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LinuxWorld: Business, Business and More Business
Clarkson University wins a server from IBM. Sun is bringing embedded Linux to its UltraSparc IIe processors. Wired has an overview of LinuxWorld, talking about how it's all business and the joy is gone; and so does Internet.com; and so does Newsforge, which also has a story about LinuxWorld in Paris. The Register has a lengthy interview with Miguel de Icaza, in which he notes "Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET".
Hey,
I thought that's what everyone wanted? To be taken serious as opposed to hey look at the nice kids playing with Linux?
What's wrong with this?
Sent from your iPad.
"I'd like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 - no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET," he told us. "A lot of people just see .NET as a fantastic upgrade for the development platform from Microsoft.
.NET. But it will be a cold day in hell before Billy and the boys would do anything (even for profit) for an open source project that uses the GNU licence for many of its parts.
If this was US politics, a candidate has just stated he supports a communistic form of governement and cant wait till he gets it installed.
Interesting concept though, using
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Wired has an overview of LinuxWorld, talking about how it's all business and the joy is gone
Too bad it can't be both ways. Often times, as mass popularity increases (in this case business adoption), enjoyment level decreases. Probably because you now have people involved who don't see things even close to the same way you do.
By the way, E*Trade moves to Linux servers
I Heart Sorting Networks
Just what exactly is the soul going for these days, Mr. Icaza?
It's clearly a buyer's market.
"click" That's the sound of Gnome being deleted. After reading the Register article, I'm almost convinced that Miguel is on the evil empires payroll. Hello KDE!
On the other hand, he does say it's a cool environment and I'm sure he knows a hell of a lot more about programming than I do. So, I take back the "click". Hell, I don't know what to think. I do know I don't ever want to donate to M$ again!
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I'm sorry, but someone throw some cold water on me.
GNOME 3.0 could perhaps be using APIs by the traditionally evil folks at Microsoft? Now, see if you have as much trouble imagining this as I do -- a long-haired, super-smart, (sexy, even) traditional Linux user who has used GNOME for years now embracing a Microsoft-ish manipulation of his GUI. Ever more far-fetched would be SUN Microsystems, who hate Microsoft more than all of us do, ditching their CDE GUI for GNOME, which in turn gets hooked into Microsoft
I'm skeptical, but it'll sure be fun to see how this all plays out.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Miguel sounds out of his mind. Despite .NET being an rather open standard, it was created by the biggest, baddest, and meanest software company in the world. You cannot get around the fact that Microsoft owns .NET. When you endorse .NET, you endorse Microsoft. I, for one, will not just forget the years of horrible software and put my trust in a shady development platform based on central Microsoft databases.
I really like Gnome, and I don't want it to be tied-in to a major Microsoft project.
Porting Gnome to
I love the idea of a common runtime environment that supports C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc., runs on all platforms, etc. etc. etc., but I DON'T want that platform in any way controlled by Microsoft (or by Sun, or RedHat, or me!) If any one entity controls the platform, that one entity has entirely too much power - we've simply traded one monopolist for another.
Now, if Miquel wishes to create such an environment under GPL, with no patents held by any organization, then I'm all for it - that way no one organization can embrace and extend the spec. But
www.eFax.com are spammers
:Peter
Sure glad I use KDE! GNOME sucks!
that was number 1...
Just kiddin, you made me do it! I love and respect all desktops equally.
bbh
I suspect that most people will probably disagree with him, however.
This is /. He'll be lucky to escape with flesh remaining on his bones. Most of the Linux people here have no interest in making peace with Microsoft under any terms except total, utter physical destruction of the company, and anyone who uses MS.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I think - I THINK - that Miquel's goal is to out-Microsoft Microsoft, by beating MS to the punch on .NET.
.NET as widespread as HTTP _before_ MS can get a signifigant foothold, then you have a certain element of control over the Beast From Redmond.
If you can make
But that's a really dangerous game to be playing, methinks.
Miquel scares me sometimes.
DG
http://streetmodified.org/books.html
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Seriously, back in the good old days (circa 1980) IBM's VM/370 OS was "available source", and we used to play with and modify it. Some of those modifications even got picked up by IBM. We also used it for business (the customer of those modifications).
There's (obviously) nothing to stop businesses from exploiting the benefits provided by those that play with the OS.
And, as long as there's source, there's nothing to stop people from continuing to play.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
The more money is going to trickle down to the little guys, read us, to develope more business solutions.
