MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld) [LWN.net]

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 10, 2008 11:29 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159)
In reply to: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld) by sylware
Parent article: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

> Wrong way, why gnome shouldn't treat <high level language> like mono?
> Since they are many so the best options would be to stick to gnome
> native language, namely C. But the idea is not to send to hell all
> other languages for gnome (like mono do) but to provide official support
> for a specific language on the side of the "official" gnome.

This logic does not make sense to me.  The whole point of promoting language bindings like
Gtk# and PyGTK is so that people can write applications in those languages.

If we then say that applications in those languages can't be part of the GNOME desktop, we are
saying that they are second class citizens.  It says that if you want the app to be really
popular you'll need to rewrite it in C.

Is it really matter that Tomboy is written in C#, or that Jokosher is written in Python?

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MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 10, 2008 14:22 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Exactly. 

User interface code, application logic, and such things are better written in a high level
language more often then not. Stuff that is common to most applications should be stuck in
libraries and it makes sense to spend the time to get those optimized and such because the
benifit is spread out across the entire desktop and all types of applications.

It also does not make sense to deny Gnome the use of Python or Mono in their shipped product
because some programmers prefer Ruby or Lua. And it does not make sense that Gnome should
incorporate support for all scripting languages equally because _that_ is serious bloat. So
there has to be a choice made and so far Gnome's has been Python and Mono.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 10, 2008 14:55 UTC (Mon) by sylware (subscriber, #35259) [Link]

>Is it really matter that Tomboy is written in C#, or that Jokosher is written in Python?
Jokosher is not part of "official" gnome, neither is pyGTK. It's "official python" gnome on
the side of "official" gnome.
Tomboy is part of "official" gnome and that's quite evil because it has replaced the clean and
light sticky notes and forces "official" gnome to depend on the mono bloat.

>It says that if you want the app to be really popular you'll need to rewrite it in C.
Wrong sentence: you mean that only mono apps are allowed to be popular with gnome. That's bare
unfair for other high level languages. And, uh... quite surprisingly, it does concern
technologies from the borg collective. Very very strange, isn't it?

The solution is to split "official" gnome into "official native" gnome, "official python"
gnome, "official perl" gnome , "official vala", "official FOO language" gnome and so on.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 2:38 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

Perhaps Jokosher wasn't the best example to give.  Contrary to your statement, there are PyGTK
components in the official GNOME desktop releases though (e.g. alacarte, deskbar-applet).

So Mono certainly doesn't have an exclusive position in the desktop release.  If a new
application comes along that makes sense to add to the desktop but happens to be written in a
language other than C, C# or Python, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be considered.

As for your suggestion that GNOME releases be broken up based on the underlying language, how
does that benefit users?  As I asked in my previous reply: as a user, why do you care what
language an application is written in provided it does its job?

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 9:10 UTC (Tue) by sylware (subscriber, #35259) [Link]

>As for your suggestion that GNOME releases be broken up based on the >underlying language,
how
>does that benefit users?  As I asked in my previous reply: as a user, why >do you care what
>language an application is written in provided it does its job?

Again that's the wrong way, let me correct you:
To force popular applications to be based on mono and excluding all other apps based on other
languages, how does that benefit users? As a user, why do you care about all your official
gnome apps coded in their gnome native language, namely C (appart from the fact that it's by
orders of magnitude cleaner than having huge complex bloats which globally require much more
man power for maintenance and evolution)?

Really, you have a kind of marketing speach which is recurrent, it's not the first time I have
to deal with almost exactly the same points. Here, you are on LWN with many skilled technical
people who are not going to be fooled easily but such venimous speach. BTW, I'm the only one
to waste saliva about all this. You could be a robot I would not be surprised (we call that
marketodroid at my work place :) ). Basically, what you say is "we can make shi** software,
till it's nice for the user it's ok". But you forget that we have already MS/Novell for that.
I'm sorry but I'm one of the many guys who thinks that GPL software can please users (for the
desktop metaphore) *and* be technically clean. Too bad, you are not one of us.
logoff.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 15:09 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

> Again that's the wrong way, let me correct you: To force popular
> applications to be based on mono and excluding all other apps
> based on other languages, how does that benefit users?

This is a strawman argument.  No one is forcing people to use Mono to the exclusion of
alternative languages.  I gave you examples of Python applications that are part of the GNOME
desktop release so it is clearly not current policy or what I suggested.

If anything, I've got a vested interest in seeing Python applications on GNOME succeed (see
the AUTHORS file for PyGTK), but I have no problem using GNOME applications written in other
languages.

I am not arguing for a special position for Mono in GNOME – I'm promoting the use of languages
other than C on the desktop.  I am not sure why you find this point of view offensive.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 16:26 UTC (Tue) by sylware (subscriber, #35259) [Link]

>This is a strawman argument.  No one is forcing people to use Mono to the exclusion of
alternative languages.  I gave you examples of Python applications that are part of the GNOME
desktop release so it is clearly not current policy or what I suggested.

Reread my postings: brute forcing mono/python in "official gnome" *does* exclude all others.
It's facts. It does favor way too much those instead of all others. It's called brute forced
popularity and deployment of huge bloats.

>I'm promoting the use of languages other than C on the desktop. I am not sure why you find
this point of view offensive.

Promote the language you want for desktop user level application, I have nothing against that,
on the contrary,... till it's not brute forced in core "official" gnome and till I can call
your FOO language code from C (without becoming crazy) and the other way around.

Flying away.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 17:06 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

>Reread my postings: brute forcing mono/python in "official gnome" *does* exclude all others.
It's facts.

Please explain the above statement (and only the above statement with no digressions, please)
using simple logic with one subject/verb logical statement per line.

Because I did reread your postings and I do not understand your argument that other languages
are excluded.

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 11, 2008 19:41 UTC (Tue) by sylware (subscriber, #35259) [Link]

I think all the reasons are explained in the thread.
Moreover I flew away...