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."

Comments

And nothing of value was lost.

[Alex Belits]

(I will gb2/b/ shortly).

I was considering Monodroid...

[hsmith]

But I think this seals my fate to avoid it and stick with just Java...

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[rabtech]

OK so you wish to live without dynamic language support, true generics, query expressions/LINQ, closures, lambda expressions, the new async/await, and a whole host of other features so you can stick with a language that hasn't seen a major new feature in a long time? One that continuously makes the wrong decisions just for backwards compatibility? (type erasure is idiotic, just make people upgrade their JVMs. the "lambda" support coming in 1.7 will suck for the same reason - it isn't true lambda expressions that make functions first-class citizens, its just syntax sugar on an anonymous class so non-final vars don't get hoisted because writing the changed value back to the caller would apparently be too much trouble.)

Basically Java is frozen in stone and will never be updated with anything worthwhile. Apparently anything that requires JVM support is absolutely out of the question. Especially if C# did it. And if by some miracle Java includes something C# did first, it will introduce incompatible syntax just to be a dick. (for/enumeration loops I'm looking at you!)

There is one interesting question... 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? They already had rotor, which was an independent implementation of the runtime for *BSD. It wouldn't be hard to do and if they did so there would literally be no reason to choose Java as the only thing it has going for it is that it runs on multiple operating systems. This doesn't necessarily involve the GUI framework or other such things... but the core runtime itself is fantastic.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[cavreader]

Can't digest any factual information that discredits your built-in bias Huh ?

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

They could port Silverlight to Flash. Flash already has pretty robust cross-platform support.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[hsmith]

Have you used Monodroid or Monotouch? I have been scrounging around for anyone that has (The droid version at least) and been coming up empty. C# is a breeze and I'd prefer to code in it... The attractive part to me was using it to build a common business layer I could leverage with WM7 and save myself some headache.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[nmb3000]

Basically Java is frozen in stone and will never be updated with anything worthwhile. Apparently anything that requires JVM support is absolutely out of the question.

When I first read about the type erasure fiasco and now the new lambda mess, this was my exact same thought. The only way they might be able to move the language and framework forward at this point is to have a huge drop-off where compatibility with older JVM is removed cold turkey in favor of improving the language. They'd call it something reasonable like Java 2, or something stupid like Java X, and it would be a fresh new start.

It doesn't even seem like compatibility would be that bad. Java programs can target specific versions of the JVM, right? It seems like it should be possible to have multiple versions installed. However, it would probably mean a significant rewrite of the JVM and compiler, a big investment, combined with the effort of maintaining two separate Java branches for who knows how long.

The problem is that Oracle is behind the wheel now, and that just won't happen. As you said, Java is frozen.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[shutdown -p now]

The problem is that Oracle is behind the wheel now, and that just won't happen. As you said, Java is frozen.

This only means that your hypothetical Java 2.0 won't be called Java.

I don't know what it'll be called, but I bet it'll come out of Google.

(and no, Go is not that)

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[shutdown -p now]

Indeed, this is the most interesting question now. Screw Mono - while nice in theory it never became popular on desktop Linux, and it's easy to understand why.

On the other hand, for mobile development, MonoTouch/MonoDroid was shaping up as the only cross-platform mobile development framework with native integration (unlike, say, AIR) and good perf. Now it looks like we're back to square one.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[Samantha Wright]

Alternatively you could just go back to Common Lisp, and discover that you can now sleep well at night.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[devent]

BS. With the JVM I can just use JRube, JPython, Groovy, Scala, Closure, and many more. All those languages are build on top of the JVM, meaning I can continue to use the tools and the libraries from Java and I can mix Java with any of those languages for free.

At least with Java I can use a ton of free, open source tools, like Eclipse, Netbeans, and Java have a way more active open source community, meaning I have much more libraries and frameworks.

"Basically Java is frozen in stone and will never be updated with anything worthwhile." In the enterprise world that is a very good thing. If you want something "worthwhile" you can still choose of the 100s of new languages developed on top the JVM.

"And if by some miracle Java includes something C# did first, it will introduce incompatible syntax just to be a dick. " That is was C# is about. Clone Java but introduce slightly different syntax and SDK to be just a "dick".

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[MostAwesomeDude]

Did you know that Haskell, Ruby, and Python exist? They have many of C#'s features, while not being C#. Consider it sometime.

Re:I was considering Monodroid...

[sproketboy]

Those are all shit features. .NET and C# suck ass from a dead monkey.

Re:MONO? SHOUDA CALLED IT STEREO !!

[Midnight Thunder]

I would suggest they were probably thinking of some difficult to diagnose disease, but that wouldn't be fair.

 

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And then you will come saying that Java is perfectly fine in the GNU ecosystem.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not, since C# is an ECMA standard. Don't let facts interrupt your butthurt though.

Re:Good.

[mysidia]

The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents.

No, C# itself is covered by an open standard. Your suggestion of Microsoft Patent Ire is entirely academic, and Microsoft's patents covering Linux kernel technology are much greater concern

And with Java, the danger is not academic. Oracle is actually suing Google over patents for their implementation resembling Java.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, C# itself is covered by an open standard.

Yes, an older version, C# 2.0 is covered by an open standard. C# 3.0/4.0 or the framework versions they came with have no open standards.
Note that all the cool productivity enhancing features came in later versions, C# 2.0 is pretty much Java with awkward closures.

Re:Good.

[Microlith]

ECMA standards don't protect you from patent lawsuits. Especially not when the standard is saddled with RAND patents (which virtually guarantee that open source usage is out the window.)

Re:Good.

[Microlith]

And with Java, the danger is not academic. Oracle is actually suing Google over patents for their implementation resembling Java.

Except he said nothing about Java whatsoever. Why do you (and the first person to reply) insist on stuffing words in other people's mouths?

Re:Good.

[rzei]

Last I checked MONO was aiming to deliver .NET to Linux. .NET (platform) patents scare people, not patents regarding the language specification. I guess you can patent anything in USA and sue on ever more in Texas, but I do not think that the language specification contains anything patentable.

Have you read the patent statement? It says:

Microsoft Corporation will grant, [..] licenses on commericially reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s), [...] for the implementation of the Ecma Standard.

So, until you have Microsoft releasing GPL (w/ classpath or whatever assemblies you use on .NET exception) or LGPL code that compiles under Linux you really shouldn't be using it.

Re:Good.

[warp_kez]

You cannot bitch about one companies supposedly insane approach to patents while ignoring another's.

Re:Good.

[osu-neko]

You cannot bitch about one companies supposedly insane approach to patents while ignoring another's.

You not only can, you have to. It may not be Twitter, but even /. has message length limits.

Re:Good.

[guybrush3pwood]

Why not?

Re:Good.

[mysidia]

Except he said nothing about Java whatsoever. Why do you (and the first person to reply) insist on stuffing words in other people's mouths?

Because C# and Java have duopoly for modern enterprise programming languages with critical mass; there aren't credible alternatives besides those two. Discouraging C# use, means encouraging Java use, and vice versa.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

With Java, there is absolutely no danger. With similar to Java implementations (android, apache harmony), there is a ton of danger. Hey, just like with similar to C# implementations.

Re:Good.

[Etrigoth]

Which parts of the standard are you referring too ?

Re:Good.

[black6host]

I don't care for proprietary programming languages as much as the next guy. Take away the .net part of it, look at the principal architect of the C# language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg/> Sorry, URL formatting has me stumped, I've followed the syntax, but that's not the point of this post. You can find him. He was was heavily involved/ perhaps lead architect (I don't know as of now) of Borland's Delphi. A most wonderful development environment, and the only real competitor to VB at the time. So my suggestion is don't bash C# but rather the encumbrances places upon it, like .NET.

Disclaimer: I still write in Delphi. If I want to update a network of 100 systems I just copy over the .exe. (Still using Delphi 7). No need to roll out updates to every machine. No registry usage. None of the BS that comes with rolling out a .Net application. And my clients find my work very valuable. My impression is that Delphi is much more common in the EU and I don't speak at all to the crap that's happened since then with the selling to this corp or that corp. I only point out that the person developed by C# is a talented individual.

Re:Good.

[Dragonslicer]

Are you sure that you aren't confusing C# with .Net? C# is a programming language that is standardized by ECMA and ISO. .Net is a framework that can be used by several programming languages, including C#. I know that there are issues with many patents that have been granted in the United States, but I would still be surprised if Microsoft has patents on a language specification.

Re:Good.

[Dahamma]

1) Do your research:

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/osspatentpledge.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/IPLicensing/customercovenant/msnovellcollab/patent_agreement.aspx

2) Stop plagarizing Richard Stallman's quotes without attribution:

http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

Re:Good.

[Etrigoth]

Erm, Have you actually tried to deploy a .net application recently ?

Other then ensuring that the framework is installed, it is also generally as simple as copying a .exe file.

ClickOnce deployment is vaguely more complicated but its complexities exist to counter security problems. One can hardly blame MS for trying to be a bit more proactive about security either.

The largest (in terms of distribution) .NET program I've ever written had a target audience of roughly 40k computers. Our deployment process ? xcopy or download an MSI file if you weren't on the network.

Re:Good.

[warp_kez]

I am reminded of all the "me too" posts when someone posted "I hate ...." - how is that being objective?

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

This is the very definition of FUD. You have some assumptions made up of complete guesswork, and from that you try to scare the development community from using this language/platform. You have absolutely no facts to back up your assertions, and yet year after year people keep spreading this FUD and year after year it does not come true.

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.

So what is the answer? To avoid applications written in C#? If you do that, then you have already lost the applications without any lawsuits being filed. The paranoia wins.

In years to come, when Microsoft moves on to its next programming system that supplants .NET, I am sure you will pat yourself on the back saying how you saved the open source world from an attack that only existed in your imagination. It is like Donald Trump fanning the flames of a nutjob conspiracy, and then claiming a victory because the unlikely accusations proved to be untrue.

Re:Good.

[Etrigoth]

You probably know this, but the OP you're quoting just wholesale copied RMSs FSF statement on .NET (linky: http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono)

I agree with you entirely though, it's FUD.

Re:Good.

[hduff]

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.

Miguel says everything is cool so you are wrong and we have nothing to fear. Ever. EVAR !

Re:Good.