I found this to be true in my consulting business: When I don't have to charge them $250 a seat for Widnows, $400 for MS Office and $250 for various CAL and NT Servers - they tend to spend more money on my cool database applications. Less money going to Billionaire Bill means more for me.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Take that!
Well, this ain't a troll, cause I'm not going to rm -rf
BTW, I'm a programmer, so I shouldn't find it hard to figure out what
"Old man yells at systemd"
I love the idea of a common runtime environment that supports C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc., runs on all platforms, etc. etc. etc., but I DON'T want that platform in any way controlled by Microsoft (or by Sun, or RedHat, or me!) If any one entity controls the platform, that one entity has entirely too much power - we've simply traded one monopolist for another.
Considering that C# and the CLI are ECMA standards exactly how does Microsoft control the Mono platform? However Java is very much still entirely controlled by Sun which hasn't stopped a vibrant Free Software community to grow around Java? So even if C# and the CLI were completely controlled by MSFT (which they aren't) there is no reason why Free Software cannot benefit from it. Now, if Miquel wishes to create such an environment under GPL, with no patents held by any organization, then I'm all for it - that way no one organization can embrace and extend the spec.
According to miguel the Mono runtime is released under the LGPL, the compiler is released under the GPL, and the class libraries are released under the X11 license..
From where I sit that is all FREE SOFTWARE unless you are one of those GPL zealots that believes that if it isn't GPL it isn't Free Software even though we all know that Apache, BSD, Kerberos, BIND, etc aren't GPL.
I actually know about here you fucking retard. In fact, one could suspect you're the fucking retard for thinking that I didn't know that:
.NET
.NET resources, that I was looking for something a little more specific or (preferrably) written by someone else other than the party with the most vested interest in convincing me that I can't live without it?
a) Microsoft makes
b) www.microsoft.com is their homepage
And yes, I could start there, but don't you imagine that I've already been there, and, by virtue of me asking for
"Old man yells at systemd"
I am not a linux world attendee, so I have not experienced the letdown that these people are describing, but it reminds me of people lamenting the loss of the "cool" internet when it was just a bunch of random people putting up sites, before mass commercialization came in and "ruined everything".
I say the same thing to this as I do to that. There are still plenty of cool sites put up by random people. You still have to look for them just like you used to have to in the early days. YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO WHAT THE MASSES DO. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THEIR TV SHOWS OR LISTEN TO THEIR MUSIC.
Getting depressed about what the masses do with a new concept is silly and counterproductive. All that does is shows how much you are buying into what Madison Avenue is trying to sell. You get irked because some knockoff is getting all the attention. Well, why do you care who all the masses are being told to pay attention to? Why are you letting them tell YOU what to pay attention to?
Britney Spears does not annoy me--that may be because I never see her or hear her music. If I want to hear edgy, innovative, gutsy music I know where to look--off the beaten track. Lamenting the fact that it isn't on the radio is a waste of a lament.
Enterprise stuff may be getting all the industry/press/expo attention right now, but that doesn't stop a single GPL/open source product from getting done, nor should it have any bearing on our passion for the freedom, quality, and community of open source/free software.
Personally, I am thrilled to see people there to make money. And an important part of that is just the "to see people there" part. With this economy we should totally expect that a lot of the fun, innovative, exciting, and cutting edge stuff would be gone. A lot of that was funded by the pre-bubble-burst wild-eyed investment community. The fact that ANYBODY showed up this year is wonderful. And if IBM and HP are not only there, but completely bullish on linux's future, well, I'm ecstatic. It's a huge victory for us that they are there at all, and that they are as enthusiastic as they seem to be.
Linux in the enterprise might not be what excites you about Linux, but it is still an exciting possibility.
These may well be the people that create your next Linux using job--I say we welcome them with hearty handshakes and reciprocal enthusiasm.
Liberty uber alles.
To be fair, he did distinguish between the NT security policy and the new .NET security policy, which he compared much more to a sandbox system.
That's kind of bordering on trollness...
If some meteor hits the earth, and Linux really does become the desktop of ubiquity, something will be lost.
The geek qualities of linux will never be lost as long as there are alternative distributions. As long as someone wants Linux to be a geek toy- it will be. use Debian.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
The parent post must be a joke.
I've created a new Slashdot Icon for Gnome that I'd like to propose. It can be seen at the following location:
. jp g
http://www.geocities.com/heavenstrash/gnomeicon
I also got to experience the feel of the old days, having brought my TiBook for a demo system. There were quite a few Apples in evidence, and I proabbly spent more time talking PPC Linux than I did KDE. The PowerPC Linux crowd continues to have all the community feeling that Linux as a whole lost when the gold rush started. Curiously, the Apple guys who stopped by the booth seemed completely uninterested as all the Linux guys drooled over the TiBook.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
most other observers are downplaying Microsoft's "security initiative" as market-speak and vaporware
Only because that's what it is - and that's what it will continue to be until we see the results.
