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Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Portable
Michelle Meyers writes "Just days before Microsoft claimed to be making parts of the .NET CLR "available" to other platforms, NeoSmart Technologies had published an article bemoaning and blasting Microsoft's abuse of it's developers by pretending .NET was a true cross-platform framework when they're doing everything in their power to stop it from being just that. Of interest is NeoSmart's analysis of how Microsoft has no problem making certain portions of .NET available to Mac users — just so long as its distributed under an "open source" license that forbids any and all use of the code except for educational purposes — yet are terrified of the very thought of .NET being available to *nix users, even if that's to the benefit of .NET developers everywhere. Even more interesting is one of the comments on that article linking to legal documents in which Microsoft employees discuss the (im)possibility of creating a cross-platform code and UI framework, years before the .NET project even started!"
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There's no point in making a marketing sleight of hand portable to other platforms, is there?
Maybe it's changed in the last few years, but when Microsoft first started talking about "dot net" the only thing I could figure was that they didn't really know what it was going to do -- and four years after it had been announced it didn't really seem as if that had changed.
Maybe it's changed since then... it's been three years since the last time I paid any attention to it...
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Why is Microsoft the only company constantly expected to make decisions anti to their business model? Where is the clamor for Apple to adopt VB for the sake of 'developers'? Ok, bad example.
But seriously; with 50Billion in the bank, I think throwing around words like 'terrified' serve no purpose but to feed the rabid-anti-Microsoft crowds.
Hard to have a serious discussion, when the article is premised on hype and flaming rhetoric to start with.
A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free. I don't know if Microsoft has ever claimed that .NET would be Free.
Je ne parle pas francais.
It's pretty sad.
On the other hand, there is always the Mono Project (www.mono-project.org)
It even has a Visual Basic Compiler.
Yes, it's not ready for primetime yet (imo), but it looks very promising.
Microsoft's actions will just result in more 3rd party and OSS development.
Stop griping and expend your efforts bringing Mono up to .Net 2.0 compatability.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
.NET is basically Java without the portability. .NET?
So why bother with
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Other implementations of .NET are kind of stupid anyway, and, like it or not, Mono really isn't very useful. Anyone who does development on Linux/Mac/anything that isn't Windows will just use native code, or Java - probably because writing a native app isn't nearly as difficult on other platforms, and Java actually is write once, run anywhere (well, closer than .NET, anyway).
.NET is Windows; have any of you written a native code Windows app (I'm sure many of you have)? The code is a nightmare and makes my eyes scream. With Windows, you really, truly need a system like .NET to make developing any non-trivial app even remotely possible, unless you want to spend 1,000 hours writing fucking COM shit (which I sure as fuck don't).
The only platform that benefits from
agreed, and while Microsoft's implementation may not be free or portable, I've yet to see a good reason why Mono doesn't make .NET portable. Admittedly, Mono isn't completely finished, but any .NET applicatino that runs in Mono (and it's not unheard of) is an example of portable .NET
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With the proliferation of Web Applications and SOA, and the diminishing relevance of desktop software, it's in Microsoft's best interest NOT to make it cross-platform.
.Net framework was available for *nix or OS X - all of the framework libs, ASP, WinForms, etc. What incentive would I have to fill a Web server farm full of thousands of dollars of Windows Server licenses when I could run my ASP.Net apps on Apache? The only real costs to add machines to the farm are hardware-related. .Net already has providers for Oracle and MySQL. Suddenly, Microsoft's Operating systems and platforms become irrelevant to developers who have years of experience and time invested in learning .Net.
Let's say that a full implementation of the
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Because Microsoft never made a single portable product!
Where "portable" means "on other OSs than the Microsoft's ones".
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Nobody with any sense is going to believe any cross-platform claims made by Microsoft anymore. The Windows platform is their lifeblood, and they'll do whatever they have to to artificially bind people to it. That's why they're fighting and delaying all attempts to truly open up their connection protocols and file formats. On a level playing field, people would desert Windows in droves, and Microsoft knows it.
Honestly, I don't see how this is even still open for debate in 2007-- Microsoft showed their true colors w/r/t portability after they added Windows-only extensions to Java. And that's if you ignore their prior attempt to balkanize the web and cause pain for anyone not running Windows IE.
