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isn't mono already open source cross platform and run on the same platforms as espeak including rasp pi... system.speech namespace http://go-mono.com/status/stat...

You don't have to with C# either...

Then again, I'm becoming a bit of a NodeJS fan for server-side dev.

Nope. In fact, I think it made it worse.

And they are still advertising Moonlight even though it is a dead project (and they admit it!). Can someone PLEASE turn off this site*! http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

One of the biggest problem with Linux is people abandoning projects and not removing them from the net/distros. You were wrong, you've admited it, but you leave us the mess.

*In all seriousness, the few Silverlight websites redirect their Linux users to this page where it almost never works for them. This of course makes the Linux experience go from just "Unsupported" to building up the hopes of the users and then Unsupported.

http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Apparently there are other ways to do it with prctl on Linux and other APIs on OS X

Netflix does not work with Moonlight at this time. While Moonlight supports all of the UI and media playback infrastructure, it lacks DRM support which Netflix requires.

- Moonlight - Frequenctly Asked Questions

Wow, using a free browser addon that has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux

That's interesting. Because, you see, I just went here, was told my browser was not officially supported so I should go here and install moonlight. Okay, cool, so I do it and go back to here. Guess what. No lecture. That's some support.

I don't think I'd enjoy your Internet very much.

My html5 open standards based internet is fantastic, thank you very much. Works on my iPhone, my Xoom, my Ubuntu netbook, my Ubuntu desktop, and my Droid smartphone. Have fun playing with your silverflash.

Even if there was a Linux port I still would try to avoid it where I could.

Then you will NOT want to click on this link .

I installed it under OS X when I was doing MonoTouch development. I actually had zero problems with it.

Are you sure you weren't downloading the Linux binary that probably came with native support for Linux or some garbage? It even comes with an installer.

Mono Download Page - Select Mac OS X (includes Gtk#, as required for by MonoDevelop)
MonoDevelop Download Page - Select Mac OS X

Install in order. Voila.

No, MonoTouch doesn't use Silverlight, it uses the native iOS Cocoa UI. Similarly, the forthcoming MonoDroid will use the native Android UI. However, you can write your core logic in C# and share it between three separate projects/platforms, generating the UI with MonoTouch, MonoDroid, and Silverlight (iOS, Android, and WP7, respectively). Currently that decision would be hard to justify unless you really love .NET (which I admittedly kinda do myself), since the viability of WP7 is a huge question mark and .NET is a somewhat of a weighty and foreign addition to the other platforms.

Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight for a quick peek at the picture? Can it be uninstalled? I feel like the little fishy who's mesmerized by the angler fishs' lure...

Not .NET, but close enough and open source for Solaris, Linux and Mac downloads is available here:

http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html

As the other poster said, the fact that we do not have 1:1 parity has never been a problem.

Some other technologies that are subsets and are wildly successful:

* Android's Java is not a 1:1 mapping to Java either, and that has not prevented it from being successful.
* iPhoneOS is not MacOS 1:1, and yet, it is incredibly successful.
* Chrome the browser, does not have every feature of Firefox, that did not stop it either.
* JBoss is a subset of the full J2EE stack, and for years it has been wildly successful.
* Linux for years was not even POSIX compliant, and yet, many of us jumped on it, and it became wildly successful.

In Mono we implement what makes sense, and what people are actually using in day to day applications, we do this using metrics that we obtain from our Mono Migration Analysis that helps us identify which APIs are used, by how many applications and we have collected this data from some 10,000 applications:

http://go-mono.com/momareports/

Call this the data-driven prioritization of development.

Mono was born as a technology to bring the best that .NET had to offer to Linux, this was initially the c# language and the core libraries. As time went by, Mono evolved in two directions:

(a) Organica growth: as the Mono community grew, we identify missing features, we envisioned better ways of doing something and created tools, APIs, languages and extensions that mattered to us. In this category you can find things like Gtk#, Taglib#, Cairo#, Cecil, Mono.Options, Mono.Security, Mono.Data, Mono.Math, Mono.Management, Mono's C# REPL, Mono's SIMD extensions, Mono's large array support. Mono's dynamic JIT extensions, Mono's static compiler and much more.

