Some interesting bits of his blog entry in which De Icaza replies to emails he has received concerning the Novell-Microsoft deal: “I do not know of any patents which Mono infringes. (…) Although I did not take part of the actual negotiations, and was only told about this deal less than a week before the announcement, I had been calling for a long time for a collaboration between Microsoft and Open Source and Microsoft and Novell. (…) Similar deals have been done in the past, in 1997 Microsoft signed a similar deal with Apple, and Apple used that agreement and the incoming monies to turn the company around. Sun signed a similar agreement with Microsoft in 2004, which at the time I realized enabled Sun to ship Mono on Solaris (which we already supported at that time).”
He cares a lot about Mono, and he believed it didn’t infringe on any patents.
The actions of Novell and Microsoft say otherwise, unfortunately.
Its an insurance policy; sure, you house might not burn down, but isn’t it nice that if it were to occur, you’ve got something to provide you with the money to rebuild again.
Same goes for Novell; its better to pay a few million now or some technology swapping now, than further on down the track when the costs could be alot higher.
Same goes for Novell; its better to pay a few million now or some technology swapping now, than further on down the track when the costs could be alot higher.
Worked like a charm for these guys, doesn’t anybody learn from history?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061015203855256
EV1 tried to protect its customers from SCO too. And as they said, they only lost them.
Lesson nr.1: History doesn’t only show things that happened. It also shows how things will happen’ again if conditions are the same.
Which has little to no relevancy to the issue at hand.
The IP which Mono could possible be violating, is actually owned by Microsoft; no one desputes it, neither Minguel, Novell or Microsoft; this is a mutual agreement over IP, simple as that.
EV1 on the other hand licenced technology that was in despute and that SCO couldn’t provide sufficient evidence to back up their claim.
Which has little to no relevancy to the issue at hand.
The IP which Mono could possible be violating, is actually owned by Microsoft; no one desputes it, neither Minguel, Novell or Microsoft; this is a mutual agreement over IP, simple as that.
EV1 on the other hand licenced technology that was in despute and that SCO couldn’t provide sufficient evidence to back up their claim.
Well, you’re kinda right on this one, but effect will still be the same as EV1. But this just leads to “chicken or egg” problem. Novell is either knowing which IP is troublesome and doesn’t want to be clear or taking precautions “just in case”, but in both cases using the MS clause “to be used with Novell products only”, which is probably THE most stupid thing OSS company could make. What EV1 did, was not even 1% bad (to be more clear I don’t consider what EV1 as bad, this was public opinion as you might read in that article, No, I consider it as STUPID) as what Novell did.
Either one will not work in OSS community they want to fit in lately. OSS community is not the community you would call “forgiving”.
On this point you could say Novell is here for money and what they did it is good for their business. Yes it is (about being here for the money part only), no disputing here, but only fools are pissing against the wind, and Novell just did what even fools don’t do, take a shit while standing on their hands.
Edited 2006-11-05 02:28
//he believed it didn’t infringe on any patents.
The actions of Novell and Microsoft say otherwise, unfortunately.//
I’m not so sure.
Microsoft say they will help Novell Suse with interoperability … domain networking, OpenOffice & Mono.
This do not say that current SuSe Linux infringes on Microsoft patents. After the co-operative effort it might have, if it didn’t have this license.
and you of cource know this better than Miguel?
This is a smart deal for all parties concerned. Microsoft’s .NET has a lot of momentum right now. It doesn’t cost Novell or Miguel much in order to guarantee that there are no patent infringement lawsuits flying back and forth over this technology. OSS zealots have long dredged up this threat over peoples’ — and I can understand how they would be upset that the threat has been completely blunted. It means that .NET/Mono may gain more of a foothold in the Linux space, without fear of litigation.
I do not know of any patents which Mono infringes. (…) Sun signed a similar agreement with Microsoft in 2004, which at the time I realized enabled Sun to ship Mono on Solaris
Uhm, sorry, late night, but still, am I the only one feeling a bit of a controversy here ?
Not really, as kawai said, this is an insurance policy.
Companies don’t like risk, so they tend to pay money to be 100% sure to be covered against patent infringement, not relying on ‘as far as I know, we’re safe’.
Not really, as kawai said, this is an insurance policy.
That’s the line that many have been taking, but you read between the lines of this deal and it is not an insurance policy. Novell have effectively disowned the open source branch and said that you’re only safe with something bought from Novell.
Nowhere anywhere does it state that various pieces of open source software that Novell uses (focus immediately falls right on Mono) are independently safe unless you buy from Novell, and get indemnification that way. The idiot Ron Hovsepian probably thinks that indemnification is the only selling point he can make at Novell, with no idea or regard whatsoever for the damage that it does to the open source software that his company uses. You can bet your life that Microsoft does know this.
If everything was OK then this would not be necessary:
“Sun signed a similar agreement with Microsoft in 2004, which at the time I realized enabled Sun to ship Mono on Solaris (which we already supported at that time).”
I found that statement bizarre, quite frankly. There’s no mention at all of an insurance policy from Novell there. What he’s saying is that Microsoft had to [indirectly] give permission for Sun to use Mono as part of a deal. That has pretty wide ramifications.
Sun or anyone should simply be able to take Mono as a piece of open source software, like they do with other software, and use it. He’s saying that’s not the case.
Miguel is trying to positively spin this, as you would expect, but it doesn’t answer the important questions and a few bombshells have slipped out.
[edit]
I’m also not entirely sure about this:
Getting rid of patents completely would probably have to involve a few giants. Microsoft has a 282B market cap, so maybe a combination of IBM (138B), Google (143B), Oracle (92B) and even Sun (18B) would have to come together and enter a gigantic patent love-fest to make a better deal for everyone happen (By comparison Novell is at 2.2B).
I have no idea why he thinks that market caps have any bearing whatsoever on fighting patents.
[/edit]
Edited 2006-11-05 13:18
Who are we talking about here? John Doe? It’s same old Microsoft, remember? SCO? Opensource is cancer? GPL BAD, BSD GOOOOOD!!!. Halloween documents? remember? Someone? Or am I the only one?
Edited 2006-11-04 22:49
I remember!
This hole thing looks like pure EEE to me. But Linux will stand up to this challenge and will win one way or the other because freedom always wins in the long term.
“… because freedom always wins in the long term.”
Err… It doesn’t unless you have a load of freedom fighters of course.
“Err… It doesn’t unless you have a load of freedom fighters of course.”
I’m in.
(a la Oxfam)
No, you ain’t, brutha, and thank goodness, too.
No, it’s not the same old Microsoft. Once upon a time, some deluded mid-level Microsoft managers thought that they could crush Linux in the same manner as OS/2, DR-DOS, etc, but clearly, that wasn’t possible using the old tactics. So, their next tactic was to blunt Linux’s growth by threatening an IP minefield.
But this agreement clears a path through the IP minefield — if you use SUSE, that is. Perhaps what we are seeing is Microsoft choosing sides in the Linux business in order to hurt all of SUSE’s competitors (Red Hat, etc). This would permit MS to fight a single competitor rather than (potentially) hundreds — which is a more manageable fight.
Interestingly, another important thing has happened: Microsoft’s customers have been demanding greater interop with Linux/Unix, so it’s in Microsoft’s interest to do exactly that. So, it remains to be seen how much Microsoft can do (overtly) to harm Linux without seriously annoying some corporate customers.
You outline those tactics and yet you come to the conclusion that “this isn’t the same old Microsoft”? Come on!
It isn’t the same old Microsoft because it cannot employ the same old tactics — and its customers are demanding that it become more interoperable with Linux. Get it? It may have some of those old tendencies in its DNA, but Microsoft cannot exert them. The market changed — and so has Microsoft.
I would accept that the market has changed, but I don’t think Microsoft has. I think it’s simply that they can’t get away with playing the same game to the same extent anymore.
When MS find other ways to compete, such as bringing out their own Linux that has full read/write compatibility with NTFS, a config tool that beats YasT, and stops bullying other Linux vendors, THEN I will accept that Microsoft has changed.
And remember, just because it releases something as GPL doesn’t mean that thing cannot be a differentiator – how many distros have picked up YaST since it was GPL’ed, despite its vaunted superiority over other config tools? If you discount openSUSE, I believe the count to date is precisely zero.
I would accept that the market has changed, but I don’t think Microsoft has. I think it’s simply that they can’t get away with playing the same game to the same extent anymore.
Ergo, they are different, from the perspective of the industry and customers.
When MS find other ways to compete, such as bringing out their own Linux that has full read/write compatibility with NTFS, a config tool that beats YasT, and stops bullying other Linux vendors, THEN I will accept that Microsoft has changed.
It isn’t necessary for MS to market its own brand of Linux in order to compete. Windows seems to be doing just fine on its own.
And remember, just because it releases something as GPL doesn’t mean that thing cannot be a differentiator – how many distros have picked up YaST since it was GPL’ed, despite its vaunted superiority over other config tools? If you discount openSUSE, I believe the count to date is precisely zero.
So what. Customers make their own choices. Why are you so bent on cramming stuff down their throats?
Ergo, they are different, from the perspective of the industry and customers.
Sorry, still don’t agree with that assessment.
It isn’t necessary for MS to market its own brand of Linux in order to compete. Windows seems to be doing just fine on its own.
That was only a suggestion. Point is, they don’t need to start threatening other people with patents in order to compete in the Linux market, whether they develop their own Linux or resell someone else’s.
So what. Customers make their own choices. Why are you so bent on cramming stuff down their throats?
What I’m interested in is not having MS software – or any one, all-powerful company’s – crammed down mine. When the only choice is one choice, customers CANNOT make their own choices
Edited 2006-11-07 00:31
Anyway no mono or xgl on my computer.
I’ve just uninstalled Beagle, tomboy and F-Stop.
I don’t deal with Microsoft, I use it or I’m not.
And I’m not, so bye bye Suse.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Come on .. if you were really that much into the free software only mood then how about Debian which AFAIK is 100% free ? – as SuSE mixes proprietary & OSS .
Reminds me of a comment to the other article – companies have to think about profits & stock value etc – ideals arent worth anything directly .
BTW could we please have a spell checker integrated into the comment section ?
“BTW could we please have a spell checker integrated into the comment section ?”
Could we have a punctator checker integrated as well? 🙂
(spaces infront of ellipsis, question mark and period)
That’s punctuation. And ellipses. Plus, you forgot a couple of periods there yourself. Oh, and you really should capitalise the first word of each sentence. Smilies are out, too..
“That’s punctuation.”
Difference: the punctator (the sign), the interpunctuation (the use of the sign(s) in a sentence or something similar). Regarding “-uation”, you’re right, of course. As you see, english is not my native language and termini technici are often translated from german to english language with a little difference (it’s “Interpunktion” in german).
“And ellipses.”
Ellipsis is singular and derived from the greek “élleipsis”. You surely mean the plural form, which I didn’t mean.
“Plus, you forgot a couple of periods there yourself.”
