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."

Comments

Finally

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

It took how many years for Miguel de Icaza to realize this? Most of us could have told him that with seconds.

Wah wah wah

[bigtomrodney]

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?

Re:Wah wah wah

[Chris Burke]

So is he allowed to be surprised or angry now?

Of course he is.

And we're allowed to roll our eyes and say "No shit, Sherlock! Welcome to five years ago!"

I mean sure he's slow on the uptake. Sure it was pretty silly to dismiss the quite plain threat of Microsoft's patents with "Oh but they won't do that!" But hey, at least the "but they won't do that!" turns into "gee, it's looking like that's exactly what they plan to do" eventually.

Doesn't mean I think he's any smarter than I did yesterday. But sure he's allowed to change his mind, and that's a good thing.

Re:So, Miguel

[Robert Zenz]

No problem: sudo apt-get remove mono-runtime mono-complete

The harm is done

[Windwraith]

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.

Java's radical change

[Rob Y.]

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.