• Chicken Little Remix will no longer be updated. There will be no 10.04 from me.
• I will no longer be visiting certain websites, under any circumstances, courtesy of 127.0.0.1 entries in /etc/hosts. This includes sites such as Ubuntu Forums, some blogs, and some “news” sites.
• I will be blocking some people from Twitter, in order to avoid their @mentions from appearing to me.
• I may (this is undecided) opt to change my anything-goes policy regarding comments on my blog. Redacted comments will have their content deleted, to make it clear that a comment is redacted, not held in moderation

Some things, however, will NOT be changing.

• I will continue my efforts in Debian. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will continue my efforts in Ubuntu. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will maintain my existing IRC, Twitter, email & IM presence.
• I will, when the opportunity arises, combine sweet and savoury foods.

Thank you for your time.

Now, once upon a time, the online functionality was mostly offered via a proprietary P2P-and-DRM-based system called Kontiki. Kontiki was unpopular for various reasons – for example, it was Windows-only, and banned by several Internet providers due to the use of P2P (e.g. I know such technology is still banned on the University of Oxford network). As a result, this lead to the introduction and eventual replacement of browser-based streaming solutions, starting with the changes made to BBC’s iPlayer. iPlayer is nowadays a combination of an Adobe Flash service for web surfers, an unencrypted MP4 streaming service for users of mobile devices such as iPhones, and as of a couple of weeks ago, has streaming support built directly into the PlayStation 3′s user interface too. Oh, and on the PC, it supports DRM-based downloading courtesy of the Adobe Air platform, on Windows, Mac, and Air-capable (x86) Linux. Channel 4′s service 4od, and Five’s Demand Five, are also based on Adobe Flash, and streaming-only. They’re basic and functional.

The final interesting one here is ITV’s ITV Player. ITV Player was, until about a week ago, the only non-Flash service, instead making use of Microsoft Silverlight. They have now changed to be Flash-based, like their peers, meaning the entire market mandates use of the Adobe Flash plugin – or, at a push, command-line utilities or browser plugins which grab the raw video files from the broadcasters’ servers, in violation of their licenses. Why is this interesting? Well, when ITV Player used Silverlight, we could watch TV using Free Software: Novell Moonlight 2.0 Beta 1.1 and above worked fine with it, on i386 and AMD64 (and other architectures with a recompile). Now that it’s using Flash rather than Silverlight, where do we stand for watching streaming TV legitimately with Free Software? Let’s take a peek!

Firstly, some preamble. I’m running Ubuntu Jaunty, and I hand-compiled a SVN (I think SVN? Maybe Bzr) snapshot of Gnash revision 11485 to ensure I had an up-to-date view of proceedings. It definitely seems to be working, as I’m introduced to the world of Flash advertising via Gnash, and Youtube.com also works, more or less. And I’m not discussing Adobe’s Flash plugin here, for various reasons:

• It’s proprietary. Boo.
• It’s i386-only in several instances – a beta of an AMD64 plugin exists, but your browser will crash on BBC iPlayer sites if you have the iPlayer Adobe Air app installed, as Air is i386-only. And the packages in Ubuntu install the i386 plugin alongside the abominable and crashy nsPluginWrapper.
• Did I mention it was proprietary? If the only way to surf the web on a Free OS is with proprietary software, then we’re not doing very well.

So, Gnash it is. Firstly, it’s a PITA to compile, as upstream seem to have misunderstood how AutoFoo works – i.e. it detects that you don’t have headers installed for certain features, and tells you so, yet still enables those features at configure-time (and obviously fails when building). Hey guys, if I don’t have qapplication.h, take the hint and disable KDE support for me like every other bloody app does. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

BBC iPlayer

Well, what does the landing look like?

BBC iPlayer Landing

Looks fine to me! Let’s try playing a show!

BBC iPlayer Playback

Oh. Um… Never mind, then. Seems iPlayer’s JavaScript to detect Flash presence doesn’t pick up on Gnash, and it bails out. Score so far: 0/1

Demand Five

Another former Kontiki partner, how do these guys fare?

Demand Five Landing

Hey, that looks pretty good to me! Perhaps we’re onto a winner this time?

Demand Five Playback

Poot. Gnash is definitely being invoked – see the context menu there – but it sure isn’t doing anything useful. Score: 0/2

Channel 4 4od

How do those hip cats at Channel 4 fare?

Channel 4 4od Landing

Hm… Gotta confess, not feeling too hopeful about this one…

Channel 4 4od Playback

Oh, well, even worse than iPlayer. What you folks might not recognise is the missing “Play” buttons which are supposed to be to the right of the program descriptions in that list of episodes. Presumably more Javascript/Flash interop failure. 0/3

ITV Player

Last, but not least, how does the newest entrant into Microsoft-free streaming fare?