For instance, today, more than 350 applications on the AppStore and 10 of the top 100 apps in there are built using Mono.

(b) Better compatibility with .NET: this is a simpler process than coming up with our own APIs. The .NET APIs are documented, there are thousands of applications to test the implementation against, the community is fed directly from the largest middleware stack in the world, so it made sense for us to implement these pieces.

Is it correct that we do not have a full implementation of .NET, there are a few reasons for this, now with numerals:

(i) Some APIs are Windows specific, and makes no sense to bring to Linux, in particular things like System.Management which is a thin wrapper around WMI. Our advise: replace that code with Linux and MacOS specific code and use one or the other at runtime.

(ii) Some APIs are too larger for us to take with our current community. This includes things like WPF and Workflow. If someone steps up, we will embrace them, but until that happens, we are focused on improving the other areas that have more users and that we have more requests to implement. Additionally, the WPF "lite" is a killer stack (also known as Silverlight).

(iii) Focus, we do not want to spread ourselves too thin.

As for .NET 4.0: we are not too far from having the core be 4.0 compliant, it is a nice upgrade to the solid 3.5 release. For instance, our C# compiler is already a full C# 4.0 compiler, and we already provide features that Microsoft wont offer until 5.0 (embeddable, reusable compiler, see C# REPL).

Moonlight is behind Silverlight, but I am not driven by despair, I am driven by the world of possibility. If I were driven by despair, I would not have written a single line of code.

If Silverlight never succeeds, then who cares how behind Moonlight is. But if Silverlight succeeds, and Linux users want to access that content, but the feature is either broken, not implemented or missing in Moonlight, those users will be in a position to contribute the code, and everyone wins.

I'm certainly not interested in using it on non-Windows platforms because said media stuff doesn't work regardless.

Yep. I was mildly interested in trying moonlight, because MS has put the famous Feynman lectures on physics online for free, in silverlight format. So when I saw the slashdot article today, I thought, OK, I'll try installing moonlight on my ubuntu box and see if it lets me watch the lectures. First off, I do an apt-get install moonlight-plugin-mozilla. Go to the MS web site. "Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not officially supported. The full list of compatible browsers you [sic] can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx. Click on the link. "If you are using a Linux, FreeBSD or SolarisOS operating system, please press the Click to Install button to get the appropriate installation package for Silverlight." Okay, I click on the button and it sends me to go-mono.com. Download and install it. Restart my browser. Go back to the site for the Feynman lectures. "Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not officially supported."

So here's this thing that almost no web site actually uses, and it doesn't actually work. And it's proprietary. And they promise not to sue me for using it. Woo hoo.

Moonlight. From the same folks who brought you Mono (and sharing much of the code), Moonlight is a free, open-source implementation of Silverlight runnable on Linux, *BSD, and so forth. It's under pretty heavy development, and like Mono itself tends to lag somewhat behind the MS version (unsurprisingly), but it's usable for many of the things that require Silverlight.

Download link (may also be in repositories): http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/
Download for development version (2 beta 8): http://go-mono.com/moonlight-beta/
Project page (including links to source): http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

Moonlight. From the same folks who brought you Mono (and sharing much of the code), Moonlight is a free, open-source implementation of Silverlight runnable on Linux, *BSD, and so forth. It's under pretty heavy development, and like Mono itself tends to lag somewhat behind the MS version (unsurprisingly), but it's usable for many of the things that require Silverlight.

Download link (may also be in repositories): http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/
Download for development version (2 beta 8): http://go-mono.com/moonlight-beta/
Project page (including links to source): http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

Let me google that for you: http://go-mono.com/moonlight-beta/

Well, Novell have got OpenSuse built in to Suse Studio, which lets you do something you can't do (at least not without a hugely expensive license) using Windows - deploy ".Net" apps as virtual machines.

As for why - why not? People use Java, so why not Mono? If you want a higher-level language than C and C++ and want some extra features that Java doesn't have (proper delegates, custom events and properties) then Mono is a good choice. You don't have to go Microsoft-dependant and develop for .Net, just for Mono.

