The-Source.com

Glyn Moody has up a short email interview with RMS on the topic of .NET and Mono (and dotGNU).

Here is my favorite bit from RMS:

RMS: You shouldn’t write software to use .NET. No exceptions.

The basic point is that Microsoft has patents over features in .NET, and its patent promise regarding free software implementations of those is inadequate. It may someday attack the free implementations of these features.

This is no reason not to write and distribute free implementations such as Mono and DotGNU. But we have to keep in mind that using and distributing these programs might become dangerous in certain countries. Therefore, we should minimize our dependence on them – we should not write programs that use those features.

Mono implements them, so if you develop software on Mono, you are liable to use those features without thinking about the issue. It is probably the same with DotGNU, except that I don’t know whether DotGNU has these features yet.

The way to avoid this danger is not to write programs in C#. If you already have a program in C#, by all means use a free platform to run it. But don’t increase your exposure to the danger – don’t write additional code in C#, and don’t encourage people to make more use of C# programs. We need to guide our community away from dependence on an interface we know Microsoft is in a position to attack.

This perfectly illustrates the difference in approach from Team Apologista.

Consider:

Promises Promises

Team Apologista refuses to honestly acknowledge that the patent promise covering .NET is insufficient. In fact, a favorite tactic of Mono Apologists is to mention some other technology (usually AJAX or FTP) and then pretend the Mono situation is similar to AJAX, and so if one is opposed to the former, they must also oppose the latter, or are ignorant/hypocritical/whatever.

The truth of the matter is that .NET is NOT under the same “promise” that these other technologies are, so this ruse is dishonest inaccurate. Shockingly, Mono apologists continue to use this faulty “defense”.

Additionally, much of .NET (and corresponding portions of Mono) are NOT covered by any promise whatsoever – and despite Team Apologista’s occasional concession on this point (often with vague promises to “split” Mono into “covered”/non-”covered” portions), I feel it is not unfair to say Team Apologista downplays this distinction.

Furthermore, the covenant covering Moonlight is even more troublesome than that covering the ECMA-approved bits of .NET, yet I do not see a clear difference in promotion or eduction on these issues from Team Apologista. Again, to be polite, “downplaying the problems” is a fair characterization.

RMS points out that “if you develop software on Mono, you are liable to use those features without thinking about the issue.” But I think it’s more than that – I think Team Mono has intentionally obscured the facts to make it more difficult to think about the issue. It goes beyond counting on people being too lazy/uninterested to examine things right into deliberate misinformation.

Dependency Hell

Team Apologista actively promotes Mono/Moonlight for Mono/Moonlight sake, increasing dependence on Mono (and by extension, Microsoft’s goodwill).

The entire path into GNOME for Mono is entirely based around a simple note-taking application! Pure insanity! Even if one accepts the argument that a note-taking application is so important that a desktop suite simply can not do without one, the answer is not to roll up one that requires an otherwise useless and seperate framework to support it, and further not to do away with it immediately once an acceptable replacement exists.

The foolishness, technical idiocy, and blatant transparency of the Tomboy debacle in GNOME combined with the latter retarded arguments that “oh well, now that Mono is in there, might as well bring in even more Mono apps” is clear evidence that something’s rotten in the State of the Art over at Team Apologista HQ, and immediately and conclusively puts to the lie any technical-based argument in support of Mono.

There are many more (thankfully, less sucessful) attempts to increase Mono dependency in GNOME and in major distros. Usually taking the form of simply rolling out yet another implementation of existing application functionality – but this time written in awesome Mono – most of these projects have failed to gain footholds. It doesn’t stop Team Apologista from trying, though. Desktop Search? Need it in Mono! Torrent client? Need it in Mono! Photo editor? Need it in Mono! Media Player? Need it in Mono!

Why the need to re-create everything in Mono?

To go back to RMS’ point: “Don’t increase your exposure to the danger.”