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Mono Blocked from MS Conference

Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Microsoft has apparently blocked the Mono 'Birds-of-a-Feather' meeting from being held at their Professional Developers Conference for the second year in a row. Miguel de Icaza discusses the circumstances in his blog. From the blog: 'It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there, but they actively have misrepresented things.' Not terribly surprising but infuriating nonetheless.

350 comments

  1. Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Typo?

    Locked Blocked? or is there something I'm missing?

    1. Re:Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The other people -- those using Java or LAMP might do, though," said Roberts."

      might do though?

      From TFA to Post, this article is crap.

    2. Re:Locked Blocked? by SoloFlyer2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Right So they announce "The Race to Linux project" at the MPDC which is exactly what Mono lots you do but they bar Mono from the Confrence???

      I must be missing something here...

      --
      "I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
    3. Re:Locked Blocked? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's Microsoft double-speak for "Lego".

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    4. Re:Locked Blocked? by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 1

      "Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft, said the challenge is a way to show off the capabilities of Grasshopper. Mainsoft offers tools that let Visual Studio users build applications that run natively in the Unix, J2EE and Linux environments. Grasshopper, a free Visual Studio .NET plug-in released in May, lets developers write .NET server applications that can run on Linux or any Java-enabled platform. "

    5. Re:Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My Eggo?

    6. Re:Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, change the 1st L to a C.

    7. Re:Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New moderation: -1 Offtopic Threadwise / Visibility Whore

      or something more descriptive that penalizes for replying to the first post(s) with unrelated (to the post, not necessarily the thread) stuff just to gain visibility.

    8. Re:Locked Blocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny


      Developers: Mono Cock Blocked from MS Conference

  2. Is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there. Is this news?

    1. Re:Is this news? by NortWind · · Score: 4, Informative

      The news part is "but they actively have misrepresented things." Maybe MS misrepresenting things is not news either, but at least this is a new case of it. Mono didn't get enough votes to get in the conference, because they were not allowed on the supposedly "open" ballot.

    2. Re:Is this news? by markdavis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there. Is this news?"

      No. It is business as usual. I can't believe anyone would expect otherwise! .Net is a lot more about .Lockin than about .open or .compatible or .competition.

      de Icaza better duck from flying chairs.....

  3. Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.. by lightyear4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.. Today's early "Race to Linux" thread about porting .Net linked to this article, which explicitly mentions mono as being an allowable language. This just seems odd to me, expecially because its also sponsored by the very same Microsoft Professional Developers Conversation..

  4. hijack potential by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 1
    Just think, if half the shark as BG et al, MI+Mono could hijack some developers with "who needs this [stuff]?"

    One dev would be too many for a true Napolean.

    1. Re:hijack potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just think, if half the shark as BG et al, MI+Mono could hijack some developers with "who needs this [stuff]?"

      One dev would be too many for a true Napolean.


      Yes. Yes it would.



      (Psst ... does anyone know what on Earth this guy is talking about?)

  5. Mono Cock Blocked at MS Conference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    There I fixed that for you.

    1. Re:Mono Cock Blocked at MS Conference by ari_j · · Score: 1

      Yeah - it was like a damn conspiracy. Every chick I hit on blew me off, mumbling something about Mono. Now I know that it was an evil Microsoft plan, all along.

      That's right, folks. It's Microsoft's fault that you're not getting laid. Or at least it's their fault that I'm not.

    2. Re:Mono Cock Blocked at MS Conference by kryten_nl · · Score: 1

      Offcourse, idiot. Stop wearing their t-shirts! :)

      --
      For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
  6. Smart Move...? by Criliric · · Score: 1
    As Mono is a competitor to Microsoft's .NET implementation, de Icaza said it may make the software giant "nervous".
    Well Apple might pick on Mr. Gates for letting compition announce stuff in his own "house"

    "But teacher teacher, Steve started it first...."
    1. Re:Smart Move...? by lightyear4 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The conference is all about .Net -- its a monologue, dammit.

  7. MS embarassed by better implementation! by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Film at 11...

    Come on now, is anyone surprised by churlish behavior by MS towards the Mono developers? Does "Samba" ring a bell?

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by MrLint · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I recall reading something a long while ago that claim that the samba guys knew more about the workings of SMB than MS does.

      I wouldn't find a statement surprising as when you deal with a *project* you can do as much or as little as you want, thus its members stay stable and pass info around. With a *product* you have employees who jockey for status, don't pass around info, come and go.

      being a control freak doesn't always get you to the place you want to go. (Today?)

    2. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

      Does "Samba" ring a bell?

      If it's the same bell that comes in the phrase "for whom the bell tolls", and the answer of the question is "Microsoft", then yes, I agree with you :)

    3. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by jcr · · Score: 4, Funny

      Mono may be open and that may be all well and good, but it is not a better implementation of .NET, period.

      So shut your mouth, bitch!


      Thanks for that demonstration of the persuasive skills of the typical MS advocate. What a brilliant technical analysis.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    4. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by jcr · · Score: 1

      I recall reading something a long while ago that claim that the samba guys knew more about the workings of SMB than MS does.

      Well, of course they do.

      They've been working on it longer than the drones that MS assigns to SMB, and I'll bet you that the four or five coders that MS has who might be almost half as good as Andrew Tridgell are busy working on blue-sky demos that will never ship.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    5. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by Crunchie+Frog · · Score: 1
      Mono may be open and that may be all well and good, but it is not a better implementation of .NET, period.

      So shut your mouth, bitch!

      Thanks for that demonstration of the persuasive skills of the typical MS advocate. What a brilliant technical analysis.

      Yes, because FOSS advocates always present levelheaded, well reasoned arguments dont they :/

      --
      --- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
    6. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for using that as a lame excuse to get in a lame MS bash. What a useful comment.

    7. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by jcr · · Score: 1

      Yes, because FOSS advocates always present levelheaded, well reasoned arguments dont they :/

      Hey, leave RMS out of this!

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    8. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by benjcurry · · Score: 1

      Yes, because FOSS advocates always present levelheaded, well reasoned arguments dont they :/

      Sorry, but I'm just really tired of this complaint. Show me a forum/bb/irc channel where young males hang and spend their time speaking respectfully and reasonably and I'll eat crow.

    9. Re:MS embarassed by better implementation! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you may need to give your irony filter a clean.

  8. lay down with dogs... by Colonel+Panic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wake up with fleas

    1. Re:lay down with dogs... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 1

      Lay down with the swine,

      And the swine run away.

      --
    2. Re:lay down with dogs... by flood6 · · Score: 1
      Lay down with the swine,

      And the swine run away.

      At least those slippery rascals can't run as fast as the sheep.

  9. Something for MS to Think About by Comatose51 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." -Abraham Lincoln

    I'm not convinced that MS' only road to victory is to destroy everyone. I know it has kind of worked for them in the past but maybe they should consider other alternatives. I don't understand why they don't port .Net over to Linux. People who are using Linux now aren't going to stop because there's no .Net. So what's the point? Why not just get half a loaf of bread and get people to use .Net at least even if it's not on Windows. If MS really wants .Net to take off, they need to ensure that it's adopted by as many people as possible. Otherwise people will continue to look to Java and other languages for cross-platform applications.

    --
    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
    1. Re:Something for MS to Think About by adolfojp · · Score: 1

      If they ported .NET to Linux, people wouldn't have to buy Microsoft Servers.

      Java runs everywhere, but it makes more money for IBM and Oracle than it does for Sun ;-)

    2. Re:Something for MS to Think About by typical · · Score: 1

      Java runs everywhere, but it makes more money for IBM and Oracle than it does for Sun ;-)

      A slow, RAM-hungry, but "scalable" language doesn't make money for a hardware vendor?

      You've got to be kidding.

      --
      Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
    3. Re:Something for MS to Think About by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It does not matter whether you don't believe that "MS' only road to victory is to destroy everyone". It is obvious that they believe it and it reflects in their behaviour. They have committed themselves to that path for so long it is now nearly impossible for them to go in any other direction. They have virutally made the whole of the rest of the computer industry their enemy.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    4. Re:Something for MS to Think About by rhiorg · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Zip it, Abe."
      - John Wilkes Booth

    5. Re:Something for MS to Think About by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If MS really wants .Net to take off, they need to ensure that it's adopted by as many people as possible.
      But they don't. .NET is a tool to promote Windows, not the other way around.
      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    6. Re:Something for MS to Think About by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      That's what he said! It does make money for a hardware vendor: IBM.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    7. Re:Something for MS to Think About by Spectra72 · · Score: 1

      If it has worked for them in the past, WHY should they consider other alternatives?

      Microsoft is utterly convinced they can get the ENTIRE LOAF of bread, plus take over the entire bakery, so why settle for half a loaf?

      Until they start losing substantial amounts of money, don't hold your breath for any changes. Look what IBM had to go through back in the 90s before they became the Linux savior. People were actually predicting the death of IBM. THAT'S what it takes to change for many companies.

    8. Re:Something for MS to Think About by CaptnMArk · · Score: 1

      >A slow, RAM-hungry, .NET is almost exactly in the same ballpark (certainly for the 2nd part, which in real world makes the first part true anyway)

    9. Re:Something for MS to Think About by Sux2BU · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Think about MS's core business areas: Windows and Office. It doesn't make sense for the company to embrace projects or groups that undermine those business areas. The company uses .Net as a way to enhance Windows, so while they are supportive of it, they're going to keep an eye on their core business first.

      This isn't MS being monopolistic, it's just good business practice. Apple's core business areas are OS and hardware (and now music), which is why Jobs killed off the 3rd party hardware. IBM's core business is consulting and hardware, which is why you won't see them partnering with other hardware companies.

    10. Re:Something for MS to Think About by mrbnsn · · Score: 1

      "This isn't MS being monopolistic, it's just good business practice."

      So all that hype about how C#/CLR is an open industry standard and Java is closed and proprietary, that was just good marketing horse manure, then?

    11. Re:Something for MS to Think About by Sux2BU · · Score: 1

      Hey, it's not like MS killed MONO.

  10. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by Teresh · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hands? Don't you mean tentacles?

    --
    Do you Gentoo?
  11. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by Lehk228 · · Score: 2, Funny

    since when was linux a japanese schoolgirl

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  12. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by einhverfr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right. It doesn't.

    I used to work at Microsoft and they have so much disorganized legacy strategy floating around that effectively keeps them from doing anything threating.

    Ever wonder why Microsoft offered help to the Mono project at first? Because they wanted to make .Net into a Java killer. And they recognized that to do this, it must be cross platform. And to have an edge on Java, it must be an open standard (which Java is not). So Microsoft tried to engineer the perfect Java Killer. Unfortunately for them, .Net is likely to be a more effective Windows killer than a Java killer..... So now they are stuck. They are still *trying* to kill Java, but in the end they are realizing that they have built their own worst enemy.

    So this largely explains their dilema, their disorganization, and their self-defeating strategy.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  13. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by xeon4life · · Score: 1

    This is what we call "bureaucracy."

    News agencies will pick up Microsoft's Race-to-Linux, but not Mono's Birds-of-a-Feather.

    --
    Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
  14. Hmpf by dedazo · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The PCD is Microsoft's event. It's for people who work with Microsoft technologies on the Microsoft platform. Maybe if Icaza had not sold the shop to Microsoft's competition then maybe they would have had a chance to get in there. Gawd knows Icaza has a lot of fans within Microsoft - he's respected by a lot of people in the mothership, especially those working with the most interesting technologies, such as Indigo/WFC.

    But when the guy essentially works for Novell, what the fuck did he expect? They didn't let the Oracle folks in either, eh?

    The zealotosphere will of course take this personally and another round of "OMFG TEH M$ IS TEH EVIL!!1!" is forthcoming. That's fine. Just remember that Microsoft is not into giving competitors slots on their conferences just so they can come across as being nice. The PDC is not an all-access proletarian gig. If Icaza was still independent I'd put good money on him getting into the PDC to demo his stuff. With the Novell t-shirt however, things are a little different.

    Oh, and BTW... OS News and every two-bit blog out there had this days ago. Slashdot is late to the party - again.

    --
    Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    1. Re:Hmpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...And yet, when Microsoft come spreading its fud at some Linux Event, the slashdot apologists pretend it would be zealot to forbid them to come or talk.

      Ah Well... This is slashdot, where MS is always right. I wouldn't be there if it really bothered me, isn't it ;)

    2. Re:Hmpf by Keith+Russell · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You're missing two important points:

      1. This was not an official presentation that was supposed to be approved and sanctioned by Microsoft as part of PDC. This was an after-hours BOF session operated by the independent International .NET Association (INETA). At least, they were independent, until they proved with this ballot snafu that they cower under Microsoft's whip hand.
      2. (And I can't stress this enough) INETA LIED TO MIGUEL DE ICAZA. He got two confirmations that his BOF session proposal was accepted, which means that it should have been on the ballot. After that, he heard deafening silence, before finally getting a rejection on the day accept/reject notices went out. Only then did he find out that INETA deceived him, and his BOF wasn't on the ballot in the first place.
      --
      This sig intentionally left blank.
    3. Re:Hmpf by dedazo · · Score: 3, Insightful
      That's misleading and sensationalist. Miguel de Icaza knows perfectly well what INETA is, what they do and how they operate. They do not "cower under the hand of Microsoft", they are very much married to Microsoft. BOF or no, the presentation would have taken place in the context of the PDC. Miguel de Icaza works for Novell. Whatever yahoo at INETA that thought it was a good idea to bring in an employee of Novell to the PDC didn't clear it with Microsoft. They didn't "lie" to Icaza, INETA probably raised the issue with the MSFT people late in the game and got reamed for it.

      It's disingenious of Icaza to cry himself a river when he knows very well how things work. He's no stranger to Microsoft satellite orgs like INETA, and I expect he hasn't forgotten Novell pays his salary.

      I'm not trying to prove Icaza 'deserved it', this whole deal still sucks. I'm making the point that he should have seen this coming and should have cleared it with someone other than some teenager at INETA. He knows enough people at Microsoft to do that. A simple email to friggin' Robert Scoble would have sufficed.

      --
      Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    4. Re:Hmpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given that INETA is essentially a part of MS (according to you), where else would a gathering for .NET take place outside of MS events? This reveals (not for the first time, it seems) that whole "standard" game MS has been playing with .NET is a blatant sham, and I don't see anything disingenuous to point out the fact.

    5. Re:Hmpf by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So then why did INETA accept the application for a slot? If they didn't think it was appropriate, why not simply reject the request for a slot, instead of trying to act like it didn't happen?

    6. Re:Hmpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't care. Miguel is a flaming leftie who quotes asshats like Molly Ivans. Fuck him.

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

      Oracle is one of the sponsors of the PDC ....

    8. Re:Hmpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah Well... This is slashdot, where MS is always right.

      Your powers of perception are astonishing.

      I wouldn't be there if it really bothered me, isn't it ;)

      People on 'ludes should not drive.

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

      What's interesting is that Microsoft is allowed a booth at LinuxWorld Conference, but Microsoft can't return the favor. Once again.....their only concerned about themselves.

    10. Re:Hmpf by paenguin · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Have you ever heard an automobile sales commercial on TV or Radio that stated:

      "All credit applications accepted" ?

      This does not mean they will be approved...

      --
      We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins.
    11. Re:Hmpf by Keith+Russell · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So then why did INETA accept the application for a slot? If they didn't think it was appropriate, why not simply reject the request for a slot, instead of trying to act like it didn't happen?

      Exactly! Miguel was led to believe that his BOF made it on the ballot on merit, without having to call in any favors at Microsoft.

      --
      This sig intentionally left blank.
    12. Re:Hmpf by Keith+Russell · · Score: 1
      flaming leftie who quotes asshats like Molly Ivans

      Get a fucking life, you sad, sorry little pawn.

      --
      This sig intentionally left blank.
    13. Re:Hmpf by stor · · Score: 1

      Just remember that Microsoft is not into giving competitors slots on their conferences just so they can come across as being nice.

      Agreed, which highlights the fact that this "Free and Open (ECMA standard! woot!) Platform that developers should rally around(tm)" is obviously far from free.

      Cheers
      Stor

      --
      "Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
  15. Well, it does seem to confirm... by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...the statements I've been making for a while now that I simply don't see Microsoft playing fair over Mono, the same way they've attacked all of their competitors using ethically dubious means or outright illegal methods.


    It is correct to say that Microsoft can choose who they want to attend the conference. There's no disputing that. Technically, they don't even have to give a reason. HOWEVER, when a reason is given and it is blatantly and willfully deceptive or untrue, then it is not so much the barring as the use of FUD to damage competition unfairly.


    Forget the barring. Ignore it. It isn't the important part of the situation. What is important is whether it is correct to say that other conference-goers are being given a line intended to intimidate or coerce. THAT is the important part, the conference itself is irrelevant.


    You should also forget the rights a normal competitor has in the US. As a legally-declared monopolist, supposedly monitored for potential malpractice as ordered by the courts, and as an organization fighting the necessity for increased openness as decided by EU courts, Microsoft is (in theory) limited in what it can do to use negative advertising for causing willful harm to competitors.


    If this was a "normal" situation, with a "normal" company, very little of this would matter one way or the other. This is NOT a normal situation, and Microsoft was ruled a monopolist by both the US and EU, making it definitely NOT a typical player in a free market.


    Actually, the EU situation is probably the most relevant here, as it is entirely possible that the example of Mono may well be usable by the EU as proof that Microsoft's counter-case over the penalties and openness of its standards are without merit. If Microsoft is willing to obstruct a free market, even when in court for doing so, then it cannot be trusted to not do so by choice at any other time.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by KillShill · · Score: 1

      well the thing is, those kind of tactics and behavior isn't ethical for any company to engage in, let alone an illegal monopolist.

      so i definitely don't condone bad business practices from any company, regardless of how i feel about them or their potential for monopoly etc.

      but as you can see, the courts aren't doing a darn thing to change their ways. they're doing all the things they've been doing since they were "caught". the courts are obviously not doing their job but good luck trying to remedy that situation.

      --
      Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
    2. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by throx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As a legally-declared monopolist...
      You misunderstand the law. Microsoft has been declared to have a monopoly in the x86 desktop market. They haven't been declared to have a monopoly in the virtual machine market, the conference market, the server market or any other market I could imagine relavent to a .NET/Mono discussion.

      The whole "declared monopolist" thing is silly. All they are not permitted to do in the US is leverage their desktop monopoly to gain competitive advantage in other spaces.

      --

      Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means

    3. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Insightful
      All they are not permitted to do in the US is leverage their desktop monopoly to gain competitive advantage in other spaces.
      What the fuck do you think .NET is, if not a way to leverage their desktop monopoly? Leveraging their desktop monopoly is very nearly the only thing Microsoft ever does!
      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    4. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by jd · · Score: 1
      Such as using their desktop monopoly to dominate the server market, by making the de-facto client/server technology a wholly Microsoft product which Microsoft could then ensure was only (fully) available on their servers and their clients?


      Oh, well, in that case I take it back. It would only be a crime if Microsoft released a new technology (let's call it .Net) and made sure that everyone used it by making it a major part of both the technological and marketting side of their business, then strangled all competitors who might use clones (Mono) or rival technologies (Java/Jini, Java/JRI, Corba 3, etc)


      Obviously, they wouldn't do something like that. They only threatened to kill one competitor and "knife the baby" of another. Peaceful folk, through and through.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    5. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      "Leveraging their desktop monopoly is very nearly the only thing Microsoft ever does!

      This is so unfair!!!! Microsoft also build mice.

    6. Re:Well, it does seem to confirm... by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      That's why I qualified my statement with "very nearly." ; )

      Incidentally, I like Microsoft Mice -- they're about the only thing the company makes well.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  16. This is news? by c · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft is behaving exactly the same way they've always behaved.

    Look, Miguel, it's pretty simple. You go play in the sandbox with a reknown bully, you eat sand. Most people figure this out before their sixth birthday. You want to do this mono thing, fine, but you _are_ going to get screwed every time you venture into Microsoft's playground and you aren't going to get a lick of sympathy from the rest of the world when it happens.

    c.

