MS .net vs Mono, Open Source

vinsci writes "Sometimes, reader comments to reporter-written stories are just as good as the stories themselves. Such as David Mohring's comment yesterday on ZDNet.com's story Mono & .Net: The odd couple. Since Microsoft are now using their licensing terms to stop GPL and LGPL free software, it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue. The gist of his comment: 'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, [...] Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies. [...] There [are] those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.' While on the subject of C# development, users of the GPL'd C# development environment SharpDevelop may also want to try Eclipse together with the Open Source Improve CSharp plugin for Eclipse. Eclipse also support C/C++ these days using GCC and GDB, thanks to the CDT. There are about two hundred add-on plugins available for Eclipse. Eclipse itself is available for many platforms, including Linux with native GTK 2 support."

Comments

ok, so I need a life

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on the computer mainly to stay out of the way in the kitchen :-) Meanwhile, whay are *you* guys doing posting Slashdot articles on Christmas, unless you're in New Zealand or somewhere that thinks it's already tomorrow?

Re:ok, so I need a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone celebrates Christmas.

Wow.

[Karamchand]

Two stories, both posted at 4:09. I never ever saw two stories with zero comments before.

Re:Wow.

[LostCluster]

Maybe that's why they put this one back in the queue for 5:59pm ET.

WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL!

[SirDaShadow]

Argh...too many acronyms! Can someone point me to a document (you thought I would say FAQ? :) ) that can explain in THE MOST SIMPLE TERMS, what all those concepts mean?
I am an old school programmer, and would like to know a little bit more about the wonderful world of OO. (ARGH!)

Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL!

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Try Acronym Finder or the Internet Acronyms Dictionary.

Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL!

[SirDaShadow]

yes but I would like to know the fundamentals...why should I use C#? what is C#? why .net or mono? why is all this technology going to benefit me/the consumer/my employer?

Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL!

[samael]

I'd like to point you at an article I wrote for kuro5hin on the subject of .net:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/2/430 59/0319

Microsoft's introduction is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/prod uctinfo /overview/default.asp

Mono's information is here:
http://www.go-mono.org/rationale.html

Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh...too many acronyms! Can someone point me to a document (you thought I would say FAQ? :) ) that can explain in THE MOST SIMPLE TERMS, what all those concepts mean?

Much of the time that the acronym user could benefit from a couple typing lessons.

Jokes on Christmas?

[saskboy]

"'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear..."

Next Microsoft will try to patent Santa Claus, right?

Huh?

[cube00]

"..it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue."

What? Microsoft mature? ..nah

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"..it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue."
Mono, a.k.a. The Kissing Disease
Can Microsoft catch Mono by kissing it's own .Net ass?

Re:GEE

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be a tad bitter.

The Devil

[the eric conspiracy]

.Net is MS proprietary. No way MS is going to let you run it in any useful way on non-MS operating systems.

If you plan to sup with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon

Re:The Devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is the Debil!!!

Re:The Devil

[Rik van Riel]

MS .Net (their implementation) is indeed the property of Microsoft. That doesn't mean they have a legal or moral right to stop other people from creating alternative implementations.

If copyright owners could determine the law, they wouldn't need to spend millions lobbying in Washington. The fact that they're lobbying like crazy illustrates the fact that users are bound by the law, not by the wishes of copyright holders.

Having said that, in this case software patents are a real threat to innovation by US programmers. This abuse of patents hurts the US public and is against the constitutional idea behind patents (the promotion of progress and innovation).

However, the open source community can't change patent law, so the only way to win this game is to follow the rules by the letter but creating the opposite result from what other players are doing. Maybe through something like a GPL for patents ?

Re:The Devil

[spybreak]

Actually there's a good discussion of this here.

It seems that Microsoft is quite encouraging of the Mono effort:

"Hats off to Icaza for getting as far as he has," says John Montgomery, who oversees the .Net Framework at Microsoft. Indeed, he practically gushes every time he hears Icaza's name. "Miguel is an incredibly sharp guy, and he is a pragmatist," Montgomery says. "I would put him in the top five of open-source thought leaders."

However the motives for this seem unclear... probably with all the bad press that MS has recieved lately they are frightened of appearing ani-competitive.

I guess that the big risk for Mono is that it exists in the legal grey area between the ECMA C# and the proprietary .NET. In this twilight area they are very much in Microsoft's shadow and at their legal whim.

Re:The Devil

[Sanity]

.Net is MS proprietary. No way MS is going to let you run it in any useful way on non-MS operating systems.

Wow, this knee-jerk cliched reaction is what passes for +1 Insightful on Slashdot these days?

How sad.

Re:The Devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this knee-jerk cliched reaction is what passes for +1 Insightful on Slashdot these days?

Switch Linux for MS in that comment, and it would have been -5 Troll.

Note: I'm not saying Linux is proprietary, my point is that any negative comment towards linux is modded down (as this one will be), while any anti-MS comment is modded up.

Re:The Devil

[JBhoy]

"If you plan to sup with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon"

Amen. But don't expect anybody at the Mono project to pay attention. Maybe they expect--and intend--to go to court over .NET. We shall see.

Re:The Devil

[the eric conspiracy]

MS .Net (their implementation) is indeed the property of Microsoft. That doesn't mean they have a legal or moral right to stop other people from creating alternative implementations.

Microsoft has a number of patents on the technologies in .Net. This gives them both the legal and moral right to prevent alternative implementations that infringe on these patents.

in this case software patents are a real threat to innovation by US programmers

I don't see how copying .Net is innovation. People REALLY need to get away from the idea that IP laws that prevent you from copying somebody else's work inhibit innovation. Innovation is about making something new of your own, not reimplementing something that has already been done.

Re:The Devil

[Chris Johnson]

How about +2 Freaking Obvious You Idiot?

Merry Xmas and tux bless us EVERY one ;)

Re:The Devil

[Zontar The Mindless]

> ...any negative comment towards linux is modded down (as this one will be), while any anti-MS comment is modded up.

Not so: This was modded down as a troll (apparently because the moderator construed it as Critical of an MS product's behaviour = Anti-MS = Bad) when I was simply stating my own observations.

What's interesting (and a bit amusing, even) is that I implied in the same post that I use a Win2k desktop (which I do).

As for .NET -- Doesn't look to me like MS has innovated anything that's not already been done by Sun in this regard.

Re:The Devil

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't mean they have a legal or moral right to stop other people

Perhaps you've been living under a rock for the past 10 years, but this is Microsoft.

Whether they have a right to do something is entirely beside the point.

I remember pitching a business idea to a VC (this was before the .com boom) - the first question they had was "What are you going to do about Microsoft?"

MS doesn't care if they have any right - they have the enough money for lawyers to do anything they want, whether the have the right or not.

Re:The Devil

[rossifer]

People REALLY need to get away from the idea that IP laws that prevent you from copying somebody else's work inhibit innovation.

Strawman.

You apparently forgot that new technology is based on and interacts with existing technology. If someone patented the recording and playback of a signal that can be displayed as a visual image before the VCR was invented, is the VCR really innovative?

If you don't think so then you need to check your premises.

Bad IP laws prevent you from building on other people's work and that inhibits innovation.

Regards, Ross

Re:The Devil

[jone]

I always prefered, "You go to bed with the pigs, you wake up with the pigs."

Pretty straightforward.

Re:The Devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel is an incredibly sharp guy, and he is a pragmatist," Montgomery says. "I would put him in the top five of open-source thought leaders." Miguel is the Microsoft representative for Open Source, right? Remember, kids, "pragmatic" means leave Mono alone as long as it's simply promoting dotnet (with the odd kiss under the table for Miguel, I'm sure), but destroy it when it becomes a threat.

Remember past Microsoft strategy on Unix, eg IE for Unix. From "multiple platform support" while it was beneficial to lure people over to Microsoft technologies, to "sorry! IE for Unix isn't even available for download any more".

Re:The Devil

[the eric conspiracy]

If someone patented the recording and playback of a signal that can be displayed as a visual image before the VCR was invented, is the VCR really innovative?

Obviously you don't have any practical experience in this area.

If you build something innovative and patentable as an extension to somebody else's work, you own the rights to that innovation. What you still don't get is the right to commercialize that innovation if it infringes on the base technology. In the real world of IP, there are any number of practical solutions to this issue including various types of mutually beneficial cross licensing.

Bad IP laws prevent you from building on other people's work and that inhibits innovation.

Current IP laws do NOT prevent you from doing this.

Re:The Devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay attention before you speak. Microsoft has ALREADY released a "shared source" (nearly open source) version of .Net that runs on Windows, FreeBSD, and MacOS.

Shared Source CLI 1.0 Release.

Re:The Devil

[Viking Coder]

What you don't seem to get is that Microsoft dictates OS technology. They don't offer an alternative, they force upon you the ONLY alternative.

Imagine if the government declared that every operating system had to implement .Net technology. Everyone would rush out to do it, to keep up with the law.

Imagine instead that Microsoft has the same power to dictate artificial market conditions, and the ability to stop their competitors from keeping up. That's what I (and many others, apparently) think is the current situation.

The nail is new technology that Microsoft says everyone has to have, whether they want it or not - the hammer is their abuse of IP law to enforce their control over the market.

Re:GEE

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not!!! It wil of course be the One OS to rule them all. After all, we all know that fat, sweaty execs make better software. Developers! Developers!! Developers!!!

Maybe one of those 16 year old kiddies can spare a *clean* cum rag for that fat bastard.

C# of the 2000s is the RPG of the 1970s

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary.

The use case is not compelling.

Those who spend money developing code in this space will at least have a prototype when they need to reimplement it in a language that has a long-term, portable future.

And no, this does not mean C# is still not fundamentally proprietary.

-- Multics

Re:C# of the 2000s is the RPG of the 1970s

[GigsVT]

We still have RPG code running in an emulator running on SCO. Costs us tons of money per year to maintain support for it. Hell, if we wanted to move it to Linux in an emulator, that would cost $20,000.

Any company which invests in proprietary programming lanugages must not expect to be around very long, or is happy giving a cut of the profits to other companies forever.

Re:C# of the 2000s is the RPG of the 1970s

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you confusing .NET with C#? .NET isn't a language/platform like Java/JVM, it's a platform designed for allowing objects written in multiple languages to communicate with each other (similar in its goals to COM and Corba).

C# is a .NET language, and the one closest to the IL used by the CLR, but there's absolutely no requirement that a .NET developer use C#. Most of the .NET developers I know use C++, since 99% of their existing code is C/C++. The whole point of .NET is that it doesn't matter to other developers (e.g. C#, VB, et al.) what language they use -- they can all use the classes without giving the implementation language a second thought.

Even if C# dies (I highly doubt it will), C++ and VB aren't about to go away, and with .NET they can interoperate with any .NET classes, irrespective of what they were written in. That, essentially, is why .NET isn't just another Java/JVM with its 'rewrite everything in the one true language' idiocy.

Last week plague of dupes,now disappearin' stories

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a refresh of the front page and the story disappeared for an hour. I thought that either Microsoft had already taken legal action or it was a latent Y2K bug. Or maybe a little too much of the Christmas cheer in the Slashdot bunker.

Burp

[Matey-O]

Do you guys REALLY expect erudite conversation after Xmas Dinner?

Ummmmm, L-triptophan!

Re:Burp

[Anonymous Coward]

Tryptophan. In America at least.

Re:Interesting, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude.. Seems your penis is offtopic :)

News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any real news here, or is this just idle speculation? The 'patently clear' evidence seems to be some troll's reaction to the news that Microsoft won't be using its patents against competing implementations of .NET.

Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently?

[Sanity]

I was amazed when I first discovered Eclipse about two weeks ago, not so much because it is an extremely powerful piece of software, not because they have written a Swing replacement which looks amazing on both Windows and Linux, but because I went for so long without discovering such a product.

While Java is my main language, I have been doing some C# work recently using SharpDevelop, which is good, but still needs work. I can't wait to try out the C# plugin for Eclipse.

Re:Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently?

[Billly Gates]

If you like eclipse then you have to try devC++.

Re:Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently?

[Qbertino]

Maybe because you weren't listening?

Just a guess. :-)

No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun Microsystems has been very kind to me and my projects and I'll happily stick with them and Java.

No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel.

Re:No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the fact that java is an absolute nightmare from an end-user standpoint means... nothing, right? Sounds to me like you're making decisions for your clientele based upon what you want.

Sigh. Where have I heard that before?

Re:No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel

[JBhoy]

So, the fact that java is an absolute nightmare from an end-user standpoint means... nothing, right?

Another pathetic Java-basher raises his head in a C# thread, opens his mouth, and burps up kaka...

Sigh. Where have I heard that before?

In the computer information systems lab at the b-school where you and rest of your luser buddies were trying to do bubble-sort with Visual Basic again?

Re:No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

>Another pathetic Java-basher raises his head in a C# thread, opens his mouth, and burps up kaka...

Wow, nice comeback.

I think C# is doing incredibly well on the desktop today - take a look around the web at the .NET communities and the stuff being written. You might want to put a little more effort into trying to discredit it..

Re:No thanks MS, no thanks Miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

> So, the fact that java is an absolute nightmare from an end-user standpoint means... nothing, right? Sounds to me like you're making decisions for your clientele based upon what you want.

My clients require programs that work from the start. With Java I can deliver working apps from day one sooner than any other technology has ever been able to deliver to me.

I would be interested in what nightmares you think someone is experiencing.

If anyone is experiencing a nightmare then perhaps the blame rests on the implementation of the software they are attempting to use rather than the underlying tool used to program it.

I've seen lots of junk programmed in a lot of different programming languages.

My standalone Java application regularly requires access up to a gigabyte of ram just to hold all of the data and it juggles more than 300 database tables.

During the time frame of 2000 to 2001 I had zero bugs logged by my 100+ corporate clients.

I definitely have some issues with some Java bugs, but they are miniscule compared to the positive value proposition Java gives me.

> Sigh. Where have I heard that before?

I don't no. It wasn't from me.

