Slashback: Mono, Names, Locking Up

AOL vs. Gaim by Skyshadow · 2001-07-09 08:10 · Score: 5

Ha, won't those fools at AOL feel stupid when they discover that they've sued a fictional race of beings from Babylon 5.

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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.

Re:AOL vs. Gaim by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 09:07 · Score: 2

And since B5 and thus the Gaim intellectual property is owned by Time Warner, they are actually suing themselves!

Just remember, kids... by Anomolous+Cow+Herd · 2001-07-09 08:14 · Score: 2

Lawyers don't sue people. People sue people.

(as seen in someone's sig. Sorry I can't remember their UID right now)

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"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush

Re:Just remember, kids... by Black+Parrot · 2001-07-09 09:32 · Score: 1

> Lawyers don't sue people. People sue people.

Yeah, but that's an oversubtle distinction for the scum who advertize their "sue their asses!" services on late night television.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Just remember, kids... by GPLwhore · 2001-07-09 14:34 · Score: 1

Oh, so according to your sig you would love to have Gore as your president.
Trial lawyers and "scum" you mention were single biggest contributor to his campaign.
In fact, Democrats were always champions of lawyers cause ( even demonstrated that very recently with their HMO bill.)

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...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
Re:Just remember, kids... by Black+Parrot · 2001-07-09 20:13 · Score: 1

> Oh, so according to your sig you would love to have Gore as your president.

Your reading comprehension skills are deficient.

Please write us two short paragraphs: one explaining what my .sig says, and one explaining what it doesn't say. Please try to keep your knees from jerking when you re-read it.

Hint: You'll be happy to know that I did not vote for Gore, neither in the primaries nor in the general election.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

clear trademark infringement... by egomaniac · 2001-07-09 08:14 · Score: 5

I'm sorry, I know this is Anti-Open-Source (TM), but I think that GAIM is clearly trademark infringement. Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

The whole point is consumer confusion, and you've got to remember that the average consumer probably can't name the president. The average user wouldn't find it too touch to miss one letter when the products do the exact same thing.

I love the line "Also, we note that the Gaim software was released almost two years before your client submitted its application for registration of the "AIM" mark" ... This sentence might just have a *tad* more impact if, in fact, you actually had to register a trademark in order to claim it. Trademarks are like copyrights -- the fact that a trademark has not been officially registered in no way means it isn't valid. Lawyer-speak at its best.

In any case, this isn't 'fighting the good fight'. This is wasting time, money, and effort that could be much better spent accomplishing something actually useful. Change the damned name and move on.

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ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck

Re:clear trademark infringement... by boneshintai · 2001-07-09 08:21 · Score: 1

Watch where you spill that can of worms. The same could be said that removing a letter does not a trademark make either, and yet neither Microsoft nor the appropriate company (lazy me, not doing research) have sued over Windows/X-Windows. (Note that this may change; Microsoft may claim that the OS running their X-Box gaming system has some claim to the name "X Windows." Should be interesting to see where THAT goes.)

BS
I don't claim to be right, I just claim to be thinking about it.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by srichman · 2001-07-09 08:35 · Score: 2

The same could be said that removing a letter does not a trademark make either, and yet neither Microsoft nor the appropriate company (lazy me, not doing research) have sued over Windows/X-Windows.
The X Consortium holds the trademark on the X Window System.
The first commercial release of MS Windows, 1.0, came out in November 1985. The first commercial release of X Windows was in 1986.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by juju2112 · 2001-07-09 08:37 · Score: 1

There is no possibility of confusion, because Gaim does not run on Windows.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by 1010011010 · 2001-07-09 08:40 · Score: 2

The first commercial release of X Windows was in 1986

... any they appeared to not have learned a damned thing from the Macintosh other than "oooo, bitmapped display with a mouse." Although they did capture the "visual elegance of Windows."

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 08:41 · Score: 3

You really want to live in a world where people just bow to corporations unreasonable demands, don't you? Their trademark is AIM, not Gaim. If they wanted GAIM, they should have registered that as well. What's next? I suppose you'll stand against people registering www.xmicrosoft.com, or www.xibm.com? And I suppose the next logical step is to stop people from registering www.hal.com, because all they did was change the letters of ibm. Screwball reasoning.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by jelwell · 2001-07-09 08:48 · Score: 2

That's almost a valid point.
While it's true that Gaim does not run on Windows. AIM does run on Linux, Official AIM client for Linux. Also, the gateway device runs AOL on linux, which includes AIM.
So, in that sense, there is a possibility of confusion - because they both run on the same OS.
Even if not being able to run on the same OS mattered... I couldn't just call my Playstation 2 game Tetris, just because there's no tetris on the game system yet.
Joseph Elwell.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Chmarr · 2001-07-09 09:04 · Score: 1

The first commercial release of Windows, version 1.0, wasn't called "Windows", it was called "Microsoft Windows".
Re:clear trademark infringement... by bellings · 2001-07-09 09:08 · Score: 2

"X" is a "window system." It is the "X Window System."

"Windows" is an "operating system." It is the "Windows Operating System."

It is asinine to think that Microsoft could go after the X Consortium because the X consortium makes a "window system." It would be the same as Microsoft going after the company Marvin Windows because they make "windows", or Apple Computers going after a farmer because he grows "Fuji Apples."

Of course, it wouldn't suprise me if someday some confused and deranged legal intern didn't confuse the generic word "window system" for the trademark "Windows Operating System". After all, any reasonable window system draws pretty pictures on the screen, just like the Windows Operating System. To some people (including a distressingly large number of people who post on slashdot), that in itself must indicate that any window system is infringing on Microsoft's IP. Because the name "Windows Operating System" sounds a lot like the generic term "window system" (to people with ADD), it must be infringement!

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Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Dredd13 · 2001-07-09 09:18 · Score: 2

You can certainly register a trademark after its first use.
What you don't get to do is kick peoples' ass who used it prior to registration. They get grandfathered because they can show "due diligence" (we did a TM search, came up empty), and you can't penalize someone under those conditions.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by TheFrood · 2001-07-09 09:27 · Score: 4

Trademarks are like copyrights -- the fact that a trademark has not been officially registered in no way means it isn't valid. Lawyer-speak at its best.
Actually, trademarks are different from copyrights in one important way: If you don't vigorously defend your trademark against all infractions, you risk losing it by letting it fall into common use.
That's relevant here because there's proof that AOL knew about the existence of Gaim two years ago (when they requested that the Gaim folks remove the AOL logo from their website) and AOL didn't try to defend its trademark at that time.
IANAL, but that fact makes it look to me like an open-and-shut case in favor of Gaim. I'm even willing to bet that AOL knows this, but they were hoping the Gaim folks wouldn't and they could bully them into changing the program's name.
TheFrood

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If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by WasterDave · 2001-07-09 09:27 · Score: 2

From the point of view of tradmarking windows, I believe it is "Microsoft Windows" and various varieties but not the word "windows" itself that is tradmarked.

And the flying window logo thingy. Jeez, strap a penguin on that and you'd be in trouble.

Dave

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I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by egomaniac · 2001-07-09 09:28 · Score: 3

No, I just want to live in a world where we can respect one anothers' property.

Something that most Slashdotters don't seem particularly good at, I might add (how many Napster fans are there in the audience? How many still use it now that you can't trade copyrighted songs? Thought so.)

"If they wanted GAIM, they should have registered that as well"

So I should be able to create a cookie called, say, Nilli Wafers, and market them under the brand Nabisci, because Nabisco didn't register these particular variations on their trademarks? Envision a world in which I could get away with this, and tell me that unscrupulous people wouldn't take ridiculous advantage of it. Would you rather have that instead?

And, nobody ever said anything about HAL/IBM. See Slippery Slope logical fallacy.

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ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Re:clear trademark infringement... by bluephone · 2001-07-09 09:28 · Score: 1

It's still called Microsoft Windows. Just like the word processor is called Microsoft Word, etc. We all know it's from MS, so we hack off the Microsoft part in our informal conversations. I can't think of very many MS apps thta DON'T begin with Microsoft.

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jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Re:clear trademark infringement... by bluephone · 2001-07-09 09:31 · Score: 2

Actually, as crasy as it seems, it's almost happened. They tried to trademark the terms Windows, Window, Win, windows, window, win, and extend that application to programs that begin with the word Win. This was to give them the ability to squash apps they didn't like by attacking their name of WinAppX but leave others alone that they liked, etc. It was shot down, but this was years ago, before the PTO lost it's collective marbles.

SImilarly, Intel tried to trademark the letter i since it's part of their logo.

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jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Re:clear trademark infringement... by donglekey · 2001-07-09 09:41 · Score: 1

Damn, my idea for 'Donglekey brand pepsi' might not fly after all

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by srichman · 2001-07-09 09:43 · Score: 1

The first commercial release of Windows, version 1.0, wasn't called "Windows", it was called "Microsoft Windows".
Uh, isn't that exactly what I said? To wit: "The first commercial release of MS Windows, 1.0, came out in November 1985."
Re:clear trademark infringement... by raju1kabir · 2001-07-09 09:45 · Score: 5

No, I just want to live in a world where we can respect one anothers' property.

No matter how many times you say it, a name, word, sentence, story, idea, song, or image will not be property.

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"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:clear trademark infringement... by rabidcow · 2001-07-09 09:47 · Score: 1

The whole point is consumer confusion, and you've got to remember that the average consumer probably can't name the president. The average user wouldn't find it too touch to miss one letter when the products do the exact same thing.

Now, I'm not too familiar with the whole situation, and I don't particularly care, but doesn't the name "GAIM" actually reduce confusion? I mean isn't it the GNU-type equivalent of the windows program AIM? If they called it "tungsten carbide drills" no one would have a clue what it did! Calling it GAIM gives you an easily understood name with a nice sharp consonant separating it from the Windows version.

(Yeah, I'm sure there's a Linux port of aim, but since when are official linux ports anything near serious ventures?)

And no, I don't use gaim, like I said, I don't particularly care...
Re:clear trademark infringement... by CakerX · 2001-07-09 09:50 · Score: 1

GWindows would be legal, GAIM I see your point though, while windows is a dictionary word, AIM is not. It stands for AOL Instant messager, its kinda copy righted, if AIM stood for something clearly diffrent, I'd say ok. As much as I don't want AOL stepping its hefty foot down, they have a point. btw, I guess you haven't heard of X-windows, been around for years(duh...) and developed by many diffrent companies, Micro$haft cannot touch that. if a company did GWindows, there is no way M$ could sue!!!!!!
Re:clear trademark infringement... by CoderDevo · 2001-07-09 09:53 · Score: 2

If the "reasonable man" would be confused by your branding and think that you product was manufactured and sold by another company, then indeed you could be libel of trademark infringement. It is the proving of that confusion that is the challenge to be taken by the prosecutor.

Also I, being a reasonable man, believe that modifying the first letter of a brand does make it hard to confuse it with another brand. Your example would be in parallel with Gaim vs. AIM if you offered "Gnilla Wafers" by Gabisco. I don't think anyone would confuse that with "Nilla Wafers" by Nabisco.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by aozilla · 2001-07-09 10:18 · Score: 2

So I should be able to create a cookie called, say, Nilli Wafers, and market them under the brand Nabisci, because Nabisco didn't register these particular variations on their trademarks?

Yes. If you confuse the consumer into buying an inferior product by pretending to be a different company, you should be charged with fraud, not trademark infringement.

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by ShadowsMV · 2001-07-09 10:37 · Score: 1

GWindows, hmmm, I seem to remember something called XWindows...

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by AsylumWraith · 2001-07-09 10:48 · Score: 1

From dictionary.com: Found 8 entries for AIM. aim (m) v. aimed, aiming, aims v. tr. To direct (a weapon) toward an intended target. To direct toward or intend for a particular goal or group: The publicity campaign was aimed at improving the eating habits of children. v. intr. To direct a weapon: a gunner aiming carefully. To determine a course or direct an effort: aim for a better education. To propose to do something; intend: The historical society is aiming to restore the town hall.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Alien54 · 2001-07-09 10:49 · Score: 2

Yes. If you confuse the consumer into buying an inferior product by pretending to be a different company, you should be charged with fraud, not trademark infringement.
Which is what MS is doing by using .NET as a trademark, even tho it was a generic term before (as in the "Net"). Also, in the case of Microsoft, you might get into trouble by buying a superior non_MS product, using words similar in describing it, such as XWindows, Wordstar, or whatever.
;-)

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by iabervon · 2001-07-09 10:51 · Score: 2

AOL has to do this sort of thing if they want to keep their trademark-- a competitor need only show that AOL had failed to pursue someone who used a similar name to AOL's.

On the other hand, AOL can only win if the names are determined to be different; the gaim people can say that AOL didn't pursue them for two years when AOL knew about gaim's use of the name. If the names are too similar, then AOL loses the trademark. It doesn't matter that AOL trademarked the name 2 years after gaim started using it, but it matters a whole lot that they didn't complain about gaim using the name for 3 years. That's failing to enforce your trademark, and the fact that they started enforcing it reasonably soon after they got it is not sufficient.

Presumably what AOL wants is to have gaim argue that the name isn't similar, and win the case in that way. Then AOL goes about its business, able to prevent other people from actually using the same name. This shouldn't be a hard case to win, especially because AOL simply wants to lose in the better way. If AOL won this, in fact, they'd lose to the first company with money, who could still argue that AOL didn't bug gaim for 3 years and thus really didn't defend their trademark.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Dai-Sho · 2001-07-09 11:07 · Score: 1

Have you ever heard of "Roldex" yup they sell watches. What about Niki (shoes). Timdex (watches again). The list goes on and on. These guys are trying to confuse. GAIM?! I don't think so. They are right along with GNapster, GICQ, GFTP, GNUMERIC etc etc.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by bellings · 2001-07-09 11:36 · Score: 3

IANAL, but I don't believe the people who make the "Gaim instant messenger client" can reasonably claim that their mark is distinct from AOL's "AIM instant messenger client." It doesn't do much to help any claim that they're distinct that the sourceforge page says, "Gaim is a clone of the AOL instant messenger client." I think an arguement could easily be made that the Gaim people have intentionally chosen a name similar to AIM, with a product that is functionally similar, and have capitalized on that similarity.

The Gaim situation is not similar to the situation of the X Consortium's X Window System and Microsoft's Windows Operating System. The generic term "window system" has been around for a long time (certainly longer than the Windows Operating System), and the X Consortium goes to some trouble to point out that their mark is X, X is a window system, and there is no product called X Windows. The X Consortium is not going to get in trouble for making a window system, any more than a farmer is going to get in trouble for growing an apple. However, Software called X Windows probably would infringe on Microsoft's trademark, no matter what that software did. Even a windowing sytem called X Windows would probably infringe on Microsoft's trademark -- an "X Windows" brand window system would probably get (deservedly) bitchslapped by the courts pretty damned quick.

I could see some recourse for the Gaim people if they had historically called themselves the Gnu Abstract Instant Messenger client, or the Guile Agnostic Instant messenger client. It would also help if they had not originally set out to create an AIM clone, and hadn't already been tangled up with AOL by putting an AOL logo on their product page.

I hope the Gaim people just change their name, and donate the $1,700 to the EFF to help someone fight for stuff that matters.

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Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by BenLutgens · 2001-07-09 11:42 · Score: 1

Not to mention it's a common word. The mere fact that the software (Gaim) was released almost 2 years ago (And that fact is, I'm sure documented) in and of itself makes it damn near impossible for AOL to pursue this much further. Don't they give away AIM with nearly everything? And it's not like there are AOL Icons and shit on it.

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by BenLutgens · 2001-07-09 11:47 · Score: 1

You can also put a Letter Of Intent on record that accomplishes nearly the same thing as registering it.

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"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Re:clear trademark infringement... by SilentChris · 2001-07-09 12:06 · Score: 4

Funny, I thought I remember Linus trademarking the name "Linux". Kind of weird when our martyr plays for the other team, huh? :)
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Martin+Blank · 2001-07-09 12:58 · Score: 1

I checked with one of the trademark attorneys (am I the only one that wants to spell that 'attourneys' and has to force himself not to?) at work, and he actually feels that AOL may well have a very weak case on their hands. The courts will consider the following (among other things):

1. The sound comparison - Gaim does not likely sound enough like AIM to merit confusion. First-letter issues are often the breakers, and the opening sounds are clearly not the same.

2. Usage - While both tie into the same network, Gaim is not available on Windows.

3. Consumer confusion - This is often the real killer point. How likely is someone to confuse Gaim for AIM, and vice versa? This is often handled by a marketing survey (one or more done by each side), asking something like, "Have you ever heard of the instant messaging program Gaim?" or, "What do you think of when asked about the instant messaging program Gaim?" or something to that effect. Different companies, different sides, different methodologies. What it comes down to, though, is how much confusion will come out of the usage of the two names. How much business is diverted from AIM to Gaim? Compare thirty million AIM/AOL users to forty thousand Gaim users, and AOL may well not have much of a case on this point.

Trademarks are really tricky things. Descriptions cannot be trademarked. If you own a deli in New York and call your storefront New York Deli, that's descriptive and cannot be trademarked except under exceptional circumstances. Sounds cannot generally be trademarked, although NBC's three-note jingle and Intel's four-note diddy have been. Harley-Davidson was at one point trying to trademark the sound of their engines to protect against a wave of heavy cruising bikes from Japan. I don't know what the result of that was, but I do remember that the official court documents described it as a repetition of the word 'potato'. It sounds weird until you actually use a low voice and say "potato-potato-potato-potato-potato", and then realize that it does sound like a Harley.

I'm getting a little OT here, but as it stands, AOL does not have a clear-cut case. Besides the three items I mentioned above, AIM is short for AOL Instant Messenger. The program sends instant messages over AOL's network, so it's descriptive of the program's function, making it that much harder to trademark. You can file a trademark, but that doesn't mean it's defensible. Sort of like the line, "No law is unconstitutional until it is challenged and struck down", no trademark is defensible until it is upheld by the courts, and this looks like an uphill battle for AOL.

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Re:clear trademark infringement... by Martin+Blank · 2001-07-09 13:02 · Score: 1

Gnilla wafers = open source cookies?

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You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Martin+Blank · 2001-07-09 13:07 · Score: 1

The issue here isn't the look and feel (which is the cloning you mention), but rather the name (which is covered by trademark law). That they picked a name similar to something already in use should not be an issue. If they had named it identically, then there could be a problem. However, they based the name on that of another product with a change to differentiate it. The question is whether there was enough differentiation.

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You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by meekjt · 2001-07-09 13:24 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, I know this is Anti-Open-Source (TM), but I think that GAIM is clearly trademark infringement. Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.
There is a little thing called XWindows.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by jonathan_ingram · 2001-07-09 13:46 · Score: 2

Interesting to compare and contrast the reaction over 'gAIM' and 'kIllustator'. At least 'kIllustrator' has some claim to just be using a generic word that fits the naming scheme of the rest of the office suite it's part of. 'gAIM' is *just* the name of the product they are cloning, with a 'g' stuck on the front.

Not that I agree with the laws over patent and trademarks in your country, but with the laws as they are, 'gAIM' are in the wrong.

