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The Case For Supporting and Using Mono
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister argues in favor of Mono, asking those among the open source community who have 'variously described Mono as a trap, a kludge, or simply a waste of effort' to look past Miguel de Icaza and Mono's associations with Microsoft and give the open source implementation of .Net a second chance, as he himself has, having predicted Mono's demise at the hands of open source Java in 2006. Far from being just a clone of .Net for Linux, McAllister argues, Mono has been 'expanding its presence into exciting and unexpected new niches.' And for those who argue that 'developing open-source software based on Microsoft technologies is like walking into a lion's den,' McAllister suggests taking a look at the direction Mono is heading. The more Mono evolves, the less likely Microsoft is to use patent claims or some other dirty trick to bring down the platform."
A third party implementation of a standard defined by the first-party implementor is always going to lag behind the original. Even if .Net is technical nirvana, if your platform's only implementation comes from a third party, your platform is a second-class citizen.
The case against Mono has nothing to do with the technical niceties he presents, nor do the fears of Microsoft "pulling out the rug" matter... What matters is that when developers and end users pick a technology, they pick the leader, not the follower. Accepting Mono is giving up and giving in to Microsoft vendor lock-in.
Mono is in a precarious, teetering position. Somewhere between tepid and antagonistic reaction amongst professional and casual developers, a designer community that is seen as a puppet or apprentice to the hegemony, and not even a clear path forward for compatibility. Be distinct, or be identical, but there's no way to be both.
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Now that Java is open source, wouldn't it make more sense to use the JVM as the standard runtime, instead of something that "might" not get sued for copying the .NET runtime?
Java has already been made to run on .NET. I wonder if it'd really be that hard to get standardized C# running on the JVM?
Sorry, I will never trust Microsoft enough to put them in a position to control a key technology. So that means there is no discussing the issue as far as I'm concerned. There is NO rational basis to argue. I don't trust em.
And I don't trust the judgement of anyone who isn't themselves suspicious of Microsoft and Miguel's motives.
Mono is a trap if it is allowed to be deployed beyond a browser plugin to support .net content in the browser. Come the day my current distro of choice loses any finctionality when removing the mono packges I'll be running something different as soon as bittorrent can supply me a new install image. Again, that position is 100% non-negotiable. I have used binary drivers in the past, bought closed source apps and committed many 'sins' against the Church of GNU but this is one case where compromise simply isn't possible. They want us dead, you can't compromise with that.
Democrat delenda est
Most people think of Qt as a GUI toolkit. They're not wrong, but that's like calling a Swiss Army Knife a "pocket knife." That's only one thing it does, and the characterization completely misses the point. Qt is an application framework. It fixes every gripe developers have with C++.
Qt promotes clean and well-developed code that is easily ported to Windows, X11 (Linux et al), Mac, and Embedded (Linux sans-X11). That's something even Java doesn't do well (have you ever tried porting between J2SE and J2ME? nothing works!), even disregarding the whole performance loss from the JVM emulation-like interpreting that goes on.
The LGPL relicensing of Qt coming this spring will change the entire programing language landscape. Nokia is moving in to crush Java. C#/.NET and it's mediocre OSS implementation in Mono aren't even on the radar.
I cite the LGPL announcement because that's the kiss of death, placing Qt firmly above GTK (GTK being an incidental casualty on the way to said crushing of Java). With Mono relying so heavily upon GTK#, that puts it behind the game already (the Qt# project is cited on the Mono page as completely dead).
Recall that Nokia is a phone company. They need not make money from the software. Freeing and promoting Qt (and getting it to supplant J2ME) merely feeds this primary function. And while they're at it, they're sweeping in a wonderful set of perks for software engineers in and out of the Free Software community, on both embedded platforms and desktops.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Learn x86, C, Java, JavaScript. EOL.
Anything more is bonus.
Anything less is lacking.
Miguel has smacked around this stupid argument before. Mono is a relatively small effort. There are people certainly violating Microsoft's IP in areas like Samba and the myriad Exchange clients, which are a far bigger threat to Microsoft's revenue streams. Mono, if anything, improves their revenue streams, because it makes .NET more feasible for some developers who otherwise wouldn't consider it.
But they're going to go after Mono, right? Let's just ignore that Samba 4 is (supposedly) going to eat Microsoft's lunch on the AD side of things. They're gonna go right after Mono! Rar! BE SCARED! Because that makes so much sense for them to do, right? It's not cutting off their noses to spite their face at all.