How to bring Microsoft down

[ShatteredDream]

1. My college has a cd that is distributed to every campusnet (campus network/ISP) user and that would be the perfect place to distribute OpenOffice and Mozilla. The one catch is that OpenOffice needs about another 6 months-1 year before it is mass-marketted. It needs to be able to feel mostly as slick as MS Office to the average Joe and needs OSX compatability to keep from luring people to only one OS.
2. Lobby the hell out of the US government to switch to OpenOffice and shoot for compatability with Mozilla in all of its websites. Losing the US government will do severe damage to them as there are probably around 1.5-2M federal computers capable of running MS Office that would now be running OO. Also, the defense contractors would retool for OO to keep up compatability with the USDoD.
3. Get BeOS open source and up to date! There is only one shot to get a major open source desktop out there for most people. They'll give switching away from MS probably one shot. Most /. nerds seem to forget that the average joe is not adventurous and will not take us seriously if we say, "come on, try it again." BeOS is very slick and easy to use. BeOS DE 1.1 is what I use half the time now on my 1 year old PC and it works very well. Push Palm to release R4.5, R5 or R6.
4. And now, the craziest proposal *drum roll* Encourage IBM to buy Sun and Macromedia. Push them to open source a fork of the JDK and JDK EE under the GPL as a reference copy, submit the specs to ISO for everything from the basic java packages to the EE specs. To further hurt MS on the desktop, they could open source Dreamweaver similar to how QT is open sourced.

Just some thoughts. It's not impossible to take them down. I remember when one of our local guys got his cost analysis posted on slashdot (Rockingham County, Virgina). Start flashing those kinds of figures to the bean counters. You may not get many converts right away, but oh well. You have to start somewhere. I've gotten most of my technology-clueless relatives hooked on Mozilla because of its popup blocking ability. My neighbor across the street who is an accountant by trade loves OpenOffice and is looking into switching to RedHat 8. Again, it can be done. Just get them hooked on the Windows/Mac versions of OO, Mozilla, etc and switching to an open source platform will be easy.

As for Mono, MS Legal can't fight if they don't have money :)

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[Anonymous Coward]

You can download BeOS 5 MAX (tweaked version) for free. I don't think it's open source though.

http://crux.sourceforge.net/nuke/modules.php?nam e= Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[ShatteredDream]

I'm downloading that too because of some of the app packages in there. I plan to put them up on my website.

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[Jason Earl]

Star/Open Office in the U.S. government would be the death knell for Microsoft. The U.S. government is not only the largest software purchaser on the planet, but every other business in the U.S., and most of the businesses in the world have some contact with the U.S. government. If the U.S. government standardized on StarOffice formats then businesses around the world would be forced to use StarOffice to some extent. When the U.S. government asks you for a document in a particular format that's the format that you send them. The fact that OpenOffice is free certainly wouldn't hurt its adoption either.

Microsoft would not only find itself losing marketshare, but it would also find itself increasingly on the wrong side of the "standards" fence. Instead of OpenOffice having to be 100% MS Office compatible, Microsoft would find that they would be forced to be 100% OpenOffice compatible. In short, Microsoft would soon find that one of their major cash cows was fighting a losing battle against a package that could be downloaded for free.

Microsoft's revenues would drop, their stock price would take a beating, and companies would switch simply because Microsoft would look like they were "losing."

The best part of this picture is that, to a certain extent, this is already happening overseas. When Microsoft finally does get cut down to size my guess is that StarOffice/OpenOffice is the primary culprit.

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[Anonymous Coward]

None of that matters if developers don't follow. And developers won't if there's no money in it. Yes, yes, of course, there are developers already, but compared to MSFT's legion of developers, especially LARGE developers, not a whole lot.

Can you install Linux on a PC that doesn't boot from CD, like an Abit IT5H from 1998? Just wondering.

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[ForceOfWill]

Can you install Linux on a PC that doesn't boot from CD, like an Abit IT5H from 1998? Just wondering.

I believe you can, you just need a boot disk that will in turn boot the cdrom. I think RedHat used to do this, I don't know if it still works...

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[SoftwareJanitor]

Yes, I have a machine with that motherboard in it, and it has been running Linux since I got it. Most Linux distros (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc) have a couple floppy disk images on the CD which you can write to a floppy (either from another Linux box, or with some MS-DOS/Windows tools that are usually also on the CD such as RAWRITE.EXE). Once you boot the appropriate boot/install disk, it should be able to find the CD and away you go.

Re:How to bring Microsoft down

[pavera]

of course it still works.
in fact you don't even need the cdrom, redhat has boot floppies that will boot and allow you to read iso images from across the network, or on the local hard drive.

Santa Clause? Not Microsoft!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that they detest him. They'd probably want to patent Scrooge.

what does "mindfield" mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question I have is who is Microsoft gonna sue anyway? And what would it get them if they win? Certainly not money. If necessary there's always P2P for distributing the binaries. Also, is "mindfield" actually a word? I've heard of concepts like "mindshare" but I'm unfamiliar with this "mindfield" business. Can anyone enlighten me?

Re:what does "mindfield" mean?

[atam]

I think the author actually wanted to say 'minefield'. Hey, this is Slashdot. So don't expect perfect grammar and spelling on every sentence.

...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[ajp]

Microsoft has already written .NET for another platform (Rotor, for BSD.) And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono. An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.

What's the news item here? Fear-mongering about the Evil Microsoft? If you're worried about big companies with riduculous patents ruining society, worry about Amazon.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Kunta Kinte]

Microsoft has already written .NET for another platform (Rotor, for BSD.)

Yeah, and there was also Internet Explorer for Solaris, look how long that was supported.

And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono

Why not communicate to the rest of the industry as to their intentions?

An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.

An interview does not make a legal contract either.

Why send so much time and effort with no legal protections? All Mono has is the apparent "good will" of a company known for being overly aggressive to the point of breaking the law on occasion.

And that's not much!

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[RickHunter]

Its worth noting that IBM had Microsoft's "good will" too. Then they got burned on OS/2, not once but twice. Once when Microsoft stole the code to make NT, and once when Microsoft threatened to stop selling IBM Windows if they continued their development efforts on any completing software. And they didn't break the law "on occasion", they broke it every single chance they got.

Sorry, but history shows that having Microsoft's "good will" is nothing more than a one-way ticket to an unpleasant death.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Mansing]

Hmmm ... let's look at some history, shall we?

Microsoft courted STAC, then killed them.
Microsoft courted Netscape, then killed them.
Micorsoft courted ... (fill in your own favorite now defunct company), then killed them.

Microsoft has never in it's history courted a competitor without either destroying the company through monopolistic practices or by suing them into oblivion.

The only survivor of a Microsoft attempt at technology murder is Java. And that was a close call.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[m_pll]

IBM... when Microsoft stole the code to make NT...

Tell that to Dave Cutler and other guys from Digital who started working on NT in 1988. I'm sure they would be surprized to know that they stole their code from IBM.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[rmohr02]

Hrmm. I feel like watching Antitrust again.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[e40]

So what, MS have communicated with Miguel? That doesn't mean they are going to play nice in the future. They might be leading him and the other Mono developers down the garden path, you know. Why? We already know MS and Gates and Balmer HATE open source software. Why not play a little cat and mouse, perhaps to teach all the industry that uses OSS a lesson?

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft courted Sendo, then
killed them.

If someone from Microsoft smiles at you, shoot them right away or you're the corpse :)

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Malcontent]

You mean VMS right?

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Once when Microsoft stole the code to make NT
They really didn't do this. IBM and Microsoft were co-developers on OS/2, WinNT and they were supposed to be somewhat compatible. Well, we see how well that panned out. The best WinNT did was a half-assed compatiblity layer for OS/2 command line apps that technically fulfilled the letter of the agreement, but nothing close to the spirit.

A better example would be how MS kept on screwing up OS/2 running Windows apps underneath. Anybody who remembers OS/2 when it first came out, they touted themselves as a better environment to run Win3.1 apps than either Win3.1 or Win95 (which was brand new at the time). MS played with stuff until it didn't work.

I think one way of seeing how bad of a monopoly MS is that even though companies know that MS is gonna screw them, they still make deals with them. MS killed Stac and Spyglass, Spyglass in a beautiful move that crushed both NCSA commercial spinoffs (Spyglass and Netscape) It severely crippled both Citrix and Mainsoft. But with all that, companies feel they must deal with the devil because they hold all the cards.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[m_pll]

You mean VMS right?

No I mean NT.

For details see Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Malcontent]

So NT was a mishmash of VMS and OS/2 and it took from 1988 to 1998 to get a first release with 200 engineers working on it.

I guess that explains a lot.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[0x0d0a]

The Register had an article on this. At the bottom was a bit by the article author saying that when Sendo started the MS deal, the author asked them whether MS might just take their code and run, given that Sendo is just a small company. Microsoft had had a pretty solid history of doing this by this oint. Sendo said that no, MS wouldn't do anything like that.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Melantha_Bacchae]

ajp wrote:

> Microsoft has already written .NET for another
> platform (Rotor, for BSD.) And Microsoft has
> communicated with Miguel many times with regards
> to Mono. An interview with him on the topic is
> hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a
> prelude to a lawsuit.

No it doesn't, not at the moment, anyway.

But say Microsoft were to come out with a new version of their operating system based on the .Net framework (as Longhorn is rumored to be). If it ran on top of Mono, Microsoft could use Mono like asphault to pave right over Linux and run their new OS on top. They already have a .Net for OS X under development, so they could do the same to Apple. A full 100% monopoly would be possible for Microsoft (ever looking for new ways to grow). And in the beginning they could afford to be nice and let you have whatever you wanted underneath, just like they let you run any DOS you wanted under 3.x.

Of course, you do remember what happened when you ran a non-Microsoft DOS under Windows, especially DR-DOS? How Microsoft put little tricks in their code to check for DR-DOS and spawn fake error messages? Do you really think they won't do that to Mono? They have done it before, and nothing, especially the government, is stopping them from doing it again. In the end, Linux and Apple (if not forced over to Intel and demoted to a mere Wintel OEM) would share the fate of DR-DOS, and Longhorn 95 would come along, with .Net's replacement bundled in, automatically installed on your PC assuming you have kept your subscription payments up. Microsoft would then have a 100% monopoly down to the metal.

Actually, I don't see Microsoft succeeding in this anymore than I see them making their customers happy with Licensing 6. But that doesn't mean they won't try something as gradiose and stupid as the stunt I outlined above. If you must use .Net, do it on a wintel machine that can't be any further messed up by Microsoft than it already is. Don't let them use the hard work of open source programmers to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish Linux and OS X.

"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[dryeo]

Tell that to Dave Cutler and other guys from Digital who started working on NT in 1988. I'm sure they would be surprized to know that they stole their code from IBM.

No, they were partners with IBM. MS and IBM cooperatively developed OS/2 v1.X, with IBM developing OS/2 v2.x and MS developing OS/2 NT v3+ NT was to be a complete rewrite of OS/2 in C, portable etc.
Then it turned out that MS stole the interface from OS/2 v1.2+ and used it to create win3.0 which they pushed while suckering in IBM about OS/2. This created a lot of bad feelings and with other things eventually led to the breakup of the partnership after which Gates openly changed OS/2 NT into win NT.
The 16 bit windows platform went on to dominate the desktop. NT sat around waiting for hardware to catch up to it and OS/2 v2+ languished under a combination of bad marketing, strict hardware requirements (a lot of that hand coded assembly died from timing problems such as 2 different brands of ram installed) and very heavy pressure from MS.
So while MS developed NT there was a lot of cross pollination between IBM and MS during the development of OS/2 NT v3
Dave

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

> And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono.

Wow, that is a big relief.

a) Miguel is an idiot.
b) Microsoft turn around and bite even their own business partners.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

NT is not a 'mishmash of VMS and OS/2'. It is an OS that borrows a number of design ideas from VMS, and to a lesser extent UNIX (e.g. portable, written in C), and which was designed to emulate all of the APIs used by Microsoft's existing OSes: DOS with the NTVDM, POSIX with the POSIX subsystem, OS/2 with the OS/2 subsystem (originally the primary one) and Windows with Win32 (which emulates 16-bit Windows using the NTVDM and also implements the primary Win32 subsystem which replaced OS/2 as the 32-bit API of choice).

NT is not OS/2 any more than it's MS-DOS or UNIX. Rather, it was designed to be able to emulate all of those operating systems, so that it would be positioned to become Microsoft's strategic OS regardless of which OS the market picked (they thought it would be OS/2, but the customers overwhelmingly picked Windows 3.x, which is why it became Windows NT 3.1).

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

When MS and IBM split, IBM took the OS/2 2.x code and MS took the NT code (which was a core OS beneath multiple emulation layers, including OS/2). IBM got full and exclusive ownership of the OS/2 2.x code, just as MS got full and exclusive ownership of the NT code. That's why the OS/2 subsystem in Windows NT (it was removed in either Windows 2000 or XP) only emulates the 16-bit OS/2 1.x, which remained jointly owned by MS and IBM.

What actually led to the IBM/MS breakup was the decision by MS to replace the OS/2 API with a 32-bit Windows API. This couldn't have been done with OS/2, but with NT it was a simple matter of replacing one emulation layer with another. IBM didn't mind that Microsoft had its own OS (NT) that was effectively competing against OS/2 because it was using the jointly-owned OS/2 APIs as its primary API set (the one developers of new software were expected to use), so IBM OS/2 was guaranteed to be compatible. When MS said it was going to rip out the OS/2 layer and use a 32-bit version of its Windows API set instead (which IBM had no ownership of), the OS/2 partnership was no longer useful for IBM (or Microsoft), so it was dissolved.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

The OS/2 subsystem in NT was 'half-assed' because IBM got ownership of OS/2 2.x when the two firms split, and NT could therefore only emulate the jointly-owned OS/2 1.x (which was 16-bit and virtually useless).