It's too early to tell if MS is really serious about security - but it IS a good thing that they're announcing it (Hmm - did I just cause you to blow a gasket? I just "praised" and "downplayed" at the same time!) But we can't just say "Oh, everything from MS is going to be secure now" - MS has a very, very bad history when it comes to securing their products, and they lie all the time - the jury on whether the new security initiative is successful won't be in for a very, very long time.
Come on spaceman, you use linux, you should be able to write your own.
Actually, I use a tweaked-out Commodore 64 for basic web browsing and email purposes. The rest of my time is spent improving Knuth's algorithms with pencil and paper methods in order to achieve a better run-time.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
IIRC, he threw a hissyfit over GMONE referring to Staroffice instead of a free alternative. I'd imagine he'd be ready to have Miguel lynched over this - getting into bed with the worst of the colsed source companies.
Doesn't he have some serious pull with the GNOME people?
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I saw this in the Business Wire - apparently Oracle will be ditching Unix to run on Linux, and will then do versions for the different OS as well.
But their main servers will all be Linux.
As to those who gripe about "darned business Linux" stuff - what's stopping you from doing your own Open Source projects? We never paid attention to Windows - you don't have to pay attention to Business glomming on to Linux either.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
here goes moderators, get your -1 trolls ready.
Which frigging way do you want it? I never once mentioned that part of the article. I was referring to this...
FROM THE DAMNED ARTICLE:
"Be careful what you wish for," programmer Mickey Haines said. "Five years ago, we all wished that Linux would be accepted by the business world. Our wish was granted. But the payback is a plague of pink-faced guys in shiny blue suits. The expo is all about brains and business now, not art and heart like it used to be."
Well, guess what. Business IS exactly that. It isn't about fun. It's about Business. If it was supposed to be fun, they would call it that.
I am sick to death of people screaming how little respect the "real world/business world" gives the various flavors. Well, here's your respect. Oh, you don't like it? Well, you ASKED FOR IT DIDN'T YOU????
And no, Jbeamon, this isn't directed at you. It's everyone with the elitest attitude...10 years from now I can see people saying yeah, Linux used to be cool, then "THE MAN" took it over and now it isn't.
Sent from your iPad.
"He also had praise for the new Microsoft security model.."
Based upon what?
"..dismissed the notion that Redmond was employing embrace and extend to its web services protocols.."
Oh, yeah, right. M$FT has certainly changed it's tune...
"..and put the message that the community should get over its beef with The Beast."
uh.. well... Maybe he's willing to "get over it"
It's plain he's intent on hopping into bed with Unca Bill: you can see that by the brown tones on Icaza's nose...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
The children had their run; now that all the IPO money has been frittered away, it is time to pay the bills.
HP, Compaq, Sun, CA, Oracle, IBM, and friends are serioius about Linux and they are taking no prisoners.
Linux is gaining momentum where it counts: with the grown-ups.
I understand from what I've read over at Wired that many an old attendee of Linuxworld are dissapointed with the new business-sponsored Linuxworld.
.NET into GNOME or the fact that IBM, HP, Compaq and other major hardware vendors are embracing Linux?
I've read comments on it 'not being fun' any more. I've also seen comments here stating that the Opensource-ness of Linux is being attacked by the close-sourced monsters. I was wondering if that comment was referring to just the spastic comment aout including
I think IBM doesn't sit up all day thinking of somehow 'stealing' linux for themselves. They see it as a viable, important alternative to the closed and controlled Microsoft, and probably even Intel regime. They see the gartner charts that show with current trends that Intel servers running MS OSes are going to account for 85% of the money spent on IT infrastructure in the server market.
The reason I think they're even against Intel is that all of their big-ticket-lots-o-press-with-linux in it adds are about the zSeries or the iSeries products. There is hardly a mention about Linux running on Intel based systems (xSeries).
I think IBM sees Linux as a way to sell more of their 'big iron' high margin systems and to not have to continue to fight the idiots at Dell who try to commodotize the server market when they see the server market as more than just a commodity...
Just My $0.02. I may be wrong.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Yeah, it's a joke. I mean, he made it obvious. "He also has a keen sense of history. Embrace and extend? Why would they do that?" You can almost hear the sarcasm.
But hey, -Miguel- actually thinks this, so who's to say?
