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Petreley on Ximian and Mono
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Bad Ximian. In this week's Infoworld opinion piece Nicholas Petreley points out how Ximian's .Net Clone, Mono, may very well be the "Destroy Open Source" Trojan horse that Microsoft has been desperately seeking. Thanks Nick for the wake up slap. We needed it." I don't understand how Ximian expects to succeed either. Lots of other companies have attempted to co-exist with Microsoft in a similar fashion, and they all lasted right up until the instant Microsoft decided to squash them.
Ximian may continue to develop and advocate porting the .NET framework to *nix, however the chances of these developments making it into Gnome itself are next to none.
Anyone who remembers the long technical debate over whether or not to include bonobo (another Ximian technology)in Gnome itself, will tell you that the chances of this making it into the base Gnome package are non-existant.
Considering that bonobo was a Ximian technology that the main Gnome developers were split about 50/50 in opinion over, and the lead guy at Ximian seems to be the only one who supports Mono, the chances of the main guys at Gnome letting this get into the base are non-existant.
So, Mono will only be available (by default that is) through the custom Gnome desktop offered by Ximian. Add that to the fact that anyone looking at this situation will tell you that the chances of mono ever even becoming usable are *very* questionable.
Add *that* to the fact that all most no open-source developer would even consider using Gnome...
In conclusion, Mono is a very disturbing effort IMO, and maybe the head guy at Ximian needs some sleep. But as for being a threat to open-source? It Won't be installed default on *any* distributions, so people will have to go out of their way to use *Ximian* Gnome (which some/many do), then Ximian will have to foce a large majority of open-source developers to base the technology of their applications on a platform created by everyone's least favorite monopoly...
And all this is assuming Mono ever becomes usable, Good luck Ximian!
hmm - on AMD 800 Mhz, 320MB RAM, KDE CVS from last night...
$time kmail
real 0m1.439s
user 0m0.650s
sys 0m0.000s
So KMAIL will be slow if you try to run it when you're loading it from another, non KDE enviroment, it has to load all services.
The upcoming version of KDE 2.2 should give you at least 30-50% speed boost when starting KDE applications.
Hetz (Heunique)
Someone is making one..
Anyway, Sun report has been read by the KDE people also and some of the points are being discussed on the mailing list - feel free to look at it at lists.kde.org
Hetz (Heunique)
There is no such thing as "decent" distributed objects infrastructure now, and won't be for quite a while -- the technology isn't advanced enough to provide model that will provide the design that will provide the standard that will provide the implementation, so all we have (COM, DCOM, Java-based stuff,...) amounts to amateurish attempts to do things with no theory or design behind them. I also have a strong suspicion that neither Microsoft nor Sun and especially not Gnome will originate this design.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
"Well, to be fair, a far larger number of companies have had very lucrative and stable relationships with MS than the converse."
Not even close. Certainly, you have heard of more companies that live in symbiosis with microsoft, but for every one of those, there are probably ten that got squashed that you never even heard about. Funny how that works.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I haven't understood Ximian's strategy from the start. Some important people have already noted that .NET isn't that technically great, that it may or may not be a big security risk, and that it definitely looks like an attempt to kill Java. So why is Ximian so eager to buy into it?
.NET, but given that it's a nascent collection of tools, and that it has no foothold in the consumer market (other than hype), wouldn't it be a better strategy to produce a competing free alternative? Tripping the giant always seems better than sleeping with it...
There may be a lot to
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Except "we" don't all hate it.
Yes, and it would be nice if Microsoft simply released .NET under the GPL as well, but that's not going to happen.
Like it or not, Microsoft controls the desktop, and they will continue to use that leverage to control what technologies are viable on the server. SMB works because it is available on every Microsoft client ever. That means that when the Free Software hackers figure out how to impersonate a Microsoft SMB server we magically gain compatibility with the entire world. This is hard, but it isn't nearly as hard as Microsoft's job of trying to find ways to extend the protocol that don't break backwards compatibility. Once something like Samba exists it basically ties Microsoft's hands. They want desperately to make incompatible changes to the protocol, but they know that if they break any existing applications or clients that their customers might very well get tired of the game and simply switch to Samba.
Which means that Mono has a golden window of opportunity here. If a useful version of Mono can be developed right now, while Microsoft is still trying to win developers to the .NET cause, it could grab a significant marketshare (especially on the server where Linux has serious traction). Microsoft can't make incompatible changes this early in the game, or they will scare everyone away, and if Mono was actually useable, then it's existence would serve as a deterrent to Microsoft trying to shaft their customers down the road. After all, as long as there is an alternative to their technology Microsoft has to listen to their customers.
SMB may be crap, but the existence of Samba has opened up the market for Linux file servers. Nowadays most large organizations are using Samba, and even quite a few small organizations have some sort of commodity server running a version of Samba.
Samba is clearly a case where it was a worthwhile effort to reverse engineer a closed protocol. SMB clients are so ubiquitous that it makes sense to try and figure out how to talk to them.
.NET should be even easier to reverse engineer. After all, the parts that Ximian is working on duplicating are all soon to be ECMA standards with plenty of documentation. Besides, all of the RPCs are done via SOAP which is basically nothing more than spitting plain text XML out of port 80. Microsoft is going to have a hard time fiddling SOAP so that it's clients still work and Mono clients don't. Especially since even non-guru hackers like myself will be able to open up the RPC packets in the text editor of their choice.
Remember, the desktop controls the server, not the other way around. Servers can be changed out over a long weekend by any halfway decent sysadmin. Desktops require bargaining with end users who will give up their familiar tools over their dead bodies. SMB became the file transfer protocol of the LAN because it was "good enough" and it was on every single Microsoft client. .NET is soon going to be on every single client as well, and it is cool enough that it will get used. IBM and crew will make sure that we can create .NET compatible services under Linux (they are nearly done now) because they want to continue to sell servers. But unless there is a .NET compatible client Linux will slide even further into the Internet ghetto than it already is. Pretty soon only the hardest of hard core Pro-Linux sites will function 100% on Linux boxes.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
As someone who has read Petreley for the last 6 years or so, off and on... (I usually can't stomach reading an article in it's entirety)
:)
I can assure you that he is part of the ABM crowd.
I mean Microsoft, not ballistic missiles.
But personally I think Microsoft is bankrolling his column, because he provides some of the best reasons to not use Linux.
That's fascinating because for the longest time vc++ conformed to the C++ standards much moreso than gcc.
That was until gcc was replaced by egcs with v2.95.
"Referring to it as a .NET clone mires it in all this Passport crap"
.NET fairly well from a Microsoft perspective, I'm actually very amazed at how easily people have decided to confuse it with just Passport.
As someone who has been following
I'm also trying to figure out exactly what the complaint is with Passport, but my mind isn't as creative as someone like Petreley.
If there is one universal truth in this world... It is that Microsoft does not like breaking backwards compatibility.
