Slashdot Mirror
Novell Presents Mono Roadmap
H0ek writes "Seems Mono is still moving along in spite of the Novell purchase. They present a nicely comprehensive roadmap. You can read the official Novell press release if you're into that kind of nonsense. All I can say is, go Miguel! Don't let the Man get you down!"
So, is this worth looking into for C# development at this point? Is it complete enough? I know next to nothing about C#, but I wouldn't mind learning it. I mostly do Web/Internet apps, and my flavor of choice at the moment is Java (servlets, not the horror that is EJB).
I keep hearing about Mono lacking System.Windows.Forms -- is this a big deal? What else might it be missing (and is any of that going to be coming soon, like within 6 months?).
I have a lot of my developers here asking about C#, and I wouldn't mind exploring it. Our enterprise division is probably going to move towards using it in new products (we mostly sell Windows-based apps), so being able to better work with their products and code might be nice too...
So, uh... enlighten me.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Novell bought Ximian as much for Mono as anything else. This is a key part of Novell's future, I hardly think they are publishing the roadmap "in spite of the Novell purchase".
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Contrary to what the poster seems to think, Mono is becoming an important part of of Novell's strategy. Very shortly after Novell bought Ximian, its developers started showing up on the Mono lists and becoming involved in the community--without trying to exert any type of control. They even appear to have already started some important projects using Mono.
All of the MS products are being rewritten to be based on .Net. ISVs are being pushed towards .Net. In the case of VB developers, they simply don;t have a choice. For C++ developers, MS is constantly selling us the manageed C++ mantra. Even game developers are getting the .NEt pitch.
If Mono works, then Microsofts own products, those of independent system developers and popular games will all be just as good on Linux, OSX, etc. as they will be on Windows. That should make MS very nervous. Go Miguel!
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
So okay, does anybody know how well it runs on Dragonfly?
I hold no ill will toward Ximian or Miguel, they have done great things, but I still am completely unconvinced by Mono.
.Net or C# developer.
.Net that are very windows specific that it is either hard or useless to port to a different platform (who wants a VM language that requires a windows emulator to run? why not just write a windows program and use full on Wine at that point?)
.Net for the foreseeable future. On the other hand Sun seems to have an interrest in a GNU/Linux desktop at this point, and may be coming around to wanting a full fledged java platform on Linux.
I've used Mono a little (Dashboard and others) and qutie frankly I am not impressed with C#, and I am not convinced of the "common language" nonsense. What does strike me is how it seems no different or better than the technology Java introduced years ago. Add to that the fact that I don't think anyone can successfully play catchup with MS, and that I think MS patent lawyers will pounce the second Mono looks credible to a
Why not re-implement a Free Java clone with the same resources. Java is more 'open' (maybe not officially with standards but in practice for sure) Java is here NOW, and Java has developers now. Not to mention the stigma of cloning MS wouldn't be there to scare away people like me. - Not to mention the things in
I really hope Mono becomes something great, but I simply don't want to invest my time in a platform that appears will remain a bastard step-son to
Yeah, I know, big surprise.
.NET. The response was "We don't work with Linux companies, I'll get you a cab" and that was that.
A couple of years ago I visited MS in Redmond to see if there was some way my then company could work with MS. We had a very encouraging two hour discussion and I was told that MS would very much like to work with us. I had demo'd our software on a Linux laptop running KDE (so I don't think they noticed it wasn't Windows) and mentioned that as we were a Linux based company we would use Mono to integrate with
While it is clear that they don't like Linux, I think it is also apparent that they will not condone anyone using Linux/Mono as a development platform instead of Windows/.NET and they will very obviously move to kill it by incompatibility as soon as it shows the slightest chance of being a threat.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Mono is an open source project, and Steve Ballmer says open source doesn't have roadmaps.
I believe everything Steve and Bill tell me, so this "roadmap" obviously doesn't exist.
Just look at the Mono roadmap. .Net on non-Microsoft platforms will always be just a bit (or maybe a lot) behind .Net on Windows. There is simply no reason not to use Java. With a fast VM (such as IBM's) and a decent native GUI toolkit (such as SWT) you can write full-featured high-performance applications with the advantage of portability. If you want web services, use J2EE. The next version of J2EE can provide services to .Net clients!
You don't lose out by choosing Java, you only gain freedom from Microsoft.
Java is open? Are you kidding?
Without EJB Java is useless for complex applications. But with EJB all other languages are useless. I don't see any "openness" of Java here.
With Mono I can use any other language that has a dotNet library for it. And many languages have it already. This is what I consider as "openness".
Less is more !
The situation is that JIT compilation (mono executable) is available for x86 right now. Other platforms can be supported via an interpreted version of the runtime called mint. mint is really useful as the first stage of a port since you can get the libraries up and running. Then write a JIT. I think there's ongoing work for PPC JIT.
