Re: GNOME, .Net and Mono

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2002-02-01 at 19:03, Gérard Milmeister wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 2002-02-02 at 00:40, Josh Steiner wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes that's what I mean. IMHO it is ok that Miguel and Ximian do
> > > work on Mono and GNOME, but he shouldn't try to push GNOME
> > > to be based on Mono.
> > > I think that both Mono and Java should be adequate development
> > > platforms for GNOME.
> > 
> > Before this degenerates into a flamewar, do you understand that Mono will
> > make it much much simpler for people to develop Gnome applications in the
> > language of their choice?  And before we start fretting about Ximian
> > "pushing" anything on us, why don't we wait to see how they behave,
> > especially considering the quality of their track record so far.
> I don't want to start a flamewar, I was just a little worried
> about it.

Just out of curiosity, why are you worried about it?  I really dislike
Microsoft for a couple reasons (mostly ethical, somewhat technical), but
I admit that some of their products simply rule.  I'd still rather use
Office than StarOffice/GNOME Office, I (until very recently) prefered IE
over NS/Mozilla, I *love* Media Player (nothing like that, so far as I
know, exists yet in Linux).

Why then would being based on Mono, a fully Open Source codebase, be
something to be worried about, any more than basing it on an "arcane"
language like C (GNOME now) or a "bloated" language like C++ (KDE).  
(And just for the record, my favorite languages are C and C++ - I just
used the stereotypes for those languages).

THe way I'm imagining being based on Mono would work is similar to how
things are based on CORBA now, although perhaps better integrated,
easier to work with, and in many cases faster.  Instead of making a
CORBA call, you'd make a Mono call.

Just because it's Mono, I don't think that means we'll be forced to use
any of the (likely) security/stability problems with MS's
implementation, or be forced to run closed code, or have to program in
C#.  As I understand it, it'll be more like the ultimate wrapper, the
ultime plugin architecture, the ultime scripting interface, etc. (or, at
least, until someone invents something better.  ^,^)

Or is there some deeper point I'm missing that would make it very bad
for GNOME to go this way?  Would mono slow things down a lot, being
interpreted bytecode in many cases?  Would mono possibly have
unavoidable security concerns wrt untrusted code?  Would mono lock out
certain languages?  Would mono force developers to use a restrictive
license? (not in the GPL-type restrictive, either)

I'm curious as to exactly *how* integrating GNOME with Mono makes things
better, and what reaons there would be *not* to do this (other than that
it would take a lot of work).

> 
> -- 
> Gérard Milmeister
> Tannenrauchstr. 35
> 8038 Zürich
> gemi bluewin ch
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