[Anthony Mouse]

That would create a single point of failure. If Novell decided to stop updating Mono (or, say, went out of business) then the community wouldn't be immune to the patents if they chose to pick up the slack.

Re:Good.

[walshy007]

Do you have the same opinion with wine? should we make life harder for those distributing wine so that people cannot try to run windows programs as a compatibility layer so easily?

Same with mono, many universities teach c# these days in their courses, and if it were not for mono I would have had to actually used windows for once.

Something of value WILL be lost, the ability to continue using your linux system in the face of being forced to use .net stuff.

Re:Good.

[shutdown -p now]

He is not. C# has versions, and so does .NET. As well, C# has an Ecma standard, and so does .NET (CLI) - they are two separate documents.

He is correct in that the most recent standardized (by Ecma and ISO) versions of both C# and CLI are 2.0.

Re:Good.

[shutdown -p now]

There's no published standard document from Ecma yet.

Re:Good.

[mcgrew]

MS patents covering the MS kernel? Huh? MS has no patents that cover the Linux kernel. Not that I've heard of. What patents are you talking about?

Re:Good.

[mcgrew]

If somebody royally fucks you over, hating them IS being objective -- and rational.

Re:Good.

[drfreak]

Good Question. In all the MSDN conference media -which I do not define as MSDN proper, but programmer conference media-, Microsoft has not only embraces Mono but showcases it. Microsoft has no intention of developing a .NET solution for other platforms, but it is advantageous for them to support others who do so. Did you (not you who I am replying to but the original commenter) not see the recent Microsoft PDC conference video where Miguel De Icaza himself presented on Mono?

Re:Good.

[drfreak]

Sorry, I should have included the link. Miguel describes all the features in the most current version of Mono. At a Microsoft Developers Conference. Enuff Said.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

In all the MSDN conference media -which I do not define as MSDN proper, but programmer conference media-, Microsoft has not only embraces Mono but showcases it.

Since I know Microsoft well, that is all the reason I need to avoid Mono now and forever.

Did you... not see the recent Microsoft PDC conference video where Miguel De Icaza himself presented on Mono?

I hope you are not under the misapprehension that Miguel de Icaza has a shred of credibility left with anyone, least of all me.

Re:Good.

[mcgrew]

This is the very definition of FUD.

Sometimes fear, uncertainty, and doubt are warranted. IMO any time you're dealing with MS you should be fearful, uncertain, and doubtful. MS does have a history, you know.

The paranoia wins.

You try walking home through the ghetto without being paranoid. I'm not talking about MS here, I'm talking about staggering home from Felbers. Live in my part of town and paranoia is the only thing that will keep you alive. And to tell the truth, I fear MS more than I fear the gangstas. What's that Who song about "a boss with a gun that fires cops"?

t is like Donald Trump fanning the flames of a nutjob conspiracy,

Bullshit, MS's shenanigans are legion and history, unlike Trump's retarded tinfoil hat bullshit.

Re:Good.

[binarylarry]

Java is open source, GPL even, and has a patent covenant from Oracle not to sue for it's use.

How much better could it fit in the GNU ecosystem?

Re:Good.

[aztracker1]

Well, you could read the legally binding community promise... Or the projects MS has released under OSS licences (MVC, DLR, etc). I'm guessing you've stripped out the FAT32 support, and Samba from your linux builds too then?

Re:Good.

[Anthony Mouse]

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/osspatentpledge.mspx [microsoft.com]

That says it only covers patents "that are necessary to implement the Covered Specification." How worthless is that? So if you implement it the same way Microsoft did, or in the most natural and straightforward way, but there was some alternative way of doing it that still meets the spec then you're not covered? As in, even if the only alternative is a crap implementation that will require twice as much memory and 10 times as much CPU?

Obviously they couldn't have created a patent grant that says 'you can use any Microsoft patents that cover the Microsoft implementation in order to create your own' because that wouldn't include the trap for the unwary.

Re:Good.

[aztracker1]

What are you talking about... you can write .Net/C# apps that don't use the registry at all... and if .Net is installed, and the app is well written, you can do xcopy deploy all you want... I have, and often do...

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

Microsoft has not only embraces Mono but showcases it.

Since I know Microsoft well, that is all the reason I need to avoid Mono now and forever.

So on one hand we have people stating that we should avoid Mono because Microsoft does not like the competition and will eventually crush it with their patents, while on the other hand we should avoid Mono because Microsoft likes it and showcases it as evidence of the .NET CLR cross platform status.

It seems Microsoft can't do anything right!

I hope you are not under the misapprehension that Miguel de Icaza has a shred of credibility left with anyone, least of all me.

It is quite damning of Miguel that he has lost the support of the paranoid set. So what has he actually done? He has created a programming platform that works, has withstood the test of time, and that has not been crushed under the legal might if Microsoft. He proved the naysayers wrong.

Re:Good.

[dudpixel]

last I checked MSI files are installers, meaning the user still has to install it once this file is on their pc.

On linux you could store your program in a self-hosted repository and each client can just sudo apt-get install programname

Installation all handled automatically so the user just has to click on the icon in the menu and run it. Software updates can happen without the user even knowing.

This can be done for ALL linux desktop software, not just the ones you create...

I believe there are ways to do this on windows but its always a custom solution and not built into windows itself...

Re:Good.

[dhasenan]

They haven't sued Novell after ten years of Mono development. Why the hell would they wait this long?

If they didn't say "that are necessary to implement the Covered Specification", you could use any Microsoft patents you want without licensing them as long as you implemented some portion of C# or .NET along with your project. For instance, add a module to the Linux kernel that parses a reasonable subset of C# and you can get around the FAT long filename patent issue.

Re:Good.

[dudpixel]

regardless of whether its FUD or not, its been going on too long now to put the fire out.

And in the open source world, as soon as something is despised or rejected by the community at large, its days are numbered.

Re:Good.

[aaron552]

Last time I checked, .NET exe files compiled on windows are able to be run on mono on linux... usually

Re:Good.

[tibit]

It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

Whoosh. You're utterly confused. C# is no biggie, to put it mildly. It's but one of the languages for which an implementation exists that happens to target the CLR and the .net framework. It's the platform that's the big deal, not a single language.

It's not dangerous to depend on C#, if anything it may be dangerous to depend on CLR or on the .net framework.

Free C# implementations do not permit users to run C# programs on free platforms. A free C# implementation is a C#-to-bytecode compiler. To be functional, it needs the framework and a runtime.

Writing programs in C# by itself is not bad. You could arrange to have a C# compiler that targets JVM, with proper library support. The latter is where the devil sits since it needs to implement quite a bit of CLR functionality, but it can be done. Mainsoft offers a system like that; no I'm not related to them in any way (not even as a user).

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

Sometimes fear, uncertainty, and doubt are warranted. IMO any time you're dealing with MS you should be fearful, uncertain, and doubtful. MS does have a history, you know.

No, Microsoft does not have a history of breaking their Microsoft Community Promise. They have never created a standard and then sued everybody for using that standard. (No, FAT32 was always a proprietary file system)

Mono is not going to be killed by Microsoft's patents, just like OpenOffice was not targetted for using Microsoft's file formats (despite being rumoured for years that MS was just about to sue). You are correct that Microsoft do have a history, but it appears to be a history of letting others use their IP if it is not something that they actively licence.

So why doesn't Microsoft sue? Because it would be a public relations nightmare - just as it was for SCO. That is the nail in the coffin for this FUD for me. Microsoft are just not stupid enough to put themselves in the position of such a David and Goliath lawsuit by going after the open source community.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

regardless of whether its FUD or not, its been going on too long now to put the fire out.

And in the open source world, as soon as something is despised or rejected by the community at large, its days are numbered.

I don't know about that. The Mono Project has had to wear these accusations since it began and yet it still grows better all the time. Just because a few vocal people are against it does not mean that it will go away. I think that their branching out into the mobile phone arena will keep their profile up and ensure the project doesn't die.

Let's face it, Windows is despised in the open source community too and yet there is still quite a lot of support for the operating system in open source software. Sure it will reduce the number of developers using it, but there is still plenty of software being written using Mono - both open and closed source. Now I think about it, it is probably the private companies writing using Mono as familiar way of moving their in-house software to Linux that will ensure the future of the platform - and be a reason that even Microsoft haters should support the programming platform.

Re:Good.

[randallman]

It's not so clear. There's still a cloud over C# and .NET implementations not from MS. See Here..

Re:Good.

[modmans2ndcoming]

what rinky dink Enterprise IT department do you work in? Users do not deploy programs to their computers. you push them out and they are just available from the end user's perspective.

Re:Good.

[SplashMyBandit]

C# is under ECMA but *the libraries are not*. The C# language is nothing (basically a sweetened version of Java - which C# is derived from via an intermediate language called "Cool"). It's the libraries that matter, and Microsoft has plenty of patents on them.

Re:Good.

[Mongoose Disciple]

So why doesn't Microsoft sue? Because it would be a public relations nightmare - just as it was for SCO. That is the nail in the coffin for this FUD for me. Microsoft are just not stupid enough to put themselves in the position of such a David and Goliath lawsuit by going after the open source community.

And, really, something like the closest cousin of the Streisand Effect -- by taking an Open Source alternative/competitor seriously enough to sue Microsoft would instantly provide them with more advertising, PR, and usage than they'd probably get in 20 years on their own.

Re:Good.

[Anthony Mouse]

First, if they had done what I suggested and included a patent grant for all of the patents that the Microsoft implementation uses, it would only have implicated the FAT long filename patent (or any given other patent) if Microsoft's implementation had used it. And if Microsoft did use it for something in their implementation, the idea that a third party implementation that did the same thing wouldn't be covered is the whole thing people are concerned about.

Second, what you are describing is the trade off between false positives and false negatives and what you are saying is that Microsoft chose an alternative that causes edge cases to result in Microsoft being able to use patents against third party implementations despite the pledge. To me that does not seem to be a good strategy to alleviate concerns that Microsoft will use patents against third party implementations despite the pledge.

Re:Good.

[kevinmenzel]

So wait, isn't that essentially "I overreact and I am stubborn about it?" I mean, sitting on a cold stove because it might be hot means that instead of learning to discern when a stove is hot and when it is cold, you're just shutting out the situation entirely. That seems rather an immature attitude to take... I mean, there's probably some reality to that - but shouldn't that be challenged? I mean, there are probably reasons not to sit on a stove that don't involve the heat of the stove - but I mean, gosh - don't we expect people to try Linux again, even though when they tried it 10 years ago, it didn't work on their computers easily? It seems really disengenuous to demand that people take time to reevaluate only some things...

