Heya,
For those who haven’t been following closely, the explanation behind Jo Shields’ recent post instructing us on the greatness of Mono and the Microsoft .NET approach to software development could be found in the fact that Josselin Mouette has decided that Mono must be part of the default desktop install for Debian Squeeze.
The reason for that is so Tomboy, the note-taking application, can be included now. Well I’m not really sure a note-taking application really needs to be in the default selection, to the point that it justifies dragging ~40 MiB of dependencies into the first CD. However, being the maintainer for Gnote in Debian, there’s one thing I know. I’ll explain with two screenshots:
Well, so which is which again? This is really just the surface. If you try both programs you’ll see that they behave so similarly, to the point that most users couldn’t tell the difference (unless they depend on some of the few less noticeable features of Tomboy that haven’t been ported yet).
I guess somehow I could be persuaded that note-taking is so important it must be in our default package selection, but what is the reason we want to drag all the .NET stack in to get the same functionality? So far I haven’t heard any, I only hear some bragging about this development environment being so “amazingly productive” and then some rant about those detractors being a bunch “trolls” and “back-seat drivers”.
I have to admit, however, that I admire Jo’s sincerity when he makes this point: it’s not the users who want it, it’s the developers. It can’t be denied that .NET was indeed instrumental in the development of Gnote. Perhaps the real usefulness of .NET is in writing new code which can later be ported to C++ in order to run faster, consume less memory and support more architectures. One can only thank them for that.
Correction:50 MiB is the measure in Lenny. With current sid, Tomboy drags in ~40 MiB, not ~50 MiB. Thanks to Jo for letting me^H^H others know.
June 12, 2009 at 17:10 |
Mono in the default install… This will be the end of my looong looove stooory with Debian.
Bye
July 31, 2009 at 00:35 |
you don’t need to tasksel desktop, you know… how do you install your debian? All of my machines are debootstrap’d, and none of them but my development machines have mono. One day I hope to write some web apps in Mono, though, so maybe my web servers will have it as well.
We’re sorry to see you go, but you can easily remove mono and its deps by running:
$ sudo apt-get remove mono*
or some small variation thereon.
Good luck out there.
June 12, 2009 at 17:48 |
for the love of god, dont let them put mono in the default install just because of a little app not used by many anyway. I’m sure many would apprechiate it if the mono-based app is replaced with your port.
kthxbai
July 31, 2009 at 00:40 |
I use Banshee because it works better than Rhythmbox. I switched just about the same time as it was added to the `tasksel –task-packages desktop` . Maybe I’m not your average user, though?
What do you folks think about Banshee and Rhythmbox?
June 12, 2009 at 18:04 |
Of course, with tomboy being a Recommends and the default being to install Recommends in lenny…
June 12, 2009 at 21:05 |
Actually, Recommends have never been included in new installs. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=388290
June 12, 2009 at 18:33 |
I’m with the Unhappy Debian User… if the Debian Project don’t kick of mono – my 6 years with debian will ending this summer.
July 31, 2009 at 00:43 |
on what grounds?
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
June 12, 2009 at 18:38 |
Sadly it have to go that way. Im not sure why people wants to push .NET so much on the Linux platform but i think making it default its a mistake. Writing test applications and then replace them with something faster sounds more natural. If the developers want it so much, just dont include it in the first media.
July 31, 2009 at 00:51 |
You know… When I created the mono group on launchpad, I received an email from Mark asking me what my motivations were. The 2007-2008 DPL very closely reviewed Mono and was invaluable in helping us to publish the c♯ bindings to gtkglarea.
http://packages.debian.org/sid/libgtkglarea0.0-cil
I think that it says something about a project when concerns such as these are immediately responded to by its leadership.
June 12, 2009 at 18:50 |
Maybe you should review the diff for 20303 and then apologise to Joss.
June 12, 2009 at 21:04 |
Hi,
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I think you got confused when interpreting the diff.
June 13, 2009 at 10:53 |
You’re very quick to make personal attacks, but not so quick to verify your facts.
Thankfully http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=532355 is very clear.
June 13, 2009 at 14:54 |
AH, I didn’t make any personal attack. I recall Joss calling me “troll”, “stupid” and a few other things, but no matter how hard he tries I’m not going to argue on that level. I hope you can still make the distinction between one thing and the other.
June 14, 2009 at 16:04 |
“The only reason why tomboy isn’t suitable for the default installed that
is mentioned in that conversation is the size of its dependency tree.
Not your little political agenda.”
Classy.
Also, we are talking about a difference of 15MB here. You might want to point that out in an update.
June 12, 2009 at 19:03 |
I prefer netinstall myself (and don’t use tasks) but please, PLEASE don’t impose an Ubuntu on us.
June 12, 2009 at 19:16 |
I really appreciate GNote but adding every new Mono based application will reduce the amount of disk space needed. Banshee is one example. Most of dependencies are there and will be there. A hello world application (I don’t know other good example) have some kilos of disk space, when a 4k on disk. Also, extending it,
I see mono on other way better than C++ and rewriting: is about bug fixing, development time, compiling time, etc.
Also, improving Mono will have a great impact for all Mono applications, and it will give lower recompiling/etc. costs in developer time. This I think are the biggest advantages of Mono also. Mono is much more improved (along with hardware) and it will still do. Also, having a mem leak in GNote will mean that your GNote application may need to be restarted once at 2 hours (let’s say, for a constannt mem leak), when a GC based approach (even Mono’s one is bad) may really be a relief on your computer resources.
June 13, 2009 at 16:15 |
Could you please repeat that, in English? I can’t understand a thing that you are saying (Though on second read I get the impression that you like Mono).
June 13, 2009 at 16:45 |
Uhm, well about the mem leak you’re not exactly correct.