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-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by tuxedo-steve · 2001-07-09 14:15 · Score: 1

Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

At risk of stating the obvious...

X-Windows...?

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- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 14:42 · Score: 1

"Something that most Slashdotters don't seem particularly good at, I might add (how many Napster fans are there in the audience? How many still use it now that you can't trade copyrighted songs? Thought so.)" Well, there's a stretch. I've used napster maybe one night, and stopped using it a full year before the crack down. It would be interesting to know the truth of whether or not you've used it, or have copied a tape/cd/record, or even taped something off of the air and fast forwarded through the commercials. "So I should be able to create a cookie called, say, Nilli Wafers, and market them under the brand Nabisci, because Nabisco didn't register these particular variations on their trademarks?" Yes. Where does it end? "Envision a world in which I could get away with this, and tell me that unscrupulous people wouldn't take ridiculous advantage of it." What? What kind of nonsense is this. I don't have to envision that world, I live in it pal, and so do you. Do you know how many "Ron somecardi" rums there are in your local liquor stores liquor isle? Crap, with all the bad things going on in the world, you're crapping you're pants about this? "Would you rather have that instead?" The alternative? Corporations have ultimate power over words and phrases, many of which are simply english words capitlized. Like a Mustang(TM) or a Cherokee(TM) or the words International Business Machines(TM). I don't exist to play by corporation rules, corporations exist to play by my rules. That is the difference between having a sovereign government of the people, and having a governemnt who are nothing more than corporate bed buddies. You can spew forth all kinds of things which say in reality, it's not like that, but reality is what you make it. And before you accuse of any more fallacies, oh genius, *YOU* brought up that you seem to think changing one letter is wrong, or adding a letter. HAL is IBM with all the letters changed one. Call it a fallacy, but this word, I do not think it means what you think it means. If you had eyes, you'd see I was illustrating what I consider to be an absurd concept, by being even more absurd myself. You cluebies should try taking and actually passing a critical thinking course before you start accusing people of fallacies, not just passing the first quarter and then dropping it.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by TheFrood · 2001-07-09 14:58 · Score: 2

IANAL, but I don't believe the people who make the "Gaim instant messenger client" can reasonably claim that their mark is distinct from AOL's "AIM instant messenger client." It doesn't do much to help any claim that they're distinct that the sourceforge page says, "Gaim is a clone of the AOL instant messenger client." I think an arguement could easily be made that the Gaim people have intentionally chosen a name similar to AIM, with a product that is functionally similar, and have capitalized on that similarity.
I agree with you on that issue, but I still think the fact that AOL failed to take action earlier trumps any other argument. Remember, they knew about it two years ago, and did nothing at all. IANAL (still), but as I understand it that failure to act constitutes an implied permission for Gaim to continue using its name.
I hope the Gaim people just change their name, and donate the $1,700 to the EFF to help someone fight for stuff that matters.
Personally, I think that not letting corporations push the little guy around is something that matters.
TheFrood

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If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by coldguy · 2001-07-09 15:22 · Score: 2

martyr? microsoft hasn't crucified him yet, have they? or did i miss the story on slashdot (or is it lingering in the submission queue)?
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Pogue+Mahone · 2001-07-09 16:57 · Score: 1

... clearly trademark infringement. Adding one letter does not mean you're safe,...
... the average consumer probably can't name the president.
[Hands up] Me! Me! I can! It's George Bush! No, wait, it's George W Bush. He's added a letter - does that mean he's a trademark infringement?

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Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Pogue+Mahone · 2001-07-09 18:13 · Score: 1

They must be the ones that Mozilla keeps asking me about.

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Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Re:clear trademark infringement... by gorilla · 2001-07-09 20:24 · Score: 2

The first release of X windows was on June 19 1984. Reference here.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Hard_Code · 2001-07-09 20:27 · Score: 1

"Funny" how RMS used copyright law for the basis of "copyleft". The point is that you use the system in place, whether it is good or not. "copyleft" happens to be a subversion, or at least inversion, of copyright. Linux trademarked "Linux" so that people who aren't doing anything related to it can't slap that on their product. AFAIK, he allows pretty liberal usage of the "Linux" mark. What "other team" are you talking about?

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It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Re:clear trademark infringement... by gorilla · 2001-07-09 20:32 · Score: 2

I think that intel was going after 'i' because at the time, it was naming chips i000, where 0 represents a number, eg i386, i486, i860 etc. When they got told they couldn't, they started naming them Pentium.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by slushpupie · 2001-07-09 20:48 · Score: 1
- any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable
But people can make products called WindowCleaner without a hassle?
Gaim is not a replacement for AIM, simply a tool to allow more users to connect. I would think AOL would be happy with such a thing. Its not like they are portraying anything negitive about AIM.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Rhone · 2001-07-09 21:34 · Score: 2

The whole point is consumer confusion, and you've got to remember that the average consumer probably can't name the president. The average user wouldn't find it too touch to miss one letter when the products do the exact same thing.
Even if the "average consumer" really couldn't name the President (insert other names for leaders in other countries), that wouldn't mean the rest of society should stoop to their level. We might as well reprint every existing book at a first grade reading level and only allow programming to be done in BASIC--we wouldn't want to confuse anyone, after all.
Speaking of the "average consumer," it's worth noting that the "average consumer" will not even see Gaim because it's not installed on his new computer. Those adventurous enough to download new software themselves will not see it while browsing the Windows section of Tucows, and I doubt many of the "average consumers" (who are using Windows) are getting their software from Freshmeat. If such an "average consumer" did take a wrong turn on the web and bump into Gaim, it probably wouldn't take him too long to figure out that it's not AOL's client.
Speaking of confusion, that's exactly what the name "Gaim" reduces for anyone who might be interested in using it. If a Linux user sees a program called "GFobberflibberthorgleborp" in order to avoid infringing on all the trademarks out there, then he'll probably ignore it and move on unless he has lots of free time. But if he sees a program called "Gaim" he'll think, "Oh, interesting, that's probably an instant messenger client made with Gtk," or if he sees a program called "Licq" then he'll probably realize "Hey, there's an ICQ client," and in both cases he's going to notice, at least by the time he downloads and runs it if it wasn't obvious before, that neither client is official or sponsored by AOL in any way.
The most annoying thing about your argument is that it's completely hypothetical. People might get confused, AOL might lose users just because of the name! I don't think that's a very good basis for restricting freedom; I'll let you imagine all the other things that could apply to, and all the other things it would justify restricting. Meanwhile, the reality here is that Gaim has helped AOL. If it wasn't for Gaim, more Linux users would be using Gabber and telling their AIM-using friends "Sorry, I can't use AIM, you'll have to use Gabber if you want to talk to me." Programs like Gaim take away our best excuse to lure other towards more open alternatives, which should be quite a delight for AOL.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Syberghost · 2001-07-09 21:47 · Score: 2

I'm sorry, I know this is Anti-Open-Source (TM), but I think that GAIM is clearly trademark infringement. Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

If adding one letter doesn't protect you, then subtracting one wouldn't have allowed Microsoft to trademark "Windows".

-
Re:clear trademark infringement... by ethereal · 2001-07-09 22:01 · Score: 1

I guess you wash those down with some OpenCOLA :)

--
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Abreu · 2001-07-09 22:07 · Score: 1

IIRC, at some point, the Apple record company (founded by the Beatles) threatened to sue Apple computer.
However, they realized the folly of such an action and decided to drop the suit.

------
C'mon, flame me!

--
No sig for the moment.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Abreu · 2001-07-09 22:29 · Score: 1

You forget that might makes right in the US court system...
If you have enough money (as AOL does) you can sue almost anybody into bankrupcy, even if you eventually lose the case.

------
C'mon, flame me!

--
No sig for the moment.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by The+Troll+Catcher · 2001-07-09 23:04 · Score: 1

No to mention AD&D long distance (or was it ATNT?)
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Ultra64 · 2001-07-09 23:22 · Score: 1

Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

You mean like Illustrator vs. KIllustrator? :P
Re:clear trademark infringement... by ttrafford · 2001-07-09 23:38 · Score: 1

Well, since the 'G' in "Gnilla Wafers" would be silent, I can see that being confusing....
Re:clear trademark infringement... by japhmi · 2001-07-09 23:48 · Score: 1

The first commercial release of MS Windows, 1.0, came out in November 1985. The first commercial release of X Windows was in 1986
Of course, the dictioary tells us more.

X /X/ n. 2. [after the name of an earlier window system called `W'] An over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly over-complicated window system developed at MIT and widely used on Unix systems.
I would think that it would be more likely that M$ could have been sued years ago, but nobody was going to do that. Those little things were called Windows, everyone called them Windows, what was the problem, we don't need to sue everyone for every little name issue...

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Re:clear trademark infringement... by japhmi · 2001-07-10 00:10 · Score: 1

I don't believe the people who make the "Gaim instant messenger client" can reasonably claim that their mark is distinct from AOL's "AIM instant messenger client."
And here we have all sorts of interesting questions. For example, the very term "AIM instant messenger client" gives me headaches. Why, because when you expand it, it is "AOL instant Messenger instant messenger client" (sort of like when people say ATM Machine... Automatic Teller Machine Machine? but I diverge.) AIM is an acronym (which in and of itself contains AOL, another acronym).
So, you end up with AIM or AOL instant messenger (etc) vs Gaim instant messenger client. Oh, and AOL instant messenger isn't a trademark, it's a service mark, who knows how that changes everything...

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Re:clear trademark infringement... by ee96090 · 2001-07-10 00:33 · Score: 1

Then I guess M$ is infringing some copyright law because Windows looks like X-Windows, which has existed long before M$'s Windows (I think).

--
Gustavo J.A.M. Carneiro
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Snootch · 2001-07-10 01:12 · Score: 1

No matter how many times you say it, a name,
- Really? Cool! Would you like to go and tell that to any company?

...word, sentence, story,
- Oh, dammit, you know, there went my professional author friend's livelyhood. I guess I'll have to lend him a cardboard box, shaln't I?

...idea, song,
- OK, you got me there. Oh, whoops, I forgot those people, what's it, oh yes, pop stars. They'd better start looking for cardboard boxes too then...

...or image will not be property.

Oh yes they can... even if only for a while, or in a way, this kind of property is essential to keep entrepreneurism (is that a word?) alive...

43rd Law of Computing:
Re:clear trademark infringement... by homebru · 2001-07-10 03:27 · Score: 1

Nope.

"1989 Apple vs Apple: Apple Records, the record company created by the Beatles, sues Apple Computer for getting into the music business. According to Apple Records, the computer company violated a secret 1981 agreement that let Apple keep its fruit logo -- as long as it didn't have anything to do with music. By 1989, however, the music and PC worlds are already coming together."

"The two Apples will later settle, with the computer maker paying the record company."

Reference: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:q3wWyevbLiY:n ews.zdnet.co.uk/zdnetuk/news/story/0,,s2080611,00. html+beatles+apple+sues+&hl=en
Re:clear trademark infringement... by raju1kabir · 2001-07-10 06:04 · Score: 2

Oh, dammit, you know, there went my professional author friend's livelyhood. I guess I'll have to lend him a cardboard box, shaln't I?

Now the cardboard box, that's property.

As for your friend's writing, it may be valuable and productive and original and profitable, but that doesn't mean it's property.

Plenty of things are protected without being property. My health is protected by assault laws, but it's not property. My reputation is protected by libel and slander laws, but it's not property. My credit rating, my children, my likeness, and my peace and quiet all receive various appropriate legal protections without anyone wasting the time and effort of retrofitting property law to them.

Just because we value something does not mean we need to try to shove it into the same rules and customs that apply to physical property. It just doesn't work, and leads to insane excesses like charging someone with theft of $1,000,000 for making 10,000 copies of a $100 piece of software. That $1m figure represents neither the lost revenue to the publisher nor the resale value captured by the pirate. It's just silliness. This stands in contrast to, say, a heist of $1,000,000 worth of physical property, where valuations work quite differently.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:clear trademark infringement... by raju1kabir · 2001-07-10 06:08 · Score: 1

I would love to see this turned around. If MS released Visual Gnu Herder or MSGimp, the cognitive dissonance around here from the high school IKANATL (I Know Almost Nothing About The Law) Crowd would be deafening.

Microsoft's hypocrisy in such a case - and not necessarily a feeling of entitlement to certain words - would probably be a good part of the reason.

--
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Re:clear trademark infringement... by aallan · 2001-07-10 06:30 · Score: 1

You really want to live in a world where people just bow to corporations unreasonable demands, don't you?

There are more important battles to fight than this, if you're going to pick fights with multi-national corporations, pick a fight that matters. Or better yet, pick one that is news worthy and that matters.

We should, perhaps, take a leaf out of Greenpeace's book. As an organisation they're into direct action, such actions could very well have had them branded eco-terrorists. Instead through carefully picking their battles they've built up a public image that is quasi-respectable. This lets them, every so often push an unpopular, not newsworthy, but important, cause into the limelight.

In short, this isn't a battle that matters. They should give this one a by...
Al. Al.
--

--
The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Re:clear trademark infringement... by srichman · 2001-07-10 08:29 · Score: 2

The first release of X windows was on June 19 1984
I was looking at this document, which exists many places on the Internet. Yes, X had been in development for several years before '86 and had enjoyed several "non-external" releases.
Similarly, MS Windows, which debuted in 1985, had been under development since 1981.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Spiral+Man · 2001-07-10 10:39 · Score: 1

(Yeah, I'm sure there's a Linux port of aim, but since when are official linux ports anything near serious ventures?)
actually, (and suprisingly) the linux version of aim performs just about as well as the windows version. not that im trying to disprove you, but in this case, the official version isnt that bad.

--
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Re:clear trademark infringement... by Abreu · 2001-07-11 00:06 · Score: 1

Thanks for clearing it up!

------
C'mon, flame me!

--
No sig for the moment.
Re:clear trademark infringement... by bellings · 2001-07-12 09:09 · Score: 2

Yes, you are not a lawyer, and I'm glad because the one the GAIM people got seems to have a good handle on the situation...you obviously do not.

If the lawyer the Gaim people found is willing to take their $1,700 and in return tell them they can clone software and change one letter in the original software's trademarked name, then I'd say the chance are good he has a very good handle on the situation.

It's kind of sad that the Gaim people are such greedy little fuck heads, though. If they weren't a such group of slimebags, they might have managed to find a human being for a lawyer, instead of another greedy little pussbag like themselves.

--
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.

.NET by moronic1 · 2001-07-09 08:15 · Score: 3

It will probably be something like what happened to samba.. if they open it up or not somebody will eventualy figure it out and write a nice full featured version that works on many *nixs.

Re:.NET by Traicovn · 2001-07-09 08:26 · Score: 2

Mono needs to be ported to more than just unicies. It'll need people to port it to Windows, the Macintosh, BEOS, Linux, Unix, BSD, and any other OS you might be able to think of. That's the secret of a successful open-source free project. Make it easy for them to install, make it available already built and packaged to as many different people as you can, and make the source code available so people can continue development, tweak, and improve upon your creation. If it's available on virtually all platforms, and is free, that will be even more the reason to choose it over .NET for home users and for businesses.

[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]

--

[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Re:.NET by chronos · 2001-07-09 09:28 · Score: 1

The Halloween documents make it very clear what the .NET strategy truly is. The only way to kill
GNU/Linux is to lock us out of the internet and
MS hopes to do this by making the internet protocols proprietary.

Having an implementation around is a good fail-safe for GNU/Linux. It would be best to
not use .NET since Microsoft will deliberately
mutate the thing to try and lock everyone
else out.

AOL vs GAIM by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 08:15 · Score: 2

The AOL vs GAIM fund has now exceeded Slashdot in gross revenue.

Legacy Windows box? by thefatz · 2001-07-09 08:18 · Score: 3

I dont understand... securing that legacy Windows box

...compared to what? Linux...BSD...Unix in general?

--
http://www.freebsd.org

Re:Legacy Windows box? by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 08:29 · Score: 1

you'll have to forgive /., i'm afraid. all of the slashbots base Linux vs Windows arguments on Windows 3.1. "What? No TCP/IP? What? Doesn't support my hardware!?" Rob Malda's skills are confined to pretending to write perl code and collecting comics while running the lastest Mandrake beta. I've never seen someone more ignorant and Open Source biased.
Re:Legacy Windows box? by _xeno_ · 2001-07-09 21:57 · Score: 2

Wow - no one bothered to explain Timothy's little pro-Linux joke.
It's "legacy" in the sense that you use it to run all the "legacy" Windows software that you haven't found a Linux equivilent for, usually games in the case of /. editors. Other times this means MS Office or other software just not available for Linux.
(Where Linux can be replaced by any of the BSDs in the above paragraphs.)
Except that I find myself using Win2K over Linux daily, mainly because a) it's what I use at work and b) for Java development, I haven't found anything that matches Visual J++ - as long as you don't use it's compiler or runtime :) (Visual J++ has a feature called IntelliSense that pulls out class names and members/methods for you, which dramatically decreases my typos and increases my productivity when writing Java).

--

--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.

AOL better back down by ivan37 · 2001-07-09 08:18 · Score: 1

The response to the AIM trademark dispute is very clear and makes some very good points. Expecially the released documents on the AIM protocol and the AOL logo removal. How can AOL fight that? More importantly: why would they want to? Should be interesting as to what comes of this, but I am betting that AOL will back down as Microsoft did with the whole Slashdot post controversy a little while back...

20 years? by Evangelion · 2001-07-09 08:19 · Score: 4

There hasn't been a dominant development environment for the last 20 years (unless you consider the C language, which I guess you could).

But that was standard, free, and efficient. .NET isn't (yet).

--

Re:20 years? by jimmyCarter · 2001-07-09 09:45 · Score: 1

MS Bob has about ten more years to go...

--

-- jimmycarter

Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by stefanlasiewski · 2001-07-09 08:21 · Score: 4

(Since so many people won't read the darn FAQ and will instead ask "What's the difference between Mono (Monkey in spanish) and JAVA", here's the answer from Ximian themselves:

Mono and Java

Question 35: What about using Java? After all there are many languages that target the Java VM. You can get very good tools for doing Java development on free systems right now. Red Hat has contributed a GCC frontend for Java that can take Java sources or Java byte codes and generate native executables; Transvirtual has implemented Kaffe a JIT engine for Java; Intel also has a Java VM called ORP.

The JVM is not designed to be a general purpose virtual machine. The Common Intermediate Language (CIL), on the other hand, is designed to be a target for a wide variety of programming languages, and has a set of rules designed to be optimal for JITers.

(Feel free to Agree or disagree with this statement, but quit asking the same question over and over. This post does not deserve Karma, since I didn't create anything myself.).

...Grumpy Stefan.

--
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."

Re:Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by jdavidb · 2001-07-09 09:15 · Score: 4

This post does not deserve Karma, since I didn't create anything myself.

Aha! Caught you. Thought you could slip that by, huh? Well, hey, buddy; you've been modded up at least 2 points so far. You can't get away with posting interesting content early in a thread without gaining karma, so don't even try. :)

My post is just a me, too message. Please don't mod it up for being funny or anything.