Re:Good.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So why doesn't Microsoft sue? Because it would be a public relations nightmare - just as it was for SCO.

Perhaps you aren't aware that MS funded SCO's lawsuit. SCO was just a proxy for MS. Nothing to stop MS from "selling" the patents in question to some patent troll and engaging in another proxy lawsuit.

Re:Good.

[devent]

Last I heart the EU forced Microsoft to release documentation to the Samba team so I don't think they can just sue Samba now anyway. http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/22/samba-team-gains-tech-docs-from-eu-microsoft-antitrust-suit/

Re:Good.

[devent]

Why not? There is no risk at all with the Linux package manager, because you can restrict the repositories to your own. That way users can install only the applications you allow. The user can't have root access to the computer so he can't change the apt/yum repositories. Don't know if it's practical but with Linux you at least have to option to do it.

Should be useful if one computer goes down and the user can just use a different computer with was not designated for the task. The user can just install the applications he needs and continue with his work. No need to setup a computer from scratch, just create a new user account, install your application and continue with your work.

Re:Good.

[HiThere]

It's been a long time since I read that statement. I was profoundly dissatisfied with it at the time, and don't even know if it was legally binding on MS. OTOH, if you want details, sorry, it's been a long time since I read it, and I don't intend to wade through analyzing it again.

That said, I seem to recall that the covenant only covered the bare language, not any of the associated libraries. So perhaps if you write programs that don't use any of the standard libraries you'd be OK. But for such programs there's little reason to use C#. So it's probably better to just avoid it.

Re:Good.

[obarthelemy]

nope, they're saying that the copyright/patent situation is not clear at all, and that MS pushing c# so hard right now, including via mono, in no way guarantees that they won't have a change of mind 5 months - 6 years from now, and close everything up again.

Actually, it may not even be a change of heart, but simply the plan, from the start. Some variation on embrace and extend.

Investing any amount of dev resources in c# implies a huge trust not only in MS's current new found friendliness to Open things, but also of the resilience of that mantra with the next CEO/policy/sales figures change.

I've got a bridge to sell. Cheap !

Re:Good.

[Savage650]

... legally binding .. promise ...

That's an oxymoron right there.

I'm guessing you've stripped out the FAT32 support, and Samba from your linux builds too then?

Try adding exFAT support without a patent license ...

Re:Good.

[HiThere]

Do you remember the limitations of coverage in that deal? They were so severe that they were essentially prohibitive. You basically weren't allowed to share anything affected with anybody except Novell, but Novell could share it. However Novell didn't own the patents, so it couldn't license anyone else to use the code. Including you. (There was an exception that you were granted a license to use the patent in Novell's code provided that you purchased the software from Novell.)

What the GPL says about code covered in this way is that you are forbidden to distribute it.

Additionally, the deal was time limited. The original deal was for 5 years, but I think Novell got an extension. Not a permanent one, but I don't remember for how long.

Re:Good.

[guybrush3pwood]

Still, you have not answered the question. My question was simple, direct, and easy to understand. You lack an answer, maybe?

Re:Good.

[DragonWriter]

Well, you could read the legally binding community promise [microsoft.com]...

Or you can realize that, at least in U.S. law, that's what's called a "gratuitous license" and is, therefore, revocable at will, even if it says otherwise.

The fact that the remedies Microsoft is able to claim for violations of its rights after it revokes the permissions might be limited to the extent a court decides is necessary to avoid injustice in the case of people who reasonably relied on the promise before it was revoked under the doctrine of promissory estoppel is very far from a solid guarantee.

Re:Good.

[davester666]

All the developers are free to move to India and apply for jobs with the new Mono team being created there...

Re:Good.

[Anthony Mouse]

The difference is that WINE is just the API. Its only purpose is to allow Windows programs for which there is no Linux version to run on Linux. Everyone understands that it is preferable to release a native Linux version of a program than to use the Windows version using WINE.

The problem with Mono is that it doesn't work that way. It isn't marketed as a stopgap for programs that don't have a native Linux version. People are promoting it as a non-transient platform for Linux software development. If WINE is destroyed, you're not any worse off than if you had never had it to begin with. If Mono is destroyed after people have written a large body of software for it, you lose all of that software along with it, and that's the problem.

Re:Good.

[kat_skan]

It seems Microsoft can't do anything right!

Yeah it's as though a thirty-year history of duplicitous business practices and hostility to standards makes people unwilling to trust them. Go fig.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

nope, they're saying that the copyright/patent situation is not clear at all, and that MS pushing c# so hard right now, including via mono, in no way guarantees that they won't have a change of mind 5 months - 6 years from now, and close everything up again.

They could also send out death squads to kill anyone who writes buggy software in C#. Or not.

It is one thing to have doubts about whether Microsoft are lying about making an open standard, but it is another to then take every opportunity to convince the world that they are doing exactly that - even if it is completely contrary to every action that Microsoft has taken since it created .NET.

All you are saying is that you fear that they may eventually turn against the developer community, that you can't be certain what their ultimate goal is, and that you have grave doubts about their motivations.

But that is not facts, just classic FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Re:Good.

[JerryLindenburg]

This whole Novell thing got me thinking that maybe Microsoft is about to throw the last blow in the platform war, decidedly ending it once and for all. Think about it for a second. Microsoft has never made a dime from anyone using Linux. They never will, either. Unless they grow up a little, and accept that Linux isn't going away anytime soon. They've done everything they possibly could to kill it and failed. If I were an executive at Microsoft (it could happen, and I would accept the job if they offered it), then I would be looking at extending my reach, improving Microsoft's reputation, and putting the past behind me. It only makes sense in that context that I (still as an executive here) would absorb mono, keep it open, and make it official.

Of course, this layoff doesn't bode well for my little conspiracy theory. So there's no telling what Microsoft will actually do.

If I'm wrong, Microsoft is being mismanaged, and they're as dumb as ever.
I'm going to hold off and give them the benefit of the doubt, assume they've matured with age, and hope I'm right.

We'll see.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

Yeah it's as though a thirty-year history of duplicitous business practices and hostility to standards makes people unwilling to trust them. Go fig.

But nobody is asking you to use any Microsoft software that doesn't follow the standards. This is about using open source software that follows an ECMA standard. It doesn't matter if .NET moves away from that standard if you are targeting the Mono CLR. If you are really paranoid then write your software using the Gtk# classes and you can be completely free of Microsoft's influence.

The patents covering the EMCA standards are part of the Microsoft Community Promise. If Microsoft decided to reneg on that promise and start suing people, do you think a judge would look favourably on that? No, they would be laughed out of court.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

[Miguel] has not been crushed under the legal might if Microsoft.

Hardly. He's Microsoft's biggest friend.

He proved the naysayers wrong.

No he didn't.

Re:Good.

[JerryLindenburg]

If there indeed aren't credible alternatives, I would question your use of the word "Enterprise."

Re:Good.

[MemoryDragon]

Yes Hjelfsberg is one of the best language architects/compiler builders worldwide. Turbo Pascal in its infancy was the fastest compiler for any high level language back then and with Delphi he had shown what to do to build a first class development tool (he and his team of course).
There was a reason Microsoft hired that guy, you could not get anyone better for building up world class developers tools.
Just look at the Microsoft tools before him and now.

Re:Good.

[ChunderDownunder]

but MS does, indirectly, make money off mono on linux - through VS licenses. While mono/sharpdevelop do exist, i'd guess that a fair proportion of those mono deployers have corporate day jobs sitting in front of VS Pro. Developer mindshare here - MS make money off the tools where otherwise projects would be written in Java.

Re:Good.

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention it has been...what? 11 years now? If there were gonna do something they would have done it when Vista was stinkin up the joint. It just goes to prove that this stereotype is sadly all too true when it comes to many in the community.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm going to hold off and give them the benefit of the doubt, assume they've matured with age, and hope I'm right

As far as I can see Microsoft remains the same gang of thugs it always was.

You know who you are.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

He proved the naysayers wrong.

No he didn't.

Seriously? After what I said, that is the response that is supposed to put me in my place? I suppose I will have to just concede to your superior argument and wit (or lack thereof).

Re:Good.

[hairyfeet]

If you would have bothered to read your own link you would have found a handy little link where you buy a licensed copy for any OS you care to run it on, how horrible! To think, they actually want to be paid for their R&D instead of giving you the right to have their work "free as in beer".

You know, just because you want everything for free doesn't give you the right to force that upon others anymore than I have the right to take GPL code and lock it behind a paywall. MSFT has given the code for .NET (all except Winforms IIRC which wouldn't bloody work anywhere else anyway) they have given it as an ECMA standard AND given a legally binding community promise that makes it so any attempt to weasel out would get them laughed out of any courtroom anywhere.

So lets be honest here: The ONLY way you would take anything made by MSFT is if it were sold to Google. BTW, they using any GPL V3 in Android? No? Know why? Look up "TiVoization" and see what is gonna happen to the droid. I frankly find it hilarious that everyone in the Linux community is worried about the old dog when the new hungry wolf is about to bite you right in the ass. Think RMS wrote GPL V3 because it was Tuesday? he wrote it because he knows GPL V2 is hopelessly broken and thanks to TiVo every corp on the planet knows that too.

So please, keep believing that .NET is some evil plot that is just taking a long long LONG time to come to fruition. It will make it all the more funny when the handset manufacturers take your Linux toys away thanks to TiVo tricking. After all, what good is the code if the device won't let you run it?

Re:Good.

[Jurily]

Since I know Microsoft well, that is all the reason I need to avoid Mono now and forever.

You know Bill doesn't work there anymore, right?

Re:Good.

[makomk]

It may be legally binding on Microsoft. It's not legally binding on anyone Microsoft may choose to sell the patents to, does not cover most of Mono, and has some other nasty caveats (for example, Microsoft have laid patent traps for applications and libraries using C#/.Net and the agreement doesn't protect against those).

Re:Good.

[makomk]

If you are really paranoid then write your software using the Gtk# classes and you can be completely free of Microsoft's influence.

