Mono in Fedora.us?

[theantix]

I'm wondering why the mono packages are not in the fedora.us repositories -- do any of you know the story behind that? I realize that mono is easily installed via the go-mono.com repository, that's what I used to install it myself. But because it's out of the standard fedora.us repository that renders it less useful because apps that depend on mono (mod_mono, muine, etc) aren't in any repository even though they are of high quality. If Red Hat is blocking mono's admission into fedora.us for political reasons that would really suck, but I don't want to put on that conspiracy hat because I really don't know enough to make that decision. Any insights would be appreciated.

[crackers]

It's not necessarily "politics" - there is still some difficulty in certain circles in believing that Microsoft won't all of a sudden pull an 800-lb. gorilla out of the hat at just the wrong moment.

[theantix]

It's not necessarily "politics" - there is still some difficulty in certain circles in believing that Microsoft won't all of a sudden pull an 800-lb. gorilla out of the hat at just the wrong moment.

Right -- I can understand why Red Hat might not want to include it in the base Fedora distribution for those reasons. But you know as well as I do that there is a marked split in opinion that closely follows the Novell/Red Hat corporate lines. That's fine, just part of life, and I accept that. But I don't see why it should be withheld from the "extras" fedora.us repository, because those same concerns about the base distribution aren't really relevant to including it in the extras repository.

If Microsoft did somday decide to flex its patent muscles against mono, all you'd have to do is drop those packages out of the main repository and mono and its related applications could exist like the livna.org packages do today. From my perspective, blocking the inclusion in the extras before you have to is indeed purely politics.. unless the explanation is purely explained by no one trying to do it or something benign like that.

[foolish]

If you want some mono packages now, get them from www.go-mono.net. Here's what I've added to my yum.conf


[go-mono]
name=Mono rpms from Go-mono.org
baseurl=http://mono2.ximian.com/archive/1.0/fedora-$releasever-$basearch

[theantix]

If you want some mono packages now, get them from www.go-mono.net. Here's what I've added to my yum.conf


[go-mono]
name=Mono rpms from Go-mono.org
baseurl=http://mono2.ximian.com/archive/1.0/fedora-$releasever-$basearch


I'm not sure if you're joking or what -- as I said in my initial post I'm already using the go-mono yum repository. The problem is not with getting mono installed, it's getting other applications that require mono installed. Right now there are two high-quality apps that depend on mono that I use: the BLAM RSS aggregator and muine music player. B esides those, there are many more in the pipelines like F-Spot. Now, I can install these myself from the tarballs after I add the mono repositories, but I am somewhat of an experienced linux user. The whole point of having yum is to be able to hunt down dependencies and automagically install applications for me so I don't have to figure out what -devel packages I need. This makes things a lot simpler for the end user, who doesn't have to care about those sorts of things.

Not having an important package like mono in the extras fedora.us repository forces less experienced users to use another repository which contains mono (like the dag one that doesn't play well with fedora.us). Right now it only detracts from Fedora a little bit, but this will only grow over time as Novell and independants continue to write new applictions targetting the mono CLR. That's why the question of _why_ it's not in the repository is important, if it's just politics it signals a problem with Fedora that will only become more glaring over time. But if it's just an oversight because no one has bothered thus far, then it will be corrected in time and it's no big deal.

[crackers]

But I don't see why it should be withheld from the "extras" fedora.us repository, because those same concerns about the base distribution aren't really relevant to including it in the extras repository.

If Microsoft did somday decide to flex its patent muscles against mono, all you'd have to do is drop those packages out of the main repository and mono and its related applications could exist like the livna.org packages do today.
Legally, Microsoft could still expect compensatory damages, even though the distro-makers and repository maintainers acted in good faith.

Plus, that may not be the "avenue of attack" - what if there were a statistically significant portion of new and really swell Linux apps (both FOSS and others) that many businesses became reliant on that are built on Mono? (Think MSOffice, for an example.)

The problem is you're thinking solely like an engineer (e.g. logical and sane), instead of a manager or lawyer: they look for angles to exploit for profit.

[theantix]

Legally, Microsoft could still expect compensatory damages, even though the distro-makers and repository maintainers acted in good faith.

Do you think this is the reason why the fedora.us maintainers don't have the mono packages in there? That's the essense of my question. I call it politics because of the very obvious Novell/Red Hat/Sun split over this issue, evident on the gnome mailing lists and planet gnome. You can identify with near 100% accuracy which camp a person will be in just by looking at his employer -- so it reeks of politics no matter the merit of the arguments involved. To be honest I agree with the camp that is wary of Microsoft and mono, if that helps clarify my state of mind -- I'm really not trying to argue the merits of your argument.

But to sidestep that messy and complicated issue, my main concern is knowing *why* the current situation exists the way it does with fedora.us, and I've been unable to find any information on this which forces me to speculate. And while I love to speculate, actually knowing is even better. So, I'm asking if you think that the reason is that the fedora.us maintains have the same concerns and are blocking fedora, or another reason.

[crackers]

So, I'm asking if you think that the reason is that the fedora.us maintains have the same concerns and are blocking fedora, or another reason.
Oh, I'm speculating as well - I have no direct knowledge. My advice would be to ask the repository maintainers, since they're the ones making the decision.

And it may not be "politics" as much as a distrust/dislike/downright-hatred of anything that even remotely smacks of Redmond - the wife is kinda like that. Well, so am I, but not quite as virulent...

[jgionet]

how does one get mono installed on FC3 now a days? I can't get it to install from the sourse... I'm trying to get f-spot installed with no luck :(

[Shadow Skill]

Well that part worked for me what error are you getting? I can't get muine to install if its any consolation.

[crackers]

I got my RPMs from Dag/Freshrpms/NewRPMs/etc. and it works just fine.

[Shadow Skill]

Those are two versions old Crackers, unless of course the dag rpms are in fact current and mr Wierrs just decided to totally screw up the version numbering for some unknown reason. I did manage to make those work for the first time as well a day or two ago, it's definetly a nice app.