Java is fully open. The spec of the VM publically available, and anyone can implement a Java compiler (GNU have one - look at GJC and the Classpath project). Sun don't provide an open source Java compiler and VM, but neither does Microsoft for C#. What they do provide is a free high-performance VM for Windows, Solaris and Linux.
EJBs (Entity Java Beans) are a very small part of Java. There are thousands of client-side applications and tens of thousands of websites that use other Java technologies such as JSP, Servlets, Applets, JNI, JDO etc. Noone could say these are anything but serious applications
First of all, I do think open source community should continue embracing C# as they've done in Gtk#. And I think .NET have great potential to compete with Java at server side market, and will certainly dominate Win32 desktop client market for years to come.
.NET framework and wasting their time and talent in such project as Mono.
.NET platform will be endless game of blindly copying everything MS put into their products under the '.NET' brand name.
.NET implementation way better than MS so, they will lead innovation of .NET technologies while MS lagging behind them struggling to make their official .NET runtime compatible with technologically superior Mono alternative?
.NET platform, while Mono developers will provide their copy of MS .NET to some poor companies which can't afford to buy MS .NET and technical support.
.NET framework for no commercial companies will be insane enough to build their business applications using some Mono specific features(What important innovations have we over Win98/WinXP with Wine/WineX?).
.NET than using plain C/C++ or whatever they're using today. Even some of them will start using VS.NET to program Gnome/KDE applications, and they'll more easily find jobs in MS shops with their skill in .NET technology.
However, what I strongly object is that OSS community trying to adop
As you can see from the roadmap Novell published, any attempt to reimplement
Do you really believe Mono or Novell could make their
No, I think the other way round wil be the case. Hell... if bunch of OSS hackers backed by one company has that much power, everyone would be all using Linux, OpenOffice, FireBird, or whatever by now instead of Windows, MS Office, IE craps.
Maybe MS will succeed taking some market share from Java, and big companies will move to their new Windows server products, so tools market, developer base will all move around their 'official'
While they - Mono developers are up to this task, they won't make any significant innovation to
On the other hand, MS will put every non-standard features into their product which will lure more customers so make it practically impossible to copy their product like what they did with IE before.
And most importantly, when applications like IE, MS Office, Photoshop begin to run on Mono/Linux, it will be the end of such projects like FireBird, OpenOffice, Gimp, and so on.
Maybe OSS developers find it more easy to program in
These thoughts make me shiver, and when this worst nightmare of mine come true... it will be the last day I'll still be using my Linux/Gnome desktop.
Does Microsoft update their open source C#/.Net that was initially released on FreeBSD, called ROTOR, along with all the new stuff they put into C#?
.Net platform, but it was supposed to be a complete C# compiler and runtime.)
(ROTOR was never meant to provide all services in the commercial
--
jonmartin.solaas@mail.link.no
For Microsoft's own products, I think that this is very unlikely. MS has quite a few aces up their sleeve that they can use to use to make it very hard to use MS apps on non-MS operating systems. Games are likely to be problematic also until the marketshare of GNU/Linux on home user desktops is big enough to make games vendors care about portable programming.
However, productivity apps will be easy to write in a portable manner, as soon as a good, portable System.Windows.Forms implementation is available, and that's why DotGNU has strong empasis in this area.
As soon as all the apps that businesses want are available on GNU/Linux (whether via DotGNU, via Mono, or as stand-alone apps doesn't matter), we'll see lots of businesses switching away from MS Windows. People will generally want to have the same OS and productivity apps at home that they use at work if they can afford it, and since everyone can afford GNU/Linux, this will lead to the migration of many home users. I predict that this will eventually lead to the slow, painful death of the MS Windows platform.
It should be noted however that obsolete OS platforms die slowly. Don't hold your breath.
Also, I'm sure that MS can survive this. They're diversified enough, e.g. in the entertainment area, and I don't see how the Free Software movement could possibly kill that profit center.
Corel are just a "dead horse" that are sponsorized by MS funds ey. Just look at facts.
:(
.Net ! Sorry guys...
By the way, who care about mono ?
Want to do cross platform ? You already got Java, it is maybe not perfect but perform pretty well.
Want to do MS OS proprietary stuff, you got dotNet and Csharp, or whatever new stuff they will push to you, you will have to follow. Windows is their OS, they control the strategic orientation and you have to comply and apply if you want to "play" in their playground.
Mono ? no future for this, because it become good enough one day (what it is very far from now), so that you can realy run any application on non MS OS, then MS will take whatever legal action they want to cut this opponent !
That's why "mono" is NO FUTURE
Your alternative are Java or
From the press release:
I thought Ngage was a handheld taco-phone-game-system-thing from Nokia.