The enemies of Democracy are
OK: old argument, old news... UNIX blah blah blah security blah blah blah happens to everybody blah blah blah...
Yeah, right.
Sounds like a typical M$FT apologist, don't he?
"...They happen to be really bad at managing their bugs, and not providing fixes on time, but that's another issue..."
Wait!
Stop right there, Miguel, that's the whole f*cking point!
You can't just blow off the single biggest issue there is with M$FT "security" just because you're sucking up to them...
Security is a marketing issue to M$FT -- not a security issue, despite Unca Bill's recent homily.
Until M$FT demonstrates in a consistent manner, over an extended period of time that they're doing *anything* differently, anyone with an ounce of integrity wouldn't be sucking up to The Beast® this way...
Like someone already said, at least there's still KDE...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Miguel? Do you have any idea of what type of fire you are playing with? Seriously, what you plan on doing is taking a large chunk of gnome users and kindly giving them to Microsoft in their battle to control EVERYTHING there is to control. Listen, if this came of it's own because of need then I would have no problem with it. Especially if it came from the free software movement or other companies/monopolists who weren't convicted of abusing said monopoly. The problem I DO have is that simply this may make things easier in short term but in long term horrible for the industry. The infrastructure of what we call the internet today (application wise) is built with many different, compilers, archs and setups; it works and it might not be efficient but it allows for choice. What .NET plans to do is basically eliminate choice in the long run.
.NET taking over the world, using dumbasses and tiny amounts of cash in retrospect as pawns and they are too blind to see me coming.. man I'm good"
Can't you see that Microsoft isn't doing this to be nice, they aren't even doing this for web services. They are doing this to own the whole goddamn thing. The internet, what developers develop in, how things operate.. EVERYTHING!! And you are gonna sit there and honestly interview with someone on some bullshit about how this is good for you/us/me/developers because it makes things easier and that Gnome 4.0 will support this. This is Microsoft getting out of the OS business and into a much larger market. If they become the standard (standard meaning widely used) this will set off World War 3.. Everyone trying to break ties with Microsoft will again have no choice but to follow a standard they created and will no doubt make proprietary extensions too breaking said standard submitted to the ECMA when their standard+extensions becomes standard (widely used) you are fucking OWNED.
I hope this doesn't happen because if it does, you'll be known as the fucking typhoid mary in the free software movement.
"MS =
Go back and read Miguel's statements on Microsoft's security in context. He correctly distinguishes Microsoft's security design from its implementation.
On paper, .Net's secuity model is quite nice. Just as NT's model is well designed. Unfortunately for all of us, Microsoft has been choosing the wrong pair from [fast, cheap, right]. That was the point of the Trustable Computing Memo. It's time for Microsoft to start coding as well as they design.
Besides, this is a tremendous opportunity for Mono in particular, and Open Source in general. Here, we have a spec from Microsoft, rubber-stamped by ECMA, with both closed and Open implementations. Both sides have something to prove. Microsoft must prove that they can "turn the boat" again, as they did after the Internet Memo, and write secure code. Mono must prove that the tenets of Open Source (many eyes == shallow bugs, full disclosure, etc.) can bear fruit in an apples-to-apples comparison. This competition can only improve the breed. In the end, we'll be able to choose the greater good, instead of the lesser evil. <trollbait /> :-)
For some, blissful ignorance of Microsoft has been the best way to go. Who am I to argue with Linus Torvalds? But Miguel has chosen to take the fight to Microsoft, by competing on their .Net turf. More power to him!
This sig intentionally left blank.
Both your questions are irrelevant. The first set of questions about whether Microsoft can change the C# and CLI spec is irrelevant because already a lot of stuff in .NET is not in the C# or CLI specification. Miguel has stated that creating a compatible implementation of .NET is not his goal yet people keep assuming it is. The CLI and C# are good technologies that fix some of the mistakes that Sun made with Java (and made some new ones) but somehow assuming that implementing the development platform now means that Ximian will have to mirror the .NET development environment when MSFT probably has twice or thrice the number of programmers working on .NET fulltime versus Mono's five fulltime and about fifty volunteer employees.
.NET framework to Linux. Instead I assume it will be a successful port of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure which is good enough for me.
Quite frankly, I don't ever expect Mono to be a port of the
As for your second set of questions, I somehow doubt that MSFT can hand over their technology to a standards body yet still threaten to sue anyone who implements it. However, IANAL and stranger things have happened.
What was so great that three of them won the contest? It's not on the press release, the COSI site, nor on IBM's winners list.
Don't bother.
