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Mono and .NET - An Interview
all-of-the-dot writes "Would you use an open-source implementation of the .NET Framework? Ximian's Mono project enables you to build .NET apps that run on Linux and Unix as well as Windows. Check out the story from .NET Magazine's interview with Miguel de Icaza, Ximian cofounder and CTO" Added to which, AirLace writes "The Mono project has just achieved full self-hosting on Linux. While the C# compiler, itself written in C#, has been able to compile itself since March, Mono can now compile its own complete set of class libraries too. This announcement closely follows the release of the Phonic media player, the first .NET application for the GNOME desktop."
We all know how MS feels about non-MS operating systems. We all know they're using .NET as a way to lock people into Windows servers and desktops. There's NO WAY they're gonna hang out and let poor Linux play in their reindeer games.
No...they'll go ahead and change their infrastructure so that it doesn't work with open source code.
That this "phonic" thing, built with the ultra-portable .net dealy, still only runs on linux (or at least nix-ish) machines with gtk?
.net apps written for windows similarly only work with the "windows gui toolkit" (or whatever)?
On a more serious note...
Seriously. Where's the portability at? Will
The .Net framework is a very clean and interesting initiative. Forget Passport, forget web-services and all the other pieces and focus only on the framework and the common language runtime (that the focus of MONO) - its neat, and being able to compile code on several platforms without worrying about ports is a great achievement.
Off course, don't use platform-specific calls (PInvoke) if you want interoperability, but almost everything else is ok.
I am not interested in .NET because of M$'s clout, but I am somewhat interested in CLR and the standard libraries because it may be a genuinely useful technology. I'm not interested much in C#, as it appears to be quite similar to Java with some C++-like stuff, but if the promise of easy cross-language development is true, that is interesting. Of course, that is possible with a JVM and standard Java libraries, but the CLR may be superior in that respect. Let's wait and see.
On a side note, I would like to see Ximian or the GNU Foundation talking at how MONO and DOT-GNU differ on purpose or how they are similar.
Frankly, they seem to have the same end goal, and I'm afraid this is a duplicate effort that would be better off if they joined forces.
Dot-GNU: http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/index.html
Microsoft has proven again and again that, in the end, they *will* win
Really? They *always* win?
Bob
MSN
IIS
MSN
ASP Microsoft Office
Hailstorm
etc, etc
Yeah... it's hopeless...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I use C#, ASP.NET and VS.NET at work. I find developing web applications with these MS technologies glumed together as irritating as it gets. While the integration between disperate technologies is commendible, VS.NET is slower than frozen mud. Give me a good text editor and command line tools any day.
.NET with Windows to the point that Mono will never work. MS will release new .NET crap every year and Mono will play catch up for a year so it finally works again just as MS is releasing a new incompatible version.
.NET. Microsoft has proven time and again that it can't play well with others. I think Java has a good record for working everywhere consistantly.
I think that the whole Mono project will turn out to be a major debacle. Microsoft is going to integrate and complicate
In the past, Microsoft has either presented an "open" standard, or pushed someone else's open standard, only to hijack it in the end, to the detriment of non-Windows users and developers.
I think the Open Source community would be better off backing a web technology like J2EE and not
I would recommend consulting members of the Wine and Samba development groups. I'm sure they have plenty of horror stories about working with constantly changing MS technologies.
Two of our developers just came back from a .NET training session and were wowed beyond belief. (Note: This session was put on by a private company, not Microsoft). These guys were hardcore Linux/Java hackers working on our latest web based application. What changed their mind? It was the tools. The code had *NOTHING* to do with it as far as they were concerned. I told them there were OSS alternatives that pretty much replicated all of the .NET functionality. They still shook their heads saying it's the tools they were introduced to that made the real difference, not the code. One small example they used was that the MSFT tools allow you to backtrace a transaction all the way from your HTML front end clear on in to the database with a simple click of a button. There were a lot of other examples, but that was the one that stood out in my mind the most. It was the fact that they could write code faster and worry less about the crap that tipped the scales.
