Re: [DotGNU]Call for a truce over mono vs pnet

[Barry Fitzgerald]

On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Paolo Molaro wrote:

> > The question is this: what is Mono willing to give up to
> > co-operate with DotGNU?  i.e. what major component
> > will you stop building, and use pnet's instead?  If the
> > answer is "nothing", then we aren't making progress
> > to resolve this.
>
> I'd really like to hear your suggestions:-)
> I don't see how people can start cooperating if they both have to cut
> one arm before starting...

Agreed -- however, something has to happen or this will continue.


> The base libraries and runtime are bound toghether, so you can't pick
> and choose a component from one project and make it work with the other
> project metadata/runtime library. We have a JIT and you don't, so we
> can't drop the jit and that means we can't drop our runtime/metadata
> libs.

Then don't collaborate on the runtime/compiler collection.  There's room
for competition and room for cooperation -- but, we're both going to have
to take a step forward and figure out where that is without strangling
each other.  (Both meaning our two projects)

> cscc is months behind mcs and has different goals, it won't be
> usable as a component etc, so we can't drop mcs.

Whoa here -- if we're trying to find a solution let's keep away from
subjective criticism of the other project.  There's been more than enough
of that to have it enter this discussion.  Yes, I do view "xyz project is
months behind abc project" to be a subjective criticism.  It enflames the
situation and brings bad will.  Keep in mind, there are also things that
mono can't do that pnet can.


> There is nothing in the current mono tools that may be dropped without
> going back several months in developer time. We want to be self-hosting
> as much as you do, but dropping functionality is not how you get
> there...
> We don't have an assembler and a verifier, while p.net appears to have
> both. Do you see a chance for cooperating (sharing code) there?
> The position here is that you can copy our code, but we can't copy
> yours, so it's not our call to make. If we can't reuse pnet's code
> we'll have to write our own.
> There may be more room for cooperation in the C# libraries, but here
> again we can't use your code unless you allow us to, while you can reuse
> our code. So, it's really up to DotGNU to decide what degree of
> cooperation they want with mono. Or am I missing something?
>


Whoa here as well, the limitations of code copying occurred when Ximian
changed to the X11 license for the library.  Don't try turning
your decisions around on us.  According to the GNU licenses, all you need
do is ask -- not act like there's some kind of imbalance of power that
we've caused.  That simply is not so.

And yes, you're missing something.  Please heed some attention to my
proposed settlement of the library issue.  For now, let's table
cooperation on the compiler suite and focus on the upper level library
which, to my estimation, is the place where we have the greatest chance of
collaboration.  Once we've got agreement on how to handle that, then we
can talk about licenses and how we're going to handle them.

Also, the solution can't be "DotGNU will give it's code to mono so that
mono can claim it" -- that's not a diplomatic solution: it's a stalemate.

        -Barry