Re: Where we stand in regard to the future platform / desktop technology

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 13:06, Danilo Segan wrote:
> Today at 13:39, Markus Bertheau wrote:
> 
> > В Вск, 28.03.2004, в 13:29, jamie пишет:
> >
> >> For Gnome 3, the options increase to having C and Mono (with the Python
> >> in 2.8 running on Mono).
> >
> > They only do if the legal situation clears up. That was my point. Do you
> > agree? Or do you think, from a legal POV, Mono is a viable way to go for
> > the community already?
> 
> This is not only about legal issues.  Many contributors would *not* be
> interested in working with something based on Microsoft's technology
> (and same goes for Sun's).
> 
> This is as much of a political issue as it is of technical/legal
> issue.  Technical/legal issues can be resolved for any of the
> solutions (discussion seems to have gone the way of how easy that is
> for Mono or Java), which leaves us with the political ones.

Yes but the open source community has been reaping the benefits over the
SUN vs MS spat (SUN releasing OpenOffice to hurt MS, MS making C#
royalty free to hurt Java etc). If some dont want anything to do with it
thats fine no one's forcing them. The proposal for Gnome 3 was C and
Mono - so there remains a choice for contributors of both sides.

Anyhow, there are many technologies in Gnome which are heavily
influenced by MS technology (E.G. Bonobo's interface is very similar to
COM, Gnome-DB is a virtual clone of ADO, Gnome panels tasklist etc). So
mono has a clone of C# (written from scratch) - whats the difference?

Personally, I think the irony of exploiting and extending an MS
technology to create a better desktop than windows is priceless... 

jamie.



> 
> With free software having major influence over many contributors, I
> believe political issues are not to be disregarded.  Yes, some even
> consider usage of free software as political/personal statement.
> 
> It doesn't matter if some of the "practical" folks consider that
> "near-sighted" or whatever, that's the result akin to
> free-software/open-source split (where sort of collaboration did live
> on, but this might be more sensitive), and I think Havoc was worried
> about that mostly, not about the technical merits (of course, I'm not
> talking for him, so he can correct me if I'm dead wrong :).
> 
> Cheers,
> Danilo
> 
>