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Mono Progress In the Past Year

Eugenia writes "OSNews posted an article accounting the applications created in GTK# the past 8 months, since the release of Mono 1.0. While many of them are still in their infancy, it's clear that the platform had a healthy progress, with 'super-hits' like Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam! and other, less known gems, like SportsTracker, PolarViewer, MooTag, GFax, GIB, Sonance and Bluefunk. The 2.0 version of Mono is expected around May, but the developers advised distros and users to upgrade to Mono 1.1.4 despite being a beta."

441 comments

  1. Mono is Wonderful by nberardi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mono is a wonderful piece of reverse engineering, many of these apps I didn't even realize were Mono apps and I have been using them for a while now. In addition I found a couple that I am going to start using such as portage-sharp.

    Keep up the good work Mono team, I love C#, and I love how you are brining it to *nix.

    I fear the day when Microsoft will come and snatch this out from under the Mono team, but I really think this benifits Microsoft just as having an open source version of Java benifits Sun.

    1. Re:Mono is Wonderful by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/22/13 10232&tid=109&tid=155
      This is the reason(meaning many simmilar things M$ have done) I currently dont use mono for any production systems ,
      now this isnt totaly related , i do admit but the relationship is too close for comfort
      . i feel on unsteady ground using it , not that it would matter as im in the EU (unless those *Explitives* get their way) ,Though i would hate to think any project i was working on could have the rug pulled so firmly out from underneath it and stop some of my freinds in america being unable to use said project legaly on a linux system .
      Although i must also raise a glass to the mono team on an excelent job.

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    2. Re:Mono is Wonderful by m50d · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It does benefit them. Hopefully when Sun sees all the devs switching it will finally open up Java. If not, good riddance - C# includes all the good bits anyway.

      --
      I am trolling
    3. Re:Mono is Wonderful by shird · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is it really reverse engineering? I mean the full spec for the CLR and various other things with .NET have been published for the very reason to create VMs such as Mono on different platforms.

      --
      I.O.U One Sig.
    4. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Rapsey · · Score: 1

      What rock are you living under?

    5. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I must being more than a little interested in Mono. However, I'm put off because I'm finding it difficult to find a lot of the dependencies (as plain source) required by some of the more interesting projects.

      I can see gtk-sharp on the main mono download page but I'm damned if I can find gnome-sharp. Can anyone answer this seemingly simple question?

    6. Re:Mono is Wonderful by greenplato · · Score: 1

      In addition I found a couple that I am going to start using such as portage-sharp.

      From the portage-sharp project page on sourceforge:

      Activity Percentile (last week): 0%

      This Project Has Not Released Any Files

      CVS Repository ( 0 commits, 0 adds )

      Gotta love all those good intention projects on SourceForge.net

    7. Re:Mono is Wonderful by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I dont see the benefit AT ALL. What happens when all of these JVMs start having different quirks? You then have to write your Java applications toward specific JVM (Wow... just like what everyone bitched at Microsoft for). Then what is the point?

      Java isnt closed in the sense that no one can get the code. Im not sure of the money you need (if any), but every JVM is well tested to make sure it does things in the way that Sun intended them to. That's what MAKES it a usable platform... and Im sure Sun really wouldnt like to support there multitudes of customers who are trying to run a java applications that seems to only work on the L33t-h4x0r-optimized JVM.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    8. Re:Mono is Wonderful by cosinezero · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No, it's not reverse engineering at all, but /. will still mod them +5 'insightful' because if you call it 'reverse engineering' it's "hacking microsoft", instead of the truth, which is that MS tried to produce a product that can be much more accessible to even the open source movement.

    9. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best thing about Mono is that it shows just what a monumental screw up Java has been. Java (Sun's version at least) is a veritable HOWNOTTO of virtual machines and class libraries. Also the recent GNOME tests showing how much memory Mono used for apps compared to C/C++ and Java were amazing. Mono was pretty svelt... but Java. Yeeessssh. Everyone has experienced just what a bloated hog Java is... now there are actual figures for it. Astonishing. No wonder people haye it so much.

    10. Re:Mono is Wonderful by m50d · · Score: 1

      You don't have to write it for a specific vm, any vm which doesn't support the main java api would quickly lose its following. Sun still controls the java trademark, and can withold approval for any JVM which doesn't support the proper api. But for a start, maybe we'd get a swing implementation which ran on sub-ghz machines or didn't look horrible. Maybe even both. And if sun did something really awful to the language, which make no mistake they will do sooner or later simply because they're human, it would be good to have an alternative.

      --
      I am trolling
    11. Re:Mono is Wonderful by wizard_of_wor · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      +5 Insightful? For this misguided and ignorant post? Unbelievable. Slashdot is dead.

      --
      If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
    12. Re:Mono is Wonderful by FooBarWidget · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's what certification and unit testing program are for. You only get the label "100% compatible JVM implementation" if you pass the test. Where's the problem?

      Even if Sun doesn't open their implementation, people will still create Java compilers. Take a look at the Kaffe and GCJ project. Why don't you complain about them "fragmentating" the Java community? If Sun open sources their JVM implementation, how will it suddenly generate more fragmentation than GCJ/Kaffe already do?

    13. Re:Mono is Wonderful by abradsn · · Score: 1

      You are right. The truth hurts sometimes.

    14. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scott McNealy's left testicle.

    15. Re:Mono is Wonderful by labratuk · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You and anyone who says "it's open enough" don't know what you're talking about. Without the freedom to fork, you don't have any freedoms at all.

      Without that freedom, you and all that code you & your team spent 18 months coding are sitting under the thumb of Sun. Sun can tell you which platforms you can migrate to in the future (unless of course you want to rewrite everything in something non-java). If it is against Sun's business interest to port / allow a port of java to architecture/os xyz, you're not going to be using it.

      It may not even be the fault of Sun being aggressive. What if Sun drops java? What if Sun goes bust? What if Sun has a hostile takeover by a company who wants to sweep java under the rug? One way or another there could be no more java releases.

      So in 5 - 10 years time when the industry makes another architecture/os leap, you're stuck running on platforms which were around in 2005, no matter how much cheaper & faster the more common new systems are. Time to rewrite plenty of code.

      It's not hard to imagine - people are making the jump to amd64 now. A couple of years from now, amd64 will be the commodity hardware standard. Cheap and easily available. Imagine if Sun had for one reason or another dropped java in 2003 with no amd64 port.

      No amd64 java. We'll have to stay running our systems in deprecated 32bit mode. Or rewrite everything. Or use one of the unofficial java replacements that's come up to fill the cracks. But oh no, those would be forks that comply to no standard!

      And really, please drop the myth of open source incompatible fragmentation.

      Python's been going for around 15 years. How many python standards are there to code to?

      Perl's been going for longer. How many perl forks are there?

      How may rubies?

      How many phps are there?

      Now let's look at some closed languages:

      All I can think of is your beloved java. MS, IBM, Sun, Kaffe, GCJ... Your strategy of keeping it closed to prevent incompatible versions doesn't seem to have worked!

      If you want all of your code to be under your own control, don't write it in java.

      --
      Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
    16. Re:Mono is Wonderful by msh104 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      well, only the core is openened.
      winforms, winfx(avalon, winfs, etc) and the like are still closed and a potential attack areas from the microsoft front. and these probably going to be much used in apps.

    17. Re:Mono is Wonderful by abradsn · · Score: 1

      They will have an API, and they will be in their own namespace. We can either support the API or not. I propose that we support as much as possible. There will always be tradeoffs in platforms. Don't forget that the same problems would ring true even if Linux were the dominant OS.

    18. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, Mono _is_ really reverse engineering --but not all. It have used Wine libs for awhile (Windows.Forms). Wine is a classic example of software reverse engineering.

      Microsoft said:

      "...Mono is an attempt by Novell to reverse engineer parts of Microsoft's .NET Framework..."

      http://searchvb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0 ,2 89142,sid8_gci1019210,00.html

    19. Re:Mono is Wonderful by bonniot · · Score: 1
      And if sun did something really awful to the language, which make no mistake they will do sooner or later simply because they're human, it would be good to have an alternative.

      You already have the choice.

    20. Re:Mono is Wonderful by aled · · Score: 2, Interesting

      # Python's been going for around 15 years. How many python standards are there to code to?
      # Perl's been going for longer. How many perl forks are there?
      # How may rubies?
      # How many phps are there?


      How many big industry names (Sun, MS, IBM, Oracle, etc) are wrestling around those like in Java? No one. There is no danger because there are no pressures to do so.

      All I can think of is your beloved java. MS, IBM, Sun, Kaffe, GCJ... Your strategy of keeping it closed to prevent incompatible versions doesn't seem to have worked!

      MS DID forked Java with its propietary extensions. Which it was ruled by a court it couldn't under their licence agreement with Sun. When MS decided it could not embrace and extend Java at pleasure started .Net which is very similar.
      IBM AFAIK made its JVMs based on Sun's.
      From Kaffe homepage: "Kaffe is not the best Java virtual machine for developing Java applications, as it lacks much in the way of documentation, compatibility, debugging/profiling support, etc. If you are learning Java, or are looking for a complete Java development environment, you will probably be best served by using a "real" Java development environment (such as the JDK) licensed from Sun."
      GCJ: "GCJ is a portable, optimizing, ahead-of-time compiler for the Java Programming Language.". There many other Java compilers around, notably the Eclipse project has one and Jikes, both open source.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    21. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right, we should rewrite that bit on the Kaffe home page. It is certainly better than using the non-free JDK for a lot of applications, and for many of them obviously the only choice.

      cheers,
      dalibor topic

    22. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Forget Sun.

      Their source code is, by all I can see from feedback in the Mustang (next version of Java) forum on java.net, an unbuildable, unmaintanable mess, just like proprietary software usually is. Sun's code is increasingly irrelevant, and opening it up would probably only end up with some poor people wasting their time trying to breath life into the baroque bitrotting corpus and getting frustrated with Sun's bizarre control urge in their licensing division.

      If there is any future for Java, the platform, it lies within GNU Classpath and its family of runtimes. Sun had total control of the platform and blew it. Now it's up to us to fix it, and on many accounts, the free implementation are much better than the non-free ones. So noone in the free runtime community really cares about Sun or Sun's source code any more. People are increasingly busy taking the future of Java in their hands.

      What's really funny is that people hacking on free software runtimes like Kaffe or Gcj want to be compatible with Sun's implementation, but Sun doesn't really want us to, because people would switch in droves. So they make it nearly impossible get the compliance test suites, the API specs are in many parts a complete joke, and the language and VM specs haven't ever been updated to match reality since Java 1.1. They do flail their arms around a lot, and there is a lot of chest-thumping on Sun's side about how open they are, but in reality, there is very, very little coming out of Sun that's really useful for a free software implementation of Java.

      They've done some great work making themselves irrelevant and to turn a nice platform into a legacy platform. Oh, and before I forget, ... go mono!

      cheers,
      dalibor topic,
      Kaffe dev

    23. Re:Mono is Wonderful by hbusa · · Score: 1

      mono is not reverse engg . it is implemented based on specifications released by Microsoft under the ECMA standards .

      microsoft cannot snatch anything from mono developers coz all the implementations are based on open standards.

      Happy Coding

    24. Re:Mono is Wonderful by Spiked_Three · · Score: 1

      Your fears are misplaced.
      Microsoft only wants to control the API. By following the MS defined API in mono, you are making bill's dream come true. Increased popularity with mono means and increased popularity with a MS API.
      Remember, Windows didn't sell the best initially, office did. And people bought Windows to run office. Now its the same thing - lot's of good .Net mono apps? great, where is the fastest most reliable place to run them? Contrary to popular ./ belief, it isn't linux.
      Mono is a hugely positive thing for MS.

      --
      slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
    25. Re:Mono is Wonderful by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sour Grapes huh?

      Because you are incapable of catching up with Sun, pissed off you can't use their code in yours, and that you can't even come close to meeting requirements with your project, so Sun's Java MUST suck! And the only way it can be good is if it is open sourced and you can rip off of it!.... Right.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    26. Re:Mono is Wonderful by creysoft · · Score: 1

      I happen to know what it's like to reverse engineer a compiler, since that's what I'm doing right now. My project is trying to reverse engineer a rather coherent, fairly well documented system. Also, our target is now defunct, and we don't have to get "certified."

      I cannot imagine what it must be like to try and do the same with documentation that hasn't been updated for years, and with the target's parent company being openly hostile toward you.

      He's not complaining because he can't use Java's source code. He even said Java's source code is a complete mess. Few open source developers even want to SEE proprietary (or formerly proprietary) code, much less try to shoehorn it into their application.

      We aren't asking for free code. We're asking for companies that brag about openness to use well documented, open specifications so we can see what we're doing. If they want to jerk the rug out from under us at version 2, and randomly change a bunch of stuff around, that's fine - as long as they tell us what they did.

      And before anyone goes off on a rant about how it's not a business's responsibility to pander to the FLOSS community, you are correct. Bear in mind, however, that Sun likes to claim it's FLOSS-friendly. If you're going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk.

      --
      Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
  2. Is there a nice guide online to coding in Mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You know, something like:

    1) Install/Emerge these tools
    2) Install this nice IDE with API completion and stuff

    It'd be nice if there was an Eclipse plugin for C# and Mono hehehe

    1. Re:Is there a nice guide online to coding in Mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. Emerge monodevelop
      2. Afaik there even is a plugin for Eclipse

    2. Re:Is there a nice guide online to coding in Mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wtf Why the hell is Mozilla 1.7.5 a dependency?!

      I understand the other stuff, but Mozilla? Or does gtk# provide something like HTMLComponent or something that uses Gecko?

    3. Re:Is there a nice guide online to coding in Mono? by ohyedoggies · · Score: 1

      x-develop.com... that's, IMHO, much better a Linux C# IDE than monodevelop.

    4. Re:Is there a nice guide online to coding in Mono? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, there are mono bindings for gecko.

      * dev-dotnet/gecko-sharp
      Latest version available: 0.6
      Latest version installed: 0.6
      Size of downloaded files: 108 kB
      Homepage: http://www.go-mono.com/
      Description: A Gtk# Mozilla binding
      License: GPL-2

  3. Mono talk w/ icaza by camcorder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Miguel de Icaza interview about mono on lug radio. Really nice one.

    1. Re:Mono talk w/ icaza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, Karma boy, this was already posted on Slashdot.

    2. Re:Mono talk w/ icaza by samael · · Score: 1

      Has anyone transcribed it?

  4. huh? by utexaspunk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tomboy, F-spot, Muine & Blam! ... MooTag, GFax, GIB, Sonance and Bluefunk

    WTF? Who comes up with names like these? I would blame the MBA's, but this is open source stuff, right?

    1. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MS have copyright on the rest

    2. Re:huh? by SoCalChris · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously...

      At least give the program a somewhat descriptive name, ie Office, Internet Explorer, TurboTax, NotePad, Photoshop, etc...

      If I were looking for a music player on Google, I wouldn't even give search results about programs named Muine, MooTag or Bluefunk a second glance, simply because they don't sound like music players.

      Open Source programmers are good at a lot of things, but naming their programs isn't one of them. Just look at the whole Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox fiasco.

    3. Re:huh? by John+Fulmer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At least give the program a somewhat descriptive name, ie Office, Internet Explorer, TurboTax, NotePad, Photoshop, etc...

      Yeah, and forget Access, Visio, Excel, BOB, Acrobat, Encore, PowerPoint, and similarly named programs. I can't tell what they do either just by their names....

    4. Re:huh? by 0racle · · Score: 1

      You mean names like Solaris, Maya, Bryce, and Jam? Its just a name, and the creators can name it whatever they want. A name isn't used to describe something, it is used to differenciate something from someone else. Does the name Toronto tell you anything about the city, or can you tell what type of person someone is when you hear the name Bob Smith?

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    5. Re:huh? by Coryoth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At least give the program a somewhat descriptive name

      You mean like Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Visio, Access, Oracle, or Winamp?

      As we all know a product can only become successful if it has a clearly descriptive name like those above. I know whenever I want password and authentication software I think of access, when I want a scientific data visualization library I think of Visio, and it is clear that Winamp is software to provide fine tuning for your desktop volume controls.

      Oddly however; stupidly named programs like Firefox (what on earth does that do?) seem to be doing okay.

      Have you ever taken part in a GIMP renaming brainstorm session?

      Paint (taken)
      Photoshop (taken)
      Photopaint (taken)
      Paintshop (taken)
      ImagePaint (taken)
      Imageshop (taken)
      Photostudio (taken)
      PaintStudio (taken)
      Studiopaint (taken)
      Imagestudio (taken)
      PhotoImage (taken)
      ImagePhoto (taken)
      .
      .
      .

      I'm not saying GIMP is the best name, but when you demand an obvious name that associates with the field you suddenly find lots of other people who were thinking the same thing.

      Jedidiah.

    6. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yeah, and forget Access, Visio, Excel, BOB, Acrobat, Encore, PowerPoint, and similarly named programs. I can't tell what they do either just by their names....

      Huh? Isn't it obvious from the name that PowerPoint is used to create powerpoint presentations?

    7. Re:huh? by bonch · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's more than that. Those names just sound better and friendlier, and are easy to remember.

      I don't know why, but just about every OSS project title is some tongue-in-cheek in-joke amongst the developers who are the only ones who think it's funny. Like KDE programs all being titled with puns starting with "K."

      Besides, Powerpoint, Access, and Visio have reasonable similarity with what they actually do. As for your completely random and pointless reference to Bob, I'm still amazed Slashdotters obsess over this small desktop shell released for a short time way back in 1994.

    8. Re:huh? by cortana · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Powerpoint has a lot to do with connecting electrical devices to their supplies. Visio is one of those dreadful, generic, probably machine-generated name with as much character as Exxon or Verizon. At lease Access is a real word, though what it has to do with databases is anyone's guess.

      Your examples only show that everyone is shit at picking names for their software projects. ;)

    9. Re:huh? by mailtomomo · · Score: 0

      because nothing scream "search engine" like Google ?

    10. Re:huh? by obender · · Score: 1
      At least give the program a somewhat descriptive name, ie Office, Internet Explorer, TurboTax, NotePad, Photoshop, etc...

      These names don't mean much if your native language is not English. You just learn to associate them with the software.
      Sometimes the same goes for icons. I still remember this funny icon in early Windows that was supposed to simbolize mail. Later on I saw the real object in a movie, it was an American mailbox.

      Now I don't know if the person that named Internet Explorer thought of an analogy of a risky trip were you are continuously in danger of being attacked and suffering from various infectious diseases but I can say the application seems to live up to its name.

    11. Re:huh? by stuntpope · · Score: 1

      Why then would you even go to Google? (yes, I know the reason behind the name - but how obvious is that meaning to most users who go "google" something?)

    12. Re:huh? by FooBarWidget · · Score: 1

      How are "Text Editor" (menu label for gedit), "Inkscape Vector Drawing Program" (menu label for Inkscape), "Mozilla Web Browser" (menu label for Mozilla) and "Totem Movie Player" (menu label for Totem) not descriptive?

      "If I were looking for a music player on Google, I wouldn't even give search results about programs named Muine, MooTag or Bluefunk a second glance, simply because they don't sound like music players."

      By your reasoning, you wouldn't even take a look at Winamp and FooBar2000 even if someone is holding a gun to your head.

      In what way are DivX ;-) (yes including smiley), Revemu, Freya, Cake Walker and Maya descriptive? Do you hear people complaining about those names?

      By your own reasoning: closed source programmers are good at a lot of things, but naming their programs isn't one of them.

    13. Re:huh? by soliptic · · Score: 1
      At least give the program a somewhat descriptive name, ie Office, Internet Explorer, TurboTax, NotePad, Photoshop, etc...

      I love the way you undermine yourself in the very next sentence!

      If I were looking for a music player on Google

      On what, sorry? Google? What is this nonsense word? Oh... it's a search engine? Well good lord! I never dreamt of associating the meaningless gibberish "google" with that. Why didn't they call themselves SearchEngine?

    14. Re:huh? by bonch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Powerpoint, as in making powerful points. Most presentations are made up of bullet points.

      Visio, as in vision, as in visualizing schematics.

      This isn't difficult.

    15. Re:huh? by cortana · · Score: 1

      The Powerpoint association honestly never occured to me, perhaps because I have never seen a Powerpoint presentation that actually benefitted from all the animations, sounds, clip art and other bullshit with which everyone insists on coating their presentations (heh, a sizable number of people just call them "powerpoints").

      Powerpoint is the best tool to use for disguising the fact that you have nothing to say; I believe an NY Times article once said that it was uniquely suited to our modern age of obfuscation, where manipulating facts is more important than presenting them clearly.

    16. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you must sure miss out on a lot of good stuff.

    17. Re:huh? by bokmann · · Score: 1

      What does 'Amazon' have to do with a bookstore?

      What does 'Google' have to do with searching?

      For that matter, what the heck does 'McDonalds' have to do with hamburgers?

      I guess we should all live in a world of 'Pizza Huts' and 'bookstore.com's according to this theory.

  5. Everybody knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sure, everyone knows Tomboy, F-spot, Beagle, MonoDevelop, Muine, Blam! or Monodoc

    Uh, right, I knew that. Sure I did. Yup. They're superhits, so I'd be a fool not to. Got that right.

  6. Hmm, does realy Mono work.. by Masq666 · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I've heard a lot about Mono not working as it's supposed to do. (buggy, missing features) but i havent tested it myself.. So my question is, does it realy work? Also check out Bits of News

    --
    Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
    1. Re:Hmm, does realy Mono work.. by WombatControl · · Score: 1

      Mono is actually rather stable, provided you're not trying to use things like Windows.Forms, which is still a bit buggy, IMHO.

      If you're using Mono for GNOME/GTK development, it's actually quite stable, and much more usable than trying to write applications in old-fashioned C.

    2. Re:Hmm, does realy Mono work.. by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're using Mono for GNOME/GTK development, it's actually quite stable, and much more usable than trying to write applications in old-fashioned C.

      Yes, but let's be honest here: if you're writing a GTK/GNOME application you're writing a reasonably high level application and pretty much anything (Java, Python, hell even C++, bindings) would be "much more usable" than "old-fashioned C".

      Please note that I am not dissing Mono. Variety is nice, and C# does provide a relatively nice language to be able to code GUI applications in. My issue is with the common implication that C# is unique in this - it isn't. Try out PyGTK for instance (particularly with libGlade).

      Jedidiah.

  7. iBookshelf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Damn, there goes another application concept I had, to manage my ever increasing collection of books.

    Does it handle stuff like "This book has been lent to Bob"?

  8. Re:Mono - HOWTO Shoot Yourself In The Foot by nberardi · · Score: 1

    Why do you say this Mono has done a good job at implimenting the CLR from the ECMA specifications?

  9. Mono progress by untaken_name · · Score: 2, Funny

    I had mono once...damn, it sucked. I'm glad to see there's been progress in fighting this disea...erm, whoops. Terribly sorry. I was thinking of something different.

  10. Beagle by ultrabot · · Score: 4, Informative

    Interestingly, the summary neglected to mention Beagle, the one Mono application I actually plan on using and that has created some momentum for getting the Mono into various distros.

    If Mono proves to be snappier than, say, Java, there might be some hope for it but the spectre of living under the mercy of MSFT is not easy to dodge. It's still there, however much people tried to not talk or think about it.

    --
    Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    1. Re:Beagle by nberardi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Everybody talks about living under the mercy of Microsoft when using Mono, but really it isn't an different than living under the mercy of Sun, both companies have their history of sqaushing compitition.

    2. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mono is slow and bloated compared with Java.

      Let's just say open source's best and brightest aren't willing to help Microsoft and one of their fanboys further the MS empire...

    3. Re:Beagle by Taladar · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is why most smart people don't write open source software in Java nor in Mono.

