This is not, and has never been proof of openness and that it should be adopted by open source developers. It is still controlled by Microsoft,
Since when do Microsoft own ECMA ? Microsofts implementation is controlled by Microsoft, but the standard itself isn't. Why don't Sun submit to a standards body ? It's primarily because they want to retain control.
To me though being UNIXish is a feature.
I'd agree, if it didn't imply that platform-specific features were properly modularised, and not glued onto the language.
Bullshit. CLR was not developed in the open, and as it evolves if the "spec" deviates from Microsoft's implementation, the "spec" will be wrong.
Not true. Under such circumstances, Microsofts implementation will be wrong. Given that there will probably be a number of vendors who will implement the standard, it's not in Microsofts interests to be incompatibile. What is more likely to happen is that they will "embrace and extend" their own standard. However, this is not a problem unique to C#-- they can do the same with anything else.
Icaza actually believed that there was openness to the Microsoft framework, and that it could be safely used for the Gnome.
Well, he believes correctly. The core components are an ECMA standard.
Them same situation we got here, you could adopt the JVM for any project actually, but it is closed technology nonetheless and very well masked as open and platform-neutral.
Java is controlled by Sun. It has not been submitted to any standards body. When it does, it will be on equal footing to C#. For now, it is not.
For true open source, platform independence see Perl [perl.com].
It's not really "platform independent" at all, actually. It has a lot of UNIX-isms in the core language. For something more genuinely cross-platform, that properly separates core and platform functionality, try Python.
One question that I have not seen raised is this: It is easier to write programs for Linux and *BSD than it is to write programs for Windows. Many open-source programmers use this as an excuse for charging for the Windows versions of their products.
Your premise appears questionable at best. Your conclusion could also be explained by the fact that Windows products tend to make better cash cows than Linux products.
That said, why would anyone but a Windows programmer want to program for.NET when it is as messy to program for as Windows is?
What do you mean by "as messy as Windows is" ? Programming for.Net is not going to resemble programming Win32 code, any more than programming Qt is like programming raw Xlib.
Mono may support.NET programs, but do Linux, etc. developers really want to go to all the trouble of writing to.NET when Sun's JVM provides the same functionality and a much cleaner API?
For starters, the technology that Mono is based on
is standardised, while java is not. Why boost Suns proprietary language ? You might respond by asking
"why boost Microsofts proprietary language", but the fact is that.Net is a proprietary implementation of an open standard, so Mono isn't
necessarily boosting Visual Studio.Net any more than g++ is boosting Visual C++
I think the languages support in CLR are impressive, but still, if you have to write to a Windows-like API, what good does it do you?
Please, offer some sound technical arguments instead of this anti-MS-jihad hot air. You don't "have to write to a Windows API", you can write to whatever APIs are implemented on Mono.
Now you're experiencing the bad side of the USA. Why do you think other western countries such those in Europe or Canada expend so much effort on building a more caring society (at the expense of higher taxes)?
How true is this ? The top marginal tax rate in the US is 40% IIRC, and they also have state income taxes on top of that, and a steep property tax on top of that. Unemployment is a desperate situation even in a "caring" country, especially if you're used to earning a lot of money.
I have to disagree. First of all, it being illegal to pay them less means nothing. I think there's a loophole with consulting companies. They can bill at the same rate as citizen, but pay the slave^H^H^H^H^Hconsultant whatever they want.
A friend of mine worked at one of these consulting companies, and their salaries were actually pretty decent. Of course, an anecdote doesn't prove anything, but suff"ice it to say, I am sceptical. However, I think the H1B visas should require a minimum salary.
This is going to show my redneck heritage, but I believe this - we can't afford to have a bunch of non-citizens in the USA stealing jobs from citizens by undercutting us in every way.
Well that's too bad, because the alternative is to have a bunch of non-citizens out of the USA stealing jobs from citizens by "undercutting" you.
What we have with the H1Bs is the recipe to economic collapse, rapid inflation, etc.
There's little in the way of evidence to support this claim. I would argue that on the contrary,
isolationist policies are a sure recipe to doom.