No you can't, because I'm pretty sure that Gtk# infringes Microsoft patents - or at the very least one carefully-targetted Microsoft patent - and for obvious reasons it's not covered by any of Microsoft's patent promises. (That's one of the problems with using C# safely - Microsoft could and apparently did file patents aimed at libraries and applications written in it, patents that avoid prior art by tying themselves to specific C# and .Net features.)

Re:Good.

[makomk]

If you would have bothered to read your own link you would have found a handy little link where you buy a licensed copy [tuxera.com] for any OS you care to run it on, how horrible! To think, they actually want to be paid for their R&D instead of giving you the right to have their work "free as in beer".

Of course, the reason you'd want to use exFAT isn't some magical Microsoft R&D mojo - there's no interesting R&D in simple filesystems anyway. It's because 90% of computers run Microsoft Windows, so if you want to store files on devices in a way that they can access you need to use either FAT or exFAT (and FAT is limited to 32GB). Worse, this means that pretty much all consumer cameras and MP3 players and other devices use FAT or exFAT as their only supported FSes, so if you want to interoperate with those you need FAT and exFAT support too. The SDXC standard for high capacity SD cards even requires exFAT support.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

He proved the naysayers wrong.

No he didn't.

Seriously? After what I said, that is the response that is supposed to put me in my place? I suppose I will have to just concede to your superior argument and wit (or lack thereof).

You are so far out in fairytale land you hardly merit a response. But let me try: nobody cares whether Miguel de Icaza is crushed by Microsoft or not. And don't worry he won't be, because he is Microsoft's man, always has been from the day I met him ten years ago.

People in this community (to which you obviously do not belong) care about preserving their freedom. And Microsoft's .NET promises to do the opposite of that.

Re:Good.

[walshy007]

People are promoting it as a non-transient platform for Linux software development.

And some silly people treat wine as that just targeting wine makes for instant porting... your point? misguided people will always be around.

If WINE is destroyed, you're not any worse off than if you had never had it to begin with.

and those using winelib for their 'ports' aren't worse off how?

The problem with Mono is that it doesn't work that way. It isn't marketed as a stopgap for programs that don't have a native Linux version.

Every time I've dealt with mono it's always been as more a compatibility layer than anything else, even when being forced to develop .net, very very few people develop OSS on linux specifically for mono on linux, when they do you typically hear a big stink about it. To most it has always been about just plain making everything work on linux.

Mono serves a useful purpose, is open source and is yet to have any patent issues. To get rid of it just because some people can abuse it goes entirely against the principles of free software to begin with.

Re:Good.

[obarthelemy]

this is MS. It's not FUD, it's experience !

plus, if they were serious and truthful about it, they would have opened it and relinquished absoluted control via some kind of overseeing foundation / steering committee. which they most assuredly didn't.

Re:Good.

[Bert64]

It has a patent covenant which cover a subset of the overall .net platform...

However the whole .net is a bait and switch, you have to go out of your way to avoid encumbered or non cross platform features when developing a .net application, so unless you explicitly intended from the start to create a cross platform application, your app will be tied to windows.

Re:Good.

[Bert64]

The trouble is that openness forces you to compete on a level playing field with everyone else, and doing so results in razor thin margins and lots of hard work...
MS want to hold on to their fat margins from selling half assed products.

Re:Good.

[Bert64]

If you would have bothered to read your own link you would have found a handy little link where you buy a licensed copy [tuxera.com] for any OS you care to run it on, how horrible! To think, they actually want to be paid for their R&D instead of giving you the right to have their work "free as in beer".

There was no need to do any R&D, there are already a large number of openly specified filesystems which offer the features exFAT is supposed to be used for (ie support for files over 2gb etc)... If MS did not have a monopoly influence over the market, then they would never be able to push their patent encumbered filesystem instead of the more open ones that are already tried, tested, and free for anyone to implement.

Re:Good.

[MareLooke]

Groklaw

Note that the splitting of the "mumbo jumbo" has never happened and was shrugged off by De Icaza last time he was confronted about it.

Re:Good.

[jonamous]

This is not true at all. I've written a few utilities which are run by people throughout my company directly from my network share. As long as you have .NET installed, it works just fine.

Re:Good.

[eulernet]

Microsoft Corporation will grant, [..] licenses on commericially reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s), [...] for the implementation of the Ecma Standard.

Did you want to say comically ?

Re:Good.

[gbjbaanb]

Anders did brilliantly on Delphi - that was very widely accalimed as one of the best languages around. then Microsoft hired him to do their Java clone, and from that, he tweaked it and made C#.

I think that Delphi would make a great open sourced language, is Borland (or whoever now owns it) just released it into the wild, it could become the Linux client development tool and gain a new lease of life (and updates, of course).

to post a link - use the html tags. (open-angle-bracket) a href="url" (close angle bracket) then put your text, then put /a in angle brackets. then preview to see you got it right. Easy, but I wish /. would create a slightly better featured editor (like the one on stackoverflow) where you can just highlight text, click the link button and enter the url.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

Once again you have managed to post a message with no actual content. Your argument thus far has been that you know Microsoft and you once met Miguel de Icaza. Wow, how insightful. You can't give any reason for avoiding Mono because there is no real reason. Anything will have to be based on some vague fear of the future.

Nobody cares whether Microsoft buries Mono with patents, you say? You obviously have not been reading all the posts here saying not to use it because of the risk of Microsoft's patents.

Finally you claim that I don't belong to this community because I am not as paranoid as you. Why would you want to go to a site where everyone has to agree with what you say? Unlike you, I am happy to read other opinions. If someone can make a logical argument then it challenges my own and this can either change my mind or force me to justify my opinions.

But if someone just resorts to straight out contradiction, or can only back up an idea with "I know the company" then it does not add anything to a useful discussion.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

this is MS. It's not FUD, it's experience !

(Sigh) Except they have never done anything that people are saying they will do this time. What you call experience, I call bias. That is not to say that Microsoft has not done bad things in the past. It is just that none of those things are comparable to what is happening now.

They are not stupid enough to start breaking their written promises to the public, and the courts would not allow them to do so even if they did.

plus, if they were serious and truthful about it, they would have opened it and relinquished absoluted control via some kind of overseeing foundation / steering committee. which they most assuredly didn't.

Like Sun relinquished Java when they invented it? Oh wait, they didn't. On the other hand languages like C++ are completely standardized, but look how slowly that changes compared to Java and C#. The benefit of maintaining control is that you don't get stuck in endless committees having mass debates about every tiny detail in the language.

Re:Good.

[cavreader]

Perserving your "freedoms"? Are you suggesting a new addition to the Bill of Rights? Also remember the patent holders (those who actually might implement the patented technology, not just patent holding companies) face a big risk every time they force an patent conflict into court. A company invoking their patent rights always has to worry about the patent being shot down when put under scrutiny.

Re:Good.

[benjymouse]

It may be legally binding on Microsoft. It's not legally binding on anyone Microsoft may choose to sell the patents to.

FUD

Re:Good.

[zigfreed]

It is not the stove's fault that it is hot, rather it is the operator's fault. Fool me twice, nuke the stove from orbit; or to save money on expensive nuking materials, avoid the stove at all costs.

Easy [simple] isn't the same as hot. The challenge of conquering complex things is self-inflicted, the challenge of conquering hot things is mostly preparation.

Re:Good.

[zigfreed]

The SDXC standard for high capacity SD cards even requires exFAT support.

Which is why I don't understand why the extremely common UDF file format isn't used for everything at this point. 16EB is big enough for any simple disk system.

Re:Good.

[Belial6]

It may seem like a contradiction, but it really isn't. What the people you are referring to are concerned about is that MS will do what they have done many times in the past. Microsoft is know known for "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". MS talking up Mono would certainly be "Embrace". As I understand it, not all features of .Net is covered by the covenant not to sue. I could be wrong about that, but that is my understanding. If that is the case, you now have "Extend". Given their long and consistent history, the people you referring to expect "Extinguish" to follow once .Net gets dominance.

Right or wrong in this case, the people that warn against trusting MS are not doing it without reason. When someone is acting in the same fashion as they did the last dozen times they abused you, it isn't 'paranoid' to worry that they are planning it again.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

We don't need to know much more about Mono than that people like you support it. We know that Mono is a patent trap and that Microsoft wants open source projects to use it for that reason and no amount of rhetoric from you will change that fact or somehow turn the cynical thugs at Microsoft into freedom loving pals of ours.

Re:Good.

[makomk]

Good question. I'm not sure the OS support is really there - in particular, Windows XP apparently doesn't support writing to UDF filesystems at all, and older Linux kernels have problems mounting UDF volumes on hard drives or other similar non-optical devices. It's also a horrid mismash of different versions and optional features which various operating systems support different subsets of, thought that mostly affects optical drives.

I guess partly it's an accident of history - Windows didn't support UDF until relatively recently, well after MP3 players and digital cameras became widespread.

Re:Good.

[Anthony Mouse]

No one has any idea what you're talking about.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

But they can't "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" something that Microsoft invented themselves. The phrase refers to Microsoft adopting a standard and then adding their own extensions to it thereby diluting the interoperability. In this case Microsoft developed the language and CLR, made them as standards but didn't standardize some of the class libraries that they use on Windows (the most prominent being the Windows Presentation Foundation). But guess what? The C language has survived for years with people writing their own proprietary libraries.

If anything, it is the Mono Project that embraced Microsoft's standard. They extended the system with their own libraries. Obviously there is no extinguish part.

Both Mono and .NET have classes that are specific to their own implementation. If you want to support both then you just have to limit yourself to the base classes. If you want to just target Mono then use their extensions. For example, there are numerous GUI Toolkits for Mono that you can use instead of WPF.

Re:Good.

[Belial6]

To be fair, the point of .Net was to replace Java. Yes, it is a bit different in this case because MS created the CLR, but we are all aware that it was in response to being shut down on an "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy that failed with Java. In this case, they are attacking Java with their own VM. If they can get everybody over to .Net/Mono, then the extinguish part is easy.

Being weary of MS is always a good idea. They have made some cool products in their time, but they have also screwed a lot of people. .Net/Mono has all the elements for a future screwing, so relying on it is really counting on MS having changed their ways.

Re:Good.

[aztracker1]

It starts with, "Microsoft irrevocably promises" ... given estoppel ruling, It's not something MS can revoke.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

We don't need to know much more about Mono than that people like you support it.