ITV Player Landing

Now, now, in fairness, it’s always been this bad, even when they used Silverlight – weirdos that they are, ITV have always used Flash for their navigation, even when they used Silverlight for playback. The Flash-based navigation you (don’t) see here is barely any better even with the proprietary Flash plugin. What the proprietary plugin does NOT do, however, is consume the 750 or so meg of RAM that Gnash did when sat idle on this screen. I mean, that’s not a problem, that’s why I have 6 gig in here, but still, not wise on Wifey’s netbook.

ITV Player Playback

Oh. Well then. 0/4 it is.

So?

What annoys me here isn’t so much that nothing works. I’m used to there being temporary gaps in Free Software functionality, that’s pretty normal. But I’m greatly vexed that one of these four used to work on a Free platform, and now it doesn’t – and that places like UbuntuForums are filled with people celebrating that fact. Celebrating that ITV have stopped using the evil nasty Microsoft system which happened to have a functional Free replacement – and that they’ve now moved to a non-Microsoft system which mandates a proprietary plugin. It’s not the first time either – Major League Baseball in the USA used to use Silverlight for their HD streaming, and now they use a combination of Flash and a proprietary Windows-only extension to Flash to make it load WMV files – this is considered a victory. It really isn’t. We should NEVER be forced to use Proprietary software in order to surf the web – yet now we’ve gone from having access to 25% of the UK’s streaming TV services via Free Software to 0% of them, and people are happy about it.

So, I want you to think long and hard about this question, one which seems to get the oddball answer far too often: What is more important – promoting Free Software, or demoting Microsoft Corp?

Richard Stallman has four freedoms.

Debian has ten guidelines.

The OSI has ten guidelines too (but they’re different).

These are all fairly detailed, and to someone who doesn’t understand the idea, take a while to explain. There are subtleties and fine-grained issues which are important in a dictionary definition, but are unhelpful in a single headline item. So, here’s my Free Software definition, the big difference between it and proprietary apps – and it’s only one point long.

Consider the average computer user. They don’t really “like” their Windows experience, and Office does funny things to them at least weekly, but that’s just the way things are, right? Well, yes, and that’s the real value Free Software can offer:

When Free Software sucks, you can actually do something about it.

Windows is crap? Tough. Skype is crap? Tough. CoPilot Central 2.0 for Windows is worthless and crashes on startup? Tough. NVIDIA drivers getting you down? Tough. Not happy about the default wallpaper in Debian? Well there, my friend, you can do something about it! Everything else is just window dressing. Important? Sure. There’s license contamination and copyright assignment and blah blah blah…important, but boring. The simple, headline point to explain what Free Software is, and why you contribute to it, can be summed up in one simple sentence.

Imagine for a moment how much better software would be if every piece of impotent rage directed towards something proprietary could instead have something done about it… Every crash in Windows, every random X-server lockup courtesy of FGLRX, all of it comes down to what we can do. Hammer that core point home as hard as you can – you can always save explaining the GPL for another day. As a frustrated Windows user, consider how empowering the mere concept of being able to do something about your woes is. Just the ability to report bugs is novel for some folks wedded to “take what we give you and enjoy it” proprietary software.

For some, I’m sure this comes as a startling realization, and for others, it’s stating the obvious. However, the point needs to be reiterated – the “Mono War” as-is serves no practical purpose.

From my diamond-encrusted Microsoft-supplied throne, here is what I see when I survey the “War”:

• Immovable, entrenched, irreconcilable viewpoints amongst combatants
• A degree of outright lunacy exhibited by both sides – but (sorry) mostly by some on the “anti” side
• A willingness to canonize anyone with a matching viewpoint, rather than use of independent thought and research
• Demands from the “anti” side that they be obeyed
• Demands from the “pro” side that the “anti” side shut up and go away. With added smugness.
• No fear of bending, distorting, or even denying reality to support an opinion
• An embracing of collateral damage as long as the main goal is achieved

It is these points which I consider unproductive. Nobody is going to change their positions based on angry or smug blogging, nobody is going to drop everything to work on things for kids with entitlement complexes, and nobody is going to give up on their freedom to kick up a fuss.

So, here I come to save the day. You’re welcome. I’m going to give the “anti” folks some suggestions on how to wage a productive war, one with results rather than recrimination. I even took the first step myself, although it was hardly well covered in the media. I’ll get to that a little later.

Step 1: Accept that some people feel differently to you

I know this may be hard to stomach, but no matter how much you shout, no matter how many times you point to assorted legal submissions from the 1990s, no matter how many times you cite cases such as TomTom or Buffalo, nobody is going to take your arguments and change their behaviour. Some people simply don’t have the same scale of concern or fear as you. Accept this. Don’t attack people because they don’t see things the way you do, as it’ll only make their resolve stronger. Simply accept that they don’t agree. If it makes you feel better, write them off as stupid in your mind. Not that I ever do this for anyone. *cough*

Step 2: Understand why people do what they do

Not everybody contributes to Free Software for the same reasons – although by and large the biggest motivator is “to make it better for myself”. People package stuff they use themselves – or should damn well do if they expect package quality to be maintained. People write apps for themselves, they submit patches to add features or fix bugs for themselves, and so on. This is not the only motivator, but it’s the primary one. There is no ulterior motive – unless you consider “improving this for my own use” to be ulterior. Yes, that even includes the recent Hyper-V drivers – where it was in Microsoft’s interest (for selling Hyper-V to displace VMWare) to “contribute” according to the rules of Free Software contribution. Imagine, if you will, that people like, say, Banshee because they genuinely prefer it to Rhythmbox – not because they’re secret dark agents of teh Micro$haft trying to “spread Mono”.

