Re: Gnome to be based on .NET?

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2002-02-04 at 22:52, Crispin Wellington wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-02-05 at 02:10, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > On Mon, 2002-02-04 at 04:52, Crispin Wellington wrote:
> > > Theres a thread ATM on gnome-devel-list called "GNOME, .Net and Mono"
> > > which you should read to get the deveopers position on this.
> > > 
> > > I think Miguel's getting free (as in price) and Free (as in freedom)
> > > confused.
> > 
> > How is he doing that?  Neither Mono nor GNOME are, or are going to be,
> > closed source.
> 
> open source != Free

Well, I can't agree there.  Any license that restricts my freedom is not
Free, and that's how I look at it.  Sorry.  ^,^

> 
> >  X11 license is just as (well, heck, more) free as the
> > GPL/LGPL GNOME uses now.
> 
> I disagree emphatically.
> 
> MIT/X
> -----
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
> copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
> "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
> without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
> distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
> permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
> the following conditions:
> 
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
> in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. 
> -----
> 
> Where is the garuntee of Openness? I take your MIT/X licenced code,
> modify it substantially, close it up and sell/sublicence it. No source
> code. Your not allowed to see *my* changes.
> 
> Freedom to be enslaved is no freedom at all.

Yes.  Enslaved.  Mono will be released under the X11 license, Apple will
make a proprietary version, and magically the Ximian version will be
eradicated, and we all will stop having the choice to install the
software we want on our GNU systems, and Apple will enslave us all.

This is of course just like how FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD are no longer
used by anyone in the world, because Apple took BSD and make a
commercial version of it.

(Note: yes, it's late, and I feel like being a smart-arse.)

> 
> MIT/X cant even be construed as more 'free' as in price.
> 
> >  *And*, adding Mono interfaces/wrappers to
> > GNOME wont force GNOME to use another license.
> 
> True. But maybe well have Mono. And then we'll have IBM's Mono (which
> doesn't come with source) and Sun's Mono...

And that hinders us how, exactly?  I mean, I thought Free also included
the right to choose our software, right?  If IBM's Mono is better than
the Open Mono, I would rather use that.


> 
> > The only issue I see is getting Mono tied into GNOME - there are lots of
> > apps and such in GNOME that are GPL only, which can't be linked to
> > closed source implementations/enhancements of .Net based on Mono.  Geez,
> > look at that, GNOME is hindering .Net in that case, not the other way
> > around. ~,^
> 
> We have a philosphical imperative to hinder .Net :)

I *hate* it when that happens. ~,^

> 
> I don't think anyone has really understood .Net yet. Everyones going on
> about security, and customer trust, but MS is redefining the terms
> without anyone realising.

Well, I don't see what that has to do with any of it.  Mono's source is
Open.  Look at it.  IF you see a security hole, point it out before we
all destroy ourselves.  ~,^

MicroSoft can do whatever it wants with its software and its customers. 
The Mono developers aren't going to go, "hey look at this backdoor that
Microsoft put into their software, lets put it in ours too!" or "my,
this is one poor security design, lets obfuscate the Open code so that
no one else can tell."

Security will be in the implementation.  Mono thus has nothing
inherently more insecure about it than any other Open project out there.

Also realize that there are two .Nets: the core technology, which is
what Mono is, and then the core tech. plus the ten billion services
Microsoft offers, which is was MS calls .Net.  I don't want to touch
that second .Net (unless they have a particular service that is really
killer), but I look forward to the .Net Mono is becomming: the VM,
compiler, and development tools.

> 
> Reading http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23715.html ... In fact
> read it now if you haven't before. Sounds great hey! Security our
> customers can trust. Wow I want a OS like that!

