Slashdot Mirror
Miguel de Icaza on Mono, Ximian/Novell, XAML
moquist writes "Netcraft has an interview with Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome and Ximian fame. Icaza expounds his thoughts on Mono (the .Net framework for open source), the current direction of Microsoft's .Net, Novell's acquisition of Ximian, Novell's Linux desktop environment, Linux for grandmas and kids, and "the greatest danger to the continuing adoption and progress of open source" (Hint: it's pronounced "XAML".)."
de icaza is dying
Mono means monkey.
What an encouraging way to end the interview.
.. the interview summarizes neatly what Miguel has been saying for the past few weeks; it even links to the "two stacks" diagram. Hopefully distributions would start shipping with the unencumbered stack of Mono once Mono 1.0 is out.. between that and gcj/classpath Linux should see an influx of new developers.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
How the hell do you pronounce "XAML"?
interview_with_miguel_de_icaza_cofounder_of_gnome_ ximian_and_mono.html
I, for one, welcome our new naming convention overlords.
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
It should also be very obvious to anyone who knows this stuff just how giant a security risk all that sort of technology would present. I'm sure g-man thinks they've got it all sewn up now with these hardware controls, but cracks in the structure are inevitable and one can only imagine a world where just clicking to visit a website, rather than downloading a trojan installer that may or may not complete, instead downloads a robust trojan installer that will complete. And people are already getting pretty damn sick of tithing to both Microsoft and Symantec. Keep selling that crapware until they can't swallow any more!
Meanwhile, the linux desktop is coming together more and more and Microsoft's uber-desktop is pushed back again to.. when?
Computers are cheap. And I can tell you from experience it's not that hard to convince someone to try linux after you've helped the reload their computer for the second or third time. It's up to the product to keep them there once they've made that transition - if we can't beat the crap MS has been shoveling with another two full years of development time, it won't be because Bill and Steve are to blame.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html#q7
Can't he talk about anything other than Mono and Microsoft Technologies? I swear he must be an employee.
He's the most visible member of the Linux community who does stuff related to MS technologies. We need people like him, people who are aware of and can help plan counters to upcoming technology that has the potential to bring great change (great as in a large amount of change). Silencing him would be like silencing a sentinel. It's good to be aware of current and future Microsoft stuff, even if you don't like Microsoft.
He acknowledges that the Microsoft replacement for HTML is a rich user experience to come, despite the fact it certainly is dangerous to a certain extent.
Do realize that, GNU/Linux zealots : you can say something is good from a certain point of view (usability), and bad from another (interoperability). Isn't that incredible ?
Really ; isn't that incredible ?
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
This new technology is finally going to bring closer to the people with domain expertise the ability to create their own applications, without having to depend on technical specialists. HTML opened the door to many people with limited or no programming expertise. The .Net framework with Avalon and XAML will advance this even further. The Mozilla approach is something the Unix/Linux developers need to better understand and get on board with and contribute towards as the current stack used in the Unix/Linux community is already out-dated. Miguel is right-on-target!!!
.Net framework, Avalon and XAML in my opinion will have no peers unless the Linux community develops a competitive answer!
I've worked in Unix engineering environments since 1984 at HP and Sun (Operating Systems, Networking and Graphics). I've observed over the years that the Unix community took Microsoft very lightly and never very seriously. The unix industry has not traditionally worked with the same user community as Microsoft. But Microsoft has matured very quickly and now delivers some outstanding technology for developing applications! The
The stack that Microsoft is creating will not only empower more people to create more sophisticated applications, but will increase the productivity of application programmers by at least 30% over todays Unix/Linux development stacks!!!
Mozilla is a great start in the right direction, but cooperation between the Gnome, Kde, and Mozilla camps will need to occur in sort order to compete with the Microsoft stack when it comes to application interface development.
GigantanKramePithicus
XUL is more of a standard: there is a specification
which describes what things must do, and there are
a couple of implementations (Mozilla's being the
most popular one).
XAML on the other hand is a serialization format:
every tag in the XML is looked up in the class
libraries, and every attribute as an event or as
a property to be set. So the resulting markup
is just a way of creating instances of your classes.
The idea of XAML can be used with any class
library really, its not limited to Avalaon (for
instance, MyXAML is a XAML implementation for
Windows.Forms). Like I said on the interview,
what makes XAML/Avalon powerful is that it runs
on a sandbox, and it has a set of fairly recent
controls as opposed to those we have grown used
to on the Web.
Miguel.
Can't he talk about anything other than Mono and Microsoft Technologies? I swear he must be an employee.
Umm... Because Mono is what is is working on, it's his job, and is basicly WHY he is being interviewed. And he talks about MS because Novell and other companies are hoping that they can compete against MS by backing Linux heavily.
What do you want to hear is opinion on the agricultural problems of nothern India instead?
Isn't it a bit like complaining that a basketball coach talks to much about basketball in interviews, or a monastic priest talking about God to much?
Anyways, if he was working for MS, I don't think that Gnome 2.6 would be so freaking wonderfull.
I wish I could get excited about XAML, because I like the idea of a complete overhaul of HTML. This is the first I've heard of XAML. If you follow the links and look at the material on it, it looks pretty cool. What bothers me about it is that if and when it becomes dominant it will stop evolving, just like IE and every other dominant MS product. Its goal is not to change the world or fix the web, but to capture market share and make competition more difficult.
Having said that, why isn't there an far-reaching OSS project to replace HTML? For one thing I guess it's a lot easier to impose a standard on the world when you have the dominant platform. Will Microsoft convert the web into a network of C# apps? I hope not.
I dont get it, MS has failed numerous times before with "exciting" new technologies and i dont really understand why they are bound to success now. XAML might as well just be a failiure. Is it really a threat to linux? Not today and not tomomorrow since its just wapourware on paper as of today. Net was supposed to be the answer to everything but hasnt really gotten much of a foothold yet.
Sometimes i wonder if Miquel is just a pawn in a game and doesnt understand it. There are more than one way to skin a cat and i find it appaling that we should mimic Microsoft at all times and play catch-up instead of setting the pace and standards ourselves.
Maybe thats what Microsoft is most afraid of, to loose control over the heading of the software industry. Open source have control over web servers and can take control over the protocols on the web if we just do our own thing. If we only follow what Microsoft do we will always be number two and thats no where to be.
HTTP/1.1 400
Interesting indeed.
Search on google for "cross platform toolkit" and note the second link - the XPToolkit from our friends at Mozilla. On that page what is the first text after the page title?
