Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

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Wednesday 22 April 2009 18:03, by Christer :: site :: #

Sweet! Keep up the good work.. and don't listen to that crap about how Gnote is harmful to Tomboy. He should be flattered that you patterned a new sticky note app after his implementation if anything.

Wednesday 22 April 2009 18:11, by Fehmi :: #

Nice; release early, release often :^)

Wednesday 22 April 2009 18:29, by Ludio :: #

Thank you so much Hubert and also love to Vadim for his Ubuntu PPA!

Thursday 23 April 2009 04:04, by nicu :: site :: #

Thanks a lot! Uninstalled Tomboy and Mono and have no intention to look back.
Gnote does already anything I need from it ...except one single thing: start up nicely when I long into the desktop.

Thursday 23 April 2009 04:04, by carlosgc :: #

Thanks Hub!

Thursday 23 April 2009 04:32, by Rehdon :: #

I recently learned of gnote and would love to try it, someone mentioned a Lauchpad PPA? (yeah, I'm lazy :)

Thanks a lot for this hub.

Rehdon

Thursday 23 April 2009 06:08, by Ludio :: #

Here is the link to Vadim Peretokin's Launchpad PPA, although it is not updated to Gnote 0.2.0 yet:

launchpad.net/~vperetokin...

Thursday 23 April 2009 07:21, by mike :: #

@Christer: Diversity in such core programs isn't needed imho.

Rather than Banshee vs. Rhythmbox I would have loved to see them rewrite together, but so there is still energy wasted on another media player..

Besides that, the "mono"guys had some innovative IDEAS for apps which were not there before, so kudos to them.

No kudos for copying that, without giving it extra value.

Gnote consume less Memory, starts up faster? Fix Tomboy (if needed at all), should be much easier than developing Gnote (further, after copying).

If you want Gnote to have success, it would need to offer unique features, and I don't see that (either needed, nor coming).

Don't you have anything better to do with your lifes?

Thursday 23 April 2009 09:09, by Rahul Sundaram :: #

Mike,

Sometimes, the choice of a language makes it not easy or impossible to optimize beyond a point. Any any rate, stop whining. What the developer chooses to work on voluntarily is purely his choice.

On a positive note, this version is now available in Rawhide and for Fedora 10 (updates-testing repo)

Thursday 23 April 2009 10:25, by Vadim P. :: #

@mike: yet to see a single innovative idea from mono, actually (gnome-do isn't, f-spot isn't, banshee isn't). Not that a language can magically give innovation to a developer.

Thursday 23 April 2009 10:38, by Vadim P. :: #

It seems 0.2.0 doesn't build anymore, and I'm not sure why - there weren't any new dependencies added that I see.

See dl.getdropbox.com/u/84880... for the build log.

Thursday 23 April 2009 13:33, by Prashant :: #

Nice. Thanks a lot for the *free* software :)

Thursday 23 April 2009 15:42, by Jason :: #

@Vadim P.
So you say nothing is innovative from any of the mono apps... I assume that this means to you that if anything generally like it has been done before, you would consider it to not be innovation. That means... actually nothing on linux was innovative in the desktop realm. Mac OS did composite desktops first, 3d effects... Taskbar was windows, windowing in general was windows. Older OS's beat Linux to the punch on nearly every window management paradigm. If you want to further this argument I defy you to come up with a single example of innovation in linux that is NOT built on something that already existed.

Note to others, I am not trying to hate on linux, its just the innovation argument is bull crap. Software evolves, its built of previous ideas to make bigger ideas. GNOME Do is a good example of this actually. No matter what you think of Docky (and honestly I dont care, save your comments) its an innovation in the sense that its something new. Not that the component ideas of it (the dock, the searching) are new, but rather the way its packaged together is. Anyone who has worked with software and written enough of it can tell you that software is often innovated in this fashion.