On one hand, garbage collection is available on C and C++ for those who want it (Gnote uses it).
On the other, garbage collection doesn’t prevent *all* leaks, just some of them (the GC can’t tell whether a pointer is still around for a purpose or you simply left it over). In fact I heard (but not verified) that if you run Tomboy for several days, it’s memory footprint will increase noticeably.
June 12, 2009 at 19:24 |
Time to switch to Fedora which actually is moving away from Mono. Fedora 12 will replace Tomboy with Gnote as the default note taking app. Awesome
June 16, 2009 at 18:58 |
So time to get out of Fedora… Good Bye old friend.
June 12, 2009 at 19:47 |
WTF is that shit? Don’t you have anything better to do than trolling around?
June 12, 2009 at 20:52 |
This is a friendly, well-argumented piece of opinion. What do you have to offer, Joss?
June 12, 2009 at 21:32 |
I have to offer that I care for our users and that you don’t. However you just motivated me to write a rant about your stupidity instead of doing something our users care for.
http://np237.livejournal.com/23901.html
June 13, 2009 at 06:50 |
First, I’m not a Mono fan or even a Gnome user.
Joss explained in his blog post pretty well that Tomboy was not the (sole) reason for pulling mono in, Gnome Do and F-Spot are. Can you make another blog-post, with side by side screenshots of these applications and their C/C++ counterparts?
Also, he didn’t add a dependency on tomboy, but a dependency on tomboy or gnote. I don’t get what the hell you are complaining about.
And “I’ll talk about it on d-d if Joss does as I say” is just plain stupid. Sorry. Why don’t you help out the Gnome team instead of making shit up.
June 13, 2009 at 10:25 |
Joss,
I read your post, and all I see in it is a personal attack. You’re ignoring my points, and instead make up accusations to throw against me. I’m sorry that you feel distressed, but it’s not my fault.
June 12, 2009 at 19:51 |
yes, same here :/
June 12, 2009 at 20:02 |
I just don’t need mono, why would I? for a single app???
Been a GNOME user for years I’m willing to drop my favorite desktop environment if it includes mono by default, but hey! Debian is getting a step forward(?) just to meet some dependencies.
As Debian user I’m a little upset about this.
July 31, 2009 at 01:09 |
$ sudo apt-get remove mono*
June 12, 2009 at 20:03 |
Not that I favour Tomboy over Gnote (I don’t) but I read elsewhere that F-Spot was also going to be included, which would pull in the Mono stack anyway. I’m not really sure of something else that is Free and comparable to F-Spot (though I’d be interested in such a thing) like Gnote is to Tomboy. I suppose, if Mono will be brought in anyway to support F-Spot, it makes it easier to consider Tomboy over Gnote, and Tomboy is in someways livelier and “upstrream” of Gnote (in that Gnote has to chase compatibility for now).
I for one love Vala.
June 12, 2009 at 20:39 |
Who do you guys think you are? OpenSuse?
June 12, 2009 at 23:53 |
I LOLed at this because the first distro that worked OK in this laptop was OpenSUSE and I had to stuck up with MONO and dependence-hell for a couple of months, until a new release of Ubuntu.
But Ubuntu is going the same way… Sigh.
June 12, 2009 at 21:42 |
Jesus, so that hateful, disrespectful troll Josselin Mouette is still a Debian dev? Nobody, but nobody is so wonderful that they should get away with being such a jerk. It is sick and a slap in the face to the good people in Debian to tolerate such a psycho,.
June 13, 2009 at 14:59 |
Hi,
I don’t like Joss response, I think it’s unnecessarily hostile and very disrespectful. That said, calling him a psycho is not the right way to complain about it.
June 13, 2009 at 16:03 |
No, I really believe he is nuts, and it is a longstanding big ugly flaw in the Debian world that toxic people are tolerated. He has been attacking and chasing people out of Debian for a long time. And here you are with the old Debian double-standard– must be nice to the poison people, but it’s Ok for them to attack anyone and everyone. Somethings never change :(
June 13, 2009 at 16:37 |
The same kind of things were said about Sven Luther, and I don’t support the project’s decision to put him aside.
As for Joss, I don’t recall seeing this attitude from him before. Usually, he just ignored or dismissed my queries.
June 12, 2009 at 23:26 |
Robert, if you want to talk about including mono/tomboy or not then please talk about it on debian-devel. Blogging about it instead seems a clear message that you’re not interested in having a productive discussion.
June 13, 2009 at 03:36 |
Hi Steve,
Sure, that would be very nice. If you persuade Joss to revert his change untill there’s a clear consensus, I’ll be happy to talk about it on debian-devel.
June 15, 2009 at 10:28 |
The normal way of getting a developer to change a decision they’ve made is to convince them with technical arguments. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense for a technical decision to be reversed because someone has a criticism they are holding to ransom until it has been.
June 15, 2009 at 11:16 |
Jon,
You can’t have a constructive discussion about something Joss is proposing when Joss has already made the decision himself and committed it. If you try, you’ll get a fake discussion instead, where you’re sort of “begging” Joss to DTRT and propose first, then discuss, then commit. Believe me, I’ve been there.
It’s disingenuous at best to try asking me for something that I’m not in a position to provide. The implication (intentional or not) is that it is my fault that Joss isn’t being constructive.
June 13, 2009 at 16:07 |
Steven, I’m glad he blogged about it because it affects users. Keeping it on the devel lists is sneaky. It’s the same debate as on Ubuntu– why should users be forced to remove Mono apps and its components from the default install when it is so controversial, and there is no compelling reason to include it? Please spare me the ‘best of breed’ twaddle, that is debatable at best. Leave it in the repos, don’t put it in the default. The dev’s attitudes alone should discredit it (Joss and jo), though the merits (or lack) are adequate.