--
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Re:Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by stefanlasiewski · 2001-07-09 09:50 · Score: 1

Hey man, if I had moderator points, could I mod myself back down again?

Guess I could post anonymously, just like I could write a post without typos, but things like that don't occur to me when I'm sneaking a post at work :0

--
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Re:Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by Demonspawn · 2001-07-09 11:14 · Score: 1

Read the Moderator FAQ. You cannot mod posts on a article you have posted to. And frankly: 1. That did deserve points. While you did not create anything new you did bring up relevent and timely information. 2. I need to use up the mod points I have. I'm sick of all the moderator boxes phucking up my browser (altho I'm sure nested -1 with 300+ posts per page helps) However, I didn't mod your post. I can't, as I'm now posting here to enlighten you on how moderation works ;) --Demonspawn
Re:Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by unitron · 2001-07-09 21:08 · Score: 2

I thought I was the only one with mod box trouble on heavily replied to stories. Glad to see the problem is external to my system.

--
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Re:Java vs. Mono : From the Ximian FAQ by SimCash · 2001-07-10 21:48 · Score: 1

Oooooh! Double dipping by posting a modable post to a post asking not to be modded. I'm impressed.
Of course, you could have posted anonymously, but that would have pushed your post into the bit bucket since I am running a client-side filter to remove all anonymous posts.
Now, if /. would add a button to the comment form to allow one to donate karma generated by a post to charity, then I could have believed your pleas to be unmodded.
Mod this one all you want - my daily morning die roll made my persona today a "+3 karma whore/elfin wizard".

C# by Anomolous+Cow+Herd · 2001-07-09 08:21 · Score: 4

Remember, that's pronounced "C-hash," with the first "h" silent.

--

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush

Re:C# by balls001 · 2001-07-09 08:30 · Score: 1

see-ash? Gawrsh, that sure is clever.
Re:C# by sheetsda · 2001-07-09 08:43 · Score: 1

Am I the only one who thinks good ol' ANSI C is just fine?
I prefer C++, but if you consider them similar enough to be counted as the same in this instance, then yeah, I'm with you. Although you can't deny Java's portablity is nice. Last time I tried to port an app written in C++ from Win32 to Linux (or was it the other way around?) I found out Visual C++ 6.0 has a bunch of non-standard compliant ways of doing things. (for instance, variables declared in for loop inits are suppose to be local to the loop, Microsoft apparently disagrees and their compiler reflects it. You get a bunch of redeclaration errors. bleh.)

"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
Re:C# by mindriot · 2001-07-09 08:56 · Score: 1

That's what MS was thinking, right?
"We love .NET C#" (pronounce: net cash)
Re:C# by Nodatadj · 2001-07-09 09:23 · Score: 1

> "We love .NET C#" (pronounce: net cash)

Man, I'm glad I've got you to point out the funny bit. I was lost till that point.
Re:C# by SilentChris · 2001-07-09 09:36 · Score: 3

Actually, if you were doing it phonetically it would be "K-ash".
Re:C# by NathanL · 2001-07-09 09:40 · Score: 1

for instance, variables declared in for loop inits are suppose to be local to the loop, Microsoft apparently disagrees and their compiler reflects it.
Gee thats funny. I don't have that problem.
Did you do this:
for (int foo; ... ; ...) statement;
more code
for (int foo; ... ; ...) statement;
The scopes of the two instances of foo are the same in this case.
Can't recall there being a service pack for this problem since I've been doing this for years on both MS and GNU compilers. (At least I think most of my CS homework assignments worked....maybe I was in an alternate reality as I was running them for the professor.)
Re:C# by while · 2001-07-09 09:40 · Score: 1

C++ is a joke on C, because in code, C++ is one greater than C on its own. By most coding standards, anything with an UPPERCASE name should be a constant, so incrementing the value would probably give you a compiler error. C# is "sharp". You'd be an idiot if you didn't use the "smarter" language...

Incidentally, if you turn down the kerning of "++" and make one of the symbols super/subscript, you get the pound/sharp symbol instead. Musically, C# is also D flat, which could be taken negatively, but the language C was borne of the language B, which was borne of A, something the amateur spin paramedics should take note of...

(As usual, ruining a good joke.)

(end comment) */ }

--
(end comment) */ }
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Re:C# by pclinger · 2001-07-09 10:01 · Score: 1

No no no, it's called called C-hash (no silent H). All that the people designing this could see was hash since they were smoking so damn much of it.

--
/. editors made it impossible to link to file:///c:/con/con in my sig. Please just type it in
Re:C# by bentini · 2001-07-09 10:08 · Score: 1

NO! Why does everybody think this?
C was borne of B (invented by Ken Thompson, the language had one type: The machine word). B, in turn was taken from BCPL.
BCPL was a medium-ly used language, as opposed to the limited usage of B. Thus, there was always the (joke) question of whether the successor language to C would be D (alphabetically) or P (the next letter in BCPL).
Do you have any source at all for your comment about this mythical language, A?
Have a nice day. Dan.
Re:C# by grammar+fascist · 2001-07-09 10:22 · Score: 2

Wild tangent - your remark makes me wonder, though: why hasn't the Kompany created a new language and called it "K?"

--
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Re:C# by flacco · 2001-07-09 11:10 · Score: 1

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
Can you give me the source of this quote?

--
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Re:C# by sheetsda · 2001-07-09 12:38 · Score: 1

Hmmm... weird. Are you using VC++ 6.0 Enterprise? If so, Perhaps I was thinking of some other language. I'll have to see if i can dig up the code where this happened.

"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

Re:C# by sheetsda · 2001-07-09 12:52 · Score: 1

Here it is, I forget exactly what this does, but anyway I put the offending statement back in so I could copy the error. Forgive the indentation, slashdot doesnt allow

 tags :( 
 for (int z = 0; z < 2; z++) {
 // read the bytes til \n

 	for (int y = 0; ((y > 0 && bytes[y-1] != '\n') || y == 0); y++) {

 		bytes[y] = GetByte(&hw);

 	}


 	cout << "got string " << bytes;


 	num[z] = atoi(bytes);

 	memset(bytes, 0, sizeof(bytes));

 }

 sprintf(bytes, "%i\n", num[0] + num[1]);

 cout << "sending " << bytes << endl;
 // annoying non-ANSI C standard compliant Microsoft...
 // variables declared in for-loop beginnings are suppose to be local to the loop.

 for (int z = 0; ((z > 0 && bytes[z-1] != '\n') || z == 0); z++)

 	SendByte(&hw, bytes[z]);
The error reads:
 
 D:\myC++\lab7\main.cpp(47) : error C2374: 'z' : redefinition; multiple initialization

         D:\myC++\lab7\main.cpp(30) : see declaration of 'z' 
the problem is solved when one removes the int from the second for loop beginning.
 
 
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

Re:C# by SilentChris · 2001-07-09 13:11 · Score: 2

Because then the development environment could be called KDE and then everything would get confusing. :)
Re:C# by megaduck · 2001-07-09 14:54 · Score: 1

That is the funniest handle I've ever seen on Slashdot, bar none.

--
This .sig for rent.
Re:C# by matrix29 · 2001-07-10 02:00 · Score: 1

Programming in "P" Language...

I can just hear the potty jokes now.
Forbid someone having to utter the phrase, "I'm compiling my 'P' program now. It could be awhile before P finishes." Then there'd be P-plus-plus and P-sharp.

But then there'd be "Microsoft Visual P"...
(Hint Hint Hint - Don't let me stand in the way)

--
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Re:C# by NathanL · 2001-07-20 04:50 · Score: 1

Actually, I'm an idiot. You're right about the error, although it would be interesting to see what the C++ standard says.
Someone posted in reply to the parent to this message that you just place the loops in separate compound statements (to change the scope) and it does work (so you don't have to go changing variables and such.)

/. expects this: by ImaLamer · 2001-07-09 08:22 · Score: 1

"a very interesting article on the implications of Microsoft's .NET technology on open source development. The article heavily quotes Miguel, who "believes that .NET is going to be the dominant development environment for the next 20 years."

Why are we letting this happen?

We are going along with it? Ok!?

It seems that people here don't want .NET, but it seems that we are all going along with it and supporting it.

--
Get your Unix fortune now!

Re:/. expects this: by Drone-X · 2001-07-09 08:36 · Score: 5

It seems that people here don't want .NET, but it seems that we are all going along with it and supporting it.
You make the mistake of assuming all Slashdotters want the same. Most posts here are trolls (well, it certainly feels like it), don't forget about the silent crowd.
.NET is good as long as Microsoft doesn't get too much control because of it. A potential dangerous thing would be if Microsoft gets all developers to use Password (which is part of something called Hailstorm), I espect new monopolies to arise in .NET land.
But .NET will likely become huge whether or not Linux supports it. For our own sake, however, we should get with it soon so we don't get locked out (remember when we didn't have any decent browsers? This could be similar).

--
Monkey sense
Re:/. expects this: by TheAwfulTruth · 2001-07-09 08:37 · Score: 2

Well as usual, MOST of the people replying negatively are doing nothing more than knee jerking. They know little to nothing about it, they hear Microsoft, they bash. But it seems like a FEW people have actually investigated the underpinnings of .NET and have seen some promise in the archetecture and the need for such an archetecture and are going to make sure that Linux will be there to play the game. It may end up being much ado about nothing like JAVA has become, but Linux has JAVA doesn't it? Good? Bad? Time will tell. But dismissing things out of hand will never allow you find out...

--
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Re:/. expects this: by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 08:52 · Score: 1

A potential dangerous thing would be if Microsoft gets all developers to use Password (which is part of something called Hailstorm), I espect new monopolies to arise in .NET land.
Ah, yes. Another Canadian Bacon fan. Oh wait, you mean you weren't joking?

For those who are mono-lingual by Tim+Macinta · 2001-07-09 08:24 · Score: 5

From the Mono FAQ:

Mono is the word for `Monkey' in Spanish. We like monkeys.

Although, this is a very clever name considering Microsoft has recently taken to calling the GPL a virus. Now we can say "you misunderstood - it's not a viruses, it's about monkeys."

--

-----

Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux

Re:For those who are mono-lingual by szcx · 2001-07-09 08:30 · Score: 1

Although, this is a very clever name considering Microsoft has recently taken to calling the GPL a virus. Now we can say "you misunderstood - it's not a viruses, it's about monkeys."
... or they can say "See! We told you it was a virus! They're naming their clones of our products after STD's!"
Re:For those who are mono-lingual by User+317207 · 2001-07-09 08:56 · Score: 1

The
quote: The FDL does preserve the "viral" nature of the GPL in a couple of ways.

GPL
quote: Tom Christiansen has noted the GPL could be called "viral".

is
quote: The way it does this is by insisting that the code and anything
derived from it is also released with the GPL licence. In some senses
it is 'viral' in nature and it is this that is central to many
people's objections.
Also, it's worth noting that the word 'derived' is a little too vague.
Does a library linked to a GPL'd program need to be GPL'd also? Does
a program running on a free operating system need to be GPL'd?
There's no clear, obvious answer for either of these with the current
version of the GPL. The new version (3) is intended to fix some of
these shortcomings, but it's viral nature will remain.

a
quote: Despite the meaning "virus" normally connotes, the viral aspect of the GNU General Public License -- known formally as "copyleft" -- is a tremendous benefit to free software developers and the community they support.

viral
quote: And the licence is "viral", preventing the combination of copyleft and proprietary code.

license!!!!!
quote: This is the 'viral clause' of GPL -- it compels anyone releasing software that incorporates copylefted code to use the GPL in their new release. The Free Software Foundation says: "you must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program [any program covered by this license] or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this license."16

ripped shamelessly from a post by Handor to the Ars Technica forums.
Re:For those who are mono-lingual by Field+Marshall+Stack · 2001-07-09 09:50 · Score: 1

Has it occurred to no one that they're going to name some other .NET related project "poly"?
Y'know, mono... poly...
--
"HORSE."

--
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Re:For those who are mono-lingual by glitch! · 2001-07-09 10:09 · Score: 1

Mono is the word for `Monkey' in Spanish. We like monkeys.

At least it isn't some crap like MNDN, short for "MNDN is Not Dot Net". Acronyms like HURD make me want to HURL.

Actually, the reference to "monkey" opens up some possibilities for related products:

Monkey belt: a network-accessible coin purse
Monkey business: an office productivity set
Monkey see, monkey do: a remote GUI admin tool
Monkey shines: a ray tracing plug-in
Monkey wrench: a repair utility (or DOS tool!)

--
A dingo ate my sig...
Re:For those who are mono-lingual by decaying · 2001-07-09 11:18 · Score: 1

don't forget a beowulf cluster

12 Monkeys

--
----- One piece short of Legoland
Re:For those who are mono-lingual by jcast · 2001-07-09 11:21 · Score: 1

For the acronym-impaired:

HURL (n): HURL: an Unfortunate Response by Lusers

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

Hope everything goes well by inerte · 2001-07-09 08:25 · Score: 1

About the first news, I really do hope an Open Source implementations of .NET is released at the same time, but before is optimal, than .NET itself.

This way, both are new, both do similar things. People will be able to choose what they want, analize the lists of features.

Not trying to enter a market already dominated by a giant corporation. This is too hard. I am not saying that it can't be done or even tried, but a 'fresh start' in a field with Open Source applications might be better for the community.

I hope this project goes very well, that it is make with superior quality than .NET. It can be another factor to convince people of the good things about Open Source.

Running side-by-side on the new tech field will help to remove people's perception, generally speaking, that Open Source only has antique apps. I heard someone saying once "How can I use Linux? It has a command line to do things, that's old". That kind of thing, new Open Source projects can help to eliminate.

--
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite

Re:Hope everything goes well by mike_the_kid · 2001-07-09 09:11 · Score: 1

Yeah, especially since Microsoft's initial release will have bugs, it would be helpful to the Open Source Movement if there was a OSS .NET alternative available, bug free, three months before Microsoft releases theirs.

Hey, while we are it, lets release an open source Windows XP before they do. Steal their thunder, you know?

Here is the trick with a project like Mono. You have to get that initial excitement so that you can attract volunteer developers. If you have too much time between press release and an actual release, you lose your momentum. Do it too quickly and you release a real shoddy product.

Now if you make it easy to contribute, their will be some low quality contributions. If there are not enough contributors, than the project will not work. That said, I went to the page, read the FAQ, "hey this looks cool". Went to the contribution link and its not real clear how to jump in.
Maybe I am betraying my lack of experience on distributed open source projects, but its not exactly really easy to see how you get onboard.

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Troll Like a Champion Today
Re:Hope everything goes well by SuperCujo · 2001-07-09 12:51 · Score: 1

Likewise... please don't spell 'analyse' as 'analyze'!

--
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Re:Hope everything goes well by inerte · 2001-07-09 23:56 · Score: 1

Sorry mister or madam. English is not my primary language.

--
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite

.NET apps by WildBeast · 2001-07-09 08:29 · Score: 1

We'll be able to code MS .NET apps using Python and several other languages. Why will Mono support C# and not Python? Kinda ironic

oh yeah also by havardi · 2001-07-09 08:32 · Score: 1

I figured out another work-around-- you just need to put your name in the c:\windows\hosts file on your windows box and it will work.. also tell your friends to do that too... thats the easy way

Ximian has better things to do. by reaper20 · 2001-07-09 08:32 · Score: 5

While Mono sounds neat and a great way for 'open source hackers to fight back', I can think of alot of issues with Ximian Gnome that need to be fixed.

It seems to me like Miguel and Co. never really finish anything before moving on to something else. Red Carpet still has some issues, Evolution isn't even close to being done, MonkeyTalk is/was awesome, but try finding a Ximian guy in there sometime, just don't bother the other _4_ users in there all asking for support.

Example: Red Carpet is STILL stuck with mozilla .9.1, but if I get .9.2 and install manually, nautilus stops working, but if I install the new nautilus, it won't unless I downgrade back to mozilla .9.1, and it keeps telling me stuff isn't installed that is ... I don't understand how apt does this so well, yet this slick looking "super update" tool from insists that my stuff is broken. And you just know somebody is going to start using --force and --nodep and screw stuff up even more.

Anyway, I digress. Just because .NET is the new Microsoft plan doesn't mean we have to be scrambling to get ahead of them.

This reminds me of the big 'Push' craze. "Everyone stop what you're doing, push is the future! The regular internet will die!" Who cares, keep doing what we're doing, making a better OS for US, not for the MASSES.

Please, Ximian, make a good, stable desktop with updates and stuff that works. Just because MS, CNET/ZDNN think that .NET is awesome, doesn't mean it will be, I mean shit, this stuff is still vaporware ....

Re:Ximian has better things to do. by _xeno_ · 2001-07-09 10:27 · Score: 4

Nautilus will work with Mozilla 0.9.2, but you have to either recompile Mozilla (painful two hour process on my 800MHz Athlon), or recompile Nautilus (painful 4 hour process chasing after packages I was missing, recompiling, etc....)
Hmmm... I suppose I could try and package up my binary and put it somewhere, but I've got Nautilus 1.0.4 running with Mozilla 0.9.2. The official Mozilla binaries are compiled in such a way that they don't work with official Nautilus binaries (wonderful, isn't it?...) so you have to compile on your own...
You'll need to check out the README file that comes with Nautius for the configure options for Mozilla to use with Nautilus.

--

--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Re:Ximian has better things to do. by Uksi · 2001-07-09 11:55 · Score: 1

I wouldn't call it the Push craze, because that one just sorta fell on everyone, suddenly there's a story about it in every magazine (wasn't that fun reading?)

.NET is actually a technology that matured to the point where it is now thru a whole bunch of previous experiments, technologies. It started with the Windows OLE, moved on to COM, COM+, DCOM.

There are non-Microsoft technologies, quite a long time in development, that address some of the important issues address by .NET. For example, if you consider the language-independent object-oriented interfacing, XPCOM, Mozilla's cross-platform component mechansim, is a working technology, and so is CORBA, successfully used by such complex projects as Berlin Consortium. The platform-independent binaries is something Java brought into the light (and boy was there hype at the time), and although not as successfully as expected, it did not fail. However, all of the existing technologies lack one of the big components. XPCOM and CORBA do not provide platform-independence bytecode business, while Java doesn't provide language-independent object communication.

.NET unites a lot of these things together. Do not look at Microsoft .NET--ignore the marketing, the Passport crap, look at the programming tool, technology that is .NET. So .NET is far from vaporware (would you like to see Visual Studio .NET beta?)

But back to your point. .NET technology (in the general sense) IS a reason to be excited. I honestly want Ximian to drop everything they do and work day and night on Mono, because it will be so damn useful.

So, Ximian, please spend less time making desktops for one operating system and more time changing face of non-Microsoft-bound projects.

Re:For those who are mono-lingual - typo by Tim+Macinta · 2001-07-09 08:38 · Score: 1

Ugh... I meant to write "it's not about viruses" - there's too much blood in my caffeine stream today.

--

-----

Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux

Where is the NSA Windows NT Security Guide(s)?? by RazorJ_2000 · 2001-07-09 08:39 · Score: 1

Where is the NSA Windows NT Security Guide(s)??