Vision: We make cross-platform user interfaces as easy to build and customize as web pages.
IMHO, Miguel isn't the only person who got scared - my bet is BillG and/or StevieB saw what Mozilla does and had a $3B coniption - XAML being it's end product. It's how Microsoft reacts every time something provides a hint of a credible threat to Windows dominance - destroy it before it destroys us.
I know that I would love a RAD tool (a la VisualBasic maybe, but with less suckage) to make XUL apps. I could then write-once-run-on-gecko with any of the quick and dirty development work I had to do, and the OS wouldn't matter one whit. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Miguel (and others) tend to over emphesise "competition" and "threads" to open source. In my opinion, there is no such thing. In fact, I would go as far as saying that his focus on XAML and other "competing" technologies is the only thread to open source.
Open source is _not_ about competing with anybody else. It is _not_ the goal to create a competing technology to win market share or anything. Open source is an exercise in technology, invention and freedom.
Why should we fear XAML or widespread adaptation of it? And why should we therefore pursue clone technologies?
We dont have the pressure to compete in any market place! We can look at the software _we_ use and see what we can do better. Maybe an XAML like technology is good. Lets think about the ideas. But maybe it isnt good, then lets do something else. You decide, not some abstract competition.
Technologies like Linux, Mozilla (XUL+++), etc. came not from the desire to do something that could lure _others_ away from somebody elses technology, but to enable the developer to use hard and software they way he wanted to and the way he thinks others may want to use it. Yes, open source takes lots of ideas, but then they are made better and often different. The drive should come from within, from excitement about the technologies and new ideas.
Instead of worrying about what others might do and how others will perceive our software, we should get excited about it ourselfs first and make it good and work well. There is no fight, there is no competition. Dont waste your thoughts about others, think about how you can realize your own ideas and make them better.
Maybe then we can focus on and enjoy development again.
Let others sleep bad at nights worrying about "the competition".
Regards,
Andre Eisenbach
It was expensive, didn't have the simplicity of HTML as a starting point and, perhaps, was a little ahead of its time. (Client/Server was still catching on.) The fact that few mainframe guys liked Macs may have been a factor, too.
Links:
"The only problem with the MacworkStation [a software program] is that instead of making it a public domain standard, Apple is licensing the source code for $1500 to 'interested' parties" - MacTech Magazine archived article
Apple Computer History Weblog
One thing I really give Miguel credit for; he is more than willing to put up with the political heat and flak for taking MS ideas seriously and seeing how they could apply to the Linux/Open Source/GUI world.
Given the popularity of Perl, Python, etc, it makes sense for a language independent VM and libraries for programming. Is the CLR the best for this? Well, no, but there's a good case that it is best thing right now, or at the least, good enough!
I think a killer Open Source project would be port Java over to the CLR. To be really evil and fun, make it a JVM->CLR rewriter. Of course, Sun will sue you like mad, but that not why it wouldn't happen (it helps MS too much), but it would break Sun's hold on Java a bit more. Especially with Mono in the mix.
And now to for the flamebait (This is a post with MS stuff it in, after all).
Microsoft does have true innovations in Longhorn. (See, I told you). And it is worth paying attention to and evaluating. Passing it off as vaporware or FUD isn't wise, considering the bits are getting into people's hands right now.
XAML is nicely balanced and really seems like the first truly usable markup-based GUI language (XUL was close, but not close enough. I think it'd be much more popular otherwise).
Avalon is nice, not totally groundbreaking, but it does kill bitmap-based windowing, and I haven't seen anything that suggest that Linux world is pulling that trigger yet. (X being a obstacle in the way) Apple did, and the results speak for themselves I think.
WinFX has some very interesting ideas in how you structure components, and has the chance to become the next big thing in components (after COM. Another Microsoft innovation! Flames rising).
Finally, WinFS is very, very cool stuff, even as vaporware. I'm not surprised they had to scale it back, because what there are doing is nothing short of rethinking the file system from the ground up. This is a bold thought to take seriously. The notion of extensible metadata alone is powerful. (Before, file metadata was fixed.) Add in searching, extensible relationships, etc and you have something worth paying attention too.
This is innovation, in my book. Invention is coming up with those rare new ideas. I see innovation is taking those ideas and making them applicable, or practical, affordable, widely available, better, used by many and so on.
I think Ford was an innovator for creating a practical way to mass-produce cars. He didn't invent the car, he made it a reality for many.
Microsoft has done that, for better or for worse. Not all innovation is a priori good for all.
Of course, one should never obsess with what MS is doing to the determent of all else. Pay attention, but focus on doing what you can do best, and let the chips fall were they may.
Why the need to counter what Microsoft do? Why not just drive in an own direction? Looking at MS at all times is just going to make Open Source spending time following MS instead of going our own way. Now that MS is starting to focus on getting patents and such on everything they do its a disaster waiting to happen if we do like them in everything. We dont need to follow MS every move any longer as long as we stick to open standards. If we follow MS in implementing closed or patented standards on the net we are doing MS nothig but favours and helping the acceptance of closed systems.
HTTP/1.1 400
That's funny I thought it was pronounced XUL.
evil is as evil does
..put them together.
a cromedia Flex</a>, however licensing for this product is a nightmare ($USD 12,000) which I think is a grave mistake on Macromedia's part.
? promoid=home_prod_ce_0111903">Macromedia Central</a> which allows flash apps to run naitively and interact with local data (download with one click, save network data locally) and its acutally a great app, but its licensing model is again completely proprietary and closed. This is where we (the OS community) come in..
l es/paradigm.html">MXML</a>, for interopability. It can be free open, and we have a full year to develop such a framework. There is a HUGE market for this. Particularly for people that are not ready to uprgrade their entire OS, but still want to use RIAs. On that not it will also be important to start devloping some of the killer apps (photo browsers, visual forums, real time easy chat for every page, data extractors, etc).
I do think that the man has a point. The web is just dying for more RIA, we will need to jump out of the request/recieve process, and if MS comes out with this system with no competition it will continue to dominate, and it will be huge.
However, all the tools to create such interactions are available now. I know many people are going to hate to hear this, but Macromedia Flash provides the framework for all of the things that Avalon envisions to do, the system for developing such apps just needs to be created. The Flash player is installed 98.6% of client systems on the internet. (!)
So hear is an idea: why not incorporate developent of such flash apps into Mono? The swf format is now open and documented.