    --
    Log in or piss off.
    1. Re:This is news? by Maxhrk · · Score: 0

      dont include me or 'rest of the world' as you put in your statement, Miguel have my sympathy.

    2. Re:This is news? by demachina · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its somewhat worse than that, Miguel has not only wasted his time, but he's suckered a large number of others developers in to expending massive effort on Mono. It is interesting and all, but it was as nearly as I can tell a complete waste of time, that could have been better spent on Java or standards not completely dominated by Microsoft. Now if there were interesting .NET web sites all over the Internet I wanted to use and had to have Mono to use on any non Windows platform then yes it would serve its purpose, I just don't think I've encountered such a web site. Are there any?

      Not sure I grok why Miguel has such icon status in the open source world, he doesn't seem to have very good judgment.

      --
      @de_machina
    3. Re:This is news? by plierhead · · Score: 1
      Not sure I grok why Miguel has such icon status in the open source world, he doesn't seem to have very good judgment.

      Miguel has excellent judgement.

      1. Persuade a bunch of open source developers to work for you for free and build a copy of .Net
      2. Release it under a open but restrictive license like GPL to get more and more people into it
      3. Find a big corporate who hates Microsoft and wants more rights to this MS-killer and will pay big time for acess to Mono under less restrictive license
      4. PROFIT!!!
      --

      [x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful

    4. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    5. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well not only that but all of Microsoft's next generation software is suppose to use this .net stuff. Well not really, but that's the kind of garbage they were saying a while back. So for example, this could very much be useful to the folks at Wine since they are going to need a way to mimic the.net structure if they want to run MS's programs. For example Paint.net requires the .net architecture and I'm sure a few of their other programs over time might need to as well.

      However, more importantly, lets say you're a company. Now, one of your previous employees made an application based on .net that's important to your business. Now to save money you've decided to switch to Novell's Linux solutions. Would it not be easier to be able to port or use almost the entire source you had working on the windows server over to the new Linux servers??? Why yes it would, and it would be cheaper. From my understanding, this is the main reason why Novell wants mono; cause they can say "hey no worries your system will still work the exact same on our servers". That's a nice thing to be able to say to a client isn't it? So mono isn't really for a standard user, its designed more for enterprise solutions as in businesses

    6. Re:This is news? by flood6 · · Score: 1
      This is why.

      I was about to post that same link. I'm not a huge GNOME fan (I use Fluxbox), but I certainly respect everything he's done. The grandparent saying he doesn't get why Miguel is such a F/OSS icon is beyond me. I've never talked to him but from what I understand he is very approachable and down-to-earth.

      Every culture has it's heros. The F/OSS community is no different. Linus, RMS, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, (countless others); each has their share of controversy and some people flat-out don't like some, but it would be foolish to try and pass them off as trivial people. Miguel certainly belongs among them.

      About that link. I knew about Miguel's involvement in GNOME, Mono, and MC, but I didn't realize he started Gnumeric, too.

    7. Re:This is news? by nametaken · · Score: 1


      You know, its bad enough when you're wrong... but to be wrong AND an asshat?

      This wasn't Microsoft's doing in the first place, and Microsoft has been helpful to the mono project.

      But lets just say that they were, and they hadn't. You still don't need to give a guy grief for trying to make something alot of people might want, for FREE. Its just childish and makes us FOSS folks look like jagoffs.

    8. Re:This is news? by m50d · · Score: 1
      It is interesting and all, but it was as nearly as I can tell a complete waste of time, that could have been better spent on Java or standards not completely dominated by Microsoft.

      It's a standardised standard (ECMA) and worth implementing. Did you argue against open source implementations of javascript because it was completely dominated by netscape?

      Not sure I grok why Miguel has such icon status in the open source world, he doesn't seem to have very good judgment.

      He's a gnome guy and gnome people seem to have an attitude of "the gnome devs know best". That might be part of it.

      --
      I am trolling
    9. Re:This is news? by kaffiene · · Score: 1

      People making things for free is fine.

      People making patent encumbered things free and trying to shove them into FOSS is a big issue.

      Duh.

    10. Re:This is news? by c · · Score: 1
      Miguel has not only wasted his time, but he's suckered a large number of others developers in to expending massive effort on Mono


      Miguel has always struck me as chasing the Latest Shiny Thing, and there's always going to be a bunch of people of like mind who are going to follow him off whenever he hears a new buzzword and decides that "his" project needs to be rewritten from scratch around this concept. Quite frankly, I think it's a good thing for the KDE project that he started GNOME rather than trying to "help" KDE.


      If he was still working on the core GNOME project, they'd probably be rewriting everything around an AJAX approach right now...


      c.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    11. Re:This is news? by c · · Score: 1
      This wasn't Microsoft's doing in the first place,

      What part of Microsoft for the second time in a row blocked the Mono Birds-of-a-feathers (BOF) meeting do you not comprehend? Now, I don't know where Miguel would have gotten that impression, but he's a fuckload closer to what's happening than I am so I'm willing to go with his word on that.


      You still don't need to give a guy grief for trying to make something alot of people might want, for FREE.


      Actually, yes, I do. If Miguel locked himself into a basement and did nothing but hack mono then I could care less. But he's managed to drag a lot of people and mindshare into this whole .NET clusterfuck and I think it's a bad thing. The fact that (parts of) Microsoft also seems to think that a successful mono project is probably a bad thing should be a hint that maybe, just maybe, it's a bad thing.


      c.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    12. Re:This is news? by GeekBoy · · Score: 1

      It also seems that Miguel is so pro microsoft it's scary, and as soon as that nice big Microsoft that Miguel admires so much gets annoyed enough with mono they are going to sue the living crap out of the people involved because of patent infringement. Why are these people spending all of this time helping to further a microsoft technology, that MS holds patents on? I could understand if it was a standard *and* not patent encumbered, but this is just playing with fire. MS may employ many nice folks, but it itself as an entity is *not* nice.

    13. Re:This is news? by demachina · · Score: 1

      "This is why."

      Well you see this is more an indicator of a problem he created rather than solved. It was bad that Trolltech didn't license Qt under the GPL early but the fact the Miguel almost single handedly created the GNOME/KDE fork is just a basic indicator of bad judgment. Sure it pressured Trolltech to change their license and some competition is good, but this fork has nearly doomed Linux on the desktop.

      Fragmentation in your desktop standard is just really, really bad. Geeks don't mind because they need their 100 window managers as religious war canon fodder. If you want to get companies, government organizations and home users to use your desktop, they just want a consistent user interface which all applications use consistently, and for which there are a lot of applications they need.

      They don't much want to have to install two huge, memory wasting desktop environments, because some applications use one and other applications use the other.

      Just as importantly you want all application developers to have one target to work towards. Its just a pain to write an app on the Linux desktop because you have two targets, not one. The whole Linux desktop market is so small most developers, are reluctant to develop for it in the first place. You then split it in half and expect them to support and test for two main desktops. In so doing you just further insure application developers will have nothing to do with it.

      The third problem is, like Mono the GTK/KDE fork is a huge sink of man power, with two sets of people reinventing the same wheel twice, their wheels have different hub caps but they are both doing exactly the same thing. People in the open source world are just way to eager to say all this competition is just purely good and healthy, some of it is but when you have such massive duplication of effort you have effort being squandered that would better be spent moving forward, and doing things that need done, and developing apps your potential customers want and need, but there isn't enough man power to do. You also fragment testing and security work so you end up with two projects which are buggier and less secure than if everyone was focused on one goal. This same argument applies to people who think create yet another Linux distro is somehow a good thing. They are a massive waste of time and resource.

      Using 20/20 hindsight Linux would be way ahead of where it is if Miguel could have marshalled corprate Linux backers like IBM or Novell to throw money at Trolltech, get Qt out under pure LGPL and held the Linux desktop together instead of blowing it to smithereens which is what he actually did.

      --
      @de_machina
    14. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using 20/20 hindsight Linux would be way ahead of where it is if Miguel could have marshalled corprate Linux backers like IBM or Novell to throw money at Trolltech, get Qt out under pure LGPL and held the Linux desktop together instead of blowing it to smithereens which is what he actually did.

      Of if the KDE developers had all given up on KDE and supported Gnome instead. Why should it be the Gnome camp that behaved differently? Just because the KDE kids wouldn't? Well, neither would the Gnome kids.

    15. Re:This is news? by dcam · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I like what Miguel is doing with mono.

      The reason I like it that I write C# for a living. I maintain a web application. Originally this was written in classic asp. It is currently a hybrid with some classic asp and some .Net (about 50-50), running SQL Server as a backend.

      With mono there is the possibility that I can port this to run under Linux. Postgress being the replacement for SQL Server. Now I haven't looked at this in depth yet, but in a year or so (by which time the migration to .Net will be complete), this is a viable option.

      Mono offers a practical upgrade path. The only other options are a clean rewrite in another language. The would take a minimum of 9 months, during which time no features would be added to the product.

      --
      meh
    16. Re:This is news? by sparkz · · Score: 1

      Be realistic. If your webapp is a few years old, then it's probably about time that it was rewritten anyway, just to incorporate CSS/XHTML and other stuff which didn't exist / wasn't mature enough when the project started. Also, if it's a webapp, it's probably a bunch of hacks thrown together anyway - why not take version 1 as a "write one to throw away" prototype, and rewrite the entire thing, using the lessons learned? If you're doing that, there's no pain (and potential gain, if you choose the right language) in switching languages at the same time. If you're now looking at switching from MS-only to other platforms, it's an ideal opportunity to write platform-independant code which can run against various databases, too. When you look at the code rewrites to "migrate", it could well turn out easier to rewrite in another language, given the lessons learned in version 1.0. It could well be that you learn that C# is the right language, but it's well worth considering. After all, you've written so many thousand lines of code, but the work you've done is in creating so many tens or hundreds of algorithms, not the TLOC. If you now know what features you need to implement, writing them afresh in another language does give you the opportunity to shelve all those nasty API dependancies you've gathered over the past few years. Note that this doesn't apply so well to mature applications - it can actually be beneficial to maintain 1960s COBOL code versus rewriting it, but a 2-yr-old WebApp is already old, will have grown with its requirements, and is more likely to need a rehaul than a 30-yr-old COBOL app

      --
      Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
    17. Re:This is news? by dcam · · Score: 1

      Be realistic.

      I am.

      If your webapp is a few years old, then it's probably about time that it was rewritten anyway, just to incorporate CSS/XHTML and other stuff which didn't exist / wasn't mature enough when the project started.

      These can be selectively and incremenetally rolled in.

      Also, if it's a webapp, it's probably a bunch of hacks thrown together anyway - why not take version 1 as a "write one to throw away" prototype, and rewrite the entire thing, using the lessons learned?

      Some sections are hacks, most aren't.

      If you're doing that, there's no pain (and potential gain, if you choose the right language) in switching languages at the same time.

      We aren't on the same planet are we. No PAIN? What the hell do you think you are saying? There is a huge amount of pain. You go to your customers and say: "Uhh we are going to change the underlying technology of the website. No it won't offer any new features. No it won't really be any different. It also means that there will be no new features for the next 9 months, and we aren't even sure of that figure. It could be more".

      You are telling me to be realistic?

      Allow me to quote from someone else who expresses it well:
      So you've got the Windows API, you've got VB, and now you've got .NET, in several language flavors, and don't get too attached to any of that, because we're making Avalon, you see, which will only run on the newest Microsoft operating system, which nobody will have for a loooong time. And personally I still haven't had time to learn .NET very deeply, and we haven't ported Fog Creek's two applications from classic ASP and Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET because there's no return on investment for us. None. It's just Fire and Motion as far as I'm concerned: Microsoft would love for me to stop adding new features to our bug tracking software and content management software and instead waste a few months porting it to another programming environment, something which will not benefit a single customer and therefore will not gain us one additional sale, and therefore which is a complete waste of several months, which is great for Microsoft, because they have content management software and bug tracking software, too, so they'd like nothing better than for me to waste time spinning cycles catching up with the flavor du jour, and then waste another year or two doing an Avalon version, too, while they add features to their own competitive software. Riiiight.
      source

      I am interested in upgrades. I am almost never interested in upgrades that dump what you have a start again. I am interested in incremental upgrades.

      There is a reason I am migrating the site to .Net. There is also a reason why I am doing it in stages.

      My training is as an engineer. One thing I learnt from my degree was that anyone can walk into a plan and tell them to raze it to the ground and build a more efficient, better plant. This is not a useful solution. However if you can tell them how that can adapt what they have to produce a more efficient, better solution, then you have something of interest.

      --
      meh
    18. Re:This is news? by demachina · · Score: 1

      "Of if the KDE developers had all given up on KDE and supported Gnome instead."

      Uh, because the Gnome kids are the one that started the fork. You are talking about KDE kids giving up work they'd already done and something that was already in existence, and that was quite good but for the licensing problem. It has also always been way stronger in application consistency because of its object oriented foundation.

      The Gnome people, with Miguel in the lead, are the ones that said abandon all your work and appoint me desktop king or screw you. Its also a simple fact desktop apps should be written in an object oriented language, not C and the horrible foundation that is GTK. C is great for kernels but it doesn't belong in a GUI. Lord knows I've used GTK plenty but man it is a half assed UI toolkit.

      --
      @de_machina
    19. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With mono there is the possibility that I can port this to run under Linux. Postgress being the replacement for SQL Server. Now I haven't looked at this in depth yet, but in a year or so (by which time the migration to .Net will be complete), this is a viable option.


      Exactly! The point that people seem to be missing is that Mono adds tremendously to the options available for MS shops in planning a migration to Linux (or integration with existing Linux efforts).

      It's much easier to get a bunch of C# and ASP.NET guys writing portable server-side C# code than it is to retrain them all on PHP (or Java for that matter). They get to keep their tools, and the administrators get to keep having manageable servers (as opposed to Windows servers).
    20. Re:This is news? by metamatic · · Score: 1

      Similarly, thank goodness Python is attracting people like Eric Raymond, and keeping them away from Ruby...

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    21. Re:This is news? by fm6 · · Score: 1

      You make some good points. Maybe a little too good. I notice you're making this post in the context of the Mono people getting locked out of a Microsoft conference. It's obvious that Microsoft does not want its developers or users playing with Linux. So if you intend to port any of your .NET apps to Linux, you do so without their support — and probably with their active hinderance!

  17. More importantly by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Insightful

    when they drop the hammer on the GNOME/mono group for using their IP, they will be able to tell the truth in court (for once) that they have never supported this project. In addition,they never fully understood how much of their IP this project walked on (I wonder if they can do that with a straight face?).

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:More importantly by adolfojp · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Eh, no.

      You can make GTK+ apps with MONO and C# for Linux without using any propietary MS IP.

      What they can pull the plug on in on ASP.NET. Of course, you can always run your ASP.NET app trough Grasshoper and turn it into a JAVA app ;-)

    2. Re:More importantly by TelJanin · · Score: 1

      Nonsense. Mono is quite clean of Microsoft intellectual "property". There is no legal threat to the Mono project.

      More FUD please.

    3. Re:More importantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Eh, yes.

      http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162 579&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=109&mode=thread &cid=13588090

      (I didn't feel like typing a long answer to you as well and this one works just fine)

      bottom line, you are wrong and are part of the problem.

    4. Re:More importantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Nonsense. Mono is quite clean of Microsoft intellectual "property". There is no legal threat to the Mono project."

      *said by a Novell representative* Oh, wait!

      http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11889&comm ent_id=32499

      "1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
      2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

      However,

      1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
      2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
      3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
      4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

      Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

      See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

      http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip.....
      http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents

      Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has every received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

      See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

      http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May

      The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

      1. Java is also proprietary: Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason.
      2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time: True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

      Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies bye the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian and some gnome developers again)"

    5. Re:More importantly by Alioth · · Score: 1

      C# _is_ Microsoft proprietary IP. It is covered by some of Microsoft's patents. It's every bit as proprietary as Visual Basic - it's just merely better documented.

    6. Re:More importantly by iamwahoo2 · · Score: 1

      Wow. Thanks for the info. I know now that I will never consider using Mono. I cannot understand why a company like Novell would put themselves at so much risk for something like .NET compatibility.

    7. Re:More importantly by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      VB and C# are protected by patents? What the hell kind of patents? VB is just an unholy union of Pascal and BASIC, and from what I've seen of C#, there's nothing there that hasn't been done before. I can't wait until Microsoft patents variables and incrementing.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    8. Re:More importantly by speedbump · · Score: 1
      "1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono. 2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards However, 1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards. 2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future. 3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards. 4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context! Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.
      ...
      Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies bye the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian and some gnome developers again)"

      I cry bullshit.

      Microsoft can't charge anybody anything for implementing C# or any other .NET technology they've submitted to ECMA.

    9. Re:More importantly by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Novell is not putting themselves at risk. The worse that can happen is that Novell (and other distros) will not be able to distribute increasingly major parts of GNOME. If you look at what Novell supports, little is based on mono.

      It is cool tech (it does correct a lot of issues with Java, which corrects a lot of issues with C++), but it is also a trap for the future, and not worth the possibility to the OSS world.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    10. Re:More importantly by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      The problem is not that MS is patenting stupid things. The problem is that increasingly, the gov is supporting large companies with stupid patents.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    11. Re:More importantly by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Informative

      I cry foolishness and an unwillingness to read.

      Per the ECMA site.: General Declaration: The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.

      The ECMA page totally backs what the AC said. And that is about the language itself. The ECMA standard has nothing to do with .net library, which is almost certainly covered by numerous MS Patents and Trademarks. Everybody seems to want to take the republican approach to this issue and look the other way (no such issue exists; if we ignore it, it will go away; MS would never file suit against mono). This is a problem, and it will not be going away.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    12. Re:More importantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I cannot understand why a company like Novell would put themselves at so much risk for something like .NET compatibility.

      Because maybe - just maybe - they prefer to listen to what their own team of legal experts say, instead of taking advice from random slashdotters?

    13. Re:More importantly by Alioth · · Score: 1

      Microsoft already have got stupid patents on some of the features of Visual Basic (one involving the NOT operator IIRC) - search the archives, it's been covered by Slashdot already.

    14. Re:More importantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's just merely better documented.

      The words "just" and "merely" are synonyms in this context. You may want to get twice the bang for your grammar buck, but you should really pick only one and stick with it.

  18. On empires.... by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.

    The Roman Catholic church, following the fall of the Roman empire, in turn conquered much of the world by assimilation and adaptation.

    Perhaps MS will take this lesson from history one day before it is too late?

    1. Re:On empires.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you are saying that the eventual fall of the single most successful and long lived empire that has ever existed on this earth proves that their way of doing politics doesn't work?

      And you are saying that the similarities between that unprecedented and unrivaled political and economic success and the unprecedented and unrivaled success of the richest company that has ever existed on the face of the earth (MicroSoft) should be cause for them to change their ways?

      Huh?

      ( Ok fine in adjusted dollars the East India Trading Co was probably bigger and there are others but you get my point which is that your point is insane )

    2. Re:On empires.... by westlake · · Score: 1
      The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.

      The undoing took quite some time. Four hundred years in the West. Eight hundred years in the East.

    3. Re:On empires.... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1


      The Roman Catholic church, following the fall of the Roman empire,
      in turn conquered much of the world by assimilation and adaptation.

      Perhaps MS will take this lesson from history one day before it is too late?


      I don't think that will happen because, no one expects the MS Inquisition!

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    4. Re:On empires.... by deaddrunk · · Score: 1

      Yeh they do you get a letter from the BSA before they turn up.

      --
      Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
    5. Re:On empires.... by khallow · · Score: 1
      The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.

      That's how empires are formed. The undoing of empires often is an internal thing. That is, the empire builds up a parasitic class (those in power and the bureaucracy that supports them) that eventually undermines the empire's ability to survive.

    6. Re:On empires.... by srealm · · Score: 1

      So Microsoft should start moving its employees to other offices and paying for relocation instead of firing them when it finds out they're pedophiles?

