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Mono Project Releases Beta 1

AArnott writes "Ximian has just released beta 1 of its open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET platform. Mono allows .NET applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. Mono 1.0 is slated for release on June 30, 2004." sjanes71 adds "The first 'beta' always gets heaps of attention, and this is the first of three planned for the Mono project. Some of the new features touted for this release that updates Mono v0.31 include a faster interpreter, a global assembly cache, support for the StrongARM and HPPA platforms, generics support in the VM and C# compiler and an early alpha of System.Windows.Forms. C# and .NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun Microsystem's Java platform and Project Mono aims to create the Open Source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's new development environment."

19 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. Re:generics compiler 'gmcs' as opposed to? by JanusFury · · Score: 3, Informative

    IIRC, the standard compiler is 'mcs', so yes, that's a typo.

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  2. MonoDevelop by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might also want to check out MonoDevelop v0.3 which was released to take advantage of new features in Mono Beta1.
    While it's not quite up to the task of stable work yet, it will become a great IDE for .NET development in Linux and rival VS.NET in Windows.

  3. Re:Compatible... how long? by clintp · · Score: 4, Informative
    The answer to this (and others) is in the FAQ.

    For this it states:

    The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent): here [the link is incorrect -- clintp].

    Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose.

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  4. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by moxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft open? Hah!
    Where is .NET for mac or linux? (I mean the ms created version and not mono)

    Their XML is a joke, swaths of proprietry code and an arsenal of patents to defend it.

    Microsoft pays lipservice to "open standards" to keep the DOJ at bay, but after that it's business as usual.

    Great work on Mono guys, we can only hope that microsoft won't dare use their patents against the project.

  5. Re:Good news by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Informative

    If it's just the IDE you're missing (and I wasn't aware that the Mono people were writing one), then you might want to take a look at icsharpcode.net. One of the projects (#Develop) is a free-as-in-both IDE for .NET.

    In addition to that, Borland have a personal edition of C# Builder available, which is free as in beer, but not licensed for commercial use.

  6. Cool Vb Compiler by DrSkwid · · Score: 3, Informative


    Someones doing a VB Compiler in Mono

    that would be an interesting thing should it ever produce binary compatibles.

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  7. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by JanusFury · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's a chance you'll see .NET for Mac if MS releases a version of Office based on .NET. Not very likely, but possible.

    Though, really, why does it matter? Apple doesn't release a version of Mac OS X for x86, so you can't run OS X software on x86, just like Microsoft isn't releasing a version of .NET for OS X. That doesn't mean that the platform is useless.

    If you really want an application that fits into your workflow nicely and cooperates with all the other software on your PC, at least for now, platform-independent solutions like .NET and Java are not the answer. A Java or .NET app is still not going to feel 100% like a native app on every platform, even if you throw some pretty skins on it - there are too many differences. For example, for the longest time the Mac OS had no standard equivalent to Windows' ComboBox, so developers rolled their own. I'm not even sure if OS X has an equivalent. Mac UIs have always been designed somewhat differently than their Windows counterparts, based on that reason and other reasons.

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  8. Re:The Novell Connection by Talonius · · Score: 3, Informative

    Mono was around long before Novell purchased Ximian. Mono will remain around long after Novell, if Novell does go somewhere, simply because the .NET platform is popular and there are quite a few talented programmers who'd like to work with it.

    Combined with Sun's perceived reluctance to open Java (perceived because IBM has their VM; GNU has theirs; they don't have the popular press that a project like Mono does) and Mono has a *lot* of support behind it.

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  9. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by GregChant · · Score: 3, Informative

    Historically, Microsoft has had two different teams to produce the same 'title' software: Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office both had teams strictly separate from their Windows counterparts. The Mac teams use Carbon and Cocoa simply because they are writing specifically for Macs.

    I'm assuming it's cheaper for Microsoft to hire a new team than to port over their framework (in strictly this context, without worrying about the Evil Empire ideology ascribed to them). This has been good: Mac versions of Microsoft software (with the notable exception of Media Player) are usually better in terms of usuability, bugs, and features.

  10. Re:Too bad they are patenting the hell out of Lonh by flying_mushroom · · Score: 3, Informative

    You probably read it here.

    It gets interesting now, though. This guy at eWeek has a theory that MS is putting all it has onto Longhorn to steamroll Linux.