.Net. They've completely ripped the foundation out from Visual Basic and the migration from VB6 to VB.NET is somewhat painful.
.Net framework and start up something new.
They are, however, doing this with
I highly doubt they'll be doing that again, unless it is to completely scrap the
".NET isn't that technically great"
Why do you feel that way? Have you even bothered to look into it.
.Net has some really smart minds behind it, and technically it's better than Java on paper anyway.
This does already exist, see this /. discussion about LBX&RX. It is included in XFree 4, unfortunately no one uses it.
Yes, but you can use QT, but can you use all the KDE/Gnome libraries?
I don't know how they describe it in the specification, but there is so-called meta-data in each assembly (the equivalent to a jar). This meta-data describes the classes, methods and so on.
Microsoft has promised to put C# and the virtual machine through the ECMA process. However, if most C# developers come from the Win32 background and heavily use libraries such as ASP.net, WebForms, ADO.net then how will those applications be portable?
You see it more from the compatibility-side than I do. I like C#, the CLR concept, the base libraries and that's it. I want some nice KDE-libraries for the CLR so I can write my KDE software in C# and/or Python. The possibility of executing Windows-software is only a side-effect for me. There will probably some company like Ximian doing it if there is a market for it, but I don't care too much about this. If MS starts making incompatible changes that's bad, but doesn't really affect my software.
You said you rarely need to use pointers yourself. I agree. And when I do, I don't want to do it inside the virtual machine and compromise it's stability or security. For any system programming I will use C.
But then you have whole categories of software that cannot be run by your VM, for example every piece of software that uses signal processing (video/sound stuff), probably also games. You cant get platform independent if you still have to use native code for 20% of the applications, even if only 1% of their code is native.
Beside that, using native code does certainly not improve your stability or security as long as it runs in the VM's process. The only secure way is to have it in a single process, and you can have that without native code, too.
Adaptive optimization of HotSpot really does make a difference in many cases.
The reason for all the complicated adaptive optimization stuff is the bad design (performance-wise) of the bytecode. Because in OO-software most methods are very small the best way to optimize a program is by inlining. Hotspot does exactly that. But because in Java every method is virtual (unlike CLR) and you can load new classes that override methods from existing ones at every time doing this is dangerous, and you may have to redo the inlining after you load a new class. This is quite a complicated and expensive process, so Sun tries to avoid for most methods it by making it adaptive.
They created a monster because their bytecode is a little bit too flexible. In the CLR this is not neccessary. You can even pre-compile your assemblies if you want to.
Some people claim this is what gives C# better performance. I'm not convinced.
The most important difference is that you cannot load any classes dynamically. AFAIK this is not possible in
It solves many problems of the current systems:
- you have a single API for all programming languages (which
admittedly all get quite similar because they all have to support various
OO-features, exceptions and so on). Currently it is only theoretical
possible to program for Gnome or KDE in a scripting language. In reality you
will get only half of the APIs and it means a lot of trouble for the end
user.
.net also comes with a unified format for things like API
documentation (that is written in XML and generated by the compiler itself).
- You dont have trouble any more if you use a non-x86 platform. This could
bring real freedom in the platform choice.
- Things like buffer overflows will be very rare (they are still possible
because you can use pointers, but you rarely have to use them and your code
is marked as insecure).
I think it is desirable to have something like this, and if MS releases the specs for it and you get some interoperability for free this is a good opportunity. Even the design of the CLR (Common language runtime) alone is such a huge effort that the free software community just saves much time by adopting it. And the base library looks very nice, they even have unix-like things in it, for example support for perl-style regular expressions. Something that is still missing in the Java (even if they announced regex support for a future release)... Speaking of Java, I dont think that it is an alternative:- It is definitely not more 'free' than the
.net stuff (if MS really
submits the specs to ECMA)
- The JavaVM is quite limited to Java as language. Yes, there are other
languages for the JavaVM, but the VM isnt really flexible enough and you
dont have things like pointers available which you need for system
programming.
- Java's performance sucks because of several design mistakes (ok, they
are only mistakes if you see it from a performance point-of-view, you could
also argue that Java's design is cleaner). MS got several things right that
cause the bad performance of object-oriented Java projects:
- they do
not make every method virtual
- there is an alternative to heap-allocated
and garbage-collected objects (small objects can be allocated on the stack
and are passed-by-copy)
- they made some restriction into their IL (intermediate language) that
Java's bytecode doesnt have and result in faster/easier code generation.
Both are stack-oriented, but in IL the stack must have the same depth at
every jump-point
Of course, there are also ugly parts in...you're loading ALL the KDE/Qt libraries, too, since they don't get loaded when you start your environment.
Try this: First, start another KDE app (like Konqueror), then start KMail and see how long it takes.
The fact is your business may have done better if there was competition at higher levels.
I'd say that it was the residual resentment at Microsoft, and the realisation that the same could happen with any of their other partners, that led them to be so interested in Open Source and Linux: if the software is free and easily portable, then that's more money to be made in hardware and services, and IBM is just 1 massive hardware and services supplier, that has to produce software as a sideline to get the hardware to work.
So that makes IBM just like Apple, except successful. ;)
Ah, no wonder it's slow under pure WM. I installed 2.2 beta 1, but I've never run the desktop. I only installed it for the libraries so that I can run KDE and QT applications. Ditto with Gnome 1.4 for the Gnome and GTK apps, so don't think I'm just a rabid Gnome zealot flaming KDE. :)
My systems are running with no M$ OS, browser or tcp/ip stack. How do you explain my connectivity or even my server being available 24/7/365.25? Keep in mind that M$ borrowed heavily from the *BSD tcp stack for their worldwide connectivity. M$ Netbeui?? Hah, their non-routable ( unless encapsulated) protocol. Even they are dropping it in winXP.
Although I sometimes think of a hermit like existence as nirvana, my lack of MS OS has nothing to do with achieving peace and quiet.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
A group of open-source developers have started a project to implement a set of programs and protocols that have been submitted to a standards comittee. Like so many other open-source projects, others are free to use it - or to help developing it - or not as they choose. This is nothing strange; this has happened many times before. So why this sudden outpouring of emotions, and even, in a few cases, hate?
.NET is not a danger; it might be beneficial to Linux; it's not connected to Gnome other than being another Gnome application; even if you hate .NET, don't connect it with GNome; it won't hurt KDE or other desktops; you don't have to use it if you don't want.
Well, is it becuse the protocols are under another entities control? No, it can't be that; after all, Java Run Time environments, and GNU:s gcc Java compiler, have not received this reaction, even though Java is not only under the control of a corporation, but isn't even submitted as an open standard.
Is it because the controlling entity happens to be Microsoft? No, or the SAMBA developers would have been boiled alive a long time ago.
Are people perhaps afraid that this will giveMicrosoft a foothold to subvert the open-source movement? Maybe, but not likely; the existence of Samba, for instance, have only resulted in more Linux servers being deployed than would have been the case otherwise. It is likely that, by allowing other services to run on Linux, we will increase its prevalence further - and this time on the desktop.