I'm going to rip it apart for different reasons than RMS would.. I installed moonlight, but every time I tried to access a silverlight page it refused to even try to load, said I needed silverlight instead.

Go here: http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight-preview/

Install the extension, then go here: http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx

It will work beautifully.

He goes into why he spent his own money to make a series of classic physics lectures available free on the Web

That's easy. It's a good way to lure technically minded people into installing Silverlight. No sale here Gates, I'll wait until it's available by torrent.

For the technically literate, Moonlight is open source. You should try it out to view these. Word of warning, it uses some of the same protocols so if you're concerned about violating Microsoft's copyright, better to avoid it. They are listed under the community promise now but you never know. And if you're RMS, you're probably going to rip this post apart.

even when I go to a Moonlight 1.0-specific demo site.
PEBKAC
Besides, try 2.0.

So Moonlight supports all of Silverlight 3's features?

Moonlight 2.0 is very close. Most of the work involved in implementing silverlight was between version 1.0 and 2.0 where the .NET CLR was added. Moonlight 2.0 has preliminary support for many Silverlight 3.0 features already, but the time between Moonlight 2.0 and 3.0 will be much much shorter.

You can develop Flash apps in vim as well. It's been available for some time actually. Flex3 SDK can compile Actionscript files into a SWF file. [wordpress.com]

Right, but comparing Moonlight to Silverlight is sort of unfair, in this case. When will this stuff work in gnash?

There's a fully supported open source implementation of Silverlight. Once Moonlight is at 2.0, it should be quite multi-platform.

http://go-mono.com/moonlight-preview/

The ability to cleanly interface with raw pointers etc also sounds like it could be useful for systems-type programming, e.g. doing ioctls! - though I have no idea how good Java is at this these days.

Java type system is really lacking there - as a strictly verifiable language with no possibility to opt out, it doesn't have pointers or anything like that. Another minor issue is the lack of unsigned integer types (C# has those), but this is more an annoyance, as it just requires extra casting back & forth to achieve the same things.

When doing low-level interop in C#, you normally just have to redeclare the C function signature in C#, and that's it; e.g.:

static class NativeMethods {
    [DllImport("libc", CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
    static extern long write(int fd, void* buf, ulong count);
}

A similar thing is available for Java, but it's a non-free third-party product; and, of course, type system mismatch is still an issue, so you have to jump through some hoops to get correct declarations for more tricky C signatures. On the other hand, the only thing that C# can't properly map are C variadic functions such as printf - you can write an separate overload for every combination of variadic argument count & types that you'll need, but you can't write a single generic overload that would just work.

Speaking of system programming, Mono specifically has some nice stuff available out of the box on Unix-likes.

The reason I like Python particularly is that it has generally provided me with a good balance of non-verbose syntax, functional features and nice libraries - C# sounds like it offers similar benefits the same, only probably a bit more strict and with better performance given a decent JIT.

If you like the high-level features specifically, have a look at Scala, too. It builds on JVM (they made a CLR version, too, but that one is hopelessly outdated now) and lets you interop with Java libraries, but otherwise it's a very neat modern language with all the same benefits as C#, and plenty more - functional-style pattern matching, traits, mixins... If C# is one step further than Java, than Scala is one step further than C#. The only annoyance with Scala is that they use crippled Java generics (for the sake of interop).

The only real problem with Scala is that it doesn't have any corporation backing it. As such, it's not a language widely used in production (though it's definitely feasible to use it so), and its tooling, while mostly good enough, is lacking features when compared to both major Java IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans...), or Microsoft's .NET offerings such as Visual Studio.

However, if we are talking specifically of FOSS environment (i.e. non-Windows), then existing Scala tools are quire comparable in stability and features to e.g. MonoDevelop.

The ability to cleanly interface with raw pointers etc also sounds like it could be useful for systems-type programming, e.g. doing ioctls! - though I have no idea how good Java is at this these days.

Java type system is really lacking there - as a strictly verifiable language with no possibility to opt out, it doesn't have pointers or anything like that. Another minor issue is the lack of unsigned integer types (C# has those), but this is more an annoyance, as it just requires extra casting back & forth to achieve the same things.

