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Mono Project Releases Version 1.0
theblackdeer writes "Just poking around the go-mono.com Mono website; it's now the multi-colored mono-project.com. Even better, it updated before my eyes to include the 1.0 release. Screenshots are (slightly) updated, too. Mono 1.0 includes the Mono Develop IDE (based on SharpDevelop, I believe). Download now and start your GTK# engines!"
Alliante adds "You can download the Release Notes and the Packages on their website."
From the FAQ:
The Mono project has also sparked a lot of interest in developing C#-based components, libraries and frameworks
Yes it has. In our company's roadmap, we considered C# and Mono, but the controversial elements of their licensing (ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Windows Forms subsets) gave us pause until we researched it further. Most of it is covered under the ECMA/ISO and the other technologies developed on top of it.
Looks like the Mono strategy is to work around the patent issues by using a different technique that retains the API but changes the mechanism.
Sigs cause cancer.
mono makes your throat sore. you get it from kissing girls. actually i guess that's not going to be a concern around here.
forgive the interruption.
A open source RAD evironment sounds like it could have a huge impact on the number of apps that could be rolled out.
Not so much for the enterprise market, but also for the 'shareware' class applications. Most of my Windows specific applications are programs that are from very small development houses or shareware products. (I love to support a small shareware author!) . I use open source when prudent, but I also love to use a nice simple tool that even if it costs $15-$20 bucks to a pay-pal account, is money well spent in my opinion. Maybe Linux will start to attract this development base with Mono.
Another question, I have a pro version of C# I picked up at staples last year. Anyone know how realistic is it for me to build an application in Windows using my copy of C# and compile it and run it on mono?
Go Mono, Go! I hope you infect everybody!
(at least I'm not back in college anymore, where they would've probably hauled me away in straight jacket for chanting that...)
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Wonder if that can be run in mono..
.NET terriarium is damn coolb Index= 6&tabId=42
installing to find out.
I have been playing in GTK getting sprites and such working, but would like to use this for more portability..
http://www.windowsforms.net/default.aspx?ta
Check it
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I'm cheering for the Mono guys but I don't see how they can avoid being also-rans in the compatibility race.
As has been pointed out ad tedium in various Java-related discussions on /. - Java's early reputation for poor performance may have been
justified in the 1.0 and 1.1 days, but modern Java VMs employ
sophisticated JIT compilers which gives it comparable performance to
natively compiled languages like C++, and easily matches .NET's CLR
performance. Java's bytecode and .NET's bytecode are not that different, the main differences are in the APIs.
Which brings us on to the second justification for .NET over Java, native GUIs, which is even weaker. Java-Gnome does the same thing as
Mono's GTK bindings, offering exactly the same GUI abilities, and SWT offers a truely
cross-platform GUI API with a native look and feel on each platform it
runs on.
For those looking for an IDE, try out MonoDevelop 0.5. It doesn't have a gui builder, but has code-completion(intellisense), class browser, project management, etc... It's a port of Sharpdevelop.
While people can debate about this, I do think it's something important for linux. It says that no matter what one company can do to try to make their development platform closed and proprietary, the open source community can retort back with their open standards. Yeah, this is just an attempt at cloning yet another microsoft product by the open source community, but when the world uses microsoft and they're distributing this for free, it hardly is as bad as one software giant cloning say...word perfect. I haven't tried mono yet, but when the day arrives when I can run a windows app and linux app without jumping through wine I'll be a happy linux user.
.NET as something positive.
I really think operating systems have become a comodity anyway. To me, linux, windows, and mac don't mean much but the software that runs on them. Sure, making different versions like mozilla does works now, but you can't expect companies like adobe to ever do the same. I think running things off the same compiled code is where software should be headed. This would make the argument of not being able to switch to linux because of lack of supported applications moot.
This is the first time I've ever thought of
I've been looking for a good way to write a crossplatform GUI for an app I'm working on. Java is not a good choice for a variety of reasons, so Mono is looking pretty tempting right now. Since Mozilla-The-Platform hasn't taken off as well as it could, Mono may wind up being the best option for a totally Free Software approach to cross-platform work. On the other hand, wxWidgits is a great toolset as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if they get C# language bindings for the library.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Given that my main OS is Windows (sorry), is there anything like this for it?