Is it because it happens to be developed by some of the people that also work on Gnome? Well, it does seem that way, unfortunately. We have not seen the same backlash against FSF for their DotGNU, after all. What seems to be happening here is that some people have taken an ABG (Anything But Gnome) approach to their lives, and will take any opportunity to help their desktop of choice "win". Of course, the same immature personalities exist among Gnome users and among any even remotely divisive application/framework/whatever - just look at how long and bitter the Emacs/Vi flamefests were before a realisation crept in that they can peacefully coexist.
This would not have blown up like this, of course, had not Petreley written a very inflammatory, factually erroneous piece in Inforworld last week. For those of us who read him every week (I've stopped since that last piece), he has, ever since he started to use KDE, used every opportunity to attck Gnome for any reason he has been able to come up with. He is, in fact, a good example of the ABG crowd that seems incapable of lifting his eyes a bit and realize that the choice of desktop isn't really important (after all, you can run either, both or none without problems).
To summarize: no,
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
TeX is a "killer app". You may not like it, or use it, but it is certainly a killer app, in fact the main reason I started using Linux was to have a decent TeX system. I'd also call apache a killer app.
As far as innovation is concerned, I consider Qt to be pretty impressive. I use it a lot from day to day, and it is cleanly designed and a pleasure to work with. It's also making its mark as a solid foundation for KDE.
Think strategically...
.NET
:-)
M$ is entirely dependent on hardware sales. Unlike Apple they aren't producing any but they're tied (and hamstrung) by the old x86 architecture that is or will soon be interfering with their plans to insinuate themselves into every transaction occurring over the 'net via
Biometric authentication will force us all off the 32-bit architecture. And Linux is already on the 64-bit and its free, as in no acquisition expense.
Changing their business model this way only makes sense. They're now a monopoly, damn-near a utility like the electric company, but they are not in control of the demand side.
The margins are not getting slimmer but the demand is drying up. PC sales are dipping. The rate and their income is going to stabilize at maintenance levels. That's maybe 10% of their halcyon days.
The difference in revenue is like the difference between a gas-bar which pumps gas versus the income of a General Motors who stir up demand with novelty and styling (and with grudging compliance with safety and fuel economy regulations.)
Unlike other industries (automobile or appliances, [or even Apple computer,]) which produce a real product which can be made obsolete by a variety of means, M$ produces a product which is already good enough for common business.
Their claims of adding to the feature set is falling on deaf ears and people who don't need or can't use the features anyway don't have the money to waste.
EG: My employer used to install NT 4.0 SP5 and the full M$ suite per box on all desktops. They now have ONE machine with M$ access running on it. A lot of the extras that came with even NT 4.0 are being stripped out. We use Lotus Notes (4.6 'cause that all we need.) We are paring, trimming, dropping licensed seats and license fees because we HAVE to. We don't even care if its 'built-in.' Its taking up space we'd rather use for data and taking up administration resources. We didn't upgrade 100 desktop boxes, we upgraded ONE Citrix server.
Linux is a definite wall in one direction (*nixes are far more reliable for server business,) And its cost of acquisition is $0.00 while its cost of maintenance is the same. If its your company and your money, you'll opt to keep it by buying cheaper.
M$ wants new markets to exploit. Transaction processing is IT. Even worse, they can predict that their OS won't survive the move to a platform that they themselves would need to make their transformation successful.
Why do they want to change markets? Even a fraction of a penny per multiplied by trillions of transactions per year will make M$ even richer then before.
They can leave the OS 'garage' business reality behind to people like the Linux competition and Ximian who's price of entry is much lower (they don't have all that old software to support,) and who are being favored "de jure" if not "de facto" by antitrust investigations of governments world-wide.
That's what I would do.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Excuse me?
Gphoto2, and every other app that starts with a G and is geared toward the Gnome desktop.
>"all most no open-source developer would even consider Gnome..."
Pretty bold statement buddy, did you happen to canvass the developer commuinity or did you come up woth that FUD on your own? or is it your opinion that you twisted to make you sound knowlegable?
I'll bet a $1000.00 that you didnt do any research and you pulled that statement out of your arse, just like the rest of the whiners and complainers here.
Mono is a great effort.. The people in our world became great not by sitting in their basement rocking back and forth mumbling.... they rattled the cages of the lions and tigers, You become great by stomping on the toes of giants.
I applaud them for such a huge undertaking...and I hope they thumb their nose at MS by making it non-compliant... Kinda how Apache isn't compatable with IIS or how TCP/IP wasnt a MS innovation (Thank GOD for that!),I can go on forever comparing Open standards we use every day compared to the MS locked down version.
If they do it right, they will make MS look stupid, get people using an OPEN standard, and possibly actually turn a profit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There's a good article on kuro5hin about this very issue......
hey
.so on windows (they call them DLL's on win32) SIMPLE
look why did microsoft invest a whole bunch of R&D monies in an IL when they could just do "normal compilers" like they had done and could do it very well
well LIB's and those
thats it
Microsoft had a nightmare with libs and useing VB and C++ caused a nightmare beacuse of all the old API's so they wanted all langs to have the same libs
now +COM did not live up to what it had promised and the standard way of delivering it in a standard way
CORBA on the other hand has this and each Object can interact with others and can use the Corba Component Model (CCM) java 2 has an ORB GNOME has an ORB whats the problem ?
people think they have a better way just use the simple it works solution IMHO
sort it out KDE is JUST C++ and thats why they dont get these problems
regards
john jones
Celebrate the finer things in life
No. But it might kill Ximian. Or turn it into a slave of MS. It would, perhaps, be better to avoid this outcome.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem is, they are also endeavoring to be a single point of control. The basic design principle is dangerous. I also think that it favors enemies of freedom. A more decentralized design is necessary.
It's true that AOL is a bit better than MS, mainly because they aren't a large software seller. This could change, however. I think that one could even depend upon it changing once they were victorious. All a battle between giants buys us is a bit more time to find a substitute. It doesn't matter who it is, you don't want someone else controlling your data and your applications. They won't act in your best interests. They couldn't even if they wanted to.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And that's your cheerful scenario? You make optimism look pretty bleak. If MS is the only viable OS/Software company, then things are going to be really tough.
Sorry. I find your "non alarmist" scenario nearly as frightening as the article. And I don't find them mutually exclusive.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"Lets make Gnome look and feel like Windows." - Gnome, 1996
"We're not trying to copy Microsoft.." - Gnome, 1998
"Lets make Gnome look and feel like Windows." - Gnome, 2000
"We're not trying to copy Microsoft.." - Gnome, 2001.
