The endless argument
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dthacker Jun 30, 2009 9:58 AM EDT |
When we argue about mono, Microsoft wins. Dave |
| tuxchick Jun 30, 2009 10:02 AM EDT |
How? What's the alternative, roll over and allow a dubious technology to infect Linux? Or contrarily, roll over and let scaredy cats chase a useful technology out of Linux? Microsoft profits from squelching openness and freedom in debate. Openness is a FOSS virtue, not a liability. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 30, 2009 11:44 AM EDT |
@dthacker We should just ignore Mono and .NET as much as possible. I don't spend any time arguing about it that I would have spent doing anything else, so no loss. I do put my time behind working with other toolsets. |
| dinotrac Jun 30, 2009 1:54 PM EDT |
TC - Have you forgotten what FOSS is? Itch scratching, etc. There is no FOSS police force zapping unworthy projects. They live for as long as people want to keep them going and die as soon as nobody cares. There's not "allowing" involved. |
| jdixon Jun 30, 2009 2:22 PM EDT |
> There's not "allowing" involved. Exactly. The Mono folks are free to develop and use Mono, as they see fit. And the anti-Mono folks are free to avoid it like the plague. That's what freedom is all about. The fact that I'm pretty much in the anti-Mono crowd is largely beside the point. I have no ability or desire to stop people from developing or using Mono. |
| rm42 Jun 30, 2009 2:59 PM EDT |
Each distribution needs to decide whether to allow mono as a default component or not on a particular release. They can either "allow" it to be in or not. Distro maintainers have a powerful position in this regard and the rest of the community can certainly voice their opinion to try to influence that decision one way or the other. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 30, 2009 5:32 PM EDT |
I'm a bit disappointed about that, actually. It is no problem for the pro-Mono folk if it is not installed by default. It's not like it's gone from the repository. It's just an apt-get, yast or emerge away, like more than half the apps you currently have installed. But it is a problem for the anti-Mono people. I really don't understand that distros are forcing it over the opposition of roughly half(*) their user base. (*) Very imprecise, but from talking to many people here on the forums and elsewhere I think that the pro and anti Mono crowd are about equal sized. |
| jdixon Jun 30, 2009 5:37 PM EDT |
> ...but from talking to many people here on the forums and elsewhere I think that the pro and anti Mono crowd are about equal sized. Probably, but each probably only makes up 5-10% of the user base. Most people don't care one way or another. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 30, 2009 6:07 PM EDT |
Okay, say it's 10%. That means that for 100% of your users it's fine to *not* install Mono by default. For the 10% Mono lovers it doesn't matter. The 80% don't care and the 10% Mono haters will love you for it. On the other hand, if you do install Mono apps by default then it still doesn't matter for the 10% Mono lovers, 80% still could care less and the remaining 10% are going to cause a PR disaster. Which is the smart move? |
| hkwint Jun 30, 2009 6:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:I think that the pro and anti Mono crowd are about equal sized. Looking from an 'evolutionary' perspective, that's great. If you have 'Linux with mono' and 'Linux without mono' the best will finally survive. If Microsoft decided to sue Mono-users, 'Linux with patented .NET technologies' would die and the Linux platform would only become better. However, as Gnome and KDE (and all other WM's) show, Linux "with and without Mono" could also coexist happily. Yes, sometimes there are religious clashes, but those are part of the evolution. I have been thinking about this issue the last weeks or so. Clearly, one could see it as a problem that not all competent developers work on one and the same Window manager. If they did, the result may be better if anyone develops and files bug reports for the same wm. That also goes for the package formats, it would be nice if everyone used the same format, easier to fix bugs, less duplication etc. It would also be better if not one half of the developers concentrated on stuff like Tomboy and the other half were to duplicate that effort with GNote, but if all these people worked on the same app. Or maybe not? I'm still not sure what would be better. Centralizing development and unification (only one WM, one media player, one distro, one package format, limited hardware