Re: [DotGNU]Gnome to be based on .NET

[Norbert Bollow]

William G. Thompson, Jr. <address@hidden> wrote:

> > > This is what Japple does.  And it does this
> > > _now_.  I'm saying we can cut m$ off at the pass.

Bill Lance <address@hidden> replied:

> > What's the difference between Microsoft's agenda and
> > Sun's agenda?

William G. Thompson, Jr. <address@hidden> replied:

> Java won't bind you to Solaris like .Net will bind you to windoze.
> 
> No one would argue that Sun couldn't do better vis-a-vis the Free
> Software community, but they _are_ shipping JDK/JRE for Linux, Solaris,
> and Windoze. You won't see Microsoft doing that.

Ok, so Microsoft may be worse than Sun, but Sun's Java stuff is
still proprietary and therefore totally unacceptable.

> We can focus our energies to solve the problem of how to build, deploy,
> and maintain web apps and services faster, easier, and more efficiently,
> or we can spend cycles porting a technology who's creator has one thing
> in mind; creating platform dependant users.

DotGNU is not about porting .NET (that's what Mono is doing).
Also, we don't have any way to stop Miguel de Icaza from
behaving as if he was a paid ".NET evangelist"  -- our options
are to either not work on DotGNU (leaving the field to Microsoft
and the Mono project with their viewpoint which is so
uncomfortably friendly to Microsoft) or we can work to build a
true Free Software competitor called DotGNU.

Yes, we want a system that is capable of running .NET
applications.... with one big difference, namely that users
won't be locked into Microsoft's "Passport" authentication /
virtual identities system.  We want this system to be capable of
running Java applciations also.  And we want this system to be
completely free software.  (And it should have some nice
additional features, etc, too :-)

> I choose the former.

This is fine.  We want such tools, too.  (They can't be
officially part of GNU before they can be compiled and used
using Free Software only, though.  Maybe it'll take a while
before the free Java stuff has been advanced far enough that
DotGNU can officially endorse your Japple.)

> But think about it for a minute.  CLS is really just a smoke screen.  What
> users will really care about is build apps _fast_.

That's what developers and their bosses care about.  I'm more
concerned about the freedom of the 'net as a whole.  As I see
it, the big issue with .NET is that it could result in Microsoft
achieving an effective monopoly on authentication services on
the internet.  Once achieved, that kind of monopoly would be
extremely difficult to break.  For this reason, we're taking
action to prevent it.  That's the main goal of the DotGNU
project.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
A founder of the http://DotGNU.org project and Steering Committee member
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59       Fax +41 1 972 20 69      http://thinkcoach.com
Your own domain with all your Mailman lists: $15/month  http://cisto.com