And I truly believe that the work that Miguel and Novell are doing will entice more people to use it as a platform to program.
But we have to be a little bit cautious when dealing with the Beast (MS). Their track record isn't all that pretty !;-)
I agree, to an extent. But their recent actions seem to indicate a new tack as a company (witness the Apache bit, for example); if we don't give them a chance to be good citizens, they never will be.
We need "interoperability" only in as much as benefits our cause.
Then your cause will continue to flounder and suck. Isn't that so awesome?!
Microsoft is hostile to open source and Linux.
There's a fairly significant cultural shift going on at Microsoft. They've got a considerable amount of code under permissive open source licenses (you do recall that the Ms-PL and Ms-RL are OSI-approved licenses, right?), and, more importantly, they're getting behind open standards. Personally, I don't give a shit whether they go open source so long as they adhere to standards; their current direction as a company is indicating considerably more support for open standards, and they should be applauded for such.
Unfortunately, it seems like the zealots, as per their M.O., are unable to recognize progress. Just more paranoia and vitriol. It's interesting.
mono and moonbat are not a "must haves" yet, and supporting them is a mistake that undercuts the competitive environment.
Really! It undercuts the competitive environment by being another choice? Interesting...sounds like insecurity.
We should be driving open and usable standards, not the convicted monopolist.
I have still seen the work he has done to fragment the OSS community. He may have contributed a lot of code, but still works against many of the concepts of F/OSS.
Part of freedom is not buying into the hogwash concepts of the freetards.
He seems to cuddle up to MS at every opportunity and frankly
In the grown-up world, interoperability is vital. Even Microsoft has figured this out. You apparently have not.
The code is already out and it can be forked (The POINT of F/OSS).
Right, but when the code out there misses the point, forking it won't help. You have to start anew. Hence, Mono.
He loves to control things and recreate the MS universe.
And so far, he seems to be "controlling" things very well. As for "recreat[ing] the MS universe"--what Mono proposes is a better design than what you currently see available on Linux, so there's nothing but benefit in the project. After all, nobody's forcing you to use it.
(Mono works fine with KDE and Qt, too. When not on working on Windows, that's my DE of choice.)
Please point out where I was "factually inaccurate.".NET *was* created as a result of Microsoft getting sued by Sun for trying to corrupt the Java standard. This is a documented fact, do your research.
Yes, the project was started as such. Calling it a "copy" is inaccurate. Java aims for Java-the-language penetration above all; Jython and JRuby are tolerated, but aren't anything close to first-class citizens. The CLR's specific goal is to get a lot of mutually interoperable languages on the same platform. Java attempts to contain everything in managed code. The CLR is smarter than that and provides very powerful and very flexible ways to handle managed/native interop (in a reasonably cross-platform manner, too).
Thus, how does opening up.NET work for Microsoft? Simple answer: It Doesn't.
Microsoft only released Rotor and made an ECMA standard because they want it all on Windows. Right.
It's good you asked. Why? Microsoft wants market penetration for Silverlight at all costs. By "providing" faux cross platform support through Mono, Microsoft gets to look open while still maintaining a way to screw everyone in the future.
Paranoia is kind of funny in this sort of situation; estoppel largely prevents them from "screw[ing] everyone" in the legal arena, and from a technical point of view, there's not a lot they could do.
Also, I highly doubt it was Microsoft's idea to work with the Mono gits in the first place. i.e. Mono came to Microsoft interested in "helping," not the other way around.
IIRC, Microsoft went and talked to Novell about the Mono project as part of their agreements, but I could be wrong.
That's great. Miguel is probably an OK guy, but he makes some extremely poor decisions.
I guess we'll see. Personally, I win either way. I use Windows as my primary OS. If Mono gets good, I get the lazy man's porting of applications to other OSes. If it ends up blowing up--well, my primary OS is still fine.
The codecs being open-source have no bearing on whether they're available for open-source applications to use.
The DRM remains, but hey--don't buy (or pirate) media that's under restrictive licenses and you won't care.
