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Fedora Core 5 includes Mono
cyberjessy writes "Surprise! The Fedora Core 5 Release will include Mono in the distribution, in spite of Red Hat's opposition. In addition to the Mono runtime, it will also include Mono applications like Beagle and F-Spot. Is the Linux community finally ready to accept Mono? Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista, which has WinFX (the next .Net Framework) as its core API. This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
Yes, off topic, but it's nice to see a well written and concise topic summary around here once in a while.
The strategy for dealing with patents is discussed on the Wikipedia article about Mono. It is not a well thought out strategy.
It's probably good that Mono exists, it may have uses in some situations. It may help people get out of .Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
No.
So Fedora Core 5 will be shipping with a virus!
I noticed when I switched from FC3 to FC4 that dag didn't have mono anymore, and so I was forced to configure nrpms.net in my yum config.
It was really getting to be a pain to search around and FIND the "new" mono repo for Fedora.
I have 3 FC distros installed and 2 SuSE10 and I was just about ready to switch to SuSE for good on FC5 if stuff like mono and yumex didn't make it into the distro. I can only hope they include yumex this time around.
At any rate, I wrote about my new mono book in a recent blog entry with a nice pic of my mandrake stuffed penguin.
http://www.sitespaces.net/blog.php?viewblog&2322
I don't really care about windows programs running on linux, though this is of course an interesting subject.
What's more important is that the stupid infighting about what role mono could play in Gnome can now finally end.
Mono seems to offer something that many people like and can now finally simply be used to build great programs for Gnome (just like pythong, jave, etc.), without being preoccupied with Fedora and thus a large Gnome distribution not shipping mono.
First time the "Kissing Disease" has ever been accessable to geeks.
.Net apps, but I can't help but think we'd be better off with another language. .Net is so freaking encumbered.
.Net apps on Linux servers...
One the one hand, I'm all in favor of open source alternatives, and it adds a lot to linux to be able to run
Still, it'd be nice to be able to host
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. .NET? .NET in the near future.
Will all major Windows applications be rewritten to
I just can't imagine Adobe, Autodesk, Corel, etc. translating their code to
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
And this is probably what MS had in mind all along. And I don't see it changing either. Microsoft make it easy to slap together apps with their stack and tools. Mono makes it hard to do the same with theirs. That means Mono will constantly be playing catch-up with Microsoft, reaching for but never getting close to 100% compatibility.
As a Gentoo user I wouldn't expect any package to be summarily left out. What I worry about is for packages such like Mono to become deeply embedded in distributions and create lots of dependencies, like Python. Python is increasingly a boil on the butt of GNU/Linux systems. Mono could go the same way.
an ill wind that blows no good
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
How about
This may mean that in the future, some native Windows applications will run on Linux, with Mono.
Not a chance. All of the MS application base (including the new ".NET" stuff) still depends on the underlying Win32 system functions, DLLs, etc. The newer interpreted APIs are just wrappers around the older stuff.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Patents are (supposed) to protect a novel way of doing something. If you can watch that something occur and come up with the same thing, how novel was it?
I know that doesn't mean much once someone already has a patent and a lawyer, but still.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
If by "the future" you mean "never", then this is correct. Otherwise, this is balderdash.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
http://www.mono-project.com/WinForms
.NET apps will most likely need to be ported from native windows to linux and unix based mono apps. .NET application to mono.
Most
The 100% completion of the above package from Novell should go a long way towards easing that code portage by developers wishing to port their
Not to overly simplify things, but Win apps running natively in Linux under Mono isn't necessarily a bad thing. Flame wars aside, Mono has a good chance of doing a better job than Wine in helping people make the transition from Windows to Linux.
All things considered, putting it in FC is a good move. I look forward to what this holds.
The question is: Will Mono support these new features, and if so, when?
I use python for just about everything including machine automation at work. A distro without python would be absolutely worthless to me. Hell ain't the gentoo ports system built on python?(don't know for sure I don't use gentoo).
Got Code?
"The problematic parts are not the core technologies submitted to the ECMA or the Unix/Gnome-specific parts."
The problem (software patents) can affect any part. If MS have claimed they don't have patents on "core parts", you cannot trust them. If the Mono devs have claimed that MS don't have patents on "core parts", they are saying something they can't possibly know.
As well as including "according to the public statements of MS and the Mono devs", you should also read that sentence with the qualification: "for now anyway".
if you say something is not well thought out, also saying why
The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Last time I looked at it, Mono didn't support Windows Forms (and thus couldn't just run your average .NET app out of the box). Has that changed?
Can we start packing ntfs-module and megp3/4 codecs on default FC distro now or at least in EXTRA??? Surely yum repo and other package source and original source compile is easy, but for heaven's sake, when will FC ever include packages based on community demand and not RH guideline?
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono Maby, but Mono is sorta like java. the .Net Programs will be portable as long as the developers don't use Microsoft APIs like java is portable to gcj as long as you don't use the com.sun.* packages etc.
Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista
As a developer, I have great concern over how Vista will muddle the Windows landscape. Microsoft is creating a situation where developers have to build and test for way too many Windows platforms.
