Slashdot Mirror
Mono Comes To Android
hairyfeet writes "After releasing Monotouch for iPhone which allows c# development on iOS, Novell has announced the availability of Mono for Android. Will this give us the 'one language to rule them all' that Java failed to bring, or will the bad blood between the F/OSS groups and Microsoft make this a dead end?"
Guess I won't be kissing it for a week or so.
Will this give us the 'one language to rule them all' that Java failed to bring, or will the bad blood between the F/OSS groups and Microsoft make this a dead end?
Neither. It will be exactly what it already is today, just one of many programming languages.
Reuters Minas Tirith - Mordor Inc. has announced the release of Ring of Power Open Source Version, to be released to the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. Mordor VP of Marketing, the Mouth of Sauron, has announced that the purpose of this open source version of the Ring of Power is to demonstrate Mordor's goodwill to all people.
"We're really hoping that all those Elves and Numenoreans and Halflings take our Open Source version of the Ring of Power and use it to do all kinds of nifty things." the Mouth of Sauron said. "There has been some animosity in the past between Mordor and the rest of Middle Earth, but we're pretty keen to the idea that this is the time to put it all behind us, so we're releasing, with this commitment from Sauron himself, open source Rings of Power with no future obligations to the Dark Lord, the Nazgul or anyone else in our organization."
When asked about previous attempts to take control of the other competing powers in Middle Earth (such as the infamous "One Ring to Rule Them All One Ring to Bind Them" proprietary patent-encumbered master Ring), the Mouth of Sauron dismissed it out of hand. "That was just business. But this is the dawning of a new age, and Mordor commits to not trying to seize control of the minds of any wielders of any open source Rings of Power... honest!"
(With files from Rivendell Archives)
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's really great that there's finally a tool to make life easier for all the developers building Windows Phone 7 apps in C# that want to move their code base to the Android platform!
Wrong.
MonoTouch ( which is the IOS .NET development suite ) uses the Mono Full AOT feature and precompiles all the code into a static binary ( including the base class libraries ) and links in runtime stubs for GC and the likes.
Certain features of .NET are naturally not available ( runtime code generation, features relying thereupon ) and some c# features don't work ( virtual methods in generic classes for example )
So you end up with a fully statically linked executable with no JIT included, fully compliant with IOS licensing terms.
Unity3D uses the same approach ( and probably shares a bit of the codebase )
This just in: "Mono for Android includes the core Mono runtime, bindings for native Android APIs, a Visual Studio 2010 plug-in for developing and testing Android applications, and a software development kit (SDK). The enterprise edition costs $999 (£613) per developer per year, including maintenance and updates. A five-developer enterprise licence costs $3,999 per year, and a professional edition costs £399 per developer per year."
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/novell-releases-mono-for-android-toolset-10022167/?tag=mncol;txt
-=Maggie Leber=-
Exactly what I thought. So I went and looked - $99 for student (non-commercial use), $399 for basic commercial, through to $3999 for enterprise.
Crazy. Would love to use it, won't touch it with a barge pole at that price.
Everything I've seen other than Java is, at best, half-baked on Android. Scala is the closest I've seen to full-featured.
With regard to your "find an excuse to not hang out with after work" comment. Actually, it are pseudo-academic language snobs who are avoided. The kind who love adding layer upon layer of complexity (including switching languages and tools all over the place), and take pride in their l337 skills for doing this. They can be great developers but are shitty *designers* (too bad they're usually so clueless at design they never even see or consider this aspect). Remember, great design is about *removing* stuff. As Einstein said, "As simple as possible, but no simpler" [note: this is actually misquote of what he actually said, but it is commonly enough used and conveys the same meaning in fewer words]. That means *fewer* languages, not more, should be preferred.
Microsoft could end the patent issue once and for all by granting a royalty-free license for any and all patents needed to implement a C# runtime. They have not done so. That suggests that they reserve the right to use those patents against any competitor who becomes a large enough threat, or any one else with deep pockets.
IBM has more patents than anyone else, yet they give patent grants in situations like this. Many companies do. Sometimes growing the market by making standards more affordable is better than protecting your share of a smaller market. Microsoft's actions speak louder than their words, and their actions come down on the side of reserving the option of shutting down the use of C# in ways that Microsoft doesn't like. You think that it's silly to fear that Microsoft would do that, I think it's silly for Microsoft to fear that someone might someday use Microsoft's C# patents to harm Microsoft.