NT was never a joint project between IBM and MS either, it was always 100% MS. OS/2 1.x was a joint venture and OS/2 2.x started out that way, but ended up being owned by IBM.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[lgraba]

A definition seen on slashdot: MS partner - a victim that MS hasn't gotten to yet.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[OneEyedApe]

Given the rabid fans of OS X and Linux, there would undoubtably be a fair number of people that would just not bother with Longhorn. Until Linux and OSS are outlawed completely, Microsoft will not be able to get a full monopoly.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[Tony-A]

If you must use .Net, do it on a wintel machine that can't be any further messed up by Microsoft than it already is.
I'm an old fart, but it seems like every time I've heard that something can't get worse, it can and it does.
Regardless of who has or has not made what promises, Java looks like a much safer proposition because both IBM and Sun are heavily involved. It's a "who watches the watcher" type of thingee and neither IBM nor Sun will be in any mood to let the other "get away" with much. (The customers of both will also have a say in the matter.) Add some Open Source to the brew and I don't think Java is stoppable in the long term.

Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is.

[poot_rootbeer]

Microsoft has never in it's history courted a competitor without either destroying the company through monopolistic practices or by suing them into oblivion.

IBM says "hi", and also "if it weren't for us you might only know Microsoft as the company that wrote BASIC for the 8-bit Atari computer you used as a kid."

I once lived near a legal mindfield...

[bman08]

...or so I thought. Turns out the hardworking mindfarmers were actually growing minds without a license. An illegal mindfield. Can you imagine?

Re:I once lived near a legal mindfield...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope those farmers were still allowed to use those minds for a mind is a terrible thing to waste

Re:I once lived near a legal mindfield...

[Anonymous Coward]

they use them to feed the pigs..

I like .net

[JeanBaptiste]

cause I picked it up as soon as it came out, and learned it. At least as far as visual studio is concerned. Now I get projects for bid for no other reason then 'it uses .net'. Its optimized for XP. whatever. I don't get what it is or might be, I think the open source thing is better... but it's one more thing for the competition to learn, and I learned it first... works for me.

Re:Santa Clause? Not Microsoft!

[D iz a n k Meister]

Yes Microsoft!! Santa gives things away, like some kind of commie bastard. They probably want all legal avenues at their disposal to stop this threat to their lively hood.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Santa Claus

[Anonymous Coward]

I had barely brushed the submit button when I saw it. Now I have to sit in the corner for two minutes before I can correct myself.

And this is newsworthy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? It comes up on Mono-List 69696969 times a week, and it's always explained in a calm, orderly fashion by Miguel and co. Some real news would be someone making a concious decision to stop the slashdot-backed FUDding to the people who are already convinced that if they ever boot back into their RedHat 7.2 partition from XP they'll love Mono for some reason they don't get understand, or end up getting arrested for using it.

Self assimilation

[jlrowe]

I still don't understand Mono. It didn't work for IBM to has OS/2 work for Windows programs, so why Mono?

Microsoft's strategy is to embrace, extend, and assimilate.

Isn't Mono just self assimilation? What does Microsoft have left to do if OSS just comits fratricide?

Re:Self assimilation

[Zeebs]

Wait for regicide? What are the home addresses of RMS and Linus again?

Re:Self assimilation

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is cool technology completely separate from Microsoft - you can use Mono today to write applications that run on any platform Mono has been ported to, much like Java. Or is it heresy to compete with Java?

Re:Self assimilation

[jonathanbearak]

"I still don't understand Mono. It didn't work for IBM to has OS/2 work for Windows programs, so why Mono?"

this is completely different from os/2

let's say that happens: if you can write for windows and make it work for both, then everyone writes just for windows, so then why not just get windows?

because Open Source = Free - if you can run the same apps and save $100 or more with Mono instead of MS .NET, you're gonna choose to save the $100, it's os/2's windows compat. prob. in reverse

"Microsoft's strategy is to embrace, extend, and assimilate."

Mono, if successful, will infiltrate!

Re:Self assimilation

[poot_rootbeer]

The reason OS/2's support for Windows software ended up a failure is because OS/2 could only run 16-bit and certain Win32 software. This was acceptable when Windows 3.11 was at the top of the MS product line, but once NT and Win95 started gaining market share, the Windows compatibility in OS/2 decreased in value to the point of irrelevance.

Not having a viable web browser also helped kill OS/2 off, at least on my desktop. IBM wrote their own called 'Web Explorer' which was a clean little browser, but fell way behind as Netscape extended the standards further and further. I tried running the 16-bit version of Netscape 2.0 on there too, but it crashed. Not just the app, but it brought the OS down too.

I also had to upgrade to Warp Connect so I could have a TCP/IP stack, which was ridiculous when even Trumpet Winsock could be had for free.

Re:Self assimilation

[Raiford]

I still don't understand Mono. It didn't work for IBM to has OS/2 work for Windows programs, so why Mono?

This is somewhat of an "apples and oranges" comparison. Mono and .NET are development environments where OS/2 just provided the ability to run Windows apps in the OS/2 environment. The user base for Mono would be very different than the typical OS/2 user back in the early 90's. Many developers live within a culture where multiple platforms will enhance any one technology. I will go so far to say that I can't think of an instance where portability to multiple platforms of a development environment has been anything but the positive way to go.

FUD?

[Yeroc]

I often see complaints about Microsoft spreading FUD about open source but this appears to be the reverse...spreading FUD about Microsoft. There's no evidence at this point that Microsoft is going to try to prevent the completion of the Mono project. In all likelyhood Mono will do little to threaten Microsoft's dominance anyhow...

Re:FUD?

[Kunta Kinte]

There's no evidence at this point that Microsoft is going to try to prevent the completion of the Mono project.

Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either. In business you don't start projects with "well, maybe they won't sue us...".

With any .NET implementation, Microsoft holds the patent card, heck they hold the copyright card as well; a whole lot of them.

Any .NET implemenation that is not officially sanctioned by Microsoft in a legally binding way is making a very risky bet.

I say, Either Miguel knows something we don't, or he is being a bit callous with Ximian VC money in this case.

Re:FUD?

[TummyX]

Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either.


What about these facts?

- Mono has been around for over a year.
- Mono has been featured on MSDN.
- To the press, Microsoft has consistantly praised the Mono team.
- .NET is an ECMA and soon to be ISO standard.

Hmmmm

Re:FUD?

[GeekBoy]

And how do we know that once mono has served it's purpose to them (showing that .net is a standard, and using mono to popularize the "technology"), that they then won't play the patent trump card once .net becomes widespread and required for decent functionality? Allowing .net technology to promulgate in the open source world could be it's death. If .net becomes a "web standard" and then MS kills it on open platforms, and refuses to supply their own implementation (or provides a crippled implementation) it would be a good way for them to drive people away from open source platforms, and back to windows. It could happen, and the fact that we have no guarentees either way means that "we" are taking a big risk on the good will of a company that is more known for killing off competitors than dispensing good will to them.

Re:FUD?

[sheldon]

"Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either."

There's no evidence that men from mars won't come storming through my front door and steal the Christmas goose.

Some day when you have a moment go to the dictionary and look up two words. The first is possible, the second is probable. In business you start projects all the time with "The probability of them suing us is slight", it's called risk management.

Re:FUD?

[mrkurt]

The truth about .net is that the Common Language Infrastructure and the C# language are the only things that are ECMA standards. The Common Language Runtime, which lies at the heart of the .net framework, is a superset of CLI; so, like we have seen in the past, there are a lot of classes/APIs that may not be accessible to non-MS implementations of the CLI. You can have a Common Type System (which is the main component of CLI), but if you don't know which classes/functions on .net to access, what parameters they're expecting, etc., resolving to common types won't do much good. It's gonna depend on Microsoft, and how open they are. Their track record is not good on these matters, as we well know.

Re:FUD?

[Kunta Kinte]

In business you start projects all the time with "The probability of them suing us is slight", it's called risk management.

Maybe that's just me, but I'd say risk management is keeping a balanced portfolio, or having a certain amount of your assets liquid.

I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk. "Managed" risk implies that the risk was un-avoidable, I'd say. At any rate, it's Miguel's call, his money.

Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?

Re:FUD?

[TummyX]

You can have a Common Type System (which is the main component of CLI), but if you don't know which classes/functions on .net to access, what parameters they're expecting, etc., resolving to common types won't do much good


Uh. If there are undocumented classes (e.g. non public APIs) then they don't need to be implemented because noone uses them. If they're public they need to be documented for people to use them. You can also just call the methods and see the return values with various argument values.

Besides, who cares about Microsoft .NET APIs? The CLI is a good framework regardless of whether you use the Microsoft-only namespaces or not. GTK#, CsGL etc don't need to rely on any non-CLI classes.

The CLI is very much like C + CLIB. You can build proprietry non cross platform libraries on top of it (e.g. Win32) but you can also build open cross platform libaries with it (e.g. OpenGL). Noone is forcing you to use Windows only libraries (e.g. WinForms) when using .NET.

Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.

Re:FUD?

[sheldon]

"Maybe that's just me, but I'd say risk management is keeping a balanced portfolio, or having a certain amount of your assets liquid. "

No, that's applying risk management practices to your portfolio. That would be an implementation of the theory.

"I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk."

That's not. Risk management is identifying your risks as well as their probability, and then mitigating appropriately.

Let's put it this way. There is a possibility that Miguel will get hit by a bus and die. Now what's the probability of this occuring? It's not likely, but it might happen. As such it's important for your project to identify a backup person for Miguel.

Now there is also a possibility that Washington DC could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow, destabilizing the government and throwing the world into chaos. It's possible right? You can't deny that. But how probable is it? Pretty low, and the govt has risk mitigation in the event such a thing occured so we hope the world wouldn't die in chaos.

Hopefully you get the idea. I grow exceedingly tired of people running around like chicken little and claiming because a thing is possible, that it's gonna happen and if we don't react we're doomed.

"Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?"

You know it's Microsoft's code, and from their point of view they are worried about theft. They wanted to show that it was possible, and provide a proof-of-concept to show how it might be done. Now you can use this, but they don't wish to see it used in a way that competes back against them.

The GPL zealots complain about the same thing all the time, it's why they claim they use the GPL... they don't want their code being used in a commercial project. So why should GNU have this freedom but Microsoft not?

Again, I really wish open source advocates would argue on a basis founded in reality instead of the chicken little possibilities. It'd make the debate more interesting and sound less fanatical.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

Uh. If there are undocumented classes (e.g. non public APIs) then they don't need to be implemented because noone uses them. If they're public they need to be documented for people to use them. You can also just call the methods and see the return values with various argument values.

Microsoft software will use them, and other software will use that Microsoft software. Soon there will be a huge chunk of .NET software that won't run on non-Microsoft platform.

Besides, who cares about Microsoft .NET APIs? The CLI is a good framework regardless of whether you use the Microsoft-only namespaces or not. GTK#, CsGL etc don't need to rely on any non-CLI classes.

It's a large and messy framework made with no understandable purpose other than "making another Java", therefore it's mental masturbation squared (because Java design is mental masturbation -- all its original goals are either abandoned or became irrelevant at the moment when semi-usable implementation was released).

The CLI is very much like C + CLIB. You can build proprietry non cross platform libraries on top of it (e.g. Win32) but you can also build open cross platform libaries with it (e.g. OpenGL). Noone is forcing you to use Windows only libraries (e.g. WinForms) when using .NET.

There is no CLIB, it's libc. And win32 has nothing to do with either, it's an API with its own library, and a horrible one at that.

Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.

It's a horrible framework -- it is very narrow in functionality and very broad in its stretch over all aspects of program's design and behavior -- basically such infrastructures are for software development what are "wizards" for system administration. Examples of good infrastructure are very rare, I can only name two -- Unix unified file descriptors and Berkeley sockets as a decent large-scale infrastructures that actually serve a valid purpose and improved the software design. The only point of bothering to port it somewhere can be to run software developed for it until people will realize how bad it is and rewrite that software in C or C++ with sanely designed libraries. Same applies to Java but at least Java can be made compatible on all platforms.

Re:FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of .NET is obvious to anyone with significant experience of non-hobbyist software development. Corporations typically use a variety of languages for their software (e.g. VB, C/C++, Java, Perl, etc., not to mention legacy languages like FORTRAN and COBOL), and interoperating with components written in other languages is invariably a pain, typically falling back to the lowest common denominator of C-style interfaces.

Java doesn't do anything to solve the interoperation problem. There have been previous attempts such as COM and Corba, but they're so tedious and convoluted that they're almost worse than C interfaces.

.NET is the first thing I've ever seen that makes it trivial to mix objects written in different languages. That's its purpose, and why it uses an intermediate language (IL) similar to the Java bytecode. Mind you, the JVM can actually be used in the same way (and has been by academic projects), even if it's less well suited to it since that wasn't a design goal, but such use is in direct conflict with Sun's goal of promoting the Java language/platform, so I don't think it's a viable basis for language-independent development. That leaves COM, Corba and .NET. With experience of all three, I use .NET for anything new, and only fall back to COM or Corba for legacy software.

Re:FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally the shared-source implementation of .NET was distributed with an anti-GPL licence. This is because the GPL is incompatible with Microsoft's goals for this code. Its purpose is obviously to provide a version of .NET that academics using UNIX can use and tinker with, not a basis for competing commercial implementations and certainly not code that can be sublicensed under a licence that would require Microsoft to license any of its code under a licence such as the GPL.

Mono does not use Microsoft code, of course, so this is a red herring. Patents could probably be used to shut down Mono (and any number of other projects such as Samba), and so the issue for those leading such projects is the likelihood that Microsoft will use patent lawsuits to shut them down. The evidence of past behaviour suggests it probably won't, but the risk, however small, is of course there.

In my view, the core issue is that the people running Microsoft believe they'll always be able to build a better version of .NET than any of their competitors. After all, they invented it, and the competitors will always be playing catch-up (the way GNU and Linux are still trying to catch up to where UNIX was ten years ago).

If .NET replaces UNIX as the most important design being copied by open source, it's a huge win for Microsoft (which also had to play catch-up to UNIX in the 1990s, e.g. by adding support for BSD sockets) because it will be in the driving seat.