Macromedia recently came out with a system to do something like this called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/">M
They also have a new (sort of) framework called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/
So what is the idea? Just incoporate the functionality of Flex into Mono, you can even use the same format used by Macromedia in Flex, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/artic
The drawback is of course speed, and we can't really beat MS there. However if we can get something like this going then it will be a big incentive for Macromedia to offer perhaps a larger + faster version of the flash player. One of the best examples of moves in this direction still has many problems with it, but you can see it here:
www.ego7.net
But, the time is def. limited.
-Ashot
-ashot
"What Miguel is afraid of, I think, is not that this technology will be mind blowingly good, but merely that it will be good enough. Let's face it, Microsoft has been very good at "good enough". What do I mean by "good enough"? Well, potentially riddled with security holes that will be sloely patched over the 5-10 years following it's release - a debacle as far as security concious users are concerned - would still count as good enough. You see, the people in management who buy into these things are notorious for their lack of long term planning, and consideration of security. Look at what Microsoft has already happly foisted onto the corporate world - code riddled with exploits, but because it offered the right new features business bought into it."
Two things. One is it really safe to ASSUME (And yes we are assuming at some level) that "good enough" will always be good enough?
Two as has been pointed out in the past. The biggest choke collar for MS, is MS. THEY"VE ALREADY SATURATED THEIR MARKETSPACE. Now how are they going to force people to give up millions of dollors in investment. Both software and training, let alone the new hardware that may be required (WinTel). For the so far unproven benifits of LongHorn?
Avalon/XAML *is* scary - but Mozilla/XUL can/should trump the living heck out of
it. If the OSS community lets Microsoft
define the rules, we all lose. We need to
push the heck out of Mozilla/XUL. XUL needs
to become a de-facto standard. It should make
Avalon/XAML look like just yet another proprietary dead end.
It is time to shift focus
past the 3GL GUI toolkits (GTK/QT) and move
on to some much bigger, 4GL, app building
blocks. This is the only fight the matters.
The future 4GL "application platform" is being decided. Will Microsoft own the platform or will
it be open source.
P.S. Lets put Python into Mozilla/XUL (Javascript *is* a big drag)
Sorry, posted in plain text on accident..
Macromedia Flex
Macromedia Central
MXML
ego7
-ashot
there is no data .... only XUL.
I actually agree, this seems like a great move by MS, and a way to make .NET the "Total Windows Solution" that it was originally marketed as. Using XAML, you could harness "the power of .NET" without breaking out your copy of VS.NET and writing and comiling a whole application.
Hell, I guess that was the gist of the response to the last question in the interview--it's just that Miguel de Icaza (reasonably) found the implications of this to be scary.
Indeed, I guess that this vision could come to pass, and the implications would indeed be scary, but that would really be the fault of content providers; One would expect Microsoft to provide a means to access the proprietary aspects of Longhorn with this: that is what makes it so wonderful (from a "Total Windows Solution" perspective). If people start using this to provide web content which can only be run on Windows machines, well, that is hardly Microsoft's fault, even if it was their goal. That would be akin to everyone posting their data in Word documents instead of an open format like pdf. This is an annoying practice from an interoperability perspective, but that doesn't mean that MS Word shouldn't have been developed.
When we make a protocol, MS can copy it perfectly, because they have access to all the neccesary documentation, and can even look at how we implemented it. When MS makes a protocol, we usually can't even get a look at the specifications, we have to reverse-engineer it, and therefore it takes us longer to make a product that doesn't always have all the functionality. It only seems like we constantly play catch-up to MS because MS doesn't really play fair.
Lagito ergo expectabo
Helloooooo, anyone home ?, once you get into creating 'elaborate' stuff in 'markup' then you are smack back into programming and code. Its that kind of thinking that gives us unmaintainable Excel or Word macros, JavaScript, ASP, Perl, Expect/Tk,...list goes on.
It IS programming and it IS in CODE because it has a syntax , a grammer and a vocabulary. Unless it is a natural language parser then its still a computer language.
I'm not knocking the language - I just think its being oversold by saying its not code.
Let the 15YMOUA begin!
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
"Non-pronouncable" abbreviations, such as SMTP and FBI, are initialisms.
;)
"Pronouncable" abbreviations, such as NASA and FUBAR, are acronyms.
And if I remember it correctly, that was the gospel, straight from my Linguistics 10 professor's mouth
XML is an initialism. XAML, although it looks like an initialism at first, is actually an acronym (pronounced "Zammel").
- shadowmatter
All logical spellings of everything have been trademarked by drug companies.
Zamil, for instance, helps firm up stool for people on low-carb diets.
Common side effects may include:
Abdominal pain, abnormal dreams, abnormal vision, agitation, amnesia, anxiety, arthritis, back pain, bronchitis, burning sensation, chest pain, confusion, constipation, coughing, daytime sleeping, decreased mental alertness, depression, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, difficulty concentrating, difficulty swallowing, diminished sensitivity to touch, dizziness on standing, double vision, dry mouth, emotional instability, exaggerated feeling of well-being, eye irritation, falling, fatigue, fever, flu-like symptoms, gas, general discomfort, hallucination, hiccup, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, increased sweating, infection, insomnia, itching, joint pain, lack of bladder control, lack of coordination, lethargy, light-headedness, loss of appetite, menstrual disorder, migraine, muscle pain, nasal inflammation, nervousness, numbness, paleness, prickling or tingling sensation, rapid heartbeat, rash, ringing in the ears, sinus inflammation, sleep disorder, speech difficulties, swelling due to fluid retention, taste abnormalities, throat inflammation, throbbing heartbeat, tremor, unconsciousness, upper respiratory infection, urinary tract infection, vertigo, vomiting, weakness, abnormal tears or tearing, abscess, acne, aggravation of allergies, aggravation of high blood pressure, aggression, allergic reaction, altered production of saliva, anemia, belching, blisters, blood clot in lung, boils, breast pain, breast problems, breast tumors, bruising, chill with high temperature followed by heat and perspiration, decreased sex drive, delusion, difficulty urinating, excessive urine production, e ye pain, facial swelling due to fluid retention, fainting, false perceptions, feeling intoxicated, feeling strange, flushing, frequent urination, glaucoma, gout, heart attack, hemorrhoids, herpes infection, high cholesterol, hives, hot flashes, impotence, inability to urinate, increased appetite, increased tolerance to the drug, intestinal blockage, irregular heartbeat, joint degeneration, kidney failure, kidney pain, laryngitis, leg cramps, loss of reality, low blood pressure, mental deterioration, muscle spasms in arms and legs, muscle weakness, nosebleed, pain, painful urination, panic attacks, paralysis, pneumonia, poor circulation, rectal bleeding, rigidity, sciatica (lower back pain), sensation of seeing flashes of lights or sparks, sensitivity to light, sleepwalking, speech difficulties, swelling of the eye, thinking abnormalities, thirst, tooth decay, uncontrolled leg movements, urge to go to the bathroom, varicose veins, weight loss, yawning
I am still a realtively new coder, with only around 4 years under my belt all in Microsoft shops, and even newer to the linux world about 3 months.