"..Microsoft Haters.."
Damn straight...
Shoo, M$FT troll...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
To those giving MS praise for coming up with .NET (including Miguel): Face it, there isn't a significant difference between CLR-type functionality and the JVM. Getting the JVM was a much bigger step than going from JVM -> CLR. In MS's defense, though, since it's an incremental and obivous step, WHOEVER had made that step would be embracing and extending the innovation of the JVM work at Sun (and the efforts to bring other languages to the JVM).
.NET software that people will think can run on any .NET platform that actually only runs on MS's .NET. Sure, it's an ECMA standard, but that doesn't keep MS from introducting their own "extensions" to it which lock users into MS.NET while still giving the illusion of not being MS-specific.
I'll leave the discussion of Java (the language) vs C# out of this.
The real difference is that with Java/JVM, when MS deviated from the spec (de facto, governed by Sun) Sun was able to get them to stop. Sun put the smack down on MS for trying to make MS-specific changes to MS's implementation of Java. This would have resulted in people developing for MS-Java thinking they were developing for Java, and then having issues when trying to get their code to "run anywhere" besides MS OSs.
With CLR/.NET there's no one to sue Microsoft when they go and take what is touted as being an open spec and change their implementation of it. That will lead to
Or am I wrong? Is there any legal way to punish MS for the type of mischief they tried with Java/JVM and that I predict they will try with CLR/.NET?
Perhaps "Student" isn't the proper description... As far as I knew he was running Clarkson's tech crew for a while when I arrived my freshman year (6 years ago)
Microsoft is playing the favourites game again. First MS gives the rights to MFC to Bristol (where is Bristol today? Notice also that Bristol did not get the rights for COM?), then COM and MFC to Mainsoft (where is Mainsoft today? Notice that Mainsoft does not have the rights for .NET?), and now finally Ximian is the "annointed one".
This is a Microsoft play through and through. And it surprises me that Michel is that STUPID to fall for it. I think the reason is because MS seriously sweet talks into into Michel's ear. And most likely the Ximian team went through various scenarios and thought, "Hey this is a win win situation." But the reality is that it is not a win win situation. Microsoft will string along Michel until they do not need him and Ximian anymore. And then there will be a new annointed one.
What disappoints me is that Michel thinks he can outfox Microsoft. Bigger people have tried and have their problems. Michel is a small fry and when Bristol or Mainsoft or Software AG tried to get more action MS stopped them dead in their tracks. Standards mean squat to Microsoft. How many people does Microsoft have on the standard bodies and how many does Ximian? Get my point folks!!! Sorry for being so harsh, but after having talked and written about Microsoft for a decade (switched to Open Source) I am amazed that people still fall for this tatic.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I think Miguel was dismissive of Microsoft's security problems because he won't be affected by them. Buffer overflows are implementation problems, and the Mono project is doing a completely independent implementation of .NET. Microsoft's design is sound, they just tend to write shitty code.
I'll put it another way. Who cares if Windows is built like a screen door? One of the big selling points of .NET (and therefore Mono) is that I can run the same web services on my secure *nix box that my neigbor runs on his virus-laden Windows box. So long as the security model is sound (and it looks like it is), then I can run Miguel's stable and secure Mono instead of the crap coming out of Redmond.
Remember, Microsoft has used some really good ideas in the past (OLE, the registry, microkernel architecture, Active Directory). It's just that their actual implementation of those ideas has been truly awful. Miguel is getting around that by writing his own code.
This
Didn't you hear?
They _do_ exist, and took down RaiseTheFist.com, too...
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
I dunno what drugs he's on either, but Miguel is under the impression that Windows is the best operating system out there, period. Since no other OS is as "user friendly" as Windows, in order for open source to Succeed we must clone Windows in every way.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Miguel is either making a huge mistake, or he's a genius.
.NET buzzword bingo started, I spent some time digging around for some information on it, and what I came up with was very impressive. I compared what Microsoft are proposing, with the developments going on in the open source community, and the thing that struck me was the synergy and scale of .NET. If it was coming from any other company apart from Microsoft, then I think we'd all be throwing a party.
.NET is appealing, and maybe Mono is what the community needs to get a development environment (by which I mean API, runtime etc) to rival MS. If we get compatibility with .NET as a byproduct of this, then I'd consider it a bonus. If GNOME is ported to Mono, along with GTK, what else could be? Maybe Mozilla, Jabber, Apache and who knows what? If MS intentionally break compatability with Mono, then we'd have two similar architectures with a whole bundle of applications. It may actually help push Linux on the desktop - especially if the modifications MS make are subtle enough to break Mono, but not most applications. Perhaps third party developers would find fixing the problem worthwhile if it means they get a few million more users.
