http://www.osnews.com/story/14220/Mono_1_2_Beta_iFolder_Server_Source_Code_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:01:14 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?111290 http://osnews.com/thread?111290 This will be intresting. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Andre4s) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111292 http://osnews.com/thread?111292 I remember hearing about some legal issues regarding windows.forms, I hope they have those cleared up!

I'm liking Novell more and more everytime they release something - they seem to be a real driving force for the Linux desktop's future. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hornett) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111305 http://osnews.com/thread?111305 It's great to see a big player really embracing free software like Novell has been, since acquiring SUSE and Ximian. I can only hope for more of the same in the future from them, and hopefully from others as well. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jchildrose) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111308 http://osnews.com/thread?111308 Can we only hope that they will release eDirectory as open source? It would be a nice competition to Fedora Directory Server. OpenLDAP is great - but I still find it too difficult to setup. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mweichert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111311 http://osnews.com/thread?111311 The iFolder demos that I have seen look really impressive. Now that it is fully open source it would be great to see that type of functionality completely integrated into the desktop. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (theorz) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111312 http://osnews.com/thread?111312 Any idea what the license for this project is? Also, how well will it interoperate with other technologies out there? For example, do I have to maintain yet another repository for authentication credentials? Or would an existing Fedora Directory Server instance suffice? Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sdnakhla) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111317 http://osnews.com/thread?111317 This is awesome news. I was once one of the biggest opponents to mono/.NET but after using it I really like it. Some great applications have already been built with mono like f-spot, beagle, ifolder, and banshee. Whether or not Microsoft pursues legal action because of Windows.Forms is irrelevant now. Mono doesn't need it to be succesful although it would help. THe most important thing is that now it is easy to make free crossplatform software.

The release of iFolder server is also great news. Novell keeps opening up amazing proprietary technology. Netmail (Hula), YaST, and now iFolder server. Novell is learning pretty quickly how to gain favor amongst OSS advocates. Let's just hope we can return the favor and not only keep Novell going but allow them to flourish. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 19:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111336 http://osnews.com/thread?111336 Please, substantiate: there are and there never were legal issues with Windows.Forms

XAML could be a problem with some patents, but Windows.Forms has nothing to do with it. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 19:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (RenatoRam) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111396 http://osnews.com/thread?111396 ok I have a copy of a novell sanction slideshow presentation that outlines the roadmap for mono and on it it clearly say that by now mono should be at 2.0. My question naturally is what happened? What happened to .net 2.0 support and c# 2.0+ support? Other than that I am really phyched about mono 1.2 but you gotta admit that it's progressing a lot slower than .net is.

Oh and just so there are no dumb comments the specs for c# 3.0 have already been released so no MS is not holding Mono's progress back. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cg0def) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111401 http://osnews.com/thread?111401 XAML could be a problem with some patents, but Windows.Forms has nothing to do with it.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if mono's implementation of Windows.Forms ever does any real damage to Microsoft there will definitely be a legal battle. You may think they don't have a leg to stand on, and neither do I but that doesn't mean they won't do it. Look at SCO. Their claims were ludicrous but here we are three years later without an answer, and a lot of money spent. Microsoft is dirty enough to bleed Novell dry with legal wranglings if they need to. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111402 http://osnews.com/thread?111402 iFolder is like rsync + a pretty gui on crack. I used iFolder before with the crappy simias server and it was ok, but this is incredible. Novell used to give away the iFolder client away for free and sell the "enterprise server" for people who needed a better solution than p2p iFolder.

iFolder has potential to be another one of those mono killer apps like beagle. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SEJeff) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111420 http://osnews.com/thread?111420 Novell, and the rest of the mono community have deliver what we have today at an amazing pace when put in perspective. There are 23 permanent Novell mono developers and about 230+ regular contributors to the mono project. We support 5 distinct operating systems and over 7 CPU architectures, that does not include all the distributions on Linux and Windows variants alone! Compared that with Microsoft and .NET. They literally have thousands of people that work on .NET between development, product and program management, QA, marketing, etc.

http://www.mono-project.com/Supported_Platforms

There is a lot of .NET 2.0 functionality in mono already. For example, a very capable implementation of generics was available in mono quite a few months before .NET Framework 2.0 was finally released to the general public.

C# 3.0 spec is handled by ECMA, so members of the Mono team like Miguel de Icaza are responsible for contributing directly overseeing its progress just as the other members like HP, Intel, Microsoft, etc. This means that C# 3.0 is not holding mono up, mono is actually one of the reasons C# has progressed to 3.0 Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marpaco) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111431 http://osnews.com/thread?111431 There are many things that mono includes in their Global Assembly Cache (GAC) that Microsoft .NET does not.

Too often folks leave out or forget that mono not only includes System.Windows.Forms but it also includes Gtk and Gnome sharp. Mono includes System.Data.SqlClient but is also has Mono.Data.SybaseClient as well as Npgsql. Mono includes System.Directory but it also includes Novell.Directory.Ldap.

I could continue but, my point is that mono has a lot of things going for it that tracend what Microsoft .Net has in its core offering.

Did I mention it is Open Source? Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marpaco) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111486 http://osnews.com/thread?111486 Windows.Forms isn't part of the ECMA standard, which has got people worried. Technically, you can't copyright an API, which is why the FSF can duplicate the Java SDK with Classpath, however with the current pitiful state of the US patent office, it's quite likely Microsoft have registered some defensive patents. As they haven't offered to standardise Windows.Forms, they may - again, given the appalling state of the US patent system - be able to bring a case to trial.

Of course, it's not certain that they would win it (though lesser cases such as Eolas have been won) but even the case itself would do enormous damage. Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BryanFeeney) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111530 http://osnews.com/thread?111530 Keep up the good work, monos.

cheers,
dalibor topic Wed, 05 Apr 2006 01:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (robilad) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111570 http://osnews.com/thread?111570 I believe the mono runtime and compiler is GPL, while all of the mono class libraries are LGPL.

However, they are also open to licensing commercially to a 3rd party if desired - as stated in their FAQ. I assume they do this by asking all code contributors to agree to give the copyright over to Novell at the time that the contribution is submitted.

As for your interoperability questions - I'm sorry I'm unable to help. Wed, 05 Apr 2006 02:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111591 http://osnews.com/thread?111591 Isn't Microsoft .NET also on FreeBSD? Wed, 05 Apr 2006 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (m1t0s1s) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111602 http://osnews.com/thread?111602 !!!
--- "It's great to see a big player really embracing free software like Novell has been, since acquiring SUSE and Ximian. I can only hope for more of the same in the future from them, and hopefully from others as well"

---

Well I agree with you! Its really good. But what else could have they done? I mean the Novell business model and technology was going down and actually doomed.. so!

But they are doing the right thing, more ore less. I hope they will continue like that, or better, and they do not rotten too much even if they have a huge sucess with their policy and business...

Mono is just onother of the good things they are bringing or helping to. It is really and interesting concept and technology.

So, up to the moment thumbs up to Mono, Ximian, SuSe and Novell!

!!! Wed, 05 Apr 2006 04:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Angel--Fr@gzill@) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?111657 http://osnews.com/thread?111657 Microsoft has something called project ROTOR. If I remember correctly, it runs on FreeBSD and on Mac OS X.

However, project rotor is a very small subset of the .NET Framework and it is severly restrictive on its share source license.

I believe that you mostly can use it in Academia and not commercially. I am no longer a Microsoft employee, so I would not be the best person to give answers about MS intent on that project. Wed, 05 Apr 2006 10:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marpaco) Comments