De Icaza Pleads For Mono/.Net Cooperation

suka writes "In a recent interview with the online edition of an Austrian newspaper, Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza pleads for cooperation between Mono and Microsoft's .Net: 'I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration'. The whole interview has some other interesting bits, like de Icaza's thoughts on open sourced Java and information about upcoming versions of Mono."

Comments

Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

My cousin tried Mono in college. Some bed rest and lots of fluid and she eventually got better.

Re:Mono

[rubycodez]

were you kissing cousins?

Yeah right

[rrohbeck]

>Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration

Why would it be in Microsoft's best interest to support migration to Mono?
Doesn't EEE make more sense for them?

Re:Yeah right

[daeg]

Because it saves them market share, which is still valuable. If you're going to lose someone to Linux, you can at least keep them partially on your platform. This makes it easy, or sometimes desirable, to switch back to Windows (for integration into other Windows software, etc).

Furthermore, if you keep them on .NET, you may also keep them on SQL Server and Exchange, which are very very pricey and I'm sure turns a nice profit.

Visual Studio is also very nice to work in, and Visual Studio isn't cheap, either. As you use Mono you can reuse those same components on Windows, too (ideally).

Re:Yeah right

[Kristoph]

Yes, and, as an added advantage, it forces the technology leader of a competing desktop offering (Gnome) to continually 'plead' for your help and support. Microsoft is bound to like that leverage.

]{

Re:Yeah right

[coaxial]

Nah. Youre asking MS to give up a club. If the customer is heavily invested in .NET, then they're more likely to stay with MS when MS is the only game in town. If the customer wants to move away from .NET, and Mono doesn't work, MS gets to say "Fine. But realize that by moving away from .NET, you're going to also lose all this, and you don't want that ,do you?"

Benefit.

[Seumas]

I suspect that it's simply a matter of Microsoft seeing no true benefit in cooperating and operating hand-in-hand. If there was potential benefit, they'd do it. Simple as that. I think he'll have to try much harder to plead his case to get a corporation to want to unfold its arms for anything it doesn't see as directly improving its own bottom line.

Re:Benefit.

[Vicegrip]

Perhaps, but it's narrow minded if thats the case. If Microsoft supported Mono they could point to it for those wanting an open-sourced .NET platform without having to change any of their current proprietary works.

A simple "we will not sue" would be a nice place to start for instance. I can't see how that would be a big risk. Therefore, I can only suspect that the reason it hasn't been done yet is that certain senior management is too pig headed to admit a different strategy is needed. Java is GPLed now. Microsoft is going to need an answer sooner or later. Maybe for once they won't wait until the opposition has a huge head-start. *cough* *cough* *cough*

It's called keeping your options open. A little bit of support now could pay off big time in the future when Microsoft gets fingered for not having an open source .NET solution.

Re:Benefit.

[Kalriath]

They already have given a "we CAN not sue" to them - the .NET CLR is licensed under the MS-Pl license, which is similar to a BSD license (even with the evil attribution clause). It also includes patent and copyright protection in the form of a clause stating that all contributors (MS in this case) issue a worldwide, perpetual, royalty free license to any and all patents and copyrights pertaining to the code. They also include a clause (I've heard it's similar to a GPLv3 clause, but I don't know for sure) that states that your license to any and all patents included in the code is revoked should you litigate against someone with regards to those patents.

That said, the core of .NET *IS* open source. The closed source stuff is the stuff in the MS namespaces.

Re:Benefit.

[Vicegrip]

Of course, the "closed stuff" is exactly what everyone raises as an objection to Mono. Microsoft doesn't need to give their libraries away but they do need to say "we will not sue anyone that uses a Mono implementation of winforms, asp.net, etc.. etc.. etc.." The fact the CLR is open is peanuts. The issue with .NET as with Java is the libraries. Libraries make or break a platform and they are what people point to with respect to patent violation suits that Microsoft could someday raise against Mono.

so, at last...

[WeAreAllDoomed]

the sleeper activates...

Good Luck

[MightyMartian]

Good luck on that. Microsoft most certainly doesn't want its application platform running well on other operating systems. The whole point of .Net was get something there while it fucked over Sun. I'm afraid that Mono, like Samba and OpenOffice, is stuck reverse engineering Microsoft, and that will always be a game of catchup.

Re:Good Luck

[stinkbomb]

[[citation needed]]

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think the point he is trying to make is that Novell should have pushed for the cooperation to be part of the deal, as in: one of Novell's demands. Of course Microsoft probably doesn't want to do this voluntarily, which is why it would have a place in the deal.

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

I hate to say it but I always felt Mono was a mistake. The problem with .NET is that it really is a Windows only system. When you try to point that out people say not it isn't you can use Mono. A convent lie that lets .NET compete with Java right up to the point where you have tens of thousands of lines of code and you want to migrate to a different platform. Then the Microsoft sales rep can say, "You know Mono really has fallen behind .NET. You can port your applications if you want but it would just be cheaper to stick with Windows. Once you add in the cost of porting all that code your Total Cost of Ownership will be much less with Windows. Oh and would you like some more copies of Office and another Exchange server to got with that?"

Mono is multi-platform .NET is not.

Re:Good Luck

[gambit3]

Interoperability.

When has M$ cared about it, unless it was to Embrace then expand? It only cares about interoperability if it's playing catchup in the market. If it isn't, then you're screwed trying to get this from M$.

Re:Good Luck

[SoCalChris]

Considering that section 3.d.iii of their MSDN code license (Covers the code samples on the MSDN site) specifically disallows you from using any of their code on non-windows platforms, I'd say their position on cross platform compatibility is crystal clear.

MSDN Code License

Re:Good Luck

[Teckla]

I hate to say it but I always felt Mono was a mistake. The problem with .NET is that it really is a Windows only system. When you try to point that out people say not it isn't you can use Mono. A convent lie that lets .NET compete with Java right up to the point where you have tens of thousands of lines of code and you want to migrate to a different platform. Then the Microsoft sales rep can say, "You know Mono really has fallen behind .NET. You can port your applications if you want but it would just be cheaper to stick with Windows. Once you add in the cost of porting all that code your Total Cost of Ownership will be much less with Windows. Oh and would you like some more copies of Office and another Exchange server to got with that?"

Mono is multi-platform .NET is not.

Even worse... How long until Ballmer starts grumbling about Mono using Microsoft patents?

Mono will never be a safe language for developers ... or even users. Just wait until Microsoft starts talking about how users of Mono applications owe Microsoft money because of the usage of Microsoft patented technology in Mono...

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono will never be a safe language for developers

Mono isn't a language, safe or otherwise.

Re:Good Luck

[zhobson]

Exactly! I remember pointing this out when Miguel tried to justify Mono years ago.

What's "Flamebait" now, huh? Huh? Miguel has been utterly consistent in his unfounded trust of Microsoft and his thorough admiration of their technology.

The "sleeper cell" bit may have been a joke, but it's easy to see how that thinking arises.

Re:Good Luck

[larry bagina]

One word: rotor.

Re:Good Luck

[kosmosik]

> I'm afraid that Mono,

Dunno. I don't use it - *I* think it sucks cause I have installed some apps using Mono on my Fedora box and they crashed really bad all the time. So it probably sucks.

> like Samba

Samba? Well Samba is Samba. Maybe it lacks in some stuff that MS has implemented (AD and such) but still it is de facto standard for CIFS/Windows Networking on non-Windows systems. It is *the* standard for most of unices, NAS boxes, Macs, Solaris, Linuxes etc. So I don't really think Samba fits along with Mono or OpenOffice.org (read further for OOo) it is not even in the same league it is not even the same game. Samba *is* very successfull and fucking nice OSS project. I have like dozens of servers that do really weird stuff most of that would not be even possible using Windows. Like providing SMB services with custom configuration just to support really old (but trust me - business critical) DOS programs.

I've read about Samba implemementations (search on /. there was a "Ask..." some time ago) that do stuff that Windows could never (for economical or practical reasons) do. Like really wide WANS, really Terminal Services (what Windows provides regarding printing is a joke) spawning multiple operating systems into custom soltuion.

So *please* do respect that Samba *is* the killer-app of Open Source. I can bet that along Apache/PHP/Python/PERL/Java whatever stuff Samba is one off the most important projects that drive OSS adoption on servers (and also on clients - see OSX).

> and OpenOffice,

Well OpenOffice.org is a cow - bloated, big and slow. But still making OOo work faster (like throwing some hardware onto the problem) is cheaper than getting into MS Office licensing. OOo is *not* MS Office replacement (due to problems with exchanging documents with MSO - but hey even various versions of MS have *severe* problems with exchanging their documents) but as an office suite itself it is really nice. From my (company) perspective it does fucking loads of jobs right - it does basic office stuff almost right, it manages to interact with databases, it can do really nice macros/scripting/programming, it can produce decent PDF files, it can (due to ODF support) interact with other OSS projects (our marketing stuff edits our website right from OO.o via XMLRPC and eZ Publish CMS - imagine that). Etc. So OOo is also in another league than Mono.

Mono? I just don't see any practical use of it for me. Few apps, bloated runtime. What are the advantages? Java is much better for portability.

Re:Good Luck

[protected_static]

Mono is multi-platform .NET is not.

Well, by definition .NET is Windows-only. The underlying Common Language Interpreter doesn't have to be. IIRC, Microsoft released a couple of non-Windows versions of the CLI when .NET was first released, including one that ran on some flavor of BSD.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is, though It is more formally known as Common Intermediate Language. Granted it is other things as well...

Re:Good Luck

[jorgepblank]

Actually, .Net is an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI, ECMA-335 ), just like Mono is. .Net only runs on Microsoft supported platforms while Mono tries to run on many more. The fact that .Net isn't cross-platform doesn't matter, because it is Microsoft's, what do you expect? But that does not necessarily mean CLI is Microsoft's. The way I see it, Mono is a cross platform implementation of CLI trying to be as compatible with Microsoft's .Net as possible. And like the guy below wrongly said, .Net/Mono isn't a language, all these confusions about are what make unknowing people accuse and put C# ( ECMA-334 ) and/or CLI down.

Re:Good Luck

[maop]

So what? Don't use their sample code. By a C# book or look at the many free online tutorials for sample code.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

A convent lie that lets .NET compete with Java right up to the point where you have tens of thousands of lines of code and you want to migrate to a different platform.

People are lying but it doesn't matter. Real companies aren't blinded by such blatant lies. They want OS that deliver performances (Linux, Solaris, ...) and they now want real portability.

Google runs GMail and Adwords using Linux / Java. eBay runs on Java (on Solaris!?). Many banks run Java on Un*x OSes.

.NET is just a bad, bad, lock-in joke.

I agree with Miguel de Icaza when he says in TFA (yup, site wasn't /.ed) that Mono isn't trying to appeal to Java programmers but to .NET programmers. However, .NET programmers wanting platform independance / open-sourceness have two choices: Mono or Java. So, yup, Java is quite a competitor to Mono.

BTW is there any serious Website running on Mono? I can cite many Fortune 500 website backed by Java (especially the ones needing lots of scalability/performances), what about Mono?

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono's an implementation, not a language.

Re:Good Luck

[FuzzyDaddy]

I work in an office that uses windows networking, office, etc. for everything. The compelling use I've found for OOo is for presentations - you can make a very nice presentation very quickly, and save it as a pdf file. Everyone can read it, and you don't have to pay through the nose for Powerpoint.

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

And WindowsNT was multiplatfrom. Intel sold MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC versions of NT....
The only non-Intel NT/W32 Kernel sits at the heart of the 360.

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

"People are lying but it doesn't matter. Real companies aren't blinded by such blatant lies. They want OS that deliver performances (Linux, Solaris, ...) and they now want real portability."
If that was true then you wouldn't have millions of line of VB code running in corporations. That is what gets me. VB.NET isn't compatible with all that classic VB code. You would think that they would run screaming from another Microsoft language trap. Yet for some reason they are lining up for .NET like lambs to the slaughter while the developers that choose Java just go on their merry way.

Re:Good Luck

[joto]

I fail to see why it's even relevant what the Fortune 500 companies are running on their websites. Presumably, java solutions are expensive, that's why Fortune 500 companies need to have java-backed websites. It's the fashion right now. (And besides, their CEOs have probably not heard of other languages)

For open source, we should instead try to focus on what is the best system. If I had to choose between java and mono, it would certainly be mono. C# can do everything java can. Java can't do everything C# can. Neither of the APIs are fantastic. End of story.

Re:Good Luck

[ClosedSource]

"The whole point of .Net was get something there while it fucked over Sun."

Your confusing Sun's philosophy with MS. Sun's philosophy has (until recently) been to fuck MS. MS's philosophy is to make money.

Re:Good Luck

[i_finally_got_an_acc]

Dude, those Thorazine pills your doctor gave you are very important.

Re:Good Luck

[neaorin]

Mono? I just don't see any practical use of it for me. Few apps, bloated runtime. What are the advantages? Java is much better for portability. I'm a Windows developer. After years of MFC, Java and ASP (thank God THAT's over!) I began developing for .NET, ever since 1.0. Everything, from the C# language to the services stack just rocks - particularly ASP.NET if you measure it against ASP, PHP, JSP, JSF and the likes. To each his own, as they say, but C# is IMO the best HL language out there and it's only getting better, and with a great IDE in VS and the services present in the .NET framework (as well as many useful 3rd party tools and libs out there) are nothing to sneeze at. I'm Mono's target audience. If you're already using either of C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby etc. and you're happy with it, you don't have any use for Mono. But after being just a Linux user for the better part of two years, I've recently began developing for it - using Mono. In this way I'm able to maximize my skills while actually contributing something. At this point I just don't have the time and energy to learn a completely new language and framework just so I can develop for *nix. Regardless of what *nix developers generally think about us Windows devs, there are quite a few skilled people out there. And the more you can sway to at least try their hand at developing for *nix, the better; after all, it's not about the OS, it's about the apps which run on it, right?

Re:Good Luck

[Weedlekin]

"for some reason they are lining up for .NET like lambs to the slaughter while the developers that choose Java just go on their merry way."

Developers don't get to choose the languages or environments they work with except in small shops or one man outfits. People wrote in the old VB because somebody far higher up in the corporate food chain decided they were going to use it, and the same goes for .NET, Java, and for that matter any other language with a regular pay cheque attached.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

>>making all the Windows zealots think we're all a bunch of rambling idiots

And your comments are doing what to dispell that perception exactly?

Re:Good Luck

[jellomizer]

.NET The speed of Java with the platform Independence of VB

Re:Good Luck

[D4MO]

Second Life.

Re:Good Luck

[LizardKing]

Presumably, java solutions are expensive, that's why Fortune 500 companies need to have java-backed websites.

Java development is cheap. The open source tools compare very favourably to their commercial / pay to use equivalents. Examples are Eclsipse and NetBeans for development IDEs, Tomcat or Jetty for Application Containers and JBoss for Enterprise Containers. There are excellent libraries from the Apache projects, as well as things like JUnit, JMeter and Log4J. The Java runtimes from Sun and IBM are obviously free of license costs as well.