    4. Re:Beagle by ultrabot · · Score: 1

      Everybody talks about living under the mercy of Microsoft when using Mono, but really it isn't an different than living under the mercy of Sun, both companies have their history of sqaushing compitition.

      Just guess which one is more likely to attempt a lawsuit attack on the desktop Linux users. ISTR also that clean-room Java implementations are less infringing than Mono (which implements the ECMA standard that is granted with "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms). Too bad Java is a dog, especially for smallish desktop apps.

      Of course people should choose a truly open solution whenever appropriate :-).

      --
      Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    5. Re:Beagle by Skeezix · · Score: 1

      Beagle rocks. It was pretty easy to get set up on Ubuntu (Hoary). If anyone has yet to see Beagle in action, check out Nat's flash demos. The "live queries" demo is my favourite.

    6. Re:Beagle by Glock27 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Too bad Java is a dog, especially for smallish desktop apps.

      You should try gcj with the SWT or gnome-java bindings. Nothing doggy about it. :-)

      BTW, gcj is the gcc Java compiler.

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    7. Re:Beagle by LDoggg_ · · Score: 2, Informative

      Huh?
      There are thousands of open source java projects.
      Here's a few.

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
    8. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He said "smart" not "moron with a degree in 'web design'", which is what most of those are. "Ooo, look, I can make text dance with an applet! I should develop applications with my 1337 5|<|11z!"

      The only Java application I can think of in wide use is Eclipse, which is really amusing when you realize it's only useful for developing Java applications.

      No one in the real world uses Java for anything serious, unless it winds up becoming fraught with problems. (Remember how their forums go down every other day? Guess what they're written using...)

    9. Re:Beagle by LDoggg_ · · Score: 1

      Azureus (The #2 download on sourceforge) is a dancing text applet?
      Oracle financial applications are not in the real world?
      And phpeclipse isn't useful?
      And your big gripe is a video game's custom forum software? (albeit an excellent game)

      Thanks for the great post.

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
    10. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One day you'll get to college, then leave college and you might understand by that time in around 8 years or so that there is a reason that J2EE is so popular with many institutions, and that is because it works.

      Just because there aren't many consumer level applications written in Java doesn't mean that it isn't used.

      And I think you are confusing Java with Javascript, idiot.

    11. Re:Beagle by White+Roses · · Score: 1
      While this somewhat true of working with any corporation with their own interests, Sun actually publishes a blessed and compatible JVM for Linux that is kept on par with the Windows and Solaris versions. Apple's version is written in cooperation with Sun, and IBM's, well, I don't know all the details there, but I expect there's an agreement in place. In any case, I've rarely had an issue running Swing GUI based Java apps across multiple platforms.

      On the other hand, if you consider Mono not as a .NET framework, but as a stand-alone environment for which .NET compatibility is merely an interesting side effect, then the whole point becomes moot. If interoperability isn't an issue for MS or Mono, then Java is back to standing on the other side of the street as an interoperable language, designed as such, with the clearly stated goal of cross-platform compatibility. There is some evidence that this is the attitude of the Mono developers. So, comparing Mono to Java becomes more academic. Yes, C# is different, maybe faster, maybe better. But it isn't cross-platform, and that's what I'm looking for. Is Java cross-platform? For a given value of "cross-platform," yes. Is Mono? Not even close to the same value.

      On the Java side, yes, we don't know what Sun is building in to the JVMs, and OSS JVMs aren't available (though I hear rumors from time to time of a truly OSS JVM), but Java is supported by more than just Sun. IBM has a huge investment in Java technologies, as do Apple and Oracle, to name a couple. Support for different platforms is a well-known goal of Java technology. Until I can build the bytecode on my Mac and run it directly on a Linux, or Windows, or Solaris, or whatever, without recoding, recompiling, and so on, I'll be sticking with Java.

      So, in summary, two points: (a) with Java, you're not as much at the mercy of Sun as you are if you think Mono and .NET will remain interoperable and (b) if Mono isn't actively trying to maintain interoperability with .NET, then you're not living under the mercy of MS anyway.

      --
      Do not touch -Willie
    12. Re:Beagle by aled · · Score: 1

      we don't know what Sun is building in to the JVMs

      Why not? sources for Java are available for download from Sun since version 1.0 at least. The licence isn't fully open source but you can see the sources and build it.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    13. Re:Beagle by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

      would ms dare to get into a patent battle with SuSE? bearing in mind IBM has lots of stock in it, and I imagine novel has plenty of patents too from their netware days.

    14. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the forum software is just part of the account management software. Your accounts are created using a Java backend. Remember how people were having terrible times simply signing up to the game? That's because the account software is written using J2EE. Remember how the login servers go down constantly? J2EE again. It's a very good example of how J2EE doesn't scale that most Slashdotters probably are familiar with, given the recent stories about the game. Almost all the server problems the game has been having are related to that J2EE layer that keeps on screwing up.

      On the Oracle front, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen an Oracle install go south soley due to their crappy suite of Java apps. Due to Java's wonderful compatibility, Oracle bundles their own version of the JRE. Frequently this causes massive conflicts with the other JRE the developer just had to install in order to make use of language features Sun didn't see fit to add until after C# did. (Keep in mind this is development, not deployment, so the web server and the DB server are on the same box.) This leads to a GIANT mess.

      And I can't imagine why anyone would use Eclipse to develop PHP code, when there are plenty of better text editors available out there. Unless you like showing off how you can use a gig of RAM to edit a 2K text file.

    15. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, I posted as someone who's worked with J2EE before. That's why the post is anonymous. Every single project I've ever been involved with (soley as a programmer, mind you, I've yet to get to try designing anything with J2EE) that's even touched J2EE (let along Java) has devolved into a giant mess.

      I'm sure someone will come in and say that's because we weren't "using J2EE right" but leave it at that. I've never heard anyone describe how to "use J2EE right" but I've heard plenty of ways to use it wrong. Seems to me that using J2EE is a surefire way to ensure that you'll be getting new servers, since whatever you used to use will no longer be able to handle the massive load of the new J2EE server, complete with the wonder JRE's "never-shrink" policy on heap-space.

    16. Re:Beagle by deander2 · · Score: 1

      or you can try just SWT or the GTK-java bindings by themselves. gcj is actually slower than the JRE. :-)

    17. Re:Beagle by LDoggg_ · · Score: 1

      Actually, the forum software is just part of the account management software. Your accounts are created using a Java backend. Remember how people were having terrible times simply signing up to the game? That's because the account software is written using J2EE. Remember how the login servers go down constantly? J2EE again. It's a very good example of how J2EE doesn't scale that most Slashdotters probably are familiar with, given the recent stories about the game. Almost all the server problems the game has been having are related to that J2EE layer that keeps on screwing up.

      You're privvy to Blizzard's code? And you're positive that this a result of the language and APIs, not just a bad implementation?

      On the Oracle front, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen an Oracle install go south soley due to their crappy suite of Java apps. Due to Java's wonderful compatibility, Oracle bundles their own version of the JRE. Frequently this causes massive conflicts with the other JRE the developer just had to install in order to make use of language features Sun didn't see fit to add until after C# did. (Keep in mind this is development, not deployment, so the web server and the DB server are on the same box.) This leads to a GIANT mess.

      Sun added features oracle felt were missing long before C# came out. And I'm currently running oracle apps on konqureror in linux using the standard sun 1.4.2 jvm, not jinitiator.

      And I can't imagine why anyone would use Eclipse to develop PHP code, when there are plenty of better text editors available out there. Unless you like showing off how you can use a gig of RAM to edit a 2K text file.

      A gig of RAM? Seems to be running in under 47 megs for me.
      It is kind of nice being able to have code-assist on php when there are so many global methods available. Being able to debug, and seing code outlines are nice as well. Also, there are other usefull plugins like jdbc clients that can be used concurrently in the IDE. Not that you would have noticed when you can't get passed simply regurgitating FUD

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
    18. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps coding just isn't for you?
      We've all been blessed with different talents. I'm sure one day you'll find your niche.
      Keep your chin up, brother.

    19. Re:Beagle by Taladar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then why is it that my Linux Desktop, using Open Source Software almost exclusively (Opera being the exception) doesn't have one single Java App or Library in the whole dependency tree of all the apps I use? After all there are lots of C, C++, Perl, Python and Ruby apps and libs.

      Why is it that anytime someone asks for an example of a decent Java App the Java Fanboys come up with either Eclipse (doesn't count, only useful with Java) or Azureus?

      Why is it I have to install old versions of the Java Runtime to run certain InstallAnywhere Installers (like Borland Together, needs 1.3.1, didn't run with 1.4.2 runtime, needed it because a University Software Engineering Course insisted on it). Never had that problem with Perl or Python.

      Sure, you may have caught lots of PHBs with all that hype around Java but how much of it really pays off in the real world?

    20. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The geniuses at Blizzard have, at times, allowed stack traces to be dumped when the server bombs. So, yes, it's well known to be J2EE.

    21. Re:Beagle by lupus-slash · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mono is slow and bloated compared with Java.
      You obviously didn't measure, see:
      http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2 005/Fe b-09.html

    22. Re:Beagle by abigor · · Score: 1

      Java is huge on the server-side. Visit IBM's WebSphere site sometime to see a list of their clients. It pays off, all right, a lot more than your little desktop apps ever will.

      Java never made much of an impact on the desktop. It's too bad, because there are nice KDE bindings for Java.

    23. Re:Beagle by Bulln-Bulln · · Score: 1

      Doesn't gcj destroy the point of Java? How plattforn independent is it once you compiled an app into native code?

    24. Re:Beagle by dr.badass · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, the summary neglected to mention Beagle, the one Mono application I actually plan on using and that has created some momentum for getting the Mono into various distros.

      The reason it wasn't mentioned is illustrated by what most of the comments in this thread are about: "Java Sucks vs. Mono Sucks".

      People just seem more interested in the languages than in the applications that can be written in them.

      This is understandable, I suppose, given the mostly-programmer audience that Slashdot (and open source in general) have, but tragic when it means that projects like Beagle get ignored.

      The point of the OSNews thing was to show that there's a huge amount of new and interesting work being done with Mono, flaws or no, and I think it's rather silly for so many to ignore it because of their gripes about the language itself.

      IMHO, Beagle is one of the most important projects in open source today, and yet it's argued-down because of the language it's written in.

      --
      Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
    25. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh?
      There are thousands of open source java projects.
      Here's a few.


      The vast majority of projects listed (including all but a single one on the front page) are only of use to Java programmers.

    26. Re:Beagle by LDoggg_ · · Score: 1

      Why is it that anytime someone asks for an example of a decent Java App the Java Fanboys come up with either Eclipse (doesn't count, only useful with Java) or Azureus?

      Because both are good useful applications? Didn't realize that made someone a fanboy. I also find many applications written several other languages to be useful.

      And as far as eclipse only being useful for java, check out http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com & http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net
      Hundreds of plugins for many for languages other than java.

      Sure, you may have caught lots of PHBs with all that hype around Java but how much of it really pays off in the real world?

      Not sure which real world you are referring to here, but I've always just used the right tool for the job. Sometimes its C & SDL , sometimes its PHP, sometimes its python & Tk, sometimes its a simple bash script, sometimes it J2EE.

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
    27. Re:Beagle by QuantumG · · Score: 1

      Pfft, it's not like you can pick up a gnome-java app and run it on another platform anyway. I really don't know why people bought into this "isn't it great that apps will run (slowly) on any platform" crap. Really, how hard is it to compile your app once for each platform? It's not.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    28. Re:Beagle by tigeba · · Score: 1


      You are right J2EE does not scale

      http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1640234,00. as p

    29. Re:Beagle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad Java is a dog, especially for smallish desktop apps.

      Really? Did you check out any well-written Java apps lately? On 1.5, that is.

    30. Re:Beagle by White+Roses · · Score: 1

      Correct me if I am wrong, but that's for the libraries (java.lang, java.util, etc.) and not for the actual VM code. I've seen the source code for, say, java.lang.String, but never for the VM. Which is not to say I'm right, just that I may have a large gap in my knowledge. Please fill it. I'd love it if there was an OSS JVM.

      --
      Do not touch -Willie
    31. Re:Beagle by aled · · Score: 1

      You can download the source code for the JVM under SCSL or JRL licence in the same download page as the jsdk or runtime. The source for the libraries comes with the jsdk.
      You can even download the development snapshots for the next version of Java 6.0 codenamed Mustang. It's still at a very early development stage.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
  11. Wrong punctuation? by Speare · · Score: 4, Interesting
    with 'super-hits' like Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam! and other, less known gems,

    I haven't heard of even one of these "super hits." I think that should have been punctuated,

    with 'super-hits' like Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam! and other less-known gems,

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
    1. Re:Wrong punctuation? by Taladar · · Score: 1

      I suspected I wasn't the only one. Might have something to do with me not using gnome nor kde (but using linux as primary OS).

    2. Re:Wrong punctuation? by Otter · · Score: 5, Funny
      Yes, as a rabidly psychotic MooTag fanboy (Nothing has been holding back open-source more than the shortage of half-finished ID3 tag editors!) I am enraged at this obvious favoritism towards Blam! and F-spot!

      [Insert requisite stream of sexist abuse towards Eugenia...]

    3. Re:Wrong punctuation? by pohl · · Score: 1
      You didn't get the memo? All mono articles are for astroturfing MS fanboys. Articles about Java are where the real slashdot crowd gets to post.

      Example: "Java!? Icky, bloated runtime. Yuck."

      Contrast: "Mono!? It's teh roX0rs! Finally EXE's and DLL's on my Debian box!!!"

      --

      The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

  12. Re:Mono - HOWTO Shoot Yourself In The Foot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By providing an excellent platform for application development? How dare they!

  13. C# Rocks - go mono go. by Tanaka · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm just getting into C#, and I love it. One interesting thing I found was that if I ran a socket server app on Windows, I couldn't connect more than 64 clients in a single thread. I tried the same binary on Linux/Mono, and it bombed out at 1011 connections.

    Keep up the good work - I'm loving it!

    1. Re:C# Rocks - go mono go. by telecsan · · Score: 1

      Watch out - McDonalds will probably take issue with your infringing on their "I'm loving it!" slogan.

    2. Re:C# Rocks - go mono go. by jdunn14 · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you're curious about that 64 client limit check out winnt.h and look for MAXIMUM_WAIT_OBJECTS (in mine it's on line 1354):
      #define MAXIMUM_WAIT_OBJECTS 64 // Maximum number of wait objects

      This is the limit on the number of objects that can be waited for in WaitForMultipleObjects calls. The same limit is enforced in winsock2 for select calls, I believe because in the end microsoft's select implementation is using WaitForMultipleObjects underneath. (Also note that the winnt.h header file is entirely too large for a single header (9170 lines), but hey, that's window's style for ya).

    3. Re:C# Rocks - go mono go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't this only work for C++? I not sure, but I dont think you can get over the 64 connection limit in Windows c#.

    4. Re:C# Rocks - go mono go. by spongman · · Score: 3, Insightful
      socket servers in .NET should be written using the {Begin|End}{Accept|Send|Receive} Socket methods. These methods make usee of completion ports on Win2k and later (and assync-io on Mono) and are the recommended way to ensure scalability. the old Unix 'select' pattern is broken as far as scalability is concerned - even on Unix.

      I've had a .NET app handle 100,000+ active TCP connections on a Win2k3 box without blinking an eye.

      Just watch out for heap fragmentation caused by pinning your input buffers. It's best to preallocate them in blocks and reuse them when you can.

    5. Re:C# Rocks - go mono go. by prockcore · · Score: 1

      Also note that the winnt.h header file is entirely too large for a single header (9170 lines), but hey, that's window's style for ya

      It's also Apple's style.

      Just look at mDNSResponder.

      mDNS.c is 318587 bytes
      mDNSClientAPI.h is 78048 bytes

      At least winnt.h is for all of window's standard library. mDNS is just for rendezvous.

  14. "Bullshit & FUD" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You know what "MFC, COM & DNA roxzzz !" :))

    Come on, watch on sourceforge, almost no mono projects !!!!

    As a comparaison, look at opensource Java projects or look at PHP projects, or Python based projects there are thousands and thousands. This is fact.

    So realy, mono by lack of support from MS has few chance to survive. That may be a pitty but it has no future because MS supporting mono is like shooting in their own foot as mono is mainly for non MS oses ;-)

    Who on earth think MS will realy want to push & help (I mean realy help, like opensourcing the whole .net platform, or by opening ALL the specification of .net and not only a small subset) for building a platform that could endanger their "milking cow" suppremacy : ie, windows OS !

    This is billion $ story guys, and this is pure corporate strategy. As a conclusion of that, .net will only be Microsoft Windows only and MS will make sure it will be so.

    The only good question about .net/java war those days is : when will sun relase the J2SE (java core) under some OSI approved license? so that it can boost implementation of GNU classpath project ;-)

    Be sure that this will also happen, has Sun has no other solution, has Java is now a too much big "pet" for them to handle it without major involvement of the community. The only alternative for them is to sink with their baby ;-)

    By other "cheif comanders" like IBM and Oracle will not let them commit in suicide, be sure :))

    1. Re:"Bullshit & FUD" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's funny, your title describes your post perfectly!

      I never see so much FUD other than someone who is screaming FUD FUD FUD themselves...

  15. Dashboard by Xpilot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm really looking forward to Dashboard (not mentioned in the article), the desktop app that uses Beagle to gives relevant information that it's collected on your computer about your current activity. It sounds really cool, and Open Source hackers came up with this before Microsoft did.

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
    1. Re:Dashboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Open Source hackers came up with this before Microsoft did.
      I dunno, this looks a lot like the Microsoft Research 'sidebar' thing that I saw a few years ago...
    2. Re:Dashboard by idlake · · Score: 1

      Neither Microsoft nor Gnome hackers came up with this first; providing useful information without requiring the user to make explicit queries has been studied on and off in various areas of computer science. There was a bout of academic interest half a dozen years ago, and those graduates have moved on to Microsoft and other industry labs, hence this is making it into products now.

    3. Re:Dashboard by watchmaker1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dashboard was really just search, and is largely dead. The bones of Dashboard were used to build the framework for Beagle.

      You can do dashboard and so much more with the functionality in Beagle. Any future Dashboard-like app would probably be from-scratch on top of a Beagle back end.

    4. Re:Dashboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Dashboard is on hold until Beagle is more stable and can form the core of Dashboard's search capability. Beagle just provides a desktop search framework.

      Beagle is not intended to provide the implicit query functionality that Dashboard does. Also, there has been a little movement recently in getting Dashboard up and running again.

  16. Well... by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 5, Funny
    Mono is a huge part of my life!

    Every morning I get up and feed F-Spot (my Beagle). Then, I get out some eggs, cheese, and MooTag to make myself an omelet. I learned how to cook omelets from Emeril. So, it's Muine & Blam! and my omelets done!

    Next, I take a shower and wash off the Bluefunk. Once dressed in my suit and my PolarViewer glasses I call down to Tomboy (our doorman) and have him GIB up a cab.

    Once at work it is non-stop Gfaxes and sneaking some time with my SportTracker.

    --
    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
    1. Re:Well... by ssj_195 · · Score: 1

      The phrase "LOL" is over-used nowadays, but you got a genuine one out of me :) Bravo!

    2. Re:Well... by GileadGreene · · Score: 1
      It is clear that you aren't familiar with CSP at all. There are essentially two components to CSP: a mathematical theory of concurrency that allows for reasoning about concurrent systems, proving behavioral equivalences, checking for deadlock freedom, and other nifty features; and implementations of CSP-style concurrency abstractions for use in real programming.

      CSP provides a way to think about concurrency. Theoretical work in CSP is done in mathematical notation. Mechanical verification of CSP models can be carried out by translating those models into CSPm, a machine readable version of CSP that does indeed embed a Haskell-style functional language. However, CSPm is not intended for creating final implementations, merely for modelling and understanding a design at a higher level of abstraction.

      Occam provides one implementation of CSP-style concurrency in an actual programming language (literally built into the language). The advantage of doing this is that abstract system models of even very complex systems, that can be verified to be free of deadlock, and to meet their specifications, can easily be translated into equivalent software that will also maintain those properties. It's nice to have those features built into the language, but by no means absolutely necessary - see for example Peter Welch's work on building CSP-style primitives for Java (the JCSP project).

      Yes, Haskell provides a Concurrent library with various threading primitives. But the point is that the threads model is decades old, and not the best way to do concurrent programming - it predates monitors (which everyone seems to agree are a good idea), and Hoare discarded his monitor concept to develop CSP due to weaknesses in the monitor idea. But the threads model, while easy to understand, can be very difficult to apply safely in any system above a modest level of complexity. One problem is that threads can often be tightly interdependent, so that their semantics compose in non-trivial ways - the whole skill in multi-threaded programming lies in setting up and staying in control of these complex interactions. On the other hand, parallel composition of CSP processes is mathematically clean, yields no engineering surprises and scales well with system complexity. The result is cleaner concurrent systems, in a much more understandable and maintainable form.

      Haskell is a great language. Just not necessarily the best one to use for concurrent applications. Presumably you could build a library of CSP-style primitives for Haskell on top of the existing threads library (similar to JCSP for Java). But it would be nicer if it was built directly into the language (cf occam, Erlang, Newsqueak, or Concurrent ML). If type-systems are your particular fetish then yeah, occam may not be for you - it was originally designed for embedded systems. In that case, you might want to check out Concurrent ML or Erlang instead.

    3. Re:Well... by Coryoth · · Score: 1

      In the case of Eiffel I really think it's a case of not offering anything truly significant for programmer productivity. I mean, yeah, Design by Contract is generally a good idea, but it's nothing assert() and good coding standards can't provide. Non-trivial "contracts" can't be verified until run-time anyway, and assert() works just fine for that.

      Yes, and I can do OO programming in C using structs and function pointers. That doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate a language that provides easy access to the tools in a manner that is easier to read, write and maintain. That's what DbC does for you with regard to assert statements. Yes, you can go around sticking asserts everywhere (and have an extra method run after any method to check the object invariants have remained unchanged), but that does get messy, and it doesn't scale well when you start doing class inheritence and having to worry about weakening of strengthening of constraints (you want to be able to weaken preconditions, but not post conditions or invariants) and so on. Contracts make it clear what you are doing, and actually supporting them explicitly in the language is a good idea. You can do DbC in Java, Python, and presumably other languages if you want, you're not just restricted to Eiffel. The catch is that those DbC systems require using add ons to the standard interpreters - why not just build it into the language? Is it really going to hurt anyone?

      As to CSP - someone else seems to have gotten to that, and they seem to have a far better grasp of it than I do, so I'll simply refer you to their comments.

      Jedidiah.

    4. Re:Well... by warrax_666 · · Score: 1
      doesn't scale well when you start doing class inheritence and having to worry about weakening of strengthening of constraints (you want to be able to weaken preconditions, but not post conditions or invariants) and so on

      That's true of course... hadn't thought of that.


      You can do DbC in Java, Python, and presumably other languages if you want, you're not just restricted to Eiffel. The catch is that those DbC systems require using add ons to the standard interpreters


      In the case of Python you should be able to do it using a metaclass which automatically does the right thing and calls the appropriate __pre_$METHOD and __post_$METHOD (or whatever you'd like to call them) methods at the appropriate times. A bit messy, but not that messy.

      why not just build it into the language? Is it really going to hurt anyone?

      Porbably not, but good luck getting the C committe, or the Haskell people, or ... to add it to their languages :). If you're designing a new language, sure, go for it... or you could try designing an extensible language and end up with LISP/Scheme. :)

      Anyway, I'm done. I shouldn't really be wasting any more time on /.
      --
      HAND.
  17. Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm writing this as a mere user, not as a developer, but from my point of view mono really is impressive. Just looking over the list of apps on osnews shows that mono really seems to give developers a framework that let's them develop great application in a relatively short time and in the end it's users like me who profit from that. ;-D

    Great works, mono devs.