People like me? What on earth is that supposed to mean? Do you mean the people who support Mono? If so your quote would actually read:

We don't need to know much more about Mono than that people who support Mono support it.

That is a stupidly circular argument, so that can't be what you mean. I suppose you mean the people who can look at the facts of the situation, as opposed to a person like you, who stick their fingers in their ears and yells "Nya Nya Nya Microsoft is evil" as if that is enough of an argument.

You haven't said a thing about the points that I have raised in this matter. Why hasn't Microsoft pulled the plug on Mono already, if that is what they want to do? What is the benefit for them to promote the project to their developers, and then piss everyone off by extinguishing the development platform after people have started using it? This would cause an exodus away from all Microsoft technologies in the developer community.

What about the Microsoft Community Promise? How do YOU think a judge would react if Microsoft tore up that promise and started suing people? I can tell you that they do not take too kindly to those bait and switch techniques. Microsoft would lose any lawsuit because of this, and they know it.

How do you think the EU would react to such anti-competitive behaviour if Microsoft starts suing the very people it encouraged to use their IP? They would come down hard on them with fines and sanctions and Microsoft knows it. They would not risk this happening.

How do you think the mainstream press would react to such a juicy story. Nothing makes people angrier than a huge corporation going after the little underdog. Once again, Microsoft would know this. They would not risk offending the developers or users at such a time when there is more and more diversity of viable non-Microsoft operating systems and development environments.

So that is the kind of person that I am. Someone who raises these questions, and hopes to get a sensible response to them. Unfortunately, all I am getting is "I know Microsoft", "I met Miguel" and now the rather perplexing "We don't need to know much more about Mono than that people like you support it". None of these are logical arguments. You are not addressing the issues, just pouring scorn on the people and company involved.

Re:Good.

[makomk]

Nope, not FUD. The usual justification is that Microsoft would never sell any of their patents to patent trolls anyway and so it doesn't matter, but it's still true. (I *think* the RAND patent grant *may* possibly be legally binding, but that's entirely useless to Mono due to licensing issues.)

Re:Good.

[Mongoose Disciple]

Nobody was talking to you. Get back in the corner.

Re:Good.

[makomk]

And some silly people treat wine as that just targeting wine makes for instant porting... your point? misguided people will always be around.

As far as I know, no distro ships Windows applications running under Wine as part of the default build, and I'm not aware of any Wine-based applications that were developed primarily to run under Linux. This is rather different from Mono, which does have primarily Linux-targetted applications based on it that are installed by default by major distributions like Ubuntu.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

If they can get everybody over to .Net/Mono, then the extinguish part is easy.

But why would Microsoft then extinguish Mono after getting the developers to use it? What possible benefit could there be? That is the problem. Everyone is saying that they will clamp down on Mono, but nobody has a satisfactory explanation to why they would do it (after being encouraged to make the development environment). It would not encourage developers to move to any future Microsoft platform.

I may actually be reading you wrong though. In your quote, you may mean that Microsoft will extinguish Java instead. In that case, what is the downside to using Mono if it is Java that would disappear? Not that I think that Java would disappear.

Re:Good.

[Belial6]

No, you didn't read me wrong. MS certainly has the goal of extinguishing Java, but as you say that isn't inherently a down side. The reason that MS would want to extinguish Mono is to force people to stick with Windows. If your company has developed everything to run on .Net/Mono, and MS decides to extinguish Mono, are you going to rewrite all of your business apps, or are you just going to replace the Linux server with a Windows box? I know which I would do, as only one would make financial sense.

Re:Good.

[DragonWriter]

It starts with, "Microsoft irrevocably promises" ... given estoppel ruling, It's not something MS can revoke.

I've already addressed the impact of the equitable doctrine of promissory estoppel in GP. If you thin there is a particular ruling on estoppel that provides in impact to that phrasing different than what was described, please cite that ruling.

Re:Good.

[walshy007]

I've heard of a two programs, some note-taking program of some sort and a search one, both had a massive stinks on slashdot because of it. If it was being sold as being as good as native (and people believing it) there should be a myriad of examples as such.

Thing is, this software IS USEFUL, for many many people. To refuse people to use it before any patent troubles stir for the _possibility_ of it among other things strikes me as very wrong. Because any piece of software could potentially violate patents so why use any of it? Let there be trouble when there is trouble. Stay wary of company's history but until there is issue if gpl licensed software with no present patent suits against it is serving a purpose, let the damn thing be.

Re:Good.

[kat_skan]

The patents covering the EMCA standards are part of the Microsoft Community Promise. If Microsoft decided to reneg on that promise and start suing people, do you think a judge would look favourably on that? No, they would be laughed out of court.

I don't think I'd put much faith in any promise that had easy outs like this in it.

Q: What if I don't implement the entire specification? Will I still get the protections under the CP?

A: The CP applies only if the implementation conforms fully to required portions of the specification. Partial implementations are not covered.

Re:Good.

[hairyfeet]

Like what EXT 2? Like that doesn't break. And frankly why should they? It is a free market, you are free to pay the RAND license or walk away. You see THIS is what I find hilariously about the "community" in that while they talk about unity and other crap they will happily fuck each other for a buck and they'll do so even when it slits their own throat!

Did you know nearly two thirds of Linux servers are running CentOS over RHEL? Did you know CentOS was created by a leech company that sold hardware that required RHEL but didn't want to have to shell a dime to RH? Do you see the community calling them out? Nope instead you see them trumpeting CentOS because they are at heart cheap bastards that don't care they are shitting in their own backyard! Who do you think gives back more code than all the others combined? Who do you think has to hire less coders and give back less code because of leeches like CentOS?

So please, continue shooting yourselves in the face. There is nothing I hate more than hypocrites and the "community" has the hypocrisy so thick you can cut it with a chainsaw. The "community" says open up your code and we'll buy and support you! So AMD does what is asked and everywhere you recommend Nvidia who fucks their customers, drops support for anything more than a generation or two old, and who won't give you access to shit! You say you'll support those that support the community yet on every damned forum you push CentOS like there is no tomorrow! Oh the hypocrisy is so thick and rich!

Hell I could go on all damned day with instance after instance of stupidity, greed, and just outright religious zealotry and egoism fucking the community, all the way up to the top with Linus" Plans? What are those?" Torvalds refusing to allow a stable ABI, which would make it trivial for all the hardware OEMs to support you, because it would keep him from getting a wild hair and going Goatse on the kernel anytime he pleases. Even the argument so frequently posted here against it is religious, with the writer going so far as to accuse those that don't give their code as GPL "leeches" and hoping Torvalds next Goatse kills the drivers, even though that is hurting the very users you want to attract.

So please,keep up the hypocrisy. Keep up with "free as in cheapskate above all!" and saying one thing and doing the opposite, please do. Because companies and orgs are getting tired of "update foo broke my drivers" so much that fully two thirds of new SERVERS sold come with Windows, and by refusing to pay even a single cent for a RAND license for anything nearly every new flash that I come across is formatted in NTFS.

You refuse to play nice with others, you have arrogance that would make Jobs blush and without the numbers to back it up, and you expect the world to give you everything for free. So frankly you really shouldn't be surprised your numbers are currently flatline globally and in Europe which so many touted as the next growth market for Linux. Hell last I checked JavaME was beating you! So please, keep it up. I do so love watching hypocrisy and arrogance get its comeuppance!

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

Why hasn't Microsoft pulled the plug on Mono already, if that is what they want to do?

Because most of us have been smart enough to steer clear of Mono, therefore pulling the plug now would do little to no damage, therefore Microsoft has not done it yet. Duh.

Re:Good.

[Daniel Phillips]

You know Bill doesn't work there anymore, right?

Ballmer gone yet?

Re:Good.

[DocHoncho]

It's very true, and and a real pain in the ass. Not sure how you managed to avoid it, but out of the box a .Net app will refuse to run from an "untrusted location,", I.E. an internal network share.

Re:Good.

[jonamous]

Well, I can't do anything other than type out my experience but it works out of the box on my home network and my work's network. In fact, I have ILSPY on my network share, and used it yesterday from someone else's machine. For reference, the latest ILSPY requires .NET4.0 and the utilities that I talked about previously were built on .NET2.0.

Re:Good.

[godefroi]

I would guess that that "out" is there to prevent things like what MS did with Java from happening. "You can implement C#, but if you fragment the platform, you've got no promise."

Maybe they learned something.

Re:Good.

[DocHoncho]

Huh. I just remembered that they were changing that behavior in a more recent version of .NET. I don't really do much with .NET so I don't know when it changed but I've had the same experience as the OP.

Re:Good.

[Gadget_Guy]

Because most of us have been smart enough to steer clear of Mono, therefore pulling the plug now would do little to no damage, therefore Microsoft has not done it yet. Duh.

So you are saying that Microsoft's final aim is to piss off developers, and that they would only pull the plug when there are enough people who would be inconvenienced by their actions.

That does not make sense. If Microsoft did not want anybody to use Mono then they would stop them before they chose that option. Pissing people off does not make for happy users being converted to Microsoft's own software.

If they didn't want people to use their language and their CLR on other operating systems then they would not have made it into an ECMA standard - they would have just made the whole thing copyrighted and guarded it jealously to ensure that theirs was the only option for this language.

There is no evidence to back up this claim of an elaborate deception by Microsoft. They have done absolutely nothing to dissuade people from using Mono - in fact they have encouraged it. There has been no public or leaked private statements about the future of the standard to suggest what you are saying. There is no precedent of Microsoft performing such a huge bait and switch scam on their end users.

Re:Good.

[makomk]

Also Banshee, the current default music player on Ubuntu, which was controversial for a number of reasons - not least that it was missing a number important features from the program it was replacing when initially substituted, and that the campaign to have it as default involved a number of outright lies. (Lies about important stuff the state of the program it was replacing, about its scalability to large music libraries, and about the amount of space it would require on the install disc.)

Re:Good.

[makomk]

Because any piece of software could potentially violate patents so why use any of it?

Also, there's a difference between the general level of patent-related risk and using stuff that's known to have patents aimed specifically at it - it's a lot harder to find suitable prior art when the patents and the system being patented were designed in tandem by a company with incentives to make the patents watertight. Probably impossible. (OOXML has the same problem.)

Re:Good.

[walshy007]

Above post was me, forgot to sign in

Re:Good.