Unless Microsoft licensing terms become as outrageous as UNIX licensing terms were/are, it's very likely most .NET users will use a better proprietary product, rather than an inferior, but free, imitation. This, I think, is the Microsoft bet. It may be right (I think it is), or it may be wrong. One way or the other, however, it will require constant development on the Microsoft side, since the free .NET implementations will invariably reimplement most MS .NET features within a few years of their introduction.

Re:FUD?

[mrkurt]

Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.

Well, if Mono isn't 100% compatible with .net, then might I not be forced to use .net to do what I want on Windoze? What has been done in the past is that there are APIs that MS shares only with its "partners", or uses for its own software. They have been unwilling to share these APIs,resulting in their own or partner SW shutting SW from other developers out of whole market sectors. I guess we'll have to see if the .net framework is under the jurisdiction of one court or another.

My take is, .net is just a ploy to hook developers and lock them in MS. You can build web services without Java, .net, etc., you can develop and deploy apps without .net, and you can use another infrastructure (like CORBA or RPC) for remoting. As I have said before on /. it's about control and trust. MS wants control, and I don't trust them.

Re:FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL zealots complain about the same thing all the time, it's why they claim they use the GPL... they don't want their code being used in a commercial project. So why should GNU have this freedom but Microsoft not?

First off, GNU, code, meaning GPL, CAN be used in a commercial project. GM designing manifolds with GPL derived software is not obligated to give away those manifolds.

GPL software can even be sold as a commercial project. Successfully I might add, see Red Hat, or if you prefer, the linux disk duplicators.

The problem people have is that if they write their OWN 100% original code, if it turns out to have been vaguely similar to a patented piece that they've never seen, can still be sued. Their work can be taken away from them.

If the cure for cancer patented the day before your 20 year quest for it was complete, you'd lose any right to that 20 years of labor, because of a legal fiction. If they decided to charge $1,000,000 a cure, you would not be legally able to cure it yourself, and unlikley to be able to afford it.

That's what people who don't like having masters, corporate or otherwise, don't like. The loss of freedom they suffer.

The fact that the US legal system heavily favors both business and the rich (double whammy for MS opponents) makes fighting a wrongful legal fiction nearly impossible for ordinary people who can't devote two - or twenty - years to legal skirmishes at the expense of their jobs, families, etc.

Re:FUD?

[e2d2]

It's a horrible framework -- it is very narrow in functionality and very broad in its stretch over all aspects of program's design and behavior -- basically such infrastructures are for software development what are "wizards" for system administration.

Can you specifically point out the flaws in the .Net API? To go on and compare the .Net API to berkley sockets and unified file descriptors is a JOKE! How can you even compare socket API to an ENTIRE windows API (which is essentially what .net is, a new windows API)? Can you please point to something with a solid argument? Show the bad design.

And please do the same with Java. What specifically is not good design?

Re:FUD?

[sheldon]

"First off, GNU, code, meaning GPL, CAN be used in a commercial project."

You mean Used as in enduser, not developer.

I just thought I'd clear that up for you, given as how you've decided to take a tactic of distortion of language to make a point.

Re:FUD?

[frank_adrian314159]

It's a large and messy framework made with no understandable purpose other than "making another Java", therefore it's mental masturbation squared (because Java design is mental masturbation -- all its original goals are either abandoned or became irrelevant at the moment when semi-usable implementation was released).

As much as I dislike Microsoft, I have to take issue with the above statement as a response to the original statement about the CLI.

The .NET framework may be messy, bloated, and obtuse, but the CLI is MUCH better than the JVM. The people who originally did the CLI put more thought and time into it than the two weeks (or so it seems) the Oak team spent in doing the JVM. It has a lot more functionality and a much cleaner and language-independent structure. Downtalk the .NET Framework all you want, but the CLI is a good piece of engineering.

Re:FUD?

[TummyX]

Microsoft software will use them, and other software will use that Microsoft software. Soon there will be a huge chunk of .NET software that won't run on non-Microsoft platform.


So? Microsoft uses non cross platform C APIs in their apps too. .NET is not meant to be a cross platform meta platform like Java. It's a development framework.


It's a large and messy framework made with no understandable purpose other than "making another Java", therefore it's mental masturbation squared (because Java design is mental masturbation -- all its original goals are either abandoned or became irrelevant at the moment when semi-usable implementation was released).


You show your ignorance here. Try looking into .NET a bit more.


There is no CLIB, it's libc. And win32 has nothing to do with either, it's an API with its own library, and a horrible one at that.


CLIB/LIBC same thing. And Win32 has everything to do with it. Win32 is an example of a series of libraries written in C. If you write a C application that uses Win32, it will (usually) only run on. If you write an application in C# that uses Microsoft APIs (System.EnterpriseServices etc) if will (usually) only run on Windows. People seem to think the CLI is supposed to be a platform like Java. It's not. It's more like C with a bit more stuff (garbage collection, managed environment, etc).


It's a horrible framework -- it is very narrow in functionality and very broad in its stretch over all aspects of program's design and behavior -- basically such infrastructures are for software development what are "wizards" for system administration. Examples of good infrastructure are very rare, I can only name two -- Unix unified file descriptors and Berkeley sockets as a decent large-scale infrastructures that actually serve a valid purpose and improved the software design. The only point of bothering to port it somewhere can be to run software developed for it until people will realize how bad it is and rewrite that software in C or C++ with sanely designed libraries. Same applies to Java but at least Java can be made compatible on all platforms


Um. Can you please explain this statement. It sounds like (because it is) pure ignorant FUD.

Re:FUD?

[TummyX]

Like I tried to say, .NET is not a platform. Don't expect to write .NET applicaitons and be able to run them elsewhere without a lot of work.

The CLI is a development framework. You can write cross platform and non cross platform applications with the CLI. Just like with C.

When you write something in C you have to be careful about the libraries you use so that you don't sacrifice portability. The same thing applies to the CLI. Just stick with cross platform APIs and you'll be fine.

So why use C# over C? C# has important features C doesn't have. Improved type safety, unified OO type system, garbage collection, better set of standard classes/functions.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

Languages compatibility is a strawman -- no one ever wanted to use objects from different languages unless all interfaces were compatible enough to make serialization of requests trivial, with or without "infrastructure". In any case all .NET does is allowing to call things, it does nothing to support complex data structures across the network, or even between programs.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

I am talking about the impact of API on thr software development, not about its size. It's almost impossible to make large far-reaching thing useful, but it's a poor excuse for making useless large far-reaching things. It's simply not any better with infrastructure than without it, except for a bunch of people who make a specific kind of programs that may benefit from it -- and it's not even clear that those programs are needed in thr first place.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

JVM is bad, too -- but at least it was made earlier when people didn't know better.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

One single problem that crosses out everything -- no objects and relationships/references replication. If that was there, it would actually contribute something infrastructure-like, but since it never was meant to even touch things like that, all its "innovation" and "usefulness" will be at the level of "let's make everyone use Segway instead of walking across the office".

Re:FUD?

[e2d2]

I disagree, when compared to the windows API the .Net API is IMO a ten fold better design. I think it will help developers speed up development. Yes you could aaccomplish the same thing within COM/WinAPI BUT it had a higher barrier to entry. Interfaces that previously only a C++ programmer could touch are now accessible to a whole myriad of languages.

Now I'm not saying it's gonna solve every problem, it's the silver bullet, or anything equally laughable. I simply think it's a clean, well designed API that has a great future and I hope, as a windows developer, that I get the chance to develop my applications for linux using this API through Mono.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

I absolutely agree that .NET API is superior to the combination of Win32 and COM. The problem is, Win32 and COM are absolutely horrible APIs that pretty much everything else is superior to.

What I am talking about is not "if it's better than an existing API" but "if it's better than whatever can be made for a specific task by more or less sane programmer without using pre-packaged API". My point is that software development with .NET is at most marginally simplier compared to design and implementation from scratch (that means, no COM or Win32 involved), and the result is usually far inferior compared to "from scratch".

Maybe some "developers" believe that they get some great value from .NET, however all I see is marginal improvement of operation that usually represents a fraction of a percent of the effort necessary for the development of a product. I guess, those "developers" never did any nontrivial software development, and since everything that is trivial and useful is already implemented, those developers make only trivial and useless things, basically wasting oxygen, energy and bandwidth.

Re:FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you just making things up without having any actual experience of what it's like to work in a corporate environment? As a C++ developer, I work with developers who use other languages (especially VB, which I detest) on a daily basis, and *the* reason for going with .NET on Windows is the language-independent nature of the CLR. It works, and people use it. There's no need to pontificate about whether or not people 'wanted to use objects from different languages', since they do want to do it, and are doing it with .NET.

As for 'only being able to call things', most of us these days use what we call 'object oriented' development techniques. Rather than using data structures that are independent of the executable code, we use 'classes', in which the code and the data are stored in a single instance (the code is shared by the implementation in most cases, but it's conceptually per-instance). The interfaces implemented by the class are used to manipulate the data contained in the instance, and conformant .NET interfaces can be called by any .NET language. In other words, your comment is nonsense. Remoting a class and accessing it from another process (on the local machine or another machine) is trivial -- it 'just works' (I use it all the time).

Maybe you should try to learn more about .NET before carrying on about things you clearly don't understand.

Re:FUD?

[Alex Belits]

Are you just making things up without having any actual experience of what it's like to work in a corporate environment?

Seven years of it.

As a C++ developer, I work with developers who use other languages (especially VB, which I detest) on a daily basis

Solution: fire them.

and *the* reason for going with .NET on Windows is the language-independent nature of the CLR. It works, and people use it. There's no need to pontificate about whether or not people 'wanted to use objects from different languages', since they do want to do it, and are doing it with .NET.

Again -- if it was necessary, their work was worthles in the first place. Everyone else just uses existing interfaces or simply connects those programs through sockets. If they can't do that, or the effort they have to apply to it is not trivial compared to the rest of their work, they are not qualified to work on a project in the first place.

As for 'only being able to call things', most of us these days use what we call 'object oriented' development techniques. Rather than using data structures that are independent of the executable code, we use 'classes', in which the code and the data are stored in a single instance (the code is shared by the implementation in most cases, but it's conceptually per-instance).

Drop the condescending tone. Object-oriented design in no way replaces the data structures -- it's just some people study OO _instead_ of data structures and never learned what they are for. Or, worse, can only use some primitive templte library and believe this is all they will ever need.

The truth is, if you have a graph represented by your data it's still a graph no matter how poorly it is implemented, and you have to somehow maintain relationships between objects. Inclusion of easier way to call methods does nothing for it.

The interfaces implemented by the class are used to manipulate the data contained in the instance, and conformant .NET interfaces can be called by any .NET language.

As long as the list of arguments is limited, and results of operation are confined to the single instance of the object. Too bad, it's usually not true even for simple trees, leave alone more complex structures.

In other words, your comment is nonsense.

In other words, you are too ignorant to understand the problem.

Remoting a class and accessing it from another process (on the local machine or another machine) is trivial -- it 'just works' (I use it all the time).

If it works, the task was trivial to begin with. Usually what you have to access is not a class but a set of objects, with complex relationships between them.

Maybe you should try to learn more about .NET before carrying on about things you clearly don't understand.

I understand it pretty clear, though the stupidity of its design insults me. You however have no capability of understanding anything beyond a simple little model where it works, and if all software you write falls within this model, your work is worthless.

Eclipse and SWT on Monster

[thammoud]

SWT search yielded 3 jobs.2 with IBM. Swing yielded 300. Hmmm, I wonder which one I need to learn.

Hey, IBM, quit trying to splinter Java. fix swing rather than invest in an MFC lookalike called SWT.

Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster

[1000StonedMonkeys]

Most users' experience with swing can be summed up with the following:

1. Open any swing application
2. Right click the mouse button somewhere a context menu should appear, or click on one of the file menus.
3. Wait 3 seconds
4. Form the incorrect conclusion that Java is slow
5. Go back to using native win32 programs

Sun's been trying to "fix swing" for the last 5 years, and they've had no luck. What makes you think IBM has the magic bullet?

Swing will never be fast. The same abstractions that make it such a joy to program with make it terribly inefficiant. Print out a stack trace in a event handler function in swing and take a look at how deep it is. Every one of those functions had to be called before the event was process, and ever call had to be done through a table lookup. I'll avoid going into the whole native vs. non-native widgets debate, but forgive me if I remain skeptical about the non-native approach sun has been using with swing.

IBM (well, the company that wrote eclipse that IBM bought) did the right thing when they started from scratch to design SWT. Eclipse is amazingly responsive when compared to any swing application I've seen. Try it out yourself, I think you'll be impressed.

Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster

[JBhoy]

I do wish that SWT had its own documentation and a separate download though. It would make it easier to use.

I haven't observed that Swing is that slow under JDK 1.4. Most complaints about Swing being slow are based on earlier versions.

That being said, I'm interested in evaluating SWT. Still, Swing is a nice toolkit, and the fact that it is so ubiquitous makes it an easy choice to use it to write against.

This would especially be the case if the preliminary injunction is upheld and suddenly the Java Plug-In shows up on millions of computers. Swing applets are pretty cool. Still, you could bundle swt.jar with your applet I guess.

Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster

[thammoud]

>>> Still, you could bundle swt.jar with your applet I guess.

Oh no!!! SWT does NOT use AWT. That means you need swt native DLL's on the client to be downloaded. Something that is disallowed with applets.

Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster

[thammoud]

Hmmm. I develop swing apps for a living. I just right clicked to popup a context menu. It just popued up like a native menu. I am using JDK 1.4.1. Is a Swing app as fast as a native Windows app ?? Nope!! but it is much faster than it used to be and is approaching the very acceptable level. For a Swing app to be responsive, it has to be a lot more optimized than a native C++ app.

>>IBM (well, the company that wrote eclipse that >>IBM bought) did the right thing when they >>started from scratch to design SWT. Eclipse is >>amazingly responsive when compared to any >>swing application I've seen. Try it out >>yourself, I think you'll be impressed.

I have and I do agree it is impressive. But so is JBuilder and many other Swing apps.

SWT goes against the design of Swing.

- No MVC
- No native Widgets. i.e no lowest common denominator for platforms.
- The API is truley ugly in comparison to Swing.
- Where is the equivalent of Java2D ?