That is, many developers and network administrators use Windows 2000 exclusively and most other pros and home users use XP -- and my father in law still uses Windows 98. NONE of these people have any intention of upgrading to Vista. So Vista will likely only be installed on new PCs
It's getting to the point where there's just too many versions of Windows out there to support:
Win 98 SE
Win 2k Workstation and Server(s)
Win XP Home and Pro
Win Vista??
And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.
The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.
boxlight
Winforms on mono is not complete yet and it will be a long time before a compatibility WinFX layer is ready. Mono is great for what it is, not for what it could be.
Cheers,
Adolfo
..... why wasn't the Open Source clone of the "C#" programming language called "Db" ?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
- It uses a byte-compiled code system called CLR that ought to be platform-independent
- It involves a whole lot of add-on libraries for additional services akin to J2EE
- The 'official' language, C#, is remarkably similar to Java
It is, in effect, Microsoft's "alternative" to Java.The troublesome part, for those with wishful thoughts about portability, is that Microsoft can implement and encourage use of components not implemented in C#/CLR, but that instead are linking to "pure Win32" stuff. For instance, it makes sense to try to tie in as deeply and "proprietarily" as possible to their versions of Sybase SQL Server, IBM MQ-Series, web servers, the Win32 GUI, and such. That sort of thing is what will provide the desired anti-Java "vendor lock-in."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
What licence applies to the ECMA spec?
Does the ECMA spec (and attached licence) say anything at all about patents?
They already can. You just need to tweak the source code a bit but they will run. Of course you could always get something like Cygwin, but why try to teach a cat to bark? Just install Linux {maybe on a dual boot} and have done with it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Parent got it more right than you. WinFX is the next iteration of the .NET BCL which is a collection of managed APIs, including (that is, now adding) WCF (Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo) and WPF (Windows Presentation Fondation, formerly known as Avalon) and WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation). XAML is the declarative (XML-markup) which is similar to XUL. All that can be done in XAML can also be done in code; elements used in mark-up will be immediately available as first class objects in C# and friends.
Who is this "we"? Perhaps it won't have the slightest effect on 90% of us. Why does this post sound like a Microsoft marketing bulletin with a small addition to try and make it look less obvious?
Pining for the fjords
Fedora guys, please promote more the Tomcat platform although telling that you have .NET support. It's better to community.
http://www.michel.eti.br
The whole "run Win-apps under Linux" really is a little misleading. That's not really the point of Mono for most users.
The point, rather, is that it is a very, very nice development environment and a very pleasant language, well-suited for application development, as f-spot and others are a testament to. As a bonus, the apps written under mono will be easy to deploy under Windows as well, should it be needed.
And when you use Mono to write desktop apps under Linux you aren't using anything Windows-related that isn't covered by the ECMA standard. You have no larger exposure to patent issues than you have under any other environment (possibly barring plain C and POSIX libs. Possibly).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Something like this: http://www.cygwin.com/ ? :-)
And there's a ports site, too: http://cygwinports.dotsrc.org/ KDE, Gnome, Xfce4 and many apps. Very nice
If anyone thinks that Mono will allow applications that were written on windows to the windows implementation of .net will somehow run seemlessly under linux, think again. .net is largely a scripting front end for native windows C++ dlls. Yes there are some implemenations of some of the .net libraries for mono but there is no way that 90% of the code written for .net will ever work under linux. Even applicatons written specifically for mono, like paperboy or beagle are shakey at best.
.net framework is useful, but if you want to get/write/use cross platform applications, say away from propietary M$ technology.
I suppose mono is interesting if you think the
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The trouble with Java, at present, is that full implementations (complete with all the latest J2EE, Java 1.whatever-is-latest) are proprietary to Sun and other commercial vendors. You can't include a full-scale Java with a Linux distribution; the licenses won't permit it, as the implementations aren't "free" the way Linux and attendant software in a Linux distribution need to be.
The lowest common denominator takes you back to partial implementations of Java 1.2 or the like; Kaffe, Classpath, and the like, with no Swing GUI and I'm not sure if Eclipse will run well with these "partial" Java environments.
MONO avoids all that; the free implementation is reasonably full featured, seemingly moreso than the "libre software" implementations of parts of Java.
I doubt it'll actually provide all that much interoperability with Windows. But the point of it was that the Ximian folk were getting tired of fighting with writing C memory management code for dynamic applications like Evolution. If they can write "Evolution Next Generation" using MONO, and have it be smaller, more componentized, more powerful, and more robust than struggling with the C version, that could be the "killer app" that makes MONO worthwhile in its own right, ignoring Microsoft's software.
It seems to me that Beagle is one of the relevant components for MONO-based "killer apps."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
But that's not important anyway. I think Mono is just another framework that can be used to develope slick apps on Linux. Having compatibility with apps written for .NET is just a fringe benefit. As we all know, MS is apt to change apis and break mono's compatibility on a whim. Even when they do, though, Mono is still incredibly useful to the Linux community.
.NET runtime and transparently call into both Java JAR libraries and Mono libraries.
.NET binaries on linux. However running cool apps like beagle I do care very much about.