[Mongoose Disciple]

So wait, isn't that essentially "I overreact and I am stubborn about it?" I mean, sitting on a cold stove because it might be hot means that instead of learning to discern when a stove is hot and when it is cold, you're just shutting out the situation entirely. That seems rather an immature attitude to take...

Yep. That's basically what I was trying to say, but I was probably too subtle about it.

Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[Omnifarious]

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.

Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe is where SuSE came from, so perhaps Opensuse should return to Germany.
It was better off there. It was actually profitable, rather than just a test bed for the SLES and SLED packages. SLES is very nice, but very few people run SLED.

Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Suse was first developed in Germany anywas all there doing it refocusing it back to its homebase.

Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Or maybe they realize that the US Patent system hopelessly f'ks things up for Linux development. Or if not hopelessly, at least expensively.

Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[pipeep]

Oh, right they're that company that...

[looks at their website]

"Provide[s] exceptional service to [their] valued customers"!
What does that mean? I hate it when websites do stuff like that.

http://www.attachmategroup.com/purpose/

Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux

[CondeZer0]

All patent systems are hopelessly fucked, software patents just make this patently (haha) obvious.

And in Europe we are not out of the woods on that topic either, they are still trying to enact software patents, and companies with failed business models rarely give up on trying to enlist the help of the government to crush their more productive competition using the legal system.

Terrible news

[kaoshin]

I sure hope someone else catches mono.

Re:Terrible news

[terjeber]

It's sad that a pathetic looser calls someone who has contributed so much to Open Source nasty names. Once you have grown past the stage where spelling your name is a chore and you have contributed something more than what your bowels empties into your adult diapers, come back to us and tell us about it. Until then you are a jealous little shit.

Not many tears

[markdavis]

>"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.

Re:Not many tears

[Etrigoth]

Ok, I'm not going to wholesale bite but you really need to bring some Citation to this FUD.

You see, a simple google search results in this: http://mono-project.com/Compatibility

Which show's that as far as base libraries and feature support, Mono is almost all there with full .Net 4.0.

Seeing as that's the latest version of .Net and not even the latest version that a lot of businesses are targeting, would suggest that Mono isn't lagging at all.

Re:Not many tears

[samantha]

Look, without Mono you can't run serveral projects in the cloud without paying Windows stupidity tax. You can run them on anything but windows if mono falls apart. Like it or not C# is at least as good a language as java and arguably better than c++ for many types of projects. We don't want to lose c# from the non-windows open source world.

Re:Not many tears

[markdavis]

I will admit that I based my comments from impressions of what I read over the last few years about things it couldn't do then and things it would never be able to do. There appeared to be a lot more about getting an app to work cross-platform than just the base libraries.

I can't site a source, and I am not a mono or .NET programmer, so I will shut up and let other people analyze it.

Re:Not many tears

[markdavis]

I am not trying to imply that C# is not a good language. I am sorry if my comments sounds as such. It probably is just fine. I have heard/read things that support just what you said. And I would hate to see any project that benefits Open Source platforms suffer. My objections have a lot more to do with the source of C#, patents, past history with that company and what they do, etc. And also what distraction C#/mono could be in siphoning away mindshare or resources from historically more open and more cross-platform environments.

Re:Not many tears

[suy]

What I fail to see is what exactly from the MS world is Mono useful for in the Linux/BSD/free software world. We more or less see how new versions of Gnash are more or less ready to play YouTube, or something like that (some goal that is useful for average Joe). But what is Mono useful for? Yes, there are some GNOME applications, and still many GNOME users try to avoid them. What non-GNOME applications from Windows is Mono capable of running? And how useful are them? Is really worth the effort? I don't have the answer, but I must see something significant before I can answer yes, and I fail to see it (and sorry if it's my fault).

Re:Not many tears

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone that build's cross platform .NET apps using Mono, you should definitely STFU, and you obviously are talking out your ass. .NET compatibility in mono these days is steller. The only things we really lack are features of Visual Studio, not so much mono itself. MonoDevelop however is pretty dang good. In .NET we've been getting some amazing database ORM's that point & click to build your DAL automatically for you. In mono its a little bit more old-fashioned having to invoke command line for auto-generation. WPF obviously is not available, as to be expected when developing cross platform, so you use GTK. Go back to fox news dude.

Re:Not many tears

[terjeber]

C# of today is in significant areas way ahead of Java. LINQ and parallelism is only two areas. Java might catch up in some areas and will undoubtedly jump ahead in others in Java 7, but Java 7 has proven that the entire Java process is irreversibly broken. The delays and the Oracle ownership are significant problems.

I build vertical in-house enterprise apps for a living. No environment on the planet currently matches .Net for this. Not even close. Being able to run on Linux servers is something I would miss greatly. I hope Miguel will find a new sponsor.

Re:Not many tears

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional full-time .Net programmer with extensive mono experience.

Mono's implementation of winforms is shit. But hey, winforms is shit!

Otherwise, I found mono to be entirely as good as MS' CLR, with the caveat that it lags behind by a short period of time. This becomes less and less important, as new language features are less and less important (generics was huge, linq was useful, type variance is nice...). Additionally, unlike winforms, mono's ASP.NET implementation is actually pretty passable.

Re:Not many tears

[JamesP]

Mono is great, but it also sucks for some specific purposes

If you have an 100% .NET app, it works (most of the time)
The problem is mixing .NET apps with native code, as Wine and Mono don't work together.

Unfortunately this is very common

Re:Not many tears

[FutureDomain]

Mod parent up! I've deployed dozens of .NET apps on Linux using Mono, even several OpenGL apps (use the Tao framework). Except for some stupid version differences with Ubuntu (the LTS ships an old version of Mono that didn't support .NET 4.0) it's just been a matter of dragging and dropping a .exe or writing a makefile and building it.

Re:Not many tears

[Etrigoth]

Mono is *not* an implementation of .NET, it's an implementation of the CLI.

However, they've already stated that WPF can't work under linux, fair enough ... but from my own experience, I've not authored one piece of .NET software in the last 2 years that needs WPF; I'm pretty sure that no-one in my team has.

Clearly, I'm not the only .NET developer in the world so I welcome your citations ...

Re:Not many tears

[spikenerd]

I don't expect this to happen, but it seems to me that it would be a brilliant move for Microsoft to pick this up and run with it. They wouldn't have to worry about those patent issues (obviously), and it might be a simple way for them to stay relevant in a world where Android eats their lunch. Won't happen--would require them to eat too much pride--but it would have been a good idea.

Re:Not many tears

[mandelbr0t]

Absolutely correct. .NET was theoretically multiplatform, and enticed Mono developers to make it happen. But there's always just enough Microsoft-sized wrenches in the works to limit the functionality to quick-and-dirty marketing demos.

Re:Not many tears

[symbolset]

While the tone is delightfully deprecating, you left off the end of your post.

As someone that build's cross platform .NET apps using Mono, ...

The fella was just echoing a common sentiment that this stuff is, and has always been a trap.

The part you left off is how you intend to get out of this particular trap now that it's sprung. For completeness you should probably include that bit before you start with your tirade.

Re:Not many tears

[radish]

LINQ is interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean about parallelism being better in C# - can you elaborate?

The main area that C# (actually all of .NET) lags behind Java is in the core libraries. The collections support is lacking (and only recently became useful in any real way), there's no equivalent that I'm aware of to something like java.util.concurrent (see previous comment about parallelism), etc. The toolset is also lacking - I don't care how many people say VS is awesome, it still needs Resharper (which is, of course, basically a port of IntelliJ to .NET) to be great rather than merely adequate. It's also good to see projects like nant, Moq, Castle, nUnit and so on come along but it's going to take a while to build up an equivalent to the Java ecosystem.

That said, as a pure language, C# is great. The event/delegate model, lambdas, even simple sugars like Properties are all real improvements over Java (though structs can burn in hell). As a platform though, .NET has a way to go before it's really mature IMHO.

Re:Not many tears

[shutdown -p now]

It's not entirely true, as WPF uptake was fairly slow since it debuted in 3.0. There are plenty of .NET apps written in the last few years (on .NET 4, even) that still use WinForms, and will run on Mono.

Of course, there's plenty other missing stuff. I definitely wouldn't call Mono compatibility story "stellar". It's quite possible to write cross-platform CLR apps using it if you mind the limitations (i.e. coding to lowest common denominator and/or cross-platform portable libraries such as Gtk#), but that's another matter.

Re:Not many tears

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not sure what you mean about parallelism being better in C# - can you elaborate?

I suspect he means Parallel LINQ, which is, of course, not a language-specific feature.

there's no equivalent that I'm aware of to something like java.util.concurrent (see previous comment about parallelism)

I'm not saying that it's as rich, but System.Threading.Tasks and System.Collections.Concurrent namespaces provide similar high-level building blocks in .NET 4.

By the way, this is about more than just parallelism - asynchrony is also neatly expressed via tasks/futures, and C# 5 will add some nice syntactic sugar for that.

As a platform though, .NET has a way to go before it's really mature IMHO.

It largely depends on the field of application. You have to remember that .NET was originally marketed primarily for line-of-business desktop and web apps; in that role, you don't need e.g. a fancy collection framework, but solid database access and a fast UI framework is a must - and so those were prioritized. Consequently, there are areas where .NET is relatively underdeveloped compared to Java, and then there are other areas where it's on par or ahead.

structs can burn in hell

Don't diss structs, they're immensely useful for direct, efficient interop with native (read: C/C++) code. With some care, you can even map them to C++ classes, hand-crafting vtables, if your compiler documents their layout.

I do wish we didn't have to use them outside of that area, though. Unfortunately, .NET JIT is not (yet) good enough to do escape analysis and optimize reference type allocations to occur on the stack rather than heap where possible, like HotSpot does.

Re:Not many tears

[blincoln]

".NET compatibility in mono these days is steller."

I have to agree. The only area I've run into trouble in general is with the XML parser. Apparently the Mono team wrote their own, completely redesigned XML libraries, and so there are areas where it behaves differently than .NET in really weird ways.

For example, up until about a month ago, if you tried to read UTF-16-encoded XML from a MemoryStream, it would fail, indicating that the first character (the XML byte order marker, I believe) was invalid. I opened a ticket about that and it was partially fixed, but the issue still crops up in some cases. When it breaks, it does so so badly that it somehow screws up the rendering of WinForms, so that text and other elements are missing, even when the XML part of the code had nothing to do with the GUI. The same code works fine under the actual .NET framework.