June 14, 2009 at 04:58 |
>The dev’s attitudes alone should discredit it
Its the GNOME way: we know better than users.
Customization and functionality? No, no… you will take what we give and like it.
Nothing really has changed over the years.
I always find it ironic that GNOME was created because Miguel didnt think the non-free, at the time, Qt widget toolkit wasnt ‘pure enough’ and he is now fighting on the other end of a similar battle. Always makes me laugh.
I see nothing in Mono and expecially C++ which is superior to what we use now. And the absolute worst reason that is always brought up is ‘we could get more Windows developer’ to work on open source projects if we use more Mono and C++.
Honestly, i dont care and I dont think this should be a goal. Most developers of a certain age have all worked on proprietary projects at some poitn in their lives and we havent had problems starting this free software thing or getting people interested since then. Why this need to bring them in? Not everyone has to like you or be like you. I dont feel a need for open source to be everywhere. You want to write stuff for Apple and Windows, feel free. Are we going to stagnate because there is a lack of interest in the non-Windows world languages?
No.
My brother in law teaches in university and he has the students who want to get a career as quick as possible and think that C++ and .NET is the way. His best students try to absorb and learn as much as possible. The projects they work on their own are almost all FLOSS related. Being portuguese, he also travels often to Brazil for conferences and lectures and is in contact with students there as well.
Yeah, Terrence whose been at the company since the late 80’s might have problem doing a late career switch but interest from the new generation in writing in Python, Perl, Java and of course C hasnt diminished a bit. You would be hard pressed to find a student a dozen years ago who knew what free software was. Now, every single student has heard of it and 30-50% have already worked on such a project when they start their first years.
So why this ‘we have to get Windows developers interested’?
And Im not a fanatic like some people like to characterize anyone who openly questions the merits of Mono; my favorite browser is Opera and my favorite app is Skype.
I’d like to close this off with a famous quote in the free software community about GNOME developers:
This “users are idiots, and are confused by functionality” mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.
Please, just tell people to use KDE.
Linus Benedict Torvalds
Dec.2005
They might have hired better PR people like Stormy since then to project a more user firiendly appearance but has the underlying mentality towards users changed?
June 15, 2009 at 10:32 |
Sneaky? It’s a development issue and the dev list is wide open! The complaint is not that this has been raised on a blog, but that it has been raised on a blog *and not in the right place* — if a discussion on -devel was opened in tandem with a blog post, that would be fine.
Every single commit made to every single package “affects users”. When you (as a user) use a distribution you are delegating decisions to developers – that’s what a distro is. Otherwise you’d build your desktop up from scratch. One advantage of the distro approach is you can dip your toe in and only involve yourself in decisions that you care about.
June 13, 2009 at 19:58 |
Dont discuss toxic stuff in public. The dev list is fine though. Then the stupid users will not need to know. Way to go. One less debian user here. You sound just like billybaba.
June 15, 2009 at 10:28 |
I’m sure you will be missed.
June 13, 2009 at 21:41 |
If you limited discussion to the dev list you would never hear from end users like me who are upset beyond words at this development.
Virtually all of the end users I know who are using debian now will leave debian if this really comes to pass. Sure if you limit it to developers you might have more support for including Mono, but you will lose your users without ever knowing why.
It is a great service to have opened up the discussion to users as well.
June 13, 2009 at 02:17 |
I want no Mono app and i definitely do not want my distro to depend on Mono. First thing I do after any Ubuntu install is to remove Mono and all related apps. Please do not infest Debian/Ubuntu with Mono.
June 13, 2009 at 09:48 |
Dear trolls: This is Debian. If you don’t want Mono, then don’t install it. If you don’t want the Linux kernel, then install HURD or kFreeBSD. If you want Gnote, install that. If you want DigiKam rather than F-Spot, you install that.
While I support developers to port Mono-based apps to other languages just in case Mono bites us, I don’t support using lesser-tested, less-mature equivilants unless it’s absolutely necessary. Especially on a distribution like Debian. Tomboy isn’t a fly-by-night app, it’s been around for years now.
June 13, 2009 at 10:36 |
Corporations with lots of money are a threat to democracy. Microsoft is a good example, when they can’t push their will legally they start bribing key people, over and over. Cut the bribes and suddenly the “will” to use Mono disappears, in the end, when also Miguel de lcaza stops getting checks from M$, even he will stop pushing Mono and get a life.
June 18, 2009 at 18:04 |
Ease up here. I think your passion is clouding you judgment just a little bit. Mono is just a technology, based on Microsoft technology. AJAX is the same, do you not visit web sites that do not use AJAX? I doubt it.
The second Mono is not in accordance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, it will get jettisoned, that you can be sure of.
If you don’t like Mono, for heaven’s sake just remove it. There are lots of available desktops know and you don’t have to use Gnome.
Microsoft may have bought Novell, and other linux types, I don’t know, but I do know that debian is Free Software and probably the most free distro out there, much more the Ubuntu. So sure, be mad, but raging at some free version of a perfectly usable technology is merely wasted energy.
June 13, 2009 at 10:46 |
What the hell is Debian playing at? I smell a big rat with this, the community does not want this patent encumbered tripe, look at the backlash against Novell when they got in bed with Microsoft.
Honestly, this raises the question: How much did Microsoft pay Joss for this? We know de Icaza is getting paid “bonuses” fro his work, so what was Joss’ paycheck?
Disgusting Debian.
June 13, 2009 at 14:49 |
David,
I don’t know what reasons does Joss have for making these decisions or being so hostile, but I’m definitely certain that noone is paying him for it. Such kind of accusations aren’t helpful at all.
June 15, 2009 at 14:42 |
thing is starting a troll, another to stop is, right ?
feeling bad, maybe ? maybe you didn’t guess it would be a tribune for those who want blood spilled :)
kinda funny to see you trying to ease the angry mob :D
June 15, 2009 at 15:54 |
Naw. I feel quite well, but thanks for asking.