I think that Mono, Java, Python, Perl, C, and C++ will all be very useful languages and environments, all deeply integrated with GTK, Gnome, QT, KDE, etc, bringing us many useful apps. I'm not opposed to these bytecode languages and runtimes, and also interpreted scripting languages such as Python making C and C++ less and less relevant for pure application development. At some point I can see objects running in very dissimilar runtime environments instantiating and calling other objects. Right now one of the coolest features of Mono is the inclusion of IKVM, allowing Java apps to run in the
So in short, I don't care in the least about being able to run MS
I think the word you look for is "port", not "tweak".
Also you suggest to install Linux in order to run Linux applications on Windows. This is a great, but I don't see where you fit Windows in this architecture...
lucm, indeed.
People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.
This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.
To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join.
Here's a webpage about how and why to support FSFE's Fellowship campaign.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
This more general patent problem is not limited to Microsoft and not limited to Mono. Java is no more protected, and neither is any other reasonably modern implementation of anything non-trivial.
The only way to be _sure_ you aren't violating a patent is to turn off the computer and leave it altogether.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I think one of most important points is possible to code in C# for GNOME platform. C# is easy, object-oriented language (similar to Java), so it IS important to get various programmers which are familiar with Microsoft .NET Studio to even start to THINK about that. About Windows apps is also important, but I would not say that is is highly possible that all apps based on .NET will run on Mono - because, quite frankly, .NET is not as portable as Mono is.
.NET use. I simply think that Microsoft is not in position to attack open source with patents AND I have actually changed my mind about Microsoft and patents. They are clearly positioned to attack open source with different methods - marketing, PR stuff. It doesn't give away any possibility that it WILL happen, but I think in the case of Mono I trust Novell and lawyers of other companies who obivously have overlooked patents. If they use it - I think it should be safe.
I think we should move on and forget patent scare, because it is not how we are gonna win this war. Yes, someone will wonder - is there really a war? Do we need this? I want only my console, my Flubox, my Englightement minimalistic stylish desktop and that't all.
Problem is here if we won't fight, maybe tomorrow you won't have such freedom to run a simple console mp3 player on your old box and use it as jukebox.
So Mono is quite essental for getting "free desktop" to the masses.
Of course, there are problems. One of them are patents, quite clearly. I have thought about this and really, my pick is that is it is too obious that Microsoft would get penalty ticket about trying to force patents about
Another problem is that Mono is not quite here for prime time - it is slow and sluggish. However, in last quater of 2005 I have seen lot of improvements of speed and memory usage of Mono base, so it is just time that Mono will be usable.
And in the end, I would like to point out that like it or not, quite lot of "killer apps" are written in Mono - F-Spot, Beagle, etc. I use them every day and they rock, period.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
BULLSHIT
mono will run into the same problem wine and free java have. if developers develop for one implementation you will be hard pressed to make an alternate implementation that works flawlessly with the apps those developers develop.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
the best bit about Moo is the CLR, for which IronPython has been written.
.NET and Mono binaries. this is _fantastic_, because it means that you can write code in python and yet access a stack of rubbish written in some daft microsoft language.
.NET system ones instead).
.NET runtime but it's just that you're using a python syntax to do it i really meant it. so that even means that you have access to gtk-sharp.
IronPython is a complete reimplementation of python, that uses the common lala rumbleburper and therefore it understands - and directly interfaces with -
the only thing: you _do not_ have access to the python system libraries (but that's okay because you have full access to the
when i said you are programming in
so you really _can_ write platform-independent prprograms in a de ecent programming language.
.
While on the surface that might seem like a good solution, in the long run it's totally unacceptable.
First of all, the primary users of Linux (and arguably the most important, financially) have been corporations -- running webservers, scientific projects, etc. A patent problem could easily scare them away. There's already enough FUD spreading about FOSS -- do you really want to give Microsoft more ammunition? I can just see the letter's from Microsoft's legal department already. "We have received information that you may be using software that is in violation of Microsoft's software patents. If you do not cease and desist from using this software, we will be forced to seek an injunction against your business. By the way, here's a coupon for 20% off of Microsoft SQL Server!"
Also, a patent-violating project could spread 'virally' because of the nature of open source code and contaminate other projects, as well as producing derivative projects, which would then not be usable in the U.S. except for personal use.
Effectively, such a strategy would create a branch of code that would not be GPL-compatible if used in the U.S.
It's a really terrible idea. Linux as an O.S. and FOSS in general would be better off dumping support for Mono entirely, than risk a patent war with Microsoft that would essentially hand them the American commercial market for the next 20 years.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Here is an idea, instead of aping after everything Microsoft does (monkey see, monkey do...), thereby giving them water on their millwheel, why don't you write good apps that run natively on Linux instead.
Or if you really want platform independence, write it in Java. Then you will be able to run it on Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, BSD, mainframes...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
IMHO, dual boot is a pain. I prefer coLinux http://www.colinux.org/ :-)
And I think it runs on Linux, too
to run .net apps that use winapi?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's not really accurate...
.Net framework... Beg your pardon?
WinFX, the next
Linux is becoming as bloaty as Windows...
"The problem (software patents) can affect any part."
As it can affect any software, not just mono, so what's you point?
"The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies."
No, they aren't. The article simply points out why dealing with patents is always problematic. And again, it is only talking about the non-core parts.