None in my post. The second line in braces is an itemization (or alliteration), if you’re thinking of this.
“Oh, and you really should capitalise the first word of each sentence. “
Please have a look on the capital “C” at the beginning of the sentence – the only sentence I wrote in my post. Maybe, it’s not capital enough.
“Smilies are out, too..”
What’s in then, in your opinion?
BTW: There are two periods after “too”, only one would be correct. Is the other one optional if the first one isn’t working?
See? No smiley added. Recognize rhetorical means by yourself.
Edited 2006-11-05 13:51
BTW could we please have a spell checker integrated into the comment section ?
FFox2 and integrated spell checkers? Works decent for me.
BTW could we please have a spell checker integrated into the comment section ?
BTW: could we please cut the crap with the spell checker; it has nothing to do with Novell, Microsoft and Miguel de Icaza.
If you feel that you can’t read with a few “typos” made by foreign people that doesn’t speak english natively, then code you own spell checker and STFU.
Thanks.
P.S.: this comment is not a personal attack to the original poster, this is just an open letter to everybody who complains about typos and english errors.
P.S.2: if you don’t like it, learn a real language. English is soooo much like Visual Basic. It lacks a lot of features. Those out there who speak other languages (Spanish, French, Etc.) will know what I am talking about.
XGL doesn’t infringe any patents, and neither does beagle or fspot or tomboy (although i really don’t give a rats ass about the last 2). They’re all open source projects, hence they don’t belong to and aren’t copyright of any specific company. XGL is dead, AIGLX killed it. As for Mono the only problem seems to be the Microsoft part of the .net implementation (keep in mind that mono embraces and extends .net with it’s own set of class libraries).
As for the whole patent violation FUD, it started when some risk management company said that OSS violates up to 200 or so Microsoft patents, allegation that have yet to be proven in court. And even if they did had something patented that we use and can’t replace, Microsoft won’t sue. Why? Because that would create a precedent and allow them to be sued over they’re own patent infringements (I bet IBM has lots of love from the OS/2 era).
I also think in this regard we should start enforcing our side of the whole patent deal, make the necessary changes (if needed) to the GNU GPL so we can claim IP over everything we came up with. We invented multiple desktops, we invented system wide skins (remember the old gtk1.x pixmap based themes?). We came up with tons of inovations that nobody ever considers to be worthy of patenting, but guess what, they would be patented by someone if they had the chance. They call it “inovoation”. This sucks. I say it’s time to make a stand and fight patent with patent.
As for Novel, be free or be dead. Either they keep up with the obligations of GPL, or use something else. Go bark at the BSD tree, god damn it! But thanks for all the eye candy
And as for Gnome, don’t you guys think it would have been better to stick with Java/objective c/c++?
Just my over emotional 0.7€
You are almost right. Let’s not mix copyright and patents. Something being opensource doesn’t mean that it doesn’t violate some patent. If MS patented “means of compositing a desktop combining windows through proxy which has an OpenGL backend” XGL is actually screwed
The problem of open source is that if you really want to share something, why the hell would you go through all the trouble of patenting it (although I think Red Hat started patenting some stuff, just to have some kind of answer when a patent war starts).
As for Gnome, the debate what to use was raging even before this deal. Some guys were for Mono, some for Java, some for good old C/C++, and some for Pyton and scripting languages. Who knows. But I kind of think that Mono won’t be on top of the list after this. Or every distribution would have to sign simmilar deal with MS.
As for the whole patent violation FUD, it started when some risk management company said that OSS violates up to 200 or so Microsoft patents, allegation that have yet to be proven in court. And even if they did had something patented that we use and can’t replace, Microsoft won’t sue. Why? Because that would create a precedent and allow them to be sued over they’re own patent infringements (I bet IBM has lots of love from the OS/2 era).
Most large companies will not exercise their patent rights unless there is a significant threat — or they need to defend against someone else’s hostile patent infringement suit. By significant threat, I mean any large potential loss of $$$ or opportunity cost. Microsoft and IBM have no interest in going to war, because both sides would get bloodied. That said, I don’t think that IBM would go out on a limb for Red Hat or some other distro which submits code to the Linux source trees which happens to violate one of Microsoft’s patents. I think that’s the reason why IBM never introduced its own distro in the first place. I’m certain that its lawyers told the company to steer clear of this market because (a) it’s not very big, and (b) there’s too much liability risk.
xgl is not related to mono. David Reveman is a great guy and xgl is an interesting technology, unfortunately loosing steem because of aiglx.
I found the idea of Xegl very compelling to be honest, but as it seems atm, aiglx is gonna make the race because it is less disruptive.
Stemp. i find this kind of stupid. Software is a tool not a religion and please don’t make it one.
People like you can never be productive in your life, not for yourself not for everyone else.
In fact we already have enough religions in the world, result of which you see today like 9/11 and Iraq etc and we surely don’t need one among software.
Hope you learn.
uh, last i checked, he was merely making a choice about what to do. he doesn’t evangelize any of us to destroy SUSE.
i hope you also learn the difference between making a reaction and preaching to the masses.
Sigh.
For -you- software is just a tool. For -me- software is my livelihood.
While for you, moving from Linux to Windows (or back) may not mean much, for me it may mean years of experience and hard work going down the drain.
Oh, and for me, having to go back to badly-documented DDK interfaces is even worse…
Seems that it’s much easier to criticize other people’s reaction when you’re job is not the on the line, isn’t it?
– Gilboa
So, now MS won’t go after the companies that sign those contracts. Like, if I develop a project, MS won’t go after those companies which are including it in ther distros, but just after big bad me, who btw happens not to be affiliated with any of the aforementioned companies. And I’m supposed to be happy about it?
No single person has done more damage to Linux and open source software – ever.
I challenge anyone to name any SINGLE person who has done more to set back Linux and open source software in general.
The fact that this dimwitted foaming at the mouth Microsoft fanboy was able to devastate both Linux desktop and application development and progress should be a shocking reality check to anyone who thinks Linux and open source are on some sort of inevitable domination of the software world.
This patent armageddon bombshell from Microsoft/Novell will hopefully be a wakeup call to the entire open source world that the days of allowing enemies like miguel and Novell to operate freely need to end now. The SCO fiasco was a silly sideshow, this Microsoft/Novell/patent threat/mono/office format assault is the real deal. For years now people have been warning that the patent assault on Linux was coming. It’s here. Now.
Novell
mono
Miguel
They need to go now. The days of having the luxury of proving what a level headed and reasonable person you are by giving Microsoft tech a try on your Linux box are over. Open war is here.
No single person has done more damage to Linux and open source software – ever.
What damage has he done? Seriously!?
I challenge anyone to name any SINGLE person who has done more to set back Linux and open source software in general.
If it wasn’t for mono I would have likely never have used a linux distro. It was really mono that originally got my interest.
Patent wars and any other doom and gloom you can dream up were coming regardless of novell and mono. Any OS that starts getting use is a threat to MS and you can expect a confrontation at some point.
If it wasn’t for mono I would have likely never have used a linux distro. It was really mono that originally got my interest.
Oh, really?
What does mono have to do with Linux?
And what did you find so special about mono?
Because it appears that all mono is, is clone of .Net.
And all .Net is, is a new load of bloat from Microsoft to help lazy developers being even lazier and write even more bloated and slower software.
And where are the great .Net apps? Only loser ATI and Matrox are using .Net for their control panels forcing people to install 100Mb of crap just to have a pretty control panel for their video card.
I guess it’s meant to distract people from their otherwise crapp drivers.
And what did mono do for Linux so far? NOTHING!
A few bloated, half finished apps that are bitch to compile and have nothing but negative impact on system performance.
And so many resources have been diverted to mono that could have been used on much more important and practical projects.
I have never and will never run any mono app.
And Novel is dead to me.
Oh, really?
What does mono have to do with Linux?
Well, I might explain you better. Most little commercial developers don’t like to code in C, if they want to survive they have to use RAD tools. But all of them are interested in linux at least a little bit. But always there is the same problem “where’s my app? why doesn’t my app work here?”
For example just take a long constant bitchin’ point “where’s photoshop?” It’s just that coders don’t need photoshop, but they need RAD instead. Hell, again look at photoshop, it’s what 98% of people doesn’t need, but look at them all whining.
At least a lot of my friends are like that.
And what did you find so special about mono?
It is RAD oriented. It is modern. It is simple. Coding is ultra fast.
Every single language or platform (except Java) has at least one missing point here.
Because it appears that all mono is, is clone of .Net.
And all .Net is, is a new load of bloat from Microsoft to help lazy developers being even lazier and write even more bloated and slower software.
You seem predetermined that everything coming from MS must be bad. No, it isn’t.
Company policy and way of doing business is on the other hand.
And where are the great .Net apps? Only loser ATI and Matrox are using .Net for their control panels
You can find bigger apps on mono success list http://www.mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono#Who_uses_Mono.3F
And MS keeps his own list like that.
forcing people to install 100Mb of crap just to have a pretty control panel for their video card.
I guess it’s meant to distract people from their otherwise crapp drivers.
If you take it like that, yes it is.
And what did mono do for Linux so far? NOTHING!
A few bloated, half finished apps that are bitch to compile and have nothing but negative impact on system performance.
Looking from that side, it would seem true.
Looking from my point of view. I needed 10 minutes to convince some of my friends how to make sure they code crossplatform (and it will ease up pushing linux on those locations). Which means their apps will run on all OSes, including linux. Java wasn’t application coders choice in Windows world in my circles.
And so many resources have been diverted to mono that could have been used on much more important and practical projects.
You mean, you’ve got it right and all those developing mono are just fools. I mean, your logic says most of people are developing in C, C++, so minority are fools.
Well as much as I’m linux pusher I say bull to this logic. In this case all people using linux would be fools because 95% or so people is using windows.
Beside that you seem to forget the heart of OSS and linux. Freedom to choose and freedom to express. Mono is just one possible choice and you are trying to take away its rights, instead of simply taking your choice based on your opinion.
I have never and will never run any mono app.
I do, they work just fine.
And Novel is dead to me.
And so it is to a lot of people. Including me, unless they are very careful when they will be cleaning up this mess.
I might consider mono when i can easily use apps created on windows on linux,and i mean the GUI also.
like: mono app.exe ,and that’s it.
But as you said mono isn’t the only cross platform framework fortunately.
I might consider mono when i can easily use apps created on windows on linux,and i mean the GUI also.
like: mono app.exe ,and that’s it
You can do that for a long time already. And even more you can run the same exe with MS.NET without mono (that is as long as it uses standard stack or you provide assemblies for it, example install Gtk-sharp for MS.NET and run the same gtk binary. Except things like banshee, beagle, f-spot won’t work, because they use a lot of native libraries, gstreamer for example).
I challenge anyone to name any SINGLE person who has done more to set back Linux and open source software in general.
The cult has a new target!!!!
