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Attachmate Fires Mono Developers

Posted by timothy on from the and-there-there-were-none dept.

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."

20 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Good. by mysidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Good. by Microlith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.)

    3. Re:Good. by rzei · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Good. by black6host · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Good. by Dragonslicer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Good. by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

    7. Re:Good. by Etrigoth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
    8. Re:Good. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    9. Re:Good. by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    10. Re:Good. by aztracker1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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?

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    11. Re:Good. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:Good. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  2. Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux by Omnifarious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Firing the mono developers didn't convince me of this. It's the fact they're basically moving Linux development to all be under a european division and giving them control over all the decisions. It's like they got that odd Linux thing and don't know exactly what to do with it.

    I worked at Attachmate for awhile, and this doesn't really surprise me.

    --
    Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
    1. Re:Looks like Attachmate didn't want Linux by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  3. Re:Not many tears by Etrigoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
  4. GOOD: Just think of energy saved... by alexmin · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  5. Re:Not many tears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Impact on popular Linux applications by lennier · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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

    --
    You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  7. Re:C# *and* core libraries by MareLooke · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.