Step 3: Understand governance

One of the biggest mistakes made by the “anti-Mono” team is the belief that abuse on forums, blogs, mailing lists and newsgroups is how change happens. I hate to break it to you, guys, but it’s not. Every distribution of Linux is put together by an individual or team, and every distribution has specific processes in place which determine what constitutes a package in the repository, a default package, and so on. Some distributions are dictatorships, some distributions are direct democracies, some are lead by layers of bureaucracy. If you want to fight against something, you need to do it within the system. And some systems make it easier than others to fight.

Here are a couple of examples, to get you going: In Debian, the final decision to include a package in the archive or not is made by the ftpmaster member who audits the package. This audit is re-done every time the package changes the binary .deb files it produces (but not for every upload), and that overall control of what is in the archive remains with them. The decision is made on a simple basis – does the license of this software permit its inclusion and distribution in Debian, under the terms of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The decision over which packages to depend (or not) in a given metapackage is at the complete sole discretion of that package’s maintainer – so for the GNOME metapackages, that’s the GNOME team. And the decision over which packages to include in the default install image are made by the installer team, heavily influenced by (but not necessarily exactly the same as) the prior decisions of the GNOME team. Packages are solely owned by their maintainers, remember that – meaning the only way to remove Mono (or to reclassify it as non-free or whatever is today’s favourite attack) without cooperation of the package maintainer is… well, there’s a way to do it, but it’s a nuclear option. A Debian Developer (and only a DD, as per the Debian constitution) can call for a General Resolution. It’s detailed in this page right here. But in essence any vote to remove Mono is a vote of no confidence in the abilities of the (thorough and hard-working) ftpmaster team – and a vote that developers should no longer consider their packages to be their own property. Good luck passing any such resolution, especially without mass resignation from the Project. There’s the Debian route. First, contribute enough to be advocated as a Debian Developer, then become one, then file and win a GR to remove Mono. Good luck with that.

Next is Ubuntu. And here, you have an equally tough fight, but for different reasons. Ubuntu has a similar role to ftpmaster, called an Archive Admin – but by and large, Ubuntu trusts decisions made by ftpmaster in Debian. As a result, arguments beyond mere licensing are delegated upwards to a committee type organization called the Technical Board. The TB is the highest law in the land – it’s made up from Canonical employees (including Shuttleworth) and community members – and according to the paperwork, the only extra power Shuttleworth has here is the casting vote in a tie-breaker situation. The TB meets on IRC every couple of weeks or so, and discusses topics raised with them, rendering “final for now” verdicts. The TB have the authority to remove Mono from not only the default install (which would override the Desktop Team’s wishes), but also the entire distribution. However, the TB has already recently reached a near-unanimous verdict that Mono is fine. Sorry, but see step 1 above. If you want to change their minds, then the path is clear – join the TB. They had a nomination period recently (I don’t think any anti-Mono folks signed up), and will be doing so again every now and again. Become a big enough contributor to Ubuntu to make a successful bid to join the Technical Board, and then once on the board, discuss with your peers why you feel Mono should be removed – and win that argument.

Noise on forums is just noise.

Step 4: Understand the relative value of contributions

There are those who have characterised this war as a war between “users” and “developers” – and to an extent that’s true. Everybody is free to make their own decisions regarding their computing experience, and to act upon those decisions. However, the question of who makes that decision affects how far-reaching those decisions are. If a developer makes a decision, that has more wide-reaching results than if a forum poster makes a decision. If a packager decides on something, the effect is wider than if a “mere” user decides something. Those decisions may not be the same as yours (see, again, step 1) but you need to understand that those decisions, those contributions, are far reaching not because of some conspiracy, but because the person doing those things, has been assigned a greater degree of impact by the community at large. If someone is elected to a packager role, then their decisions affect anyone who uses those packages – which may include users, or other packagers, or other developers. If you are not a customer (see step 2) then they will behave however they like, and contribute however they like.

You cannot win a war with a packager with flames. You cannot win a war with a distro team with attacks. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – and make contributions which outweigh (e.g. render irrelevant) the contributions of those with whom you disagree. Contributions don’t need to just be programming or packaging – many other roles are often overlooked but of vital importance to Free Software’s success, such as artists, translators, documentation writers, and so on. You can contribute in many ways – and whilst your contribution may not directly “hurt” what you don’t like, they can help what you do like – and indirectly win the “battle”.

