Ive been an avid user of Tomboy notes for quite a while now. It helps me keep the head clean and stores passwords, analysis, lists, simple notes and whatnot for me. I love the fact that I just open it, type some & close it again without the nuisance of saving, forgetting to save, being asked to save, ..
The only thing that sometimes bothered me, was seeing a .exe in my process list (due to tomboy being built on .net Mono technology)
I’m glad to say that that minor annoyance has now been solved 🙂 Some poor bored soul on the interweb decided to make a C port and ensuingly released GNote 🙂 More info on the GNote project can be found on his blog!
I would however like to make a point here..
Its a pitty the Mono people always get such a rant going when someone decides to move away from it for whatever reason. Linux is about choice, but not using Mono doesnt appear to be a valid choice for those people..(cfr posts guy, gNote release blog posts, ..) I can understand being pro Mono, I can understand seeing the positive side, but I really dont get why everyone makes such a fuss about it? Yes its a nice, valid technology. Yes, its a great project. Yes, you ll probably use Microsoft copyrighted material. Yes, you ll have to trust MS on that. Yes, you (most likely) have no idea about how close Novel & MS Actually are! Ive seen all these points agreed on by both pro & contra evangelists yet in the end, it always turns Nasty!
Choosing for GNote is in no way an insult to Tomboy. In the contrary! In a perfect world, I would like the tomboy people to embrace the port and integrate the port into the usual releases; leaving people the alternative to use mono or the plain C version.
Everyone bitching on the new version blog posts.. Someone deeming a project worth converting (yes, away from the Holy Mono) is quite the complement to the quality of the software. Both in concept as in execution.
So yeah, I dont get the negativity around the wonderfull GNote initiative 🙂 And I’m using GNote Right Now! 🙂
blog.cone 
Honestly, I think you’re a douche. You’re spreading FUD around mono here, which only destroys the community and demotivates people to work on F/OSS.
So feel free to call me a negative hater, but ask yourself: are you helping the world in becoming more free & open?
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Sigh, here we go again. One would honestly think that upon joining the Mono community you receive a free ‘how to become an evangelist’ course \o/
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I’m really amused that you make claims that Mono is probably using Microsoft copyrighted material, and then claim that anyone who speaks up to defend it is an “evangelist.” I’m no Linux die-hard, but where I’m from, that’s called baiting and trolling.
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@Joel
That’s not really the problem. The problem is that Mono isn’t defended with arguments, it’s defended with (empty) ideas. Like someone nicely put it on his blog: Mono sounds more like a religion.
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Dude…
Mono doesn’t need defending unless proven guilty. That’s the same like shutting down your internet connection because you *might* be downloading copyrighted material if you have bittorrent installed.
And honestly, I really don’t care that you don’t want to use mono, don’t! Just stop bashing people who genuinely try to make open source software (remember, their work improves your upstream stack too!). By constantly flaming them, you’re just pushing a rather significant portion of people with free & open minds out of the community. If you’re constantly being called judas because you’re using a potentially dangerous technology, when all you want to do is make nice software, it gets tiring quickly. The end result is that these guys will just stop writing open source software.
So really, who are you helping here?
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LOL
Have you even read this blog post?? If it tells anything about Mono it is positive about Mono. Alright, it refers to the earlier flames but the author of this post tried to enlight the positive about Mono, and uhm… the positive about (F)OSS.
To quote you:
“Just stop bashing people who genuinely try to make open source software (remember, their work improves your upstream stack too!).”
So, why did the gNotes author receive so many flames from the Mono community then? He just tried to(and successfully if you ask me) fork a GOOD project, to make it EVEN BETTER from HIS POINT OF VIEW. What did he ever do to the Mono community??
Got you on your own words didn’t I ?
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Sigh. You really don’t get it do you? Half of your blog post is about how .Net (and thus mono) is an unsafe technology. Tell me how this is positive will you? With this post, you’re effectively spreading FUD which might scare potential contributors to our projects. That’s not helping.
Related to gNote: there’s forking with the intention of merging back later, when the different implementation has proven to be advantageous. There’s forking with no intention to merge back. That’s a hostile and unfriendly fork, but something we can resolve through diplomacy. And then there’s what Hub did to the tomboy project: do a plain rewrite in a different language, with absolutely no intention of working with the tomboy people. That’s extremely rude and disrespectful towards the authors of Tomboy.
Now this guy is free to write whatever he wants, but if you look at the code, you’ll see that it’s a 1:1 straight port. As such he’s effectively grabbing what these guys made for such a long time, with no intention of contributing back (and let’s not forget how this fragments the community).
That’s not helping either.
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Correction, that should have been “his blog post”.
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Gnote is a constructive fork for what he believes to be a problem to software freedom.
You know that I saw this identical discussion with Java people writing Free Software before Java was GPL’d?
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It amazes me how my, as far as I interpret it, positive and congratulatory post – both on the front of Tomboy as gNote can spark such negative comments.
There is ofcourse the point of the holy Mono; I dared reiterate the common points in any generic mono flame fest (quoting the evangelists if you d care to observe) and tried to draw attention to the attitude problem that apparently exists in the Mono community. Sadly, the first reaction started off with “Honestly, I think you’re a douche.”, proving my point in a rather painful and almost comical way!