      Seriously though, The RC church is not the best example really. Remember, at one time, christianity ment catholocism. Every denomination of christianity that exists today is therefore a splinter off of RC. Which makes christianity the most fractured religion there is, since a good proportion of denominations disagree violently with others that are technically supposed to be the SAME religion.

      Some how, I don't think MS could survive thousands of other companies (some large, some small) fracturing off of its own corporate body, selling the same product, but changing a few bells and whistles to distinguish themselves. Plus you seem to forget that the RC church right now is probably the least relevent it has been in well over 1000 years. Yes, there was a time when the RC church said something, and all of europe followed for fear of their soul. However the RC membership, as a percentage of the population, has been in decline for some time.

      The other thing you have to remember is that a very large part of the Roman Empire's fall was a failure of leadership, some bad decisions (such as not waiting for the rest of the army before launching a decisive battle) and complacency (ie. allowing the military to fall into a boarder protection role and losing its ability to work as an effective fighting force). Plus of course, it had overstreached itself to what it could maintain.

      Your view is also flawed since you also don't take into account what the Roman empire did for the places it conquered. Sure, it might not be fun being conquered, however generally it dragged the people living in those places into a new era, and once the people accepted roman taxes, the quality of life increased dramatically for the most part with the introduction of modern facilities and concepts (for example, the benefits of running water). Similarly, when the romans left, the population was both again plunged back about 1000 years socially/technologically, and left a prime target for an invading force (Britain is a prime example).

      That said, I'm not sure I'd consider MS the roman empire OR the RC church.

    7. Re:On empires.... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      The undoing of empires often is an internal thing. That is, the empire builds up a parasitic class (those in power and the bureaucracy that supports them) that eventually undermines the empire's ability to survive.

      Actually, I'd say that one heck of a lot of U.S. corporations have this parasitic class. In typical business parlance, it is often referred to as "upper management".

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    8. Re:On empires.... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Funny

      Remember, at one time, christianity ment catholocism.

      Yes, I believe that most of the Vatican's servers are Catholocated.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    9. Re:On empires.... by khallow · · Score: 1
      Actually, I'd say that one heck of a lot of U.S. corporations have this parasitic class. In typical business parlance, it is often referred to as "upper management".

      Well, I think the analogy is quite apt. IMHO empires are first and foremost a means of collecting resources from a vast region or population and funnelling them to a central elite. The cultural assimilation and domination is just what is necessary to make these resources flow. You have to give the citizens of the empire some incentive for giving you work and tribute. In the case of a corporation, this flow is ultimately to the stockholders.

      The people who have the most power over this flow are upper management. What I suspect happens is that a CEO or other high executive wishes to feather their nest a little more generously. So they'll change the environment a little. Maybe put in key positions "yes men" who won't threaten the executive's job and can extend the power of the executive. Or they may relax certain rules so that they can get better equipment or travel than normal. In extreme cases, eg, embezzlement or fraud, they'll actually need accomplices further on down the chain to do the dirty deeds (and in the process create a far less accountable environment). In any case, there seems to be this universal urge to avoid risks and feather one's nest (which can be done in a number of legal ways).

      The ultimate thing is that from the top down there is incentive to create a risk-adverse, unaccountable environment. In this environment, people lose or mislay company resources and gradually the company loses efficiency. Or in other words, the parasites have infested the company.

      I suspect a big part of the reason that shareholders allow this is because most of them (weighted by shares of stock) either are themselves part of some parasitic bureaucracy (eg, most institutional investors) or they benefit from this state of affairs (eg, banks, brokerages, etc).

  19. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by courtarro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's a good insight. I remember .Net being presented back in 2001 as the next Java, with the word "Framework" substituted for "Virtual Machine". As the years have gone by, I keep waiting for it to "become" Java, but all we've got to show for it is an architecture with the speed of Java (slow) and the portability of a native Win32 exe (not portable at all).

  20. If you RTFA.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems more like a goof in their voting process as to which sessions would be included..

    those conspiracy theorists would find malicious intent on behalf of Microsoft (but then, they'll do that for almost anything.. ) but I'm not convinced of it.

    So sayeth the anonymous coward
    RAGE AGAINST THE (SLASHDOT) MACHINE!

  21. Linux conferences. by atomic-penguin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a .NET Birds of a Feather group at a Linux conference. It probably wouldn't go over well with the attendees, I can just imagine everyone attending the MS BOF pointing out how what MS hasn't done for Linux. Furthermore, the sponsors may have political issues with them having a slot in the conference.
     
    It seems very silly to hold them to a double standard. Microsoft is under no obligation to cater to Novell and their associates. Just as you would not expect groups associated with Linux to be under any obligation to cater for Microsoft.

    --
    /^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
    1. Re:Linux conferences. by Coryoth · · Score: 1

      It seems very silly to hold them to a double standard. Microsoft is under no obligation to cater to Novell and their associates. Just as you would not expect groups associated with Linux to be under any obligation to cater for Microsoft.

      Sure, no one is complaining that the Mono session wasn't allowed, it is more about the manner in which it was done. "Birds of a Feather" was supposed to be a set of open meetings - anyone could suggest a topic, the topics would get listed, then voted on, an the top n topics would be chosen for the PDC. Miguel requested a slot for Mono, the request was accepted and then... well somehow it didn't get listed for voting, and all his queries from then on were ignored. Naturally enough, never having even been listed for voting, the mono session got no votes and was dropped.

      If there was a Linux conference that advertised open sessions with topics to be voted on and Microsoft requested a slot then I would fully expect their topic to be put up for voting. If it got voted down, fine, if it got voted on I expect that would get honored.

      It's not the being ignored, its the dishonesty that irks. Although some would say Miguel should have expected as much from Microsoft, it would be nice to think that we shouldn't epect such petty churlish behaviour.

      Jedidiah.

    2. Re:Linux conferences. by cgenman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that they're not held to a double standard. Microsoft sits on the boards for OpenGL and a lot of other standards. Microsoft has been to Linuxworld and other open-source or Linux conferences. They also show up at Macworld and other Apple conferences.

      They might grumble a lot, but Open Source supporters seem to have given Microsoft as many rights as anyone else in the community may have. Microsoft doing a MONO/.net promotion at a Linux conference would be completely acceptable.

    3. Re:Linux conferences. by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 1

      I see Microsoft at Linux seminars here in Sweden.

      They are there to check out the competition - and why should they not ?

      --
      Just saying it like it are.
    4. Re:Linux conferences. by Sux2BU · · Score: 1

      I don't see how the fact they sit on the board of standards organizations has anything to do with them not supporting a group at their own conference. They may have created .Net, but they are more interested in Windows as a platform for developers. MONO goes against that in the same way that GCC does.

      Would Microsoft promoting Visual Studio (or .Net without MONO) at a Linux conference be completely acceptable? How is that suggestion different than promoting MONO (non-Windows development) at a conference about the Windows Platform?

    5. Re:Linux conferences. by k-zed · · Score: 1

      Microsoft isn't exactly famous for its standard-adherence or promoting... Why, they even quit the OpenGL board you mentioned.

      --
      we discovered a new way to think.
    6. Re:Linux conferences. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux and Open Source have nothing to do with it. If Novell wants its clone-ware ripoff to be displayed at a Microsoft hosted conference they should drop the billion dollar Office lawsuit against Microsoft.

      Good on Microsoft for flipping the bird to litigious companies like Novell.

    7. Re:Linux conferences. by stor · · Score: 1

      Just as you would not expect groups associated with Linux to be under any obligation to cater for Microsoft.

      Hmm, they seem to:

      Microsoft to Talk Unix Interop at LinuxWorld

      Also, SFU 3.0 won "best system integration software" IIRC at LinuxWorld 2003.

      Feels a bit like a one-way street...

      Cheers
      Stor

      --
      "Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
  22. Power to the... sigh... the Man by vivarin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't understand how people can get so enamoured of the .NET world, devote their professional careers to C# and the MS universe, and then wonder what happened when MS decides to zig when they want to zag.

    Seriously. I see Spolsky and Sink congratulating themselves on how well they've managed to sneak out of the MS sandbox with clever PHP translation schemes and the like.

    Gosh, guys, you don't have to give Redmond the remote control to your shock collars just because you want a little bit of leverage writing code.

    Work a little bit harder and you can be free of Microsoft and in control of your own destiny. You won't see the Mozilla foundation complaining about how .NET just broke all their code in Windows Vista, but you can bet you'll see it on the blogs of less experienced coders.

    1. Re:Power to the... sigh... the Man by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      You won't see the Mozilla foundation complaining about how .NET just broke all their code in Windows Vista, but you can bet you'll see it on the blogs of less experienced coders.

      I seem to remember an awful lot of stuff breaking when the Linux world moved from libc5 to glibc2. I seem to remember a lot of complaints a while back when RedHat moved to a new version of gcc (3.1.something?) and broke compatibility.

      Oh sure, everyone could use a different distro (potentially a huge pain in the arse) or recompile their code, but then everyone who develops against .NET 1.x and whose stuff breaks against 2.0 can just recompile their code too. Besides which, one of the complaints I hear most often about MS and Windows is that there's a shitload of cruft in there for backwards compatibility. What makes you think that .NET 1.x apps won't work just fine on 2.0 runtimes?

    2. Re:Power to the... sigh... the Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh some slashdot geeks would love some parts of Belgium. Here it's very very difficult to find a job when you arent devoted to Microsoft technologies. And not mentioning the fact that some companies even request a PHD for doing helpdesksupport, you can imagine how rough it is for geeks with no degree at all. And i'm 22, started working as a Whizzkid for Lernout en Hauspie (Text To Speech en Asynchronous Speech Recognition) at the age of 16, so roughly I have 6 years of experience.

      Some Colleges here for example are just Microsoft drone factories. The courses have names as "VB.NET", "ASP.NET", "Windows", "Windows Networking", etc. Sometimes I ask myself are they earning a college degree or a MCP certificate when they are done. And I have worked with some of them after they graduated and it was a friking nightmare when you gave them some non MS stuff.

      I'm now applying for a job (PHP, Python, Linux,Javascript,XML) and this is the first opening in months that I have seen that are requesting people with knowledge of OS technologies. In this part of the country 95% of al webdevelopment openings are requesting knowledge about ASP.NET, MS SQL Server,.NET, etc.

      Then again I live in a country where innovation in ICT is very low even with all our phd's. We did have Lernout & Hauspie but they went bankrupt and the technology was sold to Scansoft. Since then we don't have any "big guns" here anymore.

    3. Re:Power to the... sigh... the Man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it depends on where you are in Belgium. I live in Antwerp itself, and it wasn't very hard to find a job that didn't require selling my soul to MS (third letter to a tech firm I sent out). I write mostly PHP code serving up cross-browser HTML, CSS and javascript.

      Though admittedly, I got hired because I could write Delphi code, so there's still a fair bit of the proprietary at my company as well.

      Also, I went to Antwerp university (didn't get my masters degree though, got stuck at bachelor level), and there was almost zero MS dependency there. We had to write our code with editors of our chosing on X terminals to a solaris box, compiling with gcc. Using visual c++ to create your code at home was discouraged because you had to get it running on gcc and building it on vc++ made that more difficult.

      So, I guess it all depends where you are and what you're doing.

      I do agree that the more OSS there is in a firm, the more innovative it is likely to be. Companies that take no risks will be MS players, because nobody ever got fired for buying MS. And let's face it, most Belgian businesses are risk-averse, to say the least.

    4. Re:Power to the... sigh... the Man by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      wonder what happened when MS decides to zig when they want to zag

      Cmon, this is so simple I'm surprised an obviously intelligent poster like your self missed it. All the developer needs to do is "take off every zig".

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    5. Re:Power to the... sigh... the Man by vivarin · · Score: 1

      My point is that (particularly with ISVs), if you embrace Microsoft-controlled technologies, you give your mightiest potential competitor the keys to your kingdom. You can buy your way out of this problem by embracing an isolation layer (XUL/XPCOM, Qt, Wx, web-based applications) or creating your own.

      I've written a lot of Win32 code, too. I have total respect for the developer tools, and I'm sure C# shaves a lot of the rough edges off Java.

      But it's gonna be kind of tough to repurpose your code to OS X when MS announces the Windows version of your product if you've written it all in C#...

  23. Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and deluded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
    2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

    However,

    1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
    2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
    3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
    4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

    Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

    See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

    http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip.....
    http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents

    Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has ever received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

    See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

    http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May

    The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

    1. Java is also proprietary:

    Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason. Even if Sun changed its mind or was purchased by a less generous company (like MS for example), existing releases of Java and alternative implementations based on existing released specs would always remain free as in beer. The no version of the .net ecma standards ever has been comparably free.

    2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time:

    True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich and illegal monopoly that used its power to destroy competition. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

    Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies by the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian a

  24. Mono is better in many ways by ron_ivi · · Score: 1, Insightful
    1. For high-end computing - Mono runs on Sparc, S390, and Power support, Mono's really the only choice for high-end computing platforms.
    2. For embedded designs - Mono runs on ARM with MIPS soon to come, which makes Mono really the only choice for embedded platforms.
    3. For businesses - Many companies are able to provide support for the Mono engine, only one is able to support microsoft's implementaion. Any rational business will not allow any product that's sole-sourced from a single vendor, whether it's screws, bolts, gasoline, or software engines. With Microsoft's implemention your business is left at the whims of a single vendor who can pull the rug out from you whenever they feel like (remember Visual Basic 6, and the contempt MSFT showed business relying on that platform).
    Basically, for any serious C# application, Mono is the only choice.
    1. Re:Mono is better in many ways by The+Slashdolt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You hit the nail on the head. Mono is the only choice for a serious C# application. Unfortunately, the rest of the industry figured this out years ago and wrote all their code in java, which runs on all the platforms you mentioned and has nothing to do with microsoft. Why you wouldn't use an existing and mature cross platform language that is non-microsoft is beyond me.

      --
      mp3's are only for those with bad memories
    2. Re:Mono is better in many ways by TummyX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Woah. Talk about delusional.


      For high-end computing - Mono runs on Sparc, S390, and Power support, Mono's really the only choice for high-end computing platforms.

      Except that there's no proof that mono itself will scale on those platforms and P4 and AMD64 aren't exactly lightweights these days.


      For embedded designs - Mono runs on ARM with MIPS soon to come, which makes Mono really the only choice for embedded platforms.


      Well the compact framework runs on those processors too as does Portable.NET/DOTGNU.


      For businesses - Many companies are able to provide support for the Mono engine, only one is able to support microsoft's implementaion. Any rational business will not allow any product that's sole-sourced from a single vendor, whether it's screws, bolts, gasoline, or software engines. With Microsoft's implemention your business is left at the whims of a single vendor who can pull the rug out from you whenever they feel like (remember Visual Basic 6, and the contempt MSFT showed business relying on that platform).


      YOu gotta be kidding me. In reality, there more many more companies supporting .NET development. Sure, Microsoft are the only ones that can do anything about the runtime but there are literally thousands of vendors of .NET components (most of whom only support .NET on windows).


      Basically, for any serious C# application, Mono is the only choice.


      That's really delusional you know. Most C# applications being written today are on ASP.NET and SWF apps written for windows (many are internal custom applications).

      Mono's VM, although continuously improving is not as stable as Microsoft's and their class library isn't either complete or, again, as stable as Microsft's. There is also no decent IDE for mono (monodevelop is so far away from being able to compete with visual studio or borland's offering that it's not funny).

    3. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Why you wouldn't use an existing and mature cross platform language that is non-microsoft is beyond me.

      At least C# is an open standard... that kinda makes it not-necessarily-microsoft. Java is Sun's and that doesn't look like it will change any time soon. As far as the "rest of the industry"... If you mean... most of the other folks who don't work on Microsoft (you know, that other 10% of computers) mostly use Java, which has it's own set of craptitudes... but some of that other 10% use Mono as well.

      I haven't had many good experiences with anything written in Java. It either is like using stone axes and sticks or it is painfully slow, or both. I personally don't like Java all that much either, but I guess that's probably tainted by my being forced to use JBuilder and some other craptastic stuff back when we were working in Java.

    4. Re:Mono is better in many ways by killjoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Except that there's no proof that mono itself will scale on those platforms and P4 and AMD64 aren't exactly lightweights these days."

      But there is lots of proof the .NET will not scale on those platforms because it does not run on those platforms.

      "YOu gotta be kidding me. In reality, there more many more companies supporting .NET development. Sure, Microsoft are the only ones that can do anything about the runtime but there are literally thousands of vendors of .NET components (most of whom only support .NET on windows)."

      He was talking about the runtime, not components.

      "Mono's VM, although continuously improving is not as stable as Microsoft's and their class library isn't either complete or, again, as stable as Microsft's."

      I agree, furthermore it will never catch up. MS will make sure of that. If by some miracle mono does close the gap they will be sued and that will stop them in their tracks.

      Mono just doesn't make sense to me. Not when you java already exists, runs on every platform mono runs on, has proven to scale to massive proportions, can run on the tiniest of devices, had great IDEs, and is already mature and baked.

      It was a fools errand to try and reverse engineer .NET. Imagine if Miguel put all that work into a better JVM for linux.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    5. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You gotta be kidding me. In reality, there more many more companies supporting .NET development. Sure, Microsoft are the only ones that can do anything about the runtime but there are literally thousands of vendors of .NET components (most of whom only support .NET on windows).

      After what Microsoft did to people relying on VB6 (pretty much telling them to rewrite everyting in Visual Fred), no one will care about how many companies support fluff on top of Microsoft's .NET. There were once many companies supporting stuff on top of VB, and they all got screwed.

      Except that there's no proof that mono itself will scale on those platforms and P4 and AMD64 aren't exactly lightweights these days.

      Indeed!!! There's no proof that ASP.NET itself will scale at all. Python does (many google services), Perl does (slashdot), PHP does (Yahoo). Java arguably does when you throw enough money at it (Sony). But DotNET - it's still primarily a vision of some future for microsoft, not a platform anyone would consider calling mature (check out all the differences between C# 3.0's spec and the old ones).

    6. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed!!! There's no proof that ASP.NET itself will scale at all. Python does (many google services), Perl does (slashdot)

      I wonder if microsoft.com gets much traffic these days. I was going to point out the .aspx extensions on their pages but then I noticed something shocking. They are now .mspx pages. Did I miss something, perhaps a new language that would warrent a change of extensions?

    7. Re:Mono is better in many ways by PlacidPundit · · Score: 1
      There is also no decent IDE for mono (monodevelop is so far away from being able to compete with visual studio or borland's offering that it's not funny).

      You mean people actually use something other than vi? Blasphemy!

    8. Re:Mono is better in many ways by blincoln · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why you wouldn't use an existing and mature cross platform language that is non-microsoft is beyond me.

      C# doesn't require that you have version 1.4.01_04 of the runtime installed for one app, 1.4.01_03 installed for a second, and 1.5.02_01 for a third.

      Java is an awesome language, but the runtime-version-specific nature of *every* Java app we have at work ruins it in my mind.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    9. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wrong on both counts.

      C# / .Net apps can (and in fact, do) require specific versions of certain libraries, or even certain versions of the runtime itself. When an app is built, it is built against a specific version of the runtime, and when run it will be run against the same versions. So if you only have .Net 2.0 installed (assuming Microsoft don't bundle 1.1 and 1.0 with it as well), you may well find yourself in a position where 1.0 and 1.1 apps no longer work. This is intentional, by design, and there's nothing you can do about it. You simply have to install multiple versions of the runtime.

      Java apps may require a certain minimum version of Java, but I've never, ever seen a Java app require a specific version of Java unless the app itself is broken in some way. I've run stuff from Java 1.0 on a current Java 1.5 runtime, and it still works as well as it ever did (better, in fact).

    10. Re:Mono is better in many ways by lupus-slash · · Score: 1

      For embedded designs - Mono runs on ARM with MIPS soon to come, which makes Mono really the only choice for embedded platforms.

      Well the compact framework runs on those processors too as does Portable.NET/DOTGNU.


