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Can't seem to find a good reference (it's late and I got work to do), but I recall an article that claimed more than a half of core devs either run OS X exclusively with at most VMs, or at least dual-boot with OS X as primary.

But, so my words are not completely unbacked, here's the creator of GNOME.

Mono developer Miguel de Icaza has pledged to continue to add Microsoft's code to Mono saying "Like we did in the past with .NET code that Microsoft open sourced, and like we did with Roslyn, we are going to be integrating this code into Mono and Xamarin's products".

But is that wise? To your point, the Free Software Foundation's reaction to Microsoft's similar 2009 action point to exactly how changing ownership of patents render Microsoft's Patent Promise not to sue useless. This very promise could become the basis for a patent trap. In 2009 Microsoft's promise not to sue was called a "Community Promise" but today's .NET promise not to sue is risky in the same way—it's not (as the FSF rightly puts it) "an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises" and neither is the MIT license Microsoft chose to release their code under.

Looking back at that essay from 2009, we see the FSF warn us (emphasis mine):

The Community Promise does not give you any rights to exercise the patented claims. It only says that Microsoft will not sue you over claims in patents that it owns or controls. If Microsoft sells one of those patents, there's nothing stopping the buyer from suing everyone who uses the software.

Falling into this trap will directly adversely affect your ability to run, share, and modify covered software. The FSF points to a practical way out as well:

The Solution: A Comprehensive Patent License

If Microsoft genuinely wants to reassure free software users that it does not intend to sue them for using Mono, it should grant the public an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises. That would neatly avoid all of the existing problems with the Community Promise: it's broad enough in scope that we don't have to figure out what's covered by the specification or strictly necessary to implement it. And it would still be in force even if Microsoft sold the patents.

This isn't an unreasonable request, either. GPLv3 requires distributors to provide a similar license when they convey modified versions of covered software, and plenty of companies large and small have had no problem doing that. Certainly one with Microsoft's resources should be able to manage this, too. If they're unsure how to go about it, they should get in touch with us; we'd be happy to work with them to make sure it's satisfactory.

Until that happens, free software developers still should not write software that depends on Mono. C# implementations can still be attacked by Microsoft's patents: the Community Promise is designed to give the company several outs if it wants them. We don't want to see developers' hard work lost to the community if we lose the ability to use Mono, and until we eliminate software patents altogether, using another language is the best way to prevent that from happening.

I find it no accident that the built-to-be-business-friendly "open source" language is all over this announcement including the aforementioned blog post from a prominent endorser, while the wise warnings of falling into a patent trap come from the FSF who consistently looks out for all computer user's software freedoms—software freedom being the very thing that "open source" was designed never to bring to mind (see source 1, source 2 for the history and rationale on this point).

An intestinal bacteria, you say.

I will have to claim prior art. My family has been manufacturing methane the same way for generations.

If you knew the slightest thing about chemistry you'd know that Propane and Methane are not the same gas.

Nothing kills an embarrassingly obvious joke more than a TBU (true-but-useless) tidbit.

Here, read this to celebrate your technically correct moment of glory :) http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

You still don't get it, every OS release make changes of how widgets behave. One example, OS X "natural" scrolling behaviour, you run and old QT application on that platform and I am sure it will not behave the same way and users notice that. QT developers are good chasing every tiny update OS providers do, that doesn't mean that old applications are updated automatically. All applications need to be updated, specially on Windows and OS X where there isn't a shared QT runtime. If WPF is the new native, I am pretty sure that any modifications Microsoft make to old widgets are added to the new ones because I don't think they want an inconsistent experience for their users (sometimes I think they don't care after Windows 8)

I still write a lot of Java Swing code, so I know custom drawn toolkits have their advantages, if you are a good developer using them, and I am not against what QT do, I am only saying that QT are not native controls (only on platforms where it is the platform toolkit)

Is this QT or GTK? http://tirania.org/s/138c98b8.png

It is GTK, do GTK use native controls? NO

Cairo is a great library, I've used it and found it very easy, but it's not remotely approaching a standards-quality design. The closest I've seen would be Anti-Grain Geometry, which makes phenomenal use of templates.

Miguel de Icaza says the exact opposite

Nearly exactly 10 years ago, the GNOME community also lost a young member, Chema Celorio, in a Skydiving accident which was very similar unfortunately (low height, high speed turn).

More dirt on that child, he uses Mac OS X instead of GNU/Linux regularly. source

Go fucking figure.