June 13, 2009 at 11:09 |
I am a tomboy user (used Ready! with doemu until i found it) and really need it.
BUT
I am equally upset with Mono being part of the default.
I think Mono is an abomination and anything that leads to more Mono use is a bad move. Having it difficult to get the outliner/notetaker you want might stimulate the developers to come up with something better and not dependent on Mono.
I would rather go through all the trouble involved in installing what is needed for now in hopes that something independent of Mono and better than tomboy will appear. And if developers like tomboy, that gives me hope.
Hope that has just been dashed.
June 13, 2009 at 12:29 |
Well, if the developers love the environment, why don’t they develop a C# native-code compiler that doesn’t require the Mono runtime? I mean, you’re never going to get to the point of “write once, run anywhere” with .Net or Mono, so why keep pounding the drum?
Besides, IIRC, the first versions of Visual Basic required you to distribute a run time. Then, at least as of Version 6, it compiled into native Windows code, thanks to user demand. I don’t think *any* of the users out there want to deal with the hassle of run-time modules (i.e., the Windows version of Dependency Hell). Even some developers (like myself) hate them.
C# is a fine language — it reminds me very much of Delphi — so why not give everyone what they need (if not necessarily want)? The developers can use the C# language to their heart’s content, and the users get native code, free of Mono. But *please* keep Mono out of Debian! Run time modules are *so* Twentieth Century! :)
June 13, 2009 at 14:57 |
Hi Tom,
Sounds like a very good point. For example, if they added a C# frontend to GCC and used that to build their runtime as a native binary, they’d get a lot of improvement in speed, memory usage and portability. I heard they made some experiments in that direction, but it never really caught on; I’m not sure why.
June 13, 2009 at 21:20 |
I believe Vala would be much more interesting if there was a gcc front-end to it. Otherwise, how does one reasonably debug a Vala-produced image with gdb?
June 13, 2009 at 19:44 |
Vala ?
June 13, 2009 at 22:35 |
There is an ahead-of-time compilation option for Mono. This would take up more space on disk than using just-in-time compilation. If you want to save space, you would use a language and corresponding libraries written in source-compatible languages (and you would probably want to use JIT compilation).
June 13, 2009 at 13:01 |
No Mono, please.
If this happen i will switch distro to slackware. They are definitly much more coherents.
Regards and… no mono!!!
June 13, 2009 at 13:29 |
They can put in all the Mono they want and enable it by default for as long as the user can purge it from the system by choice.
June 15, 2009 at 16:01 |
I don’t agree.
Removing it is still a hassle and frankly insulting that I have to do that. I want the computer to work for me, not the other way around.
I can tolerate tomboy as an optional package, but anything that installs automatically when installing the gnome metapackage (aptitude and synaptic will (or already?) autoinstalls recommended packages) is completely unacceptable.
If someone wants tomboy specifically and not the more reasonable gnote, then they can still install it, but keep it away from the default install.
June 13, 2009 at 14:24 |
[...] door to a form of civil disobedience, so rather than claim that Mono has no legal issues, it is being added to Debian (by default) because legal issues can be disregarded. For those who haven’t been following closely, the explanation behind Jo Shields’ recent post [...]
June 13, 2009 at 15:59 |
Even a software freedom agnostic must realize that in the long history of computing, the greatest ideas and benefits to society have come from open systems. From open programming language standards to the Internet and beyond, open standards, open designs and open thinking have fueled the advance of computing.
Linux desktop pragmatists have long had to straddle the proprietary/open divide. Proprietary codecs and file formats are a fact of digital life. When there’s work to be done, you have to work with what you’re given.
That said, .NET and Mono consistently fail to bring to the table any compelling, let alone indispensable, functionality to offset their weight, both in code and legality. Incorporating such code into the base distribution would be wasteful as well as adding unnecessary and potentially damaging complications.
Put simply, why the hell would you sew tits on to a boar?
June 13, 2009 at 17:26 |
I use debian because it works for me and I like the philosophy behind it, eg. free, open, no patent threats. Putting mono in by default is opening up problems for the future because the patent issue isn’t clear. Better to be safe than sorry. Because of this, I am moving to xfce, and then to openbox for my desktop. If debian carries on with “mono in, no choice” then I’ll have no choice than to go else where. I don’t mind things being combatable with MS, just not to pay them as well.
June 13, 2009 at 17:32 |
The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/
Everyone, but everyone, who defends Mono, claims that since the .NET standards have been submitted to ECMA, an industry association, it means that it’s fine to go ahead and use Mono – aren’t we all abiding by a published standard when we do?
But when you ask ECMA, they tell you a different story.
…
My query ran thus: “I’m also seeking to find out why there is some variance in the terms under which one can use Moonlight – Novell and Microsoft appear to say different things.
“Novell says that Moonlight ‘will be available for Linux users on any distribution’.
“However, Microsoft says clearly that only Novell can supply Moonlight to end-users: “Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries, hereby covenants not to sue Downstream Recipients of Novell and its Subsidiaries for infringement under Necessary Claims of Microsoft on account of such Downstream Recipients’ use of Moonlight Implementations to the extent originally provided by Novell during the Term and, if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period, but only to the extent such Moonlight Implementations are used to provide Plug-In Functionality. The foregoing covenants shall survive termination of the Agreement, but only as to specific copies of such Moonlight Implementations distributed during the Term, and if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period.”
There’s a been a deafening silence since then. There the matter stands after nearly a month. You would think that’s a decent period for anyone to think things through and respond – if the intention of doing so exists.
