To most people, Mono is a disease that leaves young people tired and listless. But to members of the free software community, Mono is something worse: a controversy that leaves everybody over-wrought and mistrusting each other.
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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lozz
2 years 46 weeks 3 days 13 hours ago
Unacceptable risk
"20 million .NET developers don't give a sh**."(Miguel de Icaza)
Well, they don't have to.
Stick them all in a room with 20 million keyboards for long enough and eventually they'll come up with the complete works of XP SP3.
.NET was developed by M$ in a futile attempt to turn the internet into a M$-Monopoly.
For what it's worth, it still remains patented M$ technology.
Bruce Byfield appears to arrive at the same conclusion as Richard Stallman; that given the nasty nature of Microsoft's dealings with the rest of the world, Mono poses an unacceptable risk to GNU/Linux.
Byfield's suggestion, that the SFLC thoroughly examines the legal status of Mono, is a worthwhile plan for the future.
aboutblank
2 years 46 weeks 3 days 20 hours ago
Patents controlled by Microsoft
For anti-Mono advocates, there is only one way to settle the Mono debate: Microsoft should publish a legally binding statement absolving anybody that chooses to make use of Mono as well as derivatives of Mono. While Microsoft claims that the terms of ECMA .Net technologies are available under RAND, various publicised attempts to obtain these statements have been fruitless. On top of that, Microsoft's character and history towards the FOSS community fails to flatter to the anti-Mono advocates.
For pro-Mono advocates, the debate is already settled. Mono doesn't pose potential patent problems for them. Even on the event that Mono does become a weapon against them, they have faith that they have systems in place will protect them from anything that Microsoft can do.
As for me, I think we (the FOSS community) should minimise our dependancy to .Net. I believe that Mono may potentially become a problem in the future; I base this feeling upon Microsoft's well documented character and history. To me, Mono is a technically great but redundant technology so avoiding it and focusing on other things wouldn't be hard.