Anyone know where to get that? I didn't see it anywhere on the NSA website?

Thanks

--
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]

Re:Where is the NSA Windows NT Security Guide(s)?? by jeffy124 · 2001-07-09 09:51 · Score: 1

Something's wrong with your eyesight if you can't see it right in the dang middle of the http://www.nsa.gov website. Not to mention a link was posted up by timothy in the article above.

--
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.

Any good explanation on .NET ? by extrasolar · 2001-07-09 08:42 · Score: 2

Can anyone point me to a good explanation on .NET ? I've tried to understand it but it seems to be a little complex.

It seems that cloning it is a good idea and doing much of it at the GNU level makes sense since that is most of our development platform is.

I hope KDE can in on this too because forming a dotKDE doesn't sound like a good idea.

But alas! I proclaim lots of ignorance on this one!

Re:Any good explanation on .NET ? by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 09:24 · Score: 2

.NET =
- common runtime library, machine and language independent
- network components communicating via SOAP (XML/HTTP)
- Internet services where MS provides authentication and storage for all of your personal information
- marketing name applied to next gen of all MS products and APIs
Re:Any good explanation on .NET ? by Compuser · 2001-07-09 12:27 · Score: 2

Well, from what I gather, KDE people have done some
SOAP work but their general remarks tend to be along
the lines of: we'll implement stuff once users
need it. Frankly, I think cloning .NET things
before they are even certified by ECMA (or whoever
winds up certifying it in the end - maybe noone)
is a bad idea. This .NET thing is still a moving
target, why shoot for it?
Re:Any good explanation on .NET ? by jregel · 2001-07-09 16:10 · Score: 1

In essence, .NET is a platform comprised of a Common Language Runtime (CLR) (think of this as being like a JIT-compiler/runtime). On top of this sits the .NET foundation classes. This is essentially the API that is used to write applications. It includes libraries for XML, SOAP, ADO (for connecting to databases) etc. On top of this layer is ASP.NET which is a "next-generation" web scripting layer which can output "webforms" in DHTML. A companion layer, Windows Forms, provides a similar function to ASP.NET but is designed for traditional Windows applications, not the web.

.NET can be written in any ported language - Microsoft are pushing C# and VB.NET. This are compiled into an intermediate language (IL) and run on the CLR. The CLR provides some nice features such as automatic garbage collection, memory management etc which should make .NET apps more resilient than traditional Windows apps.

Web services are applications designed to work using the .NET infrastructure. The only .NET web service currently well known is Hailstorm - a single login mechanism for web sites. It allows a site to use Microsoft's Hailstorm to provide user authentication, provide the ability to "securely" buy online (because Hailstorm has the users credit card details) etc.

Think of how component software has removed the need to rewrite common bits of an application, and apply that to web servers and you'll start to get an idea of how Microsoft are heading with web services.

good news? well... by Raleel · 2001-07-09 08:45 · Score: 2

only sort of good news. the good news is he got money to send a letter to defend himself (and his most excellent work). The bad news is that it's a legal battle, and they suck as a whole. I truly truly hope that it works out for the benefit of the Gnome AOL Interactive Metatranslator ;) but I just dunno...I don't know what the statute of limitations on the "protect your trademark or lose it" thing is, and it seems fairly clear that it is a derived named. then again, they could just _hire_ the guy to make it for AOL, under the same license, and everyone would be happy.

Can you imagine? A little less AOL bashing on slashdot!

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-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --

MS and Mono by Proud+Geek · 2001-07-09 08:49 · Score: 2

Ximian isn't writing all the front ends to target CLI/ CLR because they don't have the resources to. Microsoft is doing it because they want instant widespread acceptance and they do have the resources.

What you can do until someone writes a (Python or insert your favourite language here) frontend for Mono is compile using Microsoft's tools and run on the Mono backend. That's the nice thing about standards, and it appears (so far, at least) that Microsoft is playing fair this time.

--

Even Slashdot wants to hide some things

.Net is now 100% legitimate by OSgod · 2001-07-09 08:50 · Score: 3

After all.. the open source people have adopted it (it's all in the interpetation).

Notice how the also ran languages supported on Linux (Python, etc) never make the cross platform big time -- yet with this move the Linux community gave .Net and C# the smack of legitimacy and since it will be numerically close to #1 in the future (based on number of developers using it) have really put it over the top.

Re:.Net is now 100% legitimate by Pinball+Wizard · 2001-07-09 11:10 · Score: 1

With .NET, your Python app will be cross platform(Since Python is one of the languages supported by the CLR.)

--
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

bad implementation perhaps not bad idea by Strike · 2001-07-09 08:54 · Score: 1

Just because the implementation of an idea is bad doesn't mean the idea itself is bad. Besides, I'd hardly say .NET is "about to release" either. They've been talking about it for a while now and we haven't seen much materialize. Seems awfully vaporware-ish.

Re:bad implementation perhaps not bad idea by szcx · 2001-07-09 09:29 · Score: 1

I'd hardly say .NET is "about to release" either.
I didn't say it was. Slashdot made the announcement about Mono's imminent release (which turned out to be an announcement of a pending announcement -- slow news day I guess).
They've been talking about it for a while now and we haven't seen much materialize. Seems awfully vaporware-ish.
Hmm, I guess you haven't been keeping up with .NET then. I suggest you check out the .NET Development site. Maybe download the .NET Framework Beta for yourself and see how "awfully vaporware-ish" it is.
Re:bad implementation perhaps not bad idea by lsdino · 2001-07-09 10:39 · Score: 1

Besides, I'd hardly say .NET is "about to release" either. They've been talking about it for a while now and we haven't seen much materialize. Seems awfully vaporware-ish.

Except for the fact that you can get the VisualStudio.NET beta 2 today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/beta.asp

You can download the SDK here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?ur l=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/000/97 6/msdncompositedoc.xml&frame=true And MSDN has a whole bunch of info on the frameworks, and there's other links on the MS's site which have the ECMA draft sites. But other than that...

NSA Templates on "Secure" Server? by Guppy06 · 2001-07-09 08:56 · Score: 2

They're on Conxion. You know, the same people who made the news around here for leaving copies of XP Beta lying around for the general public to snag?

Not Much New by multicsfan · 2001-07-09 09:05 · Score: 3

I don't see much new here. In the late 60's and early 70's many languages were used on the Multics system (http://www.multicians.org/). With usually little to no effort most langauges could call routines in other languages.

They seem to have changed the languages from PL/1, fortran, bcpl, etc to C#, perl, html, but they haven't changed the goals, just the implimentation details as they rediscover 20+ years old ideas and technologies.

In the late 70's I worked for Honeywell on a government contract to help develope and support the National Software Works (NSW). NSW ran on multiple systems. You logged into NSW and as you asked for tools (programs), it would open up connections across the arpanet to the appropriate system, TECO on DEC 10's and 20's, IBM FORTRAN on IBM mainframes, ted on Multics. Files were converted and ported as needed to make the different systems happy. The DEC systems used 7 bit ascii, Multics used 9 bit ascii, IBM used 8 bit EBCDIC.

You never specified where to get the tool, just what tool you wanted and the NSW system would connect you to a system that could run that tool for you. When that tool asked for a file, it was transported from whereever it was to where the tool was as well as keeping multiple copies of a file around if it was read, but not changed on multiple systems.

The goal was to make location of a user independent of where the tools they used were located.

.NET dominant for the next 20 years? by jbgreer · 2001-07-09 09:06 · Score: 2

Give me a break.... talk about a soundbite made for the press. The rate of change of nearly everything, including development environments, etc. is increasing. I'll grant you that there may be something called 'Windows' in 20 years and there may even be something called '.Net' in 20 years... in much the same way that there will probably always be a language called 'FORTRAN', regardless of what they do with it. The only intelligent part of his comment is the implicit fact that Miguel, unlike so many, at least pays attention to "the dark side" and recognizes a good idea when he sees it.
I'll get flamed for it, but I'll say this, too: Open Source software.... Free Software... means platform independence. It doesn't mean Linux. It doesn't mean BSD. It means that I get to choose.

--
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th Ed., Vol 2

Re:.NET dominant for the next 20 years? by Iguanaphobic · 2001-07-09 09:28 · Score: 2

I'll get flamed for it, but I'll say this, too: Open Source software.... Free Software... means platform independence. It doesn't mean Linux. It doesn't mean BSD. It means that I get to choose.

And that really is the bottom line. Back in 93-94 I managed to convince 3 or 4 people at work to try out OS/2. One still uses it, one is on Linux and the other two fell to the "dark side". We all had a choice. Microsofts vision is a world with no choice but Microsoft. Why people cannot see the inherent evil in this, I just don't understand.

Didn't the lad from Nazareth mention something about "the road less traveled"?

--
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Re:.NET dominant for the next 20 years? by marnanel · 2001-07-09 21:05 · Score: 2

Microsofts vision is a world with no choice but Microsoft. Why people cannot see the inherent evil in this, I just don't understand.

Indeed. I've often talked to people who've attempted to justify this by saying "but Word/Excel/whatever is a standard!" And in their case, that may well be true-- but nevertheless, standards are possible without a monopoly, and supporting a monopoly is a large black mark against any standard. The advent of Mono should mean that if .NET becomes standard it'll be because it's technically a good standard, rather than because Microsoft produce it.
Didn't the lad from Nazareth mention something about "the road less traveled"?

Nope (or at least, if he did, nobody wrote it down.) Robert Frost said something a little like it, though :)

my plan

--
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Re:.NET dominant for the next 20 years? by unitron · 2001-07-09 21:20 · Score: 2

"Didn't the lad from Nazareth mention something about "the road less traveled"?"
I thought that was the lad from wherever Robert Frost was from.

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I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Re:.NET dominant for the next 20 years? by Iguanaphobic · 2001-07-09 23:36 · Score: 1

Nope (or at least, if he did, nobody wrote it down.) Robert Frost said something a little like it, though :)

Ahhh... sorry. The path to him is narrow and the road to damnation is broad. That's the thought I was looking for.

--
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.

C# satan by roxytheman · 2001-07-09 09:07 · Score: 1

Why support C# at all? It is clearly only a M$ attempt to pollute the world of programming languages! I will never touch it and hope there are more people like me! If we all stick to C++ (I am talking about on the windows platform too! Not only on Un?xes) maybe there's a small chance of C# dying a silent death like I think it should!

--

Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net

Re:C# satan by Guppy06 · 2001-07-09 10:35 · Score: 2

Because if we take it and run with it first before Microsoft really gets down to business, WE can be the ones to "embrace and extend."
Re:C# satan by flacco · 2001-07-09 16:01 · Score: 1

Why support C# at all? It is clearly only a M$ attempt to pollute the world of programming languages ! I will never touch it and hope there are more people like me!
Well, I don't intend to use the piece of crap. I'll stick with Java. I'm just glad there's a non-MS option for those hell-bent on using it.
Yes, I know, Java isn't "free", but it does abstract my investment in business logic from the OS and architecture it runs on. Very important. I love Linux, but I wouldn't want to be trapped on that any more than on NT a(well, if I had to choose, of course I'd rather be trapped on Linux).
I like being able to move my apps around.

--
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.

Re:Unplugged. by Traicovn · 2001-07-09 09:08 · Score: 1

I was just thinking. If someone owns the copyright to part or all of a single word, even a commonly used word or one that can have different meanings, then wouldn't .net be a copyright violation, or would everyone who owns a domain in the .net domain be in violation to Microsoft? I wonder if their could be a nice little class action suit here...

[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]

--

[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}

Follow M$ to oblivion by Coward+Anonymous · 2001-07-09 09:09 · Score: 2

Aren't the free software folk who are adopting .NET making the same mistake many other MS competitors made before? They are adopting an MS technology and relying on MS not to play dirty with the specifications (DR-DOS and Win3.1 come to mind). What is to guarantee that MS won't change the .NET specification a year or two from now and break older code? ECMA standards are cute but MS wouldn't hesitate dumping them if it felt it could get away with it.

Licencing woes? by Chuck+Chunder · 2001-07-09 09:13 · Score: 2

That's the nice thing about standards, and it appears (so far, at least) that Microsoft is playing fair this time.

We've recently seen Microsoft licencing being used to prohibit development with their tools in conjunction with Free (and some other Open Source) software. Could they use similar licencing to prevent deployment of .NET apps developed with their tools on a Free platform like Mono? I guess only public sentiment (and maybe antitrust laws?) could stop them.

--
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park

Re:Licencing woes? by Mark+Pitman · 2001-07-09 16:11 · Score: 1

Another interesting twist on this is what about open source languages like Perl? There is a port of Perl to .NET, but will we be able to legally use it if they add in their "no open source" clause to the licensing agreement? ;)
Re:Licencing woes? by WildBeast · 2001-07-09 22:25 · Score: 1

even MS says that you'll be able to use it. You can already use Python or Perl to create ASP apps.

What the hell does MONO or .NET do for me? by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 09:18 · Score: 1

Seriously now, what's Mono going to do? Don't tell me "oh it's a class loader AND a compiler!". What's it going to do? Will it run quake? Will it help me surf for porn? Will it let me download warez and mp3z? Nobody seems to be able to say what the application of any of these things are.

So now instead of one piece of vaporware that I don't know what it does, I now have the choice of MS-vapor or open-source-zealot-vapor? If I just bashed microsoft would you cheer me on?

Not sure MS will allow it. by rhedin · 2001-07-09 09:23 · Score: 3

There's an interesting article over on CNET that talks about the Mono vs. .NET thing.

What I found interesting was the following quote from the article:

Other constraints could hamper an open-source effort as well, Goodhew said. Creating software that implements the CLI standard will require Microsoft technology that will be released through ECMA, Goodhew said. And the license under which that software is released may not be compatible with the licenses that govern Mono and DotGNU, he said.
"Part of the ECMA (standardization process) provides a forum for us to license the intellectual property you will need to have to implement the standard," Goodhew said. "It's up to the implementers to make sure whatever license they choose to use is compatible with the ECMA licensing terms."

So Ximian may not be able to produce what they want to produce.

Re:Not sure MS will allow it. by Pinball+Wizard · 2001-07-09 11:23 · Score: 3

It certainly looks like the beginnings of an interesting license battle.
Especially if Ximian replaces fundamental parts of .NET with GPL code. Binary programs written with the MS version of .NET would be illegal to run under the Ximian version of .NET.
I wonder who would look like the bad guy in that scenario.

--
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

$1700 ain't gonna beat AOL by bobalu · 2001-07-09 09:31 · Score: 1

I'd say the good news is he got $1700 in help, the bad news is AOL has about $10,000,000,000 and they're completely correct in that GAIM infrincges their trademark. IMHO he doesn't have a prayer of winning - the contributions couldn't been better spent on other things. Donate to EFF instead.

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The revolution will NOT be televised.

Re:.NET bandwagon by Black+Parrot · 2001-07-09 09:34 · Score: 2

> I would have thought that all the Linux Zealots would be trying to discourage .NET, it being an MS effort.

Actually, it's a Micorsoft clone of a longstanding Sun effort.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Enough with the aping, Ximian! by Dr.+Spork · 2001-07-09 09:37 · Score: 1

One has to appreciate this joke at their own expense, but seriously, do you have to try and reimplement every whim of Microsoft? Subscription services, a "windows update" and now this... I would understand it if you were aping someone who had the sun shining out of their ass, but MS is not that someone.

Re:Enough with the aping, Ximian! by Tsujigiri · 2001-07-09 15:10 · Score: 1

Um, actually if you read the articles, Miguel is saying that they are only implementing the infrastructure and the execution evironmnet as well as the class libraries. They are not planning to create any online services at this time, they'll leave that up to others.
What it should do though, is to allow Linux users to actually access the services MS are going to implement, which will be weird to say the least.
Still, if this works out as planned, at least UK Linux users will be able to lodge tax returns online. :-)

"I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"

--
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix

Re:Unplugged. by bluephone · 2001-07-09 09:41 · Score: 1

Actually, under copyright law you cannot copyright a word, phrase, or title. Also, you're not supposed to be able to copyright cultural things ("For he's a jolly good fellow" and "Heppy Brthday to you...") but it happens sometimes. That's why you can have dozens of songs and movies and books, etc., with the same title but not being the same story. Now, you can trademark words, but only if you meet crtain criteria. Think of McDonald's TM on Smile. It's not REALLY on the word smile, it's on the presentation of the word, in the semi-hand writen style. You can also trademark misspellings and special spellings, etc.

--

--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]

Miguel, you knob! by ethereal · 2001-07-09 09:42 · Score: 5

God, what a troll...

When pressed for additional details on what makes .NET better, de Icaza replied: "The tools are better integrated. You have a debugger, a project manager. It's an IDE with documentation integrated into the system.

Wow, it's a wonder those KDE guys can accomplish anything with their stone-knives-and-bearskins tools like "vi" and "man". Now we know why there's so much sucky code in the world - lack of IDEs to think for us.

Microsoft basically solved the DLL problem, and that's something that the open source community is not solving. Even though we have the tools to do so, no one is taking the next step to do things right. There's still breakage that's happening in libraries that are shipping with traditional Linux libraries.

Has this Miguel guy ever actually used Linux? (yes, I'm aware he's the Gnome god, it's a rhetorical question.) Linux has almost none of the DLL problems of Windows; you may have extra versions of old libraries, but if that's what your apps want it's not a bad thing. Microsoft, on the other hand, just recently gave us the technological advance of keeping track of the libraries needed and replacing them on you if you zapped them during another software install. Yes, that's right, just paper over that DLL Hell and keep on going.

I like Gnome, and I use it every day, but I feel like Miguel has really let down the side here. It's one thing to discuss that .NET has some advantages over current systems, but it's another thing to be basically a Microsoft cheerleader - shouting out the good bits, papering over the iffy bits, and not injecting any of the caution that any rational software engineer not in a coma over the past few years should have when faced with a new initiative from the Microsoft marketing machine. Miguel, you had a great chance to present a level and reasoned overview of the whole thing from the free side of the software world, and you ended up just giving Ballmer and Mundie some great sound bites. With open source "leaders" like this, who needs enemies?

Mod away, I feel better for having had my say. Grrrr, I haven't been this ticked off since the last time Ransom Love said anything :)

--

Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

Re:Miguel, you knob! by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 10:09 · Score: 1

In case you havent noticed, programming for windows, doesnt require automake (I dont mind make files but automake is just another layer slapped on, next thing you know diffrences in automake from platform to platform will cause another layer autoautomake :p), neither does programming for say Redhat Linux, but programming for Linux (that is programming for Debian, Redhat, SuSe, VA, etc etc), or worse programming for Unix. What scares the shit out of me, is how some people even use automake to build Java applications... AAAAAHHHHHHH... but I say its unconsequential because I understand it. But I prefer installing Visual Studio which adds to your system, then installing the unix programming packages that try to take over your system :p. And I dont blaim Miguel, it shouldnt take an enlightment monk to figure out what is easier and what is harder, and the natural progression of things is to get easier not remain hard.
Re:Miguel, you knob! by ethereal · 2001-07-09 10:49 · Score: 1

But I prefer installing Visual Studio which adds to your system, then installing the unix programming packages that try to take over your system :p.