Mmmmkay. Glad to see Gnome is sticking to the same ideology that brought such revolutionary advances like "The Foot Menu". I'd be hard pressed to find a bigger waste of effort than to clone
The world is filled with with flea market knock-offs and ultramundane ideas. There are better flags to march under than this one, i'm afraid. If only a fraction of the effort that will be undertaken to make a clone of
Nobody seems to want to do that anymore.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, System 26 GUI Component Stockpile
Bowie J. Poag
The strategy of producing a competing technology has been brought up a hundred times, but it would not work. Competing head-on with Microsoft on their own turf would almost surely be suicide. Hell, even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with the current market leaders. So they are working at the periphery, making sure that their products provide easy access to these other technologies.
.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, and I will stay neutral and not firm up my opinion about Ximian Mono until I see further how things are going to play out in the .NET landscape. I'm not saying for certain that .NET is the right place, but perhaps Microsoft in fact needs a dose of their own "embrace and extend".
.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is not available on Linux?
.NET turns out to be a popular web services platform by having an implementation available?"
I have no idea whether
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be "Should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS if
Nick Petrely has some good things to say from time to time, and I read his column, but take what he says with a grain of salt.
If you look at his past connections, it seems that he is really much more anti-MS than pro-open source. He also tends to be somewhat alarmist. Five or Six years ago, he was a HUGE OS/2 booster; OS/2 is as far from open source as is Windows. Then, when OS/2 was going down the tubes, he became an advocate of network computers (anyone remember NCWorldMag.com?), also a tad bit removed from open source. Then, when network computer related mags stopped bringing in the dough, he finally became an open source and Linux fan.
Clearly, his selection of things to support show much more of a tendency to be the currently hot anti-Microsoft technology du jour than any consistent track record of open source championship.
Finally, in the last year or two, Nick has been on a heavy anti-GNOME campaign. He obviously doesn't value competetion, having said that all of the GNOME developers should have given up and jumped over to KDE as soon as QT became GPL. Whether you like KDE or GNOME (or XFce or Windowmaker or [...] for that matter), most people feel that choice is good and both projects have benefitted from the generally friendly competion.
Like another poster said, take a deep breath, and take it with a grain of salt. If open source dies, its demise will not have been because of Ximian and Mono.
MS cuts the rope. Making propiertary API changes to explicitly *not work* with any competitors.
.NET that are being implemented by the open source project are (or will be) ECMA standards. Now, Microsoft can, of course, attempt to muck with the standards, but their changes will have to be open and incorporated back into the standard. They could also make their own implementation non-standard, but since it is their standard, they will probably think twice about doing this since they would take a LOT of heat for it (not that they haven't taken heat before, of course).
.NET
.NET features that are missing rather than starting yet a third alternative from scratch just because we don't like MS? The problem here, of course, is that large segments of the free software community balk at Java as well because of its "half-free" license (I disagree with this, by the way, I use Java frequently).
.NET on Linux does have a chance of failure, just like any other undertaking, but its probably better than doing nothing and just hoping that the whole of .NET will fail in the marketplace.
Well, this is always a possibility, except in this case the portions of
we as a community should be innovating new alternatives to
This has been suggested many times, but I think it is doomed to failure. Competing head-on with MS on their turf with a late-coming alternative supported by a small open source project would probably be extremely difficult, especially since it is the PHBs in the corporate community that must be sold on it. Heck, Even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with with the leaders in certain areas, so instead they are making their products work easily as access points to these other services. Besides, if we wanted to take this approach, why wouldn't we strengthen an existing technology like Java by adding the
In any case, as I mentioned previously, implementing
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, anti-Miguel, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be: "In case .NET turns out to be a popular web services platform, should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS by having an implementation of .Net available?"
.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is only available on MS server platforms and not on Linux?
.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, but if it doesn't pan out, Ximian will have lost some money. Big deal. But, OTOH, if .NET is successful and it's not available on Linux, MS will certainly gain server market share at the expense of Linux.
Forget that it's Ximian doing it. Forget that it might have some applicability to GNOME. These facts just bring out peoples' emotions that have nothing to do with the real issue. Consider the underlying question.
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if
I have no idea whether
First, the South Park "Underwear Gnomes": .NET Environment
1. Duplicate the
2.
3. Profit!
And secondly, an old cartoon I clipped from Omni Magazine:
A scientist is proudly displaying his solution to a problem. Complicated mathematical expressions cover a chalk-board, but in the middle is a little section marked "and then a miracle occurs".
I think Petreley is right. If Ximian doesn't duplicate Passport, and MS changes the interface, the whole thing is useless as a complete open-source alternative. Sort of like what AOL does to the AIM interface every time they want to lock someone out.
.net is just microsoft's new generation of development tools and run time support. It's lots of serperate thing that have been put together for marketing reasons.
:-
.net applications, it's just easy to do so because it's there)
A summary
New compilers for C++, C#, Javascript and visual basic. These no longer produce native 80x86 code but instead produce a intermediate language. These IL files are then run using a just-in-time compiler when they are run. (OR optionally when they are installed)
Because they compile to IL, the binaries are in theory platform independent if anyone writes a JIT compiler for that platform.
All of the languages are compatible at run time so you can mix and match languages in any way you like.
The common run time library contains classes for just about everything you can think of. It's a replacement for the win32 API and just about every other library microsoft have ever done. And it seems pretty complete and well designed. They really do seem to have just abandonded all of the badly designed stuff they did oin the past with a clean break.
The common run time works just as weel from all supported languages.
You can write ASP pages using the supported languages and class library. There are objects for web based controls which automatically generate web pages using whatever is appropriate for the browser being used. For example edit boxes that can validate there contents on the client using javascript on some platforms but will do server side validation when it's not available and without any programmer involvement.
Plus lots of services are supported like passport (although there is no reason you have to use it for
It all seems to be very well documented (for microsoft) and much of the system has been opened up for standardisation by ECMA.
The threat to the open source community is that microsoft do seem to have done a really good job on the technical level here. Copying it certainly has its own risks, but not not doing so means that microsoft could concevably have a better designed environment than anything that exists in open source.
Sig is taking a break!
From where I'm looking, Mono may actually be a very good thing. If it works, all the problems with language bindings for every feature you want to use from Python or Perl or whatever disappear. Nice. Sure, we can have that today via CORBA but do we? If Mono is dropped, lets replace it with something that solves the same problems.
.Net having SOAP as an open rpc layer makes this a 15 minute task. Its no more complex (probably less so) than using remote Windows only ODBC sources over XML-RPC, and in the worst case, there are closed tools that can bridge that gap and optimise it, no doubt there will be in the future for this problem too. Problems create markets. They don't tend to result in good programmers being sacked for something inherantly fixable. The same is already true of bridging ODBC.
.Net based on one aspect of it, an aspect that Mono isn't really concerned with anyway. Microsoft's services above and beyond the basic system are their affair. Let makes better, Free ones. "OpenTraveller" has a good ring to it. No one is forced to use Passport.