If you don’t believe there is a patent trap lying in wait for those who use MONO you are smoking some pretty powerful stuff, and ignoring 20 years of Microsoft’s history. Consult former MS Technical Evangelist James Plamondon’s website for a history of the “Slog” and the “Stacked Panel”, to get an idea, if just remembering the recent ISO committee panel stuffing doesn’t ring a bell.
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958
Some people seem to DELIBERATELY have short memories.
Add MONO and MONO dependent apps? I’ll just remove them. Make a distro DEPENDENT on MONO and I will not use it.
End of Story.
June 13, 2009 at 19:25 |
To me, Tomboy is useless, and incredibly frustrating when dealing with SUSE. In fact, it’s easier to live with MWM or WindowMaker than prune GNOME to the point where it resembles 2.0 or 1.x. As has been said, anything leading to more Mono is a bad move, especially when it’s something as simple and innocuous as a Note Taking Application.
It’s the same story there: Oops – much of GNOME is b0rked, because you didn’t install, or chose to delete ‘Tomboy’.
Now, in my chosen distribution, the one that I know, love, and prefer there is another ’stickies’ app with 50+ MB of encumberance? What has happened to the attitudes responsible for the whole ‘Iceweasel’ fiasco? I’d rather see another year-long release delay than get into the same boat with Ubu and Suse when it comes to C#-alikes, sorry Nat.
June 13, 2009 at 21:18 |
While I agree Mono is an important tool for promoting and enabling cross-platform development, I have come to believe for this very reason it and Mono applications should NOT be used to build core required apps or be part of the default install of a distribution, just as for example Java applications are not used to build default core solaris specific applications for Solaris, or (shutter) Visual Basic was used to build default applications shipped with Microsoft Windows (assuming they never did that…)
What Mono can be great for is enabling ISV’s to build cross-platform add-on/value add applications. In this role, there could then be pressure from the ISV’s to keep Mono/.NET honest and truly cross-platform compatible. When we use Mono to build core GNOME applications, we remove this pressure, and encourage what should be a cross-platform technology to be used as a single platform one, making it easier for Mono to be more effectively ghetto’d by Microsoft, and this is even before considering what legal risks may exist in it.
Furthermore, if a tiny few “core” applications require it, and there are alternative applications that do not, why drag a 40 or 50 meg dependency onto everyone? Mono dependency might well be enough to be the difference between a single live CD distribution or one that requires DVD media to fit.
Finally, I think the goal of a default core distribution should be a GNU/Linux experience that is both GNU/Linux specific (unique) and works well for users. If, as we see in tomboy vs gnote, or tracker vs beagle, there is such a large discrepency in performance and resulting experience, then I think clearly it is the wrong choice to make.
I know of course this viewpoint is at odds also with at least some others that are involved in Ubuntu, but it represents what I do think and feel is the best course of action. I personally do not fear nor dis-favor Mono, I simply do not personally believe it belongs in a core or default install or should be used to build critical / default applications for GNOME.
June 13, 2009 at 23:59 |
I completely agree with, thanks for a clear and reasoned answer…
June 13, 2009 at 21:32 |
This is catastrophic. Debian the new Novell Suse??
This is worse news than all the netbooks dropping Linux.
After all these years to deliberately steer the one philosophically decent distro dead ahead into the patent trap. I simply can’t believe it.
June 13, 2009 at 22:10 |
Much as I hate dependency hell. I also will move to fedora or slackware to avoid MS patent trap. Using Ubuntu 8.04, its easy to remove mono, but I don’t trust that the newer versions will be so easy. My next choice was debian, but if that’s the S.O.S., there’s no point in staying with .deb based distros.
June 14, 2009 at 07:56 |
As a Debian user and admirer I have this to say:
1. There are alternative applications to the ones build on Mono
2. None of the Mono applications are “core”
3. As a user who has chosen to move away from Microsoft to FLOSS world I do not want anything to do with tools/application/technologies from Microsoft anymore. I just can’t trust Microsoft anymore, not until they get at least 5 consecutive years of only good behavior (with no bad steps in between). Until then I just can’t trust them.
June 14, 2009 at 08:23 |
David Sugar,
Why do you believe Mono is a great way to create XPlatform apps? If you really want the best tools/platform for creating XPlatform apps, it is Java, not MONO or NET. And you do not have to worry about patent suits with Java, unless you try to distribute a non standard Java using the Java name or you try and use the GPL code for public distribution without giving back to the community. Java is GPL. We do not know what MONO is.
June 14, 2009 at 13:01 |
I simply said it was potentially a useful and good tool for ISV’s creating cross platform applications (presumably especially those who normally write applications targetted only for or that only had worked with Microsoft Windows platform in the past) and is not (or being misused as) a tool for building core GNU/Linux components. However, I did not offer specific comparisons to other cross-platform technologies, or choose to compare legal risks in Mono vs others.
Of course, also at the time Mono appeared, Java was not so licensed and there was uncertainly around it. That being said, I do of course feel more comfortable with the present licensing situation of Java than with that of Mono. However, I would not suggest, even on the same purely technical merits, writing core parts of GNOME in Java or requiring Java as part of a core distro install, just as strongly and for the same reasons as I do with respect to Mono.
Finally, I recognize a lot of excellent work has been put in making Mono a viable technology, and I believe this work has it’s best chance to endure with it being far more clearly presented in the role of a cross-platform enablement technology. That also is the best way I see to reduce the risk of potential patent traps by Microsoft. But again, I do not think it belongs in that use case on purely technical merits even before considering such other factors.
Of course, it is worth noting that so long as software patenting is allowed in the United States, the legal practice of champerty permitted, and non-practicing patent holding firms are rampant, all software, whether free as in freedom, or proprietary, is at equal potential risk.
June 14, 2009 at 19:11 |
[...] además de las implicaciones ideológicas, y como explica este otro desarrollador, esta decisión también significaría agregar aproximadamente 50 Mb de dependencias de paquetes [...]