A method in the GC class has the name:

static GC win32_new(Drawable drawable, GCData data)

Hmmm!!

Most of SWT is written in Java if you care to look at the code. It is open source. So Java can be fast. What will IBM do when MS introduces a new win32 component that has no equivalent in the other implementations like Linux? This is a road that Sun tried to take in the past and realized all the issues.

Swing needs to be improved. It can be fixed. If the techies from Sun, IBM and BEA decided that it is hopless, then they should go through the JCP and come up with a new design and implementation. Just like every other Java feature goes through. IBM is trying to steal the IDE market and pull a Microsoft.

You can barely put a swing component on eclipse. The most commonly used GUI toolkit in Java is NOT compatible with Eclipse. There might not be many third party apps written in Swing, but there are thousands that are written in enterprises.

What IBM is doing is evil and will hurt all of the Java community.

Thank you!

MS will be helped by Mono

[sirshannon]

Seriously. ASP.Net running on Linux will be the best thing that could happen to .Net, from the developers, to the clients, to MS.
If MS really wants to put the competition under, then .Net HAS to run on Linux.

Open Source Innovation

[genkael]

One question that I have is, "Why don't Open Source developers spend more time with their own creations and killer apps as opposed to ripping off what commercial companies have already created?" We see in a few instance that Open Source developers can do just that. Look at Apache, PHP, and MySQL for examples of packages that are unique, or not totally ripped off. Imagine what could be produced if OS developers actually built something truely unique!

Re:Open Source Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache - A patchy server. That was someone elses code.

MySQL - an attempt at implementing SQL.

So much for 'innovation', looks more like the copying you are bashing.

worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[g4dget]

I have yet to see anybody identify Microsoft patents that are essential to ECMA C#, CLR, CLI, or .NET implementations. The one or two patents Microsoft likes to parade around are general patents pertaining to distributed systems. Even if they were to hold up in court, they would have no specific effect on C# implementations. And, given when ECMA C# was published, there can't be that much hidden in the pipeline. Furthermore, if, by some obscure legal twist they did threaten Mono, they'd also threaten every Java implementation in existence. An additional protection against patent issues with C#/CLR/CLI is that Microsoft was required to disclose patents that affect the implementability of the standard as part of the standardization process. And not only was Microsoft required to make such declarations as part of the standardization effort, so was every other ECMA member (which, I believe, includes Sun).

Sun's patents are much more worrisome as far as I'm concerned. For example, patent number 6,477,702, held by Sun, would seem to be infringed by any conforming Java implementation. And Sun has pulled out of every and any process that would have required them to make a declaration or commitment on patent and IP issues related to Java. Furthermore, while Sun PR likes to talk a lot about openness, I have yet to see a legally binding declaration by Sun that would guarantee that third party implementations of Java may use Sun's patents.

I don't trust Microsoft any further than I can throw the entire stack of printed MSDN documentation (which is to say, I don't trust them at all). But, all things considered, I think the risk of patent infringment claims from Microsoft over Mono are very slim indeed. All that hot air from Microsoft CEOs and Microsoft PR folks doesn't change that. Sun, on the other hand, holds known patents that could create real problems for any non-Sun Java implementation.

If you are very worried about patent problems, there is a very easy solution: don't use either Mono or Java--there are plenty of other languages a round, many of them better. If you are slightly worried about patent problems, then Mono looks like a safer choice to me than Java. And probably, you don't really have to worry about patents with either of them.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[TeknoHog]

> If you are very worried about patent problems, there is a very easy solution: don't use either Mono or Java--there are plenty of other languages a round, many of them better.

Can you say Python? It has everything expected from Java: cross-platform (interpreted or bytecode), pure object orientation, lots of great libraries included. Plus it's Free and the syntax is very intuitive and powerful, it's arguably the fastest language when it comes to development time.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[JamesOfTheDesert]

it's arguably the fastest language when it comes to development time.

Um, no. Try Ruby. Cleaner OO, too.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[g4dget]

Python is a decent language. But it has a number of problems:

• It does not have a clear cross-platform GUI (Tkinter doesn't work on OS X, wxPython isn't a standard part of the platform binary distributions).
• Many packages rely on native code in shared libraries.
• Python byte code is orders of magnitude slower than Java or C# code.
• Python does not have optional static type checking.
• It is hard to make standalone, self-contained applications out of it.
• Python does not have a well-defined language standard, nor does it have multiple independent implementations.

Python could be more of a contender if someone built a good native code compiler for it. None of the current attempts are very good or result in much speedup.

The way it is, Python is good for many scripting and prototyping applications. But for a general-purpose, high-quality programming language, we still have to look elsewhere.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[JBhoy]

Python is a decent language. But it has a number of problems snip

It also has some bizarre language constructs that seem poorly thought out, and it probably more correctly considered an object-based than an object-oriented programming language, since encapsulation and data-hiding are matters of convention alone, which you would expect with a scripting language. The lack of compile-time type checking is unattractive in an applications or system development language too.

Python is a good language for certain purposes, but there's no reason to re-invent the wheel, or to use Python in place of Java. Given how easily Java bytecode is de-compiled, heck, you could even say it is open-source friendly, since it encourages protecting code through copyright rather than by trade secrets and patents. :)

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[Eric Damron]

From the article:

Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies.

In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA . Sun has also fully pened up the Java development standards process under the new Java Community Process (JCP) . Even to the point of granting full open source re-implentations of J2EE such as JBoss ...
JBoss received the green light last week, after Sun told ComputerWire that it would allow all of the APIs contained in J2EE 1.4 to be open sourced. Fleury had expressed concern that certain critical APIs, including Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 2.1, would be not be made available to open source organizations.

However, Java Community Process director Onno Kluyt said: "Sun's plan with 1.4 is that although it started before JCP 2.5, by the time it ships it will allow the creation of independent implementations. I don't think the APIs are that interesting, because the license that sits on top of J2EE will allow that [independent implementations]".

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[g4dget]

Well, I think Java has as many problems as Python. Just off the top of my head:

• No support for value classes.
• Java generics are not type safe across compilation units.
• Java arrays require dynamic type checks.
• No iteration syntax.
• Does not have basic operator overloading (arithmetic operators).
• Does have non-operator overloading.
• Poorly thought out source file and binary file packaging conventions.
• Casts are prefix.
• No lexical closures.
• Java2D bindings to non-Windows environments are low quality.
• Some very poorly thought out core libraries: I/O, image handling, text/string.

These, and other problems with Java seriously limit its utility and scope. Java is decent for the server side hacking where it is currently popular, but it's a poor choice for things like numerical and semi-numerical algorithms. C# improves on it somewhat.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[g4dget]

Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies.

That objection is irrelevant, for several reasons. First, we pretty much know what the related Microsoft's and Sun's patents are. Microsoft does not appear to hold any key patents necessary for any parts of .NET that most people would care about, and they almost certainly don't hold any patents on the core C#/CLR language and runtime. Second, since .NET is not a well-defined platform, even if small parts of it cannot be reimplemented due to patent issues, it doesn't affect much of anything.

For Sun, in contrast, we know that they hold key patents on core Java technology. Furthermore, Sun has made no legally binding commitments to letting others use those patents in their implementations. And, if you fail to implement parts of the Java 2 platform, you basically fail to implement Java.

However, Java Community Process director Onno Kluyt said: [...]

That's all a bunch of hot air, nothing legally binding. We know that Sun holds key patents on core technologies required to implement a conforming JVM. Sun has made no commitment to allowing commercial third party implementations, and even for open source implementations, it's all a bunch of inferences and promises. Anybody who actually wants to create a third party Java implementation has to get something from Sun in writing or forever live at risk of a lawsuit. And that will be true until Sun's patents enter the public domain.

It's pretty clear at this point that Microsoft holds no patents on core C#/CLR technology, and we can presume that they designed C#/CLR to avoid running afoul of any Sun patents. Whatever patents Microsoft may hold are at best tangential. Overall, that leaves us with a significantly better situation for C#/CLR than Java/JVM: with Java/JVM, we have to trust Sun's promises, with C#/CLR, we don't have to trust anybody.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[Daniel Phillips]

Python byte code is orders of magnitude slower than Java or C# code.

You must try psyco, the specializing compiler for Python. I've benchmarked it, it's amazing, it speeds Python up to within a factor of two of C/C++, and it's seamless.

Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents

[pnatural]

Python is a decent language. But it has a number of problems

Python is a great language. It has problems, but not those you mention.

It does not have a clear cross-platform GUI (Tkinter doesn't work on OS X, wxPython isn't a standard part of the platform binary distributions).

Those that actually care about client GUI libs can install their own. In this respect, Python is no different from C, and in fact, has more GUI bindings than C!

Many packages rely on native code in shared libraries.

And your point is...? That's like saying "many parts of my house rely on the shared frame".

Python byte code is orders of magnitude slower than Java or C# code.

For real-world tasks, Python execution speed is more than fast enough. When it's not, the bottlenecks can be easily identified and moved to C, or optimized away by the machine using Psyco. Using Psyco, my neural net code ran 5x faster. But the real thing you're missing here is this: developer time is more valuable than machine time, as machine time can be saved using other methods.

Python does not have optional static type checking.

And I thank God it does not! Static type checking solves a very narrow programming problem and requires a tremendous amount of coding for the developer.

It is hard to make standalone, self-contained applications out of it.

No, it's not hard to make stand-alone, or to embed it in other applications. There are multiple proven techniques to bundle the interpreter with a parts of the standard library and third-party code. That you don't know this makes me believe you don't really know python, either.

Python does not have a well-defined language standard, nor does it have multiple independent implementations.

Oh, my! The language definition is quite well-defined and very consistent. And there are two open-source implementations on separate platforms: python in C and python on Java

Python could be more of a contender if someone built a good native code compiler for it. None of the current attempts are very good or result in much speedup.

Psyco speeds up python by optimizing chunks of code at run time. The neat thing is that it does this against python code, so python becomes faster by more of it being written in python.

The way it is, Python is good for many scripting and prototyping applications. But for a general-purpose, high-quality programming language, we still have to look elsewhere.

NASA. ILM. Google. Please.

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft want to kill off any chance of their dream of .net programs running *anywhere*!??!!?

What's the point of learning .net then!?!?!?!?!?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Eric Damron]

Microsoft want's to control .NET completely. If enough people write .NET code they wouldn't want Linux to benefit more than their own OS.

The bottom line is we can't trust Microsoft to do anything other than what they have always done. Use their monopoly power to crush anything that even has the slightest chance of competing.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Goldenpi]

Microsoft does want .net programs to run anywhere. On the PC, on mobiles, palmtops, smartphones. Anywhere. They just plan on doing that my makeing windows run everywhere.

Has nobody read the ZDNet article?

[KAMiKAZOW]

And de Icaza says he has unofficial word that in the coming weeks Microsoft plans to share .Net-related intellectual property. Pending review by Microsoft lawyers, he says, "Microsoft patents on technology developed specifically for .Net will be granted royalty-free to those trying to implement the spec."

Yeah, it says "unofficial", but don't spread FUD until there's some updated (the Ballmer quote is from March) official information.

Re:Know thy enemy

[symbolic]

"Unique" isn't going to get linux where it needs to go - at least as a selling point. Linux needs to be able to "slip right in" so that users aren't forced to learn the idiosynchrasies associated with a different OS. The good thing about the way things are currently evolving is that Linux might be able to look and feel like 'doze as an out-of-the-box experience, but there's no reason that the unique stuff can't be available for those that dare (or even want) do stray from the beaten path. Forcing users into something "unique" as part of the overall Linux experience will probably drive more people away than it will help to convert.

.NET potability?

[the_greywolf]

correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't .NET supposed to be a "portable solution" that will work "across many platforms"? from what i can tell, M$ only wants it to work on 3 platforms: Windows Alpha, Windows ia32, Windows ia64.

well, as i've tld the people who ask me - i'll only develop with .NET when Mono is done, OR if M$ actually ports something to linux. in light of this, neither will happen anytime soon. so, i am that much more against .NET and all it represents.

what's the point of developing a "portable" app if it's only going to ever compile or run on 3 platforms? i can do that NOW with Visual Studio 6, as long as i choose to not use assembly code.

Re:.NET potability?

[mrkurt]

I think you've got it right-- .net will only run on Windows, although I understand that they have ported a subset of the .net framework to FreeBSD. I would be very surprised if we ever see a port to anything else. Microsoft is just trying to pull more developers into developing for Windows and nothin' but. "Write in any language to run on Windows". Furthermore, they are using a backdoor approach to lock organizations into Windoze, by getting developers onto the bandwagon. This is why I am staying away from .net, or Mono, or DotGnu, because of the potential for IP challenges by MS. Plus, it forces me and my potential employers or clients into restricting our choices instead of increasing them. If you want me to develop on Windoze, its Visual Studio 6, or Python/Tkinter, or maybe even Java-- but not .net.

Re:.NET potability?

[kenstcyr]

I don't think .NET is very potable. I throw up every time I get near it.

Some information for the lost and confused

[samael]

I'd like to point you at an article I wrote for kuro5hin on the subject of .net here.

Microsoft's introduction is here.

Mono's information is here.

Re:The night before....a poem

[Anonymous Coward]

*clap clap*
that was.. beautiful, man

I had a choice...

[sheldon]

I could sleep off Christmas dinner, or relax in my chair reading slashdot.

Sleeping would have been more intellectually stimulating than reading this nonsense. I'll remember that next year.

Re:I had a choice...

[Anonymous Coward]

reading the previous comment was more "intellectually stimulating" than reading your nonsense comment. I'll remember that next time I see a comment with "by sheldon (2322)" at the top.

Re:I had a choice...

[r]

Sleeping would have been more intellectually stimulating than reading this nonsense. I'll remember that next year.

amen, brother. the amount of noise on this site has become mind boggling. thought-out messages don't get posted here very often anymore.

there are days when i'm tempted to just change my password to some random string, and log off forever. and yet i don't, though i'm not sure why. maybe it's nostalgia. :)

MS patents (all patents) are a potential problem!