^,^  I wasn't planning on running Mono on MS Windows, or MS .Net on
Linux.  I'm using Mono on Linux, which won't suffer from MS's poor
programming.  Just the usual poor programming the OPen Source world is
used to... (*cough* sendmail, NIS, etc. *cough*)

> 
> Now change one thing, and .Net becomes clear. When Bill says "customers"
> he doesn't mean you and me. No. We are the product. The user of .Net is
> the comodity he will sell. The "customer" is the media content owner.
> .Nets customers are Time-Warner, Disney, Sony etc. When he says "a
> product our customers can trust the security of" he means a system that
> the content owners can deliver their copyrighted media to without fear
> of copying.

Again, we will be using Mono, which is Open Source.  You can quite
easily modify any such security precautions out.  And yes, a proprietary
extension can be developed for media that isn't OPen Source.  But how,
then, is that *any* worse than not having Mono at all?  I'd rather have
the choice to watch media thru a closed extension than not watch it at
all.  Not having that option isn't going to make the media open; it's
just going to make it impossible for users of Open operating systems to
enjoy the media.

And I'm not even going to try to dissect the rest of this message.  What
any of it has to do with Mono being released under the X11 license I
can't figure out.  ^,^  You do have some good philosiphical points tho,
something I hadn't really thought of myself.

> 
> Reread the article keeping in mind when he says "customer" hes not
> talking about us at all. Makes sense now doesn't it :) 
> 
> Its like TV. People think the product on TV is the shows. Wrong. The
> product is the viewer thats being sold to the advertisers. The TV shows
> are just filler between the adds to attract the eyes 'the product'.
> 
> So when Bill says "Trustworthiness" it means "the content owners can
> trust that their data wont be subverted"
> 
> "What I mean by this is that customers will always be able to rely on
> these systems to be available and to secure their information." 
> 
> Secure the info from what? From the product of course.
> 
> "Availability: Our products should always be available when our
> customers need them."
> 
> That is "our products" (thats us) should always be available when "our
> customers" (thats the big boys) need them. Cant have a crashing
> home-media station now can we :) 
> 
> "It's a fundamental challenge that spans the entire computing ecosystem,
> from individual chips all the way to global Internet services. It's
> about smart software, services and industry-wide cooperation."
> 
> Enter the DMCA, SSSCA, DRM, and especially CPRM here. They're gonna lock
> the product(us) out of the loop all the way from the cpu to the API.
> 
> Its a beautiful plan for World Domination TM. .Net will sell the willing
> eyes of the consumer to the content providers (programming their
> applications in .Net) and Microsoft will act as the middle man. Passport
> will be the authentication system. They'll take a cut of all the
> transactions. And they'll become significantly larger than they are now.
> If you thought they acted illegally in their monopoly before, wait till
> you see them after .Net!
> 
> It all fits in with the X-box and paves the way for pay-per-play.
> 
> Mono will enable a customer like Time Warner to securely deliver their
> media to Linux users without fear they may copy the media, or watch it
> again later. The product will have to pay. They'll pay via
> passport/hailstorm. Now THATS freedom.
> 
> > I don't see how it would be possible to close up or restrict the freedom
> > of GNOME users.
> 
> I didn't say this. Its Mono thats not going to be free. And if Miguel
> makes later GNOME based on unFree Mono, then there will just be a fork.
> 
> >  The worst that can happen is that GNOME users can be
> > locked out of potentially useful and powerful software simply because
> > for totally non-technical reasons.
> 
> Sounds like the whole commercial software industry. "Sorry Word X can't
> load Word Y files"
> 
> > (Note: I don't really understand the
> > GPL in regards to, say, a GPL -> X11 -> proprietary linkage, so I could
> > be really wrong here.) 
> > 
> > *I'd* like to see all of GNOME switched to a more Free license, but I
> > have a feeling very few of the GNOME developers agree with me there. 
> > ^,^  Heck, I'll probably be massively flamed here for sharing my
> > personal opinions on licenses.
> 
> I would contest the idea of a *more Free* licence. But I hope theres no
> flames. Everyones entitled to their opinions, and everyone can licence
> the code *they* write however they want. Users are free to use their
> software the way the licence permits. Users are free to choose not to
> use the software.
> 
> And somewhere in this whole swirling maelstrom, everything will work out
> fine :)
> 
> Crispin
> 
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