Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 3rd Oct 2007 19:39 UTC, submitted by gonzo
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Well, that day may never come.
When trying to assess what Microsoft may intend, I never listen to what they say, instead I look at what they actually do.
The .Net framework includes a new programming language form Microsoft, the C# language. This language is similar to many others in that programs written in the language are not easy to translate into other languages.
When C# and .Net first appeared, the framework and the language could both only be used on Windows platforms, to write programs for Windows platforms. C# is the second language from Microsoft that was designed to be a Windows-only language, the first such language was Visual Basic.
If a compiler and/or runtime environment for a language is available only for Windows, and programs are difficult to translate from one language to another, then both Visual Basic and C# represent a fantastic lock-in opportunity for Microsoft. Programs written in these languages can effectively be constrained from ever becoming cross-platform ... there is potential here to have a whole class of programs that are forever tied to being released only for Windows.
Then along comes the Mono project and utterly spoils this wonderful Microsoft vision of source code for applications written in a language that can never be cross-platform ...
So, even though it does sound like paranoid ramblings, I am left with a distinct impression that there probably is some substance to what the following article is saying:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2191754,00.asp
So, even though it does sound like paranoid ramblings, I am left with a distinct impression that there probably is some substance to what the following article is saying:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2191754,00.asp
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I clicked your link and stopped reading here:
"By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols"
May as well have linked to the alt.destroy.microsoft newsgroup.
Edited 2007-10-04 05:57





Member since:
2005-07-07
From Miguel's (http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Oct-03.html):
"...But like Rotor, the license under which this code is released is not open-source. People that are interested in continuing to contribute to Mono, or that are considering contributing to Mono's open source implementation of those class libraries should not look at this upcoming source code release..."
"...Sun and Java: it is possible that some customers were getting cozy with the ease of access to Java source code to the class libraries and this had some mounting pressure on Microsoft..."
"...Am still hope that one day Microsoft will open pieces of this under more liberal licenses that would allow those pieces to be used for any purposes, including Mono..."
Well, that day may never come.
Edited 2007-10-04 00:34 UTC