It's really a different mindset - unix programming packages are supposed to be part of the system - it's only those nutty commercial distributors who quit providing compilers with their systems. Programming tools are an integral part of a Unix system, if they're an add-on that seems to take over, it's the distributor's fault.
What scares the shit out of me, is how some people even use automake to build Java applications... AAAAAHHHHHHH...

ROTFL - agreed.
Really, are you sure you can write Windows code that will run on 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, and CE without some sort of compatibility layer? I bet there are still some caveats that have to be handled in an automake-like fashion. Or more likely, apps from one version won't necessarily be portable to those others. There are more flavors of Unix altogether than there are of Windows, so it's true that automake is more of a Unix necessity. It would be interesting to see how incompatibilities between various versions of Windows would have been handled had Microsoft been broken up.
And I dont blaim Miguel, it shouldnt take an enlightment monk to figure out what is easier and what is harder, and the natural progression of things is to get easier not remain hard.

Fair enough; but I think picking the IDE as the magic bullet is the wrong place to put the emphasis. IDEs have allowed more code to be written than ever before; they've also allowed more bad code to be written than ever before. The problem with software is in the brain, not in the tools.

--
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Re:Miguel, you knob! by dangermouse · 2001-07-09 11:18 · Score: 2

He's just following the Pattern. Certain other open-source companies' leaders have done the same thing.
It goes something like this:
You decry, very publicly, the pitiful state of technology available in the open source world. You point to a mass of people who suffer the horrible plight of working with open source software, despite the fact that it's missing Technology X. Never mind that Technology X creates more problems than it solves, or that the mass of suffering users doesn't exist. This is just foundation work.
Step two, you trot out your shoddy implementation of your Bad Idea, and proclaim to the world *outside* the open source community that you have just heroically stepped up to the plate and saved the day. No longer will the masses have to bear the agony of living without Technology X, you tell them, for you have delivered it. (Again, it doesn't matter that T-X sucks, that nobody really wanted it, or even that there was probably already a better solution in place.... you didn't control that one, your name wasn't all over it.)
Then you sit back and watch the newbies come directly to you, because they've heard about all the great, innovative things you've done, and how anachronistic and unusable your competitors' products are. I mean, you told them so, right?
It's obnoxious as all hell, but this isn't the first time it's happened and I'm sure it won't be the last. After all, it seems to work.
RPM, Lizard (the Caldera installer), Mono... it's all the same scam.
Re:Miguel, you knob! by update() · 2001-07-09 12:39 · Score: 2

Wow, it's a wonder those KDE guys can accomplish anything with their stone-knives-and-bearskins tools like "vi" and "man". Now we know why there's so much sucky code in the world - lack of IDEs to think for us.
Actually, KDE makes the best (IMHO) IDE for Linux and uses the excellent Qt RAD tool. HTML documentation is automatically generated from the source and integrated in KDevelop, along with Qt, system and other documentation.
Anyway, does the Mono plan even include an IDE? I don't see anything about that in the press release.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Re:Miguel, you knob! by TummyX · 2001-07-09 13:07 · Score: 1

Has this Miguel guy ever actually used Linux? (yes, I'm aware he's the Gnome god, it's a rhetorical question.) Linux has almost none of the DLL problems of Windows; you may have extra versions of old libraries, but if that's what your apps want it's not a bad thing.

Ditto in Windows. BTW if Linux doesn't have DLL problems why do I have to download different packages for different versions of Redhat or other distributions? What's with this you must have blah_blah_x_x.so. What's with glibc and libc?

Microsoft, on the other hand, just recently gave us the technological advance of keeping track of the libraries needed and replacing them on you if you zapped them during another software install. Yes, that's right, just paper over that DLL Hell and keep on going.

Um no. That is system file protection. Fusion lets applications have "personal" dlls etc. Windows has always allowed multiple DLLs. Ever heard of GetVersion() and GetVersionEx()?
Re:Miguel, you knob! by ethereal · 2001-07-09 13:32 · Score: 1

BTW if Linux doesn't have DLL problems why do I have to download different packages for different versions of Redhat or other distributions? What's with this you must have blah_blah_x_x.so. What's with glibc and libc?

DLL hell is if one app's installer blew away blah_blah_x_x.so and replaced it with blah_blah_x_y.so, and then another app didn't work right. It's true that you have to have multiple lib versions at a time, although if you stick with your distribution's install they usually minimize this. But stuff doesn't break just because you installed other stuff.
Um no. That is system file protection. Fusion lets applications have "personal" dlls etc. Windows has always allowed multiple DLLs. Ever heard of GetVersion() and GetVersionEx()?

I still say it's nuts to allow the system to be broken, and then blindly repair it every time. That's papering over the problem, not fixing it.
I dunno, maybe it's windows developers who cause the DLL problems? All I know is that older apps' DLLs regularly getzapped by newer apps' install procedures, and this doesn't seem to happen on Linux. It seems like Microsoft could innovate their way out of this one, or use their acclaimed developer resource MSDN to get their developers to do so.

--
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Re:Miguel, you knob! by The+Cookie+Monster · 2001-07-09 17:14 · Score: 1

I still say it's nuts to allow the system to be broken, and then blindly repair it every time. That's papering over the problem, not fixing it.

I dunno, maybe it's windows developers who cause the DLL problems?
It is precisely windows developers who cause the DLL problems.

With Win2k Microsoft has finally done what they should have a long time ago and told developers in no uncertain terms that installing your own DLL's in the system directory is not OK.

Because people will still be installing old crap software...

&ltrant&gtI say crap, because you have always been able to write apps in Windows that don't overwrite the system (as an added bonus those apps will run over a network as their non-standard DLLs are located with their exe), and it's been obvious for a long long time that this is a much cleaner approach&lt/rant&gt

...and there will always be dumbass developers doing dumbass things in their application installation, Microsoft's "papering over the problem" both tells developers their apps will no longer run if they insist on playing silly buggers with the OS, and makes the system immune to the old crap software. Damn fine solution IMHO. (They should have done it in '98).
Re:Miguel, you knob! by TummyX · 2001-07-09 17:44 · Score: 1

But stuff doesn't break just because you installed other stuff.

Unless the stuff that installs overwrites old libaries. It's not windows or linux's fault.

I still say it's nuts to allow the system to be broken, and then blindly repair it every time. That's papering over the problem, not fixing it.

It is fixing the problem. The problem is that some setup programs (very rare now days though) overwrite critical system files. Windows prevents this. How is this not 'fixing the problem'. What do you think Microsoft should do? Take all developers and put them through Microsoft programming camp? What's your 'fix'?

Microsoft could innovate their way out of this one.

Yes. They did with system file protection. They also have many articles on the new windows installer APIs etc. Since the early 90s they've also been describing how to use versioning APIs to make sure DLL Hell doesn't exist.
People will be people and some people don't listen.

What's your proposal for innovating a fix? I assume since you think what Microsoft has done isn't a fix, you have a better idea? Perhaps maybe cutting the fingers off bad developers who don't follow conventions?
Re:Miguel, you knob! by TummyX · 2001-07-10 05:35 · Score: 1

Many, many setup programs still attempt to do this, including the Microsoft ones.

Like? I haven't seen an instance of DLL hell since the early days of 95. Most setup programs use InstallShield or MSI. Both of which do versioning checks.

You neglect that Microsoft caused this problem. Letting developers 'upgrade' Windows willy-nilly was their solution to how to avoid distributing service packs for Windows 3.

They can't exactly NOT let developers 'upgrade' windows without something like SFP. Oh hang on. SFP isn't a fix, it's a cover up. Oh well.

SFP exists in Windows ME (the last version of the 9x line) and 2000/XP, the latest versions of the NT line.

I don't expect Microsoft to patch 5 year old operating systems. They were designed for a different era. Adding SFP and all the new Windows 2000 features to Win95 would basically mean you'd end up with Windows 2000 (running on 486s).

Don't give AOL(tw) any ideas by yerricde · 2001-07-09 09:47 · Score: 1

B5 and thus the Gaim intellectual property is owned by Time Warner

Don't give them any ideas, or AOL Time Warner will add its trademark on Gaim to the lawsuit. We don't want to have TWO plausible claims by a faceless monopoly against innocent independent developers, do we?

And yes, AOL is a monopoly and probably a predatory one. It's trying to use its monopoly on cable television (Time Warner cable) to create a monopoly on Internet access by refusing to carry other ISPs' TV ads, apparently replacing them with AOL ads when they are shown on non-TW channels.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?

Revelations are happening!! by PUAstro · 2001-07-09 09:57 · Score: 1

I'm beginning to see something here. I want to know what everyone else thinks about this. I think this would make an awesome movie sometime.

.NET == Matrix: .NET is trying to become the world to everyone. Noone can escape it. No one knows exactly what it is.

Billy & his squad == Agents: Folks who run around .NET and bring people in line who are trying to change the matrix

C# == 'perfect' language: C# is the language that perfectly describes human behavior. It models how we feed on misery (and bad API's)

Linus == morphius: Looking for the promised "ONE" to bring down the tyrannical evil matrix as it is known

Open source community == original prophet: "He" is the first to free to others. He has for told of the "ONE" who will follow and release the people from .NET

Ximain == NEO: The chosen "ONE". Looks like "he" is the only one who can change the matrix from the inside.

Now all me need is a trinity and a bunch of "homegrown" open source folks to play the other parts.

I think this would make a great movie. Wish there was something like it with some really cool effects and cool sunglasses.

Anyone want to help me write a movie?

Re:Revelations are happening!! by barneyfoo · 2001-07-09 15:12 · Score: 2

Wrong... .NET will be a faint glimmer in software history in future decades. The real analogy is as follows

RMS == Morpheus

Linus Torvalds == NEO

Doug Miller == The guy who ratted on Morpheus and NEO to the matrix police

Mundie, ZDNET, CNET == The matrix police.

Windows == The Matrix

Gates, Ballmer, and other top VP's == The Hive Mind behind the Matrix.

Hehhehe, anyone got a better comparison?

Uh-oh by Bruce+Perens · 2001-07-09 10:03 · Score: 4

It happens that I'm speaking at AOL headquarters on Wednesday, to a few hundred of their staff. I can drop in a polite sentence about this, but asked Mark to advise me as I don't want to over-do it just in case someone has already decided to be nice to him.

Thanks

Bruce

--
Bruce Perens.

Re:Uh-oh by GiMP · 2001-07-09 11:35 · Score: 1

One thing to consider is that GAIM is _NOT_ an AIM client, it is an extendable instant messaging application which has support for some AOL services.

Other than AOL's services Oscar and TOC, it supports: napster, irc, zyphar, yahoo messanger, msn messanger, jabber, and ICQ.

Of course there are all the other facts like AOL not registering a trademark for "AIM", etc..

The GAIM guys can win, but will they go poor doing it? It sucks to live in a society where freedom == money.
Re:Uh-oh by Compuser · 2001-07-09 13:13 · Score: 2

Hmm, so do you plan to speak at Adobe headquaters.
Those are a bunch of guys whose balls need to be
busted.

The trademark is WINDOWS by yerricde · 2001-07-09 10:07 · Score: 1

I went to TESS and did a boolean search for basic: WINDOWS, owner: MICROSOFT, and got serial 74212523 (WINDOWS NT) and 74090419 (WINDOWS) that had something like 'operating environments for computers' in their Goods and Services field. Note that marks are always officially recorded in capital letters, but they can be "stylized" into the more common Windows form.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?

Why .NET and not Java? by raian · 2001-07-09 10:10 · Score: 5

I think it is interesting that the Free Software community is embracing .NET, after years of scorning Java, which offers many of the same features.

Sure there are a few free implementations of the JVM, but none support Java beyond 1.1. Whenever Java is discussed among Linux developers, their voices drip with scorn and they go on and on about performance problems eliminated three years ago, and the dangers of a language "owned by Sun". But those same developers are jumping right in to develop free implementations of .NET, a language "owned" by a company with a far worse track record for cooperation than Sun, and which boasts that you will be able to "write a class in C#, subclass it in C++, and instantiate it in Eiffel" (I'm sure there won't be any performance issues there).

Why not ramp up the effort to create free VMs and libraries for Java, a language actually in use around the world *right now*? It boggles the mind.

Re:Why .NET and not Java? by Pinball+Wizard · 2001-07-09 10:41 · Score: 3

my impression is that it is because MS decided to give up control of the big pieces of .NET to a standards body. MS is also providing the reference implementation of .NET on FreeBSD. Although invented by MS, .NET won't be owned. It will be a standard. I think thats where it will succeed over Java.
Additionally, you have Miguel de Icaza, the lead GNOME developer gushing about how 'state of the art' the .NET technology is. The opposite seems to be true of Java, as you mentioned, in the eyes of influential developers.
Not to mention that the .NET runtime will compile code written in Perl, Java, C# or any number of other languages. I understand Java does this as well, but in Java which language is going to get top billing? .NET seems to have language independence built in from the ground up. That's a big win in the open source world of many languages.
So, basically you have all the ingredients for .NET's success in the OSS arena. Which is probably Microsoft's intention because if it succeeds there, it will succeed everywhere.

--
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Re:Why .NET and not Java? by q-soe · 2001-07-09 19:00 · Score: 1

Um i dont write code for a living (im an evil server admin) but even i dont understand this one.

Which Java ? Sun ? MS ?

The thing is that there is no such thing as one standard Java so therefore it wont become a standard.

Maybe .NET will, maybe not who knows, but i am sure Java won't - the lack of standards will see to it

--
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....

The TETRIS trademark by yerricde · 2001-07-09 10:21 · Score: 3

I couldn't just call my Playstation 2 game Tetris

Correct. I wrote a thorough essay on the legal issues surrounding Tetris. To sum up, TETRIS is a trademark of The Tetris Company LLC, but there are no U.S. Patents on the game itself, and the game's graphics are simple enough that any source code or audiovisual work copyright can be circumvented by a simple clean room cloning project such as freepuzzlearena, which produced the Tetanus engine (soon to be renamed to Lockjaw to distance it further from the TETRIS Mark).

Want a taste of LSD? Try TOD, a falling tetramino game with nine screen distortion effects. Includes static DOS binaries plus GPL sources for recompiling on Win32 or X11 systems. Only dependency is libc + Allegro + your window system's libraries.

just because there's no tetris on the game system yet

Apparently, you've never played The Next TETRIS for PlayStation and Wintendo9x.

Of course, nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice. See an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:.NET bandwagon by sabinm · 2001-07-09 10:36 · Score: 1

I understand your frustration. However, and I don't want to play the devil's advocate, but it's certain that "internet everywhere" by a fully interoperable computing language is what we are going after. Whether it is java, c#, or xml.

I think using my pda with linux (or even better a darwin) embedded to make purchases would be great.

Linux already does it inside of cell phones in Europe and Japan.

THe only ones who were actively pursuing this "internet everywhere" was M$.

This community was not energized until M$ put it's finger in the "privacy pie" Too bad the developer's community is so reactionary. We really could have trumped M$ on this one.

--
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'

.NET Is Not Innovation by SkewlD00d · 2001-07-09 10:46 · Score: 1

Why spend time & enegry open-sourcing a closed-source commercial products that are huge, unwieldly and poorly designed? "Yeah, lets make an exact clone of Internet Exploiter to run on Linux, even though Mozilla is faster, cheaper and better." When will these MicroSerfs cum Linux N00bies learn that Micro$oft Monolithic Design Philosophy (TM) is fundamentally flawed?!?!?!

"YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!"

Btw, I'm not against free software.

--
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.

GWindows? by scribblej · 2001-07-09 10:46 · Score: 1

Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

Uh... so XWindows is out, then? Damn... gunna' have to talk to someone about changing that name.

.NUT: President of Saturday Night Live by Futurepower(tm) · 2001-07-09 10:54 · Score: 1

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush

We wanted a president, and all we got was a character from Saturday Night Live.

It takes smarts to actually RUN a government, rather than sell it to narrow interests. Dim-witted people need representation, but it would be better for them to choose someone smarter than themselves.

--
Bush's education improvements were

well, if it takes Microsoft.... by janpod66 · 2001-07-09 10:58 · Score: 5

"Five years ago, we [open source developers] had the high ground in technical tools," said de Icaza. "We had better tools and a better development environment than Windows developers had. Now, with .NET, I see that the roles have changed and Windows developers have much better tools than we have.

This is a pretty depressing statement because it is so blatantly false all around. Five years ago, de Icaza chose to use tools for Gnome that were primitive even back then: C, make, autoconf, etc. You don't have to get very advanced to do better than that. C++ was around. GNUStep was around. Modula-3 was around. Eiffel was around. There were several mature, high-level GUI toolkits. Visual C++ was better integrated and easier to set up than GNU Emacs even back then. Five years ago, there were already numerous high level, open source languages with excellent debuggers and excellent environments. If Icaza would have wanted something better, he had the choices then. Instead, he chose primitive tools back then and stuck with them, and now that Microsoft adopts C# he finally calls those tools what they are: primitive.

According to de Icaza, the interesting thing about SharpDevelop is that the environment is really complete in only a few lines of code. It's really amazing when you compare the code size to other projects.

Again, de Icaza missed a big opportunity. As one of the leaders of the Gnome project, he could have caused adoption of this kind of "amazing" technology on Linux a couple of years ago in the form of Java. Whether he agreed with Sun's implementation strategy for Java or not, the Java language and runtime is not importantly different from C# and .NET, and Gnome could have altered it in whatever way they liked. Yet, Gnome kept on focussing on laboriously and slowly hacking C code and basically making fun of high level languages.

As far as I'm concerned, the Gnome project established its course long ago: they don't lead, they merely follow Microsoft (and something similar can be said for KDE). Maybe that's good enough to keep Linux alive as a credible alternative to Microsoft, but it really isn't very interesting to me. If open source becomes dominated by clones of Microsoft software that's two years behind the market leader, I might as well just use the real thing.

The only glimmer of hope is that the adoption of anything more high level than C by an open source project as large and central as Gnome can only improve things in the open source world. It's a good first step, whether the something being adopted is Java or C#. Maybe that will finally break the stranglehold that primitive tools and extreme conservatism have had on this community. It's kind of sad that it took Microsoft to do this, since they invented none of this technology, but--whatever it takes, I guess.