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm
“Splitters”
Is Miguel in the Judean Peoples Front or the Popular Front of Judea? (Assuming Microsoft are the Romans).
Edited 2006-11-04 23:31
Thanks for the tip, anonymous Internet hero!
1. Get funded to make a central piece of a popular DE
2. Do an Excel clone (and fullfill a need)
3. Help bring up an Outlook clone (and fullfill a need)
4. Make an open source .Net compliant stack
5. Profit!
6. Help destroy open source
[sarcasm]Makes total sense! I never had a doubt Miguel was evil.[/sarcasm]
PS: Shame on you ppl!
This patent armageddon bombshell from Microsoft/Novell will hopefully be a wakeup call to the entire open source world that the days of allowing enemies like miguel and Novell to operate freely need to end now.
I kinda feel sorry I can’t mod you down (as OSNews rules say). While I agree that Novell move was the worst in Linux history ever, Miguel says he didn’t knew about it. Try at least giving the benefit of the doubt to a guy.
As much as I love mono, I’m still not sure if mono was the best thing or the worst thing that happened to linux.
why best? Linux was in serious need to get some modern GPL licensed language or platform. Please don’t say free Java stack. Mono predates its start when development on that one became serious.
why worst? Mono is based on MS technology. As far as I take it it would be more assuring if this was completely independent implementation which would learn from mistakes of other platforms.
Mono certainly does not predate the efforts to create free implementations of the JVM and class libraries. The “languages” in .NET are not “GPL,” not that that makes a great deal of sense anyway.
Mono certainly does not predate the efforts to create free implementations of the JVM and class libraries. The “languages” in .NET are not “GPL,” not that that makes a great deal of sense anyway.
Since your complete answer didn’t made any sense at all, I feel the need to respond.
1. Mono development was serious from the start. Look at where it gotten in so short time. While Java stack predates Mono for a long time, development wasn’t going anywhere. It only became serious in last year or two. Or how do you explain, mono got ahead of free Java so quickly? I was waiting for free Java to get usable for a long time.
2. I said “language or platform”. Mono is a platform. And every language has to have compiler.
Please don’t say free Java stack.
However, GNU Classpath is almost 100% complete now. Apache Harmony also gathered a fair portion of donated code. Most speculations point to the Java VM (Hotspot) to be the first pieces of the Sun Java stack to be open sourced. The free Java stack is already viable (there are several free Java VMs) and will be even better with Sun’s upcoming OSS announcement.
Mono, on the other hand, still has trouble distributing a large portion of its stack. Besides, .Net doesn’t even compare to Java when it comes to the number of alternative libraries. We are not just talking about J2EE here, J2SE has Swing, SWT, AWT, Thinlet, Swixml etc. just for GUI. Both NetBeans and Eclipse offer complete RCPs. There are numerous open source utility libraries for desktop development, such as Spin and Foxtrot.
I hope this recent development will push more people to take a hard look at solutions such as Qt Jambi and Java-Gnome for Linux desktop application development.
It is also interesting to note that developing in Java allows ISVs to minimize cross-distro compatibility problems.
But sadly .NET is far more advanced and it is improved faster then java. And at this moment the GNU guys can’t show up any better programming environment then mono. The only useable general purpose programming environtment under linux is the mono and the java. The mono is based a commercial closed source .NET, and the java is a closed source commercial developent – and the gnu classpath is the clone of the java, similar the mono.
Well. Java is the mostly comercially viable developement platform bc sun has most partners and the it’s commercial ecosystem is the most developed one of those accessible to linux.
However there is a lot of commerciall developement happening on linux using other technologies, mostly scripting languages. PHP has already preety established ecosystem. Ruby is the new darling of innovation.
Their popularity is starting to dispace java on both linux and windows and the talks about adding scripting support to Mustang only prove that.
Actually mono as a developenent platform on its own (not as a compatibility layer to run VS developed windows apps on linux) is far from gaining any traction on linux server despite Novell strongly pushing it.
Actually mono as a developenent platform on its own (not as a compatibility layer to run VS developed windows apps on linux) is far from gaining any traction on linux server despite Novell strongly pushing it.
Very true, and one should never lose sight of that. Java is still very big in companies all over the world, and they invariably use Unix/Linux on their servers to run it. We are not talking about a photo management app, a music player and a search tool taking over the world here.
Novell has never strongly pushed Mono in the server area, which is the only area where it makes money, and had always shipped JBoss as a server development platform until Red Hat pulled the rug out from under them. Without a supported Java development platform then Novell’s Linux offerings don’t look too great.
But sadly .NET is far more advanced and it is improved faster then java
Sadly, much of Mono can’t even be distributed due to IP problems (this deal just reinforces that idea). Besides, it’s highly unlikely that MS will certify Mono to be .Net compatible (I don’t think they even have a certification program)
The whole Java stack (VM, API, Compiler and various utilities), on the other hand, can be implemented as FOSS without legal repercussions. They can even be Certified by Sun (eg. JBoss, Apache Geronimo), which allows them to use the Java trademark.
And at this moment the GNU guys can’t show up any better programming environment then mono.
GNU Classpath is only an implementation of the J2SE API.
If you are talking about Java IDEs, we already have Eclipse and NetBeans. Both are open source and had been available for years.
The whole Java stack (VM, API, Compiler and various utilities), on the other hand, can be implemented as FOSS without legal repercussions.
It is not too important for an avarage independent developer. The most of users needs cheap, reliable, good-looking windows applications. The easiest way to create similar application is the .NET and the Visual Studio. I can create C application with GTK + Glade, or C++ app with wxWidgets or Java application with NetBeans or Eclipse, but the fastest and easiest way is the VS/.NET. And with .NET I can create WinFX application in the near future, and I can write GTK# user interface to the top of the .NET based business logic. If the port of my application to linux is easy, I will port, but the linux port is not too important for me, because the 90 percent of users are uses windows and IMHO in the near future it is not changed.
And if you see the perspective, in the race of operatition systems, not the cheap, not the free version will win, but the better, more coherent, more advanced programming environment. At this moment the win32 and the linux API are similar, but IMHO the .NET will shift the ballance.
The whole Java stack (VM, API, Compiler and various utilities), on the other hand, can be implemented as FOSS without legal repercussions.
It is not too important for an avarage independent developer. The most of users needs cheap, reliable, good-looking windows applications.
My comment was made wrt Linux DEs.
I can create C application with GTK + Glade, or C++ app with wxWidgets or Java application with NetBeans or Eclipse, but the fastest and easiest way is the VS/.NET. And with .NET I can create WinFX application in the near future, and I can write GTK# user interface to the top of the .NET based business logic.
First of all, the .Net runtime is not nearly as ubiquitous as you think. There are very few .Net desktop applications and few users have the latest runtime. While you can argue that the situation will improve with the release of Vista, there isn’t a huge incentive for home users and business users to upgrade (unlike with Windows 2000/XP).
I would argue that Java offers far better options than .Net:
Some of the Java GUI editors are very innovative. In particular, the Matisse GUI editor from NetBeans is on par with VS’s GUI builder (if not better).
The numerous toolkits available for Java cater to a variety of situations: Thinlet can run on Java 1.1 (Yes, it will even run on the infamous MS JVM) and J2ME. XUL-based solutions (SwixML and Thinlet) allows easy separation of GUI and business logic. Swing offers one of the few ways to build a native looking GUI on OS X without diving into Cocoa (esp with Quaqua) and excellent crossplatform compatibility. SWT offers native UI fidelity (uses native widgets) and better performance (this bit is rather controversial) with some crossplatform compatibility. Both Qt and Gnome have Java bindings and you can use the respective GUI builders for both toolkits. Java Gnome also offers a different event handling scheme. I doubt .Net offers this much flexibility.
The linux port is not too important for me, because the 90 percent of users are uses windows and IMHO in the near future it is not changed.
On the other hand, why not keep your options open. Most of the above options can achieve native fidelity with little work (Yes, this is true even for Swing. You just need the patch look and feels). I also doubt the CLR will have much of an edge when it comes to performance (esp. when compared to the upcoming Java 6).
Porting (esp. C code, but the same would apply to .Net since it’s not disigned with WORA in mind) is often quite costly and why not save some future developmental costs by making a sound choice today.
the better, more coherent, more advanced programming environment
Can you explain what do you mean by more coherent. I find the Java APIs to be very coherent and complete.
Also, what about more advanced? I hope you are not just counting syntactical sugars (which may or may not lead to improved readability). The library also counts (Just as an example, is there a .Net equivalent of java.util.concurrent? How about something like javax.swing.plaf.synth?)
Edited 2006-11-06 10:33
There are very few .Net desktop applications and few users have the latest runtime. While you can argue that the situation will improve with the release of Vista, there isn’t a huge incentive for home users and business users to upgrade (unlike with Windows 2000/XP).
For business users there was not too big improvement between win2k and xp. But the most of users upgraded their systems. The vista also will replace the XP.
In particular, the Matisse GUI editor from NetBeans is on par with VS’s GUI builder (if not better).
It is very nice. But I am not sure the future of java under windows. Yes, probably you can run java appliations on windows in the future, but IMHO the look&feel and the comfort (cooperation with the vista security system, etc) will better with the .NET based applications.
Toolkits: it is very nice. But IMHO the too many widget toolkits are not too gond thing. The best is the only one, because if you have two toolkit, the available external componens will fewer, because one developer supports swing, one supports swt.
Most of the above options can achieve native fidelity with little work (Yes, this is true even for Swing. You just need the patch look and feels).
Yes, you can create similar look&feel with windows with little bit more work then .NET, you can create databinding with a a little more work, you can manage your database in IDE with a little bit more work… Yes, with java you can do everything, but time is money.
Can you explain what do you mean by more coherent. I find the Java APIs to be very coherent and complete.
If you want to create a business application you need many external, open-source or commercial components: hybernate, spring, Oracle ADF, etc. IMHO the net class libraries are far more ritcher in functionality.
I hope you are not just counting syntactical sugars (which may or may not lead to improved readability).
The syntactic sugars are only little things. But the many little things causes good or wrong feeling in programming.
“It is very nice. But I am not sure the future of java under windows. Yes, probably you can run java appliations on windows in the future, but IMHO the look&feel and the comfort (cooperation with the vista security system, etc) will better with the .NET based applications.”
Cooperation with Vista security system? In what way is .Net better in that than Java? You got me really puzzled there. Haven’t checked Vista lately, is there any security API exposed only to .Net?
“Toolkits: it is very nice. But IMHO the too many widget toolkits are not too gond thing. The best is the only one, because if you have two toolkit, the available external componens will fewer, because one developer supports swing, one supports swt. ”
How’s that different from what .Net has? Last time I checked you guys had WinForms. Now you have WinFX. Am I missing something? Btw, Java officially has just Swing, Swt is not a standard.
“Yes, you can create similar look&feel with windows with little bit more work then .NET, you can create databinding with a a little more work, you can manage your database in IDE with a little bit more work… Yes, with java you can do everything, but time is money.”