Staff costs are pretty good as well. If you look at the cost of a decent Java team versus say a C++ one, then while the cost of a senior developer may be similar, the less senior team members are likely to be cheaper to employ. This comes down to fact that many garduates are now learning Java at college, often to the exclusion of languages like C and C++. This increases the number of Java programmers on the market, making overall team costs lower as you can hire less experienced programmers with reasonable confidence they'll be able to do the job.

Finally, there is a much greater emphasise in the Java literature on best practices and "programming in the large" than I generally see in books on other programming languages. Dependency injection, consistent application of the MVC architecture, decent modularity, unit testable code - in my experience programmers are far more aware of the benefits of these ideas in the Java world, and are consciously applying them.

As for choosing between C#/Mono and Java, I'd go for the latter. While the core Java is far from perfect, it has far more mature support from application containers, third party libraries, and so forth. It also has an API that tries to be cross platform, whereas the .Net (and as a result Mono) APIs contain a number of design trade offs that reflect its target platform is restricted to Windows. The Forms API springs to mind (have they finally done away with absolute positioning in the current version?).

Re:Good Luck

[Nurgled]

I've found that if you do your dev on Mono, sticking to the core framework functionality and avoiding Mono's extensions, it's very easy to get the resulting apps to run under Microsoft's implementation. It's quite handy that all of the Mono-specific stuff is in other namespaces so you can avoid it easily.

You don't get to use all the fancy new stuff like WPF, but most apps have no need for all that stuff anyway. People have been writing apps just fine for years without that tech.

Re:Good Luck

[joto]

Well, compared to e.g. PHP, I believe java starts to smell expensive. You don't need to have all these fancy acronyms starting with the letter "J", just to build a website. Java equals more work than most scripting languages, meaning higher costs. Luckily, nobody builds websites in C++.

As for hiring cheap inexperienced coders, having them stick to the fashion-of-the-week "best practices" (is it still Agile that's the buzzword in corporate circles?), and so on... Well, it's not the best way. But yeah, it's a predictable way, and it means you are able to plan, predict and budget for mediocre performance, which is what corporate bureaucracies are best at anyway. So it's maybe not the worst way either. At least corporate bureaucracies are able to get something done, which isn't always the case when you take the bureaucracy away from a corporation. And obviously java has more neat stuff going for it in a corporate environment, than C#.

But hey, I wasn't talking about choosing a language or platform for corporate use.

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

Developers choose their jobs. I still don't know how VB managed to sneak in to IT. I mean Basic??? I think it started with little useful utilities written by somebody out side of IT just mutated from there.
I do lump the decision makers into the classification of developer. The people they decide what tools are used to develop should be developers themselves. They should also know that they have a big and expensive task in moving from traditional VB to C# or VB.NET. Let us not for get the several million lines of Foxpro code that are now also facing it's end of life. Seems like a great opportunity for Java or Mono if they can just wake up the sheep.

Re:Good Luck

[Weedlekin]

"Developers choose their jobs."

They do indeed. However, for those with commitments to families, other factors may be more important than what programming language is being used.

"I still don't know how VB managed to sneak in to IT"

The same way that PowerBuilder, Oracle Forms, and other similar tools got adopted in the past.

"I mean Basic???"

It's no worse than COBOL or RPG, which were also popular in the corporate world.

"I think it started with little useful utilities written by somebody out side of IT just mutated from there"

It actually gained traction because corporate types thought it could utilise the significant numbers of semi-skilled BASIC programmers that were out there (this was actually largely an illusion because the event-driven nature of VB was very alien to most people who'd used other types of BASIC).

"I do lump the decision makers into the classification of developer."

How you lump things is up to you. Reality is of course another matter entirely.

"The people they decide what tools are used to develop should be developers themselves."

Unfortunately, what they should be is very different from what they are. And those very rare executives who started out as developers usually haven't done it seriously for years, so they're hopelessly out of date, and therefore often do more harm than good.

" They should also know that they have a big and expensive task in moving from traditional VB to C# or VB.NET"

Has it ever occurred to you that this might be what everyone from the senior IT managers to the most junior programmers actually want? Big buzzword-compliant rewrites mean a constant source of funding and steady jobs, all of which can be easily justified to upper management by all the executive-level crap that Microsoft have prepared for just this purpose.

"Let us not for get the several million lines of Foxpro code that are now also facing it's end of life"

See above.

"Seems like a great opportunity for Java or Mono if they can just wake up the sheep"

Java's already got the corporate ear, but Microsoft have a very powerful marketing machine that's out to convince "all MS" shops that there's no advantage to Java in their specific case. Mono has little visibility, and those executives who do know about it tend to see it as a poor .NET knock-off with the notable disadvantage of not being supported by a big company, which in the risk-averse world of corporate IT means it's slightly less desirable than leprosy.

Re:Good Luck

[LizardKing]

If PHP is an "all in one" solution for you then that's great. However, most people doing large scale Java development need a lot more than PHP can offer. Can you write generalised code in PHP that I can use in a standalone application as easily as I can use it in a web application? Can you unit test your PHP code on a truly modular basis, and outside of the full blown web environment? Does PHP have a clear and consistent API with little or no redundancy? Does PHP offer decent support for writing threaded code? Is there interfaces for a generic database API that has been implemented for a large selection of database engines? The answer to all these questions is "no".

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, compared to e.g. PHP, I believe java starts to smell expensive. You don't need to have all these fancy acronyms starting with the letter "J", just to build a website. Java equals more work than most scripting languages, meaning higher costs. Luckily, nobody builds websites in C++.

Well Amazon and Yahoo are largely implemented in C and C++ (although the latter does use PHP for some of the simpler front end stuff). As for Java being more work than "most scripting languages", point me to the productivity studies proving it - I doubt you will be able to. There have been studies showing increased productivity when teams use Java, but this was mostly comparing with application level stuff that had previously been written in C or C++. Quite frankly, scripting languages don't register on most companies radar whem it comes to developing large scale apps, as the tools and methodologies are too informal and as a result don't scale well.

As for hiring cheap inexperienced coders, having them stick to the fashion-of-the-week "best practices" (is it still Agile that's the buzzword in corporate circles?), and so on... Well, it's not the best way. But yeah, it's a predictable way, and it means you are able to plan, predict and budget for mediocre performance, which is what corporate bureaucracies are best at anyway. So it's maybe not the worst way either. At least corporate bureaucracies are able to get something done, which isn't always the case when you take the bureaucracy away from a corporation. And obviously java has more neat stuff going for it in a corporate environment, than C#.

Sorry if the name puts you off, but Agile is a sensible, incremental improvement on Extreme methodologies. As a result they complement rather than negate each other, and they were little more than a formalisation of existing best practices into a coherent whole anyway. Don't ever expect to be able to work on a large scale system or as part of a large team if you can't handle this way of working - as you acknowledge "bureaucracy", which seems to be your snide description of a methodology, gets things done.

But hey, I wasn't talking about choosing a language or platform for corporate use.

As I said, if you're happy pluggin away at your small, web bound project in PHP then that's fine. Meanwhile those of us you can handle the Javas, Junits and sound methodologies will continue to earn the big bucks writing the large, scalable systems that you can't.

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

Wow as much as the place I work ticks me off I am grateful that programmers make the decision what tools are used.
And to it never crossed my mind that I would want to be forced to port the same working code to a new Microsoft platform over and over again. I would much rather spend my time adding new features and making the code more failsafe and bug free and maybe easier to use.
But then we use C++, Java, Perl, PHP, and Python where I work.
And we are going to an Linux based phone system.
And we use PostgresSQL for most of our in house databases except the accounting system which runs on our only Windows server.
I have to agree about Mono. I have not learned it so I don't want to bad mouth it too much. Java I know and I actually like. You can write a good application very quickly with Java.
And there are a number of free Development systems that are actually very nice to use like Netbeans and Eclipse.

Re:Good Luck

[joto]

As I said, if you're happy pluggin away at your small, web bound project in PHP then that's fine. Meanwhile those of us you can handle the Javas, Junits and sound methodologies will continue to earn the big bucks writing the large, scalable systems that you can't.

I started by saying that whatever was best in the corporate environment, is completely irrelevant for what is best for the open source community. I maintain this position.

Oh, by the way, I've been a corporate whore myself, so you don't need to lecture me about methodologies. I've already taken corporate whoring 101, and unlike you, I know the difference between methodology and bureaucracy. If you want to brag about money, find somebody who's interested.

Re:Good Luck

[roman_mir]

I fail to see why it's even relevant what the Fortune 500 companies are running on their websites. Presumably, java solutions are expensive, that's why Fortune 500 companies need to have java-backed websites. - java solutions are much cheaper than most other solutions, because java solutions are well understood, there is a huge codebase that can be used for almost any problem at hand, you do not have to build yet another server, yet another database driver (or a database) yet another XML parser, yet another message queue interface (or a message queue,) yet another rules engine, yet another front end framework, yet another distributed model, yet another project builder, yet another IDE etc. If you actually understand what you are doing, you can put out solutions incredibly quickly with minimum effort compared to other platforms, you have to do proper design (just like with any other platform,) you have to decide what existing frameworks/code you will reuse and what will have to be developed from scratch or from some existing starting point.

It's the fashion right now. (And besides, their CEOs have probably not heard of other languages) - bs. Maybe the fashion is with Java, I don't know, but the 'cool' is not with it. Everyone who wants 'cool' are moving on to other platforms/languages that do not have as many supporting structures/frameworks, because it is glamorous to rewrite connection pools from scratch again. BTW the CEOs do not care about languages, they care about selling products/services. Languages are nowhere even near their level of need to deal with their problems.

For open source, we should instead try to focus on what is the best system. If I had to choose between java and mono, it would certainly be mono. C# can do everything java can. Java can't do everything C# can. Neither of the APIs are fantastic. End of story. - for open source the best is not that, that has the most APIs, but that, which can be actually relied upon for being trully Free and Java is GPLed now. So you are trolling.

Just as a side point, Java language runs within a JVM, and JVM allows using native APIs, that is what JNI is for. Java is a tool to be used where it makes most sense, like other platforms, today with the level of official/unofficial support and with the ammount of developers/development that goes on in Java, it is the perfect language for business use.

Re:Good Luck

[MightyMartian]

Oh give me a break. MS deliberately violated licensing in an attempt to extend and ultimately extinguish Java. I have no doubt that Sun is guilty of many things, but MS was most certainly trying to destroy Java.

Re:Good Luck

[Weedlekin]

"Wow as much as the place I work ticks me off I am grateful that programmers make the decision what tools are used."

You're very lucky to work at a place like that. Most just tell you what to work with, and then blame the programmers if the tools turn out to be unsuitable for the task at hand, and the end results are therefore sub-optimal.

"it never crossed my mind that I would want to be forced to port the same working code to a new Microsoft platform over and over again"

You only have to look at how many web sites have been completely rewritten to use Ajax or Flash in an entirely superfluous way to see that It isn't just Microsoft tool and language users who constantly change working stuff to be compliant the latest buzzwords. I've seen several working, mature, and stable "fat-client" client-server products that customers were happy with get totally rewritten to use web interfaces, Java, etc. at great expense, only to scrap the lot because their customers unanimously prefer the old system.

"But then we use C++, Java, Perl, PHP, and Python where I work."

I've seen a lot of PHP getting rewritten to use the latest features, and newer versions of Python have introduced some incompatibilities with existing code bases, so once again, this isn't just something that people in the MS tool world do.

"And we use PostgresSQL for most of our in house databases except the accounting system which runs on our only Windows server."

Databases are IMO one of the areas where the open source world really shines. There's plenty of choice ranging from small "embedable" systems to full blown servers, and they run on all major platforms and several not-so-major ones. I haven't used PostgreSQL much, but have had excellent results from Firebird and SQLite, and would thus recommend either for the sorts of jobs they're suited to.

" have to agree about Mono. I have not learned it so I don't want to bad mouth it too much."

The problems Mono has with the few executive decision makers who've heard of it are two-fold:

1) It isn't supported by a major corporation who can be used a "blame sink" if things go wrong.

2) By chasing Microsoft's coat-tails, they're in the same position as the people who are maintaining Wine, i.e. that of tracking a company with a notable habit of regularly deprecating stuff they were pushing a short while ago in favour of something new that does a similar job in an entirely different way. This means that one cannot write an arbitrary .NET application using the latest MS tools and expect it to run under Mono without any issues, so people who want to support both are effectively restricted to using only those features that Mono implements, and they'll have to test and optimise all code on both platforms. This is obviously rather more costly than simply writing for .NET on Windows and ignoring the much smaller number of non-Windows users, or using (for example) Java, which has "official" versions for several platforms, and a set of excellent free tools that run pretty much identically on all all of them.

"Java I know and I actually like. You can write a good application very quickly with Java."

What I like about Java is the large number of quality frameworks, beans, and tools that make nearly every job a matter of selecting the right components, and tying them together with what amounts to some "glue code". Python and Perl programmers also have large bodies of code, frameworks, and tools to chose from, and PHP is getting that way (as is Ruby). There is a also a wide variety of more traditional compiled languages and libraries for them that are highly portable (albeit in a different way), most of which have excellent free implementations, so it's difficult to make a convincing business case for Mono when so many other (often considerably more mature) options exist.

"there are a number of free Development systems that are actually very nice to use like Netbeans and Eclipse."

Not only are they

Re:Good Luck

[LWATCDR]

"1) It isn't supported by a major corporation who can be used a "blame sink" if things go wrong."
Well Novell seems to be getting into Mono. Novell is a company that a lot of big enterpise customers actually seem to like. I keep getting the feeling that a lot of companies are just looking for a good enough reason to embrace novell again.

I agree about Eclipse and Netbeans. I used Netbeans for Java and Eclipse CDT for c. KDevelop is too KDE centric for me. I am doing cross development for Linux running on an XScale and I just couldn't get KDevelop to work for that. Eclipse CDT while a work in progress isn't bad.

I don't hate rewriting code for a good reason. If a website would work better with Ajax then it is worth a rewrite. What I don't want to do is be forced to do a rewrite because a Programming language was EOL. Now when we ported/rewrote our DOS product for Windows32 we did move from TurboPascal to Visual C++. Looking back that was a good move on our part. It was also wise of us not to get involved with VB since VB has been redefined so many times that it just doesn't seem worth it.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

'I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration'

Microsoft recommending a non-microsoft technology for a migration away from a Microsoft OS? Did i get that correctly?

Hey while we're asking for that one can we ask Microsoft to donate money to the FSF as well? That'll have pretty much the same chance of happening :)

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey while we're asking for that one can we ask Microsoft to donate money to the FSF as well? That'll have pretty much the same chance of happening :)

You'd be surprised. Microsoft matches employee's donations to United Way. United Way, in turn, sponsors the FSF. I don't know how much of UW's money goes to the FSF, but Microsoft and its employees, not counting Bill Gates, give more than $15M per year to UW.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration

Well duh. You mean it didn't? What kind of deal was that?

