Ubuntu may increase Mono-dependent apps

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 25 June 2009 05:34

Business IT - Technology

The next release of the popular Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution may include a third Mono-dependent application by default, a spokesman for Canonical, the parent company for Ubuntu, told iTWire today.
Responding to an inquiry about the Canonical policy on Mono, Gerry Carr said: "That's an interesting question. Really, it is Ubuntu's board of governance, not Canonical whose policy you want as they decide what goes in the distro. The board have been asked the same thing recently and are considering it but I do not have a timeline for a decision but I will track and push as far as I can."

Mono is a software project begun some years ago by current Novell vice-president Miguel de Icaza to create an open source clone of Microsoft's .NET development environment.

Until version 9.04, which was released in April, Ubuntu  had two Mono-dependent applications - F-Spot and Tomboy. The former is a picture viewer and the latter a note-taking application.

A Mono-free port of Tomboy called Gnote was recently created by former Novell developer Hubert using C++/Gtkmm.

Asked whether there were any plans to include more Mono-dependent applications in future releases, Carr said: "We are not deliberately looking for Mono-based applications but nor are we excluding them because they have that dependency. I think we will add one more (Banshee) in 9.10."

Banshee is an audio player. The current default for audio on Ubuntu is Rhythmbox while Totem is used for video playback.

According to the Ubuntu specifications for default media choice, the choice of Banshee has been made, in part, because it "has people working full time on it, is moving faster and has feature users expect from a modern music playing applications which Rhythmbox doesn't have yet."

The push to include Banshee has been going on for a while. Back in April, the Debian and Ubuntu Mono packager Jo Shields, who advocates the use of Mono on many forums, argued for its inclusion based both on its smaller size compared to Rhythmbox and its "active and vibrant" development community.

Carr added: "However, that is as much of an answer I can get to you until the Ubuntu board decides on a position on Mono. As Canonical we simply do not have a position ready to go on Mono. I think the Banshee exercise will likely see a harder position formed (for or against)."

According to information available elsewhere, there has also been a proposal for the Ubuntu live CD to remove the well-known image manipulation program, Gimp, with the reasoning apparently beign that F-Spot can handle what the Gimp does.

However, this appears to have been put on hold and the next release, Karmic Koala, or 9.10. will include the Gimp.

Red Hat's community Linux distribution, Fedora, recently decided to jettison Mono altogether from its default install, and replace Tomboy with Gnote. There are fears in many sections of the FOSS community that Mono may prove to be a patent trap down the line as .NET is totally Microsoft technology.

While some claim that it is possible to obtain a royalty-free, reasonable and non-discriminatory licence for the use of Microsoft patents which may be part of Mono, in reality, it is extremely difficult to even find out how one can do so.