When the whole
But we all know that MS plays dirty. Other posters have given examples already. Which makes me question whether Miguel is being utterly naive in thinking that Microsoft won't screw the Mono project.
The technical side of
Which leads me to think that maybe there is a hint of genius in Miguel's actions. A paraphrase of a quote describing genius stated that 'A clever person is someone who comes up with an idea that makes you think "I could have thought of that". A genius is someone who comes up with an idea that makes you think "I would never have thought of that!"'
Time will tell I guess.
"With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time."
.NET MYTH: that you can just willy-nilly plug in existing languages in the CLR nirvana. He has become one of those .NET fan boys who show up touting that .NET supports over twenty programming languages.
.NET are a pile of large stinking COW dookey!
.NET. What are the hard realities:
.NET support for the .NET versions of languages do not. Programmers don't want to work with 80 percent of the features of their chosen language simply because the .NET version of the language doesn't support it. They also don't want to deal with compatibility problems arising with FunctionA() acts differently when run under the C++.NET as opposed to the native C++ environment.
.NET universe impose straight jackets on languages that no programmers will want to deal with. Programmers don't want to be confined to using a limited set of types and classes just so their program can function in the CLR. Should I even mention the compatibility problems that existing code will have within the .NET sandbox?
With comments like these, Miguel has really lost it. Perhaps he never had it to begin with.
He appears to have this entirely fantastical idea that when Mono reaches 1.0, we will be able to just plug in the existing C, C++, Perl, etc code bases into it and, WAMMO!, instant cross language, cross platform code. I can understand his frustration with updating Gnome language bindings. However, I think his mind has snapped from doing that kind of work.
He has bought into the central
Note to Miguel: the cross languages promises of
Programmers don't like half assed solutions to problems. And that is just what Perl, Python and name-your-favorite-language are inside the world of
(1) Languages evolve. The
(2) The Common Type System and Common Class Libraries of the
It seems some people yearn for the days when they where the only ones using linux. They are as bad as M$ trying to put themselves on a pedestal by sabotaging other peoples attempt to step out of ignorance.
Business is good. A "mixing of open source and close source ideologies" ends up making a very competitive and successfull candidate. It's not that one or the other is necessarily bad, but that extremes of either become self defeating. Sure RedHat has certain proprietary secrets which they use to make a profit. So what. They also make linux very accessable and allow more people to discover the 'joy' of linux. These heady idealist who scream down with all things proprietary are nothing more than neo-hippy-nihilist-posers who need to think before they parrot. Part of what makes linux and open source such an inspiring concept is that it makes information accessable to the people, and thusly empowers them to some extent. Successfull business' that push open source solutions manage to put the empowering project in more hands, and helps to fuel the ongoing development and exploration in the community. I think it's very symbiotic. The real bitch I think these people have is that money no longer falls out of the trees. Such is the state of the economy. Many of us are finding we have to work for a living. For some of us, this is no revelation. Some of us even find joy in our work.
The newsforge comment on RMS' attendance habits is just plain false. RMS was at LWCE in San Jose in the fall of '99, and there was no "GNU" prefix attached. He was really tearing up the dance floor at the /. /Andover party :)
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
I for one am fed up of seeing so many anti-.Net posts by people who cant seem to see beyond "it's Microsoft, therefore it must be evil". The software industry, as I see it, is moving more and more towards web-services and Internet-connected programs, and it seems to me quite possible that in 5 years time, a large portion of the programs people run and use on a daily basis will be managed (CLR, JVM etc.) programs.
.Net is probably going to become vital if Linux/Open Source wants to remain a serious competitor to Microsoft. Will companies continue running their servers on Linux if they can't run .Net servlets on it? Will the relatively few Desktop Linux users continue using it if they cant access the sites that run on .Net?
I see a lot of posts here in this article by people who seem convinced that Ximian/Mono/GNOME is now evil because it has a vague link to Microsoft, but it seems to me that support for
Consider also, that the Microsoft CLR _is_ a managed bytecode system in exactly the same way that the Java JVM is. If companies start migrating to writing managed programs rather than native ones, it instantly solves one of the key problems that Linux faces - the lack of Applications available.