I'm really starting to think that the main reason Slashdot gets pissy over Mono is because Microsoft doesn't "lose" because of it. It's a case where everybody wins. And Microsoft can't be allowed to benefit, oh teh nos. :(
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Only Microsoft consultants will tell you that WinForms is dead. I've know developers at 2 organizations that moved from WinForms to WPF, and they hated it. (Caveat: I was at one of them). The app went from using 10MB of RAM to 200MB. It went from a minute to compile to 15 minutes. It went from taking 2 hours to make a change, to taking 2 days.
WPF is powerful, robust, pretty, inefficient, hard to use, and in beta. (Yes, Microsoft says it is not beta, but WPF is still not ready for anything more than experimental use.)
As for Silverlight, since it offers no benefit over Flash, and since even Microsoft Gold Partners have told me that they use Flash unless forced to use Silverlight, I think it will be a non-competitor unless Microsoft starts shipping it with the OS (maybe they do in Vista - if so, then Flash is dead no matter how good it is)
Then you are a fool.
Axioms of software design:
1. Algorithmic improvements will always trump optimizing execution speed.
2. Unless there is a hard requirement, development time is more important than raw performance.
3. Hardware is cheaper than developers.
4. A rich and flexible library is more useful and stable than custom coding for performance.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Speaking as a long time windows user and being fairly new at using Linux as a dedicated work-OS, I must say that that whole one-click .msi stuff is pretty damn awesome.
To elaborate the whole perception that users are dumb is pretty misguided. I'm not a dumb user, but even I like things to be easy. It's because (usually) I don't give much of a shit how the thing works, just that it does.
Before you declare that you're any different, think of how you put gas in your vehicle.. Do you care how the fuel pump works? If you're like me you only throw a fit when the clip that holds the fuel lever open is broken, but otherwise don't pay much attention.
See it's about motivation not intelligence. I do like using OSS because I think it's a GoodThing(tm) therefore I'm motivated to try it. It's a lot of the reason it took so long for Java to get a toe hold. "I just want to run PrettyWidgetBox, wtf is this JVM thing I have to have?" It's seen as ancillary or superfluous to the average user, and they don't often care enough to figure it out.
It kinda spoils one of my favorite quotes for me though regarding trash cans, bears, and tourists. Yellowstone added some trash cans with tricky openings to keep the bears out, but it turned out most of the tourists couldn't figure it out. The quote goes, "It turns out there is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." Which is unfortunately hogwash. The bears are motivated by survival to get in the trash can. The tourists are demotivated by apathy to take the time to figure out a trashcan. They just want to be able to put shit in the trash hole and be done with it. If they're frustrated for more than a few seconds they just throw it on the ground.
Question everything
Miguel has smacked around this stupid argument before. Mono is a relatively small effort. There are people certainly violating Microsoft's IP in areas like Samba and the myriad Exchange clients, which are a far bigger threat to Microsoft's revenue streams. Mono, if anything, improves their revenue streams, because it makes .NET more feasible for some developers who otherwise wouldn't consider it.
In the past, Microsoft has "cut off the air supply" of competitors. That's difficult to do with Linux as it is less a single-sourced product line than amorphous multi-vendor entity. Microsoft's strategy then has been to try and pigeon-hole Linux. But how to do that? You need to become a gate-keeper.
That's the fear over Mono. Gain developers. Gain support. Develop a dependency. Pull out the patents and seize the keys to that dependency. You are now the gatekeeper.
So what about SAMBA 4 and Exchange compatible clients? Don't they also support Microsoft products? That's win-win too, right? Surely they wouldn't go after those. Or would they? Who knows. Ballmer's threats lack detail.
And there's the key. You want to make your "everybody wins" technology widely accepted? Stifle the threats from a CEO who's continues to generate distrust in your company. No tin foil hat required.
There was a famous story about Sun and IBM that got aired a lot during the MS antitrust trial. It goes like this:
One day, a bunch of IBM patent lawyers show up at Sun's headquarters, saying that Sun is infringing on patents A, B, C, etc. They demand a hefty license fee. Sun engineers (remember, it started as a company of engineers) sit down in a boardroom with the lawyers, look at the patents, and are surprised--they're for various obvious things like mathematically adding a variable stroke to a line, and such. The engineers walk the lawyers through their own patents, explaining how they're all obvious and wouldn't stand up in a court of law. The lawyers remain silent until they're done. Then the chief lawyer says "Perhaps you're right. But after one big court case dragging on for years, we'd just come back with another set of patents and repeat the whole process. Eventually we'd find something that you'd infringed on, and then you'd have to pay damages rather than a licensing fee."