Step 5: Pick your battles

I have seen it suggested in certain areas that some feel it is their “duty” to try to elicit global change in a single shot – to have their demands met absolutely everywhere at once, and they do so by fighting absolutely everything at once. I’m sorry to tell you this, but the “community” is bigger than you are (and don’t kid yourselves, Mono has a genuine community surrounding it). If you want to elicit change, then focus your efforts. Pick some specific way to contribute which will help your point of view, and only move on when that specific fight is won. Don’t want to see Banshee as a default music player app? Then focus on that – and do so in a positive way. In this case, that means things such as contributing to competing apps like Exaile or Rhythmbox such that they are definitely better and nobody wants Banshee to be the default.

Step 6: Lead by example, not by shouting

If you really, fundamentally feel that your needs are not met by contributing positively, or trying to elicit change via the right governance channels, then  do better. That’s all there is to it. The folks behind, say, Linux Mint felt that their needs were not met (and could not be met for one reason or another) by “real” Ubuntu, so they lead by example and made their own distro. If you really feel your needs are not being met, then you can do the same. Make other apps better, or if push comes to shove, make your own distro. It’s really not hard!

In fact, to illustrate the point, I made one myself. It’s called “Chicken Little Remix” (absolutely not Ubuntu Chicken Little Remix as that would mean worrying about trademark policies), and you can download it from The Pirate Bay in i386 and amd64 formats. As a first cut, it’s simply a Jaunty Alternate ISO with all Mono-related stuff cut away – and it took me an hour to do. Imagine what the combined energies of the entire anti-Mono community could produce, with a little direction. CLR is my attempt to provide some direction – I’m happy to provide advice on how to modify packages and customize the Alternate ISO (something I have experience doing) as long as the name remains in place, but perhaps it could even be treated as a way for people who are “only” users to learn how to become “contributors” too, and make their voices in the greater community louder. Make the distro you wish those idiots in the Technical Board and Desktop Team were producing, and show them how it’s done. Set up a project on Launchpad, a website, make some art, tinker on packages, and make CLR 9.10 the most awesome distribution ever – without need for any of that messy Mono nonsense. The first cut took one person one hour – how much time does that give for the next release? Fill it with Gnote and Solang and AWN and $DEITY knows what else, and demonstrate through tangible contribution how unnecessary Mono really is.

Because when all’s said and done, simply shouting that the sky is falling won’t get you anywhere.

Mio is a heterozygous beige chinchilla, about eleven months old. I have two other chinchillas – her sister Mayu, and mother Miku. Mayu’s a real people pleaser, and always excited by things – which is why I’ve got her more sedate sister out, who is a little easier to work with in front of a camera – since she spends less time running around the place. If you’ve never had chinchillas, then they’re long-lived (15 years), incredibly fluffy (fluffier than any other competitor to the fluffiness throne) rodents. The fur is so dense they can’t get wet, so they take sand baths inst…

…..

Mio, what’re you doing with my computer?

Living with Michael Jackson? I… look, listen you ball of fluff, when I said “non controversial”, I meant it. That means absolutely nothing that could offend people. That’s the interview that killed Jackson’s career. Are you trying to get me into trouble? Can you not hear me? Got something in your ear?

Sigh.

RIGHT. Where was I? Sand baths, right. The sand is extremely fine, and helps them keep their fur clean. Oh, and Mio has a curly piggy tail, rather than the straight tail chinchillas usually have. They are terrible for being fussy eaters, so it’s important not to give them anything that encourages selective feeding – meaning hay for wearing their teeth, and pellets for th… hang on a second.

Wasn’t that interview on ITV?

Doesn’t ITV’s web streaming service only work with Silve…

…

………………..

………..

Mio, you’re in SO much trouble right now. No raisin for you, you bloody rodent

Firstly, Ubuntu’s feature freeze is at the end of August – giving about 6 weeks for Banshee to gain “default” status before that train leaves the station and Rhythmbox sticks around for another cycle. And there are real-world issues that NEED to be resolved within those six weeks for it to happen. This isn’t conjecture, it’s the result of chats with the Desktop team – I think we both still agree on the points we agreed on in Barcelona, and that means picking the “right” player, regardless of what it is, when the time comes to choose.

