A huge 'discussion' took place on the desktop-devel mailing list of the GNOME project about a possible replacement for TomBoy, the Wiki-like note taking application-thing-program-utility written in Mono - it being written in Mono was the prime reason for the whole debate, which started here, and only got considerably nastier later on. "It would seem that lately there are a lot of FUD-spreading trolls crawling out of the woodwork trying to frighten people into thinking that GNOME somehow depends on Mono. Let's take a look at their most widely repeated claims."
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Member since:2008-02-27
Until the WMA format gained popularity, MS had a Mac player. Now, as the format is now widely used over the net, MS has pulled out the support for the Mac player. Same happened with IE.
It is the usual strategy. Make it popular on all platforms. Then support only Windows.
It has been repeated so many times and still we maintain a very short memory of the past.
God only knows what all patents and how they are affecting Mono. Once it gets popular, it easy for MS to sue a few minor companies and spread fear.
And is there an absolute necessity that we use Mono? What is it providing that Java does not? Easy to use P-Invoke? If you think C# is a better language, then try Scala on Java platform. It is far better.
Do you think that Windows programmers would simply switch to Linux thro' Mono? Generally, Windows development uses so many assumptions about Windows OS that porting is not easy. And anyway, far too few Windows developers are really interested in the GUI development on Linux. It is not worth due to the low market share.
Mono was a viable alternative before GPL Java. Now it is not. There is no more excuses for Mono. If you like GTK#, then maybe we should work more on Java GTK. We should not be choosing whole platforms and future strategy on a library wrapper.
Member since:
2005-07-12
The CLR and the C# language are open, ECMA standards. Mono does a clean room implementation of both, using zero code from MS or anybody else. The Mono runtime is LGPL, and the libraries are MIT/X11.
).
Completely safe.
GTK# is merely Mono/C# bindings for GTK. This code has absolutely nothing to do with MS.
Completely safe.
WinForms, ADO.Net, and ASP.Net are not open standards, and MS holds patents on them. However, the documentation is published, and the Mono implementations of them are clean room codings for the sake of compatibility (compatibility has stood up in a court of law as making reverse engineering, or re-implementation based on public documents, legal).
Plus, it's probably not in Microsoft's best interests to sue over Mono implementation of WinForms, ADO.Net, or ASP.Net, because MS will always be ahead of the curve in their own implementation, and having another implementation out in the wild only brings in more developers and mind share for their own technology.
And the good news that it benefits Linux and open source as well, as it makes Linux and open source more attractive to Windows devs, and gives a migration path for ISVs to port.
Wow, a win-win for both FOSS and MS.
Not completely safe, but nothing to worry to much about.
Finally, there is Silverlight. For Silverlight to gain any market traction, it absolutely has to be cross platform, and run on Windows, Mac, and *nix. MS did the Windows and Mac parts, and is helping Mono/Novell do the *nix part, via the Moonlight project, which is a 100% clean room implementation, and fully GPL. This is crucial as Flash/Flex/Air, as well as Java/JavaFX, run on all platforms. Linux is big and important enough that it needs to be supported with any RIA platform.
So if MS tries to kill or damage Mono, or Mono users, with patents and/or FUD, they also kill any chance of Silverlight succeeding, as it needs Moonlight for *nix capability, and Moonlight is built on Mono.
And back on the technical side - I do think in some ways that C#/.Net is a better Java than Java, and that Mono is a better .Net than MS .Net (since it runs on all platforms and has GTK and Cocoa bindings