I don't disagree that Microsoft has given them food, but Mono is a good thing, of only because Java isn't going to cut it for a managed code environment in the future. Make something better, and we'll talk. Right now, the CLR does everything Java does and then some. Hell, it even supports Java via J#, along with a raft of other mutually interoperable languages.
Managed code userlands are the future, I think, and Mono is the best choice at the moment for it.
They aren't "leeching," because it's relatively trivial to write code that targets both Linux and Windows.
I'd have to try to write code that doesn't target both. I'd have to specifically do stupid things to limit me to a single platform. And even then, it wouldn't be hard to work around it.
That's the beauty of a managed-code language with reflection.:)
That's debatable, a clone of Java isn't that much interesting IMHO.
Calling the CLR a "clone" of Java misses the point of it entirely. Good job.
(For those who aren't so blind: the CLR (.NET/Mono) is specifically designed to provide a coherent object model across languages--Java does this only very reluctantly, and only with largely unsupported third-party languages--as well as have closer interaction with native code without changing the managed code, to allow the use of native code in performance-critical situations while allowing the flexibility and interoperability of managed code where performance is not so critical.
It allows you to do some pretty awesome things, too. I can make a Linux release of a CLR application I wrote for Windows just by changing the shared libraries; my code figures out whether it's on a Unix system or a Windows system and automatically loads the correct wrapper assembly for the correct operating system's native code libraries on-the-fly. Java can do so, but nowhere near as cleanly; its ClassLoader issues are the stuff of legend.)
WinForms support is nearing completion; the issues left are primarily issues with the X Window System model (which sucks, and don't even try to deny it) and theming (I know the guy working on theming for Mono's System.Windows.Forms implementation, and he's coming along very quickly).
Novell's business model is "interoperability." Mono will provide a significant level of interoperability between Windows and Linux.
It sure doesn't hurt that C# is a vastly more pleasant language to work with than C++ or Java or Python or any of the other "preferred" free software languages.
99% of open source isn't "innovative", so whining that Mono isn't "innovative" is silly. And Mono definitely fits both your "b" and your "c"; the Mono libraries are very extensive even apart from their implementation of the Base Class Library. Mono.Zeroconf and DBus# are the two that jump to mind immediately; there are a ton more. (And the non-UNIX-specific libraries work on Windows too, giving developers there additional tools.)
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't a valuable tool.
The number of third-party.NET apps that run on Linux is pretty good; however, it requires a little discipline on the part of the app developers to not use P/Invokes to do things.
Me, I've never written a single P/Invoke in.NET, so anything I write pops over easily.
Oh, right, because Moonlight won't be able to? What about the codec pack Microsoft will release for non-Windows operating systems, for x86, x86_64, and PowerPC alike, specifically and solely for Moonlight?
Why is it that the trolls crawl out from under the bridge whenever Mono comes up?
etc.NET is a copy of Java, which Microsoft created because Java was cross platform. Why would they ever open.NET, when the goal of.NET was to create a non-portable clone of Java?
Factually inaccurate. Get back under your bridge.
If Microsoft wanted.NET to be Windows-only, why have this dialogue with the Mono developers at all?
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google Summer of Code developer for Mono, and I know Miguel de Icaza in passing; seems like a good, knowledgeable guy who genuinely wants the best for Linux and open-source software.)
The CLR (.NET/Mono) is a step in the right direction for everyone.
Also, currently IronPython is supported (it's a Microsoft project); not built-in to Visual Studio, but I bet that's coming with the next release. I don't like Python as a language, but I've learned to accept it because with IronPython, hosting a script engine takes all of four lines of code (plus whatever global objects you want the Python script to see). The independent languages are also pretty awesome, even if I wouldn't really want to use any of them. Just off the top of my head I can think of Scheme, PHP (Phalanger), Ada (A#), Prolog (P#), and a bunch of other (more useful) languages that have CLR compilers.