support; think Apple) would be a good thing to make sure development isn't fragmented and duplicated, but on the other hand all those duplicated and fragmented efforts will lead to 'best of breed' not possible in a mono-culture (where 'mono' refers to 1, not the platform). WM, package format, text editor, 200 different distro's... I guess evolution isn't pretty and may seem like a hassle on the short term, but it's necessary to survive. Therefore one could argue that when we argue about Mono and some distro's include it and others don't, this is part of the evolution which in turn is good for FOSS and bad for Microsoft. I mean, while non-Windows platforms evolve - due to disagreement or not - and the best survives, that doesn't sound like Microsoft wins to me. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 30, 2009 6:54 PM EDT |
Your train of may be is flawed. Look at it from an anti-Mono point of view, which is a significant part of the market. Forking an application or a distro brings more choice. Suddenly I can choose between the original and the fork. Installing Mono by default brings less choice, because it's one less distro that's available to people who don't want Mono. The problem with your reasoning is that with Mono, a large percentage of people are going to pick a distro based on the fact that it does *not* have a certain app. That's the other way around from normal competition where people choose some distro because it *does* provide a certain feature. It's quite unlike any market force that I know. There are plenty of things where *not* having some thingy is a feature. E.g. spray cans not having CFK's is a feature. Vegetables not having pesticide is a feature. But in those known examples the trend is the other way. Initially everyone has the bad stuff (CFS's, pesticide) and slowly more and more products become available that do not have the bad stuff. The market for products that do *not* have a bad feature grows. With Mono it's the exact opposite. Initially nobody was shipping the bad stuff but now more and more products are including it, shrinking the market in the process. It's the opposite of what we know, and therefor the "gut feeling" of "more competition = good" does not apply cleanly in this case. More choice isn't always better. It's usually better in traditional competitive markets, but if the market is different then it may not necessarily be true. Not to say that your position is false. Just saying that you need to think about it a lot deeper before you can say it is true :-) |
| hkwint Jun 30, 2009 8:12 PM EDT |
Well, honestly, "more competition = good" is not my position at all. Fragmentation and duplication of efforts is bad. It's one of the reasons why Linux isn't mainstream nowadays and one of the reasons my KDE4 is buggy. So more competition = good is not my gut feeling at all.
However, fragmentation has its merits, sometimes. That 'struggle' is what I tried to describe. I'm still undecided, I was just contemplating above. The outcome depends on the context I guess. Also, let's consider this: When you have a spray can with CFC's (Dutch: CFK's) you cannot easily take out the CFC's. When you have genetically modified food, you cannot remove the 'genetically modified' part and eat the rest. When there are nano-parts in your spray can, you cannot easily remove them. When someone is smoking cigarettes in your room however, you can filter the air and thereby remove most of the unhealthy particles. When there's asbestos in your house, it can be removed. It's not convenient and it's more work than 'adding' it was, but it can be done. You can decide not to buy a house that contains asbestos in which case the asbestos limits your choice, or you can buy the house and remove it. Or you can build your own house. If your distribution contains Mono and you don't want Mono, I'm not sure if it's fair to say the distro forces you not to use the distro because it contains Mono, that's what I'd like to say. Also, remember Mono is not like asbestos or CFC's (haloalkanes? Not sure what word the rest of the world uses) when it comes to 'good and bad', because on asbestos/CFC's there's general agreement it's bad and nobody wants it nowadays. It's more like the nano-particle / genetical modification discussion. In all these cases, it's not entirely sure what the merits and the 'dangers' are. And with the GM-discussion, there is a - sometimes literally - religious debate too. I think you should be cautious deciding what's "bad stuff" and what's not. I believe Mono and Genetically Modifed food is bad, but who am I? BTW I do have nano spray for my car! Still alive! How to resolve the issue? Again, I'm not sure (But that's why I don't work in IT, I don't have to make these decisions!) You could argue Gnome is bad. You could argue Ubuntu forces you to use Gnome. That's why people made Kubuntu and Xubuntu. You could argue Mono is bad. You could argue Ubuntu forces you to use Mono. And the last two lines, I _am_ sure about. |
