Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Mono in the default install

[Sam Geeraerts]

Robert Millan schreef:
> Hi,
>
> As you might have heard, Richard Stallman has recently written an article,
> positioning himself against including Mono by default, and discouraging
> it as a platform for developing free software:
>
>   http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono
>
> The SFLC [1] and other members of the free software community [2] have made
> statements backing Stallman's position.
>
> I agree with Richard that this is a serious problem which could in the future
> cause great harm to our community if left unstopped (I disagree, however, in
> the way Microsoft will use to attack us; if you want to know my own opinion,
> I wrote an essay about this in my blog [3]).
>
> This matter concerns gNewSense because the i386/amd64 version is shipping Mono
> by default (as a dependency for Tomboy and F-Spot, AFAICS).
>
> IMHO it should be considered among the gNewSense community to avoid promoting
> Mono whenever possible.  There's a replacement for Tomboy, Gnote [4], which is
> almost identical to Tomboy, and there are a number of high-quality replacements
> for F-Spot.  Fortunately, at this time the move I'm proposing doesn't involve
> a great loss.
>
> What does everyone think about this?
>
>
> [1] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jun/29/language-patents/
>
> [2] http://blogs.fsfe.org/adridg/?p=157
>     http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=3
>
> [3] 
> http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/mono-is-not-a-patent-threat-for-debian/
>
> [4] As I announced earlier in this list, Gnote is already in the default
>     install for gNewSense metad (mipsel & powerpc).  Note that at that
>     time, Mono was not an option for metad anyway, since it doesn't
>     support mipsel:
>     http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-dev/2009-05/msg00024.html

I don't think the free software community will get much heat from MS 
about C#. Unless it starts becoming a real competitor to MS's 
implementation, that is. I agree that it's not good to encourage 
dependencies on C#, so I think you should open bug reports for the 
applications that should be replaced, but I'd mark them as "Wishlist".

I know Gnote is a valid alternative for Tomboy, but it would have to be 
backported. I don't know about alternative for F-Spot. Last time I 
checked I didn't find a lot of (actively developed) similar 
applications, but then I don't use that kind of software. Perhaps 
someone could make a comparison of features of the available apps so it 
would be easier to choose a replacement.

Are there any volunteers who'd like to implement this?