I read that Gnome will now be based on Microsoft .Net software. How can you have an free opensource OS with Microsoft code in it? Gnome used to claim that they were 'cleaner' than KDE because Gnome had nothing to do with any for-profit company. Now Gnome says using MS code is just fine. I don't want any MS code in my Linux box! Can we get Red Hat to kick Gnome out of the distribution? That is, if AOL doesn't buy Red Hat.
Don't confuse Ximian with GNOME... Ximian, the company, is spearheading a project (mono) to write .NET compatible services. The recent press has had to do with them altering the licence so that they could work with Intel. The licence is still fairly open (it's the X licence after all). I think the idea is that some Intel proprietary classes can still be used (because the GPL would have forced them to open it up). This isn't much different than using NVIDIA's binary drivers for X.
Much of the software on your Linux box has been touched by for-profit companies. There is nothing about the GPL that says you can't make a buck off of Free software.
Sean
On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, author wrote:
I read that Gnome will now be based on Microsoft .Net software. How can you have an free opensource OS with Microsoft code in it? Gnome used to claim that they were 'cleaner' than KDE because Gnome had nothing to do with any for-profit company. Now Gnome says using MS code is just fine. I don't want any MS code in my Linux box! Can we get Red Hat to kick Gnome out of the distribution? That is, if AOL doesn't buy Red Hat.
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Just to clarify the clarification :-) Gnome will NOT be based on Microsoft .Net software. Gnome will be changed to use the .Net Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) eventually (if all goes to plan), but it will not need .Net since the Gnome people are working on an open-source IMPLEMENTATION of the .Net APIs, called 'Mono'. So, it will all be open-source, but it will be compatible with Microsoft's .Net.
Does this clear things up?
Corrections to the above are appreciated.
author wrote:
I read that Gnome will now be based on Microsoft .Net software. How can you have an free opensource OS with Microsoft code in it? Gnome used to claim that they were 'cleaner' than KDE because Gnome had nothing to do with any for-profit company. Now Gnome says using MS code is just fine. I don't want any MS code in my Linux box! Can we get Red Hat to kick Gnome out of the distribution? That is, if AOL doesn't buy Red Hat.
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
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Sean A. Walberg