The problem is that there is change due to the unsustainable situation where people in India have much lower salaries than their American counterparts. Because of this, it's in the interests of companies to prefer the Indians, and fire the Americans since they're cheaper. A lot of people are getting burned by the transition (this always happens when economies undergo any type of transition) The key is to put the brakes on the transition so that no-one gets burned more than necessary.
Just look at the early 20th century immigration boom. That eventually led to the great depression, which led to WWII.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Lots of things led to the great depression (ponzi schemes, a poorly regulated stock exchange, and an unsustainable boom), and lots of things led to WWII (namely, Germanys hardship had a lot to do with the "victors justice" at the end of WWI
I have 28 years experience. I know all the hot technologies. I've been out of work for five months now and I'm getting close to the end of my resources. It's easy to feel generous when you're employed, but not when the only people left in your old company are Chinese and Indians. What am I going to do for my family . . .
It's not a matter of feeling "generous". I don't blame you for feeling pissed off, but isolationist policies would not really help you very much. The problem is that we are in a global economy, and sticking our collective heads in the sand doesn't change that. If the government legislates isolationist
policies, jobs move off shore, and the same Chinese and Indians still replace you, the only difference is your office moves to them and not the other way around.
The reason you're in this mess is that your labor is too expensive (or at least is perceived that way. The perception is probably actually true of you and most American tech workers). If the US currency was a tad weaker, you'd be cheaper in the world economy, and hence more employable. Conversely, if the Indian currency becomes stronger, the Indian workers become more expensive, and less appealing as a source of "cheap labor".
I don't understand this comment. They can't directly add anything to the ECMA standard either, because they don't have control over it. They can make changes to their implementation, but they can do (and have done) the same with C and C++.
But if they extend a widely supported, if not by then market dominant, standard that they own... then I think we're in deep sh*t...
They don't "own" it. That's the whole point of being standard -- it implies that it's not "owned". If it's well supported and market dominant, that's actually a good thing, because that will imply that there are several implementations, which will imply that the standard will have more active participation from third parties.
It's a manipulation and a scam on both sides - India farms out its best minds to artificially raise their GNP (and increase their status in the world), while US companies get cheap labor without having to establish an overseas presence. Brought to you by Dubya and the Indian government. Praise Jesus!
I'd argue that globalisation is not at fault, in fact, quite the opposite is true. The apparent inequalities are caused by the fact that there is not complete freedom of movement. To the degree that we have globalisation, it makes the inequalities visible, but it certainly doesn't create them. There's nothing "artificial" about the way India is raising their GNP. A more brain-oriented economy results in a stronger currency (and hence higher GNP). If the Indian government are working to create a more brain oriented economy, good for them.
When they have locked a minor detail which marketing departments view as "essential", be it a nice graphical widget or whatever, they will be recomending their respective managers to switch to the MS technology that supports it.
So what ? They could also add a "graphical widget" to perl, C++, C, or any other standard. Why is C#/.Net any different ? There are these silly comments on how Microsoft could sink the standard by adding proprietary or even patented extensions, but they can in fact do the same to any standard. I think most of the Mono bashers are blinded by their pent up anti-MS rage.
Here is a link that I thought was interesting, written by the guy who updated the 6b volume on what he thinks the adavantages over QT and GTK are.
http://unix.oreilly.com/news/motif_0400.html
That was an interesting article. I'm sure Motif won't die any time soon, because there is a lot of code out there that uses it. But tradition will only keep it alive for so long, and for new projects, it's likely to get dumped. Also, some of the comments about Qt are just dead wrong. Qt is not just used to write "software for programmers", in fact the KDE and QT APIs are designed to make it easy to write user friendly software. Qt is actually used for in-house Windows development, and that's how TT make some of their money. His "no documenation" comment is completely wrong. Every class and every method in Qt is documented, and there are also several tutorials and books. And there have been for years.
I can see Motif championing legacy applications, but for new projects, Qt is a much more appealing product.
On internationalization, Qt supports Unicode, and GTK is more recently catching up on this.
And when Ximian tries to track the spec that Microsoft will change as soon as Ximian gets up to the current spec, someone will have to mod it.
