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Attachmate Fires Mono Developers
darthcamaro writes "Love it or hate it, Novell's open source Mono project has inspired a lot of debate over the last 7 years. Mono brings .NET to Linux, with some interesting patent connections. The project is now at a crossroads, with news today that Attachmate had laid off the US based development team for Mono."
(I will gb2/b/ shortly).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
But I think this seals my fate to avoid it and stick with just Java...
Mono is so 1950s'ish.
I would suggest they were probably thinking of some difficult to diagnose disease, but that wouldn't be fair.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org/ and http://progfree.org./ This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.
This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.
The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn't make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.
We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions or in their principal ways of installing GNOME, and we should distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever possible.
Firing the mono developers didn't convince me of this. It's the fact they're basically moving Linux development to all be under a european division and giving them control over all the decisions. It's like they got that odd Linux thing and don't know exactly what to do with it.
I worked at Attachmate for awhile, and this doesn't really surprise me.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
For those who work on the abomination that is mono only death will suffice.
I sure hope someone else catches mono.
>"Mono brings .NET to Linux,"
In a way that lags so far behind current versions and with limitations to make it unsuitable for just about anything useful. I am not shedding that many tears. It was a dangerous road to begin with (patents, not completely open, etc), and it is a shame those resources were not directed to something that would have truly benefited Linux and other Open Source platforms.
In any case, I am sure development will continue in some way. But without those resources, it will just continue to slip further and further behind.
monotouch is actually very good, and very viable commercially.
mono isnt done, only novell era.. now it can back away from the corporate deals with the devil it made
FUCK!!!
The troll is strong with this one. Plenty of us Linux users are gainfully employed laughing at the XP and IE6 users.
I knew mono was bad news when I found out that Suse/opensuse's automatic update daemon was mono-based (and hence why it hung after running more than a week (or day, I forget which). I had to set up a cron job to make it restart on a regular basis lest it do nothing.
As C# is the basis for some very important to me projects this is not in the slightest good news to me.
sudo apt-get purge cli-common mono-runtime
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
By not loading up multi-megabyte runtime to print "Hello world!"
Did that microsoft fanboi get fired too? If so maybe MS will offer him a job this time...
Quite interesting, GNOME already have *a lot* of core applications backed by Mono... Who will tell 'em? ;-)
Looking through the Mono application screenshots, what I believe are the most popular programs impacted by Mono development slowing are Banshee, F-Spot, and Tomboy. Since this trio is easily replaced by Rhythmbox, gThumb, and Gnote, among other options, good riddance to the lot of them. In addition to the standard Stallman concerns, the high concentration of the development team within Novell was always a problem anyway. There are way too many similar applications within open-source operating systems, so culling out some of the weaker ones--from a development risk standpoint--is a net benefit as far as I'm concerned.
As someone who has just spent 6 months full-time leading a team of 4 porting a *large* C# system to iPad using MonoTouch I am /not/ amused by this news.
Love Mono or Hate it, many small software development companies and even some small businesses use mono to help port existing C# winforms applications to run on Linux.
These are the kinds of apps that aren't publicly available, or may be highly specialized.
To rewrite these apps from scratch for a tiny market segment is just not economically viable for many small operators.
(I love LINUX to bits and despise windows, but you have to agree most businesses run Windows desktops for the plebs).
Mono meant that you could write all your heavy lifting C# code to talk to web services, SQL databases, and business backends once.
You could then write your front end for GTK#, winforms, and Cocoa Sharp and have that software look like a native C or C++ application, regardless if you are running Windows, Ubuntu, iPhone, iPad, or Andriod device.
Realistically, I have found that only a tenth of the code for a typical business application needs to be changed when using Winforms or GTK#.
If support for mono ceases to exist, as a software developer that has been pushing hard to release Linux versions of my companies software I am going to find it almost impossible to convince management that the tiny market for Linux is worth a the required man hours to complete re-write the software in some other language.
Trust me, the loss of Mono will not bode well for Linux Desktop usage in business.
If small development companies are forced to choose a platform for desktop software front ends, then Linux will be the very last option.
what will Microsoft do now for Silverlight Linux support? Will they drop it or just go ahead and produce an actual .Net runtime for *nix?
That was quite funny.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Mono + wine, of late, were starting to be able to run some of the .net apps associated with games. For instance, if you ask it very nicely, mono + wine can run the Need For Speed World launcher/patcher (and was able to do so before .net + wine could).
