Posted by
chrisd
on from the what's-a-nice-coder-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this dept.
twigman writes "MSDN has an interview with Ximian CTO Miguel de Icaza about Mono and past Ximian projects. It's a surprisingly objective discussion, definitely worth a read." Of course we're not surprised Miguel is objective...
Ximian has been doing a good job balancing financial practicality with free software ideoligy. They make a GPL'd PIM (Evolution) and sell a proprietary interface to a proprietary server software. They have to make money, right? Exchange Connector only hurts the people who are already using Exchange.
The idea of using the.NET standard to create a robust component architecture is a pretty good idea. Microsoft is betting the farm on.NET. It is going to succeed. What is the harm in having a GPL implimentation of it? Even if it doesn't help *IX interoperate with the MS world, GNOME (and everybody in the GNU world) get a seemingly good technology. Morover, having Mono will allow the millions of.NET developers to make GPL stuff in the evenings without having to climb a steep learning curve.
We could have had a working Mono two years ago.
by
mj6798
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm glad to see that there are open source projects based on a language and runtime that supports a component architecture and runtime safety from the ground up. I think a Linux desktop environment and services platform based on C#/CLR will be so much better, more efficient, and more robust than the current systems based on plain C or C++. This has long been overdue.
What I am disappointed about is that the Linux community could have started on this several years ago. While there are some cosmetic differences between C#/CLR and Java/JVM, the object models and performance of the two languages and runtimes are essentially the same. And there actually are already several open source, high performance Java implementations already.
Even today, I think it still makes more sense to use something like GNU gcj or Intel's Open Runtime and maybe the existing native Gnome widgets (for which there are already Java bindings). But Mono is obviously not going to go that route. Too bad.
Re:Miguel is the smart fellow
by
Metrol
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
KDE's DCOP and KParts are rather incomplete imitations of CORBA.
First off, I'm not a developer. At best I just read a fair amount about what folks are doing. One of the things I personally found interesting about this interview was Miguel listing problems with Bonobo and CORBA that sounded a LOT like the reasons KDE doesn't use those technologies. Essentially that bindings such as CORBA are like swatting a fly with a hammer for desktop apps, thus a simpler approach was taken with things like DCOP.
Again, I'm not in the trenches, but from an observers point of view it seems that Gnome is just needing that next set of bindings to be developed sometime later over and over again. Everything was going to be better with CORBA and Bonobo linking everything. Now that's all the wrong approach, and Mono is needed. I may be way of base here, it just seems like it's the "bindings to be developed" of the month club.
On the other hand, KDE made the call to move things to DCOP a while ago and they seem to be sticking to their guns on it. The developers are extending where needed, but leaving the core intact as it's doing what they intended from the onset. I honestly don't know if this is a good or bad thing in practice. It seems like a more reasoned approach, and it's certainly produced a wonderful desktop environment.
Early into next year both projects are looking to have major releases. I guess we'll see which approach provides the payoff of a more robust environment that developers prefer to work on.
-- The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
GNOME != Ximian
by
ambrosius27
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Again, I'm not in the trenches, but from an observers point of view it seems that Gnome is just needing that next set of bindings to be developed sometime later over and over again. "
GNOME *is* sticking to its guns with CORBA and Bonobo. The developers are actively working on the Bonobo component model and Orbit2, and they plan on using them for the forseeable future. They're actually quite excited at the possibilities these tools are bringing to them and their desktop environment. From what I've seen on the lists, the developers have been hard at work ironing out wrinkles in the inproc/out-of-proc components and are happy with the speed of Orbit.
Now, I will concede that you're right in that *Miguel* has moved on. Even before Bonobo had fully matured (that's happening with GNOME2 development after the GNOME 1.4 experimentation), Miguel decided that the.NET framework is the way to go. I say, good for him! If Miguel and Ximian can make MONO into a beautiful development platform that is better than Bonobo, that's great! If that does happen (and it's going to be at least year before we can tell how it's doing), GNOME will probably be happy to start using MONO and employ Bonobo as a bridge to the new platform. Until then, GNOME is quite happy with Bonobo.