June 15, 2009 at 15:28 |
[...] leemos esto otro post en el que parece ser que Mono se va a instalar por defecto en la siguiente versión de Debian. La [...]
June 15, 2009 at 18:00 |
[...] delas diz que o Mono estaria sendo incluído na instalação desktop default do Squeeze (que é o nome da próxima versão do Debian), por meio da inclusão do aplicativo de anotações [...]
June 15, 2009 at 22:25 |
Debian used to be awesome – fast, small, reliable. I’m running Etch with KDE in a virtual machine on a 9 year old PC and the speed is acceptable.
Please don’t ruin it with bloatware like Mono.
June 16, 2009 at 03:23 |
What a pitty Debian and Gnome are getting caught on the .NET trap… What is more frustrating is that some people that call them selves “free software developers, debian developers, etc.” don’t understand what free software, what debian means. By all means and to show you I’m not a religious zaelot; I would only allow Mono if it was no chance but If you have one chance like Gnote I wouldn’t doubt to replace Tomnotes! Is there a way to stop these infiltrated “MS -delopers”? Can’t Debian democratic vote system stop them?
June 16, 2009 at 17:44 |
[...] ohledně zavedení balíčků s MONO do základní instalace desktopu. Důvodem této debaty je začlenění projektu Tomboy, který umožňuje uživateli vytvářet poznámky. Celá instalace by se tímto krokem podle [...]
June 16, 2009 at 20:23 |
[...] ohledně zavedení balíčků s MONO do základní instalace desktopu. Důvodem této debaty je začlenění projektu Tomboy, který umožňuje uživateli vytvářet poznámky. Celá instalace by se tímto krokem podle [...]
June 17, 2009 at 12:03 |
Robert, thanks for your work in defense of a free Debian!
June 17, 2009 at 17:18 |
I have nothing against Mono as so, but … non GPL. LGPL stuff slow but steadly migrating in more or less central applications from a end users point of view is not a good idea. I know we have non GPL stuff like nvidia drivwrs (using one by myself) but that’s not an argument to continue to just end the free SW in Gnome.
Arguments as :It’s easy .. well … not more than before
So free the desktop (again) and let kde and Gnome work even tighter. Gnome/KDE should be an issue about skins and configuration – not about different tool talks(yes we do now have DBUS but Mono will maybe end that story).
The only persons laughing now is – well guess by yourself. Something like divide and conqueror :-)
June 18, 2009 at 00:06 |
I’ve always respected Debian for its strong stance for software freedom, and this decision really disappoints me. Mono is too close to microsoft for comfort, ideologically and technologically, and microsoft indirectly controls it. Even though its authors diverge from microsoft by adding custom APIs like Gtk# and Mono.*, it is still burdened by having to follow their changes, no matter how inappropriate they are for free software operating systems. Because of this, even though technically it is free software, it cannot be called completely free.
It has technical faults as well. It is inferior to java in terms of the library API. It produces executables named according to the windows convention (.exe/.dll), which contain 16 bit DOS code, being completely alien to free software operating systems. Not to mention the ugliness of the C# language with its quirks like using “a += b;” to register a callback function with an object.
It should not be included into gnome’s dependencies. Especially since we now have the perfectly good java and java-gnome. The few apps that need it should be made entirely optional and ideally the community should abandon it alltogether.
June 20, 2009 at 09:12 |
Where are all the good applications written with java-gnome ? In Debian there are exactly ZERO (zilch, nada, none, kaputt) applications written with it.
June 20, 2009 at 09:24 |
For a comparison: there are about 30 applications in Debian written using Gtk#, plus their extensions and plugins. Several of them are among the most popular of their category.
June 21, 2009 at 01:56 |
Open Office is a written in Java. Great application, I’ve been using it since Sun bought Star Office about ten years ago. Now that is a great application, I use it on Windows, Solaris, OSX, and Linux.
June 21, 2009 at 07:52 |
OpenOffice is not a GNOME application. And it is written in C++, with some optional parts in Java.
June 19, 2009 at 09:42 |
I’m afraid that claiming that a desktop application written in C++ will necessarily run faster and support more architectures than a C# one makes you look terribly clueless.
You should also look at the number of lines of code required to implement similar features in both languages.
June 19, 2009 at 10:15 |
My reference gives a clear indication that this is true: Gnote runs faster, consumes less memory and supports more architectures than Tomboy.
From a theoretical standpoint, it’s logical that it is so. .NET apps are restricted to the number of arches supported by their platform, which isn’t nearly as many as the ones supported by GCC. Also, they need to waste CPU cycles to generate native code (it doesn’t matter if it’s JIT or AOT, the waste is there either way).
As for the number of lines, they’re essentially the same. Gnote has some glue code to map the higher level runtime facilities to similar ones from glib/etc.
Of course, I’m sure you can find counter-examples of badly written C++ which fails on most arches and wastes more time on startup than its .NET equivalent, but I don’t see any point in that sort of discussion.
June 19, 2009 at 13:15 |
Your words: “Perhaps the real usefulness of .NET is in writing new code which can later be ported to C++ in order to run faster, consume less memory and support more architectures.”
I fail to see how the example of GNote makes that statement true in general. I believe the real usefulness of .NET is in writing new code which is easier to write, shorter, more portable, debugged more easily, more maintainable, faster to compile than equivalent C++ code.
Also, you’re wrong about the theoretical standpoint. It’s true that CPU cycles are “wasted” to generate code. But in the C++ case, cycles are wasted initializing variables that will never be used, for instance. You never know how much the C# code can be run-time optimised by dynamically analysing the code flow.
Rejecting the platform where a great deal of the last 10 years’ innovation in languages and compilers took place seems pretty dangerous to me. Fortunately, you cannot tell me or anyone what language they must use.