I would love to see a desktop--Windows, Linux, whatever--done in managed code, built on a common...language...runtime (did you see what I did there?). No more assaches about "oh, that library was written in C++, I can't use it in my language of choice"--all languages build off the same intermediate language, and so they can consume code of all other languages. This isn't the best example, as this functionality is actually built into the.NET Base Class Library, but here we go anyway: say you need to do a directory lookup. Instead of going to the command line and mucking with pipes, all you'd do is reference the managed code implementation of the "ls" command and its public object model would be yours to work with. Instant interoperability with almost anything.
I think it'd be a huge step forward for all of us. Shame it'd never happen.
That wouldn't make any sense. Code taint only occurs if you've ever had access to their internals--seeing something that's part of the public interface doesn't taint you.
Unless they're talking reverse engineering, but that seems beyond the legal requirement as well.
To be fair, Ogg Theora sucks. I can see why they wouldn't really want to use it. (Don't get me wrong--Ogg Vorbis is great, but Theora is pretty second-rate. Yes, I realize I just rhymed. Poet, didn't know it, etcetera.)
Wait, wait, wait, what? Are you calling Ronald Reagan, the man who popularized neoconservatism in the public arena of ideas, and George H.W. Bush, his hatchetman, paleoconservatives?
Oh, really? Then I guess that's why we haven't invaded North Korea for how long?
Their having nuclear weapons won't do a damn thing regarding our projection of force. They can hurt us. We can kill them. Nuclear weapons are not the equalizer some think they are.
Slashdot Mirror
Java supports more languages? [citation needed]
And of course managed code is just bytecode. But the CLR is, in my opinion, a better design and a better framework (some library weirdnesses aside).
And I truly believe that the work that Miguel and Novell are doing will entice more people to use it as a platform to program.
But we have to be a little bit cautious when dealing with the Beast (MS). Their track record isn't all that pretty ! ;-)
I agree, to an extent. But their recent actions seem to indicate a new tack as a company (witness the Apache bit, for example); if we don't give them a chance to be good citizens, they never will be.
We need "interoperability" only in as much as benefits our cause.
Then your cause will continue to flounder and suck. Isn't that so awesome?!
Microsoft is hostile to open source and Linux.
There's a fairly significant cultural shift going on at Microsoft. They've got a considerable amount of code under permissive open source licenses (you do recall that the Ms-PL and Ms-RL are OSI-approved licenses, right?), and, more importantly, they're getting behind open standards. Personally, I don't give a shit whether they go open source so long as they adhere to standards; their current direction as a company is indicating considerably more support for open standards, and they should be applauded for such.
Unfortunately, it seems like the zealots, as per their M.O., are unable to recognize progress. Just more paranoia and vitriol. It's interesting.
mono and moonbat are not a "must haves" yet, and supporting them is a mistake that undercuts the competitive environment.
Really! It undercuts the competitive environment by being another choice? Interesting...sounds like insecurity.
We should be driving open and usable standards, not the convicted monopolist.
Hi there, open standard!
I have still seen the work he has done to fragment the OSS community. He may have contributed a lot of code, but still works against many of the concepts of F/OSS.
Part of freedom is not buying into the hogwash concepts of the freetards.
He seems to cuddle up to MS at every opportunity and frankly
In the grown-up world, interoperability is vital. Even Microsoft has figured this out. You apparently have not.
The code is already out and it can be forked (The POINT of F/OSS).
Right, but when the code out there misses the point, forking it won't help. You have to start anew. Hence, Mono.
He loves to control things and recreate the MS universe.
And so far, he seems to be "controlling" things very well. As for "recreat[ing] the MS universe"--what Mono proposes is a better design than what you currently see available on Linux, so there's nothing but benefit in the project. After all, nobody's forcing you to use it.
(Mono works fine with KDE and Qt, too. When not on working on Windows, that's my DE of choice.)
Please point out where I was "factually inaccurate." .NET *was* created as a result of Microsoft getting sued by Sun for trying to corrupt the Java standard. This is a documented fact, do your research.
