20090701 SFLC Majority and People Poll and Others Say "No" to Mono

From s5h.net

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There have been two posts about C# and mono on PlanetKDE this week (e.g. Richard and Andreas). The comments on Andreas’ entry are quite cogent, as are those replying to Richard, but it deserves a wider audience. As far as asking RMS at Gran Canaria this weekend, it’s worth a shot if you abstract the question away from specifically-C# and specifically-mono. [...] This isn’t to say there’s not other submarines in the water. We don’t know. Maybe we should. The known submarine should be treated with caution. And the side of caution is to treat C# as a non-Free platform to be avoided.

http://blogs.fsfe.org/adridg/?p=157 MonoSpace Conference Announced http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jun-30-1.html Organised by a Microsoft MVP (no, not Miguel). 5 easy steps to flip a burger, 1 easy step to eat it

Pressure Novell and Microsoft (as some of you work in both the companies) to change the agreement to look like this: Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google and its affiliates hereby grant to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. Is that easy. Everybody wins. Even Microsoft. If you don’t, don’t expect concerns to go away anytime soon.

http://www.stefanoforenza.com/5-easy-steps-to-flip-a-burger-1-easy-step-to-eat-it/ Will Stallman C# warning fall flat? http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4445

No (62%) Total Votes: 557

GreyGeek:

De Icaza has been trying for EIGHT YEARS to get a distro to become totally dependent on MONO, and since Novell bought De Icaza, both have increased their propaganda efforts, with the assistance of Microsoft TEs, trolls, astroturfers and fanbois. IF MONO is what its advocates are saying it is (the best thing since sliced bread and safe to use), it would already be in widespread adoption by now. The fact that you can count dependent programs on the fingers of one hand says VOLUMES about how the Linux community as a whole totally distrusts MONO. They are right to hold that distrust. Java is open source and is MUCH less susceptible to patent attacks. It has CONSIDERABLY MORE tools and applications built with it and for it than MONO does. Qt4 is GPL'd and has an excellent API and development tools, bar none. It also has excellent apps built by it and tools available for it. MONO serves no purpose, except to raise the risk of patent attack or of being left in isolation WHEN Microsoft adds extensions to .NET that patents will prevent being added to MONO. This is backwards from Microsoft's usual attack mode.

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-06-30-008-35-OP-CY-MS-0002 Sydney Water dumps GroupWise

Sydney Water has decided to migrate its email platform from Novell's GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and is looking for a contractor to help implement the change.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sydney-Water-dumps-GroupWise/0,130061733,339297128,00.htm?omnRef=1337 Stallman warns of Mono 'risk'

GNU project founder Richard Stallman has called on developers to pull back from Mono, arguing that increasing use of the open-source toolset could prompt legal action by Microsoft.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39668698,00.htm Mono is not a patent threat for Debian

I recently came across this very interesting article, written in 1999, which details the tactics used by Microsoft to fight IBM. They obviously saw OS/2 as a threat. Back then, Windows 95 was the trading token. They could have caused IBM a great deal of harm shall they refused to license it to them, but it seems the idea of subjugating IBM was more appealing. This is how Garry Norris (IBM) put it: “Microsoft repeatedly said we would suffer in terms of prices, terms, conditions and support programs, as long as we were offering competing products.“ “[Microsoft] insisted that IBM sell 300,000 copies of Windows 95 in the first five months or face a 20 percent price increase“ Nice deal, eh? Make your dependancy on Windows 95 stronger, or else we’ll use your existing dependancy on Windows 95 against you. No surprise IBM abandoned the PC market. Are Red Hat and Sun/Oracle set on the same direction?

http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/mono-is-not-a-patent-threat-for-debian/ Dear Richard,

So, Debian didn't change "the default installation" (whatever that's supposed to be) but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).

http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/tomboy-mono Debian - Mono is not in our default installation

In response to the open letter written by free software guru Richard Stallman about the Mono problem, Alexander Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesperson for the GNU/Linux distribution has pointed out that Debian has no plans to include the controversial programming environment in the default GNOME installation. Stallman, who opened his letter with "Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy", had suggested that Debian were including the Mono libraries for anyone using Debian with GNOME.

http://www.h-online.com/open/Debian-Mono-is-not-in-our-default-installation--/news/113660 As It Stands, Ubuntu Has No Issues With Mono http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Nw Ubuntu’s Position on Mono Revealed (Update) http://www.itnewstoday.com/?p=606 Mono Discussion: Stallman Warns, Ubuntu Dismissive http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Mono-Discussion-Stallman-Warns-Ubuntu-Dismissive

Our company also takes the potential threat of patents seriously. As such we stand by the position of the SFLC, FSF and RMS in that Mono is just too dangerous. We are therefore going to look at switching from Ubuntu to Fedora. The threat is too great to ignore. I wish the UTB would reconsider this as more harm will come to Ubuntu rather than good.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.devel/28569 Ubuntu says yes to Mono, SFLC says no

The Ubuntu technical board has announced that it sees no reason to consider a dependency on Mono as an issue when suggesting applications to be included in the default set included in the GNU/Linux distribution. [...] The Software Freedom Law Centre, which provides "legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free, Libre and Open Source Software" has a diametrically different view. Following the statement made by Free Software Foundation chief Richard M. Stallman against Debian's inclusion of Mono as a default, SFLC technology director, Bradley Kuhn , has written an essay, backing Stallman's view about it being better to avoid a language like C#.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26013/1090/ On Debian and Mono http://photosinensis.livejournal.com/744601.html