Tonnerre has blogged that the GNOME project has decided to rely on Mono: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/tonnerre/stdout/gnome_goes_mono_and_jumps_into_th...
RMS has previously pointed out that this is a bad idea: http://fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#q1
Miguel De Icaza now says there's nothing to worry about because Mono is to be split in two. The part that MS got standardised by ECMA will be separated out and GNOME will only rely on that part. He says that MS's patent promise is good for that part because in addition to the normal promise that ECMA requires (which talks about "RAND"), those who contributed to the ECMA standard have agreed to define RAND as zero price.
Miguel's statement is here: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=5746&offset=75&rows=90#190... (skip down to the "legalese" section)
And his comment about zero price is here: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=5746&limit=no#190596
When the only person telling us to not worry about Microsoft's patents is a Novell employee, I worry. Does anyone know if the danger has really been avoided or if there is some published explanation/criticism of this?
That would be great, thanks.
This lead me to read the Mono FAQ where I found some strange statements.
One was that they used a permissive (MIT/X11) licence for the classes because they didn't like the term "derivative work" in the LGPL. If that's the case, they should consider LGPLv3 now that that term has been replaced by international wording.
A more interesting part is about Novell selling non-free licences for the Mono code so that people can make proprietary versions:
"if you manufacture a device where the end user is not able to do an upgrade of the Mono virtual machine or the Moonlight runtime from the source code, you will need a commercial license of Mono and Moonlight."
This seems untrue. Have I missed something?
(The FAQ says that the software is all under either the GPL, the LGPL, or the MIT/X11 licence.)
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:36 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Tonnerre has blogged that the GNOME project has decided to rely on Mono: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/tonnerre/stdout/gnome_goes_mono_and_jumps_into_th...
Based on a 2004 story by OSNews?! Come on.
Mono is usable in GNOME, and GNOME comes with Mono bindings. You can use GNOME without any Mono whatsoever.
I know blogging doesn't require research, but, y'know...
When the only person telling us to not worry about Microsoft's patents is a Novell employee, I worry. Does anyone know if the danger has really been avoided or if there is some published explanation/criticism of this?
Red Hat previously were worried about mono, now they ship it by default. Might be worth asking them.
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
Based on a 2004 story by OSNews?! Come on.
D'oh!
Very glad I raised it here rather than going straight to the GNOME Foundation about it :)
Thanks.
Ciaran,
Sorry if my last post was a bit harsh, I didn't mean it to come across that way.
I'm pretty sick of seeing GNOME, and to some extent Miguel, getting vilified for contributing to free software. The recent "GNOME Foundation is helping standardise OOXML!" is one example, and the continuing furore over Mono/Silverlight is ridiculous.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:57 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
Based on a 2004 story by OSNews?! Come on.
D'oh!
OSNews is great for some things, but really, they do keep the salt industry in clover.
Cheers,
Alex.
The GNOME Foundation have now published a statement about MS OOXML: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/ecma-tc45-statement.html
I haven't read it yet.
Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org writes:
The GNOME Foundation have now published a statement about MS OOXML: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/ecma-tc45-statement.html
Discussion of this can be found on LWN.net: http://lwn.net/Articles/259765/
And the gnome-foundation mailing list: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-November/thread.html
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 12:15 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org writes:
The GNOME Foundation have now published a statement about MS OOXML: http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/ecma-tc45-statement.html
Discussion of this can be found on LWN.net: http://lwn.net/Articles/259765/
It is quite sad that a number of people want GNOME to shoot itself in the foot over the standardisation issues.
I think GNOME's attempt to ensure that any resulting standard is implementable by free software is laudable; to put all our eggs in the "OXML doesn't get ISO" basket is a. risky and b. ignores that OXML is the default Office file format now :/
It seems to me that the people usually advocating that the community completely ignore OXML are the people who aren't using .doc files anyway.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:50 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:36 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Tonnerre has blogged that the GNOME project has decided to rely on Mono: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/tonnerre/stdout/gnome_goes_mono_and_jumps_into_th...
Based on a 2004 story by OSNews?! Come on.
Mono is usable in GNOME, and GNOME comes with Mono bindings. You can use GNOME without any Mono whatsoever.
I know blogging doesn't require research, but, y'know...
When the only person telling us to not worry about Microsoft's patents is a Novell employee, I worry. Does anyone know if the danger has really been avoided or if there is some published explanation/criticism of this?
Red Hat previously were worried about mono, now they ship it by default. Might be worth asking them.
As far as I know we don't ship it in RHEL. Simo.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 11:36 -0500, simo wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:50 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
Red Hat previously were worried about mono, now they ship it by default. Might be worth asking them.
As far as I know we don't ship it in RHEL.
That's possible; I don't know about that product. I was basing my statement on stuff like this:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=159
Fedora 8 seems to install it by default now.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 16:43 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 11:36 -0500, simo wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 10:50 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
Red Hat previously were worried about mono, now they ship it by default. Might be worth asking them.
As far as I know we don't ship it in RHEL.
That's possible; I don't know about that product. I was basing my statement on stuff like this:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=159
Fedora 8 seems to install it by default now.
Yes we had it in Fedora for a long time, but Fedora is a community project where Red Hat is certainly a very big contributor. But if you mean Fedora, please call it by its name.
Simo.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 12:44 -0500, simo wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 16:43 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
Fedora 8 seems to install it by default now.
Yes we had it in Fedora for a long time, but Fedora is a community project where Red Hat is certainly a very big contributor. But if you mean Fedora, please call it by its name.
Sure, but if it was legally dodgy it wouldn't be in Fedora, because Red Hat sponsors it and is basically responsible for distribution:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2005-March/msg00305.html
I grant you it's not (yet) in a product stamped 'Red Hat'.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 18:25 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 12:44 -0500, simo wrote:
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 16:43 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
Fedora 8 seems to install it by default now.
Yes we had it in Fedora for a long time, but Fedora is a community project where Red Hat is certainly a very big contributor. But if you mean Fedora, please call it by its name.
Sure, but if it was legally dodgy it wouldn't be in Fedora, because Red Hat sponsors it and is basically responsible for distribution:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2005-March/msg00305.html
I grant you it's not (yet) in a product stamped 'Red Hat'.
Sure, I just wish people credits Fedora for being a community project, and not just a "Red Hat product" because it's not. Then yes Red Hat donates lawyers time for most of Fedora's legal issues.
Simo.