Petreley doesn't seem to take into account that open source programmers are programmers. Some extremely good and they have a tendency to open their work to others. Once a (albeit windows reliant) Passport Proxy Service is created that takes an open interface from outside, there is no reliance on the whole system being Windows based and no control granted to MS. They can change their system, but we can change the interface, a much easier task.
In fact, the point of
And if Microsoft did try to pull something like this, the chances are those in government fully mindful of their history will move in once again. They already are over XP (and there they will probably lose) but such a move as Petreley describes is unlikely to be ignored - it is directly and 100% obviously anti-competitive. Not even Judge I. R. Technophobe could miss that and if his prediction of people being sacked happens, it will only add wieght to the actual, individual damage the move has caused. In fact, I'd be surprised if you didn't have a decent shot with a class action against MS if their actions caused you dismissal.
In the end, I think we're making lots of noise about
The benefits of the project are huge and numerous.
- A language independent VM
- fast cross platform applications
- simple use of libraries without SWIG
- a 'super OS' layer that gives you more freedom to change OS. Even away from Windows while retaining the same applications.
The underlying approach of Mono/.Net is good - its what Java should have been in the first place.
Either we extend Java or simulate the CLR system. If we don't do one or the other, in 5 years time a very large segment of our industry will have less reason to consider open source and that is far more worrying.
Its easy to be negative, but what does Petreley suggest instead?
"anyone OpenSource"?
.Net makes a lot more sense than Java. Maybe one day this will change, its just a shame Sun didn't have enough of a clue to do it already. The enemy of your enemy can also be an idiot.
What the heck are you talking about? We are programmers and we want choices. Lots of them. In the end we'll have both and will choose what we like thanks.
From an Open Standard viewpoint,
If Microsoft changes their implementation of their CLI (the CLR), who cares? Linux will still have a completely open CLI implementation. It's basically a better java without any strings. Microsoft can't do anything about it because it will be a standard.
:)
Sure, it'll be the 'standard'... but the version in use on most of the world's desktops will be the real standard. The game of taking an established cross-platform standard and changing the Windows implementation is nothing new to Microsoft... maybe doing it to their own code is, though.
deus does not exist but if he does
Interesting that you didn't mention IBM :)
:). You won't believe how bitter they were at how their relationship with Microsoft had turned from very close (OS/2 was going to be a MS-IBM joint production, with Windows as a feeder route) to sour backbiting.
I was working at IBM when OS/2 Warp came out (and they gave every single employee a free copy, which was a nice supply of extra floppy disks for me
No matter how big a company you are, it's really not a good idea to get IBM mad at you. I'd say that it was the residual resentment at Microsoft, and the realisation that the same could happen with any of their other partners, that led them to be so interested in Open Source and Linux: if the software is free and easily portable, then that's more money to be made in hardware and services, and IBM is just 1 massive hardware and services supplier, that has to produce software as a sideline to get the hardware to work.
Many companies have lucrative relationships with Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that MS are liked, or respected, or trusted.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Honest, I didn't find this until after I posted my previous comment... I just found this little tidbit on the Washington Post's site:
- AOL Might Join 'Identity Service' Battle
No mention about access for non-microsoft browsers & operating systems, but this is the company that owns Netscape... and Scott McNealy is involved."AOL Time Warner Inc. is considering entering a race against Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies to establish a single Web identity for consumers, attempting to become one of the dominant Internet gatekeepers for a vast array of personal information.
AOL's project, which it calls Magic Carpet, would allow people to store personal information online to simplify transactions on the Internet, according to an internal AOL document and industry executives. AOL Time Warner would be chasing Microsoft, which has already developed a service called Passport that has more than 160 million accounts. AOL officials declined to comment."
- "...Magic Carpet, however, is referred to in an AOL strategy document on Microsoft. And at a summit of Internet industry leaders in Carlsbad, Calif., this week, Sun Microsystems Inc. chief executive Scott McNealy said he had talked to Barry Schuler, chief executive of America Online, AOL Time Warner's online unit, about the developing technology."
It's no secret that Mr. McNealy has no love of Microsoft. I think he'd make the effort to ensure that Netscape/Java works, and on all platforms. He knows how vital it is to his own future to pry Microsoft's fingers away from the Internet's throat.It's going to be interesting to see how this all turns out...
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
- Microsoft can change Passport, and thus hurt open source very badly.
Counterpoint:- If they do this, it is very possible they will (again) prove their position as a monopoly... and invite more anti-trust (and other) lawsuits
Point:(Counter-counterpoint: Microsoft isn't afraid of lawsuits.)
- If they break open-source
.NET, they will cause managers to fire their open-source people and wildly embrace Microsoft's compatible-by-default products.
Counterpoint:- If a company depends for its' lifeblood on a single point of failure, management is sunk already.
- Management may also take the 180 opposed view, form alliances, and build a competing product against
.NET. However, it'd take something the size of AOL/Time Warner to make it happen.
Point:- Nicholas Petreley makes some very lucid and thought provoking points. He points out a very possible future.
Counterpoint:- Microsoft isn't that stupid and mercenary.
Wait a minute... Yes, they are! So much for that pair of rose-colored glasses."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
I presume that Mono's C# compiler will be of similar quality, at least after half the planet gets a chance to bug-fix it into the ground.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
And, for the longest time, CC, from Bell Labs was the only C++ compiler (er, translator). Did you have a point to make about quality, or not?
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Petreley is fairly entertaining. Unfortunately like all pundits he has a tendency to oversimplify and be "alarmist" some times. In this article he is basically saying...
"This leads me to suspect that Microsoft is engaged in a bait-and-switch scheme to finally wipe out the threat of open source."The question is... so?
The scheme that he proceeds to lay out, that MS will let Ximian implement some part of the Passport scheme and then break the protocol would not "...wipe out the threat of open source."
The two things simply do not follow.
In order to connect them, you have to follow some weird train of logic that, only e-commerce matters, therefore only Passport matters, and that the Open-Source movement will only have one implementation of them that matters and when MS pulls the rug out from under us, we're all going to hell. Most of which doesn't make any sense.
From the article:
Ximian's effort reproduces only the development environment in open source. It does nothing to reproduce or replace Passport.
So then what the hell are we talking about Passport for? What is Ximian actually doing?
What Ximian is working on implementing and MS has actually submitted to ECMA-TC39-G2/G3 is C# and the CLI, which Petreley only barely mentions!
Bottom line whether or not Ximian succeeds at porting .NET and subsequently they or somebody else ports some Ms.Passport.* classes to their platform, it will not sound the death knell for Open-Source software everywhere (Geez, it sounds even more non-sensical when you write it out).
The drafts of the standards that Ximian is actaully working on can be found here.
In the meantime if you want to make up conspiracy theories about e-commerce ask yourself, "What are Visa/Mastercard up to? Aren't almost all e-commerce transactions done with credit cards?"
"Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai
It might suprise some Slashdot readers to find that monetary success isn't an antithesis to Slashdot popularity. The technology industry is full of corporate giants with deep pockets and little critical focus (can't please everyone) by Slashdot readers. Take Cisco Systems and an example.
I don't suppose there's any chance of grabbing Miguel for one of Slashdot's "Ask Miguel de Icaza Your Questions about Mono" feature, is there?
What's the point in using Open Source if no-one else uses it?
...
What constitutes a useful program?
I ran an Amiga for many years when "nobody else used one", not only because there was great software that fit my needs available, but also because it was a great platform for developing some of the custom software I needed.
I never really gave up using the Amiga, even still today, it just got to the point where most of the new software I needed was on other platforms, so I changed with the times.
I'm not "locked" into Microsoft by any means. My current day Windows machines might always run Windows until they fall over and die, and my current BSD machine might run BSD until it crumbles into the dust.
But what future OS I may run will depend on what serves my needs then, and there will be a good chance that if I know where to look I'll find open source software. It may not be popular, and it may not be published by some big company, but if it works
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
If corporations implement Gnome/Mono as a part of their IT strategy and suddenly Microsoft decides to strangle Mono to death with Passport, that's a fatal blow to the credibility of Open Source.
Oh get real!
So what if every single bloody Linux distribution company goes under? So what if 99.99% of the entire computer industry thinks Open Source software is unsupported rubbish run by college kids?
So what if the entire corporate world thinks the ONLY OS is a Microsoft OS?
That's not going to stop some from giving the source code away to a program they write. It's not going to stop someone else from improving upon those ideas, and spreading them out.
Open Source isn't going anywhere. It's been around much longer than Linux. It's been around much longer than Microsoft. The idea of free software has been around for much longer than most people who use Linux today, and Gnome/Mono are just petty projects in a much more massive movement.
You can ph33r Microsoft's 1337 455 control of your lives all you want.
But SOME of us will continue using free software whether it's just a neat little utility for Windows or a full blown operating system.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I don't mean to criticize their project, mind you. Lack of documentation is an issue with just about every open source project at one point or another, since it's inevitably done last. It just makes it kind of difficult for folks just starting out in CORBA to use anything they've done without more research than the day job will typically allow.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Would get more shit talking to Orbit. There's a project to get C++ talking to it. Last time I checked they had quite a way to completion and had no documentation. I'm not even sure there is one for Java. I haven't been able to find one anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Same for Passport. It's an authentification service, right? Won't it work with any browser? Or will it take a special client? If the latter case, I assume there's a published API that Ximian will use to implement a Linux client. And I can certainly understand Petreley's fear of relying on something that MS can undermine at any time.
Is any other reasonably well-known company providing an alternative to Passport? Seems like Sun, IBM, and Oracle would want to be in this business as well.
They might do this, but I wouldn't expect all that many consumers to take advantage of it. Why? WinXP has higher CPU/RAM requirements than the older OS's, and most owners are not up to upgrading their own hardware.
Perhaps waiting with Mono until end 2001 would be a good thing to do here.
--
Bizar technology?
>>I was under the impression that no one included OpenOffice because it wasn't ready yet;
It may not be ready yet exactly but that normally doesnt make a big difference for Debian. Debian tends to include programs that comercial distributions wouldnt if they are interesting enough.
Personally, Im quite excited about Open Office. In 2-3 years I think it will be considerred one of the most important Linux applications along with mozilla and apache.
ok ok... I dont think this is the end of the world or a threat to open source thinking like Nicholas Petreley seems to. But I still think its a little bit silly.
1) Mono will be poor quality.
Sure, C# has been submitted to a standards board but that doesnt get you home free. Probably, eventually the Mono C# compiler will be as close to the Microsoft c# compiler as gcc is to vc++. I find that its actually a major pain to switch between the two compilers. For one project I used templated methods a lot throughtout my program and then I found that vc++ did not support this with the version I had (1998). Now vc++ does but fixing it is not a simple "apt-get upgrade."
You would think that java would be another thing that would be very portable but Debian still does not include Open Office because none of the Free java compilers can run the java parts of it.
I guess my point is look how well Microsoft support w3c standards. Mono will be different from the Microsoft c# compiler and thus worse. Different == worse.
2) This is an unpopular idea.
Remember how depressing it was when slashdot used to post articles about mozilla at around m14 or so. Everytime people would post about how crashy and buggie and slow it was. But the good thing about that was that most people recognized the need for Mozilla and how it was perhaps Linuxs best shot at getting a working web browser.
Mono I think is less popular than Mozilla and less obviously necesary. Especially when you consider that a lot of gnome programmers are perfectly content programming in c. I dont see them as the type of people who will switch to c# overnight.
3) This idea wont make any money.
Isnt Ximian a company? How do they think that this will make them any money? Dont they have more pressing things to do with their time?
In the end this isnt an idea that I would focus much attention on. If its an idea thats very fun for you personally then by all means keep at it. But dont expect it to be extremely fun of financially rewarding.
In case you missed it the first time, here it is again for Reference
.NET is implemented, and that leaves us in a vulnerable position.
Putting faith in commercial entities, and backing their initiatives without regard to its license could be the end of our community. As Petrely so clearly stated, The GNU/Linux community has no control of how
I for one don't really care if Ximian does well in the market place. If their stuff works with M$, and plays well, and they enjoy commercial sucess, good for them. Just don't let their commercial concerns taint the GPL'dness of the product. As long what they produce is GPL'd, we are safe. The moment that we become dependent on software with restrictive licensing is the moment that this whole party goes down the toilet.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
"
Well, to be fair, a far larger number of companies have had very lucrative and stable relationships with MS than the converse. Companies like all the major software houses, particularly the ones that MS directly licenses software from, standards makers like Intel, HP, Apple and NCSA the major hardware OEMs Compaq, Dell, Gateway and all of the other hundreds of thousands of people around the world who've carved quite a decent living out of the MS umbrella of industry.
I can think of fewer than five examples of MS relationships gone bad in the past (blockstackers, DRDOS, Sun/Java, um... kerberos?) while thousands of companies have made handsome profits. Must I remind you that making a profit is the aim of a company?
Visa International is a very unusual organization. It's a corporation owned collectively by the 22,000 banks that issue Visa cards. Visa International runs the interbank network and sets the standards. All those competing banks agree to comply with Visa's standards. Yet the banks own Visa, so it can't walk all over them. Hock calls this a "chaord".
Here are Hock's design principles for such organizations:
These principles sound like unrealizible ideals. Yet they created the largest business organization on earth. Anybody thinking about open-source alternatives to Passport needs to understand how Hock pulled this off.
If it's that's the case, then explain how Eazel got Nautilus into GNOME? This was even before Eazel went out of business and people were able to strip out the crap "services" that were built into GNOME 1.4. Evolution and Red Carpet are no doubt going to be very much centerpieces of the next GNOME. Both of these provide dubitable Ximian "services".