I disagree with this. The goal of Mono isn't to act as some sort of "Microsoft emulator". This isn't WINE. They should for the most part work with the standard. However, some of Microsofts extensions stand a good chance of being included in the standard, and some are good enough to be worth using
anyway. Tracking Microsoft might be worthwhile to pre-empt changes in the standard, but I think the point of what Miguels doing is not to "follow Microsoft", but rather, to use a good technology to our advantage.
The other comment is obviously false, maybe the other poster is thinking of Solaris workstations that have very primitive graphics hardware.
However,
there's no comparison between Motif and. KDE has a distributed object model, a solid foundation (Qt), and a rich set of widgets, including everything Qt provides (including collection classes, network support, and XML support), and KDEs add-ons. Because it's usable in OO languages, extending and adding widgets is a piece of cake.
Has de Icaza just lost it and sold out ? Does RMS see.NET as a very big threat, way bigger than everyone else is seeing it, and thus it is worth any strategy at all to open it up ?
Their strategy is not to "open it up". C# is a standard, and as such, does not need to be "opened up". I think a lot of the slashdot zealots are putting this anti-Microsoft jihad ahead of the interests of improving Linux software.
You tell me why MS would be so interested. Philanthropy? A deep love for free software? Hardly.
MS are interested not because of "a deep love for free software", but more because of "a deep love" for their own stuff. I mean, who doesn't ? Of course MS want to see C# and.Net do well. The explanation is quite simple, and it doesn't involve obscure conspiracy theories.
I care. I need to create a web service that is available for java servlet clients, Office XP clients, windows DNA clients, and custom C++ clients. What happens if I build my product on.NET and them Microsoft decides to embrace and extend the SOAP standard in a manner which breaks half of my clients?
Assuming that your goal is standards compliance, if Microsoft don't support the standard (which I find unlikely), then that's a good reason not to use Microsoft products, but it isn't necessarily a reason not to use the standard. OTOH, if they add non-standard extensions, and you choose to use them, it's your own stupid fault if they don't interoperate with other implementations.
DOM, LDAP, HTML, Kerberos, IMAP, WebDAV, HTTP,...
What do these things have in common? They are all industry standards that Microsoft decided they didn't feel like being compatible with.
So what ? Is that a reason not to use DOM, LDAP, Kerberos, IMAP, and HTTP ? Who cares what Microsoft do with them ?
Very broad? Do me a favor and name ONE piece of software that Microsoft has created that hasn't had a major security flaw in it at some point.
IMO, NT is reasonably secure. Most of the problems stem from the fact that people tend to undermine the security either by very poor practice, or by using boneheaded legacy applications.
However maybe you haven't seen CERT digests or read about Microsoft security flaws, they aren't just poor implementation in most cases, it's absolute incompetence.
I've read a lot of them. Most of them boil down to the fact that their products are written for poorly designed legacy applications, or their products have stupid defaults (eg IIS turning on all functionality by default, instead of using secure defaults)
As for mono, if you would read my post again I never talked about their implementation as much as I'm talking about someone assuming it's secure.
No one is assuming anything. The specifications are available for you to read.
So far, you don't really have much of an argument except that "it's Microsoft, so it SUX".
Have you been living under a rock for the past decade? When has microsoft ever played fair with standards?
Do Microsoft own ECMA, or don't they ? The standard is not controlled by them. Whether or not they wish to make an implementation that supports their own standard is a seperate issue. Much like ANSI/ISO standards for C and C++ are quite useful, even though Microsoft haven't done a fantastic job at supporting the C++ standard.
1. Submit standard
Exactly. It's a standard. It has a life independent of MS.
2. Screw standard add our own shit
So ? They can also add their own C and C++ libraries, and extensions. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't use C and C++. In fact in the case of C and C++, they do worse -- not only do they add their own stuff, they do not support the standard properly either. At least in the case
of.NET, there's a pretty good chance that their implementation will support the standard.
3. Lock everyone else out
How will they do this ? People who don't want to use Microsoft extensions will target the standard, or modularise their code so that the platform specific components are isolated; in much the same way as C and C++ programmers do today.