Sounds kind of pitiful

[L. VeGas]

This is like a pimply teenager begging the homecoming queen to go out with him.

Wait. Did I just compare Bill Gates to a homecoming queen?

Re:Sounds kind of pitiful

[monopole]

More like a pimply teenager begging his lifer cell mate to be gentle.

Re:Sounds kind of pitiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, he may have a problem with rage, throwing chairs and yelling things like "I'll fucking kill them." But Balmer is a sexy, sexy man.

The point of Mono?

[ceeam]

(Disclaimer: I somewhat dislike Java and .NET)

What was the point for them of choosing .NET development over Java from FOSS's point of view?
What does it give them they think that Java couldn't? MZ format wrapped binaries?

Re:The point of Mono?

[3vi1]

Language independance.

Re:The point of Mono?

[metamatic]

Language independance

Yeah, 'cause it's not like you can compile other languages like Ruby to Java bytecode.

Re:The point of Mono?

[Xtifr]

Well, first and foremost, some people seem to prefer one over the other. God only knows why, but they do. That alone would be reason enough. Second of all, while they have many similarities, they also have many differences, and they're not particularly compatible. Having FLOSS support for both means software written in either can be free. That's a big deal too. It's basically the same reason that the Gnu Compiler Collection includes Fortran as well as C. And finally, while the Java spec was (and as far as I know, still is) under the control of one company, and is subject to change at a whim, Mono is (believe it or not) based on a public standard. It's a fuzzy standard from a dubious standards body (ECMA) that tends to be a bit of a corporate lapdog, and it only covers parts of what MS calls ".NET", but it is a standard, and FLOSS folks tend to really like public standards.

But really, the first one is the biggie. Why have Perl AND Tcl AND Python AND Ruby? Why have Gnome AND Kde AND Xfce AND GnuStep? Why have Emacs AND vi? Why have bash AND tcsh AND zsh? Why have Sendmail AND Postfix AND Exim? Why have MySQL AND PostgreSQL AND Firebird? Because people aren't all the same, and have different preferences, and, at some level, FLOSS is supposed to be, at least in part, about choice and freedom.

Re:The point of Mono?

[BlackEmperor]

.Net has a huge army of developers, specifically in the ISV sector, which could bring a flood of applications to Linux. Java is, in my experience, used more in a corporate environment.

Re:The point of Mono?

[zbowling]

Actually you can do more on Mono then Java. and Mono can run Java as a function fully functioning JVM using IKVM.NET (http://ikvm.net/). In fact that Java based x86 emulator that was posted a few days ago is running on Mono with IVKM. Not so easy to go the other direction (http://grasshopper.mainsoft.com/).

Re:The point of Mono?

[killjoe]

Nah, more languages run on the JVM then .NET and most run better on the JVM.

Re:The point of Mono?

[Mr2001]

The CLR supports a lot of features that are sorely lacking in Java's VM: delegates, generics with strong typing at runtime, dynamic code generation (at least I don't think Java has that), and pointers in unsafe mode come to mind. For interfacing with native code, .NET's P/Invoke is also supposed to be easier to work with than JNI.

Re:The point of Mono?

[ClosedSource]

So if your create a class in Ruby can it by subclassed in Java and vice versa? That's the level of language independence that .Net provides.

Re:The point of Mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you show me an example of C# subclassing Ruby?

I did not think you can.

The language independence is misleading, it is rather skinnable languages: only languages made for the runtime can do it.

Re:The point of Mono?

[ClosedSource]

I don't know if there's a .net version of Ruby and of course I never claimed there was. Can we conclude that the JVM isn't capable of running other languages just because I can identify a language that won't compile to Java byte codes?

The fact is there are many languages that can cross-inherit in .net. This is a useful feature that some pro-Java people are in denial about.

Re:The point of Mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this modded informative? It's simply an unsupported assertion. If it had been accompanied with links to lists of the said languages and evidence that they performed better on JVM than CLI, it might have been informative.

Miguel de Icaza's web log

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Mar-26.html

"The crowd at OSNews got upset because I said advocate more collaboration between Mono and Microosft. It is hardly news, I advocated the same thing in August during an interview that I did with Sam Ramji from Microsoft, before I knew of any MS/Novell collaboration."

.NOT NYET

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh just quit it, Mono has no takeup because if people wanted to use Microsoft technology they'd be buying Vista and .NET.
If they want cross platform portability they don't rely on Microsoft for anything, rather than try .NET plus a clone.

All Mono does is give them a veneer to claim cross platform portability without actually being cross platform portable.

Re:.NOT NYET

[BlackEmperor]

The people using Mono already have Vista and .Net as Mono targets Windows developers, not Linux developers. And why do you say it is not cross platform portable? Last time I checked I could compile a program under Mono and run it on windows and linux - is that not cross platform portable?

Re:.NOT NYET

[Shados]

Correct. People thinking MONO allows cross platform compatibility with .NET have never coded anything beyond a few forms and command line tools in their lives. No programmer worth their salt will pick .NET for the language or the base framework themselves. They pick .NET because it integrate easily with windows land. (Active Directory, SQL Server or Oracle on Windows, just about anything Windows specific like the journal or the performance counters, IIS and ASP.NET, etc).

As soon as you touch any of that stuff, even if the framework was perfect, crossplatform compatibility goes down the window (pun not intended).

I'm a .NET programmer, but the day I want cross platform, is the day I get rid of my MSDN Subscription: .NET will -never- be it, no matter how hard the Mono guys work.

If you use Mono, its because you like Mono. Not because you like .NET.

Re:.NOT NYET

[dbIII]

Forget the theory of "a veneer to claim cross platform portability" - it isn't Microsoft that is doing this but an admirer that wanted to get the system running on other platforms. It keeps him away from gnome and may produce some other unexpected benefits if this works well. Personally I think it would be better if MS actually do give him the job he is after and this MS javalike thing is worked on for other platforms instead of potentially being as platform specific and ephemeral as each version of VB is.

That said, I do not know what the status of mono is - perhaps it is very close to full functionality and perhaps the MS net platform is now stable enough that mono won't have to play catch up with every automatic update.

Re:.NOT NYET

[EvanED]

Last time I checked I could compile a program under Mono and run it on windows and linux...

Only if you restrict yourself to console apps or a 5-year-old API that's seen a new minor version and a new major versions go into production, and a second new major version on the horizon...

(Or if you use a 3rd party toolkit, which removes one of the big benefits of developing on .Net...)

Patents, again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping someone with more knowledge can chime in here and shed some light on the issue of .NET patents.

My understanding is that Mono exists because of a statement, made by Microsoft, that they won't sue for re-implementations of the ECMA-submitted components of .NET. I think this is the C# language and the CLR.

Mono is now starting to slip into linux distributions and that worries me. Tomboy for example is the default load of Ubuntu 7.04. I'm not a rabid MS hater, but since when does a promise from Microsoft mean anything at all?

Is there any legal protection for the Mono team and those who distribute it?

Re:Patents, again...

[Bruce Perens]

While MS pledged some patents to be royalty-free as part of the ECMA standardization of C#, those were only the patents that applied directly to the C# language. Mono code is covered by claims in other Microsoft patents as well, and patents of additional third parties.

So, if you use a paid-up copy of Novell, Microsoft says it won't sue you for using Mono. For 5 years, I hear, and then maybe they'll do it anyway.

I can't begin to understand why Miguel would have wanted to devote so many years of his life to a project that MS would invariably claim rights over. Is he just waking up to this now?

Bruce

Re:Patents, again...

[kosmosik]

> Mono is now starting to slip into linux distributions and that
> worries me. Tomboy for example

OMFG some sticky notes app is using Mono. ;) Sorry for irony but it just quite summarizes the attempt of Mono. How about few hundreds of mature Java projects, probably thousands if nod millions of server side comercial Java uses (yes on Linux, or other unices) doing finance stuff and such.

Sorry Mono is just a sad Joke. It does not offer any portability, it is bloated and is a toy. Open Source or die - now we have (open) Java and MS can stick .Net into their butts - lets compete, seriously. It is like the Jihad. No compromises. :)

Really .Net is just some programming language and runtime stuffed on Windows platform - it is tied to Win32, Microsoft does not want it to be cross-platform, so lets have it their way and just fuck it.

Re:Patents, again...

[paulxnuke]

My understanding is that the "standardization" rules explicitly allow MS to charge a ("reasonable") license fee for stuff like the CLR.

If they decided to ask one cent per application that uses the CLR on non-Windows platforms:

• no one could call it unreasonable or exclusionary: many would say that MS deserves to be paid for their research
• 10 cents extra / copy of the average distro is too much for most makers to absorb, and would cost several dollars to collect in addition to the user outrage involved. Likewise, how about the people who write and distribute a couple of titles?
• a lot of the programs involved are GPL, which would cause major legal problems in addition to the price

.NET may be the most effective weapon MS has ever had, with the least public relations liability. The last thing they want to do is cooperate with or even officially recognize a project like Mono: that's like making a pet of a cow you plan to eat in the fall.

Re:Patents, again...

[wasabii]

Because he has an honest belief that a) patents are bogus and b) C#/.Net are great platforms.

Is that so hard to understand? If we were all so scared of patents, we wouldn't have a) implemented FAT b) probably not written Linux itself c) would be scared of our own shadow.

There are patents that cover every aspect of every system you use, FOSS or not. This is not an issue that affects Mono specifically, but rather our entire free software ecosystem. It's rather nice to see somebody who isn't scared of his own shadow be willing to take them head on.

Re:Patents, again...

[angry_beaver]

There are a number of applications written in Mono, not just Tomboy. F-Spot and Beagle are a couple of the major ones that come to mind. In fact, the first hit on a google search for "mono applications" is the following link which lists many applications....

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9780

Re:Patents, again...

[dbIII]

I can't begin to understand why Miguel would have wanted to devote so many years of his life to a project that MS would invariably claim rights over.

I suggest reading his comments on the subject - he appears to find it interesting and enjoyable and really thinks MS have some good ideas there. I haven't looked at those ideas so I can't comment one way or another, so I would say go to the source. He gave us the large backward step that is gconf out of some kind of MS registry envy so I didn't have a lot of respect for him but that was a long time ago.

Re:Patents, again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a smug bastard, but I've seen some fiercely independent geeks go pro-MS when immersed in MS Land. The Kool-Aid seems to be really, really strong.

Re:Patents, again...

[squiggleslash]

Well, FAT is a poor example because it wasn't until recently anyone realized Microsoft had serious patents over it (and, in any case, original FAT isn't patented, it's the long filename hacks that are causing trouble.)

I think the point here isn't that people might have been worrying about inadvertently violating a patent or two, it's more that miguel set out to clone Microsoft's .NET system, knowing full well that Microsoft hadn't guaranteed that all of it (indeed, explicitly making that known on numerous occasions that only certain components) were free of patents and/or future patent lawsuits.

miguel didn't have to copy .NET, he could have built something better. He chose to copy .NET.

And whether he thinks software patents are bogus or not, we live in the real world, and they're regularly enforced. And Microsoft is, unfortunately, now one of the groups that enforces them.

Re:Patents, again...

[ClosedSource]

As I said in another post, these patents are likely to be stated in the broadest language possible, not something like "patent on .NET implementation #638". Thus mono isn't likely to be in more danger than any other project.

Re:Patents, again...

[squiggleslash]

The field of VMs, including OOVMs, is pretty mature. .NET itself is heavily inspired by Java. It strikes me as unlikely that someone developing a from-the-ground-up design is going to hit many, if any, Microsoft patents, no matter how broadly stated, that mindblowingly obvious prior art doesn't invalidate.

Implementing .NET, on the other hand, absolutely positively guarantees that you will violate Microsoft patents, both bogus and "legitimate".

You surely see the difference between leaving open the slight possibility of violating a legal patent and guaranteeing you will?

Re:Patents, again...

[ClosedSource]

I willing to consider your argument if you provide patent numbers that mono will violate and others won't.

Re:Patents, again...

[MobyDisk]

I've seen this discussion 1000 times but I never see anyone link to the patents. What patents? How is the specification of an API or a language patentable? This never made any sense to me.

Re:Patents, again...

[Haeleth]

Mono is now starting to slip into linux distributions and that worries me. [...] I'm not a rabid MS hater, but since when does a promise from Microsoft mean anything at all?

A certain figure commonly associated with airborne chairs has publicly stated that he believes there is code in every Linux distribution that violates Microsoft patents... and you're worried about a product that Microsoft has promised not to sue over?

Look, if Microsoft decides to get litigious, they're not going to go after a tiny and inessential thing like Mono, they're going to go straight after the real threat to Windows' dominance - and that's not Mono, it's the Linux brand itself. The kernel is a likely target. In all honesty, Mono probably isn't.

Instead of catch up

[stratjakt]

Why not develop mono on it's own, as it's own application development platform.

C# is a good language, having it represented outside of Windows is a good thing. Plenty of C# coders are hitting their streets, and linux could exploit that too.

Instead of dicking around trying to recreate MSFT's libraries (Windows Forms), why not more focus on developing their OWN truly cross platform libraries, (like, say, GTK#)

I had some success writing cross-platform apps based on GTK#, this was over a year ago, and haven't played with Mono since, I didn't want to invest too much time into something that looked like a novelty which would just be pitched.

De Icazas focus seemed to be "do exactly what microsoft does" then, and seems so now.

I'd take a thread safe GTK# over a half-assed wine-implementation of winforms.

But, that's just one little bears opinion.

Re:Instead of catch up

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an ill thought out opinion.

First of all, the winforms stuff is not wine-based. Second, why not have both? Why not make it easy to transition windows applications to linux without major changes? GTK# is there, and it's great, so now the focus is on winforms. They don't expect people to make linux applications in winforms, it's just there for cross-platform development (as in, development targeted at windows, while allowing those applications an easy path to linux).

> I'd take a thread safe GTK# over a half-assed wine-implementation of winforms.

Well guess what, you get both. :o)

Re:Instead of catch up

[tkinnun0]

Once upon a time, Microsoft tried to create an incompatible Java.

Now, Open Source Aficionados are creating an incompatible .NET.

Ah, the bitter sweet irony.

Re:Instead of catch up

[agent dero]

Wow, where does one even start to combat the trolling.

If you look in the Mono.* namespace they've developed a LOT of Mono on its own, including Mono.Xml, Mono.Unix, Mono.Math and a wide vareity of other tools. Not to mention now there are various open source projects out there like DBus#, Dumbarton, and of course Tao.

Mono is a definite option now for cross-platform applications (Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, etc) and extends the compatibility to .NET 1.1 and is coming up on having a .NET 2.0 compatible class library.

Don't get yourself mixed up, Mono does allow developers to use .NET code on other platforms, but it is really a powerful framework unto itself nowadays.

Re:Instead of catch up

[caseih]

To a certain point, this is exactly what is happening with Gnome and C#. Mono is a decent platform in and of itself if you remove winforms, asp.net, etc. In fact .Net really is superior to Java as a platform and development environment (language-wise) in many ways. As long as mono is positioned as a way of porting windows apps to other environments, it is doomed to fail, however.