1. Release schedule. Karmic won’t ship with a beta (1.5.x) Banshee release, and it certainly won’t ship with 1.4.3 – so the Desktop team require assurances that 1.6.0 be released before FinalFreeze (end of October) in order to make the switch NOW in preparation. This is entirely upstream’s lookout, so on this point, the ball’s in their court entirely – I’m not trying to apply pressure, I’m simply stating the state of play as-is.
2. Documentation. Banshee needs offline (GNOME Help System or similar) documentation, which Rhythmbox already has. Right now, all it has is a link to the (dead) Banshee wiki. I understand Canonical folks were looking at this – if you want to help with this one, try talking to jcastro on GIMPnet #banshee.
3. Music Store. I agreed with Seb at UDS that we should include support for a music store (Rhythmbox supports two), and picked Magnatune at random as it happens to work for me in Rhythmbox. This was likely a mistake – Magnatune have no coherent or usable API, and it makes it VERY hard to turn their store into a useful integrated feature. However, there is the beginning of some work on this – if you want to help add a music store to Banshee, then either speak to Max Battcher to cooperate on Magnatune support, or look into making a Jamendo/other-store plugin (should be much easier to support as Jamendo have a real API) based on Gabriel Burt’s Amazon branch. Support for Amazon itself should sadly be considered dead in the water, due to an abusive change from Amazon to prevent Free Software integration.
4. Accessibility. This is an important topic for Ubuntu to be accessible to everyone. Banshee makes use of five custom-made widgets, which all require support for Atk, the Gtk+ accessibility toolkit. However, there are sadly a number of nasty bugs in Atk# which have thrown a spanner in the works, and by the sound of it those bugs cannot be fixed any time soon (as they break the Atk# API). You should try speaking to the Gtk# maintainer Mike Kestner if you want to help at the back-end, or hacker extraordinaire Gabriel Burt for tips on where to help at the Banshee end. The specific bugs for the a11y issues are BNC476836 and BGO533030. It should be considered reasonable (even if it makes packagers like me cry) for Banshee to bundle a private copy of Atk# from SVN, rather than using the current stable release – F-Spot does this already for GIO#

There are also some specific issues which you can help with – at the very least by testing existing patches – which may not be blockers, but are functional regressions versus Rhythmbox.

1. Gapless playback. This is being spearheaded by Christopher James Halse Rogers, our fearless GNOME-Do packager in Ubuntu/Debian. This is being handled in upstream bug BGO440952 – why not lend a hand? Sadly, Rhythmbox’s support for gapless cannot be recycled, as Rhythmbox uses its own custom gapless engine (rather than using GStreamer’s built-in support). RAOF’s patch is ALMOST there, but still goes to hell in a couple of circumstances (or did last I tested it), so why not try it out?
2. Folder watching. Currently, Banshee isn’t aware when you add/remove tracks to/from the folder which you told it your music is in, requiring a library rescan. There’s an open bug on this one too, at BGO385965, primarily being worked on by Christian Martellini (with help from others like Gabriel). Why not try it out, or lend a hand?

More generally, there’s a page on the Ubuntu Wiki listing other odds and sods, which you can use as a point of reference. So. Want to help make Banshee awesome enough to greet newcomers to Ubuntu? Take a look at the list above, and pick something which you feel you can contribute towards. Want to keep Rhythmbox in charge? Take a peek at their wiki. In either case, let’s make sure Ubuntu remains awesome for new and existing users alike! All you need is a little C# knowledge to work on patching, or know how to use “patch” and “make” to test things – you can even use Boo, a Python-like scripting language, to do stuff if you like. Oh, and a few suggestions for airy fairy pie-in-the-sky changes to be made to Mono on Ubuntu as a whole, to make the whole thing much nicer for the distro folks looking to deal with bugs. Support ARM in mono-debugger! Support retracing (apport-style) in mono-debugger! Support mdb files in pkg-create-dbgsym! I’m sure there are plenty more things that could help here – try asking in #ubuntu-devel on Freenode for suggestions of how you could help the folks there, or #mono on GIMPnet for how to help the folks there.

If Banshee doesn’t make the cut this cycle, I have no doubt that it’ll be ready for another punt next time around – and that whomever ends up attending the next UDS can make the case that it’s a great idea to move, given how many issues and bugs were resolved and how it’s grown far more awesome in a short space of time – and, at the same time, fending off stiff competition from post-GSoC Rhythmbox. Remember, kids, competition drives innovation!

I mean, really. Some of them have big beards, or have trained Velociraptors!

Well, let’s watch together!

I believe Free Software developers should be free to pick and choose their development tools [2][3]

I believe Free Software developers should be free to contribute without being threatened with eviction from a community [4][5]

I believe Free Software thrives on diversity, and that there should always be a choice [6][7]

I believe we should welcome ALL developers, from any community, in helping to contribute towards Free Software [8][9]

I believe Free Software is about freedom – for both users and developers [10][11]

I believe that our priorities are our users and Free Software – meaning we should always strive to present our users with the very best Free Software has to offer [12][13]

Do you?

—————————————————–

I am a member of the Debian Mono Group, Debian CLI Applications Team, and Debian CLI Libraries Team. I’ve been working on packaging for the Mono stack and applications which make use of it in Ubuntu (and Debian) for just under a year. And, fully aware of the flame war, threats and personal attacks which will follow, I’m going to take you up on your “invitation”. I speak for myself here – not for the Debian project, nor Ubuntu, not for the Mono project, nor for my employer.

Your request was for “a calm presentation of why Mono is desirable, why it is not a threat, and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default”. I’ll answer these three questions individually, then offer a general comment on your post, as well as the wider “anti-Mono” movement. This message is GPG-signed to ensure it is published unedited. The message as-sent will be made available at http://retro.apebox.org/herewegoagain.txt to allow people to verify authenticity signatures themselves.