You can create similar Windows look and feel with absolutelly 0 work in Java; you just start your app and it is there by default, including Cleartype and using native painters to draw widgets (and all apps will change theme automagically when you switch them in Windows). You’ll probably loose just a rollover effect here and there. Databinding (MS way) can be done, well, MS way (not simpler nor harder). Managing database in IDE is trivial.
“If you want to create a business application you need many external, open-source or commercial components: hybernate, spring, Oracle ADF, etc. IMHO the net class libraries are far more ritcher in functionality. ”
No, you don’t NEED, you just maybe want to USE external, opensource libraries (rarely commercial). Or you just can use, let’s say, JBoss stack, with EJB3.0, jBPM, Drools etc. .Net class libraries are not richer, you probably mean that there is more visual components coming by default. Which could be. Anyway, people that like working with Java usually like flexibility and choice (Hibernate, Spring etc.)
.Net in Vista does have some nice advances, like SVG, various effects out of the box etc. Those can be done in Java, with a bit of more work (see Extreme GUI makeover presentations). There are people working on it becoming simpler. Oh, yes, .Net has really really nice Generics implementation
For business users there was not too big improvement between win2k and xp. But the most of users upgraded their systems.
Vista is somewhat different in that it requires much more modern hardware (even when not running Aero Glass). XP is basically on par with Windows 2000 when it comes to hardware requirements.
the comfort (cooperation with the vista security system, etc) will better with the .NET based applications.
.Net will beat Java on Look and Feel, being the reference. As for security, both Java and .Net applications are sandboxed, so I don’t see the need to run them in a low privilege context.
But IMHO the too many widget toolkits are not too gond thing. The best is the only one, because if you have two toolkit, the available external componens will fewer, because one developer supports swing, one supports swt.
There is only one official toolkit and that’s Swing. SWT is really not meant for custom components.
Yes, you can create similar look&feel with windows with little bit more work then .NET, you can create databinding with a a little more work, you can manage your database in IDE with a little bit more work… Yes, with java you can do everything, but time is money.
I am talking about crossplatform HIG compliance here. Actually, Windows support probably won’t require any work at all. Java 6’s Windows theme make use of Windows’ theme engine (Yes, including Vista’s) and will look very native. Besides, it’s not like people follow MS’ UI recommendations.
HIG compliance is critical on OS X and Gnome, where most applications follow the guidelines and users expect HIG compliance.
BTW, Java has its share of conveniences as well. The java.util.concurrent package I listed would be one example.
If you want to create a business application you need many external, open-source or commercial components: hybernate, spring, Oracle ADF, etc. IMHO the net class libraries are far more ritcher in functionality.
No, you don’t *need* any of the third party frameworks to create a Servlet etc. The tools are already available in J2EE. However, you may find that a 3rd party framework will help you accomplish your goals faster (Time is money!). If you are using .Net, you are more or less stuck with the default.
While choice might be confusing to ordinary users, I always thought developers would welcome more choice.
The syntactic sugars are only little things. But the many little things causes good or wrong feeling in programming.
That depends on how you use them. Operator overloading, for example, would be an example of syntactic sugar that can get easily abused and lead to unreadable code.
It’s kind of ironic, but your answer is what I would give to a Windows user about the virtue of OS X (eg. OS X only differs from Windows in those little things. However, hundreds of them will add up and generate the difference between a pleasant experience and frustration) So I guess it all comes down to personal preferences.
Edited 2006-11-06 20:55
Vista is somewhat different in that it requires much more modern hardware (even when not running Aero Glass).
IMHO the most of video cards are supports 3D acceleration. Yes, probably the vista needs more RAM then XP, but it was also true in 2k->xp upgrade.
As for security, both Java and .Net applications are sandboxed, so I don’t see the need to run them in a low privilege context.
IMHO in the future the .NET and the OS security will be integrated. It can be very useful: I can imagine a .NET based ActiveX-like components in your web application with restricted access to your hardware. It can be more useful then the sandbox conception – for example your business application can store data on the user’s hard disc.
While choice might be confusing to ordinary users, I always thought developers would welcome more choice.
It is true till your boss give a project to you with tight timeframe and unknown toolkit…
That depends on how you use them. Operator overloading, for example, would be an example of syntactic sugar that can get easily abused and lead to unreadable code.
Yes, is true. But if you use it wisely your code will be far more readable.
IMHO the most of video cards are supports 3D acceleration.
DirectX 9 capable? I doubt it unless your company has purchased new machines this year. Don’t expect anything better than a GMA on a business machine.
IMHO in the future the .NET and the OS security will be integrated. It can be very useful: I can imagine a .NET based ActiveX-like components in your web application with restricted access to your hardware. It can be more useful then the sandbox conception – for example your business application can store data on the user’s hard disc.
Java applets can do that from the very beginning (10 years ago?). .Net, by design, is sandboxed, just like Java and sandboxing doesn’t preclude hardware access, it just allows you have finer control of access privilege.
While choice might be confusing to ordinary users, I always thought developers would welcome more choice.
It is true till your boss give a project to you with tight timeframe and unknown toolkit
Usually, most companies stick with a single framework.
That depends on how you use them. Operator overloading, for example, would be an example of syntactic sugar that can get easily abused and lead to unreadable code.
Yes, is true. But if you use it wisely your code will be far more readable.
<sarcasm>
Like using + to connect to a server?
</sarcasm>
Java soon will not be closed source anymore, it soon will become licensed under CDDL…
We’ve started the bandwagon about three years ago by making a serious push for a free Java stack through the FSF, and now we’ve got ‘companies formerly known as proprietary Java vendors’ competing who’s going to open up their implementation first in various venues (ME/SE).
Sun is getting their runtime out under an open source license until 2007 Q1, IBM and Intel are hammering out their own open source VM and class libraries through Apache, now Motorola announced to do the same, etc. Never mind the existing dozens of free runtimes for all occasions around GNU Classpath that are getting better and better, as well.
Everyone now wants to join in the fun. We have changed the Java landscape for the better.And as an added bonus, everyone gets to be a winner: users, developers, distributors, runtime makers, …
Yes, although a coincidence, Suns open sourcing of Java kind of comes at exactly brilliant time and it is a great victory for community, and a great donation to OS community (I’m actually really not so sure that this deal is good for MS either, this is a death kiss for Mono and probably for Novell too, I don’t understand how they don’t see this, but, whatever).
Btw, now I’m even kind of happy that Sun choose to keep Solaris. You obviously can’t have enough competition, the more the merrier. MS cannot control them all. Once when (and hopefully if) a natural state, without so dominant monopoly is reached, they all can sign a deals day and night as far as I’m concerned.
If Sun lets Java go on a fair terms, it could really thrive as a connecting factor between opensource, halfopensource, and proprietary systems. And should help everyone grow.
Looking at open source stuff written in java http://java-source.net/ one wonders why Miguel and co. chose to copy .NET.
It seems the java community is much more open to open source than the .NET community.
There is a question that comes to mind with all this talk of Java etc.
I wonder if aftwer all the stonewalling that Sun has done in recent years about opening up the Source of Java that they got wind of this Microsoft-Novell deal in the offing and due to their past experiences with Microsoft decided to muddy the waters a bit.
Just a thought.
IMHO, the opening up of Java and all the other developments going on with Classpath there is a real multi-platform alternative to the mostly single platform .NET. I’m ignoring MONO on Linux as there are very few ‘real’ apps written in Mono when compared to Windows native .NET and JAVA.
Could this be SUN and the other Java supporters finally getting their act together and giving the finger to .NET and its CLR (Which IMO is a JVM Rip off big time)
The fact that this dimwitted foaming at the mouth Microsoft fanboy was able to devastate both Linux desktop and application development
Well steady on. No he hasn’t. Fortunately there are a lot more alternatives than using Mono, but it has taken a fair bit of mind share away and wasted effort that could have been reasonably put into the Gnome destop itself and other things.
I didn’t have a problem with anyone looking at .Net and asking themselves “OK, what can we learn from this?”, and then looking at PHP, Java and then Ruby in the open source/Linux world and then perhaps improving Java with C# features, or looking at language neutrality in .Net and asking if it was actually worth anything. This would have been a very good direction to take, and I think Ximian could have even made some good money out of improving Java for people running Linux and Unix, and looking at upcoming stuff like Ruby. Look at JBoss. The market was, and is, there and they weren’t doing anything special. Look at what Mainsoft have been doing with Java and .Net.
By all means do .Net, but there was no need to copy verbatim.
Sadly, Miguel never did that. He regurgitated everything that came out of Microsoft’s sales brochures in the early days about ‘people’ finding that .Net made them 80% more productive, or something. Although that is obviously exaggerated Microsoft marketing, most of the productivity almost certainly comes from using Visual Studio – which Mono doesn’t have an equivalent of. No, MonoDevelop is a long way off.
He even still believes that language neutrality, and different languages ported to .Net, is still worthwhile, even though Microsoft left that selling point behind long ago and Alan Cox pointed out on day one of his mailing list post about Mono that if you port Fortran as a .Net language then you lose the features of Fortran.
Miguel started telling us how bad Java was, even though there was a huge market for it in the Linux/Unix server world regardless, and even worse, he started bad mouthing other implementations of various .Net bits and pieces like DotGNU.
In short, I think the whole thing has taken a direction which it shouldn’t have and Miguel is simply doing some heavy backwards running regarding things that should have been sorted out and explained years ago i.e. Microsoft’s ownership and RAND agreements of their .Net ECMA standards.
“No single person has done more damage to Linux and open source software – ever.”
Are you serious? He was one of the creators of GNOME. I think he has helped Linux and all of the other open source OSs considerably more than he has or ever will hurt them.
Are *you* serious?
How about a thought exercise. If Gnome did not exist, how would the open source world be different now?
However hard I think, I cannot think of any Gnomish thing so essential that we would miss if it weren’t there.
If Gnome didn’t exist, would TrollTech have ever released a GPL Qt library…
Mono’s existence kickstarted free Java development. “Oh noes, everyone will be using MS technology, we had better clone up an alternative fast!”
Free Java is why Sun is even thinking about releasing real Java to open source.
If Gnome didn’t exist, would TrollTech have ever released a GPL Qt library…
I thought the TrollTech’s move has to do with KDE’s Harmony project, which aims to produce a LGPL licensed Qt clone.
> If Gnome didn’t exist, would TrollTech have ever released a GPL Qt library…
Sorry, my what-if-machine isn’t working today.
> Mono’s existence kickstarted free Java development. “Oh noes, everyone will be using MS technology, we had better clone up an alternative fast!”
See http://www.kaffe.org for a free Java implementation that has been under active development since 1998.
I daresay Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates are two people who have done vastly more damage to free software than Miguel de Icaza.
Actually, I would say that they helped it immensely, using an actions and practices that screamed for alternative
Btw, I wouldn’t go that far accusing Miguel like original poster. Miguel put tons of work in OS, even back then when there wasn’t so much traction. I would say that he just had some poor judgements, that will backfire to him personally. I think that he ment good, however, underestimated both of powers colliding (OS and MS). And is stuck now in the middle.