The thinking progresses with the argument that since we're developing on Microsoft tools we should be running a Microsoft OS on our servers since no two JVM's 'er I mean CLR's are alike...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Developers in the Windows world that do not care about cross platform issues (which is, 99% of them) are tired of C++, and Visual Basic, and C# happens to be a nice language to move to delivered by the company that does their OS.
So people will be adopting C# as a programming language no matter what anyone does. The language is here, and the tools are here, and the community is rapidly growing.
So what we are enabling is to bring a number of things to Linux: we bring the people, the knowledge and we are reusing Microsoft's investment in documenting, promoting and producing training materials to benefit us.
So, I am fairly possitive that this is good.
And then, there is the added advantage of open source: now you got a compiler, a runtime and classes. If they serve your purposes, take it, improve it, extend it, change it, modify it, rip it, research, reuse what you feel like reusing.
Miguel
Microsoft Bob... Need I say more? :)
.Net is going to get used by the places that have tended towards being heavily windows environments originally. Companies that have been using Unix, Linux, and Java will probably not be moving to .Net anytime soon.
.Net on Linux provided that it works well and provided that I can have faith that, in the long term, I'll be able to do this without risking a microsoft tax or lock-in.
.Net. Wait until enough people develop .Net solutions on alternative platforms then say, "well that's great, now you can pay us a license fee."
.Net I'd probably see it as a good thing. Hell, I've been a java developer for a while and I don't think much better of Sun than I do of Microsoft. The only reason I trust sun to stick with some level of openess is that it's about the only ammunition they have available to leverage against Microsoft's hegemony.
Overall
Personally I'd be very interested in using
My big concern down the road is that Microsoft is going to start using patents and license restrictions to control the fate of
I just can't believe that Microsoft would develop any technology that wasn't designed from the ground up to further their control. If just about any other company had put forth
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We're playing the wrong game here. We need to have microsoft constantly chasing after US to keep up to date with the existing "standards", not the other way around. The open source community as a whole needs to be frontlining new standards. If we can keep Microsoft and other evil empires constantly playing catchup, it will severely limit the damage they can do overall. Sure, they'll play the embrace and extend game, but only if we give them enough time to do so.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Mono has nothing to do with GNOME. If you'd do your research you'd realize that they are seperate projects and that the rumors that GNOME is going to be based on .NET are just that -- rumors. There are some people that are involved in both projects, however, the GNOME project has come out and said they currently have no plans to move to MONO or .NET any time soon. Maybe someday, who knows? But they are SEPERATE projects. Read Miguel de Icaza's own
reply to this idea.
.NET framework that are really nice. What's more, unlike Sun, M$ has given their language and technology up to be standardized. In that sense, it's more free than Java.
Besides, have you ever looked at the MONO project? They're doing some really impressive stuff. You probably shouldn't write it off just because you're afraid of M$. I'm a java programmer and an avid Linux user, however, there are some features of C# and the
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I can't speak for all the "dot-net languages", but I've been writing lots of ASP.Net code in C# and VB.Net recently and guess what? It's not the tools, it is the framework itself.
.Net SDK and what makes me all wowed is how quickly I can do things that used to take hours to build on ASP 2.0, like complex form interfaces, data validation, query output, etc. It's well worth looking at the samples to get acquainted with, I bet you'll be surprised with how powerfull and flexible the framework is :-)
I'm not using Visual Studio, I'm working out of the
There was an article just the other day on here about how web developers are designing for Microsoft now and ignoring standards. Though Microsoft is never going to make themselves fully incompatible with other browsers, they have continued to distinguish themselves from the competition by their "innovations". The result is that while I can surf websites on linux using mozilla, I will be given a decidedly different experience doing so. Some sites will refuse to let me in all together, and others will just break horribly.