I think this is good news. I use FC4 and include Novell's mono repos. It's the only outside repo I use, all other stuff I build/hack/package myself. This means I won't have to use any repos besides Core and Extras, which rocks. Maybe this will mean they'll also include Muine? My fave musicplayer, which happens to be a Mono app. Who cares about them windows compat features anyway? There's enough coolness in Mono on itself to warrant its inclusion into FC5. More languages, more choices. Sounds great!
You know I've been a big C# opponent for awhile (and still am) because of the fact that Microsoft owns it. Yes yes, it's an open standard but the Microsoft approach of embrace, extend and destroy still looms over the open standard on which the MONO projectis based.
.NET may not work with MON due to the differences in the language and the underlying architecture of the OS.
But not once did I consider this fact that applications built for Windows would be running on Linux thus replacing WINE. This is a fascinating idea but I have to ask, will this replace other types of development if this is the standard across two major platforms?
Also, it has been noted that due to the different implementations, applications built for
I'm still no big fan of MONO/.NET but if this DOES pan out, it should be very interesting.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
An interesting point not yet raised is that when you compile your code to such a weak instruction set as an intermediate limited opcode set like IL, you leave your code wide open to being decompiled, not just disassembled with something like the mamoth i686 or x86_64 opcode sets.
That means that compiling your code to these instruction sets inheritly makes them open source, unless you believe in the obfuscation fairy. And the obfuscation fairy doesn't fare too well in a debugger.
Is hacking disassembled code that much harder? No.
Is copying a huge chunk out of it and putting it in another program as useful when you only have the binary interface?
No way. A developer looking to do that will take the decompiled sources over disassebled opcodes any day of the week.
Interesting stuff to think about.
WinFx is not the next .net framework, it is the next generation API set.
It's an encompassing term, covering Presentation Foundation (how you display things on screen), Communications Foundation (secure program to program stuff), WinFS (the meta data "file system"), Workflow and Infocard (authenication and authorisation), all of which exposed as a managed code API.
It is also not limited to Vista, most of it will be back ported to XP and 2003. Look upon it as a Win32 replacement for .net. Now imagine implementing that from clean room code. Stop crying at the back.
So whilst the summary may be concise, it is not, I am afraid, accurate.
While that is certainly true. Sun does not have Microsoft's notorious history. Clearly, at this point, Microsoft has proven itself to be the least trustworthy of technology companies where compatibility is concerned.
Quite simply, no company has as large a history of trying to trap competitors with illusory compatibility. Publishing a full spec and then clenching down on the patents after significant adoption is one way to do this.
Patents are *never* an issue for the end user, only the distributor. If it is found that mono violates patents and MS sues and wins, only SuSE and the Fedora foundation would have to pay anything. Just like if MS violates a patent, every person using windows doesn't pay, only MS. In short, dont base your recommendation on this, worse case scenario is they just have to take it back out of the Fedora software repository.
Regards,
Steve
Can you build and run rasterbator
z ip
http://arje.net/rasterbator
with MONO? Here's what I tried (Debian unstable):
$ wget http://arje.net/files/Rasterbator_Standalone_1.2.
$ cd "Rasterbator Standalone/source"
$ gmcs -unsafe *.cs
MainForm.cs(35,26): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warnings
$ gmcs --version
Mono C# compiler version 1.1.12.1
Any idea what's wrong?
D is actually another whole language, unrelated to C# (but related to C).
What you said is true, but it also really sucks. Ximian and company could have made a JVM and classes, copying Sun instead of copying Microsoft. Lets be honest, the reason why they didn't is because Linux programmers are, by the large, antagonistic to Java. C#.NET is basically the same things as Java, only worse.
... etc.
And that's the sad part. We get a crappy NamingConvention that does tell the reader anything, unlike Java's where the namingConvention actually tells the reader something useful (class vs method/variable). We get crappy delegates (method pointers) instead of inner classes, so your winforms for instance have many times more methods and it's just a mess. We get a bytecode format and native code interface basically make advanced optimizations like hotspot impossible, so making it fast is going to take a lot more work. You get C++-type generics that bloat the vm with types leading to slower operation (instanceof can take for freakin ever).
So mark this troll. Fine. And there are some good things about C# (like value types and properties), but mostly it is just a crappy copy of Java in a lot more ways. And it really sucks that the unix crowd are going to adopt it basically because of their bias and prejudice. It's ironic, but if Sun hadn't ported the jvm to linux we'd all be using an oss version of it now. And be better off for it.
Fedora will have a booth at SCALE 4x.
This story's initial headline and second sentence would have made an informative and possibly controversial news item -- FC5 including Mono over Red Hat's objections.
.Net Framework) as its core API. This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?
.NET realm?
.NET. But make no mistake about it, they'll time a convenient -- but "mandatory" -- API change at a very opportune time to maximize Linux's second-class status as a .NET platform. What a perfect way to throw some mud on your competitor while appearing lily-white and innocent!
