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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."
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?
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Oh just quit it, Mono has no takeup because if people wanted to use Microsoft technology they'd be buying Vista and .NET. .NET plus a clone.
If they want cross platform portability they don't rely on Microsoft for anything, rather than try
All Mono does is give them a veneer to claim cross platform portability without actually being cross platform portable.
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.
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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?
.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.
I say it again: if MS wanted a fully functional port of the
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.
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?"
.NET is not.
Mono is multi-platform
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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
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.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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?
I thing all the projects started by Icaza have been secretly backed by Microsoft (except midnight commander). This includes Gnome.
.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.
.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.
.NET, everywhere where developers make $$$.
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
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
Right now it is Java vs
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.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
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.
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