Why Mono is desirable

That’s a question which depends on whom is being asked.

If you’re asking a user, then the answer is “it’s not”, any more than a Scheme compiler or LOLCODE interpreter.

If you’re asking a developer, then the answer is VERY different. Mono provides a well-balanced framework to enable Free Software to be developed quickly, effectively, and efficiently. By “balanced”, I mean it is unlikely to win every single contest that one can throw at a programming language – memory footprint, execution speed, availability of libraries, and so on – but does fairly well in ALL of them. Speedwise, Mono is much faster than Python – up to several hundred times faster according to some benchmarks. It has a fraction of the memory footprint of Java applications. It has modern features such as garbage collection which make it easy peasy to write code with compared to malloc()-happy C or C++. It is a well-balanced framework. As such, for people looking to write apps for a Free Software environment, it offers a compelling choice of framework on which to build. Several apps which have only existed for a short time – such as GNOME Do – make full use of functionality provided by Mono in order to be written very quickly and easily, compared to chasing SIGSEGV around due to human errors inevitable with C-based development. Mono was first conceived as a way to escape from the absolute horror of maintaining a large GUI C codebase (Evolution).

Taking it further, Mono on the whole also enables easier migration – for both developers and users – from legacy CLR frameworks such as Microsoft.NET. Students who learn Visual Studio.NET at University can take their skills and directly apply them to creating or improving Free Software on their shiny new Ubuntu installations, without the need to learn a new language. Businesses with investment in .NET-based applications can look at replacing their servers or desktops with Free Software. Whilst providing .NET compatibility has always been a secondary goal, it is an extremely popular one, which has prompted a lot of input and development work from assorted people into the Mono codebase.

It should be noted, however, that this use-case (Windows migration) is not cause for including Mono by default (any more than, say, Wine), and indeed, the libraries required to run the majority of Microsoft.NET applications are excluded from Ubuntu installations due to lack of necessity.

Why it is not a threat

This is a question which will cause nothing but angry flames – although it certainly won’t harm your page hits and resultant ad revenue. Mono is not a threat because it is not special in any legal regard. Many people have spent hours if not days and weeks attempting to explain this. I’ll try to do so again. There are a whole smattering of reasons why it’s not an issue, covering a wide range of topics. I’ll present these points individually.

• Mono is not the result of any deals between Novell and Microsoft. Mono was started 4 years before that unfortunate deal took place. Mono gets no special treatment under that deal. It is not mentioned in the deal (as with other apps). This is important to note.
• Mono is covered by the OIN, as with most other major Free apps. Patent attacks against Mono carry the same risk to attackers as attacks against any other OIN entrant. Attacks against Mono would risk patent “world war”, which Microsoft cannot win. Such an action would harm their business – and lose them money.
• Mono implements an international standard – albeit one from a convicted monopolist. If this is a problem, why do people use C, the standard from convicted monopolist AT&T? Mono implements an improved, Free replacement for a proprietary offering. If this is a problem, why do people use GNU (which provided an improved, Free replacement for proprietary UNIX)?
• Regardless of whether or not any specific patent licenses over ECMA 334 and 335 cover Mono’s implementation of those standards, if indeed such agreements are available (ITWire’s curlish “attempt” to secure such an arrangement aside), the fact that statements have been made in public supporting the idea of royalty-free licensing essentially reduces the financial impact of such infringement to zero. If Foocorp has a license to use patents, under a “non-discriminatory” license, and did not pay for them – then it would be discriminatory to change anyone  else for them (breaking the signed terms regarding patent licensing), and as such, those patents lose any financial value. They may, however, still hold non-financial value (such as their use in defending against patent-related attacks), hence not making the patents “free for all” in any understood sense.
• Mono cannot be “disabled” via an incompatible change to Microsoft.NET, for two reasons. Firstly, such a change would also break every single existing app for Microsoft.NET (in fact, if it were to happen, then the best option for those users would be to run their apps with Mono instead). Secondly, support for Microsoft.NET is a secondary goal for Mono – if Microsoft change something in .NET 5.0, then so what? It doesn’t prevent Banshee or GNOME Do from compiling and running fine on non-legacy systems like Ubuntu.
• Absence of “patent protection” is not the same thing as “patent violation”. If I offer to sell somebody a promise not to sue them using any of my patents, their taking me up on my offer is no guarantee that I even have anything valid to sell them – merely that they are willing to buy it. If Jim buys protection from any patents I hold, it does not mean that Jim is infringing on anything specific – nor that if Ted does the same thing, that Ted is violating anything either. If a house insurance policy includes flood protection, it does not mean that your house will be flooded – and not buying flood protection does not mean that you will be flooded either.
• Patents covering a specific implementation detail of a project cannot kill it dead – the example here is Freetype. Apple made some patent threats against the Freetype developers, for using their proprietary hinting data stored in TrueType fonts. You’ll notice that Freetype still exists today – this is because the specific METHOD that apple laid claim to was worked around, and auto-generated hinting data used instead. Apple’s threat was diffused, and the project went on. Suggestions have been made by FUD vendors that the Linux kernel contains a number of patent infringements – if specific details are ever provided, then those specific infringements can be worked around. A patent infringed in the Linux kernel would not cause all GNU/Linux distributions to be shut down overnight – and it’s disingenuous to suggest that any other Free Software is any different on that front. Even if a fundamental patent is infringed in Free Software, it’s no big deal – as a core change can be made, and applications etc which expect the “old” way can be modified to work with the “new” way, easily. Only proprietary applications cannot be fixed in the event of radical change – and proprietary apps are a secondary concern.
• The layering of escape routes is extensive in Mono, especially Mono in Debian/Ubuntu. In the first instance, the contentious Microsoft-sourced non-ISO libraries such as System.Windows.Forms are not included by default, and are rarely used in Free applications anyway (because WinForms looks like ass, amongst other things). If a reason is found to remove these non-standardised libraries, then bam, they’re gone – without harming Free apps. Secondly, if a more severe change is required, then the Mono packages can be patched to remove the infringement. If more drastic changes are required, as mentioned above, then the applications can also be patched to support any core changes. And, taking it one step further, if the whole of Mono needs to be pulled, then applications can be ported. The porting process would potentially be slow and painful, and cause great harm to an application’s future rate of development (although no worse than if the app was written in the target language from day one), but nobody who has written an app they care about would simply throw their hands in the air and say “never mind, it was fun, but the Man says I have to stop now”.