There are lots of bugs left to fix in mono before it can handle more .net 3-era apps, let alone WPF apps, which would be Really Hard.
It's cute that some open source people believe there is any software that isn't violating some patent.
Our patent system is broken and only seems to be getting worse.
Now just fire the rest of the idiots that came from Novell and start fresh. Every new Novell product has been a complete disaster thrown together by idiot programmers and idiot managers. Every new version of their existing software is worse than the last version. Please Attachmate, just kill Novell already.
now hopefully certain distros *cough*ubuntu*cough* will stop requiring mono just so they can put in Tomboy. (Or is it the other way around?)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Have you used Monodroid or Monotouch?
No, because they're cost prohibitive for a hobbyist programmer who has already graduated.
Between this news and Today's other Novell+MS news I'm starting to believe that Attachmate's purchase of Novell might not be all that awful.
Of course it's early yet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
We're celebrating here! Our managers took us out for a nice dinner to celebrate the news.
This is almost as good as the news about Osama.
"Mono" is Spanish for "monkey". The people working on Mono are "Ximian" (simian). Why the monkey theme? Got me.
It's not the languages, which are certainly serious productivity tools. It's that they are wedded to huge, sprawling class libraries that are growing by leaps and bounds, and which are controlled by a single corporation. It may have been a neat technical "hack" to re-implement the .NET CLR and C# compiler from Microsoft's specs, but that and $8 will get you a copy of this month's Wired magazine. You need to implement the framework libraries - and ALL of the objects and methods for the several dozen most popular libraries or packages, not some, need to be implemented correctly as per Microsoft's or Oracle/Sun's IMPLEMENTATIONS (not necessarily their man pages) for it to be worthwhile to developers. And it isn't enough to get it right once, you have to keep up with the hundreds of developers at Microsoft or Oracle who are busy adding new classes and methods and tweaking ("fixing bugs") in existing ones, as well as keeping up with new language features.
Customers realize this and they'll place their bets with the huge corporation that controls the standard, not with the ragtag company or foundation trying its best to keep up on a shoestring budget.
It's not a good thing to be fired, unless you get fired with your whole team and have enough impetus to subsist independently. Even more so if your parent company is one that doesn't care about tech or people. Miguel and the rest of the Mono guys are great. I hope they will have a bright future outside of Novel/Attachmate. I am happy to foot my $$$ to pay for MonoTouch.
This means there will be much less paid astroturfing on the internet and the ubuntu forums etc pushing for Mono when nobody really wants it. Mono wont come within ten miles of any server or desktop i manage.
Most people are pretty oblivious to Mono but those who are hate it, except for the new burger flippers they just sacked from Novell and Miquel de Microsoft.
HTTP/1.1 400
MS patent grant and covenant covers C# and core libraries. Unlike Java, C# and core libraries is standardized through ECMA and ISO. As part of having a standard accepted by ISO a submitter must grant license for any patent necessary for implementation on a RAND basis. This was not enough for the OS community, so MS issued the "community promise".
And yes, the community is legally binding and is even stronger than a contract as the recipients do not even have to agree to anything.
Enough FUD already
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Look it up. Basically if anyone acts in good faith relying on the promise (a promise here being a one-way contract where you do not have to agree to anything), the principle of *estoppel* springs into play. It is even more legally binding than a contract, because MS cannot even terminate it because of anything you may or may not do.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Mono is the worst thing that I have ever had to deal with on linux, hands down, ever.
My only concern now is that a project I have clients depending on (iFolder) uses mono (and it's pretty damn brittle because of it).
Time to start researching alternatives.
I won't even consider mono, I've been enjoying Stereo for ages now!
Well, that's more of a problem for .Net than Java, because Java was always uptodate on Linux as well, as it's Linux version was always maintained by the core develpers, not 3rd parties. (And they can't charge for that as it's GPLed.) Considering that SUN/Oracle is more intrested in the success of Linux than Microsoft, my vote is on Java. Also when I tried Redhat's IceTea, it worked seamlessly. (Of course they have it easier as they don't have to invent everything once again, as the can access the GPLed sources.)
Ominous?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The biggest problem with Mono was the futility of trying to keep up to date with the evolving .NET APIs.
MS has open sourced just a few of the core APIs, so the rest had to completely re-implemented.
And since there is no test tool, hopefully they work the same.