I think you have a very naive and incorrect view of how GNOME works. Ximian is pretty much in control. You could have observed the situation when they thought they were under threat by Red Hat's Bonobo2/HUB paper.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Please keep these 2 things separated:
- The
.NET framework which is used by developers to build webservices, which CAN use Passport.com to do authentication services (but don't have to, you can build your own if you like)
- The webservices build ON TOP of the
.NET framework (like Hailstorm).
Thank you.--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Wake up. One single open source project is not going to kill all other open source projects. The fact that .NET still makes one hell of a development environment remains, whether we will have passport or not. True, passport remains important, but it's not going to be the end of all e-commerce solutions, and even if it is, it's not going to kill all open source (or free software) applications.
My resume has never seen a word processor; I've told people this, and usually send either plain text or HTML.
BrassRing.com seems to require MSWord format... why does that betray to me a fundamental failure to get geeks?
/Brian
Miguel, IL.
These are words that go together well, my Miguel.
I love you, I love you, I love you. That's all I want to say.
Until I find a way, I will say the only words I know that you'll understand.
Miguel, IL.
Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble.
I want you, I want you, I want you. I think you know by now.
I'll get to you somehow. Until I do I'm telling you so you'll understand.
I will say the only words I know, that you'll understand, my Miguel.
And FIFTH. You can choose NOT to use passport and still program with .NET/Mono for ecommerce or kinds of software solutions.
I spent all of those years as Anonymous Coward and all I got was this lousy number (204976).
Seriously, what the hell is
Got friends?
As a long-time unix developer, I love the command-line. But I also love KDE. No one says you can't use both at the same time. Konsole is one of the best applications that come with KDE.
While most of KDE is easy to use without touching the manual, it doesn't mean it is dumbed down. KDE 2.x stays true to its unix roots, and I would consider it essential software (ie a "major part") of any unix workstation.
I don't understand how Ximian expects to succeed either
Perhaps not everyone is just the samaritan type which does everything for the better sake of everyone? Perhaps he just will get some decent money from Microsoft for it, which would pretty much mean "succeeding" for almost anyone outthere? I'm an open source oriented person too, but I still wish some of the guys outthere would wake up.
First. MS Hailstorm (and Passport) don't have anything to do with Mono or the C# programming environment as far as I can tell. Mono is basicly a free software version of C#, not a free software version of everything the MS marketing department (you mean there's other MS departments?) has decided and will decide to throw under the .NET moniker. The relation between MS Passport and C# is coincidental.
Second. I don't understand what makes C# so superior to Java that we need it. The only reason MS is using it instead of Java is because they do not have a license to use Java. Microsoft, and Sun Settle. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be ported, I mean, name a language that isn't supported by free software.
Third. Nicholas Petreley is right that MS Passport is a problem, and the real threat to computer users and an open Internet. What is needed is a Internet Standard way of managing authentification, one that is standard and independant of any one company or computer platform. Where is the auth: RFC?
Fourth. Mono is Free Software :-) (Software Libre) not Open Source
MS can Embrace and Extend Open Source software, it can't Embrace and Extend Free Software.
Mono compilers, etc. are GPL'd. This means that everything that they do is documented. The author of the story does not take this into account. In the panel debate as OSCON, the question was asked of Microsoft executive David Stutz on whether Passport would be capable of doing a simple transaction without calling home to Microsoft servers. The answer given was that it was possible but that if Passport was successful that people might want passport.
Here is the actual problem. I would submit that passort is a liability from a MONO perspective but not unconditionally so. MONO is not a passport/hailstorm alternative because that is not Ximian's business model-- but I do think that it is impossible that Passport compatible competitors rise (I think that they will).
The market is changing, and although Microsoft will likely try to leverage Windows in gaining market share with Passport, and AOL will try to produce something similar (Magic Carpet) and leverage their ISP marketshare. Not that I like AOL, but it does create the need in ecommerce for choices for the end user.
Even if Microsoft were to try to enforce through patent law, AOL's market share will force choices to exist. If Microsoft were successful in leveraging Windows with Passport, it would be a clear problem regarding the Sherman Act sections 1 and 2. If you think Microsoft is in trouble with antitrust law now, wait and see if they try to take over these markets.
I personally think that Mono is important, and I support them. However, I would like to see people aware of the liability that dependence on single vendor solutions creates.
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You make some interesting points here.
.NET and start calling it Mono or a C#/CLI implementation.
.NET only adds to MSs advertising. It also associates C#/CLI with authentication services.
.NET clone mires it in all this Passport crap that doesn't necessarily have to do anything with C#/CLI (although for MS, it does).
.NET plans.
I say we stop calling Mono
.NET is a vague MS marketing term, and referring to Mono as
If C#/CLI standards are adopted, they're just that: standards. MS doesn't have to stand by the standard, but it will be there.
I for one think there's a lot to C#/CLI, and would like to see it compete as a technology. Referring to it as a
So what if C#/CLI standards are adopted, and MS ignores them? We might still one a hell of a platform without MS, and the truth is, we would never know if we didn't try. If C#/CLI standards aren't adopted, then there you go. Case closed, everyone go home.
It seems to me it's time we start talking about C#/CLI in a way that recognizes it could be different from the rest of MS's
You are thinking of HailStorm. That IS closely linked with Passport, and Hailstorm will be implemented ontop of/with .net.
Passport is not a core part of .net framework. Core part of the .net stratagy maybe.
Sorry to say, but when I first said this (replying to someone else who said it first, tho! ;)
it seemed like those of us saying it were lone voices crying in the wilderness... everyone else seemed to think this was a really clever way to turn the tables on Microsoft.
--
Ximian's deal with Microsoft makes me nervous - sure. But if they manage to extract enough info from Microsoft to build a decent .NET project, even if it doesn't touch Hailstorm, that may be enough to convince some other folks to try and build a Hailstorm alternative since the Mono APIs/clients would be there. So long as the licensing wasn't a poison pill that is the usual Microsoft MO.
But if we as a community would stop running around yelling 'The Sky is Falling' because of .NET and instead worked on that latest bug OR perhaps a .Net alternative, it would sure be a more productive and effective use of time!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Say that we're right and Hailstorm succeeds for Microsft - they are making decent money with a small market share on transaction 'taxes' via Hailstorm with .NET as the enabler. At the same time Linux is gaining ground because of its stability and robustness... Mono exists but doesn't really use Hailstorm, it has its own auth mechanism because the viral OSS software manged to peer with Hailstorm.