      I won't comment on MIPS, because mono has not been ported to it yet, but on ARM Mono is the most advanced .net-like environment.
      The compact framework has several restrictions in its implementation and in its base assemblies.
      Portable.NET has even more restrictions because it's missing tons of features both in the VM and in the base assemblies.
      Mono on ARM provides the full framework, Reflection.Emit, Remoting, P/Invoke, Gtk# etc: none of the other .net runtimes provide an extended feature set as Mono.

    11. Re:Mono is better in many ways by msormune · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What the hell are you talking about? If your applications really need that strict version numbering, you must be doing something really wrong. I have been a Java developer for 8 years and I know this for a fact.

    12. Re:Mono is better in many ways by m50d · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Java is, firstly, really slow, throw all the benchmarks you like at me but anything that uses swing gui (and any other gui kills the whole WORA point or java) is intolerably slow on my 800mhz system (click button, wait half a second for menu to appear), and easy as it is for slashdotters to forget this machine is still about the average spec. No, I'm not using an old JVM, no, I'm not short of memory, no, I'm not running other apps at the same time, no, I'm not going to upgrade my system when every other program under the sun performs fine. Secondly, it's horribly locked into OOP, which may be the dominant paradigm at the moment but isn't appropriate for everything and may well be overtaken in the process. Thirdly, it's too difficult to call into java, from another language. Java libraries are almost useless if you decide to move on to something else. It's easy enough, though not as easy as it should be, to call out of java via JNI, but embedding it into another program is another story. Java is, ultimately, a dead end.

      --
      I am trolling
    13. Re:Mono is better in many ways by m50d · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Mono just doesn't make sense to me. Not when you java already exists, runs on every platform mono runs on, has proven to scale to massive proportions, can run on the tiniest of devices, had great IDEs, and is already mature and baked.

      .NET has the wonderful language mixing capability and is worth reversing for that alone.

      --
      I am trolling
    14. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Stocktonian · · Score: 1
      check out all the differences between C# 3.0's spec and the old ones

      I hope you're kidding. C# is not the same as the Common Language Runtime (CLR). Mono is an implementation of the CLR, C# is a language. Pointing out the differences between C# 3.0 and C# 1.0 is about as useful as pointing out there is a difference between C and C++.
      --
      XePhi Computers sell really cheap Linux CDs! http://www.xephi.co.uk
    15. Re:Mono is better in many ways by dotcher · · Score: 2, Informative
      I quote, from http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/changeinfo/default.a spx
      The .NET Framework attempts to maintain backward and forward compatibility between versions. However, a change to the .NET Framework that improves security, correctness, or functionality might also raise compatibility issues.

      Backward compatibility means an application written for the .NET Framework version 1.0 can execute on version 1.1. The .NET Framework provides the highest degree of support for backward compatibility. Most applications that work on the current version of the .NET Framework will work on the next version of the .NET Framework.

      Forward compatibility means an application written for the .NET Framework version 1.1 can execute on version 1.0. Although forward compatibility is supported by the .NET Framework, an application that uses a type or member specific to version 1.1 will never run properly on version 1.0. This is not a forward incompatibility because the application can never be expected to work. If you want your application to run properly on both versions of the .NET Framework, then your application should only use types and members in version 1.0.

      Now, I'll admit it's not always perfect, but in my experience it works. I work on a large LOB application, which has been developed for the 1.0 framework. It runs fine (in fact, it runs somewhat better) on the 1.1 framework.

      The only work we had to do to enable this was add a few lines to the configuration files on the machines which had both 1.0 and 1.1 frameworks installed. This forced the applications to use a specific version (1.1), not the version they were compiled against. I believe the middle-tier components, which are web services hosted in IIS, required a similar tweak to the IIS configuration.

      Requiring specific versions of other libraries may well be an issue - I've not had any experience one way or the other. The project I work on deploys all the required dependencies alongside the application files, which I would expect to mitigate most versioning issues with the libraries we use.

    16. Re:Mono is better in many ways by mpcooke3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Swing may be slow and crappy, java is definately not. The compromise in speed that you make in a large Java application compared to a large C++ program is negligable for most application development, and of course development in a modern OO language is much easier. Plus the tools for java such as IntelliJ and Eclipse are still a year or two ahead of microsofts intellistudio and about 5 or 6 years ahead of open source development tools.

      Java on desktop linux will die unless a good open implementation becomes popular like harmony/GCJ etc. Java is of course firmly entrenched in many banks and large development companies because its the only modern development platform suitable for large scale cost efficient development that isn't tied to Microsoft. It's also become increasingly popular to write large multiplayer online game backends in Java.

      To make out that being a modern OO language is a disadvantage is laughable. It's a bit like saying "I'm still going to use my horse'n'cart because cars are just fad and soon we'll all be flying planes." Sure, the java platforms isn't suitable for people who haven't learnt modern development practices of for hacking togethor small or temporary scripts, but that's not it's core market.

      I wouldn't declare Java dead yet, given the only viable alternatively currently is the .NET platform.

    17. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Rasta+Prefect · · Score: 1

      C# doesn't require that you have version 1.4.01_04 of the runtime installed for one app, 1.4.01_03 installed for a second, and 1.5.02_01 for a third.

      Java is an awesome language, but the runtime-version-specific nature of *every* Java app we have at work ruins it in my mind.


      Quit using the Microsoft Java tools. Microsoft intentionally busted them to poison the well for Java. There is a reason that Sun went to a lot of legal effort to make Microsoft quit shipping them.

      --
      Why?
    18. Re:Mono is better in many ways by lubricated · · Score: 1

      ok, so java is slow in the gui. You certainly aren't finding any programs that rely on heavy computation written in java. So all you have left is ?????

      Java is slow.

      The only time this is ok is when speed doesn't matter so much.

      --
      It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
    19. Re:Mono is better in many ways by mpcooke3 · · Score: 1

      The only time this is ok is when speed doesn't matter so much.

      Which is of course *most* software development.

      In a bank if you can complete a 7 month project only 2 months late rather than 5 months late and if maintenance and upgrades are easier you save millions over the lifecycle of a large enterprise application. The cost of the CPU's is negligable.

      Most desktop systems are idling 99.5% of the time and slow bits are normally IO-related. Even in game development it's only client side code where you are speed critical and even then only in a tiny percentage of the code. This is all irrelevant anyway for games as directX dominates.

      There are massive gains to be got from developing OO code for a modern virtual machine. In terms of security, less bugs and modern features like Garbage collection, etc, (I say modern but of course these basic features have been around for ages in smalltalk etc,).

      Almost all apps will end up running on something like the JVM or .NET runtime. I'm sure there were people who said the speed of C was crap compared to assembler. How many assembler programmers do you know today?

    20. Re:Mono is better in many ways by lubricated · · Score: 1

      so how is this better than c++?

      Gui response speed does matter, and memory usuage also matters, not everyone has a gig of ram yet.

      --
      It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
    21. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Trepalium · · Score: 1

      Read about it here. The URL on that site is broken, so if you want to read more, try this http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/bkst_column_46. mspx">archive.org link

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    22. Re:Mono is better in many ways by killjoe · · Score: 1

      So does java. What's your point?

      --
      evil is as evil does
    23. Re:Mono is better in many ways by blincoln · · Score: 1

      you must be doing something really wrong.

      It's not me, it's the vendors' developers.

      Seriously, every single "enterprise"-class commercial app that we use which is written in Java is like this. These are the ones that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    24. Re:Mono is better in many ways by blincoln · · Score: 1

      Parent is correct, grandparent is wrong. .NET apps built against version n of the runtime are always compatible with versions >n. That's all I care about, because it means I can just install the latest version and everything will work.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    25. Re:Mono is better in many ways by blincoln · · Score: 1

      Quit using the Microsoft Java tools.

      Where did I mention MS? These are all Sun JRE requirements, not MS.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    26. Re:Mono is better in many ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree, and have seen this first hand. But don't blame vendor incompentence on Java, as any halfway decently built app should have good forward compatibility.

      Somehow the big ultra-expensive stuff tends to never qualify, though.

    27. Re:Mono is better in many ways by m50d · · Score: 1
      Swing may be slow and crappy, java is definately not.

      If you're casting out swing and using another GUI, then you're basically no better off than you were with C++ - you have to either use an OS native toolkit and be platform-bound, or use a crossplatform toolkit and either bundle it somehow or hope your clients have it installed. You lose the WORA thing that was the big selling point of Java, the only reason to use it is if you like the language itself. Sure, it's a bit nicer than pure C++, but there's plenty of equally good languages even looking solely at compiled ones, and if you're willing to consider dynamic languages Java's blown away. Yes, they don't have the huge amount of supporting tools Java has - but if they were as popular I'm sure they would.

      To make out that being a modern OO language is a disadvantage is laughable. It's a bit like saying "I'm still going to use my horse'n'cart because cars are just fad and soon we'll all be flying planes." Sure, the java platforms isn't suitable for people who haven't learnt modern development practices of for hacking togethor small or temporary scripts, but that's not it's core market.

      Supporting OO is an advantage. Not supporting anything but OO is a disadvantage - like building a road for 24mph traffic only, because that was the speed limit at the time. Computer programming is still a fast-moving field, analogies with the early days of the motor car are more appropriate than comparisons to modern transportation. Python is OO to a deeper extent than Java - even classes themselves are objects, so you can do metaclassing - but unless you want to, you don't have to care that you are using an OO language, which is enormously useful not only if you want to do pre-OO style structured programming but also if you're doing e.g. functional programming.

      --
      I am trolling
    28. Re:Mono is better in many ways by m50d · · Score: 1

      AIUI it doesn't exist to the same extent. Can you (for example) subclass a Ruby object in Lisp when using java?

      --
      I am trolling
  25. GET A CLUE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here you hear once more that developers who buy into .NET are not interested in developing or targeting other platforms other than Windows. Those who would want to have Linux then rather use PHP, Perl, etc. That is so crazy and ignorant that it doesn't make any sense! Or maybe, the people expressing those opinions are not "Real Software Engineers" -- or good business people for that matter.

    It is NOT an all or nothing proposition. You can develop in Visual Studio and very well target Linux, Mac OS X and anything else that runs Mono. As much as I use the totally cool MonoDevelop (a.k.a Bad Ass IDE of the future), I still use Visual Studio .NET 2003 quite regularly. In fact, now that I have discovered the beauty of VMWare, it will be that much more comfortable to create projects in Visual Studio that are resting on a VMWare shared folder and use them instantly in the Linux host.

    But make no mistake, that is just one of those rich kids whim of mine. I have, for the past two years, used a Windows box that has mapped drives to my Samba enabled Linux boxes to achieved the same effect.

    One must also keep in mind the great utility of Mono's Windows incarnation. Thanks to my add-in (sorry for the shameless plug) you can use Visual Studio and test in Mono without having a Linux or Mac OS box anywhere in sight. In some cases, I very purposefully create Mono applications using handy dandy Visual Studio .NET 2003 with the intention to deploy and run in Windows boxes whose only .NET Framework runtime is the Mono for Windows SDK.

    In the early 1980's IBM put out the specifications for the PC and regardless of what were their intentions back then, the world of IT has become what it is today because of all of the innovations that we later had by contributors like Compaq, Dell, HP, Apple, Toshiba and many others.

    Today, being a .NET developer that only wants to use .NET in Windows would be as silly as a PC user back in 1987 who only wanted to use IBM hardware.

    I say we have an extremely similar situation with the original submission from Microsoft to the ECMA of the C# language and the CLI specification. Now, in 2005, you have a great group of contributors that include Novell, Microsoft, IBM, HP and many others.

    But perhaps the most striking difference from my IBM PC analogy is the role of the individual contributor. You see, I want to suggest that Open Source .NET will be much bigger -- and better for everyone -- than Microsoft .NET alone.

    No really, from a business perspective, you would have to be brain damaged to create an application or system of any sort and not hope that it can run in as many platforms (meaning customers that are willing to pay) as possible!

    So you mean to tell me that there is some .NET developer at the PDC or elsewhere that would not grin once he/she sees their application running on Linux or Mac OS X?

    For GOD sake, GET A CLUE!!!!

    1. Re:GET A CLUE! by guet · · Score: 1

      No really, from a business perspective, you would have to be brain damaged to create an application or system of any sort and not hope that it can run in as many platforms (meaning customers that are willing to pay) as possible!

      What, brain damaged like someone who only produces web-pages for IE (most corporate Intranets)? Most business is brain-damaged, or at least monomaniacal about profits.

      So you mean to tell me that there is some .NET developer at the PDC or elsewhere that would not grin once he/she sees their application running on Linux or Mac OS X?

      I imagine most would frown and then shrug - those markets are irrelevant to most developers and not worth the extra work (and there would be some, even just in testing). I type this from an OS X machine, but your view is unrealistic - .NET is designed to tie people to windows (not now, but later once they've adopted it).

  26. First Syphilis 3D, now Mono... by Cerdic · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I ScuttleMonkey trying to tell us something in a series of Freudian slips?

    --
    Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
    1. Re:First Syphilis 3D, now Mono... by Cerdic · · Score: 1

      Damn, that should have been "I ScuttleMonkey trying to tell us something in a series of Freudian slips?"

      No, it wasn't a Freudian slip of my own.

      --
      Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
    2. Re:First Syphilis 3D, now Mono... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like the Monkey didn't find it funny.

  27. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by einhverfr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As the years have gone by, I keep waiting for it to "become" Java, but all we've got to show for it is an architecture with the speed of Java (slow) and the portability of a native Win32 exe (not portable at all).

    And the security of ActiveX.....

    Actually, it is not too unportable via Mono, but I worry about a non-sandboxed security model based on digital signatures.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  28. Building their own worst enemy. by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So now they are stuck. They are still *trying* to kill Java, but in the end they are realizing that they have built their own worst enemy.

    Heh. This is just like IE and Firefox.

    By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly - not only with Firefox, but also with other competing projects like OpenOffice.org, and now, Mono.

    This is so.... ironic. And funny. Reminds me of the typical story about a wizard who summons a monster to rule the world, and then the monster kills him.

    1. Re:Building their own worst enemy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly - not only with Firefox, but also with other competing projects like OpenOffice.org, and now, Mono.

      The thing is Microsoft *hated* the Internet and they didn't want to support it, but they had no choice. Microsft themselves admits they were late to adopt the Internet, but rushed to develop for when they had no other choice. The problem with internet, of course, is that Microsoft doesn't control it and it's completely open.

      Back in Windows 98 some might remember the ill fated channel bar. Microsoft's idea of the ideal Internet would be where we sign up for subsription services for everything like news, all using a Microsoft controlled protocol. Good thing that didn't work out...

    2. Re:Building their own worst enemy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The channel bar was driven by simple XML files served over HTTP. Like Pointcast and other "Push" stuff, it was really nothing more than an early predecessor to RSS. The disgusting part was the paid adverts on your desktop by default.

    3. Re:Building their own worst enemy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Heh. It's worse than that. Microsoft believed that MSN would be an Internet killer: that they could provide all the content anybody would ever want and that nobody would still be interested in that Internet thing. They were planning on being a better AOL than AOL. This is all before the "September that never ended" of course.

  29. .NET is a Diversion Maneuver by rednaxel · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It hurts Java AND Linux at the same time, using the same trick for both: luring developers. Every minute a Java developer wastes using C# is a minute that he/she is not using Java. Every time a Linux developer tries Mono, he/she is wasting resources in a doomed technology. Even if .NET is headed to be a total failure - as a technology - at some point in the future, it's already a success as a marketing tool: it's slowing down Java and Linux.

    It's obvious that Mono will NEVER be able to run every .NET application. As soon as Microsoft starts seeing Mono as a thread, something will happen.

    BTW, where's the big wave of .NET applications?

    --
    If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
    1. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by IWorkForMorons · · Score: 1

      My company is currently converting all their software from VB6 to C#. We aren't a big company, but we are switching. Of course I see this as a colossal mistake and believe that this will further delegate us to only a small margin of our target audience (hospitals in need of document management and archiving). Honestly I'd like to see this become a secure web-based product built on an open platform. Paying the Microsoft tax is one of our biggest expenses, and we're currently in a tight cashflow situation. Divorcing Microsoft would be a good step, but no one listens to the guy in support...

    2. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by qbwiz · · Score: 1

      If .NET is a total failure then it will waste Linux/Java developer time, but it will waste much, much more Windows developer time.

      --
      Ewige Blumenkraft.
    3. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by hkb · · Score: 1

      BTW, where's the big wave of .NET applications?

      Uhm, everywhere? Maybe not in Linux/Solaris shops, but go to the bookstore and see how many .NET books are there (hint: too many). Go to Windows shops (which I hear are a significant majority).

      Java development is a nightmare, especially JSP and Servlets. The tools for .NET are light years ahead of anything Sun and third party vendors have for Java.

      Perhaps .NET is just not that popular in Brazil? It's extremely popular in the US.

      --
      /* Moderating all non-anonymous trolls up since 2004 */
    4. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ``It hurts Java AND Linux at the same time, using the same trick for both: luring developers. Every minute a Java developer wastes using C# is a minute that he/she is not using Java.''

      Frankly, I don't see it that way. When introduced, .NET was a better technology than Java. Instead of being a platform designed to be targetted by a single language, .NET enabled interoperability between languages. Microsoft has worked hard to improve this interoperability, even making changes to their VM to better suit functional languages. C# also had some really good features (generics come to mind) that Java lacked. So when a Java developer is ``is not using Java'', perhaps they're simply evaluating other, possibly better options.

      Because of .NET's advantages over Java, it has forced Java to get better. Java 5 is a great improvement over Java 4, and I doubt that this would have come as quickly had it not been for .NET. Java is hurt by .NET in terms of market share, but I'd say it's rather helped in terms of quality.

      Finally, I don't see your point about .NET hurting Linux. How many people are not using Linux because of .NET? How has .NET harmed the quality of Linux? If anything, .NET makes Linux better and more attractive; better because Linux now offers it as an additional choice (through Mono and Portable.NET), and more attractive because applications written in .NET will require less porting than applications using the win32 or MFC APIs.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    5. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by aled · · Score: 1

      Well, at least .Net will do one good thing: it will kill Visual Basic. Thanks god I'm not a years VB programmer to be told by MS that I was using a trash tool (hard truths).

      Note: yes, I know there's VB.Net but that is another thing.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    6. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by gregorio · · Score: 1

      While this message does sound inflammatory, I would like to say that it's just not my intention to cause a flamefest. I just feel like I need to make some things clear to the Slashdot audience, as most people today are having a lot of problems (orkut, kiddie crackers, lame IRC behavior, just to name a few...) with us brazillians.

      Perhaps .NET is just not that popular in Brazil? It's extremely popular in the US.

      Actually, .NET is extremely popular on Brazil. Almost every single international book about .NET have a brazillian portuguese translation, and they're really good sellers. In fact, most people from good universities and good jobs are dealing with .NET in their work environments, sometimes in a mixed Java-.NET IT infrastructure.

      The real problem is that, mostly because we (brazillians) live in a country where the capitalist culture was responsible for the sponsoring of dictatorships and social injustice, most people tend to act in a "I hate everything that's big and sucessfull" way. What I'm saying is that some people tend to act in a envious way, wich is a good motivation for being an "alternative" person.

      When brazillians want to be zealots regarding Microsoft, Open Source and stuff, omg, they can be a real pain in the ass. And yes, I'm talking about nutjob conspiracy theories, nonsense hate-speech, extreme reality denial, (sometimes violent) harassment against non-"alternative" people (*), and all kiddie-like behavior you can imagine.

      My point is? This guy is just being a zealot. He is just denying reality, because it makes him feel better thinking that good ol' and bad Microsoft is heading to imminent failure.

      And people like him keep talking to each other about these theories and made-up versions of reality, creating this whole new version of the truth, by reapeating these lies to each other, one thousand times.

      Is is just a brazillian kind of behavior? Hell no. A lot of people here in /., mostly from other countries, act this way too, but not with the same intensity.

      (*) Our zealots here sometimes act like irrational animals, mostly because they are protected by anonymity and groupthink. It's not uncommon for a brazillian zealot to make death threats and abuse their position as (low-hierarchy) government employees with access to a lot of information about the people they hate.