He can stil go to Google
Now Java will be opensourced, Josh Bloch is at Google to, lots of nice things could be done with Miguels experience with managed environments. People like Josh and Miguel could do wonders with Java (if Miguel still thinks Java has serious disadvantages compared to .Net or Mono).
Hi,
it is very interesting to see all those postings about the goodness or badness of the novell-microsoft-news. In maybe one week or less nobody will talk about it any longer.
We all don’t know the background of this agreement. But we can be sure, that both companies are interested in commercial success.
But this isn’t anything new. And also not new is the fact, that mono is violating patents. Nearly every software is doing it. This isn’t anything new too.
So now we should all continue our daily work, because all we can do is speculating about what will happen in the future. Then we will see, if this deal was good or bad.
Greetings
Mike
But this isn’t anything new. And also not new is the fact, that mono is violating patents. Nearly every software is doing it. This isn’t anything new too.
I hope you aren’t suggesting that Mono is violating Microsoft patents. You could make a case for Mono violating Suns patents considering Mono is a clone of .NET which is a clone of Java. C# is an ECMA standard. Take a look at the ECMA website.
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.h…
Then take a look here:
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofconduct.htm
You’ll notice this paragraph:
General Declaration:
The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
This means that the standard will always be available under reasonable license terms. Microsoft licenses C# for nothing as long as you in turn license your patents to Microsoft royalty free. This isn’t a problem because you cannot patent free software.
Why does this misinformation about Mono repeatedly show up on this forum?
General Declaration:
The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
Well, to be honest, I’ve fallen for that one too because of lack of carefulness. But, what this really means is that mono is RAND royalty. And by violating it the worst it could happen’ to MS, is getting thrown out of ECMA.
GIF was a RAND royalty too. And look where it got to. http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html might be more informative than my comment.
Well, to be honest, I’ve fallen for that one too because of lack of carefulness. But, what this really means is that mono is RAND royalty. And by violating it the worst it could happen’ to MS, is getting thrown out of ECMA.
Point taken. It’s not typical for me to trust Microsoft but I still don’t think they are going to do anything harmful to Mono for two reasons. First Microsoft cannot sustain the black eye it would get if it submarined Mono. Second Microsoft hasn’t made a peep about Mono yet and it doesn’t threaten Microsoft in any way. Even if Mono beomes standard over .NET, people buy applications, they don’t buy frameworks, languages, and things of that nature. More likely Microsoft would go after applications. As long as Microsoft doesn’t change its present licensing scheme, Mono is ok. Changing the licensing scheme would destroy C# as a language and that doesn’t help Microsoft in any way.
It’s not typical for me to trust Microsoft but I still don’t think they are going to do anything harmful to Mono for two reasons.
Nah, I doubt that one too.
I only hate Novell put a sticker “Use with Novell products only”. It will mean hell of a lot of otherwise not needed explaining to me. Explaining like “Why I suggested RH, why not Novell since MS prefers it? Will they have to buy Novell licenses? Will they be sued?”. You could say the same thing as it was when newspaper published news that SCO is suing IBM because of linux. It will make much harder to sell linux next few weeks. And after few weeks people simply forget.
(:warning, conspiracy theory:) Or was this sticker payment for “RAND”?
Since I’m from Europe, I shouldn’t care about it (software patents don’t apply here, or at least yet) and personally, I really don’t give a f–k if everybody involved in this deal would stick RJ-45 in his butt, start sucking their dicks and pretend they do that in cluster mode.
What bothers me in this story is the clusterf–k of explanations I will have to go trough explaining how this announcement is bogus. Well, if Novell tried to get me nervous they can be happy for their success. At least they could provide some global indemnifications (which is not including a sticker “Use with Novell products only”) for OSS tools they provide to win at least some of yesterdays popularity back.
You could make a case for Mono violating Suns patents considering Mono is a clone of .NET which is a clone of Java
How is .net a clone of java? Software platform VMs certainly weren’t invented by sun microsystems.
UCSD Pascal was built using this concept in the early 70s.
sorry that i can’t mod you down – your kind of pseudo-level-headed-reply is exactly what we do not need.
yes, “wait and see” sounds good and soothing –
only microsoft is definitely NOT waiting –
they are acting meanwhile –
and it suits them very well if everyone else just shuts up and continues with his “daily work” and lets them do their “daily work” – which of course is in their own interest, what else …
so what are your interests? the same as microsofts? are you a shareholder? or payed by them? then i can understand your comment – you *have* to show the same short-sightedness as the idiots(*) at microsoft.
if WE do not act in our own interest, we should not be too surprised if we wake up in a world where only variations of ms-sanctioned operating-systems are allowed and possible the outcome is not what we hoped.
(*) being drastic – actually i have *nothing* against microsoft – they’re human beings like everyone else, they’re just doing some very idiotic things, and that for a while now, without any hope of change for the better. should the people there, by some chance, change their attitude – that would be really welcome news.
I found Mono to be extremely stupid idea back then (when they were Ximian), even from technical standpoint, not to mention legal one. And now, here’s Miguel with innocent “I wasn’t aware”, “I don’t know any patents..”, “look, Apple did it first, and Sun too” (this are my favourites, technically speaking, result of those two was big 0 from cooperation part. Just some big payoffs to companies MS screwed in the past, with a little Suns Red Hat bashing for few months after the deal). I personally never liked the guy, too much ambition, very easy on words, very careless.
Yep, patent war is ahead, Mono or not, and free software, as things stand today (software patents comedy) is about to lose, however, it is kind of stupid to give a free ammo to already loaded MS. And all this talk about cooperating, especially on this levels (paying MS royality fees on patents that actually no one precisely pointed at, collaborating under MS terms) leaves us, well, where we were in 90ties. Proprietary Windows, (half)proprietary Unixes. And it all kind of started going well, with US and EU pressuring MS to open up a bit. From customer and industry point of view, we need to get rid of monopoly. I am really not sure how is that going to be done with deals like this.
I found Mono to be extremely stupid idea back then (when they were Ximian), even from technical standpoint, not to mention legal one.
Why, technically? Mono is syntactically similar and the class library is very close to Java. So, unless you consider Java to be an “extremely stupid idea” for some unspecified reason, Mono is an interesting alternative. From my standpoint, it’s really nice having Mono because it gives customers greater choice — and it makes it easier to migrate customer from/to Windows from/to Linux.
Because Mono is always going to be few steps behind official .Net implementation. .Net is not like SMB or Posix, practically frozen in time, .Net is a moving target. It is always better to lead than to copy. Aside from now obvious (and not resolved, except on Suse, which is a drop in the ocean of alternatives to MS) patent issues, Mono will ALWAYS struggle as a smaller, slower, less stable, less efficient, halfassed portable little .Net brother. MS will NEVER allow it to be more, even if it was somehow possible (and it is not) to make it better than .Net. One doesn’t bet their business (especially not MS) on something that could destroy them in matter of months (every new app easily portable and better working on other platforms than on Windows, yeah, right, how they didn’t see it coming, I wonder). It is nice to dream, but reality is something much more different. One of a big reasons MS says they are still on top and cites it as their crucial strategical advantage is that everyone is trying hard to keep in a race with them, copying their tech. That gives them enormous advantage, which they are very aware of. And will do everything needed to keep it that way. When they come to the end of a lifecycle, they simply change directions drastically (well, like with .Net. Or transition to WinForms. Or Transition to WinFX. Or transition to Indigo. Or…). And will do everything needed to keep it that way. Btw, did you ask yourself why this deal is signed for period of just 5 years?
So, from technical standpoint, spending valuable time and resources on improving what OS movement has/had (Python, Java, Ruby) would be much better time spent than working on Mono from scratch, just to have it now legally avaiable just on one MS alternative platform/distro. On which it will definately work worse than on Windows. Which will be definately noticed by people that you will try to migrate from Windows to Suse. So, why the hell would you need Suse or Mono when you can run the real thing on Windows? It remains to be seen. From the start of that “adventure” I see Mono as something plagued with Wine syndrome, it sometimes work, but never good enough to get rid of Windows. You will never migrate people/developers from Windows by copying them, you’ll always stay one (few) steps behind, and look redicolously subpar to the real deal.
All of this years of Mono development, and we are just now in position to legally use it on one distro. With how many, 10-20 apps? even if it was 200 apps it is just too much of a hassle, copying something that huge to be able to run 200 apps on one Linux distro. If all that energy was put into classpath, imagine what a portfolio of apps could be avaiable on what number of platforms now.
Anyway, now with Sun’s Java going opensource and fixing in the meantime all of the (little) defficiences it had compared to .Net (new bytecode for dynamic languages, multilanguage support, tiered compile, escape analysis, OpenGL pipeline for Java2D on Linux, JOGL, JOGL+Java2D combined etc.) I can see a really really niche market for Mono. Is it nice to have an alternative? Yes. Is an alternative legal on only one distro a real alternative? No. Sorry.
Because Mono is always going to be few steps behind official .Net implementation.
You said you had a technical reason. That’s not technical. That’s logistical.
.Net is not like SMB or Posix, practically frozen in time, .Net is a moving target.
Java is a moving target, as well. Sun hasn’t frozen it.
It is always better to lead than to copy. Aside from now obvious (and not resolved, except on Suse, which is a drop in the ocean of alternatives to MS) patent issues, Mono will ALWAYS struggle as a smaller, slower, less stable, less efficient, halfassed portable little .Net brother.
Not true. Mono is free to introduce its own, better class library to run on top of C#. And there is nothing which says that customers have to adopt whatever MS comes out with. Just as Java has versions, so does .NET. People write to a specific version of both. They don’t upgrade to every point-release, simply because one exists. You’re blowing smoke on that point.
MS will NEVER allow it to be more, even if it was somehow possible (and it is not) to make it better than .Net. One doesn’t bet their business (especially not MS) on something that could destroy them in matter of months (every new app easily portable and better working on other platforms than on Windows, yeah, right, how they didn’t see it coming, I wonder).
That’s tinfoil nonsense. Point me at a single case where MS sued anyone over patent infringement.
It is nice to dream, but reality is something much more different.
That’s precisely all you’ve produced regarding a supposed threat to Mono: dreams. Not based on reality.
One of a big reasons MS says they are still on top and cites it as their crucial strategical advantage is that everyone is trying hard to keep in a race with them, copying their tech. That gives them enormous advantage, which they are very aware of. And will do everything needed to keep it that way. When they come to the end of a lifecycle, they simply change directions drastically (well, like with .Net. Or transition to WinForms. Or Transition to WinFX. Or transition to Indigo. Or…). And will do everything needed to keep it that way.
Software is always changing. Java is changing, as well. Tell me, exactly, how that’s any different from Sun? Sun is the primary mover for Java. It may open source the language, but that doesn’t mean that end-user developers are going to be able to drive Java, going forward. Sun is going to retain that sole right.