If the above comes to pass - I would bet its an almost certainty that Microsoft would start to give the PERSONAL/Residential version of Windows away for free. Oh sure, they would develop some license that forced OEMs to pay to install it on PCs they sold - can't give up that revenue stream. But when it comes to users upgrading their desktop - they'd get it for free. Why? Because of call teh cash generating technologies we are beginning to see in Win XP and the potential fee generation of Hailstorm. Allowing users to upgrade to the latest wizbang windows OS from WIN 95 or higher to Win XYZ would only give them MORE market share and ensure their dominance of the customer home PC market. How scary is that? I knwo most people dont' bother upgrading from WIn 9x because it works fine for them and its not worth $100 to bother. But if Microsoft started sending out WIn XYZ upgrade CD ala AOL - you'd be amazed how many people would upgrade - bang instant new users with cash generating capability - a user they WEREN'T getting money from before cause they were happy with WIn 9x and Microsoft Works.
That's what makes Hailstorm so important to Microsoft and also makes it so scary.
I may be wrong, but the pit of my stomach tells me it'll happen. The freebies have to be the enabling tehchnologies for the cash generating architectures. IE did it for MSN and other MS websites - just wait till the OS becomes the next freebie to steer customers to Micro$oft's cash register.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
The implementation language is irrelevant. The VM strategy is relevant insofar as it affects performance. With C# Microsoft are not sacrificing any performance, Java implementations are still processor and memory hogs. Yes you can get a Java coder who can write code faster than a bad C programmer, the same is true for LISP, but the architecture still extracts a performance penalty.
If you think that .NET is simply a language war then you just don't get it, C# is not central to the .NET architecture. It is however central to getting developers to pay for another edition of Visual Studio.
Java and C# are both at base merely a way of adding objects to C than the botched job they did in C++. C# is at least open in a way that Java is not, with Java Sun reserves to itself absolute control of the future of the language. Hello, this is the future of Open Source, I don't think soooo. Not only that but Sun will sick lawyers onto folk who don't do it their way. It isn't just Microsoft that Gosling and co don't want to hear from, there are plenty of people arround who are serious heavyweights in the language design arena that got the brush off. Microsoft were very interested to hear my ideas, Gosling was not. Sure they may 'steal' my ideas, but that is what I want them to do, use them. In fact I give them for free.
C# has several very nice ideas about how to write programs that use XML. It is not the only language that can be used to write XML programs, but it does make it easier and the advantage is enough to justify the cost of the compiler. I would be very happy if someone would do a C# front end for gcc. If that happened I would probably do all my coding in C#. I am not going to move to Java however because I don't like the baggage that comes with it, nor the 20Mb run time that the luser has to download to run the program, or for that matter the crappy GUI widgets that the loosers at Sun want me to use.
I don't give a honk about write once, run anywhere. There are only two platforms that matter today, Linux and Windows. Running on Apple, Solaris, VMS, Irix, HPUX, Genera, BeOs, etc. is not something I am going to sacrifice 80%+ of my CPU for or spend three times as long writing the program putting in optimizations that depend on the structure of the VM implementation or JIT.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Passport and Hailstorm are great things for folk to get paranoid about. But they are only a means of breaking open the AOL Instant Messenger position. Microsoft wants to stop AOL from being able to leverage the IM login as a universal interface.
The way to make ERP software pay is for the company that wrote the software to run it as hosted software. This is for several reasons. First the costs of 365x24 support are amortized over hundreds of companies. More importantly however for the customer the company that wrote the software bears the cost of maintenance and the pain of all the unreliability, bugs etc.
The core of the .NET strategy however is somewhat subtler. Traditional ERP systems force you to rip out your existing installation and replace. SOAP allows you to take existing databases and applications, write a thin layer wrapper around them and have them integrate with other Web Services. Microsoft has a two tier strategy, everything runs SOAP, Windows 2000 however will be the SOAP platform with the most, the most APIs, the most tools, etc. etc. .NET will fail however unless you can run the interface parts of it on other systems - including MVS, VMS, Solaris and of course Linux.
An open source version of parts of .NET is not a beachead against the open source community, it is denying Microsoft competitors revenue. Sun is already in freefall as UNIX types realise that a low cost Intel box running linux runs faster and more reliably than an overpriced Sun box. So deny Sun the revenues they might gain from selling Web Services boxes.
Sun, Oracle and Netscape ganged up to stop Bill with the anti-trust lawsuit. The story of how the suit was filled is a pretty disgusting case of special pleading by one group of corporations against another, especially if you don't like Microsoft. What could have been a successful anti-trust case became the explanation of why Netscape did not replace Microsoft.
.NET is simply Bill's way of getting revenge. However unlike McNealy, Ellison and Clarke Bill is not stupid enough to blab his mouth off in public about the companies he wants to destroy. The fact that he is not talking about Sun or Oracle is an insult to them, he is saying that they are not going to be players in the future of the software industry. Open source on the other hand is the only serious competitor left.
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However, if we can also link up diverse scripting environments with SOAP and XML-RPC, there's no reason to worry. Choice is key. Most non-Microsoft scripting languages will never run well inside Microsoft's environment. Make it easy for Perl programmers to participate in SOAP networks without leaving home. Same with Java, Python, Tcl, and everything else.
Focus on the protocols, that's what's important. As long as we invest in diversity, Microsoft can't control. Instead of a one-party-system, let's have an n-party-system. That's how we guarantee choice, eliminate lock-in, and maintain forward motion.
BTW, an interesting detail came out at the open source summit on Tuesday. Dick Hardt of ActiveState reports that Perl does not run well in Microsoft's environment. The problem is that Microsoft's virtual machine is designed to run C-like code, but Perl is not like that.
Now I know the solution, we need a DLL-based open scripting architecture, that allows environments to compile and run scripts and have them call back into the environment, much like the architecture we developed on the Mac in the early 90s. Back then it wasn't so interesting because scripting was still pretty small, it was just us and Apple. Ten years later there's been an explosion, and there's another way, beyond XML-RPC, that's needed to integrate. It can be a tough sell to each individual community, as XML-RPC is, because the benefit is that it makes it easy to bridge to other environments. Most communities tend not to see too well outside their borders. But the larger world wants choice. No matter how great your scripting environment, you will eventually meet someone you want to work with who works in a different environment.
The main question about Ximian and Mono is why they didn't start such a project based on the Java language with Gnome APIs a couple of years ago. But that question doesn't matter much at this point: they didn't. And today, it doesn't matter that much anymore: as languages, C# and Java are nearly identical. Whatever effort goes into enhancing compilers, runtimes, or libraries for one will pretty much automatically benefit the other. And any programmer that learns one can quickly get started with the other.
So, it's no big deal. If you like the project, contribute. If not, contribute to something else. Microsoft's shenanigans with Passport have nothing to do with software anymore, and you might as well ignore them; Passport and other issues like that will be resolved by politicians and lawyers.
I agree with the article not only on the mentioned issues, but on the broader issues of the open source movement rushing to copy what companies like Microsoft create. It seems hypocritical to me that the open source movement should so readily rush to imitate what it itself often condemns, rather than creating its own model based on open standards rather than proprietary systems. The open source movement has grown, and I have no reason to doubt that if we lead the corporations that currently govern the industry will soon follow, or be lost in the tide.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.