[Mono-devel-list] gLife & .Gnome

[Matthew Lowrance]

I just wanted to pass on few thoughts that I had earlier today.  I have
just starting messing around with Mono and but I think its a great
project.  Everyone who who has helped so far is doing a great job.  

I was thinking though that something that would be cool for Gnome to
have is something like Apple's iLife.  Several of the projects already
exist, Rhythmbox for iTunes, gAIM for iChat, Kino for IMovie, I haven't
read much about it but F-Spot (is that right?) for iPhoto.  I know some
of these projects are not officially part of Gnome, but with the added
exposure it would give them, maybe they would be interested.  Maybe they
would be more comfortable with something like gtkLife.  

So you're saying "This is all well and good, but why are you posting
this to the *Mono* development list?"  Well here's why.  First of all
the other app, iDVD as far as I know doesn't have a comparable Linux
project.  Once Project Utopia stabilizes a little farther and the
Mono/C#/Gtk# bindings as well, this would be a good showcase project for
Mono.  It would be a rather large project an it would encompass a lot of
different features: video, audio, XML, graphics, etc,etc. Getting this
running on Mono would be a great project.

Second, I mentioned in the title .Gnome.  This would be comparable to
Apple's .Mac.  I know that there would be logistics to work through on
this one (especially email since Redhat currently hosts the project) but
I think it could be worked out.  Add support for it to F-Spot to post
photo albums to the web, work out the email somehow, slap together some
web based backup software, maybe add a few more features and its done. 
This one obviously couldn't be done for free, but any company that
wanted to do it would already have a business model.  Just charge
something (less outrageous than what Apple charges) for a yearly
subscription, say $45. Maybe even the Gnome Foundation could take it on
as a project and then people would see their $45 bucks as a donation and
get an @gnome.org email address as well.  The real key here though is to
do the whole thing is ASP.Net/Mono.  Here again is a HUGE showcase for
Mono.  Getting something like this going wouldn't be THAT much work and
it would really be something to impress people.

Anyway, just some thoughts I had as I was driving for hours and hours
today.  I thought I would pass them along to see what anyone else thinks
about it.  Once again keep up the great work on this project.  I can't
wait to learn more and hopefully get more involved.

matt