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.

Comments

.net isn't that bad!

[tjansen]

I dont think it is fair to bash .net because only it is from Microsoft. Beside all the political stuff about Microsoft, Gnome and Ximian IMHO, the ideas of .net and at least a large part of the specification are quite nice.

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 .net. This is basically everything that is not in the core specs, like WebForms, ASP.net, ADO.net and so on. But no one says that you cannot have your own, additional APIs...

Just because MS is involved doesn't make it bad

[philj]

There's a good article on kuro5hin about this very issue......

Re:Enlighten me...

[johnburton]

.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.

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 .net applications, it's just easy to do so because it's there)

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.

Point / Counterpoint thought exercise:

[Raetsel]

Point:

• 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
  • 
    (Counter-counterpoint: Microsoft isn't afraid of lawsuits.)

Point:

• 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.

Petreley oversimplifying

[xeer0]

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?"

Small Details

[_Sprocket_]

Well, to be fair, a far larger number of companies have had very lucrative and stable relationships with MS than the converse.

...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.

Check your recent history a bit closer. As the Microsoft Anit-trust battle started heating up, more and more whispers of discontent could be heard from the otherwise closely closed ranks of Microsoft and its allies. Lucrative? Perhapse. Stable? It would seem unlikely.

Must I remind you that making a profit is the aim of a company?

Whenever abuse of corporate power is mentioned on Slashdot (whether it include Microsoft as the prime subject or not :), this kind of line often shows up somewhere. Its a gem. Apparently there is no moral limit to one's actions as long as "profit" is the ultimate motive.

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.

Re:Gnome

[Jace of Fuse!]

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.)"

Where is Dee Hock now that we need him?

[Animats]

Dee Hock is the inventor of Visa, and the author of Birth of the Chaordic Age.. He was more successful than anyone in history in getting a huge number of institutions to cooperate. And he didn't have any coercive power; he worked for a little bank in the Pacific Northwest. When thinking about alternatives to Passport, Hock is the one to study.

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:

• Power and function must be distributive to the maximum degree. No function should be performed by any part of the whole that could reasonably be done by any more peripheral part, and no power vested in any part that might reasonably be exercised by any lesser part.
• It must be self-organizing. All participants must have the right to organize for self-governance at any time, for any reason, at any scale, with irrevocable rights of participation in governance at any greater scale.
• Governance must be distributive. No individual, institution, or combination of either or both, particularly management, should be able to dominate deliberations or control decisions at any scale.
• It must seamlessly blend both cooperation and competition. All parts must be free to compete in unique, independent ways, yet be linked so as to sense the demands of other parts, yield self-interest and cooperate when necessary to the inseparable good of the whole.
• It must be infinitely malleable, yet extremely durable. It should be capable of constant, self-generated, modification of form or function, without sacrificing its essential purpose, nature or embodied principle, thus releasing human ingenuity and spirit.
• It must be cooperatively and equitably owned. All relevant and affected parties must be eligible to participate in functions, governance and ownership.

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.

Case in Point: Eazel/Nautilus

[Karma Sucks]

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.

Imminent death of open source predicted...

[joto]

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.

Re:So, let me get this straight....

[infiniti99]

They both made a very critical mistake early on that falls along the lines of this statement:

"Lets build our desktop to look like Windows, because thats what people are used to."

Wrong. I can't speak for GNOME, but for KDE let me rephrase:

"Let's build the best desktop possible for developers (us) and users alike, modeled after both present functionality and new ideas."

it immediately commits you (and your project) to a life of constantly playing second fiddle..

Open source projects don't care about taking ideas. They take and they add. KDE has a launch button and task bar, made famous by Win95. It also has a desktop menubar, popularized by MacOS. Minimizing, shading, dockapp swallowing, system tray, desktop icons, multiple desktops. It's all there. Anything cool you've ever used, and then some, is there. Here's a recent scenario: a coder is sitting at his computer wishing he had a sidebar in Konqueror -- you know, something like what is in Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla. Does he live the rest of his life without such a feature? Making some sort of sacrifice to use Linux? Of course not! He duplicates the feature in Konqueror. The point is that it doesn't matter where the idea comes from. If it is useful, it is added. That's how Open Source projects work.

Rather than try out new ideas, take a few risks here and there, and rethink the ways in which things have always been done, they both followed like puppy dogs into the same bloody mess. Now both are stuck. The defacto standard Linux GUI is now roughly equivalent to a Windows desktop from seven years ago. Clap at your leisure.

Right... and could you open a remote file from within the included Windows text editor 7 years ago? And would selecting the "save" option cause it to be uploaded back to the remote location? Did you have a command prompt that supported scrollback and multiple tabbed sessions? Could you disable popup windows, but keep the rest of Javascript in your web browser? Could you log your windowing events to stderr? Can you do any of this with even the latest version of Windows? I think not.

refine that departure into a stable, usable, likeable model. They didn't do that. Now they're paying the price, and have no one to blame but themselves.

The KDE libraries are a desktop perfection. I fail to see this price they are paying.

Proudly posted from Konqueror.

-Justin
Psi - ICQ-like Jabber client

Wanna Bet??? - A prediction

[baptiste]

First, I posted a rather long post on Hailstorm over at K5. Feel free to read if interested. But as I submitted it, a thought occurred to me....

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.

Take a deep breath folks

[Zeinfeld]

The only thing I could make out in the article was that the guy does not know anything much about .NET but is very paranoid about what he does not know.

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.

.NET is really about Microsoft's entry into the one area of the software industry it does not dominate - enterprise resource planning. Go to SAP or Oracle and they will charge you $10 million plus for a pile of barely implementable crap. Microsoft think they have a better idea and have been hiring and strategising accordingly. The most significant part of .NET is that Microsoft has co-opted IBM as an aly.

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.

.NET may be just hype, but hey so is Java. But for Java Sun's lackluster processor performance would have consigned the company to history along with SGI and DEC. Instead Java put Sun right at the center of the Internet boom. Even if you dismiss .NET as meaningless hype, the point is that .NET has captured the airtime and there is none left for Sun or Oracle to launch JavaII or the like.