As I continue down the comments, I read many misguided replies; too many really to answer them all. To address some..
* I’m not making claims, I’m quoting common arguments, do feel free to read the post again.
* The same goes for the bashing & flaming people.
* Half of the post is not about Mono being unsafe but about the sick attitude of some people around Mono.
* ..
There are honestly too many half decent rants in here to take them on one for one.
I have the feeling Mono people just read half the post and blurt out some derogatory comments for the sake of .. boredom? And I realize this isnt a nice thing to say, but after the barrage today & in the posts I linked to earlier, one starts to wonder!
In closing, about “the world in becoming more free & open?” .. Well, the fact that people can now freely choose to use or not to use mono .. is something I like to support in the wonderfull spirit of free and open! Analogous to the wonderful way Ubuntu forked from Debian; yet for some reason, because Mono is involved; the gNote port is Not ok?
And all the trolling is quite the worse considering I have several pieces of software lying around, written in .net, that I considered porting to Mono. (These projects are now obsolete so I never really had to do the conversion)
Although they prove a lesser point I tried to make; these comments really sadden me!
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Guys, you’re stuck in a mindset that I don’t even mention (but I must say that you’re pretty good at using it to underline your own points). Getting labeled “evangelist” while not even promoting mono is… fascinating.
The only point I’m making here is the extremely negative effect this constant anti-mono FUD campaign has on mono users (yes, they are evil because they use mono, but they *are* open source users!).
You see, I don’t mind that you don’t use it, nor that you don’t like it. Just don’t spoil the party for the rest of us.
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@anon
“You see, I don’t mind that you don’t use it, nor that you don’t like it. Just don’t spoil the party for the rest of us.”
Yes, but that becomes fairly difficult with Tomboy being accepted as part of Gnome. This opens the door for others such as Banshee to become part of the standard desktop and this has implications for us if we turn out to be right.
I don’t mind you using mono or making apps in it, just as I didn’t bother campaigning against Java in the past, but Java was never a dependency of Gnome.
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@anon
If you just wanted to make a few mono fud rants, you should ‘ve looked for a more relevant post to do so. Or if you really wanted to comment on This post, you should ve at least tried to write a marginally relevant comment.
Right now it just looks as if the Mono community wont tolerate any other platform than mono being used. If you re all so sure its a great product, why are you so very pissed off when anyone dares to doubt that?
Not to mention the fact that you’re the only one posting here anonymously.
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Unbelievable, do you guys still believe that?
Microsoft actively supports mono, as it strengthens their platform (see the recent open sourcing of asp.net as an example). Let’s be serious for a moment, the open source desktop has almost no economic value and poses no threat to Microsoft.
Even if they were to have IP (remember, it’s an ECMA standard!), they would not use it as it weakens their platform (and thus their bank accounts). The competition and money is in the enterprise: flash & java. Not on the desktop.
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@ anon
You re failing the Turing test. Your answer has little to do with the posts since your last posts.
You might make more sense by explaining what beliefs of ours you re talking about (“Unbelievable, do you guys still believe that?”) and quoting them.
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@Gert: it’s quite funny how you keep on insisting I promote mono, while I explicitly said I don’t care if you use it or not (for the record, I prefer you use and embrace Vala, if you want my technical advice, but that’s not to the point here).
Here’s the one and only point I want to make (nothing more, nothing less). Read it well and think about it:
>>> Mono users are writing free & open source software. The constant bashing on these users drives them away from open source. How is this helping our free & open source ecosystem? <<<
You see, nothing about how fantastic mono might be. I just want you guys to think about the users and how you are alienating them.
It’s been sad to see how the FSF activism (fundamentalism?) prefers to push away those that are not pure enough, rather than trying to be pragmatic and embrace those that have made the first steps in the right direction.
Think about that one point. I will not respond to any further comments as it has no point anyway. The only thing I ask is to consider the toxic effect this campaign has on users and developers, potential contributors.
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I’m glad you took the time to explain your posts. I read a whole lot more in your comments than just that single statement, but now that you ve clarified your only point, we ll just ignore the rest. And we all agree that driving volunteers away from anything is a bad idea.
Now if you d please read the initial blog post.
How does your point in driving away users ..
“>>> Mono users are writing free & open source software. The constant bashing on these users drives them away from open source. How is this helping our free & open source ecosystem? <<<”
relate to my post where I congratulate the Tomboy people & the gNotes guy for their work, express hopes for a joint effort in the projects and lament the fact that any mono discussion always turns Nasty?
Exept in proving my point on Mono discussions?
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@anon
“Microsoft actively supports mono, as it strengthens their platform (see the recent open sourcing of asp.net as an example). Let’s be serious for a moment, the open source desktop has almost no economic value and poses no threat to Microsoft.”
The first is what I worry about, if MS supports mono without a clear money path back to them, they have another motive which is yet to be discovered. One line or reasoning is their recent actions in trying to extort money from Free Software.
The second is nonsense. The Linux desktop is a growing threat to them were much the same is happening as happened with servers with the added trend that a lot of services are now in the cloud which a Linux desktop can access just as easy as a windows one.
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Interesting summary in the lwn article Tomboy, Gnote, and the limits of forks 🙂
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