Yes, the project was started as such. Calling it a "copy" is inaccurate. Java aims for Java-the-language penetration above all; Jython and JRuby are tolerated, but aren't anything close to first-class citizens. The CLR's specific goal is to get a lot of mutually interoperable languages on the same platform. Java attempts to contain everything in managed code. The CLR is smarter than that and provides very powerful and very flexible ways to handle managed/native interop (in a reasonably cross-platform manner, too).
Thus, how does opening up .NET work for Microsoft? Simple answer: It Doesn't.
Microsoft only released Rotor and made an ECMA standard because they want it all on Windows. Right.
It's good you asked. Why? Microsoft wants market penetration for Silverlight at all costs. By "providing" faux cross platform support through Mono, Microsoft gets to look open while still maintaining a way to screw everyone in the future.
Paranoia is kind of funny in this sort of situation; estoppel largely prevents them from "screw[ing] everyone" in the legal arena, and from a technical point of view, there's not a lot they could do.
Also, I highly doubt it was Microsoft's idea to work with the Mono gits in the first place. i.e. Mono came to Microsoft interested in "helping," not the other way around.
IIRC, Microsoft went and talked to Novell about the Mono project as part of their agreements, but I could be wrong.
That's great. Miguel is probably an OK guy, but he makes some extremely poor decisions.
I guess we'll see. Personally, I win either way. I use Windows as my primary OS. If Mono gets good, I get the lazy man's porting of applications to other OSes. If it ends up blowing up--well, my primary OS is still fine.
The codecs being open-source have no bearing on whether they're available for open-source applications to use.
The DRM remains, but hey--don't buy (or pirate) media that's under restrictive licenses and you won't care.
I don't disagree that Microsoft has given them food, but Mono is a good thing, of only because Java isn't going to cut it for a managed code environment in the future. Make something better, and we'll talk. Right now, the CLR does everything Java does and then some. Hell, it even supports Java via J#, along with a raft of other mutually interoperable languages.
Managed code userlands are the future, I think, and Mono is the best choice at the moment for it.
They aren't "leeching," because it's relatively trivial to write code that targets both Linux and Windows.
I'd have to try to write code that doesn't target both. I'd have to specifically do stupid things to limit me to a single platform. And even then, it wouldn't be hard to work around it.
That's the beauty of a managed-code language with reflection. :)
Sure there are, trollboy. Like "his employer realizes that interoperability is the future, and that Mono's a good way to get it."
Er. Do you know Miguel? Do you know what he's done? Have you significantly interacted with the Mono developers and used their code?
I have. You're full of shit.
Vala has potential. The problem is, it's not cross-platform and is very much tied to the GObject-based framework. C# is not and is cross-platform.
So...why bother with it?
That's debatable, a clone of Java isn't that much interesting IMHO.
Calling the CLR a "clone" of Java misses the point of it entirely. Good job.
(For those who aren't so blind: the CLR (.NET/Mono) is specifically designed to provide a coherent object model across languages--Java does this only very reluctantly, and only with largely unsupported third-party languages--as well as have closer interaction with native code without changing the managed code, to allow the use of native code in performance-critical situations while allowing the flexibility and interoperability of managed code where performance is not so critical.
It allows you to do some pretty awesome things, too. I can make a Linux release of a CLR application I wrote for Windows just by changing the shared libraries; my code figures out whether it's on a Unix system or a Windows system and automatically loads the correct wrapper assembly for the correct operating system's native code libraries on-the-fly. Java can do so, but nowhere near as cleanly; its ClassLoader issues are the stuff of legend.)
WinForms support is nearing completion; the issues left are primarily issues with the X Window System model (which sucks, and don't even try to deny it) and theming (I know the guy working on theming for Mono's System.Windows.Forms implementation, and he's coming along very quickly).
So...the problem is...what?
Your bridge, it misses its troll. Go back to it.
What better return?
Novell's business model is "interoperability." Mono will provide a significant level of interoperability between Windows and Linux.
It sure doesn't hurt that C# is a vastly more pleasant language to work with than C++ or Java or Python or any of the other "preferred" free software languages.