Re:well, if it takes Microsoft.... by steveha · 2001-07-09 13:02 · Score: 2

Five years ago, de Icaza chose to use tools for Gnome that were primitive even back then: C, make, autoconf, etc. You don't have to get very advanced to do better than that. C++ was around. GNUStep was around. Modula-3 was around. Eiffel was around. There were several mature, high-level GUI toolkits. Visual C++ was better integrated and easier to set up than GNU Emacs even back then.
And what do all the tools you mentioned have in common? Compatability problems.
GNOME was intended to run on any flavor of *NIX. The plan was that you could write GNOME apps in any language, including C++ or anything else. What language is it that they all have in common? What is the "assembly language" that is common to all *NIX? Just C.
As far as I'm concerned, the Gnome project established its course long ago: they don't lead, they merely follow Microsoft (and something similar can be said for KDE).
Well, let's see. Windows has been around since 1985 or so; it was a joke for the first five years, but it started to work around 1990. GNOME took much less time to become usable, but it had to catch up before it had any chance of leading. Now, the vast majority of people want software that works more-or-less like Windows works; if they make something radically different, people complain.
At least with GNOME, they built in complete control. Want your window decorations to look a certain way? Just get a theme that looks like that. Want launchers on the side of the window? Just put them there. You can customize a GNOME desktop so it looks very little like a Windows desktop, and works differently too. The defaults are what most people want, but if you want something else, you can change them.
And now that GNOME has become usable, it can take the next step and actually start leading. Right now the GNOME interface is decent, but it has odd quirks; when these are smoothed out, GNOME will be easier to use than Windows.
By the way, if you have specific ideas on how GNOME could be improved to be better than Windows (to "lead", as you say), don't be shy about submitting them to the GNOME guys. You won't get what you want if you never ask for it.
steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely

web services, my ass! by consumer · 2001-07-09 11:06 · Score: 1

Miguel says "If you have Visual Studio, you can deploy Web services right away; they are SOAP-enabled. You can automatically generate WSDL descriptions."

Am I the only one who thinks that all of this web services BS has gone way too far? Raise your hand if you really believe that companies are going to build WSDL descriptions of their totally standardized, SOAP-enabled tire selling applications. Raise it higher if you think consumers will be excited enough about this to wait 5 minutes while the intelligent agent on MSN TireZone contacts directories, identifies tire sellers, contacts their servers, and compares prices.

You want a web service? There are Perl modules available to retrieve package tracking information from UPS. How do they do it? They regex the HTML from a publicly available HTTP interface. It's not ideal, but it's not exactly hard either.

God help us if the next version of Gnome uses web services.

This is very ... VERY interesting! by dudle · 2001-07-09 11:08 · Score: 5

I was waiting for someone like you. You give me the opportunity to make my point. Thank you for that.

In the O'Reilly article, the author says that Miguel is open minded. I suggest we all seat back, relax and try to do the same exact thing. Let's be open minded if only for 5 minutes.

So I'm sitting at my desk, open minded and stuff, reading Dale Dougherty's article. First of all, I would like to say that I found it very interesting. Here are my comments on it.

Open Source developer Miguel de Icaza, leader of the GNOME project and founder of Ximian, has been exploring Microsoft's .NET platform with an open mind

The open mind thing, remember?

he was only beginning to think about the implications of Microsoft.NET

That's exactly what it's about. The implications. Read on.

.NET provides developers with a state-of-the-art development environment, one that leaps ahead of open source alternatives.

Here we go. The first of many comparaisons. Some of you slashdotters are aiming their guns at him for making such a comparaison. Don't! Keep an open mind. With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment. Again, keep an open mind and think about it for at least a minute before you shoot.

"It's a new development environment for the next twenty years."

Let me be honest: when I read that piece, I thought he was being paid by Microsoft. I mean come on! That's a pretty bold statement right there. Let's see what he has to say about that.

Five years ago, we [open source developers] had the high ground in technical tools," said de Icaza. "We had better tools and a better development environment than Windows developers had. Now, with .NET, I see that the roles have changed and Windows developers have much better tools than we have.

(NOTE TO SELF: Don't quote that much in one piece)
Wow! Is that really so? ... Ok then. I have my open mind and all that but still, that's sounds like marketing to me. Now hold on. What if ... I don't know ... do you think ... is it really ... True?

What if it's true? Let's see what he has to say.

.NET is a good platform to innovate from

Cool! This time, the roles would be reversed. Please understand. This time, it is us who have a chance to copy, to mimic, to "innovate". Schweeeeet.

Microsoft might port the runtime to Linux

Now why the hell would they do that? The only thing AFAIK they ever did on Linux was those f***ed up Front Page Extensions! Do you really think they would do that? Why? To extend .NET of course, just like Unix embraced multiple platforms back in the days (This is indeed a very good analogy). About a year ago I think, I read someone saying that the Desktop OS should be at the user's service, not the opposite. Microsoft understood that believe it or not. You (and I) may not like it but the main reason why they are what they are on the desktop market is because they offer what the vast majority of users want. They also know that the OS is not the end all of all things. They understand the market (heck, they control the damn thing) and they expand like a wasp colony in my back yard by controling the rest with .NET.

What I mean to say by that is that Miguel has a point. .NET is probably the most important technology/invention for the years to come. Just like Unix kicked Multix's ass back in the days, .NET will be the next development environment for the years to come. (open mind everyone)

"I personally want to see the .NET runtime on Linux", [...] seeming to commit himself to building it if it doesn't emerge from current efforts.

Thank you! It would be terrible to be left at the mercy of Microsoft for having something that important not available on our favorite OS. Could you imagine? Maybe not. Let me help, imagine that there was no TCP/IP stack available for Linux. That's the kind of situation we could find ourselves in if major tools like .NET are not available for Linux. (NOTE TO SELF: That was a "Bad analogy").

Later on, Miguel explains briefly why he likes .NET so much. He makes his points when he says (and I quote)

"With .NET, MS has figured out the next generation of development software"

Now that does not come from some AC waiting for a good troll. This guy wrote a whole lot of code. I think I can safely say that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to developing software. (Open mind again).

.NET was not targeted for a single language.

Just like Unix was not targetted as a single platform. You have it right here, in front of you. If you can see further than your nose, it's obvious that this is why .NET will (wether you like it or not) take over. He even says It's a programmer's dream come true. He's right, at least admit it.

So he goes on and on explaining what the Unix world did wrong and what .NET does right. Good. He wants to see .NET under Linux. Great, count me in.

Now remember what happened with Unix in the early 2000's ... it got taken over by a Free (as in speech) OS based on the Linux kernel. This is what is going to happen with .NET. If Microsoft think they are ahead, wait until they see how good the open source community is at rebuilding a good idea from scratch and make it a wonderful one. .NET is a fantastic concept. .ORG (or whatever we chose to call our open source alternative) will be to .NET what GNU/Linux is to Unix. Mark my words.

Good night and thank you for reading.

--
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup

Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by Uksi · 2001-07-09 11:41 · Score: 1

You are a good example of the lack of understanding of what .NET entails. While it is true (and, by the way, publicly stated in the Mono FAQ) that .NET has a shitload of marketing and irrelevant tools associated with it, it really IS innovative.

I know it is hard to comprehend that Microsoft can come up with something innovative, due to the anti-Microsoft mindset of the hoard of Slashdotters, but dig it thru your head. Re-read your post: your whole post is based on the point that .NET is not innovative and that it is a Bad Thing. That point is nothing but dogmatic. It's like childishly crying "This and that sucks!" It's like a convinced Christian telling you that God exists. You try to argue with him about his religion and come to this one point where you may have some REASON in, but, he sticks the dogmatic argument 'God exists' and that's all.

Such is your post. You start off by saying keep an open mind. Fine, and you do admit that "With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment." Now, in the next friggin paragraph, where .NET is described as having superior dev tools, you ask "What if ... I don't know ... do you think ... is it really ... True?" So you just friggin said it's true and now you question yourself.

Basically, face it. .NET is a mostly a good thing because of the TECHNOLOGY advancements. The bad thing about .NET is the marketing that Microsoft puts behind it, but that's to be expected. However, describing a technology's benefits is not the kind of blatant marketing that you describe. If I told you that C++ permitted me to write applications in a much more reusable fashion than C, would you tell me in my face that I'm blatantly marketing C++ and that my argument should be discounted?

And the signal that your post is garbage is when you say "I was waiting for someone like you. You give me the opportunity to make my point." What prevents you from making the point, in this post-anywhere, public forum Slashdot? No, the real deal is that you found somebody you can group with and together bash something and otherwise exhibit single-mind group behavior. Just like the blind anti-MS bashing.

mp3.com/ilp
Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by dudle · 2001-07-09 12:13 · Score: 2

No offense but you understood the exact opposite of what I was saying.

Read again.

--
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by janpod66 · 2001-07-09 12:24 · Score: 3

[.NET] really IS innovative
So, please be concrete: what ideas do you think are "innovative" in .NET? Please compare and contrast those with some of the key milestones in the history of computer systems research. In fact, just some examples of where you think C#/.NET innovates over Java would be interesting.
Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by Uksi · 2001-07-09 12:27 · Score: 1

Ahh! I just realized it! :o( Sorry, dudle, I take back what I said about you. I feel prey to the same 'skim over, heat up and reply' basic instinct... D'oh! The embarrassment (there goes my credibility, heh...)
Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by ethereal · 2001-07-09 13:23 · Score: 1

was waiting for someone like you. You give me the opportunity to make my point. Thank you for that.

No problem, I aim to please :) I learn a lot from getting flamed out of my chair, and then here you go and actually take me much more seriously than I probably deserve.
With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment.

Hmmm. You're right, I think my quibble is more with the concept of an IDE than with a particular implementation of it. Although my experience with developing on Windows has been that it's tough to break out of the IDE when you want to. Maybe that's the case with open source IDEs too, I wouldn't know.
You (and I) may not like it but the main reason why they are what they are on the desktop market is because they offer what the vast majority of users want.

It's more like they destroy all competition, but it's true that in the end the vast majority of users think they want what they're getting. It's sort of the Stockholm Syndrome, writ large.
What I mean to say by that is that Miguel has a point. .NET is probably the most important technology/invention for the years to come. Just like Unix kicked Multix's ass back in the days, .NET will be the next development environment for the years to come. (open mind everyone)

I've got the open mind, and I can see .NET being the biggest development environment change for Windows developers, since they effectively have no choice anyway. I don't see how having an open mind helps me believe that something will become such a watershed just because Microsoft and Miguel tell me so, though.
That's the kind of situation we could find ourselves in if major tools like .NET are not available for Linux.

I think the jury's still out on whether this will end up being a useful tool. I think it would definitely be a tragedy if the Microsoft version of it becomes the de facto standard on Linux, so in that regard it's great to hear that there will be options.
Now that does not come from some AC waiting for a good troll. This guy wrote a whole lot of code. I think I can safely say that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to developing software. (Open mind again).

OK, how exactly is accepting an appeal to authority having an open mind? Not that I dispute his qualifications in the least, but that doesn't qualify him as infallible. I guess if .NET's so great, we'll all end up using it, and I'll eat my words (won't be the first time). But I reserve the right to be skeptical until I actually see the tool do what Microsoft says it will do, and until I see it work in a manner that doesn't tie development more closely to Microsoft. It doesn't sound like Miguel is keeping this in mind very well. An open mind doesn't mean banish all skepticism.
Just like Unix was not targetted as a single platform. You have it right here, in front of you. If you can see further than your nose, it's obvious that this is why .NET will (wether you like it or not) take over. He even says It's a programmer's dream come true. He's right, at least admit it.

I think the proof is in the pudding. I hope it's a dream come true, I just don't necessarily have the faith that Miguel does. On the other hand, maybe he's confident because he's already got a great implementation of Mono that's prepared to spring full-grown from his forehead. If that's the case then kudos to him for providing another tool among many.
But just playing up how great .NET is, without touching on any of the down sides, is not going to make it easy for the Linux developers out in the trenches to avoid being Microsoftized in the meantime. I think Miguel is playing with fire, and I think we'll be hearing his quotes from this article long after no one's even heard of the Halloween memo. Because if Mono doesn't happen, he's handed Microsoft some very powerful FUD (and it's even true, which is worse) that's going to frame the debate on Microsoft's terms and make it very difficult to point out any shortcomings with .NET. Any technical argument against .NET with my boss will end with "But Mr. Gnome said it was great, and you're always pushing his stuff aren't you? You techies are just never satisfied."

--
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Re:This is very ... VERY interesting! by jmu1 · 2001-07-09 20:16 · Score: 2

Kdevelop
Don't even for a second try to act like we don't have a good IDE for Linux development. Try it. You'll like it. And don't give me any shtick about being open minded either. There is a great big difference between being educated, standing your ground and being closed minded. If you don't want to learn the difference, be prepared to be ignored.

Not that bad right? by �laC|n · 2001-07-09 11:12 · Score: 1

Err... last time RMS went nuts about a non-free thing, we got GNOME... and that hasn't turned out to be all bad, has it?

I guess I'm feeling a little better about .net now... Earlier I only thought of the whole mess as a pain in the ass, probably because it was something innovative (gasp!) from redmond. Hope they'll succeed building this!
__
Greets, Øyvind Berg ~ ËlaC|n

--
__ elacin

Missing the point by miles by Uksi · 2001-07-09 11:26 · Score: 5

Instead of calling a developer much more highly experienced than you a troll, you should read and not skim the articles for possible bitching points. In fact, if anything, your post is on the verge of a flamebait, as you miss both of Miguel's points.</bitchsession>

The IDE issue. Have you developed large software in Linux and using recent Visual Studio? Sure, you can use vi and man, but you do not get things accomplished as quickly or as conveniently. vi has a significant learning curve, whereas Visual Studio IDE is sit down and start typing, and man is not as quick and convenient in retrieval and cross-referencing of the information. Compare putting cursor over the API call you just typed, pressing 'F1' (or is it Ctrl+F1? some keystroke, anyway) in Visual Studio IDE and getting a documentation page, then scrolling down, clicking on a related function and getting the help for it. Think of doing the same function with vi and man. Not nearly as convenient. And does man have cross-referenced, searcahble and indexed tutorials, guides, overviews, references to obscure APIs or APIs that may not be installed on the system? Point is, developing with Visual Studio is just damn convenient, and there are very few Linux tools in development that begin to approach the quality of the Visual Studio IDE. Take it from someone who coded both on Windows, Tru64 (Digital Unix back then), Solaris and Linux.

The DLL issue. This is where you missed the point so far it's not even funny. You are talking about versioning problems (old libraries and such). Now, tell me, if Miguel makes such a big deal out of versioning problems, why isn't it even mentioned on the Mono FAQ page or the issue touched/discussed at any kind of length anywhere? I bet the answer's gonna strike you like a heart attack strikes Dick Cheney: Miguel isn't talking about versioning. There is NO DLL hell (believe me, the versioning problems are not near the hell Miguel has in mind) when you are developing libraries using a statically-typed, procedural language like C. That's because the .so and .dll dynamic library mechanisms are designed to provide procedural APIs (i.e. APIs consisiting of statically-typed functions) and they do it well.

However, if you have ever tried to use object-oriented languages such as C++ with either of the DLL mechanisms (they are for all practical purposes the same) and tried to either provide an object-oriented API or use an object-oriented API, you will learn what the DLL hell means. It means that there is no elegant, straightforward solution to having object-oriented APIs with the DLL mechanisms, everything is a kludge, a hack. And the widely-used hack of exposing the object-oriented API thru a few access C methods (and lotsa casting), means that the client of the library must use the same ABI. And what does that mean? That means constrained to the same programming language, the same compiler (compilers often have different ABIs), and even to certain versions of the same compiler if the ABIs change from version to version. So the DLL hell is when you see a gcc-2.95-built C++ library that you'd love to use in your Delphi app, but you can't. You can't use the Solaris C++ compiler with that library. You can't even use gcc version 3.0 with that library, unless you force it to use the older ABI. (I may be wrong as to exactly which versions of gcc have the differing ABIs, but the point stands.)

I'll give you a real life example. There is a fabulous, free Windows app called Buzz. The plug-ins for that application must all be written in C++ and compiled with Visual C++. In other words, poor, yet talented developers (and in smaller European countries there are plenty) who can't afford Visual C++ 5.0 or 6.0, can't use their existing Delphi or Borland C++ compiler or the win32 port of gcc compiler. Intel C++ compiler? Fogghetaboutit. Raw talent can't contribute--just because the object-oriented-API-enabling DLL hack forces that to be the case.

You don't feel nearly as much heat in the Linux environment because nearly damn everything is built with the same compiler, using close versions (and using C). But you go to some Unix OS machine where the OS and a lot of the libraries are built using the vendor's provided compiler and you taste the hell. You try using an object-oriented Pascal compiler (FreePascal) with a C++ library and you're shit out of luck. Have Python use that C++ library? Can't do directly, gotta write messy translation layers. Same goes for almost any scripting language. Should I keep going with the examples or do you get the point?

Now compare that to Mono. Mono will let you write an OO API library in C++, and use it from something like Python like a normal object, with very little syntactical moronisms.

<bitchsession>So don't label Miguel as a Microsoft cheerleader in hopes of getting the Slashdot crowd moderating your inattentive butt up. And take that 'must consider only one view, must stick to one view' way of writing "eloquent" speeches and high school essays and stick it up where the sun don't shine. Because the world is gray and while Miguel may not subscribe to your views, labeling a developer that contributes so fucking much to the Linux community as a puppet of the Microsoft marketing machine is purely ignorant and ungrateful. In fact, as an aspiring software engineer, it hurts me that you dare use words "rational software engineer" with such an ignorant, non-software engineer viewpoint, as any rational, experienced software engineer that practices object oriented programming will tell you that anything that promotes reuse, avoids having to write a ton of extra code and avoids the above-described real DLL hell, is going to look at this free, open-source initiative (Mono) and say "Thank god, I was waiting for this." You do not nearly realize the kind of freedom and the kind of time savings that Mono will yield in medium and large software projects, something that was previously avaialble only on the Windows platform and for a shitload o' money (Windows + all the dev tools).</bitchsession>

Re:Missing the point by miles by QuoteMstr · 2001-07-09 12:21 · Score: 1

Ever hear of COM? Corba? They already solved this problem. Mono and NET are unneeded bloat.
Re:Missing the point by miles by ethereal · 2001-07-09 12:56 · Score: 1

In fact, if anything, your post is on the verge of a flamebait,...

Fair enough, in retrospect.
Have you developed large software in Linux and using recent Visual Studio?

Yes, and (fairly large) yes. And I still don't see what the big deal is. Learning curve is a relative thing - having been used to vi, I found the notepad editor to be incredibly difficult to use. All of the interface information I need on Linux is available via man, apropos, and zillions of source code examples on the 'net. My main impression of the VS documentation is that it explained how to do the easy stuff very well, but explanations of difficult stuff were inaccurate or missing. There seems to be about one way to do things in the VS mindset, and heaven help you if you picked an alternative approach 'cause it ain't documented anywhere.
I think I'll bow to your impressive OO explanation, and admit that maybe I did misunderstand Miguel's point (I'm not sure how I could have jumped from his words to your meaning, but oh well). I'll also point out, though, that the interface issues you bring up aren't a problem if you have the source code for everything. Linking to binary-only proprietary code is a problem that's already been solved. It may not always be the solution that you like or can use, but it's there - just use the source. That's the real reason that this hasn't been an issue on Linux.
I'll give Microsoft credit for pushing SOAP so that there's a way to provide (essentially, since it's XML) source-level interfaces across the ABI and machine barriers, but it remains to be seen if they'll really use XML, or just embed chunks of Microsoft object/byte code in an XML wrapper. I haven't seen them implement a real open standard yet, so you'll have to understand why I'm not holding my breath. You remember, these are the folks who have, on the record, admitted to trying to fool developers into locking themselves into Microsoft extensions. Does the tiger change his stripes?
And take that 'must consider only one view, must stick to one view' way of writing "eloquent" speeches and high school essays and stick it up where the sun don't shine.