Why Mono should be included in Ubuntu by default

It shouldn’t. Not in the sense that has been publicised on blogs, newsgroups, forums, and so on. We don’t want Mono installed by default on any distribution. Mono is a software platform, and software platforms are boring at a user level. Ubuntu shouldn’t ship with Java, Scheme, Assembly, LISP, etc, frameworks by default either. They are not interesting to users.

What we want by default are GREAT APPS. A user should boot an Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or whatever CD and say to themselves “Wow, this Free Software stuff is great, I definitely don’t need Windows anymore”. All Ubuntu derivatives, as with all distributions of Free Software seeking to convert people to Free Software, should be chasing the best applications available. In the case of Ubuntu, a decision was made to include a note-taking application and a simple photo library manager, by the Desktop Team.

They determined that the best note-taking application to offer their users was Tomboy. Tomboy has a feature set far greater than the “Sticky Notes” applets provided in both GNOME and Windows Vista, and can be seen by new users as an easy replacement for Microsoft’s proprietary OneNote product, which retails for £80. The only other comparable GNOME application is Zim, a “Desktop Wiki”. Zim is a high-quality product, but it was decided by the desktop team to use Tomboy instead, as it is easier for non-technical users (and is the default application in its class as picked by the GNOME project).

They also determined that the best photo manager to offer was F-Spot. F-Spot is directly comparable to Apple’s proprietary iPhoto application, or Google’s proprietary Picasa application. It is NOT directly comparable to “file browser” type applications such as gThumb, as one of the key features of photo album applications is allowing you to tag your photos with important metadata – gThumb works on a per-folder basis, not on a “all my photos” basis.

Both Tomboy and F-Spot require the Mono JITter, and a set of libraries such as GTK#, in order to execute. So in order to offer these best-of-breed Free Software applications to new users (determined to be best-of-breed by the Ubuntu Desktop Team), parts of a Free Software runtime are required – the same way including the GNOME System Monitor requires GTKmm. As long as Tomboy and F-Spot are best-of-breed, they should be included – and with that, whichever libraries they happen to use. If other Free applications surpass one or both of these, then they should be used instead – if a Mono-based application surpasses a different application in a different class, it should be used instead. This is not based on preference for a given framework – although it is my personal belief that a high-level language such as C# or Python enables developing such an application much more quickly and easier than C would.

The post on Linux Today

Your initial post makes it clear that you are not even-handed on this topic. Here are some specific phrases whose purpose is to “throw mud”, and show your pre-determined judgements on the topics you claim to want to hear about. It is THIS, clear preconceptions and bias, which compel those with plenty of insight on Mono-related topics, not to bother. Which leaves only the anti-Mono people to pretend they have a majority.

“There are other, better applications that could be included” – Name them.

“forcing Microsoft technologies” – Help! Help! I’m being oppressed! No, not really. Good technology is good technology, and Not Invented Here never helped anyone. None of the Desktop Team are pro-Mono (most of them are Python fans), and no unilateral decisions are made over which applications to include. Nobody is “forced” over anything. No Mono-related packages have been marked as Essential:yes.

“unholy embrace into Ubuntu” – Demagogy. Microsoft are a corporation, not a supernatural entity. Suggesting any level of “unholiness” gives far too much credit to them. They are a corporation, with a wide selection of idiot senior managers, and a limited selection of competent developers. Nothing more.