    7. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by legirons · · Score: 1

      "Every minute a Java developer wastes using C# is a minute that he/she is not using Java. Every time a Linux developer tries Mono, he/she is wasting resources in a doomed technology"

      And every minute someone spends producing Java applications, they're creating something which can't usefully be shipped with a Free Software operating system.

      Unless you meant that the Linux/Java applications should run on Kaffe (in which case, what's the difference between that and Mono?) or that people should install the proprietary JVM (in which case, what's the difference between that and .NET?)

      "BTW, where's the big wave of .NET applications?"

      Users haven't installed the programs yet because they're waiting for the 23MB runtime to download (and the Internet Explorer version it depends on, and the Service pack that that depends on...) Some estimates suggest that it will be finished soon after Gentoo is compiled.

    8. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by fishbowl · · Score: 1


      "Divorcing Microsoft would be a good step, but no one listens to the guy in support..."

      And the guy in support never succeeds in getting promoted to upper management, despite being so much smarter than his idiot boss...

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    9. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by Herschel+Cohen · · Score: 1

      While I agree in principle on too many people being overly receptive only to the messages they prefer to hear, that argument may not be totally applicable here.

      I failed in my search to find a blog entry where a former Microsoft insider (and still sympathetic to MS) had a bleaker assessment than what you would call reality.
      [Search in [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/%5D for a writeup on why he did not think .Net led anywhere. Earlier than Jan. 2, 2005.]

      As another comment that stated (which I was tempted to reply to) posed the damaging effect of MS dropping all those developers. it has happened before and will again whenever MS thinks its best interests are threatened. All those that follow the present trends blindly with no independent analysis are open to suffer the consequences.

      Even with preparation (due diligence) the future is hard to predict.

    10. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by hkb · · Score: 1

      Wow, very informative reply, thank you.

      --
      /* Moderating all non-anonymous trolls up since 2004 */
    11. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by IWorkForMorons · · Score: 1

      You got that right, bud. The people in upper management are NOT technical, instead relying on their technical people to give them good advice. The technical people in management are all Microsoft fanboys, and promote Microsoft because it's all they know instead of looking around and finding the best tool for the job at the best price. Unfortunately they are also University of Waterloo CS grads and look at college grads with distain, DESPITE THE FACT that this type of programming is what we are trained for. That's why I'm stuck in support at this company, because they need technical people to debug their crap when users call up with a problem. And yes, it is possible to have intelligent knowledgable people in a support position. Some people actually strive for and do well in this role. I do well in support, but I strive for a programming. Don't think I'm going to get there at this place though...

    12. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      > That's why I'm stuck in support at this company

      I think you missed my point. You want to blame your lack of success in career development on other people, and I'm deaf to that kind of excuse.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    13. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Insightful

      .Net is not and never will be compatible. I have not even heard of any applications being portable between the 2.

      I don't mean hello world programs either. .NET is a way to migrate linux users to Windows and no one with a brain would use mono.net on any production based webserver. Its just not stable and it will always be behind Microsoft's offerings. If you want .NET then you must use Windows.

      Or face the task of a nightmarish scenario. Besides who says MS wont pull the plug on Mono? I was reading another article about fustrated developers using VB6 and being screwed since its no longer supported. MS is known to pull the plug on its own software. What makes you think Mono will be different?

    14. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by IWorkForMorons · · Score: 1

      I'm not blaming my lack of success in career development on other people. Actually, I took this job because I was told that there were opportunities to move on, and I'm perfectly willing to pay my dues in support. That's where a new programmer *should* go in any company. BUT...after being here for 5 months I see a lot of discouraging things. The number one fact being that Systems Development is filled with university CS grads and Support is filled with Conestoga College CP/A grads, which is what I am. So I probably won't be here much longer. I am taking my career development in my own hands. It just pisses me off that I was lead to believe there was room to advance here, and that I could voice my opinions. Appearantly not, on both accounts...

    15. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by dcam · · Score: 1

      BTW, where's the big wave of .NET applications?

      The lack of .Net applications is largely (IMO) Microsoft's fault. .Net was supposed to be the replacement of the Win32 API. However Microsoft has not made any reasonable attempt to ensure it gets rolled out on desktops. This could certainly be done using Windows update.

      The effect of this is that you cannot depend on any client having the .Net framework installed. This means you must either redistribute it, or direct people to download it. Neither option is particularly good.

      --
      meh
    16. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by rednaxel · · Score: 1
      My point is? This guy is just being a zealot. He is just denying reality, because it makes him feel better thinking that good ol' and bad Microsoft is heading to imminent failure.

      Zealot, me? Is that a compliment? :-) I think you missed the IF in my words. I said "Even if .NET is headed to be a total failure (...)". So, if you could read english better, you would know that I'm not "thinking MS is heading to failure". I just think that cross-platform development is important from a business POV, and Mono (.NET) is NOT a long term solution for the problem.

      And people like him keep talking to each other about these theories and made-up versions of reality, creating this whole new version of the truth, by reapeating these lies to each other, one thousand times.

      May I ask again? WHERE ARE THE TSUNAMI OF .NET APPLICATIONS? Actual software, not books, please. Damn, Microsoft itself did not ported their own applications... :-)

      PS: Go Internacional, leading the league!

      --
      If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
    17. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by gregorio · · Score: 1

      I failed in my search to find a blog entry where a former Microsoft insider (and still sympathetic to MS) had a bleaker assessment than what you would call reality.

      Well, I think that a large and closed company like MS is way too complicated to be analyzed the way these people are doing. However, I think that comments about internal inneficiences at these companies are very interesting. But it's just micro (and not macro) analysis.

      So, reality might tell us that Microsoft has a problem, today. The future is not clear.

      As another comment that stated (which I was tempted to reply to) posed the damaging effect of MS dropping all those developers. it has happened before and will again whenever MS thinks its best interests are threatened. All those that follow the present trends blindly with no independent analysis are open to suffer the consequences.

      Even with preparation (due diligence) the future is hard to predict.
      Exactly. That's why words like "doomed" and such are a clear demonstration of reality denial. If nobody can't predict the future, but some people think they can, specially when their prediction is convenient to their beliefs, they are... denying reality.

      Well, that's what I think they're doing. Not (thankfully) the absolute truth, BTW.

    18. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by gregorio · · Score: 1

      Zealot, me? Is that a compliment? :-) I think you missed the IF in my words. I said "Even if .NET is headed to be a total failure (...)". So, if you could read english better, you would know that I'm not "thinking MS is heading to failure".

      Well, you said it clearly: .NET is a doomed technology. I think the word "doomed" is very clear about what you think.

      I just think that cross-platform development is important from a business POV, and Mono (.NET) is NOT a long term solution for the problem.

      Yes, it is important. But not essential. A lot of applications and solutions can be platform-specific. Well, for most people, running the same application on Windows and Linux is more than enough, it's like "ultimate cross-platform development".

      Those who really need extreme portability are always free to use something else. It's not like missing a small portion (needing portability, at the same time, on Linux + Windows + Solaris + AIX + Who_knows_what_else) of the developer community is a good definition of "doomed technology". You don't need a one-size-fits-all product to stay alive, you just need a stable and profitable market. And the MS Windows software market is far from disappearing.

      May I ask again? WHERE ARE THE TSUNAMI OF .NET APPLICATIONS? Actual software, not books, please. Damn, Microsoft itself did not ported their own applications... :-)

      Where? At Dell's website? At the majority of Fortune 500 websites developed in the last months? Inside a lot of companies? At SAP's product portfolio? Inside our government (big .NET system for payment handling)?

      About Microsoft porting software: Well, check out MSDN for *extreme* coverage on .NET. More documentation, samples and articles than any (even 10-year-old ones) Open Source Software can have.

      PS: Go Internacional, leading the league!

      :P

    19. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by rednaxel · · Score: 1
      Well, you said it clearly: .NET is a doomed technology. I think the word "doomed" is very clear about what you think.

      My words were: "Every time a Linux developer tries Mono, he/she is wasting resources in a doomed technology". Read again: I'm not saying .NET is doomed; I'm saying Mono is doomed.

      Well, for most people, running the same application on Windows and Linux is more than enough, it's like "ultimate cross-platform development".

      Think desktop applications, not websites. Mono is not going to deliver that in the long term. Unlike Java (one language, many platforms), .NET is a platform lock-in technology (many languages, one platform). Right now Mono serves to MS's purpouses, as an excuse for DOJ (see, we're nice!) and a waste of effort from FOSS community. As soon as Mono starts costing MS real money, it will be crushed like a bug.

      Where? At Dell's website? At the majority of Fortune 500 websites developed in the last months? Inside a lot of companies? At SAP's product portfolio? Inside our government (big .NET system for payment handling)?

      Duh. Of course, I'm not talking about websites, but desktop applications. That's where cross-platform actually matters. The others that commented seemed to understand this.

      --
      If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
    20. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by rednaxel · · Score: 1
      Frankly, I don't see it that way. When introduced, .NET was a better technology than Java. Instead of being a platform designed to be targetted by a single language, .NET enabled interoperability between languages...

      ...running on a single platform. You said it all: Java means "one language, many O.S."; .NET means "many languages, one O.S.". That's a key difference when cross-platform on O.S. level is an issue. In other words: desktop applications.

      For websites it does not matter if the server is Windows or Linux, or it uses JSP, .NET or PHP. The user can use them from any browser on any operating system (mostly). Cross-platform is not an issue here: if you are trying to switch a company from Windows to Linux and all the apps you need are available for Linux - including an internal .NET website running on a lonely Windows server - you have NO problem at all.

      The problem arise when you have a essential desktop application that runs only on Windows. In this case, being cross-platform IS an issue.

      --
      If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
    21. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by gregorio · · Score: 1

      My words were: "Every time a Linux developer tries Mono, he/she is wasting resources in a doomed technology". Read again: I'm not saying .NET is doomed; I'm saying Mono is doomed.

      Ok, my mistake then.

      Think desktop applications, not websites.

      Desktop applications? The market where Java sunk like a 100 Ton rock dropped in the water?

      Mono is not going to deliver that in the long term. Unlike Java (one language, many platforms), .NET is a platform lock-in technology (many languages, one platform).

      Except that some people (actually, a lot of them) don't need to be able to run their applications on another O.S.. Actually, the extreme majority of desktop applications fit this category. Most desktop applications don't need extreme portability at all.

      Right now Mono serves to MS's purpouses, as an excuse for DOJ (see, we're nice!) and a waste of effort from FOSS community. As soon as Mono starts costing MS real money, it will be crushed like a bug.

      To me, and the real world, Mono is just Miguel's project. Nothing to do with Microsoft's purposes. Save your conspiracy theories for another time.

      Duh. Of course, I'm not talking about websites, but desktop applications. That's where cross-platform actually matters. The others that commented seemed to understand this.

      Then I don't know what you keep talking about Java, the platform with little if not almost zero penetration in the desktop software market.

    22. Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver by rednaxel · · Score: 1
      Desktop applications? The market where Java sunk like a 100 Ton rock dropped in the water?

      I'm not a Java fan, either.

      Except that some people (actually, a lot of them) don't need to be able to run their applications on another O.S.. Actually, the extreme majority of desktop applications fit this category. Most desktop applications don't need extreme portability at all.

      Are you like most people? If I was a luser I would not care about portability. A developer, however, would care about it if being portable means more potential customers - and therefore more money.

      From a ISV's point of view, if it's possible to "write once, compile everywhere" from the same source code, even with some #ifdefs, it is good enough. No bytecode needed - and as we all know, VM-dependancy is a weak point for desktop applications. Been there, done that.

      To me, and the real world, Mono is just Miguel's project. Nothing to do with Microsoft's purposes. Save your conspiracy theories for another time.

      I agree. Mono is just Miguel's project. But I think it "serves" (not as a servant, but as a useful, naive innocent) MS's purposes. That's why Microsoft has done nothing yet. Why I say that? Because I believe that if and when Mono became a threat to MS's profit, it will be killed. A very natural and logic move from MS, BTW.

      Then I don't know what you keep talking about Java, the platform with little if not almost zero penetration in the desktop software market.

      I just think Java is the "lesser evil" in the market of desktop bytecode platforms - for the portability alone. As I've said, Java means "one language, many platforms" and .NET means "many languages, one platform". Oh, and again: both suck in the desktop.

      --
      If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
  30. Locked Blocked? by toolo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I think the proper term is 'cock-blocked.'

  31. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by typical · · Score: 4, Funny
    --
    Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
  32. how about an alternate location? by ChipMonk · · Score: 1

    How difficult would it be to find a 3rd-party location for a Mono BOF? A few enterprising souls, a restaurateur who's willing to go out on a limb in exchange for some damn good geek cred (and his/her name on Slashdot, most likely) and Micro$haft can't do a damn thing to stop it.

    1. Re:how about an alternate location? by Touisteur · · Score: 0
  33. de Icaza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    de Icaza reportedly hurled his chair across the room and yelled, "I'll bury them!"

  34. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by Rectum2003 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I worked at Microsoft game division a year prior the xbox launch. MS is SO clueless, they had projects for the PS2 going on. Needless to say one day they had a huge meeting...

    Just to say I'm not surprised

  35. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft may have a disorganized strategy internally, but I think they aren't dumb enough to dig their or grave with .NET. Microsoft *is* trying to make .NET a Java killer and look open so they allow Mono to exist but they have two tricks up their sleave to make sure Mono doesn't get too far.

    1. Native calls.
    Native calling is pretty easy to do in >NET and many developers use Win32 calls to gain missing (perhaps purposely) in .NET and Windows.Forms.

    2. (Here's the real killer coming up)Avalon
    Avalon is going to be Vista's killer API and it will be exposed through .NET. Unlike Windows.Forms though Avalon will not be part of the .NET standard (it will be under the Microsft namespace) and will be very dependent on Vista technology. Developers will flock to this to make their applications "Vista-friendly" and kill cross platform interop with Windows.Forms.

  36. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when is Java slow? When was the last time you used Java and what did you use it for? I have been building enterprise software for 4 years with Java and the performance is just fine. In fact with the last three JREs, the performance has been excellent for most applications. Of course it all depends on what you are buildling. From what I can see on your website (very basic programs) you seem hardly qualified to make a generic statement like Java is slow.

  37. Re:more like by DigitalHammer · · Score: 1

    lay down with whores...

    wake up with AIDS :)

  38. Power to pick... *sigh*... "The Man" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I don't understand how people can get so enamoured of the .NET world, devote their professional careers to C# and the MS universe, and then wonder what happened when MS decides to zig when they want to zag."

    But the only people being "Zig-Zag(TM)"'ed are Miguel. That's what the whole storie's about. The people in the MS universe aren't complaing about MS (and hence no story on /.). They however are enamoured concerning .Net and I can see why when you considered what most of them have been working with the majority of their programming lives.

    "Work a little bit harder and you can be free of Microsoft and in control of your own destiny."

    They are in control of their destiny...and they picked Microsoft. As much as that gals the OSS community (you know? the ones who talk about freedom...except to pick MS)

  39. You are missing the big picture by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft's dominance in the corporate workstation market is largely due to superior development tools (compared to other rivals) for line of business tools.

    For other tools (large scale/higher performance, nice-looking apps), MFC/VC++ is still the way to go.

    Native calling is pretty easy to do in >NET and many developers use Win32 calls to gain missing (perhaps purposely) in .NET and Windows.Forms.

    Sure but how many line of business apps need this? How many benefit from this? This was not .Net's goal.

    Avalon is going to be Vista's killer API and it will be exposed through .NET. Unlike Windows.Forms though Avalon will not be part of the .NET standard (it will be under the Microsft namespace) and will be very dependent on Vista technology. Developers will flock to this to make their applications "Vista-friendly" and kill cross platform interop with Windows.Forms.

    Line of business tools again?

    The point though is that Mono makes it much easier to move from a Microsoft-centered shop to a Linux-centered shop. Even with Avalon, this is still a reality. Now with Avalon, I still think that you are going to see quick Linux compatibility develop, and so Microsoft will have a number of problems keeping developers there.

    You have another issue. How many companies are still running Windows 2000 primarily? How fast will Vista be adopted?

    I don't think that they ever intended to allow .Net to be this dangerous to them. But it is extremely dangerous.

    The original strategy was to go with .Net to kill Java and Software Assurance to lock people into subscription contracts, but people forgot about Linux....

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
    1. Re:You are missing the big picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Native calling is pretty easy to do in .NET and many developers use Win32 calls to gain missing (perhaps purposely) in .NET and Windows.Forms.

      Sure but how many line of business apps need this? How many benefit from this? This was not .Net's goal.

      There are a lot of things, things as simple as knowing when the user is idle (not interacting with the desktop) or determining the difference between a logout and a close button click, that you can't do and might want to do in a line of business app. And if you know how to do them with .NET w/o going to the windows API, please let me know. I was trying to stay pure managed...
  40. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by jonwil · · Score: 1

    There is no reason you couldnt build MONO to pass native calls through to WINE or similar.

    So when the .NET program makes a call in gdi32.dll, the WINE gdi32 can be used to implement it.

  41. C# is a Diversion Maneuver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "My company is currently converting all their software from VB6 to C#."

    Well there goes the "C# is an ECMA/ISO standard" argument. And we haven't even gotten to .Net yet.

  42. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by AgentJJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, we *could* pass Win32 calls to WINE (hoping they work), but that defeats the whole point of using .NET to be a truly cross platform development API. We might as well ditch Mono and just focus on getting the Microsoft .NET runtime to work over WINE by your philosophy.

    Native function calls and Avalon pose a major problem in having applications developed with only Windows in mind working on Linux. Of course Linux developers can still benefit from using .NET for themselves, but the dream of "write once, run everywhere" is at risk if using native calls and Avalon becomes norm rather than the exception.

  43. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Lord+of+the+Fries · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I admit to being somewhat of the loop on this. I used to Gnome, I ditched it when they dropped Sawfish in favor of Metacity.

    But I was interested when they came to this conclusion that some sort of Application Development Framework, over and above what they could iron out of C(++) was needed. What I don't get is why .NET? And no, I wouldn't have gone Java.

    Why not go with Objective-C? Want the memory manager, link with libgc. It works GREAT! And if you don't feel the need to play ever catch up with Apple, you can link the GNUstep stuff with libgc, and fork off in your own direction. It's amazing to me what the GNUstep guys are able to do with such a small amount of developers. And then you can start playing with the StepTalk stuff being done in GNUstep, which gives you a *really* fluid application toolset. You get the C, the objects, the messages, the elegance (i.e. no need for the language to bolt on another 20 features every rev because it somehow never really figured out what it wanted to be, nee Java), and the uber fluid Smalltalk stuff at the top. And you can pick and choose, so you don't have the religous flamewars.

    Am I on Slashdot??!?! Oh. Sorry. You caught me on my soapbox in front of my mirror.

    --
    One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
  44. Monster throws chair by putko · · Score: 2, Informative

    Reminds me of the typical story about a wizard who summons a monster to rule the world, and then the monster kills him.

    Or instead of killing him, the monster just throws a chair at him.

    Great analogy. But really, what more do you expect -- if you read up on innovation, you'll see that this happens all the time -- Micro$oft isn't going to cannibalize themselves voluntarily, but it will get them in the end.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  45. In the Western World by the_raptor · · Score: 1

    That strategy worked well in the Western World, but generally failed when the Roman Catholic Church went up against another major religion (like Islam). Much of the spread of western influence outside of the west happend despite the Church, with governments using the Church as a puppet to support their wars (the Spanish in South America).

    I would say Christianity spread mainly by assimilation and adaption before it became the religion of Rome.

    --

    ========
    CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
  46. .net at Euro OSCON by Noksagt · · Score: 1

    You mean like IronPython: Python on the .NET Framework? MS frequently shows up at F/OSS and Linux conferences, in addition to MacWorld & conferences arounf another vendors' products.

