Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel novell com>]

Hello,

That subset is not enough: programs such as Tomboy depend on the other
libraries which are not in the ECMA subset and not covered.  Also,
that community promise, even where it does apply, is not adequate.

If there was only some technique;  Some sort of steps;  Some sort of process

that would allow people to change the code so that it did not use those APIs.

Perhaps some form of "change" -- a "patch", if you will-- that could be "applied" to 

this "DNA" which could produce maybe a new "strain" of this "DNA".  Maybe then,

and only then, we could have a solution.  But clearly, such process does not exist.   

It defies imagination.   

And if such process existed, Microsoft probably patented it.   So, why bother?

Clearly, giving up is the only option.   Some say "surrender", other "being practical".

See http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono for details.

That article is a load of crap, a package of half truths.   It is a textbook sample

of FUD.   Well, wikipedia-textbook sample.

That article now leads us to believe that there is something "magical" about

the way that Microsoft implements regular expressions or how they implemented

XSLT and XPath.  If you cant find prior art for that, you probably should leave

the software industry while you are still ahead.

And the other "strong" point of the article?   That some optimizations might be

patented and *then* we would infringe, then it ends with a truism, "patents are

bad".   There is a solid share of ridiculous hypotheticals, each of them worthy

of being turned into a trollcat.

     http://trollcats.com/2010/02/eat-hot-logic-heretics-trollcat/

Implementing a free platform for C# is a good thing to do.  If you
would like to promote the use of C# itself, how about explaining to
Novell and Microsoft that they need to fully implement said protection
in an ironclad way for all the usual C# libraries.

I spend a considerable amount of time doing this.   It has taken time, 

and there would be no Community Promise, and there would be no

Silverlight agreement (the one that has no special Novell provisions)

without this work.

It is a slow process since we speak different languages.    Microsoft is

willing to make changes, but they move slow and they need to understand

every step of the way.

Miguel.