Thanks, I think, but really I was never this inspired in HS :) IIRC I never said there was only one view, I said that Miguel went too far towards only covering one side of the issue. I specifically said that there were good things about .NET, but I didn't hear Miguel admit to any of the bad things. There's more than one way to look at things - there are also people who are well paid to present the Microsoft way, and so it hurts to see a hacker that I respect doing it for them.
Because the world is gray and while Miguel may not subscribe to your views, labeling a developer that contributes so fucking much to the Linux community as a puppet of the Microsoft marketing machine is purely ignorant and ungrateful.

Like I said, I use Gnome, I like it, and I'm certainly not putting my code up against Miguel's (hint: I lose, big time). But he's a public figure, like it or not, and so any jackass on the street (like me) is entitled to an opinion on said public figure's utterances. And IMHO he's shooting his movement in the foot, or at least loading the gun.
In fact, as an aspiring software engineer, it hurts me that you dare use words "rational software engineer" with such an ignorant, non-software engineer viewpoint, as any rational, experienced software engineer that practices object oriented programming will tell you that anything that promotes reuse, avoids having to write a ton of extra code and avoids the above-described real DLL hell, is going to look at this free, open-source initiative (Mono) and say "Thank god, I was waiting for this." You do not nearly realize the kind of freedom and the kind of time savings that Mono will yield in medium and large software projects, something that was previously avaialble only on the Windows platform and for a shitload o' money (Windows + all the dev tools).

As a practicing software engineer, I wish you luck. I hope things turn out the way that you and Miguel see it - that truly would be a great world to work in. I don't see that coming to pass, at least as things are going now, but I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
I don't have any problem with the stated goals of Mono (other than the usual gripe that it would be nice to not always let Microsoft define the battlefield), I just think Miguel could present a better argument by saying how great Mono is, rather than spending all his time saying how great .NET is and then saying "oh yeah, and Mono will be like .NET but better". But what the heck, I'm not an internationally famous free software luminary, so it's probably the case that you should believe him rather than me.

--
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

Where is dotGNU in this? by segoave · 2001-07-09 11:53 · Score: 3

I haven't seen any mention of dotGNU in any of this talk about .NET.

Re:Where is dotGNU in this? by small_dick · 2001-07-09 16:07 · Score: 2

No kidding. I'd rather see someone do better than MS and .NYET, not just follow the bandwagon like Gnome appears to be doing.

How hard is Miguel going to have to scrub to get Bill Gate's shit off his nose?

Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.

--

Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.

Here you go. by Derek+Pomery · 2001-07-09 11:53 · Score: 1

http://www.skeptictank.org/gbush.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/5767/essays /repubs.html
http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/news/file004.h tml

Amazing what a google search can do...

--
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.

The .Net Sevices Vacuumm by martinduffy · 2001-07-09 12:09 · Score: 1

I think that the thing that is being missed is that Microsoft could care less what you write the apps with. They just want to contol the chokepoints and charge the toll for each transaction. That is where the money is for them. What are you going to do when you can't pay your Electric bill online because the Power company is using MS Passport and you do not have an account? By building tools that work *with* the MS services *even though they do not have to* is playing into Microsoft's hand. Unless some "open source" opens up a authentication portal and other services that are the heart of .Net the only one that will work will be Microsofts and the corps will end up using MS's services.

--
Martin Duffy

Re: GW Bush quote by jibs · 2001-07-09 12:11 · Score: 1

"I don't know that the shrub should be considered president, nor should he be considered a patriot."
- me (an ashamed-because-of-Bush patriot who's a happy atheistic-leaning agnostic) 7/2001

:)

http://www.commondreams.org

and your skills extend to...? by child_of_mercy · 2001-07-09 12:17 · Score: 1

what?

hanging out on his site and bitching?

What open source is largely about is stopping bitching and going and doing things in the way you think is right.

If you don't like it go make something better

I'm waiting....

--
'There is a Light that never goes out.'

the real question by janpod66 · 2001-07-09 12:19 · Score: 3

In the O'Reilly article, the author says that Miguel is open minded. [...] With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment.

Indeed. And the question is not why some people still don't get it, the real question is why it took the people on the Gnome project until 2001 to realize this. After all, the programming environment and language technology represented by C#/.NET predates the Gnome project by decades. Why didn't they have an open mind at the beginning?

And, equally important, why is their (and your) vision still limited to copying Microsoft? Are they (and you) simply not familiar with the past 40+ years of systems research, or the state of the art?

Re:the real question by dudle · 2001-07-09 12:28 · Score: 2

And, equally important, why is their (and your) vision still limited to copying Microsoft? Are they (and you) simply not familiar with the past 40+ years of systems research, or the state of the art?
I think that when a good idea shows itself (like .NET in this case), the open source community is by far the best at imitating it and making it better. At least that is what I strongly believe. It is not limited to Microsoft but since they have such a huge footprint on the market, they may have more ideas that get known than others; I'll give you that.
Between us, I do not have the pretention to being familiar with the past 40+ years of systems research in itselft and/or the state of the art in all subjects. I suggest you elaborate a bit, it is a little confusing.

--
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
Re:the real question by janpod66 · 2001-07-09 14:07 · Score: 2

Between us, I do not have the pretention to being familiar with the past 40+ years of systems research in itselft and/or the state of the art in all subjects.
I think that's at the heart of the problem: more open source developers need to spend more time getting familiar with the history of the field, and they need to think more about their choices. For open source, we vote with our feet. And if too many people aren't well informed or don't think much about their choices, the wrong projects will get all the support simply because they have good PR or push some hot-button issue.
I think that when a good idea shows itself (like .NET in this case), the open source community is by far the best at imitating it and making it better.
So, in the spirit of more reflection, for starters, here is a question to ponder: why didn't the open source community exhibit the same fervor about Java?

Not so confusing by signingis · 2001-07-09 12:43 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, I know this is Anti-Open-Source (TM), but I think that GAIM is clearly trademark infringement. Adding one letter does not mean you're safe, any more than a clone of Windows named GWindows would be reasonable.

Or X Windows. ; )

Seeing as how it's highly unlikely that any person who isn't already using Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris et. all has even heard of GAIM, how is this confusing? Even if a windows user manages to download the an rpm or the source, what are they going to do with it? Install Linux on their box so they can run it? Of course! They'll probably just try to "run this program from current location". ;p

AOL has a Linux client now, but who would want to use it?

...the fact that a trademark has not been officially registered in no way means it isn't valid. Lawyer-speak at its best.

Yes it does. Trademark "infringement" cases have to be litigated, otherwise that trademark can be forfeit. Also, "Fight fire with fire" et cetera, et cetera... Am I wrong? Probably.

--

I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.

Re:Nitpickety by steveha · 2001-07-09 12:46 · Score: 2

Last I looked, a "troll" was someone who just sits back and reads without contributing.

Um, no. That would be a "lurker".

A "troll" is someone who writes a deliberatly inflammatory post, and then laughs at anyone who replies. For example, a troll might contribute an article claiming that Miguel should never have created GNOME, but rather helped with KDE; that would almost certainly result in a flood of replies. The troll doesn't have to agree with what he writes; he may not care at all. What he cares about is getting other people to reply.

In other words, a troll is a person who tries to make other people waste their time, and laughs at them when they do.

steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely

Re:what exactly is c#? by Owensellwood · 2001-07-09 12:53 · Score: 3

C# is, if I am not mistaken, a blend of Visual Basic Elements with C (++?) syntax, minus pointers and other potential "disaster-engine" type constructs, all stirred into a bland Windows Only framework. Mono, if I am not mistaken, is the disease that makes you miss 4 months of school for kissing someone.

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-K

Not really that big of a deal by Cerlyn · 2001-07-09 13:26 · Score: 2

Now IANAL, but keep in mind that all sorts of GPL'ed software is compiled on a regular basis on MS Visual C, Borland C, etc., compilers. Makefiles are often adapted to support them. That being said, compiling GPL'ed software on a proprietary platform in many cases is allowable. Keep in mind the GPL is a *redistribution* license (to another party); not a limitation of rights already given under copyright when you receive a copy.

Unless Microsoft puts a clause in saying that software designed and/or compiled on an MS .NET system must be run on a Microsoft platform or at least under a non-GNU system, there is no reason one can not do so. Proprietary modules are loaded into Linux kernels all the time. But don't laugh; Internet Explorer has langauge requiring Windows versions to be run under MS Windows, and I seem to recall MS Visual Studio having a clause stating it was only to be used to develop MS Windows applications.

Re:Not really that big of a deal by flacco · 2001-07-09 16:04 · Score: 1

Now IANAL, but keep in mind that all sorts of GPL'ed software is compiled on a regular basis on MS Visual C, Borland C, etc., compilers.
this whole Slashdot crowd is way too much into anal.

--
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Re:Not really that big of a deal by szomb · 2001-07-09 22:22 · Score: 1

What in the name of god gives a company the right to dictate what platform can or cannot be used to run its software?! Imagine opening a new book one day and reading "Doubleday grants you the license to read, peruse or skim the enclosed material, provided you do so in a SomeBrand(tm)-manufactured reclining chair, not a couch, a bed, or a reclining chair made by anone other than SomeBrand." It's fortunate that no one gives a fuck about issues like this, so that we don't actually have to legislate anything and just let big companies rule the planet, huh? Thank god for Democracy!

--
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe

.NET - The siren call of many languages. by SuperKendall · 2001-07-09 14:08 · Score: 2

To start with, let me say that I've been doing Java work for some time - client side stuff based on Swing, CAD sort of development, server side stuff with J2EE (Session/Entity work, not just JSP's or servlets). Behind that I have a small history of C, C++, Scheme and Lisp (well, really ELISP) programming. I only mention that to illistrate what biases I may start with.

After reading a lot of articles about .NET, a few thoughts come to mind about the issue of language independance. It may seem like a good idea, but you can already see some practical areas that make you wonder if it will all really work out.

Are cross-language components really that good an idea?

I can see Miguel's facsination with this aspect. After all, wouldn't it be great to have one set of components you use in every language?

I think in practice though, the idea falls short. Look at this exceprt from an article written by the developer of Eiffel#:

For example, overloading is part of the CLS at the consumer level; this means that a language without overloading (enforcing the simple rule that, within the context of a class, an operation name denotes one and only one operation) must be able to use and inherit components from other languages that define overloaded operations. In Eiffel# we have resolved the issue through a clearly specified demangling algorithm: for example if you are inheriting from a C++ class with two routines called foo, the first one will be known as foo and the second one as something like foo_INTEGER_REAL, with a name built from the signature.

Now to me, having to use component access methods like foo_INTEGER_REAL means that unless components are written in a language in close alignmnet with the CLR (like, say , C#) you are either going to try and find some components that were written more with your language in mind or (and this is a key point here) you are going to switch to the language that most componenets have really been developed for (again, that will mean C#). Sure a developer might start developing in Eiffel#, but how long will it be before frustrations of working with mangled method calls make one switch to C#? In this way MS presents a seemingly easy path that goes even further to marginalize languages like Eiffel and move any remaining developers away from true development in that language.

Note that I think that at the level of API's for cross-system communication that might be acceptible - but not for something you might use constantly like a set of collections.

Varying language performance?

On aother (very distant) tangent, the design of MSIL to be well-suited to JIT compilers seems great. Again though, I wonder how well it will work out for langages removed in some way from C#.

I bring up Eiffel# again as an example - right now the CLR (or MSIL, I think) does not support generic types - Eiffel# has implemennted that feature on top of the existing workings of .NET.

What will that mean to a developer? I would think that operations a developer is used to thinking of a "cheap" computationaliy will now be somewhat unknown in expense. The might be cheap, but they might have become a lot more sluggish depending on how well the language fits on top of the CLR and MSIL. While the motivation to switch to C# for a better understood performance profile is much more remote that my previous example, it still seems to undermine the desire to use other languages (a quick side note is that in fact Eiffel# appeared to perform roughly the same, so this argument may have a shaky foundation. I think C++ would be a more interesting test).

The Tool
One of the more interesting facets to me is that across the various articles, multiple people have been mesmerized by "The Tool", or the IDE for .NET development. Perhaps it really is all that and a bag of chips plus a cookie, but then again I also get the imnpression from multiple people that they have not been keeping up on the world of IDE's.

Java in particular has an amazing assortment of IDE's, from TogetherJ (truly an astounding product) to Netbeans and others. I daresay that Miguel is wrong in thinking that only .NET can generate a WSDL definition so easily, I seem to recall that a number of Java IDE's had that ability already or would have it soon (withink a month or so). Not that I use most of them, still sticking with Emacs for the most part.

To me, the ability they were stating of debugging from Eiffel into C++ and then into some other language seems not so much a dream as a nightmare, or at best a cool tech demo. I think as a developer I would much rather debug from C++ into more C++ (translated from the original SNOBOL# or whatever, backparsed from the MSIL) - but I guess that's too much work for them.

In short, I'm not really sure that .NET really is the boon to other languages that Microsoft would like us to think it is - instead it seems more like the strategy of Visual J++ on a grand scale, enticing develoipers in with one really good tool and slowly leading them eventually to work the Microsoft Way. It may still be a useful system for otehr reasons mentioned like the language metadata and versioning, but I think the cross language support is a bit of a delusional feature and if people think there will be much real .NET work done in anything but C#/C++ (and possibly VB), I believe they are mistaken.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:.NET - The siren call of many languages. by szomb · 2001-07-09 21:56 · Score: 1

The fact of the matter remains that languages like C++ allow you to overload functions and other languages like Eiffel do not. How would *you* go about getting them working together in the manner that .NET claims/attempts? If your_lang knows only about subroutine names, what do you do to make it understand that foo(int) and foo(char *) are two distinct functions? I don't see your point as a score against the architecture. Sure, it might be a pain in the ass to call mangled functions sometimes. The authors of the standard class libraries are going to exercise proper programming care and not use function overloading spuriously and without justification, right?

--
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe

Re:.NET (mono explained, link) by barneyfoo · 2001-07-09 14:15 · Score: 2

Miguel de Icaza said that the first implementations of mono will run on linux and windows, and that other platforms will come later (a linux to bsd port would be easy, I think).

It's also interesting to note that he thinks the .NET framework (the ECMA approved portions only, not passport et. al.) will be the dominant developer platform for the next 20 years. Does anyone know how long C has been the dominant development platform? Probably longer than 20 years. Of course, in 20 years, smart robots, 1 million times smarter than us (You do the moore's law math, I might be off) will make the earth a paradise and forever consider their human creators as those lovable, misunderstood gateways to the future hive mind.

Patents by Karl+J.+Smith · 2001-07-09 14:19 · Score: 1

My concern is that there are (or will be, or have been already) patents filed that cover some parts of the .NET protocols. At the point at which they're granted, open source solutions aren't possible.

Worse, by going along with .NET up to that point, you'll suddenly find yourself stuck.

Re:.NET bandwagon by GPLwhore · 2001-07-09 14:37 · Score: 1

It is going to be funny to watch MS introducing and actually implementing concept of that "long standing Sun effort."
I wonder how Sun CEO will react to this seeing his "child" being finally properly implemented after being fucked over for years inside of his own company.

--
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.

It's a trap! by Mongoose · 2001-07-09 14:50 · Score: 1

MSPT is tricking the monkeys into coding it for them! Those cheeky monkeys indeed. "We can get them to code it them chnage the license. We fire all our programmers and just repeat! yay!"

=)

BTW: Mononucleosis == Glandular Fever by JPMH · 2001-07-09 15:44 · Score: 2

In case anybody else has been wondering about this apparently virulent American plague, that's never been heard of on this side of the Atlantic, Mononucleosis translates into English as Glandular Fever (Epstein-Barr virus).

wow a lot of trolling. did you read the links? by steadph · 2001-07-09 16:07 · Score: 1

I could see that Miguel is a visionary. visionaries are *always* scorned by alot of people who don't understand their ideas until you give people a few years to assimilate the ideas.. then they understand.

from http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6527632.html? tag=mn_hd

"Miguel de Icaza, Mono founder and Ximian chief technology officer, said in an interview that he believes Microsoft's technology is worth emulating."

The keyword here is *emulating* the .NET strategy. Miquel wants to have an alternative to this .NET technology. not embracing Microsoft as a corporation, but the .NET technology.

Hey, even R. Stallman another visionary, endorsed mono! the alternative to .NET.

and another quote here:

"the move could increase the importance and popularity of the .Net strategy while diminishing Microsoft's control over the software itself. With .Net, Microsoft plans to sell its services such as address books or e-commerce, as well as the software plumbing that powers those services over the Internet."

You want MS to control the way you want to use the internet? and be potentially a big brother to everyone? you want your freedom and privacy away?

so instead of bitching about what Miguel has done, he tried something about it... an alternative to .NET.

Why we should back Mono by megaduck · 2001-07-09 16:08 · Score: 4

Disclaimer: This is a blatant anti-MS pro-Linux rant. People who think I'm full of it are encouraged to e-mail me or reply instead of moderating down without explanation.

One thing I see a lot on Slashdot is people bitching about Linux "trying to be like Windows". At first glance, it seems like a valid complaint. Surely the efforts being put into Samba/Wine/etc. could be used for better things than trying to be compatible with MS's weird-ass proprietary standards? Now why should we work on Mono and quite possibly encourage the widespread adoption of .NET tools? Why, indeed? I think we should back these projects because we want to castrate Microsoft once and for all.

Think about it. Say these projects succeed and you're shopping for a new operating system in 2003. Windows XXXP plays all of your games, runs all of your apps, is .NET compatible, and costs 120 dollars. Red Hat Linux version 19.3 plays all of your games, runs all of your apps, is .NET compatible and FREE (as in beer). Which one are you going to choose? Hmm... Tough. There's only two ways that products can compete in the marketplace: features and price. There's no way MS can compete on price, so if we match them on features (compatibility is a feature, folks!) then Windows is good as buried. It's the classic "embrace and extend" strategy that we're all too familiar with.

Even better, once OSS gains control of the desktop, then MS loses the ability to push Hailstorm authentication. MSN will go down the tubes. MS .NET dies a sad and lonely death and .GNU inherits the Web Services world. At the very least MS will be forced to compete for once, instead of simply throwing their weight around.

Mono (coupled with WINE, Samba, and a few others) enables us to play this scenario out. Microsoft knows this. That's why they're so panicky and their executives keep making all of these ridiculous "GPL is Satan" speeches. No matter what anyone says, this is a fight. Let's back the good people at Ximian and make sure we win.

--
This .sig for rent.

Re:Why we should back Mono by X-Nc · 2001-07-09 21:27 · Score: 1

Red Hat Linux version 19.3 plays all of your games, runs all of your apps, is .NET compatible and FREE (as in beer).
It's very likely that it will also be FREE (as in speech). And that will make it an even more powerful choice. The average user may not understand the difference between the two but the industry is catching on and it's definitely making a difference.

---

--
-- If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.

