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De Icaza Says Microsoft Has Shot .NET Ecosystem In Foot
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that it has cast on the system, Novell vice-president and Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is quoted as telling the website Software Development Times recently."
It took how many years for Miguel de Icaza to realize this? Most of us could have told him that with seconds.
There is hope for him yet!
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That's a little rich for De Icaza to be coming out and saying this now. He's spent years shouting down anyone that warned him about the patent scenario with Microsoft's technologies and yet he continued to proselytise. He's worked away on Mono and Silverlight and made sure to get them included wherever he could.
So is he allowed to be surprised or angry now?
I never get used to these constant resurrections
for assuming (and advocating to others) that Microsoft won't threaten Linux.
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Dude... (chicks don't react like that) .NET is supposed to be cross hard- and software.
It was introduced to abstract the OS so that if Microsoft were to also release Windows for PowerPC's or whatever architecture, .NET apps would still run,
Later on Microsoft announced the interoperability (this is my time to "Pffffffwahahahahaha") and they killed it with patent infringements.
So now, yes, Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot, which is differently from shooting it in the head.
What I am saying is yes; .NET is still very strong and succesful, but limited to Windows pretty much. Good for Microsoft and Windows, bad for the ecosystem itself that had spread to other OS platforms with Mono (which is chasing taillights and thus sucks).
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Microsoft's idea of cross platform is one of their platforms; like Windows 2000, XP, Vist and 7.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Everyone else has been saying that forever, but to hear it from you.. I'm impressed.
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Maybe the biggest lamentation I have is regarding C#. I keep on hearing how it's a wonderful improvement on C++, which is my bread-and-butter language.
I wouldn't be too sad. C# is really more of an improvement on Java than it is on C++. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume there's a reason you use C++ and not Java, and those reasons would probably still mean you'd use C++ over C#.
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I have to disagree. Mono has grown out of it's cheap-copy-of-.NET state. It tries to keep compatibility with .NET, but it has become a great framework itself.
No problem: sudo apt-get remove mono-runtime mono-complete
He already pushed Mono into a lot of parts of Gnome...harm is already done De Icaza, you had to realize before pushing it into one of the most widely used Linux desktop enviroments.
"Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java Virtual Machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by [Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] that they would come after people that do not license patents from them."
In practice, the Java community only uses two or three JVMs (IBM's, JRockit, and OpenJDK from Sun), while others are research efforts or smaller-scale open-source projects, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with."
What the hell kind of rhetorical diversion that was?
"I love air", de Icaza was quoted as saying. "Breathing oxygen is a wonderful thing. I couldn't get through a single day without oxygen."
In practice, oxygen only accounts for about 20% of Earth's atmosphere, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "O2 just isn't something that the open source community wants to inhale frequently."
Tip: Java isn't popular because people work on multiple JVMs (however small in their number they might be). The point de Icaza was making is that Java is popular because there can be multiple JVMs.
Snakes bite, buddy, that's why we don't play with them.
I don't know why you keep thinking that Microsoft wants some sort of "ecosystem". They want control, but they're always willing to use a useful idiot.
Do you have ESP?
Sun shot Java in the foot a few times.
Microsoft abused its monopoly position to shoot Java at short range.
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Lots of questions means lots of confusion. I think all you proved is a severe lack of documentation or how newbies are confused as hell by it.
Or, maybe, lots of questions just means lots of newbies?
Or it could even mean that StackOverflow is historically more .NET-centric, so that's where you go to ask .NET questions; and Java ones are asked elsewhere.
I'd say check the Tiobe index [tiobe.com] for a more accurate record. You'd think that a major corporation like Microsoft could garner more popularity than PHP instead of less than half.
TIOBE index is extremely unaccurate due to their, ahem, "methodology", and they even tell so themselves.
It is particularly inaccurate with respect to .NET, because you need to extract VB.NET out of all BASIC job offerings, add C#, and then add all positions that just say ".NET" without specifying the language (which isn't even tracked on TIOBE), to get a real figure.
