De Icaza Responds on Mono and GNOME

miguel writes: "Here is my reply to the various questions on Mono, the future of GNOME and the Register statements." Linux Today has a copy of the email as well.

Comments

Those who fail to learn from history...

[zhobson]

..are doomed to repeat it.

Over and over again, Miguel De Icaza has displayed the same sort of breathless excitement over Microsoft technologies that I'd expect to see from a newbie, not a developer of his caliber. It's extraordinarily short-sighted for him to believe that he'll be able to keep up with Microsoft. This isn't a matter of talent. Microsoft has shown, time and time again, that it has no problem locking out other vendors using API changes and whatever other means available.

Miguel seems to be ignoring the fact that Microsoft will very likely do everything it can to keep Mono uselessly lagging. They've embraced and extended every technology they've adopted, and even their own APIs shift constantly. I realize that the .NET Framework looks like a different approach, and Microsoft is acting like it's going to start playing nice. If it happens, it'd be a first for Microsoft. I personally have my doubts, and history backs me up. What a shame that a talented developer like Miguel doesn't know better than to trust them.

-zack

Re:Advantages of C# over Java

[SteveX]

Sun proved, when they sued Microsoft, that they don't want Java-the-language being used to generate code to run anywhere but inside Java-the-VM or have direct access to anything but the Java classes.

Microsoft's extensions to Java were allowing Java code to directly instantiate and use COM objects; a really big part of .NET. The CLR is designed to give easy access to the underlying operating system (in a managed manner). Very different goals.

If Sun would have been willing to allow Java to be used this way, then Microsoft would probably have stuck with Visual J++ and the Windows Java framework they were already working on, and we wouldn't have C# or .NET.

- Steve