Because yes, it’s about the developers. It’s always been about the developers. I don’t see why users should decide the language in which the software is written. Have fun debugging Boost monstrosities while I write, use, deploy and distribute software using C# and the other .NET technologies that just run and work perfectly on Linux, Win32 or OS X. Without recompiling anything.
June 19, 2009 at 15:06 |
“more portable”? I won’t even comment on that.
“faster to compile” — If you want to compile fast use TinyCC. Most people care about fast to *run* not fast to compile.
“cycles are wasted initializing variables that will never be used” — what are you talking about? C doesn’t have that “feature”.
“Fortunately, you cannot tell me or anyone what language they must use” — Right, that’s why I didn’t do it. I respect everyone’s right to write free software using whatever tools they like, no matter how badly the result performs when it gets to their users.
“Rejecting the platform where a great deal of the last 10 years’ innovation in languages and compilers took place” — Sometimes I hear about “great deal of innovation” and sometimes I hear about “ignore the patent threat, you see even double-click is patented”. You guys need to get together someday and agree about this.
“Have fun debugging Boost monstrosities while I write, use, deploy and distribute software using C# and the other .NET technologies that just run and work perfectly on Linux, Win32 or OS X.” — Have fun dealing with UAC and legacy baggage from MSDOS & CPM.
June 19, 2009 at 17:24 |
“more portable”: have you ever heard of autoconf? It is a workaround for the non-portability of C and C++ across platforms: inconsistent header locations across systems, nonexistent headers (unistd.h, stdint.h), inconsistent library function names (Sleep/usleep, thread creation), inconsistent type names (int32_t/__int32/Int32), inconsistent *types* (long, off_t). Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy C and C++, I mostly write C++ software for a living, but the last thing I’ll claim is that a C++ program is portable. Writing code that will work on most platforms requires enormous of nontrivial knowledge and practice.
“faster to compile”: You seem to be unaware that TinyCC is a C compiler, not a C++ compiler.
“cycles wasted”: C doesn’t have the variable initialisation feature? Bwahaha. All variables with static storage duration are initialised before you even enter main(). In C#, static members are only initialised when the class is actually used.
About your straw-man attack: why should I agree with anyone who’s been disagreeing with you? If you have a problem with what they say, please argue with them instead of asking me to agree with them. That’s completely nonsensical.
About UAC: UAC has absolutely nothing to do with C#. To the point that it’s actually quite hard to access UAC information from managed code.
About the legacy baggage from MSDOS: it’s funny you should mention that without giving any examples. I can give you one: in C#, a long is always 64-bit. In C or C++, it’s sometimes 32, sometimes 64, and causes numerous portability bugs. THAT is your MSDOS legacy. Enjoy it!
June 19, 2009 at 21:35 |
Many people don’t understand what’s the point of longs having a different size on each architecture. If you take a careful look at the generic implementation of strlen in Glibc, it should give you some insight on this:
http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=string/strlen.c;h=5f22ce95097d4090c6c32fc7cf6c2ef9cf6e86a8;hb=f6887a0d9a55f5c80c567d9cb153c1c6582410f9
As for portability, tell me again when you can run Tomboy on m68k.
June 20, 2009 at 09:20 |
LOL
June 20, 2009 at 03:25 |
Mono really isn’t all that useful. One writer claimed that it could be used to make “really cool apps”, but when I looked at the apps that had been done with it, what I saw was really pedestrian apps.
Someday someone might do something exciting with Mono. If they do, great. At present though there’s no compelling reason to keep Mono in Ubuntu, and considering the possible legal complications due to Microsoft’s patents. As a result in my considered opinion, inclusion of Mono, and any applications that depend on it, in any distribution is not defensible at the present time, and under the present circumstances. This of course could change. Microsoft’s patents could be invalidated for example.
But at present, the dangers are too great to include Mono in the base distribution. This does not mean that Mono apps should not be included in the repositories, where users can make their own decisions.
June 20, 2009 at 09:18 |
I don’t think you’re qualified to make a judgement about the dangers of including Mono.
You also have to explain why it would be fine to distribute Mono if it is not fine to install it. This is the most blatant logic flaw in all the Mono-haters blabberings.
June 21, 2009 at 02:19 |
I don’t think you are qualified to make a judgement about how safe it is to include Mono. You are so enamoured with Mono that you don’t appear to be able to rationally consider the situation.
There is a difference between including Mono on the install CD, and keeping it in the repository. If Mono is included as part of the install CD, and there is a problem, Microsoft could sue Canonical. But Microsoft would be very unlikely to sue individual users who choose to install an application that required Mono to operate.
As to who is “Qualified” to make a judgement about the dangers of including Mono, the word you used, “Judgement” indicates what needs to be done. “Judgement” is a legal term. What needs to happen is the Mono situation needs to be evaluated by a Law Firm that specialises in Intellectual Poverty issues.
Unless Mono is cleared by a person or firm that IS qualified to make a judgement as to its legality, it should not be included in the install CD.
June 21, 2009 at 07:55 |
Thanks for this very clear proof that you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about.
June 23, 2009 at 07:49 |
[...] discussion has taken place on the blog of one Debian developer, Robert Millan, after he made a post pointing out that another developer, Josselin Mouette, had apparently decided that Mono should be [...]
June 25, 2009 at 09:29 |
Mono is a mistake.
Linux application developers looking to escape the complexity, repetition and tediousness that tends to show up when dealing with non-trivial software in C or C++ could have embraced Lisp. Lisp competes very well vs. Mono and even C wrt. performance.
People willingly stretching yet further out on the already brittle C language family branch, and in addition towards Microsoft – is a sad thing to see.