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Too many people will get hung up over the Microsoft angle and notions that mono is out to wipe out all other development toolkits. This is nonsense. What the mono team has done is upended a Microsoft strategy - that Windows is differentiated because of the .Net platform. Now we have a level playing field on top of all of the other inherent advantages of open source.
Bravo and thanks mono team.
I'm probably feeding a troll, but I'll assume you are sincere.
.NET is deployable on any platform with a CLI, like Mono. Nobody pays Microsoft anything, though it doesn't put them at the disadvantage that Java would.
Mono was developed because Miguel thought Mono was kinda cool, and because he could. Beyond that, though, there are a few other important issues.
Most importantly, Mono is vital to the future of Linux and other open-source projects. This was a blatant attempt by Microsoft to reign in wandering developer mindshare. Also, it is part of their strategy to bring the application space back from the web, to the desktop-- Microsoft's desktop.
Also, although most geeks realize that Microsoft is not to be trusted, and that generally they produce shoddy (or downright dangerous) software, most of the rest of the world doesn't understand the danger. So, for a lot of manager-types (you know the ones, knuckles dragging the ground, sloped brow furrowed in concentration while parsing simple sentences, signs your paychecks with an 'X'), they see this as "Microsoft's next big direction." Many will choose to follow that direction, because they love Power Point.
And finally, there's the issue of choice. Java is Okay, but there are issues with it. C# has a different set of issues. Both suck. Both are great. Both cower before the awesome power of LISP. Different developers like different things in a language. Some languages suit our personalities better than others. Me, I'm a LISP and Perl kinda guy. The guy sitting next to me likes C and PHP.
There are potential pitfalls with C#, but at the moment that is all they are: potential. And in most cases, those problems are perceived, and not actual. Now
But ultimately our goal should be to produce damned good software, not just destroy Microsoft; we should concentrate on building up, not tearing down.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Look, mono have cloned an enviroment & language whose direction is steered by Microsoft.
.NET.
.NET framework *NOW*, add features and support for things that the Windows .NET does not have. But also bring the extended version to Windows itself.
.NET becomes the real one, not the MS one.
This is a problem, Microsoft is not nice.
Microsoft can take it into a direction where MS holds patents & IP protection (if it doesn't already which is very unlikely). Mono will either have to follow and lock its user in, or go in a separate direction and abandon any pretensions at cloning MS
What I think they should do is embrace and extend the the
That way the MONO implementation of
The greatest risk of the Mono project is Microsoft stepping in and filing suit against the project for using its API w/o a license. Doesn't anyone else see this? Why was Mono ever started to begin with? All you Mono developers are doing is putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket!!!
Actually, the majority of the API is covered by the public EMCA specifications. Microsoft specifically made it impossible (very very difficult) to sue someone for that when they made the standards public. See the mono and microsoft faq for details. The fact that mono is perfectly legal doesn't change the fact that they may be putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket though.
The nifty thing about this is that Mono has the potential to be bigger and better than the .NET Framework, and we don't actually *need* .NET to make good use of Mono.
The way I see it, Mono could end up gaining more market share than Microsoft's implementation, and as long as we don't tie ourselves to the Windows-specific APIs, there's not a whole lot Microsoft could do about it!
This Mono 1.0 release seems to be developer-oriented. Will they (or someone else) be creating smaller runtime packages which only include the stuff necessary to run applications?
It would be nice if there were an easy install package for Win32, too. This might seem pointless on the surface, but Microsoft.NET won't install on all Windows systems due to deliberate barriers, plus Microsoft's distribution does not come with GTk# and so forth.
I'm installing the full release on my main system, but it'd be nice to have a smaller runtime package that I can put on my other boxen to run any apps I create. Perhaps in a few hundred years Debian will have a runtime package which can be depended on by mono apps without having to pull in the whole development environment. (mono-runtime vs. mono-devel, both depending on mono-common)
(I see a page about the Mono runtime but it's talking about the runtime portion of the project rather than a specific runtime distribution.)
Check out the The Mono Handbook for tutorials and general getting started instructions. It's still a work in progress, so many sections are still quite empty. Another resource you should familiarize yourself with is the MSDN developer documentation for most of the core .NET API, it includes a lot of examples.