| dthacker Jun 30, 2009 9:26 PM EDT |
Quoting:How?By diverting our energy from making Linux stronger. Quoting:What's the alternative, roll over and allow a dubious technology to infect Linux? Or contrarily, roll over and let scaredy cats chase a useful technology out of Linux?The alternative is to stop arguing and choose. Carla, just last week you wrote about moving from Ubuntu to Studio 64. As an Ubuntu "shill", I was unhappy to read about your move. However, I could not find fault with your reasons. Your choice sent the message: Ubuntu has work to do to be effective in performance and audio production. Choosing a distro that includes or excludes Mono will send the same kind of message. Quoting: Microsoft profits from squelching openness and freedom in debate. Openness is a FOSS virtue, not a liability.I'm not suggesting the debate be squelched. I simply don't see any new ground being covered. I think the mono issue will now work itself out by the votes of developers and users. The same thing has happened with Qt and KDE, Bitkeeper and the kernel maintainers, firefox vs iceweasel and any other flamefest of the last 10 years. When all the technical ground has been covered the debate sinks into the quagmire of personal attacks. Let's agree to disagree and avoid the quagmire. Dave |
| tracyanne Jun 30, 2009 9:35 PM EDT |
last comment on this from me. Thanks Dave. |
| tuxchick Jun 30, 2009 11:48 PM EDT |
Well Dave, the reason issues like this stay alive is they don't get resolved. The deal is, when a reasonable solution is offered and it is not given serious consideration (make it opt-in rather than opt-out) that reinforces the belief that sinister motivations are at work, and that giving in will lead to worse choices, until there are no real choices left. You are right that everything has been said and no one has anything new to add. We seem to be in the position of so many IT shops, where all but a tiny number of decision-makers are in favor of rolling out some non-Windows deployments, but it doesn't matter and it won't happen because the decision-makers don't care and won't listen. Yes, we have all the usual options, use other distros, fork, etc. Those are cold comfort when it appears that the community model has been broken, that the Mono folks have somehow gained too much influence, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says. Very Microsoftian. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 01, 2009 3:06 AM EDT |
Quoting:I'm not sure if it's fair to say the distro forces you not to use the distro because it contains Mono, that's what I'd like to say. I was arguing from the view point of the anti-Mono crowd. Like it or not, the anti-Mono crowd is a significant piece of the Linux market, so distro decision makers should take them into account. |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 01, 2009 9:25 AM EDT |
> Those are cold comfort when it appears that the community model has been broken, that the Mono folks have somehow gained too much influence, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says. Very Microsoftian. I agree completely. Moles and paid defectors. |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 01, 2009 9:55 AM EDT |
Bob,Quoting:Moles and paid defectors.Let's see if I have this right. First I think I have a mole on my back somewhere, kinda hard to see clearly in the mirror. Next I always sing the praises of Vista Exteme/Extravaganza Business/Professional/Enterprise Edition, since it beats the hell out of the competition! Windows 7 doesn't stand in even as a dim glow in its shadow. How's that? Now where do I go to get my check? YBT |
| hkwint Jul 01, 2009 10:37 AM EDT |
Quoting:Those are cold comfort when it appears that the community model has been broken "The community" is not a democracy it seems; though there are initiatives like 'brainstorm'. Looking here http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/?keywords=Mono&tags= it seems more people are interested in faster Gimp than removing Mono from the LiveCD. |
| tuxchick Jul 01, 2009 10:48 AM EDT |
Check out the "Implemented Ideas" tab....it says "No entries" for all Ubuntu releases! |
| bigg Jul 01, 2009 10:56 AM EDT |
Nothing under development, either. |
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