But the article wanders into 100% opinion mode, walks through the looking glass, and winds up smack dab in la-la-land. Case in point:
Is the Linux community finally ready to accept Mono? Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista, which has WinFX (the next
Good grief son, buy yourself a clue! Learn some computing history. Read up on OS/2's support for Windows apps in a much simpler API era. At that time, IBM had access to Windows' source code and could "easily" write support to run Windows programs on OS/2. Yet IBM finally gave up because Microsoft could break OS/2's Windows support easily and Microsoft did so many times. IBM finally came to the conlusion that customers bitching about broken Windows support was not worth the headache. Lesson learned: If you control the API, you control everything.
Do we really think that Microsoft will stand by and let Linux become a viable competitor in the
Microsoft is bound to stand by as some GNU/Linux use evolves in
Of course, just like this article, this reply is 100% opinion. YMMV, depending on what side of the looking glass you're on.
Oh, and to answer the question: No, the GNU/Linux world is not ready for Mono/.NET -- not if we're smart.
Isn't part of the point of people using open source to get away from "lock in" by manufacturers? Wouldn't the effort be better expended on a truly open alternative, like something based around Python or Ruby?
The "article" fails to mention the single biggest reason why Mono was included. Fedora is a Gnome centric distro, and more and more Gnome applications are being written in Mono.
Miguel de Icaza has already been taken up on this. He basically said that the MS Sword of Damocles, didn't exist.
Whether it does or not, Gnome is getting Mono, and hence Fedora is too.
May the Maths Be with you!
So when do we get stereo?
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
how is this offtopic? the fedora community has decided to go against redhats wishes so isn't it ontopic to ask if redhat have the power to stop them doing so?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?" You mean, like making Linux vulnerable to all the Windows viruses, worms, and whatnot?
Since when is borrowing potentially patented technology from Microsoft can be considered free-ish? Not to mention that the whole .NET is a copy of Java (it really is). And how can Mono be uniform if it must keep pace with Microsoft's spec changes?
Honestly, how can someone be that silly to even put the terms .NET and free in the same sentence? I suppose Microsoft might have a special fund for this kind of misinformation.
I'm not sure how could it be easier to write "platform independent" applications in .NET than in "partially" implemented open-source Java implementations. Just look at the comparison between GNU Classpath and the JDK 1.4 API (http://www.kaffe.org/~stuart/japi/htmlout/h-jdk14 -classpath.html) and see it for yourself.
If Microsoft gave a rats ass about Mono or any of the work done related to Mono, they would have squashed it a long time ago. From all reports, Bill is flattered by Mono...and although Ballmer gets irritated when people ask him questions about it, I suspect he doesn't really care either.
.NET 1.1 is doing now.
t /0,7211,38241,00.html
c 83b-d873-40ce-9405-7f792927eeca/Why%20WPF%20Will%2 0Dominate%20Rich%20Client%20Development.pdf
Folks. Microsoft spends $6 billion dollars on R&D every year. They are building C# 3.0 and designing C# 4.0. The direction of C# is going towards a more functional programming capability. They are on the verge of delivering XAML, WPF, and WCF which will alter the way applications are designed and developed on Windows Vista. The new technologies will have no relation to what mono is doing now or even what
They don't care because they're taking the whole development game up a notch. If you're developing applications in anything these days you should be paying attention not to what we develop in today, but what we will develop in 5 years from now. It will not resemble anything available today.
There's an article by Carl Zetie at Forrester on these new technologies and how they will impact future development. I highly recommend reading it:
The original is here: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerp
The free link is here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/c/5/7c51
Mono is not threatening Microsoft in any way shape or form. Get over it.
David C.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
but unlike Java .Net lets you program in many languages .net runtimes let you code in any language that is sufficiantly similar to java/.net in object model (garbage colected heap only objects) and that someone can be bothered writing a compiler for. I belive there are bytecode converters arround in both directions. Often existing languages are screwed about with to make a language that looks similar to the existing language but works enough like java/.net to fit with the vm (vb.net is the classic example of this).
both java and
managed C++ seems to be a tool primerally aimed at making linking with native C++ code easier though i admit i haven't looked into the details.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Eclipse is a package in FC4, compiled with gcj. It's fairly stable, and the user-interface is the same as in a version of Eclipse running with Sun Java on another platform.
The inclusion of Mono in Fedora is the first step towards healing a rather serious potential rift in the GNOME world. Up until now, you could not develop a Mono-app with GTK# and expect it to work on all major updated distributions without added software.
Don't worry about Windows compatibility, Mono is cool enough on it's own, especially because Novell/Ximian has done such a good job with the Mono-wrappers for GNOME-technologies. Hopefully this will see more GNOME-development.
"Mono is not quite here for prime time - it is slow and sluggish"
.net themselves...
that never hampered java and
I don't feel like it...
Do you object to using shell scripts? Do you always write small C programs to avoid depending on an sh compatible shell? When shell scripts get to a certain level of complexity (I know I've gotten there when I have to turn to my coworkers and ask, "Did I get the quoting right in this script?"), you will save lots of development and maintenance time by using a scripting language with more large program features. I see Python, Perl, and Ruby as the major competitors for that slot. I could go into why I prefer Python to Perl or Ruby, but that would be an unneccesary flame war. I would absolutely respect any distro based on either. But it is nice when you can standardize on one language for complex system level scripts.