Sun signs a cross-licensing agreement with IBM the next day.
That's the worry. It's not that Microsoft has patents that can allow it to launch SCO 2.0 with a better hope of success. It's the worry that, if they decide to snuff out Mono, they can launch a legal crusade to so encumber Mono in litigation and FUD that it dies an ignominious death. Then all that effort is wasted, OSS and Linux get a bad name in the process, and a lot of developers and customers are soured on Mono, Linux, and anything that doesn't come from a Fortune 500 company. This is why Novell signing a patent cross-licensing agreement caused such bad blood--it implies that MS does have patents that are or could be infringed. On the fateful day that MS decides to crush Mono, Novell's agreement strengthens MS's case, if only in PR terms.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Actually, I'm inclined to agree that WebApps generally suck when compared to a Windows App performing the same task. Obviously, WebApps have their advantages (easy distribution, usage monitoring, centralized access, no risk of rogue versions); but when the situation doesn't make it necessary to create a product as a WebApp, I think it's generally stupid to do so.
As for Mono, the product is a valiant effort, but I can't understand why you would run software on something other than its native platform. After the App is deployed, if it encounters any problems, you'll always have to wonder, is it the App, or is it Mono?
The difference between Mono & Samba is that C# is dev language.
If, for instance, Samba is sued into oblivion by Microsoft then we loose a single application. Yes, it's sad and everybody cries... but there's technical ways to solve that problem that are relatively doable - such as developing a new NAS network transport protocol that doesn't break any patents.
Alternatively, if Microsoft sues Mono into oblivion - and we've all been happily developing C# code for hundreds of applications - then it's going to be a total meltdown.
To be honest though - there's not much of a chance that either of those things are going to happen.
I like C# - it's a smart, clean language. I don't utilize much beyond the stock language (2.0 & generics) and don't see much need too.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
WinForms isn't dead. In some circles, I'd say WPF is stillborn, and if there's anything good that came out of it, it was in fact Silverlight.
In fact, I would say that while WPF has its plus sides, its got a few drawbacks as well. Its -really- slow compared to WinForms, the nested control architecture isn't as good, the layouts and sizing aren't as flexible, and worst of all, there's no datagrid.
I understand the inspiration. Microsoft tried to make a modern client gui toolkit that gives you some of what html does, but I frankly think they missed the mark. If anything, WPF will inspire the idea that developer's have choices in control and widget sets and that will lead developers to look at things like Qt and Java or even Webkit, as I have done.
This is my sig.
Consider the following sentence:
.NET, which the earlier poster did, even if it doesn't exactly make sense to speak of .NET being a language, which you decided the earlier poster must have meant to do.
"If I was going to buy a new car, it would probably be Ford or Chevy and not GMC."
"Ford and Chevy aren't cars," would be one possible response, but an unnecessary attempt at correcting something that could have been interpreted in a way that made sense to begin with.
It makes sense to speak of a language being
Nope. ECMA has not forced Microsoft to give up its patent claims. The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
"If it gets too powerful, or too feature full, who's to say if MS doesn't retract their promise and claim that Mono is infringing on their patents, suing whatever company might have worked on said products?"
MS patents are going to be general (as all patents with "business goodness" are). In other words, MS isn't going to limit any patent description in such a way that only .NET implementations would be in violation. If mono violates a MS patent it's very likely that Java and many other projects will violate it too. The mere fact that Mono is an attempt to implement a sub-set of .NET doesn't mean it has any greater risk than other projects.
In any case, I seriously doubt that MS has any desire to start a patent war anyway. Between the DOJ and IBM, it wouldn't be a winning strategy.
I regret that he apparently wasn't more successful in convincing us to burn our web apps. I'd hazard a guess that 80% of my computer-related headaches is a result of web apps, which I have now almost completely swore off if there's any way I can avoid them.
Crap like Google Maps I find insulting. We had map software 15 years ago. The only thing we needed was periodic udpates, but web apps go to a completely opposite extreme, every single data request is serviced live, nobody finds it acceptable to risk that data might be hours or days old. If I'm actually using my connection to retrieve data (files, audio, video, etc.) all those web-apps slow to a crawl.
With web apps, even with the fastest modern computers we're working at speeds closer to what we had back in 1995. We don't need all data to be streamed from the source, I would much prefer most of the applications reside on a local computer and function at native speeds instead of everything being bottle-necked by my ISP. I don't even mind using a thin-client running applications through terminal services, but having all basic desktop applications running from a web server is just ridiculous.