Re: Mono/GTK#/Tomboy

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

   Ben presented a case (2 points) and you said "there are many more".
I appreciate your list, but your list contains multiple points that have
been debunked by various people.

   Am sorry if this email seems dismissive, but you conveniently quoted
the pieces you wanted and ignored follow up messages that addressed
these problems.

   1. Microsoft, the FUD argument, I wont say anything more that
      has not been addressed in the past, other than from a legal
      standpoint we created the "Open Invention Network" to 
      protect open source with teeth.

      Status: FUD.

   2. Additional Framework: yes, it is an additional and *optional*
      framework.  Nobody is forcing you to use it.

      Status: minor concern, its optional.

   3. GNOME is the only platform which would depend on an extra
      framework.  

      Status: debunked.

      You quoted KDE, and I pointed to you that KDE has support for
      Mono, Ruby, Python, JavaScript and Perl.   You conveniently
      have ignored the evidence contrary to your statements.


   4. Resources: yes, Mono takes more memory, we are not making it
      mandatory for Mono applications to be part of the core desktop.

      It is optional;  Dont like it, dont run it.

      Status: Minor concern. 

   5. Managed/interpret code is slow/larger

      Yes, it is.   So we should block any managed/interpreted systems
      to provide bindings to Gnome, because everyone must use 
      C/C++/another compiled language?

      Shortsighted. 

      Status: Minor issue.

   6. Original authors could not use it.

      You used a gossip article, I pointed to you to the real
      reason for the Longhorn failures, which you conveniently
      ignored.

      You did not reply to whether we can do better than Microsoft
      (again, conveniently ignored).

      But in addition, Microsoft has a lot of .NET code in shipping
      products, so the whole argument goes down:

	http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2005/12/16/504847.aspx

      Status: debunked.
     
   7. Build Time Complexity

      A real issue, but someone has pointed out that every Linux distro
      has already sorted that out.   Besides, Mono is only one extra
      tarball dependency.

      And its only a dependency for the Gtk# binding, what we are
      discussing.

      If we are going to have an issue over adding a new tarball as a
      dependency, we might as well not even have a process to expand
      Gnome in the first place.

      Status: unless we are willing to make a case for no-new-packages
      I do not consider this an issue.

   8. Why Python can and Mono cant.

      Its hard to argue with someone that thinks that Python was a 
      mistake in the first place (from your email).

      Status: pending.

   9. Political

      Your company does not have to ship Mono, it is not mandatory,
      and the core is not being rewritten to use it.

      That being said, your company, Sun, of all companies, has a patent
      license to all Microsoft technologies, so there are no technical
      or legal barriers. 

      There are merely strategical and ideological barriers that
      are barring Sun from shipping Mono.

      Status: Sun's problem.  Not Gnome's.

  10. Human Resources

      Status: minor.

      Your argument assumes that Gnome and Mono can not grow, that
      they are frozen in time.

      I do not believe for a second that Gnome has reached its peak,
      if anything more developers are joining the effort.

      Those choosing to use Mono will depend on Mono bug fixes for
      its bug fixes.   But so does anyone depending on any other
      library, language and framework.

Miguel.