Dont count on microsoft apps running on mono. They will hide something that will be required to run that only microsoft has. And if you try to reverse engineer it, you will be sued.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry =mono_project_meme
Java has had the same trouble as C++; you can use it for things, as long as you chose a particular subset of the language/environment to use. With C++, if you go past [some subset], madness and insanity result; with Java, it's not madness, but rather that you're tied to someone's proprietary Java implementation.
If you had watched more carefully, you'd see that I never said anything about "free .NET"...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I don't know...WINE has seemed to accomplish quite a bit lately.
Prove it.
If part of the settlement requires the Fedora Foundation to remove the technology in the next FC release, the user looses functionnality. Apps that existed and worked for him are suddenly not available anymore, at least in an easy packaged form.
Because of patent litigation, users of the Blackberry in the US could potentially loose their service. Users do suffer from patent issues.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
And dynamically typed languages tend to run poorly under Microsoft's CLR, while they work very well indeed with the JVM, despite the fact that it was primarily written for a statically typed language.
NB: while MS are aware of the CLR's issues with dynamic languages, and will in all likelihood resolve them in the not too distant future, I doubt that supporting C and C++ has any importance whatsoever for Sun or anyone else involved with the JVM's specifications. The CLR after all was primarily designed as a multi-language system, and turned out to be nothing like as multi-language as MS had intended; the JVM on the other hand was meant for Java, and ended up being suitable for lots of other languages largely by accident.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I think Mono is OK in GNOME as long as it's used to run applications at the top of the dependency stack. GNOME can live without Beagle if it must, but any pivotal library or service, such as GnomeVFS, should still be implemented in C, if only for fear of sudden patent complications.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Erm... you dumbass .NET is not an M$ API. Ever heard of ECMA?
.NET and the CLR standardised by ECMA (which is a standardization body, btw.)
a ndards/Ecma-335.htm
M$ got
Take a look at:
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/st
Ankur
Very telling entry from Miguel's own blog.
What's on display here isn't even remotely close to a cooperative spirit to further a community standard. It is more of a Cold War.
ECMA? Who cares... ECMA trying to set the direction of C# and CLR is like steering a truck with a flea.
If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source and is designed to be almost programming language independent.
.Net run again? And how many are not bastard neutered languages like managed C++?
It's awfully funny how C# developers all the sudden get all teary-eyed over the ability to use any other language than C# when the topic of faster JVM's comes up...
But then someone has to go and mention that the JVM runs about 200 languages. How many does
So I guess you need to re-phrase your statement to say "if you want to have access to many langauges, and have the fastest VM you should really just drop Mono/.Net like a hot potato and stick with Java - until you decide to try a real language on for size and move to Ruby."
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry I'm going to have to call you on this. After years of developing commercially with .NET I've never once had to make a native call. I'd be interested to know what activities you think routinely require this.
If .NET would have failed, I would agree with this sentiment, but by all accounts, .NET is wildly successful in Fortune 1000 businesses and VB6 developers are beginning to adopt VB.NET and C# in greater numbers. The surveys of top CIO's shows that .NET has enormous respect and that Microsoft has garnered the trust needed to move development along their chosen lines.
.NET. If that doesn't kill them, nothing will.
.NET foundation in place and Vista coming at a time when many shops are ready to upgrade their hardware, the next MS development platform is not only very likely to succeed, but also likely to become a standard.
Even Microsoft's horrible security track record hasn't kept businesses from adopting
With the
Finally....if you don't think MS is aware of the factors involving the downfall of past corporations you're a fool. They have made enormous changes in the way they do business based on market factors. They have never rested on assumptions for long periods of time and they have never pushed their assumptions onto businesses without having a reasonable plan B.
I suggest you start learning C# because the vast majority of programming positions will be using that language in 5 years.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
It is true, without doubt, but it really isn't the whole story. As it happens, either word can be used as a transitive verb, or a noun.
The differences are in the meaning of the words. Have a look at these definitions: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=effect and http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=affect.
I know it's pedantic, but I just couldn't help myself.
Michael Nelson
Thanks for the extra info, the brief time I spent with a WinFX beta last summer didn't make it all that clear. I still feel I was somewhat right, but "Troll"? Ouch... I'll just skip contributing altogether next time.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Does your fav. distro include Samba, Wine, etc? uh-oh, they may well infringe on MS patents.. better roll your own distro now.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Fortunately Java could not break any .NET patents for what it is now because it was the firstcomer ("prior art"). Only in future developments there might be some problems. But Mono isn't on safe ground for sure.
.NET but rather about a free-ish one. In any case, I hope that it has been made clear for outsiders why .NET isn't free.
I did not encounter situations during development in Java when I had to use a com.sun.* class and wasn't something alternative already available. But do you happen to have some examples on this?
My main problem with the Java API is rather of a different nature. There are several cases of missing native operating system bindings that should be hidden behind a standard API. And that's the point where native code (maintained for every target OS) needs to be developed. That's a real problem. But this is due to its platform independence and might get solved in time one step at a time.