Their "Flash-killer" and their "PDF-killer" and any other allegedly-open standards they try to foist off on us should be ignored and allowed to die. If we allow them to get a foothold, we deserve everything we get.
~Philly
So what you're saying is that what they said some years ago shouldn't be taken serious anymore? Why should I take anything said by MS now serious? Why should I believe that what's being spun today holds any meaning in the future if I am not supposed to believe what I was told earlier?
Don't get me wrong, but when a company makes a statement or announcement, there are two ways to deal with it. Either believe it and expect it to happen or declare it bunk and handle it accordingly. And if the former is expected, the results should warrant it. Either MS follows its words with actions or it has to accept that people ignore their announcements, or, worse, read them for the same reason they read the Prawda: To know what will certainly NOT happen.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why should they be afraid? Because given 30 years and more money than the GNP of Texas they can't come up with a better OS than a finnish nerd's geek vanity project, or a better language than c++. They should be afraid because the future is Open.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why yes, of course because we all know that Microsofts strategy today was largely determined yesterday afternoon. A large multinational company like Microsoft with product lead times measured in years would never have discussed the actions they're taking today 5 or 6 years ago would they. You muppet.
The whole point to the .NET framework is lock-in. It's the classic trade off Microsoft has always made. Back in the early 90's you could write Windows 3.x apps with standard C++ language tools, but if you used their framework you got to market 6 months quicker because you didn't have to create your own windowing code. So, you could hit 90% of the market six months faster and you did, but then you gave up cross platform C++ by relying on their windows only libraries, and thus your software didn't work on Mac. That was the play then, and it is the play now.
.NET framework, you get a lot of things. You get easy install kits, a 'contemporary professional' look and feel, you get drag and drop design, and you get cross platform use from the standpoint of different windows desktop, server, and mobile platforms.
.NET saves you time and money on development. It really does. I prefer to write in Java, but when I'm doing something within the .NET scope, it makes sense to use it.
By developing for the
If you're willing to limit your app to Microsoft platforms,
The whole point of this play is to tie users to Windows platforms. They're in business to make money, and this is one way to continue doing that.
Java was created specifically to provide an alternative to Microsoft based development as a way to thwart Microsoft. That was a (not the, but a) primary goal of its development and licensing structure from the world go. It wasn't created to make money and while its goals are laudable, they aren't always realistic. It has been an abject failure at the desktop and even as browser based applets. A huge amount of effort went into making it useful for web servers (j2ee) but even those are barely cross platform and are themselves rife with vendor lock in. It's not like you're ever going to host IBM's portal product on someone else's J2EE server instead of Websphere after all.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Microsoft won't make .NET available to other platforms than their own, just because it's the only thing that keeps developers and architects from moving to a more stable Unix-like solution.
.NET developers (unless they're knowledgeable on the subject) won't use the POSIX-compatible definitions in .NET/C# because they're fed/learned to use the 'simple' Windows way. Eg. defining a path. You could define a path as follows (yes, in .NET): (pseudocode): $userdrive + $platformseparator + dirname + $platformseparator + filename. Every developer though uses $DRIVENAME + \DIRNAME\FILENAME making it utterly inflexible to be used on another platform.
Another problem is that Windows is not POSIX compatible. Sure you can get the add-on that makes it a bit more POSIX-like but still
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A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free.
It's not portable if you can't move it to a platform of YOUR choice. Something that's not free may have SDKs for more than one platform, but that does not really make it portable. Being "open" does not help either. They could publish their entire source code but it would not be free if it was patent and copyright restrictions that keep you from doing what you want with it.
These days, that lack of freedom is a distinct disadvantage that will cost M$. It's always been a disadvantage to non free code, but the saving grace was a lack working alternative and someone might pay you for it. Because there are now entire free software systems, non free code has run out of saving graces. It won't even make money. Control is a loser.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Cause' they don't want to make it multi-platform, so developers will use .Net and develop their stuff and when they want to use it, they will be able to use Linux/whatever, and Microsoft doesn't want the developers to enjoy with their code on Linux since they want them to buy another Windows (which is legitimate to them that they want to sell. The problem is that they are doing it very ugly.)
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