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

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 14:55 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> 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.

Well, GNOME wouldn't be implementing them.  That doesn't mean other
groups (Ximian/Novell) won't.  GNOME using C doesn't mean that people
aren't writing illegal C libraries, either.  All GNOME has say over is
which libraries and utilities go into official GNOME.

If GNOME as a group says, "We won't use Mono/CLR because it's capable of
hosting patented .NET libraries" then we ought to stop using C as well,
because I know of some legally encumbered C libraries.  Oh, we ought to
stop using any shell scripts, too, someone might be illegally using SCO
shell snippets or something.  Waaay too risky to be using those
languages... right?  ;-)

> 
> Havoc
> 
> 
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.