    And to all those trolls that will come out of the woodwork with every mono story, telling us that mono is the end of open source:
    Please, for once in your miserable lifes try to provide arguments for your point that go beyond MS is evil (though I would readily agree with that) and therefor mono is the suX0r.

    1. Re:Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, I love how anything that isn't rabidly pro-Mono instantly gets marked troll.

      Guess what: there's this simple problem with Mono. It's OS/2 all over again, except Linux is already losing.

      Mono spells the end of the Linux desktop, not that there was any Linux desktop in the first place. Why? Mono offers a path between Linux and Windows that allow you to keep the same apps.

      Except that Windows.NET apps are guarenteed to run on Windows, but may not run on Mono, and Mono apps are guarenteed to run on both.

      Meaning that you get a larger pool of software on Windows, like you already do. Meaning that there's basically no point in writing a Linux port when you can write a Windows version and claim that it runs under Linux due to Mono.

      Mono will help ensure that our desktops and servers continue to run Windows. Sounds like a real win to the open source community.

      Linux is already basically cut out of the desktop since people will use whatever comes with their computer, which is universely Windows (or MacOS), and companies will continue to pay top-dollar for whatever the salesman sells them. Mono will help Microsoft in the long run by ensuring that Windows runs more software than Linux does (which it, of course, already does).

      In fact, this is already happening to a lesser degree. At one point we were going to buy a Red Hat support contract where I work, but because Apache, MySQL, and Tomcat all run on Windows, we instead decided to stick with Windows 2000 Server, since that's what Dell sells us anyway. We're considering getting new servers, too - which will be running Windows 2003 Server, of course. They'll be running Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, and a CVS server on Windows - because that's what the computer comes with.

      If those apps were only available for Linux, we'd probably be running Linux servers right now. But since they have Windows ports, we use Windows instead. It's considered "more secure," too, because IT already tests for Windows security and it would "cost extra" to keep up to date on Linux patches. So - no Linux for us, thanks to portability to Windows.

  18. Obligatory Quote by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 0

    "I thought I had mono once for a whole year, but it just turns out I was really bored". -- Wayne Campbell

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  19. good by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This should stop people using C for things like evolution. Sure C is a great lenguage, but you need to dominate it. Some people knows to use it, most of use humans don't (let's remember the simultaneous 11 buffer overflow vulnerabilities discovered in gaim the past year, making it probably the most insecure IM client ever). And let's no talk about OO, which can help a lot for those final-user apps. C is not a OO language. Yes you can try to use it as OO language like gnome/gtk/glib guys do but they're just trying. A language is either OO or not, C is not. C is a 70's language, stop making gnome "the 70's desktop" with no functional kparts equivalent (bonobo sucks) and use mono, dammit.

    1. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C is a sharp knife -- not to be used by children; but very handy when accuracy & effectiveness is needed.

    2. Re:good by grfpopl · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wow, it's really too bad that people these days think that OO is about a language spec. It's not! OO is a design paradigm! (ugh. i hate that word, but that's what it is.) Your design is either OO or not OO, and the language that you implement it in is irrelevant. All that c++ does that c doesn't is do a few checks in the compiler. You can implement OO designs in C, Scheme, and plenty of other languages that don't have built-in checks for such things. (and yes, c++ does have a number of other features, but they are wholly unrelated to OO) OO doesn't fix buffer overflows either. Why would it? If you have crappy design/use the wrong functions for the wrong things, then you're going to end up with buffer overflows. C# goes quite a ways, as a language, to prevent this, but don't confuse it with OO.

    3. Re:good by 21mhz · · Score: 1

      C is a sharp knife

      But then... C# is still sharper?

      --
      My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
    4. Re:good by claes · · Score: 1

      Please elaborate and describe these "few checks".

    5. Re:good by Dan+Ost · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A good modular design is not the same as Object-Oriented design. If the design
      uses polymorphism, then it's OO, otherwise it's just a modular design. Assuming
      you buy into the distinction I just made, it's unusual, but not difficult or impossible,
      to do OO in C since the language doesn't explicitly support polymorphism.

      In contrast, python makes polymorphism so simple that you often don't even
      realize you're doing it. With Java and C#, you either have to share a common
      ancester or implement the same interface.

      --

      *sigh* back to work...
    6. Re:good by grfpopl · · Score: 1

      i suppose i might have been clearer. c++ does all sorts of fancy type checks to make sure that what you're doing is legit, e.g. inheritance and so on, as well as implementing the whole thing with vtables so that you can have overloaded functions and so on which is convenient for OO designs, and something that c just plain does not do. it also has exception handling, and a number of other features. all of these can be done in c in one way or another, but they do usually come out looking cleaner in c++.

      conversely, in c, you can just pass void pointers around and make calls to function pointers with function signatures that you specify at your own whim and the compiler will be none the wiser. while you can still do this in c++, the compiler does provide you with a legit path so that it can do many of the checks itself.

    7. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know how Gtk+ actually works? It's definitely OO done in C (as is Xt, for that matter).

      Polymorphism is trivial in C, but I wouldn't really say that polymorphism isn't what is most fundamental to OO - dynamic dispatch and inheritance are usually considered more relevant (but it always depends on who you ask). Both of them are also possible in C.

      Parametric polymorphism isn't OO (although it's useful), nor is ad-hoc polymorphism.

      As for Python...duh, all untyped (or latently typed, or dynamically typed, whichever term you prefer) are fully polymorphic, but it's entirely orthogonal to OO; OO is just "easier" without types.

      With types, you need subtype polymorphism or structural polymorphism in order to have a useful object system.

    8. Re:good by NewOrleansNed · · Score: 1

      Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism. All 3 are needed for a language to be object oriented. C is definitely not polymorphic.

    9. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism. All 3 are needed for a language to be object oriented. C is definitely not polymorphic

      Considering the original implementation of C++ was a macro preprocessor for C you're well off the mark.

      C might not have language constructs for implementing polymorphism but it's actually pretty trivial to do.

      IMHO it's more difficult in C to implement Encapsulation and Inheritance... There again I've never had to do it - polymorphism I have.

    10. Re:good by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      I don't agree that polymorphism is the single distinction between OO and non-OO design. Other common features include encapsulation (of data and code into object) and inheritance. It's hard to call something "object-oriented" if it doesn't even use objects.

      Also, there is some support for polymorphism in C. You can use function pointers to call different functions with the same parameters, and you can use varargs to call the same function with very different parameters.

    11. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What, is that the answer you put on your CS 101 exam today?

  20. Re:Mono - HOWTO Shoot Yourself In The Foot by Taladar · · Score: 1

    He probably is one of the majority of Open Source followers thinking Mono will be sued by MS some time in the future and all the effort put into it will be wasted.

  21. Reverse engeneering :O by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Personally, I don't trust reverse engenering thing and I don't expect anybody at a corporate level can trust that.

    People need standard, people need complience tests.

    mono does not offer both because appart from a very core piece of the platform the rest is locked at Redmont side and MS will make sure it is kept so !

    As a consequence, MS can do whaever change they want in the .net platform and it could have any impact on mono users.

    Who will bet his money on moving sands ?

    So, unless MS comit strongly by submiting the WHOLE platform to ECMA or pushing their implementation to some OOS with an OSI approved license, Mono will struggle for survive next to his "big brother".

    In those conditions, this means, that mono will never be a complete, stable, relable solution.

    How much enterprise project do you have ever see running "mono" ? Personally none.
    Is it the problem of .net ? no, because .net seem to be fitting the gap let by ASP for all the small/medium project (depending on the "market").

    Anyway, comparing that with J2EE, I see daily J2EE OSS based projects implemented and that are proving linux+JBOSS or linux+Tomcat is a cost effective enterprise solution.

    So, Mono is still FUD for me and for all my .net collegues.

  22. Geeks getting mono? by Nine+Tenths+of+The+W · · Score: 4, Funny

    This has to be a first.

    --
    Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
    1. Re:Geeks getting mono? by shadow303 · · Score: 1

      I know that you are trying to be funny, but it isn't pronounced like that. According to the mono faq, it is the spanish word for monkey. Therefore, the correct pronunciation has a long o on both syllables.

      --
      I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
  23. it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mono is a wonderful piece of reverse engineering

    There is no "reverse engineering" involved. These applications are written in C#, an open ECMA standard, and the open source Gtk+ toolkit.

    I fear the day when Microsoft will come and snatch this out from under the Mono team,

    There is nothing to "snatch": these are applications implemented in a non-Microsoft toolkit using an open language standard.

    I really think this benifits Microsoft

    I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.

    1. Re:it's not reverse engineering by shird · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.

      Those same applications will also run under Windows, which means people dont have to run a competitors OS to run the software. Plus, they can sell MS Office.NET to Linux users too, as it can run on Linux.

      --
      I.O.U One Sig.
    2. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 4, Informative

      Those same applications will also run under Windows,

      These are not .NET applications, they are Gtk+ applications written in C#. As a result, they don't run on Windows or .NET out of the box.

      You can run them on Windows, but you can do that with lots of other Gnome and KDE apps as well.

      Plus, they can sell MS Office.NET to Linux users too, as it can run on Linux.

      I think this would be great for Linux. Unfortunately, Mono will likely never be compatible enough for that, and hell would freeze over before Microsoft would even contemplate such a thing.

    3. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice try. Note that WindowsForms aren't part of the standard, however, which the Mono team is also implementing.

    4. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Patoski · · Score: 5, Informative
      I fear the day when Microsoft will come and snatch this out from under the Mono team,

      There is nothing to "snatch": these are applications implemented in a non-Microsoft toolkit using an open language standard.

      This isn't 100% accurate since there is also the issue of patents to consider. In order to implement some parts of the .NET standard there would be some "use" of MS patents (I'm talking about ASP.NET and ADO.NET in particular). MS has never said anything about letting people use these parts of .NET and could easily go after Mono over this issue. Even the Mono team acknowledges this as an issue but they promise they'll somehow code around the patent or they just won't implement parts of the standard. Certainly not an optimal solution.

      I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.

      MS gets to say that their solution (C#) is cross platform and usable on numerous platforms. In short, publicity.
      --
      G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
    5. Re:it's not reverse engineering by nberardi · · Score: 1

      It also has the benifit of allowing their products to be used on *nix in the future. If the Mono guys do a good enough job and Microsoft gets products such as Office and Excahnge running in .Net, with a combiniation of Mono and maybe a little help from Wine Exchange could run in .Net and that would be added income for Microsoft. Then from that point the next step from a Linux/Exchange combination is a Windows/Exchange combination. So it's win/win for Microsoft and they get the publicity.

    6. Re:it's not reverse engineering by avdp · · Score: 1

      Plus, they can sell MS Office.NET to Linux users too, as it can run on Linux.

      You might think they'd want that, but they really don't. The whole thing with Microsoft (especially Office and Windows) is how they can leverage one product to sell more of the other. For them to produce a MS Office.net version that would (legally) run on Linux would be a serious blow to their Windows sales in the corporate world.

    7. Re:it's not reverse engineering by ultrabot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is nothing to "snatch": these are applications implemented in a non-Microsoft toolkit using an open language standard.

      The catch is that C# and CLR are not open standards - they are just ECMA standards. Apparently it was a brilliant move by MSFT because now people will automatically believe CLR is somehow "open". In fact, a while ago Novell was asking MSFT for a clear declaration that Mono does not infringe MSFT IP. Guess what, we never heard what happened with that.

      I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.

      It provides a hose that MSFT can step on to end the distribution of the appications. The more critical the app is for Desktop Linux, the better for MSFT. Hopefully the apps that are written in C# will stay small and architecturally open enough to be easily rewritten in another language should that happen. We should never become too dependent on Mono, or Java, or any other proprietary technology.

      --
      Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    8. Re:it's not reverse engineering by beanlover · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Thank you for your post. I was one of those that believed because it was an ECMA standard that it was free and open.

      I went to the ecma site and saw this page:

      WARNINGS

      The liability and responsibility for the implementation of an Ecma Standard rests with the implementor, and not with Ecma.

      Below that was a warning and a linke about settling patent issues pertaining to ECMA standards. Scary.

      B

    9. Re: it's not reverse engineering by gidds · · Score: 1
      There is nothing to "snatch": these are applications implemented in a non-Microsoft toolkit using an open language standard.

      Maybe so, but it's far easier for MS to embrace and extend their own 'standards' than other people's... After all, they've already done the 'embrace' bit. And it's not as if they haven't shown time and time again that they're ready, willing, and able to do so. It's their main flippin' business plan!

      All the fuss about Mono and C# makes me very sad. It's as if developers are saying "Well, maybe MS have used every single previous language and platform to promote their Windows monopoly unfairly, but maybe it's different this time! And even if they -- Oooh, look! Shiny things!"

      --

      Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

    10. Re:it's not reverse engineering by pclminion · · Score: 1
      There is no "reverse engineering" involved. These applications are written in C#, an open ECMA standard, and the open source Gtk+ toolkit.

      The reverse engineering comes in when you try to emulate all the places where Microsoft has intentionally diverged from their own spec.

      You can't even trust the MSDN documentation on simple Windows functions, how can you expect an entire application framework to actually adhere to the spec? Thinking you can just implement it straight out of the book is pretty naive. It IS reverse engineering.

    11. Re:it's not reverse engineering by bushidocoder · · Score: 1

      Office will never be available to run on Mono, because so much of Office is still written in C++ calling Win32 - although most future development of MS Office and other products is done in .NET, Microsoft will never rewrite the millions of lines of Win32 code that Office already uses - it just doesn't make any business sense to do so, especially since .NET plays with C++ so well.

    12. Re:it's not reverse engineering by PickyH3D · · Score: 1
      I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.
      Generally speaking, I agree with you, but if more programmers are using C#, specifically those using it on the job, then those people are generally programming for a Windows environment, and not using GTK#.

      The day that WinForms is rewritten by Mono (even if it is just using mappings to GTK#) is the day that it really becomes what it should be, but legally I do not know if that is even allowed because of the proprietary nature of the .NET Framework, as opposed to the ECMA standard that is C#.

    13. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you can run them on windows, without any form of recompilation, you just need gtk available under windows. you can't do this with lots of other Gnome and KDE apps.

      The biggest issue with mono / windows.net apps is those apps using win32 calls. other minor ones are the use of \ instead of / in path names. assuming such problems don't exist, you can just take a binary and run it and it should work straight off.

    14. Re:it's not reverse engineering by rpozz · · Score: 1

      You have got to be kidding. Microsoft makes its money from locking out competitors. I'll be damned surprised if that ever happens. ..and before you support Mono, take the following into account:

      - Microsoft are not stupid.
      - Microsoft will have seen Mono coming a mile away.
      - Microsoft support software patents.
      - Microsoft do NOT want people to write software that works on any platform.

      Go figure.

    15. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 0

      Mono is a wonderful piece of reverse engineering There is no "reverse engineering" involved. These applications are written in C#, an open ECMA standard, and the open source Gtk+ toolkit.
      There is indeed a lot of reverse engineering in creating the MONO platform, they definitely had to de-compile the .net libraries that were written in .net languages in order to come up with equivalent libraries. And I know this for a fact as I happen to know 2 college colleagues that contributed to the MONO project as a graduation project and implemented parts of the .NET remoting in MONO.

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    16. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FEI, Windows has NO probelem with mixed / and \ in paths. So moving from Linux to Windows is no problem, but the other direction might be.

    17. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 4, Informative

      The catch is that C# and CLR are not open standards - they are just ECMA standards.

      That is what an open standard is: something that is published by a recognized standards body and that anybody is free to implement.

      Apparently it was a brilliant move by MSFT because now people will automatically believe CLR is somehow "open".

      They believe that because it's true. .NET is not open, but ECMA C# is.

      In fact, a while ago Novell was asking MSFT for a clear declaration that Mono does not infringe MSFT IP.

      Yes, Novell did ask that. That question doesn't refer to ECMA C#, which is as open as any language standard, it refers to Mono's implementation of .NET.

      It provides a hose that MSFT can step on to end the distribution of the appications.

      Erroneous statements like that seem calculated to create unjustified fear, uncertainty, and doubt about C# in order to keep people from using it. ECMA C# is open. Microsoft can no more "step on its hose" than they can step on C++ or Python or Java (on which, incidentally, they may also hold related patents).

      We should never become too dependent on Mono, or Java, or any other proprietary technology.

      Mono is not proprietary technology: it's an open source project implementing a de-facto industry standard. As such, it is no different from Linux, for example. As such, Mono consists of two parts: a part that implements an open standard (ECMA C#), and a part that implements a proprietary set of APIs (the parts of .NET that are not in ECMA C#).

      If you want to use purely open APIs, just use ECMA C# and Gtk# and don't use any of the non-standard .NET libraries that Mono happens to implement as well. That's what I do.

    18. Re:it's not reverse engineering by lupus-slash · · Score: 2, Informative

      Please tell us who whose people are so we can remove their code.
      We don't decompile the MS libraries as a rule.

    19. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I don't doubt Microsoft would dearly love to avoid losing their monopoly, your method of insinuating that they are inevitably going to stoop to any depths in order to stop Mono is high in FUD and low in plausibility.

      Let's consider an alternative scenario, which is just as scary and just as valid as yours!

      Before you hack on Mono, take the following into account:

      - Microsoft are not stupid.
      - Microsoft do not want Mono to damage the market for Windows.
      - Without developers, Mono would fold.
      - Developers are human, and therefore vulnerable to bullets.
      - Microsoft have plenty of money. More than enough to hire hitmen.

      Go figure.


      ...man, I'm so convincing I've even scared myself.

    20. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1, Informative

      This isn't 100% accurate since there is also the issue of patents to consider. In order to implement some parts of the .NET standard there would be some "use" of MS patents (I'm talking about ASP.NET and ADO.NET in particular)

      Did you even bother to read what I wrote? These are mostly Gnome applications written in the C# language. They don't use ASP.NET or ADO.NET.

      Even the Mono team acknowledges this as an issue but they promise they'll somehow code around the patent or they just won't implement parts of the standard. Certainly not an optimal solution.

      My point was and is: the non-standardized parts of .NET are a red herring because open source applications simply don't use them. That's what this list of applications shows.

      The non-standardized parts of .NET are only an issue if you use Mono to deploy your Windows-based ASP.NET or ADO.NET applications on Linux. Your risk and exposure to Microsoft IP results from your choice of using ASP.NET and ADO.NET in the first place; the existence of Mono, if anything, reduces your risk and exposure somewhat, but, of course, it can't completely eliminate it.

      MS gets to say that their solution (C#) is cross platform and usable on numerous platforms. In short, publicity.

      Good for them: they let the language undergo standardization by an independent standards body, and now people are creating third party implementations of it for other platforms. That is as it should be.

      Contrast that with Sun, which promised to standardize Java, and then pulled out of standardization processes twice when they discovered that those bodies had requirements for intellectual property disclosure and withdrew twice. Sun now falsely gives the impression that Java is an open standard and that the JCP is an open process, when neither is anything of the sort. That is not as it should be.

    21. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      This isn't 100% accurate since there is also the issue of patents to consider


      Not in Europe, you insensitive clod!
    22. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      don't use any of the non-standard .NET libraries that Mono happens to implement as well.

      What use is a managed runtime without libraries? How can the .NET libs possibly be non-standard when MS implementation is the standard?

    23. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Jussi+K.+Kojootti · · Score: 1

      They are actually ISO standards now. If that's not standard enough, I don't know what is...

    24. Re:it's not reverse engineering by e40 · · Score: 1

      The snatching comes in when MS decides to exercise patent control over Mono. MS have patented a bunch of things in .Net and who knows how they'll use those patents in the coming years...

    25. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      What use is a managed runtime without libraries?

      The ECMA C# standard includes a significant set of libraries. Mono implements those and you can use them.

      Microsoft's .NET includes a lot more APIs that are not part of ECMA C#. Mono implements many of those as well, but you don't have to use them because Mono provides comparable functionality in bindings to existing open source libraries. In fact, if you are writing software for Linux, using the Mono bindings to open source libraries is both technically and practically a better choice for you.

    26. Re:it's not reverse engineering by miguel · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would be very suspicious about such contribution,
      because most of the remoting code was written by
      Lluis (for all the high-level channels), Dietmar
      (for all the low-level remoting bits), Patrik
      (which filled a lot of the mid-level details).

      All I can think of are stubs, which are not really
      useful.

      Those were either Novell/Ximian/Intel employees,
      and in no case we did disassemble.

      For the other pieces like Soap/Remoting, the code
      was so broken that it could not have possibly
      been copied/decompiled given how useless it was
      until we fixed it in various iterations.

      I very much doubt your statement, but if it
      happens to be true, we have records for each
      contribution going to the day zero of the
      project and we can track it down.

      Miguel.

    27. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      The reverse engineering comes in when you try to emulate all the places where Microsoft has intentionally diverged from their own spec.

      What difference does it make to Linux developers of Mono applications whether Microsoft fails to implement their own spec?

      You can't even trust the MSDN documentation on simple Windows functions, how can you expect an entire application framework to actually adhere to the spec?

      I don't expect them to. In fact, I don't care because it doesn't matter what Microsoft does with .NET or C# in the future.

    28. Re:it's not reverse engineering by rpozz · · Score: 1

      You are defending a company with a long track record of (arguably illegally) screwing over the competition, by trying to be funny. Go and read the Halloween documents.

    29. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anybody who performed reverse engineering on Microsoft's libraries for contributions to Mono deserves to be banished for life from the FOSS community as a whole. It is difficult to imagine a worse offense than to try to sneak potentially tainted code into an open source project, and that's what that sort of behavior amounts to.

    30. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 1

      I will ask them to know for sure if their contribution was actually integrated in the MONO codebase, I will also ask about whose name they used as they actually were a group of 3 and who was their contact person in MONO.
      And I'm not saying they decompiled code and submitted as is, I am saying they used decompilation to learn and gain insights about the inner workings of the libraries. Can't really see anything wrong about that.
      And believe me, I am not bluffing :)

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    31. Re:it's not reverse engineering by miguel · · Score: 4, Informative

      Thanks for looking into this.

      We are auditing the code, and the code that we have
      in that area was either completely redone, or what
      has not been redone is fairly broken.

      I would be surprised if the implementation is
      copied.

      But if they decompiled to learn how it worked, we
      will remove the code anyways.

      Miguel.

    32. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Bulln-Bulln · · Score: 1
      The catch is that C# and CLR are not open standards - they are just ECMA standards.


      ISO/IEC 23270:2003 - C# Language Specification
      ISO/IEC 23271:2003 - Common Language Infrastructure
      ISO/IEC TR 23272:2003 - Common Language Infrastructure -- Profiles and Libraries
      Stage date (of all 3): 2003-03-28
      This means you had 2 years to realise that these are also ISO standards.

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/ says:
      "The following organizations have participated in the work of ECMA TC39/TG2 and TC39/TG3 and their contributions are gratefully acknowledged:
      (...)Novell/Ximian(...)"


      So Novell does also have rights to C#/CLR/CLI.
    33. Re:it's not reverse engineering by WWE-TicK · · Score: 1

      > The catch is that C# and CLR are not open
      > standards - they are just ECMA standards.

      By that logic I guess we shouldn't write applications in C or C++ too. After all, they're not open standards either - they are just ANSI standards.

    34. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just admit that you are full of shit and were caught trying to discredit the Mono project by spreading lies. What? You didn't think the Mono developers wouldn't be reading an article on Slashdot about their own project?

