I can't be bothered
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Jun 22, 2009 10:28 PM EDT |
1) reading this article by Catherine Noyes, as I have to be insulted by an advertisement for a Microsoft product to get there 2) as usual she's late. This subject has been debated to death on Lxer already, with a wealth of new information on the issues, and indeed why it's not really an issue, anyway, made available 3) there is so much anger, mostly misdirected, from the opponents, and I simply can't be bothered anymore. Instead I'll just follow the project to keep up to date with how it's going. If I find it useful, I'll use it. |
| caitlyn Jun 22, 2009 10:31 PM EDT |
It seems like you're bothered even without reading it :) Don't worry, you aren't missing anything. It's Noyes usual quoting a bunch of comments from posts with nothing new to add. |
| tracyanne Jun 22, 2009 10:33 PM EDT |
Yeah I did bother didn't I, oh well. |
| bigg Jun 23, 2009 6:06 AM EDT |
I think these articles do serve a useful purpose. A couple of years down the road, someone might want a reference to the 'Mono controversy'. This is a summary of the debate. Of course, one might argue that stringing together a few quotes without a rigorous methodology is not sufficient to summarize a debate, but the idea is not bad. |
| Libervis Jun 23, 2009 6:44 AM EDT |
Her articles are an example of truly neutral reporting. I think there's some value in that. She doesn't take sides nor imply any final conclusions on her part, just present various points of view with some quotes. |
| azerthoth Jun 23, 2009 7:01 AM EDT |
Lib, I think there is a rather wide difference between opinion neutral reporting and content neutral reporting. This one falls well into the second category. I can sum up the content of the whole article in three sentences. "There was yet another discussion of mono in Linux. (1) Spurred by an invitation and response from LT's editor the brushfire surrounding the topic flared to life yet again. (2) There followed even more debate and discussion on $site1, $site2, $site3. (3)" This one is just a case of loquaciousness, i.e. using ten words where one will do. |
| hkwint Jun 23, 2009 9:49 AM EDT |
Next week she'll probably ask if 'apt hurts LSB', if Ubuntu hurts Debian, or if Emacs hurts Vim. Kinda smart way to let commenters write the article for you. You only have to read those 3k+ messages, find the most interesting ones and summarize. The funny thing is, it's a nice way to write articles about stuff you don't know about yourself. I'm not implying Ms. Noyes doesn't know about Mono and all, but I could imagine a flamewar can be quite educational. Should remember that trick. For example if I wanted to write about Emacs vs. Vi(m) without ever having used Emacs, or whatever it is I'm too lazy to read about / try myself. |
| TxtEdMacs Jun 23, 2009 11:39 AM EDT |
Stenography != Journalism YBT |
| gus3 Jun 23, 2009 1:42 PM EDT |
Standing ovation at the end of the press conference != Journalism |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 23, 2009 2:34 PM EDT |
I guess it's time for me to read up on Mono. I can understand the control issues that occur with technologies such as Java, Flash and Mono (and perhaps also with Adobe Air), and I also understand the impact of a distro shipping with it as a default and/or critical dependency vs. a voluntary add-on. So if any of you have nominations for "best article that explains it for the uninitiated," I'm all ears. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 23, 2009 3:05 PM EDT |
I got quoted in the article, but kind of out of context... |
| jdixon Jun 23, 2009 4:16 PM EDT |
> So if any of you have nominations for "best article that explains it for the uninitiated," Not really. However, IMO it's fairly easy to sum up. There are two essential problems. One, Microsoft has patents (AFAIK, so far unspecified) on .Net. Mono is a reimplementation of that technology, and there are concerns it may infringe those patents. These concerns appear to be largely unjustified, AFAICT, but there's no way to be absolutely certain any time patents become an issue. Two, some folks (myself included, so you know my biases) want nothing to do with any Microsoft related product if they can avoid it, and see no particular need or have any particular use for Mono. Every argument I've heard against Mono can be summed up as one of those two. |
| moopst Jun 23, 2009 6:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:Her articles are an example of truly neutral reporting. I think there's some value in that. She doesn't take sides nor imply any final conclusions on her part, just present various points of view with some quotes. She does have a neutral tone, but near the end she quotes Kevin Dean a lot without pointing out some of his fallacies. Quoting:The problem isn't the software but "the 'game' software exists in," Dean explained. "Most Free Software advocates believe that information or data can't be owned but should be rightfully shared. The problem is that those advocates subscribe to the same SYSTEM that by default makes things like Mono or .NET okay to restrict. They subscribe to the government-enforced system of copyright; the owner of an idea (the creator of it) somehow owns *all implementations* of that idea -- a monopoly on that idea, if you will." Here Dean is making a mistake about intellectual property law. Prior to the day they decided that software could be patented, IP was handeled this way: Trade mark law for things like "Ford Motor Co" or "Coke", Patents for truely new and useful inventions like machines or new chemical processes and copyright for large scale creative works. (I just summed up a very well written article I read a few years ago on the subject of IP, I wish I could remember where it was). Anyway it is software patents that attempt to monopolize ideas, not copyright. The Free Software folks would say that copyright is the proper field of law to apply to software and I tend to agree. There have been cases where someone tried to sue over things like double ledger accounting and it got struck down. The court ruled that someone else may write their own book about it and may expand on it, and that your copyright applied to your particular implementation (i.e.book), not to the concept (or idea). Thus it is perfectly ligitament for a FLOSS implementation of the .NET framework to be created and distributed under a free software license. I think the emotional issue some people have is that the FLOSS version will be the second rate, follow Steve Balmer's taillights version, struggling to be feature complete as M$ constantly mutates the unpublished or incompletely published specs. Quoting:There may be some in the Free Software movement who are uncomfortable with rejecting the idea that the author of software is its owner, Dean noted -- "the GNU project, for instance, might balk at the idea that they do NOT control how software they wrote is used by developers around the world," he said. "But consistency and ethical conduct are the price of freedom." A little misdirected emphasis here. The free software ethos is that software should remain free. Some licenses are considered "permissive" (BSD and MIT come to mind) in that they permit you to take their open source code and create a closed source derivative (Darwin and OS X are examples). The authors of the GPL, in particular RMS, say that any closed source software is inherently unethical because it denies the user various fundamental rights that they are always promoting. Thus it's more fair to say that they would be abandoning their fundamental principles rather than meerly balking and that the dispute is about what is "consistency and ethical conduct". |
| hkwint Jun 23, 2009 6:20 PM EDT |
And there's the other discussion: Mono can lead .NET Windows-developers to Linux, or Mono can lead Linux developers to .NET and later Windows. Mono can weaken the platform lock-in to Windows and .NET because there's an alternative implementation and you don't have to use Windows if you want to program in .NET. Or Mono can strengthen the platform lock-in to Windows because Windows will always have better support for the newest .NET framework than Mono does. Mono-developers claim that Microsdoft .NET compability isn't the main goal - standard adherence to certain ECMA-standards surrounding .NET is, but obviously Mono's compatibility with .NET is the real reason why lots of people use Mono. Furthermore, Mono (and .NET) offer the ability to mix different computer languages and easily glue components written in different languages together, and there's not a viable 'open' alternative for that technology. DotGNU is trying to make the latter however. I think the above - together with jdixon's comment - sums up the whole discussion within 20 lines. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!