However, I suspect that the standard components will have more functionality than the ISO/ANSI C and C++ standard libraries.
I can understand using mono for.net stuff (interoperability of course)..
IMO, this is not a reason to use mono. Because if the goal of developing mono is interoperability with Microsoft, then we are vulnerable to exactly the kinds of sabotage you speak of. On the other hand, if Mono is primarily their to serve as a platform in its own right, it really doesn't matter a great deal what Microsoft do.
I have no problem with people spending time doing absolutely what I feel to believe is dumb stuff..
Well I suppose this is what it boils down to -- whether or not you feel that this is really "dumb stuff". I don't feel it is "dumb stuff" at all. And I think Miguel is smart enough to realise that GNOME is not going to progress rapidly if everyone is stuck using C as an object oriented GUI programming language.
Do you remember why Microsoft started C# to begin with? Because the courts said they couldn't embrace and extend Java.
It's true that the courts said that. However, it's also true that Sun refused to turn Java over to a non-partisan standards body.
So they create C#, give it to some quasi-standards committee.
What's "quasi" about it ? It's better than Sun have been able or willing to do.
What makes you think they won't embrace and extend it?
I didn't say that they won't. My point is more a matter of "who cares if they embrace and extend it ?"
If the only purpose of mono were to provide some kind of Microsoft compatibility, I would be considerably less enthusiastic about it. But the fact is that it is a standards based architecture
that is useful in its own right, and will continue to be useful regardless of what Microsoft do with.NET
All of that makes sense except it totally defeats the purpose of.NET and Mono.
Depends on what your purpose is.
Explain to me the point of Mono again,
To provide a common runtime/object model that's usable by several different programming languages. It's got very little to do with "interoperability". The standard provides for a limited amount of interoperability. In particular, you have a certain common core functionality that is interoperable.
Except, of course, when you are a monopoly. In which case the notion of "standard" you're talking about ceases to work
Not at all. The standard will exist regardless of what Microsoft does. Indeed, there already are standards, such as ANSI/ISO C and C++, and these work, despite the fact that Microsoft is the dominant vendor, and do not do a terribly good job at supporting these standards.
The original poster didn't miss any point, maybe you want to read the post again. The jist is that Microsoft and anything they
do is usually not secure in comparison to many other alternatives.
This is a very broad generalisation, and your statement, in that level of generality, is simply false. It's true that they are slack with getting bugfixes out. It's also true that their desktop software has enormous security holes, largely because it's designed to run on DOS++. However, it's not true that all of their designs are "bad". For example, the NT security model is in theory pretty good. The main problems arise when users try to install and run boneheaded applications that need to run as administrator. Also, the default settings are traditionally fairly poor.
The important point is that the security problems are largely a result of poor implementations and poor practice. Poor design for the most part is not the culprit. In the case of Mono, implementation issues are not really relevant, since Microsoft are not the implementor.
Miguel? Do you have any idea of what type of fire you are playing with? Seriously, what you plan on doing is taking a large
chunk of gnome users and kindly giving them to Microsoft in their battle to control EVERYTHING there is to control.
On what basis do you make this claim ? Since when did Microsoft own ECMA ?
IMO, the fact that Microsoft wrote it is largely irrelevant. If it's standardised, and it's useful, there's no reason not to use it. The worst that Microsoft can do is sabotage compaibility by adding a lot of their own extensions, but then again, so what ????? We can write our own extensions too, and the platform will continue to be useful in its own right. We can continue to support the standard subset of.NET. The standard.NET platform will contain at least as much functionality as ANSI/ISO C/C++, so it will continue to be quite useful for writing portable software, even if Microsoft develop their own APIs.
A lot of slashdot posters seem to be more concerned about some sort of anti-Microsoft juhad than they are about developing good software.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when do Microsoft own ECMA ? Microsofts implementation is controlled by Microsoft, but the standard itself isn't. Why don't Sun submit to a standards body ? It's primarily because they want to retain control.
To me though being UNIXish is a feature.
I'd agree, if it didn't imply that platform-specific features were properly modularised, and not glued onto the language.