/. I was excited at the possibility of using the development tools and environment that I am familiar with and be able to deploy my code to Linux. The most exciting thing to me was the possibility of running ASP.NET on Apache. In the last 2 weeks I have really began to experiment with this particular aspect and was able to copy my compiled C# ASP.NET web app from my windows box to my Fedora Core box and everything ran with no problems.
When I first heard of the Mono project here on
I welcome further the possibility to continue to use the development environment I know while being able to deploy my code across windows and linux platforms. (I am not a fan of Java and say what you wish about C#, but I find it to be a very nice language.)
I wish the mono team the best of luck.
I am so creative, look at my cry for attention in my sig.
> Why the need to counter what Microsoft do?
Because Microsoft has something on the order of 95% of the desktop market. If Linux ever hopes to achieve a greater penetration into that market (which would be a *good* thing), they need to counter things Microsoft does or they become even more marginalized.
> Why not just drive in an own direction?
Yes, it has worked so well for Apple. Their marketshare went from what, 10% to 2-3% over the past decade or two? You need to provide some sort of migration path. I develop applications on FreeBSD, but I do my development on a Windows machine because there are a few Windows programs that I have trouble doing without. I've finally moved over to Firefox/Thunderbird and Open Office, and almost done doing the same for my wife (as a web developer she still needs IE for testing) but games aside, there are a few applications that I use that I don't want to do without.
> Looking at MS at all times is just going to make Open Source spending time following MS instead of going our own way.
Open Source has a potential to do both at the same time... provide a migration path AND compelling reasons to switch over. But without the migration path, it's a scary change. Linux and other open source operating systems don't have enough marketshare to drive serious change in the desktop. I want to see open source innovation, but without that marketshare, it will be ignored and marginalized.
> Now that MS is starting to focus on getting patents and such on everything they do its a disaster waiting to happen if we do like them in everything.
And if everyone believes that Microsoft is doomed any day, then open source will never get the momentum it needs to be a 'real player' on the desktop. Microsoft is a competitor for the desktop market... and you can't afford to ignore competitors.
> We dont need to follow MS every move any longer as long as we stick to open standards.
I'm sorry, but that's just naive. When they have 97% of the marketshare, they CREATE the standards. Open standards don't mean a damn thing if there isn't a serious choice in applying those standards.
> If we follow MS in implementing closed or patented standards on the net we are doing MS nothig but favours and helping the acceptance of closed systems.
And if the open source 'market' ignores those closed or patented standards, they will become further marginalized and the rest of the market will be forced to accede to reality: that those closed standards are where the action is at.
Maybe it's time for the open source movement to do a little "Embrace and Extend"ing of their own.
GreyGore
Now how are they going to force people to give up millions of dollors in investment. Both software and training, let alone the new hardware that may be required (WinTel). For the so far unproven benifits of LongHorn?
Shiny things. IT management loves shiny things. As long as there are lots of nice shiny features that they can market to death it will sell. The reason the uptake of XP and Server 2003 has been so slow is because they don't really do a hell of a lot more thna Win2k. Yes, there are some nice new bits and pieces, but I don't know of any major shiny new features that actually break any ground.
On the other hand, Longhorn is their chance to fianlly add some of these "new groundbreaking" features - it's an all out overhaul rather than the incremental stuff that XP and 2003 have been. Of course Longhorn is, for now anyway, the vaporware repository too: "Objected Filesystem? Sure, in Longhorn.", "Graphics card accelerated desktop with scalable graphics? Sure, in Longhorn", "Uncrackable security model, Dancing bears and World peace? Sure, in Longhorn."
Some of the talked about features will undoubtedly make it in. Avalon, I gather, is making reasonable headway. Some of them might not - every time I hear about WinFS it has been scaled back even further, and will do even less. The point is that there are potentially enough shiny things to impress managment.
The thing to remember is that management cares about shiny things. Vendor lock in and ensuing extortion, security issues, and pretty much anything that requires contemplating more than a quarter in advance are irrelevant. Look! Shiny things... oooooh.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Say hello to IKVM!. It works with Mono and MS's .Net implementation, and has already been demonstrated running full-fledged Java applications like Eclipse, along with translating between aspects of the Java and .NET world. It's a very cool project, and I look forward to seeing it completed.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I think these projects are defeating the open source community and just strenghtening the hold MS has on the industry.
.NET as proprietry nonsense. If XAML ends up as a windows only thing, it wont get developer support, and wont take over the world, leaving linux and windows on a more level playing field.
Imagine a world where one can only use XAML indeed. If XAML is supported fully on linux eventually, MS will make sure that their version is always one step ahead. They have proven in the past, and leaked internal emails that were evidence in the recent european court cases brought out more leaked internal memos, that they deliberatly hide aspects of their APIs to give them an advantage. They deliberatly release bogis example software, and change the API too often, for reasons of confusing the competition rather then legitimate technical reasons.
They will definatly do this for XAML too, leaving windows as the dominate player in a XAML world at the expense of linux.
How can we avoid this?
Simple. The open source community must ignore XAML and
Longhorn has kind of a scary technology called Avalon, which when compounded with another technology called XAML, it's fairly dangerous. And the reason is that they've made it so it's basically an HTML replacement. The advantage is it's probably as easy as writing HTML, so that means that anybody can produce this content with a text editor.
.NET language like C# or VB.NET if I'm not mistaken. Yes, XAML apps are similar to HTML pages, but they, like HTML, also need a scripting part to actually do something and not just be static. And that's what e.g. C# is for.
The main application code is supposed to be written in a
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You are overlooking the fact that Mono has two stacks. One Microsoft clone and a home grown solution. The home grown solution is cross platform and not the same direction as Microsoft.
I any case. This isn't a case of choosing between our own direction and Microsoft's direction. It is choosing between a whole mess of open source projects moving in their own way or a coordinated push to integrate disparate open source projects and technologies that currently do not integrate well.