I also recommend you check out the standard GTK+ tutorial. A lot of it is still directly applicable to GTK# and it's more complete than most GTK# only tutorials. If you're already familiar with GTK+, Glade# for Rapid Development will help you get up to speed with Mono.
It's like deja vu all over again.
One of the problem with Shareware (or cripple ware) and open source is that it's generally just as easy to distribute the shareware version as the complete version, so it only takes one person to purchase a product and give it to everyone.
I think this impacts open source game production because, frankly, it's hard to find a way to give the source to the community and still ensure some kind of revenue stream.
What I figured is, why can't someone release a game, GPL all the source code, but claim that the artwork and level data are copyrighted and, please, feel free to give your buddies a copy, but don't use the art/leveldata in a commercial release
I think that, while not nesseccarily in keeping with the free software ideology, it is in keeping with the open source philosophy (and yes, bare with me, i know that free is not cost free and open is not simply saying 'check out my code')
By providing my source code to whomever wants it, I make it easier for the next guy not to have to reinvent the wheel. But the specific game data (leveldata, game sprites) are what makes this game unique (if only at the surface level) and are useless to a programer who wants to use my code to write his own game.
Such a license would allow one to release a Shareware version of the game (akin to Doom or Commander Keen, where you get an episode, not some software that expires over time and does half of what you want) which allows for commercial distribution, and a full version which the author can sell.
Of course, maybe that makes the author a capatalistpropriatarypigbastard, but i'd like to hear feedback on the idea...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
First of all, Microsoft has been directly helping the Mono project, in terms of technical assistance. While this doesn't solve the patent issue, it does show a certain culpability on the part of Microsoft, and it would be a big fly in the ointment if MS decided to file a lawsuit.
Also, Mono is much closer to a "clean-room" development model, based almost exclusively on the API libraries and reverse engineering of data formats to become more compatable with MS function calls. Although Mono started with the core components being compiled with the free dotNet compiler from MS, it has been self-compiling for some time now.
The anti-trust issues won't help out MS either if they file a lawsuit against Novell. Novell has some relatively deep pockets, and it would be in their interest to get into a legal fight with Microsoft, particuarly one that MS initiated. From a sheer anti-trust viewpoint it would not be a good thing for MS to engage in something like this directly, and it could only be a direct threat from MS that would amount to be worth anything, unlike the SCO fiasco. No hiding behind serrogates for this fight. Furthermore, MS would risk a counter suit from several parties (Miguel to start with) if they tried to get the software pulled, potentially costing MS quite a bit of money.
Almost all of mono is derived from the ECMA documents, which also state rather clearly (with formal waivers signed by Microsoft) that anybody is free to create their own implementation of those standards.
Where the Mono Project could run into problems is if somebody (in a really stupid moment) decided to include some "shared source" source code from MS into Mono. This would be the same issue that Linux is facing from SCO, and when that goes to court it will have a final court ruling on that issue. If SCO wins by some act of God, it will become a huge issue for almost all open source/free software projects, not just Mono. I don't know if the courts have the political will to shut down a multi-billion dollar industry that easily over a technical ruling. Besides, the remedies to fix an issue like that are very easily done, and can even be done in a very pristine "clean room" atmosphere to replace any code that caused problems like that.
I would have no problem testifying in court that Mono and dotNet are two totally different pieces of software, from benchmarks and I/O behavior to variable names and even Mono-only software classes.
What is going to be interesting is that Mono, now that they are at version 1.0, is going to be in a position to actually drive mindshare with this system. I predict that you will seem MS backporting some of the mono class features (including method names... even a mono.* class naming system) into standard dotNet. The question would then become who is driving the development for whom?
Yes, I dont trust Microsoft, and won't rely upon their goodwill. True as well, if you had developed a completely independent virtual OS (like dotNet or Java), there might not be as much to argue here, but then again, you might even be in more danger of violating a patent, simply because you weren't aware of it.
I think a much bigger threat for a submarine patent that would threaten Mono would come from Sun, or even some silly 3rd party that filed a patent 5-10 years ago covering virtual operating systems. The concern then is not with Microsoft, but with the USPTO instead.