[manyoso]

Really folks, patents are a problem to Free Software in every project. No Free Software project is immune to these kind of concerns as well as other complicated interactions with corporations. Look at Samba which is every bit as susceptible to MS patents as Mono. Or how about OpenGL which has problems with corporate concerns. Sun has patents on Java. At least Microsoft is bound to the ECMA patent policy which is basically RAND with required disclosure.

Another important thing to understand is Mono isn't the only Free Software project out there that is implementing the ECMA standards. DotGNU/Portable.NET has a large par t of the ECMA specs implemented and the design goal of PNet is ECMA not the rest of MS's .NET infrastructure ie, System.Windows.Forms, ASP.NET, ADO.NET. The wine project is another area with every bit the risk that Mono faces.

So the conclusion to draw from this is: Patents are a danger to Free Software in every direction! Not just this one particular project...

We don't have to worry about Sun Java patents

[Kunta Kinte]

(i) Sun has supported third party implentations to the point where they used a third party implementations themself. What's the original linux jvm a third party jvm ( name was black-something, I can't remember). IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs.

(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.

(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.

Don't forget dotGNU...

[Lysol]

I'm sure that'll get the RMS haters eyes rolling, but, dotGNU also deserves a mention. I know, cuz I'm a recent contributor to it. These guys have done a lot with fewer PR and resources than Ximian/Mono, but they're not as far along either.

They've actually done some stuff much different than Mono. For starters, their compiler is in C not C#. And it's able to general IL as well as Java bytecode and hs some other interesting approaches; not huge, but still very cool. One thing I find interesting with various OS vs. closed source projects - their approach.

From the code perspective, we read the Ecma spec and then crank out some code. If M$ has the entire spec patented as various 'processes' then I guess they could take the authors of Mono and dotGNU to court. It would be complicated tho and I'm sure there's already prior art out there for Strings, Input Buffers, Webservices, etc..

Frankly, I joined dotGNU because the Java tools are very mature and after working with them for the past 5 years, I'm really bored doing 'enterprise web apps'. There's much more fun, for me, in getting the foundation built; seeing how and if it will actually work. For me, all the top most layers are just fluff.

As far as ASP.NET goes, I'm actually thinking of something along the lines of a C# version of Java Servlets and JSPs. I've done ASP and I personally think it's pretty filthy. JSP can be just as much, but there are definitely more patterns applied to Servlets/JSPs than ASP. A C# implementation of the Servlet/JSP spec would be an interesting thing; and possible too! Altho, I obviously wouldn't be 'compliant', but could work the same with just a little different syntax.

Anyway, I finally realized that .NET can't be ignored. So if it's gonna be as big as J2EE (and it will) then there might as well be a some OS implementations out there for anyone and everyone to use. That will not really help M$ so much as it will make them work harder to justify using Windows as a platform when it can run just as well or better on others. Hats off to the Mono and dotGNU team for realizing this early on.

Seriously, we need both

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why don't Open Source developers spend more time with their own creations and killer apps as opposed to ripping off what commercial companies have already created?"

I don't believe it's an either/or proposition. Do you honestly think there's a shortage of creative Open Source work? It seems to me that many more people are going for their own blue-sky ideas; so much so that I'm glad to see so many people are dedicated to more pedestrian (but more immediately useful) projects!

If people want to spend their time and effort making the MS interoperability systems they and others need to do their jobs, that's a good thing. If people want to spend their time and effort producing polished MS workalikes to help MS-raised users switch with the minimum amount of effort, even better.

The reason? Even super-programmers can't do everything. A large community of developers (yes, and users) is essential for working on more interesting stuff at the same time. An added bonus is a reduction in the pain associated with running a minority system -- e.g., wouldn't it be nice if all the latest games were available for Linux?

Everything we can do to make switching to Open Source easy will help us gain greater installed base in the short term -- which will make the task of those searching for the next killer app that much easier...

There are no legal swpatents in Europe, yet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Se more at swpat.ffii, also sign the Petition against swpats. An you should talk to your local representative.

Third time lucky, will Microsoft listen

[NZheretic]

Yes, David Mohring is NZheretic and I have posted that comment at least a couple of times before.

Also, I am not alone in my concerns about Microsoft's patent threat, even Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik has said that Microsoft's legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat.

Microsoft could settle this issue by making a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA.

Re:Third time lucky, will Microsoft listen

[jone]

Scroll up a little and you'll see that Sun is *evil* too. Apparently that JSPA thing isn't worth the paper it's written on, that despite it being written by the combined legal teams of Sun and numerous competitors!

These days when i see a high numbered id telling me that it's not MS that i should be worrying about, i just roll my eyes and move on.... or reply if i've drunk enough.

Nice

[DopeRider]

In all likelyhood Mono will do little to threaten Microsoft's dominance anyhow...

If it fails, they won't be sued. Stop caring.

nails get hammered

[goon]

add to this a bit of "Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?" (more informative article article - javatips (66293) ) and you get a better view of the options MS are working on.

Borland are developing their own architectural solution for .NET and remember Rotor already runs on FreeBSD so borgifiying any of Borlands tools into a XP Visual Studio for Linux gives MS means to kill any competition - (Open source Mono classes). Remember MS's MO is to set and 'own the standard'. Nails get hammered and Mono is a target.

agreed

[exhilaration]

I was at a Microsoft demo of .Net in New York before it was released. The speaker (a Microsoft head developer), when praising .Net, said that it would allow your software to run on multiple platforms. He said that Mono would allow you to run .Net apps on Linux, implying that it was a Good Thing (tm).

They're happy to see Mono progress. In the end, it'll help them sell more copies of Visual Studio and Windows XP Professional.

But what I'm afraid of is that if someday Microsoft is in bad shape and its profits start to drop, they'll go on a legal rampage and take down anyone that built software even remotely "like" theirs.

Re:agreed

[tftp]

The speaker (a Microsoft head developer), when praising .Net, said that it would allow your software to run on multiple platforms.

Don't ask developers; ask MS policy makers.

Re:The night before....a poem

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantastic! Merry christmas to you, sir!

People are you reading this!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

from http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/index.en.h tml:

Asked by CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf whether Microsoft will enforce its patents against open source projects, Mundie replied, "Yes, absolutely." An audience member pointed out that many open source projects aren't funded and so can't afford legal representation to rival Microsoft's. "Oh well," said Mundie. "Get your money, and let's go to court."
and
"Heise report about Steve Ballmer's talk at CeBit. At a speech event together with chancellor Schroeder, Ballmer says that Microsoft owns lots of patents which cover its new DotNet standard and that it aims to use them to prevent opensource implementations of DotNet. The key phrases read, in translation:"

you've been duped

[g4dget]

(i) Sun has supported third party implentations to the point where they used a third party implementations themself. What's the original linux jvm a third party jvm ( name was black-something, I can't remember).

It's Blackdown Java. It is not a third party implementation. Sun simply dumped their source code onto a bunch of people outside Sun who then fixed a bunch of bugs and ported it to Linux.

IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs.

IBM does not have its own Java implementation--they have a license to Sun's Java implementation, and they replace some of Sun's components with their own.

(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.

Sun hasn't tolerated anything. As far as I can tell, anybody who is shipping anything remotely resembling a Java platform implementation has a contractual agreement with Sun. In fact, merely to claim that something is Java, you need a contractual agreement with Sun (because of their trademark).

(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.

I see no basis for that statement. Sun simply isn't leveraging their monopoly because they don't have one. As a 15 year Sun customer, all the indications I have seen are that Sun is worse than Microsoft when it comes to cut-throat competition and intellectual property, they are simply not as successful.

Re:you've been duped

[Kunta Kinte]

As far as I can tell, anybody who is shipping anything remotely resembling a Java platform implementation has a contractual agreement with Sun.

If that's true it's only needed because certain companies, are greedy enough to try to pollute the language with their own platform dependent extensions for their own gain.

There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html

PS. I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.

Re:you've been duped

[e40]

As a 15 year Sun customer, all the indications I have seen are that Sun is worse than Microsoft when it comes to cut-throat competition and intellectual property, they are simply not as successful.

Care to be specific? As a 17-year Sun customer/user (the group I was in at UCB got one of the early Sun 1's) I have not witnessed anything you allude to.

Re:you've been duped

[GeorgieBoy]

IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs. IBM does not have its own Java implementation--they have a license to Sun's Java implementation, and they replace some of Sun's components with their own.

-----------

What you're saying isn't really true. IBM has 2 JVM implementations, the JDKs (J2SE) as well as J9, a whole separate Sun-code-free VM which implements J2ME and other custom class libraries.

Re:you've been duped

[g4dget]

What you're saying isn't really true.

Oh, yes, it is.

IBM has 2 JVM implementations

And your point is what? We aren't talking about "JVM implementations" we are talking about Java platform implementations.

Furthermore, IBM is a licensee no matter what they implement it or how they implement it, so they are not an example of how Sun lets third parties implement Java freely.

Re:you've been duped

[g4dget]

Well, look at Sun's "contamination clauses" for Java sources, the way their business is built on taking open source software proprietary, McNealy's and Gosling's apparent disdain for open source, their broken promises over Java and Java's future, among others. Also, when talking to Sun as a customer, coming from UCB, you probably didn't get an entirely normal customer experience.

In any case, I'm not saying that anything Sun has done has been wrong. I am saying, however, that you are kidding yourself if you think that you can trust Sun to stick to promises of "openness" any more than you can trust Microsoft. Sun has the same kind of lawyers, PR people, and stock holders. They will say anything that's legal, defensible, and doesn't damage their PR too badly as long as it makes more profit or gets the stock price up; that's not just common sense, it's the fiduciary duty of its officers. And, if anything, Sun has demonstrated that they can't be trusted by pulling out of standardization efforts and failing to pull through on other Java-related promises.

Re:you've been duped

[g4dget]

If that's true it's only needed because certain companies, are greedy enough to try to pollute the language with their own platform dependent extensions for their own gain.

Whatever the reason, it means that Java is not free, and it means that any open source effort that "pollutes" the language might end up in Sun's cross-hairs as well.

There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html

Yup, there are many JVMs, but those are not independent Java implementations. A Java implementation consists of JVMs together with a complete set of libraries.

There might be independent J2ME implementations somewhere from some small outfit, but there don't seem to be independent J2SE or J2EE implementations, either open source or commercial.

If you think that there are indepdent, open source Java platform implementations, please point me at the non-Sun source code for the part of the implementation that implements Swing.

I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.

It's only "pulling" with MS because MS has a monopoly. Sun doesn't, so it's legally OK and reasonably accepted for them to do certain things. If MS had 20% of the market, little of what they have done would cause any legal problems.

I'm just saying: you can't rely on Sun's PR statements. Sun is a publically traded company, and if their prior promises were not legally binding, they can reneg on their promises. And they have, in a big way in the past, for example, with Java standardization.

Re:you've been duped

[leandrod]

> their business is built on taking open source software proprietary

Just as everyone else, including MS. This at worst makes Sun as bad as MS, not worse. Anyway this was truer at the SunOS = 5, AKA Solaris >= 2, is based on AT&T Unix), and they also contributed a lot with NFS, NIS and other such stuff.

> their broken promises over Java and Java's future

Never assign to ill faith what can be explained by incompetence (Napoleon). But what do you have in mind?

Re:you've been duped

[g4dget]

This at worst makes Sun as bad as MS, not worse.

Whatever. I gave other examples. The point is: companies aren't people. Companies generally cannot be relied on to keep promises. If they aren't willing to commit to something in writing, don't rely on it.

Never assign to ill faith what can be explained by incompetence (Napoleon). But what do you have in mind?

I don't ascribe it to anything in particular. I don't care why they behave the way they do. I don't even care whether they have "good reasons" (Sun may well find some "good reason" to sue open source implementations of Java off the face of this planet). I just note that I can't rely on them to keep their promises. For example, Sun has dropped out of two standardization processes, they weaseled out of early open source promises, they have failed to deliver things like VM sharing and value classes for Java, they have failed to keep the VM competitive across platforms (the X11 version of Java2D sucks, and that's Suns fault), and they promised to make Java a platform for portable client applications but instead put most of their efforts into server-side applications, to name just a few Java-related issues.hae

Re:you've been duped

[leandrod]

> companies aren't people. Companies generally cannot be relied on to keep promises.

Even if they were like people, people are not reliable too. They might have been a little from Reformation & Counterreformation to, say, the Instant Gratification culture, but they are not now and were never in several other cultures, like most of the Islamic ones for example.

> they weaseled out of early open source promises

Were such promises ever made? Not doubting you, but I do not remember them being made.

> things like VM sharing and value classes for Java

Can you provide URLs about these things? I am not familiar with them.

Anyway, agreed about the other examples of broken promises. Just keep in mind some of these are changes of focus that were brough by failure of former plans, not necesssarily by an intention to deceive. Granted they could have fared better had they been more open from the start.

Re:you've been duped

[g4dget]

Even if they were like people, people are not reliable too

Yes, but with people, you have some expectation that there are some that you can trust. With companies, there is no basis ever to have such an expectation.

Were such promises ever made? Not doubting you, but I do not remember them being made.

In 1996, when people like myself were deciding whether to get our companies to support Java big time, yes. Sun definitely told people that they wanted Java to become an open standard, that they wanted to encourage multiple implementations, that they wanted to open source it (but perhaps not under the GPL/LGPL), etc. None of that has really happened.

Can you provide URLs about these things? I am not familiar with them.

Look around JavaGrande.org, and also take a look at pointers to Java Grande from Sun's site (via Google). Gosling and others were talking about these kinds of features even before the founding of Java Grande in 1998. The only thing that has gotten addressed is some floating point issues.

In any case, the overall point remains: C# delivers all the major points that Sun has promised but not delivered: standardization, full open source implementations (no thanks to Microsoft, however), and decent support for numerical programs (operators, subscripting, iteration, value classes). Furthermore, we know that the core of C#/CLR is not covered by Microsoft patents, while the core of Java/JVM is covered by some Sun patents. I think if openness and features are primary issues, the choice is clear.

