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

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> Similarly, if you have an ASP.NET clone, Microsoft has made clear they
> will sue you the minute you ship that and this will never change. But if
> people are using it anyway, we get a situation where the only solution
> available on Linux is illegal to ship, and nobody has an incentive to
> write an unencumbered solution.

There are plenty of ASP.NET replacements today.  Written in Java,
Python, Perl, PHP and god knows what else.    

Developers do not just sit down and use what is available;  That is why
we have a hundreds of platforms, mp3 players, video players, terminals,
irc clients, editors and more.

I believe the "a new platform wont be developed" is a bit exaggerated.

Btw, for everyone's information Mainsoft is already shipping our ASP.NET
implementation in a product that integrates into Visual Studio and
deploys into J2EE servers:

	  http://www.mainsoft.com/products/vmw_j2ee.html

A fantastic product in fact.

> So I think we should go farther than "GNOME does not support using the
> extended .NET APIs" and say "we will oppose implementing those APIs on
> Linux at all" - unless Microsoft releases the patents, it's impossible
> for those APIs to contribute to the success of Linux, all they can do is
> encourage people to get locked in to Microsoft from a legal point of
> view. And Microsoft has said they will _not_ release these APIs.

We can certainly promote the use of ECMA only, we will take the first
steps on our next release, splitting the rpms.

Splitting the source will take me a few more weeks, to do all the cvs
surgery and build system.

But the non-ECMA parts have already been written, so its too late to
avoid implementing them :-)

Miguel.