Race to Linux Project Announced

An anonymous reader writes "According to Internetnews.com The Race to Linux project was announced Wednesday at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The challenge: port an existing ASP.NET application to Linux using any cross-platform tool of choice, including Mono, Grasshopper and PHP. (Mainsoft offers tools that let Visual Studio users build applications that run natively in the Unix, J2EE and Linux environments.) Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.'"

Comments

I thought Vista

[hungrygrue]

Was Microsoft's "Race to Linux" project?

Re:I thought Vista

[tuxguy]

Naw, Vista was Microsoft's 'race to Tiger' project ;)

Of Course

[Luke Psywalker]

.....but thats not what this article is about.

MainMicrosoft

[thedogcow]

Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.
Mr. Cohen spelled Mirco wrong.

Re:MainMicrosoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you spelled it wrong.

First thoughts

[LiquidCoooled]

I first thought of porting "Hello World!" to linux.

Then I realised that the .net version is 17mb compressed and covers numerous files and resource images.

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses , Microsoft should support it regardless,
of course if they are *not* a software company then being a 1 trick pony is what we would expect

Re:Makes sense

[gallondr00nk]

I agree. Microsoft should port Office 2000 to my Commodore 64. That'll seperate the men from the boys!

Re:Makes sense

[RAMMS EIN]

``if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses''

Well, Microsoft does, and they very well should. If people can run MS Office, Exchange, etc. on better systems than Windows without jumping through hoops, businesses and schools may well decide they don't need Windows anymore. That would kill one of Microsoft's two cash cows. Since Office - the other cash cow - is already starting to lose popularity, that would be a very bad thing.

I seriously think that Microsoft is currently at or over their peak. Their flagship called Windows has made it to the ocean called 'Internet', but is found not to be seaworthy. Malware is penetrating it at an alarming rate, and it's only a matter of time before it will sink. It remains to be seen if their next OS will be any better. At the same time, their Office software has about reached the point where no new features can be important enough to attract many new customers, and since they have pretty much the whole market, they can only go down from here.

In both markets, they are receiving competition from opponents that they can't kill. Open source projects just won't die while there are still people using them. Right now, open source is still all potential and no real growth in the market that Microsoft is in. However, with cross-platform products like Firefox and OpenOffice.org slowly creeping in, it is only a matter of time until the benefits of jumping ship from Windows to Linux overcome the resistance, and then the self-sustaining system of platform lock-in will come crashing down.

Whether or not Microsoft actually loses most of their market share, the truth is that they will be forced to innovate and forced to compete, both of which eat into their profits. The days of them being a virtual monopoly are numbered.

Re:Makes sense

[markwalling]

how many cassete tapes is that going to use?

Re:Makes sense

[mrRay720]

Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.

Supporting your major applications on a minority platform where a large number of the users have an irrational hatred of your company anyway?

Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.

Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.
Of course, with the OSS community being a 1 trick pony, I wouldn't expect anything else.

Re:Makes sense

[rm69990]

Yes, I'm sure the CIO's at corporations migrating to Linux on the desktop have an intense hatred of Microsoft and stay up until 4 in the morning posting about it on Slashdot.

Will this lead to enlightenment?

[RAMMS EIN]

Interesting. I wonder if now, some people are going to discover that some of the tools and languages that work with Linux are really very convenient and superior to their Windows counterparts. Or that Windows using developers will finally be have some real arguments to back up their claims that their platform is superior as a development environment. At any rate, some people will learn how to write software that works on Linux (and likely other unices), which can only be a Good Thing.

I win! I win!

[lisany]

echo "Hello World!\n";
?>

FogCreek should enter

[discordja]

They already have an ASP to PHP compiler which they use to build their FogBugz software. Note this is not available to the general public, just bringing it up in relation to the topic.

Granted, I don't know if it's the .NET environment to PHP but I'd wager it probably is knowing FogCreek.

I always find Joel on Software to be an enjoyable read.

Re:FogCreek should enter

[mrRay720]

No, as far as I'm aware, it's original ASP to PHP. Since both are plain scripting it's (relatively) easy, but going from ASP.NET to PHP would be completely different.

Reading about it on JoS a while ago, he says that it's not a general converter either - it only works because they follow certain strict rules when coding, that the translator can take advantage of. Let is loose on masses of random code written any which way and you'd probably find bad things happen.

A general purpose translator for this sort of thing is 5% of the work. The other 95% of the effort is in getting all of the corner cases and other oddities working right. Joel got around this by skipping the 2nd 95% and just coding in a certain manner.

I wonder when...

[Torinir]

I wonder when we're gonna see the new "Winmacux" OS?

With all the time and energy spent cross-porting applications from Linux to MacOS to Windows et al, I'd not be surprised if someone didn't attempt to make a hybrid OS that at least tries to bridge the three OS's together under one banner. It'd likely be the biggest piece of bloatware to ever grace a HDD, but it would prove interesting to see a system running MacOS, Windows, and Linux apps at the same time.

Of course, if that were to ever happen, I could see M$ trying desperately to buy the technology out. heh

Linux port of HJ-Split

[wiresquire]

I've recently completed a port of HJ-Split to Linux.

So far, I've only completed a command line interface which I've called 'split' and 'cat'.

It should be available on most distros. Let me know what you guys think!

This will lead to a "buyout"

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I'm guessing that this will lead to a buyout of Mainsoft by Microsoft. There's no way that Microsoft can allow a free plugin that works with Visual Studio and ports to Linux to exist in the marketplace. I think that's exactly what the Mainsoft folks had in mind too...

Yeah, I know all that the stuff people want to say about "illegal" and whatnot...I used to think like that too. I've seen Microsoft get away with criminal activity too many times now to think it's NOT some type of conspiricy with the government. MS doesn't care about illegal, think of Balmer's recent press regarding Google..."I'm gonna kill that pussy.." They're not gonna let this place exist for any length of time... It's like putting raw meat in front of a bear...

Mainsoft's gonna get swallowed up whole. Microsoft will put up a press release about how "innovative" Mainsoft is, how they are going to provide plug-ins for Microsoft now, and then the product's gonna be cancled... End of story...

Don't knot your knickers

[Gribflex]

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I sugest that you read the article.

No, MainSoft is not a typo for Microsoft; MainSoft is an independent software company that makes a tool that allows for cross-platform development.

During the PDC, which was organized by Microsoft, one of the exhibitors (mainsoft) announced this contest which was intended to show off their products.

This is not an attempt by Microsoft to do any kind of cross-platform development.

To the best of my knowledge, neither of the groups organizing the event (MainSoft and CodeProject) are owned in whole, or in part, by Microsoft.

If you read the disclaimer on CodeProject, you will find the following groups barred from the contest:

• The Code Project
• Mainsoft Corporation
• Novell
• Zend
• Macromedia

Microsoft Employees are not on this list. I really don't think that Microsoft has a great deal to do with this event.

Wake up everyone!

[The Slashdolt]

People seriously need to wake up. The whole mono thing isn't about windows people moving towards linux, its about linux applications moving towards windows. People already have windows. They bought their computers from dell with windows preinstalled. Now they are looking for fun and useful applications, not to reinstall an alternative operating system.

OK, here is a hint. The REAL application that matters is the office suite. Particularly word, excel, and powerpoint. The day you see MS write these applications in .NET and then have them run on linux is the day it will matter. MS ain't that dumb guys....