The patent issue has been covered so many times before. When it comes to patents, it doesn't matter if you are cloning Microsoft technologies or building something entirely original - your risk is the same because no matter what you are implementing, you are probably infringing a patent anyway. The only effective defence you have is prior art.
He's the most visible member of the Linux community who does stuff related to MS technologies.
.NET stuff is pretty recent. I think Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) has to get the nod on this point.
Miguel's
May we never see th
Shiny things. IT management loves shiny things.
I'm not sure if that is true these days. I think IT management are looking much closer at what kind of bang per buck they are getting.
The reason the uptake of XP and Server 2003 has been so slow is because they don't really do a hell of a lot more thna Win2k.
And this can work to our advantage.
As far as I can see, the only real benefit of LongHorn to businesses is XAML and its "zero-install over the network" delivery. Businesses are swimming in custom written in-house applications such as billing systems, stock control system, client record systems, etc. I work as a programmer at a web developement business. We specialise in Content Management Systems and basically web based applications. Our clients absolutely love having these applications running centrally on a server while being immediately available (zero install!) on every machine in the office (and out of the office if needed). This is done via a web browser and HTML+Javascript of course. Now, XAML takes this idea and implements it properly and fixes a lot of problems that come with trying to create applications inside a web browser.
What Mozilla needs to do is get their browser out there and on desktops, but more importantly they need to document(!) and further develop XUL. Try to use it for making business applications like I've mentioned above (not chat clients, get serious). Find out where the weak spots and gaps are and fix and fill them in. At the same time they need to get things working happening on the server side. OSS is strong on the server, but we need proper libraries and support for XUL apps on the server written in Java, PHP, etc hell even C# if really want to use a window webserver. For the love of god Mozilla, get in touch with Apache.org, Tomcat and friends. Create a full and complete platform (server + client) for creating and delivery business/database applications. We already have the big pieces.
In 2 years time we want IT management to have to decide between:
--
Simon
People who upgrade to Longhorn and
It is a complete waste of time to copy Microsoft and expect to survive, innovative products survive. Apple only outlasted OS2 because of its innovation. It only lasted this long because of innovation.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Right after saying:
"We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases."
He then states:
"We're making the decision it's going to be OpenOffice, the browser it's going to be Mozilla, the email client it's going to be Evolution, the IM client it's going to be Gaim. So we basically have to pick successful open source projects and put them together."
The problem is that, as far as I know, these tend to be the default applications used on top of the gnome DE. Granted I would install OpenOffice when setting up a computer with KDE, but it would make more sense to use konqueror, kmail(/Kontact) and kopete instead of the other programs. In fact given time and if koffice manage to convert over to the openoffice file format (which I believe they are doing) it might make more sense to install this for basic users, as like the other programs, it is tied in well to the KDE DE. This leads me to the assumption that Novell will eventually, at least in the short run, ship Gnome as the default as KDE will have to load 2 lots of services (it's own + those for OOo/gaim/evolution/mozilla integration) and will thus require many more resources.
In the long term I hope that this kind of activity will help to unify the two desktops background services, allowing software to be written that works with an equal level of tie-in with both DE, however I guess this will take a long time and lots of carefull negotitation before it happens.
There are 2 possiblities: 1. An open standard wins over XAML 2. XAML wins, and becomes a de-facto standard.
If #1 happens, the Miguel has wasted his time. If #2 happens, the FOSS community will NEED his work to be able to interoperate with the majority of the WWW.
So, on one hand, cloning XAML hedges our bets, but on the other, it helps XAML gain acceptance, because even the FOSS people can use it.
So, we want Miguel to continue what he's doing, but we also want him to fail!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I want to ask you a very serious question.
If you have to install a 7 meg browser (mozilla) to make your application work why not just ship an application that updates itself over the network? Better yet why not just write a java web start application. Either way you have to get some sort of a platform installed on each and every machine and keep it updated. maybe if Mozilla could get their act together and come up with a clever way to share a network installed mozilla amongst the desktops we would have a compelling solution. It's a lot easier to distribute an icon to every desktop then a full blown application and it sure would be handy to just upgrade the network copy and go home. Mozilla really needs to look into centralized management of user prefs, plug ins, bookmarks etc.
Where MS kills you is in forcing people who have windows to install IE and updating IE when they update their windows. Maybe what's needed is a XUL activex plug in so that XUL will work with IE.
I do agree with you about the database application thing though. 90% of all business applications touch a database.
evil is as evil does
When is there going to be an Open Source equivalent or alternative? I agree that WinFS is about the coolest thing that I've ever heard of from Microsoft (not that they necessarily came up with the idea).
.NET and XAML, when are we going to start on Avalon and WinFS? Or, if there is a project going on, where is it?
We're trying to compete with
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I was looking for a XUL RAD tool myself the other day and came across XULMAKER
Havent tried it yet, dont know whether its anywhere near mature or not.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Which makes it more akin to the .nib files of NeXT/ OS X Interface Builder fame.
In any case, if you can break out of a chroot jail, you can break out of a sandbox. Truly malicious people will not be deterred by it.
The main problem is that I don't think anybody has really experimented with using Glade for anything other than GTK widget heirarchies. The other problem is that GObject isn't really a match for the .NET object model currently. With some work it could be a fantastic middle ground between what COM was and what .NET is - you still gain the advantage of actually using the real platforms instead of "skins" (see CPython vs Python.NET sometime), but you can still interop with other platforms at the OO level.
The main problem with sucking Glade files through SOAP/XML-RPC is that you'd have to relay all the signals to an instance on the server. GTK+ wasn't really designed for high latency feedback like that. It *could* work, but it probably wouldn't work well.
So there seem to be several alternatives:
1) Use Mono with our own XAML/Avalon implementation. .NET already has code access security and other things you want for sandboxing, though given the mess that Java applets/security was I'm not sure it's necessary a good thing. Pros: compatibility, Cons: we're chasing a standard we don't have any influence over so will always be behind.
2) Improve Mozilla/XUL - some previous poster suggested fully documenting it, integrating it with Apache/Tomcat, writing corporate webapps in it etc - YES. These are excellent suggestions for how to improve XUL as an app delivery platform. I used to be quite into XUL and knew the creator of JabberZilla : the things you could do with it even in the pre 1.0 days were mind boggling. XUL may never be a good way to write client side apps, but for internally deployed webapps it's fantastic.
3) Leverage current Linux technologies to produce something like ActiveX but with security. I was thinking about that this morning. If you have an SELinux/DBUS enabled system you can get quite good sandboxing even for native code. You'd want some kernel mods to prevent certain "attacks", but I think you can get pretty close to what .NET CAS provides except you can also reuse the entire free desktop platform as well (all the libraries that don't have .NET bindings for instance).
You could then layer some simple technologies on top of the web browser to write web-deployed client-side apps using GTK/Glade or Qt or whatever.
In other words, it'd have all the good bits of ActiveX, but without the bad bits. I'm not sure this is a good way to go though - ActiveX/Java Applets seem to be a mostly dead idea, except in a few old-skool corporate webapps.
Avalon is not really about providing dynamic "web pages", which is, at least based on my probably outdated understanding, what Flash is about...
Avalon is about providing actual *native* Win32 applications, but doing so with a simple XML-based format, and potentially in a way that is deliverable over the internet. The key difference between this and all other browser-based technologies that have preceeded this (including Flash and Applets) is the *native* part. Technically, it has been possible to do truly native stuff from the browser with ActiveX controls, but obviously this is an attempt at a technology which is far more robust, secure, and appropriate for web-based and non-web-based apps.
Will Avalon replace the need for Flash altogether? Perhaps some day, when "skinning" ability in native windows apps is so strong that you can easily throw a very fancy skin on a custom native win32 app as easily as you could design a Flash app with the same look and feel. But until then, Flash will still have it's place as a framework for "flashy" web-based apps that do not require the native win32 look-and-feel.
Yes, I know I'm using the word win32 a lot here, along with native - but let me clarify - that is just an example, since we are talking about Avalon within the Windows platform. But obviously once this XAML technology gains the potential to be "native" to any desktop system, such as GTK or KDE - so what I am talking about still applies, and even moreso - we are not talking about providing Flash-based apps that run on the native "Flash platform" which is a plugin inside the browser - we are talking about providing actual native apps that run on the platform of the desktop OS.
And in the end once the ability to do this becomes as easy (and "standard") as writing HTML, but combines the power of both native apps and fancy customizable look-and-feel of Flash apps, it starts to become clear that this is a new way of doing things over the internet that has the potential to make all of the other technologies in the browser (including HTML and Flash) become legacy.
"Maybe thats what Microsoft is most afraid of, to loose control over the heading of the software industry. Open source have control over web servers and can take control over the protocols on the web if we just do our own thing. If we only follow what Microsoft do we will always be number two and thats no where to be."
If they (Microsoft's management/people who make the big decisions) are really afraid of losing control of the heading of the software industry, they certainly don't show it. The software industry is ultra-competitive. Microsoft is an ultra-competitive player in that market. They always have been. Bill Gates started by being a key player in the way people developed software for what we think of today as toy or hobby computers. He made the compiler of an easy-to-use language. BASIC became the first programming language that millions of people ever used. And they used Bill's BASIC.
Bill didn't invent BASIC. He just implemented it, marketed it, and was the first to sell rights to use an implementation of it. That concept of licensing a piece of software was what *made* Microsoft what it is today.
Bill didn't invent the Operating System, or the Word Processor, or a Web Browser. What Bill did was to enter each of those spaces and offer what people were looking for at the cheapest price with some innovative features. Linux/OSS may be offering an interesting proposition, but the products speak for themselves. Linux/OSS is like the imitation product made by people who are smart enough to figure out how to make a clone and tweak a few things. Now, imagine you are at a counter of a camera store. The salesperson behind the counter shows you a $300 Canon camera, and a $50 Kanan. Do you buy the Kanan, made by people smart enough to roughly clone the original and maybe add a few differences?
Are Microsoft managers worried about how to keep up earnings and revenue. Sure. Every successful company has leaders who worry about that. But you will note that Microsoft hasn't been firing off its employees like Sun, IBM, et all. Basically, the strategy at Microsoft is to have a deep development pipe. Build it, and sell it, and build it, and sell it. That's what Microsoft is. It's a highly organic code factory. Microsoft has 2 strategies.
1) Make it work.
2) Make it depend only on Microsoft technologies.
Microsoft will never lose control over the heading of its own industry (no, I'm not saying that Microsoft is the whole software industry, just a large industry within it).
Let me make an analogy. Say I buy a Canon Digital camera. It comes with Canon software. The store that sells me the camera may or may not sell me Canon lenses for the camera, but most people will buy Canon accessories for their Canon camera. In the case of the Digital SLR, Canon Lenses, Canon Flashes, and Canon accessories out-sell the 3rd parties in the Canon market. Now you can say that maybe that is because Canon is better than its 3rd party vendors, or maybe it is because people are afraid of breaking the device with third party stuff, but most people buy 1st part accessories. And if Canon is (as www.dpreview.com's statistics seem to indicate to me) the leader in the market (I own 3 Canon cameras, so I'm quite biased in this regard, but please ignore my bias for argument's sake), then you can imagine that being the leader, the market will follow you. Of course, the only way to stay a leader is to produce more of what people want to buy. Canon's offerings in the digital camera space match Nikon, Kodak, Olympus, Sony, Fuji, Sigma, etc.
Similarly, Microsoft's offerings match IBM, Novell, Oracle, Sun, etc. Granted, each of these companies competes in different segments of the markets, Microsoft is vertically integrated (depends on products produced by itself) and horizontally integrated (offers products in most/all categories in the industry in which it competes) specifically with regard to software.
Sony is an example of a company which is similarly vertically and horizontally integrated in th
Oh, you didn't know that about de Icaza? Miguel doesn't just like some of Microsoft's ideas - Miguel wishes he were working for them.
f you have to install a 7 meg browser (mozilla) to make your application work why not just ship an application that updates itself over the network? Better yet why not just write a java web start application.
How is installing mozilla on each and every desktop different from installing java on each and every desktop?
With java you can have web-start applications - with mozilla you can have XUL applications.
I may be missing something, but as far as I can see, there is no difference at all.
Yes, if MS can take over and make XAML the dominant format, then it will win.
.NET is far easier (and more powerful) than VB/COM, etc... This is just the next generation of that Windows GUI technology. However, the main difference this time around is that this technology has the potential to cause browser (internet) GUI technologies to converge with native windows technologies.
This is the one area where I think we are looking at this from different angles. In my opinion, there is no question about whether XAML will be the "dominant format" for it's target platform, which is Windows native apps. In other words, IMHO the question you are posing above is not even relevant.