Then, also, think about what it measures - if you look at what is found by googling for "PHP programming" (which is what TIOBE does, pretty much), it's mostly various tutorials/howtos. So, it effectively measures the amount of learning material available online for a given tech, including any low-quality and duplicate ones. It's no secret that there's a crapload of that for PHP. In fact, by your logic, it would indicate that PHP is so bad, since it needs so much tutorials to teach people to do things, no?
Instead of TIOBE, why don't you open your nearest job search website, and look at the number of available .NET positions vs Java ones? (the ratio will vary quite a bit by region/country, by the way)
Miguel was enamored with a lot of the technology behind ".NET", and thought he could outsmart Microsoft, in a sense. He thought he would be pragmatic and non-religious about the technology and adopt it.
I've been saying it for years -- real pragmatism must always include consideration of the practical realities surrounding a tool or technology. Like, who is providing it, what are the terms under which they provide it, could those terms change and how would that affect your use of the tool? Or as you point out, how does the technology you like (C#) fit into the larger strategy being pushed (.NET)?
Many engineers tend to want to ignore those aspects and focus solely on the qualities of the tool itself. They say they just want something that "does the job", and thus fail to consider how those factors affect the tool's ability to do the job. Because, being technically-minded people, they want the technical factors to be the only ones that matter. They call this "pragmatism" and being "non-religious".
Which just goes to show how even people who value pragmatism and rationality more than anyone can still be completely irrational. Ignoring the important external factors because you really wish they weren't important is not rational!
Rationality is simply a useful trick that our mammalian brains have picked up. But at the end of the day we are still emotional animals, and even when expending great effort to force ourselves to think rationally we can't eliminate the effect of our emotions. Much of the time "rationality" is simply a way to justify what we've already decided based on emotion.
Ergo the worst thing a person who values rationality can do is tell themselves that they are completely rational and uninfluenced by emotion. I think there's an important lesson to be learned here, even for those of us who saw this situation coming from a mile away.
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Paint.NET is far too usable to be compared to Gimp.
Cross platform typically means running on platforms from more than one vendor. You basically said, "I can run my C# code on all these Microsoft platforms."
Java embodys one radical change, and it's not a feature of the language (which was pretty radical itself at the start). No, the radical feature is that it's GPL'd. This change came a little late in the game, but look what it's produced already.
Take Android. You might say 'just another smartphone platform', but think about how it came about. Google didn't develop it. A startup did. And how was it possible for a startup to build an entire internet-capable touchscreen platform? GPL. Because they had a free OS they could use any way they wanted, and a free virtual machine they could use any way they wanted, they were able to get creative and package it all together as an innovative new platform. Google bought it, added polish and apps, and suddenly it's an iPhone and Android world with Microsoft playing catch up.
Microsoft can't do this. They are committed to their proprietary OS, so they are unable to harness any major creative leaps that come from outside the company. Outsiders can't play with the OS to tweak it to their needs, so they have no way to use Windows as a platform for creativity that doesn't fit into the channels that Microsoft provides them. Plus, they know that any really good ideas they develop on the Microsoft platform will likely be copied by Microsoft and never realize their potential (for them, at least).
But the Android folks could start with minimal overhead and produce something great under the radar.
That's the beauty of the GPL and the Linux (and now Java) models based on it. DVR's, netbooks, cheap wireless routers, smartphones, Kindle and 100 tablets to come. The Microsoft ecosystem is not capable of producing these things. So the next time you rag on Java or OpenGL, X-Windows or even OpenOffice - and rhapsodize about C#, .NET, MSOffice, etc., realize that you're missing the point. These tools may not individually be the absolute best in class, but they are all much more than good enough. And they enable the most creative and dynamic ecosystems in IT today. If you care about that, C# vs Java is a no-brainer. You're gonna want Java.
Miguel seems to be just now grasping this. He had hoped that a free version of .NET would be as good as Java. He liked the technology better (not sure how much better), and thought making it free would bring it to the creative class that's really innovating these days. But Microsoft won't let him. Never meant to, never will. Sorry Miguel - I feel your pain.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Unfortunately, even the most studious lack of infringement won't prevent you from getting abusively sued into bankruptcy. It's all about the implied threat, Miguel.
-- B.
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