I still use Java instead of C# for now, but only because we have a lot of Java legacy code and because the Mono implementation isn't quite up to snuff. In a year or so, I see nothing keeping me with Java.

Re:you've been duped

[leandrod]

> VM sharing and value classes for Java

A cursory Google search for Java VM.sharing did not enlighten me much.

But are not value classes a contradiction in terms? After all, a class is but a type or domain. A value is a fundamentally different concept. See Chris Date and Hugh Darwen writings for this, I think they call this the First (or Second?) Great Blunder.

Eclipse

[linux_warp]

Anyone got any screenshots of Eclipse in action?

Re:Eclipse

[AG]

See http://www.klomp.org/mark/gij_eclipse/

That's Eclipse running on top of gcj (http://gcc.gnu.org/java), making it a 100% Free solution.

(btw some of the problems he mentions on that page have already been fixed (like the memory problem))

AG

It is better to take than receive....

[uberdood]

Let's check the list:

• stole TCP/IP stack 'cause they couldn't write a decent stack of their own
  
  
• stole kerberos 'cause they couldn't write a decent authentication protocol of their own
  
  
• will continue to bite the hand that helps develop the code they will continue to steal 'cause they are too incompetent to develop it themselves
  

Re:It is better to take than receive....

[yuiop]

Stole Kerberos

Your proof?

Re:It is better to take than receive....

[Wudbaer]

* stole TCP/IP stack 'cause they couldn't write a decent stack of their own


Repeat after me: ONE CANNOT STEAL BSD LICENSED SOFTWARE. ONE CANNOT STEAL BSD LICENSED SOFTWARE . .....

Re:It is better to take than receive....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when MS implements a open spec they are stealing .. and when they don't they're evil because they are proprietery and not open? And that got moderated interesting - how about moderating it boring, snobbish, stupid and written by a dumb ass.

Has anyone looked at Linux lately? MS stealing ideas? Pllllease. Has X got those fancy new fangled anti-aliased fonts yet? I think Windows 95 plus pack had them (in ummm 95), right?

Re:It is better to take than receive....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why reinvent the wheel?

The BSD licence allows this (and the BSD licence is a good thing).

Re:It is better to take than receive....

[bratmobile]

Repeat after me:

One cannot steal DOD/IP because the US government put it in the public domain. One cannot steal DOD/IP because the US government put it in the public domain.

The Troll

[sirshannon]

ASP is MS proprietary and ChiliSoft never got sued, right?

Re:The Troll

[the eric conspiracy]

ASP is MS proprietary and ChiliSoft never got sued, right?

Chilisoft (Now Sun One) ASP has some limitations, including lack of support for ASP 3.0 and VB objects.

Since Sun has announced that they are not going to advance Sun One ASP to ASP.NET, I think that this is a dead product.

Re:Santa Clause? Not Microsoft!

[Waffle Iron]

Santa gives things away, like some kind of commie bastard.

He's worse than a commie bastard. He's a commie bastard fool.

People have leeched trillions of dollars by ripping off his valuable trademark image, and he's done nothing to stop it. He is such a poor steward of his own intellectual property that he should be sued for negligence.

His business plan sucks:

1) His elven employees make toys all year
2) Give away toys
3) WTF ???????? No profit!!!

This is worse than any .COM boondogle. When he runs out of cash, all of his elves are going to be out in the street. How can he live with himself?

I've got news for all of the slasbots out there: there's no such thing as a free sugarplum. This Santa fairy tail is going to end soon. Milk and cookies don't pay the rent. Mark my words, if Saint Nicholas wants to make a go of it in this economy against heavyweights like Wal Mart and Best Buy, he's going to have to demand that people leave a major credit card out for him. And he's going to have to charge a steep premium for holiday home delivery and setup. The writing's on the wall, folks. It's time to pay a fair price for your toys.

Submarine patents

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe no one has brought this up yet, so I'm bringing it up now: Patent protection starts the moment the patent is FILED, NOT when the patent is GRANTED. This is a major, critical point which everyone here has overlooked so far. There are many many ways to delay the time between filing and when the PTO actually grants the patent. The result is that MS could have patents on some of the critical core components of .NET, and everyone (including Linux) goes over to .NET, and then a few years later, surprise! All this stuff is patented. You can't boot up your Linux box and check your email without violating some MS patent. Then we are really really screwed. This is highly dangerous, and completely in-line with MS tactics. There are two solutions to this: first, don't use .NET. Second, lobby to have software patents thrown out entirely, as it is in Europe.

I'm using Eclipse...

[ChaoticCoyote]

...for almost all of my Java development, on both Linux and Windows systems -- and I ship the entire project to my client, who runs Eclipse on his Macs. The same projects work across all three platforms. Why so many systems? Well, let's just say that Java is a "Write once, test everywhere..." language.

I don't use IBM's SWT -- my app needs to be portable, and Swing is working just fine under Eclipse. Don't believe the ignorati who say the Eclipse forces you to write SWT apps -- it doesn't. Eclipse is part of IBM's attempt to control Java -- but considering the piss-poor job Sun does at times, I think they need a little competition.

As for Mono -- anyone who relies on it for the portability of their applications is fooling themselves. I've used .Net since it's beta days; it is a blatant move by Microsoft to lock people into an architecture they control. MS learned the value of a VM-based language when they started implementing Java; when they couldn't "embrace and extend" Java, MS created a semi-clone. I recognize .Net's prupose and goals; it has value in certain situations, but it is not an open standard that guarantees portability.

I took a RPG II programming class once

[Anonymous Coward]

I already knew BASIC, Pascal and C by that point... Everyday we walked into class and the instructor would shout "Don't forget your programming template!" (the template made it easy to remember which obscure character went into which column. It took me more than one class to drop it because I wanted to be sure it REALLY sucked and I wasn't jumping to any hasty conclusions. Yes, it sucked

DotGNU ?

[Gopal.V]

Ever heard about DotGNU ?

About the GPL blocking...

[dpete4552]

Couldn't people just copy the GPL word for word, and then add some small thing to it (e.g. "By using this software you also agree not to jump off a cliff") and name it something else (e.g. WTF: What The? oh Free software)

Re:About the GPL blocking...

[Goldenpi]

They have a definition of GPL-like in their licenses. It says "any license which: 1. requires release of the source code or 2. Makes the program redistributable without charge or 3. Allows people to modify the program

Incorrect

[SuperKendall]

If you look at the JCP, you'll note that any use of a patented technology in a JSR means that the submitter grants everyone else a royalty free use of that technology, forever. Just check out the documents you have to sign to become a member. Your argument has no grounds, unless you care to name examples that apply to Java?

Thanks the the JCP, you don't have to worry about patented ideas polluting additions. That's what I call a standards body, not a puppet show.

Re:Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thanks the the JCP, you don't have to worry about patented ideas polluting additions. That's what I call a standards body, not a puppet show."

I call it a monopoly on a technology that a company is willing to leverage. JCP allows for patent ideas polluting additions as long as those additions are from and implemented by SUN. You don't want to pay for these techniques or processes or are unable to get them gratis from SUN and your java will be in non compliance. OK so you ship something supporting earlier versions trusting that backward compatibility will be there. Sorry your old java standard compliance is noot good enough. Hell not supporting whatever they want to ram down as the new standard is pollution. The only inovation on the JVM is at SUN's premitance or ignorance.

It's kind of sad to see opensource projects being lured into a false sense of security when both MS and SUN are able to leverage their positions.

pm

ChiliSoft (was Re:The Troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta be anonymous on this one...

The ChiliSoft rep at Linux World SF this year sadly recounted how most of the company was gone. The aquisition did not go well, and former ChiliSoft employees had been more or less driven off as a result of internal Sun politics.

This is about par for the course for Sun aquisitions, they don't tend to be very successful. I know this from personal experience, which is why I am posting anonymously.

It's sad because Sun is actually a pretty decent company to work for, at least as far as employee policies go. However, from being inside, I can definitely say that many times company insiders work very hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, often successfully... and often promoted for it.

Anyway, I hope Sun makes it.

I recommend Dev-c++ instead

[Billly Gates]

I just downloaded eclipse and found the interface horrible and awkward. The source editor is tiny and everything needs to be added as a plugin. Click on the plugins and a million tabs obstruct the view for the source editor. I only use 1024 x 768 resolution so maybe the designers had bigger monitors but it was unbearable and difficult to do basic things.

Dev-c++ was easy. I just selected "new project" and selected the project I wanted. No bizaare menu's obstructing my menu space. Just a class browser and a source editor. When you compile a project with Dev-C++, the debugger and compiler log pop out just like Visual c++. Its very well integrated. The only downside is its very c/c++ oriented while Eclipse is java oriented with beta level c++ support.

Eclipse screenshots are here and devc++ is here.

Re:I recommend Dev-c++ instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Requirements

* Windows 95 or higher.
* 32 MB of RAM.
* The executables compiled by Dev-C++ will need MSCVRT.DLL (comes with Windows 95 OSR 2 or higher).

Re:I recommend Dev-c++ instead

[Billly Gates]

There is a linux alpha version available and should be stable soon. It is programmed in Kylix so porting should not be too hard.

opensource needs "none of this can be used by MS"

[terrox]

maybe put lots of details in a GPL/opensource agreement which states, "none of the technology in this program may be used by Microsoft, in any way" and lots of similar Microsoft style license agreements aimed only at them (and any company created by them to serve themselves etc)

Well...

[Dirtside]

...I'd personally rather get mono than use .net.

Oh, that Mono. Nevermind.

IBM's jvm

[variable]

Actually, you are wrong. IBM has two jvm's. They have the Hursley JVM which is a port/licensed jvm based on Sun's source base. However, IBM also own's OTI and OTI has j9, which is a totally clean-room jvm that recently got full certification. So IBM does in fact have it's own JVM.

Re:IBM's jvm

[g4dget]

Actually, you are wrong.

No, I'm not. It's just that you have trouble reading carefully.

IBM has two jvm's. They have the Hursley JVM which is a port/licensed jvm based on Sun's source base. However, IBM also own's OTI and OTI has j9, which is a totally clean-room jvm that recently got full certification. So IBM does in fact have it's own JVM.

A "JVM" isn't a "Java" implementation. Furthermore, IBM is a Java licensee, so no matter what they implement, they are not an example of Sun allowing independent third party implementation.

That might be dangerous

[0x0d0a]

Maybe through something like a GPL for patents ?

There are those of us that have one major issue with the GPL -- the amount of trust one is forced to put in the FSF. The FSF now has enormous intellectual property power by having the ability to revise the license on a very large amount of software.

Now, maybe the FSF is "okay" for a couple years. Or maybe Stallman decides to give special favors to companies that donate large amounts of money to the FSF (the idea has already been batted around). Fifty years from now, unless the GPL flops, it will be enormously influential and powerful. Stallman will likely be dead, and a new generation or two will have passed through the organization. Do you trust the FSF to have that much power a few years down the road? Especially when it becomes *worth* it to bribe an FSF member with a few million dollars?

The FSF is the single point of failure of the GPL. Sure, you can do what Linus does and use "GPL v2 only", but very, very few people do so.

Anyway, patents would be even more nasty. If a viral-style license was produced, where you could use any FSF-owned patents as long as you also donate any other patents used on a project to the FSF, you have an *incredibly* quickly growing virus. It's *very* hard to avoid infrining a huge body of patents (unlike copyright, where you just avoid copying any GPLed code).

I had no idea you read Slashdot, Rik.

Re:That might be dangerous

[OneEyedApe]

The FSF is the single point of failure of the GPL. Sure, you can do what Linus does and use "GPL v2 only", but very, very few people do so.

To me it seems that it is the fault of the people if they are not explicitly defining the terms under which they release their code. If there is a point of failure in a system, it is the responsibility of everyone who interacts with the system to make sure that they are prepared to deal with a failure in the system.

Date error

[0x0d0a]

it took from 1988 to 1998 to get a first release with 200 engineers working on it.

The first release of NT (3.1) was in '93, not '98.

Re:Date error

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, he meant to say "working" release.

Microsoft and Mono.

[jfisherwa]

Even if Microsoft were to attempt to pull Mono, they would wait until it is deeply entrenched into the Linux community and knowledge of C#/.NET itself is widespread among us before doing so.

They could look at this as free marketing, because I didn't give a damn about .NET until word of Linux/Mono came around.

Jason Fisher

Counter Example

[Matts]

ActiveState started out porting Perl to windows for Microsoft to put on the Resource Kit CD. They've funded and helped quite a lot of ActiveState's development. They have not yet killed them, nor shown any sign that they wish to.

SharpDevelop is worth a try

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse might be good for Java development.
(I say good not *best*)

But for C# development it sucks the C# plugin
isn't advanced. I've tried out both SharpDevelop
and Eclipse and SharpDevelop IS superior try out
yourself.
Eclipse doesn't have a visual designer, they don't
have project support for C# nor code completion
for C# ... great deal they give us 'notepad' with
compile & run.

SharpDevelop is extendable. I wish that someone
with some OO skills would wrap the GCC to
SharpDevelop to make it even better.

cya

Re:SharpDevelop is worth a try

[fiffilinus]

I take it you did not download the source distribution?

If not, do so now and take a look at the samples directory. There *is* a (simple) GCC backend binding supplied - go and hack it to your liking.

I found a worse MS license

[Goldenpi]

Take a look at this piece of pure evilness. I originally discovered this clause in the MS license for ASF devlopers, along with some other restrictions such as "no saveing data from ASF files in any format other than ASF". But this is common to many MS licenses, includeing much of .NET. For more information just google "identified software". I did attempt to submit a story about this to slashdot a few months ago, but I was new here at the time and my poorly-written post was rejected :-). I have a website complaining about the license in more detail, but I doupt a 128k upstream server will stand a slashdot crowd for long. 2(g) For a variety of reasons, including without limitation, because you do not have the right to sublicense the Necessary Claims, your license rights to the Specification are conditioned upon your (a) not distributing the Implementation in conjunction with Identified Software (as defined below); (b) not using Identified Software (e.g. tools) to develop the Implementation; and (c) not distributing the Implementation under license terms which would make the Implementation Identified Software. "Identified Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that directly or indirectly: (i) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the intellectual property in the Specification (including without limitation, any Necessary Claims) licensed to you pursuant to Section 1 (!Microsoft IP!) or (ii) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights or immunities under Microsoft IP. Identified Software includes, without limitation, any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (x) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (y) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (z) be redistributable at no charge.