Let me try to clarify - I believe that XAML is first and foremost designed as a technology for replacing the way standalone Windows apps (non-browser, non-internet, etc.) are built, from the UI perspective.
There are already many solutions for creating native apps using XML layout
On the (dominant) Windows native platform? I'm not sure I am familiar with any good examples of what you are talking about here - surely none that would be considered as having the potential to become the de-facto "easy" way to build Windows apps.
The fact that it will be a standard markup language that facilitates browser download, and thus makes it possible to deliver these apps over the web through a browser, is just an added benefit - although once the full vision comes into scope, it is a HUGE benefit, and obviously makes this technology much more than what I am claiming is it's primary goal. But I want to stress that this doesn't change the primary goal - to make it easy to build native Windows apps.
Thus, there is no question about whether this has the potential to become the dominant way to build apps on it's target platform - standalone native Windows apps - because if that's the direction MS says Windows apps should go, that's the direction it will go. Not that this will be the only way to build apps on Windows in the future, but that it will be by far the easiest - just as MFC was by far easier than C with low-level APIS, and then VB/COM was by far easier than MFC, and then
Thus, the question about whether this could replace Flash (and all other non-native browser technologies) is not a question about which is easier or more powerful, etc., as a framework for building dynamic (and interactive - touchee) web applications - it is a question about whether this is the technology that will finally bring native Windows apps "into" the browser.
However, there is still hope for MXML and XUL to fit into the picture.. perhaps.
Only as long as the browser maintains it's status as an acceptable outlet for "non-standard" or "non-native" applications. Some day, I believe there will be full convergence between native apps and delivery through the internet, perhaps no longer with the browser as we know it today. The idea that every website will support it's own proprietary or non-native (yes even throwing HTML into this category) UI technology will become a relic of the past. Some day, going to slashdot and posting a comment will be no different than opening up Outlook and reading my mail. Slashdot will have a fully customized user-interface, but it will be done in such a way that the actual GUI I use is a fully native Windows-rendered GUI, not something that requires non-native browser-based protocols and standards in order to be rendered. A button will always be a win32 button, and a checkbox will always be a win32 checkbox, and more importantly, the background will be a win32 Window, not a browser panel that is being rendered with text. There will be no need to render tables and images to make things look like frames and panels and sub-windows - these will simply be actual win32 frames, panels, and sub-windows, on an actual win32 window. Right now the browser is basically at the point we were at with lots of DOS applications back when Win3.1 was just release
You've just described what DCOP does in KDE. Contact info is offered by the address book component, which can be queried by the email suite, the IM tool, etc. The entire desktop is built upon this approach, in fact.
The Freedesktop group has begun working on a generalization of DCOP called D-BUS, primarily geared toward exchanging message between backend (hardware detection...) and frontend (desktop environment), if I got it right, but I think that GNOME will also eventually be able to use it to tap into KDE components as well. This would be really nice.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Moz developers out there? Excuse my ignorance, but this XAML beast sounds an awful lot like XUL. So in a sense, the OS world has had a XAML alternative for a few years now - just a damn shame the Moz platform isn't ubiquitous enough to promote proper takeup of XUL. And if XAML is such a threat (and I see why), is it being developed along some standards? Is M$ going to submit this to ECMA as well? Why can't Moz/XUL start publishing "HTML New Generation" specifications, get corp buy-in from the likes of IBM, Sun, Novell, etc. to try and get XUL and XAML to converge?
-- Manik Surtani
Yes you do. That's what an acronym is.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
Well whoop-de-doo. Their problem. They were warned, and if they chose to ignore the warnings, they'll have to dig themselves out of it, or pay someone with a clue to do it for them. There are enough clueless designers around to keep consultants in business until Stardate 4096.
> Now imagine a world where you can only use XAML
Oh good grief. Get a life. It's just XML. It's not rocket science (or if it is, I know several unemployed rocket scientists who can help). Yes it's big. So is DocBook. Yes it's badly designed: the inclusion of executable code in a different syntax is a silly mistake, and only someone who has never used ISO 8879 before would allow Mixed Content in top-level element types. Unfortunately there are people like this at Microsoft, as well as plenty of people who do have a serious clue...but with a marketing-driven organisation, the marketing droids will always win, and if they want it that way, that's the way they'll get it.
It'll be a pig to write, a pig to maintain, a pig to understand, a pig to document, and a hog on resources, but that isn't really anything new. If it's XML, I can always open it and reprocess it using standard tools. Bill Gates (or his successors) will come to rue the day he bet the farm on XML.
The best cure for seasickness is to go and sit under a tree. --Spike Milligan
Claimer: yes, I do run the XML FAQ. No, my opinions are not those of the University I work for.
"What Mozilla needs to do is get their browser out there and on desktops, but more importantly they need to document(!) and further develop XUL. Try to use it for making business applications like I've mentioned above (not chat clients, get serious). Find out where the weak spots and gaps are and fix and fill them in. At the same time they need to get things working happening on the server side. OSS is strong on the server, but we need proper libraries and support for XUL apps on the server written in Java, PHP, etc hell even C# if really want to use a window webserver. For the love of god Mozilla, get in touch with Apache.org, Tomcat and friends. Create a full and complete platform (server + client) for creating and delivery business/database applications. We already have the big pieces."
Exactly - you clearly Get It.
Let's say there's an existing database in MySQL or whatever - if you could write an interface to it in XUL and have the "browser" construct a rich client front that understands transactions, field validation and persistence - that would be heaven. The Eclipse RCP project is very close to doing something useful and usable in this domain but it still seems to require too much hand coding for the front end.
One of the things that I like to do is find the Silver Bullet of tools. So I keep searching the internet and keep installing new tools. Yet here is an interesting result, am I closer to getting my app done?
We developers always like new and neat tricks, but yet it seems we are still building the same apps at the same speed. It took the Mono team about three years to build the Mono stack. Well, you know I could probably write most of my apps in three years.
I am not trying to rail C# or Java, as my point is that maybe we should be thinking about how to code properly. Maybe the language is not THAT big of an issue....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Let me give you a clue - while it may remain fun for you to "keep it real" by coding on open source, .Net and the Avalon/XAML platform threatens to displace a lot of the progress Linux has made, at least on the desktop. And we know that when MS owns the desktop they have great leverage to push on the server area. Every time MS comes up with something, the first reaction is to downplay it and shout that it has already been done before. IE was a joke too. Windows was a joke to. You can keep laughing, but unless there is a viable open source alternative to what MS is providing, we stand to get our lunch eaten. That is what is scary. That is what is scary for a lot of open source companies which are essentially loss-leading by pouring tons of money into free software and HOPING that by doing so they can open the market and reap rewards later. .Net and Avalon/XAML threaten to crush that. It's not enough to say that it's nothing new or not a big deal. When all of Microsoft developers, and a large segment of the industry that MS influences, starts adopting it in droves, it WILL be a big deal. When MS develops something that will give their customers some value (whether or not you think it gives /you/ value), it is not enough to shout "bogeyman!"... you actually have to compete.