The reality is, that .NET and Mono compatibility only worked for small and simple apps.
And some APIs were completely tied to the Windows kernel Win32/64 API, so Mono versions of these APIs were nearly impossible.
When people talk about such features, I wonder:
Why not LISP? (Or Scheme)
The classic quote of course is that every languge environment expands to implement LISP badly, so why not just start with the real deal?
You can just implement any language features you desire by yourself.
And if you say that corporate programmers can't handle LISP, what makes you think that they can handle closures, lamda expressions, and the rest?
The fact is, I think the legions of corporate programmers cannot handle advanced language features. They're better off being verbose.
But the line of reasoning employed against Java and for advanced language features (make the language more powerful, and code more terse) can be used continually until you end up with Scheme.
By the way, How to Design Programs is a great programming book using Scheme.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Since you're obviously quoting FSF propaganda, please explain why Mono, an implementation of proprietary .Net, is bad while the GNU operating system, an implementation of the proprietary Unix, is perfectly fine?
Also, in what way would Portable.NET be safer than Mono?
Wow you could make good money on windows, and make 1/10000th on linux.
Is that a scare tactic ? Being windows only isnt so bad.
YOU CAN BE RICH!!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That was probably the stupidest idea ever seen, who would ever want to develop on this "thing" ? No way Jose and good riddance !
Usually seriouslly, you have at least 4-6 weeks of testing for any serious apps.
Not, just a make my chanes, no testing, and deploy.
But I get your point, its easy..... just like an rpm repo.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I have been a contract software engineer for a few decades now, and about a decade ago, Attachemate wanted to contract with me for some work. I was very excited about the opportunity until I read their contract. There were some portions about non-compete that were problematic for me and I attempted unsuccessfully to come to any accommodation about this. The problem about their contract is that it states that you can never again (ever) work for a competitor that has, or is planning to have, or considering having, a product that might compete with Attachemate, or any affiliate of Attachemate, now or at any time in the future. There are just so many things wrong about this I don't know where to start. A non-compete that lasts forever, a non-compete not only about an existing product, but anything that might be planned, or even considered, not only by Attachemate today, but any of their affiliates today, and any of these affiliates any time in the future, and the topper, any new affiliates that might arrive any time in the future. They were absolutely hardcore and would not even discuss changing any of these terms. I believe when they purchased Novell, they probably approached the MONO engineers and tried to get them to sign a new contract with the aforementioned non-compete terms. I doubt any of the American engineers agreed to sign such an open ended contract, and Attachemate probably gave up, and laid off the bunch, thinking Americans are unreasonable. For those in the know about ECMA, there is also the possibility that Microsoft told Attachemate to deprecate MONO, and Attachemate may be a big member in ECMA.
At first I thought.... who wants to write .net apps on unix? Until I was forced to write a program that talked SOAP to a vendor's server running .NET web services.
I whipped one up in visual studio (and im a unix admin with 15+ years experience) compiled it in windows, and then copied the .exe file to a linux and solaris box where it ran with no issues whatsoever
The same thing in perl using SOAP::Lite took weeks to get right and even then was still a mess.
Mono's definitely a useful part of the unix world.
If you didn't notice, the post you criticized on the basis of assuming an MS environment was installed was a response to a comment that already assumed an MS environment was installed. Your statement, then, is meaningless in the context of the conversation you jumped into.
Perhaps more importantly, the post you criticized was suggesting that .Net exe's are as easy to deploy as native exe's. And, given that .Net exe's will run on Linux with Mono, your statement is factually wrong, as you can indeed run exe's on a Linux system without any MS code at all.
Achievement Unlocked!
Shit Slinger: Begin and end a sentence with the word "bullshit"!
.. with the added benefit that it compiles down to native code -- no virtual machine required. Has all the wizzy C#/Java things people go on about.
Quick tutorial on how to do lots of equivalent things in Vala vs. C#:
http://live.gnome.org/Vala/ValaForCSharpProgrammers
Huh, that's funny. Without projects like Mono, I personally wouldn't have been willing to touch Linux (or OS X). Thankfully, your opinion - though apparently shared by many - doesn't mean squat. I for one am glad for the availability of choice in the open source world, and the beauty is that what I chose doesn't have to line up with what anyone else chooses. I'm hopeful another company picks these guys up soon as the risk now is that the team won't stay together. The only mistake I see with Mono was they tied themselves to Novell which has been destined for the bottom of the sea for years.