Not true. Under such circumstances, Microsofts implementation will be wrong. Given that there will probably be a number of vendors who will implement the standard, it's not in Microsofts interests to be incompatibile. What is more likely to happen is that they will "embrace and extend" their own standard. However, this is not a problem unique to C#-- they can do the same with anything else.
Well, he believes correctly. The core components are an ECMA standard.
Them same situation we got here, you could adopt the JVM for any project actually, but it is closed technology nonetheless and very well masked as open and platform-neutral.
Java is controlled by Sun. It has not been submitted to any standards body. When it does, it will be on equal footing to C#. For now, it is not.
For true open source, platform independence see Perl [perl.com].
It's not really "platform independent" at all, actually. It has a lot of UNIX-isms in the core language. For something more genuinely cross-platform, that properly separates core and platform functionality, try Python.
Your premise appears questionable at best. Your conclusion could also be explained by the fact that Windows products tend to make better cash cows than Linux products.
That said, why would anyone but a Windows programmer want to program for .NET when it is as messy to program for as Windows is?
What do you mean by "as messy as Windows is" ? Programming for .Net is not going to resemble programming Win32 code, any more than programming Qt is like programming raw Xlib.
Mono may support .NET programs, but do Linux, etc. developers really want to go to all the trouble of writing to .NET when Sun's JVM provides the same functionality and a much cleaner API?
For starters, the technology that Mono is based on is standardised, while java is not. Why boost Suns proprietary language ? You might respond by asking "why boost Microsofts proprietary language", but the fact is that .Net is a proprietary implementation of an open standard, so Mono isn't
necessarily boosting Visual Studio .Net any more than g++ is boosting Visual C++
I think the languages support in CLR are impressive, but still, if you have to write to a Windows-like API, what good does it do you?
Please, offer some sound technical arguments instead of this anti-MS-jihad hot air. You don't "have to write to a Windows API", you can write to whatever APIs are implemented on Mono.
How true is this ? The top marginal tax rate in the US is 40% IIRC, and they also have state income taxes on top of that, and a steep property tax on top of that. Unemployment is a desperate situation even in a "caring" country, especially if you're used to earning a lot of money.
A friend of mine worked at one of these consulting companies, and their salaries were actually pretty decent. Of course, an anecdote doesn't prove anything, but suff"ice it to say, I am sceptical. However, I think the H1B visas should require a minimum salary.
This is going to show my redneck heritage, but I believe this - we can't afford to have a bunch of non-citizens in the USA stealing jobs from citizens by undercutting us in every way.
Well that's too bad, because the alternative is to have a bunch of non-citizens out of the USA stealing jobs from citizens by "undercutting" you.
What we have with the H1Bs is the recipe to economic collapse, rapid inflation, etc.
There's little in the way of evidence to support this claim. I would argue that on the contrary, isolationist policies are a sure recipe to doom. The problem is that there is change due to the unsustainable situation where people in India have much lower salaries than their American counterparts. Because of this, it's in the interests of companies to prefer the Indians, and fire the Americans since they're cheaper. A lot of people are getting burned by the transition (this always happens when economies undergo any type of transition) The key is to put the brakes on the transition so that no-one gets burned more than necessary.
Just look at the early 20th century immigration boom. That eventually led to the great depression, which led to WWII.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Lots of things led to the great depression (ponzi schemes, a poorly regulated stock exchange, and an unsustainable boom), and lots of things led to WWII (namely, Germanys hardship had a lot to do with the "victors justice" at the end of WWI
It's not a matter of feeling "generous". I don't blame you for feeling pissed off, but isolationist policies would not really help you very much. The problem is that we are in a global economy, and sticking our collective heads in the sand doesn't change that. If the government legislates isolationist policies, jobs move off shore, and the same Chinese and Indians still replace you, the only difference is your office moves to them and not the other way around.
The reason you're in this mess is that your labor is too expensive (or at least is perceived that way. The perception is probably actually true of you and most American tech workers). If the US currency was a tad weaker, you'd be cheaper in the world economy, and hence more employable. Conversely, if the Indian currency becomes stronger, the Indian workers become more expensive, and less appealing as a source of "cheap labor".