.Net.
I am a Java developer, and I for one don't want my career derailed because there was never an open source alternative to compete with
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The problem with technologists deciding where technology goes is that they are not customer focused. They are technology focused. From the Microsoft blog featured here the other day, MS was at one time (and probably still is) extremely customer focused. Maybe they've lost it a bit, I don't know.
It's always an internal battle within organizations. Should we embrace some cool tech or not. Boss asks why, IT guy says, "'cause it's the future." Which begs the question.
Is it going to help ME in MY business?
I think the beauty of OS in general is that we make commodity blocks, which we can then adapt to a wide range of uses. When I meet with a client, I ALWAYS start with business questions.
"What are are your current challenges? What would you like to do better?"
Sometime they respond with specific answers about technology. I usually back them up one more step and try to get them to think about the bigger picture, macro style. They have an "A-ha" moment, and then the flood gates open. It usually boils down to wasted time and effort performing some repetitive task.
"Ah, well you know, that's the stuff computers are really good at. Repetitive tasks, that is. Let's reduce the time your people spend managing computers, and put them to work managing your business."
It's so simple, it's revolutionary. Microsoft did a lot for computing, but they mostly were able to make people slaves to their personal computers.
OS turns it back into what it should have been all along, Business Automation.
And all this talk about MS's new tech, or .NET or whatever... I have only question: Can a technology by itself really be a magic bullet?
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Microsoft Drives me batty with their absolute flaunting of supporting open formats. Take for instance Avalon which they describe as "Microsoft® Windows® Vector Graphics (WVG) . . . and it is familiar to users of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)" Everytime I read a MS programming book, I feel like they have branded everything that should be considered a basic fundamental Computer Science (Use your Microsoft® Windows® mouse® to type in a Microsoft® Windows® int®). I know this is so they can prevent competition, but I just can't get over how accepting computer users are to this as a whole.
If you have to install a 7 meg browser (mozilla) to make your application work why not just ship an application that updates itself over the network?
That would be an option if Java were free, so that the appropriate initiatives could be undertaken to have a decent way to run web applications.
Starting back in 1995, various companies asked for a number of features in Java necessary for launching web applications efficiently over the web -- licensees of Java paying Sun the big bucks. I was in one of these companies. Sun has never gotten what it would take to make Java a serious advantage for applications that trickle down to the desktop over the web.
There are many examples of things that would be needed and were repeatedly requested, that I have never seen materialize -- for example (one of many) a really-intelligent class loader that understands how to make applications work instantaneously and reliably over the web. The design doesn't seem that hard, but it is very different from anything that Sun has undertaken. I and other people made presentations to Sun, and they ignored it all, being a server company. Without free software, that leaves no options. This was 9 years ago, and Sun still has not figured most of it out. Companies cannot wait for Sun to get it.
As it is, I couldn't care less whether Sun or Microsoft wins, because it is 6 of one or half a dozen of the other, they will be limited by their own lack of vision. Licensees of Java were ripped off, believing they would be helped by Sun for all the money they paid.
It isn't that companies are not willing to pay. It is that Sun isn't willing to deliver even to those who pay who see how to bring Java out of the box where it is now (and have seen since the beginning).
For those that don't speak Spanish but English with latin stems, mono* is a prefix meaning single or singular, e.g. monotheism - the belief in one god.
For those that speak slightly geeky American English, mono is short for mononucleosis, which is another term for glandular fever.
For those that speak common English, mono means a single sound source, i.e. monophonic as opposed to sterophonic.
But for the Spanish speakers of the world... it's Monkey.
* I know not it's true etymology.
If you are a real OSS (and not a cryptic MS zeelot), you should push real OSS project that can benefit the commuity
You mean like the Linux Kernel (an open source re-implementation of a closed source OS kenerl -- AT&T's UNIX at the time), Gaim (an open source re-implementation of a closed source IM client -- AIM from AOL), GCC (an open source re-implementation of a closed source compiler for a language developed by the same vendor that developed the OS -- PCC for the C language from AT&T), Linux NFS (an open source re-implementation of a closed source networked filesystem which the vendor published the protocol for while retaining patents on the technology -- NFS by Sun Microsystems), The Gimp (an open source re-implementation of a closed source photo editor -- Photoshop from Adobe), The X Window System (an open source re-implementation of a closed source windowing system -- PARC from Xerox), Samba (an open source re-implementation of a closed source file system -- SMB by Microsoft) or did you mean something else?
Face it: Open source software has been BLINDINGLY SUCCESSFUL at re-implementing closed-source software and making it popular. Why would we stop now?
Actually a good project in this area exists already, the MyXaml project.
From the DotGNU perspective, XAML isn't particularly scary. We can simply support and recommend (and perhaps distribute) MyXaml.
Really, from the perspective of the Free Software community, XAML isn't particularly scary. XAML may make the deployment of apps easier, and some of those apps may have been written to run only on MS platforms, but that cannot possibly be worse than the current situation with most apps for desktop computers running only on MS platforms. If indeed the IT world switches to XAML, that's not something to be scared about (except perhaps from a security perspective) because supporting XAML+.NET on free operating systems is in fact easier than supporting native "Microsoft Windows" executables.
So I come to the conclusion that while I don't know whether XAML may perhaps be scary for Novell from a business perpective, or it may be scary for Miguel personally (because the MyXaml project is independent of Mono, and Miguel has historically found it difficult to interact with independent projects in a contructive, mutually beneficial manner), but certainly XAML is not a big threat for anything that I particularly care about.
It's trivial to extend XAML with C# or any other CLR source language, too.
Your XML reprocessor is going to do *what*, exactly, when it encounters some inline C#? And to what are you going to translate the whizzy graphics, animations, videos, and other effects?
XAML is just the surface, an easy-to-use XUL + Flash language. Scratch below that and you get the Avalon engine and the .NET runtime. That combination is not something lying around on today's Linux, and not something you can whip up in an evening.
Although Mono gives us a good start on half of the substance behind XAML....