    35. Re:it's not reverse engineering by pclminion · · Score: 1
      What difference does it make to Linux developers of Mono applications whether Microsoft fails to implement their own spec?

      That sort of defeats the point of .NET/Mono as a platform-independent development system, doesn't it? If you're coding in C#/Mono just because you like it, that's one thing, but touting it as the Linux version of .NET is dishonest because the idea of platform independence is one of the concepts of the .NET moniker.

      I have no problem with Mono if they're just trying to implement the language/runtime, but they shouldn't bill it as .NET compatible if it's not.

    36. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't see how writing Gnome applications in C# benefits Microsoft any more than writing Gnome applications in C++ or Python.

      I don't see how writing gnome applications benefits anyone.

    37. Re:it's not reverse engineering by jallen02 · · Score: 1

      Its not about rewriting code, its just about getting a compiler that can translate your code to "MISL" that will run seamlessly on both platforms.

      The real deal isn't just having the language standardized. It really is kinda meaningless to have the language standardized in my opinion. It is something, but such a small something that its like a "SMALL NEGATIVE" that approaches 0 ;) You also need to have complete compatability with the .NET runtime to make it truly seamless. IE: Compile C++ to MSIL and have it run on the .NET and Mono frameworks. And, some day, you could have all Win32 API calls translated into platform independent calls. That , theoreticall, breaks your coupling to Win32 since the Mono framework can then just take the IL and it should be able to process the IL and render graphics calls and Win32 calls without ever actually knowing they were Win32...... I think we all know how likely it is that having a working Win32 API, or compiler than can generically interpret and translate Win32 is though.

      As long as MS controls MSIL it controls the platform. It will still be NICE to use Mono as it is nice to use Java and C# when they suit your needs. But the dream of compatability is going to be just that, a dream.

      Jeremy

    38. Re:it's not reverse engineering by abradsn · · Score: 1

      You're dreaming. Take a look at reality. People have alternatives now that are free, and they still choose Windows and MS Office.

    39. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Patoski · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Did you even bother to read what I wrote? These are mostly Gnome applications written in the C# language. They don't use ASP.NET or ADO.NET.


      Your point would be well made if all Mono wanted to do was implement C# but obviously Mono looks do to much more than that. I never meant to imply that these early adopter apps use ASP/ADO.NET as they clearly do not. I was merely commenting on the the larger issue touched on by the great grandparent which is the possibility of MS trying to damage Mono somehow (by using an IP / patent club in my example).

      Who is to say that MS won't at some later date apply for a patent to some core part of .NET and come after Mono / Novell / Gnome for using it? MS is openly hostile to OSS in general and towards Linux in particular. When asked directly if Mono infringed on MS' IP, MS' silence was deafening.

      Depending on the good graces of someone who will go to great lengths to stop Linux is something we ought to consider *very carefully* before embracing Mono with both arms.

      The non-standardized parts of .NET are only an issue if you use Mono to deploy your Windows-based ASP.NET or ADO.NET applications on Linux.


      Note that Mono very openly encourages and advertises Mono's support for these questionable portions of .NET. Also, ASP and ADO aren't exactly some dusty corner of .NET spec which we can safely assume will infrequently be used.

      Your risk and exposure to Microsoft IP results from your choice of using ASP.NET and ADO.NET in the first place; the existence of Mono, if anything, reduces your risk and exposure somewhat, but, of course, it can't completely eliminate it.


      Saying that the patent issue is a "red herring" is an enormous stretch. Mono's web site acknowledges that is an issue and even tries to come up with mitigating factors. Heck, Miguel even acknowledges that this is an issue which deserves debate, discussion and may result in the FOSS community having to route around patent damage. I'm not sure why you're trying to paint this as a non-issue when all sides have agreed that it is an issue worthy of discussion.
      --
      G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
    40. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 1

      So you never decompiled any of the .net's libraries while developing MONO? I'll take your word for it but I find it rather surprising.
      And I also have to express my respect for you guys, I have always wanted to contribute to the project but never finding the time. I currently live and work in Egypt and I do 14 hours days pretty frequently, that's what you've got to do to keep a good job here

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    41. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 1

      yeah right, and I did so using "Anonymous Coward"

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    42. Re: it's not reverse engineering by captwheeler · · Score: 1
      It's as if developers are saying "Well, maybe MS have used every single previous language and platform to promote their Windows monopoly unfairly, but maybe it's different this time! And even if they -- Oooh, look! Shiny things!"

      And on slashdot, of all places. SCO took a run at linux with almost no relationship, and people say M$ wouldn't do the same?

      I can sympathize with enthusiasm for the technology, but it's just not honest to say there isn't a problem here.

      --

      Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.

    43. Re:it's not reverse engineering by avdp · · Score: 1

      In the business world it's all about compatibility with clients and suppliers, not to mantion years and years of people writing macros in vbscripts in Excel. Office is the market leader, and 95% compatibility with Office is not acceptable. That's the single (only?) thing that's holding back the alternatives (Open Office, etc). But they're not compatible with Office (and yes, that's MS fault). Believe it or not, I know first hand that this issue prevents companies from switch to free office suites and Linux.

      And before you quote me the one of two brave companies/governments making the switch in spite of this issue, understand that they are the minority.

    44. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      So you never decompiled any of the .net's libraries while developing MONO? I'll take your word for it but I find it rather surprising.

      WTF? you are a troll or only a lamer, or maybe both...

    45. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you are not lying, you can be incriminated on conspiracy, believe me, i'm not bluffing...

    46. Re:it's not reverse engineering by abradsn · · Score: 1

      (and yes, that's MS fault)

      I see no proof of that with a modern version of office (files saved in an xml office format). Perhaps in the past this was partly true.

      How do you explain the large number of conversion filters available for the MS office products. It seems to me that they have the most compatible Office environment available.

      How many apps support 25 different formats out of the box? MS Word does. Open up a doc and click File -- Save As, count them for yourself.

      On your other point, I personally think that everyone exagerates those other companies, and governments use of Linux. Personally, I use whatever tool makes my life the easiest. Sometimes it is Linux, and sometimes it is Windows. It depends on the needs of the application. Linux is getting better, and someday it will be good enough for most tasks, someday.

    47. Re:it's not reverse engineering by ultrabot · · Score: 1

      This means you had 2 years to realise that these are also ISO standards.

      Well, in that case Mono project does a pretty bad job about advertising that. Everybody always talks about ECMA standards.

      --
      Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    48. Re:it's not reverse engineering by arkanes · · Score: 1
      I see no proof of that with a modern version of office (files saved in an xml office format). Perhaps in the past this was partly true.

      I'm not sure what planet you've been living on. It has certainly been true, and it's well known how difficult it is to parse and understand arbitrary Office documents. The XML file format may be a step in the right direction, although last I heard there wasn't a lot of usefull information in there.

      How do you explain the large number of conversion filters available for the MS office products. It seems to me that they have the most compatible Office environment available.

      This has nothing to do with the ability of *other* applications to read Office files, which is the problem.

      How many apps support 25 different formats out of the box? MS Word does. Open up a doc and click File -- Save As, count them for yourself.

      Just about every other office application out there. Stop deluding yourself. Regardless, you're talking about something totally different than what the OP is.

      On your other point, I personally think that everyone exagerates those other companies, and governments use of Linux.

      Why would you think that, and why does it matter?

    49. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      The snatching comes in when MS decides to exercise patent control over Mono. MS have patented a bunch of things in .Net and who knows how they'll use those patents in the coming years...

      Microsoft has patents on lots of things--they can try to exercise control over Perl, Python, C++, Java, Qt, KDE, whatever your favorite language/library is. That's just a fact of life.

      As for Mono, it is actually in a better situation than many other platforms: as part of the standardization process for ECMA C#, Microsoft and all other ECMA members had to disclose the totality of their intellectual property related to it.

    50. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      so what about this then ?
      Beppe, As one of the inventors on that patent as well as the person heading up the standardization efforts for the CLI, I'd like to explain why I've never felt the two are in conflict. The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards. This is the normal condition used in all International Standards organizations, including both ECMA and ISO. But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis for this purpose. Furthermore, our release of the Rotor source code base with a specific license on its use gives wide use to our patents for a particular (non-commercial) purpose, and as we explicitly state we are open to additional licenses for other purposes.
      From here http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unipi.it/pipermail/dotnet-sscli/msg00 218.html/
    51. Re:it's not reverse engineering by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      It isn't just an ECMA standard, it is an ISO standard as well ... It would do more harm than good for MS to be agressive towards any OSS implimentation, beyond this, with MS being aware of said development for several years, hasn't enforced it's IP/Patents, and would have that much weaker of a case.

      Beyond this, it is *MORE* likely that the MS implimentation tramples on other patents, and there is prior art for pretty much anything in .Net

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    52. Re:it's not reverse engineering by kaffiene · · Score: 1
      That is what an open standard is: something that is published by a recognized standards body and that anybody is free to implement.

      No! ECMA standards can be patent encumbed and that is most certainly not an "open" standard at all.

      Stop spreading this rubbish that ECMA == Open, it does not.

    53. Re:it's not reverse engineering by geggo98 · · Score: 1
      It's all about choice

      The difference between Java and Mono is not a technical one in the first place. Both are modern platforms with a JIT compiler and a prefered OO language. Both run on multiple platforms and for bioth are multiple languages available.

      The problem is more a political one. On Mono, future language extensions are dictated by Microsoft. The Mono developers could of course extend their VM in any way they want. But they would loose compatibility with Windows.

      On Java everyone can join the Java Community Process (JCP). Membership is free and every member is entitled to vote and can even run for election.

      Datails can be found at Javalobby.org.

      "Power arises when groups of people act in concert." (Hannah Arendt)

    54. Re:it's not reverse engineering by lupus-slash · · Score: 1

      On Java everyone can join the Java Community Process (JCP). Membership is free and every member is entitled to vote and can even run for election.

      With mono everyone can actually write the code and submit it for inclusion in Mono or create his own derivative. But this actually requires doing some work, which is considerably harder than writing uninformed opinions on slashdot like your post;-)

    55. Re:it's not reverse engineering by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 1

      Ok contacted the guys and got back the news.
      http://www.go-mono.com/archive/mono-0.26.ht ml

      They wrote the HttpChannel which went into the 0.26 release, use the above link and search for HttpChannel you'll find this

      Implemented HttpChannel, thanks to the work of Hussein Mehanna, Ahmad Tantawy and Ahmad Kadry.

      Will all the ACs please shut up now?

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    56. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      I was merely commenting on the the larger issue touched on by the great grandparent which is the possibility of MS trying to damage Mono somehow (by using an IP / patent club in my example).

      The set of things that Microsoft can and cannot do is well understood. There is a small possibility that Microsoft's .NET patent allows them to exert pressure on Mono with regard to the .NET portions of Mono. But as these numerous examples of applications show, those portions aren't important for open source development.

      Who is to say that MS won't at some later date apply for a patent to some core part of .NET and come after Mono / Novell / Gnome for using it?

      You can't get a valid patent on technology that is already published. The set of patents and patent applications that can read on Mono and .NET is fixed and you can dig up Microsoft's any anybody else's patent applications and patents on the USPTO web site.

      But if that is a serious worry for you, then every platform is subject to that concern. If that approach really worked, Microsoft could take out patents on Java, Linux, Python, Mozilla, etc. and shut all those projects down. But the fact is that that approach doesn't work.

      Depending on the good graces of someone who will go to great lengths to stop Linux is something we ought to consider *very carefully* before embracing Mono with both arms.

      "We" did. People thought about this more carefully for Mono than for any other platform.

      Note that Mono very openly encourages and advertises Mono's support for these questionable portions of .NET. Also, ASP and ADO aren't exactly some dusty corner of .NET spec which we can safely assume will infrequently be used.

      Yes, and that's because ASP.NET and ADO.NET are Novell's business model: that's why they are investing so much money in Mono. The thinking is that they allow people to use Mono to deploy software developed with ASP.NET on cheap Linux servers. It's a good business model. It's risky because it competes with Microsoft head-on, but you don't have to worry about that risk: just don't use the .NET APIs and you'll be fine.

      I'm not sure why you're trying to paint this as a non-issue when all sides have agreed that it is an issue worthy of discussion.

      I'm sorry if you have been living under a rock on a desert island for the last several years, but the issue has been discussed and debated to death. There is nothing more to discuss. There is a small patent-related risk if you use the proprietary .NET APIs that aren't part of the ECMA standard. For anything else, Mono is at least as safe a bet as any other open, free, and open source platform.

      There is currently no alternative to Mono: there is no platform that combines the runtime safety, efficiency, open standard, and open implementation of Mono. The real problem is that people with an agenda (which sounds like what you are) are trying to use the patent issue to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt over Mono, usually out of a desire to get people to adopt their pet proprietary platform.

    57. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      Stop spreading this rubbish that ECMA == Open, it does not.

      I said no such thing. ECMA standards can be patent encumbered. This particular ECMA standard, however, anybody can implement.

      That's why I said "That is what an open standard is: something that is published by a recognized standards body AND that anybody is free to implement."

    58. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      That sort of defeats the point of .NET/Mono as a platform-independent development system, doesn't it?

      Unlike Java, neither .NET nor Mono are religiously cross-platform.

      Both .NET and Mono give you cross-platform capabilities if you want them (like, for example, C++ with wxWidgets). And Mono gives you multiple choices for cross-platform applications: Mono/.NET, Mono/Gtk# (which has a Win32 port), Mono/wxWidgets, and Mono/Qt# (and probably more).

      I have no problem with Mono if they're just trying to implement the language/runtime, but they shouldn't bill it as .NET compatible if it's not.

      Mono offers both cross-platform compatibility and .NET compatibility, and you can choose to use one without the other if you like. So, the "billing" is accurate.

    59. Re:it's not reverse engineering by idlake · · Score: 1

      That's true for any standard. Nobody can protect you from patent claims against a standard. Also note that anybody can make patent claims against a standard. Microsoft can make patent claims against Java, and Sun against Mono, and both against Python or anything else. There are no guarantees.

    60. Re:it's not reverse engineering by miguel · · Score: 1

      Hello,

      Ah, those are the pieces that we had to redo,
      they were an interesting first approach, but they
      could not be used in production.

      For the few pieces remain, they are mostly
      property getter/setters, namespace declarations
      and a few comments.

      Miguel.

    61. Re:it's not reverse engineering by MehannaH · · Score: 1

      Hi, Yes , I agree with that, because Remoting is a fairly high level namespace/functionality of the .Net framework and therefore had to depend on alot of the parts below it. Mono at that time was in version 0.26, and surely anything in the level of Remoting or even lower should have been changed to use the better/modified parts of .Net. Anyway, all we need to conclude is a) No decompilation was carried out b) The initial code that was written wasn't "useless" and surely helped whoever changed/modified it. Hussein

    62. Re:it's not reverse engineering by abradsn · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what planet you've been living on. It has certainly been true, and it's well known how difficult it is to parse and understand arbitrary Office documents. The XML file format may be a step in the right direction, although last I heard there wasn't a lot of usefull information in there.

      I did say modern version of office. And yes, all of the information is in the XML. Office is not all of a sudden going to change to a two file format for documents just to spite oss.

      This has nothing to do with the ability of *other* applications to read Office files, which is the problem.

      Other apps use a conversion just the same way that MS does. So, they share the same problem, and the same solution.

      Why would you think that, and why does it matter?

      Why -- because most of them are only using it in a very small way. It matters because I was responding to the previous post. He didn't want to hear about how everyone was pointing out that Linux is the answer -- just look at *unkown third world country here*

      On your point though, I only think that because I know that for the most part Linux is still a very small share of the Market. The numbers don't lie, and they say that Linux has got a ways to go. It's currently at the windows 98 stage of development. I believe that in 4 years that Linux might be a real player, with the rate at which they have been improving, and the financial backing that they have been getting. We'll see, I guess.

  24. Advising a beta upgrade by Inkieminstrel · · Score: 1

    If developers advise people to use the beta, doesn't that defeat the purpose of calling it a beta?

  25. C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Laoping · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ok, Microsoft Is evil, this I will give you, but C# rocks. After years in C and C++, I moved to Java, and It was good, then about 2 years ago I moved to C# and it was better. Now I program in both, for work and graduate school. I have to say they are very similar, but when I am doing a program in Java, I always miss a few of the C# features (virtual keyword for functions, Get/Set are better in C#, etc)

    The only problem I have with C# was that it was not as portable as Java, but Mono came to my rescue. I was surprised how many of my program just worked in Mono (after removing winforms that is). I can't wait for version 2.0.

    Really, Mono should be embraced /.ers . If we can start making programs for the general population that run on *nix systems, but look just like they do on windows, more people will use *nix. What we have to realize is that most people in the world(not on this website J) don't have 4 computers in their basement running different operations systems, they just have the one running windows.

    P.S. And for some reason, they still have the sides on their computer case.......

    1. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Stephen+Williams · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Get/Set are better in C#

      I see loads of love for the C# property syntax, but I personally find it a bit irritating because you can't have different access qualifiers on the getter and setter. If you want, say, a public getter and a protected setter, you have to write a special setter method that defeats the purpose of having the special property syntax.

      If the property syntax were modified to look like this, it'd be perfect:
      string Foo
      {
      public get { return foo; }
      protected set { foo = value; }
      }
      -Stephen
    2. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by mattgreen · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is slated for C# 2.0.

    3. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Taladar · · Score: 1

      Who the hell came up with the idea that we, the Open Source community, want everyone using Open Source even at the price of all Open Source Software looking and behaving exactly like MS Software?

    4. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      but when I am doing a program in Java, I always miss a few of the C# features (virtual keyword for functions, Get/Set are better in C#, etc)

      How can you miss the virtual keyword in Java since every 'function' is virtual?

      That C# even has functions and function pointers (delegates) is a sick joke. The naming scheme is inherited from visual basic and lame since it doesn't tell you anything meaningful... in Java Nouns are capalized and verbs are camel-case whereas in C# Classes, Methods, and Properties are capitalized and only variables are not (ie, it's retarded). Microsoft took Java's standard library, which uses good short names, and crapped on it so it wouldn't look like a straight rip-off, so you end up with retarded names all of the API.

      Basically the C# language is built for the masses of lame C / VB / C++ coders that have no sense of style. Seriously, nobody with any self respect could even write in C++ if they knew the difference. The only thing holding Java back is the license; you can't even emerge in on gentoo without manually downloading a file for heaven's sake!

    5. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by rabtech · · Score: 4, Informative

      Funny story on that:

      VB.NET originally supported this (different access on setter and getter) but since C# didn't support it they dropped it to be compatible... now that C# is gonna support it in the next version they are going back in and re-enabling the feature.

      Why it wasn't in originally I don't know, it would seem to be an obvious feature.

      --
      Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
    6. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      Hell, VB6 supported differential access levels for property Get / Set routines ; I'm surprised, now that you point it out, that VB.NET and C# don't.

      One of the features of VB6 I found useful!

    7. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by metasyntactic · · Score: 1
      You'll see this C# 2.0 which will be part of the VS2005 release later this year.

      This was a very large customer request along with generics and the other enhancements we're bringing to the table.

      -- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

    8. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Stephen+Williams · · Score: 1

      This was a very large customer request

      I'm not surprised; it just seemed such an obvious thing to want to do. I look forward to the feature becoming part of the language, and hopefully Mono will support it soon as well.

      The only other major gripe I have with C# is the lack of checked exceptions. I've been bitten too often by errors appearing at runtime that I just forgot to check for because the compiler didn't warn me. Hokay, so this is probably more due to my poor coding than anything else, but I like the security that I have with Java, knowing that I'm catching every exception that might be thrown. I wish C# would offer me the same security.

      -Stephen

    9. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1
      Why it wasn't in originally I don't know, it would seem to be an obvious feature.

      Because eventually, you need to stop adding features and ship.

      --
      That is all.
    10. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're talking to F/OSS fans here, whose favorite products never get beyond version 0.6 anyway.

      Most of them will even explain that "not having to meet a schedule" is a benefit of F/OSS, because, you see, it would be ever so much higher quality if it ever did ship.

    11. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by metasyntactic · · Score: 1
      Stephen:


      One of the major problems we've found is that while you might be catching all checked exceptions you won't be aware of unchecked exceptions (like NullPointerExceptions). This disparity between checked/unchecked is the source of many bugs (how many times have you had an IndexOutOfBounds, ClassCast, or NullPointer exception thrown?). It's extremely difficult to cope with with interfaces (you end up with interfaces throwing extremely catch all exceptions like "IOException" for any method they might have). Any implementor can only throw that set of exceptions and needs to throw runtime exceptions versions of anything else.


      Without a comprehensive solution that could address all the issues of checked exceptions it was felt that there was too much cost for too little benefit. If there was strong customer demand for this (which there isn't) we would revisit this decision again in the future.


      -- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

    12. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Mornelithe · · Score: 1

      Basically the C# language is built for the masses of lame C / VB / C++ coders that have no sense of style. Seriously, nobody with any self respect could even write in C++ if they knew the difference.

      Java is also a language built for the masses. It may be the best out of C, C++ and VB (maybe), but if you think that's all there is to programming languages out there, you're mistaken.

      Go learn Ruby or Haskell or OCaml if you want to see a modern, interesting, elegant language. Or alternatively, go and learn Lisp/Scheme or Smalltalk, and realize how poorly Java copies some ideas that have been in languages for decades.

      Don't claim Java is for people with senses of style as far as computer languages are concerned. Java is good for corporate style programming and the like, but it isn't beautiful.

      --

      I've come for the woman, and your head.

    13. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by TwistedSquare · · Score: 1
      Time to reason with the angry AC... How can you miss the virtual keyword in Java since every 'function' is virtual?

      What the C# virtual keyword facilitates is declaring functions to be non-virtual. As in C++, this can provide performance benefits, as well as preventing people later overriding any method that is inappropriate to override where a coder forgot to write final.

      That C# even has functions and function pointers (delegates) is a sick joke. The naming scheme is inherited from visual basic and lame since it doesn't tell you anything meaningful... in Java Nouns are capalized and verbs are camel-case whereas in C# Classes, Methods, and Properties are capitalized and only variables are not (ie, it's retarded).

      What is the problem with having function pointers in C#? And can't you do similar to using them by using reflection in Java anyway? As for having functions, one of the things that bugs me about Java is that if you have a function that is not directly related to any one class, you still have to bundle it to a class anyway. Java's own bundled classes like System often seem to be a substitute for namespaced functions to me anyway.

      Basically the C# language is built for the masses of lame C / VB / C++ coders that have no sense of style. Seriously, nobody with any self respect could even write in C++ if they knew the difference. The only thing holding Java back is the license; you can't even emerge in on gentoo without manually downloading a file for heaven's sake!

      Are you saying that no-one would code in C++ if they understood C#, or that nobody would use C++ if they understood Java? It is interesting to note that Java has recently introduced generics, which function very similarly to templates in C++. Java sometimes feels like it is merely a C++ to JVM-bytecode compiler, with an extra large body of standard library.

    14. Re:C# is Better than Java(At least I think So) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no you ship when the implementation meets the requirements.

  26. Mono ..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WTF has selectes "mono" name ;-)

    Coz it sounds like "monomaniacs" :D

  27. Question about GTK# by hey! · · Score: 1

    Hmm. What the article is really about is gtk#, not mono per se. How well does gtk# work in Microsoft's dotNet implementation? Or even does it work at all?

    Now that Windows forms is available, I could of course create cross platform applications in that, but I suspect I'd get more consistent results from using gtk#, if targetting both Unix and Microsoft dotNet is a requirement.

    In any case, gtk# looks nicer as a programming model.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Question about GTK# by zbowling · · Score: 3, Informative

      GTK# works wonderful without even even being related to Mono in anyway. It runs under Microsoft.NET just as well as it does on Mono under windows.