  47. Not sure the book applies by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    The book seems to focus on being able to disrupt entrenched competition. Even barring the profit-margin issues, Microsoft seems bound and determined to destroy the entrenched competition in the desktop OS market. However, this is largely something that I think will misfire because it is badly targetted. Additionally, Microsoft is the largest competitor to Microsoft. So you can draw your own opinions regarding where this is headed.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  48. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

    Yeah, but that would ALSO kill all the .NET development on Windows at the same time. There are tons of MS .NET developers now; MS wants them to use their tools. Non-discriminatory means they'd have to kill off their own fanboy dev armada in order to get at the Mono gnat.

  49. Re:Mono Cocked at MS Conference?? by smallpaul · · Score: 1

    How about that one?

  50. Infuriating? by aCapitalist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Miguel didn't say anything about "infuriating" in his blog. I'm sure the anonymous coward or ScuttleMonkey (whoever added that) was really infuriated (rolls eyes) over this.

    So much wasted energy on rabid hatred of Microsoft. Give it a rest

  51. This is pure FUD by Baki · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You have apparently been fallen for the FUD from MSFT. This is totally not true. I have been developing very large java appications for years, and we've moved from 1.1 through 1.4 (and for trials I've used 1.5) in large banking applications. Everything has been perfectly backwards compatible, except for a few obscure bugs. Show me any code that doesn't have bugs.

    For years we have been developing in a group of 20 developers. We didn't have anything standardized but 1.3. Everyone was developing on a different 1.3 version, and deployment was on yet another. I 2 years time this situation endured we have NEVER seen any version problems at all. We use mainly J2EE (serlvets, EJB, corba, JDBC) but no applets.

    The only problematic area has been applets/swing in version 1.1, and especially the incompatability for those when switching from, you guess, MSFTs crippled java implementation to Sun.

    It is very sad that to this day, so much time after MSFT's ploy to sabotage Java by bringing incompatible versions, people still believe this story. Please don't give MSFT so much satisfaction by repeating such nonsense, grrrrr.

    1. Re:This is pure FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Our experience differs. We've been developing Java apps since 99 here - always with Sun's JDK - and we've had a lot of issues with certain updates. 1.1 to 1.2 had some annoying Swing inconsistencies. 1.2/1.3 to 1.4 had other Swing issues, i believe with the way focus was handled. Ditto to 1.5. Not to mention getting stuff to work the same on Linux as on Windows has been difficult. Don't get me wrong, i think Java's great, but it's definitely not a drop-in upgrade from version to version.

    2. Re:This is pure FUD by Baki · · Score: 1

      as I have mentioned, awt & swing might be the only exception.

      I think it has been a mistake to build the java GUI on awt, a platform independant toolkit which only uses the lowest level platform specific stuff. Instead the currect approach of IBM with SWT is much better, basically using a platform independant GUI toolkit and providing java bindings for it (similar to, say, perl or python bindings for GTK or QT).

  52. Not coherent by BerntB · · Score: 4, Insightful
    By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly
    You are claiming that internet use and open source organization on the net wouldn't have happened without Internet Explorer?!

    That is some strange history writing...

    --
    Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
    1. Re:Not coherent by rbanffy · · Score: 1

      The ubiquity of IE was very important to the wide adoption of the web, which brought more awareness to open-source/free software. IE is crucial on any new Windows box - how else would you download Firefox?

      The web would not be what it is today if Microsoft Network arrived a couple years earlier than Netscape. They wanted an AOL killer and, had the web not happened at that time (earlier would be impossible because of the modems we had, later it would be too late to get noticed) they would have it. And they would have killed the web without even noticing it.

      Without the awareness the web generated, free software would have remained a tiny niche player.

    2. Re:Not coherent by ahodgson · · Score: 1

      IE is crucial on any new Windows box - how else would you download Firefox?

      FTP? Or, you know, Microsoft could include a wget port or rsync by default. Downloading is hardly rocket science.

    3. Re:Not coherent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or just have a new user install cygwin.. That way MS wouldn't have to do the port at all. Genius!

    4. Re:Not coherent by goon · · Score: 1

      "... You are claiming that internet use and open source organization on the net wouldn't have happened without Internet Explorer?! ..."

      No but is a pretty good trojan to expand onto the desktop wouldn't you say.

      Before Mozilla and WWW in '94 you have to remember the state of MS Windows, V3.x Most Windows based user machines would have an OS without:

      *networking (unless you had 3.1)
      *tcp/ip stack (unless you used trumpet created by a little tasmanian sw company of same name)
      *browser (unless you used mozilla, tulip etc)

      I personally see it the other way around (MS gaining more than it gave ~ zero sum gain) with MS gaining a huge technical jolt up the rear.

      I still remember with fondness bill.gates trying to run his own little internet - probably called bbb internally, big bad billy or something equally as silly :)

      --
      peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
    5. Re:Not coherent by darkonc · · Score: 1
      You are claiming that internet use and open source organization on the net wouldn't have happened without Internet Explorer?!

      It's kinda like the way that IBM opened up the possibility of workstation computing. Up to that point, Radio Shack, Apple and Commodore were the big players, but most companies -- especially larger companies didn't consider them much more than toys.

      Once IBM got into the fray, people suddenly opened their eyes up to the fact that these PC machines could do all sorts of things that had previously been relegated to huge mainframes, and workstation computing took off.

      Even though companies like SUN, HP, DEC and even, ultimately IBM itself, became small players relative to Intel/Microsoft, they still took off relative to the market that they had before IBM stepped in, and the dawn of client-server computing ultimately ate a big hole in IBM's then monopoly on business computing.

      Similarly, the 'Net was starting to become a really interesting toy by '95, when Microsoft finally stepped into the fray. Yes, they took the crown away from netscape, but by the time they were done, everybody was aware of the power of the 'net. As a side-effect they also became aware of Open Source, and a lot of (then) newbies got into the OS realm that, without net, they wouldn't have had any way to know about.
      _____

      That having been said, I don't think that the benign explanation for their Jeckle & Hyde treatment if Mono holds here... As someone else pointed out, C# is intended to be a java killer. To do that, they need it to appear cross-platform. That's where Mono comes in.

      MS wants people to think that they can port to mono so that they can in theory do .net(tm) programming for Linux servers. This really helps them to market C# to all the CxOs out there... That's why they had the race to Mono.

      On the other hand, having people actually use mono is against Microsoft's marketing interests. That's why they killed the mono BOF. They have absolutely no interest in letting mono gain a life of it's own. C# is a Windows only platform. MS's intent is to lock people into Windows with it. Letting Mono live (barely), on the other hand, is a useful marketing ploy (to the extent to which it takes market from java) allowing them to claim that C# is cross-platform capable. Once Java is dead, however, they will throw Mono into the grave after it, and do their level best to bury them both.

      I'm guessing a submarine-patent wolf-pack.

      --
      Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
    6. Re:Not coherent by BerntB · · Score: 1
      Once IBM got into the fray, people suddenly opened their eyes [...] and workstation computing took off.
      Your analogy doesn't exactly fit well.

      Remember the press around that time. There were some serious hype; remember the bubble?

      Microsoft was close to being declared dead because they didn't go for the web. They turned around because they had to, not because they wanted. (Like the OSI standards and the telephone companies in Europe, a few years before that.)

      Your thinking regarding Mono's future hits the nail on the head, imho.

      --
      Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
  53. Why not Java? Here's why. by idlake · · Score: 1, Informative
    Why you wouldn't use an existing and mature cross platform language that is non-microsoft is beyond me.

    For the obvious reasons:
    • There is effectively only a single compatible implementation of Java SE (Sun's, plus its licensed derivatives), so the way Java achieves cross platform capabilities is the same way Microsoft or Delphi does: through the implementation, not through the standard.
    • Compatible Java implementations do not run on many platforms; they don't run on my Linux distribution, for example.
    • The core Java standard is controlled by Sun and third parties are not free to implement it any way they choose.
    • The evolution of the Java standard is heading in the wrong direction; whether the process is "fair and open" or not, it isn't working as far as I'm concerned.
    • There are horrendous version dependencies in Java: while I know how to write Java software that works across most existing versions of Java, a lot of commercial software fails when used with the wrong Java runtime version.
    • Java has serious technical limitations compared to C# in the areas of generic types, value classes, and numerical programming.
    • C#'s interface with native code is much simpler, much safer, and much more efficient than Java's. One consequence of this is that I can continue to use the native libraries I need without having to rewrite them or wrap them up in JNI.

    I've been using Java for many years, and it has failed to mature as a general purpose programming language. For my work, it's either back to C++ or C#; Java is not an option anymore.
  54. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by blowdart · · Score: 2, Informative
    You're assuming that the CLR security setup is like ActiveX; it's not.

    The CLR proves zonal security, which can be set at the enterprise, machine and user levels. By default you get Full Trust, Skip Verification, Execution, Nothing, Local Intranet, Internet and Everything. Don't like those zones? You can create your own and provide the conditions for an executable or loaded assembly to be placed in them. For example I have c:\sandbox\internet in the Internet zone. Any CLR exec I drop in there runs under that zone, despite being on the local hard drive, which by default has Full Trust.

    Better still you have CAS, which allows you to specify what permissions you need. The permissions are granular and you can create your own should you need to. If the zone your code is starting in does not have the permissions you request the CLR will not run it. You can also request optional permissions, so if you optionally request to save to local hard drives, and you don't get it, you can remove that menu option/functionality.

    So there is a CLR sandbox, there has always been a CLR sandbox. It's not ActiveX.

  55. Java isn't in the running anymore by idlake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree, furthermore it will never catch up. MS will make sure of that. If by some miracle mono does close the gap they will be sued and that will stop them in their tracks.

    Of course, Mono will not catch up with Microsoft on .NET APIs, just like no open source Java implementation will ever catch up with Sun on Java APIs.

    The difference is that with Mono, it doesn't matter. Open source software development and cross platform development in Mono is not primarily done in .NET, it's done in Gtk+ and other toolkits.

    Not when you java already exists, runs on every platform mono runs on, has proven to scale to massive proportions, can run on the tiniest of devices, had great IDEs, and is already mature and baked.

    Repeating a lie often enough doesn't make it true. Java does not run on my Linux box, for example, while Mono does. Java has not "proven to scale" any more than Mono has; and while Sun was pushing Java for enterprise apps, their runtime had horrendous memory leaks. Finally, Java is not mature, it's frozen; there is a difference.

    Imagine if Miguel put all that work into a better JVM for linux.

    Then we would be stuck with yet another incomplete implementation of Java, a language and a set of APIs, many people have already decided not to use.

    After years of programming Java, I have gone back to C++; Java simply isn't working out. Unlike Java, however, C# is worth another try.

    1. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by kaffiene · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Almost every sentance in that post is utter BS.
      Java has not "proven to scale" any more than Mono has
      Like fuck! You are clueless.
    2. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, Mono will not catch up with Microsoft on .NET APIs, just like no open source Java implementation will ever catch up with Sun on Java APIs.


      Kaffe 1.1.6 will have 90%+ of 1.4 APIs implemented. Two years ago the number was around 50%.


      Never may come soon enough.


      cheers,
      dalibor topic

    3. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by idlake · · Score: 1

      Kaffe 1.1.6 will have 90%+ of 1.4 APIs implemented. Two years ago the number was around 50%. Never may come soon enough.

      How is implementing a set of core APIs that are several years out of date "catching up"? We are up to Java 1.5, with 1.6 on the drawing board, and that doesn't even include all the important JCP APIs. Besides, Kaffe is at best a mediocre implementation.

      Mono is already further along implementing the core .NET APIs than any open source Java implementation has implemented Sun's core APIs. And unlike Sun, Mono actually also implements a lot of widely used open source APIs, foremost, Gtk+ and Gnome.

      In any case, I don't care whether you use Mono. Just stop trying to tell people that Java is a high-quality, open cross-platform environment; it is none of those things. After nearly a decade of developing in Java, I rather program in C++ than Java.

    4. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Java has not "proven to scale" any more than Mono has"

      Are you retarded? This is possibly the dumbest and most uninformed comment I've ever seen here. Like the other poster has already said; you're clueless.

    5. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kaffe also implements ~85% of Java 1.5 APIs, if that's what you care about. It *is* catching up, I believe the 1.5 coverage was around 60-70% when 1.5 came out.

      Kaffe is a pretty good implementation, as far as stairghtfoward, portable VM implementations go, but it does not have the trolling zealot fanbase of some other projects. I consider that as a good thing. YMMV.

      As for Gtk & GNOME, you can run the GNOME and Gtk Java bindings just fine with Kaffe. It works. Kaffe also includes some other nice stuff from GNU Classpath, and various other Free Software proejcts combined into one bleeding edge package of stuff that's currently out there.

      Mono is pretty cool, and does a lot of things well. I don't get why Mono has to be the only free runtime to suffer from the a huge amount of fanboys throwing shite in everyone else's general direction, but hey, not my project, not my problem.

      cheers,
      dalibor topic

    6. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kaffe is a pretty good implementation, as far as stairghtfoward, portable VM implementations go

      A "good implementation" of Java needs to achieve performance close to native C code, and Kaffe was very far from that last time I checked. If a Java implementation doesn't come close to native performance, there is no reason in the world to put up with all the restrictions, inconvenience, and other unpleasantness of the Java language and library.

      As for Gtk & GNOME, you can run the GNOME and Gtk Java bindings just fine with Kaffe. It works.

      Maybe you can. But almost nobody does, meaning there are no tools, little documentation, and little support.

      I don't get why Mono has to be the only free runtime to suffer from the a huge amount of fanboys throwing shite in everyone else's general direction, but hey, not my project, not my problem.

      The Kaffe guys don't need to "throw shit" because the entire Java community is "throwing shit" at everybody else: insulting open source developers, insulting Microsoft developers, insulting C++ developers, insulting PHP and Python developers, and being generally unpleasant. Java's really unpleasant user community alone is turning people off to the platform.

    7. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is always JCVM, gcj, JikesRVM, CACAO, ... if you want better performace. If you want the better performance in Kaffe, feel free to merge the relevant bits and pieces in and send the patches. Take whatever is cool in Mono, and merge it over, I'd seriously appreciate such patches. And I know that a ton of stuff is pretty nice in Mono, as I've been following the development from a far for a while.

      As far as proprietary Java fanboys go, full ACK. There is a ton of people with inferiority complexes a mile wide in there who have condemned themselves to "Java-for-life", and react accordingly when they see their turf in danger. I'd assume that's not that much different in the C# world, and I guess C# offered some of the Java zealots the opportunity to find another pool of warm superiority pee to feel comfortable in.

      See, what really turns me off that slashtrolls are piling junk on Mono and Miguel, when he is doing some pretty good work, to make C# useable. People have been piling junk on the Monos ever since the project was started. I've been watching Mono since it was started, and it's been amazing. And he and the Monos pulled it off, anyway, and proved the peanut gallery wrong. That's frigging awesome.

      But I'd also appreciate when in their retaliation trash talk, people would get a frigging clue and don't shit on fellow free software projects. It doesn't make their points stand out above the troll level.

      cheers,
      dalibor topic

    8. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by jsight · · Score: 1

      "Repeating a lie often enough doesn't make it true. Java does not run on my Linux box, for example, while Mono does."

      I have to ask, what backwater Linux distribution doesn't support Java at this point?

      I've used tons of them, and haven't had an issue getting Sun's Java to run on them in years.

    9. Re:Java isn't in the running anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is always JCVM, gcj, JikesRVM, CACAO, ... if you want better performace. If you want the better performance in Kaffe, feel free to merge the relevant bits and pieces in and send the patches. Take whatever is cool in Mono, and merge it over, I'd seriously appreciate such patches.

      But I why would I want to? I don't want to use Java at all.

      But I'd also appreciate when in their retaliation trash talk, people would get a frigging clue and don't shit on fellow free software projects. It doesn't make their points stand out above the troll level.

      The only person talking "trash" is you, constantly using four letter words.

      In fact, all I pointed out is that I think neither Mono nor Kaffe will catch up with their de-facto standards. Nothing you have said changes that belief--Mono has a better claim to being close to completion than Kaffe. But the crucial difference is that Kaffe must catch up in order to be useful, while Mono is already being used widely with non-Microsoft APIs.

  56. I don't get Mono by 21chrisp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The whole concept of Mono is somewhat confounding to me. Why not just implement something new? Why spend so much time recoding the .NET API?? When I first heard of Mono I thought that it was cool that existing .NET apps could potentially run in Linux. Then I realized that I don't give a ____ about these apps anyway. And I gaurantee I won't bother running some GPhoto type application in Windows. Anyone who uses this is just going to be using Linux anyway. On the server end.. I have to wonder what the ROI would be for porting apps from Windows-IIS/.NET to Linux/Mono.NET. It seems like a complete waste of time. Also, most people that write cross platform apps simply don't care about .NET and won't bother learning it, even if it really is as cool as Miguel says. Most of the Mac/Linux types quit coding on Windows a long time ago. Those that still do code on Windows usually do it as their job, which is usually in a position they've had for 5+ years.

    There are so many other ways to create cross platform code in a non-MS API. QT and WxWidgets are both quite nice. I do admit that I might consider Mono over Java though. If only just to avoid the "Java trap." Of course this only matters if I want to do some GPL type coding.

    Sooner or later MS is going to put out .NETv2, complete with a whole new API and super-duper-mega-active server pages. Of course all of the IIS users (which will remain 99% of the .NET users) will pretty much have to "upgrade." Then the Mono developers get to do it all over again when they could have just started from an existing cross-platform kit or just created their own. Mono seems so much like a ship going way off course whith no one on board willing to question the path.

    I hope I'm wrong though. If what the Mono developers say is true than it will be really exciting down the line. I've become pretty skeptical over the years though.. It's already been over a year since Mono 1.0 and I can't name one commonly used cross platform Mono/.NET app. There certainly seems to be way more resources getting dumped into it than results coming out.

    *prepares for the flames*

    1. Re:I don't get Mono by uberchicken · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > *prepares for the flames*

      The apathy is much more disappointing, isn't it?

    2. Re:I don't get Mono by FishandChips · · Score: 1

      "The whole concept of Mono is somewhat confounding to me ... It's already been over a year since Mono 1.0 and I can't name one commonly used cross platform Mono/.NET app"

      I guess that's what they might be saying in the Novell boardroom whenever someone digs out the old invoices for the purchase of Ximian.

      --
      Las qué passoun
      tournoun pas maï
    3. Re:I don't get Mono by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 1

      Ask yourself this. There are in fact several open source languages being developed some based on new ideas. Why have you not been interested in any of them?

      Why? Because there is no momentum behind these languages. Creating a language and then creating a momentum behind it is VERY difficult. Look how long it took Python to gain the popularity it has today. It nearly started around the time of perl.

      Secondly, it's a nice language and people wanted to implement it. There you have it.

      sri

    4. Re:I don't get Mono by claytongulick · · Score: 1

      You hit the nail on the head there. For an application that I needed to develop a "proof of concept for" I chose Python/WxWidgets/Boa Constructor.

      Even though 99% of our applications are .Net, they are all web apps. This app was a desktop app, and I couldn't rely on the user having .Net or Java or whatever installed.

      So, Python + WxWidgets + Py2exe solved the problem.

      And Python was alot of fun to code in.

      My $.02.

      --
      Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
  57. Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    From the article

    "the majority were not interested in having .NET development tools available for alternative platforms, such as Linux."

  58. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by nissu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There is effectively only a single compatible implementation of Java SE (Sun's, plus its licensed derivatives) ... Compatible Java implementations do not run on many platforms
    Rubbish.

    Certified, compatible implementations are available for just about any relevant platform you can imagine (yes, probably not for BSD's but that's because they are not relevant).

    In comparison, .NET framework is really available only for Windows, mono doesn't cut it.

    The core Java standard is controlled by Sun and third parties are not free to implement it any way they choose.

    Do you mean that anyone should be able to extend or modify the "standard" Java APIs anyway they choose? Why? To ensure that only their virtual machine can be used to run a particular piece of software? I think that Microsoft tried to do just that in the 90's, and got sued.

    Licensees can *implement* the API's in any way they choose, as long as the API does what it's supposed to do thus ensuring compatability between different virtual machines.

