Embracing the .Beast

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"These days I see Mono as an upgrade on a development platform," de Icaza remarked in early 2002. "I think it's going to be the next big thing, and I think the GNOME community is going to jump to it, if only because I'm going to make it really simple for them to do it. All of these people are extremely talented, they can see through the bullshit, and they'll see that Mono is a good thing for them."

To some extent this has been the crux of the problem for the Mono developers. Mono is an implementation of Microsoft proprietary technologies that were developed to divert attention from Java. Software that can interact with Microsoft's proprietary technologies, read, translate and even create programs in C# is one thing. Entangling this software into Gnome, one of the two key desktop environments for Linux and UNIX, is seen as quite another.

The hostility of users and developers to this notion is not based on aversion to the implementation of Microsoft technologies per se, but the fear of entangling a major free software project in the snare of proprietary "standards," patent threats and other irrelevant noise.

The clearest exposition of this position was made by Richard Stallman on the Gnome Foundation mailing lists. "I have always supported the development of free platforms for C#, just as I've supported the development of free platforms for any language that users use. I also wouldn't argue that people should not use C# with a free platform for secondary applications," he said.

"However, making GNOME depend on Mono is running a grave risk, and a grave mistake."

Visual Basic for Linux?

The attraction of a language runtime, such as that offered by Mono, .NET and Java, is that, in theory at least, it simplifies the job of the applications developer, taking the responsibility for tasks such as creating objects, making method calls, managing memory allocation and accessing operating system resources away from the programmer.

de Icaza has attributed the creative inspiration of Bonobo and GNOME to the ideas behind DevX and COM, (which are also Microsoft technologies) and the inspiration for Mono to the integrated philosophy behind the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime), which he sees in the long term as a method of integrating technologies across the board. de Icaza believes that .NET is an improvement on Java, a thesis with which many disagree, and as an easy tool for rapid cross-platform applications development. One of the greater assets of Mono and the CLR is that it allows some language independence, so developers aren't tied to one language or another for the rapid development of useful applications.

Free software advocates have had historic problems with the licensing of Java, (which were solved by Sun's 2006 decision to release Java under the GPL), but tended to see Java as a better, more open and trustworthy solution for web services, and did not want irrevocable tangles of integrated technology to invade the Linux developer space. To which de Icaza's response has been that: ".NET is nothing but Java. They just happened to learn the mistakes from Java and build things they couldn't do with Java because it was set in stone. GNU was based on a proprietary technology [UNIX]. Think of Mono as following the same process: we are bringing the best technology out there to our beloved free software platform."

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