      My good friend Paco (Fransico Martieneze) has posted a installer for .NET SDK 1.1 and it includes documention for it and even some intergration with Visual Studio as well.

      http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?g tk s-inst4win

      --
      No.
    2. Re:Question about GTK# by hey! · · Score: 1

      Thanks zac, that's what I needed to know.

      It's tricky to google-fu your way to an answer to this one, because naturally anything that mentions gtk# is bound to mention dot Net in a generic way, not necessarily meaning the Microsoft implementation.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  28. From a mono developer.. by zbowling · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just happen to be one of the few official developers for the mono project, just catching this artical early. Mono is quickly becoming better then ever. The biggest difference between Mono 1.0.x and Mono 1.1.x is the fact that our Just-In-Time compiler (or JIT) is getting more and more amazing every day. The 1.0.x series use a interprator capable of understanding things at the application start. One huge correction is that Mono will be called 1.2 in May not 2.0. While it is true that gtk-sharp-2.0 is moving to 2.0 from 1.0, the Mono runtime will remain at 1.2 as not to be confused with Microsoft.NET 2.0 (all though support for many of .NET 2.0 features will be included). Gtk# being based on Gtk+ 2.2 and Gtk# 2.0 being based on Gtk+ 2.4. Windows support is just as compatable with GTK# as it is on Linux, minus support for Gnome, VFS, GConf, GtkHtml 3 and DBus of course. Hope that helps!

    --
    No.
    1. Re:From a mono developer.. by ultrabot · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I just happen to be one of the few official developers for the mono project, just catching this artical early.

      Great, now that you are here:

      A while (a year or two?) ago Novell was asking MSFT to clarify the IP issues with Mono, or at least to declare that Mono does not infringe MSFT IP, i.e. that it's safe to use. What happened with that? I'd certainly like to get a form of reassurance that it's going to stick around and be safe to code for, esp. with the emergence of projects like IronPython...

      --
      Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    2. Re:From a mono developer.. by zbowling · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, there really isn't an issue.

      IP issues have been solved a long time ago. While Microsoft didn't publicly comment on IP issues in Mono, the legal department at Novell feels that any action taken by Microsoft against mono would be in amazingly bad faith and for 90% of Mono would be impossible to impose.

      The sections that were released under the EMCA filing are public and they will be ours forever. The issues that maybe questionable are parts that were not released on the EMCA but Microsoft has released the source for those under a shared common licence (very restrictive) but allow anyone to "learn" from them as long as the don't take anything tangable (copy and paste, rigth it down) so as much as you can remember while looking at it is yours. The even make the comment in the licence that its a almost needed tool for implimenting your own runtimes. Mono has a personal policy not except code from people who even looked at to avoid all chances of something slipping up in the mess.

      Microsoft has communicated with us in the past on different things and we have communictated with them when we find a security flaw in the framework. They even use our code deep in the depths of Microsoft for regression tests (as much as I have heard) and the even demo with our software at conferences and online broadcasts on the power of the .NET Framework.

      With all the positive support they have given towards it would be in bad interests to suddenly change on that and would be against anti-trust laws. We are also protected by the EMCA filling because it proves that Microsoft intented for .NET to be a standard and not propiatary. Any patent that Microsoft would try to file would be quickly shot down because of prior art clauses and the fact that Mono is mostly a wrapper (when it comes to the classes not the compiler or the runtime) for libraries that already exist in Linux (in most cases this is true) they would have to file against libraries that even Microsoft used as the basis for their products publicly.

      I just don't see any issue. It was a consern when we started before we had time to investigate. :-)

      --
      No.
    3. Re:From a mono developer.. by darkmeridian · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There is an old legal aphorism that winning a lawsuit is one of the worse ways to go bankrupt. Even if the case gets dismissed on summary judgment, you have already wasted a lot of time on discovery and pre-trial motions. Think of SCO. And then there are appeals to follow. MS has deep pockets to fund Stupid Lawsuits (TM). Look at SCO. All MSFT has to do is to scare people in corporate settings away from Linux, Mono, or whatever open source program they have declared jihad against.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    4. Re:From a mono developer.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Novell better get some new lawyers. Quick. In law school you learn; Lawyers should never speculate. Ever. Either it's legal or it's illegal, the job of a lawyer is to simple interpret and know the law prescribing proper guidance. The diatribe repeated after that usually describes incidents where things are seemingly ok. Children playing on your stoop day in and day out until one of them falls and you're sued etc. You as a lawyer are to warn the client of such things etc etc.

      Either Novell has an ace up their sleeve they are willing to take a risk with or they are setting themselves up for failure. Either way; it's going to be costly.

      If history is any marker. Microsoft will be attacking Novell within the next 2-3 yrs. Well, unless Microsoft has changed. Well wishing, speculation and positive good seeking doesn't exist when it comes to the letter of the law. If Microsoft hasn't stated in writing in a public forum or fashion that "It's ok for Novell to implement non published ECMA standard stuff into Mono". It doesn't matter how friendly they seem now or how much "interest" they see in it.

      Either it's illegal or it's not. If you aren't sure you better find out, or find a firm that will tell you one way or the other. If Novell is going to operate in the speculation waters, they better make the retainer for legal a bit bigger.

    5. Re:From a mono developer.. by seguso · · Score: 1
      Out of curiosity: are you dictating this document with a speech recognizer? Noone who is using the keyboard would misspell "accept" with "except", "write it down" with "right it down".

      Just a curiosity.

    6. Re:From a mono developer.. by miguel · · Score: 1

      The official Mono position can be found on our FAQ,
      there is nothing to report.

      Novell was doing a review of the patent situation,
      and the review detemined that our existing policy
      on the FAQ was all we could do.

      Miguel.

    7. Re:From a mono developer.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if what you say is true, Miguel is still trying to turn unix into MS-Winux and the answer is still a resounding no, what do you think of that?

    8. Re:From a mono developer.. by LuSiDe · · Score: 1
      IP issues have been solved a long time ago. While Microsoft didn't publicly comment on IP issues in Mono, the legal department at Novell feels that any action taken by Microsoft against mono would be in amazingly bad faith and for 90% of Mono would be impossible to impose.
      MS has been quiet but not silent Quote: Herman (remember, MS director of IP) explicitly says, "the field of use (...) and the prohibition on sub-licensing are inconsistent with the requirements of Sec. 7 of the GPL. Sec. 7 of the GPL says that if you do not have the rights to distribute the code as required under the GPL then you do not have the right to distribute at all. The GPL says you must have the rights to sublicense and to freely modify outside the field of use limitation."

      Source: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono

      Its a quote, quoted from an older (19 may 2004) view/opinion, by RedHat's Seth Nickel -- but still useful, i believe. Seth Nickel included the following analysis based on that quote (also see the complete article!): The GPL incompatibility presumably isn't a big problem for Mono since (I think) its under an X style license, and GPL'd apps can still run atop it. However, this underscores that Microsoft knows full well that their particular terms have interactions with free software. Given the potential for sub-licensing to wreak havoc (as outlined above), I'm very worried that we, the free software community, are not flying "under the radar".

      Remember, posted on 19 may 2004.
      --
      WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
    9. Re:From a mono developer.. by zbowling · · Score: 1

      I should also point out that the legal opinion I said where from Novell are nothing more then my informed by not confirmed feelings they send my way (ether by proxy or directly) and not a direct quote from them. As Miguel said the best place to look is the FAQ. Most of what I said is my own personal opinion and doesn't confirm or deny any of the opinions of Novell and the Mono project as a whole.

      --
      No.
    10. Re:From a mono developer.. by puppetluva · · Score: 1

      IP issues have been solved a long time ago. While Microsoft didn't publicly comment on IP issues in Mono, the legal department at Novell feels that any action taken by Microsoft against mono would be in amazingly bad faith and for 90% of Mono would be impossible to impose.

      Clearly YANAL (You are not a lawyer). Just because Microsoft doesn't address something doesn't mean they won't sue you tail off about it later.

      Also, Microsoft is used to acting in "amazingly bad faith" over languages/runtimes. Look at Java for examples.

      With all the positive support they have given towards it would be in bad interests to suddenly change on that and would be against anti-trust laws.

      It would be in whose bad interests? It would only be in their good interests to screw the opensource world . Trust me, Microsoft could care less about the good relationship that they've been building with Ximian or Novell. They are a company that is used to pulling fast ones like this.

    11. Re:From a mono developer.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If history is any marker. Microsoft will be attacking Novell within the next 2-3 yrs.

      Name for me one instance where Microsoft has attacked someone for writing an implementation of Microsoft's API.

    12. Re:From a mono developer.. by I_redwolf · · Score: 1

      Name for me one instance where someone has implemented an implementation of Microsoft's API?

    13. Re:From a mono developer.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      MS has deep pockets to fund Stupid Lawsuits (TM).

      Microsoft has to be very careful about filing stupid lawsuits. Joke if you must, but the DOJ and Judge Kollar-Kotelly are evaluating Microsoft's compliance with the 2001 antitrust settlement. Stupid lawsuits won't look very good.

    14. Re:From a mono developer.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wine. But it never became popular enough to be useful as a weapon against FOSS, Mono just might.

    15. Re:From a mono developer.. by I_redwolf · · Score: 1

      True, how I forgot about wine I don't know.. The only major difference I can see here is that Mono is a compiler implementation based on a standard. Wine works at being compatible by replacing the native api through dll's. Never thought about it like that.

      Doesn't matter though. I still don't trust Microsoft.

  29. MOD UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *LOL*

  30. it's not .NET by idlake · · Score: 1

    I know you are trying to be funny, but please don't confuse people: these are generally not Microsoft .NET applications; they use the C# language and standard library together with common open source libraries.

    By analogy, Qt applications written in C++ have nothing to do with MFC applications written in C++; they are two different application frameworks that happen to be based on the same programming language.

    1. Re:it's not .NET by zootm · · Score: 1

      That's exactly what they were saying -- a few of these programs have names with ".NET" (or, more frequently, a capitalised "NET"). They were pointing out that not only is this incorrect, it sets them up for potential legal trouble.

  31. .NET is a brand, Mono should stop referring to it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I just went to Mono Project. They call it a ".NET" implementation. I further understand why they like to make the distinction between the ".NET Framework" as being specifically the C# and CLR pieces vs ".NET" that Microsoft refers to, but I'm afraid this is a very poor decision. Here's why.

    ".NET" is Microsoft's brand. They use it to refer to many many different pieces of their technology that use the CLR/C# runtime. This includes such nebulous things as "Sign In.NET", the button that people use to login to MSN and Hotmail. What on earth does that have to do with Mono????? How is that related??

    Furthermore, all of the tools that *include* many, many technologies that do not fit under the ".NET" umbrella (if strictly defined as the C#/CLR pieces) sport the brand. Even VisualStudio.NET is not completely a ".NET" thing.

    So, my very firm advice and solemn plea is for Mono completely to drop *ALL REFERENCES* to ".NET". It is doing them no good whatsoever and just confusing people. It is not clear at all what ".NET" really is, and I'm afraid the Mono team have been roped into Microsoft's marketing machine, not realizing what's being done to them. In addition, I think that ".NET Framework" is equally muddled and confusing. I would recommend that they refer to Mono only as an implementation of the C# and CLR specifications as outlined by the EMCA standards body, with a link to those specific standards.

    Otherwise, they are showing a complete ignorance of basic marketing. They are simply reinforcing Microsoft's brand in a very significant way, not just implementing their technologies. This may not be so bad, but one thing that Open Source/Free Software *really* *really* *really* desperately needs to get better at is marketing, if it ever hopes to get beyond an also-ran technology implementor of other peoples' technology. Take a small lesson from Firefox. If Microsoft released a XUL clone, integrate it with some parts of XAML, and changed the name of Internet Explorer 7 to "InternetExplorer.WEB", I would sincerely hope that Mozilla would not start calling Firefox an "Open Source implementation of the .WEB Framework by Microsoft".

  32. Impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm writing this as a mere user, not as a developer, but from my point of view assembly really is impressive. Just looking over the list of apps on freshmeat shows that assembly really seems to give developers a framework that let's them develop great application in a relatively short time and in the end it's users like me who profit from that. ;-D

    Great works, assembly devs.

    And to all those trolls that will come out of the woodwork with every assembly story, telling us that assembly is the end of open source:
    Please, for once in your miserable lifes try to provide arguments for your point that go beyond low level is evil (though I would readily agree with that) and therefor assembly is the suX0r.

  33. Wow! 50-something apps and SDKs ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... and lemme check...

    *censored*@*censored*:~$ dpkg -l '*' | wc -l
    12382

    Nice. From that I can estimate that ~1% of Debian's packages are Mono apps or SDKs, and that half of them aren't even worth noticing.

  34. Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by eno2001 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The world of programming has gotten better and be[tt]er over the years. It used to be that you had to have to deal with punch cards or programming right on the metal itself. But in recent years development environments have improved tremendously approaching the ideal: ANYONE can write software even if they don't understand programming.

    Take me for example. I work for a Fortune 500 company that is currently working on NextGen database products. I'm the chief software designer. Back when I was in college in the 80s, programming was a black art known only to nerds who wore underpants on their heads and uttered dark incantations. I never really got on with those guys because they just weren't popular enough and they smelled kind of funny.

    But thanks to the miracle of the 90s, I am now a software developer myself. My dev suite is comprised of Photoshop (for mock layouts of the UI), Macromedia Flash and MS PowerPoint. With these tools I am crafting the nextgen interfaces that are what put my company at the top. We are drawing lots of attention and turning lots of heads with our products because only we know what the users want these days. Our database product is an award winning package that combines the ambience of Myst and Riven with an Oracle backend and a hint of The Matrix. Users want cool looking apps, not some archaic software that just displays data. Why settle for an app where the text is just displayed in a scroll box, or worse through a terminal emulation program like WRQ Reflection? Our app flys in the text from the side and makes the text sparkle like you see in the intro to a lot of movies. That's the key folks, don't look to Silicon Valley for great software ideas, look at Hollywood. They get it right.

    Since I'm a generous guy, I'll share some suggestions about how to design great apps these days:

    1. Always make sure that you focus on making the UI look as cool as possible. This requires the use of many tools to make sure that the interface is going to make the user look as good as possible.
    2. Always add more features to your application because nothing helps users more than new features. And make them sexy. I'm not talking about adding automatic spell checking or useless shit like that. I'm talking about syncronized sound effects that reflect the actions on screen like you see in the best films.
    3. Pervasive use of MPEGs. Our company got away from the old practice of using stupid 16 color icons for button functions and the like because we realized that this was confusing to users. Most of the time those images didn't mean much. Instead, we replaced them with full MPEGs running in loops to represent every possible function a user might do in the real world.
    4. Watch all the latest blockbuster scifi films that make use of computer interfaces. The geeks get UI design wrong every time. Only Hollywood knows how to make cool looking UIs and only the best software designers know to take their cues from the film industry.
    5. Require that your customers have the most powerful boxes to run your programs. We can't be bothered with idiotic businesses that want to keep desktop systems with PIIIs and 256 megs of RAM. How the hell are you supposed to expect the software to run properly? We tell all of our customers that they must upgrade all desktops to the following minumum requirements: Pentium 4 2.5 GHz or better, with 1 gig of RAM. That just barely keeps up with our advanced software, but it's the minimum. (Alienware makes the best business machines we've seen)

    It makes me laugh when I see you geeks trying to come up with new programming languages and platforms. Mono. What a joke. You call that progress? I don't. Keep working on more tools like Photoshop, Flash and PowerPoint. That's where development is these days. All that antiquated complicated crap is just mental masturbation for losers with no life. I read an article recently about a company that is working on self writing software. If these guys succeed, and they partner up

    --
    -"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
    1. Re:Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously have no clue what Mono or .NET is, I'll know the company you work for when I hear of the next Chapter 13 filed.

    2. Re:Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uptight moderation syndrome. apparent need to feel a sense of power or control by modding obvious satire down as troll or flamebait. what is so wrong with you that you feel the need to suppress humor? please mod parent post as +1 funny. i got a good laugh out of it and i'm a unix guy.

    3. Re:Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why you got a good laugh out of it... you're a unix guy. Not a VB/C# guy.

    4. Re:Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      are you threatening me? or are you saying that a VB/C# guy would find it even funnier?

    5. Re:Easier Coding Tools = Better Software!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oooooh... Threatening you! If only I had some modpoints left you'd be sorry!

      But I just spent them all promoting the pro-mono messages!

      "I may be crazy, but I think C# is better than Java (5 insightful)"

      Good answer! [clap, clap] Good answer!

  35. Re:Reverse engeneering :O by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

    MS cant change the standard, because that would break all apps developed for it (not just for mono)

    also they cant add too many things to the standard because people will get bored of upgrading a 200mb runtime environment every 3 days

  36. Re:I for one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Booo!!!
    I for one, will fight this development tooth and nail.
    -Coalition for the protection of calcium, lime, and rust.

  37. Slashdot: News from the Future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dateline: February 22, 2015

    Today Microsoft sued Mono for infringing upon its CLR patents after closing the license to CLR development last year. This jeopardizes the entire Open Source community now as much had been standardized on the CLR model.

    Microsoft stated that "We are merely trying to protect our intellectual property and users security from being infiltrated by hostile and unsecure .NET objects."

    Meanwhile, Open Source advocates vowed to develop their own CLR standard claiming, "This is an outrage! We played by their rules and followed their model. We support and implement CLR better than they do! It doesn't matter anyway as we'll just fork it!"

    The Slashdot Liberation Front vowed DDS attacks. Microsoft responded by saying that Windows Server 2013 was more than ready to handle any attacks.

    The Microsoft Web Servers were unavailable at the time of this writing for further investigation.

    Richard Stallman was reportedly holding a party in his retire home.

  38. Stop being a crusty slashbot. by Inoshiro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How is this not like life?

    Ford Explorer -- does that also access the internet?

    Hyundai Accent -- is it about the korean language?

    Honda Accord -- music perhaps?

    People make names which they feel are the best for something. They rely on something's ability to be good at it to spread the love, so to speak. If it's good, people will remember it. If it's not good, it goes away and it's no issue. Do you really like how people went to ultrageneric names and domain speculation on the Internet? Pets.com? Mail.com? News.com?

    Take a look at things which people remember. What about Napster implies filesharing? What about Suprnova? What about Google implies searching?

    Naming is a magic game. Just because you don't like how others play it, does not mean they are playing it wrong. This whole "incorrect naming" meme is stupid and pointless. Start thinking critically about what you're saying before you repeat it everywhere.

    --
    --
    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
    1. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

      If we named cars after what they did, it would get rather confusing, since they all do basically the same thing.

      Ford DriveAround
      Hyundai GoesOnRoads
      Honda MovesRealFast

      Also:
      Napster sounds like "to nab" things.
      Google indexes an innumerable number of things, maybe about a google worth of things.

      But we already know what cars do. Software is so ubiquitous that we it helps have some indication what it does in the name.

    2. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by hunterx11 · · Score: 1

      "Naming might be magic, but there are some pretty rich magicians." =~ s/magicians/consultants/;

      --
      English is easier said than done.
    3. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1
      If we named cars after what they did, it would get rather confusing, since they all do basically the same thing.

      How is this different with music players?
    4. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      People make names which they feel are the best for something. They rely on something's ability to be good at it to spread the love, so to speak. If it's good, people will remember it. If it's not good, it goes away and it's no issue.

      No, names have a real impact. I know a lot of geeks don't care about this (Who cares if this library is called huc2r15xy.lib? It works great!), but normal people do.

      To make an extreme example, if Burger King called their burgers Shitters instead of Whoppers, they wouldn't have sold very well. I know a lot of slashdotties would have gone to buy "Shitters" because of the name, but normal people will avoid your product if they have to ask for a "Shitter" for lunch.

      Do you really like how people went to ultrageneric names and domain speculation on the Internet? Pets.com? Mail.com? News.com?

      No, those are bad names, too. There *are* good names on the internet, like Google, Napster, Monster.com, or even Slashdot. The idea is *not* "generic = good".

      The difference is that: (a) Websites are *all about* branding. People don't bookmark much, so using a name with "career" in the URL for a job webpage is doomed to failure. "Monster.com" is easy to remember, so people keep going back there. Programs are different: it's on my computer, it's right there. I don't really need branding for a music player (I can pick it out of the list). And: (b) I don't even know how to pronounce some of this crap. "Muine"? Moo-ine? Mweene? Muh-wine? Mweeney? If nobody can figure out how to pronounce your name, it sucks, full stop.

      Naming is a magic game. Just because you don't like how others play it, does not mean they are playing it wrong. This whole "incorrect naming" meme is stupid and pointless.

      I've heard exactly the same thing about user interfaces and design from geeks for years. Geeks like to put everything in terms of equations and big-O and C code, and anything that doesn't fit falls into the "magic" category, where "you like what you like and nothing is better than anything else". But that's simply not true.

    5. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because Ford, Hyundai and Honda have extensive advertising campaigns to make sure you know exactly what a Ford Explorer, Hyundai Accent and Honda Accord are. Plus the fact that they come from some of the world's leading car companies should give you a hint of what they might be (yes, I know the Explorer isn't a car per se).

    6. Re:Stop being a crusty slashbot. by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      Napster sounds like "to nab" things.

      That's a total coincidence. Napster was named after an inside joke about a fellow with nappy hair.

  39. Re:.NET is a brand, Mono should stop referring to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are mistakenly assuming the Mono trojan horse project intends to be beneficial to open source and Linux...

  40. Re:You were right the first time. by untaken_name · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah well...I hear that Open Source is a total whore. Anyone who wants to can 'get in'. Bill shoulda known better.

  41. Story time by buddha42 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Could someone in the know please explain how Mono will not suffer the fate of samba or that attempt to get ASP working on nix (chilisoft? I forget)?

    I don't know the detailed inner workings, but it seems like these projects are forever doomed to being a shadow of a "mostly" implimentation riddled with "gotchas" and always a few steps behind. I don't blame the developers in any way, its just we all know MS does not play nice with others.

    1. Re:Story time by ed__ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      first, their is a published spec.

      secondly, mono is more about enabling developers to use C# and CLR, rather than allowing people to run windows software on *nix, so there isn't the same necessity for bug-for-bug compatibility as there is in samba (where you want to look exactly like a Windows box from the outside).

    2. Re:Story time by damiam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The fate of samba? Last time I checked, Samba was alive and well. And if anything, Mono has an advantage over samba in that it doesn't have to be Windows-compatible to be useful. C# is a great language (supposedly; I've never used it) and an open-source Linux implementation can only be a good thing. All of the apps mentioned in the intro are native GTK apps, and will continue to work well and be developed even if MS does something to break Windows compatibility.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    3. Re:Story time by aled · · Score: 1

      secondly, mono is more about enabling developers to use C# and CLR, rather than allowing people to run windows software on *nix

      If you read the discussion on this article and other s about Mono posted in Slashdot you will see that many (most?) other people feel different. They seem to confuse C# and .Net and believe that Mono will allow them to run -for example- an hypothetical MS-Office.NET or most Windows .Net unchanged in Linux, the way Java does. They will be kind of disappointed IMHO.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
  42. heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another one of those "please save me from myself" whiners who faints at the mere sight of a pointer.

    Listen kid, go play with your garbage collector and let real men do their work, mkay?

    1. Re:heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh, I know, I have been trolled, but i'll respond anyway.

      They day you get to manage a project with ~10 coders and only one of them will be a "real man" (at best), you'll be very thankful to find out there are languages like java or python.

      --Coder

  43. Could Microsoft Take over Linux? by palndron · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Ok, this is not a troll, but is problebly off topic.

    I was just wondering - what if?
    What if MS came out with MSLinux ( just a flat rebranding of RH ). What if it was just as free as other Linux distos, but had enough closed software added onto that base that they could customized Linux versions of their apps to only run on thier distro?