Now, you might say the reaction to this is that those companies will suffer from losing my business. Yeah, so they are losing what, 5% of the market? Ooooo, big deal. This causes people who don't have a tolerance for these glitches to go with a windows platform out of their lack of patience for that stuff.
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I guess I have to make my obligitory post on this subject:
As a technology person, I like the .NET framework, the web services aspects, the runtime, and I think C# is infinitely better than C++ (then again, what isn't...). I'm looking forward to playing with C# on my Linux machine.
But I'm just a little creeped out by the idea of using Mono for anything important (business-related), such as deploying services or products. I really have trouble figuring out what Microsoft has to gain from allowing Mono to exist indefinitely. They have plenty to gain from a sweeping, cross-plaform, bait-and-switch ploy.. they can just wait until Mono is somewhat established, apps are built and deployed... then break it and wait patiently for the inevitable migration back to Windows.
I would like to hear from Microsoft that they won't sue any Mono developer (or user) for patent infringement. I'd like to hear that all relevant APIs and specification are public and open and will stay that way. Miguel's attitude seems to be one of "hope", quote:
Now, I could be all wrong, Microsoft actually might not mind that we will use their technology and not their products...but...this is Microsoft we're talking about here.
Sure this sounds like fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but that's exactly what I feel whenever I think about Mono......
Well, .NET 1.0 was released on January, so by that metric Mono is already late to the game. But so is every other piece of free software, and we still manage to do a great job.
Miguel
Look at .NET, what is it? Basically it's just another API (plus some other enhancements, but I told you to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.) like the Win32 API
Microsoft wants to fuel upgrades just like the transition from Win16 to Win32 fueled upgrades.
The worst case in a Linux-point-of-view is that everything stays the same - Windows-apps don't run under Linux.
The best case is that .NET apps run under Mono/Linux right from the start.
We need to have microsoft constantly chasing after US
.NET offer, really? "Portable" code and remote apps? Java has offered portable code for about 7 years now, and remote apps predate Unix.
They are. Can you name a single "technology" MS has announced recently that *nix hasn't had for years (if not decades)? What does
All MS has done since they started developing NT is chase *nix. The only thing I can think of that they might have had a head start on is the GUI, but I have my doubts about that, too. What OS was Xerox using at PARC, anyway?
The problem for *nix is that the general public isn't aware of that fact.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
About some people using a technology out of religion rather than merit.
.NET but I tend to see it as an exit strategy from the OS market (in a world where the OS market is saturating in the key markets in the developed world). This is a real reason that open source, being more flexible in its development pace (and giving customers what they need through community effort rather than centralized marketing). So, I wish Mono the best.
This interview is a very interesting interview in part because it seems to indicate that Mono is a good way of getting Windows developers into Open Source software development-- something that Microsoft has generally been pretty successful at preventing. I have generally likes what I have seen in
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This doesn't really add up to much.
Only about 120 classes of the 1200 in the Dotnet platform are standardized as part of the C Sharp language, so standardization offers little protection if your application uses a GUI (Windows Forms, Web Forms) or a database (ADO Dotnet). Not only are these libraries not standardized, they are likely to be protected by patents.
Sun does not have the same room for manoeuvre as MS since the JCP has other powerful participants. In practice, there have been few ownership/legal issues in developing Open Source versions of the JVM - see the Kawa web site for a list of these. Their complaints revolve around issues such as access to the test suites - ultimately Sun just owns the Java name, not all the implementations.
We are not planning ourselves on writing one, but several people have expressed their interest on doing so.
There is already a proof that this can be done (Microsoft's JUMP), but it is not fundamentally a hard problem either.
There are three groups of people to my knowledge working on free software versions of such a tool.
Miguel
Cheers!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
Look at the toolsets, the final contenders I looked at for a cross-platform GUI toolkit were: .NET .NET:
Trolltech Qt
GTK
Delphi/Kylix
wxWindows
-Poor history of MSW undocumented APIs.