Ximian isnt evil. They're making something which is quite possibly vital for the future of Open Source Software.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
If Sun wants to have people use the Sparc chip in embedded systems like network routers, then they should make some hardware available to do just that. I suggest starting with a small box not larger than the old lunchbox machines (e.g. IPC, IPX, LX, etc) and preferrably smaller, with the following features:
If they sell that beast w/o HD, w/o RAM, but with a 1 GHz CPU, for say $500, I'd bet it will sell fast. Oh, and if IBM does the same but with a PPC-64 CPU at 1 GHz, I'd bet that would sell fast, too.
Now if they added a 2nd CPU, ultra fast 3D graphical video, and joystick controls, and sold it for $300 ... uh, no ... I am not going to share this excellent weed with you :-)
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wonder if they would end up offering opportunities for open source freeware developers to do testing of their packages in a zSeries environment in a way that IBM failed to do with their highly restricted and limited program.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Why is it so easy to hate members of the "Linux community"? Is it because they are the whiniest bunch of computer users ever? Is it because they kick and scream like the children they are when they don't get their way? Is it because they are just fucking stupid? I don't really know which one to pick. Two years ago Linux geeks were complaining about not getting corporate support. Now they are complaining about actually having corporate support. Now when somebody suggests they have a method to interact with the rest of the world they kick and scream because the great satan was the one who came up with the buzz words. What the fuck?
.NET system is based around stateless XML based RPC methods. This is a GOOD THING for interoperability. As long as you conform to the SOAP your program can talk with another program not matter what sort of machine it is running on or where it is running. A common runtime for languages isn't so bad either. You can write a program on any architecture and run it on any other architecture that has a compliant runtime environment and bytecode translator. Don't use the CLR if you wahnt to preserve certain functionality for a given language. It would be cool though to be able to write apps for GNOME that would run on any OS and architecture that has the CLR compliant GNOME libraries. No recompiling required. A house that does all C/C++ development doesn't need to learn Java in order to write a program they can sell to just about anybody running just about any computer. Just because the idea proposed by microsoft doesn't make it evil. In fact I'd say Miguel is doing the GNU thing by writing a free implimentation of non-free software. This is what the whole GNU crap is about. Slashdotters seem too fucking stupid to understand this point.
Miguel de Icaza wanting to add real functionality to Linux is not a damning offence. Half the fucking posts on this thread seem to think Miguel is off his rocker or Bill Gates' bitch or something. That is just fucking retarded. He's a damn good programmer who knows Linux is way behind the times when it comes to interacting with the real business world. Stateful RPC methods need to hit the road. They don't fit into topologies where you have multiple servers behind a single address that are all processing requests for the sake up upping your throughput. Stuff like the LVSP isn't going to work with FTP or rsh connections though works well with HTTP. XML based RPC (or any stateless RPC method) are much more efficient in modern networks because I don't need to fuck with my external network configuration to add capacity. SOAP and the whole
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Jebus, should I have cut-and-pasted a shell session of me unintalling gnome properly? It was all tongue and cheek, for the sake of fun and brevity!
"Old man yells at systemd"
This would be a great time for the people at odds with microsoft to think about the future.
Linux needs something other than Microsoft/Gnome.
Java won't cut it, being held tightly by Sun (who is going to use Gnome anyway).
So, what the heck is the alternative? KDE (with the licensing issues?)
The last guy I worked with from Ximian had a severe fetish for python, so maybe they can do something?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Miguel's comments completely shocked me like when Luke Skywalker got his hand chopped off in "The Empire Strikes Back".
.NET, what the future of it holds or whether it is a true "sell-out" to MS, but I can say by embracing the ".NET" name alone Miguel just did a boatload for MS PR.
.NET, which again indirectly says that they all support MS.
.NET is "the future" and that Microsoft will be "the leader". Is it sound business to use products that lag behind by 1 year? Of course not. They'll all choose MS because now they think .NET is the future to everything, there is no alternative and that MS is the leader of it.
I have no idea about the "technical" pros and cons of
Average Joe now thinks that MS=.NET and Miguel just said that Gnome=.NET. Sun said they'll use Gnome2 and obviosly Linux uses Gnome, thus indirectly Sun and Linux now support
Next he said that Ximian will lag 1 year behind MS, thus MS is superior and the "leader" in the technology. Now most high-level managers have the technical knowlege of "the average Joe" and to them Miguel just validated that
This is so sad. The game's over. MS wins if they pull this off -- it doesn't matter what is technically superior -- if MS wins the PR battle they can make monkey dung and people will flock to buy it. Case and point: OS/2 versus Windows 3.0.
MS just got one of the "leaders" of Open-Source to fully endorse their technology (and thus indirectly thier products). I'm glad I got my class B CDL so that I can drive busses when MS owns the technological world.