    Wouldn't they give corporate customers looking at linux an alternative to Windows that would keep them with MS? Better a rebranded MSLinux and MS Apps/support lic. then nothing right?

    Could that happen?

    --
    a man, a plan, a canal, panama
    1. Re:Could Microsoft Take over Linux? by otherniceman · · Score: 1

      They have already announced MSLinux (see http://www.mslinux.org/), it was supposed to have shipped Nov 2003, looks like it has been delayed again :)

    2. Re:Could Microsoft Take over Linux? by palndron · · Score: 1

      How is this question flamebait?????

      that is not right.

      --
      a man, a plan, a canal, panama
    3. Re:Could Microsoft Take over Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are right.

      Group-think and group-suppression is never right. The /. moderation system is nothing less than gang tactics.

      Just because someone says something you (/.) dissagree with, doesn't mean that you should just mod them out of existance. How about debating the topic instead?

      There should be only one real mod and that is a combination "Off-topic-flame-troll" and applied ONLY to truly disruptive goatse/page widing type posts that are meant to do nothing but destroy /.s usability itself.

    4. Re:Could Microsoft Take over Linux? by clayasaurus · · Score: 1

      Have you been living under a rock? MS Linux has been out since November 2003!!

  44. Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Glock27 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Statistics from Sourceforge:

    Java (14080 projects)
    C# (2206 projects)

    Also, don't forget there is a very interesting ahead-of-time Java compiler as part of the gcc toolchain, gcj. It isn't complete, but it is constantly improving and can now be used to write SWT and Gnome applications. Good stuff!

    I hate to see C# getting any uptake when all it is intended to do is allow Microsoft to co-opt all of Java's good ideas while stifling portability as much as possible. It is a transparent Java ripoff.

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
    Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    1. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by NewOrleansNed · · Score: 1

      Have you actually considered how long Java has been around compared to C#?

      C# is NOT a Java ripoff. It's an OO language all its own and it has substantial features which are lacking in Java.

    2. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      1. I hate to see C# getting any uptake when all it is intended to do is allow Microsoft to co-opt all of Java's good ideas while stifling portability as much as possible. It is a transparent Java ripoff.

      While I'd like to agree...I can't.

      Microsoft did submit CLR and C# to a standards body for approval.

      Sun did not.

      You can't make a JVM and know that it's fully compatable. You can make a CLR runtime engine.

      Do I trust Microsoft? Hell no. As the Mono developers say, they don't have to. They aren't following Microsoft.

      Sun continues to astound me by how difficult they make it to use what they promote.

      Sun did it to themselves and they continue to do it to themselves.

    3. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Sunspire · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's all a matter of how you choose your metrics. Here's another one, desktop applications that don't suck horribly:

      Java: Azureus, Eclipse.... I'm sure if I really searched I could find a third.
      Mono: Beagle, Tomboy, F-Spot, Muine, MonoDevelop etc.

      It's no sillier a metric than the amount of showelware on SourceForge for a given platform. For the Linux user it's certainly a more interesting one.

      Even these so called crown jewels of the Java desktop can be spotted a mile away as Java programs. When you run Beagle or Tomboy you can not distinguish them from native GTK+ apps. For all intents and purposes they are native.

      Java and Mono have chosen completely different paths at this point. It's futile to try to evangelize one language over the other at this point. Java has settled as a backend language for stuff like web services, while Mono/.NET competes with the incumbent C/C++, and Python to some extent, over the desktop. It's now a case of different tools for different jobs, and at this time it's already pretty clear that Mono is going to be a major force when it comes to the future of the Linux desktop.

      --
      It's like deja vu all over again.
    4. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Glock27 · · Score: 1
      Java and Mono have chosen completely different paths at this point. It's futile to try to evangelize one language over the other at this point. Java has settled as a backend language for stuff like web services, while Mono/.NET competes with the incumbent C/C++, and Python to some extent, over the desktop. It's now a case of different tools for different jobs, and at this time it's already pretty clear that Mono is going to be a major force when it comes to the future of the Linux desktop.

      I disagree. Java hasn't ceded the desktop, and C# hasn't won it. There is plenty of activity in both camps, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. You should check out gcj if you haven't already...

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    5. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Elektroschock · · Score: 1

      But it depends on the Gnome desktop and its evangelists are known to be vapour ware freaks with strong propaganda against other frameworks. I think we shall rather focus on GNU Classpath and get it done first before talking about mono.

    6. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Statistics from Sourceforge:
      Java (14080 projects)
      C# (2206 projects)


      I wouldn't trust any numbers pulled from SourceForge like that. Only a tiny fraction of those projects are actually active and beyond the "planning" stages. A huge percentage are started by overeager teenagers biting off way more than they can chew. And an equally huge percentage are listed under languages that they have nothing to do with. How many times have you seen "Languages: C, C++, Objective-C, C#, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, Eiffel, LISP, FORTRAN"?

      That said, I do think there is a difference in the number of actual Java vs. C# projects, but that it is due mostly to Java's entrenchment and the fact that Java is taught in the vast majority of colleges, community colleges, and even high schools (those that have programming courses, that is). There are simply more "Java Programmers" that have never coded in anything else.

    7. Re:Mono has a long way to go, even in OSS by kaffiene · · Score: 1

      That's moronic. If you *want* to use the native UI toolkit in java, just use SWT.

      Duh!

  45. Driving developers to windows by acomj · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't have anything agains mono, and the C#/java seem pretty much identicle to my mind (There's nothing that compelling that one has thats not in the other).

    Its great to have a language that can come installed with linux (java cough* cough*). However mono ultimately will work OK, but will drive developers to windows in droves because of the better deveopment environment that Visual Studio.net offers.

    I fear that ultimately there will be mono apps that can run sometimes on windows (if you install gtk# etc...etc.) and .net apps that might run on linux if you didn't use this package or that package.

    Mono has its place, but I don't think cross platform apps is going to happen.

    1. Re:Driving developers to windows by LnxAddct · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fedora comes with gcj (gcc java compiler) and that compiles most swt and gnome applications jsut fine. Also there are a few very good open source JVMs, the first one off the top of my head is Blackdown, which I use to develop java3d on linux. I have yet to see blackdown not do something that Sun's can.
      Regards,
      Steve

    2. Re:Driving developers to windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt that any linux geek using mono to develop will be driven to windows...for one, VS.NET sucks ass (I use it everyday, unfortunately), I'd much rather use Borland or SharpDevelop, but they don't integrate with VS.NET very well, and my company won't let me use it.

      Things like Mono will enable us poor coders who have no other choice but to develop with Microsoft tools (Hey, gotta eat.) to finally be able to, if at the least, use a better desktop environment to develop with.

    3. Re:Driving developers to windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, an identicle artical.

  46. Almost 100% Agreed. by warrax_666 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Your design is either OO or not OO, and the language that you implement it in is irrelevant.

    By extension, you could just as easily say that the implementation language never matters, it's all just a Turing Machine(*) anyway. Except it does matter. Support for cleaner syntax, extra type checking, virtual/non-virtual method dispatch, etc. all matter when implementing an OO design. You can avoid whole classes of bugs by having proper language support, and programmer time can be reduced considerably.

    (*) We'll conveniently ignore the fact that computers aren't really TMs here. The point is still valid.
    --
    HAND.
    1. Re:Almost 100% Agreed. by grfpopl · · Score: 1

      Have you ever seen an OO design in scheme? It's *surprisingly* clean. Other than some admittedly hairy convenience functions, you can implement a class structure quite easily. And scheme doesn't even have types. (For those who don't know, scheme is pretty much the same thing as LISP. And if you don't know what that is... well... there's google.)

      And yeah, I agree that there are some languages that facilitate OO and others that don't. It just irks me when people claim that OO is linked directly to a given language and any program in C can't be OO, it can only "pretend"

    2. Re:Almost 100% Agreed. by rjh · · Score: 4, Funny

      Have you ever seen an OO design in PROLOG?

      It usually starts with this: "First, implement LISP..."

      Have you ever seen backwards-chaining declarative logic designs in Scheme?

      It usually starts with "First, implement PROLOG..."

      I wish I was kidding.

    3. Re:Almost 100% Agreed. by Coryoth · · Score: 1

      You can avoid whole classes of bugs by having proper language support, and programmer time can be reduced considerably.

      Very true. So the question is why are you choosing a language that doesn't support nice features like Design by Contract (which helps avoid whole classes of bugs, makes debugging far simpler, and thus reduces programmer time considerably), or (a new one to me) CSP style programming (which makes writing multithreaded programs a breeze, meaning you can just do things multithreaded from the outset, obviously reducing programmer time considerably)?

      Yes C# and OO languages have nice language features that aid in development. That's not the be all and end all however. Both ideas I just mentioned are very old (DbC is decades old, CSP about 20 years old), yet we haven't gotten around to using them, mostly because people simply don't know what they are, what they can do, and how much simpler they can make things.

      Jedidiah.

  47. top applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    An MP3-tagger.

    Great.

    What an outstanding achievement.

  48. I wouldn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mono, I wouldn't kiss it goodbye.

  49. what about dotgnu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so are the two compatible? Which is more mature?

  50. Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bitch about Microsoft everyday, meanwhile as you use a start menu, taskbar, integrated filesystem/internet browser, and now C# and .NET in your rip-off desktop environments.

    Remind me again what Linux has actually innovated first? I know this will get modded down, but I'm genuinely asking.

  51. unwelcome reasoning by rbanffy · · Score: 0, Troll

    Can it be that nobody will reason that, by endorsing Mono as a .Net clone/subset, we allow Microsoft to dictate what an open-source product should do?

    FOSS can't beat Microsoft by embrace and extend. More so when it's Microsoft who hold the standard reference and not the other way around. They can make the Mono developers jump wherever they feel like, by extending and deprecating APIs at will.

    And, by being a subset of .Net, it is not very reassuring that resources invested in .Net will not be lost when migrating to Mono.

    Changing the subject a little bit, is there a Visual Studio .Net plug-in that validates code against Mono to ensure that it's Mono-compatible?

    1. Re:unwelcome reasoning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I've had similar thoughts as well.

      My boss put it very succinctly, once. We're in the document business (a vague but at least trivially accurate term) and a few of the engineers seem to think of Adobe as a direct competitor. My boss heard about that and told them to knock it off, saying "If you're a little guy and you position yourself in direct competition with the big guys, all that's going to happen is they'll make you look like incompetent amateurs."

      Mono is an interesting project, but going head-to-head against Microsoft will only cause them grief.

  52. Re:Yes, let's all bow to Microsoft by cosinezero · · Score: 0

    Try six months of programming in .net, and then try to tell me that MS was wrong with it. It's seriously hot stuff.

  53. Re:Yes, let's all bow to Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, it's called Java and us smart folk in the vast world of computing have been using it for years dimwit...

  54. Cue the Microsoft paranoia by bonch · · Score: 1

    Let's get it out of the way here. Everyone who's going to post about C# and .NET being controlled by a big, proprietary corporation that has been known to crush competition, post here. Meanwhile, ignore Java and Sun.

  55. What are the good bits of which you speak? by pmike_bauer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are these good bits of which you speak? Or are we (yet again) confusing Java, the language, and Java, the platform? An argument can be made that the C# language learned and improved upon the Java language's experience. On the other hand, comparing the two platforms (i.e. runtimes and libraries) is a whole different bag. Granted, C# and .Net are possibly the best technologies to use if you are developing Windows applications. But, to assert that these are the best options in any other environment is simply ludicrous. Mono is in no way as mature, stable, feature rich (you name it) as the Java platform. Pray tell where is my Mono equivalent of Jakarta, Java3D, Maven, HotSpotVM, Tapestry, Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, yadatada? When you find them, then come back and tell me C# has "all the good bits." Mono may have the potential to become what Java is today, but its not there yet.

    --
    I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
    1. Re:What are the good bits of which you speak? by m50d · · Score: 1

      There's no we, you may be confused but I'm just talking about the language, which is horrible and deserves to die.

      --
      I am trolling
    2. Re:What are the good bits of which you speak? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One could also make the argument that C# includes a lot of cruft which the Java people wisely left out.. C# is NOT a better language IMO.

  56. Active Desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It sounds really cool, and Open Source hackers came up with this before Microsoft did.

    Active Desktop?

    Microsoft came up with taskbars, start menus, integrated filesystem/net browser, and now C#/.NET before "Open Source hackers" did. And whatever they didn't come up with, they ended up being the ones to popularize (i.e., taskbar). OSS is about cloning.

  57. What are the good bits of which you speak? by pmike_bauer · · Score: 1
    ...good riddance [to java] - C# includes all the good bits anyway.

    What are these good bits of which you speak?
    Or are we (yet again) confusing Java, the language, and Java, the platform?

    An argument can be made that the C# language learned and improved upon the Java language's experience.
    On the other hand, comparing the two platforms (i.e. runtimes and libraries) is a whole different bag.

    Granted, C# and .Net are possibly the best technologies to use if you are developing Windows applications.
    But, to assert that these are the best options in any other environment is simply ludicrous.

    Mono is in no way as mature, stable, feature rich (you name it) as the Java platform.
    Pray tell where is my Mono equivalent of Jakarta, Java3D, Maven, HotSpotVM, Tapestry, Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, yadatada?

    When you find them, then come back and tell me C# has "all the good bits."

    --
    I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
  58. Re:Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Answer is obvious. Security.

  59. Not hardly. by rjh · · Score: 1, Troll

    Right. So by that logic, you can write OO code in machine language. (Which you can't, by the by; no processor on the market today has a "frob this object" command in its opcodes.)

    I wonder when this "OO is just a style" meme will die. Guys, we have different computer languages because machine language is icky. (Have you ever hand-hacked applications using debug.exe? I have. I didn't like it and I'm not going back.)

    In order to guard our precious sanity from the frozen wasteland that is raw machine language, we've invented formal languages in which it's possible to describe mathematical constructs in terms of various different metaphors. PROLOG uses pure mathematical logic as a way of approaching the problem domain. Instead of raw 1s and 0s, we escape from it altogether and we get to think in terms of bindings and clauses. (Variables? What are those? Functions? Don't need 'em.)

    LISP uses set theory to do the same thing. Learn set theory in and out and you'll discover interesting niches of LISP, and come to appreciate its alien beauty.

    What's C? C's a portable Assembler that's been kludged up over the years. That's not an insult--sometimes what you want is a portable Assembler with 30 years of hacks on the side, because those hacks are what give it such power. The C language is designed in such a way as to make kludgy hacks easy to write, which is sometimes a great strength.

    The languages we use lend themselves, quite directly, to how we think about problems and how we decide to solve them. As such, it makes absolutely no sense to say "well, you can do OO in any language." Sure you can. All Turing-complete languages are equivalent. But at that point, why don't you go back to machine code? That's Turing-complete, too.

    When you've bled from your eyeballs on the raw binary, then come back to languages. Discover what each one brings to the table. Discover where they're superior and where they're inferior. You might discover a lot of new things along the way.

    1. Re:Not hardly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      clearly you have never coded in assembler. no processor on the market has a draw a line from this point to this point command in its opcodes. this doesn't stop you performing this action though does it.

    2. Re:Not hardly. by grfpopl · · Score: 1

      So... when you write an OO program in C++ it stops being OO once you compile it since it is in machine code?

      Yes, every language has value. Yes, hand coding assembly *BLOWS*. (debug.exe was fun, but there's something to be said for being able to edit your code...) OO is still about design, and then you choose the language that will best allow you to implement your design.

      And to respond to your first comment directly, you can't write OO code in any language. You can write code that implements an OO design in any language (and like I think both you and I agree, depending on the particulars of the design, some languages will be better to use than others).

    3. Re:Not hardly. by Kihaji · · Score: 1
      And it is this reason why I see Mono to be a great tool, it expands on the CORBA and cross language bindings to make them easier to use.

      Instead of using hacks to get multiple languages to work together, with the CLR you can write different parts of an application in languages that best suit them, and easily (Key word easily) integrate them through the CLR.

      Every language has its place in the world, they are afterall just tools to be used. With Mono and the CLR technology that they, and MS have improved upon, the future for all of them is bright.

    4. Re:Not hardly. by rjh · · Score: 1
      it stops being OO once you compile it since it is in machine code?
      Clearly, yes. Machine code is not C++. Machine code is its own language, with its own grammar, syntax and rules. A many-to-many correspondence exists between C++ source and machine code representations. There are many ways to write C++ source which will compile down to the same machine code, and there are many different pieces of machine code which can be derived from the same piece of C++ depending on compiler optimizations and the like.

      A correspondence exists, but once you make the translation you can no longer be said to be using idiosyncratic features of the original language. If I take English text and translate it into Japanese, I'm not going to have prepositional grammar anymore. Likewise, if I take C++ and compile it into machine code, I'm not going to have OO code anymore. (Or I might; it depends on whether I'm targeting silicon directly or an intermediate layer like the CLR.)

      OO is not about design. OO is a feature of a language. It can be supported strongly and by design (Smalltalk) or weakly and by accident (C) or not at all (PROLOG).

      It's not about design. If it was about design, I'd be able to design OO applications in PROLOG and backwards-chaining declarative logic applications in C.
    5. Re:Not hardly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some languages allow you to build your own abstractions, including OO, without going into Turing tarpit territory (i.e. what you're doing doesn't resemble interpreting a language with different abstractions - it doesn't matter if it resembles implementing such a language).

      I'd say C and assembly language definitely allow you to build your own abstractions (in fact, they all but force you to build your own abstractions), although I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea.

      Other languages (such as Common Lisp with its macros) allow you to more elegantly and safely build your own abstractions.

      If you claim that C can't do OO, please familiarize yourself with how Gtk+ is actually implemented.

    6. Re:Not hardly. by StrawberryFrog · · Score: 1

      So by that logic, you can write OO code in machine language. Which you can't.

      Of course you can. You just code machine code similar to that which would be generated by the equivalent OO-style C++ program :)

      Machine language makes OO hard to do, C#/Java et all make it hard not to do, but it can be done - just make everything static methods of the same objects and voila - procedural programming.

      --

      My Karma: ran over your Dogma
      StrawberryFrog

    7. Re:Not hardly. by mrroach · · Score: 1

      > Right. So by that logic, you can write OO code in
      > machine language. (Which you can't, by the by; no
      > processor on the market today has a "frob this
      > object" command in its opcodes.)

      Hmm, so when your C++ code is converted to machine code, it suddenly stops being object oriented? Interesting.

      > it makes absolutely no sense to say "well, you
      > can do OO in any language." Sure you can. All
      > Turing-complete languages are equivalent. But at
      > that point, why don't you go back to machine
      > code? That's Turing-complete, too.

      Wait, so you're saying it makes no sense... and then you're saying it yourself, and then you are contradicting your opening statement...

      My brain asplode.

      -Mark

    8. Re:Not hardly. by Jhan · · Score: 1

      Ding! Ding! Ding!

      ...And the Neologism-of-the-Day award goes to MrRoach!:

      My brain asplode.

      Classical, consice, pretty!

      My loins afire,
      My heart asunder,
      My brain asplode!

      --

      I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

    9. Re:Not hardly. by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      What's C? C's a portable Assembler that's been kludged up over the years. That's not an insult--sometimes what you want is a portable Assembler with 30 years of hacks on the side, because those hacks are what give it such power.

      People like to think of C that way, but often it's because they don't understand ANSI/ISO C. Most such "kludgy hacks" that people have learned are formally undefined by the C language, reliant more on implementation quirks than anything else. Thus, I'd like you to cite a few examples of what you think you're talking about.

      You also make it sound way too hard to write assembly language. It tends to be costlier and less portable, but it's not that hard to read and write at all.

    10. Re:Not hardly. by nightski · · Score: 1

      Actually,
      Yeah I would say that once your code is converted to machine code it is NO longer object oriented.

      What is object oriented anyways? It is code written that exhibits the traits of polymorphism, abstraction, etc...

      Does machine code do this? Heck no. Does C++? Yes. Python? Very good. C#? Also very good.

      Can you convert from OO to non-OO during compilation? Of course. In fact we have to since the hardware has no concept of OO. Now there is an idea! :-)

      --
      "Ideas without action are worthless."
  60. Mono is a train wreck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The 1.0 release got off to a nice start. I was able to easily install it on a development server and do some basic tests. I just returned to do some cross-platform anti-microsoft insurance for a C# based web app and...

    Frankly, mono is now impossible to install. I am willing to use debian stable or testing, but with my sarge-base dev server, there are no debs and it is not possible to get mono to compile. I guess it will probably work on SUSE, but after my experience with RedHat as a partner I'll stick with debian.

    1. Re:Mono is a train wreck by lupus-slash · · Score: 1

      I use debian and compile mono from svn every day.
      Maybe you need to post details of the failure so we can tell you what's wrong in your system (likely you are still using an old automake, maybe you installed a new one, but still use the old one).
      If you use the packaged tarballs there are no compilation issues on debian.

    2. Re:Mono is a train wreck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You were right. I was digging out the info for you and found a missing dependency. Frak. Nothing to see here.

  61. Re:Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped o by hey · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Just from today's news...
    Genetic Algorithm in the Kernel

  62. Did you forget about wxNET? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1, Informative
    These are not .NET applications, they are Gtk+ applications written in C#. As a result, they don't run on Windows or .NET out of the box.

    That's because they keep thinking "Linux-only". It's not "I'm going to make a cross-platform app using C#", but "I like C#, I'll use it on Linux".

    WAKE UP, GUYS!!!

    If you want Mono apps to run in Windows, perhaps you should take a look at wx.NET.

    From the link:

    Cross-Platform, Multi-Runtime

    Without any extra work on your part, your application will run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows using any of the following .NET runtimes: MS.NET, Mono [emphasis mine], or DotGNU Portable.NET.

    Native UI, No Emulation

    Unlike other toolkit approaches, wx.NET uses the native UI framework on each platform. Under Windows the WIN32 API is used to create buttons, checkboxes, etc. On Linux, GTK+ 2.0 is used (not really "native", but a look/feel users are familiar with). On the Mac, the full aqua look and feel is provided by using Quartz window compositing and HIView implementations for controls.

    Other toolkits take the emulation route. This can cause look/feel inconsistencies to end users and slower executing interfaces.

    (end of snip)

    Take two very good cross-platform things (.NET/Mono, wxWidgets)... a powerful combination like this could jeopardize Microsoft's monopoly if you ask me. And that is always a good thing.

    GoMono!
    1. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How many times do we have to have the myth of cross platform UIs repeated? Each platform has different HIGs which determine how an application should behave as well as how it should look. Using the same UI code on multiple platforms results in apps that don't match the HIGs on any platform except (if you're lucky) the one on which they were developed. Using native widgets does not make an app that matches the HIGs, it just removes an important visual clue from the user that the app is not going to. A better solution would be to go the Java route and develop a set of HIGs for Java/Swing/Metal apps, so that anything that looks like a Java/Metal app behaves in the same way, giving people a subconscious visual clue that they are going to be different from their apps, but consistent within the context of the Java (or Mono, or whatever) platform.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Each platform has different HIGs which determine how an application should behave as well as how it should look. Using the same UI code on multiple platforms results in apps that don't match the HIGs on any platform except (if you're lucky) the one on which they were developed.

      Which raises the interesting question of whether we should be looking for another level of abstraction for GUIs beyond widget toolkits that let you write one codebase that then applies the HIG rules of the platform (which, of course, have to be something formally codified rather than just a spec document) to generate a (relatively speaking) HIG compliant UI.

      Imagine having applications written on a level such that the "OK/Cancel" button order is determined by the platform rather than by where the code explicitly placed the buttons. Such would certainly make GNOME and KDE much more compatible. At the same time it would formalise the HIG from a "reccomended way of doing things" into a mandated consistent GUI.

      Jedidiah.

    3. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by arkanes · · Score: 1
      Incidently, wxWidgets provides functionlity to do exactly what you're saying - an abstracted widget you can use to provide correctly ordered stock buttons on any platform.

      Writing good cross platform applications is hard. A good cross platform toolkit can make it a lot easier - then you only need to understand the behavior differences, rather than the entire native toolkits of every platform. And it's certainly a heck of a lot better than the abomination of Gtk/Win32.

    4. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 1

      KDE uses KDialogBase for dialogs, and it is totally up to the user which way round the Ok/Cancel buttons go. There's an option for it somewhere. ( Not sure if it's modifyable via a GUI, but it is modifyable).

      http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/c vs -api/kdeui/html/classKDialogBase.html#_details

      One reason I think is for right-to-left languages. Not sure if it swaps them round for that or not.

    5. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by Coryoth · · Score: 1

      Incidently, wxWidgets provides functionlity to do exactly what you're saying - an abstracted widget you can use to provide correctly ordered stock buttons on any platform.

      Well, not exactly no - that's coding the HIG into the widget library. I would think the logical thing to do would be to code the HIG into the platform. Thus GNOME as a platform has an abstracted way of building a GUI application that it can share with KDE, MacOS and whoever else wants in, such that when you run/compile the application in/for a GNOME environment it applies GNOME HIG rules to construct the GUI, and when you use KDE it uses KDE HIG rules to construct the GUI and...

      That way it is the platform that is responsible for defining their HIG, not the cross platform widget library.

      Sure, there are some HIG rules you can't enforce via this "this is how to construct the GUI" way, but it would be useful for a lot of things. Perhaps it would be worth the time to see what sorts of concepts and objects one would have to use/define to be able toi build a UI in this manner.

      Jedidiah.

    6. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sounds like XUL, XAML, the Glade XML format, or Renaissance (an OpenStep GUI builder) to me... you express the GUI in some logical fashion, and ask the underlying OS toolkit (whatever that is... Gtk, KDE, etc) to render it.

    7. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by arkanes · · Score: 1

      You're still describing exactly what wxWidgets does - it's the toolkit that *has* to support this sort of thing, although the platform can encourage or assist it, as GNOME does.

    8. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 1

      Sounds like glade. You can use different glade templates which work but have different apearance.

      But even then, you wouldn't havefull HIG compliance. How do you match the HIG for menus?

      In my opinion, HIG is not that important - what matters is real appearance, aka the toolkit. What makes a app more or less hig compliant in mac os x is he use of cocoa instead of X11 for example

    9. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? by Delos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How many times do we have to have the myth of cross platform UIs repeated?

      As long as people keep downloading Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

  63. Wow by kahei · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Actually, reading that statistic I was impressed by how well C# is doing -- 1/7th as many projects as Java, and really all in about 2 years, and in the OSS community which isn't exactly MS's core area.

    I think MS have recaptured a bit of their old magic here, in lowering the 'energy threshold' required to get a project going. That's what made VB and Excel so ubiquitous -- I'm not saying that that was a good thing, but it sure worked. The work you have to do to create, package and distribute a .net app is just significantly less than for a java app. If I never see another classpath or another teeny little xml file that has to just match the Java code in some other file, I will be sooooo happy.

    Of course, I'm far from declaring victory for .net. But 2000 on sourceforge is a good sign, not a bad one.

    --
    Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
    1. Re:Wow by Glock27 · · Score: 1
      Actually, reading that statistic I was impressed by how well C# is doing -- 1/7th as many projects as Java, and really all in about 2 years, and in the OSS community which isn't exactly MS's core area.

      OSS isn't Java's core area either. Considering the amount of badmouthing Java takes here on /., it's amazing that there are any Java Sourceforge projects at all... ;-)

      I think MS have recaptured a bit of their old magic here, in lowering the 'energy threshold' required to get a project going. That's what made VB and Excel so ubiquitous -- I'm not saying that that was a good thing, but it sure worked. The work you have to do to create, package and distribute a .net app is just significantly less than for a java app. If I never see another classpath or another teeny little xml file that has to just match the Java code in some other file, I will be sooooo happy.

      You should try gcj, you can either end up with a single executable file, or an executable plus some shared libraries that reside in the same dir. No classpath or XML required.

      Of course, I'm far from declaring victory for .net. But 2000 on sourceforge is a good sign, not a bad one.

      Considering the glowing tone of the original article, you'd think the proportions were reversed...just thought I'd inject a little reality into the conversation.

      (BTW the #5 most popular app on SF, Azureus, is a desktop Java app.)

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
  64. Re:Reverse engeneering :O by nberardi · · Score: 1

    It's a 20MB runtime environment, and a 200MB SDK envieronment.

  65. Who made this list? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    portage-sharp - portage-sharp is a gtk frontend for the Gentoo portage system

    Why does Mono feel the need to include vaporware in order to bolster their list? portage-sharp has no files, no cvs, no nothing.

  66. Yup. by warrax_666 · · Score: 1

    We actually agree, it's just that I felt you being a bit over the top with that one statement. :)

    --
    HAND.
  67. LOL WHAT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    -5 Funny. Ye-e-e-e-esssss....

  68. sure, but by zerojoker · · Score: 0

    when will we get stereo?

    1. Re:sure, but by robotoverflow · · Score: 1

      You'll need to wait for version 2.0

      --
      % mkdir :
      % ls -dF :
      :/
  69. ".net" vs ".NET" (rant) by McFly777 · · Score: 1

    I am still steamed that Microsoft sucessfully (?) hijacked the term in the first place. Considering that it is a internet standard TLD designatator for network domains (originally... now just another TLD) it would seem that it should be off limits for trademark use as regards to computers.

    Remember, trademarks are specific to a particular industry, and involve whether customer confusion would result. For example, it would be no problem if a fishing supplies manufacturer created a new fish harvesting device and trademarked it as the ".NET" fishing net, because that is in a different industry. But if I created software.net domain it now sounds like it MAY have something to do with MS's .NET due to it being in the same or related industry.

    Put another way, I could not trademark "facial tissue" because it is a generic term. For similar reasons, "Kleenex (R)" has to try very hard to keep its trademark from becomming a generic term, or risk losing it altogether.

    --

    McFly777
    - - -
    "What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
    1. Re:".net" vs ".NET" (rant) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yeah, like OpenOffice.org - what were they thinking? (posting ac 'cause I've modded in this thread)

  70. Re:Reverse engeneering :O by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

    oh right, but still, 20meg is still too much for dialup users, which are still common.

    come to think of it, directX is distrobuted with every game that requires it, so if the latest .net environment was distrobuted with every app that required it and it checked to see if it was newer than the one installed (like directX), they could get away with it. shit.

  71. Re:I for one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Message to moderators:

    Stop modding down any anti-Mono posts. Many of them have valid points.

  72. The naming of cars is a difficult matter by metamatic · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ten cars which sound like Robert Ludlum novels:

    1. The Honda Accord
    2. The Isuzu Axiom
    3. The Buick Rendezvous
    4. The Mazda Protegé
    5. The Alfa Quadrifoglio
    6. The Diahatsu Charade
    7. The Lambourghini Murcielago
    8. The Mitsubishi Endeavor
    9. The Oldsmobile Intrigue
    10. The Subaru Legacy

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  73. Re:I think it is a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Now you've written a whole lot to make clear that you think mono opens up open source for litigation from MS. The only thing that's missing is an argument as to exactly why writing an implementation of an open standard should pose such a risk.

    Now I would readily agree that there are probably parts of the mono project that could turn out to be problematic, like implementing winforms, which is afaik not part of the standard. But, and that's really the important point here, mono itself and all the programs mentioned here written with mono and gtk# wouldn't be affected by any MS legal assault on mono's winforms implementation.

    So what exactly makes you think that mono is such a huge risk?

  74. Hey by antoy · · Score: 1

    It's Mono 1.2, not 2.0, that's coming on May.

  75. Re:I think it is a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What makes him think?

    Why nothing of course. He heard someone else say it on /. and of course everything anyone says on /. is God's own truth right?

    That's all the proof HE needs...

  76. C# for UI? by swimmar132 · · Score: 3, Interesting


    I'm primarily a *nix developer, but this Mono implementation of .NET seems somewhat interesting. It may be a good way to go in the future for Linux GUI applications (as C# is probably better suited for GUI development than C++ or others -- and don't mention Java please).

    A good portable way to write programs might be to write the application core in standard C++, then write the UI in C#/Mono on *nix, Obj-C on OS X, and C#/.NET on Windows.

    Thoughts?

    1. Re:C# for UI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ughhhh you can do that now with glade. You don't even have to write anything. Just design your app and call the blah.glade file. It works with c,c++,c#,java,python etc

  77. Depends by XpirateX · · Score: 1

    I love Muine, but I don't like how I have to install a bazzillion dependancies to run a "light weight" mp3 player. Seems contradictory. If and when the application and all the dependancies work, the final products (at least the ones I've seen) are really nice though. I still prefer Muine over just about anything. I'm looking forward to trying BlueFunk.

  78. Mono fanboys make me ill by amightywind · · Score: 1

    Keep up the good work Mono team, I love C#, and I love how you are brining it to *nix.

    I can't think of anything the GNU system needs less than another bloated Windoze language port. The list presented by the article was unimpressive - mostly just sleezy C wrappers and ill conceived "frameworks". Nothing with any legs. It is regretable that the good effort that goes into Mono isn't channeled into better C and C++ API's. Oh well, free software means people are free to waste their time.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
    1. Re:Mono fanboys make me ill by nberardi · · Score: 1

      You right it also means that they don't have to waste their time on comming up with an other API for C or C++. They can work on something they like to do, such as developing .net for *nix.

  79. Manage? Project? What are these things? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not trolling, I honestly believe that there is such a thing as the best tool for the job, and for some jobs, C is the best tool. Would you write a device driver in Java or Python? A file system? A compiler? A 3D graphics library? Anything that runs in kernel space?

    And speaking of best tool for the job, you may redefine "best" to mean "whatever makes my project easier to manage", but I'm a scientist, I don't really give a shit about that stuff. To me, "best" means best.

  80. No Really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm afraid you simply don't grok the object oriented design methodology which is what oo means, the clue is in the name.

    I'd say your confusing designing software and implementing software. So for example you say It's not about design. If it was about design, I'd be able to design OO applications in PROLOG and backwards-chaining declarative logic applications in C.

    However one doesn't design an application in PROLOG, COBOL, lisp, C, c++ C#, Java or any other language, one implements a design in a specific language, one designs software on paper (or in a tool, I forget the name of them but Rational Rose is an example).

    I do agree that a chosen target language may influence a design but IMHO one should design the software first and the design should influence the language and not the otherway around.

    OO is not about design. OO is a feature of a language - I'm sorry this statement is simply wrong, the rest of this thread has a clear explanation of why.

  81. Re:I think it is a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AFAIK, Mono is a FLOSS re-implementation of .net and the whole suite that follows it (C#, etc.), technologies that are strongly identified... and *controlled* by our Redmond friends.

    Over the last 25 years I have seen these people do whatever it takes to crush & destroy competition. Remember "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run" when they were still trying to shove MultiPlan down people's throat? Even if, in reality, Mono has been implemented using unecumbered & open standards, I do not think that M$ will let those little details stop it from sueing the FLOSS movement (or just the Mono team) for theft of trade secrets or whatever nonsense they can think of.

    This is like the SCaldera suit, anyone who knew anything about anything knew that the suit never made sense and that their claims were baseless. Yet it did not prevent Darl & co. to sue IBM and scare many a PHB into avoiding "Linux" and "open source".

    That's what I'm afraid of. A repeat of the "theftware" accusations... A little FUD can go a long way with the decision makers, those who sign the cheques.

  82. THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This comment has a valid point.

    I didn't realize mono was so in vogue that it got exemption from criticism status on slashdot.

  83. Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good info. Thanks!

  84. Re:I think it is a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1. Mono is an implementation of an open standard. That this standard was developed by MS doesn't change the fact that it is an open standard. This standard is not controlled by our Redmond friends. Sure they are free to add new things to it, but that doesn't really affect mono, as mono as it is now will still be available and all the apps written with mono and gtk# will still be available.

    2. I agree with your "appreciation" of MS bussiness practices and I readily agree with you that MS wouldn't shy away from even the most disgusting legal assault on open source if it thought to profit from it. But this holds true with mono and without it.

    I think one can even argue that attacking mono would be the stupidest thing MS could do, as, again, it's an open standard, MS is marketing .net as cross platform, MS has been very aware of mono and can be shown to have been very aware of it and on top of it they even worked together with the mono devs, so claiming that, oh, we just found out that something terrible is going on here probably wouldn't have any chance to stand up in court.

  85. stop the cross-platform bullshit by idlake · · Score: 1

    That's because they keep thinking "Linux-only"

    Yes, and that's a good thing. I don't want cross-platform apps, I want the best apps possible for the Gnome desktop. I don't get the best apps possible for the Gnome desktop if people waste their time worrying about how their application is going to look on Windows or OS X. The whiners on those platforms are only going to complain that the application doesn't look "native enough" anyway.

    Microsoft doesn't lose focus by worrying about how to port their apps to UNIX and neither should Linux developers worry about how their applications look on Windows. When Microsoft does create applications for multiple platforms, they hand-craft them for each target platform.

    Mainstream applications shouldn't be cross-platform; it's a waste of time and results in a poor quality user experience.

    1. Re:stop the cross-platform bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *sic* what a bunch of garbage.

    2. Re:stop the cross-platform bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Mainstream applications shouldn't be cross-platform; it's a waste of time and results in a poor quality user experience.

      Replace "mainstream" there with "gnome" and you've got a good start. The worst thing about all this mono/gtk+ crap is that it keeps Linux apps locked into the garbage that is the gnome desktop which only a handful of gnome fanbois even use, let alone like.

    3. Re:stop the cross-platform bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Replace "mainstream" there with "gnome" and you've got a good start

      No, Windows and Macintosh applications are not cross platform. It is idiotic to hamstring Linux desktops with building it out of cross platform pieces.

      The worst thing about all this mono/gtk+ crap is that it keeps Linux apps locked into the garbage that is the gnome desktop which only a handful of gnome fanbois even use, let alone like.

      Sun chose it as the basis for their desktop, and IBM chose it as the basis for Eclipse/SWT. I think that should tell you something.

    4. Re:stop the cross-platform bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that commercially successful desktops like Windows and Macintosh don't use a cross platform approach doesn't concern you: you think that a cross platform infrastructure is still the way to go.

      Well, without an actual argument, you are on thin ice, buddy. No, actually you are already drowning.

    5. Re:stop the cross-platform bullshit by PickyH3D · · Score: 1
      I guess Microsoft Office for the Mac is a piece of junk?

      Good times.

      Anything that turns out to be poor quality was a waste of time. Maybe you should look into what you are doing wrong?

  86. Microsoft Linux by ReelOddeeo · · Score: 1

    What if MS came out with MSLinux



    New! Improved! Microsoft Linux!

    Don't be fooled by those inferior Linux products from the likes of Red Hat and others.

    Buy only Genuine Microsoft (R) brand Linux. The Linux that Microsoft has embraced.

    Yes, folks, Microsoft Linux has everything that you'll find in those other Linux knock offs. But Microsoft Linux has extended Linux with many great new patented features that set Microsoft Linux way ahead of the others. These features will extinguish the competition.

    Using Microsoft Linux, you can still run every program written for those other generic Linux systems, while enjoying unique features found only in Microsoft Linux.

    But wait! There's more!!!

    Microsoft Linux is the only Linux that can run all your favorite programs, inclucing Excel, Word and Outlook, and many, many more! Now how much will you pay!?!

    Order Now! Don't be left behind! Get in on a leading edge technology, from a leading edge company like Microsoft.

    Unlike other brands of Linux, only Microsoft Linux has the stability, quality, and security that you've come to expect from the Microsoft name.

    Limited time special offer!!! For a limited time, get a copy of Microsoft Linux for FREE! when you order Microsoft Office at full retail price! Remember, this is a limited time offer! This offer could be withdrawn at any time after our competition disappears! So hurry and order now!


    [_] YES! I want to pre-order Microsoft Linux!

    Enclosed is a blank check. When Microsoft Linux is ready to ship, please fill in the amount and then rush Microsoft Linux to me!

    --

    Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
    1. Re:Microsoft Linux by Anonym0us+Cow+Herd · · Score: 1

      only Microsoft Linux has the stability, quality, and security that you've come to expect from the Microsoft name.

      A very true statement.

      ONLY Microsoft Linux...
      has the STABILITY that I would expect from Microsoft.
      Other Linuxes have great stability.

      ONLY Microsoft Linux...
      has the QUALITY and SECURITY that I would expect from Microsoft.
      Other Linuxes have great quality and security.

      --
      The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
  87. Super hits by Ulric · · Score: 0

    What the **** are "Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam!"? I have never heard of a single one of those programs.

    1. Re:Super hits by nr · · Score: 1

      *lol* Yeah I also got a good laugh then I looked at that list of "high quality" Mono software.

      So where are all the big iron industrial strenght enterprise applications?, like what Apache project is doing with Java.

  88. Mono in stereo by ravenII · · Score: 1

    I use mono on both my main development platforms, Linux (SUSE) and Windblows,(sorry guys/gals, most my pay comes from M$ clients.)Mono and eclipse are my major Xplatform tools. It is fun to work with mono and I am always looking for more and more functions and libs. Infact I have two sets on each platform, dev and cvs /SVNversions. I am getting ready to provide some patches, if accepted

  89. Neither does Samba by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    Actually, Samba doesn't need to be Windows compatible to be useful either. Aside from the many other devices that speak SMB (many NAS units, etc), there's also the not insignficant matter of the POSIX extensions in Samba.

    I'm increasingly inclined to view CIFS and Samba as an NFS alternative for Linux that does't suck. I'm hoping NFS4 turns out well, but I'm not holding my breath. We do need something to replace NFS, and we need it about ten years ago.

  90. Re:Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Bitch about Microsoft everyday, meanwhile as you use a start menu, taskbar, integrated filesystem/internet browser, and now C# and .NET in your rip-off desktop environments.

    Microsoft invented none of that, even .NET/C# is just a rehashing of existing ideas. Actually Microsoft have invented a grand total of 'jack-shit' unless you include the help assistants.

  91. Re:Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped o by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1
    Bitch about Microsoft everyday, meanwhile as you use a start menu, taskbar, integrated filesystem/internet browser, and now C# and .NET in your rip-off desktop environments.

    For each item on your list, you'll find previous examples that don't originate from Microsoft. Granted - some of them may not be as directly related as others. But there's a lot less "innovation" than it sounds like you're expecting.
    Remind me again what Linux has actually innovated first? I know this will get modded down, but I'm genuinely asking.

    Remind me again where anyone associated with Linux has used "innovation" as marketing or moral justification? If you look at Linux and the Unix culture it more-or-less spawned from, you'll find that it comes closer to evolution than "innovation". This environment recognizes the process of building on previous work.

    This doesn't mean Microsoft hasn't done particularly clever things - even "innovative" things. Nor does it mean that Linux (and similar environments) are all about copy-cat and incapable of having similarly cleaver things happening in their environment. But it does highlight the apparent importance given to "innovation" by each environment. And that is the crux of that particular Microsoft criticism.

    Which has little to do with all the other criticism that targets other aspects of Microsoft's business.
  92. MonoDevelop 0.5.1 and Mono 1.1.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unfortunately, the latest stable release of MonoDevelop will not compile against Mono 1.1.4. If you need an IDE for your Mono work, you would have to check out the Mono sources from SVN. The SVN version of Mono also has its dependencies, many of which also would have to be checked out of SVN repositories. So, while Mono 1.1.4 is available, for the time being, I have to stick with 1.0.6 in order to continue working within an IDE framework.

  93. Re:Isn't it funny how much Microsoft gets ripped o by uglyduckling · · Score: 1
    OK, I know this is a troll but...

    a start menu - OK, I use that sometimes

    taskbar - no way, I have my Gnome set up Mac-style

    integrated filesystem/internet browser - you have to be kidding: what has web browsing got to do with my filesystem? I use Firefox for the web.

    C# and .NET - I don't use either of them, but if C# is a half-decent language I don't object to apps being written in it

    Remind me again what Linux has actually innovated first?

    • tabbed browsing and popup blocking integrated into the browser (Firefox/Mozilla)
    • XML file formats in a mainstream office suite (Openoffice)
    • decent package management with automatic dependency resolution (apt/urpmi)
    • run-anywhere live CDs with persistence (MandrakeMove etc.)
    • seamless virtual desktops (MS now has a Powertoy that does this, but it sucks)
    • true seamless USB hotplugging - it's still broken in XP

    OK, I know that much of the above doesn't impact on the regular user most of the time, but it's worth remembering that the taskbar idea was stolen from RISCOS, integrated filesystem and web browser is a stupid idea anyway - about the only real innovation in GUIs from MS was the Start menu. It's good - but one true GUI innovation in 20 years from a multi-billion dollar company really isn't that great.

  94. Which bit of Java isn't open ? by MosesJones · · Score: 2, Insightful


    C# is an ECMA standard (which of course with generics et al Microsoft is breaking). This is NOT open, and certainly not in comparison to Java.

    The Java Community Process go to the site and have a look at the "closed" and unchangable monstor that Sun has created. I mean its just scary to think that Java 6.0 is ASKING FOR JOINERS, to input into the next standard.

    How would you become an ECMA member and propose changes to C# ?

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
    1. Re:Which bit of Java isn't open ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Dude, you can join the JCP 20 times in a row, if it makes you feel better, it still doesn't give you any say in what goes in and out of Java 6. That works via expert committees, and these work via invitation only.

      The general JCP membership can vote in a bunch of elections, and gets to see some drafts a bit earlier than the general public, and *that's about it*.

      cheers,
      dalibor topic,
      Kaffe dev

    2. Re:Which bit of Java isn't open ? by m50d · · Score: 1
      The implementation. C# has a pretty decent open implementation which I can fork and add my own bits to. I don't care if my new language isn't C#, I don't even care if I have to rename it, but I do care about whether I can make a new language with the bits I want without having to reimplement the whole language from scratch, which is pretty much the case with Java. (Yes there are free implementations around which do a bit of the language, but a lot is missing - and iirc, they can't even publish the partially-implemented versions).

      How would I propose changes to C#? I'd implement them, and submit them to mono and MS, and we'd see if they got adopted. If they were useful enough to warrant changing the language, they would get adopted. I trust this mechanism a lot more than a committee.

      --
      I am trolling
  95. Troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mono is more than an implementation of C# and Microsoft have patented the .NET API. History taught me not to trust Microsoft, so I'll pass on installing a CLR, forever. On one hand the EMCA CLR is no problem because I get by without java just fine. On the other hand, people are talking about targeting Microsofts little trap with core components and I'll continue to call these folk fuckheads for it.

  96. heh - this cracked me up: by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 1

    "with 'super-hits' like Tomboy, F-spot, MonoDevelop, Muine & Blam!"

    Keep that in mind for a sec. Disclaimer: i use GNU/Linux, support the EFF with real $$, and buy boxed distros when available.

    Having said that, heh, F/OSS program/suite names just crack me up sometimes. i was doing fine until that last one.

    Picture this: Dimmed boardroom (lolz, yes lights and minds ... funneh.), that stupid projector and powerpoint setup and you pitching new support and installation services for some really cheap software ... like free ... beer and speech. You're calmly cruising through the lists and what each does. With a nodding of heads and whatnot they listen to you drone. Then you jump forward and scream, throwing your hands out:

    BLAM!

    Swear all of holy hell, you're goin' to jail for dropping 4-6 members with heartattacks. Not good for business.

    k. i'm done now. Sorry, i'm bored.