“Mono fans have been creating a giant ruckus in the Ubuntu forums” – actually, it’s the anti-Mono crowd responsible for this. If you refer to accusations of censorship, then you’re being mislead (or intentionally misleading). Those who read the specific details of those accusations can find rudeness, threats, arguments, and worse – with anti-Mono people at the core. Childishness does not win arguments – nor friends amongst moderators.

“have not bothered to say why removing Mono from the Ubuntu installation CD” – To this, I offer a quote from Thomas Jefferson – “Ridicule is he only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them”. Demands to remove Mono from a default Ubuntu system are not based on any rational suggestions – there are no packagers offering superior replacements, only people demanding that because in their personal ill-informed opinion everyone will be sued to death, that Mono applications should be purged. This is, in short, software terrorism – demanding a change in someone else’s policy and telling them they are not Free to make their own choices, based on personal politics. Rational minds can dissent on questions of Mono, but until there are adequate replacements for Mono applications, complete with functional migration path, the choice is simple – make Linux suck more by moving to an inferior default application set, or “make do” with Mono. It should be noted that people with rather more to lose than random anonymous people on web forums – such as Mark Shuttleworth – have said on record multiple times that they don’t have any such fears. I would personally support a move from any Mono-based application to a non-Mono-based one, with demonstrable technical superioriority.

“simply including it in the standard repos is not acceptable.” – It’s perfectly acceptable – however, it’s not the only argument put forward. Suggestions range from reclassifying Mono as non-Free (moving it to third-class citizen status), to its complete removal from the archive, to the expulsion from both Debian and Ubuntu for anyone who has worked on Mono packaging. Free apps in general should be in the standard repos – regardless of their implementation framework – but if a specific application is best-in-class, it should be included by default.

“The inability of Mono fans to answer that simple question has me a bit bothered, as though there is a deeper agenda.” – If you want to make accusations, make them plain. Don’t play the Fox News game of “well, I find it *interesting*” – call a spade a shovel. If you have specific accusations to make about people who are not anti-Mono, then make them, or to put it bluntly, don’t spread lies.

The anti-Mono “movement”

Some people are “for” things. They are for Freedom, or for technical superiority, or for a sports team, or whatever. Some people are “against” things. They are against political candidates, or Microsoft, or people from certain places, or whatever. Some people define themselves on the basis of what they want, others on the basis of what they do not want. Mono causes immense anger amongst that second group – specifically, people who use GNU/Linux not because they are “for” anything, but because they are “against” Microsoft. This can be easily seen – using names like “Microshaft” or “Micro$oft” or similar childish attempts to define a “them and us” situation and ridicule the “them”. Mono is symbolic – it is Free (something they are supposedly in favour of), but Free on the basis of something sourced from the Great Satan – an inexcusable mix.

Many of those who advertise themselves as anti-Mono are, quite frankly, frightening. Calling for the deaths of Microsoft employees (see comments on Boycott Novell), or trying to have people who make positive comments about Mono fired (see recent comments on Ubuntu mailing lists), or making insinuations about anyone who does not agree with them (see pretty much every news post on Boycott Novell itself) – this is ugly behaviour, the absolute worst kind of advert for the “Free Software community” imaginable. If people want to be “against” Mono, then there are sane ways to do it – for example, by working on or packaging alternative software. Calling for people to be expelled from Free Software communities because they don’t work on apps you like is, in short, the antithesis of supporting Freedom. If the anti-Mono crowd want to be taken seriously, then they need to UNDERSTAND what they fight against – they need to have sufficiently intimate knowledge of what Mono is, how it works, and why, in order to know where to direct their energies (and general shouts of “ZOMG! MICRO$HAFT!” isn’t well-directed). I would LOVE to see some high-quality apps for GNOME written in, say, Java or Python – as the competition would only result in better applications.

However, the vast majority of the anti-Mono crowd are not developers or packagers – they are back-seat drivers. They make proclamations about how other developers (who are surrendering their time to developer Free Software) should instead use the framework of THEIR choice, not the developer’s. This is another reason why anti-Mono arguments are given so little respect – the sheer cheek, the PRESUMPTION that they somehow are in a position to make demands of other developers, is galling. Free Software is a meritocracy – those who do things earn respect. Until the anti-Mono crowd actually make a contribution to Free Software, they will continue to be treated as cranks – and their questions left unanswered.

In the end, there is NOTHING which will cause the Mono controversy to disappear – as long as vague threats of legal attacks are manufactured and fuelled by certain members of the community. Much like a presidential birth certificate, there is simply nothing which will placate those who have already made up their own minds without any concerns about basis in reality or fact. Anti-Mono arguments based in reality or fact are fine, and I welcome them – but I’ve very rarely seen them. And even when they are offered, they are offered drowning in a sauce of demagogy and FUD so thick as to obscure the salient point.

So, I think that’s what you were looking for. Repost it or don’t. It’ll make for a new chapter in the daily personal attacks I receive from the oh-so-sophisticated anti-Mono crowd.

–Jo Shields

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Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth