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Miguel de Icaza on Longhorn
An anonymous reader writes "In Miguel de Icaza's latest blog entry the Mono project leader discusses the threat Longhorn's new technologies and frameworks pose to Linux and open source. He also directs users to this recent USENET post about the goals of Mozilla, which is a very interesting read.
Originally seen on OSnews." Mmmm...Miguel smart. Seriously, good commentary - and ripe for discussion/flame wars.
Hey - if someone wants to make a goal for Mozilla, here is a good one:
Create a "drop-in" replacement for Internet Explorer. That is, it has the same layout and "feel" of the IE browser without all that monopoly crap.
I'd use Mozilla if I could shift+click and get a new browser window. But every time that I install it, I end up removing it because of little annoyances that happen from my IE habits. I can't expect to make others use it (I deploy many PCs) if I don't do it myself.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The "Microsoft Network" lost out to internet because W95 shipped too late. Let's do the same with Longhorn!
It is interesting that he acknowledges Mozilla's work. XUL has the potential to supply a platform that could nullify Longhown's advantage before it hits the streets.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Although I don't think the OSS community should be making descisions based solely on Microsoft's heading, I don't think ignoring them is the way to go either. I do think the fact that something like mono exists makes one less argument *not* to make the switch to linux. If you support .net the Linux platform can attract developers which would otherwise be coding for and on Windows only.
Just my 2ç
Question to Miguel ...
.. but why are we -following- Microsoft .. there are ways we can leap ahead of Longhorn.
.. ok fine it is .. but this has to do with how Linux desktops can beat Longhorn. Icons that are in 3D (change perspective when moved and reflect lighting etc. and also change shape, position, and size according to time or other factors (for example I use certain instant messenger at weekend nights mostly).
.. and nobody's asking for photorealism.
I definitely agree we need to pay attention to Microsoft and learn from the whatever innovative or good things they are bringing to market (regardless of whether they invented it)
For example, why is everyone trying to get 2D vector icons when it's obvious 3D or even 4D (fourth dimension is time) icons are the way to go? This may sound offtopic
Realtime 3D icon rendering may not be possible for most people's graphics cards today (guess they'll have to disable that feature)..but they will be soon
-Johan
I thought Sun Solaris was the standard for servers? I thought Apple the standard for schools? Face it, there is no standard. The standard software is the software which comes first. Microsoft steals standards but never sets them. The browser was not invented by Microsoft, Netscape was around long before IE. Just like Google owns the search engine and AOL owns instant msging, Microsoft is not standard. We should take the good features of OSX, BEOS, Unix and Windows and make the best OS. Forget about copying Microsoft as if Microsoft innovates. Copy Apple, at least Apple actually does invent new technologies instead of just new buzzwords.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Certainly he has boundless energy, but many people were allready pointing out that it could be the case to concentrate on getting P&P functionality with what was allready available (and hence beating MS to the market), rather than play MS at a game of catch up that you could never win (they make the rules).
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
XUL does not have the potential to do this for one simple reason. Almost nobody runs Mozilla. Yeah, I know we all do, but in the real world, on the desktops of people doing their internet banking, their web based email and so on, nobody uses Mozilla, so people cannot ship a web based app using Mozilla tech (XUL). It would have to run on IE to have even a chance in hell of nullifying Avalon, and XUL simply does not, and will never, work on IE.
People arent buying typical PCs anymore from Typical OEMs like they were back then. Microsoft had a complete lock on OEMs, the American market is sold up in terms of the Desktop computer.
New devices which run Linux now actually arent so typical in nature, devices like PDAs, Cellphones, Tivos, Video Game Consoles, Small FormFactor PCs like Shuttle and Biodeq, all come with Linux not WindowsXP.
Sun's Linux Desktop is actually catching up to Microsoft in certain countries and even surpassing them. Microsoft is King only in one specific area, the USA PC gaming desktop PC.
For laptops people don't care if it runs Windows,Linux or OSX, For media centers people don't care as long as it works well with their Tivo. For their PDA they just want it to work.
The era of Microsoft is coming to an end, Microsoft knows this, most people on the inside know this. Microsoft simply cannot sell another version of Office and another version of Windows. Most people who use Microsoft office have no reason to buy a new PC. Most people who buy new PC products who arent gamers are doing so to do new things which Longhorn currently is behind Linux at doing, like running servers, or hosting a media center, more sophisticated uses which are appearing now that people have more than one computer in the house.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Miquel's vision a few years ago was that GNOME,
Gtk and Bonobo, etc will take over Microsoft.
Now his vision is that Mono should be used for that
goal.
He wasn't right the first time.
Whe should anybody trust his vision this time?
This "analysis" is poor:
Where is "Java" in that list? Java's only big problem, at this point, is the mindset that "something is wrong with it". It's really quite good, and there is a growing ecosystem of open source stuff (see SWT and friends) growing around it.
Every major computer company besides Microsoft supports it, and a Sun JVM now ships with many (most?) new Windows PCs. Even if not, a broadband JRE download is only a couple of minutes...and ~40% of U.S. households are on broadband if I remember a recent article correctly.
There is also plenty of effort going into Free/OSS JVM development, including gcj and IKVM on Mono.
Java tends to break the MS monopoly...Mono/.Nyet tends to lock it in. Which do we really want?
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
That USENET post goes on and on about XML formats and such and I'm not saying that's irrelevant, but XML is really more of a concern for people in specialized projects. I thought that was the whole point of XML. The browser just has to follow the standards.
I think in the browser game it's the little things like pop-up blockers and being able to manage your configs across multiple desktops are what make Firefox kick ass all over IE.
These are the things that closed source has no reason to compete on. It doesn't make anybody money to prevent ads. There's no way MS is going to compete on that front, and yet it's a huge factor for most end users.
Let's just hope that never happens... Is there anything around at the moment that ONLY runs on XP?
I help blind users with access to computers, and the evil JAWS screen reader package ($1800!) comes with limitations; you can only install it on win95, 98, ME (why?), and XP home only. No win2000 of any flavour, and no XP pro. The reasons for its restrictions are not technical though; they are built in to ensure that corporate users are charged more than personal ones...
I've started teaching one of my clients some linux skills as X can now talk... the Linux revolution is here for the blind community, as it is for the rest of us!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Freenet runs fine, and Limeware is java too if I remember right, along with lots of other p2p apps
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
It's a big world out there if you look out the windows - there's more to computers than the receptionists PC or using a desktop PC to replace a Playstation.
The unix way is to have configuration files in known locations with sane names (generally not one of the names of the three stooges followed by a string of numbers), and to use pipes or ports. Miguel with gnome followed the windows method of weird OLE stuff, heaps of temporary files and multiple configuration files that may as well be registry entries (gnome panel is the worst offender, including the file names mentioned above). In the end once the political stuff and odd dependancies dropped out we were left with a usable set of programs that look good - whether it is because of the design or in spite of it I'll leave to someone who knows more about the aspects of gnome that just confuse me.
I doubt that Microsoft's newest OS will have anything drastically new that the Linux community does not already have, or that can easily be added.
.NET apps seems to be a really good idea from a security standpoint -- patch the runtime and all .NET apps benefit, be it performance benefits or security benefits. No more of this "patch a single app" stuff. Microsoft is definitely on the right track with this.
.NET runtime IS faster than Java, meaning it's actually possible for them to make most of Windows's user apps run in the .NET VM without a huge performance hit. As much as Slashdotters lambast Microsoft for not "innovating", they're definitely taking radical steps with Longhorn. And, as usual, I predict that Linux users will remain stubborn and say "Oh those features are stupid, no one will use them. Linux can already do that with this ugly hack. RTFM" until about two years after Longhorn is released, at which point suddenly you'll see GNOME and KDE emulating all those things that Longhorn has been doing for years.
I wouldn't be so sure. Integrated XML user interfaces? Sandboxed VM execution for user-mode applications built in to the OS? Longhorn's got em, Linux doesn't. In particular, the emphasis on
It's attitudes like yours that Icaza is talking about. "Oh, XYZ huh? Yeah Linux has that, if you follow these seemingly endless instructions to get this kludgy hack working." I hate to say it, but just watch. Microsoft's XML UI technology is going to be faster than Mozilla's XUL, and their
"What makes you think that sticking with Mono will work when MS might well modify the .NET framework by the time Longhorn comes out so as to make it unusable by anything but Windows?"
.net around, and eventually stop supporting the current version, but if mono gets stable enough, people wont need .net, and will actually have a choice in what they want to do (either stay as they are, or upgrade to longhorn).
to me, thats been the whole point of mono. It makes what ever MS wants to do irrelevant. Yes MS will change
mono gives people choice. that is how it's going to succeed.
I don't know nor care much about whether or not going to support Avalon and XAML is a good idea if your goal is nuke Microsoft and Redmond.
However
My goal for Mono, being an active supporter and a small contributor, is not to try and kill Microsoft. My goal is not like most slashdot zealots to wipe and replace Microsoft. My goal is to provide Linux with a platform for developers that they can and will enjoy.
The point is not to compete with the Java world nor to compete with the Microsoft world. The point of Mono is to create both a self hosting platform and a platform that will be somehow compatible with Microsoft.
The point of Mono is not the be 100% compatible! It has never tried to be 100% compatible. The main point of Mono is to create a self hosting platform.
People often argue that it would be better to implement our own kickass framework. Well, Mono is just that. Agreed they are filling in the specifications which Microsoft made. But Mono is doing much more than that. And the specification is not that bad at all. Why throw a way a nice specification just because you hate the creator of it? That doesn't make any sense. And I don't hate Microsoft, nor do most Mono developers (oh by the way, Miguel is not the only developer).
Hating Microsoft is foolish and stupid. You don't have to love them (hell I don't) and you don't have to agree with their marketing point NOR technical point of view (mostly for the marketing part I for sure don't), but that doesn't mean that you also have to ignore them completely. I even dare to say that you are a fool and an idiot if you do so.
I would very much support introducing support for Avalon/XAML in Mono if Avalon/XAML is a nice technology. And yes, it looks nice to me. So if it's possible to implement that technology (using Mono or using whatever) then I think that we as an OpenSource community should do that. We should, indeed, (re)implement it, at some point in time.
Not because we can then compete with Microsoft, thats not the point, but because we want to provide developers (and in the end, users of our softwares) with the best technology, the best platform and most choices.
Our users will have the benefit of not having to get locked in that Microsoft monopoly because WE recreated a part of that Microsoft-world.
Lets not forget that we are doing this because of the love of the art of programming, not because we HATE Microsoft. Thats what those stupid newbie Linux usies think why we do it. We love the art of programming. We love to show our art and the best way to do this is by making it public. And we, OpenSource developers, think that the best way to make things public is by licensing it using for example GPL, MIT or whatever OpenSource license.
Just like a lot musicians release their compositions for free, so that students can learn using their materials. I often compare such (classical) music with software code. The author thinks that it's art, the listener mainly enjoys it. But for a lot people it's art, okay?
For software developers, our code is our art. Our users don't give a shit about that code. They want to use our code. We want to distribute our art and show our skills. THATS the main reason why OpenSource exists. NOT because we HATE Microsoft.
Regretfully most people think we are doing this because we hate Microsoft. We don't. (And I speak for a lot OpenSource developers, I am confident about that).
Microsoft is on top of that.
LUA is supposed to take care of that. And yes, it is a bit like Unix permissioning, but it does do some cool stuff, like provide each app its own copy of local files and even mock registry hives.
Mono means they can stay in their comfort zone, but still produce software that will work for people moving to Linux. You're not likely to change the minds of all those Windows programmers who are just doing a job because they are being paid to do it, but you can at least open a path of least resistance towards portability. Go Mono!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I do. I use Windows XP hours on end at work. But I use GNOME on Debian at home. And I prefer GNOME over XP. Even though I'm on a 750MHz Duron.
And, in my opinion, it doesn't matter that I'm a power user in both OS's. I work as a student tutor at the local community college, and I see people completely new to computers coming into the lab every semester.
They don't find Windows intuitive. They don't find Office intuitive ("Where is cell B5?"). They don't find MS Paint intuitive.
The easiest thing for them to use is the Internet. And that's actually easier to use under Linux than Windows, since IE is absent under Linux. People get all these windows popping up over their screen, and they have a hard time doing anything about it.
There's a lot of people around who still don't know how to use a computer well. They go to community colleges to learn. Community colleges exist to serve the needs of bussinesses, and they have a tendency to swallow market speak. So market, damnit!
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I see two possible options:
* Implement Avalon/XAML and ship it with Linux (with Mono).
* Come up with our own, competitive stack.
wxwidgets and python with a sandboxed execution stack using the already existing xmlrpclib.
Got Code?
.NET will succeed because it is better.
It looks better than java, its faster than java, is is easier to deploy than java, they really thought about the security issues (as opposed to java's sandbox which stops you doing anything).
It's so much better than CORBA its not worth comparing.
Ironicaly however, I believe
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
There's the Muine music player.
This is the age old Microsoft mantra. Long before they've so much as written a line of usable code, before they've even tested the concept, they cry to world that their current vaporware will be the greatest thing to revolutionize the computing industry -- EVER!. There was NT, "The UNIX Killer" before whom the nations trembled, DCOM --- the ultimate framework that would redefine client/server computing, which more than anything made it possible to crash Windows remotely on other peoples machines. There was ActiveX --- Ooohhh --- another name for COM/DCOM/OLE/ATL which would change the web and make alive. Like DCOM, it was little more than a fancy DLL tied to the Windows registry. Lets not forget Windows DNA --- what disruptive technology was that? Then came "Next Generation Windows Services", which like DCOM was been morphed/recast by the marketing department into something more catchy. Yes, dear reader --- it truly is the lastest greatest world changing, paradigm shifting, not-to-be matched-or-conquered --- (trumpets blast) --- .NET. No really, we're serious this time, it's really going to change the world. This is going to be really good --- just wait.
So what's the reality. It's been three years since Almighty Bill declared to the world that Microsoft would make its software secure. Still waiting? Remember how the XBox was going to be the greatest gaming machine ever made --- a year before it was to be release? Well, I see playstation still has 60% of the market. I also hear that XBoxes have been know to catch the carpet on fire.
Maybe I'm too old. At the ripe old age of 33, I've smelled enough MS BS for a lifetime. The only thing I do now with this kind of news is use it to compost my wife's azaleas. I've yet to witness The Unix Killer, trustworthy computing, DCOM in my life, and somehow I doubt Longhorn will change this. I am quite happy with that "Cancer" called Linux and GPL software, that just three years ago was never going to take off. Yep, I'm shaking in my boots.
This is only half true. As the 'computer person' in the family I get all of the 'my computer...' calls. Most of these calls are related to virus activity and or crappy performance. The most common being performance issues. 9 times out of 10 this is related to LOTS of spyware. Every machine I sit at after removing all of the spyware and setting up adaware to run every so often I remove all links to internet explorer from the users desktop and start menu and replace them with Mozilla. I name the link 'Internet Explorer' and replace the icon on some machines because people do not know what to do in any other case. Once this is done I always get comments like 'The Internet is so much faster now!' and once I tell them about the new 'feature' of tabbed browsing it is a done deal. 100% of these users are STILL using Mozilla. As I am sure all of the readers here know its all about what is PRESENTED to the user. As long as MS continues to bundle IE it will be the dominate browser. If we do not want that to be the case then start removing it from user land and putting mozilla in its place.
of course failed to find an agent
Why "of course"? Some kind of conspiracy theory?
So maybe the Mozilla team should consider creating a XUL plug-in for IE then. Is that feasible, or are there technical quirks preventing that from happening?
I switched to Linux once and for all in 1995, after trying out a beta copy of Windows 95 (on 13 floppy disks!). Since then I've been exposed to Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows XP. For the most part the useful changes in Windows are in the user interface. There's less "configuration" of hardware devices with each iteration of Windows, and the interface itself gets "prettier." (Except for XP, which reminds me of Fisher-Price toys.)
Microsoft has incorporated good ideas into Windows, such as autoconfiguring hardware, automatically recognizing file types on removable media and launching the appropriate program, etc. But for someone for whom the computer is a tool to accomplish work, Windows is, at least for me, a royal pain in the ass in other ways: I can't configure it to my personal tastes. I can't customize it to work the way I want to work. This is where Linux is a big win: it lets me work the way I want (or need!) to work.
Case in point: Even when I'm managing files in Nautilus, I frequently find myself sliding the mouse over to a terminal and running a command on the files. It's easier for me. It's very difficult to manage files with CMD.EXE, however, as anyone who's tried can attest.
As a developer, I'm comparing Linux to (now) Windows XP, and yes, it has some shortcomings that will have to be addressed, and in each case I've found a shortcoming, I've also found a project working on addressing it. So I have nothing to do. :-) (Not exactly true; the project I'm working on aims to replace Exchange and possibly Active Directory.)
It still remains, though, that my productivity drops sharply on a Windows platform, simply because the tools available do not lend themselves well to efficiency and productivity. They do, however, look really pretty.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
- Implement Avalon/XAML and ship it with Linux (with Mono).
- Come up with our own, competitive stack.
There is, of course, a third option. Move all your development time and efforts to supporting and using Java on Linux. Java is the technology Microsoft is trying to emulate and squash withCan you recommend a couple of sites to learn about Linux text-to-speech and/or voice recognition, especially X integration?
You can already "embed" XUL in IE of course, by having the user download the Gecko ActiveX control and effectively embed a renderer within a renderer, but that's a cheap hack and has severe performance implications.
To be frank, I'm 100% not convinced that Avalon is going to be as world changing as Miggy predicts. I think it's especially rash to be starting internal projects even if they are "thought only" to develop a competitor.
Miguel thinks Avalon will be great, because it will let you deploy applications via the web browser that use native widgets, and be nicely integrated with .NET and so on.
But ... but ... but ... Microsoft did this years ago (minus .net). Or am I really the only one who remembers the version of Outlook implemented entirely using DHTML/HTA (which produces native widgets). I can't remember the codename, but the project was scrapped. The benefits of running Outlook inside IE just were not compelling enough to overcome the performance and other problems.
I'm not denying it'd be useful. The long term UI goals for my own packaging/installer project are that the user should be able to launch (and implicitly install) software simply by clicking on an icon embedded in a web page. As far as the user is concerned then the effects would be the same, so the real differences lie in how the developer sees things.
In the Avalon world view, the developer creates widgets on a canvas (AFAIK), ties them together with .NET code, and then .NET CAS allows you to launch it from a web browser without fear of it doing nasty things to your machine (which is a massive oversimplification, but oh well).
In fact, we can do this sort of thing today, with technologies that are either here or just around the corner. SELinux allows you to effectively sandbox native code to a fine degree, similar to .NET CAS except enforced at the kernel level and not by a VM. It's not just a set of kernel security checks - it's actually a security architecture with an exposed set of APIs which allow people to use MAC security features to a high level.
I don't know enough about .NET security to know how it compares, but SELinux policy is easily distributable in the form of text files and allows you use native code, which runs directly on the CPU without the overhead of a VM and huge set of managed APIs.
So, if you can download some native code and correctly sandbox it, you have the start of web app deployment. XAML appears to bear a superficial representation to Glade (note: NOT xul) but using a more customised and therefore human friendly schema.
I say Glade and not XUL because a Glade file is, in actuality, not an UI description at all. It's really a persisted GObject tree that libglade uses along with the GObject reflection APIs to reconstruct the GUI at runtime. I have read that XAML despite appearances is similar: it is a persisted .NET object graph.
So, I think if Miguel starts from "what user experiences does this technology allow" and work backwards, he'll find we already have the basics in production. Sure, they need to be improved and tied together, but they are there nonetheless.
Finally I think it's wrong to say that the reason desktop Linux didn't happen in 1994 was because people were "sleeping at the wheel". The fact of the matter was in 1994 Microsoft already had several thousand people working on Windows full time, whereas desktop Linux had .... none.
Really, I think a simpler explanation is just that MS had a monopoly pumping cash into their development teams, and Linux did not. Its falling behind was therefore completely inevitable until it gained enough momentum to move as fast as Microsoft do.
How did you miss that .NET is going to get gnome bindings? This will allow the development of not just portable gnome code, but write-once-run-anywhere gnome code.
It doesn't matter if Microsoft makes enhancements to .NET, because its core is open. It's true that applications written to run on both Linux and Windows will have to use separate functions if you want to take advantage of Windows-specific functionality in your code when running on the Win32 platform, but this is nothing new.
Finally, WINE (or similar) may make it possible for some or most of those Windows-targeted .NET applications to run on Linux. Time will tell.
No one is waiting around to see what MS will do, and regardless of whether that's true or not the fact is that MS did something, and Linux needs to respond in SOME way. Ensuring interoperability has worked for Linux in the past and it will likely work in the future. Linux continues to gain market share like nobody else.
And finally, there's room enough in the world for both copying Microsoft, and reinventing the wheel completely. Few people seem to be interested in the latter path.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are plenty of others. For Speech synthesis, you are probably looking at Festival. For Voice recognition, you are probably best off looking at IBM Viavoice for linux. GNOME has gone a very long way with the Accessibility toolkit and will continue to push down the accessibility path - for example, take a look at Dasher for an interesting app to aid writing for impaired users. There is a lot more on GNOME Accessibility to read.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
First of all, you have to decide who you're talking about. There are server based code(ie. web development, aka think client) and client side code (ie. fat client). I develop server based code. We use Java. We use Java because our customers use so many different platforms. We've deployed on solaris, mvs, linux, windows, and many more. There is not even a remote possibility that we will be switching .NET for these types of applications in the near future. The only people who would switch their server code to .NET would be people who are currently in the VB.NET/ASP.NET world already.
.NET? Your photo editing software? I don't know, I can only speculate. A direct comparison between OSS and commercial/microsoft versions of a product reveal that in most cases the OSS version is more secure and has better features. So why, oh why, do people not use the OSS version? Simple, marketing!
The client side (desktop) is the area where all Miguels comments seem to be directed. Will your word processor of choice be written in
You see, software developers work on projects. And projects ARE NOT PRODUCTS! You can have a successful project, which may not be a successful product. And as microsoft shows, you can have an unsuccessful project, which is a successful product. Projects become successful products because of good marketing. OSS has little or no marketing, and this is the fatal flaw. If only apple could help market some OSS projects we could see just how successful they could become. Think about it, if you saw an ad for the "Sexy, New, Feature Rich, Gimp project"(note that a name change would be mandatory for this project to be marketed, project vs product). Now put this ad in Cosmopolitan magazine (this is where you see ipod ads...). Put it everywhere. Make it sexy, make consumers, that's who we're really talking about here, want it.
Many of the developers on these projects are not going to like this. Nobody wants to "sell out" their project. But if you're after the client side market(aka desktop), then you're targeting consumers, not developers.