    I don't know if there is something in Sun's licensing policies which prevent a fully GPL'ed SDK being done by someone, but I really couldn't care less about "open source" Java SDK or runtime environment. SDK's are essentially free anyway and they work well; whether they are open source or closed source is totally irrelevant.

  59. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by Homology · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Certified, compatible implementations are available for just about any relevant platform you can imagine (yes, probably not for BSD's but that's because they are not relevant).

    Hey, wasn't Java supposed to be cross platform or something? Those poor *BSD people don't have someone like IBM behind them to pay for the certification.

    I don't know if there is something in Sun's licensing policies which prevent a fully GPL'ed SDK being done by someone, but I really couldn't care less about "open source" Java SDK or runtime environment. SDK's are essentially free anyway and they work well; whether they are open source or closed source is totally irrelevant.

    So in which way is Sun Java policies any different in effect than Microsoft's .NET policies?

  60. private by baojia · · Score: 1

    It is a private meeting, not for public.

  61. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by SillyNickName4me · · Score: 2, Insightful

    SDK's are essentially free anyway and they work well; whether they are open source or closed source is totally irrelevant.

    That is true only when you look at the initial cost and ignore anything after it.

  62. How to do Mocrisoft more nervous! xDDD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    1. To make charitable investment (donations), to optimize, improve and bugfix
      http://go-mono.com/sources/mono-1.1/mono-1.1.9.tar .gz and their partners tools (xsp, mod, gdi+, gtk#, ikvm, eclipse JDT compiler, openoffice#, ...) until reaching the latest powerful release.
    2. To improve and clean
      http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/experimental/gc7.0alpha4.tar.gz and
      http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/gc6.6.tar.gz
      for merging the latest Mono's release.
    3. To repeat 1. until Mocrisoft is eliminated.

    The anti-marketing tip is

    "Don't furious Mono-users." and "Do furious .NET-users for no-buying the awful M$'s potatoes.".
  63. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That was a doomsday scenario.

    MS could simply require registration. That alone would probably do serious damage to such a strongly OSS project.

  64. wear a condom - stop mono by wadiwood · · Score: 0, Redundant

    When a geek can't get enough sex to get a real STD, they name their software after one?

    "I've got mono" is never going to catch on (or is it?). Will Microsoft's next product be .condom?

    http://www.mamashealth.com/stds/mono.asp

    --

    -- it must be true, it's on the internet.
    1. Re:wear a condom - stop mono by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know but I've been told

      the Eskimo pussy is mighty cold

      (throws chair across the room).

  65. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by lokedhs · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yeah, but that would ALSO kill all the .NET development on Windows at the same time. There are tons of MS .NET developers now; MS wants them to use their tools. Non-discriminatory means they'd have to kill off their own fanboy dev armada in order to get at the Mono gnat.
    Not if they include a license with every Windows license. That would be a very effective way of getting what they want.
  66. When people tell me .NET is cross-platform... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...because Mono exists, I tell them: "Yeah right, and Windows is cross-platform because WINE exists"

  67. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by DrXym · · Score: 2, Informative
    Sadly, .NET is no Windows killer. You just have to look at enough .NET apps to realise that many will only run on Windows. I'm know there are Mono / .NET apps out there that are clean but many apps that use PInvoke or COM interop to function. These are doomed to never work with Mono. You can bet that this inclues many apps ported from VB6 to .NET.

    On top of that Microsoft is pushing things called Application Blocks (ABs) which a useful bits of functionality such as logging and caching. There is already an enterprise library version of the ABs (backend stuff mostly) and MS is poised to release ABs for UI development for .NET 2.0. In theory this sounds like a great idea, but you just have to grep the source of these ABs for PInvoke and you realise they're infested with Win32 calls. So anyone who uses an AB may unwittingly be tying themselves to Win32.

    I suppose in theory, the ABs could be fixed to remove the calls - calls to high performance timers and so on - but where is the pressure going to be to do that? Microsoft most certainly won't care to do it, and I suspect there will be all kinds of rules to prevent developers doing it.

    So at the end of the day whether .NET is allegedly cross-platform, the reality is that it isn't. Not while MS continue to push and enable native calls by default.

  68. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, your argument only applies to countries with broken/messed up legislation on intangible goods. I for one come from china and I am more concerned about the use of blogsoftware and other dangerous free speech tools, as it can turn me into a dissident...

  69. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by DrXym · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The security of ActiveX is no worse than any other natively executed piece of code. The problem is not in the controls themselves but the way MS has traditionally encouraged sites to use them and "trained" users to automatically download and install them.

    A benign but exploitable control signed by MS (for example) can be forced on a user by a malicious site and then used to compromise their machine. i.e. the trust model is completely broken.

    Microsoft have been increasingly deemphasizing ActiveX because of all the problems with it. I think that IE7 is going to be extremely restrictive of what ActiveX controls can do. ActiveX controls are bad news and even MS know it.

    So what's going to replace it? I expect to see XAML and .NET being pitched as the alternative solution for sites that want interactive content. In theory a .NET application could run in a sandbox mode just like Java and still provide useful functionality but it really depends what security policy MS set and how the secure the design and implementation are before knowing that.

  70. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by m50d · · Score: 1
    Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason. Even if Sun changed its mind or was purchased by a less generous company (like MS for example), existing releases of Java and alternative implementations based on existing released specs would always remain free as in beer. The no version of the .net ecma standards ever has been comparably free.

    The standards might be freer, but the implementations are less free. Right now, there is a working, free, implementation of most of .net. Despite the best efforts of kaffe and classpath there simply isn't a truly usable free java.

    --
    I am trolling
  71. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Java is okay for many things. And probably if you do graphics animation you could do some nice things too. But still a good build native program will always start faster and run certain things more efficient, than something like java (or .NET).

    I heared that with the 1.5 or 5.0 version of Java they would at last make the VM such that it would only be loaded once, when starting one or more programs. That would be an improvement for one... But still programs have to be compiled from P-code to native at the moment they are first started.

    Computer have become much much faster now. But to be honest, I don't feel that programs have become faster. I liked Wordperfect 5.0 on my 486DX/2 66Mhz, it was really really fast. I pushed the return key on the dos-prompt, and within half a second wordperfect would be startet. Now adays my computer is 50 times faster. But everything is so much slower. It takes a long time before Word 2003 is startet.

    Things like Java's and .NET's Virtual Machines are not helping here either. Why can't they make C# like Delphi, just compile it and run it, it will be very small, and very very fast...

    Most people don't care that they can run it everywhere. If they can compile the sources without changes and it runs there where they want it too, a lot of people would already be happy.

    Ofcourse what you have now a days are good VM's, which of course are better than bad programmers. But good programmers can make a program without a VM much faster that with a VM. All be it just starting faster or using less memory....

    But today we have loadbalancing, well too slow? No problem just put another PC next to it. Which is much cheaper, than spending a few weeks extra optimizing the code. By the way you mention Enterprise Software, well the loses you have there in performance are not because of the programming language but because of network-connections. So even if your program becomes 10x faster, when sending XML over the network it will still be slow. So Java is a perfect language there.

    Ofcourse there is more, C# / Java (without GUI) is much easier to program than C++ so it is cheaper because you can do it faster, you need less skilled programmers (they think). It is less buggy because you have a garbage collector. And so on and so on....

    Now we go to Linux take KDE, every new version has more features less memory inpact and feels faster... Can't do that with VM's.....

  72. Free Linux CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would be pretty nice to setup a table outside the conference and hand out free Linux CD's and Mono brochures. ;)

    A LiveCD would be perfect.

  73. Inconceivable! by kaffiene · · Score: 1

    I have it on slashbot authority that M$ are loverly fluffy bunnies who will allow C# / .NET into FOSS code without causing any ripples whatsoever because they are lovery friendly Good Guys. Unlike BAD Evil Sun (boo hiss!!)

  74. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I used to work at Microsoft and they have so much disorganized legacy strategy floating around that effectively keeps them from doing anything threating.

    There have been a lot of reports out of Redmond to the effect that Microsoft is being strangled by internal politics and endless meetings. The most recent report, and a very significant one, is a cover story article in next week's Business Week magazine.

    In that article, Ballmer comes across as being out of touch and in denial of the problems. It is no wonder why Microsoft is unable to put forth a coherent and consistent strategy on anything.

  75. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by jsebrech · · Score: 1

    Do you honestly believe had the effort that went into mono been put into the open source java implementations they would not have been just as good as mono?

    I've had this thought the whole time mono has been in development. Why give the company most bent on your destruction leverage over you? Even if the leverage is not THAT much, it still makes zero sense.

  76. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by jsebrech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

    Harsh as this may sound, I am actually hoping this happens. It would have a number of very necessary consequences:

    - the entire OSS community would learn to never ever rely on proprietary tech again, it would lead to a code purge in the major projects, where the line between open source and proprietary has been getting increasingly blurry (like the linux driver including proprietary firmware, or X relying on proprietary drivers for credible 3D use).

    - with gnome dead everyone would standardize on KDE, which would be a dramatic advancement. Not that I have anything against gnome, KDE could die just as well, but regardless, either these guys work out a way to truly have their desktops interact, or one of them is going to have to die. The current situation leads to too many problems that the end user sees for a truly useful desktop product to ever result from it.

    - the EU would likely go after MS again. This is always a good thing. No explanation necessary ;)

  77. Microsoft: by springbox · · Score: 1

    "Of course we blocked mono! We wouldn't want everyone getting sick, right?" ..... "Oh.. The software? .. Whoopsie!"

  78. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by bersl2 · · Score: 1

    1) I wonder what His GNUness would have to say about this potential pitfall for GNOME.

    2) I know there is some limited work being done to standardize certain things between KDE and GNOME. Check some of the projects on freedesktop.org.

    That said: I like some of the GNOME projects, but I think KDE has more going for them; the monolithic nature of their DE is working to their advantage at the moment.

    3) Hey, I don't like hearing "we told you so"s, such as the XP N fiasco. If you're going to go after them, be correct and be thourough.

  79. Said it many times by jav1231 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mono is basically a dance with the Devil. Now Mono is surprised they have fleas after laying the big Dog, but I'm mixing metaphors. With M$ themselves distancing themselves from .Net proper Mono is facing less adoption.

  80. Typical ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I love how anybody can make a random ignorant jab at a Microsoft technology without regards to accuracy, and instantly be moderated up like there is no tomorrow.

    I was about to write an enlightening post telling you the truth, but it seems that a few people beat me to it.

  81. How is the parent +4 Interesting? by Gorath99 · · Score: 2, Informative

    What???

    Java does not run on my Linux box, for example, while Mono does.

    I work on Redhat, CentOS, Debian and Mandrake boxes and each and every one of those runs Java just fine.

    Java has not "proven to scale" any more than Mono has;

    Right, all the Fortune 500 companies use Mono for their enterprise apps instead of Java. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)

    and while Sun was pushing Java for enterprise apps, their runtime had horrendous memory leaks.

    Yeah, version 1.1 was buggy, but that was ages ago. Early linux versions were not so great either. Software can improve, you know.

    Finally, Java is not mature, it's frozen; there is a difference.

    Have you even looked at Java 5? The list of improvements is enormous.

    Come on. There are plenty of real reasons to praise Mono. Don't try to make up false ones.

    1. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by mikaelhg · · Score: 1

      How is the parent of the parent +4 interesting?

      The reason is simple: astroturfing.

    2. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by idlake · · Score: 1

      I work on Redhat, CentOS, Debian and Mandrake boxes and each and every one of those runs Java just fine.

      I don't know about RedHat or Mandrake, but Java does not run "fine" on Debian. You may or may not be able to install Sun Java on it right now, but you can't rely on it: any "apt-get upgrade" can end up breaking it, and it does.

      Right, all the Fortune 500 companies use Mono for their enterprise apps instead of Java. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)

      In case you hadn't noticed, Forture 500 companies use lots of garbage.

      Yeah, version 1.1 was buggy, but that was ages ago. Early linux versions were not so great either. Software can improve, you know.

      Java 1.3 still had serious bugs, but most so-called "enterprise developers" didn't even know about it.

      Have you even looked at Java 5? The list of improvements is enormous.

      The list is enormous, but insubstantial; Sun has been unwilling to make substantial changes to the runtime or the language, and as a result, serious problems remain.

      Come on. There are plenty of real reasons to praise Mono. Don't try to make up false ones.

      This isn't Java vs. Mono issue. I'm back to developing in C++ right now. I hope Mono will be a way out, but I already know that Java isn't. Java has failed to deliver on its promises.

    3. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by idlake · · Score: 1

      How is recommending that people drop Java and go back to C++ or use Mono with Gtk+ "astroturfing"?

      The "astroturfers" in Java vs. the World debates are the Java proponents, who are arguing that we all should use a proprietary platform that can only be implemented under license from Sun.

    4. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by Skjellifetti · · Score: 1

      How is recommending that people drop Java and go back to C++ or use Mono with Gtk+ "astroturfing"?

      Because essentially the only thing you have said is "I think Java sucks" without really backing up any of your claims. To those of us who write large scale Java apps for large customers, it is pretty clear that you either don't know what you are talking about or have some hidden agenda.

    5. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by killjoe · · Score: 1

      "I don't know about RedHat or Mandrake, but Java does not run "fine" on Debian. You may or may not be able to install Sun Java on it right now, but you can't rely on it: any "apt-get upgrade" can end up breaking it, and it does."

      I don't know what you are saying here. I have was able to install java on my debian box. Anybody who says it's not possible to install java on debian is lying outright.

      "In case you hadn't noticed, Forture 500 companies use lots of garbage."

      Ah this makes it all clear now. You should avoid anything used by fortune 500 companies. Say it once again so I can get another chuckle. Say "java does not scale but mono is proven to scale". Go ahead I dare ya.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    6. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by idlake · · Score: 1
      "I don't know about RedHat or Mandrake, but Java does not run "fine" on Debian. You may or may not be able to install Sun Java on it right now, but you can't rely on it: any "apt-get upgrade" can end up breaking it, and it does."

      I don't know what you are saying here.


      Obviously, you don't, which just goes to show that you simply aren't qualified to make statements about running Java on Debian.

      Ah this makes it all clear now. You should avoid anything used by fortune 500 companies. Say it once again so I can get another chuckle. Say "java does not scale but mono is proven to scale". Go ahead I dare ya.


      My point is simply this: given that fools like you were using Sun Java for "scalable enterprise apps" even back when (not so long ago) Sun Java was full of horrendous memory leaks and other bugs, it obviously doesn't matter for scalability what people do in the runtime.

      In fact, it turns out that in this day, you can write scalable apps in Java, Mono, Perl, Python, PHP, .NET, Tcl, or any of the other incompetently thrown together languages and runtimes people are so fond of. But between those incompetently thrown together languages and runtimes, you might at least choose the more convenient ones and the less proprietary ones, and that places Java at the very bottom of the pile.
    7. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To those of us who write large scale Java apps for large customers

      You can write "large scale apps" in just about any language: Cobol, assembler, Fortran. That doesn't make those languages good choices.

      it is pretty clear that you either don't know what you are talking about or have some hidden agenda.

      Well, to Java zealots like you, a lot of things are "pretty clear". That doesn't mean you're right. And since there are very few of you, it doesn't even matter what you think.

    8. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by killjoe · · Score: 1

      "Obviously, you don't, which just goes to show that you simply aren't qualified to make statements about running Java on Debian."

      No, it simply means you can't seem to be able make coherent english sentences. What are you bleathering on about exactly? I was able to install java on debian, so have thousands of other peopel. I know from personal experience that it's possible to install java on debian. So where does your claim that it's not possible to install java on debian come from?

      "My point is simply this: given that fools like you were using Sun Java for "scalable enterprise apps" even back when (not so long ago) Sun Java was full of horrendous memory leaks and other bugs, it obviously doesn't matter for scalability what people do in the runtime."

      Ah I see, you are an idiot.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    9. Re:How is the parent +4 Interesting? by jsight · · Score: 1

      "I don't know about RedHat or Mandrake, but Java does not run "fine" on Debian."

      Are you kidding? I've seen (and administered) plenty of Debian boxes running Java servers and Java GUI apps.

      No significant problems whatsoever.

      Maybe you should just try downloading from Sun instead of some random garbage apt source? :)

  82. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

    Almost all big companies are like this. They have so many divisions, and so many people doing different things, that it's impossible for everyone to know what everyone else is doing. This is why companies like Sony produce CDRs and yet the music production part tells everyone not to copy music. It's the same reason why some computer manufacturers offer the same PC for different prices for home use than for small business use. Microsoft did make PC games, i'd be more surprised if they didn't have PS2 titles in the works at the same time they were developing the XBox. They probably started that development before they heard about the XBox, and they didn't want to have a cancelled project on their shoulders.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  83. What did they expect? by ChaoticCoyote · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The entire Mono project is based on the false assumption that Microsoft will bestow its blessings on those who clone .Net (and its tools). Given Microsoft's predatory and paranoid history, I can't imagine why Miguel persists in his Quixotic quest.

    1. Re:What did they expect? by Herschel+Cohen · · Score: 1

      > "I can't imagine why Miguel persists in his Quixotic quest."

      Latin heritage?

    2. Re:What did they expect? by ChaoticCoyote · · Score: 1

      I wish I'd made that joke. ;)

  84. What did you expect? by pyite69 · · Score: 1

    Microsoft didn't play fair with an "unauthorized" technology - surprise, surprise.

    Just wait until there are actual Mono users, it will only get worse.

  85. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    with gnome dead everyone would standardize on KDE

    That would be an unbelievably stupid response.

    If someone manages to kill Gnome then that would show the importance of having alternatives instead of being locked down to one approach. We would be able to rely on KDE and XFCE while other alternatives are developed. Same if someone launches a succesful attack against KDE, we can focus on Gnome and XFCE while repairing the damage / starting new alternatives.

    Saying "oh look, a mistake can lead to a DE being wiped out, let's rely on just one" would be insane. (Yes, I know, you're thinking "well but the kde developers would be prescient superhumans who would never make a mistake letting their project be vulnerable", but honestly anyone who thnks like that deserves what they get).

  86. Have to wonder why he loves MS so much... by rdean400 · · Score: 1

    ...that this surprises him is evidence that he loves Microsoft. Love is blind, and you'd pretty much have to be blind not to see Microsoft's pattern of playing these games.

  87. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by benjcurry · · Score: 1

    In trying to compete with MS, I hope that OSS doesn't make the same mistake IBM has made continually: refusing to assume the worst scheme possible on the part of MS. Perhaps that was a bit hyperbolic (and no disrespect to the savvy minds at MS), but the point remains that IBM never looked far enough ahead to compete with Microsoft in a number of areas.

  88. Mono? Gross! by JrbM689 · · Score: 0

    I wouldn't want Mono at my conference either! http://www.monobrex.com/

  89. You are missing the big picture: Mono to Windows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The point though is that Mono makes it much easier to move from a Microsoft-centered shop to a Linux-centered shop. Even with Avalon, this is still a reality."

    You have it backwards. Mono will make it easier to move from Linux to Windows. Moving from one to the other, is the process of addition. The other way is subtraction.

  90. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by BillKaos · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Harsh as this may sound, I am actually hoping this happens. It would have a number of very necessary consequences:

    This happened with the whole BitMover/BitKeeper(TM:) debacle, and it seems that nobody had learned from it.

  91. Eclipse is an open source tool by mparaz · · Score: 1

    Eclipse, and many its plugins, are open source. Perhaps you're referring to closed-source/commercial tools based on Eclipse. (e.g. WebSphere Advanced Developer). Here's more about open source stuff on Eclipse.

    1. Re:Eclipse is an open source tool by mpcooke3 · · Score: 1

      I really meant that there was no opensource development environment for a GPL-compatible/linux-friendly opensource language. Since java isn't open enough the fact that eclipse is opensource is pretty much irrelevant to linux developers.

      At the moment anyway.

    2. Re:Eclipse is an open source tool by GiMP · · Score: 1

      Eclipse isn't just for Java.. I've been using it for Python development for some time.

  92. Slowness is not the main problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wouldn't say that slowness of Java is its main problem, although it is certainly relevant in some areas.

