04.23.08
SpeC#ulation: Tipping Point for GNOME?
MS-GNOME.NET, anybody?
Two completely independent warning shots were sent to us an hour ago by folks whose name shall remain undisclosed. The first is a pointer to this GNOME announcement stating “not sure what ’special rules’ means, but I thought you might find it interesting.” It seems to be about dbus, which we wrote about before [1, 2, 3, 4]. The second, which refers to a more recent observation, bears the subject line “Munchkins invading GTK+.” It says: “The GTK+ start page no longer mentions the major development tool, Java, now that it is open source, instead pushing a proprietary substitute…”
http://www.gtk.org/language-bindings.html
Regarding Debian GNU/Linux, which this reader uses, he adds: “it is important to find out [if more evidence exist]. I hope it does not mean that Debian is breaking its famous Debian Social Contract to allow mono and mono-carrying developers to infect Debian projects. The social contract is one of Debian’s great strengths.
“As the Microsoft barge sinks the bailers are not just bailing their own boat, but tipping the water into other people’s boats. de Icaza and other Microsoft reps are working as fast as they can to contaminate as many projects as they can with Microsoft technologies. On the technical side, it will make the distros more bloated, inefficient and cumbersome. On the legal side, it will make easy pickings for Microsoft lawyers in the trade zones where software patents apply.”
Looking at the cache as supporting evidence, our reader adds: “I looked at archive.org, but it’s next most recent version is from August 2007. Java is, as you point out, listed in last week’s Google cache, but not on the start page. Instead Microsoft C# is being promoted.”
Can anybody shed light on this? Will GNOME promote Microsoft technologies at the expense of open source Java and C++? █
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.
Alex H. said,
April 23, 2008 at 8:32 am
Given that the gtk website is controlled in SVN, why not check out exactly when and where Java was “removed” from the front page?
This history is here:
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gtk-web/trunk/index.html?view=log
I couldn’t find any mention of Java on the front page though.. ?
CoolGuy said,
April 23, 2008 at 8:34 am
I was learning Py GTk and due to Gnome infestation I have changed my goals and now using Java. I will change over to KDE or xfce soon .. !!
Gnome is no longer the “free” desktop that it used to be. It has been polluted by Novell - curse them. Novell is now aiming for infesting the KDE soon.
I have left gnome after many years of using it. Best of luck to Gnome community - hope this turns out good for them.
Merlin the Great said,
April 23, 2008 at 9:41 am
Nonsense-schmonsens; as usual standards of this so-called ‘website’ (read: slander-speculation-FUD-factory).
Kuba said,
April 23, 2008 at 9:52 am
Merlin, do you have anything to say to back up what you just said?
Merlin the Great said,
April 23, 2008 at 9:56 am
Nah; those of us who know, and visit this website only for the cheap laughs, understand it… As for you other folks - you’re part of the amusement and trying to explain it to you would only spoil the fun.
Kuba said,
April 23, 2008 at 10:52 am
So, basically you claim that anyone who agrees with a point arguments and facts that you don’t like to even hear about is laughable and not even worthy to be presented with any reasonable points concerning the subject at hand… Ah, truly! Now I see the errors of my ways!
BTW. Are you new here, or are you another “incarnation” of eet? You sure do sound like it.
And the serious part of post- Roy, check this : http://slated.org/mono_mysterious_special_rules .What the hell is that about? I’d sure like to know.
Alex H. said,
April 23, 2008 at 11:11 am
A small amount of research again would go a long way.
1. The special rules regarding mono:
http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleRequirements
Mono is treated less favourably than C++ and Python, as modules within the Desktop set are not allowed to gain Mono dependencies without approval first.
2. The front page of gtk.org.
There’s no evidence Java was ever on the front page of this site, and I’d love to see someone try to prove it - gtk-web is stored in GNOME’s svn, so you don’t need a cache, the full history is there.
C++, Python and C# are mentioned there. They also are the allowed dependencies in the GNOME desktop set, whereas Java is not.
max stirner said,
April 23, 2008 at 12:01 pm
this is depressing. ive enjoyed gnome ever since i switched to ubuntu from suse upon breezy launch. oh well.
luckily there are plenty of excellent window managers around that are not developed by MS shills. so one may have to switch there.
i am much more concerned about the mono online hedging bit really..
MS is a sinking ship, just like rome back in the day or the US today, there will be turmoil!
Victor Soliz said,
April 23, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I’d say this is rather a shame, the home page is full of C#, C# and C# and the bindings page lists C# before Java, python, perl , ruby and so many FOSS alternatives.