I've also had issues on Kubuntu (and I assume Ubuntu) with the default font being of a very different size than the one on Windows (or OpenSUSE), so text gets cut off, but I figure there's an easy fix for that.

Re:Not many tears

[spells]

I admit it has been a few years since I developed in Java, but I wouldn't mind reading what your specific concerns are about collections and concurrency in .Net. Here is astarting point for concurrency and one for collections.

I would also be interested in hearing what you think is missing from the .Net ecosystem.

Re:Not many tears

[aztracker1]

Not sure about that one.. MS has .Net in it's community promise, and I've seen mono bring more windows developers to test/deploy on linus and osx than the other direction.

Re:Not many tears

[radish]

It's not so much concerns (as in things which are wrong) and more that some of the libraries in Java are so powerful. I have a personal soft spot for util.concurrent (which started life as Doug Lea's concurrency package). The executor model effectively gets rid of the need to directly manipulate threads/pools (and are great for DI based apps, e.g. using Spring/Unity), and the concurrent collections (like ConcurrentLinkedQueue) are nice for performance in heavily multithreaded apps. Even the little things - for example I don't think there's an equivalent to the "fairness" parameter on .NET's semaphore (which lets you control the order that threads can enter it) just make some aspects of coding in .NET feel like a bit of a step backward.

Collections have become _much_ better in .NET 4, the lack of something even as simple as a Set was kind of embarrassing for a while there :) I actually just noticed they now have a ConcurrentDictionary in .NET 4 so that's cool.

Re:Not many tears

[radish]

It largely depends on the field of application. You have to remember that .NET was originally marketed primarily for line-of-business desktop and web apps; in that role, you don't need e.g. a fancy collection framework, but solid database access and a fast UI framework is a must - and so those were prioritized. Consequently, there are areas where .NET is relatively underdeveloped compared to Java, and then there are other areas where it's on par or ahead.

100% agreed there. What struck me as interesting (after years of explaining Swing to WinForms devs) is how much WPF reminds me of Swing, mixed with a little HTML and CSS. The DB stuff though is very impressive, the shame is that in my place of work (and, I suspect, many others) it's not really very useful. We don't do 2-tier apps, we don't run SQL Server and we don't run Windows app servers. A lot of it feels like it was created to make the demo look really cool rather than to be actually useful in major development projects - but that could be my bias talking.

Still, as a Java guy who has become responsible for a bunch of .NET stuff, it's a lot less painful now than it would have been a couple of years ago!

Re:Not many tears

[radish]

Realised I forgot the second part of your query. In terms of ecosystem I'm referring to tools (profilers, decompilers, etc), libraries (for example hibernate, spring, jaxp, ANTLR, jbpm etc etc). There are equivalents for many of these in the .NET world now, but in many cases they're non-free and non-open, and also often less mature than their Java counterparts.

Something I miss as a server-side dev is JMX - if anyone's aware of anything like that for .NET I'd love to hear about it!

Re:Not many tears

[dhasenan]

If Mono could implement Microsoft's DRM schemes in such a way that Netflix just works, it would be trivially easy to alter Mono to save the DRM'd content (in unencrypted form) to a file. Sucks, but there it is.

Re:Not many tears

[markdavis]

It is interesting to read the various feedback from people, such as yourself, that have used Mono productively and for purposes that help instead of hurt platforms other than MS-Windows. Thanks for sharing the info.

Re:Not many tears

[shutdown -p now]

... and? Are you saying that the feature itself is not useful?

Mono also has it, by the way, and it's very handy for calling into various C libs on Linux as well. The problem is portability, but the way Mono does it, if you have the same shared library on all supported platforms, your code is readily portable.

Re:Not many tears

[markdavis]

It is interesting to read testimonials about those who HAVE used Mono for something productive. But, like you, I question the validity of comments made by "Anonymous Cowards" who also resort to swearing and personal attacks. Fortunately, there are other comments that are valid retorts to my posting and are not made by cowards and are more convincing.

But yes, I still think it is a possible trap. Like I said in other postings, I don't question the technical merits of .NET/C#/Mono as much as the motivation and company behind it. At any time a new version can come out that will horribly break compatibility with Mono and in ways it can't hope to recover from. I have observed decades of very bad behavior by it's creator, and it will take quite a while before I believe they are "reformed".

Re:Not many tears

[aaron552]

.NET code with native interop works fine in mono on windows. The main issue is the same as for native interop for Java: the native code needs to be available for the OS you are running on. If the .NET code was written well, it is possible that all you would need is native libs for your OS. Obviously, this doesn't apply if the native code referenced is part of the Win32 API, but then the problem isn't the use of native interop and is still identical to the problem of Java apps with native interop

That said, P/Invoke is vastly better than JNI. If I wanted native interop, I'd use C# over Java every time.

Re:Not many tears

[shutdown -p now]

What struck me as interesting (after years of explaining Swing to WinForms devs) is how much WPF reminds me of Swing, mixed with a little HTML and CSS.

Do you mean the layouts and model/view separation?

As far as layouts go, WPF is fairly bland, though I find it easier to reason about what goes where when you write the tree as XML (where it maps one-to-one), as opposed to wiring it all up in code. There are similar third-party solutions for Swing, so far as I know, but I never understood why they didn't do that from the get go - of all the ways XML is misused, UI layout is something that actually is a good application for once.

As for model/view, I dare say that WPF actually takes things much further here... in Swing, the glue between the two is strictly typed through rigidly defined model interfaces, and so you end up coding model wrappers around your business objects. WPF binding expressions are rich enough that you can bind directly to objects and collections, and change notification events that are necessary for this are lifted to the core framework and not tied to the specific technology - hence why you can actually reuse the same models between WinForms and WPF. Then, of course, there's the ability to bind elements to other elements, and triggers - making rich yet purely declarative UI possible with little to no glue for the model layer (especially if you use one of third-party markup extensions for free-form expressions in bindings).

The only framework I'm aware of that can match this flexibility is Qt Quick... it's a damn shame that its future is so uncertain now - we could certainly use more of that kind of clean separation.

Re:Not many tears

[spells]

Thanks for responding. The fairness parameter is interesting - I would love to see how it was implemented in java on Windows since all of the kernel objects (mutex, semaphore, etc) are not guaranteed to be processed fairly. I may have to go do some investigating.

Re:Not many tears

[terjeber]

In terms of ecosystem I'm referring to tools (profilers, decompilers, etc), libraries (for example hibernate, spring, jaxp, ANTLR, jbpm etc etc).

Hibernate and Spring are fine for .NET, ANTLR does C#, I don't see a good reason to use jaxp on .NET but I might be uninformed. Seems to me that LINQ2XML is far superior.

I don't know of any free, good BPM tools for .NET, but honestly, I don't know of any for Java either. I have worked with jbpm on JBoss and it was a nightmare, though we were never really sure who was the ultimate culprit, jbpm, Smooks or the Java NTLM integration. What we do know is that if all three were enabled in one JBoss instance, nothing would really work. Smooks never worked. In one project that used to rely heavily on Smooks we still have situations where nothing changes and smooks just stops parsing stuff. Yuck!

There are several commercial BPM solutions that are better than what is in JBoss. If you need the power of something like jbpm you'll probably go for the commercial solution anyway. If you don't need to full power of something like jbpm for .Net, Windows Workflow works great for small things.

As a long-time Java developer, it was a huge surprise for me that .Net (I can only talk about 3.5 and later) was as mature and polished as it actually is. I can also say with confidence that I am significantly more productive in .Net than I was in Java, and that's all that counts. Considering I have developed commercial Java apps since 1997 and only done .Net since 2009, that's something of a surprise.

Re:Not many tears

[makomk]

It's useful, but the thing that makes Java popular is that Java has an expressive enough set of libraries that most of the time you don't need it, whereas .Net seems to positively encourage its use - especially for GUI stuff.

Re:Not many tears

[spells]

I did find a couple of implementations of semaphores that implemented fifo outside of the core libraries, but the implemetation seemed very slow with lots of context switches. Reviewing comments on the java implemention, "fair" semaphores are also a lot slower than non-fair.

Shamefully, I will admit that I assumed they were always fair, so I definitely learned something.

I knew mono was bad news

[Culture20]

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.

Re:I knew mono was bad news

[Etrigoth]

So one instance of a bug makes the entire thing bad news ?

If that's your tolerance level for using a computer, then perhaps you'd be better with an abacus :)

Re:I knew mono was bad news

[Gbor]

Please note that this stack is only used on SLE10 nowadays. SLE11 and openSUSE 11+ relies on ZYpp ( http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Libzypp or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zypp ), which is a quite different story.

Re:I knew mono was bad news

[Culture20]

Good to know. I'll probably jump ship from Ubuntu back to opensuse now that Unity has come to town.

not good

[samantha]

As C# is the basis for some very important to me projects this is not in the slightest good news to me.

Re:not good

[Etrigoth]

Then I hope that this all 'comes out in the wash' then.

Re:not good

[bill_mcgonigle]

As _________ is the basis for some very important to me projects this is not in the slightest good news to me.

This is the lesson everybody who hitches their wagons to Microsoft technology eventually learns. VB, FoxPro, mono, etc.

the equivalent command in ubuntu...

[Blob Pet]

sudo apt-get purge cli-common mono-runtime

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Re:the equivalent command in ubuntu...

[osu-neko]

sudo apt-get purge cli-common mono-runtime

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I don't necessarily disagree, but it's unfortunately necessary rubbish for my work. :(

Re:the equivalent command in ubuntu...

[drinkypoo]

And don't forget

sudo apt-get install banshee- rhythmbox tomboy- gnote evolution- thunderbird

or similar.

Re:the equivalent command in ubuntu...

[foxylad]

Gnote is a GTK version of Tomboy, and pretty much the only reason it exists is for people who don't want Mono on their box. Likewise rhythmbox.

Re:the equivalent command in ubuntu...

[DarwinSurvivor]

Weird. I wonder what Canonical did to evolution to make it depend on Mono. It's not even an opt-depends in Arch...

GOOD: Just think of energy saved...

[alexmin]

By not loading up multi-megabyte runtime to print "Hello world!"

Re:GOOD: Just think of energy saved...

[zlogic]

Who needs a multi-megabyte runtime when "hello world" can be run on a multi-gigabyte dedicated virtual machine!