Re:I found a worse MS license

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a patent on the ASF file format (I kid you not, a patented file format). So I am sure they would love to legally keep someone from moving content away from ASF since nobody else can legally support that format. The whole story around ASF is probably very interesting and appropriate to consider. What happens, for example, if Microsoft patent's specific (Office11) DTD's next?

Re:I found a worse MS license

[Goldenpi]

They have actually used the patent once. Virtualdub (popular GNU AVI utility) managed to get ASF support without using anything licensed from microsoft. The programer managed to get the same content encoded in both ASF and AVI format, then compared the two to discover the ASF format. Microsoft threatened to sue, and ASF support was quickly removed. As its GNU some hacked ASF support versions can be found floating round the net, but they are unsupported.

Now, MS really doesn't want people converting ASF to another format. The first problem is that license needed to devlope ASF programs. It explicitly forbids converting ASF to another format. Microsofts own utilities dont do it either. The only ASF filter-decompressor ever written is part of directshow. That could be used to convert ASF by feeding its output into an AVI writer, so as an extra precaution the filter is limited to decode only at playback speed. That method works, but its slow. As an added complication the AVI muxer filter usually messes up AVI sync by a few minutes.

Similar things can be seen with the other WM formats, WMA and WMV. I have written an intresting and rather illegal Linux program which will read the headers from one of those files. Its a patent infringer, and its still only in beta. It decodes the basic headers, but doesn't yet support all header objects, and it has large chunks of code missing so its very unreliable. But its the princible that counts: Its designed to carry my anti-WM rant to the people who use these formats :-)

Forgot who IBM used to be ?

[Wudbaer]

4. And now, the craziest proposal *drum roll* Encourage IBM to buy Sun and Macromedia. Push them to open source a fork of the JDK and JDK EE under the GPL as a reference copy, submit the specs to ISO for everything from the basic java packages to the EE specs. To further hurt MS on the desktop, they could open source Dreamweaver similar to how QT is open sourced.

Yeah. Great idea. IIRC there used to be some huge company years ago that dominated the whole market for everything connected with mechanical and electronic calculations from even before WWII until the advent of the PC. Incidently they also were named IBM. So you just want to revive the largest mega-monopoly of all times to fight MS ?

Re:Forgot who IBM used to be ?

[OneEyedApe]

I've noticed that when people fight fire with fire, the only result is that everybody gets burned.

sci-fi novel?

[cascadingstylesheet]

... but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.

Hey, anyone can make spelling mistakes. But this sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi novel ... our intrepid heroes carefully make their way through a mindfield, using an, er, mindsweeper ...

I have my own solution to .NET

[kfg]

I call it, "Just say no."

KFG

ISO etc.

[jav1231]

I think MS needs Mono to legitimize itself in the standards department. I also feel that eventually, they (MS) will pull the patent and copyright reigns to curb the extent to which Mono and other competing entities can compete. Look, if Miguel thinks this won't happen, he's an idiot at most and naïve at least. Someone said "there is no evidence MS will do this." I wonder how many people thought they wouldn't bastardize Java? Or give their browser away to kill Netscape? Or gobble up competing innovations just to kill them? MS is the single most destructive entity in technology today. They are not going to be happy unless they dominate. They've bought all the players they need and now they are getting patents on as many plays as they can. The rest are reduced to running single plays and offensively just cannot score. Open Source has found a way to compete via numbers. Now we're going to throw much of our team away because MS has decided to let us "borrow" some formations from their playbook? When this all goes down, I hope Miguel posts a HUGE apology on Slashdot. Frankly, anyone working on Mono is wasting valuable time, but hey it's a free country (depending on where they live). Until we're willing to take an US/Them approach we'll be pissing traces of the MS cool-aide from now on. >

I stand corrected...

[JBhoy]

...since this would obviously require a separate download of native code.

Msoft, Mono have nothing to loose

[boatboy]

I'm of the view Microsoft has nothing to loose by letting others develop full .NET implementations for other platforms. At the very least, they can sell more Visual Studio & MSDN licenses. I recently gave Mono a test drive, and very easily ran a command-line app written & compiled on a windows box under linux.

In addition to the developer side, each implementation increases the user base of Microsoft's products. Presumably, future versions of Office, etc. would be able to run natively on Linux, BSD, etc. From Microsoft's side, it's diversification- with OS sales slipping, it makes business sense to establish a user base for other products.

The OSS developers also have nothing to loose, because they have the same benefits. Not to mention, .NET is a good technology. You don't hear many complaints that it is a bad idea on it's face, like you do with older versions of VB and with Win32 programming.

Confessions of a card-carrying Microsoft dot-whore

[pvera]

Yes, that is what I am. I have been doing asp on both SQL Server and Oracle for a few years and managed to ship one asp.net product while Visual Studio was still in beta. Then things changed.

It is easy to support Microsoft-based initiatives when you work for a company large enough to qualify for Microsoft partner discounts on development software. A $2500/year subscription/blackmail fee pretty much gives you access to any and all commercial software sold by Microsoft. You get used to have all the cool stuff arrive on CD or DVD every month or so and nothing stops you from building one more development box just to test Whatever.net. Who cares if you got a room with 20+ development servers on a 100+ employee company anyway?

Things change once you move to the small business field. Suddenly you don't have a shitload of cash to burn, and the $2500/year can probably pay one or two PCs for coworkers. You barely manage to afford one lousy development server, and your production schedule is so hectic that you cannot afford to drop development on asp (dirt cheap, you can pick asp programmers literally everywhere) to make the jump to asp.net, which means you will need Visual Studio and eventually more expensive windows.net server licenses.

I was put in that position when I switched jobs and joined an 11-employee firm to be their techno geek (I got so tired of explaining to people my job that I just tell them my job is to isolate the CEO and President from technical stuff). Then the soul searching started?

1. Do I commit my company to a $2500/year MSDN subscription? We are not a software shop, all our development is internal.

2. Do I make the jump to .net? I love c#, it is a hell of a technology but even if the asp.net sdk is free the only decent tool to build asp.net solutions quickly costs thousands. I would rather use that money to buy more PCs for the 2-3 new employees we hire every quarter.

3. Do I keep the current solution as asp and wait for the end-of-life of asp before I try to move up to .net? Will this ever happen? What if they suddenly drop asp?

4. What about php? I have run a phpnuke website successfully for a long time and I am sure I can rewrite my company's solution to php.

5. What about SQL Server? I absolutely love SQL Server 2000, but how much will I have to relearn when the new one comes out? And will I have odbc connectivity to php in case I want to jump out?

6. What about mySQL? A couple years ago mySQL was nowhere close to ACID, but right now it is almost there. And my mySQL install runs as stable as my SQL Server. When can I trust mySQL with corporate data?

The list of questions goes forever. I finally decided to do nothing. The current toolset in asp runs itself and does not make me waste a lot of time in code maintenance. Performance is acceptable for our usage. I am not going to move us up to asp.net just so I can say it runs on .net. I am happy that Ximian decided to build their own .net solution, but I am hoping this does not harm the php movement.

I would like to be able to buy a $1500 Compaq 1U rack drawer and know I only have to put freeBSD, Apache, mySQL and php and I am set, instead of having to go thru the stupid requisitioning process to get Windows server licenses and CALs every time I deploy a windows server.

When people ask me why I am on a mac (switched in September 2002) but I still use Microsoft products (IE, Ms Office v.X and the xbox) I tell them my beef with Microsoft is not about monopoly this or predatory that. I have valid business concerns and complaints, and .net has the potential to bring me, my company and my colleagues a lot of heartburn.

You missed a bit of insight...

[TheConfusedOne]

That's not really true. Rotor is a "shared source CLI". This has two strikes against it.

1) It's only the CLI and not .NET. Remember the Common Language Infrastructure is only a small portion of what MS is calling .NET

2) It's "shared source". That basically means "look but don't touch". You can't do any commercial development with this code and you can't look at this if you want to work on something like Mono.

You have trouble reading yourself

[TheConfusedOne]

First off, how can a JVM not be a Java implementation? The Virtual Machine is the part that actually runs the byte-code that Java (and other languages) is compiled into.

Second, as was pointed out, IBM in fact has a complete "clean room implementation" which means that it uses no code from Sun whatsoever and is built solely off of the specfication.

Finally, Sun has made incredible strides in opening up Java for implementation by free-ware groups such as Apache. It is not possible to create a complete and compliant JVM and JDK using an open source license.

Re:You have trouble reading yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is not possible to create a complete and compliant JVM and JDK using an open source license."

Freudian slip or proving the prior posters point, you decide.

pm

You know better that MS's CEO?

[TheConfusedOne]

I find this absolutely astounding. Steve Ballmer has been quoted about having IP in .NET and wanting to protect it. If you bothered to read the post by Mr. Mohring that started this you would see links about Mr. Ballmer's statement and a patent application filed by Microsoft.

You however, blithely dismiss all of this and claim to know better, eh?

Meanwhile, Sun is actively working on supporting groups for open implementations of Java and you attempt to disclaim it as "hot air". Please tell us what particular patents we "all know that Sun holds". Be specific as David was.

Then, finally, we troll off on a tangent by talking about C# and CLR. We all know that MS has submitted these two tiny portions of .NET to ECMA so they have to be relatively unencumbered by patents.

This, however, isn't the issue. The issue is .NET in its entirety. David has repeatedly pointed out the potential legal traps just waiting for anyone trying to fully implement .NET.

You're so right, but...

[GCP]

You're so right about the thousands of dollars of licensing. For a small company that's trying to be flexible, it's a big deal to cough up a $2500 fee for MSDN, and it's even worse to consider that if you use it for anything, you are pretty much condemning yourself to keep paying that fee (plus many others equally pricy) *every year* FOREVER.

It's enough to make any sane and savvy entrepreneurial run off and join what you call "the PHP movement".

It's just my opinion, but I think it would be a mistake to do it. PHP and MySQL are quite amateurish compared to serious enterprise-class tools. Put the PHP and MySQL teams together and between them you won't find anyone who can even SPELL Unicode. They are so far removed from the state of the art in serious enterprise-class platforms that they don't even understand what they lack or why it matters.

Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc., invest millions of dollars in R&D to create platforms with architectures that are deeply globalized and rich in other sophisticated features that reflect the enormous expertise and experience of their corporate specialists. Most developers barely understand a fraction of the power in systems like Java, .Net, Oracle, etc., so they don't really realize how much they are losing when they move to a little quickie platform like PHP or MySQL. "Looks good to me, and it's really fast!"

If you have a small company that will be building inventory systems for local shoe stores, you might make great money (if you don't get too many employees) by rolling out quick solutions with simple tools like PHP, so I'm not saying the platform is worthless. Sometimes small, simple tools are the best for the job.

But if you have bigger ambitions, you might be better off mastering platforms like Java and/or C#/.Net plus powerful databases such as Oracle, SQLServer or PostgreSQL. All of these are rich, powerful systems.

Java backed by Postgres can be set up with no software license fees whatsoever on a Linux server. Or you could pay the MS fees for a while, go with C#/.Net and keep an eye on the Mono project. I think that a few years from now, C#/.Net will be as available as Java in no-cost versions, but we won't know for sure until it happens.

I'm not impressed with PHP and MySQL, though. Both projects are years old already and (unlike Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, and some other OSS systems) seem to be guided by a "quick and easy tools for amateurs" approach to architecture that is something that I would personally prefer to avoid, especially given the free or low-cost alternatives.

Guess I should have used 'preview'

[TheConfusedOne]

It *IS* possible to create a complete and compliant JVM and JDK using an open source license.

Specifically this came about through work between Sun and the Apache organization.

lots of CEOs claim this

[g4dget]

There are two common strategies for IP claims by CEOs. The first is to make gigantic claims even if there is nothing of much value; it helps with the stock price. The second is to keep quiet about IP while establishing something as a standard, then hitting people with licensing fees. It's the latter you have to worry about.

Factually, Ballmer may be right: within the vast, ill-specified mess of APIs that is .NET, Microsoft may have some patents. But that doesn't matter: .NET is not a standard and it doesn't matter whether open source clones implement it 100% or 98%; it's fine to leave out some APIs around the periphery. It is clear that Microsoft has no patents on ECMA C# or most other .NET technologies.

For Java, in contrast, we know that Sun holds patents essential to the core of compliant implementations. If you implement any form of Java, you infringe. The only thing we have so far is legally non-binding promises from Sun not to bother open source implementations. That is a very, very serious problem.

My take on the 'IP' deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent the process, but not the product.

If someone can do the same thing better, without copying your stuff, then they win - That's what has driven industry since the beginning.

Microsoft is acting like badly here - sooner or later, their tactics are going to wear out. Most ISPs and Geeks use some form of Unix, and some free language. That's filtering out to the general IT community, and pretty soon it'll filter out to the general public. It's going to be odd in 5 or 10 years to look back at the Demise of Micro$haft.

You continue to make claims with no support

[TheConfusedOne]

First off, "some API's around the periphery" is a rather nice way of saying that MS controls "little" things like ASP.NET and ADO.NET and WINForms. You have a very generous definition of the periphery.

Now, you again insinuate that Sun has Java locked up in patents. Like I said before, be specific, give us some actual likes to some actual patents. David Mohring took the trouble with regards to .NET.

Finally, Sun has gone a lot farther than some "legally non-binding promises" about being able to fully implement an open source licensed version of Java. They not only have changed their license to support it they've also changed to allow for free testing and access to the testing tools needed to establish compatibility.

C'mon g4dget, time to put up some facts.

No good options to me

[racerx509]

Hmm. SO what would i prefer.
Getting caught in Ms's Net

Catching mono

or

Having Open Sores.