As for my own cross-platform development, I did once use C# and GTK# for an app like you did, and it worked out well. Now I just use python, and use c/c++ for things that python is not so good at. I'd rather see more python apps in Gnome than C#.

Re:Instead of catch up

[zbowling]

Mono does Python as well by way of IronPython so while it might be python it might not be CPython but its completely compatible. That doesn't also include the GCC backend that will compile all the GCC languages to CLI.

Re:Instead of catch up

[jmccay]

Why use GTK? GTK still limits you to GTKs look and feel--even on other platforms. I am not sure if it is available, but why not leverage another open source cross-platform framework that's been around since 1992. I am talking about wxWidgets. It is already cross-platform, and it has been bound to other languages like ruby & python. wx.NET started this, but has stalled. You could even use SWIG 1.3.18, or newer, to make the library available to C#.

Re:Instead of catch up

[kaffiene]

Who cares? There's already way better stuff in Java right now. Why recreate a lop-sided hexagon instead of using the wheel already provided by Sun / IBM et al?

We already have Linux hopelessly divided with Gnome vs KDE, why add Mono vs Java as well?

Java is superior technology NOW. Java is GPL'd and non patent encumbered NOW. Mono is a retrograde step.

Like if it would ever happen

[vivaoporto]

If Microsoft was interested in interoperability, they could have it, anytime. They own the platform, for goodness sake, and if they wanted other their framework to work on other O.S., they would do it themselves. Microsoft strategy is not and will never be help to other platforms to run their applications, they prefer people locked in, with no choice. What is the main excuse for Mono? "To help people that are locked in .Net applications to migrate to Linux". (btw, if those people had plans to migrate to Linux, they would not choose .Net in the first place, as the technology is widely known as MS only. It is not as if it was a market standard, it is 6 years old, tops). Microsoft, on other hand, lists .Net as an advantage over "Unix". Why would they give up that advantage? On the goodness of their hearts?

I say it again: if MS wanted a fully functional port of the .Net framework for *nix, they would do it themselves (like the PS3 people ported linux to their console). The truth is that they don't want.

Re:Like if it would ever happen

[Anonymous Coward]

(...) if MS wanted a fully functional port of the .Net framework for *nix, they would do it themselves (...)

What would you call Rotor, then? This "Shared Source CLI Provides Source Code for a FreeBSD Implementation of .NET" and been out for almost 5 years! Guess who paid to get it developed??

Re:Like if it would ever happen

[samkass]

(btw, if those people had plans to migrate to Linux, they would not choose .Net in the first place, as the technology is widely known as MS only. It is not as if it was a market standard, it is 6 years old, tops)

If only it were true. Mono is oft-cited as a cross-platform solution that validates the decision to utilize .NET on new projects. "Well, if we have to support UNIX/linux in the next release, we'll just use Mono!" If Mono didn't exist, .NET would be a lot less popular, with even more support probably going to Java's open source efforts. But if Mono had parity with .NET, .NET would also be less popular. So Microsoft has Mono exactly where they want them right now, and they have absolutely no reason to want to change anything.

Re:Like if it would ever happen

[Duhavid]

Anyone who would trust anything other than a trivial app to what
is decribed therein would be a fool.

There is nothing ongoing out of this, no maintainance.

What would I call rotor? Handwaving that does nothing and
goes nowhere.

Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Locutus]

Why does this guy need comfort from and a working relationship with Microsoft? And why do all of his projects follow some tech Microsoft convolutes from some REAL tech(OOP, Java, etc)? Sure seems like he's got a case of Microsoft envy or something and IMO, it can only be terminal.

Because De Icaza is not only putting Microsoft tech in Mono, he's pushed Mono applications into Gnome and he's loading the MS Trojan Horse onto many GNU/Linux distros.

So what is up with him needing acceptance from Microsoft?

LoB

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[AJWM]

So what is up with him needing acceptance from Microsoft?

From Wikipedia:

In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked a university degree to obtain a work H-1B visa.

Perhaps he's still trying to live down that rejection. (I seem to recall that he tried more than once to get a job at Microsoft, but I can't readily find a reference.) Mind you, I think anyone who would even apply for that kind of job was probably brain damaged to start with.

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Rich0]

Yes, I find this a bit annoying. I used to use gtkatalog to track my software collection. It was replaced by a mono-based application that I have yet to get to work correctly - even on 32-bit linux (let alone 64-bit). I was left scratching my head as to why they'd use the mono platform for something like that...

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Locutus]

yup, sure seems like he has a major interest in pleasing Microsoft.

Regarding MS IE for UNIX, that was all a trick to make sure MainSoft got a huge payoff so they could afford the win32 source license. Microsoft had just quadrupled the price of that license to the other Win32-on-UNIX vendors and the result was to kill off all those UNIX apps ported to Win32 since now they had no update strategy. After Microsoft shipped Windows 95, they directed millions putting MS Windows NT againt UNIX, Novell, and OS/2 servers and workstations.

Too bad De Icaza didn't get that job in 97. He'd have lost it pretty quickly as MS IE on UNIX had no legs and it might have 'colored' is idolization of them.

LoB

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Locutus]

IMO, this is all a good reason for having two or more desktops. Especially when one is driven by someone so infatuated with Microsoft tech and Microsoft is threatening it'll use its patents to stop Linux.

LoB

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[caudron]

And why do all of his projects follow some tech Microsoft convolutes from some REAL tech(OOP, Java, etc)?

Huh?

De Icaza was at the forefront of Gnome development, the forefront Ximian development, and the forefront of Novell development (pre-MS deal). You may not like his choice here, but seriously, what's with the 'tude? I'm pretty sure he's done more for open source than Locutus of Slashdot...unless "Locutus" is RMS's /. screenname (in which case I take it all back and you are, of course perfectly correct!).

Seriously, attack his decision wrt mono if you must, but not his track record, which is fairly solid. He's earned the right to a little wiggle room on this.

Also, he's right about mono. Linux needs it, whether you 'get' it or not. Explaining why is too involved for a /. forum, but the arguements are out there and they are pretty good. I wouldn't mind seeing more of a break between mono and .NET, but overall his ideas and direction are good on this one.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Nicolay77]

I believe that's a reason for just ONE desktop. Of course I'm talking about KDE. The first and true one.

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Locutus]

Gnome was based on MS COM and MS COM was in response to the OOP based IBM SOM. Mono is based on MS C#/.Net which was designed in response to Sun Java. What he's done on top of the tech has no connection to my comments. What he's done to bring Microsoft tech to GNU/Linux is questionable and there is way too much history to show that you do not win or help your customers by letting Microsoft dictate the rules.

LoB

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[ardor]

What the hell are you talking about? Gnome IPC was (is?) based on CORBA, not COM.

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[LizardKing]

Yup, GNOME IPC is based on CORBA, using an implementation of the C language mapping. I understand this is going to be replaced with a dbus based system as the CORBA stuff is a bit to generalised and heavyweight for a desktop system. CORBA is more like DCOM, while COM is more like the old System V IPC facilities.

Re:Mono is a Trojan Horse, expect no help

[Locutus]

its original design was to follow MS OLE and COM. What it grew into is another story but THAT is not what I said in my original statement.

LoB

Nevermind MS....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, every piece of software that has anything to do with Mono is slow, buggy and they leave zombie processes everywhere. I hate them to the point where I finally ditched Gnome. I recently updated to SUSE 10.2, which has been afflicted with Mono, even though I choose KDE. I now curse SUSE.

Why would Linux users be interested in Mono again? Something about "compatibility" with MS software? You mean software that's slow and buggy and makes me curse like a sailor? No thanks.

As far as I'm concerned, mono stands for "mononucleosis". I sure as heck don't want the human version nor the computer version!

Re:Nevermind MS....

[agent dero]

As far as I'm concerned, mono stands for "mononucleosis". I sure as heck don't want the human version nor the computer version!

Mono means monkey in spanish. Thus the monkey on almost ALL the mono-project pages.

Re:Nevermind MS....

[Knuckles]

Ooops, mismoderated, posting to undo.

Re:Nevermind MS....

[sh4na]

A troll marked as insightful... why doesn't that surprise me? Eh.

Re:Nevermind MS....

[Anonymous Coward]

why does the mono logo look like a penis with a bad case of dick cheese?

Re:Nevermind MS....

[the-matt-mobile]

ALSO... Mono is pronounced Moe-no, not mon-oh.

Because SUSE will soon become MS-linux

[denis-The-menace]

It will take some time (5y, 10y tops) and MS will buy Novell, puppet of 2007
By then, they'll probably even buddle Exchange and SQL

I know I might be trollin' a bit here but I still think "Novell's deal with the devil" is a win-win for MS:
-Suse Dies => big woop for MS
-Linux Dies (as if) => party time @ MS (and possibly the break up of MS a-la-ma-bell)
-Suse becomes real big => MS gets first dibs to buy/control it.
MS:parasite of the IT

Mod parent up!

[khasim]

Not to mention that ALL the source code for Linux is Freely available online. If there's any "interoperability" issues, Microsoft has access to ALL the Windows code and ALL the Linux code.

They only reason there are "interoperability" issues today is because Microsoft wants there to be.

Re:Mod parent up!

[coaxial]

You're right to say that MS could fix the problem, but there's little reason for them to. Mono is a flyspeck, so why waste resources on developing it? Complicating matters, MS would be helping a would-be competitor. Why the hell would MS want to do that?

If I was MS, be acting the same way.

libs, APIs and tools are completely independent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although our core is following .NET footsteps, Mono has an incredibly vibrant ecosystem of libraries, APIs and tools that are completely independent.

We got libraries and components for integrating with Gtk#, the Gnome desktop, Cocoa on the Mac, Apache, Mozilla, Bittorrent, Flickr, Picassa, Google, music playback, tagging, desktop searching, media handling, GUI design and many many more.

So Mono needs its own libraries for Apache, Bittorrent, Flickr, Google, etc. They are "independent" from .Net? I have to use one set of libraries and APIs on .Net and a different set of libraries and APIs on Mono? Where is the silver lining in that storm cloud?

Miguel needs a reality check

[overshoot]

Microsoft didn't get where they are today by enabling their customers to leave.

Miguel's role in the world is to make it possible for Linux developers to get locked into Microsoft technologies, In due time Microsoft can harvest them in any number of ways. If he thinks otherwise, he needs to reconsider his choices in recreational chemistry.

Re:Why?

[CRCulver]

Agreed. De Icaza started out with admirable hopes of helping poor Mexican children through successful Free Software, putting a whole desktop project into motion. That he now is just a corporate shill investing all his time and energy in a misguided language project that even his GNOME colleagues don't take seriously just shows he has ceased to be a big player.

Jack Valenti has stroke so cooperate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA-RIAA-M$ evil axis is beginning to crumble, so don't get all warm and fuzzy feeling inside now. They can still regroup even though they look weak now due to...

MPAA = Jack Valenti has stroke
RIAA = sales down 20%
Microsoft = Vista takes 10 times longer to copy a file

Money Whore

[Anonymous Coward]

Fresh of encouraging new GTK+ development to happen in C# so only mono users can benefit, and now this. He's really doing all he can to maximize his Novell shares, even if it means fucking the whole community to do it.

Jonathan Schwartz from Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

He has done more for open source and general community than this guy. Open sourced Solaris (dtrace), Java, etc. Started a discount program for start ups, partnered with Ubuntu on hardware certification and the list goes on. Miguel is an idiot to think that Microsoft will ever cooperate with the Open Source movement. It's just one more strategy by Microsoft to hold back the coming tidal wave of change. Miguel/Novell are traitors for forming any kind of alliance with Microsoft.

Microsoft and WHAT developers ?

[unity100]

the ones in "developersdevelopersdevelopers" ?

havent they all got a chair thrown towards them already ?

eheheheheehee. couldnt resist. sorry.

Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Orion Blastar]

This gives a great opportunity to allow Visual Studio developers to port code to Linux, Mac OSX, *BSD Unix, etc by having Dotnet and Mono synch up to be 100% compatible in the code and CIL, CLR used.

It also would allow Microsoft to more easily port Visual Studio to Linux, Mac OSX, *BSD Unix, and other platforms that Microsoft claims is too hard to port Visual Studio over to. After that is done, Microsoft can port their application software to those platforms more easily rather than rewriting code for a separate Windows and Mac version of MS-Office, etc. Then it would be one code base, and recompiled for each platform using Dotnet/Mono libraries. If Mono is finally 100% compatible with Dotnet, then the CIL and CLR code will run under Mono as well as it does under Dotnet on Windows. Since Mono exists for multiple operating systems, all that is needed is to compile the code for that OS and it makes cross-compiling easy and less costly.

Think of all the money in R&D that Microsoft would save, if it partners up with Novell and Mono just on the R&R of OSX applications that Microsoft writes if the same code can be used for Windows and OSX with just being recompiled.

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Moocow660]

Disclaimer: I am a C# dev working at a Microsoft Partner

You realise that Visual Studio is mostly written in C++. .Net on any other platform won't help at all. In fact, most of Microsoft's big name products are mostly native code, and will be for a very long time - why re-write something that works?

The big problem with 'porting' .Net as you describe is that a lot of the actual .Net framework is simply a thin veneer over win32. This means in order to 'simply' port .Net, you need to reimplement large chunks of win32 on your target platform.

And don't even talk about .Net 3.0, a good chunk of which *is* WinFx. Do you really think Microsoft is going to implement some of its core functionality for competitor's platforms? Why would they? For that matter, why would they let someone else do it?

No, the reason to use .Net (and the reason I have a job) is because (in my opinion) its a much better way to write windows software than using win32 directly. If you want interoperability go elsewhere, say for example the much maligned Java.

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering Microsoft gets most of their revenue from Operating Systems then I doubt any of what you said makes sense.

The only reason anything Microsoft works on a non-MS OS is to keep the lawyers off their back.

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Anonymous Coward]

"Think of all the money in R&D that Microsoft would save"

I would save them nothing, for the obvious reason that they're no doing it.

As for the rest, thanks for pointing out the obvious reasons why developers may like a cross-platform language. I know them. That's why I'm using Java. Any reason I should switch to C#? Is a GUI toolkit running through Wine supposed to look more native or fell less bloated on Linux or MacOSX?

The only developers this would help are those currently writing Windows-only apps. Considering that the one reason Microsoft came up with C# was precisely to prevent those from writing cross platform Java apps, it's easy to see why it's not gonna happen.

And for the record, even if they did, I'd stay well clear anyway. Not taking the risk of ending up with a mass of code that can't use features I need because the latest Linux .NET is suffering "technical difficulties" and possibly won't run on the latest Windows .NET.

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[kisielk]

You just did a great job of describing exactly why Microsoft would never support Mono...

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[shutdown -p now]

And don't even talk about .Net 3.0, a good chunk of which *is* WinFx.

