There's been a lot of chatter about Mono, recently, varying from "its a killer dev platform!" all the way to, "the patent issues are going to destroy us all!" And yet, in all this chatter, there has been relatively little chatter about DotGNU or Portable.NET. Well, you know what they say: learning is FUNdamental...
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Remember: Unlike Mono, the Portable.NET project seeks to create an alternative but compatiable technology, much like the WINE project.
How is "an alterative but compatiable (sic) technology" any different from Mono? Mono is working towards compatability with MS.NET, and has an "alternative" in the form of the Mono stack using Gtk# and friends. So what differentiates the two? (in this particular instance, I'm aware of the differences in implementation, etc)
That probably should've read, the DotGNU Project...
'cuz, DotGNU has Goldwater, groupware projects, etc; you know, instead of just implementing all the stuff Microsoft has like Hailstorm, they're trying to compete with their own open and free technologies while remaining compatiable with the proprietary lewt.
Speaking of which, didn't Hailstorm die an agonizing death two years ago or around then?
but the DotGNU authorization system is decentralized and can be adapted to be used in any way you like from authorization on a pen drive, to having authorization service providers, something you might trust a Bank to provide since they have a good track record on personal information.
this is of course the last time I checked the site what was going on.
I'm using portable.NET on cygwin (Mono wouldn't compile) and it is good. The Windows.Forms is much further along than Mono's.
In a court of law you're more likely to win with a BSD/MIT license because if you're facing a jury your lawyer can make the argument that you don't hurt the patent holder since whatever you do with their patent can be freely incorporated into their product. Think about it. If Mono adds some cool feature to ASP.NET, since they use the MIT license, Microsoft can legally add the feature as a proprietary add-on.
Chances are still higher than acceptable that you'll lose, but the GPL makes it worse. Common sense would dictate that if you release a major patent violation under the GPL, that since the patent holder cannot directly benefit at all from your use, that you're doubly screwed.
The CVM link goes to a single advertisement with no other information.
Bad copy/paste at work?
First of all, windows forms on windows will be depricated in Longhorn. Second, X has no concept of widgets (from what I know, all it understands is to draw pixels), and that ugly looking windows controls on linux and os x will no help it's adoption. Same thing with happened with java. You need to do this SWT style.
How will SWT help X with its non-native widget set? You've just said that X has no concept of a widget, so SWT isn't going to do any good. All the toolkits on X draw their own widgets. Qt draws its own widgets and its pretty good looking on Windows and OS X.
Supposedly Pnet's windows forms implementation has the ability to hook into native themes. I have no idea of how it looks because I've never seen it.
@Wee-Jim Goh - I guess what SpookyET is advocating is the "SWT approach". Use Gtk+ on unix, windows controls on windows, etc...
I'm working on the theming hooks for native themes. Currently our first step is working on Qt because we have someone in our crew with Qt theming experience, and were looking for someone who has GTK/OSX theming so we can add those as well. The idea is to have a Theme manager that can auto detect your OS, and what environment you are running (KDE/Gnome, etc) and use it to paint widgets.
Currently the Qt stuff is working out great, here's a very small sample screenshot of a few widgets using the plastik theme in KDE:
http://216.58.40.193/qtwinforms2.jpg
Who says winforms based on X has to be ugly? Looks pretty to me 
there is wxWidgets.NET but it doesn't get much press. I've played with it on Mono before. Worked fine, except for some MFC'ish api behavior.
Yeah wxnet does a pretty damn good job, they just don't get the advertising. I use it and native widgets everywhere, that just rocks it's little world
Damn, I pressed enter. There is also VCF (Visual Component Framework) at vcf.sf.net. It will be much better than wxWindows in the feature. Right now it is best on Windows.
GPL cannot protect against patents either
Think about it. If Mono adds some cool feature to ASP.NET, since they use the MIT license, Microsoft can legally add the feature as a proprietary add-on.
So MS is allowed to take open standards and embrace and extend ^H^H^H^H^H^H incorporate them into it's own propietry products (for example, LDAP and Active Directory), but if anyone writes a free implementation of said extension, then extended again, but make the extension GPL'd, it suddenly invalid?
If this is the case, the US legal system is even more screwed up than I thought.
But when are we going to have this integrated nicely with an X server and a windowmanager in a nice standarized package that normal people can enjoy?