Btw, did you ask yourself why this deal is signed for period of just 5 years?
You are aware that, in order to be valid, a contract must have an end-date, correct?
So, from technical standpoint, spending valuable time and resources on improving what OS movement has/had (Python, Java, Ruby) would be much better time spent than working on Mono from scratch, just to have it now legally avaiable just on one MS alternative platform/distro.
More tinfoil hat nonsense.
All of this years of Mono development, and we are just now in position to legally use it on one distro. With how many, 10-20 apps? even if it was 200 apps it is just too much of a hassle, copying something that huge to be able to run 200 apps on one Linux distro. If all that energy was put into classpath, imagine what a portfolio of apps could be avaiable on what number of platforms now.
Whether you want to admit this or not, eventually there will emerge a single corporate Linux distribution. It will either be SUSE or Red Hat. As for the little guys, who cares. They don’t drive adoption, anyway.
Anyway, now with Sun’s Java going opensource and fixing in the meantime all of the (little) defficiences it had compared to .Net (new bytecode for dynamic languages, multilanguage support, tiered compile, escape analysis, OpenGL pipeline for Java2D on Linux, JOGL, JOGL+Java2D combined etc.) I can see a really really niche market for Mono. Is it nice to have an alternative? Yes. Is an alternative legal on only one distro a real alternative? No. Sorry.
You’re dreaming if you think that Sun is going to relinquish all control over Java to the open source community. Sure, you may get the source code, but Sun has been remarkably cagey about which license it’s going to release under (my assertion is that it won’t be GPL’d). So, in the end, you’re still under Sun’s control. Some freedom.
You’re dreaming if you think that Sun is going to relinquish all control over Java to the open source community. Sure, you may get the source code, but Sun has been remarkably cagey about which license it’s going to release under (my assertion is that it won’t be GPL’d). So, in the end, you’re still under Sun’s control. Some freedom.
Sun is not the only vendor who is considering OS Java. Intel had already donated code to the Apache Harmony project.
Because Mono is always going to be few steps behind official .Net implementation.
You said you had a technical reason. That’s not technical. That’s logistical.
Regardless of the reasons, I think any reasonable person would accept that Mono will lag behind .Net (However short the lag maybe).
Software is always changing. Java is changing, as well. Tell me, exactly, how that’s any different from Sun? Sun is the primary mover for Java. It may open source the language, but that doesn’t mean that end-user developers are going to be able to drive Java, going forward. Sun is going to retain that sole right.
Java has been under the guidance of JCP for years. Indeed, the end users have some say as to which features will be included. In particular, JCP reconsidered and approved the JDO 2 spec after developers voiced their opinions.
Not true. Mono is free to introduce its own, better class library to run on top of C#. And there is nothing which says that customers have to adopt whatever MS comes out with. Just as Java has versions, so does .NET. People write to a specific version of both. They don’t upgrade to every point-release, simply because one exists. You’re blowing smoke on that point.
One of Mono’s original purpose is to help users migrate their .Net application from Windows to Linux. What good will it do if the customer had to completely rewrite their application due to incompatible API?
Without a .Net-compatible API, Mono will become yet another bytecode compiled language, not so different from Perl and Python.
Right now, there are definitely more pygtk based linux application compared to GTK# applications.
Edited 2006-11-07 00:47
“That’s tinfoil nonsense. Point me at a single case where MS sued anyone over patent infringement.”
No, it is not nonsense. Actually, it could be nonsense if MS and Suse didn’t tried they very best to assure people that only and I (they for several times) repeat ONLY legal Mono implementation is this one on Suse. If I hadn’t seen Ballmer saying that for several times, I would keep my tinfoil hat on. Btw, did you know that MS took IBM’s top dog patent guy something like a year and a half ago, to make sense of their patent portfolio? As I’ve said several times, I was under impression that Mono is totally safe, we were even considering it for some projects here with out .Net branch. However, I’m for sure not going that way now, I really dislike being threatened. And especially if it is with no reason.
“You are aware that, in order to be valid, a contract must have an end-date, correct?”
Far from correct. Have you ever signed any contracts lately?
“Whether you want to admit this or not, eventually there will emerge a single corporate Linux distribution. It will either be SUSE or Red Hat. As for the little guys, who cares. They don’t drive adoption, anyway.”
I’m not really sure about that, and would advise you to not being so sure either. There’s no way there will be “one to rule them all” in Linux world, especially not with countries like China, Brazil, India coming into the picture. Btw, Sun is pushing Ubuntu, Oracle is going their own way, so what in the world gave you impression that there will be just one? To much MS centric thinking. For example, that would imply that just one Java app server is dominant on the market now. However, there are several dozens, with 3-4 of them having same or similar footprint.
“You’re dreaming if you think that Sun is going to relinquish all control over Java to the open source community. Sure, you may get the source code, but Sun has been remarkably cagey about which license it’s going to release under (my assertion is that it won’t be GPL’d). So, in the end, you’re still under Sun’s control. Some freedom.”
No, I’m not dreaming. Actually, I CAN get the source of Java right now, and even build it with changes, and even use it inside my company. So, they did relinquish some control even right now. They probably won’t opensource it under GPL, but I don’t care much about GPL, and actually don’t think that GPL would be practical for Java. They will for sure opensource it under OSI approved license (probably similar to Solaris). JCP will remain in control of goes into official Java (the trademark), but no one could stop you or me to
a) propose some changes and drive them into official release (I actually pushed hard for sharing VM, subpixell AA and automatic subpixell AA in KDE, an got all what I wanted
)
b) fix bugs as much as we want
c) fork, but you just won’t be able to call it Java. Just like Mono is not called .Net
Btw, ALL of Java is going opensource, micro edition, standard edition and enterprise edition.
And finally, I don’t expect Sun to ever pull this kind of nonsense that MS and Novell did. Sun is mostly selling hardware and services, what use would they have of Java if they suddenly say: oh yes, it IS portable, but you can work with it only on Solaris (free) and Ubuntu (free).
Aside from that, classpath is progressing nicely (missing just a really good VM), Harmony is getting some donations, Motorola is opensourcing their complete JME3.0 stack, from what I can see, we will have several choices in Java area, with licenses ranging from GPL, over Apache to whatever Sun chooses, and a means to pressure Sun to behave nicely.
…his comments on MS/Sun deal aren’t even remotely true. Sun and MS ended up a legal battle over Java, with huge MS payout worth 2 billion $. Novell has done similar thing in past, with 500 mil $ payout in damages from MS. Sun never agreed to pay any royalities to MS. The deals have some similarities (with crosspatenting and much talking about future collaboration that never took significant place) however, in Suns case it was basically one way money transfer, MS to Sun, to stop legal process around Java and damage that MS has done to it. That was a bit of screwup too (Sun could block MS .Net effort relatively easy, with .Net 1.0 being ripoff of Java), but Java was Suns only investment at the time, as opposed to Linux for Novell. Remember Miguel, every SLED sold will bring MS money. And its not like you personally, or Novell wrote every little bit of it.
Hello Santana,
You are incorrect, the Sun/Microsoft agreement specifically spells out that Sun and Microsoft have agreed to pay royalties to each other on the use of their patents:
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-04/sunflash.20040402.3.x…
But the direction of the money transfer is very simple: its linked to how much revenue is linked to the patents you own. Having a single patent that Windows infringes on would turn on a lot of money for the patent holder, but having a hundred patents might turn very little if you go against someone that has sold a thousand dollars worth of product.
Miguel.
Hello Miguel,
thanks for the answer. Btw, I was strongly against that deal too. But, who asks me, right
Anyhow, Sun kind of had a moral grounds to settle with MS.
“The agreements involve payments of $700 million to Sun by Microsoft to resolve pending antitrust issues and $900 million to resolve patent issues. In addition, Sun and Microsoft have agreed to pay royalties for use of each other’s technology, with Microsoft making an up-front payment of $350 million and Sun making payments when this technology is incorporated into its server products.”
See, situation is much much more different that in your case. MS pays to Sun because of Java. Period. Sun pays to MS WHEN and IF they incorporate technologies. And MS doesn’t become a Sun’s reseller. Taking royalities from every product they sell. And that Sun sells as well. Just product(s) that Sun inconporates MS technology in.
See this paragraph? Doesn’t it remind you of something?
“This agreement will be of significant benefit to both Sun and Microsoft customers. It will stimulate new products, delivering great new choices for customers who want to combine server products from multiple vendors and achieve seamless computing in a heterogeneous computing environment. We look forward to this opportunity – it provides a framework for cooperation between Sun and Microsoft going forward.”
Well, its been 2 and a half years now. Where the hell are these products? Choices? I can’t find them. Maaaaybe Sun Calendar server has infamous MAPI fully implemented. Maybe. Those products sure as hell aren’t something Sun sells in huge quantities, or depends on them. And sure as hell doesn’t cover all of Suns product line. And sure as hell those products didn’t live up to the “can we all get along” hype, the world is exactly the same as it was three years ago. One big monopoly that charges 400$ for its next OS.
Look, this is a one way street. We all know it. I’m sorry that you’ve got the biggest hit, because I kind of beleive that you knew nothing about it. And now when you know, I would actually advise to turn away. This is not your fight. Gnome was (is) great, Evolution is nice, Mono is nice (although I have serious objections about copying something MS has done, technically you’ll always stay subpar, there are better ways to drive OS side forward), but this deal isn’t.
But, when making comparisions, keep in mind that Sun basically settled for what they completely own, they invested in it, produced it, and never claimed it is a public owned good. Java. Your management made it sound like they settled for various things, which they actually don’t completely own, and which they (sometimes through you) vigorously defended as completely safe and open. Like Mono (even if you personally plus Novell made 99%+ of it). Or OpenOffice (which you and Novell had very little do to with). Or OpenXML implementation in OpenOffice (which MS is hard trying to explain to governments it is free to use, and now I’m not so sure, there are patents, but there are grants, and it is killing me to find out where the thruth lies, with this deal not helping at all). Or Linux (which you actually didn’t include in deal, but MS oh soooo much enjoyed to plug into their speech as a key patent breaking item, and your management just set there quiet).
Or, to make it simpler, answer that I would like to hear is; Sun got a money from MS for Java. Lots of it. Novell too got a money from MS, as far as I can see. For what exactly? (Novell antitrust case was settled and payed for before, something like 500+ mil dollars)
Stop defending this deal, it won’t bring any good, not for Linux, not for customers, and especially not for you.
Regards,
Filip Selendic
Protenus CTO
Mig, just in case you want a change of perspective sooner or later, Google’s still hiring: http://egofood.blogspot.com/2006/11/short-post-on-microsotnovell-de…
There were two open source dot-net-like projects started at roughly the same time–Mono and DotGNU, http://dotgnu.org/. The DotGNU site was updated as recent as August, but it’s still at version 0.1.