99% of open source isn't "innovative", so whining that Mono isn't "innovative" is silly. And Mono definitely fits both your "b" and your "c"; the Mono libraries are very extensive even apart from their implementation of the Base Class Library. Mono.Zeroconf and DBus# are the two that jump to mind immediately; there are a ton more. (And the non-UNIX-specific libraries work on Windows too, giving developers there additional tools.)
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't a valuable tool.
Yep ... bang on. Mono is about as compatible with .Net as JavaScript is with Java.
Are you trolling because you know how inaccurate this statement is, or are you just repeating what somebody else said that you liked the sound of?
Because your statement is factually inaccurate at best.
The number of third-party .NET apps that run on Linux is pretty good; however, it requires a little discipline on the part of the app developers to not use P/Invokes to do things.
Me, I've never written a single P/Invoke in .NET, so anything I write pops over easily.
Oh, right, because Moonlight won't be able to? What about the codec pack Microsoft will release for non-Windows operating systems, for x86, x86_64, and PowerPC alike, specifically and solely for Moonlight?
Why is it that the trolls crawl out from under the bridge whenever Mono comes up?
etc .NET is a copy of Java, which Microsoft created because Java was cross platform. Why would they ever open .NET, when the goal of .NET was to create a non-portable clone of Java?
Factually inaccurate. Get back under your bridge.
If Microsoft wanted .NET to be Windows-only, why have this dialogue with the Mono developers at all?
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google Summer of Code developer for Mono, and I know Miguel de Icaza in passing; seems like a good, knowledgeable guy who genuinely wants the best for Linux and open-source software.)
The CLR (.NET/Mono) is a step in the right direction for everyone.
Also, currently IronPython is supported (it's a Microsoft project); not built-in to Visual Studio, but I bet that's coming with the next release. I don't like Python as a language, but I've learned to accept it because with IronPython, hosting a script engine takes all of four lines of code (plus whatever global objects you want the Python script to see). The independent languages are also pretty awesome, even if I wouldn't really want to use any of them. Just off the top of my head I can think of Scheme, PHP (Phalanger), Ada (A#), Prolog (P#), and a bunch of other (more useful) languages that have CLR compilers.
I would love to see a desktop--Windows, Linux, whatever--done in managed code, built on a common...language...runtime (did you see what I did there?). No more assaches about "oh, that library was written in C++, I can't use it in my language of choice"--all languages build off the same intermediate language, and so they can consume code of all other languages. This isn't the best example, as this functionality is actually built into the .NET Base Class Library, but here we go anyway: say you need to do a directory lookup. Instead of going to the command line and mucking with pipes, all you'd do is reference the managed code implementation of the "ls" command and its public object model would be yours to work with. Instant interoperability with almost anything.
I think it'd be a huge step forward for all of us. Shame it'd never happen.
That wouldn't make any sense. Code taint only occurs if you've ever had access to their internals--seeing something that's part of the public interface doesn't taint you.
Unless they're talking reverse engineering, but that seems beyond the legal requirement as well.
To be fair, Ogg Theora sucks. I can see why they wouldn't really want to use it. (Don't get me wrong--Ogg Vorbis is great, but Theora is pretty second-rate. Yes, I realize I just rhymed. Poet, didn't know it, etcetera.)
There's also Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, too. Life Sciences professor at UCLA.
Wait, wait, wait, what? Are you calling Ronald Reagan, the man who popularized neoconservatism in the public arena of ideas, and George H.W. Bush, his hatchetman, paleoconservatives?
<insert shocked emoticon here>
Um, what? "Anti religion and morality"? Bush is quite religious.
Oh, really? Then I guess that's why we haven't invaded North Korea for how long?
Their having nuclear weapons won't do a damn thing regarding our projection of force. They can hurt us. We can kill them. Nuclear weapons are not the equalizer some think they are.
Except that the areas they have okayed to drill don't have oil. The oil companies have said to Congress "go ahead, take them back, we can't use them."
(Some have oil shale, which is not the same thing.)