What we are doing, what’s happening — is a disaster. We are wasting so much time going in the wrong direction. I’ll just quote Frances Allen:
“C has destroyed our ability to advance the state of the art in automatic optimization, automatic parallelization, automatic mapping of a high-level language to the machine. This is one of the reasons compilers are pretty much, basically not taught much anymore in the colleges and universities.”
(Question about when she stopped programming, herself)
“I guess I kind of stopped when C came out. I mean that was a big blow. We were making so much good progress on optimizations and transformations. We were getting rid of just one nice problem after another.”
June 26, 2009 at 04:52 |
Here you are the non mono equivalent applications:
http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php/Mono_Applications
We can start here! Leave mono for monkeys!
June 28, 2009 at 05:19 |
[...] @atoponce: Another article, this time form a debian dev: http://is.gd/1gBPE [...]
June 28, 2009 at 18:24 |
It has been claimed that Richard Stallman has no problems with Mono. Guess what folks, he does have problems with Mono.
What’s your next argument?
July 2, 2009 at 07:12 |
Time for me to leave my favourite distro… as a perfect ignorant, I thought one advantage of using Debian was that one could make their own decisions without having to follow imposed rules/models as opposed to other more user-friendly distributions which don’t leave such a liberty. If I want to be liable to be suited and taken to court by MS at any time, I prefer using MS Windows instead, back to cracked apps, back to disabling automatic updates, back to be tied hands and feet. This is one of the greatest disappointments since I switched to linux some year ago.. [sorry for my bad english]
July 4, 2009 at 19:05 |
I don’t know what kind of things you are expecting from Linux, but if what you’re really looking for is being safe from any kind of legal attack from Microsoft, you should just buy all their products instead.
July 5, 2009 at 01:18 |
Why would I buy their products when I don’t like them?
July 6, 2009 at 15:01 |
[...] explained before that I’m skeptical about whether a note-taking application ought to be pulled to the default package selection for [...]
July 7, 2009 at 20:28 |
Tomboy is one of the best apps in Gnome. Now that I am using Windows again on a daily basis (for work), it is something I miss more than almost anything else. Joss says the excellence of Tomboy was not even the decisive trigger for the decision; rather two other apps were.
Upstream made the same choice, and that also would have weight with a Debian maintainer.
I think Joss’s reasoning here http://np237.livejournal.com/23901.html is a long way from an ad hominem argument. He’s not 100% dispassionate, but it is also a lot more than a trolling, personal attack.
Arguments about the merits of c## are irrelevant. Developers surely should be able to choose. It’s also choice which allows people to remove Tomboy.
Arguments about the free nature of stuff in debian are relevant. On balance, my personal conclusion is that the concerns about mono seem more paranoid than valid, but anyway, Debian has great mechanisms to safeguard it.
Joss is a good developer and an strong asset to Debian. He makes some very good decisions about what parts and versions of gnome get into releases.
It seems that this decision already has a lot of supporters (eg upstream) and the final Debian decision is not in Joss’s hands. He has made the sort of decision a package maintainer should make. In a situation where people need to exercise authority to make a useful contribution, challenging the reasonable execution of their judgement is not helpful (because then people lose motivation, and the people intervening need to take over responsibility permanently; you shouldn’t just airlift in when you see something you don’t like, and then disappear after you’ve won your point). You can challenge the process of making a decision, but reasonable people can come to different conclusions. If we don’t agree with the decision but can’t fault the process and the checks and balances, we should respect the concept of reasonable differences and respect the area of responsibility that someone has. In Joss’s case and with respect to his Gnome involvement, he has earned that.
July 9, 2009 at 02:43 |
[...] -Corre el rumor de que Mono sera instalado de manera predeterminada en Debian [...]
July 22, 2009 at 09:54 |
“I have to admit, however, that I admire Jo’s sincerity when he makes this point: it’s not the users who want it, it’s the developers.”
Isn’t it in violation of one of Debian’s Free Software Guidelines?:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract.en.html
“4 Our priorities are our users and free software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.”
August 13, 2009 at 16:26 |
—-WTF is that shit? Don’t you have anything better to do than trolling around?
^ from NP237—-,
That is so vile, and not welcome conversation in the linux commuity, let alone any community.
Thankfullly, kde exists and we never have to look back now due to license change.
whew, so you guys can keep your mono excuse for supporting ms&silverlight, which btw moonlight seems to be struggling at v2a, while silverlight is at v3 for ‘windows ‘and’ mac’.
cheers
nl
November 20, 2009 at 04:10 |
Bought netbook with W/XP and installed Ubuntu (do not want to spend time installing Gentoo that I am running for 8 years on a desktop).
Did not like Ubuntu choice of applications and the hard way of creating user kernel.
Switched to Debian to have independence in choosing applications. Always was using Gnome (like its simplicity).
Do not use any Mono applications. Removed Mono. Now I have 77 applications/libs to be removed as well, including arj, at-spy, libconfig-tiny-perl…
Is it a joke?
I think not – I think Debian is not good on supporting dependencies… :-(
Bye-bye Debian, welcome back Gentoo…
Installed
November 21, 2009 at 14:54 |
Alex_Red: That does look a bit odd, but yeah, the ‘gnome’ package points to a lot of “core engine type stuff” in addition to Mono stuff which makes removing the ‘gnome’ package (to get rid of Mono) impossible or unrealistic wrt. future changes.
Debian isn’t very flexible at all tbh. … and IMHO Gentoo is too slow for “serious work”. Well, I might be wrong about that since I haven’t used Gentoo since 2003 or so ..
The desktop (in general) can fuck off as far as I’m concerned. MS totally won and destroyed it. The Linux desktop is just a bunch of kids dicking around. The web is where things are happening these days, and we’re stronger here.
November 22, 2009 at 03:36 |
Yeah! Go Us! Boo on Them!