The good thing about WPF (if that's what you mean) is that, unlike WinForms, it's not tied to Win32 API and event model. So it should be much easier to write a 100% compatible WPF implementation for Mono, that any .NET WPF application would seamlessly run on.

Except there surely are a lot of patents to be infringed in the process. *sigh*

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Moocow660]

I was meaning the whole WinFx/.Net 3 package of WPF, WCF, etc. And you're exactly right, its good that they are moving away from win32, which should make porting more straightforward.

And I also agree with you that its unlikely Microsoft would let someone make a successful attempt at implementing something like WPF on a different platform.

Thats really what I meant - going backwards Win32 ties .Net to Windows, but moving forwards its likely to be legal factors more than anything - but make no mistake the tie to a Microsoft platform will be there. Possibly not Windows in the more distant future, but still a Microsoft platform nontheless.

Re:Why Mono and DotNet should synch

[Anml4ixoye]

The funny thing is that the cross-platform solution Microsoft recommends for developers needing to work with VS Team System and Team Foundation Server is Java-based from Teamprise.

I never did understand why they would push that over a Mono-based solution for Linux.

Novell Failed With Evolution, so Why Not?

[filesiteguy]

I've been a SUSE user for about two years now. I have exclusively SUSE on one laptop and dual boot one desktop with Win2K. My other desktops have either SUSE/XP or SUSE/2K at work. I remember the big push after Novell bought Evolution and brought all the Mono developers on board, where they said, 'hey, let's all be one big mono happy family and everyone use Gnome.' Of course, us KDE-fans screamed and pouted and stomped our feet so much, that Novell pulled back to some degree.

I remember back to TechEd (or was it TechNet) 2001 in Atlanta where Bill and Co. introduced .NET to us as "the next big thing." Even back then I thought of it as a half hearted attempt to marginalize Java. (Not that I had any love for Java at the time.) Now, they have the market share they want, we've all got VS 2005 loaded on our machines (next to Netbeans 5.5) and those few who use Linux (including me) as a desktop may want to use C#/Mono to develop. Well, the problem is, there's no good IDE. Monodevelop isn't really up to the same level as VS 2005 or NetBeans (or Eclipse, for that matter) and is currently at a 0.13x release. Who'd want to develop an enterprise-scale application using that?

So, here's Miguel, who failed at getting us enterprise users to adopt Evolution, and he wants us to go with Mono.NET. I particularly love Miguel's naivety in saying he'd want to, "even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration." Migrating from what? Windows? Microsoft doesn't want people to migrate away from Windows. That's the furthest thing on their minds.

In any case, I'll stick to migrating to Java. Now that it is going to be truly OSS, I'll trust them just a wee bit more than our good friends in Redmond.

Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[d3xt3r]

Seriously, now that Java will be GPL'd, why exactly do we need Mono?

.Net only exists because M$ failed to embrace and extend Java. Why does the OSS community need a knock-off of a language that only exists because M$ couldn't control Java?

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Because some VERY lazy developers just need the "ease" of C#.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[KingMotley]

First, .NET isn't a language. It's a platform. If you recall, Java was one of the original languages that was going to ship with .NET, but Sun threw a fit, filed a bunch of lawsuits, and Microsoft finally just took it out.

Because Java isn't good at everything (Actually, I find it's good at very little), the .NET platform supports all of the following languages:
Ada, APL, Basic, Boo, C, C#, C++, Cobol, Eiffel, Forth, Fortran, Haskell, IL/MSIL, J#/Java, JavaScript, LISP, LOGO, Mixal, Modula-2, Perl, Pascal, PHP, Prolog, Python, Ruby, RPG, Smalltalk, and Tcl/Tk.

Each of them is capable of both creating and consuming code written by any of the others. So I can write in VB.NET, and use a class that was written in C#. I can package it up, and the application just works.

A better question that you should have asked is why would we care about Java being GPL-ed when it's slower, less scalable, only supports a single language, controlled by a single vendor, and YEARS behind. When the Java language becomes forgotten (like all computer languages do) for the next best language, all your code is useless. But all my libraries are just a call away, no matter what language takes the place of what I currently use.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[gludington]

A better question that you should have asked is why would we care about Java being GPL-ed when it's slower, less scalable, only supports a single language, controlled by a single vendor, and YEARS behind.

I am not going to get into a pointless flamewar on speed or scalability, but Java has not been the only language on the JVM for quite some time. The first result on a Google Search for jvm languages lists over 200 languages. Granted, most of those listed are toy and/or unfinished projects, but there are solid options available for most of the main languages you list, and with JRuby, Rhino, and JSR-223, this is rapidly improving, at least for dynamic languages. I will grant you .NET is far ahead of the JVM in terms of mixing languages in a single application.

When the Java language becomes forgotten (like all computer languages do) for the next best language, all your code is useless. But all my libraries are just a call away, no matter what language takes the place of what I currently use.

Since the JVM can and support other languages, the question for both JVM and .NET is "When the JVM/.NET runtime becomes forgotten, what happens to my code?" This is one reason why people are excited about the GPL of Java. With an open source virtual machine, should (Sun|Microsoft) (go bankrupt|lose interest), other people can pick up the slack. In the Java world, open source JVM efforts (e.g. Kaffe) no longer have to spend the time with clean-room reimplementations, and can focus on improvements. You could say that Mono could do the same thing -- but that seems to be what Miguel is arguing now, that without explicit Microsoft cooperation Mono has to expend too much of its resources in playing catchup.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[jd]

I'm not as impressed with Java as I once was. It hasn't evolved cleanly, the object nature of it isn't as consistent or as pure as it perhaps should be, there are OO concepts that Java doesn't - and probably will never - support, and although OO is implicitly parallel, its support for parallelisms isn't impressive. (OO is implicit parallelism because the code and data for an object are tightly encapsulated. The whole point of OO is that there is no "program", only message passing between objects.)

Now, am I saying to use Mono or .Net? No. .Net is a framework that is designed around C# and the Microsoft concepts of networking. Sure, it can be used with almost any language under the sun, but who cares what it can be made to work with? It has one architecture and one underlying premise. That is all any design can ever have. You can build anything on any foundation you like, but what you build can never be structurally more sound than the foundation it is based on. Sure, there are interfaces for many languages. So? A tone-deaf polyglot can sing very badly in many languages. Versatility is important, sure, but would you use a Swiss Army Knife made entirely from cheese? Versatility alone isn't a useful attribute to have.

Frankly, I believe there are far too many extremely badly-designed programming languages and frameworks out there which should be put out of their misery. After judgement day has been visited upon such disasters, it may make sense for software engineers to develop a CLEAN, UNIFORM, COHERENT design that is logical, rational, usable and (after all that) still worth using. I say it may make sense because although such a language is needed, many languages are developed to serve the commercial purposes of the designers, NOT the engineering purposes of the programmer, OR the trust-related purposes of the user. There'd be no point in eliminating the swiss-cheese languages and environments we have, if all we're going to do is end up with concoctions that are likely to be far worse for everyone other than the IP holders and the "value-added" compiler writers.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[cheshire_cqx]

Because Java is lame to program in compared to C#.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[kripkenstein]

First, .NET isn't a language. It's a platform. [...] So I can write in VB.NET, and use a class that was written in C#. I can package it up, and the application just works.

True in general, but the issue of "one Runtime to rule them all" is debatable. There is sadly no such thing as a 'language-independent' runtime, it always depends on the specifics of the language (e.g. how memory is managed, etc.). This can lead to suboptimal performance. Now, I admit that, for example, IronPython (Python on .Net, say Mono) has similar performance to the standard CPython, which is interesting. But this may be only a matter of time - more advanced dynamic language runtimes are in the works, as is PyPy, which may improve things quite a lot.

The interoperability benefits may outweigh the performance hits, I grant you that, but in general the answer isn't cut-and-dry, it's an interesting question. Perhaps we should have both - native, optimized runtimes for each language (or type of language), as well as standard 'compatibility layers' that can connect them.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[Anonymous Coward]

"the .NET platform supports all of the following languages:
Ada, APL, Basic, Boo, C, C#, C++, Cobol, Eiffel, Forth, Fortran, Haskell, IL/MSIL, J#/Java, JavaScript, LISP, LOGO, Mixal, Modula-2, Perl, Pascal, PHP, Prolog, Python, Ruby, RPG, Smalltalk, and Tcl/Tk."

fuck you! No "enterprise-level" developer is allowed to use "weird" languages. Either they write in C# or VB#. This multi-language approach is moot and nevertheless, the Java platform also has plenty of compilers and interpreters for other languages.

Re:Forget dot net / mono, use Java

[squiggleslash]

Then port C# to Java.

If the .GNU and Mono people both have working GPL'd C# compilers, retargetting them to output Java bytecode would be an interesting project, but there's no reason I can see why it should be particularly hard. All you need to add after that are some stub libraries to make it easy to port .NET programs over to the Java platform without making serious changes.

Monoculture

[flyingfsck]

I though monoculture already exists in the computer industry...

In fact,

[WindBourne]

had mono came out about 3 years earlier (i.e. during the early days of .net), then MS would have cooperated until they felt that they had enough market share taken from java, and then they would have gone after mono. Based on MS's long history of screwing over all their partners, I would say that it was very predictable what this outcome was going to be. What I am amazed at, is that so many expect different of MS. This is the classic case of a dog helping a scorpion across the lake and then getting stung on the other side. The simple answer, that it is in the scorpions nature. Well, it has ALWAYS been in MS's nature.

Re:In fact,

[bean123456789]

not to take away from your point, but I believe it was a FROG, not a dog.

In other news...

[ivan256]

...Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was hospitalized today. Doctors say that he nearly died of laughter.

Dear Novell,

[pair-a-noyd]

Fuck you very much.
You are traitors and profiteering scumbags.
You sold your soul to the devil for 30 pieces of silver and you're trying to take everyone else down with you.

Go to hell and die. I was a loyal Suse user and financial supporter. No more.
I would rather sandpaper a bobcat's ass in a phonebooth than use a Micro-Novell product.

That will be all.

Depth Psychology

[slashflood]

So what is up with him needing acceptance from Microsoft?

Maybe it's because he always wanted to work for Microsoft? Gnome was just plan B.

Part of the problem

[einhverfr]

is that there are fundamental philosophical differences in programming strategies that a cross-platform tool will be unable to overcome. Windows tends to support object-oriented approaches, while *nix supports data-triven approaches. Some loosely typed languages like Perl and Python allow one to sort of freely meld these approaches (Perl moreso than Python), but this has some strong drawbacks in certain types of projects.

Even if .Net (or Java) were truly cross-platform (write once, test once, run everywhere), these things would not get huge traction in the *nix markets because the approach seems at odds with the OS.

I personally think that software should be written for one primary platform and if you can support others with a minimum of headache, go for it. Then those who work on other platforms should have some responsibility in contributing to the port.

Re:Part of the problem

[LWATCDR]

There is nothing about Unix that makes it any less object-oriented than Windows. Just take a look at just about anything written using KDE/QT.

Re:Part of the problem

[putaro]

Even if .Net (or Java) were truly cross-platform (write once, test once, run everywhere), these things would not get huge traction in the *nix markets because the approach seems at odds with the OS.

So, Java is supposedly the most popular programming language on the planet according to one thing I saw recently. It's certainly widely used and lots of systems are implemented in it. Windows is not the big Java platform since if you're in a MS only environment .NET is easier to use. If Java isn't being used on Unix where is it being used? Mac OS X?

Re:Part of the problem

[einhverfr]

I always thought that Java was big specifically on three environments: Mac OS (X and prior), SOlaris (admittedly *nix), and Windows.

Heck, Mono is a bigger development environment on Linux than Java is.

Re:Part of the problem

[einhverfr]

But pretty much everything you do on the system level is in either a structural or procedural approach in Windows, but everythng system-level is either text processing or structural programming.

Re:Part of the problem

[putaro]

Well, I think you need to get out a little more often.

Java is primarily used as the backend for internet applications these days. There's not that many Java user apps if that's what you're thinking of, but things like JBoss and Tomcat are widely deployed on Linux and other Unix platforms. Eclipse (a Java IDE) runs very well on Linux though the typical corporate development environment is probably more like development using JBuilder/Eclipse/NetBeans on Windows and deploying on either Unix, Linux or Windows backends.

Re:Part of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about?

It occured to me just reading this ...

[Qbertino]

Mono is factually sponsored by MS. The Novel/MS deal was all about Mono! The patent-deal thing was a feint (with a neat side effect, mind you)! No, hear me out. Just reading his talk and arriving at page 2 made me notice it. I honestly believe it is and it's not that Miquel is seriously bullshitting about his opinions. Allthough they are notably influenced by black MS accounts - which I am now certain of. Allthough maybe without him knowing for a fact.

Figure this:
If there is any way MS can prepare to hop the OSS bandwagon that is continously growing without losing their face it is the mono(t)rail (pun intended). In a well built mono they can without haste probe the OSS market for sophisticated free developer tools and their chances to get into OSS bases servicing and specialized proprietary offers without thinning the .Net brand or attracting attention. All the while having Mono on the leash. If the test fails, they pull the plug, go completely off trail with .Net and leave behind yet another OSS plattform along with the XUL, Ajax, Java, QT, etc. bunch to bash their heads competing for attention. If it does work out they can slowly shift to OS independant services and tools. They can even combine both with varying intensity in which ever way they require it.

Think about it. It's a very smart move and not that a stupid notion at all. They can continue to slowpoke about with their bloated NT/2k/Vista Kernels and go 'plattform independant' whenever the need arises, squishing whatever Zends, SuSEs, Novels and RedHats get in the way. And with a 'Mono excuse' they won't even raise a blip on the antitrust radar doing so.
If this works out we'll see yet another rare of strange things: MS actually trying to build quality software again. For a short period of time that is. Until they regain their stranglehold. Then it's business as usual again.

No, friends, it's absolutely clear to me: Novel bought Ximian, SuSE and then some. Then they went f*cking around aimlessly with those brands for two years. They are MSes easiest, least dangerous, most hidden, most powerfull and - oh, the irony - cheapest way into a potential MS dominated OSS market. This is what's behind all this.

My 2 dollars.

Re:It occured to me just reading this ...

[twmcneil]

I agree with you 100%. Many others have opined that Mono had a lot to do with the MS/Novell deal. I think De Icaza had a lot to do with it the deal as well. What with many of their higher-ups retiring / whatever, MS needs some new blood. De Icaza would fit in pretty well as soon as he learns how to throw chairs properly.

You know...

[encoderer]

You know, this guy got mod'ed troll, but at worst I think he was off-topic.

In all reality, that is a quintessential Microsoft move.

Purchase into a market, then leverage their OS monopoly to drive adoption of SUSE, or whatever they may call it then. It's already begun, but imagine a version of Linux that also supports the ACTUAL Win32 API, or true cross-compatibility between Windows and this one linux distro.

Sure, the Microsoft-Haters in the linux community would throw fits over it and boycott it entirely, but the businesses that use Linux for web servers and db servers and such don't care about that. To them it would mean the best of both worlds. And in all honesty, they'd be correct.