When doing low-level interop in C#, you normally just have to redeclare the C function signature in C#, and that's it; e.g.:

static class NativeMethods {
    [DllImport("libc", CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
    static extern long write(int fd, void* buf, ulong count);
}

A similar thing is available for Java, but it's a non-free third-party product; and, of course, type system mismatch is still an issue, so you have to jump through some hoops to get correct declarations for more tricky C signatures. On the other hand, the only thing that C# can't properly map are C variadic functions such as printf - you can write an separate overload for every combination of variadic argument count & types that you'll need, but you can't write a single generic overload that would just work.

Speaking of system programming, Mono specifically has some nice stuff available out of the box on Unix-likes.

The reason I like Python particularly is that it has generally provided me with a good balance of non-verbose syntax, functional features and nice libraries - C# sounds like it offers similar benefits the same, only probably a bit more strict and with better performance given a decent JIT.

If you like the high-level features specifically, have a look at Scala, too. It builds on JVM (they made a CLR version, too, but that one is hopelessly outdated now) and lets you interop with Java libraries, but otherwise it's a very neat modern language with all the same benefits as C#, and plenty more - functional-style pattern matching, traits, mixins... If C# is one step further than Java, than Scala is one step further than C#. The only annoyance with Scala is that they use crippled Java generics (for the sake of interop).

The only real problem with Scala is that it doesn't have any corporation backing it. As such, it's not a language widely used in production (though it's definitely feasible to use it so), and its tooling, while mostly good enough, is lacking features when compared to both major Java IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans...), or Microsoft's .NET offerings such as Visual Studio.

However, if we are talking specifically of FOSS environment (i.e. non-Windows), then existing Scala tools are quire comparable in stability and features to e.g. MonoDevelop.

Last I read, Moonlight support for those specific features aren't available until Q3 this year.
That said, you might try the Moonlight that let everybody stream the presidents inauguration address. I doubt it will work, but it's worth a try.
http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Odd that this is just now breaking on Slashdot. According to the Mono project's Moonlight page, the final version of Moonlight 1.0 was released Jan. 20 -- just in time for Linux users to accept de Icaza's invitation to watch President Obama's inauguration over the Internet via Silverlight.

To answer somebody's earlier question, Moonlight 1.0 is licensed under LGPL.

I clicked the link to install Silverlight (firefox, ubuntu, i386) and got sent to Moonlight.

Of course you can, it's all on their blog http://www.go-mono.com/monologue/

I just wanted to confirm that you can watch today's Barack Obama Official Inauguration video stream using Moonlight on Linux/x86 and Linux/x86-64 systems.
(...)
Microsoft worked late last night to get us access to the code that will be used during the inauguration so we could test it with Moonlight.
(...)
Aaron's code will also be powering MacOS/PPC streaming.

http://www.pic2009.org/page/content/linuxplayer - works fine moonlight link - http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Except that the only moonlight installation I've seen (from http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/index.aspx), explicitly says:

"Note: These are currently built without multimedia support. No video or mp3 playback is enabled on these binaries."

I know what that means, but I don't know why. Is it legal or technical?

Theres an installer. :-) http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Silverlight has a pretty good start even on Linux, and on OS X and Windows is darn solid, light and fast compared to Flash.

Especially Video streaming, and HD streaming is not only faster but demands less bandwidth and less server and client resources. If you are doing HD, silverlight VC1 even from a Linux server works well, without the Flash licensing.

Windows and OS X users will note Silverlight handles multimonitor fullscreen modes and other features that Flash often fails with, let alone the video quality in comparison is considerable.

Linux users, check it out, you can view Silverlight content now and even though it is a 'side' project from the Mono team, it is supported by Microsoft. (Microsoft did not want to develop it internally so they wouldn't compete with the Mono project and they also don't have to jump through and OSS licensing that might require them to expose non-related code they consider private.

(Even if you don't agree with MS on this, you can respect their issues with the various licensing models that would force them to provide more than a 'working' version of Silverlight.)

http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

(As for the DNC site Silverlight in previous posts, note that it is not Silverlight that is forcing users to use Windows, but a third party media control plugin.