I kinda doubt that, since Miguel now uses a Mac.

Thats a little unfair. In my experience this question and discussion comes up with in increased frequency at many of the tek meetups and forums I participate in. There was a massive shift to OSX in the time scales discussed, to the point where almost all the developers and designers I personally know where using OSX. It even became common for the occasional non apple hardware laptop to be singled out and form a basis for discussion itself!! Recently the tide does indeed seem to be shifting once more, and many who tried linux desktop before are tempted into trying once more. The recent high profile disparing positions by people such as Linus https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/UkoAaLDpF4i and (lesser) Miguel de Icaza http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html make this a valid subject for discussion I believe.

It doesn't matter his affiliation or if he likes or even works for MS or not. Judge the statement on it's own, and it's true.

Absolutely. I agree with this and also with things that Miguel wrote three years ago (see http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html)

The only thing I question about Miguel's recent statements, why now, or even in 2009? Wasn't this obvious as far back as year 2000? I used to be a Linux system admin 2000-2007. Everything he is saying was clear to me back then. E.g. that Linux will always remain a chaotic mess with not binary driver compatibility, incompatible package formats, incompatible and ever changing desktop environments, distributions that move too quick, etc. Linux works great for servers, because of server enterprise oriented distributions like RHEL, but on the desktop it's primarily a platform for people to tinker with.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Oct-03.html
Microsoft Opens up the .NET Class Libraries Source Code

automatically in the compiler, try several things and pick the one that uses the least memory/processor cycles/OSPF if multithreaded/whatever based on what you want to gain by optimizing code

Oh - you mean like every JVM/CLR in the last I can't remember how long? Like you get in every Android device? Like all the decent JS engines out there?

Now we could discuss the relative efficiencies of interpreted vs bytecode vs compiled vs whatever all day long (hint: it's more variable than it might at first seem), but I have a feeling you'd rather go back out and shout at the kids on your lawn.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html THE orginal Gnome dev, explains why a Linux desktop success isn't likely in the foreseable future.

The chart from TFA:

http://tirania.org/s/71de890b.png

Whoa. Those benchmarks show Java/JVM about 7 times slower than C#/DLR. (I thought "DLR" in TFA was a typo, but it's correct. DLR stands for Dynamic Language Runtime.)

I'm not entirely surprised. I remember reading the history of IronPython, where Jim Hugunin (the original author of Jython, which is Python running on the JVM) did some experiments with the CLR, intending to prove how sucky and lousy the CLR was; instead, he found that the CLR was faster than the JVM, and he went ahead and created IronPython to run on the CLR.

steveha

Mono can generate a normal, runs-without-Mono, Windows .exe executable from your C#, but I get the impression that generation of a (native) .dll can't be done, even with Mono.

That is factually untrue.

"Microsoft demoed creating new WinRT components on both C++ and .NET."

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Sep-15.html

WinRT is the new Windows 8 runtime, which will be accessible by C++, C# and any .Net language.

WinRT demystified [Miguel de Icaza]

WinRT is a new set of APIs that have the following properties:

It implements the new Metro look.
Has a simple UI programming model for Windows developers (You do not need to learn Win32, what an HDC, WndProc or LPARAM is).
It exposes the WPF/Silverlight XAML UI model to developers.
The APIs are all designed to be asynchronous.
It is a sandboxed API, designed for creating self-contained, AppStore-ready applications. You wont get everything you want to create for example Backup Software or Hard Disk Partitioning software.
WinRT wraps both the new UI system as well as old Win32 APIs and it happens that this implementation is based on top of COM.

Some developers are confused as to whether .NET is there or not in the first place, as not all of the .NET APIs are present (File I/O, Sockets), many were moved and others were introduced to integrate with WinRT.

When you use C# and VB, you are using the full .NET framework. But they have chosen to expose a smaller subset of the API to developers to push the new vision for Windows 8.

And this new vision includes safety/sandboxed systems and asynchronous programming. This is why you do not get direct file system access or socket access and why synchronous APIs that you were used to consuming are not exposed.

Now, you notice that I said "exposed" and not "gone".

What they did was that they only exposed to the compiler a set of APIs when you target the Metro profile.

You might be thinking that you can use some trick (referencing the GAC library instead of the compiler reference or using reflection to get to private APIs, or P/Invoking into Win32). But all of those uses will be caught by AppStore review application and you wont be able to publish your app through Microsoft's store.

You can still do whatever ugly hack you please on your system. It just wont be possible to publish that through the AppStore.