-Poor history of MSW trying to break other toolsets not blessed by the company.
-Poor history of MSW once actually finishing a piece of software's features (eg Office) trying to find other ways to pinch money off people.
-Poor history towards GPL software.
Qt:
-A strong contender: good documentation, tools.
-Lost out because they say the Windows version requires a purchased copy of Visual C++ to do any compiling with it.
-Emulates widgets instead of using native.
GTK (1.2 back then, I can't comment on 2.0):
-Very free.
-A lot of component scattered libraries makes documentation difficult.
-Sometimes higher level widgets don't exist: need to make them from scratch using the window primitives.
-MSW port is a bit rough.
Delphi/Kylix:
-Easy to use, a company respected by me that makes good software.
-No Mac available.
-Proprietary, liable to not be maintained if company goes under.
-Free version is nagware under Linux, I believe their documentation said.
wxWindows:
-Works out of the box, now.
-A single project can be compiled for MSW, GTK, OSX and less commons like X11 embedded.
-Good documentation, sample code, etc.
-Core team is *very* accepting to new features and sharper code.
-Native widgets always used, where they exist makes a proper look and feel for an application.
-The open library in unencumbered by a company that needs to ship new versions of tools or the library.
-Fast: native compiles so no runtimes needed.
-The C++ is designed to by truly compatible with almost any compiler, toolset, not ones blessed by one certain company.
-Well tested (10 years).
-Tools and library are no cost, (or nagware). Free compilers exist on all supported platforms.
wxWindows was the one that was selected, and now 10 months into the project, I am very satisfied with the results from that toolkit choice.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Mono is a stupid reason to switch from Gnome to KDE, in that the Gnome project has not accepted Mono. It's a proposal from the Ximian folks that Gnome eventually accept Mono. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Gnome project split if Mono were forced on it in a central role (rather than as an optional add-on), as many Gnome developers are not fans of it at all.
What will you do if some KDE developer says he wants to support .NET in the KDE framework? You'll then have to drop KDE, since you drop platforms based merely on proposals that they go in a direction you don't like.
First, I would like to post a link to an MSDN article on Microsoft's attempt to build a .NET implementation on FreeBSD.
Second, I am a C# and VB.NET programmer. I have really enjoyed using the new VS.NET, and love ASP.NET. The way it treats web pages with an event model is very, very cool. As I am also a PHP programmer, I consider ASP.NET, concept wise, a giant leap ahead of PHP. VS.NET runs a bit slow on my 400 MHz machine, but cruises along smoothly on my 1.6 GHz laptop. Plus, it handles much better than Sun's Forte, a comparable product that would let me build comparable software solutions.
Third, I am VERY excited to be made aware of MONO! I have done quite a bit of Java programming in my past, and am glad to have a better alternative to it for building enterprise level applications on Linux. I have not had the level of "undocumented features" bite me in my .NET programs as I have in VC++, VB6 or Java. Say what you will about the evil empire, but the .NET framework is a very well thought through, nice behaving programming platform. I wish the MONO team the best of luck, and am thinking of volunteering!
Fourth (and finally) I have been teaching some VB.NET and C# classes. I have found all of my students walking away from the classes wanting to use .NET, including Linux programmers. I would tell you hardcore MS haters out there to at least try out .NET, especially if it is going to be implemented on Linux. I think you will find that it could be a great tool for you to build software with, if you take of the blinders. After all, why not take what is Microsoft's big marketing push and turn it against them on Linux?
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Can you name a single new technology that has appeared in UNIX in recent years that was not in VMS or MULTICS?
This type of argument is pure sophistry, either Microsoft are accused of stealling other peoples stuff (hard to do with open standards) or they are ignoring open standards.
Until WS-Security was proposed nobody had had any success with a transaction layer security enhancement. HTTPS failled, SHEN failled, PEM and MOSS failled. PGP and S/MIME had some success but they are limited to email.
Now nobody would claim WS-Security to be amazingly novel, however Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign have got the whole industry behind a spec in that niche which has never happened before.
