perhaps even parts of the desktop in Moonlight. The expansion and promotion of Mono grows.

And it will not stop – because people do not give up ground, and they do not remain content with what they have. You can rest assured that whatever limits are outlined today will move tomorrow; whatever assurances and promises once made will be forgotten when Team Mono casts an eye on new territory.

That’s how people are in general. It becomes doubly true when you add in the financial and idealogical drive behind Mono.

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.

“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.

That was a pretty strained opening. Nevertheless, we proceed. Just wanted to point out a few other people’s take on the on-going character assassination of rms. Each one is worth a read, including comments. You might see a pattern developing.

All hail the windmill tilters

In which Christian Schaller expresses his thoughts on the matter. We get some really vile allegations in the comments section by the creater of the “afraid of code” slur-meme:

Given that death threats have been sent to Mono developers frequently by said fundamentalist fans of Dr. Stallman, we instead decided to launch the “I am not afraid of people writing code” meme.

ps. Yes, death threats are exactly and precisely the level that these fundamentalist people have reached. And yes, the Mono guys are exactly and precisely the most pragmatic guys (about such things) in the community. But you can’t ignore certain things anymore. They are getting increasingly fanatic, increasingly crazy and Dr. Stallman is increasingly positioning himself in support of those idiots.

Once confronted, he does the old reliable backpedalling dance. Read the comments for context and weak sauce explanations. “I meant that rms was supporting those idiots, not the things they do! It’s totally not the same thing!”

By the way, there is an interesting entry on the gentleman’s blog: Why females should participate in agile software development. It is because their brains are different, you see. Soon, I hope to see the series continued with such enlightened entries as “Why Asians should participate in mathematical software development” and “Why Blacks should participate in sports software development (but not hockey) .” Also, Stallman is a sexist.

There’s another nice appearance of the main motivator behind the recent sexism scare, who humbly asks us “were the folks who weren’t African-Americans who joined and vocally supported the Civil Rights movement in the 60s wrong to do so?”

Yes. You read that right. This man’s fight, bold and uncomprising in principle – is to be compared to the Civil Rights movement. Oh! To be alive now, when such magnificent humanitarian efforts are a-foot! One is truly honored to read the words of such a courageous leader.

Once again on RMS and sexism

In which Patryk Zawadzki expresses his thoughts on the matter.

Again we are treated to some keen insight by Rev. Dr. Martin “Lefty” King:

Yeah! And all those folks who joined the Civil Rights movements in the ’60s who didn’t happen to be African-American were wrong to do so. After all, the African-Americans should be perfectly capable of complaining themselves if they see fit.

Right?

Hell no! Struggle on, Brother! Too long have our Software Sisters sat behind a GUI while the Stallman lorded emacs over her! All that is short come to an end now that the Rev. Dr. Martin “Lefty” King has struck out against the Great Satan rms, fearless and bold behind his keyboard, uncompromising in his campaign of slander, lies and deceit!

Again, read the comments for the full on self-righteous martyrdom of this joker.

Don’t forget a little bit of the Godwin before you go though:

Ever hear the one that starts, “When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a Jew” and ends “When they came for me, there was no one left to say anything”…?

So, now it is Rev. Dr. Martin “Lefty” King-Schindler I guess. Stay classy, San Diego.

Summary

So now that we have Stallman painted with the “sexist” brush, I see some people casting glances to the “Death Threat Crazy” and “Nazi” brushes.

Let me clear: I wasn’t at the conference, and I don’t know exactly what Stallman said. It is possible he made an inappropriate remark. Some reasonable people say it was a joke gone bad; stuff like that happens.But, even if it were an honest-to-good malicious sexist remark (unlikely considering Stallman has a long record of supporting women’s rights in his writings and interviews), the character assassination has been totally disproportionate to the event. He may indeed need a word of correction from a trusted friend or even a letter of concern from a respected group. What he doesn’t need or deserve is a pack of snarling jackals lumping him in with lunatics making death threats and freaking Nazis. (Assuming the death threat thing is legit, I haven’t looked it up. I know I got a lot of death threats from owning peeps in Quake, so that junk can be serious business.)

Apologia

This is another one of those times I have to adopt a mocking tone, because if I were to give these cretins a serious response I would work myself into a right powerful rage, disturbing weather systems and startling genteel ladies everywhere with my sexist body. I know this is not quite up to my normal Aristotelean discourse. Double your money back if not satisfied.

And they have. Again. And Again. And Again.The push is on to paint him as a “sexist”. Watch as mono supporters everywhere jump on board. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump.

These attacks are especially vile, being in no way related to factual or technical issues but pure personal attacks. It is 100% Grade-A Columbian Smear Powder. A smooth white line of character assassination.

If one were interested in getting a more rounded picture of Stallman’s attitude, one could consider his comments when asked directly about women and Free Software:

I am strongly in favor of equal rights for women, and always have been. I think that I somehow escaped learning the ideas of “machismo”.
I never learned to think that women ought to be subordinate to men, so I never had to unlearn it.

The ethical ideas of free software are gender-neutral. Human rights apply the same to everyone, both rich or poor, both male and female.
Every woman should be free to share and change software, just as every man should be.

I can’t suggest any specific “role for women” in the Free Software Movement, because the very idea would be sexist.

But that would put the kibosh on the latest Two Minute Hate from Team Mono and the Lynchmob Lackeys.

Read the interview. Read his website. Read his essays. Educate yourself if you don’t know what rms is about.

The sad thing is, much of the damage is already done. Stallman is facing a concerted attack on his character and competence and stands little chance of coming through it unscathed. Such is the penalty for daring to critize Mono. This garbage is already all over Planet Gnome, Planet Debian, Monologue and spreading.

“A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” – Charles Spurgeon

It’s an informative article, mainly focused on the technical aspects of mono as it relates to a developement choice, and not too much on the larger issues.

There is one especially illuminating quote from Ian Murdock (the founder of Debian) in there:

It’s also worth noting that many of the high-profile Mono applications are written and maintained by Novell. That’s a pretty classic platform strategy—try to get your platform broader distribution (in this case, integrated into the Gnome desktop) by creating compelling applications that require it.

This sums up a couple of my issues in a very diplomatic way. There is an aggressive PR push for Mono, which forces people to take sides and almost the entire strategy is based on getting a freakin’ note-taking program in GNOME.

I’m sure Tomboy is a nice app and all that, but if any non-mono team was to come up with a sweet little calculator which required a 50+MB framework just to run it, they would be laughed out of the room. Yet somehow this note-taking app – for which there are several alternatives and one exact C++ port – is vital to inclusion of the GNOME desktop.

I’m also sad to see Mark Shuttlework spouting the awesome rocks line about Mono:

The driver for Mono in Ubuntu is the set of applications, which are written in it. Since we think they’re the best-in-class free software solutions, we want to make sure they are up to date and well integrated, and that drives Mono work.

So tired of hearing how mono apps are “best-in-class” or “best-of-breed”. If you look at any user feedback for Ubuntu, the vast majority of users do not want the mono solution. Beyond that, if you ask any 3 Linux users what the “best app” for a specific use is, you will get 5 answers. Most features != “Best”, usually Most features == “Bloat”.

The continuing insistence that the mono alternative just happens to be best-of-breed is not convincing, it stinks of propaganda.

Most of the Q&A are purely factual or based on technical issues, and there is really not much to be much to be said  about them. The problem is when crap like this pops out:

Q: Why not ship GNote instead by default?
A: GNote was written for bad reasons, without even respecting the GPL copyright requirements. But more importantly, its maintenance model is going to make it only follow behind the Tomboy lead, as any code changes in Tomboy will need to be translated to C++. It also supports less languages and less features. Furthermore, it was introduced in Debian for political reasons, by a maintainer who doesn’t use it and isn’t involved in GNOME maintenance.

I told you all that mono FUD on Gnote was still working. The author is questioned on this in the comments:

skx 2009-07-06 11:43 am UTC
“GNote was written for bad reasons, without even respecting the GPL copyright requirements.”
Please be more specific.
“Bad reasons” I can infer means that it was written purely to duplicate an existing program in a different implementation language. That’s either bad, or necessary, depending on what you think of Mono.

But you suggest GNote doesn’t respect the GPL, and so I wonder in what sense you mean that? Certainly the code is available and open. I do hope you’re not conflating the reimplementation in some fashion..

np237 2009-07-06 11:57 am UTC
The GNote author did not even keep the copyright notices from Tomboy. I don’t know whether this has been fixed in the meantime, but that tells a lot.

skx 2009-07-06 11:59 am UTC
Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, and if so you could point it out to me.

But :
Tomboy = Note application written in Mono.
GNote = Near-Identical clone written in not-Mono

Given that the implementation languages are different I’m struggling to see how there could be any applicable copyright issues.

(Unless you’re refering to things such as icons, media files, etc. Clearly the code is in a different language and even if the end result is look-and-feel identical there can’t be any actual infringement.)

np237 2009-07-06 12:02 pm UTC (link)
It’s not a clone. It’s a line-by-line ripoff of the C# code, in C++.

mono apologists have long been trying to tar Gnote with “copyright violation”, you can see Jo Shields waft it around a little bit here:

If Debian’s FTP Master determines that Gnote is permissible for inclusion in Debian (I hear FTP Master has been particularly stringent these days in checking copyright) then great.