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
I liked the sentiment of your post, but I have two minor criticisms:
/. for years, wanting to contribute (but were unwilling to go back to C) will help build the next Linux desktop.
1) Mono is not the new Wine. The mono implementation of WinForms may be (at one time they talked about binding it to wine). I see the main use of Mono to be building Linux applications that only *happen* to work on windows. At first they will use GTK# and later some new better UI toolkit (Avalon# ???, XUL# ???)
2) Mono opens the doors for many more programmers to contribute to Linux, but not just unwittingly. When (if) mono become commonplace on the Linux desktop, Window programmers and Java programmers will flock to the Linux desktop. Thousands of people who have been reading
I for one welcome the change. God knows there's plenty of work.
A Microsoft clone of GNU/Linux is as bad a thing as a F/OSS clone of Windows. Clones are bad. Choices are good. Clones remove choice.
Remember the late eighties? You had Amigas, Macs, Atari STs, PC Clones with GEM, PC Clones with Windows, and those were just the "mainstream" platforms. You had choices. You could chose a computer that actually suited you. The different manufacturers did things in different ways to suit their audiences. There was more than a nod to the Mac in all of the above, but not so much you could safely argue most were clones of it. That was a good time to be in computing.
The F/OSS communities can be leaders in the industry. It doesn't have to replace one monopoly with another. It certainly doesn't have to submit to a monopoly mindset, as its leaders do today.
This is a justification for cloning Microsoft, not something that addresses the issue of Microsoft's ability to define the game. And it doesn't answer the fundamental "what's the point of creating something that isn't a choice" issue I raised in my original. I'm arguing that copying Microsoft is fundamentally damaging. The cloners are more interested in the idea that something called "GNU/Linux" will become popular and that "Microsoft" will not than producing something positive. They don't care what gets called GNU/Linux, as long as it "takes over the world". If it's a lousy, security hole ridden, irritating, poor clone of an operating system that was never any good to begin with, that's fine, as long as the name wins out.This shouldn't be a war against Microsoft. This should be a war against a lack of choices, and against proprietary software. Both are inherently undermined by the cloners.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
People always trash MS but it has some of hte best engineers and software developers around. Because of that, they always seem to take advantage. For instance, if .NET becomes popular (which it will), I can automatically see MS Office destroying everything else (not that there is much competition these days) and actually cause consumers to upgrade for sure.
.NET. It is the company that designed it after all. So they would have some advantage. If nothing, they will at least have more knowledge and expertise than others.
Also, don't forget that MS controls
As far as the IBM example is concerned... the reason IBM kind of lost is because they cared about mainframes more than PCs. Mainframes generated more profits and hence IBM didn't want to sacrifice that market for the PC market... In any case, IBM still remained in the top 5 PC manufacturers all throughout the 90's (and even now I think). So it's not as if they failed. A better example of total collapse is Apple. Apple had a huge market in the early 90's but totally fell off the planet...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Omega1045 wrote "This weekend I went to install some GNU software on my WinXP Pro laptop. "
A good, GUI-based XP apt-get, even if it only provides access to Unix-derived apps on XP, will serve two purposes:
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
MIguel, in his usual way, is about halfway right, I think.
.Net will Take Over The World(TM). From his perspective as a .Net implementor on Linux, he obviously sees it as the best thing since Corona beer and tacos. Those technologies will surely become very popular in the Windows world, and I'm sure that a good deal of companies that are currently within the Windows loop will make heavy use of local Web applications a la XAML.
.Net and XAML on Windows machines since the idea that Mozilla will get it together in a reasonable amount of time to get their engine to render anything in the way of the Avalon engine is probably expecting too much.
He is definitely right that MS won a lot of its marketshare by simply bundling stuff with the OS and by having enough money and time to survive mistakes that killed competitors (XBox, WinCE, Plug and Pray, Bob, J++ etc).