  97. Live Code Examples for Mono by __aabjlj9081 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Zamples provides a facility for live code examples for C# and and VB.NET using Mono. Novell (sponsor of the Mono project) was kind enough to publish a news brief about us last month. Zamples also provides a live code facility for Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, Haskell and various APIs. Learning by example is a fast way to learn, and Zamples is a good way for authors and software publishers to present their information interactively.

    Disclaimer: I am the founder of Zamples, Inc. Go gently on our servers, they probably won't survive being slashdotted!

  98. mono IsNot .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Certainly not an optimal solution.
    I think that sums up well the entire mono effort, unfortunately.

    As others have posted many many times before, almost, but not quite compatability just doesn't cut it. And that's where mono will be when MSFT cuts the lifeline. If they even have to do that, keeping a version or two comfortably ahead achieves the same.


    Funny to see hoo-hah articles such as these, and then in the same page, this article about Microsoft's efforts to patent the VisualBasic 'IsNot' operator. Call me a sceptic.


    One has to admire the mono team, except, perhaps, for implementing a clone of a standard that is a clone itself (of Java).

  99. Idiots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hope Mono dies... dies a slow and horrible death. What's the point? Learn a real language...

  100. Take the Mono Challenge !!! by MrData · · Score: 1

    Here is the Mono challenge:

    Why should I use it instead of .Net or Java ?

    To be blunt, I have some severe misgivings about the vision and usefulness of Mono.

    Java explicitly supports multiple host operating systems, so this would make it the obvious choice for crossplatform development. .Net is supported by Microsoft on their platforms and app servers, so this would be my best bet for applications targeted soely for Windows.

    Why then should I use Mono instead of these environments ?

    What distinct advantages does Mono have over either of these established and supported platforms ?

    1. Re:Take the Mono Challenge !!! by lupus-slash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What distinct advantages does Mono have over either of these established and supported platforms ?

      Contrary to both the JVM and MS .Net, Mono is free software. Mono is also cross-platform, running on Linux, MacOSX, Windows, Solaris and others on at least 5 different processor architectures.
      And we're rapidly improving to support better server workloads.

    2. Re:Take the Mono Challenge !!! by MrData · · Score: 2, Interesting
      What do you mean when you say that Mono is "free" ?

      Do you mean that it is available at no cost ?
      If this is the case, then so is Java's runtime AND development environment.

      If not then I assume you mean it is "open-source", which is confusing since:
      • The Mono FAQ page claims to implement the Microsoft .NET development platform which it has no legal right to
      • Mono consists of three separate licenses, one for the C# compliler, one for the runtimes, and another for the class libraries


      Secondly, why do I need a Windows version of Mono when as stated in the projects FAQ, Question 1: What Exactly is Mono ?:


      The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Novell that is working to develop an open source, UNIX version of the Microsoft .NET development platform.


      (See the http://www.mono-project.comabout/index.html page for details)
    3. Re:Take the Mono Challenge !!! by QuantumG · · Score: 1

      ahead-of-time compilation.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    4. Re:Take the Mono Challenge !!! by lupus-slash · · Score: 1

      What do you mean when you say that Mono is "free" ?
      I explicitly said "free software", not free: if you don't know what that means in this context you have serious comprehension issues.

      If not then I assume you mean it is "open-source", which is confusing since:

      * The Mono FAQ page claims to implement the Microsoft .NET development platform which it has no legal right to


      Sure, we'll take your uninformed legal advice seriously. It would be funny to know why you think we don't have the legal right to write our own code.


      * Mono consists of three separate licenses, one for the C# compliler, one for the runtimes, and another for the class libraries


      I see, you have issues counting up the number of licenses: for your own benefit we'll use just one license for the next release, so you don't have to count and get confused.

      Secondly, why do I need a Windows version of Mono?

      Dude, you first complain that Mono is not cross-platform and then you complain that it is.
      Anyway, this clearly shows you don't know what free software is about. I suggest you read
      http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.

    5. Re:Take the Mono Challenge !!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Java is proprietary sun software.

      Using java apps on multiple host operating systems is a disruptive user experience, I can tell a java app a mile away. Ugh.

      Using a java app on the backend is asking for slow performance.

      Linux/MacOSx/Windows are they key markets (no, Solaris doesn't have more applications / device drivers then these platforms). For this key grouping mono is looking strong.

      C# is probably on a ton more chip architectures by now as well.

      I think the proof will be in the pudding, but with a huge % of the windows market heading in the C# direction I think the network and benefits of C# will take over. I did my CS courses in Java, but am loving the C# version of things. Using it at work, and starting to use it at home.

  101. Re:.NET is a brand, Mono should stop referring to by MrData · · Score: 1

    I second the motion. I have personally dealt with end users and potential customers who believe that ( .Net == Mono) and managers who have chosen .Net for a development solution over Java based on the misconception that Mono is a crossplatform (ie. Unix/Linux) runtime environment for .Net.

  102. Innovation! by fforw · · Score: 1
    As for your completely random and pointless reference to Bob, I'm still amazed Slashdotters obsess over this small desktop shell released for a short time way back in 1994.
    That's because it was one of the very few times Microsoft really invented something - and it demonstrates what comes out if Microsoft does innovate.
    --
    while (!asleep()) sheep++
    1. Re:Innovation! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taskbar, start menu, integrated filesystem/net browser, .NET, etc.

      What do all those things have in common with Linux? Oh, that's right, they're Windows features that are ripped-off in all Linux distros.

      Hilarious.

    2. Re:Innovation! by fforw · · Score: 1
      Taskbar, start menu, integrated filesystem/net browser, .NET, etc.

      What do all those things have in common with Linux? Oh, that's right, they're Windows features that are ripped-off in all Linux distros.

      Hilarious.

      Hilarious? You should really learn some computer history:
      • Arthur/RiscOS2 (1987/1989) and NextSTEP (1989) both included a taskbar. ( History of the GUI )
      • The start menu is very similar to the apple application menu.
      • NSCA Mosaic supported local files since version 0.2a, publically available was version 0.5a in 1993 ( NCSA Mosaic History ). Microsoft bought a Spyglass Mosaic Browser version and renamed it to "Internet Explorer" in 1995.
      • .NET is hardly innovative. It rather blatantly copies Java which copied features from Smalltalk, Pascal and LISP.
      --
      while (!asleep()) sheep++
  103. obvious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so is there anything that can rescue java and the free side at this point ?

    just for the record, i personally am not a .net or mono fan. i consider it to be a MS strategy against free software at it's core.

    a lot of the posts about the various libraries being patent encumbered, etc. seem well written and articulated.

    so...the question remains...will Sun and IBM deal with this in some way or just let it keep growing ?

  104. Re:.NET is a brand, Mono should stop referring to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In fact some of their .NET stuff, esp. Passport may not even run off of the .NET Framework!

  105. Yes, we've heard it all before by aCapitalist · · Score: 1

    Yes, we all know about the patents (2.5 years ago), and we also know that you don't like Mono because it's Microsoft stuff, and we also know that you have 0 influence over what anybody else does.

    What's the deal with web forums and IRC where people with personality disorders actually think that they can tell people what to use and what not to use?

    I guess it's one of those geek things, where in real life they get shoved around all the time, so behind the keyboard they falsely assume they have influence.

  106. Ignorants babble what they don't understand... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you EVER used wxWidgets? No, have you even READ TF website?

    wxWidgets is NOT an EMULATOR layer. It's a parallel implementation of an UI using the Native OS's widgets. From the wxWidgets site: "the open source, cross-platform native UI framework
    with twelve years of evolution behind it".

    It's not about how a widget should LOOK or FEEL. It's about using THE SAME CODE to make a program.

    They even got a PalmOS version now.

    Maybe for your small needs you don't need cross-platform. Maybe you're happy crunching bits and recompiling the most of your kernel, but you're certainly not the average Joe User - and that's a majority that has needs. These people right now are screaming when their machines are being invaded by spyware, viruses (and coming soon, rootkits)
    . These people need to escape. And cross-platform applications is the way to go.

    But if you really want to help people migrate from Windows to a safer Linux environment without losing their friendly commodities, at least you should give programmers the benefit of the doubt.

    I AM a windows user. But I'm planning on migrating. And I want OTHER people to migrate to Linux. Linux doesn't belong to elitists... it belongs to the world, that's why it's Open Source, and GPL licensed. So please, stop building iron walls and let the Windows prisoners escape to a safer world.

    After all, don't you want to be among the ones who were there, the day Microsoft died?

    Certainly, I do.

    1. Re:Ignorants babble what they don't understand... by idlake · · Score: 1

      Maybe for your small needs you don't need cross-platform.

      Quite correct: for my "small" needs, I don't need it. Apple doesn't need it for its small needs, like Finder, Safari, etc. Microsoft doesn't need it for its small needs, either, like Explorer, IE, etc. Not only don't we need it, we find it a waste of time to try to make applications cross platform when the goal is to build the best application for a specific given platform.

      So please, stop building iron walls and let the Windows prisoners escape to a safer world.

      People like you won't be attracted to Linux if it is the lowest common denominator among all platforms, and that's pretty much what it comes down to if everything one does on it is cross platform.

      After all, don't you want to be among the ones who were there, the day Microsoft died?

      Sure, and that won't happen if people waste their time trying to build cross-platform applications, as opposed to creating the best applications they can for Linux. If they also happen to run on Windows, that's a nice accident, but nobody should be spending any significant amount of time worrying about that.

  107. Mono Sucks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone praises mono.. i don't see why. While I agree that mono has potential, the garbage collection code is terrible. Try running mono for web applications or graphical applications on a UNIX platform. (GNU's not Unix :)

    For example, Mac OS X or FreeBSD. Its terribly sad how often it crashes or does not work right. I tried to deploy a simple web app on freebsd once... it resulted in a bug report. Last I knew it was still open. (year old) I could get the compiler working in OSX, but it certainly didn't work as advertised. Another tred i see in the mono project is selective implementations.. if you want to make a compatible .net framework then do it.. that means it has to support all of microsoft's bs before you extend it with extra features! The whole thing is useless if you can't move a .NET web or gui app from windows to linux, freebsd, and OSX seemlessly. Thats what I want.

    Of course java does not support its "write once run anywhere" ideas any better but I certainly think its got a better chance.

    1. Re:Mono Sucks! by lupus-slash · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are issues running Mono on FreeBSD because FreeBSD has broken thread libs. Some of the fixes are in the latests 5.x releases, but there may be still more issues.

  108. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hahaha, Miguel should stop kissing Bill and Stevie's asses. an bad habit which will only end in distaster.. hahaha

  109. Microsoft bad; Linux good! by speedbump · · Score: 1

    That's what it seems like the /.'ers who don't like Mono and C# are saying, that anything from Microsoft is automatically bad, and must not be adopted.

    I got news for you, C# is a great language to develop with. Don't adopt it if you don't want to, which is fine with me, because that means there will be more jobs for me.

  110. Microsoft litigation is now Bob. by Sick+Talents · · Score: 1

    Are you a hacker?

    Are you thinking about using mono?

    If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then Microsoft litigation might be exactly what you're looking for!

  111. patented libs in different part of build tree-pt2 by goon · · Score: 1
    '... In order to implement some parts of the .NET standard there would be some "use" of MS patents (I'm talking about ASP.NET and ADO.NET in particular). ...'

    The patented libs in different part of build tree and ready to be yoinked at the first sniff of patent wars. Its amazing how the same stuff seems to popup. I posted about this in Mono: A Developer's Handbook (SEP2004).

    --
    peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
  112. Re:Reverse engeneering :O by el_gordo101 · · Score: 1

    if the latest .net environment was distrobuted with every app that required it and it checked to see if it was newer than the one installed (like directX), they could get away with it

    That is exactly what is done. The framework redistributable is available here:
    .NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable

    --
    TODO: Insert witty sig
  113. mostly great, BUT.... by nikkoslack · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Lack of webservices is a major stumbling block for my development team. We'd love to be runnning on Mono vs. .Net, but the lack of even a light at the end of the tunnel for web service integration is keeping LOTS of developers at bay.

    Also, the list of dependencies to run monodevelop is astronomical. After my 7th or 8th trip to google to find some arcane dependency, I gave up. I think it's better if you are running gnome, but not much.

    1. Re:mostly great, BUT.... by pacomar · · Score: 1

      Web Services have been available in Mono for a long time. If you can run XSP you can host an ASP.NET Web Service generated with say Visual Studio .NET 2003 without even having to recompile.

    2. Re:mostly great, BUT.... by nikkoslack · · Score: 1

      ASP.Net and Web Services (note the capitals in Web Services)are two different things, semantically speaking. What I 'm talking about is the System.Web.Services Namespace that allows SOAP based web services.

    3. Re:mostly great, BUT.... by slluis · · Score: 1

      FYI, the System.Web.Services namespace is fully implemented in Mono. You can host SOAP based web services in Mono's ASP.NET web server (XSP), and you can generate client proxies using Mono's wsdl tool.

    4. Re:mostly great, BUT.... by nikkoslack · · Score: 1

      My apologies. I tried to compile a web service a short time ago, and had difficulties. I went to the mono project and according to the class browser, the status of the Web.Services namespace in "needs implementation"

  114. Different concepts, not just vocabulary by Kaseijin · · Score: 1

    wxWidgets is great, but cross-platform Nirvana it isn't. There are various aspects that aren't or can't be translated automatically: menu layout, keyboard equivalents, widget placement. A wxToolBar on Mac OS is a row of shiny Aqua buttons, not an HIToolBar. It can rearrange an Apply/OK/Cancel cluster, but that doesn't help when the HIG say preference changes should be immediate. I'm glad to have wxWidgets in my toolchest, but for many apps modular code and native frontends will offer a better user experience.

  115. journalistic integrity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    am i the only who thinks it is of dubious ethics that the submitter of the article on /. also happens to be the author of the article on OSnews? The subject is all good & fine with me, but the method raises questions, IMHO (i do not want to offend anyone either, i'm just asking).

  116. Explorer by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

    Actually, Ford Explorer would be closer to the original meaning of the word "explorer" than Internet Explorer was.

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  117. call us back when you have figured it out by idlake · · Score: 1

    Which raises the interesting question of whether we should be looking for another level of abstraction for GUIs beyond widget toolkits that let you write one codebase that then applies the HIG rules of the platform (which, of course, have to be something formally codified rather than just a spec document) to generate a (relatively speaking) HIG compliant UI.

    Well, you go looking, and if you figure out how to do a reasonable job at building such a high-level GUI toolkit, you go right ahead and share it with the rest of us.

    Until then, however, the fact is that we have to work with what we have. And none of the cross-platform toolkits we have (Swing, Qt, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, ...) automatically make applications conform to HIGs. Therefore, if you write cross-platform applications using those toolkits, you either end up with a poor result, or you have to invest a lot of effort in each application, not only implementing the HIGs, but also fixing those areas where the cross-platform toolkit deviates from the target platform.

    Again, successful commercial companies like Microsoft or Apple don't waste time on this for mainstream apps: they develop for their desktop, anything else is secondary. Linux desktops need the same focus if they want to compete.

  118. skynet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know what worries me more: that Skynet is listed there, or that it's written in Mono!

  119. Re:.NET is a brand, Mono should stop referring to by Micah · · Score: 1

    Either that or they just invalidated Microsoft's .Net trademark since MS didn't enforce it by coming after them. :)

    That would be sort of funny.

  120. I'll say this... by agraupe · · Score: 2, Interesting
    C# is every bit as good as Java at this point. That being said, being Java's equal is not a stunning approval. I like its design, and its similarity to C/C++. I would say anyone interested in cross-platform development (Windows too, not just different *nixes) should take a serious look at Mono/.NET/C#.

    Having recently considered learning C#/Mono, a few things bugged me. Firstly, it was not easy to find a tutorial more complex than Hello World but less complex than "oh, look, we're going to be making a wordpad clone". Considering that it is much easier to program with C and GTK, or C++ and QT or GTK--, it will take some serious work to make Mono attractive if you're looking to attract the people who don't need Windows compatibility.

  121. Well... by warrax_666 · · Score: 1

    In the case of Eiffel I really think it's a case of not offering anything truly significant for programmer productivity. I mean, yeah, Design by Contract is generally a good idea, but it's nothing assert() and good coding standards can't provide. Non-trivial "contracts" can't be verified until run-time anyway, and assert() works just fine for that.

    In the case of CSP... I must admit I'm not too familiar with it, but to me it seems rather like a restricted subset of purely functional programming. Of course, Occam is much lower level than, say, Haskell, but AFAICT all the CSP concepts have direct equivalents in Haskell, and the type system in Haskell is much richer. Given the choice I'd rather program (applications!) in Haskell.

    (Anyway, I'm certainly no fan of C# or Java... their type systems are just too wimpy for my tastes...)

    --
    HAND.
  122. Re:it's not reverse engineering- MONO CONTRIBUTORS by popsito82 · · Score: 1


    Hi,
    This is on behalf of the 3 guys who were mentioned, we contributed to the mono project as it was previously said, our contacts were Lluis & Miguel.

    We didn't decompile the .net framework libraries, we used the Shared CLI Source codename "rotor" (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F amilyId=3A1C93FA-7462-47D0-8E56-8DD34C6292F0&displ aylang=en), to study the .net remoting, and how it internally worked, but we've written our own classes/code.

    Rotor is a SHARED RESOURCE, which means it can be used LEGALLY for studying, but not for commercial purpose, here is the link for the rotor license (http://msdn.microsoft.com/MSDN-FILES/027/002/097/ ShSourceCLILicense.htm).

    We would like to thank the MONO team for giving us the opportunity of contributing in this project, it was very usefull for all of us (team members), and wish them the best of luck in finishing it.

  123. yes, it's about choice by idlake · · Score: 1

    The problem is more a political one. On Mono, future language extensions are dictated by Microsoft. The Mono developers could of course extend their VM in any way they want. But they would loose compatibility with Windows.

    Yes, and that's a good choice: it's the way, C, C++, and lots of other languages have evolved. If Microsoft does a good job with evolving the language (they have so far), people will follow it, and if they don't, people jump ship.

    On Java everyone can join the Java Community Process (JCP). Membership is free and every member is entitled to vote and can even run for election.

    In order to become a member of the JCP, you have to sign a contractual agreement with Sun Microsystems. As a result, you invest lots of work, and in the end, the fruits of your labor are owned by Sun. That's a bad choice. In fact, I'd call it a scam.

    Furthermore, because of Sun's draconian compatibility requirements, you are not free to change the language or libraries any way you like, even in your own implementation. That's, among other things, why Java has stagnated technically.

  124. I do have an idea of by warrax_666 · · Score: 1

    what CSP is, actually, although details are a little fuzzy... I was introduced to it on one of those wet conferences. Apparently you just don't see the same connection between pure FP and CSP which I see... Let me see if I can explain more thoroughly:

    My thinking is along the lines that e.g. the seq (is that the name? Like I said it's been a long time...) operator in CSP maps onto the "do" monad, likewise the par operator in CSP maps onto a parallel execution monad, etc. etc. The pure functional nature of Haskell means that there are no nasty side effects (aside from monads). So threading is basically trivial given enough knowledge about the properties of the compositional monads. The trouble is obtaining that enough knowledge about the monads to be able to parallelize effectively. In Haskell, monad behavior is (essentially) arbitrary, but in CSP you are restricted to a predefined set of compositional operators (monads). The fact that they have predefined concurrency semantics means that parallelism is "built into" the language and so the compiler can make assumptions that Haskell compilers cannot -- thus enabling more parallelism.

    I hope that clears up what I was talking about.

    --
    HAND.
    1. Re:I do have an idea of by GileadGreene · · Score: 1
      First of all, you are confusing CSP the theory with a specific implementation of CSP (occam). SEQ and PAR are occam constructs.

      Second, it's not so much that I don't see a connection between "pure FP" and CSP, but rather that I think that the concepts are orthogonal. CSP is a concurrency model. Threads is another concurrency model. Don't think of a CSP as a layer on top of threads, think of it as a different way of representing concurrency. To quote from here:

      Most computer science undergraduates are forced to read Andrew Birrell's ``An Introduction to Programming with Threads.'' The SRC threads model is the one used by most thread packages currently available. The problem with all of these is that they are too low-level. Unlike the communication primitive provided by Hoare, the primitives in the SRC-style threading module must be combined with other techniques, usually shared memory, in order to be used effectively. In general, programmers tend not to build their own higher-level constructs, and are left frustrated by needing to pay attention to such low-level details. For the moment, push Birrell's tutorial out of your mind. This is a different thread model. If you approach it as a different thread model, you may well find it much easier to understand.
      What you are referring to as "pure FP" is really "FP + threads". You could just as well implement "FP + CSP" (which is something like what Concurrent ML does - although I'm not sure if ML counts as "pure FP").

      The concurrency semantics that implementations of CSP-style concurrency (such as occam) make use of allow a precise and safe one-to-one mapping from theoretical constructs to language constructs. That's the point - there's no need to have "enough knowledge about the properties of the compositional monads", because the concurrency model of CSP makes that knowledge essentially unnecessary.

      Yes, you can map CSP style concurrency to thread style concurrency (which is what JCSP) does. You can also map threads to CSP if you want: the advantage of doing that being that you can then mathematically reason about thread interactions, which is not possible directly in the thread regime (in fact, the JCSP team has built and verified a CSP model of Java's monitor-threads concurrency system, as part of the larger effort to ensure the correctness of the JCSP implementation). But instead of going that roundabout route, why not just implement a good concurrency model in the first place?

  125. Re:Did you forget about wxNET? (OT) by Knuckles · · Score: 1

    There's an option for it somewhere

    This surely is the expression I read most when the topic is KDE :)

    --
    "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
  126. Re:it's not reverse engineering- MONO CONTRIBUTORS by MehannaH · · Score: 1

    Hi, I agree with what Ahmad Tantawy and Ahmad Kadry have mentioned. I would like to add the following: 1- We consulted Rotor code for the Http client channel only, that was ambiguous at that time and we needed more information to understand how URLs are dealt with. This is the only part where we looked into Rotor. If anybody has the chance to look into our code and the Rotor code, will definately find differences, specially on the server channel side. 2- Miguel mentioned , that the code has been mostly changed and the remaining is broken. Well, I would expect so, for many reasons, one of them, is because that we didn't not do deep exception handling which we did admit so. Simply because, we anticipated that alot will be changed as the mono framework becomes more mature. On top of that, Mono V1.0 wasn't released yet, and therefore you could imagine the bugs and incomplete classes and namespances that were not implemented at that time. So for us to implement most of the functionality, we had to use the best out of what was available but at the same time is not good enough to stay forever and has to be changed when the framework is mostly completed. An example was the Socket class and how you had to loop until all the data you want to send is actually sent; which contradicts the standard .Net Socket class. I believe that contributing to mono was a great experience, and it was so only because we did not copy code from somewhere else!! Hussein

  127. Re:Which bit of Java isn't open? by emarkp · · Score: 1
    Well, the language for one. The so-called "Java Community Process" is Sun's way for asking for free input. But Sun controls the language and will direct it the way it wants.

    I think C# is a hideous language with lots of structural problems, but at least it's open to anyone who wants to implement the ECMA standard. Java is so terribly underspecified that half the time you end up guessing what behavior happens in certain circumstances, and if you're an implementor of a non-Sun JVM the only disambiguator is Sun's implementation of the JVM. Which means that it's not a standard, but a reference platform.

    With an open standard, if there are disagreements about what the standard means, MS can't just change the spec to match their implementation (like Sun can with Java).

  128. Re:Mono - HOWTO Shoot Yourself In The Foot by Mystic0 · · Score: 1

    .Net and the CLI are an ISO Standard. Microsoft cannot sue them for implimenting a standard.