Cheers, and by the way, best wishes,
I don't understand this comment. They can't directly add anything to the ECMA standard either, because they don't have control over it. They can make changes to their implementation, but they can do (and have done) the same with C and C++.
But if they extend a widely supported, if not by then market dominant, standard that they own... then I think we're in deep sh*t...
They don't "own" it. That's the whole point of being standard -- it implies that it's not "owned". If it's well supported and market dominant, that's actually a good thing, because that will imply that there are several implementations, which will imply that the standard will have more active participation from third parties.
I'd argue that globalisation is not at fault, in fact, quite the opposite is true. The apparent inequalities are caused by the fact that there is not complete freedom of movement. To the degree that we have globalisation, it makes the inequalities visible, but it certainly doesn't create them. There's nothing "artificial" about the way India is raising their GNP. A more brain-oriented economy results in a stronger currency (and hence higher GNP). If the Indian government are working to create a more brain oriented economy, good for them.
So what ? They could also add a "graphical widget" to perl, C++, C, or any other standard. Why is C#/.Net any different ? There are these silly comments on how Microsoft could sink the standard by adding proprietary or even patented extensions, but they can in fact do the same to any standard. I think most of the Mono bashers are blinded by their pent up anti-MS rage.
That was an interesting article. I'm sure Motif won't die any time soon, because there is a lot of code out there that uses it. But tradition will only keep it alive for so long, and for new projects, it's likely to get dumped. Also, some of the comments about Qt are just dead wrong. Qt is not just used to write "software for programmers", in fact the KDE and QT APIs are designed to make it easy to write user friendly software. Qt is actually used for in-house Windows development, and that's how TT make some of their money. His "no documenation" comment is completely wrong. Every class and every method in Qt is documented, and there are also several tutorials and books. And there have been for years. I can see Motif championing legacy applications, but for new projects, Qt is a much more appealing product.
On internationalization, Qt supports Unicode, and GTK is more recently catching up on this.
Read the article. Mono is not a "Windows compatibility" tool. Your analogy is neither analogous nor relevant.
I disagree with this. The goal of Mono isn't to act as some sort of "Microsoft emulator". This isn't WINE. They should for the most part work with the standard. However, some of Microsofts extensions stand a good chance of being included in the standard, and some are good enough to be worth using anyway. Tracking Microsoft might be worthwhile to pre-empt changes in the standard, but I think the point of what Miguels doing is not to "follow Microsoft", but rather, to use a good technology to our advantage.
However, there's no comparison between Motif and. KDE has a distributed object model, a solid foundation (Qt), and a rich set of widgets, including everything Qt provides (including collection classes, network support, and XML support), and KDEs add-ons. Because it's usable in OO languages, extending and adding widgets is a piece of cake.
Cheers,
Their strategy is not to "open it up". C# is a standard, and as such, does not need to be "opened up". I think a lot of the slashdot zealots are putting this anti-Microsoft jihad ahead of the interests of improving Linux software.
MS are interested not because of "a deep love for free software", but more because of "a deep love" for their own stuff. I mean, who doesn't ? Of course MS want to see C# and .Net do well. The explanation is quite simple, and it doesn't involve obscure conspiracy theories.
Assuming that your goal is standards compliance, if Microsoft don't support the standard (which I find unlikely), then that's a good reason not to use Microsoft products, but it isn't necessarily a reason not to use the standard. OTOH, if they add non-standard extensions, and you choose to use them, it's your own stupid fault if they don't interoperate with other implementations.
So what ? Is that a reason not to use DOM, LDAP, Kerberos, IMAP, and HTTP ? Who cares what Microsoft do with them ?
IMO, NT is reasonably secure. Most of the problems stem from the fact that people tend to undermine the security either by very poor practice, or by using boneheaded legacy applications.
However maybe you haven't seen CERT digests or read about Microsoft security flaws, they aren't just poor implementation in most cases, it's absolute incompetence.
I've read a lot of them. Most of them boil down to the fact that their products are written for poorly designed legacy applications, or their products have stupid defaults (eg IIS turning on all functionality by default, instead of using secure defaults)
As for mono, if you would read my post again I never talked about their implementation as much as I'm talking about someone assuming it's secure.