As for all the 'nothing new has happened since Xerox' stuff, I suggest the people with that dellusion stop eating the mushrooms and go and use one of the things. OK so you can kinda sorta see the beginings of the ideas we use twenty years later, but they got as much wrong as they got right.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Suppose that I decided to use .NET on Windows. I look around, and find that they support Perl. Cool, so I go and use some Perl libraries in various places. Perl is as cross-platform as it gets, I am fine. Right?
.NET sucks goat d*ck on handling dynamic languages. Since Perl on .NET was too slow, even by .NET standards, its "integration" is through a custom modification that exports a COM interface, that is imported into .NET. Works fine on Windows. But on Linux, what then?
No. I am utterly fscked.
Perl uses a dynamic programming model.
And once people get going, how many real applications are going to use Windows forms, or link in some other library, or link in a COM interface from a legacy app, or otherwise become unportable?
Care to guess whether future tools from Microsoft will "encourage" you to introduce such dependencies?
Thanks, but no thanks. I have had to work with Microsoft APIs too much for my taste. That is why I try not to now.
Yes! Give me .Net! I can hardly wait to run all of the windows apps including the lates viri!
I really think that Linux is missing out on the fun. I mean sure, it's stable and secure but what adventure is there in that? I want to wonder every time I boot up if I'll see: "You have been hacked by the Windoz Nukum Worm! Hard drive formatting now...."!
Oh yes! Why should Windows users have all of the fun?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Gee, I guess if you repeat it often enough it becomes true. The site you linked is, judging by the snide comments abut Windows' "features", a tad biased. Do you have any other sources?
What were the predecessors to the Visual Studio IDE? To IntelliSense? To drag-n-drop GUI building? Dropdown menus that show frequently-used items, adjusting themselves over time?
I'm not trying to troll here, and it's not entirely off-topic. As with a previous post on MS projects that failed, debates about the future of .Net need to be framed in an accurate asessment of Microsoft's history of success and inovation.
It seems most folks on slashdot believe Microsoft can simply bully its way to the top of any field, forcing people to adopt anythning it produces. Yet products like Bob suggest this isn't true. So, why do some, but by no means all, Microsoft products succeed? Clever copying of proven ideas? Subtle innovation? Reinvention of older ideas, with improvements based on 20/20 hindsight?
People snipe at the idea of a .Net VM as a Java ripoff. The Java VM is a Pascal P-code VM ripoff, but done better. Java swiped ideas from C++, and improved certain things. Could it be a similar case for C#/.Net?
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
There is very little emotion in either my post or my decision.
.NET Framework?"
.NET was not taken as the platform of choice and the reasons were not technical. I think .NET will certainly be competent, as the technical lead was the guy behind Delphi.
.NET. The possibilty of that occurring moves .NET to the back of the pack as their counterparts can already do what I need without that extra weight looming over the project.
The question posed by the article was "Would you use an open-source implementation of the
I listed the reasons why
I am a GPL software author. C# is an unproven new language to assess in my choices. I am absolutely going to judge the likely future of a language by looking at the past history of the company who will be managing its development.
Microsoft has quite openly stated that they think GPL is a virus, and there has been rumblings of making it illegal to use their development tools in the creation/conjunction of GPL software or libraries (which is their right to do).
However, a major software project is a large commitment of time--porting to another language down the road is unlikely to be trivial. if Microsoft takes their familar road with C#, and my code becomes illegal to compile, or I now everyone who wants to work on the software now has to fork over $500 a year for a MS-blessed C# compiler to be able to contribute to the GPL project, I will have regretted my choice of
But the results also matter. Here are some development snapshot screenshots, fresh off a clean compile on Linux and MSW, built with wxWindows with no MFCs, Microsoft dlls or anything else that can be made illegal or prohibitively expensive later on:
http://www.clinicalexam.com/pluckerdesktop/tour
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone