Reasons To Use Mono For Linux Development

Nerval's Lobster writes: In the eleven years since Mono first appeared, the Linux community has regarded it with suspicion. Because Mono is basically a free, open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework, some developers feared that Microsoft would eventually launch a patent war that could harm many in the open-source community. But there are some good reasons for using Mono, developer David Bolton argues in a new blog posting. Chief among them is MonoDevelop, which he claims is an excellent IDE; it's cross-platform abilities; and its utility as a game-development platform. That might not ease everybody's concerns (and some people really don't like how Xamarin has basically commercialized Mono as an iOS/Android development platform), but it's maybe enough for some people to take another look at the platform.

Comments

If there are patent issues

[fustakrakich]

You just shouldn't bother. It's not worth the risk.

Re: If there are patent issues

[Gravis Zero]

By this time (w/ MS deliberately contributing to Mono no less) estoppel should quash any patent claims.

it's a good thing proving that in court is inexpensive and that they have a moral integrity to not use their vast army of lawyers to just bleed you until you cannot afford to defend yourself.

oh wait.

Re: If there are patent issues

[Anonymous Coward]

"Better Java" is like a chocolate teapot being marginally preferable to one made of butter.

Re:If there are patent issues

[mcrbids]

Microsoft has always been fairly smart about courting developers with excellent tools and development platforms, and making it quite easy to build applications for Windows

Maybe you don't remember history the way I do.

Remember VB? An excellent toolkit that gained widespread acceptance in the Enterprise world for it's tight IDE, integration environment and easy forms. But then MS came out with VB.net which was about as related to VB 6 as javascript is to java. It was a horrible mess, everything had to be re-written to be compatible because it was really an entirely new language. Developers were left in the lurch, oh well, perhaps you shouldn'ta Microsoft, you know?

Remember Silverlight? The "Flash Killer", it was an excellent toolkit for writing distributed applications quickly. Performance was excellent. Many big names "bet the farm" on it. Until Microsoft walked away from it, too. Netflix will *never again* bank on a MS technology, I'm sure.

But that's not where it ends. Remember Windows Phone 7? The next big thing (tm) and they ditched it, for WP8, and all the devs were screwed. Again.

But that's not where it ends. Why is the XBox 360 not compatible with the original XBox? Why is the XBox "One" not compatible with the XBox 360? With every console generation, MS has been screwing the developers.

And so it goes. Over and over, the devs get the shaft any time they bet on Microsoft's newest, highly promoted technology.

What's next?

Re:No, it's not enough

[penguin7of9]

Apparently "we" don't have a long memory of Sun/Oracle's past behavior: Sun's repeated lies about making Java an open standard, their legal threats and lawsuits, the way they killed off independent implementations, and most recently, Oracle suing the pants of Google again. Microsoft played hardball on the business side, but Sun and Oracle have been dishonest, deceptive, and litigious. In the end, Java is both technically inferior and legally more risky than C#.