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Interview With Ximian's Nat Friedman
Sheepish writes "OSNews features a long and interesting interview with Nat Friedman, of Ximian fame. Nat tells all and talks about the upcoming Ximian Desktop 2 and its differences from Gnome 2, the difficulties of developing the MS Exchange Connector, Linux as a desktop, Mono and plans for Gnome integration, the hundrends of OpenOffice.org changes made to make OOo like a Gnome2 app, and how Ximian feels... about Apple's business. Four screenshots of Ximian Desktop 2 are included too."
Oh dear, are you sure you were concentrating before?
.NET development platform is essentially a new foundation for program development that gives Microsoft a room to grow for the coming years.
What we are referring to here is the Dotnet Framework. Not just C#, not just the CLR or CLI, but the whole platform - the APIs that people write real applications on. Nobody is disputing that for Mono to be useful, it has to go beyond what has been made public and clone those parts that are private and patented.
The word "liable" is well chosen regarding Mono's position with MS - and those using it will be in just the same position legally as those creating it.
The situation with the Java Platform (to include J2SE, and J2EE if you like) is quite different. Not only are there already multiple vendors and dozens of separate implementations, but the legal position has been set forth in the JSPA (that link again, for the hard of memorizing). No equivalent exists for Dotnet whatsoever.
Thanks for the link regarding Mono's rationale. I encourage everyone to visit this page and evaluate the reasons stated. I'm afraid that when I looked I could only find the following rather contradicatory statements:
There is not really a lot of innovation in this platform: we have seen all of these concepts before, and we are all familiar with how these things work.
What makes the Common Language Infrastructure development platform interesting is that it is a good mix of technologies that have been nicely integrated.
The
Now, regardless of whether the Mono people think that Dotnet is or is not an innovation, I think we are obliged to observe the rationale for their enthusiasm is less than one sentence long and rather vague. Given that Perl and Java could equally well be described as an interesting mix of technologies, that they were around a long time before Dotnet, and that the Mono proponents themselves admit that there is not a lot of real innovation in it, it is very hard to see how this aspirational fragment can add up to a convincing manifesto.
Regarding your analysis of other open source VM efforts, I again find myself unable to discern nuch of a coherent argument in your statements, despite your earnest entreaties. You appear to be against a multiplicity of similar efforts where Perl and Python are concerned, but apparently for multiplicity where Java, Mono and Dotnet are concerned.
I'm not particularly disappointed that you are unaware of original, innovative and preexisting OSS work in this area - the problem is that the Mono developers are unaware of them too, and prefer to subject themselves to Microsoft's leadership rather than work with those that share more compatible goals and methods.
Oh, look. Sarcasm. I fear.
and those using it will be in just the same position legally as those creating it
That's nice. I wonder how this fits into your response to the Wine question somebody called you on? Didn't use much sarcasm, there.
Now, regardless of whether the Mono people think that Dotnet is or is not an innovation, I think we are obliged to observe the rationale for their enthusiasm is less than one sentence long and rather vague
That's even nicer. For all our slow readers out there, this means "I don't agree with what they stand for, so they must be full of shit".
it is very hard to see how this aspirational fragment can add up to a convincing manifesto.
I don't know that it's meant to be "inspirational", but apparently you just think it's garbage so the whole idea is lost on your small mind anyway.
Regarding your analysis of other open source VM efforts, I again find myself unable to discern
ROFL! So I took a couple of similar projects as examples and you take them literally. Is that the best you can do?
not particularly disappointed that you are unaware of original, innovative and preexisting OSS work in this area
Irrelevant. Hopefully even you can understand that, in this case.
BTW - you display an admirable grasp of the English language - however, pig shit is still just that, even when sprinkled with rose petals. The same goes for FUD, which you seem to enjoy spreading with unabashed gusto. Very impressive.