I hope this deal gives DotGNU a shot in the arm as developers start to reconsider if they really want to use Mono.
The reasons that people are wary of Mono are endemic to any implementation of the .NET platform. The same thing, only less developed and under the GPL, doesn’t really rectify any problem except maybe hatred for Novell or something.
reasons … are endemic to any implementation of the .NET platform
Yes, there is certainly some truth there. But I think some actually found technical merit in .NET (unlike ActiveX, which is a security nightmare).
And then there is the prospect of using Microsoft’s own tactic of embrace and extend right back at them.
You’d have to be a brain dead idiot to keep on supporting and developing Mono now. As of today Mono has lost all crediablity and so has Miguel in the OSS world. When you sleep with vipers don’t be upset if they bite you one day.
You’d have to be a brain dead idiot to keep on supporting and developing Mono now. As of today Mono has lost all crediablity and so has Miguel in the OSS world. When you sleep with vipers don’t be upset if they bite you one day.
Its nice to know the cult knows who the real enemies are!
Well, cult or not, it would actually be very stupid to start developing something that is supposed to be free (as in speech and as in beer) with something that both MS and Novell claim has patent issues because of which Novell is paying royalities to MS.
Mono either does or does not have patent issues. It cannot be both. Novell develops most of it, Novell acknowledges that it does have issues, Novell pays MS royalities. Why in the world would you build something supposed to be free with something that obviously isn’t free? After all, all Gnome thing started because QT wasn’t free enough at that point of time.
About GNOME and Mono:
I’m starting to think about what Richard “let’s start a completely free desktop” Stallman must be thinking.
Don’t get me wrong. I DO respect RS very much, but I wonder what is crossing his mind right now about this MS/Novell/Mono/Gnome issue.
Thing he wrote some weeks ago about why they started gnome (plus talk about kde/qt)
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-09-05-001-21-OP…
Edited 2006-11-05 01:09
Why in the world would you build something supposed to be free with something that obviously isn’t free?
Well that depends on if you are developing on linux because its free, or if you are doing it because from a cost standpoint it makes sense.
Some of us don’t live by the ideology of open source but we have found Linux distros to be a very cost effective platform.
I respect anyone who is for open source and will not put up with licensing issues etc. but linux appeals to more than just these people and mono has its place.
Mono either does or does not have patent issues. It cannot be both. Novell develops most of it, Novell acknowledges that it does have issues, Novell pays MS royalities. Why in the world would you build something supposed to be free with something that obviously isn’t free?
As others have stated, Mono goes beyond the ECMA/ISO standards and implements Microsoft proprietary technologies like ASP.NET and Windows Forms. Assuming Novell is paying MS for patents affecting Mono, how do you know it isn’t just for the non-standard stack? Those worrying about Mono’s position WRT IP should just stick to the standard stack.
Novell signed a deal with Microsoft. So what?
It doesn’t change anything for the rest of Linux arena.
Microsoft can’t buy Linux, (neither can Oracle) and they know it. Because of non-profit distribution organisations which don’t even think about buying a patent license from Microsoft.
What Novell does is only related to their product and doesn’t give microsoft any legal benefits regarding their possible plans to sue someone else. Besides, they seem to be doing well even without patent lawsuits.
All nice and Ok, but…
what I would like to know are a bit specific answers not blanked out by pointing the fact that Sun did it also. (and since Miguel usually reads OSNews when it concerns Mono or him I hope he will answer, and yes I love mono). And beside mono I doubt there is one piece of technology that Novell produces I’m interested in (speaking personally, I only buy Novell Server when customer requests it or requires Netware services, which would put me in kind of awkward position, not a customer, but still provider of business for Novell).
From Novell announcement
Novell customers can use these technologies, secure in the knowledge that Microsoft and Novell are working together to offer the best possible joint solution.
From his previous blog:
So today we have secured a peace of mind for Novell customers that might have been worried about possible patent infringements open source deployments. This matters in particular for Mono, because for a long time its been the favorite conversation starter for folks that find dates on Slashdot.
1. Taken to equation, Novell users are covered. What about others? Because if I read it, I’m allowed to produce free software, and not allowed to produce commercial. And Novell seems to agree with the facts.
2. Reading all together, it seems like there were problems between Mono and MS and Novell knows it.
3. I long believed that core mono is in clear, only specific parts are troublesome. Otherwise I doubt I would see Mono in Fedora (RH lawyers seem to take it as safe). But this one http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16384&comment_id=178685 has get me to wonder a little bit.
4. If problems do exist, is Novell preparing some indemnifications for technologies they put out in the wild (take my awkward position as starting point)? I mean if this is MS way “to be used with MS products only”, then please get out of the OSS world. I can respect MS as they are and have always been proprietary company.
All I can say is that clearing up this point will decide on me avoiding business with Novell products or not. Currently state is very negative for Novell.
Mono won’t show up in RHEL anytime soon, so seeing it in Fedora doesn’t actually prove anything.
… And judging by recent discussions on -devel ML, it won’t be in Fedora for long. (And rightly so. This code is tainted and shouldn’t be touched.)
– Gilboa
“””And judging by recent discussions on -devel ML, it won’t be in Fedora for long.”””
Could you give me a pointer? The only post I’ve found on the topic is this one:
http://tinyurl.com/un2j6
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2006-November/msg00…
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2006-November/msg00…
– Gilboa
I just did a quick Google search and failed to find an instance where Microsoft directly sued someone for Patent Infringement. I don’t doubt that they’d do it if they were undergoing serious collapse, but I don’t see the evidence of it right now. Can someone point me to an instance where Microsoft sued anyone-open or closed-for patent infringement?
I suppose you could point to the SCO case, but is there anything else?
Microsoft isn’t going to sue anyone. This is just a venue for FUD since it casts a shadow on the distributors that aren’t going to pay a royalty to Microsoft, and I suppose is intended as both a cash infusion and competitive advantage for Novell. I think they are overestimating their hand, but then I don’t care that much about Mono or any of this.
just did a quick Google search and failed to find an instance where Microsoft directly sued someone for Patent Infringement. I don’t doubt that they’d do it if they were undergoing serious collapse, but I don’t see the evidence of it right now. Can someone point me to an instance where Microsoft sued anyone-open or closed-for patent infringement?
I suppose you could point to the SCO case, but is there anything else?
Yes, Microsoft sued Belkin in Aug this year:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39280317,00.htm
But that’s not a software patent!
No, it isn’t, but you said you’d failed to find a single instance of Microsoft suing for “patent infringement”, NOT “software patent infringement”.
I said that, not “someone.”
In any case, you have found a case. But I can see how this one probably played out. Several hardware manufacturers were probably licensing U2 from Microsoft and they complained when Belkin made products without the license. They complained to Microsoft and left it with the choice of not enforcing the patent for anyone (these manufacturers thereby forfeiting the licensing fees they’ve paid already), which penalizes people for working within the system and following the laws. Or they could demand that Belkin not continue distributing unlicensed technology, which is what they did (note that they did not seek compensatory damages).
Your reference has nothing to do with patents, period. It’s about a failure on Belkin’s part to properly license Microsoft’s software.
– improves its position on its battle to legitimize patents on software;
– carves a better position to itself on litigation about monopolist tactics;
– rise their power level and control over Linux business;
– if they succeed, they will diversify and extend their incoming with the ones coming from Linux vendors and users;
– they even prepare the ground to also service from FOSS projects.
But what about Novell? To me looks like they choose a dangerous path, one where both the risk is too big and the reward is too small to be worth of. You can talk about the benefits of a “secure pact” but what had been pushing companies to try and use Linux? Was not for sure the esteem of MS!
Remember: people went Linux way to have more control of their system/resources and this is exactly what Novell is dropping!
Wouldn’t linux vendors banding together to offer indemnification make more sense?
This agreement is more like a marketing tool for Novell sales people over Redhat, saying “we have agreements with Microsoft”
There are plenty of dumb CIOs out there who’ll drink this without questions, smart move Novell
There are plenty of dumb CIOs out there who’ll drink this without questions, smart move Novell
There are also smart CIO’s working for Sarbox-encumbered companies, and deployment of technology with a hazy IP provision is a risk best not taken. This move at least clarifies things for organizations intent on compliance.
It’s been brought up that Microsoft rarely actually sues people over IP infringement, but the point being overlooked is that they don’t need to. The simple implication that they can is sufficient to prevent organizations from infringing. That was the tactic SCO basically attempted, and if IBM and Novell hadn’t immediately jumped out of the gate with both guns blazing, the FUD may have succeeded if allowed to grow.
So Novell made a strategic business decision. I don’t agree with it, and I’m doubtful it will be successful, but I can’t deny the business logic in it.
The irony is that, at least IMHO, this taints the mono project. Certainly SLED/SLES customers are clearly protected. I suspect that the patent issues hanging over mono’s head due to the MS-like technologies just got murkier for the rest of the community. Yes, C# is ECMA. We get that. But what about the rest of the .net stack, winforms et al.? Where do you draw the line? What can SLED users/developers do that Ubuntu can’t, or OpenSuse for that matter, since it’s seperate from the agreement? OIN was supposed to be the buffer there, of which Novell was a major contributor, and that was the move that even convinced Red Hat to cave with mono in Fedora. Why this move now?
And the bigger irony is that mono dependencies are now part of Gnome, the project that grew out of a belief that license payments to Trolltech were bad because the technology should be free.
I’m not saying that mono is a road to patent hell, frankly I don’t know enough about the technology to say for sure, but as someone that wasn’t sure before I’m even more confused now.
I know that most of us posting here at OSNews, and various other news sites/blogs/forums on the internet make up an extremely small segment of the IT world in general. Hell, I’m even a Novell customer, and I’m small potatoes. However, I’m curious where Novell is during all of this. It seems like the annoucement was make, some of the CXOs made cookie cutter “blog” postings, Novell.com changes to blue links(because blue links show synergy between Novell and Microsoft…or something), and that’s it. Nobody is trying to explain anything. Even the customers who are supposed to win don’t know what any of this really means. Novell’s PR and Marketing at its best again. If they dropped the ball anywhere, this is where it is.
The net could be rife with mis information and screaming at Novell, and nobody is trying to clear anything up. It doesn’t even seem like the support/engineering Novell employees(you know, the ones who actually do real work) seem to know what any of this means. Maybe someone at Novell who isn’t an engineer could do the unthinkable and actually explain some of this. And for the love of god, don’t talk to us about open enterprise, or your open enterprise, or how Novell is open source. Get to the facts out there.
Novell’s marketing and PR has shown itself to be inept, and the trend continues. You can’t make a huge annoucement like that and follow it up with quotes and blue links on your front page. Blue links? I feel all warm and fuzzy now.
Edited 2006-11-05 05:29
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6132552.html
Nice to see one company with a spine.