Here is Miguel on the topic and I think he does a great job of explaining it...

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Sep-15.html

Actually, Oracle might not have bought Sun if they could not sue Android:

" Miguel De Icaza has provided a very interesting insight into the case. His report has been confirmed by James Gosling, known as the father of Java who left Sun right after the merger. Icaza speculates that the potential to monetise on Java by suing Google was pitched by Jonathan Schwartz during Sun's sales talks with Oracle. Oh boy."

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/android-oracle-java-lawsuit/
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html
http://www.osnews.com/story/23684/De_Icaza_Sun_s_Schwartz_Pitched_Google_Lawsuit_to_Oracle

You'll have to wait for the judge for that citation but my best guess here is that Google either approached Sun or Sun approached Google, and the two companies couldn't work out a deal. Google wanted to partner to save money, but Sun wanted $100mil and I'm pretty sure Google didn't want to invest that much so they decided not to. But Google used the code anyway and that's where they are in the wrong.

People have known about Google being in the wrong for about a year. It's pretty obvious they knew about these patents but ignored them so that puts them in the wrong. Oracle being greedy though is going to get the short end of the stick here but yeah... Google screwed up and played this a little too close to the line.

Not true.

Firstly, you can run Silverlight applications on Linux and Mac with Moonlight.

Secondly, in the case of C# applications that use Direct3D you can use Wine and Mono together.

Thirdly, for phones, there is Mono for Android, and iOS support on the way, as described here.

Directly from Miguel de Icaza's blog: "Mono for Android uses the Mono Linker to ensure that only the bits of Mono that you actually use end up in your package and that you do not pay a high tax for just using a handful of functions."

I've never used Dropbox and never will with what I know now, so I wasn't aware they could do password recovery. It seems that Dropbox has changed their claims about privacy based on the discussion at Miguel de Icaza's post. Apparently they used to say that

Dropbox employees aren't able to access user files, and when troubleshooting an account they only have access to file metadata (filenames, file sizes, etc., not the file contents)

but now say

Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store in your Dropbox account, and are only permitted to view file metadata (e.g., file names and locations).

It's already been shown that Dropbox's claims about security are mostly bogus. If Dropbox can Hand Over Your Files to the Feds If Asked then the encryption method they use to store files on their servers is meaningless since they have the private keys anyway.

Miguel was very quick indeed to try to spread FUD and capitalize on the uncertainty that Oracle brought to Java, e.g. see: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Oct-26.html I wonder how is this going to impact his disposition. Let me guess, it's still better than Java right?

If Oracle step up and deliver a Java 7 for OS X, you will still be able to bundle the JVM with your application to be on the Mac App Store (until megalomaniac Steve Jobs change the rules again), the same with Mono, python, Ruby ... Read Miguel de Icaza

We clearly have to take this to the next step as MonoMac is merely a binding to .NET. We are going to have to extend MonoDevelop to create fully self-contained applications that embed both your application, any library dependencies that it needs as well as the Mono runtime.

The above really had not been my priority, as far as I was concerned "Download Mono and Install it" was a perfectly suitable solution. So you have Apple to thank for my change of heart.

A security nightmare on my opinion, the same VM code duplicated on each application, and consuming more machine resources because there is no shared runtime

Miguel de Icaza gives a pretty good guess about what's happened.

The gist is that Sun very carefully licensed Java under the GPL with an agreement that anyone who implements Java 100%, without supersetting, would get access to the patents. Apparently Sun's embedded implementations have some special functionality not included in the GPLed version. This is where the "very carefully" bit comes in -- it means others can't implement their own embedded versions (adding that special functionality would be supersetting), and would have to license Sun's version. Their embedded implementation generates the bulk of the cash for them, and they wanted to protect that.

Google wanted to use Java but didn't want everyone to need to license the embedded version. So they implemented their own. To get around the supersetting issue, they changed their implementation (Dalvik) to not infringe on Sun's patents -- even going so far as to change the bytecode format and implementing a Java->Dalvik bytecode translator.

Now Sun sees everyone hopping on the Android train for all sorts of devices, and no licensing fees coming in from any of them. And they're suing.

It sounds plausible to me but Miguel is the author of Mono, so take this with a grain of salt. He's usually the one having an argument against someone saying how everyone should use Java because Microsoft will pull the same type of stunt against Mono some day, so this must be a humorous day for him.

This is going to get down voted to hell. But anyway.

Here is Miguel's opinion on this development.

I hope the Mono hating will finally stop now.