    If that's the case, then projects like Mono (or anything that consolidates and professionalises Linux) takes a larger sense of importance and urgency (well, kind of: MS won't release Longhorn for another decade or so...)

  11. Re:Sure, it's here now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    These are my 0.02 US$...

    ...and that's about all they're worth.

    According to your predictions for Mono, Microsoft should have litigated Samba into the ground years ago. Remind me, how many lawsuits has MS filed against Samba? Oh, that's right, ZERO . Not a single fucking case. Man, that bodes ill for Mono, doesn't it!

    Of course the Samba team didn't get any support from Microsoft. But Samba still exists, and it still works.

    Likewise, Microsoft can't break .NET compatibility. Microsoft have always gone out of their way to make sure their new versions of Windows run software written for previous versions: do you know why? Because big business won't let them break things. Why should that be any different today than it has been for the last fifteen years?

    And even in the case that MS do break compatibility... why should we care? Will that mean that Gnome apps using Mono and GTK# will suddenly stop running on Linux? Of course not. We'll still have something cool of our own.

  12. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by moxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    Haha, far from it.
    Choice quotes from the MS website:

    It will be of interest to academics and researchers wishing to teach and explore modern programming language concepts, and to .NET developers interested in how the technology works.

    Notice that nowhere in the list of intended uses is "Development", that's because it lacks all the libraries needed to make it useful.
    This software was last updated 18 months ago - it's not undergoing development.

    Simply another ploy to gull people into thinking .NET is something more than a new API for windows...

  13. Re:Good news by Senjutsu · · Score: 4, Informative

    'm sorry, but WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? If you do .Net development in Windows, you use VS. You have no alternative. It's not "not a lot of fun", it's impossible.

    Wrong:

    The Microsoft® .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.1 includes everything developers need to write, build, test, and deploy .NET Framework applications--documentation, samples, and command-line tools and compilers.

  14. Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? by Phidoux · · Score: 4, Informative

    The sub-classing of standard classes has been managed successfully in Java for many years. I've never had the problem where a new version of a class has produced a method with a name the same as one I might have written in a sub-class. Anyway, even if it did happen, the likelihood of it causing a problem is very remote. Java very easily distinguishes between (For example) Method(String string) and Method(boolean flag).

    Another thing I've found extremely prohibitive with the standard .NET libraries is that they aren't very extensive (Well, at least not when compared to the Java standard libraries). Of course to work around the limitations of the standard libraries we look for 3rd party libraries. In the case of Java, 3rd party libraries are mostly GPLed and free, where 3rd party .NET libraries are almost always commercial products with fees attached to their licensing.

  15. Re:I have said it once by AArnott · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chill. If Mono only implemented the CLI and a C# compiler, it WOULD be "just an open source implementation of the CLR/C#". But Mono implements nearly all of the MS.NET base class libraries as well. Those libraries are not part of the CLI. Therefore, the only accurate way to describe Mono is to say it implements .NET in Linux. Shut up.

  16. Re:The Novell Connection by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative
    No, DR-DOS dates to the mid-eighties, I believe its immediate predecessor was "DOS Plus", a version of CP/M 86 that had some degree of DOS compatability and one or two nice extras of itself (it had a kind of pre-emptive multitasking feature, but required specially written tasks for that, and they couldn't be interactive.)

    I'm guessing that DOS Plus imported a bunch of features from the Atari ST version of CP/M 68, which also looked just like MSDOS to end users (and was renamed TOS and had GEM as the UI.)

    QDOS was a semi-clone of CP/M, built to deal with the fact that DR took their time to port CP/M to the 808[68] architecture. The original author denies it was a straight clone pointing out it had some nice features and architectural differences that weren't present in DR's OS, but there's no denying the API was intended to make porting CP/M programs easier.

    CP/M itself dates back to the mid-seventies, with Dr Gary Kildall writing a crude filesystem and CLI for early Intel 8008 evaluation systems. CP/M 1.3 was practically unusable. CP/M 2.x became an industry standard, but was very tied to the architecture of those original Intel evaluation systems (CP/M required OEMs develop a BIOS that was practically identical to the firmware in those systems.)

    So what you essentially have is:

    (Mid seventies) CP/M for the 8080

    1980/81: QDOS developed independently by Seattle Computer Associates, with many ideas taken from CP/M and with compatability in mind.

    1981: Microsoft buys QDOS, releases it as MSDOS 1.0. IBM bundles it with PCs.

