02.24.08
Novell’s Mono in Fedora 8
Here’s the full extent of Mono in Fedora 8, as far as I can tell:
avahi-sharp
avahi-ui-sharp
banshee
beagle
beagle-evolution
beagle-gui
blam
bless
boo
bytefx-data-mysql
cowbell
daap-sharp
db4o
dbus-sharp
drapes
evolution-sharp
f-spot
gecko-sharp2
gmime-sharp
gnome-sharp
graphviz-sharp
gsf-sharp
gtk-sharp
gtk-sharp2
gtk-sharp-gapi
gtksourceview-sharp
ibm-data-db2
ice-csharp
ikvm
kerry
lat
mod_mono
mono-core
mono-data
mono-data-firebird
mono-data-oracle
mono-data-postgresql
mono-data-sqlite
mono-data-sybase
mono-debugger
monodevelop
monodoc
mono-extras
mono-jscript
mono-locale-extras
mono-nunit
mono-web
mono-winforms
muine
nant
njb-sharp
tomboy
xsp
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Mark Fink said,
February 24, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Does this mean they replaced c dbus with that MONO dbus replacement that Beranger was talking about?
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 24, 2008 at 10:43 pm
As I understand it, both remain, but some packages might use dbus-sharp instead.
Here is something which I found yesterday (incidentally):
“…support for writing applets in Vala, the C#-like language for GObjects.”
From: http://phorolinux.com/avant-window-navigator-awn-024-released.html
Okay, so I don’t know (and haven’t checked yet) if Mono is involved, but a huge number of people became rather dependent on this excellent project (AWN) and not just GNOME users.
So okay, I’ve just lookup up Vala in the Wiki:
“Vala is a new (as of 2006) programming language, targeting the GObject object system. It was developed by Jürg Billeter and Raffaele Sandrini.
It has a syntax based upon C#. However, unlike C#, it has no runtime system (Vala is compiled to C code, which can then be compiled to native code) and so imposes little additional overhead.”
There appears to be no problem here after all, but it’s worth keeping an eye open,
Woods said,
February 25, 2008 at 12:49 am
What I don’t understand is that if the point of Vala is providing a modern, object-oriented language for programming Gnome for developers who won’t/can’t use C# or Java, why emulate C# of all languages? Gnome already has the (to my understanding) excellent gnomemm-bindings for C++, an ISO-standard programming language. And without the pseudo-syntax of Qt for handling gui-signaling.
Furthermore, Vala doesn’t provide garbage collection (which would be a major boon for easy development) but only assisted memory management (C++ smart pointers anyone?)
I mean, what is the point of Vala?!
What really bothers me with this is basing the language on C#. Alone, it would be nothing but I feel like there is a tendency among the FOSS-side to somehow provide a better Windows _for_ Windows developers and Windows users than what Microsoft is providing them. And even that is fine as far as it goes but there isn’t just the danger of patents from MS (_maybe_ this will be mitigated by the recent announcement from Microsoft, especially if we get them in writing (the Mono-crowd must be cheering: “We were right!”)) but as Beranger quite rightly pointed out there is the danger of “cultural imperialism” as well. What will we (FOSS) be if, at the end of the day, we’re just a free version of the Microsoft-culture?
GNU project began with the basis of UNIX and grew a culture and an identity of its own (diverse though it may be) Should all that just be discarded so that we can be Microsoft in place of Microsoft?
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 25, 2008 at 1:00 am
It’s very much the opposite. I don’t know if you read Matt Aslett’s analysis of this (he’s a journalist/analyst focusing on Open Source), but the new announcement means that Microsoft will specify patents covering its ‘precious’ APIs. It remains to see what this means to C#.
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra said,
February 25, 2008 at 2:21 pm
dbus-sharp are C# bindings for dbus.
Woods said,
February 25, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Rui,
Dbus-sharp is a C# implementation of D-Bus (http://www.ndesk.org/DBusSharp)
You’re confusing it with dbus-mono, which were the (now unmaintained) C# bindings for libdbus (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DBusBindings)
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 26, 2008 at 12:07 am
The discussion here might be helpful.
Victor Soliz said,
March 24, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Hmmm Vala looks nice, I just found it by mistake, for example, the syntax allows much more stuff than C++ and is closer to Java in the aspects in which Java makes better looking code than C++.
And now I read these comments and Vala has no garbage collector! That’s so good! I think I should take a look to this…