You are right that you did not directly talk about free
That's proof by *false* analogy buddy. Your wiki link is only helpful if you demonstrate that the analogy is false. Also, an argument by way of analogy is a fine way to make a normative argument, even if it's not a good way to construct a formal proof. This is because norms are in fact quite imprecise and depend greatly on context; a good analogy between things that are alike in meaningful ways can provide a great deal of insight into how to approach an issue.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Wrong. If you watch the video of Anders Hejlsberg demonstrating LINQ, you'll notice that it's a language feature, not a MSSQL-only layer, and he actually demonstrates using LINQ not only with MSSQL but XML documents and arrays (IIRC) too.
:)
Miguel De Icaza's comment on the video was "Anders Hejlsberg is a man of excellent taste"
The video is a bit on the long side, but it's well worth it if you're interested in the topic
I agree that it is well worth learning C#; however, if you have already developed in java for several years you already know 95% C#. The IDE and .Net framework are where the differences are. I disagree that fortune 1000 companies are jumping wildly for c#.net. The largest of those companies have requirements and legacy investments requiring something that j2ee can handle that vb.net wasn't designed to accomplish.
Governments in countries with a high level of poverty are not going to do anything that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor -- they will be deposed quicker than you can spell AK-47.
Clearly you don't live in the third world. Things are a lot more complex than that.
In general governments are very big beasts. One sector can be pro Linux and another is just buying MS because is what they use. And we are having lots of pressure from USA and other countries to introduce patents on everything, from software to GM seeds.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
This is why I hate Gnome and KDE. Both of them are just windows cloners, and they are dragging Linux down with them. More and more, you can't install linux without either a pile of kde or gnome libs along with it, or you end up neutering the system. I don't get it, I've read things Miguel de Icaza has said, and the man is unbelieveably in love with Microsoft, to the point that he thinks gnome and Linux need to be more like microsoft products. So, why doesn't he just run Microsoft's stuff, and stop tainting an otherwise fine OS with crap like Mono?
My god, gnome and kde have managed, over the years, to eliminate anything goo about the average linux distro, simplicity, elegance, ability to run on super old hardware, and replaced them with bloat, complexity, and insecurity, all in the name of "user friendliness." And the distro's have gone along with it, tying themselves more closely to whichever camp they deicided to align themselves to in the old gnome/kde flame wars. I got news for ya, the only people who came out clean on the other side of that shit storm were debian, slack, and the bsd's.
Sorry, if I wanted user friendly, I would run Windows. But I never expected the Linux crowd to turn their backs on their strengths in this mad quest to be more like what all you zealots claim to hate. Desktop Linux may very well end up being a Windows killer some day, and it will be just as bad in the end, if not worse.
Glad I ran off to BSD land, where I have karma to burn slamming why I went from loving, to hating linux almost overnight. Go ahead, mod me down, I said something critical.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Actually WinFX is not "the next iteration of the .NET BCL" either. WinFX is a set of Windows specific APIs built on top of .NET 2.0 runtime and framework. In other words, there will be no new runtime or framework for Vista. WinFX itself is really three sets of APIs rolled under one umbrella:
It's also important to note that WinFX is not tied to Vista either. There are different set of APIs within the WinFX umbrella that are going to be available on 2003 and XPSP2 as well. Most likely (perhaps obviously) however, the v1 release of WinFX for all platforms will coincide with Vista's release.
Mono is here to stay and it is quickly becoming an integral part of Gnome. Technically, I think Mono with the open source Gnome APIs (but not Mono with the .NET APIs, which is an entirely different thing) is also by far the best desktop platform right now. Neither Cocoa, nor Java, nor Qt come even close in my opinion.
.NET (and even those don't look like they are a problem); Microsoft just has no patents on Mono with the Gnome APIs.
The worry that people have about patents is understandable on the surface, but ultimately not warranted: Microsoft only has patents on
erm ... c++/c dont run under mono too, now do they ? :p
c/c++ are still used to be compiled into machine code while the new platforms all move towards the platform independant btecode and just in time compilation where ever it is executed.
c/c++ can be integrated into java, go grab a jni book.
if c#/mono would execute c/c++ inside it's virtual machine, it'd be just as slow as in jvm. and if it just inlines it, it's the same as jni, just more comfortable syntax.
c# is nowhere near the point where i'd accept it as a replacement for java. everything else aside, the c# api is still controlled by microsoft and therefor right at the fingertips of the great evil himself. if microsoft decides that c# v 2.1 must contain direct approach to directx or any other windows only lib, which doesn't exist anywhere outside, the c# effort from mono will be worthless within a day.
look at what windows vista did with it's direct3d alternative opengl. opengl is F-d in windows vista and doom3/quake4 only run normally in your wet dreams. microsoft wont ever give a real chance to alternatives. it just crushes them when the time is right.
ps. as long as windows programmers hardcode c:\program files\yada\yada paths into their applications, it's as portable as anything else that was invented on windows.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
...and Mono contributes heavily to that. It has _nothing_ to do with having 10 editors and 4 browsers yadda-yadda and everything to do with a handful of components that do not necessarily benefit from being shackled to the Mono CLI.
Now we just need someone to take the Eclipse JDT and convert it to an equivalent toolset for C#.
Mono is a trojan horse. Letting it into Linux distros is BAD. We're inviting patent issues into Linux which is stupid.
Well, time to switch to Debian - I *will not* run that crap.