Remember that the GNU Object Model Environment was formed, and it's ultimate final goal still is, to provide a whole heap of things for the FSF's GNU project. Obviously, a GUI infrastructure; a component architecture, GUI applications and other such niceties also fall within it's domain.
When Stallman decided that he wanted a free operating system, and started up the whole GNU thing, he decided to clone one of the most popular hacking environments at the time: Unix. Remember that every working Unix was proprietary at the time. Now, it's up to GNOME to provide GNU with a whole bunch of "modern" features, so why not work off of .NET?
.NET is a lot more centrally controlled than Unix was, so I agree that there's a serious danger of GNOME being burnt horribly. But if they're willing to take that risk, and think they can surmount it, I don't think "We can't use .NET! We're all turning into Microsofties! Linux rules!" on it's own is a valid argument.
And if it doesn't work, there's always KDE. (Just think, as KDE and GNOME branch out further from each other in their goals and approach to things, they might start to get different enough that comparisons can be entirely free of religious arguments! :)
The first compiler I used was UCSD Pascal, and it produced P-code, to be run on any platform under a VM. That was back in the early 80'ties. Some years later, I got an account on a Unix mainframe, started using Emacs, and write small Emacs Lisp programs. Usually they were interpreted, but I found that byte compiling them produced platform independent byt ecode that ran much faster than the interpreter. That was the mid 80'ties.
I haven't yet programmed in Java and produced code for the JVM, but what would make that so innovative compared to the technologies that were old when I discovered them a decade before Java was marketed.
Suppose we put our suspicions and personal views of Miguel aside for a moment, and look at the footprints Miguel's projects have left over the past year or two. After all, thats the best indication you're going to get as to where he (and the projects he's associated with) are headed.
In the beginning, GNOME meant "GNU Network Object Model Environment". Remember that? GNOME was being offered up as essentially Miguel's attempt build an API infrastructure, having complained in his original "Lets Maker Unix Not Suck" decree about the lack of code reuse and interapplication communication, among other complaints. CORBA was going to be thefoundation of the beast, and ORBit would be the broker making it all click. This approach failed because CORBA had to be badly kludged to get it to the point where it could even discover other components, let alone communicate with them. All dressed up and nowhere to go..which leads us to Bonobo.
Bonobo was Miguel's attempt to standardize the way in which components discovered eachother and talked with eachother, regardless of origin, and regardless of what language they're written in. It failed, because no coder in their right mind wants to deal with that level of overhead and abstraction, especially when the definition of HOW to go about doing it was never fully nailed down. Bonobo failed to pull the GNOME car out of the ditch. "All dressed up and nowhere to go" became "Die and leave a good looking corpse".
Meanwhile, the desktop wars were heating up. The GUI was getting all the attention, not the underlying mechanisms that were making it happen in the basement. For a guy who works hard and wants a little respect and attention, the basement is no place to be. You want the spotlight. You want a cameo in a movie, you want the speaking tour circuit, and you want progressively less and less to do with working and more to do with playing the figurehead game. Enter Ximian. Ximian GNOME was Miguel's attempt to distance himself from GNOME's basement. In short, Miguel decided to put himself on a level higher than his GNOME work, hoping his project management decisions would trickle down from the throne instead of trickle up from the basement. Miguel probably noticed at some point that issuing edicts from the basement would only get part of the project built. The other portion would have to be created by issuing edicts from the top. This brings us to today.
Ximian is pretty, but stability continues to be an issue. Its a 50 story building built from the ground up that halted construction around the 35th floor. Construction was resumed on the the top of the building, but it only extended down to the 45th floor leaving a messy framework of I-beams and scaffolding exposed for all the world to see.
Disappointed with how the Linux community has "failed" to deliver a completed structure to him, Miguel wants to call in Microsoft to fix that hole. They'll cover the holes on the outside of the building with plywood and paint them to look like the rest of the building. They'll worry about the insides later.
The whole issue comes down to this---If you insist on living in GNOME city, which would you rather look at? An ugly, unstable skyscraper with 10 unfinished floors at the top, or a pile of rubble and plywood? (No WTC jokes, please..)
Then again, I hear KDE City is building a nice skyscraper with gleaming spires and a solid foundation, and Microsoft is nowhere to be found.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
OS X is quite a tasty piece of work. I'm in the middle of a Cocoa project (which I am simultaneously developing with a plain text UI) and was wondering if it might not be worthwhile to try to resurrect and improve Open Step. It seems to me that opening a compatibility wire that way might be a good idea. At minimum, it might unsimplify the target.