I think the third party control plugin is stupid, really stupid as it is not needed if they took 10min to design the features as native Silverlight .NET code.)

Except there will be no first-party support of Silverlight for Linux, ever, so it will always be a second class citizen in the .NET world. Assuming Moonlight even gets to the 1.0 status, or ever works as a browser plugin. The gnome guys working on it are so busy sucking Microsoft's dick for cash that they can't actually make it useful (it's compiled without any kind of multimedia support, which is the main feature that it's pushed with). And the Mac will get the same treatment, the Silverlight releases will always lag significantly behind the Windows one in version and bugfixes.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. They've done it before, they'll keep trying to do it again, and people like you who say "look how little work it takes to make something locked into a very expensive OS that actively works against it's user!" just enable them to keep doing so.

Given the amount of OSes that Mono is available on, would that be two universal runtime environments with true cross-platform deployment - Mono/.Net and Java?

TBH I always get the impression that .Net is more platform independant. SWT and Eclipse need OS specific libraries and you can't export an Eclipse app to run on any OS. .Net has been (in my experience) build once, run anywhere (unless you purposefully do something OS specific like P/Invoke).

Mac OS X:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/silverlight.html

Well, that right there satisfies 'cross platform' as far as I'm concerned. I mean sure, it might not run on -every platform- but very few things that call themselves cross-platform run on my Amiga.

Of course, this is slashdot, so by cross-platform you must mean does it run on linux... and apparenty the implementation that DOES is called Moonlight...

Linux:
http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Does that count as cross platform support too? Personally, I think it does. After all, lots of FLOSS software is developed by a core team of developers on one platform, some even are only developed for one distro, and the ports to other platforms and distros are managed by completely other independant groups, yet we don't deny them being cross platform.

You can also try the live CD for opensuse its available in the download section http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html

If you are on windows and have decent ram you can try the mono vmware image. It boots opensuse desktop and has mono and monodevelop ready to go. go here: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html Click on the vmware image.

Yahoo would be the ideal vehicle to push (force?) Silverlight out to millions of people in one foul swoop. Note the system requirements in the link -- linux users are not welcome.

The Linux Beta can be downloaded here:

http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Microsoft has not released the media codecs yet (In the pipeline as we speak), but otherwise you should be able to look at any Silverlight site you want.

I visit many of the same sites that you do. Freshmeat is essential for keeping up with the OSS community. As a professional programmer, I also need to know what's new when it comes to Python, Ruby and Mono, since those are the languages or platforms I use most often. Sites like the Ruby Forum [http://www.ruby-forum.com/], Planet Python [http://planet.python.org/], and Monologue [http://www.go-mono.com/monologue/] make doing that very easy. And for future language developments, I'm always sure to read Lambda the Ultimate [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/] and PLnews [http://plnews.org/]. And the comp.lang.misc newsgroup [http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.misc/] is also a good place for information, too.

(a) does the VB.NET environment support most of Windows Forms

Mono has had complete System.Windows.Forms 1.1 API support since Mono 1.2. System.Windows.Forms 2.0 is still being worked on, with the missing methods reported by MoMA getting implemented first.

(b) does it support database access through ODBC, OLE DB, some equivalent to the .NET native providers, or some combination of the above

Mono has many System.Data providers, including System.Data.Odbc, System.Data.OleDb, System.Data.OracleClient, and System.Data.SqlClient, though I can't say how complete these are. You will likely need to test your code.

(c) can it expose and consume Web services with reasonable ease

Mono has had ASP.NET support for quite some time, as well as .NET Remoting, so ASP.NET web services (.asmx files) and .NET Remoting web services are both supported.

Sure you could. Like all those fast, light, embedded versions of Gnome people are running on their cell phones....

I never mentioned phones - I mentioned embedded systems. However, just to humour you, here is a video of a cell phone running gtk.

I don't think I'm the one that doesn't get it.

I'm afraid you are. I specifically mentioned libraries, yet you used gnome as your example.