    The real problem with Java is religion, ie. the mantra held throughout Javaland that it is the One True Faith. Integration and inter-operability with other languages are simply irrelevant and derided by its devotees. I was on one project where the Java faithful were totally open to integration with Python, but only if the Python in question was the version rewritten in Java. WTF?

    The Java hoards simply don't understand that engineering has nothing to do with tool religion. The language will die in due coarse, it's inevitable, because its supporters live in an altered reality.

  93. .Net is an "open" framework, why is MS worried? by t35t0r · · Score: 1

    The Mono project develops software that allows .NET client applications to be run on various operating systems including Microsoft, Linux and Mac OS X. As Mono is a competitor to Microsoft's .NET implementation, de Icaza said it may make the software giant "nervous".

    Is Sun nervous because Blackdown has made their own JDK? I highly doubt it.

    MS has provided the datasheets for .Net so that it can be implemented under any OS. Mono is becoming more and more mature every day so that it can duplicate the features in MS's compilers. Visual Studio is just a set of tools to interface with the compiler. Mono doesn't steal customers away from MS, in fact it probably increases the .Net developer and user base. It leverages the .Net technology away from just Windows+x86 environments and for this MS should be happy.

    1. Re:.Net is an "open" framework, why is MS worried? by jvital · · Score: 2, Informative

      Is Sun nervous because Blackdown has made their own JDK? I highly doubt it.

      Blackdown didn't make their own JDK; they just ported Sun's code to platforms where it didn't run before - and, of course, with Sun's permission.

  94. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by SiMac · · Score: 1

    It's also worth noting that it's possible to run Java un-sandboxed with a proper certificate. This is what the Java SSH and SCP applets do. Thus, it's all a matter of policy. It just happens that Microsoft doesn't have the best track record for implementing the most secure policies...

  95. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by sylvester · · Score: 1
    From the Wholy-owned Canadian Subsidiary's Horse's Mouth:
    It concerns me that Microsoft could be in the process of baiting people into using C# by claiming it is open and cross-platform, only to follow this up with patent claims against implementations that it does not agree with. Because the EU does not recognize software patents, one presumes that the ECMA does not consider this an issue. However, since software patents are accepted in the US, and currently (I believe) under review in Canada, this issue affects C# directly. Can you assure me that no patents required to reasonably implement a C# compiler will ever be enforced against C# implementations?

    With regard to the C# standard governed by ECMA (now known as ECMA-334), Microsoft has committed in a letter sent to ECMA that it will "grant on a non-discriminatory basis, to any party requesting it, licenses on reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s) deemed necessary for implementing the ECMA standard." Microsoft has disclosed that it will not seek royalties for necessary patents to implement the ECMA C# standard (ECMA-334). Microsoft's license grant is to be applied on a world-wide basis and not just within Europe.
    -Rob
  96. Re:Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. by nastro · · Score: 1

    Thank you. That was HAWT.

  97. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by idlake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Certified, compatible implementations are available for just about any relevant platform you can imagine (yes, probably not for BSD's but that's because they are not relevant).

    Thank you very much, but I want to decide for myself which platforms are relevant.

    I don't know if there is something in Sun's licensing policies which prevent a fully GPL'ed SDK being done by someone, but I really couldn't care less about "open source" Java SDK or runtime environment.

    There are no third party Java implementations at all, whether commercial or open source or free. Java isn't a language or a platform, it's a proprietary implementation from Sun that's been ported to a few platforms by various licensees.

    SDK's are essentially free anyway and they work well; whether they are open source or closed source is totally irrelevant.

    I've been through this cycle several times before: whether platforms are proprietary or open does matter a lot. You'll eventually figure it out for yourself when you have to stop shipping a product or pay inflated licensing fees.

  98. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by sylvester · · Score: 1
  99. "...but they actively have misrepresented things." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    "...but they actively have misrepresented things.".

    Imagine if MS used that line for anything /. It would be justified 1000x more. So, what comes around goes around. 999x more to go.

  100. is Mono a diversion? by steve_l · · Score: 1

    I understand some of the goals of mono -language independent library linking is great...even linking C++ applications has always been a bit hit and miss.

    But too much of Mono's focus has been on doing a clone of the windows APIs, letting people port .NET code to Linux. Which helps legitimise .NET. They even do things like XBuild, which is a clone of the MSBuild build tool, which is itself nothing but a ripoff of Nant/Ant. Better to embrace NAnt as the mono build tool, instead of trying to mirror every single feature of the .NET system. Particularly because the Microsoft runtime exposes its windows underpinnings everywhere. The semantics of many CLR calls are exactly those of the windows things underneath, be it ::OpenFile or ::CreateProcess, which makes it hard to be truly portable...

  101. Why? Again by maxrate · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why is this on slashdot?

    1. Re:Why? Again by maxrate · · Score: 1

      totally on topic - mercedes benz is having a conference, and a bunch of execs at Land Rover want to put on a show - think about it. Dumb moderator.

  102. Mono: Non-catching. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well the OP's proclimations nonwithstanding. I don't see a mass adoption of Mono by the Gnome community. At most it's a handful of apps. None critical to Gnome.

    So it appears that the only one who hasn't learned is...Miguel. Which many of us have been pointing out for months.

    --
    The "are you a script" word for today is deluding.

  103. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    I'm know there are Mono / .NET apps out there that are clean but many apps that use PInvoke or COM interop to function.

    I think though a lot of this is legacy code that will eventually be made cleaner for the sake of making the app easier to maintain.

    Interestingly, I wonder how hard it would be to reroute COM interop calls to some sort of DCE/RCP library on Linux and then run the components via Wine. DCOM and DCE are pretty interoperable....

    Secondly, as Linux becomes more common on the desktop, there will be more pressure to put in the effort necessary to have cross platform apps. The barrier to creating such apps will be lower with .Net than with other Microsoft development environments, so the porting work won't be that much harder. I certainly think it would be easier to port apps via Mono than with something like Winelib...

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  104. MOD UP!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dear God, How could I forgot about that! MOD UP PEOPLE!!

  105. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by DrXym · · Score: 1
    I think though a lot of this is legacy code that will eventually be made cleaner for the sake of making the app easier to maintain.

    Sadly it's not legacy. Microsoft's brand new and shiny application blocks contain PInvokes. Any app written off of them will become instantly incompatible with Mono on other platforms. I haven't checked but I have my doubts that the MS licence would even permit the application block code running or being ported to non-MS platforms. I suppose it would be possible for Mono to special-case certain PInvokes if they're used in well-defined ways such as ABs but I fear that this is not likely to be fool-proof.

    I would like to think that there would be more pressure to make apps cross-platform but I don't think it is happening. I work for a major finance company which is doing lots of .NET stuff. I raised concerns about using the MS Enterprise Library because it might not work with mono and I was told it wasn't on the company's radar. Their concern is coding stuff now on time and on budget, not worrying about how much it will cost to port it to another platform later. This despite the huge amount of Java code they have which demonstrates what a good idea cross-platform code is. I think this attitude is representative. Managers with a budget and a deadline don't care beyond the end of their own noses.

    Worse is that Mono is doing itself no favours by the way it is being propogated. Mono offers an alternative development stack, but who bothers with that? It's impossible to develop to it with on Win32 without dropping to the command line. Meanwhile MS offers Developer Studio with wizards, syntax highlighting, form designers and whatever.

    MonoDevelop could alleviate some of this but AFAIK it doesn't even run on Win32 which somewhat contradicts the whole point of Mono. I've never even gotten it to run on Fedora despite trying very hard. The only other IDE that seems to fit the bill is #Develop and that doesn't work on Linux. So there is a gulf between Win32 and Linux which wouldn't even exist in Java-land. There is nothing comparable to Eclipse by a long stretch.

    If Mono or others can't even produce cross-platform IDEs, I don't hold out much hope that others will make the effort. I lay the blame squarely with Microsoft here. They could have set the default policy of .NET to ban PInvoke & COM controls but they didn't. They could have set coding & quality guidelines that banned PInvoke and COM but they didn't. Instead they decided to throw the switches and in the process ensure that .NET is heavily Win32 dependent. The water is so cloudy that it will take years if ever to settle.

    On top of that .NET is a nebulous term for the CLR, .NET Framework and anything else they feel like including under it. Microsoft are in the position to change the definition or toss in other assemblies which are by their nature Win32 dependent such as ASP.NET.

    I truly believe that this was their intention all along - to allude to being another cross-platform solution such as Java but being so infested with Win32 specific things that this is a complete lie.

  106. Portability of Java is FUD too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The picture you paint of Java being painless with the exception of MS's broken version doesn't reflect my experience at all. I find Java the only language that fails to run on 75% of my many and varied Unix-type boxes, out of well over a dozen primary languages.

    The portability of Java is a complete myth, and I've tried pretty much every version out there. My current Mozilla and Firefox don't even have Java capability now because all attempts at installation (both source and binary) have failed repeatedly. And it's all going backwards, since older versions of the browsers did run Java, albeit with continual crashing.

    Since Java's primary goal was "run everywhere", it's just a complete failure from that perspective, I'm sorry to say.

    1. Re:Portability of Java is FUD too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have Java applications installed on AIX boxes, Linux boxes, SCO boxes (ugh), and Windows boxes. Same application works everywhere.

      Portability is not a myth.

    2. Re:Portability of Java is FUD too by Baki · · Score: 1

      well that is very strange and I would like to see some code to prove that claim.

      for the past 5 years I have been working on 3 very big products written entirely in java. we have always developed on windows and deployed on various platforms (mostly solaris and linux) and I have never ever seen a single compatability problem.

      as I mentioned, the only exception might be awt/swing, i have no experience with that. we only do j2ee, using servlets, corba, ejb, db access, xml etc.

  107. Signed Java applets are run just by pressing Enter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    The Java plugin will ask the user if he will let the signed applet run with full access. No ominous warnings that the applet may wreck your computer or anything like that. And the default is "Accept". Just press Enter, and the malicious applet 0wnz your box. Works on OSX, and probably on BSD and Linux, too.

    How is this a better (i.e. more secure) policy? It even works cross-platform, which pisses me off, as a Linux user.

  108. Why Java? by Peaker · · Score: 1

    If you don't care much about speed, why use Java and not Python?

    Python has a better learning curve, better readability, much more power and yes, better portability.

    So why Java?

  109. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    Sadly it's not legacy. Microsoft's brand new and shiny application blocks contain PInvokes. Any app written off of them will become instantly incompatible with Mono on other platforms. I haven't checked but I have my doubts that the MS licence would even permit the application block code running or being ported to non-MS platforms. I suppose it would be possible for Mono to special-case certain PInvokes if they're used in well-defined ways such as ABs but I fear that this is not likely to be fool-proof.

    Two things... Anything abstracted from the developer can be reimplimented in Mono without PInvokes, simply by reproducing the interfaces. My guess is that like Windows.Forms, however, we will start with a Wine-based implimentation and then later move into native implimentations entirely contained in Mono.

    Worse is that Mono is doing itself no favours by the way it is being propogated. Mono offers an alternative development stack, but who bothers with that? It's impossible to develop to it with on Win32 without dropping to the command line. Meanwhile MS offers Developer Studio with wizards, syntax highlighting, form designers and whatever.

    Fair enough, but this is sort of a separate issue really. There are a lot of Windows developers using Mono. Maybe not as many as Microsoft's framework, but....

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  110. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Interesting but still not nearly good enough. Even requiring any registration for developers would kill gnome if it were deeply integrated. Any constraints are contra to everything gnome stands for. They could require that all people using these standars license there apps under a very broad set of licenses that possibly do not include the gpl!

    Remember how the very small change in the license to Xfree resulted in its utter expulsion from the OSS world? These things are very important in OSS. This letter you refer to is insufficient.

    If any loophole exists at all and gnome or linux threaten MS, they will exploit that loophole to kill gnome. Zero question about that.

    My litmus test for these things is Redhat. When redhat feels ok to bundle mono, I'll get on board. That they (and many others) are refusing to do so tells me that my concerns are well founded.

  111. Re:Signed Java applets are run just by pressing En by SiMac · · Score: 1

    Because it's not common for a Java applet to require authorization to run, whereas every ActiveX control must.

    You don't get used to pressing "Accept" to run the Java applet on Linux because it happens so rarely. It doesn't become a routine.

    Also, many browsers won't run unsigned Java applets outside of a sandbox at all, whereas Internet Explorer will (or at least used to) simply say "This applet is unsigned. Do you want to run it?" or something to that effect.

  112. What a shock by Sloppy · · Score: 1
    they actively have misrepresented things.
    Yeah, Miguel, and nobody ever predicted you'd feel that knife in your back.
    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  113. logic meltdown by goon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "... the entire OSS community would learn to never ever rely on proprietary tech again, ... (continues) ... with gnome dead everyone would standardize on KDE ..."

    *sigh*

    --
    peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
  114. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by kupci · · Score: 1
    I don't know if there is something in Sun's licensing policies which prevent a fully GPL'ed SDK being done by someone,

    Nope, there isn't, in fact the Harmony project is building an implementation of J2SE 5.

    And Kaffe has been around for years, an open-source vm.

  115. Re:Signed Java applets are run just by pressing En by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Because it's not common for a Java applet to require authorization to run, whereas every ActiveX control must.

    If every ActiveX control pops up a dialog asking for permission, then you have a point: That amounts to potty-training the users to "just click OK". Which is pretty much what Microsoft Windows did throughout the 90s.

    "You just did something! Are you sure?"
    [OK] [Cancel]

    "Something just happened! Are you sure?"
    [OK] [Cancel]

    Then along came the web, and the occasional nagging turned into a torrent of unhelpful popups. The rest is history.

    I'm a bit surprised that googling for "OK buttons considered harmful" did not bring up any hits.

  116. Since we all have an opinion - no submarines by Penguine42 · · Score: 1

    My perception is that Mono jumps on the fact that Java wasn't open-sourced. Yes, Miguel plays it up that programs written on Windows can be ported to Linux, but this seems like a total red-herring to me. I may be way off base w/Miguel's intentions, but Mono doesn't necessarily need to continue following the .net framework. The real win seems to be GTK#, and just C# - not laching on to everything that MS does with their framework. I may be wrong, but if Mono is a "submarine", I don't think it's going to submarine Gnome. Why is WINE still kicking? Why can Linux implement an interface that Unix used? That was kind of the whole premise behind Linux in the first place, same interface different implementation.

    1. Re:Since we all have an opinion - no submarines by Penguine42 · · Score: 1

      And another thing. If MS wanted to kill Mono, would't it just be easier to buyout Miguel de Icaza? Who has more bucks, MS or Novell? what if they just decided to payoff Novell? Is RAND the way they would do it? Do you really think MS is going to try and squeeze blood from a stone?

  117. But, Microsoft said from the beginning. . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That C# was to be an open standard for all to use. Hullo, what gives?

    Oh right. by "open" they mean "anyone is free to use it, so long as they use Microsoft"

  118. No, it's `bock-clocked' KFC is a evil corporation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    bock-bock-bock-bock-buckake!



    I clocked 4 bock(ii) in that stream. Now that's some fast buckake! I wonder how much buckake Kernel Sanders has locked-up...<br><br><a href="http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=6 579&t=1&c=1">Allegations of animal cruelty: CONFIRMED</a>, <a href="http://www.metrobeat.net/gbase/Expedite/Cont ent?oid=oid%3A3385">Allegations of animal cruelty: CONFIRMED</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pag ename=article&contentId=A13701-2003Jul5&notFound=t rue">Disgruntled spokesman (former Seinfeld actor JASON ALEXANDER) about evidence of animal cruelty: CONFIRMED</a>, <a href="http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:1mtYnFM vzgsJ:www.uncoveror.com/chicken.htm+%22KFC+has+bee n+a+part+of+our+American+traditions+for+many+years .+Many+people%22&hl=en">Accounts of genetically-manipulated chicken to minimize costs (genetically engineered to have reduced skeletal system, no beaks, no claws, etc): CONFIRMED</a>

  119. Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) by Stardate · · Score: 1

    It helps if you just don't think of .NET as a cross-platform framework, but rather a bunch of convenient wrappers around Win32 that make it a lot easier to use. The best thing about VB6 was that it made writing Windows applications (including everything from fat clients to small backend DLLs for websites) easy, not that it ran in a VM and could in theory be cross-platform (except for whenever a VB6 program uses a 3rd party control or Win32 call, which is almost all the time).

    I guess MS was pushing it like that in the beginning -- I suppose if Mono has a real effect than that was stupid for MS to do, and if Mono turns out not to matter then it was smart.

    --
    "... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
  120. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not if they include a license with every Windows license. That would be a very effective way of getting what they want.

    Then it wouldn't be non-discriminatory.

  121. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why wouldn't it? Show me some reference to some document that says that that is not a legal thing to do. The RAND promise is only a reference to price and availability, as far as I know.

  122. Re:Why not Java? Here's why. by jsight · · Score: 1

    There are no third party Java implementations at all, whether commercial or open source or free. Java isn't a language or a platform, it's a proprietary implementation from Sun that's been ported to a few platforms by various licensees.


    This isn't really true. There are compatible third-party implementations of all Java variants, except J2SE (ie, J2ME, J2EE, etc).

    And the GNU Classpath guys have an awfully good start on J2SE at this point.
  123. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by sylvester · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I wasn't particularly implying that it was adequate, but I think it is the most clear, complete and official statement on their attitude that I've seen.

    -Rob

  124. MS never guaranteed cooperation with Mono by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    The news part is "but they actively have misrepresented things." Maybe MS misrepresenting things is not news either, but at least this is a new case of it. Mono didn't get enough votes to get in the conference, because they were not allowed on the supposedly "open" ballot.

    It's also not news, because many (myself included, though not in AC form) have been asking since the initial announcement for Mono what concrete, written guarantees Miguel has that MS won't pull the rug out from under them. MS has never tolerated competition, even in markets they don't own.

    There are so many ways that MS can monkey-wrench Mono and no visible assurances, aside from Miguel's, that MS is willing to allow competition. Miguel, can we finally have some sort of clarification of MS' guarantee of cooperaton or else an admission that there isn't one?

  125. Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud by m50d · · Score: 1
    Do you honestly believe had the effort that went into mono been put into the open source java implementations they would not have been just as good as mono?

    Yes, I do. Lots of people have wanted open java for years before .net even existed, there are four or five different efforts going at it, and none of them is far enough to be truly usable. .net is released, has less people wanting to use it than java, but within a few months there's a pretty decent implementation, not perfect, but better than any open java version. It's possible that things were better organised, or more people contributed solely to spite microsoft, or something, but I think the most plausible explanation is Java is flipping hard to implement.

    --
    I am trolling
  126. "...but people forgot about Linux...."? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    I'd very interested in ANY person who has worked with linux, forgetting about it. To me, PAYING for the same thing over and over again is symptom of forgetting.

  127. The keyword is.... by heybo · · Score: 1
    PDC attendee Mike Roberts said Microsoft's customers are unlikely to switch from Visual Studio to the open source project. "There are two types of businesses -- the ones that buy into Microsoft and those that don't. The people who bought into the Microsoft world probably won't switch to Mono. The other people -- those using Java or LAMP might do, though," said Roberts.

    I think the keyword here is "Buy". Does this really state that they're not switching because they bought into MS's BS? Or does it mean that since they have sunk so much money into MS they can't afford to change.

    I love this statement too "people who bought into the Microsoft world I'm glad I must be existing in another plane of existence.

    Personally I'll have another cup of Java

  128. specious argument by idlake · · Score: 1

    Nope, there isn't, in fact the Harmony project is building an implementation of J2SE 5.

    There were plenty of GIF implementations, both open source and proprietary, before Unisys asserted their intellectual property. So, the existence and toleration by Sun of attempts to implement J2SE is not evidence at all that Java is open or can be freely implemented; quite to the contrary, it is suspicious.

  129. Re: RAND + Royalty Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, ACMA standards are RAND+Royalty Free. That means thay are, humm, free.

  130. Python by Steven+Reddie · · Score: 1

    This Miguel fellow should take a look at Python.