Re:GOOD: Just think of energy saved...

[aztracker1]

So you aren't using anything with gtk, or qt at it's base?

Re:GOOD: Just think of energy saved...

[dbraden]

Why would you use .NET to print "Hello world!"? I suggest using a tool better suited to the project. Something like, maybe, "echo."

Re:GOOD: Just think of energy saved...

[knapper_tech]

Directly from Miguel de Icaza's blog: "Mono for Android uses the Mono Linker to ensure that only the bits of Mono that you actually use end up in your package and that you do not pay a high tax for just using a handful of functions."

Too late for GNOME?

[pixline]

Quite interesting, GNOME already have *a lot* of core applications backed by Mono... Who will tell 'em? ;-)

• http://www.mono-project.com/Screenshots
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)#Software_developed_with_Mono

Re:Too late for GNOME?

[supersloshy]

None of the core GNOME apps use Mono besides Tomboy (the others aren't "core apps" and are considered "extra" or even "third-party" apps). You can run GNOME without any of them installed, and they all have reasonable replacements that don't use Mono (Rhythmbox, Gnote, Shotwell, GNOME Shell's search bar, etc.). Rhythmbox is actually quite good; I used to be a Songbird and Banshee fan, but I tried Rhythmbox and, while it doesn't have every single feature under the sun, it's nice to work with and not nearly as buggy as Banshee was to me.

Re:Too late for GNOME?

[tchernobog]

Well, most of those projects have satisfying alternatives, except one (at least for me): Banshee. Rhythmbox just plainly sucks in comparison.

• Beagle: is it widespread anymore? I thought Tracker did win the race.
• GNOME Do: use Kupfer or Synapse. As soon as they get momentum, more plugins will be available.
• Pinta: do we *really* need paintbrush ported to GNOME? I guess Inkscape can be fun for kids anyway.
• F-Spot: ugly and slow piece of software. I switched to Shotwell a lot of time ago.
• Gbrainy: no real alternative in the same class, but it is not too big to perform a port.
• MonoTorrent: Transmission works for me. Other alternatives abound.
• Tomboy: use Gnote.

I am not claiming the alternatives are perfect (nor the originals). But they can quickly improve if needed.

In my opinion, it is time Vala developers write a decent enough manual for it (improve the main points that undermine its use), and the free world switches to it. It works well, it is fast, and you can link other C libraries to your Vala programs. FLOSS has reached some sort of maturity where it can produce something good without looking at Microsoft or the now-defunct Sun to do it for us.

Re:Too late for GNOME?

[pixline]

Glad it didn't make into core :-) I'm not using GNOME these days but I did a lot and I had bad memories about mono, this relax me a little bit. Thank you!

Impact on popular Linux applications

[greg1104]

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.

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[aztracker1]

Wasn't gnote started because tomboy was a stronger app? Wha about Pinta, imho the best general pain't program out there (though I use the original paint.net for win, and pinta for osx and linux)

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[lennier]

F-Spot... easily replaced by... gThumb

I'm actually enjoying Shotwell. It's also a good advertisement for the Vala language, which seems interesting.

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[gbjbaanb]

IIRC Gnote was started because someone wrote Tomboy and it was put into the ubuntu base distro. They pointed out that required a huge mono runtime dependancy, so they sat down and knocked out gnote in a day or two to prove that the 'super wonderful new cool' tomboy app wasn't; all that impressive and could be replaced with a 'normal' app.

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[arose]

No kidding, Shotwell destroys f-spot in responsiveness and speed. There are many applications that are not processor bound, photo managers don't seem to be them.

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[brunogirin]

Indeed! For the record, Vala was actually inspired by C# so any Java / C# / C++ developer should need very little time to pick it up.

Oh and if you have any issues when importing your F-Spot database to Shotwell, please file a ticket so that I can fix it.

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[aztracker1]

But aren't Python and other run time environments included in Ubuntu as well?

Re:Impact on popular Linux applications

[CondeZer0]

But, but, but... think of Miguel's ego!

After the total disaster that was Bonobo, what will he do if Mono fails too?

Lets hope he can get a proper job at Microsoft and leave Linux alone.

Re:Miguel too?

[larry bagina]

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Re:This fucking sucks..

[Etrigoth]

Good luck brother, I'm personally hoping this turns out to be not such a big deal.

They've refocused SUSE and Mono back to europe; let us hope it doesn't kill the momentum.

Out of mod points today

[symbolset]

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.

Mono does work with wine...

[dkegel]

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.

All Software Violates Some Patents

[2bfree]

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.

Good start.

[Yaos]

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.

Great

[CODiNE]

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?)

Cost prohibitive

[tepples]

Have you used Monodroid or Monotouch?

No, because they're cost prohibitive for a hobbyist programmer who has already graduated.

Attachmate is not the devil?

[symbolset]

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.

Re:Attachmate is not the devil?

[yuhong]

Personally as I said before I hope they will finally let the MS-Novell deal expire.

Re:MONO? SHOUDA CALLED IT STEREO !!

[jejones]

"Mono" is Spanish for "monkey". The people working on Mono are "Ximian" (simian). Why the monkey theme? Got me.

C# *and* core libraries

[benjymouse]

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

Re:C# *and* core libraries

[Moondevil]

C# is only an ECMA standard up to C# v2, go look it up.

Microsoft stop submitting more recent versions to ECMA.

Re:C# *and* core libraries

[MareLooke]

The FSFs stance, but since the FSF are just anti MS, Stallman following loonies (right?), here's Groklaw's stance. I'm sure you can find more with your friend.

But don't let the facts presented by people who understand the applicable law and the related issues stop your fanboyism.

Re:C# *and* core libraries

[gbjbaanb]

only C# version 2.0 is standardised by ECMA and ISO, so forget using any of those nice new features like LINQ.

Unless you do use those features, accidentally or otherwise, then you're obviously no longer covered.

The comunity promise isn't strong enough for the community, I can believe that given the way patent lawyering has been going recently.

Legally binding promise == estoppel

[benjymouse]

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.

Mono, on the ropes? lets hope for a swift death!

[geekprime]

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.

ragtag Java

[sourcerror]

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.)

Nuremberg new HQ for Suse

[Compaqt]

Ominous?

Re:Nuremberg new HQ for Suse

[MarkvW]

As long as the Germans don't start having rallies for Suse, everything should be all right. Don't worry.

LISP.

[Compaqt]

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.

Re:Loss of Mono means less specialised Linux Apps

[gbjbaanb]

If small development companies are forced to choose a platform for desktop software front ends, ...then they tend to choose web-based ones nowadays. There's a lot more interest in HTML based apps, especially since Microsoft declared their main GUI interest was HTML5 at that PDC (the one that pissed all the silverlight devs off) and started supporting jQuery.

And, of course, not only does HTML5 have some excellent promise for the future, it works on Linux just as well as Windows.

big deal

[cheekyboy]

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!!!

no testing?

[cheekyboy]

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.

Some personal insight into this

[Douglas Goodall]

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.

Re:Some personal insight into this

[MarkvW]

When you get one of those noncompete clauses in a contract you like, you might want to talk with a specialized employment lawyer. In a lot of states, unreasonable noncompete clauses are void. But then, is it worth the money . . .?
FWIW

Re:Some personal insight into this

[Douglas Goodall]

I was unemployed at the time, and it was painful to reject the work. But I have thankfully avoided litigation with any of my clients for forty years. Now the allegedly religious clients that didn't pay my final invoice and stiffed me for $17,000 deserved to explain themselves to a judge. But that taught me not to let clients get so far out that it is worth blowing me off to avoid payment. I guess the contemporary issue beyond non-competes is the one of software licensing and patent issues, and I would have a hard time signing a contract these days promising that code I write for a client does not have patent issues when the big boys have so many patents you cannot do Hello World without changing the final two exclamation points. :-) I used to think software people should get an MBA first. Now I think they should be lawyers, get an MBA, and then if they aren't grey by then, learn enough programming to make a living.

mono is a good thing

[sirinek]

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.

Re:mono is a good thing

[makomk]

The easiest way to talk to MS products that speak MS-developed protocols is using other MS products? Who'd have thought it...

(SOAP is IIRC a particularly large, gnarly and unpleasant protocol with plenty of different and not-so-subtly incompatible ways to implement it.)

Re:mono is a good thing

[makomk]

Aha! This was the blog post I was looking for when writing that comment...

Re:mono is a good thing

[Junta]

SOAP is needlessly/hopelessly complicated. For a given implementation, at the surface API-wise it doesn't look particularly horrid, but then you see the on the wire representation of it.... It's not hard to understand why two different implementations disagree and why most of the sane webservices world goes to much more straightforward JSON based communication when they have a choice now.

Then you missed the point of the GP

[digsbo]

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!

[LordArgon]

Achievement Unlocked!

Shit Slinger: Begin and end a sentence with the word "bullshit"!

Re:Finally!

[codecore]

I guess that I don't really get the Mono-Hate. As far as run-times go, .NET and MONO are pretty good, at least comparable to JVM, and Parrot. There are good expressive languages that provide good inter-op, such as C#, F#, and IronPython. In other words, you can probably get your requirements coded and running fine with these run-times. So your business needs are met. So the hate must be the reflection of straight-up anti-MS hate, or some fear that MS will somehow, at some unknown point in the future, decide that it's in their best interests to file some sort of patent claims against vendors of software that use this technology, in spite of a promise not to do so. Of course this would cause a disruption among many of their own customers that will do nothing to increase sales of MS technology. Is there any historic example of this specific scenario? Is this really a rational fear? Is this the fear that leads to hate?

Speaking of irrational hate, what's with the continued Anti-MS hate? What has that torch done for anybody? Just accept that there will the MS products in the data-center, just as MS accepts that there will be Linux products in the data center, and move on. Work towards inter-op, like um....Mono. Your customers can more likely use what they like, and everybody can get along, not withstanding the fanatics.

Re:Mono, on the ropes? lets hope for a swift death

[the-matt-mobile]

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.

Re:Finally!

[miffo.swe]

I have never ever used a product written in either .net or Mono that wasn't dog slow, used tons of memory and was about as stable as an upside down pyramid.

Couple that with a litigious Microsoft running around suing everyone from Tomtom to Barnes and Noble, right now, and the benefits if any do not in any way outweigh the cons. Its just not worth it because its not any better than anything else.