    1981: DR releases CP/M 86 as a seperate product, this is essentially CP/M ported warts and all to the 8086. Nobody buys it.

    1982: Microsoft makes dramatic updates to QDOS, releasing MSDOS 2, which has a proper file system, I/O redirection, all the things, essentially, we consider part of DOS today

    1984: DR releases CP/M 68 for Atari. This includes an MSDOS compatable file system and many MSDOS APIs

    1984: DR releases CP/M 3 (CP/M Plus) for 8080 based machines. Amstrad in the UK is only major buyer. This is still straightforward CP/M, antiquated file system and all, but with support for paged memory and with a lot more userland tools.

    1985: DR releases DOS Plus. Amstrad, in the UK, is virtually the only major buyer. DOS Plus is mostly, but not entirely, compatable with MSDOS. Most people avoid it because of this.

    1986 (I think): DR releases DRDOS. DRDOS is now almost completely compatable with MSDOS and begins to take off.

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  17. Both by DreadSpoon · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are shipping both CLS and Microsoft compatible implementations. The basic idea is that new applications for Linux can use CLS plus the Mono stack (i.e., UNIX/Linux intended assemblies, like gtk-sharp, various DB libraries, POSIX wrappers, etc) and legacy or cross-platform apps can use the Microsoft stack (Windows.*, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc).

    For example, a GNOME app written in C# for Mono would not use the Microsoft stack at all. So even if Microsoft broke/changed/patented the Microsoft (non-ECMA) stack, that would have zero effect on the tons of Open Source/Free Software apps developed using the ECMA and Mono assemblies. Thus, Mono provides both a great set of languages (C# and anything else that can run on the CLR), a good solid runtime (Mono+CLR stacks), an efficient and cross platform interpreter and JIT/AOT compilers, and so on.

    The only thing Microsoft can kill is Microsoft compatibility. Which really isn't all that interesting to most FOSS developers. ;-)

  18. Java and Mono serve different purposes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    > What I have been wondering, however, is why .NET generated so much interest in the Open Source community? Java has been around forever, and hyped beyond belief, yet for all the talk about needing an open-source java vm and class libraries, it looks like open-source .NET is further along than open-source Java in much less time!

    I can understand why you might have that impression, but I don't think it's true.

    I think both Java and Mono have a place on Linux.

    Java provides an excellent cross platform language and runtime environment. In terms of number of job listings, it is currently the most popular languge used in business, having surpassed C/C++. And Java is well supported on Linux -- there are Open Source JVMs, the GCC supports Java bytecodes, and the Sun Java Desktop Linux distribution is finding a lot of support.

    Mono (i.e. the .Net framework, C#) fills a slightly different niche, with its strong emphasis on multi-language support. This is attractive for developers who already have a lot of code written in other languages.

    Of course, other languages can also be compiled to Java butecodes, but that aspect of Java has never been emphasized much, so it didn't really mature.

    Java is good for downloadable Internet applets, though Microsoft has used their control of the PC desktop to stunt Java's growth in that area, by sabotaging the compatibility of the Java clients (i.e. "polluting" Java with J++, then removing Java support altogether).

    C# can also be used for Internet applets, and Microsoft will try to use their desktop control to ensure C#'s success in that area. Microsoft intended to have a monopoly in that area, but that may not happen now with Linux and Mono as an alternative.

    So I think both Java and Mono/C# have roles to play, and I think they will both succeed.

    As to your suggestion that Mono/C# may be gaining greater interest on Linux than Java, I think that is a false perception.

    Instead, I think it is simply that Mono/C# currently has more buzz factor...

    I think that Java is simply accepted, and growing quietly. As I said, the popularity and support are both there.

    Mono/C#, on the other hand, is very controversial, being a Microsoft-originated technology. Thus, it makes the headlines. Add to that the Microsoft propaganda, the Microsoft-forced "success" for .Net, and the discussion over strategy for preventing a Microsoft Internet monopoly, and you get a lot of buzz factor.

    Overall, I would say not to worry. In its usual open, free-market style, Linux is trying all possible avenues to success. And it will succeed, even if we can't predict the exact mix of technologies for the future.

  19. Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? by jsantos · · Score: 3, Informative



    Wake up: the ECMA standard covers c# only.

    Funny you should suggets the parent to your comment was a troll. There is an ECMA standard for the CLI (i.e. .net's runtime) and you can find it here.

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