Of course, it would probably be bad for the Linux community, I'm not denying that. But this is a very standard modus operandi for Redmond. It's certainly more than just a troll.

Where were you when I had mod points?

[symbolset]

Oh, the lameness of it. All I can post is 'ditto'.

New tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to start using the "sucker" tag. In addition to the usual "haha" of course.

Hey, that's a great idea!

[seebs]

This reminds me of an Onion headline from Our Dumb Century, to the effect of "Japanese enter well-thought-out alliance with white supremacists."

Microsoft has always been utterly ruthless in suppressing any attempt at compatibility with their software. They make money because they control the API; a competing implementation that's allowed to become comparable is a threat, and they are pretty active about trying to make sure that such things don't stay viable.

Did it really take this guy this long to realize that Microsoft would take every step possible to ensure that his work was never going to be a migration path off Windows, and that most of these steps would involve willful incompatibilities? Was he really expecting that, somehow, just because some open source guys started using some of their stuff, Microsoft would turn around and stop being ruthless monopolists?

I've never been able to make any sense of the whole Mono thing. I mean, it always looked like an attempt to lube up and bend over a barrel just in case Microsoft was feeling playful. With this announcement, it looks like it's not even that coherent.

Crap

[recharged95]

I like SuSE a lot, and Novell does have the clout to push back against MS (though it is making deals with them), but Mono is just killing the interop effort.

Shout to Novell: Just drop mono and switch to Java...Pleeaseeeze! (pleading like De Icarza).

And yes, I've tried switching my winforms apps to mono and it never worked out. Why? cause the cool features in .Net apps are either referenced unmanaged code or some DLL import hack. .Net only offers great cross coding between MS languages and webservices (I prefer XML-RPC anyway) from my experience and that's it.

Then again, my apps broke switching from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0. sheesh.

Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[Augusto]

(literally: Miguel, step down from that cloud - Miguel, get real)

I just don't understand your project.

Most .NET developers are not aware of your project, and most would not want to bother with it. People that use Visual Studio care about using the latest tools and APIs from Microsoft, and when they know you don't even have .NET v2 they don't want to bother.

"On the migration piece, the open sourcing of Java will not have an effect on Mono. Because the crowd that we are targeting is the .NET crowd which is typically not using Java. The open sourcing of Java will not alter the balance of applications that will be ported from other platforms to Linux. If they existed, people were already using the proprietary Java from IBM or Sun or even one of the GNU based efforts."

I'm so glad Java is now being open sourced, you won't have this as an excuse anymore. Why would anybody want to develop in your environment, which has serious patent concerns? It lags behind and has no serious number of tools for anybody to use?

Your statement about MS recommending Mono is bizarre. Why would Microsoft recommend Mono? The only reason for them to even mention your project, is in the chance a customer maybe asks about running in other platforms. I could definitely see MS just mentioning Mono to get a customer, but they surely will have no incentive for anybody to use your technology.

Finally, why is this project called mono? It reminds me of the phrase:
"El hombre crea y el mono imita", which seems apt for your project (Man creates and monkeys imitate)

Re:Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[wasabii]

What serious patent concern? Please point one out. Please also point out why it doesn't equally apply to Java.

Re:Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[Shados]

The concerns are from the fact that only PART of .NET is open, for example the C# language specification. Anything that can actually be patented in VB (aka: not much, languages themselves not being patentable and all) is, ASP.NET contains a ton of patented stuff, etc. .NET's assemblies are also very easy to disasemble, but there is still copyright on the code (the same copyright laws that make the GPL possible, btw!): how much do you want to bet that a ton of Mono is just copy paste from .NET assemblies opened up in Reflector? (Though to be fair, thats not patents, its copyright).

Then again, maybe its clean. But unless I get the time and chance to verify that on my own... (and again to be fair, I doubt Microsoft will do anything, unless they really push it. If they end up with a full ASP.NET 2.0 and WinFX stack running on Linux, you can bet Microsoft is going to say something... until then though I doubt it: but until then, Mono ain't very useful)

Re:Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[Augusto]

Did you miss the deal MS made with Novell to agree not to sue them due to patent concerns?

How about the fact that MS has intellectual property in .net and their libraries that they don't welcome or officially endorse?

Java is getting GPLed, hopefully you would understand the difference ...

Re:Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[ClosedSource]

"Did you miss the deal MS made with Novell to agree not to sue them due to patent concerns?"

I did miss that, but I did hear about a deal MS made with Novell to agree not to sue each others customers over patents.

Re:Miguel, bajate de esa nube.

[kaffiene]

What serious patent concern? Please point one out. Please also point out why it doesn't equally apply to Java. Because Microsoft created .NET and not Java, you tool. And because removing patent-encumbered code was a major part of the preparation for GPL'ing Java you ill-informed FUD spewing troll.

Miguel, Miguel Miguel

[Anonymous Coward]

how much more of your life are you going to waste waiting for MS to kill your baby?

plead, beg, grovel, it's all gonna result in the same laughter in Redmond.

so sad

This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Nicolay77]

I thing all the projects started by Icaza have been secretly backed by Microsoft (except midnight commander). This includes Gnome.

MS monopoly is all about protecting the API. As Ballmer said: developers, developers, developers! They had one API everybody used, win32, and it was their crown jewel. As long as everybody keep developing for win32, MS would win.

Then came Linux. If Linux distros could provide a competing API to Win32, MS would be screwed. MS solution? fragment the Linux API. You see, one of the main values of a successful API is that it's universal. So how to destroy Linux? Destroy the universality of the API. Make not one, but TWO competing APIs! Then developers would have endless religious wars and Linux would not grow as a competing commercial platform against Win32. How to do it? Make Gnome and start a religious war against the then 'closed license' QT libraries. Forward ten years and what's the result? Nobody uses either KDE or Gnome to develop commercial software, the 'developers, developers, developers' are still somewhere else. Oracle uses Java as the API when running in Linux. And who started Gnome? Icaza.

Meanwhile Java becomes stronger against C++. Developers switch to Java.

Now what happens, MS decides to create a new API from zero, sacrificing their beloved Win32. The new API is then called .NET. They have to do this, because they could not destroy Java. Now MS has to protect .NET, make it the universal API that every developer would use. Linux (as always) is a threat to MS. So what's MS strategy this time? The same they used against Java, just a little backwards.

Against Java they used the embrace and extend, promoting J++, that used MS proprietary extensions to the Java language to achieve developer lock in. To protect .NET from Linux, they would do a backwards embrace an extend: give Linux a limited .NET implementation, so that developers would still be locked to .NET proprietary extensions in the Windows platform. This limited .NET implementation is MONO. And who started MONO? Icaza.

Right now it is Java vs .NET, everywhere where developers make $$$.

Icaza is also a strong backer of the Novel-MS deal.

All I can see Icaza doing lately is telling everybody: "why can't we be friends?", but I seriously suspect the motives behind it.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[joto]

Ok, I've finished analyzing your thoughts. It goes like this:

• I'm a linux fanboy, I know linux is best
• I don't like Microsoft
• Linux isn't succeeding on the desktop
• One possible reason for failed linux desktop dominance is lack of API standardization
• Icaza is a prominent linux developer
• Icaza isn't completely negative towards everything from Microsoft

Therefore: There must be a conspiracy by Microsoft to lure linux developers into creating competing APIs. Icaza must be paid by Microsoft to do this

Personally, I think the current situation is better explained without resorting to conspiracy theories. But then again, the moon landing might have been fake...

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Nicolay77]

Almost totally wrong men.
I prefer Windows to Linux as a desktop, and sometimes as a server, as I do mostly SQLServer DBA stuff.
No fanboyism here.
But I think APIs are important.
In fact, the lack of an unified Linux API and the boring religious wars have driven me out of Linux development. OSX is the one that interests me now.
However, I don't believe in coincidences. Everything I said could perfectly be true. You don't believe me, fine. Time will tell. I stand by my position. Refute my points if you want to and if you have the info, but attacking me? That's so catholic church-like.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[joto]

Everything I said could perfectly be true.

Sure. That can be said of any conspiracy theory. But we don't need a conspiracy theory for it. Linux haven't got standardized APIs for GUI programming because there are more than one group/person/whatever working on it.

Refute my points if you want to and if you have the info, but attacking me? That's so catholic church-like.

Yeah, I'm probably paid by Icaza to make fun of you. And the catholic church is probably into it too, all paid by Microsoft.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you don't remember Icaza applying for a developer position at Microsoft and getting turned down. That would be a part of the conspiracy theory, wouldn't it. Sadly, it's the true part. And the most important.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Anonymous Coward]

No it cannot (be said about conspiracy theories).

I myself do not know whether Icaza is paid by Microsoft or just a complete fool. I do not care, end result is identical: I avoid Mono as far as I can.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[WWWWolf]

This is a nice conspiracy theory, but there's one giant big thing that makes it all fall crumbling down:

GTK+ and Qt are just GUI toolkits. The *nix APIs that are used to develop the actual application logic are the same in both cases - and the GNOME and KDE folks have also shared quite a few of the standards they've developed and will work on unifying stuff more through freedesktop.org. If you want to port an application from GTK+ to Qt or Qt to GTK+, you can do so.

Meanwhile in Win32 land, there have also always been multiple "GUI toolkits". Nobody programmed on bare Win32 - everyone used something on top of that, and not always MFC. Even Microsoft used multiple different GUI abstractions depending on how things worked for them, and backed up whatever that helped them sell Visual Studio.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[IamTheRealMike]

That's ridiculous. If GTK vs Qt were the only fragmented APIs in the Linux space you might have a point, but that's far from true.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Anonymous Coward]

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity :)

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Anonymous Coward]

[snip - serious crazy ranting]

Although it's serious crazy ranting the end effect is the same. Qt/GTK have kept the linux desktop split and Mono is a horribly misguided project. Of COURSE MS is going to screw the mono developers one way or another (both subtle and overt). They would never let it become feature comparable to the .NET stuff... Read TFA... Icaza even sounds like a MS marketing drone. I'm not saying he is one. But might as well be.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Nicolay77]

True, there's Openmotif, bare X and some more stuff.

But GTK and QT are the only ones that really matter.

Re:This time is a backwards embrace & extend

[Nicolay77]

It doesn't matter that nobody programmed on bare Win32. The end user only needed win32 to run the programs, and all looked the same, and all had the same clipboard since the beginning and so on. An extra DLL in the application directory didn't really made any difference. The different GUI toolkits existed as a help to the programmer, they didn't look different and the end user didn't need to know about them.

In Linux when the programmer chooses a GUI API it sort of limits itself to half the linux users. That's much less true now than when Gnome started, and I truly like the freedesktop.org thing, but it's still true to a degree (i.e. it depends on each user).

Bear in mind, that all this time I have talked about the hordes of developers that once wrote Foxpro apps, then Visual basic and now Java and .NET stuff. They're the ones that are NOT developing Linux desktop stuff as a result of Gnome.

Also, if GUI toolkits are not that important, but the logic is, then everybody should do only console programs (and Web stuff), that's what you're telling me? Try to sell that to end users.

Finally: I should NOT HAVE TO port an application between GTK+ and QT. There should not be dependency hell in any OS. An unified standard API with GUI components would help a lot about that.

De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a lot of people in the OSS community think of De Icaza as some sort of god. But when we look at his actual contributions, I think they've set the OSS community back by years.

Take GNOME, for instance. When GNOME was first established, KDE was already the premiere OSS desktop environment. There were some minor licensing issues, but with Trolltech's cooperation those were quite easily worked out. Regardless, a lot of effort was put into GNOME to duplicate what KDE already offered. Even today, we still see that GNOME has not yet caught up to KDE. And with the upcoming release of KDE 4, it's unlikely that GNOME will ever be able to catch up to KDE, let alone overtake it. Nearly a decade of effort has been wasted on GNOME, with so very little to show.

And then we have Mono, the subject of this Slashdot topic. Again, so much valuable time and effort has been wasted on creating a product that really is of no benefit to the OSS community. In fact, it blatantly stands against what OSS is all about. And beyond that, we already have a common runtime: the POSIX interface shared by Linux, *BSD, and even commercial UNIX systems. And even on top of that we already have many language options: C, C++, Python, Perl, Tcl and Ruby, just to name a few.

Like GNOME before it, Mono is essentially a waste. Just imagine how much further along projects like KDE, Python, Perl, and Ruby would be if effort and expertise hadn't been wastefully siphoned off to GNOME and Mono. It's quite conceivable that Linux could have been a major rival to Windows on the desktop.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Tack]

There were some minor licensing issues, but with Trolltech's cooperation those were quite easily worked out.

The "licensing issues" you refer to were not minor; they were simply not compatible with the ethos of a fully free desktop. To the best of my recollection, at the time of GNOME's inception there was no end in sight to Trolltech's proprietary hold on Qt. Qt was GPLed at least three years after GNOME was began. Dealing with Qt's "minor licensing issues" was not as trivial and straightforward as you make it sound.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

You remember quite wrong.

KDE was started in 1996. GNOME was started in August of 1997. Qt was licensed under the QPL in November of 1998, along with the plans to release Qt under a variant of the BSD license were Trolltech to go under or otherwise abandon Qt. Regardless, Trolltech released the UNIX version of Qt under the GPL in September of 2000.

For most pragmatic developers and users, the deal of November 1998 was more than sufficient. Thus GNOME was essentially rendered useless to everyone but a small handful of zealots. But even most of them were satisfied by the eventual GPL'ing in 2000. Keep in mind that that was over six years ago. Since that time there has been absolutely no reason for GNOME to exist.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[joto]

Take GNOME, for instance. When GNOME was first established, KDE was already the premiere OSS desktop environment. There were some minor licensing issues,

Uhm, at that time, there was no good OSS desktop environment. Sure, KDE existed. So did a bunch of others (e.g. Gnustep, CDE, various fvwm-based shit, etc...). They all sucked. KDE may have sucked a little bit less than some others, but it was far from obvious that it was what everybody should bet on (if it was, everybody would have done just that). And the licensing issues seemed pretty unsolvable at the time. It is doubtful whether Trolltech would have caved in, if it wasn't for the rise in interest in GNOME.

Even today, we still see that GNOME has not yet caught up to KDE.

GNOME has never been about "catching up" to KDE. When GNOME was started, KDE was ignored out of political and philosophical grounds. Since then, both GNOME and KDE has gone out of their way to emulate Microsoft Windows. Sure, some ideas might have been brought from KDE to GNOME, or in the other direction, but for the most part, ideas have been stolen from more successful commercial products, not from some hobbyist open source desktop project.

And then we have Mono, the subject of this Slashdot topic. Again, so much valuable time and effort has been wasted on creating a product that really is of no benefit to the OSS community.

In my opinion, Mono has a lot to offer the OSS community. Does that make one of us wrong? Yes. Is it me? No. Just because you don't find any use for it, doesn't mean that it's useless. Personally, I find C++ to be pretty useless, but I don't go around blaming the gcc developers for spending their time writing a compiler for it. And if it wasn't for gcc supporting C++, there would be no KDE either.