The good news is that it doesn’t look like the home page has deliberately removed Java references, but the bad news is that it looks like they never had any reference of that sort and just had C# bias altogether.
Why allow or encourage MONO dependency at all in gnome? It sounds detrimental for a cross platform project as gnome which primarily used to focus on Linux in the past to suddenly decide it is all right to depend on a whole platform such as gnome as long as it is approved by “the community”.
Victor Soliz said,
April 23, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Merlin the Great: Yah I got you, you are such a superior human being, I guess ad hominem is the superior man’s weapon of choice…
Alex H. said,
April 23, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Victor - with regards the mentioning of C#, that’s really pretty natural. Gtk# is as good as the C++ binding (gtkmm) and the Python one, and the Java one simply isn’t as good.
I’m not sure why C# automatically means Mono dependency for you, because that’s not what it means. For one, it’s just a language. Mono is one implementation, but there’s also the GNU Portable.net:
http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/pnet.html
Given that GNOME is a free software GNU project, and so is dotgnu, that seems a fairly natural relationship to me and you don’t have to touch any mono.
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 23, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Kuba,
I don’t know if ‘Merlin the Great’ is ‘eet’, but both share the same E-mail domain (gmx.net).
Merlin the Great,
Please explain where the sources are wrong.
Victor Soliz said,
April 23, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Alex: I hope you are right and they mean dotgnu altogether. In that case though they probably need to be more specific.
stevetheFLY said,
April 24, 2008 at 9:46 am
I hope that this Roy-guy here apologizes, soon! I hate people who soil our own free-software community by false accusations!!! Traitor!!!!!!!!!!!
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
stevetheFLY: 80.132.128.196
eet: 80.132.139.19
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 24, 2008 at 9:54 am
These were not false accusations.
stevetheFLY said,
April 24, 2008 at 9:58 am
They were!!! Stop shitting on your co-Linux-workers, man! We’re all in the same boat, but some are working on code and some are shitting on the others, like you!
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
stevetheFLY: 80.132.128.196
eet: 80.132.139.19
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 24, 2008 at 10:07 am
The exclamations marks don’t make you more correct. I know why I flagged ‘eet’ who, as we stressed before, abused readers and editors with bad language.
cojii said,
April 24, 2008 at 10:42 am
Hi there,
I just wanted to say a HUGE thx to you roy for taking the time you’ve had to to make sure this important information gets out there to unsuspecting users. I was a longtime user of gnome, not wanting to abide within the ranks of the non lgpl qt toolkit, but now I see that I can no longer be ’safe’ in gnome I will probably seek refuse in E17, that or fork gnome altogther.
Your articles have been very enlightening and what it means for me ultimately is steering CLEAR of any distro that adopts mono, which means ubuntu, fedora , freespire ( due to ubuntu base ) and mandriva. I am not sure if that is an exhaustive list but there it is.
Oh what fun…
cu
COJ
stevetheFLY said,
April 24, 2008 at 10:53 am
I have found just the right Linux-version for you:
http://tinyurl.com/5u7uv9
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
stevetheFLY: 80.132.128.196
eet: 80.132.139.19
stevetheFLY said,
April 24, 2008 at 10:54 am
For a detailed explanation see: http://tinyurl.com/no2yg
Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.
stevetheFLY: 80.132.128.196
eet: 80.132.139.19
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 24, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Does that distro have a patent royalties deal with Microsoft?
Dan O'Brian said,
April 27, 2008 at 10:11 pm
What’s so wrong about C# bindings being mentioned on the gtk.org site?
The bindings aren’t being “promoted” as you try to claim they are, they are simply listed as part of a complete list of usable bindings for the GNOME platform for any developer who visits the site to find out what bindings are available.
I don’t see any text anywhere saying “we prefer you use C# bindings over Python, Java or C++”. So where is this “promoting” of which you speak?
This is why you are a lying sack of shit, Roy.
You are constantly making false accusations in order to try and ruin GNOME’s good image. For someone who claims to be bringing the truth to everyone’s attention, you’ve done a pretty piss poor job of it. You aren’t trying to make people aware of the truth, you are trying to make people see your own warped view of the free software community. You play yourself off as some morally superior, “fighting FUD” to save users from themselves yet you use FUD yourself in order to convey your message - talk about hypocrisy.
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 27, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Microsoft is actively trying to destroy Java (always has) and I merely point out here that GNOME is used by it to achieve this goal. I receive some E-mails I can’t share in public, but it’s clear what games Microsoft is up to.
True_Friend said,
September 19, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Thanks for C# and Mono, I am now using Gnome instead of KDE. Love in it. Great language and great DE.