True, but not exactly. Microsoft has submitted C# for ECMA standardization (ECMA-334, IIRC).
The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), has also been submitted for standardization.
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/ecma/: ECMA submitted the standards and TR to ISO/IEC JTC 1 via the latter's Fast-Track process. In April, 2003, ISO ratified the standards as ISO/IEC 23270 (C#), ISO/IEC 23271 (CLI) and ISO/IEC 23272 (CLI TR). Equivalent specifications have also been adopted as 2nd edition standards and TR by ECMA.

This allows free software developers to create free (as in freedom) .NET implementations, such as Mono and DotGNU. I consider this open-minded, and appreciate developping free software in C#.
On a related subject, they also opened their RSS extensions, protected by a Creative Commons License.

Even if it is true that using C# indirectly contributes to Microsoft's success, that's also a gift to FS developers.

This isn't very interesting at all.

You can compile a java-program and run it under Mono.
Eclipse runs under Mono.
See: http://www.go-mono.com/images/ikvm-screenshot.png

As the distinction between Java, .NET and Mono seems to be unclear to a few people, I'll throw in my "humble view":

• Mono supports several langauges, that easily interoperate. Java supports one langugage.
  You can write in support for other languages in Java, like Jython, but this is not the point.
  A compiled function written in Boo can easily be called from C#.
  See: http://www.mono-project.com/Languages
  
  
• Mono has a compiler, VM, and a bunch of classes that are all As Free As They Can Be (tm).
  In addition, Mono has re-implemented a few microsoft-specific classes, that can easily be removed, where there supposedely is an incredibly tiny chance that anyone will care. If you're making Linux-only programs, this will never be an issue for you, and you'll have a very nice and powerful tool for making programs with.
  See: http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_General
  
  
• It's easy to call .dll's and .so's from Mono. For what I know, It's not that easy from Java. I tried calling some dlls a few years ago, and it was a mess. For me, at least, the threshold for calling a function from libsomething.so from Java is a lot higher than from Mono. Especially if you're planning on doing this in a crossplattform way, which Mono has support for. You can call the native .so on Linux and the native .dll on windows, with the same program.
  See: http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/8794
  
  
• Python supposedly runs faster under IronPython (which runs on Mono) than normal python (CPython).
  See: http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/9/
  

Regardless of my list of points above, I hope you'll see that Novell could very well be "reinforcing their commitment to the Java community, while at the same time funding Mono".

1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

However,

1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip

http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents

Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has ever received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May

The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

1. Java is also proprietary:

Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason. Even if Sun changed its mind or was purchased by a less generous company (like MS for example), existing releases of Java and alternative implementations based on existing released specs would always remain free as in beer. The no version of the .net ecma standards ever has been comparably free.

2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time:

True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich and illegal monopoly that used its power to destroy competition. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies by the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian and some gnome developers again)

Microsoft's recent actio

each language is really more of a "skined" version of C#

Start with http://www.go-mono.com/languages.html, maybe check IronPython and Boo too.

Looking a little bit further, there might be some very interesting times ahead, since Ximian people have said that it's now possible (a lot of work, but possible) to add Mono support into gcc, to make it generate CIL! If that really became reality it would mean that you could write C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C and Java for Mono.

1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

However,

1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip

http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents

Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has ever received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May

The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

1. Java is also proprietary:

Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason. Even if Sun changed its mind or was purchased by a less generous company (like MS for example), existing releases of Java and alternative implementations based on existing released specs would always remain free as in beer. The no version of the .net ecma standards ever has been comparably free.

2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time:

True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich and illegal monopoly that used its power to destroy competition. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies by the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probabl

Keep in mind that Microsoft saw .NET as cross-platform, but only between windows platforms. Java is far better in that respect. While full compatibility is in many cases impossible, the extra effort per platform is much smaller

be aware that thats great in europe where software patents don't apply yet but for the americas mono is a can of worms. see:

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11889&comm ent_id=32499 [osnews.com]

"1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

However,

1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip [archive.org].....
http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents [go-mono.com]

Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has every received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May [gnome.org]

The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

1. Java is also proprietary: Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason.
2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time: True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies bye the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian and some gnome developers again)"

Just a reminder that Mono has ASP.NET. You can get an Apache plugin too.