Just imagine how much further along projects like KDE, Python, Perl, and Ruby would be if effort and expertise hadn't been wastefully siphoned off to GNOME and Mono.

I have lots of trouble imagining that just because people stopped developing Mono, there would magically appear lots of worthwhile contributions to KDE, Python, Perl and Ruby instead. People work on what they want, not what you want.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take GNOME, for instance. When GNOME was first established, KDE was already the premiere OSS desktop environment. There were some minor licensing issues, but with Trolltech's cooperation those were quite easily worked out. Regardless, a lot of effort was put into GNOME to duplicate what KDE already offered. Even today, we still see that GNOME has not yet caught up to KDE. And with the upcoming release of KDE 4, it's unlikely that GNOME will ever be able to catch up to KDE, let alone overtake it. Nearly a decade of effort has been wasted on GNOME, with so very little to show. Exactly, if there's one thing that slows development it's competition.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I am of the exact same opinion of KDE.

Of course, I recognize that it's not a waste -- apparently some people actually _like_ KDE better than GNOME (crazy, I know). Choice is good.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Tack]

You remember quite wrong.

Seems to me that I remembered quite right, in fact. GNOME was started in 1997; Qt was GPLed in 2000. That's 3 years. Your bias (in presuming my wrongness) is your interpretation of "proprietary hold." From the perspective of a FOSS desktop, if vendors (say Red Hat) can't distribute a derivative of Qt, then that qualifies as "proprietary hold." The ability to distribute derivatives is hardly useful only a "small handful of zealots." The QPL was just not viable for a free desktop, and, from a licensing perspective, there was still a place for GNOME even in 1998.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[splict]

I really don't have much of an opinion either way on De Icaza. I do, however, find many glaring issues with your post. Gnome was started because QT's licensing issues were not as free as those who made Gnome wanted. Yes, they did change and they do have a free, high quality product. I still do not see how that means Gnome is a bad thing. Many people (yes, myself included), like Gnome - even prefer it. Choice is such a benefit of FOSS that I am very surprised that you, Mr. AC, would consider it a negative. I am even more surprised that you have been modded insightful.

It is a very weak argument to imagine that KDE would be twice as good, or even close to that, if people weren't (supposedly) wasting their effort on Gnome. It's also very subjective to say that KDE is so far ahead, that Gnome and its developers have little to show, or that Gnome can't "catch up, let alone overtake it." In fact, those statements scream troll, or at the very least someone who doesn't understand why some people do what they do. It is fun to be competitive but if you think that working on a separate but similar project is counter-productive you should realize how counter-productive it is to be so negative and competitive with people who have many of the same ideals which you claim to have. If you think Gnome is the reason that Linux is not a "major rival to Windows on the desktop" then you are in a fantasy world.

In fact, what does Gnome even have to do with this? Did I just feed a troll?

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Coryoth]

From the perspective of a FOSS desktop, if vendors (say Red Hat) can't distribute a derivative of Qt, then that qualifies as "proprietary hold." The ability to distribute derivatives is hardly useful only a "small handful of zealots." The QPL was just not viable for a free desktop, and, from a licensing perspective, there was still a place for GNOME even in 1998. Indeed, from a licensing perspective, there is a place for GNOME right now, since GTK+ is LGPL: there is a reason that things like Mozilla, OpenOffice, SWT, etc. use GTK+ rather than QT. Yes, the whole GPL v LGPL issue for the GUI toolkit is, for many many people, a minor point that makes no difference. There are people for whom the difference matters, however, and as long as the difference in licensing exists there will continue to be a licensing niche that GNOME successgully occupies.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[ozmanjusri]

Since that time there has been absolutely no reason for GNOME to exist.

Variety is good. Choice is good.

Monopoly is bad. Monotony is bad.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, Mono has a lot to offer the OSS community.

It only offers legal risk and legal uncertainty. Those are such things that the OSS community does not need to deal with.

Just because you don't find any use for it, doesn't mean that it's useless.

It's not useless because I don't have any use for it. It's useless because open source developers had already developed equivalent, and often better, functionality years before. Anything you can do with Mono today you could have done with Python years ago. And it would have performed better when using Python. And it would have been far more portable when using Python. And it wouldn't have the legal questions that currently surround Mono.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Choice is such a benefit of FOSS that I am very surprised that you, Mr. AC, would consider it a negative.

Choice between two or more competing products of a high-quality is a very good thing. But that's not what we have with KDE and Gnome. On one hand we have KDE, a respectable, functioning, well-developed software system. On the other hand we have Gnome, which most users tend to find is hackish and poorly integrated scrap heap. Gnome is best described as a leech on the open source community, drawing valuable resources away from a successful and useful project like KDE.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[richlv]

openoffice.org is capable of using 3 widget sets - it's own vcl, gtk and qt

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[shutdown -p now]

C, C++, Python, Perl, Tcl and Ruby

Neither of those are comparable to C# and .NET. C/C++ is too low-level and clumsy to write GUI programs in, the rest are too high-level and slow for quite a few tasks. Mono (with MonoDevelop) strikes the very much needed middle ground.

Now, when we'll have fully open sourced JDK, that's another story.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[FooBarWidget]

"Since that time there has been absolutely no reason for GNOME to exist."
Bullshit. GNOME has a very good reason to exist - emphasis on simplicity over configurability. Every time I look at KDE, the interfaces are full of controls and the configuration dialogs have tons of options. I much prefer GNOME's simple interfaces, even if they're less configurable. Granted, there are people who like KDE's configurability, but there are also plenty of people who don't like it. Thus GNOME's existence is justified.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[miro f]

I like gnome better because I don't HAVE to configure it. I can't help but think kde looks utt ugly out of the box.

of course, that's my personal opinion. I also can't stand the incredible masses of toolbars, tabs, etc that the average kde app has. I think both desktops have issues in opposite directions, but gnome requires less effort to get it likeable so it's justified for me.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[slashdot_commentator]

I know a lot of people in the OSS community think of De Icaza as some sort of god. But when we look at his actual contributions, I think they've set the OSS community back by years.

The reason why Icaza gets his respect, while you are looked upon as a cowardly twat, is that Icaza has actually produced a body of OSS work (Gnumeric, Evolution, Gnome, & Mono). You, on the other hand, are a cowardly dillhole, who by your criticism, pretty much demonstrates my point.

Take GNOME, for instance. When GNOME was first established, KDE was already the premiere OSS desktop environment. There were some minor licensing issues, but with Trolltech's cooperation those were quite easily worked out.

Actually, back in my day, Enlightenment was the premiere desktop. At that time, CDE obviously had more eyeballs too. KDE could not have been considered a premiere OSS desktop at that time, because its core code library, Qt, was proprietary. Oh yeah, sure, you could get the source code, but that didn't make it OSS. Just because TrollTech was not Microsoft, did not mean proprietary licenses were okay for building a OSS platform; its more like building a castle on a sandbar. Those "minor" issues was the impetus to produce Gnome.

Regardless, a lot of effort was put into GNOME to duplicate what KDE already offered. Even today, we still see that GNOME has not yet caught up to KDE.

And Gnome has no desire to be a whiz-bang Rube Goldberg collection that is KDE. It will never try to match KDE feature for feature, because in the Gnome's eyes, that would be failure and a waste of time. They are focused on building a USER-FRIENDLY desktop. Its meant to take care of everything so civilians, not geeks, find it easy to use.

And with the upcoming release of KDE 4, it's unlikely that GNOME will ever be able to catch up to KDE, let alone overtake it.

Gnome is standard on every "commercial" distribution of Linux, from Redhat, to SuSE, to Solaris. Gnome "owns" the desktop, and even owns Ubuntu. KDE is only more popular among KDE fans.

And then we have Mono, the subject of this Slashdot topic. Again, so much valuable time and effort has been wasted on creating a product that really is of no benefit to the OSS community.

You can't see the benefit because you've never written a piece of code outside of a programming class. Icaza saw a threat that Microsoft's .Net platform posed, that the rest of the community were too prejudiced to perceive. The only alternative cross-platform language is java, and you are too stupid to have wrestled with coding in it to see the limitations of java, or how its PROPRIETARY license and management by Sun left it vulnerable to a Microsoft push into cross-platform development. If Microsoft had suceeded in making C#/.Net the industry standard, we would all be going to work on Win2003K and Vista platforms. That would be because all the application development would be quickly completed in .Net, rather than java, necessitating adoption of the Microsoft OS.

I am NOT going to defend whether MS could have actually succeeded in their goal, or if Mono helps the evil empire more, or if Mono will be a sucessful effort. BUT it should be OBVIOUS to a PROGRAMMER that Icaza was not an OSS traitor for perceiving a threat to the community that Microsoft posed with their .Net effort.

In fact, it blatantly stands against what OSS is all about.

As does Samba. You're going to punk them too, jackass?

And beyond that, we already have a common runtime: the POSIX interface shared by Linux, *BSD, and even commercial UNIX systems. And even on top of that we already have many language options: C, C++, Python, Perl, Tcl and Ruby, just to name a few.

Again,

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

And we have GNOME to thank for the fact that it finally did get resolved.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[mstahl]

If there were a (+1, smackdown!) moderation, I'd apply it here. Right on.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. The simplicity is nice. Right up until the point the Gnome people decide that whatever feature you happen to need/like is too complex for the target audience - a newbie that hasn't ever seen a computer before - and remove access to it in the next version of the program. Then due to the lack of usable configurability, you get to go right back to Windows-style "set this magic registry value to 1234 to make the frobnicator work", assuming it was even left in as an hidden option.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like GNOME before it, Mono is essentially a waste. Just imagine how much further along projects like KDE, Python, Perl, and Ruby would be if effort and expertise hadn't been wastefully siphoned off to GNOME and Mono. It's quite conceivable that Linux could have been a major rival to Windows on the desktop."

The above statement is a common misconception. Not all Gnome developers would jump ship to KDE if Gnome suddenly disappeared. It's kind of like the RIAA claiming every pirated copy equals one lost sale. It's simply not true. You could just as easily say 'Imagine how much further along Ruby would be without all that expertise being wastefully siphoned away to Python, Perl, C++, C#, etc'. Why have all the programming languages when having one would be most efficient?

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with you. I know lots of people who use GNOME even today.

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[ccp]

I know a lot of people in the OSS community think of De Icaza as some sort of god.

And they would be him an his dog.

The rest is divided between:

"He's a mole"

"He's really, really naïve"

"Both"

Cheers,
CC

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[Haeleth]

I large agree with what you say, but I have to correct you on one point:

Gnome is standard on every "commercial" distribution of Linux, from Redhat, to SuSE, to Solaris.

Sadly this is not the case: KDE is also standard on many "commercial" distributions of Linux, such as Linspire, Xandros, and Mandriva.

(By the way, Solaris is not Linux. It does default to Gnome these days, though. A shame in some ways... ugly as Motif is, I still have a soft spot for good old CDE.)

Re:De Icaza is a disgrace to OSS.

[be-fan]

The QPL was not GPL compatible, and it was being linked against (L)GPL'ed code. It was a blatant license conflict, and it took three years to resolve.

And of course, with GNOME 2.0, your point is moot anyway. GNOME now distinguishes itself from KDE by having a GUI that isn't a complete and utter clusterfuck.

.NET 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

And how will Mono support .NET 3.0? Many of the new features such as Windows Presentation Foundation simply aren't available on a Linux system. Has someone already wrote a XAML parser as well?

Re:.NET 3.0

[miguel]

Yes, a XAML parser was written two years ago, as part of Google's Summer of code.

It is on SVN, in the module "olive", the command line compiler is "xamlc", its supporting libraries all under olive/class.

Now, if you wanted to make a big deal out of where Mono stands with .NET 3.0 you could have picked the actual class libraries, xaml is really easy.

Miguel.

Re:.NET 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually picked Windows Presentation Foundation which you totally ignored. Even if support for WPF exists it will no doubt be subpar to the Windows implementation.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps De Icaza sees or is inspired by something that others here dont recognise. that c# and the .Net framework are a genuinely beautiful techonology. its like late bound python or ruby yet is typesafe, has wonderful meta programming possibilities - dynamic properties overiding IPropertyDescriptor, and a wonderful event model using delegates - cleaner and more contained than than Qt's signals and slots mechanism for instance. also easy integration to c/c++ using MC++, now CLI in ms world or even better automatically via swig wrappers. easily configurable automatic COM IUnknown interface exposure.

i say this as someone who at a personal level actively resists windows (10 year linuxs on personal desktop yada yada yada) and recognises ms business practices for its genuine sin and damage caused to economic welfare.

much kudos to De Icaza for seeing the value in this technology before others. linux/unix is so missing in a good object model (corba, gobjects, java beans etc) and a good abstraction layer between high and low level object design - i just hope that this might become a standard that ms could permit to be embraced by the linux community.

searchanoncoward

Microsoft collaboration with Mono project: Suicide

[Eric Damron]

"I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration..."

Right and elevate all doubt that mono violates Microsoft's patents.

This is EXACTLY why we should let the mono project die. Don't support it, don't use it. Find other ways to deliver active web pages. PHP, JAVA, etc...

Microsoft has shown in both word and deed that they are not interested in coexistence with open source. We should all work together to make Microsoft irrelevant. It won't be quick and it won't be easy but it really needs to be done.

Seriously...

[ThatSandersKid]

The chances that Microsoft is going to play nice with De Icaza is about as likely as Bill Gates walking down to CowboyNeal's house and hitting him upside the head with a block of cheddar cheese. Microsoft hasn't tried being nice, or social, for that matter, since Microsoft BOB.

And just look at what a disaster that was.

Where this is all going...

[espressojim]

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."

-Natural Born Killers

GTK sucks.

[FishWithAHammer]

Raw GTK, that is.

I use Windows.Forms when doing stuff in both .NET and Mono for the simple reason that under Linux it'll use GTK# or whatever and under Windows it'll use the GDI. It does what it needs to do, where it needs to do it.

Samba

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same reasoning they should be mad for Samba - well, OK, it's different if Suse/Novell own Mono. But still, if the project is going to stay open-source then anyone would be able to run it on their own distro/platform.

Under your bridge troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is a platform too and supports multiple languages - so pretty much the rest of your post is shite. Thanks.

Just a few points...

[serge587]

When MS says "cross-platform" they mean mobile devices (running a Windows-esque OS of course). Look at the system requirements for the compact .NET 2.0 runtime and it should be obvious enough: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=9655156b-356b-4a2c-857c-e62f50ae9a55&displa ylang=en

Microsoft actually released the 1.0 CLI sourcecode with support for BSD and OSX, and the license is not that bad, except for a small paragraph which prohibits any commercial use (breathe easy, the catch has been revealed). http://msdn.microsoft.com/MSDN-FILES/027/002/097/S hSourceCLILicense.htm

The people at MSDN aren't that bad, the marketers seem to dislike the smell of source code =). I've used both C# and Java extensively and there are numerous areas where C# shines above Java like types, generics and operators (overloading) for instance. There is a much higher level of consistency in .NET than in JRE in terms of interfaces and namespace/class hierarchy. Then again the .NET team had a change to design the framework from the ground up with all the features included, rather than Java starting out as a small platform and getting worked into what it is today. Java effectively has a monopoly as a realistic cross-platform solution, so it would be nice to create a viable alternative then you can actually weigh the pros and cons of both platforms on a level playing field, maybe even learn a thing or two from it.