He is only halfway right that Longhorn and XAML, Avalon and
But, as has been the case before, it's only half the picture. The other half of the picture is that those people who see it as critical to have their web applications be compatible with the myriad different Windows OS versions, the myriad different OS types right across the board will still use Java/PHP etc for server based apps and keep the frontend in the browser. The XAML local web applications are very similar to Java Webstart in concept, but will find it only marginally more acceptable in the real world, for purely compatibility reasons.
Granted Java has been an unmitigated disaster client side, with Sun having screwed up by introducing the white elephant known as swing and thereby permanently giving client side Java the reputation of being slow, even though this is no longer true with modern CPUs. This hole will probably be filled by
And the price/performance and price/freedom of implementation benefits of Linux are truly starting to find adherents across the world in a serious manner.
In the end it will probably be that Windows will provide the better experience but that Linux will provide the lower cost and "be good enough" very much like Windows 95 was compared to its competitors.
Miguel, what do you envision as the channel for getting Windows users to adopt Avalon? A default install is pretty hard to compete with.
I have trouble understanding your contradictory stances. The difference in performance between C and, say, Java is unimportant, but the time to parse XML is a deal breaker? I would rather parse 10 pages of xml on startup than wait for the JVM to fire up. Of course, if you are arguing for C++ or some other compiled OO language, there is still more of a performance hit compared to a lower level language than there is in parsing a few extra lines of text. (Just to clarify my own position, I favor low level non-OO languages and despise XML...)
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
First: looking at things from developers' perspective does not make any sense. These days the majority of PC users are not developers.
Second: MS won everything mostly due to their absolute commitment to backwards compatibility. It allowed them to survivie during Sux'95 days of BSOD and will allow them to survive the present security fever.
But that's nothing. What's important is DRM. Here is a probable scenario for the next decade: 1. DRMed Longhorn PCs become commonplace. 2. Most of the commercial content is accessible via DRMed PCs only. 3. Linux' chances to win a consumer desktop are dead once and for all.
I mean, commercial websites will not be accesible from nonDRMed Linux/Gnome/Mozilla PCs because those web sites will be happy to use DRM for: 1. blocking ad blockers 2. blocking "helpful" slashdotters from violating their copyrights.
And chances for a GPLed kernel to become compatible with that patented MS DRM stuff are zero.
Right?
I would rather parse 10 pages of xml on startup than wait for the JVM to fire up
Interesting point. Obviously, if you're starting up a lot of programs all the time like most UNIX coders, you don't want to open up a new JVM instance for each. I don't deal with piping or porting, so I didn't think about it...most of the programs I write are opened at 8:30 am and not closed until 5 pm. What you consider a program is more like a function to me...hence why you don't necessarily need OO.
In fact, I think that's the key to most of the pro-C, anti-OO sentiment. You're thinking of programs as things that start, perform a set process, and then end. I think of programs as things that start, and then do whatever the user tells them to do. To you, three separate user functions are performed by three programs called by a flow control program. To me, they're three separate functions of an object, or three functions in three separate objects, or one virtual function of an interface shared by all three -- depending on the context and the similarity of the functions and the data they operate on. Neither philosophy is more correct than the other, but OOP makes it a lot easier to make massive, consistant, ubiquitous GUI applications.
The other point is, why are we waiting for the JVM to start up before we can do anything? Shouldn't it already be loaded and shouldn't it be trivial to load our program with a new classloader or as a new thread on the current JVM? After all, that's how Tomcat and other servlet engines work. Why is there no applet engine? I mean, once the JVM or CLI becomes the operating system...like it did with PocketLinux...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"The confusion is over what the crusaders wish to gain."
:)
Goodness, yes. That is exactly the issue that you're confused about.
Getting enough market share so that there's enough apps out there that I don't have to use Windows to do my work is more than enough motivation for me. Though I don't know if I count as enough of a "crusader" for your taste, I've been known to say nice things about Microsoft now and then, so I'm probably some kind of pseudo-crusader wannabe.