We have announced that our upcoming Mono release (2.8) will default to 4.0:

http://www.mono-project.com/Roadmap

For the first time in Mono's history our C# compiler and its supporting engine and core libraries were done before Microsoft released the product, we were usually one to two years behind. This time we are some five months ahead of time:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-09.html

There are still a handful of loose ends here and there, but luckily, nothing major.

I provided some context to the SD times article on my blog today:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Mar-25.html

Miguel.

You can write codecs for Silverlight 3.

According to the second link in the summary, WCF and LINQ to SQL have been addressed in Mono 2.6.

Oh, I thought you meant proprietary codecs. Well anyway, Moonlight is up to date with Silverlight 2 and a good bit of 3.

In this instance Miguel wrote a blog post about Silverlight that reads like a press release. Silverlight is a proprietary and patent-encumbered replacement for Flash written by Microsoft.

Thus a promo for Silverlight was showing up on Planet GNOME.

I read that more as "Silverlight 4 finally supports these totally awesome features that everyone's been asking for, and that we already had in Moonlight. So now we (the Mono people) need to implement the rest of Silverlight 3 and 4, so we can run the upcoming flood of apps that use these features but don't specifically worry about being cross-platform."

Hmm, on second reading I think your interpretation is fairly accurate, I think the style threw me the first time I read it because it really does read like an official press release.

I still feel the emphasis really is on Silverlight, not Moonlight (the free implementation), which isn't ideal but is fine with me if the blog normally focuses on Moonlight and the post fits into the wider picture.

I should note I don't really know if that post in particular was a big issue, the iTWire summary drew that conclusion.

In this instance Miguel wrote a blog post about Silverlight that reads like a press release. Silverlight is a proprietary and patent-encumbered replacement for Flash written by Microsoft.

Thus a promo for Silverlight was showing up on Planet GNOME.

I read that more as "Silverlight 4 finally supports these totally awesome features that everyone's been asking for, and that we already had in Moonlight. So now we (the Mono people) need to implement the rest of Silverlight 3 and 4, so we can run the upcoming flood of apps that use these features but don't specifically worry about being cross-platform."

(Qt kicks the fuck out of GTK+)

It doesn't matter. Don't you read the news? GNOME is ditching GTK for Silverlight 4, a cross-platform technology that only runs on Windows.

There is a blog aggregator called Planet GNOME which pulls together blog posts from various Gnome developers. One of these developers is Miguel de Icaza, a fairly senior GNOME developer (I believe he started both the GNOME and Mono projects, though I don't know his current position in them). Miguel is known, and somewhat infamous, for supporting MS Standards like C# (hence Mono, an opensource implementation of it), and OOXML.

In this instance Miguel wrote a blog post about Silverlight that reads like a press release. Silverlight is a proprietary and patent-encumbered replacement for Flash written by Microsoft.

Thus a promo for Silverlight was showing up on Planet GNOME.

This was not the only time something like this had happened, these are blogs afterall, people write about all sorts of stuff. Thus people started discussing a code of conduct about appropriate topics for blogs on Planet GNOME.

Stallman stopped by to offer his opinion (just couple very short posts in a long discussion) saying that people shouldn't use Planet GNOME to talk about proprietary projects like promos for Silverlight or even talk about using vmware since Gnome is a GNU project and opposed to proprietary software.

Philip Van Hoof responded saying he disagreed and started talking about a split, a few other people started talking about the rules surrounding the vote and the rest kept talking about the idea of a code of conduct.

I don't really know who anyone is other than Miguel and Stallman, but my gut says that no vote is going to occur.

iTwire says its because of article by de Icaza that resulted into Stallman protesting and the whole shit hitting the fan.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Nov-09.html

Thanks for that, but that's not what I was looking for. I'd like a reference to RMS's last post which contains a personal attack against Miguel.

I found it by finding Miguel's blog where the slashdot comment is repeated, but there is a link to http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/. I followed it, but it has a content-full post with no personal attacks.

The link you just provided is a bit surprising, but it isn't written by RMS. The quote is definitely making the rounds: I read about it yesterday, and Google is turning up many more commentators referring to it.

For example, Thom Holwerda (http://www.osnews.com/story/22225) thinks RMS has 'crossed a line' and the FSF should 'removed him from the stage' and that 'he has lost touch with reality'

It's picked up again by aross who thinks it's hard to believe, but also seems to accept it at face value. http://www.fosslc.org/drupal/node/550

It seems to me as a spectator that name-calling is very alive and well here, as is the postured over-reaction on the part of non-participants. Miguel offers this somewhat dippy comment: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-23.html about how God loves all creatures, including Richard Stallman. The funny thing is, he suggests that RMS might want to talk about how to improve 'Free and Open Source Software', as if RMS has never made any suggestions in that line.

"Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness"

Which begs the question as to why expend so much energy in duplicating dotNET onto the Linux platform. Isn't whole the MONO effort diverting developers from developing native Linux applications?

"The creation of the CodePlex foundation was an internal effort of people that believe in open source at Microsoft. They have been working from within the company to change it. Working at CodePlex is a great way of helping steer Microsoft in the right direction"

What was wrong with SourceForge. If I was cynical and recalling Microsoft's past behaviour, including tthe NovoSOFT trojan .. er covenant, I would suspect this as yet another attempt to co-opt and control a technology they don't own. Why not contribute to SourceForge instead of creating and stacking their own organization. Same with the numerous Microsoft 'open source' licenses. It's very telling that GPL 3 is not one of the supported licenses on CodePlex.

And as an 'open source' supporter I fail to understand how you would recommend something called the LinuxHater's Blog

'If you're a freetard, but you need to run Windows at work or something, I've got an idea for a utility that will keep you true to the cause'

'How many hours do I have to waste wading through the monument of shit known as the debian package repository?'

Recent post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-14.html
This one's almost a year old, but contains more details: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Nov-05.html

To those that say Apple won't accept this to the App Store, it is not intended to be accepted because it is not an iPhone app. It is a really just compiler that gets run ahead of time; so it is not a runtime for the iPhone like the JVM was.

Recent post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-14.html
This one's almost a year old, but contains more details: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Nov-05.html

To those that say Apple won't accept this to the App Store, it is not intended to be accepted because it is not an iPhone app. It is a really just compiler that gets run ahead of time; so it is not a runtime for the iPhone like the JVM was.

My guess is approximately zero seconds, as Apple is sure to kill this.

Why would Apple want to kill this?

MonoTouch is not significantly different from Unity 3D, which has been used to create over 40 games for iPhone already.

The primary difference is, instead of needing to create user interfaces purely atop GL, you can use the CocoaTouch libraries and get native buttons, frames, html controls, etc.

Head of Gnome, right? Lead developer in bringing Microsoft .NET to Gnome, worked in Novell as vice president of development (which is partnered by Microsoft) and now is a director for Codeplex, Microsoft's new opensource foundation.

If that isn't unsettling enough, he's a /b/tard. Look at this post from his twitter:

"That last picture from @abock is photoshopped. I can tell because of the pixels and having seen a lot of shops' myself."

holy shit

I just think this guy is a massive troll. I can just picture him doing all this Microsoft shit with a troll face.

The entire development cycle of Gnome suddenly makes sense to me now.

Gnome developers: Look at all this cool stuff we can do for Gnome!!! We'll be way more awesome than Microsoft now with this stuff!
Miguel de Icaza: No. I want to keep Gnome stable and unimproving. *trollface*
Miguel de Icaza: But lets go ahead and bring .NET to Gnome. *trollface*

Another gem:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-10.html

"I hope that I can last more on this foundation than I lasted at the FSF, where I was removed by RMS after refusing to be an active part of the campaign to rename Linux as GNU/Linux."

In recognition for his outstanding achievements in bridging the gap between FOSS and Microsoft, let me suggest Miguel de Icaza. I doubt there's another human who's done more to embrace Microsoft patented technologies and extend them into popular Linux distributions. With his advocacy on OOXML, his dedicated efforts on Mono and Moonlight he's proven himself a capable mimic who can transform Free and Open Source Software from the type of innovative cauldron that gave us our current rich selection into a uniform platform that consistently replicates Microsoft, only perpetually two years behind.

They should get him - if only they have what it takes to lure him away from Novell.

Yes.

They've even caught up with Silverlight 3.0.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-24-1.html

Fraking trolls....

I stand somewhat corrected:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-24-1.html

"Moonlight 1.9 now supports the Silverlight 3 api and can play oggvorbis"

I thought I had read elsewhere that they were going to keep the moonlight release base number matching the silverlight number to minimize confusion.

Moonlight uses a binary blob containing proprietary codecs so it can legally decode H.264. Also, Silverlight 3 allows you to use your own codecs, and the Mono project has implemented Ogg/Vorbis.

Moonlight is always hot on their heels.