No one is assuming anything. The specifications are available for you to read. So far, you don't really have much of an argument except that "it's Microsoft, so it SUX".
Do Microsoft own ECMA, or don't they ? The standard is not controlled by them. Whether or not they wish to make an implementation that supports their own standard is a seperate issue. Much like ANSI/ISO standards for C and C++ are quite useful, even though Microsoft haven't done a fantastic job at supporting the C++ standard.
1. Submit standard
Exactly. It's a standard. It has a life independent of MS.
2. Screw standard add our own shit
So ? They can also add their own C and C++ libraries, and extensions. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't use C and C++. In fact in the case of C and C++, they do worse -- not only do they add their own stuff, they do not support the standard properly either. At least in the case of .NET, there's a pretty good chance that their implementation will support the standard.
3. Lock everyone else out
How will they do this ? People who don't want to use Microsoft extensions will target the standard, or modularise their code so that the platform specific components are isolated; in much the same way as C and C++ programmers do today. However, I suspect that the standard components will have more functionality than the ISO/ANSI C and C++ standard libraries.
I can understand using mono for .net stuff (interoperability of course)..
IMO, this is not a reason to use mono. Because if the goal of developing mono is interoperability with Microsoft, then we are vulnerable to exactly the kinds of sabotage you speak of. On the other hand, if Mono is primarily their to serve as a platform in its own right, it really doesn't matter a great deal what Microsoft do.
I have no problem with people spending time doing absolutely what I feel to believe is dumb stuff..
Well I suppose this is what it boils down to -- whether or not you feel that this is really "dumb stuff". I don't feel it is "dumb stuff" at all. And I think Miguel is smart enough to realise that GNOME is not going to progress rapidly if everyone is stuck using C as an object oriented GUI programming language.
It's true that the courts said that. However, it's also true that Sun refused to turn Java over to a non-partisan standards body.
So they create C#, give it to some quasi-standards committee.
What's "quasi" about it ? It's better than Sun have been able or willing to do.
What makes you think they won't embrace and extend it?
I didn't say that they won't. My point is more a matter of "who cares if they embrace and extend it ?"
If the only purpose of mono were to provide some kind of Microsoft compatibility, I would be considerably less enthusiastic about it. But the fact is that it is a standards based architecture that is useful in its own right, and will continue to be useful regardless of what Microsoft do with .NET
Depends on what your purpose is.
Explain to me the point of Mono again,
To provide a common runtime/object model that's usable by several different programming languages. It's got very little to do with "interoperability". The standard provides for a limited amount of interoperability. In particular, you have a certain common core functionality that is interoperable.
Not at all. The standard will exist regardless of what Microsoft does. Indeed, there already are standards, such as ANSI/ISO C and C++, and these work, despite the fact that Microsoft is the dominant vendor, and do not do a terribly good job at supporting these standards.
This is a very broad generalisation, and your statement, in that level of generality, is simply false. It's true that they are slack with getting bugfixes out. It's also true that their desktop software has enormous security holes, largely because it's designed to run on DOS++. However, it's not true that all of their designs are "bad". For example, the NT security model is in theory pretty good. The main problems arise when users try to install and run boneheaded applications that need to run as administrator. Also, the default settings are traditionally fairly poor.
The important point is that the security problems are largely a result of poor implementations and poor practice. Poor design for the most part is not the culprit. In the case of Mono, implementation issues are not really relevant, since Microsoft are not the implementor.
On what basis do you make this claim ? Since when did Microsoft own ECMA ?
IMO, the fact that Microsoft wrote it is largely irrelevant. If it's standardised, and it's useful, there's no reason not to use it. The worst that Microsoft can do is sabotage compaibility by adding a lot of their own extensions, but then again, so what ????? We can write our own extensions too, and the platform will continue to be useful in its own right. We can continue to support the standard subset of .NET. The standard .NET platform will contain at least as much functionality as ANSI/ISO C/C++, so it will continue to be quite useful for writing portable software, even if Microsoft develop their own APIs.
A lot of slashdot posters seem to be more concerned about some sort of anti-Microsoft juhad than they are about developing good software.