On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:00:28AM -0500, Bob Tanner wrote: > http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/11967.html I can't say that I agree with JZ (the article's author) on much of anything. He seems to think that Free/Open Source Software has a central purpose which all effort should be devoted towards and redundant projects detract from that purpose, although he never states what he believes that purpose to be. I think that the point of it all is to write good code that does what _you_ want instead of what someone else thinks you want. A plethora of yet-another-foo projects aren't harmful in my view, they're essential. > As I started to read this, I thought "rant" and "flamebait", but then the topic > turned to .GNU and to tell your the truth, I read Ximians press release, I > thought why? Why -follow- microsoft? I don't mess with KDE or GNOME either, but I am on the mailing lists for DotGNU and FreeDevelopers (which is where the idea was originally hatched). JZ obviously isn't on these lists, based on his comments regarding DotGNU. Mono is intended to be, essentially, a DotNET compatibilty layer. As I understand it, they're creating an open implementation of MS's Common Language Runtime so that DotNET applications can be run on non-MS systems. They may be misguidedly following MS, but how is mono any different from wine or samba in that respect? DotGNU is focusing more on the Passport/HailStorm side of MS's strategy. The intent is to create a DotNET-compatible authentication system which is distributed and fully-decentralized (the original plan was to base the design off of DNS, but it was later decided that even having root servers was too open to abuse) and gives the user full control of his personal information, whether he wants to run an auth server on his own desktop or delegate those functions to someone else (bank, ISP, even MS). As for JZ's ETA on DotGNU, it's possible that he's correct about it being two years out, but there are those on the list who believe that, by basing it off of existing Free code, a working auth system could be in place before MS completes the rest of DotNET. Personally, I don't believe that a DotNET-style vision of ASPs everywhere is anything more than a passing fad. But I do believe that MS is trying to establish a lock on authentication services which, if they succeed, could make them as powerful on the internet as they are on the desktop today and render any victory in the operating system arena irrelevant. DotGNU is an attempt to head them off with an open authentication system that will prevent any single player from obtaining that stranglehold on the net.