And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Well, now that the FTP Master has determined that Gnote is permissible for inclusion in Debian, I’m sure we can count on you to support Gnote and stop insinuating there are bad-faith copyright issues? It looks to me the worst you can say about the man is he tried something and didn’t get away with it – and that’s the most malicious interpretation. It seems much more likely he either didn’t care or didn’t get around to all the boring-ass copyright notice updating while he was excited about writing code.

I mean, I know the first thing I do when I start coding is all the licensing and copyright parts, but maybe not everyone starts there.

Of course, now that copyright issues can no longer stand up, np237 falls back to “it’s a ripoff”. It seems clear to be that Gnote copyright FUD has not FAILEN here. This comes across as a very unfair assessment of Gnote.

Q: Isn’t GNote much smaller?
A: Not really. C++ bindings are larger than CLI bindings, so the only real differences are the size of the Mono interpreter, and the size of translations. In the end, Tomboy with all its dependencies is only 10 MiB larger; that includes 3 times as many translations, and some important functionality.

This is a fair enough point – and I’m sure np237 knows the space Debian has to work with far better than I, I just think it is funny that 10MiB here is no big deal, where 6MiB was the entire basis for Jo Shields to start off his “out with Rhythmbox, in with Banshee” drive. And those 6MiB weren’t even accurate! Ha, such is the internets.

Q: What is the agenda of Roy Schestowitz, Sam Varghese, Robert Millan and their friends?
A: What they are doing is giving credit to the Microsoft FUD in order to also scare consumers and developers away from Mono. They want to scare them away to other free software environments, but what they achieve is scaring people away to buy Microsoft products instead. It is tempting to conclude, because of the result, that they are employed by Microsoft underhand, but applying Hanlon’s razor, I think they are just incredibly incompetent, to the point where they are dangerous. These people are toxic to the community, and we really need them to shut up. If they ever reach their goal and destroy a great piece of free software like Mono, they will go on and find something else to destroy. Remember, their goal is to SDD: scare, disrupt and destroy. You cannot build anything useful or interesting with such goals.

Q: But Richard Stallman says they are right!
A: RMS is also the guy who wants us to ship non-free documentation. I don’t think RMS has enough connection left to the real world for his opinion to be con

Come on – is this really necessary? The vast majority of the Q&A are solid, factual responses to questions people are likely to have. To end on an a bullshit ass personal attack just makes the whole list look questionable. If you have 20 facts and 2 pieces of obvious bullshit, the 20 facts don’t make the bullshit look good. The bullshit makes all the facts look bad.

Right, but what do YOU think about it?

Brace yourself … if Debian wants to install mono in a gnome package, they should. That’s right, I said they should. Mono is a part of GNOME via Tomboy right now. I think that is a horrible situation, and I think Gnote should replace Tomboy in GNOME immediately if not sooner, but to beat up Debian for installing what the user asks for is misplacing the blame.

As I understand it, Debian is focused on the “Free-ness” of the package. I don’t think a credible argument can be made that Tomboy is non-Free software, because the patent and political issues don’t affect that aspect of Tomboy or mono. Now, that’s not saying that there aren’t a host of problems with mono, but I’m not going to try to pretend like it doesn’t meet the guidlines for Free and Open Source software.

Mr. Neary adopts a reasonable enough position: don’t encourage mono, but he disagrees with rms that active discouragement is the proper course. He then rightfully goes on to point out the law is an ass.

The part I take issue with is the suggest that “ignoring the patent system” completely is the right answer, and “let the chips fall where they may”. This sounds nice and idealistic, but let me raise on issue:

Most companies are not going to “let the chips fall where they may”

You may get a brave individual to make a stand for a cause, but you will have a hell of a time finding a for-profit commercial entity to do so. That’s just the nature of things…and it is something that Novell and Microsoft exploit: time and time again, codephrases like “respecting intellectual property” and “piece of mind” waft up from the bowels of PR departments, always inferring (if not flatly stating) that Novell/Microsoft is the only safe choice.

Therefore, I see ignoring patents to develop on mono, but “respecting” them in Novell PR as developers rewarding Novell’s tactics. That just rubs me the wrong way.

You see, I  think Novell should be at Microsoft’s door everyday saying, “Listen. You guys have to clear up this issue – it’s too divisive and it’s hurting us all.” But they aren’t. Novell is content – if not downright pleased – to play up their exclusive arrangement with Microsoft and other proprietary sources. In fact, that’s largely the backbone of Novell’s current strategy – and just happens to be the vast majority of the Novell revenue stream as well.

So, it’s a bit strange to suggest that some individual developer or non-Novell project should be the one making the stand. It is Novell that is pushing mono – so it is Novell’s responsibility to make sure everything is clear for everybody. Until they can do that the community has the legal and ethical responsibility to limit the spread of mono.