Re:Bush "quote" by njdj · 2001-07-09 17:11 · Score: 1

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush

Can you give me the source of this quote?

He made it up. And now it will be re-quoted endlessly until people think it is "authentic".

We need cross-language interoperability, not .NET by pastie · 2001-07-09 18:04 · Score: 1

Ok, this is completely a personal opinion and so many of you will disagree. It is not intended as flamebait.

I feel that there _is_ a need for cross-language interoperability, of a standardised nature. However, I think that following Microsofts lead on .NET is just handing the `win' to them by implementing their proprietary standards on basically every other platform (*nix).

For a long time, interfacing languages has been more difficult than I feel necessary, but how can these problems be overcome when some languages support features (such as overloading, functor objects, higher-order functions) when others do not? Do we opt for the lowest common denominator (procedural interface)?

It would be fantastic to simply be able to use _any_ different languages together to create your apps, but how is .NET going to solve this problem?

</vent>

Forgive me if i am a bit dense by q-soe · 2001-07-09 18:56 · Score: 1

I know this might seem dense but isnt there an issue of copyright in the case of reverse engineered code ?

If there is then doesnt this all smell a little fishy ?

As a microsoft server guy i have been and seen and looked at .Net and i dont see it has much to offer in some ways - but it will likely be a standard in some ways.

The fact is that even though i use MS products for work and on this machine my webservers are all FreeBSD and i run Slackware on my server here - i cant help but thinking there are products out there that already do all of this and with better developed implementations ?

As i said forgive me if i appear dense

--
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....

Re:Nitpickety by q-soe · 2001-07-09 19:08 · Score: 1

Umm then forgive me if i am wrong but doesnt that make the post a troll post - that is judging by the amount of replies ?

I am only new to this stuff but having been called a troll before for expressing an opinion out of the ordinary i thought a troll was anyone who disagreed with the person applying the label ?

Am i wrong ?
(and no i am not trolling - i AM asking a question)

--
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....

What exactly is c[hash]? by Martin+Spamer · 2001-07-09 19:19 · Score: 1

In the UK '#' is called 'hash' and to hash something is too bodge it or mess something up. Rather ironic (or should that be iconic? :), under the circumstances because it seems to me that C[hash] pronounced 'cash' in UK English is actually the broken J++ product, broken because it does not comply with the Java standard.

Hailstorm by Popocatepetl · 2001-07-09 20:03 · Score: 1

When was the last time you were in a pleasant hailstorm? Sure, the balls of ice look neat as they hurtle toward your car, but they rarely do anything good when they hit. Hail wrecks stuff.

Actually, Microsoft is using reverse psychology. Make it sound so bad that people decide it *can't* be that bad.

.NET is legitimized by Mr.+McD · 2001-07-09 20:05 · Score: 2

At first I thought Mono was a good idea. But upon further thinking, one can quickly realize that this announcement make .NET valid. Sure, C# is very cool and has potential to do things better than Java. But now, Ximian is playing into Microsofts hands by investing a ton of work into making .NET available for other platforms. Unfortunatly, I think Sun blew it withJava in reguards to .NET. Let's take a look at how:

Sun

Create a cool language and keep it in house so no big scarry companies can prevert it and in turn, let no one improve it
Release the initial version for Windows and Solaris and let everone else (Mac OS, Linux, etc) fend for themselves.
Get some opensource developers to create a Linux version of the JDK and take the credit
Create a UI set that is heavy and slow to use and offer no convienient way to package a double clickable application accross platforms
Get opensource developers looking elsewhere because the language is not open.

And now the MS way:

Make the opensource world hate you
Announce a cool software initiative and language and say it's only for Windows
Release the specs to a standards body
Offer a semi-open source version of the language and spec
Get all the angry open source developers to develop the implementation for you on every platform you're not willing to develop for.
Make .NET a more viable platform than Java

If Ximian suceeds .NET will be available for as many mainstream platforms as Java. With MS putting the C# reference on FreeBSD, it's a pretty good indication that .NET will live on Mac OS X too. So, by the time it's ready .NET will have Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and who know what other platforms will be involved here too. And the best part is, MS just had to publish it as a standard. Sun, are you listening?

Could this be linked to the funding of Ximian by IIO · 2001-07-09 20:20 · Score: 1

I'm open minded about .NET and C#. Actually I like both. I like Java too. And GNOME! However, before I go any further evaluating the situation, could someone enlighten me as to whether Ximian entering the .NET arena has anything to do with the future plans (funding, etc.) of Ximian? In other words, who's paying for all of this? (It should cost millions of dollars.) -- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@networkusa.net

--
-- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@speakeasy.net

Another annoying item by item Slashdot responder by Anonymous Coward · 2001-07-09 20:30 · Score: 1

You guys that respond to each and every item putting in your useless two cents whether or not you have a point are very annoying. Take the comment: "The open mind thing, remember?" and "That's exactly what it's about. The implications. Read on.". Then you idiots get modded up by other like-minded idiots who also post to Slashdot in this same fashion.

Re:.NET (mono explained, link) by gorilla · 2001-07-09 20:39 · Score: 2

C has never been the dominant development platform. COBOL is.

New York Times Link by cbowland · 2001-07-09 21:01 · Score: 2

Here is a link to a New York Times article regarding the DotGNU project.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

--

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.

Trolls (was Re:Nitpickety) by marnanel · 2001-07-09 21:11 · Score: 2

The usual meaning is the one to do with inflammatory posting, as given above. (See the entry on troll in the Jargon File.) Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people on Slashdot have heard the term, but not understood it, and use it themselves as a fairly meaningless insult for people whose opinions they disagree with.
my plan

--
GROGGS: alive and well and living in

Re:Trolls (was Re:Nitpickety) by q-soe · 2001-07-10 06:45 · Score: 1

ahh now i understand - thanks for that

--
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....

Re:We need cross-language interoperability, not .N by szomb · 2001-07-09 21:40 · Score: 1

Well, my understanding anyway: you can use _any_ language - as long as you have a .NET compiler for it. Said compiler generates code for their VM - think of it as if you had compilers for languages other than Java that generated JVM-runnable code. Now you add that there is a common class format that these compilers can adhere to. Now you can "write a class in langA, derive it in langB, and instantiate it in C." Personally, I am not familiar enough with it to say whether or not I like it. At first glance however, it sounds to me like a step in the right direction.

--
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe

I Weep For You All by CrazyLegs · 2001-07-09 21:58 · Score: 2

Here's a recipe for you all. Can you guess what it makes?

re-brand OLE, COM, DCOM, VB, and a slew of other old products (otherwise known as 'tarting up the whore')
throw in a touch of SOAP (Yum!)
give the world a new useless language called C#
mix liberally with target-marketing and the usual MS FUD and misdirection

Give up? It's called .NET kiddies! Besides SOAP, where the hell is the innovation here? That's ok though, Miguel. You go ahead and get C# working on Linux 'cause we all need a retarded cousin to play with the great Java support the Open-Sourcers have come to love.

Seriously, though. Why would Ximian waste the effort giving .NET a seal of approval when it has so much unfinished business on other products? There is nothing in .NET that MS has tried before with little success. This MS's modus operandi; rebrand the crap you already have and add a pinch of new stuff.

Oh, and for those folks arguing that MS is going to hand over pieces of .NET to the standards bodies - which is somehow better than what Sun does with Java - get a grip and read your history books. MS trots out this hoary old promise with some regularity. The way it works is this: find an international standards committee that is strapped for cash and respect, give it cash and MS designs, stand back and let the validation wash ovr Redmond.

Really people. This validation of .NET is just about the stupidest thing I've heard all year (next to the *nix kiddies who claim no one is using Java anymore...).

*sigh* I feel better now.

--

CrazyLegs

"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.

There's one distinct reason- equality. by Perianwyr+Stormcrow · 2001-07-09 22:03 · Score: 1

Microsoft is the market leader right now. Nothing to do about that currently... This isn't 1985, people won't happily be incompatible with their fellows because all this here computer stuff is so durned highfalutin new. So, if Linux doesn't have MS.NET equality, open operating systems might have to continue to fight the same backward struggle that they've been fighting with so many sorts of applications.

It sounds like giving up, it sounds like rolling over for MS- My first impression was that before I really thought about it. But now that I've considered it a bit more, it's not an outright drawing of battle lines, it's just shoring up the good old Victor Charlie tunnels for some more guerrilla warfare.

--Perianwyr Stormcrow

--

What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey

Will Mono allow pseudo-binaries to run anywhere? by Sunnan · 2001-07-09 22:25 · Score: 1

A creepy thing with the "write once, run anywhere" is that it, if successful, removes one of the strenghts of free, open source software. See, with free software, any dimwit with an advanced degree in mad-skills-hax0ring can port it to many platforms, so it's already "write once, run anywhere". With byte code interpreters, (pseudo)-binaries will run anywhere, lessening the incentive to give out source and with it freedom.
That is the reason why I will not give .NET, Java and the new Amiga legitimacy. I will stand proudly with a finger up and say "No thanks" to non-free software.

Massive props to free software writers, and this is not in anyway intended to flame the Mono initiative - just that with it may follow unwanted consequenses.

Yes, I'm aware that saying that 'this technology allows bad stuff so we shouldn't allow it' is chicken-shit, DMCA-style arguing but hey... I just hope everything turns out for the better, okay? Do what you will. I'll just sit here and use free software. Thanks.

Stepping of the preaching, loudmouth advocate-but-really-just-a-wannabee-programmer soapbox,
S.

Monkey + Virus = AIDS! My God... by FatSean · 2001-07-09 22:26 · Score: 1

It's all so clear, Miguel is playing into Gates' hands! By calling upon the legend of a virus found in monkeys being the precursor to HIV and AIDS....oh it's too horrible!

--
Blar.

Re:yes, Legacy Windows Box by jmahler · 2001-07-09 23:50 · Score: 1

christ. i gotta handle this?

point by point now- no compiler is included with windows. whoopee. download any number of decent shareware, freeware, or malware compilers from any site you please.
Secure remote admin- umm, yah. you know anything about windows 2000? use the mmc once or twice. retract that statement.
servers if any type? hmmm... advanced, datacenter, nt, 2000, print, smnp, multi-homed routing (ripv1, v2, ospf all compliant), terminal services, file sharing, directory services... the list could go on.
"man pages" - check out 2k's F1 help sections. the best so far, and while lacking to a degree, are far more comprehensive than most need. and hey, if you don't think it's enough, go buy a frickin book. oh, you don't want to spend money on a book? why, is the copyright thing that much of an issue?
file system that can be reconfigured and defrags itself. again- in 2k, Dynamic Disks can be reconfigured (within limits) and hey, there's a myriad of scheduling options.
reasonable graph. tool for reconfig of file sys -see above.
spell checker - not in outlook express primarily (tho it is available there). it's in office. and it does a pretty good job (from 2k up, anyways. :)
smtp - is included
choice of gui- format it and install linux, you picky ass freak. :)
choice of browser- lesse, i got IE 6 beta running, netscape, and opera. i use opera and IE the most. why IE? cause it's actually really good. that's shocking, isn't it? using a product because of its quality instead of its ideology?
WP, Typesetter, spreadsheet, fax program- you WANT those included into windows? oh come on. begging to really push that anti trust suit a lot further, with those.

there's more, but your list wasn't good enough, sorry.
:)

--

--endcycle--

MOD THIS UP by El+Rey · 2001-07-10 00:05 · Score: 1

This article is really good... I've read a little bit about .net, but this article is the first one I've seen that lays out how this is different than what Java has done from a big picture / theoretical perspective.

I thought the sections about the object model, like this statement:

"At the center of the dot-NET framework is an object model, called the Virtual Object System (VOS), and at center of the object model is a type system. This already sets dot-NET apart from the other available component models, which are organized around a programming language (Java), an application interconnection model (CORBA) and a wiring model (COM)."

were particularly interesting.

Quote by pq · 2001-07-10 02:15 · Score: 1

Can you give me the source of this quote?

I thought exactly the same thing. The best ref I found: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.htm l#bush .
(Watch out for the slashcode URL munging!)

The excerpt:

The following exchange took place at the Chicago airport between Robert I. Sherman of American Atheist Press and George Bush, on August 27 1987. Sherman is a fully accredited reporter, and was present by invitation as a member of the press corps. The Republican presidential nominee was there to announce federal disaster relief for Illinois. The discussion turned to the presidential primary:

RS:"What will you do to win the votes of Americans who are atheists?" GB:"I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me." RS:"Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?" GB:"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." RS:"Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?" GB:"Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists."

UPI reported on May 8, 1989, that various atheist organizations were still angry over the remarks.

--
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."

Design goals by nickm · 2001-07-10 04:06 · Score: 1

One item from the FAQ bothers me more than the rest:

Question 6: When will you ship it?
[...]
A rough estimate is that we might be able to run our C# compiler on Linux by the end of the year. That means running the Windows Executable generated by a Microsoft .NET compiler on the Linux platform.

When I was in high school, we all ran OS/2 2.1. It was hep, it was scientificologically advanced, and it sure as hell beat the crap out of DOS and Windows 3.1. We made them PC/Mac wars easy, since OS/2 made things as easy as a Mac while still giving you command prompt windows! LEET STUFF!

But the apps weren't there. We had to scrounge a bit and use DOS apps (fortunately, those still worked), but we knew that sooner or later there would be a kerbillion bajillion OS/2 apps out there and we'd own the world.

Imagine the joy when OS/2 began to support Win16 apps as well! WOw! Now we could run MORE STUFF than those Windows weenies could, and we could do it BETTER because OS/2 wouldn't crash when the Win16 subsystem went pecs-up! Our cuisine reigned supreme!

But developers looked at the available platforms when choosing how to write their apps. "Gosh," Mr. J. Random Hacker said, "I could write for OS/2 and Win16 and Mac, or I could write for Win16 and Mac and let OS/2's Win16 layer handle all the nitty-gritty."

Thus, nobody wrote any apps for OS/2, but wrote them all for Windows instead. The cool feature of OS/2 turned out to be the final nail in its coffin.

So why are we repeating this by making the goal "running the Windows Executable... on the Linux platform."? WHy aren't we doing things the other way around? GNU took off because it wooed the developers with nice EMACS and GCC and other goodies. Why not make it so that people want to develop on and for Linux, and consider the Windows support a nice bonus?

WOuldn't it be fun to say, "If Windows is so great, then why does it have to run Linux apps?" I know it was fun to say about FreeBSD.

--
I noticed

--

--
I noticed

It's getting about time to leave everywhere

semantics by kpeerless · 2001-07-10 04:12 · Score: 1

Slashdotters posting would do us all a favour by not referring to folks prominent in our community as "leaders". Project managers etc. perhaps but not "leaders". I don't have, nor do I want, a "leader". I'm too bloody old for this bull shit. We're starting to sound like one of our wretched, traditional political parties. Mr. Icaza may be a nice man, but my leader he's not.

I'm not saying it's a bad design... by SuperKendall · 2001-07-10 13:50 · Score: 1

I agree that it seems like a resonable way to handle such a situation.

However, if you're designing a library what do you do? Do you ignore overloading and force C++ and other similar languages to make calls like thing.addFoo(foo), or do you create the library with overloading with resulting unpleasant calls like thing.add_FOO( foo ) in other languages, or do you you just add calls for both means?

I'd say whichever way you go, you've got a library good pretty much for one languages' approach and alien in varying degrees to any other language calling into it - or as in the last case you've got a fairly polluted method namespace.

Of course you want to use overloading carefully, but even a careful use can lead to some unpleasant looking interfaces in langauge X that does not support overloading. And in those cases, since use of The Tool is the overriding concern to the programmer they are more likley to drop the language with the offending interface to a set of components than The Tool!

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:I'm not saying it's a bad design... by szomb · 2001-07-12 04:58 · Score: 1

Depending on the mangling algorithm in use, it may not be that hard. add_int_long() isn't so bad, is it? Much better than add_sIsLblahblah.

Even if they're mangled to something like the latter there are plenty of workarounds that could be implemented. Anything from aliases (like convert a call to add_int to add_sIblah) to separate mappings fed to the compiler, whatever.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is this: these kinds of interoperability problems are inevitable. We're talking about any language linking with any other - this is a powerful idea. If you don't want to have problems, either don't use a language w/o overloading, don't use a library that overloads, or stick to a native compiler for your platform and ignore the initiative altogether.

DISCLAIMER: posted drunk, stoned and tired. might not make much sense.

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Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe

That is a powerful idea by SuperKendall · 2001-07-12 14:08 · Score: 1

Although add_int_long() is a bit easier on teh eyes, I have to say that I still would feel annoyed using it every day. I can see that perhaps with enough tweaking, it might end up being OK for general use, but I remain suspicious...

I agree that cross-language linking is a powerful concept. However, I think that this particular attempt ends up not being exactly so much cross-langauge linking as cramming as much a language that will fit into the given design, and having it all spit out the same code on the backend. To me it seems like it could have been done just as easily in Java bytecode, it's just that MS went to the trouble to write really great cross-compilers for the MSIL where the compilers for other languages into Java bytecode are more disperate and not really integrated with one another. I think a much more interesting project than an open-source ".NET" would be an IDE that combined a number of these implementations of various languages compiling into Java bytecode and wrap them in one IDE that could also debug between languages.

To me, the fundamental goal of the whole .NET thing (at least the CLR/MSIL aspect) really seems to be a VM style design only more oriented to performance than Java VM's. The cross-langauge feature to me feels something of an afterthought, and I think it really grew out of a need for a migration path for both VB and C++ programmers that were starting to eye Java than a true love of many languages (though I don't doubt that the people working on the "#" versions of languages have every bit as much fire for them as any other devotee of said language).

Perhaps I am somewhat tainted by my fringe involvement with the language Eidola (posted to /. some time back). There, you have a langauge designed to have many "notations" (text and/or graphical form, like possibly a C++ and Ruby form [Note - not sure either form would be possible to any great extent! Still wide open really.]) spring from a comman mathematical foundation - in Eidola one could imagine debugging through code written in one notation even if it had been written in some entirely different notation, without any effort on the part of the debugger or notation presentation layer.

As I mentioned before, being able to debug from C++ into a perl library which in turn inherits from a VB base object doesn't actually sound that great to me in practice. It's a cool tech demo but for real world situations where most people only know a language or two at best (and sometimes even one is in question!) it seems like it could lead to trouble, and also over-reliance on the one development tool which is capabile of doing that. Again, I'd much rather debug all the code as if it had been written in whatever language I'm actually working in.

As for not using a library that overloads - that's where I'm not sure you'll have a choice. Given that it seems to be taking a very Java like direction in most other areas, I note that really the most powerful thing about Java is not so much the language or VM's, but the very rich and powerful set of standard libraries. If they go that way then you'll have the choice of using many powerful libraries with overloading (as they would orient them toward C#) or having almost no libraries at all. As you say, you could just ignore the initative altogether but I think the draw of a very modern and powerful tool will pull in some developers from other langauges who then will mostly end up migrating to C#.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Windows NT4 Guides by RazorJ_2000 · 2001-07-22 09:15 · Score: 1

Thanks for the NT4 guide location.

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pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]

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