A bit on GNote. I actually think that this will serve only to fragment the community, but its too late now. The only thing I can hope for is that one of the two dies out, and at that point its going to come down to developer base. He who can move the fastest will probably win. It'll be an interesting race, I don't much care which takes the winner circle, but I see a long road ahead of GNote right now. People are saying it starts up faster blah blah without realizing the line for line port wont actually solve this problem. The problem is with the algorithmic complexity of the tomboy startup procedure (initializing plugins and note indexing), GNote will not improve this if it only does a line for line port. It's not the language that makes an application fast, that can only help a little.

I do have a single quesiton for the author though. What are you plans once you complete the port for maintenance? Do you plan to continue to side port new features from Tomboy or will you begin to work in your own direction?

Thursday 23 April 2009 20:43, by Jeff Schroeder :: site :: #

@Vladim P. : How about the first jit'd regexp engine making it faster than pcre? How about xml processing faster than libxml2? Mono has both of those. Yes folks, it is faster than C.

Friday 24 April 2009 03:21, by Martin Owens :: site :: #

Thanks Hubert and Vadim, I'm looking forward to a note program I can use that's better than the current nothing I currently have.

As to all the mono devs, your tribal war paints are showing boys. Your not discusing a rationale here, your asking for a fight between those who despise mono for either it's technical limitations or it's writers political affiliations and yourselves. You can't win my heart, I'm firmly against mono because it's an idea spawned from Microsoft and I don't really care how irrational you think that is.

Friday 24 April 2009 04:12, by Jason :: #

@Martin Owens
That was the most relieving thing I have read about the anti-mono folks ever. For once you have clearly admitted that rationality is not of concern to you, which will lead to you being ignored by the community at large.

Friday 24 April 2009 15:05, by Martin Owens :: site :: #

@Jason - What is funny, is that I'm a human being, rationality is something that is fleeting and difficult to obtain. Unless of course your not human? I'm allowed to bare a grudge, it's called reputation and trust and the people involved at Novell have none of either with me. It's got nothing to do with the tech, so none of you devs would understand. But sometimes, you just gotta say no to the reformed criminal.

Friday 24 April 2009 19:09, by Vadim P. :: #

Ubuntu PPA for 9.04 and 8.10 has been updated: launchpad.net/~vperetokin...

Tuesday 28 April 2009 20:15, by Paul Kishimoto :: site :: #

Still loving it, and I agree with Martin completely. I also read a wise comment from someone elsewhere to the effect that "using 'resources' efficiently", "keeping the community unified", and "adding [what you consider to be] extra value" are NOT the highest values of the Free Software movement; freedom and choice are. Where there is tension, the latter two always win.

@mike, Jason: when people want to *dictate* what developers will spend their time on (or demand an explanation of their motivation/future intentions), they usually pay for the privilege. This relationship is called "employment."

@Vadim: there seems to be an issue with the PPA build; some of the gconf schema defaults don't appear when a user runs the program for the first time. I reported a bug at bugzilla.gnome.org/show_b... and got yelled at :( I can help investigate this if you like.

Tuesday 28 April 2009 21:01, by somecanuckchick :: site :: #

@Paul Kishimoto

"...when people want to *dictate* what developers will spend their time on (or demand an explanation of their motivation/future intentions), they usually pay for the privilege. This relationship is called "employment.""

Truer words were never spoken. :)

Wednesday 29 April 2009 05:38, by Rehdon :: #

@Jason and others

It seems to me, from what I've read here and on planet Gnome, that what really bothers you and the people developing Mono it's not that Gnote is a waste of time (FUD, none of your business anyway) or might be harmful to the community (FUD), but that people might not like Mono and actually prefer an alternative when one is given.

Doesn't sound rational or logic to me. You think Mono is great? Fine, go develop for/use stuff developed in Mono. But you have no right to dictate what other developers should be doing with their time, or what users should be ... using. And if you're really convinced that Mono's so great I don't understand why you're so scared and mad when people say they don't like it.