Jonathan Ingram posted in a thread that if Orbit really proves great, KDE would be happy to use it. In the meantime, KDE is using their own solution (which they like quite well) and will let GNOME do the Orbit development. You can compare GNOME's stance with MONO in the same way: wait and see.
Remember Miguel != GNOME and even Ximian != GNOME. Both are big players in GNOME, but GNOME is larger than them. Cheers!
Slashdot Mirror
Blah blah.. standard crap about reading your own site :)
Ximian has been doing a good job balancing financial practicality with free software ideoligy. They make a GPL'd PIM (Evolution) and sell a proprietary interface to a proprietary server software. They have to make money, right? Exchange Connector only hurts the people who are already using Exchange.
.NET standard to create a robust component architecture is a pretty good idea. Microsoft is betting the farm on .NET. It is going to succeed. What is the harm in having a GPL implimentation of it? Even if it doesn't help *IX interoperate with the MS world, GNOME (and everybody in the GNU world) get a seemingly good technology. Morover, having Mono will allow the millions of .NET developers to make GPL stuff in the evenings without having to climb a steep learning curve.
The idea of using the
What I am disappointed about is that the Linux community could have started on this several years ago. While there are some cosmetic differences between C#/CLR and Java/JVM, the object models and performance of the two languages and runtimes are essentially the same. And there actually are already several open source, high performance Java implementations already.
Even today, I think it still makes more sense to use something like GNU gcj or Intel's Open Runtime and maybe the existing native Gnome widgets (for which there are already Java bindings). But Mono is obviously not going to go that route. Too bad.
KDE's DCOP and KParts are rather incomplete imitations of CORBA.
First off, I'm not a developer. At best I just read a fair amount about what folks are doing. One of the things I personally found interesting about this interview was Miguel listing problems with Bonobo and CORBA that sounded a LOT like the reasons KDE doesn't use those technologies. Essentially that bindings such as CORBA are like swatting a fly with a hammer for desktop apps, thus a simpler approach was taken with things like DCOP.
Again, I'm not in the trenches, but from an observers point of view it seems that Gnome is just needing that next set of bindings to be developed sometime later over and over again. Everything was going to be better with CORBA and Bonobo linking everything. Now that's all the wrong approach, and Mono is needed. I may be way of base here, it just seems like it's the "bindings to be developed" of the month club.
On the other hand, KDE made the call to move things to DCOP a while ago and they seem to be sticking to their guns on it. The developers are extending where needed, but leaving the core intact as it's doing what they intended from the onset. I honestly don't know if this is a good or bad thing in practice. It seems like a more reasoned approach, and it's certainly produced a wonderful desktop environment.
Early into next year both projects are looking to have major releases. I guess we'll see which approach provides the payoff of a more robust environment that developers prefer to work on.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
"Again, I'm not in the trenches, but from an observers point of view it seems that Gnome is just needing that next set of bindings to be developed sometime later over and over again. "
.NET framework is the way to go. I say, good for him! If Miguel and Ximian can make MONO into a beautiful development platform that is better than Bonobo, that's great! If that does happen (and it's going to be at least year before we can tell how it's doing), GNOME will probably be happy to start using MONO and employ Bonobo as a bridge to the new platform. Until then, GNOME is quite happy with Bonobo.
GNOME *is* sticking to its guns with CORBA and Bonobo. The developers are actively working on the Bonobo component model and Orbit2, and they plan on using them for the forseeable future. They're actually quite excited at the possibilities these tools are bringing to them and their desktop environment. From what I've seen on the lists, the developers have been hard at work ironing out wrinkles in the inproc/out-of-proc components and are happy with the speed of Orbit.
Now, I will concede that you're right in that *Miguel* has moved on. Even before Bonobo had fully matured (that's happening with GNOME2 development after the GNOME 1.4 experimentation), Miguel decided that the
Jonathan Ingram posted in a thread that if Orbit really proves great, KDE would be happy to use it. In the meantime, KDE is using their own solution (which they like quite well) and will let GNOME do the Orbit development. You can compare GNOME's stance with MONO in the same way: wait and see.
Remember Miguel != GNOME and even Ximian != GNOME. Both are big players in GNOME, but GNOME is larger than them. Cheers!
~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.