Granted, but since Sun is now in bed with Microsoft, all bets are off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...I went ahead and drilled down 5 or 6 levels here just to make sure.
Yep.
This guy is a fucking idiot.
First he says it's so terrible that so many things depend on Python (gee...turns out people *wrote* some shit in Python) and neglects the fact that *Portage* was written in Python. When everyone jumps him about this he replies with completely unfounded hatred of Python for no adequately explained reason, and therefore concludes that nothing should be written in Python and certainly not Portage, because Python "sucks."
His suggestion appears to be that everyone should always write everything in C. I can only assume this is due to his never having written an application in C.
Nothing to see here....move along.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
That depends on how different the new .NET framework will be for Windows Vista. Most developers I'm sure will target Vista, depending heavily on all the APIs it will offer. Mono will have to have the same functionality. I'm hoping Mono will be able to do this as flawlessly as possible. The large variety of "managed" applications that could run on both Linux and Windows would be amazing. You can even do impressive "managed" games!
.NET for Common Language Infratructure applications.
Personally, I'd rather target the Mono framework rather than
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
It's true that more languages compile to the JVM than the CLR. However, by all accounts I've heard so far it's also true that the CLR is superior to the JVM, from design through implementation.
.Net as kind of the middle of the pack - there are lot of Java VM's around now, some of them very highly optimized. The implmentation of a VM may not be better depending on need, and Java has a lot of debugging and monitoring hooks built in.
From teh design standpoint that was more true before Java 5, less true now... the CLR does offer some feature which help implmentation of other langauges.
However as far as implementation the only studies I've seen show
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dejanews is not a representative sample of the programming population anymore, so those statistics are meaningless.
Does the ECMA spec (and attached licence) say anything at all about patents?
Why, yes! It appears that any Microsoft patents covering ECMA parts of .NET are permissively licensed. This permissive license does not necessarily extend to System.Windows.Forms ("winforms"), but if the Mono developers discover essential patents that encumber winforms, they'll simply suggest that developers of free software switch to Gtk#.
Thank you, professor. I will consider myself reassured. OLE...ActiveX...DLL...boy, I forgot all about those words during these years of exclusive Linux use. That's right, there's darn near no such thing as a stand-alone MS executable...even the dangerous stuff.
Redhat has had an open source java stack(gcj/gij) since Fedora Core 2.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
And it's awfully funny how the "JVM supports 200 languages" argument continues to be raised in these discussions even though it has been shot down every time.
.Net common language runtime was designed to allow compiler developers to target it directly. This may seem like a minor point. If the end result is the same then the developer probably doesn't care how it's accomplished. But in an argument about the relative merits of different VMs then this is definitely a plus for .Net.
First of all, that list contains everything from precompilers to Java language extensions. They are not all complete languages on their own. More importantly, though, many of these languages are able to target the JVM only by first translating the code into Java source and then compiling that down to Java byte code. The compiler is not written to target the JVM directly. I take it that this the easiest route for developers that are targeting a platform that was not designed for alternate languages.
Fine, cut the list in hlaf then and it's still a order of magnitue larger.
If that's what you call "shooting down" you shoudl stop using blanks.
OTOH, the
It's a large point but in the end of little significance, as you say what matters is results. In the end almost no-one uses the multi-language feature of Net - it's a bullet point on a slide somewhere. Same for Java really.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You do realize that Linux libraries have version numbers in the names, so that we can have like five different versions of a library to keep five different programs happy and suffer no conflict?
it's on my complaint list right next to the linux directory deployment structure.
I'm afraid you won't see that go away any time soon. We count it as one of our strongest features. Where are the library files? In the /lib directory, right where I'd expect them to be. Also, it helps with security. Which system program did the executable that I downloaded attack? None of them, because nothing in my home directory has write permissions in /sbin. Computers should be organized.
Ok, this is no way meant to be a provocative question, i'd really like to hear your opinions. As an enterprise developer, i'd love to have a .net implementation that's cross platform. Without going into another debate, i just want to say that .net is way more productive in many ways, compared to java. But i HAVE TO use java, since it's cross platform. Not only the language, but for everything that j2ee specs point out, i can find a cross platform implementation. so, for an n tier enterpise app, the underlying os is no problem, and this is a real requirement for me. If i was not forced to present a solution that can work on any major os, with all necessary features like n tier design and such, i'd go with .net.
no matter how i like the idea, i just can't see the support and large user base for mono appearing in a near future. what can i use for an application server ? what kind of development tools will i have? anything that can match eclipse or one of the commercial development tools.?
without these, i can't go with mono. sorry but these are my requirements. if i was writing software for my own pleasure, i'd take the burdens if i wanted to, but i'm writing for other people,and i can't provide what they want with mono.
You should read that information before making any comments about patent issues.
Loaded with syntactic sugar, it has a much wider scope than shell and it is massive overkill.
Here's the complete grammar of Python 2.4, as good a measure of the amount of syntactic sugar as anything. I doubt the grammar of Bourne shell is any smaller. (I seem to recall that there are so many irregularities in shell syntax that it's not even possible to describe it in EBNF, but I might be wrong.)
Python is also conceptually unstable. Constant incompatable upgrades are made.
Such as?
You don't get out much, do you?