Novell officials noted that one of their priorities in working toward the agreement with Microsoft was making sure the agreement made sense for the open source community. As part of today’s agreement, Novell and Microsoft are announcing three important commitments. First, Microsoft will work with Novell and actively contribute to several open source software projects, including projects focused on Office file formats and Web services management. Second, Microsoft will not assert its patents against individual noncommercial open source developers. And third, Microsoft is promising not to assert its patents against individual contributors to OpenSUSE.org whose code is included in the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-02MSNovellPR…
Sounds too good to be true, reading that press release it seems that MS won’t go after single oss developers or opensuse developers, so this means that automagically they won’t go even after RH which shares the same codebase
“Second, Microsoft will not assert its patents against individual noncommercial open source developers.”
Define “noncommercial open source developers”. Not a single RedHat employee is “noncommercial open source developer”. Any enterprise that will try to make a living from OS is doomed by this wording, except from Novell.
Not to mention that this deal clearly breaks OS community in half; it is OK to work for Novell, but not OK to work for anyone else. Oh, yes, it is OK to work as a hobbyist. Just can’t make a living out of it. I really don’t know how they mean to enforce that. Is Linus commercial or noncommercial OS developer? Alan Cox? Guys from IBM? Terrasoft? Mandriva? Guys from Oracle?
This deal sucks, there’s not a single good point in it, no matter how hard you try. What the hell do you think MS gave money for?
The worst part of a deal is that somehow Linux actually sneeked in it. FAQ clearly says Mono, OpenOffice, OpenXML, .Net and such. It doesn’t mention Linux per se. However, the deal sucked up Linux plus all of the open source. Is Classpath part of this deal? Harmony? Apache? SugarCRM? Azerus? KDE? Who the hell gave Novell authority to include such broad wording in this deal and explanations of it?
Any enterprise that will try to make a living from OS is doomed by this wording, except from Novell.
Except, of course, enterprises that don’t violate any valid MS patents. Which we shouldn’t be doing in the first place*.
*(and no, i’m not trying to implicate that we are)
Edited 2006-11-05 16:46
Except, of course, enterprises that don’t violate any valid MS patents. Which we shouldn’t be doing in the first place*.
Most informed observers seem to believe that it is impossible to create any software at all without infringing on someone else’s patents. For example, anyone who puts a minimize/maximize/zoom button on a GUI is infringing on an Apple patent.
If things were this bad in the “real world” (i.e. outside the software industry), you’d have to pay someone for permission to put one foot in front of the other.
For example, anyone who puts a minimize/maximize/zoom button on a GUI is infringing on an Apple patent.
I doubt that would hold up in court. Note I wrote valid patent. The mere fact that someone registered a patent doesn’t mean it is valid.
Anyway, Novell is f–ked also if it turns out to infringe on MS patents: it’s true MS won’t sue them, but they’ll lose the right to distribute the software (GPL section 7). With this agreement, they’re just less f–ked and have time to fix the infringement, which should benefit us all.
Edited 2006-11-05 17:07
For example, anyone who puts a minimize/maximize/zoom button on a GUI is infringing on an Apple patent.
I doubt that would hold up in court. Note I wrote valid patent. The mere fact that someone registered a patent doesn’t mean it is valid.
Microsoft have enough lawyers to “validate” a patent on breathing in and out if they so wish.
Unfortunatelly, not so simple. You would have to be aware of every MS patent then. And there’s A LOT of them.
For example:
‘Word-Processing Document Stored in a Single XML File’
‘Word-Processing Document Stored in a Single XML File that may be Manipulated by Applications that Understand XML’
Now, touch any Word-processing document with a parser and you are in violation. Or aren’t you? There’s clearly prior art. But, why were they granted a patent? Because patent offices are full of stuff like that, and cannot check it like they should. So, besides needing an army of lawyers to browse through all of MS patents (so that you don’t break any) you will have to have an army of lawyers and tons of money for court, if you choose to break some patents that shouldn’t be patented to begin with.
That’s why patent system is broken. And MS is using it in its advantage, there’s no room for small players here. It has simply gotten out of hands, too many things patented.
Btw, be carefull, if you have kids, one lawyer, to show his kid how patent system works, patented sideway swinging. So if your kid swings sideways on a swing i a park, you (and kid) are breaking someones precious intellectual property. And should be paying royalities.
Read the article carefully, and you should understand why this thing with patents is so dangerous.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2178
That’s why patent system is broken.
True – but that was the case before this agreement and will be the case for some time to come. Nothing really changed there.
patented sideway swinging
As I said, the mere fact that a patent has been registered doesn’t mean it is a valid patent. So even if you found a patent that covers something you’re also implementing, you’re still in the dark as to whether it applies at all. Nothing new there either, though.
If the above definitions are to be taken literally, OpenDocument doesn’t infringe them. An ODF document is contained in a series of XML and schema files, in turn contained in a zip archive. The XML file that holds the content does not really represent the “Document” as a whole; it’s pretty useless on its own.
>No single person has done more damage to Linux and open >source software – ever.
>I challenge anyone to name any SINGLE person who has >done more to set back Linux and open source software in >general.
Richard Stallman?
Deal between Sun and Microsoft was about interoperability between Java and .Net, such as web services, or Java-Vista integration, it had nothing to do with Mono. Nobody uses mono for servers anyway.
Edited 2006-11-05 12:59
I guess the smell of money is stronger than good old common sense. Microsoft’s reputation in the marketplace are well known. But some companies, like Novell (and even SCO) are just hard learners I guess. When companies make deals with Microsoft, Microsoft is the only winner.
Speaking of Java, I don’t see .Net being that much more advanced (or more advanced at all). From what I’ve tried, it is not faster, has some features that Java doesn’t, and that “improved faster” part probably means it is getting more language features, which can be both a good and a bad thing (kitchen sink syndrome).
Java is actually a great, solid platform, ranging from micro space (JME is basically everywhere, supported by everyone) to JSE (which could use some work, and some porting to less known platforms) to JEE which is a king in big companies and is supported by practically everybody in the industry (except MS).
Java also has a HUGE opensource legacy, which is actually helping very much with new releases and improving still closed platform (Spring, Hibernate, Struts, JBoss, Tapestry, AOP, all of those once opensource underdogs sneaked their ideas into formal Java releases).
Opensource Java is something I look very forward to. If done right, it could be a huge boom.
One side of this, you have Apple, MS, Novell, Oracle. DRM, locked hardware and software, incompatible proprietary formats, an MS tax on every PC sold.
Other side, you have Open Source.
Its not a matter of waiting and seeing, its a matter of making up your mind where you stand, because with this we reach the point where there is no middle ground left.
I would suggest taking all those Suse disks that come on magazines and mailing them back to Novell.
Edited 2006-11-05 20:09
“Its not a matter of waiting and seeing, its a matter of making up your mind where you stand, because with this we reach the point where there is no middle ground left.”
You can make up your mind if you like but no matter what side you come down on if Microsoft owns patents that are infringed within Linux then Microsoft has the right to make the claim and to seek royalties.
And this isn’t just a matter of rewriting the source to remove offending code; patents cover the end result no matter how the code is written.
So there is more going on here than just choosing sides. There is source code, patents, and royalty issues.
It ain’t that easy…
I want to thank all the cultists for a very funny past few days.
The defense of the copyrighted and patented Adobe PDF spec as “open” and “free” on another thread contrasted with the demonization and hate spewed forth against anyone using the ECMA .NET specification in this thread has got to be the funniest show on earth!!!!
Edited 2006-11-06 00:04
And thank YOU for allowing ME to be the first to mod that manure down.
Edited 2006-11-06 00:17
And thank YOU for allowing ME to be the first to mod that manure down.
Why would you do that?
When I point out hypocrisy over ECMA published specifications like .NET and OpenXML versus Adobes copyrighted/patented PDF is it just plain embarrasment at the rank hypocrisy that causes you to mod me down?
The defense of the copyrighted and patented Adobe PDF spec as “open” and “free” on another thread contrasted with the demonization and hate spewed forth against anyone using the ECMA .NET specification in this thread has got to be the funniest show on earth!!!!
Adobe does hold several patents on the PDF spec. However, they will license these patents to developers on a royalty-free basis.
See this for more details:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/support/topic_legal_noti…
Adobe does hold several patents on the PDF spec. However, they will license these patents to developers on a royalty-free basis
Does that make it “open” or “free” in your mind?
Have you read the license agreement that discusses when royalties may be imposed?
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat/sdk/topic_licens…
In what way is PDF “free” or “open” compared to OpenXML (other than the usual “Microsoft can’t be trusted” bullsh*t”)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA102058151033.aspx
Does that make it “open” or “free” in your mind?
I never said PDF was open and free.
In Adobe’s license, the word “royalty” appears exactly once, in the phrase “royalty-free”. Did you even bother to read the license? In any case, this is the license for the SDK, not the PDF patents.
In what way is PDF “free” or “open” compared to OpenXML (other than the usual “Microsoft can’t be trusted” bullsh*t”)
I don’t see any differences between the two regarding patent status. Both specs are patent encumbered and both companies grant royal-free patent licenses related to the spec.
Note that PDF is not directly comparable to OpenXML from a technical perspective. XPS is more comparable to PDF.
In Adobe’s license, the word “royalty” appears exactly once, in the phrase “royalty-free”.
I’m pretty sure fee appears at least once:
“You agree not to reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software, Other Adobe Acrobat Software and/or any component thereof except to the extent (i) You may be expressly permitted to decompile under applicable law, (ii) it is essential to do so in order to achieve operability of the Software or Other Adobe Acrobat Software with another software program, and (iii) You have first asked Adobe to provide the information necessary to achieve such operability and Adobe has not made such information available. Adobe has the right to impose reasonable conditions and to request a reasonable fee before providing such information.”
And I’m equally sure you have to agree to respect all DRM associated with PDF’s.
Edited 2006-11-06 17:39
Again, did you even bother to read the license? They are talking about reverse engineering Adobe’s SDK for compatibility purposes here. Basically, you have to ask Adobe for the technical details before proceeding and they may charge you a reasonable for providing the information. This has nothing to do with PDF.
To implement PDF, all you need is the spec, which is available for download here (No, they don’t charge you a fee): http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/index_reference.html
And I’m equally sure you have to agree to respect all DRM associated with PDF’s.
The PDF spec does not include Digital Rights Management (in the popular sense). It does have access permissions, which is analogous to file permission on your HD. This feature is probably most useful in corporate environments.
Edited 2006-11-06 19:01
I really, really want to thank all the cultists for a very funny past few days.
The defense of the copyrighted and patented Adobe PDF spec as “open” and “free” on another thread contrasted with the demonization and hate spewed forth against anyone using the ECMA .NET specification in this thread has got to be the funniest show on earth!!!!
And thanks for proving how thin skinned and hypocritical you are too!
Edited 2006-11-06 16:13
See this:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16391&comment_id=179186
Given that there is a considerable amount of GPL’d software being used by the BSD groups, by extension could they potentially threaten those end users with ‘infringements’ as well?
I’m assuming the main thrust of this is that they’re not just talking about the kernel when they say “Linux”.