Rehdon

Wednesday 29 April 2009 16:03, by Jason :: #

@Rehdon
Clearly you didn't read where I said I didn't care if Tomboy or GNote win, only that one eventually dies out. Its not FUD to say that people not working together slows down progress and fragments the community (case and point in comments here). I do think that this line for line port has some more personal motives for Hub, but I will let him decide if he wants to address that. To be flately honest, I was serious when I say I dont care who wins this race. Tomboy can go away, or GNote can, but in the end one of these two will either have to diverge or die. In the future, please bother to read what I said before you respond.

@Paul Kishimoto
I am a core developer of GNOME Do and have been a core member of the predicessor to Compiz-Fusion as well. I am very very well aware that you cannot tell a developer what to do, which is why if you actually bother to read what I said, you will note that I never told Hub to stop what hes doing. I did ask what his plans He will do whatever he feels is right, that's all. However this does not preclude me from saying things like "this fragments the community", because it does. Oh, and I am employed as a programmer for other work too.

Wednesday 29 April 2009 16:10, by Rehdon :: #

@Jason

I was (quite clearly, I might add) answering your other post, the one where you declare that anti-Mono people are not concerned by rationality. In the future, please bother to try to understand the point that is made before you respond.

BTW, if you really want to call freedom of choice "fragmenting the community", you're free to do it: see the beauty of freedom of choice? Myself, I'll keep calling FUD on that.

Rehdon

Wednesday 29 April 2009 17:29, by @Rehdon :: #

@Rehdon

My other post also did not tell Hub to stop, indeed I am still lost in where you think I dictated to a developer what he should do. Please address that. Additionally, I was merely repeating what another person said about being concerned with rationality, making it clear what I thought of it.

As for freedom of choice == line for line ports. Thats not exactly being true to whats going on here. The choice from a normal users point of view between GNote and Tomboy is, well, the name. That and currently GNote is missing some features of tomboy, but I assume that will be fixed sooner or later. If you want to argue that Mono vs C++ is a choice the majority of users care about, you're free to do it. Myself, I'll keep calling shenanigans on that.

I do believe that this does fragment the community however. Its clear there are people switching to GNote, there are going to be developers interested in GNote. That in itself is fine. However it is problematic since these developers will largely be using their efforts to re-invent an application without making and significant changes or improvements. Distro's will have to choose between Tomboy or GNote, and they will not all make the smae choice. GNote, until it catches up, will continue to follow in Tomboy's footsteps, and make for largely duplicated efforts. Once it does catch up, either it will stagnate due to lack of leadership (so far Hub has had to make few design decisions other than replacing Mono.Addins), or it will go in its own path (most likely since Hub is a skilled developer) and take its half of the user base with it. Now you have two communities, around two projects, each either half the resources they could have had if they were together.

This is an idealogical issue. Well, that and there are some underlying issues to this port that are not be discussed. www.figuiere.net/hub/blog... Draw what conclusions you will. But its probably not surprising to note that Tomboy is a Novell project, as is Mono. The approach being taken here is not to discuss the potential problems with Tomboy and the merits of a C++ port. As far as I know, nobody even bothered to inform the Tomboy people of the port. It's also worth noting that GNote is licensed in such a way that Tomboy can not receive any improvements back into it. It's intentionally made so that code and new ideas can only flow one way. This is a very hostile fork, with a personal vendetta at the core.

Wednesday 29 April 2009 17:38, by KeithCu :: #

Someone asked what he will do once he catches up with Tomboy. Will he keep adding new features or go in a new direction?

The answer is that he will never catch up. He's working in a less maintainable programming language.

Here is the list of ideas for tomboy:
live.gnome.org/Tomboy/Pla...

Wednesday 29 April 2009 17:51, by Jason :: #

Oops, the @Rehdon above is me. sorry

Wednesday 29 April 2009 17:56, by hub :: #

Enough trolls. Closing comments.

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