Mono Is Dead Meme

[broward]

I told you Mono was over a year ago!

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry =mono_meme_update_mono_still

Yup.
He's still dead, Jim.

Re:Mono Is Dead Meme

[DrSkwid]

Jan 2006, wow

I was disparaging in 2003 http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=811 69&cid=7138993

Mono Is Dead Meme

[broward]

I told y'all that Mono was dead over a year ago.

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry =mono_meme_update_mono_still

Yup.
"He's still dead, Jim."

Mono won't have more patent problems than others

[ClosedSource]

Any MS patents Mono might violate aren't going to be described as if they are restricted to .Net, they would be described as broadly as possible. So unless Mono implements some functionality that no other library or framework possesses, Mono is not uniquely vulnerable to patent problems from MS.

Siphoned off?

[ClosedSource]

"Just imagine how much further along projects like KDE, Python, Perl, and Ruby would be if effort and expertise hadn't been wastefully siphoned off to GNOME and Mono."

This might be a reasonable argument to make if OSS was a corporation and one made up entirely of paid employees, but since it is not, no "siphoning" took place. People freely chose what they wanted to contribute their time and code to. They weren't the default property of any project. It was their time to "waste" whether they contributed that time to GNOME or KDE.

Mod parent -1 proofread

[SanityInAnarchy]

When you try to point that out people say not it isn't you can use Mono.

First lesson: This is a comma, learn to use it. In fact, punctuation is your friend!

Also: not? I don't think the phrase "not is isn't" makes any sense, in any context.

So, the above sentence should read: "When you try to point that out, people say "No it isn't, you can use Mono."

And it's still ugly as sin. Do you actually read what you type? Alright, going to ignore punctuation for the rest of the paragraph...

A convent lie that lets .NET compete with Java

What's a convent lie? Is that a lie told in a convent?

I think the word you're looking for is convenient.

Now, on to what I actually disagree with...

You know Mono really has fallen behind .NET. You can port your applications if you want but it would just be cheaper to stick with Windows.

Or you could switch to Rotor. Microsoft does actually provide the .NET source under some Shared-Source crap, and if you've got tens of thousands of lines of code, chances are you can afford some MS-owned port to somewhere else.

Also, .NET does have strengths Java doesn't, and vice versa.

Consider: Java has a fairly long-standing and stable bunch of libraries, including cross-platform stuff, but not limited to it. There's tons of open-source frameworks, but also plenty of official and commercial frameworks. The server frameworks are apparently very good.

However, Java is not well supported in a few places -- including out-of-the-box Windows. You have to install Sun's JVM if you really want your app to work. Vista comes with .NET, if I remember right, and older versions of Windows can get it via Windows Update. It integrates better, too -- they look and feel like native Windows apps, and are .exe files, so the user doesn't even have to know they're .NET.

Then again, .NET does not work very well on the server. Trying to get .NET working under Linux/Apache is probably worse than trying to make Ruby/Rails to work under Windows -- and you'd still need a SQL server, most likely.

I've always felt that Mono is a great project, but that it's going to be held back by Microsoft's dominance over the language. I like that there's a standard, but after "OpenXML", I don't trust Microsoft's standards.

mono is pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

As a .NET developer, I've always seen mono as pretty pointless.

Anyone choosing .NET as a platform is generally going to be a Microsoft shop anyway, with no reason to move elsewhere. Moving to mono would likely mean a rewrite, because there is going to be a heap of compatibility issues moving from .NET to mono.

I think Icaza would be better off doing something sensible with his spare time, like setting GTK on fire or at least getting it move to an old folks home where it belongs.

Re:Why?

[icepick72]

That he now is just a corporate shill investing all his time and energy in a misguided language project [...] he has ceased to be a big player.

Whoa, below the belt! I don't know about you, but if De Icaza can reimplement a complete framework built by Microsoft teams (cutting edge stuff), he has a lot of programming prowess and deserves respect in my books no matter if I agree with the Mono project or not. Because you don't agree with his decision, you have decided to disparage everything about him in your post: all the good he has done, and even his talent. Something tells me you're soar about something, although nobody knows what that is. But I can surely say you don't stand a chance when put up against someone who is as accomplished as De Icaza whether you agree with him or not. Whoever you are I doubt you would even be a lot of fun at a party. *Cold chill* *shudder*

consider

[icepick72]

Mono is taking a lot of good concepts away from .NET (which M$ stole from others). From reading the posts here I see many people have a weird knee-jerk reaction when the name Microsoft is mentioned and then they immediately and totally lose perspective and jump to conclusions.

Many people should do some reading about Mono and how it also embraces open source solutions, incorporating a lot of the good features from a variety of open source projects.

As a developer, don't necessarily talk yourself out of an interesting development platform.

I'm all for the complete separation of Mono from Microsoft .NET. Sandbox it for open source needs and usage. It has a lot of potential. And don't forget, you wouldn't be using "Microsoft" technologies because Microsoft stole most of the ideas from other languages and platforms i.e. Java, C++. Embrace and extend.

All he will get from Microsoft

[MemoryDragon]

is probably the middle finger...

Bizarre, simply Bizarre

[Anonymous Coward]

De Icaza is no doubt a really bright programmer. His logic hits a giant brick wall when thinking through the very existence of mono, and also microsoft. Ok, here it is. No matter how good it is, microsoft is never ever going to use mono. In certain ways, microsoft is really predictable. Here is what they do: they use their own stuff, and kill off everyone elses. Note the period at the end of the last sentence. Microsoft is here to make money, not be compatible or interoperable. Offering mono to them is like offering supper and a bed to a mugger. They will take all you have, much more than you are offering, and leave you with much much less than you ever thought they could ever get away with. De Icaza is bright. Its a shame all of his effort has amounted to so little, and won't ever amount to anything. He is asking the scorpion not to strike, for the leopard not to have spots, for the crocodile to kiss instead of eat the wildebeest. It isn't going to happen.

Re:Mono - English Joke Translation

[Wanon]

FYI: I believe that Mono is American slang for Glandular Fever.

Hence the joke. Get it? GET IT? *glares around the room*

What do you mean "how long?"

[ibi]

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/ballmer_linux _users_.html

"Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered," Ballmer said. This "is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

(He's not saying which bits, but certainly Mono isn't exactly excluded, if you know what I mean :-)

I appreciate De Icaza's contributions, but sadly there is no future for Mono or Novell. (Don't blame him, it's not really his fault.)

Microsoft knows what they are doing and Novell's leadership is the typical short-term driven corp types. Charles Ferguson's line about Apple and MS in in his book (High Stakes No Prisoners) comes to mind:

"Watching Sculley go up against Gates was rather like watching a rich playboy who was ordering his yacht to attack a carrier battle group."

Substitute Novell's current leadership for Sculley and you have the current picture. MS saw a chance to split the open source world in two and cripple Novell for a few hundred million measly (to them) dollars.

In the short run, nothing much spectacular is going to happen. In fact Big Co's (like the one I work in) will lean a bit preferentially to Suse (I'm likely to be running Suse at work shortly on my desktop, in fact). But in the long run, a number of things are going to happen:

* Key parts of Linux *will* go GPL v3 (that wasn't so likely before, but is a done deal now)
* Novell will not be able to use those parts without renouncing the MS deal (What do want to bet that Novell doesn't even have the right to do so without giving back all the MS money?)
* GPL/Classpath exception Java is going to look more and more like a safer choice than Mono if you're not under the Suse umbrella (Ballmer will grow only more strident about this stuff over time)

The OS world will be divided into Novell and everyone else and corporate users will turn back away from Novell. This will be bad for OS not good (Novell actually does much useful stuff - I like Beagle in particular), but I don't see how it can work out any other way. Novell screwed up. Now we all pay.

If you want a statically typed runtime for Gnome, I'd start looking carefully at those GTK bindings for Java...

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[Douglas Goodall]

You are absolutely wrong. Mono is based on the ECMA International standards documents. If you read the description of ECMA at the www-ecma-international.org site, you will read that ECMA standards contain patented technology from the member companies (Thats Microsoft). Just because the technology is described in a freely distributable document, doesn't mean it doesn't require licensing. Take some time and read the fine print. The ECMA documents are a patent trap and the Mono/DotGNU people fell right in. I warned them both multiple times and they ignored me. Now they are crying about it. I took the time to read the documents on the site, and I know enough now not to touch that technology with a ten foot pole.

It's all about the libraries.

[master_p]

It's all about the libraries...the run-time environment is of no importance.

De Icaza could have simply made a front end which translates C#/.NET bytecode to GCC, and then compile it to native code. It would be just as useful as Mono.

But where are the libraries? If I have invested many dollars in building an application with .NET, I want all of it to be runnable in Linux, out of the box. As it is right now, Microsoft has lots of proprietary libraries that Mono does not have, so Mono has no real value yet.

You are so right about Microsoft.

[master_p]

They even went so far as to change a C/C++ application's entry point: in all other systems, the function 'main' gets called first, but for Win32 applications, it is WinMain, which has a totally non-standard signature.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every one of MS's *previous* language attempts were pants, but THIS one is the doberman's doobries.

Forgive me if I don't join in...

Thunder!

[Dr_Barnowl]

Indeed, by far the most popular toolkit for writing applications was (and in terms of the sheer mass of supported code, still is) Visual Basic.

You can't get much more abstracted from the Windows API. It struck a nice balance though - you could still *use* the API, you just had to know what you were doing.

C# strikes a great balance ; management love it because you can crank out applications at a VB pace, developers love it because it's new and shiny and not VB (meaning that they avoid the stigma of being a VB developer, and get the higher pay rates associated with a C family language.)

I'm still probably far more productive in VB6 than anything else ; 5 years of hard commercial experience and a large set of libraries don't just evaporate overnight in the face of a new technology. And mocking by the "real" developers aside, if you use good practices, VB code can be just as robust and fast as most C++ desktop apps, with a fraction of the work involved.

As far as Mono is concerned, the most important part is that their Windows.Forms implementation is by and large, much more compatible than it used to be. Which improves the chances of Linux desktop adoption, because as we all know, what makes a desktop useful is DESKTOP APPS. If you can port your desktop app to Linux more easily, people are more likely to take it seriously as a desktop OS. You could argue that this is why MS scrabbled to produce yet another GUI app framework before the ink was really dry on Windows.Forms 2.0 - the last C# app I ported to Linux took two lines of code changed to get running, and afterwards it was truly cross-platform, as executables compiled by both the Mono and .NET compilers ran in either environment quite happily. Aside from very minor differences in font aliasing, you couldn't tell the difference either. That's proper abstraction for you.

Moderators need a clue!

[kaffiene]

This is a fucking troll. How the fuck did it get moderated Insightful?

The factual errors *should* be obvious to those using their mod points unless they are CLUELESS!

Re:Mono - English Joke Translation

[CastrTroy]

That's because the more scientific name for it is Infectious mononucleosis. It's usually called mono or mononucleosis in Canada. I've never heard the term glandular fever before.

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[ClosedSource]

So what are the patents in question that apply only to someone implementing .net and nothing else? If you are so certain that mono has a problem, you should be able to tell us the patent numbers.

Sure can

[everphilski]

http://www.saltypickle.com/rubydotnet
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000049
And here's a list of more languages: http://dotnetpowered.com/languages.aspx

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

surely you don't believe that Novell funds Mono because they saw that it is a "geniuely beautify technology". it's just MS's answer to Java and it is no big deal.

the fact is that Mono is doing a very big favour to MS because it makes their "portable platform" actually portable. the question is, why should we help MS achieve this goal, when MS back in 1993 stopped giving our development tools with its OS saying that only experts should be programming and everybody else should be buying user friendly software from them. now they come back asking for interoperability with the superior system built by the people who were pissed off back then, and MS did their best for 10 years trying to kill linux/FOSS.

we can just let this .NET thing die an unportable death. as for geniuely beautiful technologies, besides java, mozilla/xul you can also find perl, erlang, lua, python and ruby.

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[Douglas Goodall]

ECMA doesn't require their members to annotate the standards documents with patent numbers. It is assumed that information can be obtained upon request. Before you pester me with a request to do extensive specific research to obtain patent numbers, please tell me you have at least read the documents on the site tht describe the site and their patent policies. If you haven't read the descriptive documents that state standards contain proprietary technology that is assumed to be licensable under RAND, you are trying to waste my time. I spent many hours reading their site, have you?

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[ClosedSource]

Sorry it's your claim that mono has a patent problem, you do the work.

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[Douglas Goodall]

I don't need to do the work for you. I am satisfied that the technology is encumbered. As I said I have spent a lot of time reviewing the ECMA documents, and as a result I understand the situation. If you can't bother to read the documents, I can't be bothered to hold your hand and spoon feed you the information. The ECMA policy documents are easily read at their web site http://weww.ecma-international.org/

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[ClosedSource]

Believe whatever you want. MS won't be able to sue anyone based on what ECMA documents say, it all depends on the wording of specific patents.

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[Douglas Goodall]

Thank you, I will believe what I want. The ECMA documents state that the standards documents contain patented technology. Since you seem to be refusing to read or understand these documents, I can only assume that you want to hide behind the, "I didn't know that", excuse. I was concerned about what, "open standards", could be used for. I was excited about the ECMA documents at first. Then I read further on the site until I found what I was looking for. A limit to the usefulness of the documents. I guess if you knew the documents contained patented technology, you might be liable for treble damages. I guess you don't want to "know". I understand. I don't respect your position though.

Re:Mono won't have more patent problems than other

[ClosedSource]

"The ECMA documents state that the standards documents contain patented technology."

I never questioned that. The question is whether the patents that the standards refer to can be violated soley by implementing a version of .net It's quite possible that many open source projects violate these patents. Most companies try to make their patents as broad as possible to maximize their ability to collect license fees or to just lock out as many competitors as possible. The only way to be sure is to examine the specific patents.

Of course there may be issues such as prior art, but they'll apply equally to mono and other open (and closed) projects.

How naive.

[jotaeleemeese]

Ballmer is stating in no uncertain terms that they will emforce their "Intellectual Property" tights.

Now pray tell us, where is MS more likely to start digging? In stuff they developed themselves or in stuff completely unrelated to their efforts?

Ballmer is asying they masy sue, and they even made a deal with a company to stop suing them.

What other elements do you need to wake up and smell the coffee? That they start culling penguins?

Re:How naive.

[icepick72]

You have to take into account what aspects of .NET Microsoft has opened to standardization. Your argument seems to assume that Mono is simply railing against another closed Microsoft project. That's not quite true.